​Quotes of the Day:

"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."

– Patrick Henry

"Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine."

– Peter Sondergaard

"I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University."

– William F. Buckley, Jr.

1. Treasury Defends Musk Team’s Access to Federal Payment System

2. With Assist From America, Philippines Is Standing Up to China — but for How Long?

3. Germany vs. Donald Trump? Ambassador’s Memo Sparks Diplomatic Firestorm

4. Terrorism Resilience: Why Killing Their Leaders Doesn’t End the Threat

5. The Global Rise of Conservatism: A New Political Power Shift

6. State Dept. Fires About 60 Contractors Working on Democracy and Human Rights

7. USSOCOM headquarters holds a groundbreaking ceremony for SOF Operations Integration Facility

8. Trump Says U.S. Will Take Over Gaza

9. The CIA Is About to Get a Trump Makeover

10. How Trump Gutted America’s $40 Billion Aid Agency in Two Weeks

11. What Do Trump’s First Weeks Tell Us About His China Strategy?

12. The World Has Changed Since Trump’s First Trade War. Other Countries Are Ready to Fight Back.

13. Assad’s Fall and the Qatari Gas Pipeline: A Risky Bet or Potential Source of Relief?

14.  U.S. soft power took decades to build. Trump is dismantling it in weeks.

15. The Boys of DOGE

16. USAID shutoff will hurt US interests around the globe, including Ukraine

17. Donald Trump’s New Tariffs Could Be a Fatal Blow to China’s Economy

18. Collins becomes first post-9/11 vet to be confirmed as VA secretary

19. 'Infinite Nightmares at Once': Veterans Data Swept Up in Musk's Takeover of Treasury System

20. This new Army special ops fitness center is decked out like a pro sports gym

21. The Army’s Special Treatment of Capt. Rebecca Lobach

22. With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: How to Make Big Tech Accountable for its Global Influence

23. Trump Needs a Plan on Ukraine’s Buried Treasure

24. Unprepared in the City: Operational Planning for Urban Environments

25. NYPD Confidential: Inside America’s Most Unconventional Counterterror Squad

26. The U.S. Military’s Recruiting Crisis

27. Trump names Washington’s Joe Kent to lead counterterrorism agency

28. Does globalisation have a future? by Joseph S Nye Jr

29. Curtis Fox: Greetings to the SOFREP Community From a Former Green Beret and Your Newest Weekly Columnist

30. China’s Preparations for a ‘Major-Power War’ RADM Mike Studeman (Ret.)

1. Treasury Defends Musk Team’s Access to Federal Payment System

​As I was watching an episode of Severance on Apple TV last evening a thought popped into my not severed brain. Why does Elon Musk want access to pay systems? It is obvious that he wants the data for something. What could that be for?

I am wondering if his quest to build an efficient government is his vision to create a federal bureaucracy based on algorithmic decision making. So I asked AI to describe algorithmic decision making and this is their response. As I review this information it seems to me that this must be Musk's vision for making the government efficient.

The fundamental question is do we want our lives governed by an algorithm that we think is perfect (but is not) or be represented by fellow human beings who are imperfect but seek to act in accordance with the values set forth in our Constitution? I wonder why there is not any discussion of Musk's likely vision?

Algorithmic decision-making (ADM) is the process of using data, machines, and algorithms to make decisions in various contexts, ranging from public administration and business to healthcare and criminal justice. This approach involves analyzing large-scale data from diverse sources, such as databases, text, social media, sensors, images, and speech, using advanced technologies like computer software, machine learning, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence.

 Key Components of ADM

Data: The foundation of ADM is data, which serves as input for analysis and model generation. Data quality is crucial, as issues like bias, incompleteness, or limited coverage can significantly impact outcomes.

Technologies: ADM employs a wide range of technologies, including:

- Basic computational operations (search, matching, calculations)

- Assessment and grouping tools (user profiling, recommender systems, clustering)

- Spatial analysis (social network analysis, mapping, routing)

- Complex data processing (image and audio processing, natural language processing)

- Machine learning, including deep neural networks

 Applications and Impact

ADM systems are increasingly deployed across various sectors:

- Public administration

- Business and finance

- Healthcare and medical diagnosis

- Education

- Law enforcement and criminal justice

- Employment and recruitment

- Transportation

- Media and entertainment

 Advantages and Challenges

Advantages:

- Increased efficiency in decision-making processes

- Potential for reducing human bias

- Ability to process vast amounts of data quickly

- Discovery of new patterns and insights

Challenges:

1. Bias and Discrimination: ADM systems can perpetuate or even amplify existing biases present in training data.

2. Lack of Transparency: Many ADM systems, especially those using complex machine learning models, are often described as "black boxes," making it difficult to understand their decision-making process.

3. Fairness and Equity: Ensuring that ADM systems produce fair and equitable outcomes across different demographic groups is a significant challenge.

4. Explainability: The need for interpretable and explainable AI (XAI) is growing, especially in high-stakes decisions.

. Information Asymmetry: ADM may increase the information gap between individuals and the systems processing their data.

 Ethical and Legal Considerations

The widespread use of ADM has raised important ethical and legal questions:

- Right to Explanation: There's growing debate about whether individuals have the right to understand how algorithmic decisions affecting them are made.

- Data Privacy: The use of personal data in ADM systems raises concerns about privacy and data protection.

- Accountability: Determining responsibility when ADM systems make errors or produce harmful outcomes is a complex issue.

 Future Directions

As ADM continues to evolve, several areas are gaining attention:

1. Improving Fairness: Developing techniques to detect and mitigate bias in ADM systems.

2. Enhancing Transparency: Creating more interpretable models and better explanation interfaces for users.

3. Regulatory Frameworks: Establishing guidelines and regulations for the ethical use of ADM in various sectors.

4. Human-AI Collaboration: Exploring ways to effectively combine human judgment with algorithmic insights.

In conclusion, while algorithmic decision-making offers significant potential for improving efficiency and objectivity in various domains, it also presents complex challenges that require ongoing research, ethical consideration, and careful implementation to ensure its responsible and beneficial use in society.

Treasury Defends Musk Team’s Access to Federal Payment System

The department said that no payments would be interrupted and that it was conducting a review of the integrity of the system.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/us/politics/elon-musk-federal-payments.html

Representative Maxwell Frost, Democrat of Florida, speaking on Tuesday to protesters gathered outside the Treasury Department building to express their opposition to Mr. Musk’s involvement in the federal payments system.Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times

By Alan Rappeport

Reporting from Washington

• Feb. 4, 2025
• Updated 9:02 p.m. ET

The Treasury Department said on Tuesday that it was not stopping or rejecting federal expenditures and that it was committed to safeguarding the nation’s payment system following widespread backlash after Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency was granted access to the system.

In a letter to members of Congress, the Treasury Department said that it was conducting a review of the system to “maximize payment integrity” for agencies and the public. It described the initiative as an expansion of a review that had gotten underway during the Biden administration.

“Treasury has no higher obligation than managing the government’s finances on behalf of the American people, and its payments system is critical to that process,” wrote Jonathan Blum, a legislative affairs official at the Treasury Department.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has yet to comment on the situation. The letter was the first public comment by the department since the matter came to light last week following the abrupt resignation of David Lebryk, a career official who did not approve of Mr. Musk’s team accessing the data.

The letter was sent as what appeared to be hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Treasury Department building to express their opposition to Mr. Musk’s involvement in the federal payments system.

Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrats on the banking and finance committees, called on the Government Accountability Office on Tuesday to begin an investigation into Mr. Musk’s access to the payment system.

“The process by which Mr. Musk’s team obtained access to these systems is troubling — as are the implications,” they wrote.

Image

In a letter to members of Congress, the Treasury Department said that it was conducting a review of the system to “maximize payment integrity” for agencies and the public. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has yet to comment on the situation.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

Critics are concerned that Mr. Musk and the Trump administration want to stop payments that were authorized by Congress. There are also concerns about data privacy, Mr. Musk’s potential conflicts of interest and the possibility of federal funds being mishandled during a standoff over the debt limit that could lead to a U.S. default.

The Treasury Department said in the letter that an official by the name of Tom Krause was working on an “operational efficiency” assessment of the coded data of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems.

The letter said that Mr. Krause, who is associated with Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team, was working on the initiative with Treasury career staff and that he had the necessary security clearances to perform the role.

“Treasury will continue its efforts to promote efficiency and effectiveness in its operations, and to prevent waste, fraud and abuse,” Mr. Blum wrote.

Alan Rappeport is an economic policy reporter, based in Washington. He covers the Treasury Department and writes about taxes, trade and fiscal matters. More about Alan Rappeport

2. With Assist From America, Philippines Is Standing Up to China — but for How Long?

​News articles cannot cover everything. Below this article is my entire contribution based on the questions I was asked to comment on. Some of the information on China might be of interest to some.

With Assist From America, Philippines Is Standing Up to China — but for How Long?

The close coordination between Washington and Manila on defense against China represents a distinct improvement from before the election of President Marcos, yet Filipinos are wondering how long the relationship will endure.

https://www.nysun.com/article/with-assist-from-america-philippines-is-standing-up-to-china-but-for-how-long

The Philippine president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., with the now former U.S. secretary of defense, Lloyd James Austin III, at the Malacanang Palace, Manila, February 2, 2023. Jam Sta Rosa/pool via AP, file

DONALD KIRK

Feb. 4, 2025 01:23 PM ET

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The Philippines is defying China’s grip on the South China Sea with a powerful assist from American forces despite doubts about the depth and duration of the American commitment.

When three small Philippine air force T-50 fighter planes took off Tuesday to prove their right to enter what the Chinese say is their air space, two huge American Air Force B1 bombers were flying with them. The mission, over a fish-rich shoal 120 miles off the Philippine west coast, angered the Chinese, who promised as always to defend their own “rights and interests.”

The close coordination between Washington and Manila on defense against China represents a distinct improvement over frayed relations and the corruption that decimated the Philippine armed forces before the election of the Philippine president, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., nearly three years ago.

Now, though, Filipinos are wondering how long the relationship will endure. The deepest immediate concern is that President Trump may “strike a deal with China that will compromise our mutual defense agreements,” a longtime Philippine foreign affairs and military analyst, Roland Siumbulan, told the Sun.

A shift in American policy, with emphasis on trade and tariffs on China, he warned, might force the Philippines to buy missiles that Washington has deployed while building new military facilities designated for American forces to use as tensions grow still more serious.

“The Philippine government has realized that it should build up its own national external defense capability by using its military-to-military relations with other countries,” Mr. Simbulan said. “The eternal capability must be credible.”

The Philippines, however, has had very little credibility as a military power beyond the 8,000 or so islands that form the nation. The armed forces of the Philippines have been deployed for years fighting Muslim and Communist rebels while quavering in the presence of the Chinese, who have driven off Philippine vessels with powerful water cannons while turning islands into air strips that no one dares confront with more than shows of force.

“I do not think China will attack the Philippines in a single operation to take the Philippines,” a retired American Army colonel, David Maxwell, told the Sun, but the Chinese might attack if they “decide to invade Taiwan,” just 155 miles north of the northern tip of the Philippines.

The reason, he said, would be that the Philippines is “key to supporting U.S. operations in the Indo-Pacom,” the vast region watched over by the American Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii. China, according to this logic, “must neutralize the Philippines — prevent the U.S. from operating for it — in order to successfully take Taiwan.”

For now, though, the Chinese are sticking to less kinetic ways to exercise their power over the South China Sea, much of which the Philippines calls the West Philippine Sea. Chinese coast guard vessels routinely fire huge water cannons at Philippine boats, blocking them from getting near ancient fishing grounds while building up strength in the middle of the sea.

“Filipino fishermen have been deprived of their livelihood, and the country is deprived of access to offshore natural gas,” Mr. Simbulan, chairman of the Philippines’s Center for People’s Empowerment in Governance, said. “Our coast guard is also continuously harassed by Chinese coast guard illegally entering Philippine territory.”

There is “a chance of war,” he warned, “because of China’s hegemonic provocations.” The Philippines’s “defensive actions may start a war provoked by China.”

Colonel Maxwell, the vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy, agrees. Mr. Marcos “is trying to improve Philippine defense capabilities,” he told the Sun, “but it will never be able to defend itself against a Chinese attack.” The Philippines, he said, “will be dependent on the U.S. to contribute to its defense.”

He was uncertain, though, about the depth of Mr. Trump’s commitment. “Will Trump come to the defense of the Philippines,” he asked rhetorically. “Who knows?” He said he was confident that Mr. Trump’s “military advisers and national security professionals will recommend defending U.S. interest in the Philippines.”

DONALD KIRK

Mr. Kirk, based in Seoul and Washington, has been covering Asia for decades for newspapers and magazines and is the author of books on Korea, the Vietnam War and the Philippines.

China is most certainly a threat to the Philippines. It is in a key geostrategic location and is emerging as strategic terrain for the US in defense of its interests in Indo-Pacom.  

I do not think China will attack the Philippines in a single operation to take the Philippines. But it will be a key target for China if China does decide to invade Taiwan because it will be key to supporting US operations in the Indo-Pacom. China must neutralize the Philippines (e.g. prevent the US from operating for it) in order to successfully take Taiwan.

It is hard to judge Philippine politics. I can't say for sure how strong Marcos is. Will Trump come to the defense of the Philippines? WHo knows? But his military advisors and national security professionals (as opposed to is inner circle of rust) will recommend defending US interest in the Philippines. If you lose the Philippines you will lose the ability to support the defense of Taiwan and US bases in Japan and Korea will be threatened as well.

I do not think the US is building bases in the Philippines in the same way we think of bases in Korea and Japan. It is building joint-use military facilities to support joint training.

Marcos is trying to improve Philippine defense capabilities. But it will never be able to defend itself against a Chinese attack. It will be dependent on the US to contribute to its defense.

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

I also think this quotes from the Philippine Ambassador is something to consider:

“The West Philippine Sea, not Taiwan, is

the real flashpoint for an armed conflict,”

– Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez

February 28, 2024

Attached is my generic Indo-Pacom security lecture I give to various audiences.

Here is some specific data on Chinese military preparations in the region.

China has built three major airstrips in the South China Sea that are capable of supporting military operations. These airstrips are located on the three largest artificial islands China has constructed in the Spratly Islands:

Fiery Cross Reef 

Subi Reef 

Mischief Reef 

Each of these artificial islands features a runway approximately 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) long, which is sufficient to accommodate fighter jets, bombers, and large military transport aircraft. They also include hardened aircraft shelters, radar installations, missile systems, and military barracks.

China has also built smaller airstrips and helicopter facilities on other South China Sea outposts, such as Woody Island in the Paracels, but the three major airstrips in the Spratly Islands are the most strategically significant for military power projection in the region.

China’s construction of military-grade airstrips on Fiery Cross Reef, Subi Reef, and Mischief Reef in the South China Sea has significantly altered the security dynamics in the region. Below is an analysis of their impact on regional security, focusing on military, economic, and geopolitical implications.

1. Military Power Projection

The 3,000-meter-long runways on these artificial islands allow China to deploy a wide range of military aircraft, including:

- J-11 and J-16 fighter jets

- H-6 bombers (capable of carrying cruise missiles)

- Y-20 transport planes (for rapid troop deployment)

- KJ-500 airborne early warning aircraft

- Refueling aircraft to extend the range of combat missions

These capabilities enhance China’s ability to enforce its territorial claims, conduct air patrols, and sustain long-term military operations far from the mainland.

Strategic Effects:

- Enhanced Air Defense: The presence of surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems like the HQ-9 extends China’s air defense umbrella over much of the South China Sea.

- Surveillance and Early Warning: Radar installations on these islands improve real-time intelligence gathering and tracking of foreign military activity in the region.

- Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD): These airstrips, combined with naval and missile forces, increase risks for U.S. and allied forces operating in the South China Sea.

2. Threat to Freedom of Navigation

China claims nearly 90% of the South China Sea under its controversial "Nine-Dash Line", despite the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling rejecting these claims. The militarization of these islands raises concerns that:

- China could declare an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), forcing foreign aircraft to request permission to fly over the region.

- The Chinese military could intercept or harass foreign naval vessels and aircraft in international waters.

- Increased military presence might discourage commercial shipping and oil exploration by regional nations.

Strategic Effects:

- Increased risk of military incidents between China and the U.S. or regional players (e.g., the Philippines, Vietnam).

- Potential disruption of critical trade routes through which 30% of global maritime trade passes.

- Growing concerns about China coercing smaller Southeast Asian nations into accepting its maritime claims.

3. Shift in Regional Power Balance

China’s ability to operate long-range bombers, refueling aircraft, and reconnaissance planes from these islands gives it a persistent military presence  in a region previously dominated by U.S. and allied forces.

Impact on U.S. and Allies:

- The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia are now within striking range of Chinese aircraft and missile systems.

- U.S. aircraft carriers and warships operating in the region may face greater risks from Chinese land-based aircraft and missiles.

- U.S. allies like Japan and Australia are increasing their defense cooperation in response to China’s growing military reach.

Response from Regional Nations:

- The  Philippines has expanded U.S. military access to bases under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).

- Vietnam and Indonesia have increased naval and air patrols around disputed waters.

- The U.S., Japan, and Australia conduct more freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) to challenge China’s claims.

4. Potential for Conflict and Escalation

China’s airstrips and military build-up raise the risk of an unintended clash between Chinese forces and the U.S. or its allies. Scenarios that could trigger a crisis include:

- Accidental Military Confrontation: Close encounters between Chinese and U.S. or allied forces (e.g., naval standoffs, aerial interceptions).

- South China Sea Blockade: China using its military presence to restrict access to disputed waters, affecting regional economies.

- Taiwan Contingency* In the event of a Taiwan conflict, these airstrips could be used to block U.S. reinforcements from reaching the region.

Conclusion: A Game-Changer for Regional Security

China’s militarized airstrips in the South China Sea significantly enhance its power projection capabilities while challenging the strategic balance in the region. These islands serve as forward-operating bases, allowing China to sustain military operations far from its mainland. However, they also increase tensions with the U.S. and regional nations, heightening the risk of conflict.

The response from regional players—strengthening military alliances and increasing defense cooperation—suggests that China’s militarization of the South China Sea will remain a major security flashpoint in the coming years.

3. Germany vs. Donald Trump? Ambassador’s Memo Sparks Diplomatic Firestorm

Is the German Ambassador trying to be the "de Tocqueville" of the 21st Century?

Germany vs. Donald Trump? Ambassador’s Memo Sparks Diplomatic Firestorm

19fortyfive.com · by Russell Berman · February 3, 2025

A leaked briefing memo signed by Germany’s ambassador in Washington, Andreas Michaelis, expresses deep concerns about the viability of democracy in the Trump administration. Dated January 14, a week before the inauguration, the confidential text quickly became an open secret.

Press reports about the memo appeared on both sides of the Atlantic, including direct quotations, although the full text remains withheld from the public. The embassy has effectively used trusted press outlets to broadcast a message without taking full responsibility by hiding behind a fiction of secrecy. Call it diplomacy by leak.

What Did the German Ambassador Say?

The ambassador serves up dire predictions that are nothing new, familiar repetitions of the world-is-ending warnings issued by the Harris campaign and repeated in friendly editorial pages.

“Basic democratic principles and checks and balances will be largely undermined, the legislature, law enforcement, and media will be robbed of their independence and misused as a political arm, Big Tech will be given co-governing power,” asserts the Ambassador as reported by Reuters, as if one had never heard this before.

This sort of German hysteria about American democracy is tiresomely familiar. However, promoting this angst over the Ambassador’s signature ups the ante and will only add to a toxic tone of relations between Washington and Berlin. Michaelis’ ambassadorial effectiveness has probably come to an end. One can only hope that bilateral ties will eventually heal.

Method to the Memo Madness

Yet, there is a political method to this diplomatic madness. The cable was likely leaked with an eye to its impact in Germany in the lead-up to the federal election scheduled for February 23.

The Green Party, currently a governing coalition member, faces significant challenges to maintain its political standing. The leaked memo appears intended to improve the Greens’ electoral prospects.

Michaelis is well connected to German Foreign Minister Annaliese Baerbock, one of the Green Party’s iconic leaders. The disclosure of the ambassador’s diatribe, which was sure to be expected if not orchestrated, promotes the Greens as the torchbearers for anti-Trump sentiment in Germany.

Flaunting their anti-Trump credentials through the cable leak, the Greens can now try to attract voters who might otherwise align with anti-American factions on the extremes of the right and the left. For those German voters who despise President Trump, the Greens now become an attractive choice. The leak seems likely to have been calculated as an electoral strategy to push the party over the finish line.

The accusations in the Michaelis text are harsh. The ambassador predicts domestic deployments of the military as well as the curtailing of the First Amendment. His tone will not be conducive to improved bilateral relations, to say the least.

German-American Relations Damaged?

The reverberations of his attack on the incoming administration may instead damage prospects for productive and collaborative bilateral relations.

This is unfortunate because there are significant areas of overlap between American and German national interests. Cooperation is both possible and needed. It will be up to the next German government, presumably under the leadership of Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz, to build a positive relationship with Washington despite Michaelis’ legacy. Identifying possibilities for productive cooperation would have been a more constructive use of a diplomatic cable.

There are two areas in particular where German and American agendas overlap. The first involves the familiar debate concerning defense spending and NATO. Throughout the first Trump administration, the president and his ambassador, Richard Grenell, pushed hard on Berlin to increase its defense spending to meet the 2% of GDP agreed upon in the Wales Pledge of 2014.

Yet Chancellor Merkel consistently resisted, even as she cemented Germany’s dependence on Russian energy. Only after the Russian invasion of Ukraine did Germany begin to take steps to increase its defense capacities. Today, the international security situation on Europe’s eastern front is even worse, as Russia cuts undersea cables in the Baltic and Belarus weaponizes immigration on the Polish border.

Germany should appeal for greater defense cooperation with the U.S. by committing to increase its own spending significantly. Demonstrating a clear will to defend European security might build a bridge to the Trump administration and, in any case, behoove a German government more than moralizing about the state of American democracy.

The second area of cooperation involves trade.This is difficult terrain because the U.S. trade deficit with Germany has been a long-standing concern for President Trump. Germany and the rest of Europe worry rightly about protectionist trade policies and a tariff war. Yet a German Chancellor and diplomatic corps could make the case that, whatever the trade imbalances in transatlantic commerce, both countries suffer from the deleterious impact of China. China’s economic strategies have significantly eroded German manufacturing, particularly in the vital automobile industry, just as they have harmed the U.S. economy.

Berlin would do well to explore aligning with Trump’s China policy, potentially in return for better transatlantic terms. Specifically, this might involve agreeing—ideally at the EU level—to impose a unified tariff regime on exports from China that complements Trump’s policies. Germany and the U.S. should be allies in the coming trade war with China rather than working at cross purposes.

A Path Forward

The transatlantic partnership is too important to be sacrificed to short-term electoral gains or obscured by German appetite for anti-Americanism. Lectures from German diplomats about American domestic affairs are unproductive on this side of the Atlantic, while they reinforce stale stereotypes in Europe.

A more helpful dialogue would explore areas of cooperation because both nations share the same adversaries. Russia threatens the international order on Europe’s eastern flank, while China undermines the security architecture in the western Pacific and the prosperity of Western economies everywhere.

Germany and the U.S. need diplomacy capable of meeting these challenges, preferably through collaboration.

About the Author: Dr. Russell A. Berman

Russell A. Berman is Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Professor of German Studies at Stanford University. He served as Senior Advisor on the Policy Planning Staff of the State Dept in the first Trump administration.

19fortyfive.com · by Russell Berman · February 3, 2025

4. Terrorism Resilience: Why Killing Their Leaders Doesn’t End the Threat

​Conclusion:

The persistent threat to America’s national security interests in the Middle East posed by Iran’s proxy networks and regional terrorism underscores the inadequacy of leadership decapitation as a standalone counterterrorism strategy. While such tactics may yield short-term disruptions, they fail to address the deeply entrenched systemic and ideological foundations that sustain these groups. Iran’s strategic use of proxies exemplifies a sophisticated and resilient approach that exploits sociopolitical grievances, entrenches local dependencies, and propagates destabilizing narratives. To effectively counter this threat, the US must adopt a holistic strategy that integrates diplomatic engagement, economic development, intelligence operations, and ideological countermeasures. Only by targeting the underlying drivers of instability and dismantling the infrastructure sustaining these groups can lasting peace and security be achieved. The path forward requires nuanced, collaborative, and long-term efforts to neutralize not just the operatives of terror but also the environments that allow them to thrive.

Terrorism Resilience: Why Killing Their Leaders Doesn’t End the Threat

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/02/04/terrorism-resilience-why-killing-their-leaders-doesnt-end-the-threat/

by Albert Hadi

|

02.04.2025 at 06:00am

Introduction

In recent years, the United States has adopted a targeted military approach, particularly decapitation strikes, as a key tactic to counter regional terrorist organizations. This strategy, aimed at dismantling these groups by eliminating their leadership, seeks to disrupt their operational capabilities and prevent further threats to US interests. While such strikes may offer temporary tactical victories, they have proven ineffective in achieving lasting peace or stability. The persistence of these terror organizations, despite the loss of key leaders, highlights the shortcomings of relying solely on military force. This article will argue that US over-reliance on military targeting fails to address the underlying sociopolitical and geopolitical drivers that sustain regional terrorist organizations, particularly in the context of Iran’s influence. The article will analyze the limitations of this approach, using Iran as a case study to illustrate how the manipulation of local grievances, coupled with a robust proxy network, continues to perpetuate instability. It will conclude with recommendations for more comprehensive strategies that address these foundational issues.

