Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.”

– Theodore Roosevelt

“In order to empathize with someone’s experience, you must be willing to believe them as they see it, and not how you imagine their experience to be.”

– Brene Brown

“It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.”

– Rene Descartes

1. U.S. and Ukraine Prepare to Sign Minerals Deal—With Critical Details Unresolved

2. Trump Team Tried to Drop Security Guarantees from US-Ukraine Resources Deal

3. U.S. Foreign-Aid Halt Is Making Scrutiny of China Even Harder

4. Why Is the U.S. Paying Officers to Leave the Military?

5. How Charging Chinese Ships Could Ripple Through the Economy

6. Iran Has Enough Highly Enriched Uranium for Six Nuclear Weapons

7. Iran, the Nuclear Program, and Trump 2.0

8. Expert Q&A: DOGE May Be a Cybersecurity Nightmare

9. 3 thoughts on Trump's foreign policy from an expert critical of U.S. intervention

10. Taiwan Faces China Threats From Sea and Cyber

11. Trump signals more firings of military leaders

12. Trump’s Chaotic Agenda Has a Critical Through Line

13. Special ops commanders say adversaries outpacing US in tech advancement

14. USAID workers will be given 15 minutes to clear their workspaces as the agency gets dismantled

15. Musk has inside track to take over contract to fix air traffic communications system

16. The Rise of the Fake Tech Workforce: State-Sponsored Infiltration of U.S. Technical Supply Chains

17. Deterring Chinese Aggression: Theoretical Approaches for the South China Sea

18. The Pentagon's joint requirements process must go

19. Rewind and Reconnoiter: Soft Power Shouldn't Be Taken Lightly

20. Chief Justice Allows U.S. to Continue Freeze on Foreign Aid Payments

21. The Collapse of Assad’s Regime: A Major Blow to Iran’s Influence

22. Hezbollah’s Defeat and Hamas’s Dogged Resistance: Israel’s Two-Front War and the Perils of Prewar Assumptions

23. The Taiwan Fixation: American Strategy Shouldn’t Hinge on an Unwinnable War

24. In Focus with Curtis Fox: Bureaucracy Limits Special Ops' Effectiveness

25. Hegseth: DoD doing 'complete review' of Afghan withdrawal

26. Some US allies contribute, some loaf. Here’s a numerical assessment

1. U.S. and Ukraine Prepare to Sign Minerals Deal—With Critical Details Unresolved

Excerpts:

Trump said in his first cabinet meeting Wednesday that he expected the Ukrainian president to come to Washington on Friday to sign the agreement, which he said would share Ukraine’s mineral resources. Earlier in the day, Zelensky said he wasn’t sure if he would go.

The financial benefits of the deal remain up in the air. The text of the deal, which has been viewed by The Wall Street Journal, includes the creation of a fund co-owned by the two countries, with the details of the financial arrangement to be determined down the line.

The agreement lacks explicit security guarantees for Ukraine, which Zelensky had previously said would be necessary for any mineral-rights deal, and nods toward Kyiv’s needs for such assurances. One clause of the agreement says the U.S. “supports Ukraine’s efforts to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace.”

U.S. and Ukraine Prepare to Sign Minerals Deal—With Critical Details Unresolved

U.S. military support to Ukraine and even the value of the deal will be the subject of future talks

https://www.wsj.com/world/zelensky-says-details-of-u-s-deal-for-resources-still-need-to-be-worked-out-aa763dab?mod=hp_lead_pos5

By Jane Lytvynenko, Ian Lovett

Follow and Alan Cullison

Updated Feb. 26, 2025 5:16 pm ET

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had been invited to Washington but wasn’t sure he would go. Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine—Both the U.S. and Ukraine touted a proposed deal over mineral resources as important, but the most contentious element—military support to Ukraine—and other details have yet to be negotiated.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday that the success of the proposed deal depends on his broader conversations with President Trump and Trump’s commitment to helping Ukraine.

“This agreement can have a major success or quietly pass by,” said Zelensky, signaling that the proposed framework required more work. “And I believe that a major success depends on our conversation with President Trump.”

Trump said in his first cabinet meeting Wednesday that he expected the Ukrainian president to come to Washington on Friday to sign the agreement, which he said would share Ukraine’s mineral resources. Earlier in the day, Zelensky said he wasn’t sure if he would go.

The financial benefits of the deal remain up in the air. The text of the deal, which has been viewed by The Wall Street Journal, includes the creation of a fund co-owned by the two countries, with the details of the financial arrangement to be determined down the line.

The agreement lacks explicit security guarantees for Ukraine, which Zelensky had previously said would be necessary for any mineral-rights deal, and nods toward Kyiv’s needs for such assurances. One clause of the agreement says the U.S. “supports Ukraine’s efforts to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace.”

The high-profile signing of the agreement would be a victory for Kyiv, which feared that Trump, who has been trying to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, might meet first with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump praised the financial benefits of the deal. “We’ve been able to make a deal where we’re going to get our money back and we’re going to get a lot more money in the future, and I think that’s appropriate because we have taxpayers footing the bill,” he said on Wednesday.

Trump also said that he is focusing on establishing peace in the region, but didn’t say what that meant for the future of Ukraine’s government or borders. “I’m not going to make security guarantees,” Trump said, noting Europeans would place troops in Ukraine, “but we’re going to make sure everything goes well.”

Zelensky himself proposed a mineral deal in the autumn of 2024, sensing that Trump, who has criticized U.S. support for Kyiv as a zero-sum drain on U.S. resources, would be more amenable to continuing support if he saw some return on U.S. investment. The original idea was to float cooperation with the U.S. on developing $10 trillion to $12 trillion in critical minerals and rare-earth elements, “big numbers that really did capture Trump’s attention,” said Heidi Crebo-Rediker, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Ukrainian proposal also aimed to help the U.S. counter China and Russia’s chokehold on the global supply chain of critical minerals and rare-earth elements that are vital to high-tech and weapons industry in the U.S..

Trump Team Tried to Drop Security Guarantees from US-Ukraine Resources Deal

kyivpost.com · by Kyiv Post · February 27, 2025

Zelensky is set to visit Washington DC on Friday to sign the natural resources agreement. The trip has already been confirmed in both Kyiv and Washington.

by Kyiv Post | Feb. 27, 2025, 9:00 am

US President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, on February 26, 2025. Also pictured, L-R, Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP)

Representatives of US President Donald Trump’s administration reportedly pushed to exclude wording on security guarantees from an agreement between the US and Ukraine regarding access to Ukrainian natural resources.

According to an unnamed Ukrainian official, cited by the New York Times, Trump administration negotiators repeatedly tried to remove references to security guarantees from early drafts, arguing that they were “unrelated” to mineral rights. The phrasing was only added back at the later stages of negotiations.

The New York Times obtained a copy of the Feb. 24 draft, which states that the United States “supports Ukraine’s effort to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace.”

This wording was also reported by the Ukrainian outlet European Pravda, which published the full agreement text. Earlier drafts reportedly did not include any mention of security guarantees.

The NYT notes that while the current language expresses support, it remains vague and does not specify any concrete US commitments. It is also unclear if this version is final.

The draft also mentions US steps to “protect mutual investments,” which, according to analysts, could imply a role in safeguarding mineral resources – some of which are near the front lines.

Ukraine had insisted that security guarantees be part of the deal. Zelensky acknowledged on Feb. 26 that while the agreement “does not have all the security guarantees that Ukraine wanted,” at least the wording “security guarantees” appeared in the final draft of the document.

Russia and US Open Second Round of Talks in Istanbul to Mend Ties

While neither side has disclosed the participants, Russia’s TASS news agency reported that the Russian delegation includes representatives from the foreign ministry.

Trump, for his part, claimed the agreement ensures automatic security, stating that “no one will attack Ukraine as long as the US is working there.”

At the same time, at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Trump ruled out offering US security guarantees for Ukraine in upcoming peace settlements. He said he would have Europe offer the ones to Ukraine instead when asked by a reporter about “what type of security guarantees” he was willing to make.

“Well I’m not going to make security guarantees beyond… we’re gonna have Europe do that… cause Europe is their next-door neighbor,” he said.

Zelensky is set to visit Washington on Friday, Feb. 28, to sign the agreement, it has been already confirmed in Kyiv in Washington.

On Tuesday evening, Ukrainian officials confirmed that Kyiv is ready to sign an agreement with the US on developing its mineral resources – including oil and gas – after Washington dropped demands for the right to $500 billion in potential revenue from exploiting Ukraine’s resources.

According copy of the revised agreement, obtained by European Pravda, Kyiv agrees to allocate 50% of future revenues generated from minerals, hydrocarbons, oil, natural gas, and other extractive materials to a joint US-Ukraine fund in the new minerals deal with the US.

At the same time, the draft makes no mention of the monetary value to be extracted from Ukraine’s mineral resources under the agreement.

3. U.S. Foreign-Aid Halt Is Making Scrutiny of China Even Harder

A national security paradox: We need to fund programs that contribute to national security (which ones those are will always be subject to debate) and we need to cut the budget because the debt (and the interest on the debt) is a national security threat.

U.S. Foreign-Aid Halt Is Making Scrutiny of China Even Harder

Funding freeze rocks nonprofits that collected increasingly scarce information in a country that Trump has deemed a competitor

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-us-scrutiny-trump-foreign-aid-pause-39408d38?mod=wknd_pos1

Visitors at the Museum of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing this week. Activists say collecting data on public dissent is becoming more difficult. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

By Chun Han Wong

Updated Feb. 27, 2025 12:00 am ET

China, the world’s second-largest economy, is already one of the most impenetrable countries. Now, the Trump administration’s move to suspend foreign aid is starting to derail nonprofit efforts to unearth data on business and social trends—which was already hard to track.

Nonprofits cited halts to funding from U.S. institutions including the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the National Endowment for Democracy.

Activists and nonprofit executives say the shutdown—led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency—is forcing nongovernment organizations to suspend or stop their research on everything from human-rights abuses to socioeconomic indicators prized by foreign businesses.

One nonprofit has suspended efforts to collect data on public dissent and worker unrest—information that investors and academics have mined for clues on China’s economic health and social stability. Some activists say they are cutting research on Chinese supply chains, disrupting work that has helped foreign companies and consumers navigate legal and ethical concerns over the alleged use of forced labor.

Other NGOs are dialing back efforts to track the Communist Party’s suppression of speech and religious freedoms, and worry that they may have to cease contact with Chinese activists, independent journalists and whistleblowers who share information that Beijing tries to suppress. Also at risk are think-tank studies on Chinese cyber threats and foreign-influence operations, which have uncovered potentially malicious activities that democratic governments around the world are trying to thwart.

“U.S. government grants often fund research that cannot be conducted easily in China due to Beijing’s formidable censorship apparatus,” said Neil Thomas, a fellow on Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Cutting off support for researchers focused on understanding Beijing could raise the risk of strategic misunderstandings that endanger U.S. national security.”

Some organisations say links with activists, journalists and whistleblowers are at risk. Photo: peter parks/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Foreign officials, academics and executives have turned to China-focused NGOs, and their local connections, for help parsing signals from a country where the Communist Party has tightened controls on data and suppressed independent analysis of social and economic trends. Many of these NGOs now say they are scrambling to seek new funding or lobby for resumptions to their grants.

Many of these NGOs have received U.S. government grants that were meant to fund research and advocacy projects that support Washington’s foreign-policy goals, according to a U.S. government database.

Their findings have informed policy debates in Washington, with citations by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and in reports published by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, a group of lawmakers and executive-branch officials that tracks human-rights issues in the country.

Some of these NGOs have also provided international institutions such as the United Nations with information on alleged human-rights abuses and forced labor in China, such as the Communist Party’s forced-assimilation program targeting Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in the frontier region of Xinjiang, according to activists and nonprofit executives familiar with such work.

One widely cited data set on social unrest in China came from Freedom House, a Washington-based organization that tracks political freedoms around the world, which said the U.S. aid freeze has forced it to suspend its China Dissent Monitor, a platform that documents protests and other forms of public unrest.

Launched in 2022, China Dissent Monitor documents mainly in-person demonstrations and online dissent by tracking news reports and social-media posts, as well as information from local activists and NGOs. In its most recent quarterly report, the initiative said it tracked 937 instances of dissent from July to September last year, a 27% increase from the same period in 2023, and categorized more than 40% of protests as being led by workers.

“We hope that we will be able to continue work on this important project soon,” Freedom House said.

NGOs have gathered information on alleged abuses, such as the Communist Party’s forced-assimilation program targeting Uyghurs. Photo: pedro pardo/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

While major nonprofits suspend U.S.-backed research projects on China, smaller organizations say they are struggling to survive, even after furloughing or laying off staff to buy time. Many of these groups are reluctant to speak publicly about their difficulties, since this could make public their reliance on U.S. funding and jeopardize the safety of partners in China, activists said.

“When smaller NGOs are broken, they can’t be easily rebuilt,” said an Asia-based executive of an American private foundation that has provided funding to China-focused nonprofits. “The functions and capabilities that these NGOs provide would be lost.”

China Digital Times, a California-based website that tracks Chinese censorship, said it has slashed management salaries and working hours for regular staff after losing grants from the National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit funded by the U.S. Congress.

Founded in 2003, China Digital Times has emerged as a leading resource on Beijing’s media and internet policies by publishing government propaganda directives and archiving internet content scrubbed by Chinese censors. Its work has helped foreign officials and academics study how the Communist Party tries to shape public narratives, and preserved Chinese voices and writings that would otherwise have been lost.

In February, Canadian authorities said they relied on China Digital Times’s findings to uncover what they called a malicious information operation that targeted former Canadian finance minister Chrystia Freeland, a candidate to succeed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“This funding cut has had severe and immediate consequences on our ability to continue this work effectively,” said Xiao Qiang, the founder of China Digital Times, who is seeking a resumption of the NED grants while searching for new financing.

The NED said it has been “forced to suspend support for nearly 2,000 partners worldwide,” even though 95% of its funding comes from Congress, isn’t considered foreign assistance, and should have been exempt from Trump’s aid freeze. “The disruption is hitting hardest in highly repressive environments, where dedicated frontline organizations have been forced to lay off staff, curtail operations, and, in some cases, face increased security threats,” NED said.

Foreign officials have turned to China-focused NGOs because of their local connections. Photo: jessica lee/Shutterstock

China Labor Watch, a New York-based advocacy group that monitors workers’ rights, said the aid freeze eliminated some 90% of its $1 million budget for this year. The group has suspended investigations into the use of forced labor in Chinese supply chains—work that helped U.S. authorities identify and ban imports from companies that allegedly use Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities as forced labor.

The Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, has paused work on several China-focused projects that were funded by State Department grants, including research on how Beijing tries to use international institutions to advance its interests, and a program to train Latin American journalists on how to monitor Chinese influence operations in that region.

The think tank is working to get the grants restored, according to Romesh Ratnesar, senior vice president of engagement at the Atlantic Council. “These programs are cost-effective investments in U.S. national security,” he said. “They allow for independent research and engagement to counter China’s strategic ambitions.”

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a Canberra-based think tank, said the U.S. funding halt has prompted it to stop work on China-related research and data projects—worth about $1.2 million—that focused on cybersecurity and technology issues. The think tank’s China work has often been cited by members of the U.S. Congress.

“Like many NGOs we’re waiting to hear whether this work will proceed in the months to come,” said Danielle Cave, ASPI’s director of strategy and research. “In the meantime, we’re looking for alternative support and staff have been moved to other projects where possible.”

To help finance its work, ASPI is planning to charge access fees for some of its more popular research, particularly on China-related projects that require significant resources to produce and maintain, Cave said. “In an ideal world, we want it to be free-for-all public good, but in this situation, we don’t have much of a choice.”

U.S. government grants have accounted for roughly 10% to 12% of ASPI’s funding and financed roughly 70% of its China research since 2019, which included studies on Chinese disinformation and data-harvesting operations, according to the institute. In its latest annual report, ASPI said it received nearly 3 million Australian dollars—about $1.9 million at current rates—in U.S. State Department grants during the 2022-2023 financial year, which supported work on issues including disinformation and protection against intellectual property theft.

“The U.S. government was the key funder of large grants on topics focused on China,” Cave said. Other governments and supporters have tended to give far smaller grants or actively avoid funding China-focused projects, for fear of upsetting the Chinese government, even though they “eagerly read and use the research once it’s published,” she said.

“This work is data-intensive, expensive and there is no backup” to the U.S. funding, Cave said. “Now other governments need to step up.”

Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com

Appeared in the February 27, 2025, print edition as 'U.S. Aid Halt Slows Haul of China Data'.

4. Why Is the U.S. Paying Officers to Leave the Military?

Will this program be "DOGE'd?" Will the SECDEF be answering to Musk on this?

Why Is the U.S. Paying Officers to Leave the Military?

By funding competitive, private-sector internships, SkillBridge is draining the services’ talent pool.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/why-is-the-u-s-paying-officers-to-leave-the-military-skillbridge-veteran-internship-e2dae1fc?mod=hp_opin_pos_6#cxrecs_s

By John James and Danielle Charette James

Feb. 26, 2025 5:08 pm ET

U.S. Navy Special Warfare Combat Crewmen ride aboard a special operations craft during a military exercise near Tampa, Fla., May 22, 2018. Photo: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg News

If President Trump and Elon Musk are serious about efficiency at the Pentagon, they might start by reforming SkillBridge. The program began as a well-intentioned effort to reduce veteran unemployment but now pays promising officers to leave the military for careers in investment banking and consulting.

The U.S. military is the smallest it’s been since World War II. The Defense Department expects active-duty forces to drop below 1.28 million in 2025, nearly 40% smaller than active-duty forces in China’s fast-growing military. But the aggregate number of soldiers isn’t as vital as the experience and professionalism of the force—which is also shrinking.

In fiscal 2024, nearly 5,400 officers at the O-3 rank—lieutenants in the Navy, captains in the other branches—separated from the service. That’s almost double the number of officers at the same rank who left in 2010. The military is struggling to hold on to the leaders it needs to preserve its skill and experience.

There are a variety of reasons junior officers might opt to leave the military after fulfilling their initial four- or five-year service commitment, but the most quantifiable is salary. Private companies are glad to hire veterans with strong leadership records, and a tight post-Covid labor market means former officers can often command large paychecks in the private sector.

Last year the Navy announced officer retention bonuses up to $150,000 for experienced surface warfare officers who commit to additional years of service. The Air Force now offers certain pilots an extra $140,000 to sign up for another four years. The military should do everything it can to retain existing officers. Yet its taxpayer-funded SkillBridge program encourages the opposite outcome.

The Defense Department launched SkillBridge as a pilot program in 2011 to combat a rise in veteran unemployment during the Great Recession. The program allows soon-to-be veterans to spend their last six months of active duty interning for approved private companies while retaining full military pay and benefits. SkillBridge initially focused on junior enlisted personnel, who often enter the military without a college degree or trade, and who may have a harder time making the transition to civilian careers. The Biden administration liked to tout SkillBridge opportunities in commercial trucking, law enforcement and entry-level cybersecurity.

But the program is open to all ranks within the military, and it has expanded well beyond apprenticeships for blue-collar jobs. Ultracompetitive companies such as JPMorgan and Boston Consulting Group are now authorized SkillBridge organizations.

An officer’s path into a SkillBridge internship differs from that of a junior service member in several crucial respects. First, officers hold college degrees, many of which were paid for by taxpayers. Second, the cost of subsidizing internships for officers is considerably higher because officers are paid more. A midlevel officer who earns $140,000 a year will continue to receive his existing salary, plus free healthcare, for up to 180 days after making the leap to corporate America through SkillBridge.

Assuming 4,000 officers participate in SkillBridge each year, that the average length of the SkillBridge internship is four months, and that the average annual compensation of officers using SkillBridge is $140,000, we conservatively estimate that the Defense Department spends nearly $190 million annually paying officers while they intern for private companies and depart the service.

Even more serious than its cost, SkillBridge hurts retention. The military isn’t a revolving door, and for good reason. It promotes its leaders from within and rarely makes external hires, meaning the decision to leave is almost always permanent. A Naval Academy graduate who jumps ship for McKinsey will probably never command a carrier, submarine or flight squadron.

Plenty of officers join the military intending to leave after their initial service commitment. Others know they want to serve for a full career. But a good portion of them are undecided, and SkillBridge can tip the balance. Junior officers are most likely to separate from the military after five or 10 years, after they have fulfilled their service requirements but before they feel the pull of a generous pension that begins vesting after 20 years. By providing an off-ramp into high-paying corporate jobs during this critical window, SkillBridge gives motivated officers an incentive to leave when they might otherwise have stayed.

Military commands have started pushing back against SkillBridge, and understandably so. The program not only drains their talent pool but penalizes remaining personnel, who sometimes are saddled with additional responsibilities or relocated on short notice to cover the duties of officers departing ahead of schedule.

The Navy announced in 2023 that it will limit senior sailors to three- or four-month SkillBridge internships. Last year the Marine Corps capped SkillBridge internships at three months for officers and four months for junior enlisted members. But the Pentagon should go further. SkillBridge must return to its original mission of helping junior enlisted personnel as they enter civilian life. Officers shouldn’t be eligible.

None of this is to criticize individual officers who take advantage of SkillBridge, or to fault the companies that have signed on as partners. Top companies should want to hire and help veterans—just not officers still on active duty.

Talented officers already enjoy plenty of private-sector opportunities. Many take advantage of the GI Bill to enroll in elite M.B.A. programs. Others consult nonprofits like American Corporate Partners or Candorful that match service members with mentors in their desired industries and offer practice interviews. Companies such as Accenture, UBS and Citi boast internship programs for veterans that function similarly to SkillBridge but are paid for by the companies rather than the government.

Excluding officers from SkillBridge would help the military retain the next generation of generals and admirals while reining in costs and reducing administrative churn. There’s no reason to subsidize private corporations as they poach the military’s best and brightest.

Mr. James is a former naval officer working in finance. Mrs. James is an assistant professor in the School of Civic Life and Leadership at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

How Charging Chinese Ships Could Ripple Through the Economy

Carriers warn of higher shipping prices from proposed fees on Chinese-built or -flagged ships that call at U.S. ports, which could boost consumer prices

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-charging-chinese-ships-could-ripple-through-the-economy-cc5c46f6?mod=Searchresults_pos4&page=1

By Paul Berger

Feb. 26, 2025 5:16 pm ET

Containers on a Cosco Shipping cargo ship to be unloaded at the Port of Long Beach in California. The U.S. Trade Representative’s office says new fees on Chinese ships are needed to counter China’s shipbuilding dominance. Photo: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg News

The Trump administration is considering fees of up to $1.5 million each time Chinese-built or Chinese-flagged ships call at U.S. ports. The U.S. Trade Representative’s office says the fees are needed to counter China’s dominance of global shipbuilding and to stimulate America’s moribund shipbuilding sector.

The potential levies would join a slew of measures Democratic and Republican administrations have tried to counter what they see as growing economic and security threats from China. These measures have ranged from tariffs on commodities such as steel to targeted duties on Chinese products including washing machines and trucking equipment, as well as across-the-board tariffs on Chinese goods.

The latest proposed fees directly target the Chinese-government-controlled carrier Cosco Shipping. Because so much of the world relies on Chinese shipbuilding, the fees also would hit ocean carriers across Asia and Europe. That would add significant operating costs to ocean shipping companies that would in turn drive up freight rates for U.S. retailers, manufacturers and farmers.

The USTR, a cabinet-level post that advises on and investigates trade issues, will hold a hearing on the proposed fees starting March 24. Then the office will make final proposals to President Trump, who must decide whether to implement them.

What are the proposals’ aims?

The USTR’s proposals are the culmination of a yearlong investigation started during the Biden administration into China’s dominance of maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors. The investigation, sparked by complaints from five labor unions, concluded that China for decades has “employed increasingly aggressive and specific targets” to dominate the sectors. It found that Chinese shipbuilding, for example, accounted for more than 50% of global tonnage in 2023, up from less than 5% of tonnage in 1999. The proposals aim to weaken China’s grip and to boost U.S. shipbuilding.

How would the fees work?

The administration proposes charging Chinese ocean carriers $1 million each time a containership enters a U.S. port. It also proposes charging any carrier a fee of between $500,000 and $1.5 million for each port call by a Chinese-built vessel, depending upon the percentage of Chinese-made ships in a carrier’s fleet. An additional fee would be charged based on the percentage of ships a carrier has on order at Chinese shipyards.

The proposals also are aimed at boosting U.S. shipbuilding and include a refund of up to $1 million per entry that ocean carriers can claim based on their number of U.S.-built ships that call at U.S. ports. The administration is looking to require that a growing share of U.S. exports are carried on U.S. ships. Seven years on from the proposals being adopted, the administration would mandate that at least 15% of U.S. goods are exported on U.S.-built, U.S.-flagged and U.S.-operated vessels.

The World Shipping Council, a trade group that represents ocean carriers including Cosco, opposed fees during last year’s USTR investigation. The group said the fees would “reduce the competitiveness of U.S. exports, raise prices for U.S. consumers, and divert port traffic to Canada and Mexico.”

What is the state of U.S. shipbuilding?

U.S. shipyards last year produced about 0.1% of global commercial vessels, on a gross tonnage basis, down from about 5% in the 1970s, according to data provider Clarksons Research. The largest containerships being built in the U.S. are capable of carrying the equivalent of 3,600 containers, well under half the average-size containership that called at U.S. ports last year. The world’s largest containerships are capable of carrying more than 20,000 boxes.

The two biggest producers of containerships outside of China are South Korea and Japan. South Korean-built vessels account for about half of containerships on the water today, when measured by the number of boxes they can carry, according to data firm Linerlytica. But China is gaining ground as it dominates in shipbuilding orders.

Almost 14% of Danish carrier A.P. Moller-Maersk’s containership capacity and 36% of that of France’s CMA CGM is made in China. Ocean carriers are investing hundreds of millions of dollars from Covid-era profits into modernizing and expanding their fleets, making last year one of the busiest for ship orders in more than a decade. Almost 70% of new order capacity is being built in Chinese yards.