Iran as a Case Study

Iran’s strategic interest and influence in the Middle East has been a key factor in the persistence of regional terrorism. By skillfully exploiting sociopolitical grievances within local populations, Iran has been able to insert itself into the fabric of various societies across the region. This has been particularly evident in countries like Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, where Iran has capitalized on sectarian divisions, political disenfranchisement, and socioeconomic instability. The Iranian regime has strategically cultivated relationships with its proxies by providing financial, military, and ideological support while manipulating existing frameworks to establish a durable foothold. This strategy is underscored by a 2018 US State Department report, which disclosed that since 2012, Iran has allocated $16 billion to bolster the Assad regime and support its partners and proxies in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

The development and use of proxy forces have been central to Iran’s strategy. Rather than directly engaging in conventional warfare, Iran leverages groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen to achieve specific operational outcomes. These groups not only act as instruments of Iranian influence but also serve as a tool to advance Iran’s geopolitical objectives, including the destabilization of US-aligned regimes and the weakening of American influence in the region. For the United States, the growing presence of these Iranian-backed proxy groups represents a significant risk to both regional and domestic security. These groups are not only a threat to US interests in the Middle East but also pose challenges to broader global stability, as their actions often lead to the escalation of conflicts and the destabilization of fragile states.

The Limitations of Targeting as an Isolated Strategy

The limitations of America’s counterterrorism strategy, particularly its reliance on decapitation strikes, reveal a complex interplay of operational, financial, and geopolitical factors that significantly diminish its effectiveness. According to the US Department of Defense’s 2019 Iran Military Power Report, the IRGC-QF has developed a sophisticated multi-layered proxy network that fundamentally challenges traditional counterterrorism approaches. This network’s structure contrasts with conventional systems that rely on a centralized command and control (C2) system, where a single authority makes all decisions. Instead, Iran has opted for a decentralized execution model, where combat crews are equipped with the information and resources necessary to make real-time decisions, fostering shared responsibility and enhancing operational effectiveness by leveraging collective authority.

First, regarding C2 structures: While many militant groups appear to have local leadership and objectives, forensic analysis of their operations, funding patterns, and tactical sophistication reveals substantial Iranian oversight and direction. The IRGC-QF has been documented providing advanced training, weapons systems, and strategic guidance to groups across multiple theaters including Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria. This suggests a deep operational resilience within these groups, sustained not only by their leadership but also by the direct involvement and resources provided by Iran.

Moreover, Iran’s involvement extends beyond mere operational guidance. Iran facilitates and sustains regional terror groups through the provision of arms, training, and logistical support. A 2023 analysis by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy documented evidence of Iran supplying advanced drone and missile technology directly to Hezbollah, underscoring Tehran’s commitment to empowering its proxies with advanced operational capabilities. The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has identified these networks, highlighting Iran’s ability to fund its proxy operations despite significant international sanctions, with operational resilience further reinforced by complex financial networks that blend illicit activities, such as oil smuggling and drug trafficking, with state-sponsored funding channel

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) 2019 report further illustrates how Iran exploits sociopolitical grievances across the region. By leveraging sectarian discrimination and economic marginalization, Tehran positions itself as the defender of disenfranchised populations while maintaining plausible deniability through arm’s length control of proxy groups. This strategy allows Iran to present itself as a legitimate regional stakeholder, even as it acts as an external disruptor to established security frameworks. It systematically undermines both regional stability and US strategic objectives. Consequently, the result is a resilient network that can sustain operations despite leadership losses, suggesting that effective counterterrorism strategies must go beyond tactical strikes. They must address state-level sponsorship, financial networks, and the sociopolitical drivers that fuel instability.

The distinction between regional presence and external manipulation is crucial in understanding this dynamic. While Iran is geographically part of the Middle East, its operational model deliberately maintains arm’s length control over proxy groups, ensuring plausible deniability. This creates a complex situation where Iran can simultaneously claim to be a legitimate regional stakeholder while undermining security frameworks as an external disruptor.

For example, a 2023 US Defense Intelligence Agency report detailed how Iranian-supplied advanced drone and missile technology to Hezbollah demonstrated not just material support but also direct command and control linkages. This technological transfer required Iranian operators to provide training and maintain operational oversight, indicating deeper C2 relationships. The strategic impact of such connections highlights the failure of relying solely on decapitation strikes and the need for a more comprehensive counterterrorism approach that addresses the broader state sponsorship and financial infrastructure enabling these groups

Resilience in Ideological Foundations

The survival of terrorist groups, even after the loss of their leaders, is largely attributable to the strength of their ideological foundations. These ideologies provide a deep sense of purpose and serve as a vehicle for the group’s continuity. The death of a leader, in many cases, transforms them into a martyr whose legacy strengthens the resolve of their followers. These organizations often frame their objectives within a historical, religious, or nationalistic context that resonates with the local population’s grievances, ensuring their survival in the face of leadership loss. Both Sunni and Shia extremist groups tend to idealize the past, envisioning a return to the glorious days of the early Islamic caliphates. This vision is not just a passing notion but a powerful and pervasive narrative that is enshrined in their foundational texts and speeches. For example, ISIS’s brutal attempt to establish a caliphate in 2014, with its control over Mosul, was rooted in this ideological belief. Similarly, in Shia Islam, particularly in the practices surrounding Ashura rituals, there is a deep veneration of martyrdom, which reinforces the commitment of fighters and recruits to continue the struggle long after a leader’s death.

The Iranian regime’s IRGC has refined this ideological model through its proxy strategy, particularly leveraging the martyrdom of key Shia figures like Imam Hussein. This historical framing has become central to the operational cohesion and ideological indoctrination of its regional proxies. By embedding such narratives into the operational fabric of their organizations, Iran not only propagates a religious message but also capitalizes on long-standing regional grievances, ensuring that these groups are resilient and able to adapt to new circumstances, even in the face of leadership decapitation.

The Leaderless Proxies: Iran’s Use of the Fatemiyoun and Zainabiyoun Brigades

Iran’s Fatemiyoun and Zainabiyoun brigades, composed of Afghan and Pakistani Shia fighters, represent a transformative approach in Tehran’s proxy warfare strategy. Unlike traditional militias tied to specific leaders or national identities, these brigades operate under a leaderless structure, ensuring loyalty solely to Iran’s IRGC. This model enhances their operational resilience, allowing them to function effectively even after leadership losses and making them less vulnerable to decapitation tactics that have historically weakened other groups like Hezbollah and the PMF.

These brigades play crucial roles in securing Iran’s regional dominance. The Fatemiyoun Brigade ensures control over the Syria-Iraq border, maintaining supply lines to Hezbollah and solidifying Iran’s strategic corridor to the Levant. Similarly, the Zainabiyoun Brigade focuses on protecting Shia religious sites and bolstering Iran’s military presence in strategic areas like Deir ez-Zor. Their flexible deployment across Iraq and Syria underscores their adaptability, serving Tehran’s objectives without being constrained by national or local loyalties. Beyond military operations, Iran uses these brigades for demographic manipulation, resettling Shia families and fighters in key regions to create loyal, Iran-aligned strongholds. This demographic engineering secures long-term Iranian influence, embedding its power within local populations.

By detaching these brigades from specific leaders or national identities, Iran has crafted a modern proxy model—resilient, mobile, and strategically integrated with the IRGC’s vision for regional control. This innovative approach ensures Tehran’s enduring dominance across Iraq, Syria, and beyond.

Beyond Leadership Decapitation

The widely held belief that eliminating terrorist leadership is the key to dismantling their organizations is increasingly being recognized as an oversimplification. The assassination of Qasem Soleimani in 2020, for example, temporarily disrupted the IRGC’s operations but did not dismantle its influence in the region. Decentralized command and organizational structures, such as Hezbollah’s integration of military, social, and political wings, allow these organizations to continue operating even after losing key leaders. The evidence suggests that targeting leaders is often a temporary fix that fails to address the broader systemic enablers of these groups, including state sponsorship, ideological cohesion, and local support. To truly counter these organizations, international efforts must focus on dismantling the infrastructure that sustains them. This includes targeting Iran’s role as a state sponsor of terrorism, addressing the ideological narratives that fuel extremism, and disrupting the financial networks that allow these groups to function.

Strategic Resilience and Iran’s Long-Term Vision

Iran’s proxy strategy is not simply about managing individual military units; it is about embedding these groups into the broader geopolitical landscape. The IRGC extends its reach by integrating its proxies into local economies, including through the control of trade routes and illicit activities like drug trafficking. This operational resilience allows Iran to continue projecting power while avoiding direct confrontation. These proxies, including Hezbollah and the PMF, are integral components of Iran’s long-term vision for regional hegemony. Their resilience stems not just from military prowess but from a sophisticated network of financial, logistical, and ideological infrastructure that sustains them. Until the international community addresses this network—focusing on the systemic enablers rather than just isolated leaders—the threat from these groups will persist and evolve.

Moving Beyond Leadership Decapitation – Recommendations

Given the limitations of targeting as an isolated strategy, it is evident that a more comprehensive and multifaceted approach is necessary to effectively counter regional terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah, the PMF, and the Houthis. Therefore, the US must acknowledge the inherent weaknesses of relying solely on military action and instead develop a strategy that addresses the deeper sociopolitical and geopolitical drivers of terrorism in the region. This includes directly targeting Iran’s pivotal role as a state sponsor of terrorism, dismantling the ideological narratives that fuel extremism, and disrupting the financial networks that provide critical support to these groups. Moreover, such a strategy demands an understanding of the intricate web of grievances and systemic vulnerabilities that these organizations exploit to recruit, operate, and sustain their influence. By integrating these elements into a cohesive plan, the US can not only degrade the operational capabilities of these groups but also undermine the foundational structures that enable their longevity. Several key recommendations emerge from this analysis to guide such an approach:

1. Engagement in Regional Diplomacy: Strengthening diplomatic ties with regional partners is crucial in addressing the influence of Iran’s proxies. By fostering dialogue with governments and key local actors in countries with a strong presence of Iranian proxies, the US can help ensure these countries do not feel isolated or marginalized from the Arab community or regional unity. Engaging with nations like Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen allows regional stakeholders to collaborate in addressing local grievances and promoting political reforms that undermine extremist ideologies. This approach emphasizes leveraging the influence of regional partners, empowering them to take the lead in resolving conflicts and reducing the appeal of terrorism, without the need for extensive US or Western military presence.
2. Support for Civil Society and Economic Development: In order to counter the appeal of groups that exploit local grievances, the US must invest in initiatives that promote economic development, good governance, and social inclusion. Programs aimed at reducing poverty, improving education, and providing employment opportunities can help address the root causes of radicalization.
3. Comprehensive Intelligence Gathering: Leveraging regional security partners such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, who share a strategic interest in limiting Iran’s regional influence, the US can enhance intelligence gathering efforts to target and dismantle the decentralized networks that sustain terrorist organizations, focusing on disrupting their financial and logistical operations. These partnerships enable the sharing of critical intelligence, bolstering the US’s ability to identify and disrupt the financial, logistical, and operational networks that fuel these groups, while also ensuring a more coordinated and effective response to regional threats.
4. Countering Iran’s Influence through Strategic Information Campaigns: To effectively combat the pervasive influence of Iran’s proxies, the United States must adopt strategic public information campaigns that prioritize exposing the operational and ideological manipulation employed by these groups. These efforts should shift the focus from regional diplomatic or economic frameworks to undermining the psychological and social narratives sustaining proxy networks.

• Decoding Proxy Tactics: These campaigns should meticulously reveal how Iranian proxies manipulate societal vulnerabilities—such as exploiting unresolved historical grievances or leveraging misinformation to create loyalty. By dismantling these tactics through transparent and factual narratives, the US can weaken proxies’ ability to exploit communal fears or divisions.
• Psychological Resilience as a Tool: Introducing programs aimed at fostering critical thinking and media literacy among vulnerable populations can empower communities to resist ideological manipulation. These efforts would help neutralize the proxies’ effectiveness in promoting their agendas under the guise of sociopolitical solutions.
• Long-term Narrative Shaping: Unlike immediate counter-propaganda measures, these campaigns must invest in creating enduring messages that challenge the glorification of violence or sectarian superiority perpetuated by Iranian proxies. Emphasizing themes like coexistence, individual empowerment, and long-term stability allows for sustained erosion of proxy influence.

This approach distinguishes itself from broader diplomatic, economic, and intelligence strategies by focusing specifically on eroding the ideological foundations that enable Iran’s proxies to maintain influence. Leveraging international partnerships, the US can spearhead initiatives aimed at enhancing education, promoting media literacy, and fostering inter-sectarian harmony. By empowering local leaders, particularly educators and religious figures, to challenge extremist narratives and offer constructive alternatives, the US can effectively reduce the appeal of these groups. A comprehensive strategy, integrating military, economic, and ideological actions, is crucial in dismantling the structural and ideological pillars of Iran’s influence, ultimately curbing the growth of radicalization in the region.

Conclusion

The persistent threat to America’s national security interests in the Middle East posed by Iran’s proxy networks and regional terrorism underscores the inadequacy of leadership decapitation as a standalone counterterrorism strategy. While such tactics may yield short-term disruptions, they fail to address the deeply entrenched systemic and ideological foundations that sustain these groups. Iran’s strategic use of proxies exemplifies a sophisticated and resilient approach that exploits sociopolitical grievances, entrenches local dependencies, and propagates destabilizing narratives. To effectively counter this threat, the US must adopt a holistic strategy that integrates diplomatic engagement, economic development, intelligence operations, and ideological countermeasures. Only by targeting the underlying drivers of instability and dismantling the infrastructure sustaining these groups can lasting peace and security be achieved. The path forward requires nuanced, collaborative, and long-term efforts to neutralize not just the operatives of terror but also the environments that allow them to thrive.

Tags: American Foreign Policy, Counter-insurgency, Counter-terrorism, Development, Hezbollah, Human Security, influence operations, insurgency, national security, proxy warfare, Targeting, terrorism

About The Author

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• Albert Hadi
• Albert Hadi is an accomplished author and expert in Middle Eastern political and security affairs, with over 25 years of experience collaborating with U.S. interagency entities. His career includes serving as an Arabic Press Officer in Iraq with the Department of State and Editor-in-Chief of A Word of Truth Magazine, a CJTF-OIR publication countering extremist propaganda like ISIS’s Dabiq. Mr. Hadi is widely recognized for his in-depth analysis of human rights, racial justice, press freedom, and social equity, contributing significantly to global understanding of these critical issues. He has published six books in Arabic and English, alongside numerous articles and research papers addressing terrorism, radicalization, and extremist ideologies.

5. The Global Rise of Conservatism: A New Political Power Shift

Are we talking real conservatism as in the Edmund Burke and William Buckley forms? ​I think he really means the rise of populism as he describes in his conclusion:

The reality is populists are getting more popular. The right is shifting the center of global politics to the center right. The left’s game plan to stop change from happening isn’t working. These truths are redefining global politics. They are already impacting climate and energy, migration, and social policy, and these changes are profoundly going to change the world.

The Global Rise of Conservatism: A New Political Power Shift

19fortyfive.com · by James Jay Carafano · February 3, 2025

The biggest geopolitical shift in the world has less to do with great power competition and more to do with people power. This formidable force is the rise of global conservatism. This new dynamo could matter more in the near term than what Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Brussels, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Delhi, or Washington thinks.

Progressives at Dusk

The world watches the Davos Consensus dim like an iPhone running on 1% in real-time. How long before George Soros and Greta Thunberg become trivia questions?

Once upon a time, progressives believed they would define progress. The whole premise of the modern liberal project turned on a relentless drive for global orthodoxy—on everything: climate, governance, migration, gender, the economy, law, media, technology, and gas stoves. Even as China, Iran, and Russia, radical extremists of different stripes, and other grifters and ne’er-do-wells shredded their way through the rules-based-order, liberals sat like the Romans roasting marshmallows by the vomitorium while the barbarians were at the gates.

An alternative worldview has emerged because liberal paradises are withering everywhere, common sense dried up on the vine, prosperity dropped from trees like rotten fruit, credibility was crushed underfoot, and the sweet rivers of liberty turned swampy. However, the resurgence of a conservative worldview has also emerged because it is delivering on the promise of a credible alternative for a better life.

The left may have missed the rise of the right because the movement comes without a definitive label—right, center-right, conservative, social conservative, conservative internationalist, national conservative, freecon, neocon, classical liberal, populist, and more. They thought the right was just a ragtag gang of pirates. The plethora of names also reflects why the left doesn’t understand the right or the source of the conservatives’ global strength.

The global conservate project is the doppelganger of Davos. Rather than build a movement by defining an orthodoxy, conservativism succeeds by eschewing policy orthodoxy. Indeed, every root and branch of the conservative movement that tried to claim the right to define the right has been stiff-armed in their efforts to get the rest in line. The lack of orthodoxy turns out to be the real strength of modern conservatism: diverse peoples united more by the commonality of interests and ethics than politics or rigid ideology. Modern conservativism is about good governance that delivers on issues that impact the lives of everyday people. The word “conservative” no longer means conserving what is old; the term means conserving what works, adapting action to the conditions of the modern world, and not subverting principles because they stand in the way of progressive progress.

The Conservative Space

By working on likeminded issues conservatives are connecting, building trust and confidence, and expanding their national spaces into a larger network that transcends these issues, issues cutting across domestic, legal, and national security priorities.

The emerging conservative ecosystem is a historic and world-changing event, a surge of confidence for the conservative agenda along with a commitment to closer working relationships, significantly in parts of Europe, Latin America, Africa, the US, and Canada, and dots in the Indo-Pacific including Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Korea. Here is the basket of issues that can be heard everywhere conservatives are found, leading to conversations and partnerships that organically create a global movement, magnets drawing continents together.

Energy and Environment

Only a few years ago only the bravest of the brave would dare question the orthodoxy of climate change, NetZero goals, the Green New Deal, and green transition. Now not only are conservatives making the case that NetZero is unachievable, won’t address climate change, and is creating more not less human misery, but they are publicly mocking Greta Tunberg and embracing an alternative approach focused on affordable, dependable, abundant energy, with a balance that recognizes the necessity of achieving energy security and escaping energy poverty. Regarding energy, Trump is just the tip of the iceberg, which is not melting.

Mass Migration, Border Security, and National Sovereignty. Uniformly, battling unrestrained mass migration is recognized as an issue of common concern and common sense. Conservatives want to disarm weapons mass migration.

Woke. Woke is an inelegant but commonly accepted term of art for a basket of issues that represent efforts to impose a political agenda through subverting culture, law, ethics, and morality. Woke can mean different problems for different people in different places. Still, the anti-woke tide reflects a common desire to fight back against political warfare guised under a liberal agenda.

Free Speech, Election Integrity, and Lawfare. The suppression of conservatives by silencing free speech and through legal repression is increasingly emerging as an issue across the global space. Repression is often camouflaged by terms like protecting democracy, fighting disinformation, and social justice, often pioneered by organizations like the Soros Open Society Foundation and its globalist agenda. The tools of repression, conservatives believe, are the new weapons of mass suppression.

Antisemitism and Antizionism. The rise of hatred for Jews and Israel is a problem everywhere. The global intifada is a massive global campaign fueled by money, politics, and power used like a sledgehammer on a watermelon. Jew-hating is not just a problem for Jews. Weapons of hate can be turned on any group. Antisemitism and antizionism are the gateway drug for violent identity politics. After they perfected against Jews these practices will be turned on the rest. Conservatives fear they are next. Fighting Jew hate is the cornerstone of protecting religious liberty and battling barbarism in the world today.

The Challenge of China. There is no consensus on how to deal with Beijing’s malicious, pernicious, and destabilizing activities across the world, but everywhere, conservatives are increasingly asking the question—what to do? Folks are ready for that conversation, even if they don’t one hundred percent agree on what next. For conservatives, not everywhere, but more and more, the issue has become not a choice between systems, picking East or West. Getting China wrong risks national independence and survival.

The Good Life. Most want an economy that works for everyday people and not just elites. Folks demand good governance that will deliver opportunity and prosperity. Conservatives increasingly reject that they have to make a myopic choice between protectionism and a free market. They want answers to how they can live in a community where they can enjoy the fruits of their own labor.

Conservatives everywhere, of course, have their own issues, but the big seven issues frame a common language that increasingly allows people, no matter what their dialect or politics, to talk with one another.

Traversing the Landscape

Modern conservativism, by nature, is brash and disruptive. That said, not every activist who claims a mantle of conservatism is a common traveler. Conservatism is more than tactics—goals and values matter. Political opportunism and deception, for example, is not populism. Crass, old-fashioned populism rallies around a popular leader, with the leader deciding right and wrong, a practice that often leads to more wrong than right. Conservative populism is rallying around leaders that commit to delivering on the issues that people most deeply believe are affecting their daily life. The problem is how conservatives find their popular leaders. Three factors driving the drive for change may answer that question. One is that movements are manufactured and manipulated by money, coercion, power, and propaganda fueled by the Russians, the Chinese, the Open Society Foundation, or other malefactors. A second source of dissatisfaction can be long-standing beliefs rooted in history, culture, and ethnicity. Third, and what we are seeing the most, populism rises from a deep discontent with failing governance and political leadership that is inept, cruel, or corrupt (on occasion all of the above). One or more of these animating forces might be at play at the same time. For instance, Russian and Chinese influence operations often try to sow dissent in the polity of their adversaries. Usually, however, these efforts only take where people are already primed to hate their government and want change. How do you know what really motivates a movement?

Unpacking what is animating the campaign for political change can be complicated. The left makes the problem worse by just labeling every conservative movement a tool of evil actors, manned by a bunch of no-nothings, or led by the reincarnation of Hitler. The demonization of the right is the preferred tactic for silencing conservatives. Conservatives have to figure out for themselves who should sail along on their unruly pirate ship and who is beyond the pale. The standard is not that everyone believes the same things. As a matter of ethics, however, no conservative can accept, for example, folks that may be hard core on immigration, but also are seriously antisemites and racists. Putin, for instance, tries to obfuscate the banal evil of his regime by claiming he stands for traditional Christian values. Believing in Putin’s conservatism is like asking Hanibal Lecter to make dinner

Making these hard calls on who to trust is made harder by the influence of media and elites. There is no upside in trusting the people who screwed you over to tell you who the good and bad guys are in the world. Fortunately, today conservatives have their own huge, diverse global network. Plug in, connect, consider, and make your own judgments. Modern conservatism is a bit like Darwinism—if you choose poorly, neither you nor your movement will likely survive the fight for the most fit, just, productive societies.

Succeeding in the Conservative World

Four keys exist to tapping into and thriving in an emerging conservative world. Actions typified in many ways by leaders like Milei, Meloni, Modi, and Donald J. Trump.

First, you have to campaign and govern as a conservative. If you get political power and nothing changes, conservatives will quickly and rightly lose interest. The battle between progressives and conservatives is not Coke and Pepsi. Change has to be more than just changing labels.

Second, build the capacity to govern. Coming to power without people who share your vision and commitment and have the ability to implement change is like being gifted a Ferrari without a driver’s license.

Third, have the means not to let the left define you—because if they do, you are Hitler. Whether it is social media or word of mouth, you must compete in the information space, not devolving into propaganda or content management or restricting free speech but simply having the capability to tell people honestly who you are.

Fourth, build an independent, thriving civil society that can’t be silenced by the left and is not dependent on the party, the government, or elite interests. Foster a vibrant conservative ecosystem that makes the case for good governance. Never tie up the dogs and bark yourself. Politics is about governing. Stick to the day job. A strong civil society will generate the ideas and human capital to sustain the movement.

Progress Beyond Progressives

The reality is populists are getting more popular. The right is shifting the center of global politics to the center right. The left’s game plan to stop change from happening isn’t working. These truths are redefining global politics. They are already impacting climate and energy, migration, and social policy, and these changes are profoundly going to change the world.

About the Author: Dr. James Jay Carafano

Dr. James Jay Carafano is a leading expert in national security and foreign policy affairs. Carafano previously served as the Vice President of Heritage Foundation’s Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy and served in the US Army for 25 years. He is an accomplished historian and teacher as well as a prolific writer and researcher. Follow him on X: @JJCarafano.

19fortyfive.com · by James Jay Carafano · February 3, 2025

6. State Dept. Fires About 60 Contractors Working on Democracy and Human Rights

​Sadly, like USAID, DRL is in for a tough time.  I hope both DRL and USAID can be reformed to meet their original organization mandates. 

This work of USAID's governance bureau and Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at State are complement and when combined with special operations forces the the three could achieve synergistic effects to support foreign internal defense and unconventional warfare and especially support of political warfare in support of US national security objectives.

https://www.state.gov/bureaus-offices/under-secretary-for-civilian-security-democracy-and-human-rights/bureau-of-democracy-human-rights-and-labor/

The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) champions American values, including the rule of law and individual rights, that bring about safer, stronger, and more prosperous states. We advance American security by promoting respect for human rights, bolstering democratic institutions, empowering civil society, promoting and protecting freedom of expression, and upholding internationally recognized worker rights. 

https://www.usaid.gov/democracy

If you examine closely (and read between the lines) this is a government agency that has the capability to effectively support foreign internal defense (FID) as well as unconventional warfare (UW) (and most importantly political warfare in the gray zone of strategic competition).

• Democratic Governance – Building open, responsive, and accountable institutions and processes that serve the needs and preferences of the public.
• Participation – Ensuring all have the opportunity to participate and have a voice in how they will be governed.
• Enabling Credible, Free and Fair, and Peaceful Elections and Transition of Power – Promoting credible and transparent political competition and periodic elections for citizens to participate in their country’s governance and have their preferences represented.
• Boosting Independent Media – Defending freedom of expression and helping journalists defend themselves against digital surveillance, and repression; partnering with countries to promote a free and open internet, and to infuse democratic values and human rights principles into the adoption of major new technologies.
• Advancing Civic Engagement – Helping countries develop and sustain effective institutions and citizen-responsive governance that can fulfill their obligations toward citizens.
• Promoting Justice and the Rule of Law – Strengthening justice and security institutions, justice and security reforms, holding institutions and people accountable to the rule of law, and providing access to justice mechanisms.
• Advancing Respect for Human Rights – Supporting efforts to prevent human rights abuses, protect human rights defenders, and respond to human rights abuses.
• Countering Resurgent Authoritarian Influence – Strengthening democratic and institutional resilience to tackle malign authoritarian influence, disinformation and digital authoritarianism.
• Addressing and Fighting Corruption – Mobilizing broad-based coalitions and partnerships; galvanizing collective action across sectors; elevating anti-corruption considerations in policy making; and catalyzing innovation and experimentation to provide cutting-edge and responsive technical leadership and programming that focuses on prevention, detection, mitigation, and accountability.

This is of course complementary to the work the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

https://www.state.gov/bureaus-offices/under-secretary-for-civilian-security-democracy-and-human-rights/bureau-of-democracy-human-rights-and-labor/

The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) champions American values, including the rule of law and individual rights, that bring about safer, stronger, and more prosperous states. We advance American security by promoting respect for human rights, bolstering democratic institutions, empowering civil society, promoting and protecting freedom of expression, and upholding internationally recognized worker rights. 

Again, together these two organizations along with USSOCOM should be the main agencies supporting FID and UW. If I were king for a day I would have these three organizations joined at the hip.

Give an Office of Strategic Disruption a mandate and these 3 organisations could bring about significant change in support of US national security objectives. If JFK had lived long enough he would have envisioned these three organizations forming relevant task forces around the world.

Seizing the Initiative in the Gray Zone: The Case for a US Office of Strategic Disruption

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2025/01/seizing-the-initiative-in-the-gray-zone-the-case-for-a-us-office-of-strategic-disruption/

State Dept. Fires About 60 Contractors Working on Democracy and Human Rights

The contractors helped enact programs that focus on building up civil society and democratic practices in authoritarian states such as China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba.

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Some Republican politicians say the State Department’s democracy-promotion programs often end up supporting political parties or groups abroad that are opposed to conservative or far-right political figures in those countries.Credit...Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency, via Getty Images

By Edward WongMichael Crowley and Alan Rappeport

• Feb. 3, 2025

The State Department has fired about 60 contractors who work for its democracy, human rights and labor bureau, a division whose programs have often been criticized by authoritarian leaders, according to two U.S. officials and two former officials.

The dismissals deal a severe blow to the bureau, because the contractors were mostly technical or area experts whom senior officials relied on to do the day-to-day work of enacting the programs overseas.

The bureau has received about $150 million to $200 million of annual budget funding from Congress in recent years. But the bureau also handles and passes on money that Congress appropriates for other groups, including the National Endowment for Democracy.

Besides the contractors, the bureau has about 200 full-time staff employees. They mainly work out of Washington, where the programs are run from the State Department’s headquarters.

The bureau’s programs have often been focused on building up civil society and democratic practices in countries where the United States does not have missions and formal diplomatic ties, or where relations with an authoritarian government are especially tense. This includes Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba.

President Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 20 that has suspended any money or programs that can be deemed to be foreign aid or assistance.

Some of the bureau’s contractors have specific technical expertise. For example, at least one is an expert on virtual private networks, software that allows users to get around government internet blocks. China has the most effective internet censorship program in the world, called the Great Firewall.

The bureau has also worked on enacting policies aimed at pressuring China to relent on its forced labor of Uyghur Muslims, including the imposing of sanctions on U.S. companies that buy products that can be traced back to some form of forced labor.

Some Republican politicians have criticized the bureau in recent years, saying its democracy-promotion programs often end up supporting political parties or groups abroad that are opposed to conservative or far-right political figures in those countries.

However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has long been a champion of policies that advance human rights and promote democratic practices. In the Senate, where he represented Florida, Mr. Rubio was a lead sponsor of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which had broad support from both parties in Congress. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signed it into law in December 2021.

The State Department had no immediate comment when asked about the firings.

Foreign leaders who have criticized the bureau include Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, who has tried to suppress democratic practices in his country over many years. Mr. Orban is a favorite politician of conservative and far-right groups and politicians in the United States. Last December, he met with Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, the billionaire technology businessman who advises the president, at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s home in Florida.

The firing of the contractors is similar to the drastic steps taken in recent days by the Trump administration, and by Mr. Musk in particular, to sharply reduce the work force of the United States Agency for International Development. Last week, the administration placed 60 senior officials from the agency on paid leave and issued orders that led to the firing of hundreds of contractors. Since then, administration officials have fired dozens more employees or put them on paid leave.

Karoun Demirjian contributed reporting.

Edward Wong reports on global affairs, U.S. foreign policy and the State Department. More about Edward Wong

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

Alan Rappeport is an economic policy reporter, based in Washington. He covers the Treasury Department and writes about taxes, trade and fiscal matters. More about Alan Rappeport

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 4, 2025, Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: State Dept. Dismisses Contractors In Bureau. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

See more on: State Department, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, U.S. Politics, Agency for International Development, Elon Musk

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The Trump Administration’s First 100 Days

• Tariffs: President Trump’s demands on the United States’ neighbors are difficult to measure. That allows him to declare victory when he sees fit.
• U.S.A.I.D.: Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that he had taken over as acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, assuming control of an agency that had functioned largely independently for over 60 years and stoking fears about U.S. assistance around the world.
• DOGE: Unions representing federal workers sued the Treasury Department and its head, Scott Bessent, in an effort to block Musk and his team from accessing the federal payment system.
• Immigration: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed during a visit to the southwestern border to use thousands of U.S. active-duty troops to help stem migrant crossings.
• Government Web Pages: More than 8,000 web pages across more than a dozen U.S. government websites have been taken down, as federal agencies rush to heed Trump’s orders targeting diversity initiatives and “gender ideology.”

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7. USSOCOM headquarters holds a groundbreaking ceremony for SOF Operations Integration Facility

USSOCOM headquarters holds a groundbreaking ceremony for SOF Operations Integration Facility

https://www.dvidshub.net/news/489976/ussocom-headquarters-holds-groundbreaking-ceremony-sof-operations-integration-facility?utm

Photo By Michael Bottoms | Leaders from USSOCOM and MacDill Air Force Base participate in the groundbreaking... read more

MACDILL AFB, FLORIDA, UNITED STATES

01.23.2025

Story by Michael Bottoms  

U.S. Special Operations Command  

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On a chilly, cloudy morning leaders from U.S. Special Operations Command and MacDill Air Force Base held a groundbreaking ceremony for the Special Operations Forces Operations Integration Facility Jan. 23, 2025, on MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. The secure facility represents the first of various efforts to modernize the headquarters.

The SOF operations integrations facility will consist of a two-story building totaling 57,000 square feet in size and is expected to take two years to build.

The ceremony was hosted by U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Guillaume N. Beaurpere, USSOCOM chief of staff.

“It’s significant because when construction on the SOF Operations Integrations Facility is complete, it will be the newest, most modern, and secure facility within the USOCOM campus,” said Beaurpere. “The SOCOM HQ’s original buildings were built in 1968, so this facility – with its state-of-the-art design, security, and construction features – represents what special operations is all about.”

The command will celebrate its 38th birthday this year and the new facility will help modernize the headquarters.

“One of the hallmarks of the U.S. Special Operations community and something that has contributed to our success since our inception is the special operations commitment to innovation and adaptability. We are always adapting to the threat, to the environment, to whatever the mission, or our nation, may ask of us,” Beaurpere said. “Innovation helps us to solve challenging problems on behalf of the nation. This facility represents a facet of that adaptability and innovation.”

“This facility is a specially designed and constructed facility represents in both its design and the construction we will see over the next two years that spirit of innovation and adaptability,” Beaurpere said. “It will be the newest, most modern, and most secure facility in USSOCOM, continuing a larger effort within the command to modernize our aging SOCOM Campus here on MacDill.”

The facility is scheduled to be completed in 2027, and its unique features will serve as the node for SOF operations for a new task force conducting missions all over the globe that will better posture and enable special operations forces to accomplish whatever mission they are assigned.

8. Trump Says U.S. Will Take Over Gaza

​I bet no one saw this coming.

This would appear to be the very definition of and a poster child for a "foreign entanglement."

Do we still have a peacekeeping force in Sanai? When did that begin? 1979?

Trump Says U.S. Will Take Over Gaza

Proposal stuns Middle East experts and Trump allies, leaving many questions unanswered

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trump-us-gaza-takeover-4bb381e8?mod=WSJ_home_mediumtopper_pos_1

By Alexander Ward

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, Dov Lieber

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 and Michael R. Gordon

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Updated Feb. 4, 2025 9:56 pm ET

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President Trump was speaking during a joint press conference at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

WASHINGTON—President Trump called for the U.S. to take long-term control of Gaza and for nearly two million Palestinian residents to permanently leave for neighboring countries, a break with decades of U.S. policy that left the idea of a Palestinian state in tatters.

“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip,” Trump said during a press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. “I do see a long-term ownership position, and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East, and maybe the entire Middle East.”

The proposal, if implemented, would deeply involve the U.S. in a development project that Trump officials said earlier in the day could take 10 to 15 years. He left unaddressed how the U.S. would persuade Palestinians to voluntarily surrender their land and whether Israel would ultimately exercise sovereignty in the territory. 

Trump didn’t rule out sending U.S. forces to hold Gaza, a deployment that could launch the kind of long-term American military occupation in the Middle East that Trump has long decried.

The Trump administration estimates the reconstruction of Gaza could take as long as 15 years. Photo: Haitham Imad/Shutterstock

Trump cited the devastation in Gaza for why the enclave’s residents had to move. 

“I hope we can do something where they wouldn’t want to go back,” Trump said. The president added that he would like to see “really good quality housing” built for Palestinians outside Gaza. The rebuilt strip would provide jobs and stability to the region, Trump said, implying without providing details that it would be open to both Israelis and Arabs.

It wasn’t clear how Trump’s plan could be implemented.

The Arab world is likely to reject Trump’s proposal, though initial responses were muted because it was the middle of the night there when the news conference happened. Late on Tuesday, the Saudi foreign ministry said the kingdom rejected “any violation of the rights of the Palestinian people, whether through settlement, land annexation, or attempts to displace them.” Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have also rejected evictions, while the Palestinian Authority and Hamas say they wouldn’t support an evacuation of Gaza.

With Gaza under military occupation as a result of Israel’s 15-month war with Hamas, Israel would have to play a major role in any plan to empty Gaza of its residents. Netanyahu didn’t directly address Trump’s ideas at their joint press conference.

Netanyahu said during the press conference that one of his key goals was to ensure Gaza wouldn’t host terrorists again. Trump, he continued, took that concept “to a much higher level.”

“It is something that could change history, and it is worthwhile really pursuing this avenue,” Netanyahu said.

Right-wing Israeli politicians have called for resettlement of Gaza and some have even endorsed postwar annexation of the territory. But Netanyahu’s government hasn’t endorsed taking over postwar Gaza, much less anything like what Trump proposed.

Itamar Ben Gvir, a far-right politician who dropped out of Netanyahu’s government over efforts to end the war, posted on X: “Donald, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Removing Gaza from Palestinian hands would detach a significant portion of Palestinian territory that U.S. presidents—including the first Trump administration—have said for decades would form part of an eventual Palestinian state.

Trump has yet to publicly address whether he has any plan to revive the moribund process aimed at achieving a Palestinian state alongside Israel, a goal that would be all the harder if the U.S. pressures Gaza residents into abandoning their land.

President Trump with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Tuesday. Photo: Ting Shen/Bloomberg News

Congressional Republicans and Democrats expressed skepticism at the idea of the U.S. taking over Gaza.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), a Trump ally, called the proposal interesting but problematic and said his constituents wouldn’t like the idea. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D., Ariz.), a former Marine, said Trump was outlining an invasion of Gaza.

Middle East experts were stunned.

Khaled Elgindy, a former senior adviser to the Palestinian Authority in negotiations with Israelis, called Trump’s proposal “truly bizarre and incoherent.”

“None of it makes any sense. Is he looking to develop Gaza as some kind of massive beachfront property? Is he talking about a U.S. occupation of Gaza? Will the U.S. force out two million Palestinians as part of the plan?” asked Elgindy, now at Georgetown.

White House officials argued that mass relocation from Gaza was the only viable option and that they could persuade Egypt and Jordan to accept displaced Palestinians. Trump has invited Jordan’s King Abdullah and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi to the White House for talks later this month. 

Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said the three- to five-year timeline called for in the cease-fire agreement for reconstruction of Gaza’s shattered housing and infrastructure isn’t realistic. A more accurate estimate is 10 to 15 years, a senior official said.

“At some point, we have to look realistically. How do you rebuild Gaza?” said White House national-security adviser Mike Waltz. “What does that look like? What’s the timeline? These people are sitting with literally thousands of unexploded ordnance, in piles of rubble.”

U.S. officials have yet to outline how they will remove Palestinians from Gaza if they don’t leave voluntarily. Moving forward with the plan could also undercut Trump and Netanyahu’s larger goal of reaching a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

But even as Trump was outlining his chimerical ideas, he admitted that he was uncertain a fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza would survive.

“I’m hopeful that this cease-fire could be the beginning of a larger and more enduring peace that will end the bloodshed and killing once and for all,” Trump said. But he added, “I can’t tell you whether the cease-fire will hold.”

Trump dismissed the many obstacles, even suggesting that Saudi Arabia might proceed with plans to establish diplomatic ties with Israel. But the Saudi Foreign Ministry pushed back Tuesday night, saying it wouldn’t support normalization of ties with Israel until there was a clear path toward a Palestinian state. The ministry said it would oppose any efforts to “displace the Palestinian people from their land.”

It is also unclear how the plan would align with Trump’s other Middle East goals, especially toward Iran. Netanyahu has long tried to convince Trump that military force is the most effective way to disarm Iran.

Trump’s plans for Iran are another murky part of his Middle East agenda, at one moment appearing to encourage Netanyahu to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, something that could trigger a war, while simultaneously saying he wants to avoid a war and cut a deal with Tehran.

Before meeting Netanyahu, he signed an order to reimpose “maximum pressure” on Iran, a first step toward toughening enforcement of sanctions on Iranian oil exports and other parts of the Iranian economy imposed during his first term.

The president said he was “torn” about signing the memorandum. “Everybody wants me to sign it,” he said.

He didn’t rule out supporting Israel if it decides to strike Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon. “We just don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon,” he said, adding, “We’ll see what happens.”

Write to Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com, Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com and Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com

9. The CIA Is About to Get a Trump Makeover

​I wonder if Mr. Musk can use his algorithms to collect and analyze intelligence too?

The CIA Is About to Get a Trump Makeover

Spy agency’s workforce receives buyout-style offer

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/the-cia-is-about-to-get-a-trump-makeover-16fc0cbf?mod=hp_lead_pos3

By Joel Schectman

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 and Dustin Volz

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Feb. 4, 2025 8:33 pm ET

The seal of Central Intelligence Agency in the lobby of the headquarters building in Langley, Va., Photo: Kevin Wolf/Associated Press

WASHINGTON—The Central Intelligence Agency offered buyouts to its entire workforce Tuesday, in what officials said is a bid to bring the agency in line with President Trump’s priorities, including targeting drug cartels. 

The CIA appeared to be the first intelligence agency to tell its employees that they can quit their jobs and receive about eight months of pay and benefits as part of Trump’s push to downsize the federal government. The offer last month made to most civilian federal agencies exempted some categories of federal workers, including those with national security roles.

The agency is also freezing the hiring of job seekers already given a conditional offer, an aide to CIA Director John Ratcliffe said. Some are likely to be rescinded if the applicants don’t have the right background for the agency’s new goals, which also include Trump’s trade war and undermining China, the aide said. 

Across government agencies, overall interest in the deferred resignation offer appears to be low, career coaches focused on the federal workforce say, citing conversations with more than 100 people. Many people have questions about whether they are legally able to take another job during the payout period or whether they can return to government under a future administration, these people said. 

“There’s no statutory authority that I can see for the president making this offer,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.), who represents tens of thousands of federal workers and said no constituents have told him they are taking the deal. Doing so presents risk, he said: “The administration immediately knows, you don’t want to work for me. They’ll find some other way to get rid of you. You should not raise your hand.” 

Trump administration officials have said the offers are also meant to signal to those who oppose Trump’s agenda to find work elsewhere. Ratcliffe told the White House to extend the same buyout package to the CIA, the aide said, believing it would pave the way for a more aggressive spy agency. 

A CIA spokeswoman said the move was part of an effort to “infuse the agency with renewed energy.” 

In his confirmation hearing, Ratcliffe promised to launch more hard-edge spying operations and covert action, naming drug cartels and China as key adversaries. “To the brave CIA officers listening around the world, if all of that sounds like what you signed up for, then buckle up and get ready to make a difference,” he told lawmakers last month. “If it doesn’t then it’s time to find a new line of work.”

Trump’s CIA will have a greater focus on the Western Hemisphere, targeting countries not traditionally considered adversaries of the U.S., the aide said. For example, the CIA will use espionage to give Trump extra leverage in his trade negotiations, potentially spying on Mexico’s government amid the ongoing trade spat, the aide said. The CIA will also take on a significant role fighting Mexican drug cartels, the aide said, which Trump designated as terror groups on his first day in office. 

For the decades after its creation, the CIA was focused on America’s rivalry with the Soviet Union. After 9/11, the agency transformed much of its workforce into a shadowy paramilitary force that could kill terrorists with drones. In recent years, the CIA has shifted back to focus on countries including China, which has been widely viewed by national security officials as the U.S.’s greatest long-term threat.  

The Trump administration and the intelligence community clashed at times in his first term, but some CIA officers later said they missed the greater latitude to conduct covert operations against America’s adversaries under Trump. 

It wasn’t clear whether other intelligence agencies would follow suit with a buyout offer. The Senate intelligence panel on Tuesday narrowly advanced Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination to be Trump’s director of national intelligence—a position that oversees the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies and bureaus—but she hasn’t yet been confirmed by the full Senate.

Lindsay Ellis contributed to this article.

Write to Joel Schectman at joel.schectman@wsj.com and Dustin Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com

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

Appeared in the February 5, 2025, print edition as 'CIA Offers Its Entire Workforce Buyouts'.

10. How Trump Gutted America’s $40 Billion Aid Agency in Two Weeks

​Every government agency is going to take a huge haircut in the coming days and weeks.

How Trump Gutted America’s $40 Billion Aid Agency in Two Weeks

Dismantling of USAID, including putting all staff on leave, appears to be a test case for new administration

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/how-trump-musk-doge-killed-usaid-b649f1f5?mod=hp_lead_pos8

By Joel Schectman

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, Kristina Peterson

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, Laura Kusisto

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 and Alexander Ward

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Updated Feb. 4, 2025 9:49 pm ET

A demonstration Monday outside the U.S. Agency for International Development’s offices in Washington. Photo: mandel ngan/AFP/Getty Images

WASHINGTON—The cuts came so fast that one dismissed employee had to be rehired to process other employees’ time sheets. 

Photos of projects that the U.S. Agency for International Development had funded around the world—girls playing soccer in South America, families getting food in eastern Africa—were gone, and in their place were strips of nails and empty picture frames against white walls. 

Over the course of less than two weeks, the Trump administration largely dismantled the work of a 10,000-person, $40 billion foreign-assistance agency and the thousands of people in nonprofits and other groups that work with it. By Monday, it had closed the agency’s main building and pulled down its website. On Tuesday, all of USAID’s Washington facilities were closed, as the agency prepared to put nearly all of its remaining 1,400 staffers on administrative leave, two officials said.

The big announcement came later that night: Nearly all USAID staff would be put on paid administrative leave starting Saturday morning, with aides working around the world ordered to come home within 30 days, barring special circumstances.

The missive was placed on USAID’s website, which for days had been offline. “Thank you for your service,” the message ended.

USAID appears to be a test case for whether the Trump administration can effectively restructure a decades-old agency without meeting much legal or political resistance. So far, the answer seems to be yes. 

Some outside groups say they can’t get paid for work they have already done. The few officials who remain are forwarding past-due invoices, trying to walk a line between potentially violating a directive from President Trump and violating federal contracting rules. 

Stefanie Leigh Plant, a 40-year old contractor for USAID’s global health program, was fired via email, with her health insurance severed three days later. “That’s when the incredulity began setting in,” she said. 

Photos were removed from USAID’s office walls.

USAID was established in 1961 to fund efforts to manage disease outbreaks and reduce child mortality, among other aid programs. It has been kept as a distinct agency from the State Department for decades in part to avoid giving the appearance that aid was directly tied to diplomatic requests. 

That goal has run headlong into Trump’s America First approach and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is seeking to trim billions of dollars in government spending. The Trump administration has started to fold USAID into the State Department, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio stepping in as its acting administrator. Senate Foreign Relations Chair Sen. Jim Risch (R., Idaho) said he would support merging the two. Some Democratic lawmakers who support USAID tried to enter the building Monday but were shut out by security guards. “Is DOGE in there?” one of the lawmakers asked. 

“You cannot wave away an agency that you don’t like or that you disagree with by executive order or by literally storming into the building,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii) said. 

The White House said in a statement Monday that for decades USAID has been “unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous—and in many cases, malicious—pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats.”

Longtime USAID officials acknowledged that the process for delivering aid could be inefficient. The Trump administration pointed to examples of U.S. dollars being used to fund diversity, equity and inclusion programs in Serbia and a transgender opera in Colombia. 

Representatives of USAID and DOGE didn’t respond to requests for comment. A State Department spokesperson declined to comment beyond Rubio’s recent statements.  

As DOGE representatives canvassed the building, some USAID staff weren’t sure who was working for that operation, suspecting that some might be dressed in suits and others in puffer jackets.

Some of the Trump administration’s actions, such as furloughing contractors, have been broadly legal, but others appear to be impinging on Congress’s authority, said Matthew Kavanagh, director of the Center for Global Health Policy and Politics at Georgetown University. 

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WSJ’s Shelby Holliday breaks down why President Trump and Elon Musk have targeted USAID, the D.C.-based international aid organization with more than 10,000 employees and relief operations around the world. Photo: Kenny Holston/New York Times/Zuma Press, Will Oliver/Shutterstock

“They see the U.S. aid agencies and infrastructures as weaker than the rest of the government, so they are trying to see what they can get away with,” Kavanagh said. 

After Trump was elected in November, USAID employees knew changes were coming, but veterans of prior Republican administrations had found changes to their programs less drastic than feared. 

When Trump on Jan. 24 not only paused new foreign-aid funding, but also issued a stop-work order—preventing outside groups from using U.S. funding they had already received—it became clear this time would be different. Groups that relied on USAID funding laid off hundreds of staffers. 

Work that was halted, according to employees and contractors, included the U.S.’s efforts to stop the spread of an Ebola outbreak in Uganda, an outbreak of the Marburg virus disease in Tanzania, and a multicountry outbreak of Mpox.

Most employees of a field hospital in Gaza were abruptly terminated last week, said Adam Hamawy, a plastic surgeon working nearby. The hospital administrator sent a text message to the terminated staff, saying they would be paid a final $400. 

Waivers have now been granted to allow certain emergency humanitarian programs to get funds, although employees and recipients said they had received limited guidance about how to interpret which programs qualify. “This is not about getting rid of foreign aid,” Rubio said Monday on Fox News. “There are things we do through USAID that we should continue to do, that make sense.” 

Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), one of the lawmakers protesting the USAID shutdown Monday, said the stop-work order halted the deliveries of firewood to Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines.

On Jan. 27, some 60 senior career employees, including the ethics and employment lawyers, were put on administrative leave and escorted out of the Ronald Reagan building in downtown Washington, forced to hand over the security badges they needed to swipe out. 

Lawmakers were barred from entering USAID headquarters on Monday. Photo: Jason C. Andrew/Bloomberg

Nicholas Gottlieb, the agency’s director of employee and labor relations, later sent an email saying that after review, he found the decision to put dozens of senior employees on leave unjustified and that there had been no evidence of misconduct. Two hours later, he emailed to say that he himself had been put on leave, according to employees. 

On Jan. 28, hundreds of contractors were laid off. 

Last week, the order came down that all artwork throughout the organization would have to be removed. USAID officials expect that there will be a future notice putting more staff on administrative leave.

Termination notices often arrived outside normal working hours. Some contractors started hearing that their colleagues had lost their jobs in the morning and watched the hours tick by until their notices arrived at night. For some overseas, dismissal has meant trying to figure out how to get back to the U.S. with their families. 

On Saturday, DOGE representatives sought access to sensitive systems at USAID’s building in Washington. Security officials at the agency initially resisted the DOGE team’s requests, which some people familiar with the confrontation said included demands for access to personnel information. The security officials, John Voorhees and his deputy, then were put on administrative leave for not complying, people familiar with the episode said.  

“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk said on social media. “USAID is a criminal organization.” 

Vivian Salama contributed to this article.

Write to Joel Schectman at joel.schectman@wsj.com, Kristina Peterson at kristina.peterson@wsj.com, Laura Kusisto at Laura.Kusisto@wsj.com and Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com

Appeared in the February 5, 2025, print edition as 'Trump Gutted a $40 Billion Aid Agency in Two Weeks'.

11. What Do Trump’s First Weeks Tell Us About His China Strategy?

​Excerpts:

The big question is whether Trump shares his predecessor’s—and much of Washington’s view—of the China rivalry as a historic battle or whether he intends to frame it more narrowly, in a reprise of his first-term focus on trade imbalances.

“Does the Trump administration really think this is an urgent epochal competition?” as Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Washington-based Wilson Center, put it during a recent conference. 

The Biden administration regarded China as America’s leading military, economic, ideological and technological challenger, and the great-power competition with Beijing as democracy versus authoritarianism. Some of that sentiment built on hawkishness that emerged in the latter part of the first Trump administration after the Covid pandemic torpedoed Trump’s first trade deal.

​I am sure some of POTUS' advisor such as Elbridge Colby thinks China is an "urgent epochal competition."

What Do Trump’s First Weeks Tell Us About His China Strategy?

Executive orders and actions taking aim at Beijing suggest a focus less framed around ideology than under Biden

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/what-do-trumps-first-weeks-tell-us-about-his-china-strategy-ba571376?mod=latest_headlines

By James T. Areddy

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Feb. 4, 2025 9:00 pm ET

President Trump’s recent actions illustrate how intertwined China’s economy is with U.S. interests. Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

China is a theme in President Trump’s first weeks in the White House, factoring into over a third of the more than 80 executive orders and key actions he has signed so far. 

Actions including 10% additional tariffs over China’s alleged unwillingness to help halt the flow of fentanyl have laid bare areas in which the new administration will seek leverage over Beijing. Not yet articulated is a broader strategy from Trump for handling America’s biggest rivalry—and whether he sees it in ideological terms or as a series of deals. 