Legislators from both major parties are trying to revive U.S. shipbuilding. Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, as a member of Congress last year co-sponsored bipartisan legislation that would expand the U.S.-flagged international fleet and provide financial support and tax incentives to U.S. shipbuilders. Steve Gordon, global head of Clarksons Research, said U.S. ships cost about two or three times more than ships built in Asia. He said U.S. yards also don’t have the capacity to significantly ramp up production.

“Shipbuilding is a tough and competitive industry and it takes time to build out the suppliers’ network that you need and to make the investment that you need,” he said.

How much pain could the fees inflict?

Business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Retail Federation are worried the proposals will drive up shipping costs, forcing retailers and manufacturers to raise prices.

Logistics specialists say ocean carriers could blunt some of the fees by shuffling their fleets so that a greater share of Japanese- and South Korean-built ships call at U.S. ports. That would still leave the carriers exposed to penalties based on the number of Chinese-built ships they own.

Because containerships make multiple calls at U.S. ports, ocean carriers could be looking at charges of millions of dollars per voyage. Analysts at Jefferies estimate the fees could add $150 to $300 to the roughly $3,000 they say it costs to ship a container from China to the U.S. West Coast.

“The importer or the exporter, they’re the ones that are going to have to factor in additional costs associated with transport because of this proposal,” said Ashley Craig, lead trade attorney at law firm Venable.

Write to Paul Berger at paul.berger@wsj.com

6. Iran Has Enough Highly Enriched Uranium for Six Nuclear Weapons

Excerpts:

Trump said this month Iran is “too close” to having nuclear weapons. In January, French President Emmanuel Macon said Tehran’s program was “close to the point of no return.”

The Trump administration has tightened economic pressure on Iran, vowing to slash Tehran’s oil sales to China through a stricter implementation of existing sanctions. The Treasury Department this week announced new sanctions on ships and people dealing in Iranian oil.

Iran is at its most vulnerable position in years after its largest regional militia, Hezbollah, was badly damaged in a war with Israel, which in October also took out Tehran’s most advanced air-defense systems.

Israel has warned it would take military action if Iran moves toward a bomb. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar told Politico this week that time was running out to pursue a diplomatic path.

European countries have started a process that by October could lead them to reimpose all international sanctions on Iran that were lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal.

Tehran has said if that happens it will quit the international treaty banning countries from pursuing nuclear weapons. The only country to have done that is North Korea, which subsequently built nuclear weapons.

Iran Has Enough Highly Enriched Uranium for Six Nuclear Weapons

Iran boosted stockpile of near weapons-grade fuel by 50% since late October, according to a United Nations report, amid U.S. silence on talks

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-has-enough-highly-enriched-uranium-for-six-nuclear-weapons-07e6a0bd?mod=Searchresults_pos5&page=1

By Laurence Norman

Updated Feb. 26, 2025 4:42 pm ET

A rally in Tehran in early February. Photo: abedin taherkenareh/Shutterstock

VIENNA—Iran has sharply increased its stockpile of highly enriched uranium in recent weeks, according to a confidential United Nations report, as Tehran amasses a critical raw material for atomic weapons.

The increase in Iran’s holdings of uranium enriched to 60%, or nearly weapons grade, gives it enough to produce six nuclear weapons.

Iran is now producing enough fissile material in a month for one nuclear weapon, according to the report, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Tehran’s strides come as the country has indicated an openness to negotiating with the U.S. on limits to its nuclear ambitions. The Trump administration has said it would return to a policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran but that it also wants to negotiate a nuclear deal.

Still, there hasn’t been significant direct contact between the two sides since President Trump took office. And Iran has said it won’t negotiate directly with Washington while under maximum pressure sanctions.

In an interview Wednesday, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, warned that as Iran’s nuclear activities advance, “the problem becomes bigger, not smaller,” and urged Tehran and Washington to engage. “It is problematic that we are not moving” on talks, he said. “We believe it is necessary to move to action.”

The U.N. report said Tehran had amassed around 275 kilograms of 60% highly enriched uranium as of Feb. 8, up from 182 kilograms in late October. That’s a 50% jump in 15 weeks. The fuel could be converted to 90% weapons-grade material in days.

Iran, which started producing 60% enriched uranium in 2021, has expanded its production since early December, after facing a censure resolution from Europe and the U.S. at the IAEA.

“The significantly increased production and accumulation of high enriched uranium by Iran, the only nonnuclear weapon state to produce such nuclear material, is of serious concern,” the IAEA said in its report.

Hezbollah used the massive funeral of leader Hassan Nasrallah to showcase its power and security control after the Israeli military weakened the group in the past year. Photo: Adrienne Surprenant for WSJ

The head of Iran’s atomic agency, Mohammad Eslami, said on Wednesday that Iran was cooperating with IAEA inspectors and that the agency should avoid putting pressure on Iran.

Tehran has made large advances on its nuclear work since Trump was last in office—when he pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which placed strict but temporary restrictions on Iran’s nuclear work in exchange for relief from international sanctions.

In 2019, Iran began revving up its nuclear program and officials from the U.S. and elsewhere now believe Tehran could develop some kind of nuclear weapon within a few months. Iran says its nuclear work is for peaceful civilian purposes.

U.S. intelligence reports in December said Iran hadn’t made a decision to build a nuclear weapon but there was a growing risk it might do so. U.S. officials have said that Tehran is working on research that could help it build an atomic bomb.

Trump said this month Iran is “too close” to having nuclear weapons. In January, French President Emmanuel Macon said Tehran’s program was “close to the point of no return.”

The Trump administration has tightened economic pressure on Iran, vowing to slash Tehran’s oil sales to China through a stricter implementation of existing sanctions. The Treasury Department this week announced new sanctions on ships and people dealing in Iranian oil.

Iran is at its most vulnerable position in years after its largest regional militia, Hezbollah, was badly damaged in a war with Israel, which in October also took out Tehran’s most advanced air-defense systems.

Israel has warned it would take military action if Iran moves toward a bomb. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar told Politico this week that time was running out to pursue a diplomatic path.

European countries have started a process that by October could lead them to reimpose all international sanctions on Iran that were lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal.

Tehran has said if that happens it will quit the international treaty banning countries from pursuing nuclear weapons. The only country to have done that is North Korea, which subsequently built nuclear weapons.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, earlier this month publicly warned against negotiations with the U.S., but Iranian officials have told their European counterparts they are keen for talks.

“This confluence of pressure creates a window of opportunity to push for a nuclear and regional deal on Trump’s terms,” said Michael Singh, former senior director for the Middle East at the U.S. National Security Council. “But that window won’t last forever—Iran is closer than ever to nuclear weapons.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was in Tehran on Tuesday to meet with his Iranian counterpart. Photo: atta kenare/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Dan Shapiro, a senior Biden administration Pentagon official who was part of the Iran nuclear negotiation team, said Trump’s efforts at rapprochement with Russia could theoretically lead to a situation where Washington could get help from Moscow on containing Iran’s nuclear work although there have been no signs of that so far.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was in Tehran on Tuesday to meet with his Iranian counterpart. He met with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy, in Saudi Arabia last week.

Shapiro said Washington needed to coordinate closely with Europe on the reimposition of sanctions on Iran, saying this could be endangered as “a yawning gulf has opened up between them and Washington on Ukraine.”

Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com

Appeared in the February 27, 2025, print edition as 'Iran Has Capability To Build Six Bombs'.

7. Iran, the Nuclear Program, and Trump 2.0

A complex problem:

The odds of a new deal?

Doyle: I always believe there’s a possibility for a deal. Cracks and fissures happen all the time. And if our instinct and our policy is to drive a new deal, then do it. Drive it. But drive it from a perspective of all of Iran. This notion that you can do a nuclear deal over here and Iran gets to do terrorism over here – that has proven to be very damaging to our national security and to the security of the Middle East. And we have a lot of friends and neighbors in the Middle East.

But this is a beautiful opportunity. Every change of administration is an opportunity to kind of reset, rethink, pull things back, try some new things. We know what the cracks and fissures are. Hezbollah has been decapitated. Hamas has been decapitated, at least on the leadership side.

Roule: Iran’s primary goal in negotiations is to fend off the pressure, the diplomatic and economic isolation, and to provide sufficient economic relief to enable the regime to move through a period of time when it’s experiencing a leadership transition. We’re watching the demise of the revolutionary generation – as the old saw goes, the average age of Iran’s revolutionary leaders is deceased. The Supreme Leader is in his mid-eighties, and in poor health. The next generation is about 20 years younger. Their world view is not the revolution or the Iran Iraq war, but the world post-2003. So first Iran needs to maintain stability. Second, it needs to erode the sanctions pressure and provide some financial relief. But when you look at the nuclear program, Iran has always had four red lines or four demands that I don’t think they’re going to change in the near term.

No requirement that it admit its past weaponization activities; it retains the right to industrial enrichment in its civilian program; it doesn’t close nuclear facilities, but it has been willing to dismantle aspects of those facilities. And lastly, the right to continue nuclear research and development. Iran also needs time to revitalize its regional proxies.

Iran, the Nuclear Program, and Trump 2.0

The Trump Administration faces questions - and stark choices - about dealing with a weakened Iran

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/iran-the-nuclear-program-and-trump-2-0?mc_cid=5b0f51d5fe&utm

People walk past a drawing of the Statue of Liberty and other visuals on walls in the Iranian capital, Tehran on January 21, 2025. (Photo by Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Posted: February 4th, 2025

By The Cipher Brief

As the second Trump Administration took office, it found a Middle East landscape that had been transformed dramatically in the last year alone. Nowhere is that change felt more profoundly than in Iran, which finds its power and influence in the region reduced – most notably, its ability to use its so-called “ring of fire” of militant groups to threaten Israel. The two most potent elements in that “ring” – the armies of Hamas and Hezbollah – are now shadows of what they were before the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and the Israeli wars against both groups that followed.

That altered landscape has analysts and policymakers focused increasingly on the one element of Iranian power that has actually been strengthened – its nuclear program – and it has left the U.S. facing profound questions in terms of its policy towards Iran.

Should Israel and the U.S. seize this moment of Iranian weakness to open fresh negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program – with the aim of driving a harder bargain than the world was able to achieve in the landmark 2015 agreement? Or does this moment present an opportunity to strike militarily at elements of the Iranian program, given Iran’s relative weakness when it comes to retaliatory measures? That weakness was made worse when Israel struck critical Iranian air defenses last October, including missile production facilities and surface-to-air missile sites.

The Cipher Brief spoke with Norman Roule, former National Intelligence Manager for Iran at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI); and Paula Doyle, a former Associate Deputy Director of Operations at the CIA.

Norman T. Roule

Norman Roule is a geopolitical and energy consultant who served for 34 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, managing numerous programs relating to Iran and the Middle East. As NIM-I at ODNI, he was responsible for all aspects of national intelligence policy related to Iran, including IC engagement with senior policymakers in the National Security Council and the Department of State.

Paula Doyle

Paula Doyle served as Assistant Deputy Director for Operations at CIA, where she oversaw worldwide HUMINT operations and activities that required the use of air, land, maritime, space-based and cyber technologies. She was the Deputy National Counterintelligence Executive from 2012-2014, where she oversaw the official US Damage Assessment resulting from Private Manning’s 2010 unauthorized disclosures to Wikileaks and led the IC’s extensive review of Edward Snowden’s unauthorized disclosures and defection to Russia. She led three CIA stations in Europe, the Levant, and Asia.

Their interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

How badly weakened is Iran?

Doyle: It’s very significant. One thing to note was that at the Davos events [last month’s World Economic Forum], the Iranian vice president Javad Zarif was, in my view, begging for re-engagement. This is a man who has been part of the negotiating world of Iran for many, many years. He tried to reframe things – he said, we are tough, we are strong, we are resilient, we will continue to pay in blood, sweat, tears, and money. When I looked at that, I saw an Iranian official that the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] clearly let leave Iran to try to reframe a very weak Iran, an economy that is crushed – as somehow standing strong. But Zarif cannot say that Iran is operating from a stronger position, after having lost [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad and its Russian allies in Syria. But it’s not their style to come forward in a public venue to say, OK, we’re on our backs right now.

Roule: Iran now has a possible threat to regime survival by an external power, beyond the capacity of its military to oppose. It has a lack of external allies of any strength, a disgruntled population, a poor economy, rising inflation, and a need to deflect sanctions.

Iran is certainly weaker than a year ago, but we need to be careful about using such broad adjectives. Iran’s ability to project power has diminished significantly, and it’s certainly exposed to further attacks by Israel or the United States. The regime is increasingly unpopular, the economy is poor. So if that’s your definition of weakness, then Iran is weak.

But just because Iran has lost its proxies, and has reduced confidence in its air defenses, doesn’t mean the regime is about to collapse or that the West is about to launch sweeping attacks against Iran. As a result of the Biden administration’s decision not to robustly enforce oil sanctions, the regime now has accessible foreign reserves that are much higher than at the end of the last Trump administration.

The regime may be unpopular, but it still appears relatively stable. Unrest could break out at any time, but at present there is no major protest underway. Security forces appear loyal and relatively resourced. And perhaps most importantly, there is no evidence that Iran is yet willing to take steps that would give us confidence that it would accept a deal that would end or temporarily halt its nuclear weapons and regional ambitions – because doing so would require that it change its own DNA.

What should the West should do – on the nuclear front and elsewhere?

Roule: Iran is a very complicated challenge. And this has been a challenge for very smart people in every administration since Jimmy Carter. So we shouldn’t expect the Trump administration to perform a miracle overnight. But at the same time, we need to come up with ways to support one more administration as it tackles one of the most complicated challenges in our foreign policy we’ve had in our country’s history.

U.S. pressure can constrain Iran, and bring Iran to negotiations if done consistently and over time. There is no question that maximum pressure has done this in various administrations, and can do this again if applied correctly. U.S. unilateral sanctions can severely damage the regime. Washington does not need Europe to apply these sanctions. These sanctions slowed the nuclear program, and during periods of maximum pressure under the first Trump administration, severely limited resources available to [Iran’s] proxies.

There’s sometimes an argument in Washington that sanctions don’t work. That’s completely untrue. You can measure the impact and sanctions to delay Iran’s nuclear program, to impact a variety of different things. But symbolic sanctions don’t work. The next time somebody puts forward a proposed sanctions, there should be a line at the end that says, this is what this sanction will do. In some cases, it just creates an atmosphere – don’t do business with Iran. And that’s important. But if that’s all you do, you’re not going to erode capability in Iran and push the leadership into a debate where they make decisions. And it’s been a long time since we’ve imposed sanctions on Iran that have been more than symbolic and shifting the atmosphere.

Iran is going to seek a deal that undermines the entire pressure architecture, without committing itself to permanent constraints. The Iranians will refuse to discuss regional or missile issues beyond the basics, as they did in 2013. I was there [then], and whenever anyone says you should have done this, you should have done that, you pretty much know they weren’t there. Iran refused to come to the table at all if missiles or the region was on the table.

At the end of the day, the [Trump] administration has got to decide, how do you start shaping the thinking of the Iranian regime? If you’re looking at military deterrence against Iran, we have a new secretary of defense, and what are the plans for our sending aircraft carrier task forces to the Middle East? And why are we doing so? What is the purpose of our current aircraft carrier task force in the Red Sea? It seems right now, its primary purpose is to protect Russian and Chinese shipping because there’s not a lot of American shipping in the Red Sea. And the last I checked on the map, the Red Sea was neither next to New York nor Los Angeles. So you’ve got to have a sense of what are our strategic interests in the Middle East? How do we handle military engagement? What are the prioritizations of the issues we’re going to address with our always finite diplomatic bandwidth?

Doyle: Anything that happens that can be a breakthrough on the negotiation side needs to be done in private. For eons, our best strategies with Iran have been in private. In private, you can look for cracks in the facade [of the regime] and you can begin to shape and mold. If you try to do it in public, you’re just going to steel everybody up, stiffen their backs, and you could get some very unproductive outcomes.

What I would say about what comes next is, don’t make the mistake again of separating Iran’s terrorism activities from its quest for a nuclear weapons program. If you look back at the decision to separate those two, after the nuclear agreement, Iran ramped up its support for Hezbollah. It ramped up its support for Hamas. It ramped up the violence against the West and with the Houthis. [The nuclear agreement] was well-intentioned. I understand that, but in terms of these other issues, it didn’t work. The nuclear issue and Iran’s state-sponsored violence deserve to be on the table together.

How real is the military option against Iran’s nuclear program?

Doyle: Governments always have choices. If you go the diplomatic route, you choose some things. If you go to the military action piece, that would probably be looking at not just the nuclear program, but also Iran’s ability to deliver a weapon. We are not aware, as far as I know, that Iran has developed a warhead capability. This is really sophisticated stuff. If they should, however, get some help – and they have friends, friends with nuclear programs who may or may not be willing to help – then what we really need to focus on is Iran’s ability to project power outside of its borders.

So rather than risking a nuclear warhead on a missile, I would focus on the missile complexes. We know exactly where they are. It’s really hard to have a missile complex and hide it under the ground. And I would imagine – I do not know, I’ve been out of government now for eight years – but I would imagine that war planners are very good at knowing where the missile capabilities are, and some of the bigger drones that could carry something heavy enough to carry nuclear material. So I would urge people to contemplate what an attack might look like if it really just went after mostly the missile complex delivery system.

Roule: In the near term, based on history, what would move Iran would be a demonstration of U.S. willingness to use force in the event of any attacks against U.S. persons, the homeland or the development of nuclear weapons. It’s one thing to punish them after an action, but if you can create that debate now within Iran that you don’t want to go there, you’re going to have a very bad day, you actually will keep people alive – then it helps the diplomacy.

The U.S. is moving towards direct military confrontation if Iran continues its lethal actions against us, but is also looking for a way to avoid a conventional war. If you look at this soup of ingredients, you see similarities in 1999 to 2003, 2009 to 2013, and 2022 to the present. And when that occurred, Iran made substantial nuclear negotiations, halted a weaponization program in 2003, and accepted the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [the nuclear agreement] in the Obama era. I think Iran’s going to see if it can run that playbook again, particularly starting with Europe, to see where this goes.

The odds of a new deal?

Doyle: I always believe there’s a possibility for a deal. Cracks and fissures happen all the time. And if our instinct and our policy is to drive a new deal, then do it. Drive it. But drive it from a perspective of all of Iran. This notion that you can do a nuclear deal over here and Iran gets to do terrorism over here – that has proven to be very damaging to our national security and to the security of the Middle East. And we have a lot of friends and neighbors in the Middle East.

But this is a beautiful opportunity. Every change of administration is an opportunity to kind of reset, rethink, pull things back, try some new things. We know what the cracks and fissures are. Hezbollah has been decapitated. Hamas has been decapitated, at least on the leadership side.

Roule: Iran’s primary goal in negotiations is to fend off the pressure, the diplomatic and economic isolation, and to provide sufficient economic relief to enable the regime to move through a period of time when it’s experiencing a leadership transition. We’re watching the demise of the revolutionary generation – as the old saw goes, the average age of Iran’s revolutionary leaders is deceased. The Supreme Leader is in his mid-eighties, and in poor health. The next generation is about 20 years younger. Their world view is not the revolution or the Iran Iraq war, but the world post-2003. So first Iran needs to maintain stability. Second, it needs to erode the sanctions pressure and provide some financial relief. But when you look at the nuclear program, Iran has always had four red lines or four demands that I don’t think they’re going to change in the near term.

No requirement that it admit its past weaponization activities; it retains the right to industrial enrichment in its civilian program; it doesn’t close nuclear facilities, but it has been willing to dismantle aspects of those facilities. And lastly, the right to continue nuclear research and development. Iran also needs time to revitalize its regional proxies.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

8. Expert Q&A: DOGE May Be a Cybersecurity Nightmare

Expert Q&A: DOGE May Be a Cybersecurity Nightmare

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/expert-qa-doge-may-be-a-cybersecurity-nightmare?mc_cid=5b0f51d5fe&utm

Posted: February 26th, 2025

By Rear Adm. (Ret.) Mark Montgomery

Rear Adm. (Ret.) Mark Montgomery is a senior director at the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He directs CSC 2.0, which works to implement the recommendations of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. Montgomery is a principal member of the Cyber Initiatives Group.

OPINION — The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has made headlines regularly in recent weeks, as it works to slash the federal workforce and do away with government inefficiencies. The quasi-official organization, created by the Trump Administration and led by Elon Musk — who, according to a court filing from the White House, is not an actual employee of DOGE and “has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself” — has gained access to the data of various government agencies, from the Department of Education to the Internal Revenue Service, the Treasury Department to the Pentagon.

There have been critiques of the wisdom of certain DOGE cuts, but cybersecurity experts are raising a the alarm over something else: the potential cybersecurity risks posed by what they see as unsafe practices of DOGE employees – including the use of personal devices with unknown security controls when working with government data, and reports that DOGE personnel don’t appear to have the proper security vetting or cybersecurity expertise. Federal judges have blocked DOGE access to several government networks amid these concerns.

The Cipher Brief spoke with retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, who served as Executive Director of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission and is Senior Director at the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, to discuss the cybersecurity risks associated with DOGE. Montgomery warned of shortcomings in the vetting of DOGE personnel and the agency’s cybersecurity practices. “Years of practices and governance and doing things the right way or holding people accountable for not doing the right way are thrown out,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery spoke with Cipher Brief Editor/Writer Ethan Masucol. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity. You can also watch the full discussion on The Cipher Brief YouTube channel.

Masucol: Setting aside the debate over the work of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), why is cybersecurity being brought up as an issue when we talk about this?

RADM Montgomery: We are allowing access to government systems by personnel and technology that has not been through the proper vetting or governance processes. And if we’re confused about whether DOGE can screw up, I would submit to you page one of The Washington Post and The New York Times for the last two weeks. There’s tons of administrative screwups in there. They accidentally fired the National Nuclear Security Agency workforce for some of our labs. There’s a lot of these issues. But very specifically for DOGE, if you can make those kinds of mistakes, my guess is you can make a cybersecurity mistake.

I’m for government efficiency. If you can find inefficiency, that’s great. I would not break all the rules of IT security and governance in doing it. There is no reason to do that other than they think they can. They don’t follow basic precepts of: has this person been properly trained on how to handle government information, on how to handle the PII – the personal identity information of people who’ve given it to the government? Things that we as citizens rely on. Things that President Trump has accused previous administrations of violating in the case of him and his supporters. He then is wantonly allowing these people to do it.

There’s this belief that Elon Musk is Superman, that he’s got some special cape and on cybersecurity he’s special because he’s made a lot of money in the IT world. Let’s be clear, his two current big companies, SpaceX and Tesla, are donkeys on cybersecurity. They’ve had terrible ransomware and/or breach-of-data incidents. They’re like everyone else. Telling me that Elon Musk is keeping an eye on cybersecurity is like telling me my five-year-old is keeping an eye on the car. That just doesn’t do it for me. It needs to be someone with a license, someone who knows how to follow the rules and someone who I would trust with the keys. So I’m very unhappy that we’re violating these basic governance rules with no accountability. And I suspect that the accountability for the people making these decisions won’t happen for months or years, if ever.

Everyone needs a good nightcap. Ours happens to come in the form of a M-F newsletter that provides the best way to unwind while staying up to speed on national security. (And this Nightcap promises no hangover or weight gain.) Sign up today.

Masucol: Are the issues here the vetting process and the personnel in DOGE? And there are reports that they’re using personal servers and computers, training AI models with government data, things like that?

RADM Montgomery: So yes and yes. Yes, I’m worried about the personnel, and the vetting was obviously awful. I mean, these people are measurably underqualified for the jobs that they’re doing. And then when you do the actual vetting of the human’s performance, you find all these things they’ve done both as a human, but also as a cyber professional, that cause you to think they should not be given unlimited access with no governance. There clearly was no vetting of people. If there’s vetting of people, you wouldn’t have had these guys.

If the Chinese didn’t already own OPM [Office of Personnel Management] previously, they’d probably be back in there right now. But my guess is they’re like, we’ve got enough of Montgomery’s records already. We’ll let it go.

This is a really frustrating thing. Years of practices and governance and doing things the right way or holding people accountable for not doing the right way are thrown out. What’s the standard now? When they leave, what’s the standard? Is the standard whatever I feel like doing?

Masucol: Is there a way to accomplish what the DOGE team is trying to do, and for them to have this kind of access, while safeguarding security?

RADM Montgomery: Sure — take your time and do it right. GAO [the Government Accountability Office] does great assessments. GAO does not do great assessments in 18 days. They do great assessments in 18 months. I’m not saying you have to take 18 months. I’m saying you have to take the time to do it right.

Masucol: I’m glad you brought up the GAO. It’s another body that seems to have the same access to networks for the same sort of auditing and efficiency review as DOGE. But the difference there is the time, as you said.

RADM Montgomery: And more importantly, the difference is the adherence to rules and governance structures. DOGE is not special. We’re treating it like it’s special. The president is treating it like it’s special. It will be proven to not be special.

Looking for a way to get ahead of the week in cyber and tech? Sign up for the Cyber Initiatives Group Sunday newsletter to quickly get up to speed on the biggest cyber and tech headlines and be ready for the week ahead. Sign up today.

Masucol: Why is this an issue that ordinary Americans should be worried about in terms of security compromises?

RADM Montgomery: Well, I would say the government owns a startling amount of information about you. And that information is not contained in one agency in one file, but in multiple agencies and multiple files and at different levels of information.

Your IRS information is fairly revealing and compromising in the sense of exposing you to financial malicious activity. Your information in HHS or Health and Human Services or Social Security Administration certainly could put you at risk for exploitation by criminal actors. And then for some of us who have been in the military, intelligence services, there’s information that puts us at risk from nation states and espionage. So I would say every American is probably affected in multiple agencies. And if you’re in the military or intelligence services or government service with clearances, then you’re especially affected.

Masucol: I don’t think DOGE is going to be slowing down anytime soon. So what are your thoughts, concerns, and suggestions going forward?