Trump’s actions illustrate how intertwined the No. 2 economy is with U.S. interests. An America First trade order threatens to strip China of certain preferential access to U.S. markets. Other measures take aim at Beijing more indirectly, such as orders on illegal immigration, energy production, digital finance, military readiness and even foreign aid.

The big question is whether Trump shares his predecessor’s—and much of Washington’s view—of the China rivalry as a historic battle or whether he intends to frame it more narrowly, in a reprise of his first-term focus on trade imbalances.

“Does the Trump administration really think this is an urgent epochal competition?” as Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Washington-based Wilson Center, put it during a recent conference. 

The Biden administration regarded China as America’s leading military, economic, ideological and technological challenger, and the great-power competition with Beijing as democracy versus authoritarianism. Some of that sentiment built on hawkishness that emerged in the latter part of the first Trump administration after the Covid pandemic torpedoed Trump’s first trade deal.

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China announced retaliatory tariffs on certain American goods in response to President Trump’s latest levy on Chinese goods. Trump went ahead with an additional 10% tariff on China after delaying levies on Mexico and Canada. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty

Trump’s actions so far have shed little light on whether he intends to build on the effort under President Joe Biden to block Chinese industry from accessing core American technologies. But his expressed desire to huddle soon with Chinese leader Xi Jinping is a clear departure from the Biden administration’s strategy of limiting direct engagement with Beijing and instead rallying allies around joint military, trade and diplomatic responses to China. 

People who have spoken with Trump’s team said China is a secondary consideration for the administration, and indeed the president’s most headline-grabbing actions have been directed at Mexico, Canada, Greenland and Panama. 

“China has been carved out or downplayed during the early days of the administration in a way that presents the possibility of making progress with China,” said Susan Shirk, director emeritus of the 21st Century China Center at the University California, San Diego, who sees the president as setting the table for dealmaking with Beijing.

To China watchers, Trump’s tariff scare against Mexico and Canada suggests a playbook similar to how the president went after China during his first term, using trade threats as a negotiating tool. The action against Canada also reinforced doubt that he would work with allies to counter China.

“He’s less ideologically driven,” said Henry Huiyao Wang, founder and president of the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing think tank. He sees Trump as formulating a deal that Wang predicts will find a favorable reception in China. 

An America First trade order threatens to strip China of certain preferential access to U.S. markets. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Beijing’s countermeasures to the new tariff suggest “a more coordinated and comprehensive approach by Chinese policymakers,” said Goldman Sachs analysts. They calculate that $14 billion of U.S. exports will be affected by China’s effectively 12% additional tariffs, compared with the 10% hit on $525 billion in Chinese goods from Trump.

While trade appears to remain Trump’s primary focus, Wang said the wide range of executive orders might be aimed at softening Beijing up to make deals in other areas. He points to Trump’s order to create an “iron dome” designed to shield the U.S. from China’s hypersonic missiles, which Wang sees as a bid to compel Beijing into nuclear-arms talks. “He only cares about a fair deal,” said Wang.

Trump told a World Economic Forum audience that to build positive ties with China, “We don’t need to make it phenomenal. We have to make it a fair relationship.”

Trump has spoken fondly of Xi personally—“I’ve always liked him”—and aims to solicit Beijing’s cooperation to end the Ukraine war. The White House has sent mixed messages over whether the two will speak about the new tariffs.

Beijing has been relieved Trump’s initial tariff strike has been relatively light. Given the breadth of the orders and actions touching on China, the Trump team appears to be positioning to negotiate a wide-ranging deal with Beijing and is seeking to “maximize the pressure on the assumption they’ll cave,” said Christopher Johnson, a former U.S. intelligence analyst and the president of China Strategies Group, a risk advisory firm.

Johnson warned that Beijing won’t be the pushover many in Washington believe and that while Trump appears in a hurry to secure a deal, Xi will slow-walk progress.

Trump conferred in 2019 with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Japan. Photo: Susan Walsh/AP

Instead of framing America’s contest with China as an existential battle between a democratic or autocratic future as Biden did, Trump is more likely to be guided by his America First mantra, analysts said. His comparatively light opening salvo of 10% additional tariffs on China rather than the threatened 60% sends a signal to Beijing that he will wield the trade weapon, while also limiting how much inflation he is ready to unleash on Americans.

Other actions by Trump seem to reject the national-security concerns regarding China that have gripped Washington, such as his executive order to pause the legislatively mandated shutdown of TikTok to pursue a deal to sell the Chinese platform. Similarly, Trump described the emergence of the high-performing artificial-intelligence tool DeepSeek, which was cheaply developed in China, not as a threat to a strategic, futuristic U.S. industry, but as a fresh spur to American competitiveness. 

“I don’t think the president is anti-China,” said an adviser to officials in both Beijing and Washington. 

The adviser said Trump’s initial attempts to build a “cordial relationship” with Xi—inviting him to the inauguration and referring to him as “chairman” in a January phone call—seem aimed at getting the Chinese leader on board for the president’s domestic priorities on trade. The adviser added that Trump has also made it clear he hopes for Xi’s help to make good on his pledge to be “a president for peace,” seeking, for example, an end to the Ukraine war.

Key members of Trump’s team, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have historically espoused more ideologically negative views of Beijing than the president. It remains to be seen how much that sentiment might guide policy, particularly as long as China-friendly Elon Musk retains influence.   

Ryan Hass, a Brookings Institution senior fellow, said that Beijing will take its cues from the president alone, and that Trump’s influence will depend on how clearly he defines a strategy. 

“The first step down this path will be for Trump to begin his term by articulating his goals and vision for China and then directing his top advisers to advance his vision,” Hass said in a recent commentary.

Write to James T. Areddy at James.Areddy@wsj.com

12.The World Has Changed Since Trump’s First Trade War. Other Countries Are Ready to Fight Back.

​

Will this be mutually assured destruction or will it work out in the long run?

Excerpts:

But if Trump continues on his current course—wielding sanctions and tariffs indiscriminately, against adversaries and allies alike—he risks triggering a vicious cycle of retaliation that fractures the global economy. As supply chains unravel, prices will rise, scarcity will return and our standard of living will suffer.

Painful as that will be, the geopolitical consequences could prove even worse. We originally embraced economic interdependence not only as a path to prosperity but also as a way to prevent war. If states can’t secure resources and markets through trade, the temptation of conquest and imperialism will surge. Great powers could once again find themselves drawn into military conflicts.

If we mishandle them, today’s economic wars could become tomorrow’s shooting wars.

The World Has Changed Since Trump’s First Trade War. Other Countries Are Ready to Fight Back.

China, Russia and even U.S. allies have developed retaliatory options that could deeply hurt America’s economy and standard of living.

https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/the-world-has-changed-since-trumps-first-trade-war-other-countries-are-ready-to-fight-back-2ec0f705?mod=Searchresults_pos3&page=1

By Edward Fishman

Feb. 4, 2025 11:00 am ET

In 2019, President Trump spoke in front of a ‘Game of Thrones’-style poster promising economic sanctions against unspecified countries. His second term has begun with threats of tariffs and sanctions against China, Russia, Canada, the EU and other targets. Photo: michael reynolds/epa/Shutterstock

Of all the powers of the presidency, none comes more naturally to Donald Trump than weaponizing America’s economic might.

Since returning to the White House, he has ordered sweeping tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico and threatened a barrage of sanctions and levies on everyone from Colombia and Russia to the European Union and the BRICS.

Trump’s second term is shaping up to be a turbocharged version of his first, when he styled himself “Tariff Man” and brandished a “Game of Thrones”–inspired poster warning “Sanctions Are Coming.” Then, as now, his actions matched his rhetoric: He slapped tariffs on China, cut microchip exports to Huawei and launched “maximum pressure” campaigns against Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. He imposed nearly as many sanctions in four years as Barack Obama did in eight.

Trucks in Tijuana, Mexico, on their way to the U.S., Jan. 31. Trump announced a 25% tariff on Mexican imports to begin Feb. 1, then suspended it for a month. Photo: guillermo arias/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Back then, retaliation was muted. America still inhabited a world akin to the dawn of the nuclear age in the 1940s: It possessed fearsome economic weapons, but no one else did. Today, the world looks very different. Many countries are prepared to fight back. The risk of a rapidly escalating global economic war is high—and America is poorly equipped to prevent it.

This economic arms race began in response to Trump’s first-term policies and accelerated with the Biden administration’s sanctions and export controls on Russia and China. But it also reflects a deeper tension: The global economy was designed for the benign geopolitical environment of the 1990s, not for the more dangerous one that exists today. As great-power competition has intensified, integrated supply chains and financial markets—once viewed as anchors of stability—now seem like glaring vulnerabilities. They include chokepoints that Washington, Beijing and other capitals can exploit in a multi-front economic war.

No country has devoted more energy to this contest than China. When Trump launched a trade war during his first term, Beijing was unprepared. Its counterstrategy—imposing reciprocal tariffs on American goods—ran into a hard limit: China imports far less from the U.S. than the U.S. imports from China. Beijing simply had less room to escalate, leading Trump to conclude that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.”

But China learned its lesson. In the years since, it has built its own arsenal of economic weapons. It has enacted a raft of new laws that give it the power to impose penalties ranging from targeted sanctions to full-fledged embargoes. And it has painstakingly mapped out global supply chains, identifying chokepoints it can weaponize with devastating effect. Beijing is now poised to respond to U.S. measures asymmetrically—not by mimicking Washington’s actions but by hitting America where it hurts.

We got a taste of these capabilities days before the 2024 presidential election, when China cut off Skydio, America’s largest drone company, from vital battery supplies. Skydio was forced to ration batteries, limiting them to one per drone. The consequences rippled far beyond Silicon Valley: The Ukrainian military relies on the company’s drones to gather battlefield intelligence and document war crimes. “This action makes clear that the Chinese government will use supply chains as a weapon to advance their interests over ours,” said Skydio CEO Adam Bry, who called it “an attempt to eliminate the leading American drone company.”

Drones at the Skydio manufacturing plant in Hayward, Calif. Skydio, the U.S.’s largest dronemaker, was cut off from Chinese battery supplies last year, an example of how U.S. trade partners can target economic chokepoints. Photo: Clara Mokri for WSJ

China has other chokepoints it can manipulate, starting with critical minerals. The country produces two-thirds of the world’s graphite, lithium and cobalt—essential for electric vehicles—and dominates the global supply of rarer minerals like gallium, germanium and antimony, which the Pentagon depends on for radar systems and precision-guided munitions. In recent months, antimony prices have more than doubled as China introduced export controls, leaving the U.S.—which hasn’t produced antimony since the 1990s—perilously exposed. It’s telling that China’s initial reaction to Trump’s new levies was not limited to tariffs but included export controls on tungsten and other key minerals. America has many more supply-chain vulnerabilities, including some that officials and business leaders have yet to fully appreciate.

By contrast, China has been actively fortifying its economy against external pressure. Scarred by curbs on access to American microchips, China has poured money into its domestic semiconductor industry, investing several times more than the U.S. has under the CHIPS Act. It has exploited loopholes in U.S. export controls to amass vast stockpiles of semiconductor equipment. And it has built a homegrown alternative to the SWIFT network to reduce its reliance on the U.S. financial system. These defensive measures won’t make China invincible, but they could blunt the impact of any new sanctions and embolden Beijing to retaliate more aggressively.

Other rivals have similarly beefed up their economic warfare capabilities. Russia has weaponized natural gas exports to Europe, and it recently restricted sales of nuclear fuel to the U.S. Despite a new law that encourages domestic sourcing, American nuclear reactors still depend on Russia for about a quarter of their fuel. As the artificial intelligence race heats up, tech firms such as Microsoft and Google are counting on nuclear energy to power the data centers that train advanced AI models—a bet illustrated by Microsoft’s deal to reopen Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island facility. Yet these plans could be jeopardized if Moscow permanently bans nuclear fuel shipments.

Russia is also spearheading an effort to weaken the dollar’s role as the default currency for international payments, which underpins the potency of American sanctions. At last fall’s BRICS Summit, Moscow unveiled a series of initiatives to help bloc members bypass the dollar entirely in their trade with one another.

Russian President Vladimir Putin looks at a proposed BRICS currency at a summit in Kazan, Russia, October 2024. Trump has threatened 100% tariffs on countries that support the new currency. Photo: Stanislav Krasilnikov/ Photohost

A worker at a graphite company in China’s Henan Province, March 2020. China produces two-thirds of the world’s graphite, which is essential for building electronic vehicles. Photo: Li Jianan/Xinhua/Zuma Press

A common BRICS currency is a pipe dream, but a platform allowing members to settle trade using their own digital currencies is much more plausible. In fact, a similar project called mBridge, led by the central banks of China, Thailand, the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia, proved its ability to settle payments in mere seconds late last year. Trump’s threat of 100% tariffs against the BRICS countries if they create a shared currency misidentifies the challenge. The real issue is that Russia, China and their partners are building parallel systems that—left unchecked—could defang U.S. financial power.

It isn’t just adversaries who are gearing up for economic war. Allies are doing the same. Japan recently appointed a cabinet minister for economic security, and the EU and Britain have drastically enhanced their ability to impose sanctions.

Under the Biden administration, the U.S. encouraged these efforts, working with G-7 allies to lay the foundations of an economic security alliance. But all this progress could come undone if Trump wields sanctions and tariffs against our friends, as his targeting of Canada and Mexico—despite the announced one-month delay—shows he is prepared to do. Worse, instead of joining forces to confront China and Russia, our allies could even turn their revamped economic arsenals against the U.S. In Canada, the race to replace Justin Trudeau has already become a contest over who can deliver the most effective counterpunch to Trump’s tariffs.

With so many countries armed and ready, the challenge for Trump will be to use economic weapons to advance U.S. interests without leaving America isolated or ruining the world economy. As much as Trump values unpredictability and improvisation, they are a recipe for miscalculation and failure. 

Here again, the nuclear age offers lessons. What has kept the peace in a world of multiple nuclear states isn’t bluster or brinkmanship but institutions, doctrine and diplomacy. Formally established in 1947, the Joint Chiefs of Staff unified decision-making across military branches, creating a system that could manage the complexities of nuclear competition. The strategy of mutual assured destruction deterred aggression by guaranteeing that any nuclear attack would bring total annihilation for all sides. And international agreements like the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty set clear rules and built trust to limit the spread of nuclear weapons.

Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff attend the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter, Jan. 9. Unlike the military, American economic policy has no unified decision-making structure. Photo: susan walsh/Press pool

We have none of these resources to guide us through today’s Age of Economic Warfare. Authority over sanctions, tariffs and export controls is scattered across multiple agencies, with no one empowered to craft an overarching strategy. We have no doctrines for economic warfare, nor do we have treaties outlining rules and norms. That is why, even when Trump hasn’t been in the White House, the U.S. has often pursued haphazard policies, with decidedly mixed results. If Trump wants to use his favorite weapons effectively, he should start by creating an economic war council to address this problem and develop a coherent strategy.

But if Trump continues on his current course—wielding sanctions and tariffs indiscriminately, against adversaries and allies alike—he risks triggering a vicious cycle of retaliation that fractures the global economy. As supply chains unravel, prices will rise, scarcity will return and our standard of living will suffer.

Painful as that will be, the geopolitical consequences could prove even worse. We originally embraced economic interdependence not only as a path to prosperity but also as a way to prevent war. If states can’t secure resources and markets through trade, the temptation of conquest and imperialism will surge. Great powers could once again find themselves drawn into military conflicts.

If we mishandle them, today’s economic wars could become tomorrow’s shooting wars.

Edward Fishman is a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. His new book, “Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare,” will be published by Portfolio on Feb. 25.

13. Assad’s Fall and the Qatari Gas Pipeline: A Risky Bet or Potential Source of Relief?

Excerpts:

Either way, the U.S. and the EU are both stuck weighing the least costly of the available options. If the pipeline is not built, it will be business as usual: Europe’s rising demand for Chinese-brokered LNG combined with Chinese dominance in clean energy technologies is gradually replacing energy dependence on Russia with energy dependence on China.

If the pipeline through Syria does move forward, it helps Europe mitigate both problems, but the geopolitical power that accrues to the Syrian regime may be beyond the level of acceptable risk. This scenario is also likely to free up more LNG to meet rising demand in the Global South, but this is still likely to go through China unless the U.S. gets serious about long-term partnerships and overseas investment in energy infrastructure.

Purchasing long-term contracts directly from U.S. brokers would solve the bloc’s geopolitical woes, but not without adjusting the EU’s net-zero climate agenda which requires European states convert 45% of its energy supply to renewables by 2030 and phase out fossil fuels entirely by 2050. Inherent in this requirement is a paradox, as building out an electrified grid and renewable infrastructure is itself an extremely energy intensive process that for now can only be achieved primarily by relying on fossil fuels.

Perhaps for this reason, despite the fallout from Ukraine, between 2023 and 2024, Germany quietly increased by 600% its purchase of Russian LNG, which is not subject to the same sanctions as Russian pipeline gas. In the long term, it may make more sense for the EU to adjust its net-zero commitments and opt for a more reliable long-term partnership with the United States. Failure to do so appears inevitably doomed to benefit America’s top adversaries and foes.

Assad’s Fall and the Qatari Gas Pipeline: A Risky Bet or Potential Source of Relief?

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/02/05/assads-fall-and-the-qatari-gas-pipeline/

by Alicia Ellis, by Jeremy Hodge

|

02.05.2025 at 06:00am

Assad’s Fall and the Qatari Gas Pipeline: A Risky Bet or Potential Source of Relief?

Two days after the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkish Energy Minister Alpraslan Bayraktar announced that Ankara was considering resuming construction of a pipeline that linked Qatar’s North Field gas reserves to Turkey’s Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) network via Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria. The announcement was largely drowned out over the next several weeks by the flurry of diplomatic delegations that visited Syria and pledges by foreign governments to provide aid and renewed investments to revive the country’s ailing economy.

If built, the pipeline would be the most consequential development to occur as a result of Assad’s ouster, bringing significant potential benefit to the EU. Today, the EU imports nearly 15% of its natural gas from Qatar and is also the primary market for gas delivered via TANAP, mostly from Azerbaijan. Rerouting Qatari gas via TANAP would make EU imports cheaper and more reliable as it accelerates the bloc’s transition to net zero by preventing supply shortages that could hinder the buildout of renewable infrastructure and electrification of the continent’s energy grid. It would also reduce China’s growing dominance within the global LNG market by potentially crowding out Chinese LNG resold in Europe.

Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Europe managed, in part, to avoid energy shortages by increasing imports of LNG purchased and resold on international spot markets by Chinese middlemen. That year, China became the world’s second largest LNG reseller after Spain, exporting 1.7m tons of mostly US and Russian LNG to European and Asian buyers. China’s resale of LNG is possible because of the significant discounts it receives on U.S. and Russian imports relative to other buyers.

Starting in 2021, China signed numerous long-term purchase agreements with American suppliers indexed to the U.S. Henry Hub, which offers lower rates than European and Asian markets. These agreements did not include final-destination mandates—a practice introduced by the United States in 2015—enabling Chinese state-owned firms to take advantage of the price premium to reap hundreds of millions in profits through resale.

Starting in 2022, Moscow granted Chinese buyers 30 to 50% discounts on LNG, prompting the latter to expand its Russian imports by 28.7%. Despite sluggish growth, China continues to seek new long-term fixed rate contracts to satisfy growing demand that is expected to increase another 50% by 2040, locking China in as the actor with the most influence over world LNG supply for the foreseeable future.

Some of these purchases appear to be aimed at converting China into an international storage and delivery hub for LNG. The growth of such a market could enable China to settle contracts in RMB, contesting the petrodollar’s dominance in the energy sector, and helping to insulate Beijing from U.S. sanctions in the event of military escalation in the Taiwan Straits or South China Sea.

Construction of a Qatari-Turkish pipeline through Syria could help stall or avert such a scenario, and potentially reduce Beijing’s geopolitical leverage over a critical energy sector. However, running a new pipeline through Syria carries its own risk, particularly as the country’s new government begins to take shape.

Syria’s Gas Gambit

First proposed in 2005, former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad vetoed construction of the Qatari-Turkish pipeline on Syrian territory in 2009, due to Russian pressure. Supported at the time by ExxonMobil and Total, the pipeline was one of three proposed in the early 2000s that aimed to connect Middle East gas reserves to Europe via Syria as alternatives to Russian gas, alongside Egypt’s Arab Gas Pipeline and Iran’s Islamic Gas Pipeline projects.

The outbreak of the country’s civil war in 2011 indefinitely ended all prospects that new energy infrastructure would be built in Syria. However, with Assad gone, Qatar and Turkey may be able to pursue construction of the pipeline unobstructed for the first time in 20 years, as both countries have long standing ties to Ha’it Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) —the country’s de-facto governing authority— and other Syrian rebel factions.

The euphoria brought about by Assad’s removal and the end to Syria’s 13-year civil war has furthermore generated significant enthusiasm in the region and in the West for the lifting of sanctions, both on humanitarian grounds and for the economic benefits that would accrue to companies that take part in the country’s reconstruction.

On December 16, 2024, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and Counterterrorism Chris Murphy called on the United States to consider lifting sanctions on Syria entirely on the grounds that the government they were meant to pressure is no longer in place.

On January 06 2025, the U.S. Treasury issued a 6-month license lifting restrictions on remittances and energy sales to Syria, an exemption to sanctions included as part of the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which Congress extended to 2029 on December 12, 2024 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act.

In June 2025, the Trump administration will be left with the decision on whether to extend, expand, or end Syrian sanctions relief. This is a decision that will likely depend to some degree on the extent to which HTS adapts to international norms and abandons its roots as a Salafi-Jihadist organization. The administration should be cleareyed about balancing the benefits against the potential downsides of lifting sanctions and enabling Syria’s rise as a regional energy hub. There are many concerns.

Turning Syria into a regional energy hub, with power over an ever-growing share of Middle East supply, would further increase the group’s (HTS) leverage throughout the region.

For starters, construction of a pipeline through Syria would carry obvious national security concerns, as HTS and other Salafi-Jihadist groups integrated into Syria’s new government could earn significant revenue in transit fees that could be used to finance jihadist networks. By hosting such a pipeline, HTS could also acquire the ability to regulate and potentially embargo a portion of Europe’s energy supply. This situation might create a massive source of geopolitical leverage never before wielded by a Salafi-Jihadist group.

Furthermore, should regional states continue their process of normalization with Syria’s new government, the construction of a Qatari-Turkish pipeline would likely set a precedent that might encourage Egypt, Iran, and other states to consider relaunching the projects they put on hold after 2011.

Despite both being adversaries of Syria’s new administration, Egypt in particular may be able to use the prospect of a lucrative and mutually beneficial energy project as a way to repair relations with HTS following years of providing support to the Assad regime. In such a scenario, turning Syria into a regional energy hub, with power over an ever-growing share of Middle East supply, would further increase the group’s leverage throughout the region.

Practical challenges must also be considered when assessing whether to support the construction of a new pipeline. Unlike spot markets, it is standard for importers of pipeline gas to commit to sign onto years or decades long purchase agreements with suppliers. This requirement would likely undermine the EU’s net-zero commitments and contradict the bloc’s goal of phasing out rather than expanding reliance on fossil fuels.

This desire to avoid long-term purchase agreements is in part what has driven the EU to rely so heavily on LNG spot markets as alternatives to Russian gas. However, rather than avoid Moscow altogether, reliance on LNG has created the space required for China and other non-producing nations to emerge as important middlemen in the global energy market.

Liquid Renminbi, Liquid Gold

The reach of the U.S. sanctions regime along with dominance of the petrodollar is largely possible because of the market for oil futures and derivatives, which dwarves the trade in international physical oil cargo by a factor of nearly thirty. Following the imposition of U.S. sanctions on Russia’s shadow fleet and the associated value chain in 2022, global traders lined up behind Washington for fear of risking their dollar-based futures contracts, leaving Moscow with few options to offload its exports.

Beijing understands the risk posed to its own energy sector by the petrodollar’s dominance, particularly should western countries impose sanctions on China in response to the latter’s military aggression in the Taiwan Straits or South China Sea. China attempts to insulate itself against this risk by diversifying the type, trade partners, and delivery methods of its energy imports, as well as encouraging the use of RMB in settling contracts.

China’s growing role as an LNG re-exporter suggests Beijing may also seek to transform itself into an international liquid delivery and storage hub which can facilitate the development of futures contracts tied to physical cargo that can serve as an alternative to the US Henry Hub index.

In so doing, China would be replicating the trajectory of Brent Crude, which emerged in the 1980s as the marker for crude oil not because of production points, but because of the emergence of a large liquid delivery point. China’s recent activities suggest this may be part of its strategy: even as its imports of LNG continue to increase, local utilization rates remain low.

Rather than avoid Moscow altogether, reliance on LNG has created the space required for China and other non-producing nations to emerge as important middlemen in the global energy market.

China is currently ramping up construction of storage facilities, introducing the world’s largest onshore LNG storage tanks in 2024 as part of the CCP’s Five-year Plan to double LNG storage capacity by 2025. China is also increasing production of LNG tankers, giving its trading companies greater control of growing trade portfolios, and positioning China as the arbiter of LNG in the still-developing global market.

As the trading arms of Chinese state-owned energy giants buy up long-term U.S. LNG contracts at low prices and re-sell it on the spot market to buyers in Europe and the developing world, it does more than pocket tremendous profits off the arbitrage. It positions China to become a hub for both a physical and paper trade, potentially creating an opportunity to price and settle contracts in its own currency.

This would help China meet its dual goals of insulating itself against exposure to the risk of U.S.-led energy embargoes while undermining the petrodollar’s dominance that affords Washington geopolitical leverage in energy markets. Shielded from such leverage, a more emboldened and assertive China may find itself more willing to risk a military conflagration in the region, either in Taiwan or elsewhere in the near Pacific.