RADM Montgomery: I do think those will be slowed down by the court processes over time. You just have to get people who have standing. Some of this stuff will start to be impacted a little. I’d like to go back in time and make them adhere to standards — can’t do that. There’s no indication to me that they’re getting that much better. They might be a little, but as I said, some of the people that they failed to vet properly were fired and then rehired. So that is why I have little optimism.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals.

Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

9. 3 thoughts on Trump's foreign policy from an expert critical of U.S. intervention

Stephen Walt:

Excerpts:

Walt, who has long been critical of U.S. over commitment overseas, doesn't see Trump's actions and his pulling back from the old world order as being beneficial to the U.S. in the long run.

Why Trump is more comfortable among the ranks of autocratic leaders

Trump's not practicing good negotiation tactics in trying to end Russia-Ukraine war

Europe should become more responsible for its own defense, but it should be gradual

3 thoughts on Trump's foreign policy from an expert critical of U.S. intervention

Updated February 25, 202512:57 PM ET

Heard on Morning Edition

Leila Fadel

Obed Manuel

NPR · by By

United States Vice-President JD Vance, rear right, and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, rear left, meet during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, Friday, Feb. 14, 2025. Matthias Schrader/AP

President Trump is quickly scaling back decades of U.S. foreign policy by alienating long time allies, particularly those in Europe.

The president has repeatedly criticized NATO and has seemingly sided with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, the largest attack on a European country since World War II.

Beyond Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump has sought to align himself with other similar leaders far less favorable to democracy, and who have assumed more and more power for themselves.

Morning Edition is exploring the repercussions of America's foreign policy reversals and realignments under President Trump with different writers, analysts and leaders.

Sponsor Message

Stephen Walt, the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University, told Morning Edition that this is because Trump's worldview aligns much more with those kinds of leaders.

Walt, who has long been critical of U.S. over commitment overseas, doesn't see Trump's actions and his pulling back from the old world order as being beneficial to the U.S. in the long run.

Here are three thoughts he shared with Morning Edition's Leila Fadel about the Trump approach to global politics:

Why Trump is more comfortable among the ranks of autocratic leaders

Trump is an ardent nationalist and not an isolationist, Walt said, noting that he's much more comfortable with autocratic leaders than with leaders of liberal democracies, pointing to the president's relationships with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, as well as Mohammed bin Salman, crown prince of Saudi Arabia.

"And I think in Trump's mind, a perfect world would be one where powerful leaders can get together and cut deals and then impose them on others without paying too much attention to the rule of law," Walt said. "That's the kind of world he likes. And that's why Trump and his administration would like to move other parts of the world, parts that are sort of reliably democratic in a more illiberal direction."

Trump's not practicing good negotiation tactics in trying to end Russia-Ukraine war

Bringing the war in Ukraine to an end makes good sense, Walt said. But how to do it in a responsible, disciplined way that ensures Ukraine's sovereignty and security matters.

Right now, Walt said, that's not where things are headed.

"Unfortunately, what the Trump administration appears to be doing so far is, blaming Ukraine for the conflict, which is absurd, and giving Russia most of what it wants before the negotiations really begin," Walt said. "This is just not good negotiating tactics and is likely to produce an outcome that's much more in Russia's favor than it needed to be."

Sponsor Message

Europe should become more responsible for its own defense, but it should be gradual

Walt said "there's no question" Europe should be more responsible for its own defense and the United States should be shifting its attention and resources elsewhere. But he notes that it should be done over a period of five to 10 years, so Europe can develop its own security institutions and build up its forces.

This is key, he said, so that the U.S. can count on their diplomatic support and cooperate with Europe when unexpected events happen.

Trump appears to be "burning up the alliance," Walt said, adding that this approach is likely to "destroy" relationships that the U.S. could benefit from in the future.

"We're going to be giving them the incentives to start forming coalitions against us and also reaching out to other countries elsewhere around the world, because they're going to need help to keep the United States in check," Walt said.

NPR · by By

10. Taiwan Faces China Threats From Sea and Cyber

Excerpts:

Kelly: You wrote a piece not long ago in The Cipher Brief about Volt Typhoon and the suspected targeting of critical infrastructure in Guam. Kind of a big deal, because Guam is really essential to U.S. Navy operations in the Pacific. Talk to us a little bit more about why that’s such a top issue for you as well.

RADM Montgomery: Guam is a critical node for Indo-Pacom’s warfighting capability, both naval and air, which is pretty important in an air maritime campaign. All the services are there. The Navy’s got submarines there, critical submarines that have to be able to get underway, get out and carry out the fight, come back in, reload, go back out. The Air Force operates a magnificently large airfield at Anderson. The Army guards it with THAAD, which is a Theater Air Defense System. And then the Marines are moving into Guam, because years ago we made a deal to trim the size of our Marine Corps in Okinawa and move them to Guam, slightly out of the missile range of Japan. The missile range is caught up and Guam’s in it as well.

Guam has to be defended. It’s not surprising to people like me who write war plans, that an area where the Chinese had really worked on our critical infrastructure was Guam. It was in the communications networks and other networks, and clearly their goal was to bring the critical assets within Guam’s critical infrastructure to their knees during a crisis by having disruptive or destructive events occur, during a crisis or casualty. Hitting these forward-deployed forces is a big deal. I talk a lot about military mobility and the stuff back in CONUS (continental United States) being able to come out. Well, it’s even a bigger deal if you can’t receive it and your forces that are out there are kind of trapped or limited because the Guam infrastructure doesn’t work.

I would say this applies to both Japan, maybe the Philippines and Taiwan and Australia. The countries that we have to fight with and through have to have critical infrastructure at the same high quality as ours because we want our forces to be able to seamlessly fight with and through those countries’ infrastructures.

Taiwan Faces China Threats From Sea and Cyber

China’s “shooting drills” and cyberattacks pose dangers for Taiwan - and possible lessons for the U.S.

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/taiwan-faces-china-threats-from-sea-and-cyber

Two KH-6 Fast Attack Missile Boats sail in formation during a combat readiness exercise at the Zuoying Naval Base in Kaohsiung on January 9, 2025 (Photo by I-HWA CHENG/AFP via Getty Images)

Posted: February 27th, 2025

By The Cipher Brief

EXPERT INTERVIEW — While much of the world’s attention in recent weeks has been on Europe, and the U.S. tilt to Russia in its pursuit for an end to the war in Ukraine, tensions remain high in a hotspot on the other side of the globe: Taiwan.

Officials in China and Taiwan are tracking the situation in Ukraine with a focus on how the Trump administration’s approach there might signal a U.S. response in the event of a conflict with China. But in many ways, the self-governing island, which is claimed by Beijing, is feeling the heat right now. Taiwan’s defense ministry said Wednesday that China’s People’s Liberation Army had begun unannounced life-fire naval drills off Taiwan’s southwestern coast. The ministry said the “shooting drills” – just 40 nautical miles from the Taiwanese municipality of Kaohsiung – endanger commercial aviation and shipping, and “present an open provocation to regional security and stability.”

The threats from the mainland reach beyond the military dimension. Taiwan has long faced what it says are Chinese state-sponsored attacks in cyberspace. Taiwan’s National Security Bureau reported in January that cyberattacks against Taiwanese government departments in 2024 more than doubled from the previous year, reaching an average of 2.4 million attacks a day. Most of these attacks were attributed to Chinese cyber forces. Taiwanese telecommunications, transportation and defense networks were also targeted.

Taiwan has also reported recent damage to undersea communications and internet cables which link Taiwan with outlying islands and nearby countries. In the latest incident, Taiwan’s coast guard detained a cargo ship and eight Chinese crew members after a cable was reported damaged shortly after the vessel dropped anchor in the area.

The Cipher Brief turned to retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, former Executive Director of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, to discuss the wide-ranging threats posed by China to Taiwan. Montgomery spoke with The Cipher Brief from Taiwan, where he attended the first-ever Halifax International Security Forum in Taipei.

Montgomery stressed the importance of preparing responses and defenses to China’s cyberattacks — well ahead of time. “There’s all these things they can do that make it so that when the cyberattack happens, it has less impact,” he said. “But those are things you got to do and you got to practice.” He added that many of the lessons for Taiwan are applicable to the U.S., which faces similar cyber and gray-zone threats from China and others.

RADM Montgomery spoke with Cipher Brief CEO Suzanne Kelly. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity. You can also watch the full discussion on The Cipher Brief’s YouTube channel.

Rear Adm. (Ret.) Mark Montgomery

Kelly: You’ve been meeting with senior leaders in Taiwan since you arrived. What’s top of mind for them right now?

RADM Montgomery: For sure, it’s been President Trump’s comments on Ukraine and this kind of treatment of the negotiation process.

As you may know, Taiwan’s government has repeatedly said that continued success in Ukraine is good for Taiwan. They understand basic deterrence, that if you want to deter one bully, standing up to the other bully in the neighborhood, particularly when they’re all aligned in an “Axis of Authoritarians,” is important. And backing down to that bully or appeasing that bully — Taiwan thinks that will embolden China to do things to them. So there’s a lot of nerves here about how to handle that.

Then there’s broader nerves on how to handle President Trump and his approach to Taiwan and China.

Kelly: Why is Taiwan so important to the U.S.?

RADM Montgomery: There’s a few reasons. The original reason: back in 1979, there was an agreement after we had switched allegiances in terms of who was at the UN, who would be “China” as we saw it. After [Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger did that, the Congress did respond eventually with the Taiwan Relations Act, which defined and said the United States is going to make sure Taiwan is not compelled to be absorbed into China. And then it said that to do that, we’ll support Taiwan by selling weapons, and the United States will have plans for how they would support you if necessary. And that made perfect sense. If you go back to when I was a young kid, we had 10,000 troops in Taiwan. We had troops in Taiwan all the way up to about 1979, and the numbers were in the thousands through the end of the Vietnam War. This was a long-standing ally.

So, the first reason Taiwan matters is our values. We said to them, we will protect you against being compelled or coerced back into mainland China without an agreement by you.

Since then, Taiwan has evolved. As they shed their military martial law in 1987 and democracy came to Taiwan, capitalism came with it and they flourished. And eventually they invested in TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation. Morris [Chang] set the company up here in Taiwan and it has been highly successful. Fast forward, they’re now a critical element of the global economy. It’s not just that their GDP is [strong] — it’s that they facilitate the GDP of the United States, and of China to some degree, and other countries around the world with the work of not just TSMC, but UMC (United Microelectronics Corporation) and other semiconductor manufacturing equipment companies here. They certainly are the drivers in logic chips and the later-generation logic chips of the 3-5-7 nanometer.

Kelly: And these are the chips and the semiconductors that are basically used in almost everything that we consume today, whether it’s cars or phones.

RADM Montgomery: They’re used in almost everything. Your phone, your kids’ Xbox. The computer next to your feet in your F-150 truck or in your car is full of TSMC chips. And then of course, in the end, they do a lot of the Nvidia chips that drive the AI and data-center computational power that we see.

The intersection of technology, defense, space and intelligence is critical to future U.S. national security. Join The Cipher Brief on June 5th and 6th in Austin, Texas for the NatSecEDGE conference. Find out how to get an invitation to this invite-only event at natsecedge.com

Kelly: One of the things in Ukraine that was very concerning early on was that Russia had used Ukraine as almost a test bed for cyberattacks. When we look now at Taiwan, according to the National Security Bureau of Taiwan, attacks that were sponsored by the Chinese government have doubled in 2024 to more than 2.4 million a day against government entities in Taiwan. Give us a sense of how they’re coping with this and how they’re planning for their own defense if there is more of an aggressive action in terms of bringing Taiwan back into China.

RADM Montgomery: I want to separate two things because you brought up a great point. What’s the threat from China? I’m not sure it’s those distributed denial-of-service or pinging attacks that are just kind of checking out, mapping surfaces. I’m much more worried about their successful penetrations of networks and their installation of malware to come back at a later date and conduct destructive or disruptive behavior. In the United States, we called that operation Volt Typhoon, after the advanced persistent threat team from China that did it.

I’ll just say that if China is screwing with our critical infrastructure to X degree, they’re screwing with the Japanese critical infrastructure to 2X and the Taiwan infrastructure to 5X. Almost as worrisome as the big numbers you mentioned for those broader attacks are the specific directed attacks against their infrastructure. It is pervasive, comprehensive, and persistent. The Chinese are really in there, they’re working it hard.

The Taiwanese struggle with this. They’re like us, they’re a democracy. A lot of their critical infrastructure is run by private industry, and in their private industry, there’s one power company, not the seven or eight big ones that are in the United States, and one big telecom company. So it’s a little different, but it’s still the private sector and they still have a lot of work to do to get together to secure all these networks that we’ve been talking about. So the short answer is: it’s a big deal that Taiwan is getting attacked like this, and they’re really not ready for it, and I think it’s going to pressurize the situation during a crisis.

Kelly: What are the solutions here? Who needs to step up and help — the U.S. government?

RADM Montgomery: I think it’s a couple of things. We do tabletop exercises where we look at cyber-enabled economic warfare. That’s the mixing of financial attacks that could be cyber-based but are often just like removal of access, tough love from Chinese banks to Taiwanese companies operating their company or blocking of remittances. In addition, there’s energy attacks. They could be cyber or they could be a missile closure area around where LNG (liquefied natural gas) is delivered. And then finally, communications attacks. They could be cyber. They could be anchors being dropped on cables.

We looked at all of those and studied them, and it was tough. When done right, China was able to crank up the pressure just beneath where the U.S. would come and respond, or the Japanese or the Australians, responding after us. So Taiwan was alone under severe pressure. [China] just kept it for two, three, four months and eventually it breaks the resilience.

The good news is, you do this tabletop and you start to say, well, what are actions we could have taken? What if we had this capability, that capability? You start to identify them and then you say, these are 10 or 15 things we can do two to three years before an event to be better prepared. Here’s five or six things we can do at the initiation of an event to be more resilient and recoverable. And then here’s the five or six things we can do in recovery, but it’s good to have practiced them so we’re more efficient and effective. So now you have a list of 15 to 20 things that need to be done.

I’ll give you one example: if they do a virtual closure area or some kind of cyberattack that takes out LNG, and [the U.S.] has to bring in LNG shipping, and [China is] running this virtual quarantine around Taiwan, we may need to reflag the ships and escort them in, like we did with Kuwait during the tanker wars. We’ve got to study, where’s the LNG coming from? Are there countries that are favorable to do this kind of reflagging? It’s mostly Australia, the U.S., but also Qatar. Are they getting the LNG from the right countries? Can they align themselves to more countries guaranteed to be friendly?

There’s all these things Taiwan can do that make it so that when the cyberattack happens, it has less impact. But those are things you’ve got to do and you got to practice. Let me just tell you what the lawyer gaggle will be like if you try to put this together for the first time in the middle of the crisis: there’s going to be 100 reasons you hear “no.” Well, I’d like to hear them all ahead of time during a practice event, three months or six months or nine months ahead of time, work my way through all the “no”s, and then be ready to do that kind of exercise or operation when a real crisis happens.

The Cipher Brief Honors Dinner is on April 18th in Washington D.C. Apply now for your seat at the most glamorous spy dinner of the year. Find out more about this invite-only event at cipherbriefhonors.com

Kelly: You wrote a piece not long ago in The Cipher Brief about Volt Typhoon and the suspected targeting of critical infrastructure in Guam. Kind of a big deal, because Guam is really essential to U.S. Navy operations in the Pacific. Talk to us a little bit more about why that’s such a top issue for you as well.

RADM Montgomery: Guam is a critical node for Indo-Pacom’s warfighting capability, both naval and air, which is pretty important in an air maritime campaign. All the services are there. The Navy’s got submarines there, critical submarines that have to be able to get underway, get out and carry out the fight, come back in, reload, go back out. The Air Force operates a magnificently large airfield at Anderson. The Army guards it with THAAD, which is a Theater Air Defense System. And then the Marines are moving into Guam, because years ago we made a deal to trim the size of our Marine Corps in Okinawa and move them to Guam, slightly out of the missile range of Japan. The missile range is caught up and Guam’s in it as well.

Guam has to be defended. It’s not surprising to people like me who write war plans, that an area where the Chinese had really worked on our critical infrastructure was Guam. It was in the communications networks and other networks, and clearly their goal was to bring the critical assets within Guam’s critical infrastructure to their knees during a crisis by having disruptive or destructive events occur, during a crisis or casualty. Hitting these forward-deployed forces is a big deal. I talk a lot about military mobility and the stuff back in CONUS (continental United States) being able to come out. Well, it’s even a bigger deal if you can’t receive it and your forces that are out there are kind of trapped or limited because the Guam infrastructure doesn’t work.

I would say this applies to both Japan, maybe the Philippines and Taiwan and Australia. The countries that we have to fight with and through have to have critical infrastructure at the same high quality as ours because we want our forces to be able to seamlessly fight with and through those countries’ infrastructures.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

11. Trump signals more firings of military leaders

There were a lot of people involved in Afghanistan who were simply doing their job and doing the best job they could based on the hand they were dealt, e.g., General Donohue. They did not make the decisions that put them in the position but executed as best they could. I hope that there is not any fratricide in these decisions. Yes, let's hold the right people (leaders and decision makers) accountable but I doubt that anyone who was on the ground or in the air making the evacuation happen were involved in the decision making that created the impossible conditions. Just because someone was associated with or supporting the mission in Afghanistan does not make them "guilty" by association.

I would in fact argue that people like General Donahue and many others are people we want to retain. First they demonstrated leadership and competence in making the best of a terrible situation. And second, because they were the ones who had to execute these decisions in impossible conditions they are more likely to learn from the mistakes that the decision makers made and are more likely to give the best military advice to avoid creating similar conditions in the future.

Excerpt:

It’s unclear how many military officers involved in the withdrawal are still on active duty, but the most prominent is likely Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of the U.S. Army Europe-Africa. He led the 82nd Airborne Division at the time and was one of the last soldiers to board a plane out of Afghanistan. His promotion in December was briefly held up by Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) over the withdrawal controversy.

Trump signals more firings of military leaders

By Paul McLeary

02/26/2025 01:55 PM EST

Politico

Senior officers involved in the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan are “going to be largely gone,” he said.

President Donald Trump looks on as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House on Feb. 26. | Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

02/26/2025 01:55 PM EST

President Donald Trump, in a continued effort to replace Pentagon officials, hinted his administration would fire the military leaders involved in the American withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“They’re going to be largely gone,” he said Wednesday during his first cabinet meeting, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth by his side. “I’m not going to tell this man what to do,” he said, turning to Hegseth. “But I will say that if I had his place, I’d fire every single one of them.”

Former President Joe Biden ordered the American military to quickly evacuate in August 2021 after the Taliban overran the Afghan army and poured into the capital, Kabul. Dozens of U.S. military transport planes ferried panicked Afghan allies out. A suicide bomb killed 13 service members and about 170 Afghan civilians, only making the chaotic scene at the airport worse.

The withdrawal was the culmination of plans to reduce the military’s presence in Afghanistan, which the first Trump administration launched after negotiations with the Taliban.

But the airport attack was used prominently by the Trump campaign during the 2024 presidential election. Family members of the fallen troops even appeared at the Republican National Convention, introduced by current national security adviser Mike Waltz.

“We’re doing a complete review of every single aspect of what happened with the botched withdrawal of Afghanistan, and plan to have full accountability,” Hegseth said.

It’s unclear how many military officers involved in the withdrawal are still on active duty, but the most prominent is likely Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of the U.S. Army Europe-Africa. He led the 82nd Airborne Division at the time and was one of the last soldiers to board a plane out of Afghanistan. His promotion in December was briefly held up by Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) over the withdrawal controversy.

Any further culling would come on top of the firings last week of the Joint Chiefs of Staff chair, the Navy’s top admiral, the Air Force deputy chief of staff and the services’ top military lawyers.

Politico

12. Trump’s Chaotic Agenda Has a Critical Through Line

Playing catch-up with China?

Excerpts:

One answer could be potential access to China-free supply chains for critical minerals, the resources underpinning everything from advanced weapons systems to green energy technologies. Ottawa is a mining hub, while Greenland boasts reserves of rare earths—though developing them is another story. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, too, has hyped up his country’s rare-earths potential, even though Ukraine has no commercial rare-earth deposits.

“When we look at a lot of the foreign-policy decisions that have come out in the first 30 days: Canada? Resource-rich. Greenland? Resource-rich. Ukraine? Resource-rich. Panama Canal? Vital for moving resources,” said Gracelin Baskaran, a critical minerals security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who noted that Panama is home to one of the world’s biggest copper assets.

“We’re seeing resources play a much larger role, which is what China’s been doing for decades,” Baskaran said.

Trump’s Chaotic Agenda Has a Critical Through Line

What do Greenland, Canada, and Ukraine have in common? Critical minerals.

By Christina Lu, an energy and environment reporter at Foreign Policy.

Foreign Policy · by Christina Lu

February 26, 2025, 5:29 PM

Trump’s Second Term

Ongoing reports and analysis

Absorbing Canada into the United States. Taking over Greenland. Seizing the Panama Canal. Controlling Ukraine’s natural resources.

In the whirlwind that has been U.S. President Donald Trump’s first month back in the Oval Office, analysts, officials, and diplomats have scrambled to understand the returning U.S. leader’s scattered—and often outlandish—foreign-policy fixations. After all, what do Canada, Greenland, Panama, and Ukraine really have in common?

One answer could be potential access to China-free supply chains for critical minerals, the resources underpinning everything from advanced weapons systems to green energy technologies. Ottawa is a mining hub, while Greenland boasts reserves of rare earths—though developing them is another story. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, too, has hyped up his country’s rare-earths potential, even though Ukraine has no commercial rare-earth deposits.

“When we look at a lot of the foreign-policy decisions that have come out in the first 30 days: Canada? Resource-rich. Greenland? Resource-rich. Ukraine? Resource-rich. Panama Canal? Vital for moving resources,” said Gracelin Baskaran, a critical minerals security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who noted that Panama is home to one of the world’s biggest copper assets.

“We’re seeing resources play a much larger role, which is what China’s been doing for decades,” Baskaran said.

Critical minerals may not seem like an obvious U.S. foreign-policy priority, but they’re more important than you might think. The broad grouping includes 50 raw materials that are the building blocks of the U.S. defense and energy sectors, including lithium, cobalt, gallium, germanium, nickel, and rare-earth elements.

Of all the critical minerals, rare-earth elements—a group of 17 metallic elements that you’ve likely never heard of, such as lanthanum and neodymium—are the ones that most often dominate headlines. Despite their name, they are not actually that rare, though finding them in commercially significant concentrations can be challenging. Once mined and processed, they have crucial military applications: Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets, for instance, are each built with 920 pounds of rare earths.

The problem for the United States is that China, after a decades-long push, now commands the supply chains for many of these critical minerals, particularly for rare earths. Beijing has proved willing to wield that supply chain dominance in the past, sparking a race in Washington to diversify away from China’s grip.

Boosting the domestic U.S. critical minerals industry was a key focus of both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, the latter of which dangled hefty tax incentives over the sector through the Inflation Reduction Act and stressed the importance of joining forces with U.S. allies to forge new supply chains. With Trump 2.0, critical minerals have yet again emerged as a prominent feature of the U.S. leader’s agenda.

This “is one of the only areas of sort of rough bipartisan agreement—that is that these minerals and metals are crucial for energy, but also national security and consumer goods and the overall economy,” said Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines. “They feature heavily in the economic war between China and the United States.”

U.S. lawmakers, for example, touted Greenland’s rare earths as Trump ramped up his calls for the United States to acquire the strategically situated island, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark. As part of the effort, some House Republicans last month even floated a “Make Greenland Great Again Act” that would authorize the president to enter negotiations with Denmark to acquire Greenland.

“Greenland sits atop vast reserves of rare earth elements,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said at a hearing this month. “If the U.S. were to gain access to Greenland’s resources, it could significantly reduce our dependence on foreign suppliers, particularly China, which currently operates a virtual monopoly on the rare earth market.”

This month, as tensions between Ottawa and Washington flared over Trump’s calls to annex Canada, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also pointed to the country’s mineral riches as a possible reason for Trump’s fixation.

“I suggest that not only does the Trump administration know how many critical minerals we have, but that may be even why they keep talking about absorbing us and making us the 51st state,” he reportedly told a group of business leaders and company executives in Toronto.

“They’re very aware of our resources,” Trudeau added, “of what we have, and they very much want to be able to benefit from those.”

And minerals have emerged at the heart of the United States and Ukraine’s souring ties after Zelensky proposed a deal that would swap Ukrainian rare earths for continued U.S. support for Kyiv’s war effort against Russia.

Kyiv and Washington now appear to be inching closer to a deal, but the very idea has baffled analysts and industry experts since Ukraine has no commercial rare-earth deposits, does not currently produce rare earths, and has not produced rare earths in recent decades. There is scant geological data, and key territories are inaccessible as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war.

“I have heard nothing about rare earths in Ukraine, and, you know, I’ve been doing rare earths for 15 years,” said Christopher Ecclestone, a mining strategist at the financial advisory firm Hallgarten & Company.

Even if Ukraine was brimming with economically recoverable concentrations of rare earths—which there thus far does not appear to be any evidence of—it would likely take years of immense investment to make any headway.

On average globally, it takes 15 years to develop a mine, Baskaran told Foreign Policy earlier this month. Such projects require tens of millions of dollars of capital, and there is not a lot of private-sector appetite to enter Ukraine with the ongoing war, she added.

“Trump may have better relations with Russia, but you can’t develop a mine from scratch and extract resources in three or four years,” she said. “It’s a decades-long undertaking.”

And mining is just one part of the equation. Forging new supply chains requires a whole ecosystem of refining, processing, and manufacturing capabilities—and with rare earths in particular, those systems are overwhelmingly dominated by China.

Bazilian likened the current hype around Ukraine’s resources to when the United States announced it had identified $1 trillion worth of untapped mineral riches in Afghanistan more than a decade ago. That, of course, never amounted to anything.

“We had an almost identical, sort of hyperbolic discussion in the media about the minerals and metals under the ground in Afghanistan,” Bazilian said, describing the Ukraine hype as “largely a red herring.”

“The reality is that mining is complex and difficult and not just getting minerals out of the earth, but processing them, getting them to market, and becoming part of supply chains,” he said. That’s a “multi-decadal situation, even in countries that are not at war.”

This post is part of FP’s ongoing coverage of the Trump administration. Follow along here.

Foreign Policy · by Christina Lu

13. Special ops commanders say adversaries outpacing US in tech advancement

Special ops commanders say adversaries outpacing US in tech advancement

Stars and Stripes · by Svetlana Shkolnikova · February 26, 2025

Rear Adm. Milton Sands, left, speaks with Marine Maj. Gen. Peter Huntley on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025, before a House Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)

WASHINGTON — The commanders of special operations forces told lawmakers Wednesday that they were worried about the speed of technological advancement among adversaries and feared the U.S. was not keeping up.

The advantage that the U.S. had for decades in being able to “sense the enemy before they sense us” has eroded with the proliferation of modern technologies among great powers and terrorist and criminal groups, said Maj. Gen. Peter Huntley, who leads the Marine Forces Special Operations Command.

“They’re moving fast in terms of upgrading. We need to be able to move just as fast,” he said in testimony to a House Armed Services Committee subpanel. “That’s our main challenge going forward.”

Huntley said he was “greatly” concerned about the ability of special forces to keep pace with modernization and rapidly evolving technology such as artificial intelligence. Non-state actors, such as the Islamist militant group Al-Shabaab and drug cartels in South America, are evolving quickly, he said.

“What they bring to the tactical fight is, frankly, pretty impressive,” Huntley said.

Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, commander of Army Special Operations Command, said his forces struggle with rapid innovation due to lengthy bureaucratic processes that can make the simple modification of commercial off-the-shelf drones take months or years.

Lt. Gen. Michael Conley, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command, said modifications to his aircraft fleet also take too long. By the time an aircraft fleet is updated to modern needs, the technology is already irrelevant, he said.

Rep. Trent Kelly, R-Miss., left, laughs with Army Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Conley and Rear Adm. Milton Sands on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025, before a House Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)

Army Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, left, talks with Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Conley on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025, before a House Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)

“It’s this constant loop of trying to catch up with the enemy threat,” Conley said.

To make up for the gap, Air Force special forces have been “training our way out of it” by developing new tactics and procedures, he said.

“But that’s only a small piece of what we really need as far as advanced modifications,” Conley said.

Rear Adm. Milton Sands III, commander of Naval Special Warfare Command, said the challenge and priority for his command is rapidly getting equipment required for the modern battlefield into the hands of service members.

Braga suggested that could be achieved through better streamlining of innovation, funding and oversight processes. Huntley said special forces must move quickly to remove barriers to modernization as technology continues to transform warfare.

“That’s just kind of where the tactical world is right now and that’s where it’s going,” he said. “We can identify that, we know what we have to do, but to be able to get those capabilities into the hands of our operators, or our small tactical units, I would describe as critical.”

Svetlana Shkolnikova

Svetlana Shkolnikova covers Congress for Stars and Stripes. She previously worked as a reporter for The Record newspaper in New Jersey and the USA Today Network. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland and has reported from Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Russia and Ukraine.

Stars and Stripes · by Svetlana Shkolnikova · February 26, 2025

14. USAID workers will be given 15 minutes to clear their workspaces as the agency gets dismantled

Sigh... WTF?

Excerpt:

Many USAID workers saw the administration’s terms for retrieving their belongings as insulting. In the notice, the employees were instructed not to bring weapons, including firearms, “spear guns” and “hand grenades.” Each worker is being given just 15 minutes at their former workstation.

USAID workers will be given 15 minutes to clear their workspaces as the agency gets dismantled

By GARY FIELDS

Updated 6:22 AM EST, February 27, 2025

AP · February 27, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands of U.S. Agency for International Development workers who have been fired or placed on leave as part of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the agency are being given a brief window Thursday and Friday to clear out their workspaces.

USAID placed 4,080 staffers who work across the globe on leave Monday. That was joined by a “reduction in force” that will affect another 1,600 employees, a State Department spokesman said in an emailed response to questions.

USAID has been one of the biggest targets so far of a broad campaign by President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency, a project of Trump adviser Elon Musk, to slash the size of the federal government. The actions at USAID leave only a small fraction of its employees on the job.

Trump and Musk have moved swiftly to shutter the foreign aid agency, calling its programs out of line with the Republican president’s agenda and asserting without evidence that its work is wasteful. In addition to its scope, their effort is extraordinary because it has not involved Congress, which authorized the agency and has provided its funding.

A report from the Congressional Research Service earlier this month said congressional authorization is required “to abolish, move, or consolidate USAID,” but the Republican majorities in the House and the Senate have made no pushback against the administration’s actions. There’s virtually nothing left to fund, anyway: The administration now says it is eliminating more than 90% of USAID’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in U.S. assistance around the world.

It’s unclear how many of the more than 5,600 USAID employees who have been fired or placed on leave work at the agency’s headquarters building in Washington. A notice on the agency’s website said staff at other locations will have the chance to collect their personal belongings at a later date.

The notice laid out instructions for when specific groups of employees should arrive to be screened by security and escorted to their former workspaces. Those being let go must turn in all USAID-issued assets. Workers on administrative leave were told to retain their USAID-issued materials, including diplomatic passports, “until such time that they are separated from the agency.”

Many USAID workers saw the administration’s terms for retrieving their belongings as insulting. In the notice, the employees were instructed not to bring weapons, including firearms, “spear guns” and “hand grenades.” Each worker is being given just 15 minutes at their former workstation.

The administration’s efforts to slash the federal government are embroiled in various lawsuits, but court challenges to temporarily halt the shutdown of USAID have been unsuccessful.

However, a federal judge on Tuesday gave the Trump administration a deadline of this week to release billions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid, saying it had given no sign of complying with his nearly two-week-old court order to ease the funding freeze. Late Wednesday, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked that order, with Chief Justice John Roberts saying it will remain on hold until the high court has a chance to weigh in more fully.

That court action resulted from a lawsuit filed by nonprofit organizations over the cutoff of foreign assistance through USAID and the State Department. Trump froze the money through an executive order on his first day in office that targeted what he portrayed as wasteful programs that do not correspond to his foreign policy goals.

Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerald Connolly said in a statement that the attack on USAID employees was “unwarranted and unprecedented.” Connolly, whose district includes a sizable federal workforce, called the aid agency workers part of the “world’s premier development and foreign assistance agency” who save “millions of lives every year.”

AP · February 27, 2025

15. Musk has inside track to take over contract to fix air traffic communications system

Is Starlink the answer to everything? Is it or will it become as important as the Global Positioning System?

Musk has inside track to take over contract to fix air traffic communications system

By BYRON TAU and BERNARD CONDON

Updated 5:40 PM EST, February 25, 2025

AP · by BYRON TAU · February 25, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — A satellite company owned by Elon Musk has the inside track to potentially take over a large federal contract to modernize the nation’s air traffic communications system.

Equipment from Musk’s Starlink has been installed in Federal Aviation Administration facilities as a prelude to a takeover of a $2 billion contract held by Verizon, according to government employees, contractors and people familiar with the work.

Musk said that the network used by air traffic controllers is aging and requires drastic and quick action to modernize it.

“The Verizon system is not working and so is putting air travelers at serious risk,” Musk on Monday posted on X, the social media site he has owned since 2022.

The emergence of Starlink as a potential replacement for the Verizon-led effort underscores the extraordinary conflicts of interest inherent in Musk’s position as both a senior White House adviser to President Donald Trump and a business mogul in charge of a sprawling array of companies. It is not clear what role Musk might be playing in helping Starlink parent company SpaceX win such business.

“There’s very limited transparency,” said Jessica Tillipman, a contracting law expert at George Washington University. Referring to Musk, she said: “Without that transparency, we have no idea how much non-public information he has access to or what role he’s playing in what contracts are being awarded.”

Former FAA officials also told The Associated Press that they were alarmed at the prospect of Starlink being used as a critical part of the nation’s aviation system without adequate testing, review and debate about its benefits and drawbacks.

SpaceX is angling to use its constellation of satellites to replace an aging ground-based communications system that facilitates the FAA’s text and voice communication, the sources said. The Verizon contract, awarded in 2023, was to update part of that system to a more modern standard relying on fiber optic cables.

Contracting records show that nearly $200 million in work has already been done on Verizon’s 15-year modernization effort to update the FAA’s communications system. A Verizon representative said the company is unaware that the contract is being amended or terminated.

The FAA announced on X on Monday that the agency is testing a Starlink terminal at its facility in Atlantic City and two terminals at “non-safety critical sites” in Alaska. Terminals are ground-based receivers that connect devices or computers to orbiting satellites.

Another FAA contractor, L3 Harris, confirmed it was responsible for acquiring and testing Starlink terminals for incorporation into the FAA’s telecommunications infrastructure network. An L3 Harris spokesperson said the company has been working with SpaceX on the initiative for many months.

Bloomberg News reported earlier about the FAA installing Starlink terminals at its facilities.

Details about SpaceX employees deployed to work on the project are unclear, but three of its software developers appeared on a Trump administration list of government workers given “ethics waivers” to do work that could benefit Musk’s company.

Government ethics laws require that people who could profit from government work either recuse themselves from specific projects or first sell their financial holdings or sever ties with the company that could benefit. Waivers can be granted by the heads of government departments or other officials, but only in limited circumstances.

Ted Malaska, a senior director of application software at SpaceX, got a waiver along with two software engineers, Brady Glantz and Thomas Kiernan, according to the waiver list and LinkedIn profiles. The AP could not determine if the three are still working for SpaceX or the precise nature of work for the federal government.

Malaska posted on social media on Thursday that he had been meeting at FAA headquarters with officials responsible for implementation of the telecommunications modernization.

The FAA contract is not Musk’s only conflict. His acolytes have also taken over many of the operations at the General Services Administration, which controls real estate and contracting for numerous government agencies. GSA currently offers other agencies the ability to launch payloads through an existing SpaceX contract —- putting the agency in a position to direct business toward Musk. The Department of Transportation regulates aspects of SpaceX and his electric car company Tesla. NASA and the Department of Defense are major customers of SpaceX. His brain-computer interface company Neuralink has regulatory issues in front of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

___

AP writer Kimberly Kindy contributed from Washington.

AP · by BYRON TAU · February 25, 2025

16. The Rise of the Fake Tech Workforce: State-Sponsored Infiltration of U.S. Technical Supply Chains

Excerpts:

This is not a situation that can be resolved quickly. It is not solely a technical, a human resource, or even a single organization’s problem. Mitigating the threat requires a collaborative solution.

The focus for firms and organizations should be to update their understanding of the threat patterns and build in careful checks against those behaviors. There is no substitute for having knowledgeable people well-armed with effective tools in the hiring and employment retention process.

What is most important is that we make these adjustments now. These fraud efforts are low risk with a high reward. They are not going to stop. It is on us, as defenders, to find a solution that balances the invasive requirements of a more robust identity verification system and the demand for a more open threat-sharing method against the need to maintain organizational reputation and candidate privacy. Only by collaborating, both across internal teams and between organizations, will we be able to stand against the rising fake technology workforce.

The Rise of the Fake Tech Workforce: State-Sponsored Infiltration of U.S. Technical Supply Chains - War on the Rocks

Nathaniel Davis and Nina Kollars

warontherocks.com · by Nathaniel Davis · February 27, 2025

If the cornerstone of America’s competitive advantage is its domestic workforce’s capacity to drive technological innovation, then how do we respond if members of that workforce are not who they say they are?

On Dec. 12, 2024, the Department of Justice released an indictment against 14 North Korean nationals for involvement in a fake IT worker scheme impacting hundreds of U.S. firms and funneling millions of dollars to the ballistic missile program in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“Fake technology work” is conventionally associated with the techniques individuals use in attempting to appear productive, taking wages for work they did not do themselves. This type of fraud is not necessarily a threat to national security. However, cyber security researchers have grown concerned with employment fraud schemes that could be used by state-backed threat actors to gain access to sensitive systems inside firms and government agencies. Certainly, not all cyber threats are necessarily direct threats to the Department of Defense and its industrial base, but the rising trend of employment identity fraud merits more careful attention above the usual noise of conventional cybercrime.

This article is intended to introduce lawmakers and defense planners to the broader threat, but as is always the case with cyber threats, decision-makers need to read more deeply as befits their organization’s responsibilities and threat profile. Hereafter is a brief overview of what the national security policymaker needs to know about this trend, what resources firms and agencies need to manage their risk, and perhaps most importantly what not to do.

Become a Member

The Trend

For most working in cyber security, the weaponization of fake technology worker fraud as part of international statecraft is unsurprising. The U.S. technology sector has been publicly battling advanced persistent threat teams sponsored by North Korea for nearly 15 years. Regardless of the method (e.g., ransomware, spyware, etc.), North Korea has been leveraging the asymmetric features of attacks in cyberspace to bypass sanctions and fund its regime. It is only recently that industry has associated identity fraud with threats to national security.

The December indictment is part of a year-long series of revelations. The initial indictment unsealed in May 2024 named Arizona resident Christina Marie Chapman and three foreign nationals for their part in the theft of over 60 identities that they then used to obtain employment from U.S. firms. They infiltrated over 300 companies, which permitted agents to extort and funnel wages back to North Korean coffers. Chapman plead guilty to running a laptop farm in her home using equipment and login access obtained from the unwitting employers, obfuscating the true locations of the North Korean IT workers based internationally throughout Southeast Asia, Africa, China, and Russia.

These cases mark what FBI Special Agent Ashley Johnson characterizes as “the tip of the iceberg.” Johnson warned back in May 2024 that “North Korea has trained and deployed thousands of IT workers to perpetrate this same scheme against U.S. companies every day.”

There has been clear coordination of efforts to channel funds to North Korea at scale by North Korea’s “IT Warriors,” with assistance from Russian and Chinese firms. Yanbian Silverstar of China and Volasys Silverstar of Russia have been named as facilitating the fraud via replication of websites posing as fake U.S. IT firms offering workers for consulting and contract labor.

Estimating the scale of the broader problem and rooting it out will inevitably be done in back-channel conversations across affected firms, with help from federal and international crime agencies. As is the case with most cyber incidents, firms are reluctant to publicly disclose what transpired. The incentives for transparency are still outweighed by the headaches disclosure can cause like damage to reputation, risk of litigation, and loss of revenue. The potential impact is significant enough that the Securities and Exchange Commission released a Final Rule regarding incident disclosure.

Among the leaders in breaking this story was Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42, which documented a case they refer to as Wagemole in November 2023. Thereafter, in July 2024, KnowBe4 publicly disclosed they were a victim of this fraud.

The ongoing shortage of technical expertise for the Department of Defense exacerbates the potential for fraud. For over a decade now, the cyber workforce problem has continued to outrun solutions with no end in sight. Our adversaries have taken notice of our struggles with hiring and retaining a technology and cyber workforce. It will simply be a matter of time before our adversaries leverage access gained through identity fraud to directly manipulate software and networks. It would be a small step for a fake technology worker to move from sanctions evasion to sabotage of software and hardware supply chains, or to theft of critical and sensitive data like the cyber espionage activities of Onyx Sleet.

These risks demonstrate the need for integration of the defense industrial base with the wider U.S. private sector technology and service base. The innovation and production capacity needed to realize the Department of Defense’s vision for military victory requires close, if not fully overlapping, relationships with private sector firms outside the traditional defense industrial base. While conventional defense industry firms are accustomed to protocols to ensure thorough vetting of their labor force, the opposite is true of more innovative small and medium-sized technology sector firms that rely upon international and remote talent. These firms must now worry about how much of their workforces are and will be affected by this rising trend.

Adjustments, Not Massive Overhaul

Rising threats are not necessarily a reason for massive changes in policy. Instead, we contend that somewhat simple adjustments are likely sufficient. Specifically, we propose more robust identity verification, streamlined internal information sharing, and greater external collaboration as starting points for changes that offer defensive improvements.

Identity verification is one pressure point that we can leverage. An overarching issue is the delay between the initial background check (i.e., Does this identity have a history and is this identity real?) and identity verification (i.e., Is the human in front of me the same as that of the identity we just checked?). Currently, most employers conduct these two activities at separate times, often through separate offices. The separation of these two activities is a weakness fraudsters rely upon. The gap is even more pronounced when an organization is leveraging a contracted workforce to supplement their full-time employees with limited access to background checks or identity verification information obtained by the vendor.

Currently, most businesses contract out for services to conduct criminal and lifestyle checks on a given identity. This normally occurs before onboarding and permits the fraudsters to input their own supporting background information, which may differ from the information initially provided to the recruiter. The identity verification process is often a perfunctory part of completing the Employment Eligibility Verification (Form I-9) during onboarding. It doesn’t require a government photo ID or a Social Security number, just a List B identity document and a List C employment authorization document. Tools like E-Verify can add a layer of robustness to the process but are often not leveraged sufficiently against tight hiring deadlines and pressure to move the person along into their role.

At the firm and organizational level, the necessary elements needed to defend against the external threat and mitigate the internal threat likely already exist inside the company but are often divided across multiple groups: direct managers, cyber security teams, and human resources departments and their recruitment teams. Oftentimes, these teams operate in silos with limited interaction. Security offices should have the most up-to-date information on current tactics, but that information is of little benefit if the other teams are never told what to look for. Similarly, if a recruiter identifies a suspicious candidate but has no process for logging these personas, there is nothing to prevent the applicant from trying for a different position under another recruiter.

Going forward, human resources and recruitment offices must be aligned with security offices. Recruiting offices are often viewed as simply a resource for filling employment gaps, but they are usually the first touchpoint with the external candidates. They should be trained to recognize the signs of a potential fraudulent technology worker. Similarly, the broader human resources offices need to improve how they leverage the records of employees and candidates. Cross-referencing the candidate-supplied information (e.g., photos, phone numbers, and email addresses) against existing records can identify suspicious applicants much earlier in the hiring process. In real terms, the security office (or provider of those services) should have open lines of communication with the human resources and recruiting offices. This close alignment means that the risks and protections needed can be understood and managed holistically.

The problem isn’t fully solved once a person is checked and verified. That outsider is now a new insider in the company. Again, no major policy adjustments are necessary, just a greater focus on access to resources based on performance and time. Once hired, employees should be put on probationary periods of limited access and greeted with a healthy dose of required face-to-face engagement on camera or in person. Over time, as trust builds the newly hired employe can transition to more consequential projects.

Effective retention and development of a trusted workforce is also essential to insider threat reduction and identification of fake technology workers. Those office holiday parties, recognition events, and employee development programs are not just niceties. Disgruntled employees are risky and more likely to engage in illegal subcontracting, sell their electronic identities, and trade in stolen data.

At the federal and international level, it is no secret there are significant growing pains when it comes to cyber security maturity and the defense industrial base. More checkboxes and training are not only unwelcome but further complicate a process that is already painful to small and medium-sized businesses — not to mention the international science and technology firms of our most trusted allies. A more effective mitigation would be to leverage preexisting informal sharing relationships and create a formal information-sharing program that facilitates passing threat intelligence across firms and trusted international organizations. A less-restricted sharing capability would allow more consistent linking of the individual cases at a firm with larger organizationally backed enterprise fraud efforts. These alignments between firm hiring and security offices and national and international law enforcement agencies are key to managing the threat and taking down the larger operations.

Potential Pitfalls

It may be tempting to hope that AI will help filter out the internal and external threats, but it won’t. In fact, generative AI appears to have only exacerbated the sheer noisiness of hiring processes as applicants both malevolent and sincere use generative AI to try to bypass screening filters in applicant tracking systems. Threat intelligence should be leveraged to flag candidates for further review. Human-centered tool adoption is always better than blind faith in mindless automation.

Additionally, it is likely that firms and government agencies will want to reverse their expansion of remote work policies to blunt this threat. It is the wrong answer. Turning back, no matter how tempting, will not make the problem disappear. Given the ease with which North Korea has convinced people to serve as laptop farm facilitators, it is not outside the realm of possibility to see them recruit proxies to go into the office for them. The fundamental fact is that we are in a condition of scarcity for qualified labor — full stop. Backing away from remote work will further exacerbate and weaken our competitive global position by closing off access to an already highly sought-after workforce. It is more about managing the risk of access to resources and sensitive work in firms and organizations. Aligning human resource offices, hiring teams, and security offices will help mitigate these risks.

Way Forward

This is not a situation that can be resolved quickly. It is not solely a technical, a human resource, or even a single organization’s problem. Mitigating the threat requires a collaborative solution.

The focus for firms and organizations should be to update their understanding of the threat patterns and build in careful checks against those behaviors. There is no substitute for having knowledgeable people well-armed with effective tools in the hiring and employment retention process.

What is most important is that we make these adjustments now. These fraud efforts are low risk with a high reward. They are not going to stop. It is on us, as defenders, to find a solution that balances the invasive requirements of a more robust identity verification system and the demand for a more open threat-sharing method against the need to maintain organizational reputation and candidate privacy. Only by collaborating, both across internal teams and between organizations, will we be able to stand against the rising fake technology workforce.

Become a Member

Nathaniel Davis has spent more than a decade defending government and private sector systems from both internal and external compromise. He is currently a member of the Paranoids at Yahoo, serving as a senior security systems engineer on the Cyber Defense team. He has presented his original research hunting fake technology workers in numerous off-the-record events within the security community. This is his first time on the record.

Nina Kollars, PhD is an associate professor in the Cyber and Innovation Policy Institute of the U.S. Naval War College and director/co-founder of the Maritime Hacking Village, a non-profit education and research maritime vulnerability initiative. She has had the honor of serving as a DefCon speaker on internet fraud and as a DefCon goon. She is also a certified executive bourbon steward and fan of cigars on occasion.

Image: Midjourney

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Nathaniel Davis · February 27, 2025

17. Deterring Chinese Aggression: Theoretical Approaches for the South China Sea

Excerpts:

This integration of theoretical concepts, so long as they remain practical and relevant, offers opportunity to better understand both the problem of Chinese aggression and potential solutions. As argued by the Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz in his seminal treatise, On War, “the primary purpose of any theory is to clarify concepts and ideas that have become, as it were, confused and entangled.” In this sense, US and coalition leaders can employ abstract theories to conceptualize and refine military strategies in order to apply graduated deterrence that avoids uncontrolled escalation. This requirement, which occurs within a commercial context where conflict could have global ramifications, becomes critical concerning the threat to Taiwanese autonomy and Japanese and Filipino offshore sovereignty.

...

Alfred Thayer Mahan, a leading naval warfare theorist of the late 19th century, once claimed that “force is never more operative than when it is known to exist but is not brandished.” This means that deterrence has its highest value when force is threatened, and believed, and often retains maximum potential prior to expenditure.

Given the international resolve recently demonstrated against Russia, it suggests that the United States can plausibly dissuade Chinese aggression in the South China Sea by combining deterrence by punishment, indirect approaches, and maritime strategies in ways that credibly threaten strategic dislocation and economic disruption. While no deterrent is absolute, and strategy must accurately assess adversary tolerance and intent, the fact remains that China, as the largest importer of crude oil in the world, remains acutely vulnerable to protracted energy disruption of any kind.

This means that any US policy designed to preserve stability in East Asia must employ effective theories and concepts to craft practical strategies. While Schelling, Liddell Hart, and Corbett provide useful ideas for understanding how nuanced deterrence can align with the value of the political object, Clausewitz’s statement that relevant theory enables “analytical investigation” of the “constituent elements of war” underscores the point. This means that, even as nuclear tensions continue to define competition in the South China Sea, the United States should consider ways to intervene that allow graduated pressure and de-escalation. While no military strategy is absolute, and the future is uncertain, it remains true that the ultimate US aim is not to seek war, but to preserve a better peace.

Deterring Chinese Aggression: Theoretical Approaches for the South China Sea

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/02/27/deterring-chinese-aggression-theoretical-approaches-for-the-south-china-sea/

by Nathan Jennings

02.27.2025 at 06:00am

Introduction

The requirement for the United States and its allies to deter Chinese territorial aggression in the South China Sea region remains an enduring feature of the strategic environment. While this imperative emerges from the clear necessity to safeguard political stability in an area of global economic interest, it also incurs the risk that miscalculations, misinterpretations, or missteps could catalyze catastrophic military outcomes between nuclear powers. Given the potential cost of escalation associated with more direct military interventions, US leaders should employ theoretical concepts relating to coercive deterrence, indirect approaches, and sea power strategies to understand how to influence Chinese behavior in ways that accommodate the reality of the strategic environment while allowing avenues for negotiation and de-escalation.

This integration of theoretical concepts, so long as they remain practical and relevant, offers opportunity to better understand both the problem of Chinese aggression and potential solutions. As argued by the Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz in his seminal treatise, On War, “the primary purpose of any theory is to clarify concepts and ideas that have become, as it were, confused and entangled.” In this sense, US and coalition leaders can employ abstract theories to conceptualize and refine military strategies in order to apply graduated deterrence that avoids uncontrolled escalation. This requirement, which occurs within a commercial context where conflict could have global ramifications, becomes critical concerning the threat to Taiwanese autonomy and Japanese and Filipino offshore sovereignty.

Strategic Context

The rise of China as a political, economic, and military hegemon has proved a defining phenomenon of the 21st century. While the Asian power achieved meteoric G.D.P. growth to become the world’s second largest economy over past decades, it has invested heavily in intercontinental trade to both export products to numerous clients and import the commodities of modernization at scale. This latter requirement, in particular, has seen China become the world’s largest importer of crude oil from distant sources that most prominently include Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. More importantly, similar to other East Asian economies, much of imported crude oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz and the Straits of Malacca, Sunda and Lombok via tanker and is vulnerable to prolonged disruption or delays.

How to deter Chinese military aggression without provoking undesired escalation? The answer, as part of a broader national and coalition agenda, may lay in turning China’s rising economic strength and global integration against them.