Short and Long-Term Prospects

Either way, the U.S. and the EU are both stuck weighing the least costly of the available options. If the pipeline is not built, it will be business as usual: Europe’s rising demand for Chinese-brokered LNG combined with Chinese dominance in clean energy technologies is gradually replacing energy dependence on Russia with energy dependence on China.

If the pipeline through Syria does move forward, it helps Europe mitigate both problems, but the geopolitical power that accrues to the Syrian regime may be beyond the level of acceptable risk. This scenario is also likely to free up more LNG to meet rising demand in the Global South, but this is still likely to go through China unless the U.S. gets serious about long-term partnerships and overseas investment in energy infrastructure.

Purchasing long-term contracts directly from U.S. brokers would solve the bloc’s geopolitical woes, but not without adjusting the EU’s net-zero climate agenda which requires European states convert 45% of its energy supply to renewables by 2030 and phase out fossil fuels entirely by 2050. Inherent in this requirement is a paradox, as building out an electrified grid and renewable infrastructure is itself an extremely energy intensive process that for now can only be achieved primarily by relying on fossil fuels.

Perhaps for this reason, despite the fallout from Ukraine, between 2023 and 2024, Germany quietly increased by 600% its purchase of Russian LNG, which is not subject to the same sanctions as Russian pipeline gas. In the long term, it may make more sense for the EU to adjust its net-zero commitments and opt for a more reliable long-term partnership with the United States. Failure to do so appears inevitably doomed to benefit America’s top adversaries and foes.

Tags: China, Energy, Energy Security, gas, HTS, oil, Russia, Syria, Turkey

About The Authors

• 
  
• Alicia Ellis
• Alicia Ellis is an Assistant Teaching Professor and Director of the MA in Global Security program. She has developed and taught graduate & undergraduate coursework on national security, economic statecraft, geopolitics, war & conflict, and international relations. Alicia was appointed as a Presidential Management Fellow in 2012, during which she served as an analyst at the Department of Treasury’s Office of Financial Research and later as a policy analyst for the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. While assigned to the State Department, she studied Russian language at the Institute of World Politics, including six weeks immersion training in Odessa, Ukraine. A former Air Force officer, she served two deployments as an Air Battle Manager in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, including three months as the Joint Air Operations Center Liaison Officer. She received her B.S. in Political Science from Northern Illinois University, her M.A. in International Relations from St. Mary’s University, and her PhD in Political Science from Arizona State University. Alicia published her dissertation on how the structure of state-industry relations in the agriculture sector impacts democratic accountability. She is a committee member with the Phoenix Committee on Foreign Relations, and currently working on several articles on the impact of political risk on industry and strategic vulnerabilities in the food supply chain.
• View all posts 
• 
  
• Jeremy Hodge
• Jeremy Hodge is a Research Fellow at New America's Future Security Program and Arizona State University's Future Security researching extremist patronage networks in the Middle East. He is also Senior Investigator at the Zomia Center, and an investigative journalist covering the rise of extremism in Syria and Iraq, the petroleum/defense sectors, and regional finance. He has published articles in Foreign Affairs, The Nation, Le Monde Diplomatique, Al Jazeera, The Daily Beast, Africa Confidential and other publications.

14. U.S. soft power took decades to build. Trump is dismantling it in weeks.

​Does Mr. Boot describe the future of strategic competition?

Conclusion:

The major beneficiary is likely to be China, which, as Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) warns on X, “will fill the void” caused by the end of U.S. aid programs. Now that Trump is capriciously imposing tariffs on U.S. allies, China, notwithstanding its bullying behavior, will also become a more attractive trade partner and counterweight to U.S. power for many nations around the world. Far from making America great again, this erosion of soft power will undermine the United States’ economic and national security for years to come.

​When thinking about this (and Mr. Boot and President Trump) it is always good to keep in mind Justice Scalia:

"I attack ideas. I don't attack people. And some very good people have some very bad ideas. And if you can't separate the two, you gotta get another day job. You don't want to be a judge. At least not a judge on a multi-member panel."

– Antonin Scalia

Opinion

Max Boot

U.S. soft power took decades to build. Trump is dismantling it in weeks.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/03/donald-trump-tariffs-canada-mexico-soft-power/

With tariffs and an aid freeze, the president is eroding the United States’ standing in the world.

Updated

February 3, 2025 at 5:40 p.m. ESTFebruary 3, 2025

7 min

752

A flag outside of the headquarters of the U.S. Agency for International Development in Washington on Monday. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Political scientist Joseph Nye coined the term “soft power” in 1990 to denote “the ability to affect others by attraction and persuasion rather than just coercion and payment.” Long before this capability had a name, it was a key part of America’s power projection: Soft power helps to explain why the United States has military bases in at least 80 countries, why the dollar has become the international reserve currency, and why English has become the global language of business and diplomacy.

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China and Russia are also powerful militarily, and China is an economic superpower, but they don’t exercise anywhere close to the global influence that the United States does. That’s because the United States has been a uniquely beneficent superpower. America has committed its share of crimes and blunders, to be sure, but it also has a long history of altruism (think of the Marshall Plan or PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). The United States has also long stood as a beacon of hope to millions “yearning to breathe free,” and it has generally supported international norms and institutions that, to some extent, constrain its own power.

While America’s soft power took decades to accumulate, President Donald Trump appears determined to destroy it in a matter of weeks. Witness the trade war he launched this past weekend with Canada and Mexico (before pausing the tariffs for a month on Monday), the freeze he just imposed on U.S. foreign aid programs and the heartless decision he just reached that could send hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan refugees back to the Marxist dictatorship they fled. Each of these moves amounts to another nail in the coffin of U.S. soft power.

Start with what the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board rightly calls “the dumbest trade war in history.” Trump announced he is imposing 10 percent tariffs on China, the United States’ chief competitor, and 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada. Why? His explanations are nonsensical. He claims that Mexico and Canada aren’t doing enough to stop the flow of fentanyl and undocumented immigrants into the United States while also complaining about U.S. trade deficits with those countries.

Following Max Boot

Following

Yet U.S. trade with Mexico and Canada — which in 2022 totaled more than $1.7 trillion — is mutually beneficial. The automobile industry is so integrated across the three countries that Trump’s tariffs, if implemented, will almost certainly cause massive disruption to U.S. automakers. As for the claim that Mexico and Canada aren’t doing enough to stop the flow of migrants and drugs, they appear to be doing their level best. But there are limits on their ability to control their own borders, just as there are limits on the ability of the U.S. government to stop the illegal export of guns to both countries. (“In 2023,” the BBC reports, “90% of handguns recovered after violent crimes in Ontario — Canada’s most populous province — were traced back to the US.”)

Canada is particularly blameless: In fiscal 2024, the U.S.-Canada border accounted for less than 1 percent of all fentanyl seizures and 1.5 percent of all apprehensions of undocumented immigrants at U.S. borders. On Monday, Trump said he was delaying the tariffs for a month while both Canada and Mexico beef up border security, even though in Canada’s case there was no problem with border security to begin with.

No wonder that Canadians “are a little perplexed,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Saturday, “as to why our closest friends and neighbors are choosing to target us.” This, after all, is a country that sent its soldiers to fight alongside U.S. troops from the beaches of D-Day in Europe to the villages of Kandahar in Afghanistan. Canadian TV anchor Adrienne Arsenault says the “whole country” is receiving “a lesson in heartache.” Ordinary Canadian sports fans showed their feelings by booing the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at NBA and NHL games over the weekend.

By freezing most U.S. foreign aid for 90 days and moving to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, Trump is alienating many more people around the world who have come to rely on U.S. help to survive diseases such as AIDS and malaria, to get access to clean water or to stave off malnutrition. Far from being an “evil” and “criminal organization” that deserves “to die” — as Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, bizarrely labeled it on Sunday — USAID has been a vital component of America’s soft power. No doubt some aid programs are wasteful and in need of reform, but there is no excuse for this kind of blunderbuss assault on all foreign assistance.

While Secretary of State Marco Rubio granted an exemption from the aid freeze for lifesaving humanitarian work, outside aid groups say that USAID’s payment system has been dismantled and that “medicines are still sitting on shelves without nurses to distribute.” Whether this is malevolence or incompetence doesn’t matter; the result is the same.

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In Uganda, the New York Times reports, insecticides aren’t being sprayed and bed nets aren’t being distributed to combat malaria. In Zambia, drugs that can stop hemorrhages in pregnant women are not being distributed. And all over South Asia, Africa and Latin America, thousands of people enrolled in clinical trials are no longer getting access to treatment. As researchers and program managers talked about the results of the U.S. aid freeze with a Times reporter, many of them “broke down in tears as they described the rapid destruction of decades of work.”

And for what purpose? To save 1 percent of the federal budget?

No doubt the Venezuelan refugees who will now be forcibly repatriated to their destitute and repressive homeland will also shed more than a few tears. Rubio himself, while still a U.S. senator, said in a 2022 letter that deporting Venezuelans would be a “death sentence.” And Trump, in his first term, had offered Venezuelans a reprieve from deportation because of what he described as the “catastrophic” situation in their country.

But whatever restraints guided Trump in his first term are rapidly being shed in his second. So, now, the Department of Homeland Security is revoking temporary protected status for 600,000 Venezuelan refugees in the United States, thereby placing them at risk of deportation. This is a betrayal of America’s identity as a nation that offers a haven for refugees — including my own family when we fled the Soviet Union in 1976.

It is staggering to see how much damage Trump has done to U.S. soft power in just two weeks and painful to imagine how much more he could do in the next 206 weeks. Whatever minor concessions Trump might be able to extort from U.S. allies such as Mexico or Canada with his heavy-handed demands are not worth the damage to America’s long-term relationships with those countries.

The major beneficiary is likely to be China, which, as Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) warns on X, “will fill the void” caused by the end of U.S. aid programs. Now that Trump is capriciously imposing tariffs on U.S. allies, China, notwithstanding its bullying behavior, will also become a more attractive trade partner and counterweight to U.S. power for many nations around the world. Far from making America great again, this erosion of soft power will undermine the United States’ economic and national security for years to come.

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By Max Boot

Max Boot is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in biography, he is the author, most recently, of the New York Times bestseller “Reagan: His Life and Legend," which was named one of the 10 best books of 2024 by the New York Times.

15. The Boys of DOGE

​Yep. We have seen the wiz kids before.  

But is it different this time? He Who Rules The Data, Rules The World

But Mr. Levin makes a good point: What is the vision? What is the end state? Or more to the point, what is the acceptable durable political arrangement that will serve the American people? Are we going to be ruled by algorithms? Do the American people want to be governed and ruled by algorithms?

Excerpts:

The problem, Levin said, is that the Trump administration has not made clear what the “end goal of DOGE is at this point.” Indeed, it has not. If DOGE is an instrument aimed at reducing the federal budget deficit, then even dramatic moves like eliminating the Department of Education or USAID will hardly make a difference, if government entitlements and defense spending are not addressed. If DOGE is just a way to cut the waste, fraud, and abuse from government, then perhaps it would be wiser to operate as a scalpel within government programs instead of as a sledgehammer eliminating whole programs altogether.

Whatever happens with DOGE, though, it’s important to remember that the young lads working for Musk are not really the deciders. It’s the middle-aged billionaire advising the senior citizen president who makes the call of what government programs live or die.

The Boys of DOGE

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-boys-of-doge?utm

Before you reach for the Valium, it’s worth remembering this isn’t the first time twentysomethings have helped lead a revolution inside the nation’s capital.

By Eli Lake

02.04.25 — U.S. Politics

Meet the lads who will help decide the fate of America’s administrative state. Many of them are barely old enough to order a drink. And yet these engineers staffing Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, appear to be running the current Hunger Games for the federal bureaucracy.

Or so it would seem from recent profiles of the young engineers selected by Musk to cut the fat out of such bureaucracies as the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The DOGE lads include 22-year-old Luke Farritor, who won a $250,000 prize for using AI to help decode one of the ancient scrolls found near the ruins of Pompeii. (We profiled him in February 2024.) There is also 21-year-old Akash Bobba, a Berkeley student and former intern at the Bridgewater Associates investment firm. And Ethan Shaotran, a 22-year-old senior at Harvard University, who launched his own AI start-up with a $100,000 grant from OpenAI. And let’s not forget Gavin Kleger, 25, who lists his title as “Special Adviser to the Director” of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. His paywalled Substack, with one post titled “Why I Gave Up a Seven-Figure Salary to Save America” can be read for $1,000 a month or $10,000 a year.

While these whippersnappers have impressive accomplishments and look primed for long and prosperous careers in tech and business, many of Washington’s middle-aged pundits and journalists are shocked and horrified that the fate of the federal government appears to be in the hands of kids who were in grade school when Donald Trump was first elected president in 2016.

“It is very unlikely they have the expertise to understand either the law or the administrative needs that surround these agencies,” huffed University of Minnesota law professor Nick Bednar to Wired magazine.

The Democrats agree. “The American people will not stand for an unelected secret group to run rampant through the executive branch,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday. “Being innovative is good, but Mr. Musk, this isn’t a tech startup. These are public institutions.”

Admittedly, like so much in the new Trump era, there is a strong possibility that all of this disruption will end in catastrophe. But before you reach for the Valium, it’s worth considering that this is by no means the first time twentysomethings have helped lead a revolution inside the nation’s capital.

Peter Robinson, who led his own conservative revolution in Washington 45 years ago, was a twentysomething speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan. He told The Free Press that sometimes the young and inexperienced bring a certain fearlessness in taking on encrusted bureaucracies.

Robinson helped write Reagan’s famous speech where he implored Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” referring to the barrier that divided East and West Berlin. Robinson said that this iconic section of the speech was opposed by Reagan’s secretary of state, George Shultz, and his brilliant aide, Peter Rodman.

“Schultz had served in the Nixon administration and Rodman was a protégé of Henry Kissinger,” he said. “They had learned in their youth that in the Cold War, we would not win and they would not lose.” In this respect, Robinson said, they were shaped by the realities of their youth. He had the advantage of being a very young man who hadn’t learned those hard lessons, and that allowed him to better align with the president for whom he was writing speeches.

The point is that sometimes being young is an advantage because you haven’t learned you can’t do the things that your president insists must be done.

Then there was President Harry Truman’s decision to recognize the state of Israel. He brought in a young lawyer named Clark Clifford to argue the case for recognizing the Jewish state, which was fiercely opposed by his secretary of state, George Marshall, who had been the top general in World War II. All his experience had taught Marshall to be attuned to the long-standing opposition of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to the creation of Israel. Clifford had the advantage of lacking precisely that experience.

Robinson finds the critique of the young lads of DOGE to be absurd for another reason—namely, the federal government has always relied on talented and ambitious young people; as they get older and start families, working for the government becomes financially difficult.

“Not only should Washington be open to young people, but young people are the only people in Washington to get things done that you can rely on,” Robinson said. “People in the middle of their careers cannot afford to stay in government because government salaries are not that great. High-flyers go to Wall Street or Silicon Valley; they don’t stay in Washington for their peak earning years.”

Finally, it’s a bit unfair to say that the young kids like Farritor, Bobba, Shaotran, and Kleger are making billion-dollar decisions on what programs will be cut. They are still working on behalf of President Donald Trump. “The president has the right to send his people to look under the hood of any agency,” Yuval Levin, the director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute, told The Free Press.

The problem, Levin said, is that the Trump administration has not made clear what the “end goal of DOGE is at this point.” Indeed, it has not. If DOGE is an instrument aimed at reducing the federal budget deficit, then even dramatic moves like eliminating the Department of Education or USAID will hardly make a difference, if government entitlements and defense spending are not addressed. If DOGE is just a way to cut the waste, fraud, and abuse from government, then perhaps it would be wiser to operate as a scalpel within government programs instead of as a sledgehammer eliminating whole programs altogether.

Whatever happens with DOGE, though, it’s important to remember that the young lads working for Musk are not really the deciders. It’s the middle-aged billionaire advising the senior citizen president who makes the call of what government programs live or die.

16. USAID shutoff will hurt US interests around the globe, including Ukraine

​Excerpts:

But the second official said Congress is actually a big part of the reason USAID gets a bad rap.

The agency has been “regulated and has been picked to pieces by Congress,” they said. Specifically, many of the agency’s new programs must be approved by Congress. But the process is highly inefficient and results in money going to areas that are less urgent.

For example, the official said, USAID was pursuing a program to provide solar power for one community, but Congress killed the initiative out of fear that the chips in the solar panels might have to come from China. The end result: USAID had to spend the money on another area, before it expired altogether.

“You’ve got to throw it into something that exists already,” like a job program, they said.

As an aside, while I have a lot of gerst experiences with USAID some of the problems I have seen have been the result of Congress. Back in the day of earmarks I saw specific funding provided to USAID to provide to specific organizations to conduct specific projects that these organizations had lobbied for. They had to be executed even if they were counter to the Ambassador's mission strategic plan or the military campaign plan. Things were made worse for USAID because these organizations would not provide an accurate accounting of funding because they thought they had Congressional top cover and did not think they had to answer to USAID even though USAID was responsible for providing the funding and administering the programs. One "project" I saw was the ice cream Sunday project where a certain NGO would fly a handful of children from a conflict zone to a stable area to have ice cream cones on a sunday. Another was an NGO providing plastic chairs to schools with the organization's name and logo on it but nothing attributable to the host nation government or the US. It was simply an advertising campaign for the NGO funded by the US government. The plastic chairs were so cheap that they broke within weeks and the advertising stenciled on them cost more than the chairs themselves. My USAID friends were so frustrated because there was nothing they could do despite decrying the fraud, waste, and abuse. But of course these stories do not compare to condoms for Hamas and the Taliban. 

USAID shutoff will hurt US interests around the globe, including Ukraine

The end of USAID is a win for China and Russia.

By Patrick Tucker

Science & Technology Editor

February 5, 2025 12:31 AM E

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

The Trump administration's assault on USAID will help China and Russia and hurt countries friendly to the United States, current and former government officials say. And it will undermine Ukraine's efforts to fend off invasion and lead to the unnecessary deaths of troops and civilians, Ukrainian military leaders said on a recent visit to Washington, D.C.

“We should understand that it's not only about some small projects in some NGOs. It's about people's lives,” one Ukrainian commander said Monday.

The U.S. Agency for International Development is best known as an organization that provides humanitarian assistance to people around the world—including to governments under direct military attack, such as Ukraine, or ones targeted for election interference, such as Moldova.

USAID does not—and cannot—provide direct military support to Ukraine. But because all of Ukraine is under attack, the country’s civilian and military healthcare systems overlap significantly, with some civilian medical facilities located less than a kilometer from the front line. So supporting the civilian healthcare system in Ukraine indirectly supports the country’s fight against Russia.

A January memo from USAID obtained by Defense One outlines $35 billion in development assistance the agency provided to Ukraine since the start of the invasion, including money to enable the “government to provide emergency services and support to public employees—such as frontline health workers—undertaking essential duties at a time of crisis.” But the assistance also funds energy initiatives, helping the government pay workers, and other items.

Having medical supplies readily available is crucial not just for keeping soldiers alive, but also for doing military planning, since predicted casualty numbers are part of the operation planning process, the commander said. Ukraine is reportedly talking to European allies about replacing the assistance USAID has provided if the funds are cut off, but finding a new source of support makes things more difficult.

Countering Chinese and Russian influence

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was named acting director of USAID on Monday, said in a letter to lawmakers that USAID will “move, reorganize, and integrate certain missions, bureaus, and offices into the Department of State, and the remainder of the Agency may be abolished consistent with applicable law,” the Washington Post reported. Employees on Tuesday began receiving notices that they would be placed on administrative leave.

The agency’s headquarters in DC was also closed, with employees locked out their online work accounts and dozens of senior staff put on leave. Elon Musk, the billionaire defense contractor at the head of the recently created Department of Government Efficiency, has targeted the agency, and in a live stream Monday on X, which he owns, called it a “criminal organization.”

USAID officials reported that individuals working for DOGE, some of whom have previously worked Musk’s companies, attempted to gain access to classified materials in USAID’s possession.

Katie Miller, wife of Trump advisor Stephen Miller, is serving as a spokesperson for DOGE. She posted on X on Monday that, “No classified material was accessed without proper security clearances.”

A January 20 executive order grants Trump the ability to extend security clearances to whomever he sees fit, for a period of six months. But Miller did not respond to a Defense One query asking for clarification on whether DOGE workers attempting to access classified information had passed any sort of formal background check.

Democratic lawmakers have voiced serious concerns about the effects of shuttering the agency so abruptly.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., on Monday told CNN that “Congress writes a law that dictates how USAID spends money, to make sure that we're countering Chinese influence inside Africa, to make sure that we don't lose access to critical mineral supplies, so that we're fighting back against Hezbollah in Lebanon.”

In Ukraine, the agency has done far more than provide emergency medical supplies, according to the memo. For example, USAID also worked to offset the costs to the global food supply caused by Russia’s attacks on Ukraine farmers and grain producers.. Other investments include sovereign loan guarantees allowing Ukraine to access “$20 billion in immobilized Russian sovereign assets,” essentially helping Ukraine’s economy continue to grow. The agency played a big role in helping Ukraine transform its economy to be more resilient, and emerge as a “potential as a world leader in digital innovation” despite the ongoing conflict, according to the memo.

One former senior government official said USAID has been an essential part of the effort to account for U.S. weapons and other aid to Ukraine. The agency is “enabling Ukrainian oversight over that direct budget support, and in the Ministry of Finance. And as a result, I think other Ukrainian ministries have taken on that example to expand their own oversight, building their own systems, because those systems and that oversight is critical to retaining U.S. support.”

A current U.S. government official who has worked directly with USAID said agency workers are able to apply for special waivers from the State Department to unfreeze vital aid, such as for Ukraine. But they might be competing against a variety of other USAID teams.

A third U.S. government official said USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, which responds to the most urgent needs, could get a waiver specifically to carry out key support functions in places like Ukraine. The official described the bureau as similar to a special operations force: small but able to quickly maneuver in and out of countries to contend with crises that could escalate quickly. In regard to Ukraine, the official said, “I would expect that they're probably focused on would-be payroll assistance for the government, a lot of things that were going through, aid to pay for keeping Ukraine running.”

All of the current and former officials emphasized the importance of USAID efforts in countering Chinese influence around the globe, such as in Eastern Europe where the Russian government is actively attempting to undermine free elections in order to install officials sympathetic to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“It's just critically important that we help those countries grow more resilient, to withstand Russian aggression. And if you undercut the programming that USAID has, you're inviting a free hand for Russian meddling,” one of the officials said.

USAID is also critical to combating growing Chinese influence in other places in the world. For example, in Africa, where AFRICOM Commander Gen. Michael Langley in October specifically highlighted the agency’s role in stabilizing regions, which facilitates continued U.S. operations.

USAID and Congress

The role of USAID in countering Russian and Chinese influence isn’t lost on many lawmakers—including some Trump allies.

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss, said Monday: “I have felt for a long time that USAID is our way to combat the Belt and Road Initiative, which is China's effort to really gain influence around the world, including Africa and South America and the Western Hemisphere. So we need an aid program to match the Chinese effort.” But Wicker is concerned about allegations of mismanagement at the agency, and wants to make sure aid efforts reflect what “policy makers of the United States have decided [they] ought to be doing, so I'm eager to see an audit,” he said.

But the second official said Congress is actually a big part of the reason USAID gets a bad rap.

The agency has been “regulated and has been picked to pieces by Congress,” they said. Specifically, many of the agency’s new programs must be approved by Congress. But the process is highly inefficient and results in money going to areas that are less urgent.

For example, the official said, USAID was pursuing a program to provide solar power for one community, but Congress killed the initiative out of fear that the chips in the solar panels might have to come from China. The end result: USAID had to spend the money on another area, before it expired altogether.

“You’ve got to throw it into something that exists already,” like a job program, they said.

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

17. Donald Trump’s New Tariffs Could Be a Fatal Blow to China’s Economy

​Excerpts:

China can absorb the 10% tariff, but it would have difficulty if Trump were to fulfill campaign promises and take tariffs to the 70% level. At the moment, Trump tariffs are at about 35%.

China’s economy is protected by high currency walls, but those walls are leaking cash, which means the situation is serious for the regime, especially because the country is already on the edge of a debt crisis.

“I don’t think they want the trade war escalating,” said John Gong of Beijing’s University of International Business and Economics to the Associated Press, referring to the Chinese leadership.

That’s correct. This trade war could last a long time. And should it do so, Trump’s next rounds of tariffs will almost certainly tank the Chinese economy—and maybe take the already fragile regime with it.

Donald Trump’s New Tariffs Could Be a Fatal Blow to China’s Economy

19fortyfive.com · by Gordon Chang · February 4, 2025

Saturday, President Donald Trump announced additional tariffs on China, Canada, and Mexico.

The Canadian and Mexican governments will certainly survive the episode. China’s, on the other hand, might not.

Over the weekend, Trump made good on campaign promises. “Today, I have implemented a 25% Tariff on Imports from Mexico and Canada (10% on Canadian Energy), and a 10% additional Tariff on China,” he announced on X on Saturday afternoon. “This was done through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) because of the major threat of illegal aliens and deadly drugs killing our Citizens, including fentanyl.”

Canada immediately retaliated with tariffs of its own, but late Monday, just hours before the American tariffs were to go into effect, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came to terms with Trump, agreeing to appoint a “Fentanyl Czar” and adopting other measures.

Mexico quickly decided to send 10,000 soldiers to the U.S. border to fight the cartels involved in the deadly drug plague.

China vs. the Trump Tariffs

China was not so accommodating. Beijing retaliated on Tuesday with an array of measures. The Ministry of Finance imposed 10% and 15% tariffs on a variety of products including crude oil, coal, liquefied natural gas, large cars, and agricultural machinery.

The Ministry of Commerce announced new export controls on metal products and technologies and added American companies to its unreliable entities list. The State Administration for Market Regulation began an anti-monopoly investigation of Google, which has almost no operations in China.

Beijing also launched a propaganda barrage. “China’s position is firm and consistent,” a foreign ministry spokesperson stated in remarks carried by the official Xinhua News Agency on Sunday. “There is no winner in trade and tariff wars.”

In fact, there are winners. The Chinese regime, however, will not be among them.