Like its economic trajectory, China has transformed its military over past decades with dramatic investments intended to amplify its coercive influence. As argued by Admiral John Aquilino, commander of the U.S. INDO-PACIFIC Command, in March of 2024, “the PRC continues to advance its comprehensive military modernization program to transform the PLA into an integrated, joint, high-tech, network-centric military force” in order to “supplant United States security leadership in the region.” With this expansion of military capability to fight in all domains, China has shown intent to subjugate Taiwan, seize contested archipelagos in proximity to Japan and the Philippines, and as stated by Aquilino, “alter the international system to one that encourages repressive, authoritarian governance.”

This belligerence from a historically insecure power that is both an influential actor in the global economy and a threat to US and allied interests in East Asia presents a complex problem: how to deter Chinese military aggression without provoking undesired escalation? The answer, as part of a broader national and coalition agenda, may lay in turning China’s rising economic strength and global integration against them. Specifically, by employing coercion through deterrence by punishment, devising indirect approaches that reduce cost and risk, and applying sea power strategies that project out-of-theater blockades instead of direct counter-offensives, the United States and its allies can communicate credible deterrence without igniting a destructive war—ideally within a calibrated strategy that allows for nuanced diplomacy.

Theory in Application

Coercion theory is the first and overarching concept that could inform effective US strategy in the South China Sea region. Defined by Cold War economist Thomas Schelling as, “the threat of damage” in order to “structure someone’s motives” and make them “yield and comply,” it can manifest in two primary forms: compellence and deterrence. While the former employs threats or escalations to force an actor to take a specific action, the latter employs the promise of future harm to convince them not to. Further, though compellence usually requires proactive initiative, deterrence is often indefinite and more expensive to maintain. Schelling’s work becomes especially relevant with nuclear tensions, where the most credible and moral effect is often to employ the awesome weapons to passively deter violation of sovereign territory.

Despite the illegality of such a violation, the probability of nuclear escalation resulting from any US joint counter-offensive to repel PLA forces or retake the island could prove prohibitively costly and undermine the original value of the political aim.

In the volatile environment of the South China Sea, deterrence, rather than compellence, thus remains the logical mechanism to avoid conflict and preserve stability. More specifically, a variation called deterrence by punishment, where, according to the late theorist and professor, Glenn Snyder, the coercing power “grants the gain” but “deters by posing the prospect of war costs greater than the value of the gain.” This option, which differs from deterrence by denial ideas that threatens to proactively deny or block achievement of the desired territorial gain, would allow the United States to form diverse and disparate coalitions in order to better influence Beijing’s decision calculus with promises of economic harm without immediately resorting to large-scale combat in close proximity to sovereign Chinese territory.

This argument for deterrence by punishment, rather than denial, may be critiqued as being too reactionary and not forceful enough to prevent a dramatic event such as a Chinese military offensive against Taiwan. However, despite the illegality of such a violation, the probability of nuclear escalation resulting from any US joint counter-offensive to repel PLA forces or retake the island could prove prohibitively costly and undermine the original value of the political aim. Taken further, U.S. promises of a direct military response in and near Chinese sovereign territory—as opposed to threatening to deny a distant, but vital, interest—could have counter-productive results by triggering a preemptive Chinese offensive or initiating a destabilizing military build-up for a future war which Beijing may see as existential.

A second theory that both compliments deterrence methods and can inform US strategy is B.H. Liddell Hart’s concept of the indirect approach. According to the 19th century British war theorist, who wrote in the aftermath of the destruction he endured in trenches of the First World War, the aim of strategy is “not so much to seek battle as to seek a strategic situation so advantageous that if it does not of itself produce the decision, its continuation by a battle is sure to achieve this.” This means that coercion should achieve strategic ends efficiently instead of hastily applying expensive and predictable direct approaches. This concept again finds relevancy in nuclear scenarios, where, similar to the carnage that Liddell Hart witnessed in 1915, the war may prove counter-productive by raising the price of victory beyond acceptable costs.

When applied to US deterrence of Chinese aggression, the indirect approach, as a military strategy, takes the form of physical and psychological dislocation. Defined by Liddell Hart as the “result of a move” which “upsets the enemy’s dispositions” by “compelling a sudden change of front,” the strategy would move the points of friction away from the South China Sea where Beijing possesses proximate military advantage and initiate the contest in a different zone where US-led coalitions may enjoy superiority. This could require the PLA to project force beyond its practiced maneuvers and inflict cognitive disarray on how to respond to the promise or actual loss of vital interests. Again, remembering attrition in the First World War, this would re-direct hostilities away from the immediacy of the sovereign nuclear equation.

Like criticism of deterrence by economic punishment, critics may argue that a direct approach, both credibly promised and tactically prepared, is required to deter aggression. However, this discounts the probability that Americans would pay a high price to win on Chinese terms and in response to Chinese initiative and would be disadvantaged by onerous requirements for hemispheric force projection. Further, in the absence of a direct Chinese attack against the U.S. homeland as the Japanese Empire did in 1941, the human costs of a more direct approach may exceed the will of the American public to sacrifice for a distant partner with an ambiguous national status. This would align with recent polling where hypothetical actions such as providing logistical support and enacting naval blockades gained majority support.

In the event of a kinetic fleet action, US-led forces could then fight from positions of advantage while stressing Chinese capacity to deploy beyond East Asian waters.

Sea power theory can offer a third, and complimentary, concept that can inform requirements for deterrence in the South China Sea. In this regard, Julian Corbett, a British war theorist and historian who wrote at the turn of the 20th century about maritime strategy, offers a sophisticated description of how naval forces must operate within a joint strategy and national security agenda in order to achieve higher policy aims. Avoiding the temptation to center naval campaigns on decisive fleet action, Corbett argued that “command of the sea” actually revolved on gaining degrees of “control of maritime communications” for both “commerce and military purposes.” This would enable “commerce prevention” to induce “economic pressure” as part of a broader military strategy that may or may not include decisive land or sea battles.

This perspective adds deterring value by threatening any major Chinese aggression with out-of-theater naval blockades and economic sanctions to deny vital resources. Similar to the US-led coalition that embargoed Moscow following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, this would turn China’s economic growth into a liability and support a scalable diplomatic and economic scheme to isolate Beijing. It would enact a Corbettian strategy of disrupting oil shipping by applying Liddell Hart’s prescription for strategic dislocation and, if required, shift naval clashes to more favorable spaces. In the event of a kinetic fleet action, US-led forces could then fight from positions of advantage while stressing Chinese capacity to deploy beyond East Asian waters.

Critics, however, may claim that the intimidation of naval blockades would be insufficient to deter territorial aggression or prove disruptive to global markets. However, when again evaluated against the costs of a counter-offensive to retake territory or inflict kinetic punishment—which would likely be expensive in ships and manpower due to proximate Chinese missile superiority—Corbett’s focus on controlling maritime lines of communication to establish positions of relative advantage offers a more flexible military action when combined with embargos, sanctions, and financial restrictions. This would calibrate U.S. strategy towards achieving the policy aim of deterring future undesirable behavior with the threat of a tailorable effect, as opposed to relying upon battle-centric approaches that risk uncontrollable escalation.

Deterring Chinese Aggression

Alfred Thayer Mahan, a leading naval warfare theorist of the late 19th century, once claimed that “force is never more operative than when it is known to exist but is not brandished.” This means that deterrence has its highest value when force is threatened, and believed, and often retains maximum potential prior to expenditure.

Given the international resolve recently demonstrated against Russia, it suggests that the United States can plausibly dissuade Chinese aggression in the South China Sea by combining deterrence by punishment, indirect approaches, and maritime strategies in ways that credibly threaten strategic dislocation and economic disruption. While no deterrent is absolute, and strategy must accurately assess adversary tolerance and intent, the fact remains that China, as the largest importer of crude oil in the world, remains acutely vulnerable to protracted energy disruption of any kind.

This means that any US policy designed to preserve stability in East Asia must employ effective theories and concepts to craft practical strategies. While Schelling, Liddell Hart, and Corbett provide useful ideas for understanding how nuanced deterrence can align with the value of the political object, Clausewitz’s statement that relevant theory enables “analytical investigation” of the “constituent elements of war” underscores the point. This means that, even as nuclear tensions continue to define competition in the South China Sea, the United States should consider ways to intervene that allow graduated pressure and de-escalation. While no military strategy is absolute, and the future is uncertain, it remains true that the ultimate US aim is not to seek war, but to preserve a better peace.

Tags: Deterrence, Integrated deterrence, US-China

About The Author

Nathan Jennings
Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Jennings is an Army Strategist and Associate Professor at the US Army Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. With a background in armored warfare, he served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan. Jennings previously taught history at the US Military Academy at West Point and in the Department of Military History at CGSC. He is a graduate of the School of Advanced Military Studies and earned a PhD in history from the University of Kent.

18. The Pentagon's joint requirements process must go

I heard someone compare the process to soviet era planning processes.

Excerpt:

The solution isn’t more paperwork — it’s understanding warfighting outcomes. Rather than prescribing solutions years in advance, the Pentagon should start with clear problem statements of warfighting need, then move to campaigns of experimentation where service systems and new prototypes can be linked together to see what solutions work best. Our recent report explores what this new approach might look like and how it could function. But to make things better, we don’t need to wait for a new system, we can start today.

But sometime I think the designers of the process borrowed concepts from the OSS Simple Sabatage annual:

(b) Managers and Supervisors

(1) Demand written orders.

(2) "Misunderstand" orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long

correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can.

(3) Do everything possible to delay the delivery of orders. Even though

parts of an order may be ready beforehand, don't deliver it until it is

completely ready.

(4) Don't order new working materials until your current stocks have

been virtually exhausted, so that the slightest delay in filling your

order will mean a shutdown.

(5) Order high-quality materials which are hard to get. If you don't get

them argue about it. Warn that inferior materials will mean inferior

work.

(6) In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs

first. See that the important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers

of poor machines.

(7) Insist on perfect work in relatively un important products; send

back for refinishing those which have the least flaw. Approve other

defective parts whose flaws are not visible to the naked eye.

(8) Make mistakes in routing so that parts and materials will be sent to

the wrong place in the plant.

(9) When training new workers, give in complete or misleading

instructions.

(10) To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient

workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient

workers; complain unjustly about their work.

(11) Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.

(12) Multiply paper work in plausible ways.

Start duplicate files.

(13) Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing

instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to

approve everything where one would do.

(14) Apply all regulations to the last letter.

https://archive.org/stream/simplesabotagefi26184gut/26184-8.txt

The Pentagon's joint requirements process must go - Breaking Defense

In this op-ed, Bill Greenwalt and Dan Patt argue that the Pentagon's Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System is inefficient and should be an early target for the new Trump administration.

breakingdefense.com · by Bill Greenwalt, Dan Patt · February 26, 2025

Seal of the Pentagon on display at the Pentagon visitor center. (Photo by Trevor Raney

Digital Media Division)

A wave of efficiency talk has arrived in Washington, epitomized by the Department of Government Efficiency now roaming the halls of the Pentagon. But as policymakers examine how government actually functions, it’s becoming clear that the goal shouldn’t merely be cost savings, but higher competence.

One glaring example stands ready for immediate action: the Pentagon’s sclerotic joint requirements process. In a new Hudson Institute report, “Required to Fail,” we outline the need to immediately put this process out of its misery.

For over two decades, the Defense Department has labored under a bureaucratic ritual known as JCIDS — the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System. Created with noble intentions, this process has devolved into a crushing administrative burden that actively impedes America’s military modernization. Far from ensuring strategic alignment or joint warfighting capabilities, JCIDS has become a bureaucratic priesthood fixated on formatting, enthralled by committees, and divorced from tangible warfighting needs.

The numbers tell a damning story. It takes over two years just to get a military requirement approved through this system. During that time, technology evolves, threats advance, and opportunities evaporate. While China rapidly fields new capabilities, and commercial technology cycles span mere months, America’s military remains trapped in endless document reviews and formatting refinements.

Consider this absurdity: When engineers once discovered that the F-35’s combat radius fell short of its validated key performance requirement by just six nautical miles — about one percent — it triggered nearly a year of bureaucratic wrangling. Instead of acknowledging that 584 nautical miles might be perfectly adequate, or rethinking the entire approach, the system doubled down on its initial, arbitrary decree. Hours of senior leader time, including that of the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, evaporated in the pursuit of percentage points that had no inherent strategic significance. This isn’t just inefficiency — it’s institutional madness.

The fundamental flaw lies in JCIDS’s delusion of perfect planning. The system imagines an immaculate cascade from high-level needs to engineering specifications, all knowable years in advance. But reality intrudes: Technical constraints, shifting threats, and budget realities collide with these neat theoretical cascades. When they do, instead of adapting, the system demands costly acrobatics to preserve the illusion of perfection.

But here’s the cruel irony: After climbing this bureaucratic mountain, these documents accomplish nothing. They don’t align money. They don’t identify program managers for urgent joint needs. They simply accumulate in an ever-expanding pile of validated requirements that don’t get published, don’t get culled, just accumulate.

An unprecedented wave of decorated senior military leaders has promised to fix this system. From General Cartwright’s blunt calls for elimination through Admiral Winnefeld’s streamlined forums, General Selva’s accelerated timelines, General Hyten’s software-era rhetoric, and Admiral Grady’s top-down pronouncements — each inherited the same unwieldy machine and promised to fix it. Each has been absorbed into its inertia.

Congress has finally lost patience. The latest defense bill mandates a clean-sheet redesign of military requirements. But tinkering won’t solve this. The entire apparatus needs to go.

Remarkably, this is relatively straightforward: One minor revision to Title 10, removing the legal requirement for document validation, coupled with an internal Defense Department memo scaling back the joint requirements oversight council, would suffice.

What the Joint Staff calls progress just indicts the system for its futility — broad capstone documents you can drive a truck through and that don’t track accountability, alongside a capability portfolio review model that dominates calendars but doesn’t move money. Over more than 30 years and twenty major revisions to the joint requirements system — calling it top-down and bottoms-up, changing document names and approval authorities — the Pentagon has failed to ever question whether the idea of rubber-stamping documents could lead to desired its outcomes.

The solution isn’t more paperwork — it’s understanding warfighting outcomes. Rather than prescribing solutions years in advance, the Pentagon should start with clear problem statements of warfighting need, then move to campaigns of experimentation where service systems and new prototypes can be linked together to see what solutions work best. Our recent report explores what this new approach might look like and how it could function. But to make things better, we don’t need to wait for a new system, we can start today.

This isn’t about making government smaller for its own sake. It’s about recognizing that sometimes less really is more. By removing this bureaucratic albatross, we could free up America’s brightest officers in joint roles to focus on actual warfighting innovation rather than debating section headers while our adversaries field new capabilities.

Abolishing JCIDS can be the first needed step in streamlining Pentagon processes — picking off the low hanging fruit in the monstrosity that is defense acquisition. If Congressional and Pentagon reformers can’t do what it takes to kill such a non-value-added process, they will have no chance in tackling more difficult choices.

Let’s give JCIDS the funeral it deserves. Our military’s future depends on it.

William C. Greenwalt is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial policy.

Dan Patt is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology

breakingdefense.com · by Bill Greenwalt, Dan Patt · February 26, 2025

19. Rewind and Reconnoiter: Soft Power Shouldn't Be Taken Lightly

Excerpts:

Sometimes, foreign aid leads to unintended adverse outcomes, like breeding extremism among the local population rather than turning people away from it. What does USAID do to mitigate these risks, and how could it improve?

If our primary goal is to save money and eliminate all risk, we might as well hide behind suburban gated walls and avoid engaging with the Global South — even though it makes up most of the world’s population and geography. This retreat would hasten the decline of America’s global influence, reverting to the “ugly American” stereotype that led to USAID’s creation more than sixty years ago. Americans would grow more fearful and less confident, losing the pioneering spirit of our ancestors who braved the New World. Worse still, we would be slower to detect emerging threats, whether from terrorism, pandemics, or geopolitical rivalry with China.

On the other hand, blind idealism is no better. Believing any well-intentioned action will succeed — regardless of how poorly it fits local realities or matches ends and means — is simply wishful thinking. While helping those in need is never trivial, unchecked spending of taxpayer dollars can quickly become wasteful without achieving meaningful results.

A wiser path is selective engagement: one that learns from past mistakes, fosters effective partnerships, and remains focused on achievable, high-impact goals. Some programs may only do limited good, and that’s fine — provided we recognize their constraints and avoid burdening an already overstretched government and society.

Finally, with the benefit of hindsight, is there anything you would change about your original argument?

Foreign assistance helps those in need, and carelessly closing USAID without weighing the consequences would only worsen suffering while failing to address the deeper challenge of engaging with the developing world. We are living in a time of profound change, and our approach to foreign assistance — and to many other critical issues examined in War on the Rocks — must rise to meet that challenge.

Rewind and Reconnoiter: Soft Power Shouldn't Be Taken Lightly - War on the Rocks

Patrick Cronin

February 26, 2025

Members

https://warontherocks.com/2025/02/rewind-and-reconnoiter-soft-power-shouldnt-be-taken-lightly/

In 2014, Patrick Cronin wrote “USAID & the National Interest,” where he defended the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) from broad criticisms but acknowledged the need for further planning and oversight. In the wake of recent discussions on the role of soft power in U.S. foreign policy, we invited Patrick back to reflect on his article.

Chief Justice Allows U.S. to Continue Freeze on Foreign Aid Payments

Lawyers for the government had said it would miss a deadline to release more than $1.5 billion in payments for past aid work and sought a late intervention from the Supreme Court.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/us/politics/trump-usaid-foreign-aid.html

By Zach Montague Michael Crowley and Adam Liptak

Reporting from Washington

Feb. 26, 2025

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Wednesday night handed the Trump administration a victory for now in saying that the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department did not need to immediately pay for more than $1.5 billion in already completed aid work.

A federal judge had set a midnight deadline for the agencies to release funds for the foreign aid work, which was withheld in the wake of the president’s Day 1 directive to gut U.S. spending overseas.

The Trump administration, in an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court just hours before the deadline, said the judge had overstepped his authority and interfered with the president’s obligations to “make appropriate judgments about foreign aid.”

Chief Justice Roberts issued an “administrative stay,” an interim measure meant to preserve the status quo while the justices consider the matter in a more deliberate fashion. The chief justice ordered the challengers to file a response to the application on Friday, and the court is likely to act not long after.

However tentative, the stay was nonetheless the first victory for the administration in a deluge of cases that the justices could hear over President Trump’s blitz of executive actions.

In another aggressive move on Wednesday to carry out the president’s directive, lawyers for the Trump administration said that it was ending nearly 10,000 U.S. Agency for International Development and State Department contracts and grants.

The pair of administration actions stunned diplomats and aid workers already reeling from mass firings at U.S.A.I.D., which funds food, health, development and democracy programs abroad, and which the Trump administration has systematically dismantled. A former senior U.S.A.I.D. official said the cuts account for about 90 percent of the agency’s work and tens of billions of dollars in spending.

Image

The signage for U.S.A.I.D. in Washington, which has been covered up with tape, seen on Tuesday.Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times

The cuts deal “a catastrophic blow to USAID’s implementing partners and the populations they serve, likely bankrupting many, and shuttering lifesaving and important programs forever,” a group of agency workers and partners said in a fact sheet distributed Wednesday night.

Several aid workers and U.S.A.I.D. officials said that at least some money for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, had been eliminated, including for elements of the program that were previously deemed essential lifesaving work and exempted from the aid freeze.

Tracking Trump’s First 100 Days ›

The Trump administration’s previous actions on U.S.A.I.D.

See every major action by the Trump administration ›

Other terminated contracts included ones with urban search and rescue teams in Virginia and California that deploy to afflicted areas in the wake of natural disasters such as the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria two years ago, according to the former U.S.A.I.D. official. That program had also previously been granted a humanitarian exception from the foreign aid freeze by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Trump administration lawyers outlined the steep foreign aid cuts in a status report on the administration’s progress in complying with a Feb. 13 order by Judge Amir H. Ali of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia. In the order, he said the government must disburse funding already promised to foreign aid contractors and grant recipients who work around the world and who say the U.S.-backed programs save countless lives and enhance America’s influence abroad.

Mr. Trump and other top U.S. officials insist that foreign aid, which makes up roughly 1 percent of the federal budget, has grown wasteful and detached from America’s vital interests.

But critics warn that Mr. Trump is making a calamitous mistake, saying his assault on foreign aid “dangerously undermines America’s ability to win,” as Liz Schrayer, president of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, said in a statement.

The moves on Wednesday were the latest twists in the tug of war between the Trump administration and the legal system, in which administration officials have stated that they are working to comply with directives while simultaneously looking for ways around them.

Adam Liptak

Supreme Court reporter

“I try to make the Supreme Court accessible to readers. I strive to distill and translate complex legal materials into accessible prose, while presenting fairly the arguments of both sides and remaining alert to the political context and practical consequences of the court’s work.”

Learn about how Adam Liptak approaches covering the court.

After Mr. Trump in January ordered agencies to pause nearly all foreign aid spending for 90 days while officials reviewed individual projects, aid groups sued. They argued that the pause jeopardized their missions and the lives of millions of people who depend on the programs the U.S. government has funded for decades.

On Feb. 13, Judge Ali issued an order requiring agencies to release funds for any “contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, loans or other federal foreign assistance award that was in existence as of Jan. 19,” the day before Mr. Trump took office.

But group after group, including the ones that brought the lawsuit, has reported that funding was never restored. At the hearing on Tuesday, lawyers told Judge Ali that the only reasonable explanation was that the government had never taken steps to lift the blanket pause on foreign aid.

The administration argued in the filing that because the agencies had raced ahead to review the grants and contracts and determined that all but a fraction of them would be canceled, it had met the court’s demands by finishing “a good-faith, individualized assessment” of its programs.

“U.S.A.I.D. is in the process of processing termination letters with the goal to reach substantial completion within the next 24 to 48 hours,” it said. “As a result, no U.S.A.I.D. or State obligations remain in a suspended or paused state.”

According to the filing, the government identified around 3,200 contracts and grants that it decided to retain and was “committed to fully moving forward with the remaining awards.”

Judge Ali repeatedly pressed a lawyer representing the government to clarify whether any funds had been released since his directive earlier this month. The lawyer was unable to point to any sign that the aid money was flowing, and Judge Ali issued a new midnight deadline for the government to pay any outstanding invoices or drawdown requests that had come due before his Feb. 13 order.

According to Pete Marocco, the top Trump appointee in charge of foreign aid, the continued holdup was at least in part because of logistical issues. U.S.A.I.D. is facing roughly $1.5 billion in payment requests and the State Department has around $400 million more outstanding, Mr. Marocco said, which could not be handled immediately.

“These payments cannot be accomplished in the time allotted by the court and would instead take multiple weeks,” he wrote in a document supporting the government’s argument for more time filed on Wednesday.

In their own submissions on Wednesday, groups that had brought the legal challenge against the Trump administration listed a ream of complaints about how the Trump administration has proceeded.

Among them, lawyers argued that Trump officials “have added new layers of review to all disbursements of foreign assistance funds, including requiring line-by-line policy justifications for payments for past work that has already been approved through normal approval processes.”

Image

Demonstrators protest the withholding of funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington on Wednesday.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

Lawyers pointed to sworn statements by aid workers who said that because they had been unable to access funds as recently as Tuesday, they had been unable to go about their work overseas, including disbursing H.I.V. medications purchased with U.S. aid.

The State Department issued a waiver for PEPFAR weeks ago, allowing funding to flow to those programs. But several statements filed on Wednesday said that invoices related to PEPFAR still had not been paid.

Statements filed in support of the groups suing on Wednesday detailed other harms.

“Within my portfolio this means that starving children will not receive ready-to-use therapeutic foods, pregnant and breastfeeding women will not be screened for malnutrition, and refugee households will not be provided vouchers to purchase food for their families,” one worker wrote in a declaration.

Lawyers for the government said Judge Ali’s deadline to keep aid flowing was unrealistic.

“Additional time is required because restarting funding related to terminated or suspended agreements is not as simple as turning on a switch or faucet,” they wrote.

Lawyers for the aid groups also asked the court on Wednesday to allow them to call Mr. Marocco and Mr. Rubio to testify. In the filing they said that administration lawyers had “indicated that they would resist” Mr. Rubio being deposed under the apex doctrine, a legal theory that protects high-level executive branch officials from burdensome demands and potential harassment.

But the plaintiff’s lawyers noted that administration lawyers have said that Mr. Rubio had “personal involvement” in decisions about the foreign aid funding, making his testimony essential.

Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the U.S. Department of Education, the White House and federal courts. More about Zach Montague

Michael Crowley covers the State Department and U.S. foreign policy for The Times. He has reported from nearly three dozen countries and often travels with the secretary of state. More about Michael Crowley

Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times in 2002. More about Adam Liptak

21. The Collapse of Assad’s Regime: A Major Blow to Iran’s Influence

Excerpts:

Given these risks, the United States must remain vigilant, as Iran has incentives to exhibit both destructive and constructive behavior. In the meantime, Washington must understand that the degraded operational capacity of Iran’s proxy network has opened opportunities. Specifically, there is an opening for the United States to push back against Iran’s surrogates in Iraq and Lebanon by empowering their domestic governments to serve as a counterbalance to Iran’s proxy network. In the absence of an effective and functional state that holds a monopoly over the means of violence, the armed forces, militias, and non-state actors will find the space to emerge. Simply put, non-state groups step in when the state is either incapable of governing a region or providing security. Washington can capitalize on this by fostering regional cooperation, particularly between Israel and Arab nations.

Such cooperation has been proven possible: in April 2024, a coalition including Israel, Jordan, France, Germany, and the United States successfully countered Iran’s aerial attack on Israel. Coalition-building efforts should reach beyond military operations and include intelligence-sharing and covert activities and involve key regional players like Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Egypt. Rolling back the Iranian proxy network would not only contain Iran’s influence but also strengthen Washington’s leverage in regional negotiations, increasing the likelihood of securing strategic concessions from Tehran.

The Collapse of Assad’s Regime: A Major Blow to Iran’s Influence

irregularwarfare.org · by Arman Mahmoudian · February 27, 2025

Not long ago, Iran wielded significant influence across the Middle East, extending its reach from Baghdad to Beirut and Damascus to Sanaa. Through a network of proxies, it encircled its regional adversaries, Israel and Saudi Arabia, creating what many referred to as a “ring of fire.” However, over the past 15 months, this strategic advantage has begun to erode. While ongoing clashes between Israel and Hezbollah have tested Tehran’s deterrence strategy, the most consequential blow has been the sudden collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

Iran’s leadership initially downplayed the severity of Assad’s fall, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissing it as a temporary setback. Yet, the magnitude of the crisis quickly became undeniable. Just a week after the fall of the regime on Dec. 8, 2024, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander General Hossein Salami publicly acknowledged the “bitter event” in Syria, marking a shift from denial to reluctant acceptance. This rare admission showcases the strategic importance of Assad’s regime for Iran’s regional power projection.

With Syria’s role as a conduit for weapons and fighters in jeopardy, Iran faces a major setback in sustaining its irregular warfare capabilities. The ripple effects of this upheaval will extend far beyond Syria’s borders, reshaping regional power balances. For Washington, this moment presents a rare opportunity to recalibrate its Middle East strategy, exploiting Tehran’s vulnerabilities to curb its influence. How Iran navigates this crisis, and how the United States responds, will shape the next phase of Middle Eastern geopolitics.

Why Did Syria Matter to Iran’s Irregular Warfare Capability?

Syria has long been a cornerstone of Iran’s military strategy, which revolves around deterrence and asymmetric warfare, leveraging “low-cost, high-impact” operations. This strategy consists of two main components: conventional military capabilities, such as Iran’s missile and drone programs, and irregular warfare, executed through a network of proxies. Syria played a pivotal role in advancing both aspects of this doctrine.

As Iran’s longest-standing ally in the Middle East since 1979, Syria was among the first to recognize the newly established Islamic Republic. During the Iran-Iraq War, Hafez al-Assad’s government provided Iran with weapons after Libya withdrew its support. According to former IRGC minister Mohsen Rafiqdoust, Syria not only supplied arms directly but also acquired Soviet weapons under its name for transfer to Iran. In 1985, Damascus hosted training for thirty IRGC officers on Scud-B missile production and deployment, laying the foundation for Iran’s formidable missile program.

However, Syria’s most significant contribution to Iran’s military strategy extended beyond conventional arms: it was instrumental in shaping Iran’s irregular warfare capabilities by serving as Tehran’s primary opening to the Arab world. This access enabled the formation of Hezbollah, a cornerstone of Iran’s proxy network. Former Iranian defense minister Hossein Dehghan confirmed that, in 1983, Syria facilitated the IRGC’s Mohammad Rasulullah Division’s relocation to Lebanon, where it laid the groundwork for Hezbollah under Assad’s patronage.

Since then, Syria has been Iran’s key stronghold in the Arab world, a role Bashar al-Assad himself acknowledged by calling it Iran’s “gateway” to the region. This strategic importance drove Iran to invest heavily in preserving Assad’s regime after the civil war, providing loans estimated between $30 billion and $50 billion. Iran has also paid a human cost, with over 2,100 soldiers killed in Syria. Beyond financial and military sacrifices, the war enabled Iran to expand its irregular warfare (IW) strategy, establishing a strong military presence with an estimated thirteen bases and five IRGC divisions across Syria.

Iran’s military presence in Syria granted it a strategic foothold in the Mediterranean for the first time in over a millennium, strengthening its asymmetric warfare against Israel by opening a new front. The formation of proxy groups like the Imam Hussein Brigade exemplified Iran’s reliance on IW through proxies to counter adversaries. This also reinforced Iran’s vital land corridor linking Tehran to Hezbollah in Lebanon, ensuring a steady arms supply to its primary proxy. Beyond logistics, Iran has transformed Syria into a military production hub for Hezbollah, reportedly using the Scientific Studies and Research Center (CERS) to manufacture precision-guided missiles, enhancing Hezbollah’s arsenal. In essence, Iran has leveraged Syria not only as a transit route for arms but also as a weapons manufacturing base, deepening its capacity for IW in the region.

Now, with Syria’s role as a weapons hub in decline, the collapse of the 1,574-kilometer land corridor between Iran and Hezbollah will most assuredly disrupt Iran’s arms logistics. Without it, Iran would have to rely on smuggling, maritime shipments, or airlift, all vulnerable to Israeli interception. While Iran has experience using illicit trafficking routes, evidenced by documents showing its covert smuggling networks into the West Bank, the loss of Assad’s regime should create major obstacles. A hostile new Syrian government would likely intensify efforts to block such shipments, further crippling Iran’s ability to sustain its IW strategy in the region.

Hezbollah in the Absence of Assad’s Regime

For Iran and Hezbollah, the loss of Syria as a logistical hub could not have come at a worse time. In the absence of Assad’s regime, Syria is no longer securing or facilitating supply routes, leaving Tehran with significant obstacles in delivering arms and reinforcements to its most important proxy. This comes as Hezbollah finds itself in one of its most vulnerable states, urgently needing support to rebuild. Since the escalation of clashes with Israel in October 2023, the group has suffered devastating losses. Nearly all of its senior leadership, including Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, senior commander Fuad Shukr, designated successor Hashem Safieddine, and intelligence chief Hussein Ali Hazimeh, has been eliminated. Hezbollah’s militia has also lost about 4,000 elite fighters and half of its arsenal, leaving it in a precarious position just as Iran struggles to maintain its supply lines.

These setbacks have reportedly created a power vacuum within Hezbollah, increasing the risk of internal divisions. According to Lebanon’s Al-Nahar newspaper, some factions argue that Hezbollah should focus on rebuilding itself rather than aiding the Axis of Resistance, while others disagree.

The decline of Assad’s regime could pose a significant threat to Hezbollah’s operational capacity. Any blow to Hezbollah would also impact Iran’s IW across the region, as Hezbollah has been one of the primary enforcers of the growth of Iran’s proxy network in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

Hezbollah’s Operation Code 110 in 2013 marked the start of its extensive military involvement in Syria, securing key victories that helped Assad’s regime withstand the early phases of the civil war. The group played a decisive role in capturing strategic areas such as Al-Qusayr, the Damascus-Homs Corridor, the Qalamoun region, and parts of northern Syria. Beyond Syria, Hezbollah was instrumental in training and arming Shiite militias in Iraq against United States’ forces. Some reports suggest that after the 2020 killing of IRGC Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah took on a managerial role in overseeing Iran’s operations in Iraq. In Yemen, Hezbollah has been pivotal in training the Houthis, enhancing their military capabilities and reinforcing Iran’s influence in Yemen and the broader Gulf region.

Lastly, Hezbollah remains a dominant force in Lebanon, itself a key source of regional instability. Hezbollah’s military wing has been stronger than the Lebanese Army, challenging the Lebanese government’s monopoly on the use of force, and its financial capabilities have often surpassed the government’s. The militia has even held the largest gold reserves in the country, which allow it support its activities as a key vanguard for Iran’s interests in the region.

Given this context, Assad’s fall stand to significantly weaken Iran’s asymmetric warfare by crippling Hezbollah, its key non-Iranian enforcer.

The Probability of The Domino Effect

The fall of Assad’s regime could extend beyond weakening Hezbollah and Iran’s influence in the Levant, potentially destabilizing Iran’s entire proxy network. Iraq, in particular, presents a critical front, as Syria’s border with Iraq’s Sunni-majority Al Anbar region raises concerns of a spillover effect. A Sunni-led Syrian government backed by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) could fuel a Sunni insurgency in Iraq, further undermining Iran’s regional strategy.

HTS has deep ties to Iraq. Many of its senior commanders, including leader Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, began their activities during ISIS’s offensive in Iraq. This history has given the group familiarity with Iraq’s geography and likely connections to discontented Iraqi Arab Sunnis opposing Iran-backed Shia dominance. This threat is not hypothetical. Fighters and weapons have flowed from Syria into Iraq during past conflicts, including the Sunni insurgency of 2003-2008 and the resurgence of ISIS in 2014.

The situation today is more precarious for Iran than it was in either 2003-2008 or 2014. With the fall of Assad’s regime and the significant blow Israel has dealt to Hezbollah, the operational capacity of the Axis of Resistance is at its weakest point. A renewed Sunni uprising in Iraq inspired by Syria’s regime change would pose a severe challenge to Iran’s regional influence. Political change in Syria could also inspire a Sunni uprising in Lebanon where 31% of the population are Sunnis, many feeling sidelined by Hezbollah. A Sunni-led Syria might encourage such an uprising, giving discontented Sunnis hope of regaining control of Lebanon.

This scenario is plausible, as Syria has historically been a key influencer in Lebanon. Even during the friendly relations between Iran and Hafez al-Assad’s Syria, Damascus sought to limit Iran’s influence in Lebanon. Syria at times backed Hezbollah’s intra-Shia rival, the Amal Movement, and even clashed with Hezbollah militants, as seen in 1987 when Syrian forces opened fire on them. Competition between Iran and Syria persisted until Bashar al-Assad’s presidency in 2000. His leadership brought Syria into closer alignment with Iran and Hezbollah, making the collapse of his regime even more damaging for Iran. The situation vis-à-vis Lebanon could be far more severe for Iran today, considering Hezbollah’s weakened state. Indeed, the group’s de facto leader, Naim Qassem, reportedly does not feel safe in Lebanon and has relocated to Iran.

Conclusion

The collapse of Assad’s regime presents a serious threat to Iran’s IW capabilities, weakening a key pillar of its regional influence and deterrence strategy. Without Syria as a secure logistical hub, Tehran faces mounting challenges in sustaining its proxy network and maintaining its strategic reach across the Middle East.

In response, the Iranian government has two primary options. It could attempt to de-escalate tensions by negotiating with the United States, buying time to recover from its current vulnerabilities. Alternatively, Tehran may choose escalation, potentially by doubling down on its nuclear program or expanding proxy conflicts elsewhere to offset its losses in Syria.

Another likely course of action is for Iran to strengthen ties with more radical factions or foster insurgencies as a substitute for its diminished foothold in Syria. A precedent for this exists in Iran’s support for Hamas over the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, as Hamas’ more radical and anti-Western stance made Hamas a more willing partner for Tehran.

In comparison to Fatah, Hamas, which was ideologically closer to Iran, proved to be a suitable proxy for Iranian sponsorship and supply. Similarly, Iran might seek to exploit HTS’s recent efforts to purge Syria’s security forces of Assad loyalists. These purges, which have led to the arrest of many Alawite figures, could provide an opportunity for Iran to support insurgent groups or establish alliances with disgruntled elements in Syria.

Given these risks, the United States must remain vigilant, as Iran has incentives to exhibit both destructive and constructive behavior. In the meantime, Washington must understand that the degraded operational capacity of Iran’s proxy network has opened opportunities. Specifically, there is an opening for the United States to push back against Iran’s surrogates in Iraq and Lebanon by empowering their domestic governments to serve as a counterbalance to Iran’s proxy network. In the absence of an effective and functional state that holds a monopoly over the means of violence, the armed forces, militias, and non-state actors will find the space to emerge. Simply put, non-state groups step in when the state is either incapable of governing a region or providing security. Washington can capitalize on this by fostering regional cooperation, particularly between Israel and Arab nations.

Such cooperation has been proven possible: in April 2024, a coalition including Israel, Jordan, France, Germany, and the United States successfully countered Iran’s aerial attack on Israel. Coalition-building efforts should reach beyond military operations and include intelligence-sharing and covert activities and involve key regional players like Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Egypt. Rolling back the Iranian proxy network would not only contain Iran’s influence but also strengthen Washington’s leverage in regional negotiations, increasing the likelihood of securing strategic concessions from Tehran.

Arman Mahmoudian is a research fellow at the Global and National Security Institute and a professional lecturer at the University of South Florida. His research primarily focuses on security dynamics in the Middle East and Russia’s foreign policy. Arman holds a Ph.D. in Government from the University of South Florida, an M.A. in International Affairs from Russia’s Peoples’ Friendship University (Moscow), and a B.A. in Law from Iran’s Islamic Azad University (Tehran). His insights have been featured by Foreign Policy, The National Interest, BBC World, Le Monde, and the Stimson Center, etc.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official position of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, the Modern War Institute at West Point, or the United States Government.

Main Image: Images of Bashar al-Assad (james_gordon_losangeles; Creative Commons license)

If you value reading the Irregular Warfare Initiative, please consider supporting our work. And for the best gear, check out the IWI store for mugs, coasters, apparel, and other items.

22. Hezbollah’s Defeat and Hamas’s Dogged Resistance: Israel’s Two-Front War and the Perils of Prewar Assumptions

Excerpts:

Conclusion: Clausewitz’s Trinity and the Perils of Assumption in War

“The blow to the Israeli home front will be so horrible that it will cause a deep demoralization.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued this dire warning against launching a ground invasion into Lebanon to his cabinet shortly after Hamas’s October 7 attacks, fearing the heavy cost of fighting Hezbollah. His prediction, however, would prove wrong. The rapid defeat of Hezbollah—once considered Israel’s most formidable adversary—contrasted starkly with Hamas’s endurance in Gaza, a strategic paradox as shocking as the German Army’s early victories in World War II followed by its ultimate downfall. The reversal of expectations in Israel’s war with Hamas and Hezbollah highlights the unpredictability of war and the dangers of relying on prebattle assumptions.

The unexpected divergence in these two conflicts underscores Clausewitz’s trinity—the dynamic interaction between government, military, and people in shaping war’s outcome. Hezbollah, despite its superior arsenal and battlefield experience, was constrained by Lebanon’s fractured political system and pressure from displaced civilians, forcing it into an early ceasefire. Hamas, by contrast, wielded absolute control over both governance and military affairs in Gaza, allowing it to fight indefinitely without internal opposition. Hamas’s capture of 251 hostages ultimately proved more strategically powerful than much of Hezbollah’s arsenal, as public pressure within Israel compelled the government to negotiate their release, influencing the course of the war.

For military professionals, this war highlights the dangers of assumption in war. Hamas’s ability to conduct a devastating Israeli campaign in Gaza and survive fifteen months of total war should challenge our assumptions about the capabilities of adversaries and their ability to endure sustained conflict. The next October 7 will not likely look like the last one. The ability to identify flawed assumptions and adapt in real time will define success or failure in future conflicts in the Middle East and beyond.

Hezbollah’s Defeat and Hamas’s Dogged Resistance: Israel’s Two-Front War and the Perils of Prewar Assumptions - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Harrison Morgan · February 27, 2025

Share on LinkedIn

Send email

“We have only to kick in the door, and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.” Hitler’s famous declaration prior to invading the Soviet Union illustrates how reality can shatter prewar expectations. But coming on the heels of the German Army’s blitzkrieg into Paris and the sudden collapse of the French Army after six weeks of fighting, why would he doubt Germany’s ability to defeat Stalin’s forces given Russia’s humiliating withdrawal in World War I, the devastation of Stalin’s purges, and the Red Army’s poor performance in the 1939 Winter War against Finland? He evidently did not. Yet, despite massive early losses, the Soviet Union not only survived but would demolish Hitler’s army and emerge as one of the world’s two superpowers by the war’s end.

Similarly, Israel’s two-pronged war against Hamas and Hezbollah has produced outcomes few expected. Before the conflict, Israeli military leaders assessed Hezbollah as the greater strategic threat. The group fielded an estimated forty to fifty thousand active fighters, with another forty thousand in reserve, and possessed as many as two hundred thousand rockets, including long-range precision missiles capable of striking deep into Israel. Hezbollah also had extensive combat experience in Syria, where its fighters spent years battling rebel forces to support the regime of Bashar al-Assad. In contrast, Hamas had a smaller force of approximately twenty-five thousand fighters, an arsenal of between eighteen and thirty thousand mostly short-range rockets, and significantly less battlefield experience.

And yet, despite these disparities, Hezbollah suffered a rapid military defeat and accepted an unfavorable ceasefire, while Hamas held out in the face of a fifteen-month Israeli military campaign until Israel agreed to a ceasefire deal that effectively been on the table for the better part of a year. Given the sequenced and chaotic nature of Israel’s multi-front war against the two groups, it’s important to understand the key factors that contributed to Hezbollah’s defeat and Hamas’s comparatively greater ability to withstand intense Israeli military pressure.

The Crisis Unfolds: Key Moments in the War

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israeli military and civilian outposts, killing over 1,200 Israelis and capturing 251 hostages. The next day, Hezbollah joined the conflict, launching rocket and missile strikes on Israel’s northern border. By October 27, Israel had begun its ground invasion of Gaza, engaging in prolonged urban warfare against Hamas’s tunnel networks and decentralized command structure.

In July 2024, simmering tension along Israel’s northern border boiled over when a Hezbollah rocket strike killed Israeli children. This prompted Israeli air strikes and, by August 18, a ground incursion by the Israel Defense Forces into southern Lebanon. After suffering leadership losses, Hezbollah accepted a ceasefire on November 27, 2024.

Hamas, however, endured fifteen months of war. On January 19, 2025, Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire, but Hamas’s political and military infrastructure—although hollowed out by the deaths of a number of key leaders and many of its fighters—remained intact.

These outcomes defy what might, on the surface, have seemed to be obvious expectations. Why was Israel able to deal such a significant, even decisive, blow to Hezbollah but unable to break Hamas? The answer lies in four key factors.

Political Constraints

The first and most fundamental difference between Hezbollah and Hamas centers on their respective governance structures and political accountability. Hezbollah is unique among paramilitary organizations in that it holds official representation in the Lebanese legislature. Since the end of the Lebanese Civil War, Hezbollah has operated as both a political party and an armed force, giving it significant influence over Lebanon’s coalition government. However, this dual role also imposes constraints. As a participant in Lebanon’s parliamentary system, Hezbollah is subject to internal political pressures, particularly from other factions that prioritize national stability over confrontation with Israel.

Lebanon’s government is deeply fragmented, with power divided among Sunni, Shia, Christian, and Druze factions. This division forces Hezbollah to compete for influence and resources within a diverse political landscape. While Hezbollah enjoys strong support among Lebanese Shia, the broader population is not uniformly aligned with its militant ambitions. Following Israel’s intense bombing campaign and successful targeting of senior Hezbollah leaders, many Lebanese civilians—particularly those displaced by the fighting—demanded a ceasefire and a return to normalcy. Ultimately, these internal pressures, combined with Hezbollah’s military losses, compelled it to accept an unfavorable compromise with Israel.

The ceasefire agreement, based on UN Resolution 1701, forced Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani River, ceding territory to the Lebanese Army and reducing its ability to threaten Israel with short-range rockets and mortars. While Hezbollah retained longer-range missile capabilities, its retreat effectively limited its ability to engage in sustained high-intensity conflict with Israel. Despite its battlefield strength, Hezbollah’s political obligations constrained its ability to wage an indefinite war, ultimately leading to its strategic setback.

By contrast, Hamas faced no such political constraints. Unlike Hezbollah, which must navigate Lebanon’s complex coalition politics, Hamas enjoys a monopoly on both political and military power in Gaza. Hamas initially came to power in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, winning a majority of seats in a surprise victory over the ruling Fatah party. Following a brief and violent power struggle, Hamas expelled Fatah from Gaza in 2007, establishing itself as the sole governing authority. Since then, Hamas has consolidated control, eliminating political rivals and integrating nearly all armed Palestinian factions in Gaza under its command structure.

Hamas’s absolute political dominance allowed it to pursue a strategy of total war without facing internal opposition. While Hezbollah had to balance its military campaign with domestic political considerations, Hamas was free to fight without fear of political backlash. Palestinian civilians suffered deeply from the Israeli campaign after Hamas’s October 7 attacks, but with no organized alternative to Hamas’s political authority, there was no means of opposing the group. The destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure and the humanitarian toll of the conflict did not translate into pressure for Hamas to negotiate; instead, it solidified Hamas’s grip on power. Without competing factions demanding a ceasefire, Hamas could continue fighting indefinitely as long as it maintained a steady supply of manpower and munitions.

Intelligence Penetration

A second major reason for Israel’s success against Hezbollah was its deep intelligence penetration of the group’s military and leadership networks. Israeli intelligence agencies, particularly Mossad, infiltrated Hezbollah’s ranks long before the war, gaining access to critical information about its command structure, logistics, and operational plans. This allowed Israel to strike with precision, eliminating Hezbollah’s key leaders and disrupting its ability to coordinate large-scale operations. Additionally, Israel’s strikes against Fuad Shukr, the senior military commander of Hezbollah, and Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s secretary-general, all suggest a high level of intelligence penetration by Israel. These senior leaders were likely well aware of Israel’s human and signals intelligence collections against them and took several measures to avoid targeting. This included limiting communications, shifting locations of meetings, and meeting in fortified command bunkers. Despite these steps, Israel successfully targeted the two senior leaders and many others, which gradually broke down Hezbollah’s command and control of its fighters.

One of the most devastating intelligence operations was Israel’s infiltration of Hezbollah’s communication networks. Hezbollah, aware of Israel’s electronic surveillance capabilities, attempted to counter this by banning mobile phones and relying on encrypted pagers and radios. However, Mossad outmaneuvered the organization. In a highly sophisticated operation, Israel created a front company posing as a legitimate supplier of communication devices. When war broke out, Israel remotely detonated these devices, reportedly injuring thousands of Hezbollah personnel, including key commanders. This single operation crippled Hezbollah’s ability to command and control its forces in the early stages of the conflict.

Israel’s ability to penetrate Hezbollah’s networks can be largely attributed to Lebanon’s unique political and social landscape. Unlike Gaza, which is a closed and highly controlled enclave ruled exclusively by Hamas, Lebanon is an open, heterogeneous society with numerous religious sects and political factions. The country’s fragmented governance, rampant corruption, and economic instability made it easier for Israeli intelligence to cultivate assets. Lebanon’s porous borders, particularly with Syria and Israel, may have allowed greater movement of intelligence operatives. All these factors made Hezbollah vulnerable to infiltration in ways that Hamas was not.

In contrast, Gaza is one of the most insular and controlled territories in the world. Hamas dominates every aspect of life, from governance to security, allowing it to tightly regulate movement within the enclave. The territory is largely sealed off from outside influence, with strict controls on who can enter or leave. Foreigners, including journalists, aid workers, and diplomats, operate under heavy Hamas surveillance, which likely made it exceedingly difficult for Israeli intelligence to insert operatives or cultivate assets. Furthermore, Hamas spent decades identifying and eliminating suspected Israeli informants. The result is a far more hostile environment for intelligence operations compared to Lebanon.

Hamas’s Self-Sustaining War Economy vs. Hezbollah’s Reliance on Iran

The third major reason for Hamas’s ability to endure prolonged conflict while Hezbollah faltered was the stark difference in their sustainment strategies. Hamas developed an innovative and largely self-sufficient logistics system that allowed it to continue fighting without relying on external resupply. In contrast, Hezbollah depended heavily on Iranian weapons shipments, which Israel systematically targeted and disrupted throughout the war.

Hamas’s self-sufficient sustainment strategy revolved around three key factors: domestic weapons production, battlefield scavenging, and an extensive tunnel network that enabled continuous operations. Over the years, Hamas invested heavily in indigenous weapons manufacturing, allowing it to produce antitank rockets, mortars, improvised explosive devices, and even longer-range rockets without depending on foreign suppliers. This local arms industry enabled Hamas to sustain combat operations even as Israel targeted its prewar stockpiles.

Additionally, Hamas exploited the battlefield as a source of resupply. After every engagement with Israeli forces, Hamas fighters combed the wreckage for small arms, ammunition, and unexploded ordnance. During recent prisoner exchanges, Hamas publicly displayed captured Israeli rifles and other military gear—evidence of its systematic battlefield scavenging efforts.

Most critically, Hamas turned Israel’s bombing campaign into a resource for its war effort. The thousands of unexploded bombs and artillery shells dropped on Gaza provided Hamas with a virtually endless supply of explosive material, which its engineers repurposed into new weapons. Far from being crippled by Israeli air strikes, Hamas leveraged them to sustain its operations.

By contrast, Hezbollah’s sustainment model was more vulnerable to external disruption. Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah relied heavily on Iranian weapons shipments, which were transported via air and overland through Syria. From the outset of the war, Israel targeted these supply lines with precision strikes, destroying key munitions depots and cutting Hezbollah off from critical resupply. Israeli air strikes inside Syria targeted Iranian weapons storage sites and convoys en route to Lebanon, while Israeli fighter jets prevented suspected Iranian arms shipments from reaching Beirut’s airport.

These sustained attacks placed Hezbollah under mounting logistical strain. While the organization had stockpiled significant weapons reserves before the war, Israeli airpower steadily eroded these supplies. Estimates suggest that by October 2024, Hezbollah had lost between one-half to two-thirds of its total munitions stockpile. Unlike Hamas, which could repurpose Israeli ordnance into new weapons, Hezbollah had no equivalent means of regenerating its arsenal.

Furthermore, while Hezbollah possessed some domestic weapons manufacturing capabilities, it relied on Iran for sophisticated systems such as precision-guided missiles and advanced antitank weapons. When Israel severed Hezbollah’s supply lines, these high-tech capabilities dwindled, forcing Hezbollah to rely on less effective alternatives.

Hostage Leverage

A fourth key reason for Hamas’s ability to endure a prolonged war while Hezbollah was forced into an early ceasefire was its capture of 251 hostages during the October 7 attacks. This single act gave Hamas strategic leverage that Hezbollah never possessed, fundamentally altering the political and military dynamics of the conflict.

By seizing hundreds of Israelis, Hamas forced Israel into difficult military and political decisions. Unlike Hezbollah, which relied solely on military force and indirect deterrence through Iran, Hamas’s hostages gave it direct influence over Israeli decision-making. Israel had to balance its offensive objectives with efforts to recover captives alive, constraining its operational freedom.

Hamas used the hostages as both human shields and a psychological weapon against Israeli society. Periodic proof-of-life videos kept pressure on Israel to negotiate with Hamas. This prolonged Hamas’s survival, including by leading to a temporary ceasefire in November 2023 that delayed Israel’s ability to achieve its military objectives. Hezbollah, by contrast, faced unrelenting Israeli airpower without interruption, accelerating its defeat.