Trade-surplus countries like China do not have much ammunition in struggles with deficit ones like America. We can see that in the remarks of the oft-quoted Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics, who stated in a research note that China’s measures were “fairly modest.” They were, he pointed out, “calibrated to try to send a message” to the Trump administration “without inflicting too much damage.”

Ultimately, there is not much damage Beijing can inflict, except to itself.

At the end of November, China’s merchandise trade surplus with the United States amounted to $270.4 billion and was on track to exceed last year’s full-year surplus.

Things Could Get Bad For China’s Economy

China’s predicament is even worse than that large number suggests. For one thing, China is fighting a larger economy. Last year, the U.S. produced about $29.2 trillion in gross domestic product. China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported $18.8 trillion.

Beijing’s GDP report is highly suspect. China, for instance, reported a whopping 10.7% year-on-year export growth in December, a figure well above expectations.

Why such an increase? China needed a great December so that it could report 5.4% growth in the fourth—last—quarter of last year. It needed a great Q4 in order to report full-year GDP growth of 5.0%. Beijing needed 5.0% to meet its official target of “around 5%.”

Xi Jinping Is Creating Problems

As China’s economic problems get worse—the economy is not growing anywhere near the 5.0% pace if it is growing at all—Xi is doubling down on policies undermining the economy.

Most important, he rejects the idea accepted most everywhere that consumption should be the basis of an economy. Xi does not want to empower consumers, he does not want to offend powerful blocs in the Communist Party, he wants to build a wartime economy, he wants to protect the interest margins of fragile state banks. To accomplish all these objectives, China’s ideological leader is implementing policies inhibiting consumer spending.

This means China, as Scott Bessent said in his Senate confirmation hearing last month, has “the most imbalanced, unbalanced economy in the history of the world.”

China Can’t Export Itself Out of an Economic Jam

In these circumstances, Xi Jinping has only one way to rescue the Chinese economy: export more. In practice, he has put the fate of his regime in America’s hands. The United States is by far the world’s largest market, and it cannot be replaced in any realistic time frame.

Moreover, both the European Union and so-called “Global South” countries, perhaps inspired by American moves, are beginning to erect tariff barriers to Chinese goods of their own.

China’s position, therefore, is increasingly vulnerable. Trump can shut out Chinese goods in two ways. First, he can further tariff China as promised during the campaign. He first pledged across-the-board tariffs of at least 60% and later a 10% tariff. Trump made good on the latter promise on Saturday.

Second, Trump can—should—enforce the Tariff Act of 1930, which bars the importation into the United States of goods made with forced labor. Many Chinese goods, including all or virtually all of the country’s “green” products, are made with such labor.

Donald Trump Isn’t Backing Down on Tariffs

Trump looks serious. He took an important step on Saturday by eliminating the “de minimis” exemption for Chinese goods. The provision allowed China’s Temu and Shein, among others, to ship goods worth $800 or less to American consumers free of American tariffs.

To keep access to the American market, the Chinese government and Chinese factories absorbed somewhere between 75% to 81% of the cost of Trump’s 25% tariffs imposed in 2018. This time, the regime has even greater motivation to effectively pay tariffs.

President-elect of the United States Donald Trump speaking with attendees at the 2024 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona.

China can absorb the 10% tariff, but it would have difficulty if Trump were to fulfill campaign promises and take tariffs to the 70% level. At the moment, Trump tariffs are at about 35%.

China’s economy is protected by high currency walls, but those walls are leaking cash, which means the situation is serious for the regime, especially because the country is already on the edge of a debt crisis.

“I don’t think they want the trade war escalating,” said John Gong of Beijing’s University of International Business and Economics to the Associated Press, referring to the Chinese leadership.

That’s correct. This trade war could last a long time. And should it do so, Trump’s next rounds of tariffs will almost certainly tank the Chinese economy—and maybe take the already fragile regime with it.

About the Author: Gordon Chang

Gordon G. Chang is the author of Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America and The Coming Collapse of China. Follow him on X @GordonGChang.

19fortyfive.com · by Gordon Chang · February 4, 2025

18. Collins becomes first post-9/11 vet to be confirmed as VA secretary

Collins becomes first post-9/11 vet to be confirmed as VA secretary

militarytimes.com · by Leo Shane III · February 4, 2025

Senate lawmakers on Tuesday confirmed former Georgia congressman Doug Collins as the next Veterans Affairs Secretary, putting a post-9/11 veteran into the Cabinet post for the first time.

Collins, 58, served in both the Navy and Air Force Reserve as a chaplain and deployed to Iraq as a member of the 94th Airlift Wing. During his confirmation hearing Jan. 21, he talked about experiencing toxic burn-pit smoke firsthand while overseas and counseling service members about the mental stresses of combat deployments.

“I understand the issues many veterans face because they’ve impacted me or those with whom I’ve served,” Collins told lawmakers at the event.

The former House Republican lawmaker was confirmed by a bipartisan 77-23 vote in the Senate, a contrast to many of the close and contentious roll calls for other nominees of President Donald Trump.

Collins has close ties to the commander-in-chief, serving as a legal counsel for Trump since leaving Congress three years ago. He also appeared on the campaign trail with Trump throughout the summer during his reelection campaign.

RELATED

VA secretary nominee promises more medical care options and upgrades

Nominee Doug Collins said he wants to expand VA's community care program while still strengthening the existing department health care system.

Collins has questioned the validity of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to former President Joe Biden.

Now, he’ll take over an agency with a budget of over $350 billion and more than 450,000 employees, responsible for distributing benefits and health care services to more than 9 million veterans nationwide.

Opposition to Collins was centered largely on his position on abortion. Collins has been a fierce critic of abortion access in the past, and during his confirmation hearing he refused to commit to keeping current policies on abortion services at VA.

“We will look at this [abortion] rule and see if it complies with the law,” he told senators. “It is a debatable issue. We’re going to look at it and make sure that the VA is following the law.”

The White House has already announced Chris Syrek will serve as chief of staff to Collins. Cheryl Mason, Karen Brazell, Curt Cashour, Lavin Gartland and John Bartrum will all serve as senior advisors to the secretary.

In early January, Trump nominated former Republican Nevada Senate candidate Sam Brown to serve as head of cemetery and memorial affairs for VA. The administration has not announced plans to start the process for choosing the under secretary of health or under secretary of benefits, posts which require a lengthy review process with outside advocates.

Immediately after Collins’ confirmation, Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee ranking member Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. — who voted for Collins — sent a letter to the new secretary congratulating him on the result but also charging him to ensure that veterans services and programs are protected in the new administration.

“Over the past two weeks, we have seen an unprecedented number of dangerous and unlawful actions from the White House that will decrease access to care for veterans across the country, delay delivery of recently-expanded benefits for toxic-exposed veterans and their families, and disrupt a wide array of critical services and opportunities they rely upon,” he wrote. “This deluge of harmful actions is a betrayal of trust for veterans, and must be reversed quickly and unequivocally.”

Among the requests from Blumenthal are an exemption from the White House’s federal hiring freeze for all VA jobs; the re-appointment of Mike Missal as VA Inspector General; and the blocking all Department of Government Efficiency employees from accessing veterans’ health care records and personal data.

Officials from Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America noted the historic nature of Collin’s confirmation, making him the first post-9/11 servicemember to serve in the top veterans policy job.

“What remains to be seen, however, is if we can also count on Secretary Collins to also ensure that our generation of veterans’ unique needs are effectively prioritized as he leads VA,” IAVA CEO and Iraq War veteran Allison Jaslow said in a statement. “We nevertheless remain hopeful that he’ll do right by our nation’s veterans as he steps in to lead the VA at such a consequential time for the agency.”

Collins is expected to be sworn in as secretary in the next few days.

About Leo Shane III

Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.

19. 'Infinite Nightmares at Once': Veterans Data Swept Up in Musk's Takeover of Treasury System

​Again..... He Who Rules The Data, Rules The World

Or in this case rules the veterans.

'Infinite Nightmares at Once': Veterans Data Swept Up in Musk's Takeover of Treasury System

military.com · by Rebecca Kheel · February 4, 2025

Sensitive veterans data, including information about Department of Veterans Affairs benefits, are among the Treasury Department records Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency now has access to amid his quest to unilaterally cut government spending and personnel.

Over the weekend, Musk and his team gained access to the system that the Treasury Department uses to make all U.S. government payments. The system includes taxpayer data, such as Social Security numbers, for nearly every American, which naturally includes scores of veterans. On top of that, information about VA disability and retirement benefits, Medicare and Medicaid payments and any other government benefits veterans might receive would be swept up in the system.

"Anyone who's receiving payments from the federal government, first and foremost, is likely to be concerned that payments that they are obliged to receive might not show up, either intentionally because they're getting blocked for some reason that's not explained, or even unintentionally, because they're giving admin access to a critical piece of our federal infrastructure to random coders off the street, which violates like every principle of cybersecurity and administration of these systems that exists," said Alan Butler, executive director and president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit privacy advocacy group.

The top Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee also sounded the alarm Monday specifically about the risk to veterans.

"With this takeover, Musk can now access veterans' personal data -- from where they live, to their bank account info, and the amount of their earned VA benefits," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in a statement. "Veterans risked their lives to defend this country, and they deserve more than to have unaccountable billionaires playing with the benefits they earned and rely on."

The Treasury Department did not respond to Military.com's request for comment Tuesday on concerns about veterans' data being exposed to Musk and his team.

Musk, the world's richest man whose companies SpaceX and Tesla have earned billions of dollars from government contracts, was appointed by Trump to lead what was dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to take a sledgehammer to government spending.

Despite the name, DOGE is not actually a federal department. Rather, Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office that rebranded an existing White House office that was called the U.S. Digital Service into DOGE, which is also the name of a cryptocurrency that Musk has boosted in the past.

DOGE, which Wired reported is staffed by 19- to 24-year-olds with previous connections to Musk's companies, sought and gained access to the Treasury system after the White House's effort to freeze wide swaths of government funding was blocked by court orders and elicited widespread public panic and outrage.

By Musk's own description, the goal of gaining access to the Treasury system is to stop some payments from going out.

"Obviously, DOGE is trying to stop your tax dollars from being stolen for waste and fraud," Musk posted Tuesday on the social media platform he owns, X, in response to Democratic criticism of him gaining access to the Treasury payment system.

On Monday, the White House told The New York Times that Musk's team's access to the system is "read only," meaning they cannot make changes or stop payments themselves.

Even if that is true, Butler said, the access to the system is still concerning.

"That is still a massive invasion of privacy, first of all, and still imposes significant ongoing risks," Butler said. "Because 'read' includes the ability to exfiltrate data. ... All of this just exponentially increases the odds that this data gets breached, that people's private information is breached, that national security is breached. Infinite nightmares at once."

Two federal employees unions and an advocacy group called the Alliance for Retired Americans sued the Treasury Department on Monday over Musk's access to the payment system. The lawsuit notes that veterans benefits, Social Security payments and tax refunds are handled on the system and argues that the move to give Musk and DOGE access violates federal privacy laws.

Democrats have also cited the risk to veterans as they agitate to block Musk's access.

In addition to his statement Monday, Blumenthal sent VA Secretary Doug Collins a letter Tuesday, immediately after the Senate voted to confirm Collins to the job, outlining what he would like to see from Collins at the beginning of his tenure.

Among Blumenthal's demands, he called for Collins to "restrict, block, or remove Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee access to all VA data systems and records, including those holding veterans' private health, benefits and related financial information, and VA employee personnel files."

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, both Democrats of New York, also said Tuesday they were introducing a bill to "prevent unlawful meddling in the Treasury Department's payment systems." They are calling the bill "Stop the Steal," a winking name that references Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election.

"They are raiding the government and attempting to steal taxpayer money," Jeffries said at a news conference Tuesday. "That's what the situation at the Treasury Department is all about."

He said the legislation would block "people who are trying to steal personal, sensitive and confidential information related to Social Security recipients, Medicare recipients, taxpayers, businesses, not-for-profits, veterans and everyday Americans."

military.com · by Rebecca Kheel · February 4, 2025

20. This new Army special ops fitness center is decked out like a pro sports gym

This new Army special ops fitness center is decked out like a pro sports gym

The Human Performance & Force Generation Training Center, or HP Forge, at Fort Liberty cost $43 million, includes 100 workout stations and a digital shooting range. But it's just for special ops students.

Joshua Skovlund

Posted 15 Hours Ago

taskandpurpose.com · by Joshua Skovlund

A massive new gym at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, has over 100 weight and cardio stations, a platoon-sized kitchen, and a digital shooting range — though it is open just to students and staff at the Army’s special operations training hub.

At $43 million, the Human Performance & Force Generation Training Center, or HP Forge, took three years to build and will be the fitness hub for the 1,000 or so students, instructors and staff at the Army’s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. The JFK center runs the training pipelines for the Army’s Green Berets, Civil Affairs, and psychological warfare troops.

“This all goes back to our first SOF Truth that humans are more important than hardware,” Lt. Col. Mike Handlan, the director of Human Performance and Wellness at the JFK school, told Task & Purpose in an email. “This is an example of investing in our people and ensuring they get the best possible training, both on and off the field.”

Along with fitness equipment, the center will have what the Army calls a synthetic training environment, made up of “two digital marksmanship and simulation trainers,” a JFK spokesperson told Task & Purpose. One will be an “immersive 300-degree (5 screen), the other a flat-screen simulator.”

Similar to marksmanship or “shoot-no shoot” scenarios trainers used by law enforcement, the systems will also be able to put students through scenarios with “distractions both visual and audio” specific to military training while staff monitor students with heart rate and eye tracking equipment. Up to 25 students can use the simulator at once, JFK officials said.

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The 90,000-square foot facility, which opened to soldiers in December, is nearly twice the size of another massive Special Forces gym that opened in 2022 on Fort Liberty, the Duskin Human Performance Training Center. That gym, at 56,000 square-feet and with much of the same equipment and facilities, is the fitness and wellness center for the 3rd Special Forces Group.

Latest addition to special ops ‘campus’

The new gym sits adjacent to a complex of three-story classroom buildings at Fort Liberty that look more akin to a university campus than a traditional Army garrison. Opened in 2022, the buildings house hundreds of classrooms where students in JFK training pipelines attend classes during the academic phases of their training.

For instance, after months of rigorous field training to begin their Special Forces training, new Green Berets can spend up to a year attending classes at the center to learn a foreign language before reporting to their first active unit.

New York Jets Head Athlet1ic Trainer David Zuffelato, center, meets with leadership from the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Ft. Liberty, North Carolina in 2023 at the 3rd Special Forces Group Human Performance and Wellness Facility. Army photo by K. Kassens

Roughly the size of a Target or Super Walmart, just under half of the HP Forge facility is filled with workout equipment, while the rest has classrooms, a kitchen, offices, and physical therapy, rehab rooms and the shooting trainer.

“It provides holistic training across a variety of disciplines, maximizing the performance potential of each soldier and providing them with foundational knowledge that will serve them throughout their career,” Handlan said in a statement to Task & Purpose. “This includes not only the physical domain, but also the cognitive, psychological, family, social, and spiritual domains.”

The facility is staffed by strength and conditioning coaches, physical therapists, performance dieticians, mental performance coaches, performance integrators, and a data and analytics cell.

A ‘pro-style’ strength and fitness center

A glance at the gym’s equipment list almost reads more NFL than SOF, and that may be because the Army has brought in pro sports consultants to advise on using it. According to an Army release, New York Jets Head Athletic Trainer David Zuffelato visited the JFK school in 2023 as a “subject matter expert” on the fitness and training programs in the wellness centers.

Among the equipment in the center:

• 44 strength training racks with barbells, kettlebells, medicine balls, dumbbells, and over 30,000 pounds of weight plates;
• 56 cardiovascular machines;
• 22 Reverse Hyperextension machines;
• 10 push/pull sleds;
• 5 “run rockets,” machines that “hold back” a sprinter with a weighted tension cable;
• 4 recovery chairs;
• A large turf open training area;
• Sports medicine clinic with 18 tables for physical rehabilitation;
• A “performance kitchen” that can serve up to 49 people at a time;
• A behavioral health clinic;
• The synthetic training environment.

Up to 300 soldiers can work out at a time in the gym.

Handlan said the design behind HP Forge will assist the command with early detection of ailing physical or mental health, allowing the training teams to catch and treat problems before they become difficult to treat.

“Research consistently supports the notion that physical health, nutrition, mental performance, and social well-being are interconnected and collectively contribute to maintaining strong mental health,” Handlan said. “The resources within HP Forge, from counseling to performance training, work together to provide soldiers with the tools and support they need to excel both on and off the field.”

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• 3rd Infantry Division identifies two soldiers killed in training accident
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taskandpurpose.com · by Joshua Skovlund

21. The Army’s Special Treatment of Capt. Rebecca Lobach

​Excerpts:

If the Army wanted to lessen the grief suffered by Capt. Lobach’s family, it used the worst tactics possible. Those who deliberately hid, and are hiding, information from public view activated the Streisand Effect, drawing further attention to what they want to hide. Unfortunately, such malpractice is characteristic of the Army’s public affairs apparatus at top levels. This is the same field that resisted recent guidance from the acting Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs (ATSD) to implement a social media pause. It is the same group that failed to address false rumors about the paternity of Master Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger’s daughter after his tragic suicide in front of Trump Tower on January 1st. It is the same military career field that ignored an admonition from then Secretary of the Army Mark Esper that the Army is the slowest branch to respond to press inquiries. The Army’s public affairs code of "Maximum Disclosure, Minimum Delay" is often cited but never enforced. This is a well-known problem that refuses to self-correct. It will demand attention from the Pentagon’s new leadership to force a solution.

Regulations lose legitimacy when selectively enforced. Lobach’s family is not the first to request privacy, but they are the first to receive such overt preferential treatment in recent military history. This sets a precedent that will make the jobs of commanders, public affairs officers, and casualty notification officers more difficult going forward.

I feel tremendous sympathy for the family of each soul on both aircraft and cannot begin to imagine the pain each one feels. That pain was not lightened for any of them by the Army’s agenda-based actions since. I call on top public affairs officials across the Army to remember your oaths, and put them into practice.

The Army’s Special Treatment of Capt. Rebecca Lobach

By Chase Spears

February 05, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/02/05/the_armys_special_treatment_of_capt_rebecca_lobach_1089352.html?mc_cid=6d2b7cbe67

Favoritism Inevitably Draws Scrutiny: The Army’s Special Treatment of Capt. Rebecca Lobach Fuels Speculation and Dishonors all Who Perished in the Recent DC Air Collision

On Saturday the U.S. Army released the name of the second pilot—reported to have been pilot in command—of the Blackhawk helicopter that collided with American Airlines flight 5342 over the Potomac River, killing 67 people. This was a marked departure from Army policy that states “Names, city, and state of deceased will be withheld until 24 hours after next of kin notification.” This was the standard process used to identify the other two members of the Army’s flight crew, Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Eaves, and Staff Sgt. Ryan O'Hara. It is the same process used to identify soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan—a process I followed as a military public affairs officer for over 20 years. Army public affairs officials followed the same procedures to publicly identify soldiers who died in not-too-distant helicopter crashes in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alaska. Yet, in an unusual deviation, the Army selectively withheld Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach’s identity for an additional two days. When her name was finally released over the weekend, the Army included a family statement of eulogy that praised Lobach and requested privacy. Army officials claim that violating its own rules was done to respect Lobach’s family’s wishes, but that decision casts an unnecessary shadow over her service and memory.

Working a casualty release is a difficult task. I remember each one that had to be done when deployed to Afghanistan as public affairs director for the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division. Each time while combing through a fallen soldier’s deployment photo and service record, there was a painful awareness that I was handling information that would soon devastate this fellow paratrooper’s loved ones back home in the U.S. The entire brigade would be placed under an internet blackout to ensure the news did not leak out before the family was notified in person. This practice is taken seriously, and rightly so. Much of its dignity comes from its predictability and equal application. No matter the rank or position of a deceased soldier, the notification process is supposed to be the same for all—and was until now.

The crash over the Potomac is a very unusual tragedy for many reasons that are being unraveled by investigators. The Army’s special treatment of Capt. Lobach adds to that complexity. The information shared by the Army and Lobach’s friends indicate that she was a stellar soldier. However, stellar soldiers do not ask for special consideration—they demand equal treatment to prove that they are one among a team. Yet we now see a movement to essentially canonize Lobach as a hero while civilian remains are still being recovered from the submerged and fragmented passenger jet that her aircraft knocked from the sky. Army officials rushed to defend a single pilot among a flight crew of three and 64 dead civilians. This treatment echoes a 2015 Army study warning that male soldiers are driven instinctively to protect female colleagues over mission completion. In this instance, we see that tendency strangely playing out in a way that reflects allegiance to intersectional theories and bandwagon effect as much as complementarian instinct.

Over the weekend, several Army public affairs officers and Pentagon reporters expressed heartbreak over Lobach’s passing, implying she was uniquely victimized above the 66 others killed. In contrast, they were largely silent when the identities of the other soldiers and jet passengers were released. Some narratives even suggested that the president was to blame for the Army’s deviation from standard protocol. Army officials surely knew the risk of this event becoming politicized and encouraged it through their unprecedented actions.

Beyond violating military regulations, the Army strategically released Lobach’s identification on a Saturday—a classic public relations tactic used to bury news. Meanwhile, it appears her social media history was erased, despite the insistence that she was an admirable public servant. The inclusion of a family eulogy in the Army’s announcement further signaled that her passing was somehow more profound than the rest. Why? The Army’s actions invite speculation. The best way to honor Capt. Lobach as a soldier would have been to treat her like any other. Instead, by attempting to craft a heroic top gun narrative around her, Army officials took a path that increased concerns about the circumstances of the crash. This is a textbook example of the "celebration parallax"—as if the Army intends to prove that women receive no special treatment by giving one woman special treatment.

I have followed air crash investigations for decades, worked numerous crisis communication initiatives since 2005, and teach crisis communication at the collegiate level. Never have I seen an airline spin a tragedy into an opportunity to highlight the greatness of a pilot when pilot error was likely involved. American Airlines is focusing its response on caring for the families of the 64 passengers lost on flight 5342, while the Army appears preoccupied with nurturing a politicized narrative. Early evidence suggests that cockpit mistakes contributed to the collision. Yet, in no prior case have I seen an airline or government agency publicly promote a downed pilot as a hero within 96 hours of an accident. Something is very different about this case.

The point of this essay is not to ascribe blame. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board will get to the bottom of what is likely a complex set of factors that passed 67 lives into eternity. Rather than rushing to offer one pilot as above question in that investigative process, Army officials should focus on following their own regulations, addressing systemic safety issues in Army aviation, and prioritizing public service over institutional image protection. Now is the time for introspection and hard questions—not attempting a flags of our fathers public relations play.

If the Army wanted to lessen the grief suffered by Capt. Lobach’s family, it used the worst tactics possible. Those who deliberately hid, and are hiding, information from public view activated the Streisand Effect, drawing further attention to what they want to hide. Unfortunately, such malpractice is characteristic of the Army’s public affairs apparatus at top levels. This is the same field that resisted recent guidance from the acting Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs (ATSD) to implement a social media pause. It is the same group that failed to address false rumors about the paternity of Master Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger’s daughter after his tragic suicide in front of Trump Tower on January 1st. It is the same military career field that ignored an admonition from then Secretary of the Army Mark Esper that the Army is the slowest branch to respond to press inquiries. The Army’s public affairs code of "Maximum Disclosure, Minimum Delay" is often cited but never enforced. This is a well-known problem that refuses to self-correct. It will demand attention from the Pentagon’s new leadership to force a solution.

Regulations lose legitimacy when selectively enforced. Lobach’s family is not the first to request privacy, but they are the first to receive such overt preferential treatment in recent military history. This sets a precedent that will make the jobs of commanders, public affairs officers, and casualty notification officers more difficult going forward.

I feel tremendous sympathy for the family of each soul on both aircraft and cannot begin to imagine the pain each one feels. That pain was not lightened for any of them by the Army’s agenda-based actions since. I call on top public affairs officials across the Army to remember your oaths, and put them into practice.

Chase Spears served as a U.S. Army public affairs officer for 20 years. Among other pursuits, he enjoys writing about courage, civil-military relations, communication ethics, and policy. Chase holds a Ph.D. in leadership communication from Kansas State University, where his research focused on the political realities of military norms and actions. He can be found on X, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Substack at @drchasespears.

​22. With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: How to Make Big Tech Accountable for its Global Influence

​Excerpts:

None of these proposals will settle the total balance of the accountability deficit, and in all likelihood, the status quo will persist. Even those countries that acknowledge that action should be taken to redress the power and accountability imbalance ultimately have limited bandwidth — amid a “studs up” trade war between the United States and China — to dedicate resources to reconciling corporate accountability. Countries and trading blocs may also use an accountability agenda as cover to promote national or regional interests and champions to undermine those of rival powers.

Additionally, historical precedents — such as efforts to engage Big Tech in the United Nations and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe counter-terrorism forums — suggest that expectations should be managed. International institutions can be notoriously slow to adapt, while Big Tech moves fast — and often breaks things. We hope this reflection offers a starting point to consider accountability for Big Tech’s exercise of international influence.

On balance, it is neither feasible nor desirable to show Big Tech a “red card.” The transformative impact of technology on power dynamics within international society is undeniable and will only intensify. The challenge lies in ensuring that Big Tech’s immense influence is aligned with the rules of the game. It should be accountable — not just to shareholders or national regulators but to the wider public. Through our ongoing research with King’s College London and the University of Bath, we aim to drive the conversation forward, shedding light on the critical intersections of technology, governance, and statecraft.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: How to Make Big Tech Accountable for its Global Influence - War on the Rocks

Joseph Jarnecki and Gareth Mott

warontherocks.com · by Joseph Jarnecki · February 5, 2025

“Big Tech” — or large multinational corporations that manufacture, own, and operate the digital ecosystems and physical infrastructure constituting cyberspace — wield state-like influence, advancing their interests with a reach that rivals powerful state actors.