The hostage strategy proved more strategically valuable than Hezbollah’s firepower. While Hezbollah was dismantled militarily, Hamas leveraged hostages to prolong the war, force diplomatic engagements, and extract concessions from Israel. Hamas’s hostage strategy ultimately prolonged its survival in a way Hezbollah could not replicate, proving that political, psychological, and diplomatic leverage can be just as important as battlefield firepower.

Conclusion: Clausewitz’s Trinity and the Perils of Assumption in War

“The blow to the Israeli home front will be so horrible that it will cause a deep demoralization.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued this dire warning against launching a ground invasion into Lebanon to his cabinet shortly after Hamas’s October 7 attacks, fearing the heavy cost of fighting Hezbollah. His prediction, however, would prove wrong. The rapid defeat of Hezbollah—once considered Israel’s most formidable adversary—contrasted starkly with Hamas’s endurance in Gaza, a strategic paradox as shocking as the German Army’s early victories in World War II followed by its ultimate downfall. The reversal of expectations in Israel’s war with Hamas and Hezbollah highlights the unpredictability of war and the dangers of relying on prebattle assumptions.

The unexpected divergence in these two conflicts underscores Clausewitz’s trinity—the dynamic interaction between government, military, and people in shaping war’s outcome. Hezbollah, despite its superior arsenal and battlefield experience, was constrained by Lebanon’s fractured political system and pressure from displaced civilians, forcing it into an early ceasefire. Hamas, by contrast, wielded absolute control over both governance and military affairs in Gaza, allowing it to fight indefinitely without internal opposition. Hamas’s capture of 251 hostages ultimately proved more strategically powerful than much of Hezbollah’s arsenal, as public pressure within Israel compelled the government to negotiate their release, influencing the course of the war.

For military professionals, this war highlights the dangers of assumption in war. Hamas’s ability to conduct a devastating Israeli campaign in Gaza and survive fifteen months of total war should challenge our assumptions about the capabilities of adversaries and their ability to endure sustained conflict. The next October 7 will not likely look like the last one. The ability to identify flawed assumptions and adapt in real time will define success or failure in future conflicts in the Middle East and beyond.

Major Harrison (Brandon) Morgan is a US Army Middle East and North Africa foreign area officer. He previously served as a Modern War Institute nonresident fellow.

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

Image credit: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit

Share on LinkedIn

Send email

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Harrison Morgan · February 27, 2025

23. The Taiwan Fixation: American Strategy Shouldn’t Hinge on an Unwinnable War

Excerpts:

To preserve their latitude in a Taiwan conflict and stay out of war, American policymakers won’t just need a new approach in the Indo-Pacific. They must also change the conversation at home so that U.S. presidents do not fear political retribution for doing what best serves U.S. interests: avoiding war with China. Since 2019, American politicians, especially those in Congress, have pushed for a flurry of antagonistic policies that have created an atmosphere of hostility toward China. In such a climate, the president and Congress may be more prone to taking up arms to defend Taiwan. As the political scientist Evan Medeiros has argued, developing a domestic consensus in favor of U.S.-Chinese coexistence is “not just a useful condition—but also a critical one—for avoiding conflict between these two geopolitical rivals.”

Before the moment of crisis arrives, political leaders should initiate a frank national dialogue about U.S. interests in the western Pacific. Americans must know the true costs of conflict with China: the deaths of tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers, the possibility that nuclear weapons would be fired in desperation, an economic downturn dwarfing that of the Great Recession of 2008, and severe disruption to everyday life. It will take great effort for policymakers to communicate the scale of the potential devastation because a war with China would look nothing like the relatively small and contained wars that the United States has waged in recent decades.

In addition to making clear the costs of war with China, U.S. officials should stress the need to coexist with China as prominently as they discuss the need to compete with it. In the coming years, especially if Beijing’s behavior improves, American policymakers should adopt “competitive coexistence” as an approach for U.S. relations with China. In doing so, they would convey Washington’s willingness to establish stable patterns of interaction, limit security competition, and address global problems collaboratively. At a minimum, political leaders should avoid undue alarmism about Taiwan. The Biden administration was right to tamp down public speculation about the year by which China might intend to launch an invasion. The Trump administration should go further to discourage catastrophic thinking, including by communicating to the public that China would not pose an immeasurably greater challenge to the United States if Taiwan came under its control.

The U.S. government should not underestimate the China threat. A larger problem, however, is that the United States underestimates itself. Washington enjoys vast strengths and wide latitude in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. The United States has forces patrolling the seas near China, not the other way around; it is an island 100 miles from the Chinese mainland that is in dispute. Taiwan does hold value for the United States, but if U.S. policymakers overrate its importance, they will sacrifice the safety of the status quo for the perpetual risk of a devastating war. That would be an error that no amount of military strength could redress. Washington should not squander its advantages out of fear or zeal. Together with allies and partners, the United States can preserve an open and balanced Indo-Pacific, regardless of what happens in the Taiwan Strait—but it needs to prepare now.

The Taiwan Fixation

Foreign Affairs · by More by Jennifer Kavanagh · February 25, 2025

American Strategy Shouldn’t Hinge on an Unwinnable War

Jennifer Kavanagh and Stephen Wertheim

March/April 2025 Published on February 25, 2025

Matt Chase

JENNIFER KAVANAGH is a Senior Fellow and Director of Military Analysis at Defense Priorities and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies.

STEPHEN WERTHEIM is a Senior Fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy.

More by Stephen Wertheim

Subscribe to unlock this feature or Sign in.

Print Subscribe to unlock this feature or Sign in.

Save Sign in and save to read later

The fate of Taiwan keeps American policymakers up at night, and it should. A Chinese invasion of the island would confront the United States with one of its gravest foreign policy choices ever. Letting Taiwan fall to Beijing would dent Washington’s credibility and create new challenges for U.S. military forces in Asia. But the benefits of keeping Taiwan free would have to be weighed against the costs of waging the first armed conflict between great powers since 1945. Even if the United States prevailed—and it might well lose—an outright war with China would likely kill more Americans and destroy more wealth than any conflict since the Vietnam War and perhaps since World War II. Nuclear and cyber weapons could make it worse, bringing destruction on the U.S. homeland. These would be catastrophic consequences for the United States.

As terrible as a U.S.-Chinese war would be, an American president would face immense pressure to fight for Taipei. Many U.S. policymakers are convinced that Taiwan, a prosperous democracy in a vital region, is worth protecting despite the daunting price of doing so. Political calculations may also push a U.S. president into war. By staying out, the president could expect to be blamed not only for permitting the economic meltdown that China’s invasion would trigger but also for losing Taiwan after a decades-long battle of wills between Washington and Beijing over the island’s future. That would doom a president’s legacy. Against such a certainty, any chance of salvaging the situation could look like a better bet—and by opting to fight China to protect Taiwan, the president would preserve the possibility of going down in history as a great wartime victor. In the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson faced a choice between ramping up a U.S. military campaign in Vietnam and allowing the Communists to take over the country. He doubted that a war was necessary or winnable. But he sent American soldiers all the same.

U.S. leaders need a way to escape the ghastly decision to either wage World War III or watch Taiwan go down. They need a third option. Washington must make a plan that enables Taiwan to mount a viable self-defense, allows the United States to assist from a distance, and keeps the U.S. position in Asia intact regardless of how a cross-strait conflict concludes. This way, the United States could abstain from sending its military forces to defend Taiwan if China invades the island and does not attack U.S. bases or warships.

The Trump administration should launch an effort now to make this third option viable. Washington should condition its aid on defense spending and reforms in Taipei, pushing Taiwan into a position to better protect itself. It must also develop capabilities and plans to resupply the island if needed.

Yet U.S. policymakers must also accept that, without direct U.S. military intervention, Taiwan may manage only to stall a Chinese invasion, not repel one. The United States therefore needs to insulate its regional interests from Taiwan’s fate. Instead of clarifying its commitment to defend Taiwan, Washington should retain an ambiguous stance and downplay the importance of keeping the island out of Beijing’s hands. It should, meanwhile, bolster the self-defenses of its other Asian allies and partners, blocking any path for China to convert a successful bid for Taiwan into regional dominance. At home, U.S. politicians and analysts should speak frankly about the cost of a war with China and push back against the misguided idea that the United States’ survival and prosperity turn on Taiwan’s political status. Through a policy of firm but limited support for Taiwan, the United States can avoid involvement in a world-rending war while putting China off a risky invasion—and safeguarding U.S. interests if an invasion comes anyway.

PRICING IN WORLD WAR III

The United States rightly expends considerable resources to dissuade China from using coercion to control Taiwan. If China were to seize Taiwan, the United States would suffer significant military, economic, and reputational setbacks. China would gain a new foothold from which to project power across East Asia, complicating U.S. military operations in the region. Beijing could disrupt trade routes in the western Pacific, rattling the global economy. U.S. allies would have a new reason to question Washington’s commitment to their security. The repercussions would be greatest, of course, for the people of Taiwan, who would lose their vibrant democracy.

Nevertheless, for the foreseeable future, the benefits of preserving Taiwan’s de facto self-rule do not warrant the enormous human and economic costs of a U.S.-Chinese war. The United States’ vital interest lies in preventing China from attaining untrammeled regional hegemony in Asia. With such dominance, China could project large-scale military power into the Western Hemisphere or cut the United States off from Asia’s dynamic economic markets. But controlling Taiwan would not, in itself, transform China into a hegemon. The United States would remain capable of rallying a counterbalancing coalition to impede any potential Chinese bid for political and military supremacy in Asia.

For one thing, the military advantages China would reap from taking Taiwan would not be that profound, and the United States and its allies would have time to adjust. Beijing could use control of the island to expand the reach of its missiles, air defenses, radars, and maritime and air surveillance systems, allowing the People’s Liberation Army to operate farther from China’s coast and more easily hold at risk U.S. military assets, including bases in Guam and vessels near Japan and the Philippines. But the PLA’s weapons can already reach these U.S. targets, so adding a few hundred more miles to their range would make only a marginal difference. China’s undersea gains would be similarly modest and unlikely to offset U.S. advantages. Seizing Taiwan would allow China to dock submarines in the deepwater ports off Taiwan’s eastern coast, which would extend their range and enable them to avoid some U.S. underwater sensors in the Miyako and Luzon Straits. They might not evade U.S. monitoring entirely, however, because satellites or sound surveillance in the region could probably detect them. Moreover, China may, in time, develop quieter submarines, and these could avoid U.S. detection without being launched from Taiwan.

U.S. politicians should speak frankly about the cost of a war with China.

Such limited operational gains would not give China the ability to bring about a dramatic regional expansion. Despite the fears of some in Tokyo and Manila, China would still face formidable obstacles to seizing outlying territories belonging to Japan or the Philippines—most of which are farther from Taiwan than Taiwan is from China—let alone more distant and populous islands, such as Okinawa or Kyushu in Japan or Luzon in the Philippines. Furthermore, it would take China years to build the infrastructure needed to use Taiwan as a base for military operations; the United States and its partners would have plenty of time to prepare additional defenses. In short, control of the island would hardly overturn the military balance in the region. Countries threatened by China’s rise have to invest in security measures no matter what happens in and around Taiwan.

If military considerations do not necessitate the direct U.S. defense of Taiwan, neither do the economic stakes. National security officials who favor a strong U.S. commitment to Taiwan frequently cite their concern that China could commandeer high-tech assets on the island. Taiwan produces about 90 percent of the world’s most advanced chips, largely through the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. They argue that if Beijing gains control of TSMC, it could leap ahead in the global technology race, and Washington would lose its most important source of semiconductors, constraining U.S. economic growth and military innovation. TSMC, however, cannot operate without Western components and intellectual property, both of which could be immediately cut off after a Chinese invasion. These steps, of course, would disrupt the United States’ own chip supply chains. Fortunately, the United States is already preparing for the possibility of losing access to Taiwanese production by building semiconductor fabrication plants at home. Boston Consulting Group has estimated that the United States is on track to produce 28 percent of the world’s advanced semiconductors by 2032.

The United States similarly has little reason to fear that it would lose access to East Asia’s valuable economic markets if China controlled Taiwan. China likely already has the military capability to disrupt shipping through the narrow sea-lanes of the East China and South China Seas, yet it has not done so. Fully blocking traffic would be expensive and time-consuming for the PLA, even if China controlled Taiwan, and China’s own economy would suffer, too. If necessary, commercial ships headed for Japan or South Korea could take new routes, bypassing the South China Sea by traveling through the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagoes or around Papua New Guinea through the Solomon Sea.

Some argue that the United States must fight for Taiwan because a failure to do so would undermine U.S. credibility, driving countries in the region closer to China. This seems unlikely. India and Japan, two of the United States’ cornerstone partners in the Indo-Pacific, have a deep history of animosity toward Beijing and tend to respond forcefully to Chinese aggression. To prevent Asian countries from aligning with Beijing if it takes Taiwan, the United States should stop reinforcing the idea that its reputation hinges on the defense of Taiwan. Instead, it should focus on its larger objective—preventing Chinese regional dominance—and stake its credibility on that.

PLAYING PORCUPINE

Taiwan certainly matters to the United States—just not enough to justify a war with China. The U.S. government thus needs a new strategy to support the island’s defense without having American troops engage in combat. Of course, if China were to target American forces first, keeping out of the fight would become impossible. But Beijing would have reason to refrain from attacking U.S. forces if it believed there was a good chance that Washington might abstain from conflict. To make a Taiwan-led U.S.-supplied defense viable, the United States should adopt two policies over the next decade: insist that Taipei reorient and step up its defense efforts, and improve the Pentagon’s ability to send military supplies to Taiwan during a conflict without putting Americans in harm’s way.

Taiwan’s current defense strategy leaves it unprepared for a Chinese attack. Taipei spends a significant share of its resources on advanced equipment, such as F-16 fighter jets, Abrams tanks, and submarines, intended to fight China head-on. Taiwan cannot defeat a Chinese invasion this way. China could easily find and destroy big assets, and its much larger military force would overwhelm any of these systems that survive an initial attack, leaving Taiwan without offensive firepower or sufficient defenses. At that point, Taiwan’s survival would depend entirely on U.S. military warships and aircraft rapidly arriving and entering into the conflict—a massive gamble for Taipei and a devil’s choice for the United States.

Instead, as many analysts have argued, the best way for Taiwan to protect itself is to become a “porcupine” whose sharp defenses—large numbers of antiship missiles, sea mines, and air defense systems, for instance—can thwart an invader’s attempt to absorb the island. With this asymmetric denial defense, Taiwan’s military could prevent China from quickly seizing the island, dragging the PLA into a long and costly war that paves the way for a political settlement. Under the first Trump and the Biden administrations, Washington encouraged Taiwan to embrace such an approach, and Taipei made some progress, for example by investing in antiship missiles and starting to build a fleet of small drones. But change has been halting and insufficient.

Soldiers celebrating Taiwan’s National Day, Taipei, October 2024 Ann Wang / Reuters

The United States can spur Taiwan to acquire the capabilities it needs to become more self-reliant. Washington should clearly convey to Taipei that it will increase or decrease aid depending on how much Taiwan spends on its military and whether it invests in the right kinds of weapons and personnel to mount a denial-focused strategy. To turn up the pressure, U.S. leaders should publicly state that, although the United States has an abiding interest in maintaining the cross-strait status quo and a legal obligation under the Taiwan Relations Act to equip the island with defensive weapons, Taiwan bears the primary responsibility for its own defense.

To receive the maximum U.S. assistance on offer, Taiwan should be required to increase its defense spending from the roughly two and a half percent of GDP it spends today to at least four percent by 2030—a level of expenditure on par with that of other countries in precarious security environments. Israel spends about five percent of GDP on defense despite being far stronger than any of its adversaries. Poland and the Baltic states are working toward military spending of four percent of GDP even though they are protected by NATO’s security guarantee.

Just as important, the United States should condition military assistance on the extent to which Taiwan uses its expanded budget to prepare a denial defense. Taiwan will need to triple or quadruple its arsenal of antiship missiles to have a chance at disabling a significant number of the vessels China would use to move its forces onto Taiwan’s shores. Taipei should increase and modernize its stockpiles of naval mines, which would, in the event of an invasion, allow it to wreak further havoc on approaching Chinese ships. Taiwan should, at a minimum, double its supply of shoulder-fired and mobile air defense systems and purchase or manufacture thousands of the munitions they need. It will also have to acquire tens of thousands of cheap drones that can harass PLA aircraft as they try to control the skies over the island. This would inhibit China from relentlessly bombing Taiwan’s critical infrastructure or dropping paratroops inland. Finally, the United States should reject Taiwanese requests for big-ticket items such as aircraft and warships that would be easy targets for Chinese missiles and would be unlikely to withstand an initial Chinese attack. Washington should cancel unfilled Taiwanese orders for Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter jets and reallocate the funds to smaller, cheaper systems suited to a denial strategy.

In addition to setting spending targets, the United States should demand that Taiwan improve its military training so that it generates a large, reliable reserve force capable of holding off Chinese invaders. With enough skilled personnel, Taiwanese forces could occupy hardened positions along the island’s coast to prevent the PLA from amassing the numbers needed to break out from their beachheads and seize and hold territory farther inland. Responding to internal and external pressure, Taiwan lengthened its conscription term in 2024 from four months to one year for all Taiwanese men born after 2005 and updated the curriculum for conscripts and reservists to include some live-fire drills. But much of this training remains divorced from the realities of warfighting. For example, it focuses on the most basic military skills rather than offering the advanced field exercises that would prepare soldiers to operate in a conflict. In addition, only six percent of eligible conscripts reported for training last year; the rest received deferments to complete their education. To get Taiwan’s reserve force to its necessary size and readiness, the Trump administration should press Taipei to require two full years of more intense instruction and limit the use of deferments.

Controlling Taiwan would not, in itself, transform China into a hegemon.

The United States, for its part, must do all it can to equip Taiwan with asymmetric capabilities. Washington should make the island a priority recipient of arms sales, filling Taipei’s orders before those of other clients, just as the United States has done for Ukraine. U.S. suppliers can produce much of the materiel Taiwan needs most, such as antiship missiles, naval mines, and small air and sea drones, cheaply and in large quantities. The Biden administration transferred excess stocks of U.S. weapons to Taiwan, and the Trump administration should continue to do so. The United States should also invest in Taiwan’s defense industrial base so Taipei can produce and distribute munitions, spare parts, and medical supplies around the island during a conflict. This would also alleviate the burden on the United States’ own defense industrial base. Co-production arrangements and even joint ventures with U.S. firms could help Taiwan meet its needs.

Taiwan should become as self-reliant as possible, but the United States may still need the capability to replenish Taiwan’s military stockpiles during a Chinese blockade or under Chinese fire—without bringing U.S. forces into the conflict. Washington’s best option is to transport military supplies using uncrewed systems, including aircraft, surface vessels, and undersea vehicles, because even if the PLA fired on them, the United States would suffer no casualties and could avoid entering into a war. On the few occasions that adversaries have damaged U.S. drones, Washington has never retaliated with a direct military strike. During the war in Ukraine, for instance, a Russian fighter jet forced down a U.S. Reaper drone over the Black Sea, and the U.S. military did not respond.

Uncrewed vehicles tend to be smaller than crewed ones, but they can still carry essential items such as ammunition, shoulder-fired and other small missiles, and naval and antitank mines. Some uncrewed systems already exist: the U.S. Marine Corps has developed an autonomous vessel, modeled on the boats of drug smugglers, that can be remotely operated from thousands of miles away. The Pentagon should accelerate efforts to develop other such systems, working with traditional defense contractors and smaller startups to produce autonomous air and sea craft that can carry cargo.

For now, the military infrastructure on Taiwan’s eastern coast is limited, making it difficult to receive cargo during a war. Taiwan should build additional runways, reinforced aircraft hangars, shelters for ships and submarines, and more extensive roads leading to the rest of the island. At the same time, the United States should expand current plans to stockpile military equipment at facilities near Taiwan, including in Guam, Japan, the Marshall and Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, the Philippines, and South Korea. Where necessary, Washington should seek explicit permission from host countries for the U.S. military to conduct resupply missions there. So far, no country in the region has clearly and publicly pledged to provide this type of support in the event of a Taiwan contingency. Some may be leery of getting pulled into a conflict with China, but U.S. officials should make clear that Washington, too, is seeking to avoid direct intervention.

SELF-DEFENSE CLASS

In addition to reducing Taiwan’s dependence on U.S. military assistance, the United States should insulate its regional strategy from developments in Taiwan. That way, Washington can minimize the fallout in case Beijing succeeds in taking the island. In recent years, the Pentagon has adopted a Chinese invasion of Taiwan as its “pacing scenario,” the prospective future conflict on which U.S. budget and posture decisions are determined. Civilian leaders, meanwhile, speak more forcefully about their commitment to defend Taiwan than they did in previous decades. This approach has potential benefits. Demonstrating U.S. readiness and resolve over Taiwan may deter China from attempting an invasion by suggesting that the price would likely be direct war with the United States. But it also raises the risk of the worst outcome: that China is provoked into war and the United States is compelled to join that war out of fear that its credibility is on the line. To avoid such a calamity, Washington should change tack. The Trump administration should encourage countries in the region to become ready to defend themselves, and it should signal a more modest and ambiguous U.S. military commitment to Taiwan.

The balance of power in Asia does not hinge on control of Taiwan. More important are the United States’ ties to the major centers of economic and military power—Japan, India, and, to a lesser degree, South Korea—and countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines that are located on sea-lanes through which the United States gains commercial and military access to the region. Instead of planning to fight China in a war over Taiwan, the United States should prioritize shoring up the self-defense capabilities of these partners. Over the past few years, U.S. efforts to strengthen allied militaries have emphasized Taiwan-related scenarios. In the Philippines, the United States has concentrated investments in defense infrastructure in Luzon, the main territory closest to Taiwan, where the United States hopes to base missiles and personnel in a conflict. U.S. officials have likewise encouraged Japan to purchase cruise missiles that are capable of striking China. Yet Washington has paid insufficient attention to its allies’ most immediate security requirements. Manila needs to better protect bases and airfields across the Philippine archipelago, and Tokyo should bolster its air defenses and build munitions stockpiles.

The United States has also erred by expanding its military bases close to China and Taiwan. Washington has tried to gain more military access along the so-called first island chain, which encompasses the seas closest to the east coast of mainland China. The United States has also pushed increasingly powerful military hardware in greater quantities close to Chinese shores. Washington would be better served, instead, by reinforcing existing infrastructure where it is most defensible. The U.S. military should enhance airfields and ports, logistics and supply hubs, and pre-positioned military equipment in northern rather than southern Japan, and along the so-called second island chain, including Guam, the Marshall and Northern Mariana Islands, Micronesia, and Palau. China has fewer of the longer-range missiles needed to hit these distant and dispersed locations, making them more secure. By helping partners develop their own asymmetric defenses and protecting the U.S. military presence at better-defended bases farther from mainland China, the United States can both deter Beijing from widening a conflict over Taiwan and prevent it from achieving regional hegemony in any scenario, including if it gained control of the island.

Anti-landing barricades in Kinmen, Taiwan, February 2024 Ann Wang / Reuters

For similar reasons, the Trump administration should take a public stance on cross-strait issues that is less provocative than the Biden administration’s. Over the last four years, the United States has effectively watered down its “one China” policy, which has long allowed Washington and Beijing to paper over their deep differences regarding Taiwan and avoid conflict. Under the policy, the United States acknowledges the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China, agrees not to challenge that position, and maintains only unofficial relations with Taiwan. In the early months of the Biden administration, however, the State Department loosened restrictions on meetings between U.S. and Taiwanese officials. In 2022, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Taiwan’s president in Taipei, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the island in 25 years. Biden himself said on four occasions that he would order U.S. forces to defend Taiwan if China were to attack the island, a departure from the usual stance of maintaining ambiguity over the U.S. response. Twice, he said it was up to the people of Taiwan to decide whether to declare independence, although he later returned to the customary position that the United States does not support Taiwan’s independence.

Many Asian allies worried that Washington’s actions provoked Beijing into cross-strait escalation, or at least handed Beijing a convenient justification for expanding its military activities around Taiwan. Trump and his team should be less assertive. If U.S. allies and partners deem the United States responsible for the outbreak of a Chinese-Taiwanese war—even if inciting a conflict is not Washington’s intent—they will be less willing to assist U.S. resupply missions and less likely to view China as a threat to themselves. This perception would undermine the paramount U.S. objective of preventing Chinese hegemony in Asia. Moreover, when allies see the United States stake its credibility on Taiwan’s political status, they, too, may come to see Taiwan’s defense as the litmus test of Washington’s commitment to the region. It would be much better for the United States to set realistic expectations with its allies and partners, not to mention for itself.

The United States should no longer let Taiwan policy come at the expense of regional strategy. Building on the assurances exchanged between Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in November 2023, the new administration should make a determined effort to shore up the “one China” policy. Washington should remain ambiguous about whether it would defend Taiwan by force. It should consistently discourage unilateral Taiwanese moves toward independence and restore limitations on official U.S.-Taiwanese contacts. The Trump administration should consider gradually removing the U.S. military trainers who have been working on Taiwan’s outlying islands since at least 2020; similar missions have been largely unsuccessful at teaching partners to become self-sufficient. At the very least, the training could be carried out in a less sensitive place. The Trump administration could also offer new assurances, publicly or privately, that it will respect China’s redlines. For example, the United States could announce that under no circumstances would it support Taiwan’s independence, unless, perhaps, the island faces an armed attack initiated by Beijing. In addition, Washington could affirm that it would accept any resolution of cross-strait differences, including unification, that is reached peacefully, without coercion, and with the assent of the people of Taiwan.

The military gains China would reap from taking Taiwan would not be that profound.

These steps are best taken in return for corresponding Chinese actions, such as a reduction in military activities around Taiwan and a declaration that Beijing has no deadline for resolving the Taiwan question. Still, the United States would benefit from strengthening its “one China” policy regardless of Beijing’s willingness to reciprocate. Doing so would show U.S. allies and partners in Asia that Taiwan is not the United States’ overriding concern and that further escalation of cross-strait tensions would stem from Chinese aggression, not American provocations.

The main risk of this strategy is that it could weaken deterrence by suggesting to China that the United States might not defend Taiwan militarily. The United States can limit this risk by adhering to its traditional policy of “strategic ambiguity,” which entails remaining purposely vague about how the United States would respond to a Chinese attack on Taiwan. Even if the United States does develop a viable option to aid the island without entering a war, Beijing should not discount the possibility that the United States might yet decide to fight. U.S. presidents will still face significant pressure to intervene in a conflict over Taiwan, from civilian and military advisers, Congress, and segments of the American public. And by increasing its assistance to Taiwan and investing in its regional military capabilities, Washington could even strengthen deterrence. Beijing may nonetheless conclude that the likelihood of U.S. military intervention has somewhat diminished, but this calculation could have a bright silver lining: believing it can keep U.S. forces out of a conflict, China would have less incentive to target American troops at the start if it did decide to invade Taiwan.

A different risk is that Taiwan could, in effect, arm itself too well: China, seeing that the possibility of ever unifying with the island is ending, might invade sooner to avoid losing the opportunity forever. But it seems unlikely that Taiwan would strengthen its defenses so robustly as to persuade China’s leaders that the island had become irrevocably separate from the mainland. To be convinced to attack, Chinese leaders would have to conclude that Taiwan was about to outmatch China and would indefinitely sustain its military advantage. Realistically, even major investments will enable Taiwan only to make an invasion slow, long, and costly, not to render coercive unification impossible. Even if Taiwan turned itself into the ultimate porcupine, China would probably respond by improving its own capabilities—not by gambling on an invasion.

Furthermore, Beijing’s concerns should be mitigated by U.S. efforts to quell its fears. Taiwan may become materially better prepared to counter a Chinese attack, but Chinese leaders should not perceive any new challenge to their political claim to Taiwan. On the contrary, they would see the threat subside as Washington takes greater care not to publicly challenge the legitimacy of Beijing’s territorial claim and aspiration for eventual unification.

VIBE SHIFT

To preserve their latitude in a Taiwan conflict and stay out of war, American policymakers won’t just need a new approach in the Indo-Pacific. They must also change the conversation at home so that U.S. presidents do not fear political retribution for doing what best serves U.S. interests: avoiding war with China. Since 2019, American politicians, especially those in Congress, have pushed for a flurry of antagonistic policies that have created an atmosphere of hostility toward China. In such a climate, the president and Congress may be more prone to taking up arms to defend Taiwan. As the political scientist Evan Medeiros has argued, developing a domestic consensus in favor of U.S.-Chinese coexistence is “not just a useful condition—but also a critical one—for avoiding conflict between these two geopolitical rivals.”

Before the moment of crisis arrives, political leaders should initiate a frank national dialogue about U.S. interests in the western Pacific. Americans must know the true costs of conflict with China: the deaths of tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers, the possibility that nuclear weapons would be fired in desperation, an economic downturn dwarfing that of the Great Recession of 2008, and severe disruption to everyday life. It will take great effort for policymakers to communicate the scale of the potential devastation because a war with China would look nothing like the relatively small and contained wars that the United States has waged in recent decades.

In addition to making clear the costs of war with China, U.S. officials should stress the need to coexist with China as prominently as they discuss the need to compete with it. In the coming years, especially if Beijing’s behavior improves, American policymakers should adopt “competitive coexistence” as an approach for U.S. relations with China. In doing so, they would convey Washington’s willingness to establish stable patterns of interaction, limit security competition, and address global problems collaboratively. At a minimum, political leaders should avoid undue alarmism about Taiwan. The Biden administration was right to tamp down public speculation about the year by which China might intend to launch an invasion. The Trump administration should go further to discourage catastrophic thinking, including by communicating to the public that China would not pose an immeasurably greater challenge to the United States if Taiwan came under its control.

The U.S. government should not underestimate the China threat. A larger problem, however, is that the United States underestimates itself. Washington enjoys vast strengths and wide latitude in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. The United States has forces patrolling the seas near China, not the other way around; it is an island 100 miles from the Chinese mainland that is in dispute. Taiwan does hold value for the United States, but if U.S. policymakers overrate its importance, they will sacrifice the safety of the status quo for the perpetual risk of a devastating war. That would be an error that no amount of military strength could redress. Washington should not squander its advantages out of fear or zeal. Together with allies and partners, the United States can preserve an open and balanced Indo-Pacific, regardless of what happens in the Taiwan Strait—but it needs to prepare now.

JENNIFER KAVANAGH is a Senior Fellow and Director of Military Analysis at Defense Priorities and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies.

STEPHEN WERTHEIM is a Senior Fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Jennifer Kavanagh · February 25, 2025

24. In Focus with Curtis Fox: Bureaucracy Limits Special Ops' Effectiveness

This article covers a lot of SOF ground.

While Bing West's book The Village is important and excellent I would have thought a former special operator writing about Special Forces would have cited the work of the Civilian Irregular Defense Group project by the CIA and Special Forces and later run by US Army Special Forces.

Also I would say the concept of the Forward Operating Base (FOB) employed in the GWOT in Afghanistan and Iraq was not the concept of the FOB in Special Forces doctrine prior to 9-11. In Special Forces the Forward Operating Base was not designed to be a fortress from which elements would submit "conops" to leave the wire. Yes they were for command and control and logistics support to deployed SFODAs but the concept was to support SFODAs deployed for long duration and they were not designed to be the same as the FOBs as employed by the conventional forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Excerpts:

I encourage my readers to explore a book on the Marine Corps Commandant’s reading list: The Village by Bing West. The book detailed the exploits of a 12-man Marine detachment (under the command of a Sergeant) in protecting a village in Vietnam. Marine fire teams conducted multiple nightly patrols to hound the Viet Cong’s access points into the community. As the Marines increasingly proved to the village that they were protected from Viet Cong reprisals, the Marines won the community over. Their success is a story of constant harassment of the enemy, open access to the community, freedom of movement, level-headed conflict resolution, unrestricted presence patrols, violence of action, and delegated command-and-control to tactical leaders (a sergeant).

Here are some CIDG specific references. These offer additional and Special Forces relevant studies to complement Curtis Fox's recommendation of Bing West's The Village.

The Civilian Irregular Defense Group in Vietnam: Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support

This book examines the impact of civil defense forces on counterinsurgency campaigns, focusing on the CIDG program. It provides detailed insights into the collaboration between U.S. Special Forces and indigenous groups.

US Special Forces and Counterinsurgency in Vietnam: Military Innovation and Institutional Failure, 1961-1963

Authored by Christopher K. Ives, this work analyzes the early stages of U.S. Special Forces' involvement in Vietnam, including the development and challenges of the CIDG program.

Village Defense: Initial Special Forces Operations in Vietnam

Written by Ronald A. Shackleton, this book offers a firsthand account of the early Special Forces operations that led to the establishment of the CIDG program, detailing the strategies and interactions with local populations.

U.S. Army Special Forces 1961-1971

This official history provides a comprehensive overview of Special Forces activities during the Vietnam War, including detailed accounts of the CIDG program's development and operations. :::

These works collectively offer a comprehensive understanding of the CIDG program's intricacies and its role in the Vietnam War.

The Buon Enao Experiment and American Counterinsurgency by J.P. Harris

This book examines the origins of the CIDG program, focusing on the Buon Enao experiment that initiated the larger CIDG effort.

"Gypsies of the Battlefield: The CIDG Program in Vietnam and Its Evolutionary Impact" by Lance E. Booth.

This study analyzes the CIDG program's strategic importance and its impact on future conflicts.

In Focus with Curtis Fox: Bureaucracy Limits Special Ops' Effectiveness

sofrep.com · by Curtis L. Fox · February 26, 2025

23 hours ago

Theater Special Operations Commands

The Theater Special Operations Commands (TSOC) is led by a 2-star CGO, who is responsible for supporting the Geographic Combatant Commander’s Intent by conducting special operations in the theater. Having a division-level command to support and advocate for the SOF missions in theater sounds wonderful in theory, but the reality is mixed at best.

The TSOCs are staffed with fine people—Green Berets, SEALs, Raiders, etc. The component commands of USSOCOM generally require officers to pursue professional growth and development experiences, and the TSOCs provide the opportunity to work in a joint command.

Typically, the TSOC will have several subordinate Joint Special Operations Task Forces (JSOTF) under the command of an O-6 (Colonel or Navy Captain). The JSOTF will manage SOF in one section of the GCC theater. JSOTFs often carry names like SOC Forward—East Africa or SOC Forward—Trans Sahara. Each JSOTF has its own joint command staff.

Unfortunately, the TSOCs and their subordinate JSOTFs have the handicap of being permanent bureaucracies.

You can read the previous column here.

—

Theater Special Operations Commands

Unfortunately, the TSOCs and their subordinate JSOTFs have the handicap of being permanent bureaucracies.

Bureaucracies are good at managing the status quo, but they punish risk-taking and innovation—two principles that are supposed to underline all Special Operations. The officers staffing these bureaucracies also usually work in air-conditioned offices in Germany or Hawaii or even the continental United States (CONUS). This makes command-and-control of SOF in theater somewhat disconnected and often counter-productive.

When an SFOD-A or MSOT or SEAL Platoon wants to conduct a mission in a hostile or denied environment, they are expected to generate a power point presentation that communicates the Concept of Operations (CONOP) as well as a risk assessment. Depending on the TSOC’s risk appetite, approval for this mission can take days to months. Detachment commanders are often frustrated by repeated CONOP revisions from the JSOTF J3—revisions that have little to do with the mission itself (format policing and punctuation).

These exercises in micro-management are not designed to facilitate agile special operations. They are designed to control downside risks and maintain a paper trail. If something does go wrong, as sometimes happens, then TSOC staffers will be immediately hammered by a General who must now remediate the problem. Official inquiries will micro-analyze the CONOP, and officers who were involved in its staffing and approval will be forced to answer hard questions that will have a dramatic impact on their careers. See the aftermath of the Tongo Tongo Ambush for reference.

Afghan National Army Commandos along with Coalition forces conducted a cordon and search in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, March 18, 2010. (DVIDS)

Casualties are a hard fact of armed conflict, and while every effort needs to be made to ensure that units have the proper training and have undergone a rigorous planning process, Generals should not be obligated to investigate subordinate officers when things go sideways.

Identify the mistakes that were made. Codify the lessons to be learned. But, there’s a difference between establishing “what went wrong” and establishing “who’s to blame”. War is unpredictable. Being incorrect is not a crime. Being in-charge when something unexpected happens is not a fireable offense. Assume good effort and good faith. Don’t crucify subordinates for anything less than clear negligence and incompetence.

Codifying these basic lessons would go far in fixing risk-avoidance in the TSOCs.

Requiring an SFOD-A or SEAL platoon or MSOT to function under this system of command-and-control is taking the nation’s most gifted soldiery, tying their hands behind their backs, throwing them in a river, and telling them to swim upstream to victory. SOF officers require the delegated authority to make decisions regarding how best to employ their troops at a much lower level (and preferably by a commander that is located down-range and close to the mission space).

In the decades prior to widespread adoption of satellite communications, the SOF enterprise was forced to defer to the officer on the ground. The advent of advanced information technology has enabled a decline in command-and-control practices and the appropriate delegation of authorities.

Moreover, SOF leaders have a moral imperative to move the ball forward when they send personnel abroad. Especially in the case of kinetic missions supporting counterterrorism or irregular warfare (127e and 127d authorities), the TSOC must allow teams to establish a regular Op Tempo.

If there is no risk appetite for missions outside the wire without a 3-5 week CONOP turnaround, then why are we separating these troops from their families? Clearly it isn’t to disrupt enemy activity, prohibit freedom of movement, or deny safe haven.

It would be better to send these men home so they can maintain their marriages and see their kids grow up.

Forward Operations Bases

Forward Operations Bases (FOBs) are staging points for missions within an area of operations. They may even include an airbase, hospital, machine shop, and supply depot. They serve not only as a base of operations but as a strong point in which U.S. forces can seek shelter and resupply.

FOBs were a staple in the employment of SOF during the War on Terror, but in the case of Special Forces they present a unique problem.

FOBs are essentially medieval towers. They are constructed to project hard power over a village or community, and their intrusive structures and high walls are a sharp indicator that these soldiers are foreign occupiers. Moreover, with cumbersome mission authorization procedures emanating from the TSOC, Green Berets cannot get out from behind these high walls to engage with the communities they are meant to understand and liberate. And if they can’t engage with the local populace, the insurgency has a free hand to shape the environment as it sees fit.

TSOCs also often insist on lodging SOF personnel behind secure walls even when they are deployed in a permissive Title 50 environment. Bunkering all deployed SOF elements in a nominal location like Dakar Senegal—SFOD-A, Civil-Military Support Element (CMSE), and Military Information Support Team (MIST)—briefs well and tells superiors that you are serious about protecting your personnel. However, putting 25 stocky military age males and several trucks with diplomatic plates in a single walled compound tends to draw attention.

Worse, during the relief in place/transfer of authority (RIP/TOA), not only will all of those personnel have to move out of that compound but they will have to load several pallets of gear and ship it to the local airfield. Pallets often weigh between 6,000-8,000 lbs, and shipping them to an airfield requires a forklift and heavy flatbed truck. Incoming SOF elements will land with their own pallets, all of which will have to be shipped from the airfield to the compound. To say that this is high signature is a gross understatement.

Soldiers conduct Forward Operating Base operations during training exercise Saber Junction 20 at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center, Hohenfels, Germany. (DVIDS)

I encourage my readers to explore a book on the Marine Corps Commandant’s reading list: The Village by Bing West. The book detailed the exploits of a 12-man Marine detachment (under the command of a Sergeant) in protecting a village in Vietnam. Marine fire teams conducted multiple nightly patrols to hound the Viet Cong’s access points into the community. As the Marines increasingly proved to the village that they were protected from Viet Cong reprisals, the Marines won the community over. Their success is a story of constant harassment of the enemy, open access to the community, freedom of movement, level-headed conflict resolution, unrestricted presence patrols, violence of action, and delegated command-and-control to tactical leaders (a sergeant).

The FOB likely has some role in the future—primarily in logistics and supply. However, at present it is over-used. Its very existence hinders SFOD-As from establishing themselves as integral components of indigenous communities—because the SFOD-A does not have a real presence in the community. Big burly smiling Green Berets just walk through the community (armed to the teeth) and distribute food, generators, and soccer balls on a sporadic basis (whenever they can get a CONOP approved to leave the FOB).

For Special Forces, the traditional FOB has to go. It is anathema to the Unconventional Warfare mission.

—

Stay tuned for next week’s continuation of “Practice of Unconventional Warfare,” where Fox discusses how Special Forces (SF) should better coordinate with conventional forces and suggests a more integrated approach with SFABs (Security Force Assistance Brigades) to improve long-term effectiveness while maintaining tactical capabilities.

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

Subscribe Now

Hegseth: DoD doing 'complete review' of Afghan withdrawal

Washington Examiner · February 26, 2025

The U.S. military’s presence in Afghanistan ended in August 2021, 20 years after the war began in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, though the chaotic nature of the final weeks has been the subject of significant scrutiny.

“We’re doing a complete review of every single aspect of what happened with the botched withdrawal of Afghanistan and plan to have full accountability,” Hegseth said ahead of the president’s first complete Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. “We’re taking a very different view, obviously, than the previous administration, and there will be full accountability.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth looks on as President Donald Trump holds a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, on February 26, 2025. (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

He did not specify who was leading the review, the parameters they were dealing with, or if the investigators had a deadline for when to get a report to him.

The Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General has not been asked to participate in this review, a spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. Steven Stebbins is currently serving as the acting inspector general after Trump fired Robert Storch when he fired more than a dozen inspectors general last month.

The first Trump administration agreed to a deal in 2020 with the Taliban, without the Afghan government, to end the military’s presence the following year if certain conditions were met, though it was the Biden administration that followed through with the plan to leave.

The Taliban conducted a revolt in July and August 2021 against the U.S.-based Afghan Army, which quickly folded. As a result, the Biden administration announced it would conduct a noncombatant evacuation operation to get Americans or Afghan allies that would be at risk under the Taliban out of the country.

It was the largest such operation ever conducted. They got over 100,000 out of the country, though they left an untold number of Afghan allies behind. As the flights were ongoing, an ISIS-K suicide bomber carried out an attack at the perimeter of the airport, killing nearly 200 people, including 13 U.S. service members.

“That was a horrible display, and I’ve dealt with the parents and family of the 13 that were killed, but no one ever talks about the 40 that were so badly hurt with the arms and the legs and the face and the whole thing. The missing arms and legs. It was so terrible,” Trump said.

He also jokingly said he doesn’t believe many of the military leaders involved in the withdrawal would get promotions, adding, “I think they’ll largely be gone,” though many of the senior military leaders are no longer in those roles.

It’s not the first time Hegseth has promised “accountability for what occurred in Afghanistan,” which he did during his town hall with Pentagon employees earlier this month.

Trump and Hegseth are working on reshaping the Department of Defense. The department has announced plans to lay off more than 5,000 probationary employees and to identify and divert about $50 billion worth of Biden legacy programs to reallocate for purposes more aligned with its agenda. They have ended the Pentagon’s diversity and inclusion efforts.

The president fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, last Friday and said he would nominate Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine as a replacement. Shortly after, the secretary fired Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Slife, and the top lawyers at three of the service branches.

US-UKRAINE RELATIONSHIP REACHES INFLECTION POINT ON THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF WAR

Trump will need to waive the legal requirements to serve as chairman for Caine’s nomination. Any nominee to be chairman must have previously served as the vice chair, led one of the military services, or served as a combatant commander, which he has not done.

“Certainly Gen. ‘Razin’ Caine, who is on his way in, was not a part of [the Afghan withdrawal],” Hegseth said. “Instead, [he] was a part of leading the effort against ISIS by untying the hands of warfighters and finishing the job properly.”

Washington Examiner · February 26, 2025

26. Some US allies contribute, some loaf. Here’s a numerical assessment

I am saving this article for future reference. Thank you to The Strategist from Australia for putting this together.

This is not only about contributions of treasure but blood as well.

Please go to this link to view the fascinating charts. https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/some-us-allies-contribute-some-loaf-heres-a-numerical-assessment/

Some US allies contribute, some loaf. Here’s a numerical assessment | The Strategist

aspistrategist.org.au · by George Boone · February 26, 2025

Which US allies have paid their bills, as President Donald Trump would see things? Which, having given the United States little support in return for its security guarantee, now risk losing it?

The short answer, derived from our numerical methodology, is that only nine countries in the US’s main European and Indo-Pacific alliance networks are genuine net contributors to their partnerships with Washington. Australia, Britain and the Netherlands rank highest. Poland, Norway and France are also pulling their weight.

Sixteen countries in those alliances, though not quite free-riders, can fairly be called cheap-riders, according to our assessment, which measures allies’ commitments of blood and treasure. Another 12 may be classified as blatant cheap-riders, notably including Japan, which has the largest economy among the US’s friends.

Our assessment does not focus on Washington’s Latin American and Caribbean allies, but, if it did, they’d all be classed as cheap-riders or blatant cheap-riders.

With Trump taking the unprecedented step of linking protection with payment, our analysis aims to clarify allies’ risks of US abandonment. For the NATO and Indo-Pacific allies, this is no mere academic exercise. European NATO members face an aggressive Russia that has threatened to expand its war against Ukraine. And US allies in the Indo-Pacific confront an increasingly assertive and powerful Beijing, alongside growing nuclear and missile threats from Pyongyang.

Contrary to expectations, we found that proximity to these threats did not necessarily correlate with higher contribution to the US alliance, especially in Europe.

Within alliances that are asymmetric, as any with the US must be, weaker partners cannot fully compensate the stronger partner for protection. They’re not rich enough. But they can contribute (or, in Trump’s parlance, ‘pay’) through such actions as providing international diplomatic support, forward bases or niche military capabilities.

Trump generally attaches greater weight to more readily quantifiable measures, such as defence spending as a percentage of GDP. So we follow him, answering the bottom-line question ‘Who’s paid?’ by asking five component questions with readily quantifiable insights. We aggregate the results into an overall payment score.

First, has the ally met its defence spending targets over the lifetime of the alliance? Washington expects allies to spend at least 2 percent of GDP on defence (though Trump has floated higher standards). By doing so, allies develop properly funded independent military capabilities, reducing the US’s burden of guaranteeing their security. Higher spending also makes them more useful potential partners in US-led coalitions operating outside the alliance areas. Consistently meeting the 2 percent target, amid constant pressures on the public purse, also demonstrates a domestic political resolve that enhances the alliance’s deterrent potential. So we assess lifetime spending by comparing each ally’s total defence expenditure and GDP during its time in alliance with the US. Net contributors meet the 2 percent threshold, whereas net cheap-riders fall short.

Second, has the ally met its defence spending targets over the past decade? Military capabilities, accrued over time, atrophy without sufficient ongoing funding. Washington, for example, built a world-class navy in the American Civil War—which, after years of underinvestment, amounted to just ‘an alphabet of floating washtubs’. Correspondingly, recent defence spending provides insight into which allies have maintained the military capability and preparedness that Washington values. And, again, it shows political resolve. We assess recent spending by considering allies’ defence expenditures and GDPs since 2015 (when combat operations in the last US-led ground-war ended and when Trump’s full engagement in politics began). Net contributors meet the 2 percent threshold, whereas those falling short have either been persistent cheap-riders or, having formerly paid their dues, have now decided to take it easy.

Third, how much US weaponry has the ally purchased? Allied acquisitions of US military equipment, such as aircraft, give Washington several benefits: revenue from and longer production runs of existing systems (for example, F-16s); more work from their maintenance programs; savings from cooperative development of new systems (such as the F-35); and improved US and allied fighting strength thanks to the ease of operating common equipment. We assess weapons purchases by considering allies’ relative shares of US arms transfers and global GDP during their alliance tenure. Scores under 1 indicate comparatively limited purchases, whereas those exceeding 1 denote outsized purchases, and those above 2 show purchases that greatly favour US suppliers.

Fourth, has the ally supported US-led combat coalitions? Allied participation in military operations benefits Washington by providing international legitimation for the action and reducing the burden on the US. Alliances, however, are not wellsprings of guaranteed support: as self-interested actors, allies can decline to render aid or even defect to opposing blocs. Correspondingly, joining US-led coalitions builds good faith with Washington (and implicitly serves as down payment on reciprocal assistance). We assess participation by considering five ground-war coalitions (those for the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq) and five primarily air-war coalitions (in the Iraqi No-Fly Zones and campaigns in Bosnia, Kosovo and Libya and against ISIS). We allocate points according to the burden undertaken: for ground-wars, 8 points for providing frontline combat forces, 4 for supporting units, and 2 for financial assistance. For air wars (which involve less cost and risk), point values are halved. We count allies as consistently supportive if their points exceed 17 points and as reliable combat partners if they exceed 30.

Fifth, has the ally paid a blood price? Allied personnel losses, incurred while furthering Washington’s security interests, represent a shared sacrifice, one that demonstrates the highest form of loyalty (a value cherished by Trump) and implicitly serve as further down payment on reciprocal assistance. Since US-led air wars have featured minimal casualties, we assess losses by counting the number of US-led ground wars after World War II in which allies have suffered service deaths.

We generate overall payment scores by aggregating allies’ performances across all five measures. Each measure receives a 20 percent weighting, and we grant maximum points for:

—Meeting the 2 percent defence expenditure target during the period of alliance;

—Meeting it in the past 10 years;

—Greatly favouring the US in weapons purchases;

—Providing frontline combat forces for each US-led combat coalition; and

—Incurring personnel losses in each US-led coalition ground war.

Partial points are awarded relative to these maximums. Scores below 50 indicate blatant cheap-riding. Those exceeding 70 denote genuine net contributors—for example, 40 for meeting both spending targets, 20 for joining and suffering losses in more US-led coalitions than not, and 10 for outsized weapons purchases.

So, who’s paid?

The US alliance network contains few genuine net contributors, with only nine of 38 NATO and Indo-Pacific allies exceeding 70 points. Moreover, three net contributors deserve qualification: Greece and Turkey generally prioritise each other as a threat rather than NATO’s common adversary, Russia, and South Korea owes the US for its ongoing protection along with its defence during the Korean War.

The Indo-Pacific allies contribute relatively more than their NATO counterparts, averaging higher overall and component scores (apart from participation in operations, among which were three NATO-centric air-war coalitions). Compared with NATO, the Indo-Pacific alliance network also includes a greater percentage of genuine net contributors (28 percent versus 22 percent) and a much lower percentage of blatant cheap-riders (14 percent versus 35 percent).

Notable cheap-riders include Germany and Japan, because they have large economies and therefore great potential military might.

It’s also remarkable that cheap-riding is common in the countries of NATO’s Eastern European expansion. Apart from Poland, Romania and the Baltics, all are blatant cheap-riders, even though their membership has brought added burdens and risks to the alliance, including the US.

Australia is well insulated against Trump’s potential revisions to US alliance policy, which largely (and, in light of our findings, rightly) concentrate on redressing NATO’s relative underpayment. Canberra is immune to similar charges: no other ally has given Washington comparatively more blood and treasure than Australia, and the Albanese government has already begun reversing recent dips in defence spending, pledging to spend 2.3 percent of GDP by 2034. Moreover, Australia’s ‘indispensable’ strategic partnerships with other US allies remain relatively safe: Britain ranks second in terms of its alliance contributions (which bodes well for AUKUS solvency), and Japan, though a definite laggard, has been steadily boosting what Trump would see as its payments. It’s greatly lifting defence spending, increasing host-nation financial support and reinterpreting its constitution to permit collective military action.

How, or whether, Canberra’s unrivalled contributions will affect its bargaining position with Washington remains to be seen and needs supplementing with qualitive analyses (as given here for the first Trump presidency).

aspistrategist.org.au · by George Boone · February 26, 2025

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

Company Name | Website