But as these companies grow more powerful, the systems that are meant to enforce accountability seem ill-equipped to do so. Where Big Tech companies cherry-pick the privileges of state-like power, without submitting to the associated responsibilities, they risk fraying the public’s trust. To preserve and strengthen the post-World War II international order, which is already facing profound challenges, there should be a clear-eyed reckoning with Big Tech’s agency as influential international actors.

Critiques of Big Tech are abundant. Accusations range from anti-competitive practices, neglect of social harms, democratic encroachment, and the warping of humanity itself. And these concerns are not without merit: Unchecked corporate power threatens societal cohesion and traditional governance structures. Yet, relentless condemnation of lawful and highly successful enterprises risks paralysis. When every flaw is fatal, we risk letting perfect become the enemy of good enough. The challenge lies in finding a middle ground — acknowledging Big Tech’s power can be a force for social benefit, while creating sensible mechanisms to ensure their accountability.

The rise of Big Tech reflects a seismic shift in international relations. Power has leaked out of the corridors of government. It’s now exercised in data centers, server rooms, and undersea cables. Recognizing this, the U.K. Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology argued in November of last year that countries should approach Big Tech with “humility,” and treat them like nation-states. More recently, some of the most exclusive seats at President Donald Trump’s inauguration were taken by powerful Big Tech executives — filling the space typically reserved for elected officials. Their presence and prominence reflects how the international order is changing. It is not only multipolar but multistakeholder.

The question, then, should not just be whether to accept Big Tech’s influence, but also how to channel it responsibly. We propose three possible pathways. First, grant Big Tech formal membership in international organizations. Second, enhance and expand existing treaties and national legislation with an increased focus on enforcement. Lastly, encourage companies to adopt transparent reporting on their global activities. The solution is uncertain, but a common goal is in reach: make Big Tech accountable for its power.

Become a Member

Establishing and Exerting influence

The term “Big Tech” echoes legacy descriptors like “Big Oil,” “Big Banks,” and “Big Pharma,” highlighting the scale and dominance of multinational corporations that shape influential industries. However, unlike its predecessors, Big Tech wields a unique, quasi-sovereign power over cyberspace — a recognized domain of war and the backbone of our economic and social interactions. Their control extends beyond monopolizing products — it grants them the ability to shape the rules, norms, and processes governing our digital lives.

Big Tech’s quasi-statecraft can be understood through three distinct functions: diplomacy, state-like involvement in armed conflicts and crises, and ownership and operation of domains through which state interactions are mediated (e.g., cyberspace).

Take diplomacy: During the first Trump administration, Microsoft led calls for a Digital Geneva Convention to establish international rules protecting civilians from state-led cyber threats. While the initiative stalled amid diplomatic wrangling, it revealed how Big Tech companies were beginning to rethink their role in the world. By 2020, Microsoft went further, establishing a U.N. representation office in New York. Two years later, the United Nations responded in kind by creating the Secretary General’s Envoy on Technology. These moves underscore how Big Tech is embedding itself in international institutions. State actors are taking notice. Denmark was the first country to appoint a dedicated tech ambassador, a trend now mirrored by several states seeking to engage Big Tech on equal footing.

Regarding armed conflict, Big Tech companies have played a pivotal role in the ongoing war in Ukraine. Starlink has ensured mostly uninterrupted connectivity for Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainian government migrated critical data and government services to the cloud to protect against Russian attacks, and private companies have gathered intelligence, hardened targets, and responded to incidents. This level of involvement in the war goes beyond the traditional role of suppliers or contractors. It resembles a form of deputization, whereby private companies are given authority to perform state-like activities under specific circumstances. At most, these activities reflect how companies are seizing an opportunity to elevate their agency and status through unilateral or multilateral actions that materially change conditions in active conflict zones.

Underpinning the functions of diplomacy and state-like involvement in armed conflicts is a third function: ownership and operation of cyberspace and associated capabilities. Cyberspace — the fifth sphere of power projection — is distinct when compared to the other four, which are owned and/or shared by states through treaties and principles of sovereignty. Cyberspace is simultaneously a physical infrastructure as well as an information ecosystem. The two are inextricably linked.

Unlike the corridors and meeting rooms of the United Nations — where states are the operators — in cyberspace, the private sector owns the pitch, largely sets the rules of the game, and has the best players.

As a result, Big Tech occupies a privileged position in one of the most consequential arenas: cyberspace. Big Tech’s influence, however, also exposes a fundamental tension. While these companies have become de facto actors in the international system, they are free from many of the accountability systems that constrain state actors. This is not a lawless, zero-sum “Wild West,” however. Big Tech is beholden to shareholder expectations, national regulations, and international standards. Yet these mechanisms, based on a concern for consumers and principals, are no substitute for broader responsibility to citizens and global society. The issue is not necessarily Big Tech’s influence, but the inability of existing international frameworks to adapt to its emergence as a dominant actor in cyberspace and a near-peer in world affairs.

Don’t Hate The Player, Change the Game

Adapting to Big Tech’s growing global role is not just about blaming companies for taking initiative. It is also about reforming structures and processes to introduce accountability. To date, similar attempts in multilateral forums to integrate the private sector have had limited success. As the international system reckons with the rise of Big Tech actors, three intuitive pathways appear.

First, Big Tech companies could be granted formal membership of key international organizations — recognizing the multistakeholder status quo. This could range from observer status at the United Nations to increased participation rights in specialized governance forums like the International Telecommunications Union. For example, Big Tech companies could get a vote in setting international standards or in selecting leadership, and participate in world radiocommunication conferences. Inclusion would bring companies into existing frameworks, creating opportunities to enforce accountability among peers through existing mechanisms. Doubtlessly controversial, this approach could normalize and better define the remit of their contribution to a rules-based system.

Second, countries and international organizations could enhance international treaties and national legislation to better control private sector influence. Multilateral agreements, akin to those governing arms control or nuclear proliferation — each of which already have some private sector oversight — could set controls on Big Tech’s operations in critical areas such as global digital infrastructure. Simultaneously, national governments can update legislation and regulatory frameworks to close loopholes and bolster enforcement against company excesses. The European Union is broadly taking this approach under the auspices of the Digital Markets Act and the Cyber Resilience Act, though these aims are not always made explicit. Alas, these initiatives have also been criticized as a veiled attempt to pursue industrial policy along geopolitical fault lines and makeup for European regulation stifling the growth of the technology sector.

Third, companies can adopt greater corporate transparency. Tech companies could apply standards like environmental, social, and governance statements that are tailored to their international activities. These “international engagement, compliance, and governance” reports would represent a bespoke opportunity for firms to outline their global posture. Such reports could self-assess a company’s activities in the preceding year and narrate their plans — including future strategy, partnerships, and upcoming participation in international processes. These disclosures would produce additional sources of qualitative and quantitative data — similar to governments setting out strategies or policy papers. In turn, this data could empower civil society, companies’ employees and shareholders, as well as governments to hold these companies accountable for their actions on the world stage.

None of these proposals will settle the total balance of the accountability deficit, and in all likelihood, the status quo will persist. Even those countries that acknowledge that action should be taken to redress the power and accountability imbalance ultimately have limited bandwidth — amid a “studs up” trade war between the United States and China — to dedicate resources to reconciling corporate accountability. Countries and trading blocs may also use an accountability agenda as cover to promote national or regional interests and champions to undermine those of rival powers.

Additionally, historical precedents — such as efforts to engage Big Tech in the United Nations and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe counter-terrorism forums — suggest that expectations should be managed. International institutions can be notoriously slow to adapt, while Big Tech moves fast — and often breaks things. We hope this reflection offers a starting point to consider accountability for Big Tech’s exercise of international influence.

On balance, it is neither feasible nor desirable to show Big Tech a “red card.” The transformative impact of technology on power dynamics within international society is undeniable and will only intensify. The challenge lies in ensuring that Big Tech’s immense influence is aligned with the rules of the game. It should be accountable — not just to shareholders or national regulators but to the wider public. Through our ongoing research with King’s College London and the University of Bath, we aim to drive the conversation forward, shedding light on the critical intersections of technology, governance, and statecraft.

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Joseph Jarnecki is a research fellow for cyber and technology at the Royal United Services Institute and a 2024-2025 European cyber security fellow at Virtual Routes.

Gareth Mott is a research fellow for cyber and technology at the Royal United Services Institute.

Image: Trevor Cokley via DVIDS

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Joseph Jarnecki · February 5, 2025

23. Trump Needs a Plan on Ukraine’s Buried Treasure

​Excerpts:

However, since Ukraine remains a high-risk jurisdiction for investment, any credible plan for stimulating private sector engagement will require clear and robust mechanisms to ensure Ukraine’s future security and protect new capital. The specter of another Russian attack following a period of rearmament will loom large over any investment calculations in New York, London, or Brussels. While formal NATO admission seems unlikely, the United States could throw its support behind a range of other multilateral frameworks in service of deterring Russia.

For example, the U.K.-led Joint Expeditionary Force, a multinational military partnership with the Nordic and Baltic states, could provide the institutional and operational scaffolding necessary to integrate Kyiv into Europe’s security architecture. The Joint Expeditionary Force could leverage real political clout and a large pool of high-readiness forces to provide Ukraine with initial guarantees while NATO allies coordinate on mechanisms to reinforce deterrence over the long term. For its part, the United States could encourage deeper Polish involvement with the Joint Expeditionary Force as a means of providing the group with a sizeable land force to ensure stability along a demilitarized line in eastern Ukraine, while also offering temporary support in the form of airlift as well as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities to bridge operational gaps until European states develop sufficient indigenous capacities. This is one, but by no means the only, possible option for achieving the kind of robust security guarantees necessary to promote and protect future investment in Ukraine’s critical materials sector.

In any event, Washington should also increase its provision of advanced missile defense and anti-air systems to Kyiv. Such systems will be instrumental in protecting critical infrastructure from future assaults and instilling a degree of security within the Ukrainian public. Tactical support should also be complemented by clear strategic deterrence signals from Washington. The United States should make it clear to the Kremlin that future aggression will be met by coordinated military action from Western partners.

Unlocking Ukraine’s massive untapped mineral wealth represents an opportunity to both secure Kyiv’s long-term economic prospects and insulate critical Western supply chains during a period of heightened geoeconomic and geopolitical tensions. Such an effort will require sustained engagement from Washington and its partners in Europe. It would also not be without risks or challenges. However, the new administration should carefully consider the opportunities presented and build a diplomatic and military strategy that allows the West to benefit from this providential natural endowment.

Trump Needs a Plan on Ukraine’s Buried Treasure - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by J.C. Ellis · February 5, 2025

The war in Ukraine isn’t just about safeguarding democracy or demonstrating Western resolve — it’s also about the future of the global economic order. As the Trump administration considers how to deliver on the president’s promise to bring this war to a close, it risks neglecting a critical, untapped asset: Ukraine’s immense reserves of lithium, titanium, graphite, and rare earth metals. These critical minerals are the foundation of modern industry and essential for military technology, clean energy, and advanced manufacturing. They also have the potential to transform Ukraine into an invaluable partner amid the global scramble for resources and geopolitical advantage.

American leaders tend to treat war as a military problem rather than a geopolitical one, fixating on tactical gains while neglecting the economic and strategic conditions necessary to win the peace. As a result, the United States has spent trillions on warfighting while failing to capitalize on postwar opportunities. Now, after committing over $175 billion to Ukraine’s defense, Washington risks making a similar mistake: walking away without ensuring that Ukraine’s economic potential strengthens the West rather than its adversaries.

Far from an agrarian backwater, Ukraine is one of the most resource-rich nations in the world, particularly in the critical raw materials central to 21st-century competition. Moreover, its proximity to the industrial centers of Europe and access to Black Sea trading routes provide it with geopolitical advantages over potential export competitors in Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia. While Moscow has seized key mineral-rich regions, Kyiv still controls nearly two-thirds of its reserves, valued at tens of trillions of dollars. Under the right conditions, Ukraine could become a major player in the critical supply chains driving economic competitiveness — a new “battery basket” for the Western world.

Hopefully, President Donald Trump will not ignore the geoeconomic considerations necessary to win the peace. It’s not too late for Washington to enact a strategy that prioritizes Ukraine’s control over as much of these reserves as possible. This would provide Ukraine with a robust foundation for its future economy, facilitate the diversification of Western supply chains to a closely aligned partner, and help secure the West’s future as a manufacturing and technological powerhouse. Abandoning Ukraine risks America’s rivals gaining control over this vast reservoir of natural wealth and tightening their grip on the building blocks of economic dynamism.

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Europe’s “Battery Basket”

From the medieval period through the 18th century, Ukraine’s economic fortunes turned principally on its agricultural productivity. The most fertile lands in the central and southern regions benefit from a wide distribution of chernozem — or “black earth” — a rich soil found in parts of the Eurasian steppe and the North American Great Plains. Control over this land was a strategic asset for a succession of Eastern European powers, allowing them to feed their populations and trade the bountiful surplus. During this long historical sweep, Ukraine cemented its reputation as “Europe’s breadbasket.” As the area industrialized, its agricultural assets were augmented by the mining of iron ore deposits and coal seams in the Donbas and Kryvyi regions. These latent and actualized economic resources were central to the struggle for supremacy in Europe through the 19th and 20th centuries and formed the basis of Russian and Soviet strength. As Dominic Lieven memorably wrote: “Without Ukraine’s vast population, industry, and agriculture, early-twentieth-century Russia would have ceased to be a great power.”

Though the modern sources of economic dynamism have evolved away from grain and steel, Ukraine continues to occupy a central role in the future of global power. This is due to its immense, yet untapped, reservoirs of the critical raw materials necessary to produce a range of advanced commercial and military technology. While its traditional agricultural and fossil fuel resources still play an important role in the global economy, these reserves of critical raw materials have the potential to sway the future of geoeconomic and geopolitical competition.

Due to Ukraine’s diverse geological footprint, it possesses around 5 percent of the world’s mineral deposits despite occupying just 0.4 percent of its land area. Its natural wealth is spread across approximately 20,000 mineral deposits, which include 117 of the 120 most widely used minerals and metals, 22 of the 50 strategic materials recognized by the United States as critical, and 25 of the 34 identified by the European Union as critically important. Estimations of the total value of these deposits range in the tens of trillions of dollars.

Among the most significant are its reserves of lithium, graphite, titanium-bearing minerals like ilmenite and rutile, uranium, and rare earth metals. According to the Ukrainian Geological Survey, Ukraine holds the largest lithium and titanium reserves in Europe and is among the top 12 in global reserves of uranium, which has the potential to help bridge yawning shortfalls in production requirements for nuclear energy. Researchers at the University of Kyiv estimate that Ukraine has the world’s sixth-largest graphite reserves, larger than all other Western states combined. Kyiv has also identified six large deposits of rare earth metals such as beryllium and gallium that are estimated to be the highest recoverable supply of rare earths in Europe. One of these rare earth deposits, located at Novopoltavske, is potentially the largest in the world.

These resources are critical for many of the advanced technologies that will define global power for generations. Lithium and graphite are both key components in the lithium-ion batteries powering electric vehicles and high-capacity energy storage systems. Titanium’s strength, lightness, and non-corrosive qualities make it indispensable in the production of advanced aerospace and weapons systems. Uranium is vital to nuclear power generation and armor-piercing ammunition. Rare earth metals underpin a gamut of sophisticated technologies, notably advanced semiconductor production. Ukraine’s relative abundance of these materials stands in marked contrast with the rest of Europe, which relies heavily on imports from Australia, Africa, and China. Developing the mining and production capacities necessary to harness these resources could position Ukraine as Europe’s “battery basket” of the future.

Commercial profits from this resource wealth were limited through the Soviet and post-Soviet years. Despite their multi-trillion-dollar value, total Ukrainian mineral and metal production output was only $15 billion in 2021. Before the full-scale invasion, Ukraine was actively mining only 15 percent of its known deposits. The lack of notable development is due to a combination of structural, political, and economic factors. Fragmentation and corruption after 1991, outdated industrial and mining technology, and Russian predations after 2014 hamstrung sustained investment in the sector. Beginning in 2017, Kyiv redoubled its attempts to court investors through digital land auctions and expanded partnerships with the European Union. The launch of the E.U.–Ukraine Strategic Partnership on Raw Materials focused on harnessing Ukraine’s mineral resources, integrating them into critical supply chains, and shepherding capital investment. By 2021, Kyiv’s attempts to profit from its mineral wealth appeared to be bearing fruit. For example, European Lithium moved to secure rights to two lithium deposits with the aim of becoming Europe’s largest lithium supplier.

European Lithium’s bid, like Ukraine’s critical material ambitions writ large, collapsed following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Capital investment dried up, critical infrastructure for resource extraction was either lost or destroyed, and Ukraine was unable to ship many of its exports via the Black Sea. Kyiv’s focus turned from cultivating its vast resource wealth to keeping it out of Russia’s rapacious hands.

The Fight for Ukraine’s Buried Treasure

Experts have offered a range of explanations for Putin’s full-scale invasion: from his ambitions to reconstruct the Soviet Empire to concerns about NATO influence in Ukraine to features of his post-pandemic psyche. However, beneath these largely speculative narratives lie clear material enticements: the possible acquisition of Ukraine’s vast resources. Putin’s war of aggression has enabled Russia to gain control over nearly 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory, including significant reserves of minerals that Ukraine had hoped to leverage into a promising economic future.

Russia has been abetted in its theft by geography. A sizeable share of Ukraine’s mineral wealth is concentrated east of the Dnipro River. One estimate holds that Russia has captured 33 percent of Ukraine’s critical raw materials deposits since 2014. A back-of-the-envelope calculation puts the value of this at $5–$8 trillion. Among Kyiv’s stolen assets are over 10 major mineral sites, including one of the lithium sites eyed by European Lithium and the massive rare earth metals deposit at Novopoltavske. Including stolen fossil fuel deposits, the value of Russian conquests currently exceed $12 trillion.

Preventing further loss of its territory and, by extension, its natural resources has been a central objective of Ukraine’s valiant self-defense. Fortunately, Ukraine still controls the bulk of its mineral reserves, including significant rare earth metals deposits in the Dnipropetrovsk region, along with major pockets of graphite, titanium, cobalt, and manganese along the western bank of the Dnipro River.

Ukraine’s resource riches have also piqued interest within the corridors of Washington. For some American policymakers, Ukraine’s potential as a critical raw material partner presents a unique opportunity to diversify supply chains away from its geopolitical rivals. In the months before the full-scale war, Congress passed legislation mandating the State Department investigate the feasibility of utilizing titanium sources from Ukraine as a potential alternative to Chinese sources.

America’s concerns about China’s dominance over critical materials are well-grounded. China controls 85 percent of global rare earth refining, 95 percent of gallium production, and 67 percent of natural graphite mining, along with significant shares of cobalt and lithium refinement. China has also developed a firm hold on global titanium production, reaching 66 percent in 2023. By consolidating its access to these materials and their refinement, Beijing has established vertically integrated supply chains that power industries like semiconductors, batteries, and renewable energy. Moreover, China has deployed its control as a coercive tool against Washington, as evidenced by its December ban on exporting critical minerals like gallium, germanium, and graphite to the United States. This dominance presents strategic risks for the United States, potentially disrupting key sectors such as defense, technology, and clean energy.

Ukraine has deftly played off America’s concerns to position itself as a valuable partner in de-risking critical supply chains. As part of his “Victory Plan,” President Volodymyr Zelensky offered his Western backers “a special agreement for the joint protection of the country’s critical resources, as well as joint investment and use of this economic potential.” This included a secret annex that likely included more detailed arrangements for Western investment and development opportunities. Ukrainian officials have also underlined the risks to the United States should Moscow gain greater sway over these assets and seek to exploit them in partnership with Beijing.

Parts of the Republican foreign policy establishment have seized on this logic to push for greater support for Kyiv in the war. Speaking in June, Sen. Lindsay Graham made the case bluntly:

They’re sitting on 10 to 12 trillion dollars of critical minerals in Ukraine. They could be the richest country in all of Europe. I don’t want to give that money and those assets to Putin to share with China. If we help Ukraine now, they can become the best business partner we ever dreamed of, that 10 to 12 trillion dollars of critical mineral assets could be used by Ukraine and the West, not given to Putin and China… To give Putin 10 or 12 trillion dollars for critical minerals that he will share with China is ridiculous.

However, the issue of resource control is just beginning to filter into the mainstream strategic discourse. Trump’s recent comments expressing interest in securing American access to Ukrainian rare earth metals dovetail with Kyiv’s strategy of offering development partnerships in exchange for enhanced military and diplomatic support. The president’s statement is one step in the right direction insofar as it acknowledges the material stakes of the conflict. However, it should be noted that Ukraine’s resource wealth extends far beyond just rare earth metals.

As the fight for Ukraine’s underground riches drags on, the Trump administration would do well to consider the risks and opportunities presented by a cessation of hostilities. Failure to integrate resource calculations into Western strategy could have profound strategic consequences, entrenching rival states’ control over the inputs for economic dynamism and depriving the West of an invaluable partner in achieving greater technological and manufacturing self-sufficiency.

Policies for Peace

To secure the foundations of Western economic power, the new administration should devise a policy framework that allows for capitalization of and cooperation over Ukraine’s critical raw material reserves. The two essential features of such a strategy are institutional links to facilitate and secure rapid Western investment in the mineral extraction sector and a credible deterrent against future Russian aggression. Such a framework should also draw on the support and resources of interested partners in the European Union.

On the investment side, the United States could spearhead the creation of a U.S.–E.U.–Ukrainian investment consortium designed to attract and mobilize capital for Ukraine’s mining sector. By providing government-backed funds to de-risk investments and offering tax incentives to Western companies, this initiative could facilitate the rapid development of strategic resources like lithium, graphite, titanium, and rare earth metals. Alongside this, Washington should work with Kyiv to establish a mineral export control framework and investment screening processes that privilege Western access and prevent Chinese penetration. These transparency mechanisms and joint ventures between Ukrainian and Western entities are essential to ensuring that investment flows are secure, strategic, and free from malign external influence.

To complement these measures, the United States could spearhead infrastructure development financing — focusing on rebuilding rail and port infrastructure; expanding power generation and transmission; and constructing the refineries, smelters, and storage facilities necessary for mining operations. Standing up special economic zones in resource-rich regions along the Dnipro could streamline investment processes by providing favorable regulations, investment guarantees, and incentives for technology transfer. Finally, the United States and European Union should back an anti-corruption program tailored to the mining sector to enhance investor confidence and ensure responsible resource management. By fostering public–private collaboration and integrating Ukraine into Western supply chains through long-term trade agreements, these policies will enable Ukraine to leverage its mineral wealth for national recovery while securing a stronger Western geoeconomic position.

However, since Ukraine remains a high-risk jurisdiction for investment, any credible plan for stimulating private sector engagement will require clear and robust mechanisms to ensure Ukraine’s future security and protect new capital. The specter of another Russian attack following a period of rearmament will loom large over any investment calculations in New York, London, or Brussels. While formal NATO admission seems unlikely, the United States could throw its support behind a range of other multilateral frameworks in service of deterring Russia.

For example, the U.K.-led Joint Expeditionary Force, a multinational military partnership with the Nordic and Baltic states, could provide the institutional and operational scaffolding necessary to integrate Kyiv into Europe’s security architecture. The Joint Expeditionary Force could leverage real political clout and a large pool of high-readiness forces to provide Ukraine with initial guarantees while NATO allies coordinate on mechanisms to reinforce deterrence over the long term. For its part, the United States could encourage deeper Polish involvement with the Joint Expeditionary Force as a means of providing the group with a sizeable land force to ensure stability along a demilitarized line in eastern Ukraine, while also offering temporary support in the form of airlift as well as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities to bridge operational gaps until European states develop sufficient indigenous capacities. This is one, but by no means the only, possible option for achieving the kind of robust security guarantees necessary to promote and protect future investment in Ukraine’s critical materials sector.

In any event, Washington should also increase its provision of advanced missile defense and anti-air systems to Kyiv. Such systems will be instrumental in protecting critical infrastructure from future assaults and instilling a degree of security within the Ukrainian public. Tactical support should also be complemented by clear strategic deterrence signals from Washington. The United States should make it clear to the Kremlin that future aggression will be met by coordinated military action from Western partners.

Unlocking Ukraine’s massive untapped mineral wealth represents an opportunity to both secure Kyiv’s long-term economic prospects and insulate critical Western supply chains during a period of heightened geoeconomic and geopolitical tensions. Such an effort will require sustained engagement from Washington and its partners in Europe. It would also not be without risks or challenges. However, the new administration should carefully consider the opportunities presented and build a diplomatic and military strategy that allows the West to benefit from this providential natural endowment.

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J.C. Ellis is a PhD candidate with the Centre for Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge.

Image: Midjourney.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by J.C. Ellis · February 5, 2025

24. Unprepared in the City: Operational Planning for Urban Environments

​Excerpts:

Preparing for urban conflict at echelons above brigade is urgent. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be inherently urban almost from the start. A Russian invasion of the Baltics would likely have a large urban component almost immediately as the Russians could reach capital cities in a matter of days. A North Korean attack on South Korea would have a significant urban component because of the proximity of Seoul to the border. The US military must accept that odds are high that the next large-scale conflict will have a heavily urban character within days of beginning. There will not be time to make up then for the lack of preparation today. This can be partly addressed now—at low cost—by training echelons above brigade staffs how to campaign in urban areas.

​Seoul will be a black hole of urban combat for north Korea - what goes into Seoul will be absorbed and will never come out. north Korean forces need to bypass Seoul and rapidly get across the Han River and make it to Pusan before the ROK can mobilize and the US can deploy reinforcements (1950 all over again). To get bogged down with troops in Seoul in the initial fight means the nKPA will not be able to conduct its military objectives. But there will be plenty of urban combat throughout the entire Korean peninsula just not in Seoul in the initial fight - but Seoul is likely to be initially rubbled by artillery, rocket, and missile fire from the north.

Unprepared in the City: Operational Planning for Urban Environments - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Brandon Schwartz · February 5, 2025

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On February 24, 2022, Russian forces air assaulted into the Antonov Airport near Kyiv while a large ground force attacked from the north. In the end, the air assault failed but Russian troops pushed their way to Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv. There they clashed in a monthlong battle with Ukrainian forces, grinding the city to a pulp. Since then, the Russians and Ukrainians have fought in numerous large-scale urban battles, including in Bakhmut, Mariupol, Izium, Kharkiv, and Toretsk.

A year and a half after Russia’s invasion and about 1,200 miles south, Israel responded to Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7, 2023, by deploying three divisions into the heavily urbanized terrain of the Gaza territory, battling upwards of thirty thousand enemy fighters. The campaign in Gaza gained worldwide notoriety for its urban complications and remained a multidivision mission for over half a year.

These two conflicts, in Ukraine and Gaza, teach an inconvenient lesson—that large scale combat operations (LSCO) and urban environments are linked. Together, they demonstrate the urgent necessity for the US Army to prepare for conflict in urban environments. In particular, echelons above brigade commands must learn to plan for urban operations at the operational level of warfare. Having planned real-world urban LSCO in a theater army, I can attest to the scarcity of practical, readily available resources for planners at echelons above brigade. Doctrine is limited to primarily tactical matters, captured mostly in one joint publication and three Army techniques publications. As for education, the 40th Infantry Division ran an urban operations planner course, which has an uncertain future, that focused on brigade and division staffs. However, with relatively small cohorts, no direct connection to corps and theater army, and a more tactical how-to focus rather than operational campaigning, the course did not fill all gaps in the force. Until doctrine and education catch up to the requirement, planners will rely on simple guides like this to help understand how to plan for urban conflicts as part of LSCO campaigns.

The Future Fight is Urban

To embrace planning, echelons above brigade commands must first reject the myth that US forces would never fight LSCO in the urban environment. There are numerous reasons to fight in urban areas. First, cities can be intrinsically valuable. Cities contain dense populations of people, attract economic resources, and often have cultural or political significance. Global megatrends indicate continuing population growth over the next few decades with people concentrating in urban areas. This means an increasing number of these areas in the future operating environment.

Another reason to fight in urban areas is that the aspects of a city that make it intrinsically valuable may also make it militarily valuable. Consequently, US forces may need to operate in urban areas to deny critical capabilities from the enemy or to protect or recapture them on behalf of a partner nation. As a personal example, this is the category related to my urban LSCO planning experience. The combatant commander directed the theater army to develop plans for imposing costs to the enemy through the land domain. Our team developed multiple options that generally fell into one of two types. One type sought to directly deny resources to the enemy. The other sought to be close enough to those resources to indirectly deny them using land-based effects. Regardless, the most valuable resources in all options were in cities and required urban planning.

A third reason US forces may fight in urban areas is simply because that is where the enemy chooses to operate. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army today believes that American risk aversion to high-casualty situations makes drawing them into cities an ideal way to erode will, regardless of each city’s value. The Battle of Ortona in 1943 provides an example of this phenomenon. Ortona possessed zero strategic and little operational value to either Axis or Allied forces. However, the Germans defended Ortona almost solely because it provided the opportunity to attrit Canadian forces. The Canadians completed their attack simply because it provided the opportunity to attrit the Germans.

Finally, US forces may need to conduct urban operations to secure lines of communication to enable other operations. A significant reason for the US seizure of the German city of Aachen in 1944 was to secure the Aachen Corridor to the vital Ruhr industrial region. Bypassing urban areas when attacking Kyiv disrupted Russian lines of communication and significantly contributed to the Russian attack’s logistical culmination. As a result, the Russians abandoned the concept of bypassing cities when they contained important rail or road nodes.

Planning for Operations in Urban Environments

Once over the myth that urban areas can always be avoided, commands then encounter the challenge of how to actually plan large-scale operations. Urban environments significantly impact how Army forces conduct operations, which requires unique planning considerations.

Operational Approach

The first major planning factor is developing an urban campaign operational approach. The starting point for all urban campaign decisions is identifying how a city fits into the overarching strategic objectives. This context is essential for the commander to establish acceptable levels of destruction to the city, a determination that influences all subsequent decisions.

Offensive campaigns are different from defensive ones. As the attacker, US forces will exert more control over the amount of precombat destruction that occurs in a city (i.e., preparatory fires). Therefore, commands may be more precise when establishing acceptable levels of destruction. Some of the other important considerations for urban operational approaches include end state and conditions, phasing and transitions, tempo, operational reach, and culmination. While those are all aspects of operational art, they are uniquely impacted in urban environments by the commander’s acceptance of destruction. As a result, there are a handful of urban campaign approaches commanders can select from: destroy, assault, infiltrate, isolate and besiege, bypass, or raid.

Defensive urban campaigns have their own unique operational approach considerations. As the defender, US forces exert more control over the amount of destruction inflicted during combat. For example, defenders usually choose which bridges to destroy or buildings to rubble to create obstacles. Commanders must also decide whether they plan to conduct a long-term or short-term defense. The anticipated length of the defense informs nearly all subsequent decisions. Other key considerations for defensive campaign planning include enemy capabilities and objectives, strategically or culturally significant terrain, natural terrain, alterable terrain, civilian population, and the role of civilians in the defense. Based on historical examples, commanders generally employ one of the following types of defensive operational approaches: preemptive withdrawal, fortress of last resort, city as a fortress, envelop and counterattack, zonal defense, defense in depth, point defense, delay, and denial of control.

Operational Framework

The second major planning factor is the operational framework. Planners must consider that the application of the operational framework is complicated by urban environments, thereby increasing the difficulties of controlling subordinate formations. One challenging aspect of urban operations is that units will often have noncontiguous areas of operation. This presents challenges to identifying and delineating between deep, close, and rear areas by echelon, especially as boundaries based on terrain landmarks may be quickly destroyed. Another challenge is mutual support. Supporting range in urban environments can vary drastically over time and space. Also, supporting distance considerations are impacted by rapid change in the landscape, which can quickly isolate units.

The areas within the operational framework are challenging as well. In the close area, the most obvious and significant issue is that units will often be in a 360-degree fight along multiple axes. Consequently, the close area is much more expansive in urban than in other environments for an Army force, despite occupying a relatively small portion of a map. Planners at echelons above brigade need to adjust their correlation of forces and means (known as COFMs) for all operations. In the case of attacks, many historical cases indicate at least six to one.

The deep area also presents challenges. In particular, isolating large cities can be problematic. Large city perimeters increase security requirements, often beyond the capacity of available Army forces. Many large cities also have significant maritime features. As a result, urban deep areas at echelons above brigade are unusually joint-dependent and require close coordination with the other services.

Finally, in the rear area in urban operations, commanders at echelons above brigade must decide how to conduct reception, staging, onward movement, and integration (RSOI). Cities often provide excellent access to transportation facilities, such as ports and rail networks. However, those facilities are often within range of many of the enemy’s offensive capabilities. Yet conducting RSOI beyond the city may add significant maneuver distance, require fighting through previously cleared terrain due to enemy infiltration, and expose forces to enemy interdiction efforts.

Time

The third major planning factor is time. Commanders should expect to devote additional time for planning urban operations for two major reasons: intelligence and operational planning teams. First, intelligence preparation for a city should be lengthy and extensive. As noted by the Mosul Study Group, “Extensive and unceasing . . . intelligence preparation of the battlefield [is] essential to understand this ever-changing complex terrain.” The intelligence function benefits from developing on-the-ground knowledge in urban environments to collect and analyze human intelligence, which takes time. Planners should consider that the urban terrain limits the effectiveness of imagery intelligence while the congested urban electromagnetic spectrum reduces the effectiveness of signals intelligence. This will likely impact the selection of named areas of interest and priority information requirements.

Second, city-specific operational planning teams (OPTs) require additional time to complete their work. Each city, even within the same geographic area, is unique. Commanders need specialized planning teams to manage the planning process for operations in a city. These OPTs benefit from additional time to sift through the complexity of a city to best develop courses of action for the commander. Additionally, OPTs have a capacity limitation. Many of the planners involved in other efforts related to conducting operations in the operational environment will be dual-hatted in the city-specific OPT.

Enablers

The fourth major planning factor is enablers. The numerous adverse impacts of urban operations drive the requirement for additional capabilities.

Beginning with protection, combat engineers are an especially valuable asset in urban operations. They conduct breaching, route clearance, rubble clearance, and obstacle reduction to enable movement and maneuver and support the commander’s tempo of operations. Depending on the situation, urban operations may create significant demand for gap-crossing capability, especially multirole bridging companies. Additional military police capabilities will be essential because of the presence of internally displaced persons and the likelihood of holding detainees. Another consideration is for explosive ordnance disposal units. The presence of unexploded ordnance, the use of mines, and the likelihood, demonstrated by history, of encountering booby traps in urban areas will likely exceed normal capacity.

Sustainers will face increased requirements in multiple classes of supply. The presence of civilians, historically measured at about 10 percent of preconflict urban populations, will increase requirements for food, water, and medicine. US forces have legal obligations to the civil population, as well as enemy prisoners of war, that cannot be avoided and will drive increased sustainment demand. Urban operations also tend to increase demand on repair parts, particularly tires, and ammunition. Planners should consider the possibility of additional ground medical evacuation capability and surgical support in urban areas. There may also be increased demand for port-opening and -operating capabilities, depending on the mission. Urban areas also usually contain key infrastructure that can be dangerous and require technical expertise to safely operate, such as oil and gas refineries. This may require contracting technical expertise to provide support during operations.

Another consideration worth noting deals with the information dimension. Public affairs and combat camera units can be especially helpful during urban operations. Urban operations often generate civilian casualties, which is exploited by the enemy, such as Hamas did in Gaza during Israel’s ground campaign after the October 7 attacks. Effective and aggressive public affairs can mitigate this challenge. Commanders may also need additional civil affairs capabilities to assist with developing a civilian common operational picture and to lead stability-related efforts.

Finally, urban plans benefit from emphasis on special operations capabilities. Special operations forces (SOF) can assist with challenges associated with intelligence preparation of the operational environment, especially with developing vital human intelligence sources. SOF is also the key in defensive campaigns, particularly in developing civilian defense augmentation or a long-term resistance in enemy-occupied areas. Finally, SOF can assist with isolating portions of cities, conducting counter-SOF operations, and executing sabotage in enemy-controlled areas.

Preparing for urban conflict at echelons above brigade is urgent. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be inherently urban almost from the start. A Russian invasion of the Baltics would likely have a large urban component almost immediately as the Russians could reach capital cities in a matter of days. A North Korean attack on South Korea would have a significant urban component because of the proximity of Seoul to the border. The US military must accept that odds are high that the next large-scale conflict will have a heavily urban character within days of beginning. There will not be time to make up then for the lack of preparation today. This can be partly addressed now—at low cost—by training echelons above brigade staffs how to campaign in urban areas.

Major Brandon Schwartz, US Army, is currently a doctrine author at the Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate. He holds a BA from the University of Michigan and an MA from Air Command and Staff College. During his career, Major Schwartz served with the Third Expeditionary Sustainment Command, 82nd Airborne Division, Cadet Command, and Army Central.

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

Image credit: Spc. Charles Leitner, US Army

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Brandon Schwartz · February 5, 2025

25. NYPD Confidential: Inside America’s Most Unconventional Counterterror Squad

​A fascinating biogeographic sketch of another great American and unique organization. What can we learn from Rebecca Weiner and her Intelligence and Counterrorism Bureau?

Excerpts:

When I asked a top US diplomat for his read on Weiner, he called her “the real deal,” an assessment based in no small measure on where he’s run into her at national security conferences. “When I hit the hotel gym at 5:30 in the morning,” he said, “she’s always there on the treadmill.”

“The variety of threats that we have right now,” Weiner observed, “are unprecedented in the 20 years I’ve been in this work.” Whether they know it or not, New Yorkers—and Americans across the land—are now standing on the X.

In no small measure, safeguarding America’s financial and cultural capital—and its 8 million residents—rests on the shoulders of a five-foot-five-inch national security prodigy with a backstory that is the stuff of cinema. “If you didn’t have a Rebecca Weiner, you would have had to make her up,” her predecessor, John Miller, told me. “How her life has come full circle.”

NYPD Confidential: Inside America’s Most Unconventional Counterterror Squad

How Rebecca Weiner’s elite team thwarts attacks at home and abroad—and helped the FBI foil Iranian plots to kill Donald Trump.

By 

Photography by 

February 3, 2025

Vanity Fair · by Adam Ciralsky · February 3, 2025

On a cloudless September afternoon, I stopped by 1 Police Plaza in Lower Manhattan to see Rebecca Ulam Weiner, an enigmatic figure who occupies one of the most consequential and improbable perches in America’s national security hierarchy. As the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, her chief mission is to “counter terrorism and mitigate targeted violence, fight crime, and protect people, places, and events in New York City.” And that’s not the half of it.

As part of her sprawling portfolio, the 47-year-old mother of two relies on a mind-boggling suite of assets that Americans might otherwise assume are controlled by the CIA, FBI, DHS, Secret Service, or other agencies. Weiner has access to a legion of intelligence analysts, counterassault and dignitary-protection teams, a flotilla of boats, radiation-sniffing and surveillance aircraft, the nation’s biggest bomb squad, a counter-drone unit, a remote contingent of NYPD detectives stationed in 13 cities overseas, and a network of multilingual undercover operatives who subvert malicious actors across the US and around the world.

Dubbed Intel or ICB for short, the Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau was forged from the fires of 9/11. For more than a decade, its members drew scorn from and fought turf wars with America’s spooks and special agents. But after helping foil more than 60 terrorist plots, Weiner’s squad has made a quantum leap from deeply controversial to positively indispensable. NYPD Intel disrupts terror attacks, runs deep undercover operations, and disseminates threat assessments and flash reports to its sister agencies as well as foreign intelligence services—offering expertise and muscle for cases as varied as mystery drones flying over the tristate area and December’s fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO in midtown Manhattan.

In August I approached Weiner’s team with the idea of chronicling its operations. Just on the horizon loomed the annual 9/11 commemoration, the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the violence and upheaval it wrought, and a highly contentious US election. The NYPD agreed, citing the volume of threats facing New York and the country—and the department’s unique role in combating them.

Meanwhile, Weiner and her team were on the lookout for Iranian agents prowling the city, actively planning to assassinate former US officials.

When I arrived at her 11th-floor office, Weiner was sporting a baby blue pin on her lapel, a vestige of the September 11 ceremony at the World Trade Center memorial she had attended—and helped secure—earlier in the day. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the men pining for their jobs, Donald Trump and JD Vance, were there. Responsibility for their safety that morning fell in part to Weiner. Though fierce political foes, the four principals were united by the occasion’s solemnity. They were also defiant in their decision to stand together on the proverbial X: what security specialists refer to as a position of maximum vulnerability. It wasn’t political theater. Weeks earlier, an assassin had shot at Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania—killing a spectator—and four days later, a second gunman would be caught fleeing Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach.

As we sat in her inner sanctum—surrounded by diplomas (Harvard College, Harvard Law), assorted law enforcement tchotchkes, and her young kids’ artwork—events in Ukraine and the Middle East conspired to make it feel as though the world were spinning off its axis. At the same moment, three floors above, her boss, police commissioner Edward Caban, was about to resign under pressure from his boss, Mayor Eric Adams, who would soon be indicted. (Shortly thereafter, Caban’s replacement, Tom Donlon, would fall under federal investigation as well.)

The machinations inside the cloistered halls of 1PP and Gracie Mansion, however, paled in comparison to what was happening on the streets. An ISIS-inspired plot to murder Jews in Brooklyn had just been stymied. That was on the heels of arrests in New York, LA, and Philly of a group of Tajik men with alleged ISIS ties who had come across the Mexican border. Meanwhile, Weiner and her team were on the lookout for Iranian agents prowling the city and actively planning to assassinate dissidents and former US officials—Trump among them—in a series of overlapping plots, revealed here in minute detail for the first time. All of this was happening against the backdrop of an election and a poisonous political atmosphere that had drawn an alphabet soup of wing nuts, including what those in counterterror circles refer to as racially/ethnically motivated violent extremists (REMVE), homegrown violent extremists (HVE), and anti-government/anti-authority violent extremists (AGAAVE).

When I asked a top US diplomat for his read on Weiner, he called her “the real deal,” an assessment based in no small measure on where he’s run into her at national security conferences. “When I hit the hotel gym at 5:30 in the morning,” he said, “she’s always there on the treadmill.”

“The variety of threats that we have right now,” Weiner observed, “are unprecedented in the 20 years I’ve been in this work.” Whether they know it or not, New Yorkers—and Americans across the land—are now standing on the X.

In no small measure, safeguarding America’s financial and cultural capital—and its 8 million residents—rests on the shoulders of a five-foot-five-inch national security prodigy with a backstory that is the stuff of cinema. “If you didn’t have a Rebecca Weiner, you would have had to make her up,” her predecessor, John Miller, told me. “How her life has come full circle.”

The H-Bomb and Its Fallout

Weiner grew up in a family steeped in secrets and service. In 1939, her grandfather, Stanislaw Ulam, enticed by a teaching offer from Harvard, fled Poland ahead of the Nazi invasion. Soon enough he was contacted by the renowned mathematician John von Neumann, who suggested that Ulam relocate with his wife to New Mexico “for war work” but did not (and could not) explain anything more. “Knowing nothing about the place, my grandfather checked out a library book on the American Southwest,” Weiner recounted as we raced along the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive in a blacked-out Suburban. “Based on who had checked out the book before him, he figured out that the US was working on a fission device.”

Her grandparents moved to Los Alamos in the early days of the top-secret Manhattan Project. So early, in fact, that Weiner’s mother, Claire, was among the first babies born on the Hill, as Los Alamos was euphemistically known. There, Ulam collaborated closely with Edward Teller on the hydrogen bomb, which cycled through various nicknames, including the Super, Ivy Mike, and the Teller-Ulam Design.

Ulam’s contributions to America’s national defense were extraordinary. Not only did he codevelop a weapon so destructive that scientists and policymakers believed its mere existence would help ensure the peace amid a very cold Cold War, but he was also the brains behind Orion, an Elon Musk–sounding endeavor to harness nuclear-pulse propulsion to slingshot rocket ships into deep space. Weiner remembered how her grandfather’s achievements at work did not always sit well at home. She said her grandmother, a French émigré whom she called Mémé, grew disenchanted with America’s ongoing nuclear enterprise in the wake of the devastating A-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In short, it seems that what her grandfather considered elegant solutions to thorny math and physics problems, his wife viewed as unacceptable, or at least troubling, moral choices.

While a Harvard undergrad, Weiner studied the impact that women had on the Manhattan Project and, last year, wrote about her family’s unique dynamic and dilemmas: “Mémé vividly recount[ed] the moment she came across my grandfather sitting in the kitchen one day, staring blindly into their garden. ‘I found a way to make it work,’ he said. ‘It’s a totally different scheme, and it will change the course of history.’ ” Pulling no punches, Weiner noted, “When the U.S. tested Ivy Mike, the first hydrogen bomb built using the new design, it vaporized an entire South Pacific island.” In our conversations it was evident that the New Mexico native has internalized the lessons of her lineage. She needs no reminder that with great power comes great responsibility.

“Hopefully I will have more success keeping the bombs out of Manhattan than the Manhattan Project had making a bomb to ‘keep peace forevermore.’ ”

In a way, she is so laser focused, she seems unfazed by the internecine battles of New York City—or NYPD—politics. (In November she learned she would be reporting to her third police commissioner in two months: her close friend heir to the Loews fortune, who has three degrees from Harvard and a background in counterterrorism.) Given the relentless pace and tremendous stakes of Weiner’s job, I was also struck by her breezy demeanor and wicked sense of humor. She burst out laughing when I asked her to comment on Miller’s observation about her: “Somewhere there’s a strange corollary between building the bomb that was meant to bring peace in the Manhattan Project to being in charge of the project that keeps bombs out of a place called Manhattan.” Ribbing her friend and former boss, she replied, “That’s the insight you have as you’re eating Cool Ranch Doritos after smoking way too much pot.”

Ruminating further on the historical and personal through line, Weiner said, “I like the leitmotif. Yeah, they did think it was going to ‘end war.’ Well, hopefully I will have more success keeping the bombs out of Manhattan than the Manhattan Project had making a bomb to ‘keep peace forevermore.’ ”

Such offhand acuity is part of her makeup. Weiner is poised, cultivated, pin-sharp, convivial, boundlessly curious, charmingly profane, a lightning-quick study, and, at times, a person possessed. At one point, as we discussed her unit’s close cooperation with Scotland Yard, I learned that she had spent 18 years helping bring to justice a seemingly untouchable ISIS recruiter in the UK.

When I asked a top US diplomat for his read on Weiner, he called her “the real deal,” an assessment based in no small measure on where he’s run into her at national security conferences. “When I hit the hotel gym at 5:30 in the morning,” he said, “she’s always there on the treadmill. Only the two of us, and maybe one other guy. She’s totally hard-core.”

NYPD Stealth

As America’s gateway, New York City has long welcomed those wishing to join our democratic experiment and defended against those seeking to destroy it.

That was foremost on my mind in late September when I went with Weiner and her associates on some unconventional ride-alongs as New York played host to the single largest gathering of world leaders—heads of state, monarchs, and their retinues—all of whom had come to town for the annual United Nations General Assembly, or UNGA. It is a diplomatic spectacle wrapped in a security nightmare. Allies and adversaries arrive on a flock of official planes, swarm the city’s hotels, and move between meetings and meals in convoys flanked by the Threat Assessment and Protective Unit (TAPU), all under Weiner’s, and now Tisch’s, command. “We’re running 215 motorcades today,” said Greg Engel, the gregarious silver-haired lieutenant who has been choreographing the elaborate ballet since 2020, as we stood in the middle of First Avenue, which had been turned into a veritable fortress.

“There are lots of police departments with dignitary teams, but ours is scalable,” he said of the 60-person unit that every September balloons into the hundreds. “Nobody has this size or level of integration and planning. Well, the Met”—meaning the Metropolitan Police, in London—“has the royal family and all—so that’s something.”

Weiner, in a secure operations center at 1 Police Plaza in Manhattan.Photograph by Mark Seliger.

As Engel and I chatted outside UN headquarters, Biden had just finished speaking. Due to the recent attempts on Trump’s life, law enforcement officials were leading from the front. Weiner, Ronald Rowe Jr., the acting director of the Secret Service, and senior FBI brass stood a few feet away while heavily armed detachments roamed the plaza. In the distance a Coast Guard cutter and NYPD counterassault teams on fast boats patrolled the East River. At that moment, the UN seemed the safest place on earth—and the biggest bull’s-eye.

Though the cadence had increased, the mission set had not. TAPU routinely provides close protection for senior US and foreign officials in coordination with the Secret Service and the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, and it does so on top of a yearlong calendar of high-profile events that include the New York City Marathon, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, New Year’s Eve in Times Square, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, the Fourth of July fireworks, the US Open, and in 2024, the World Series. Still, nothing compares to the General Assembly. Like Inauguration Day and the Super Bowl, it is an all-hands occasion for federal, state, and local law enforcement. Visiting dignitaries are classified as high, medium, or low risk, which helps Engel and his federal partners determine how big a security bubble to place around them. Weiner’s deputy, Chief John Hart, tried to put things in perspective: “UNGA is always a great concern. But now we’re talking about historic times—two wars, two assassination attempts, and an election.”

Manhattan was abuzz: Three wartime leaders—Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy—had converged on the city. And while Netanyahu was in town, he took the opportunity to call in a rather consequential air strike, eliminating Hezbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, a close Iranian ally. Referring to the potential threats amid the flurry of limos, Weiner said, “You never know what’ll show up on your bingo card at UNGA.”

Some of the uncertainty stems from the fact that heads of state arrive with their own bodyguards, who are packing a combustible combination of firearms and diplomatic immunity. Under the 1947 Headquarters Agreement, which established the UN as neutral territory, the US is generally obliged to issue visas and facilitate access for member states—even avowed enemies. UNGA tests the limits of this rule as well as the patience of national security officials. It is one thing when Britain’s prime minister travels with an elite protection team. It is quite another when Iran’s president is out and about with a phalanx from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a US-designated terrorist organization.

Weiner has access to a legion of intelligence analysts, counterassault and dignitary-protection teams, a flotilla of boats, radiation-sniffing and surveillance aircraft, the nation’s biggest bomb squad, a counter-drone unit, a remote contingent of NYPD detectives stationed in 13 cities overseas, and a network of multilingual undercover operatives.

According to senior law enforcement officials and court records, the IRGC, besides training and equipping a murderer’s row of malign actors (Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, PFLP, PMF, and the Houthis among them), has been at work on American soil, orchestrating a series of brazen murder-for-hire schemes to avenge one of their own. In 2020 Major General Qassem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike approved by Trump. As commander of the group’s elite Quds Force, Soleimani was the power behind the throne, responsible for maintaining the regime’s authoritarian stranglehold at home and overseeing the deadly work of its proxies abroad. His demise sent Tehran into a tailspin and triggered a qualitative change in doctrine. Iran had long been, as Weiner put it, “calibrated and retributive”: It responded to a strike against a general or a nuclear scientist by targeting somebody of comparable stature among its enemies. “Now,” she advised understatedly, “the aperture’s opened a bit.”

Iran’s Stateside plotting pushed ICB into overdrive. Together with the FBI’s New York field office, Weiner and her unit help staff and direct the nation’s oldest and largest joint terrorism task force, which includes representatives from some 50 other federal, state, and local agencies. Over the last two years, increasingly alarming information started coming in suggesting that hit men, hired by Iran, were roaming the five boroughs. “There’s this growing intensity and urgency,” Weiner said of the hunt for these would-be assassins. “We felt like we were chasing ghosts.”

Israel’s Anti-Terror Team

The NYPD would not discuss how or where the intelligence was gleaned. However, filings by federal prosecutors indicate that information was “obtained or derived from electronic surveillance conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.” Translation: The feds had received the blessing of the top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington, DC, to target individuals who were believed to be Iranian agents.

I did not fully appreciate the extent of Iran’s “lethal plotting,” as Weiner’s team calls it, or the obsession it had become for officials in New York, until I sat in for part of Weiner’s morning intelligence briefing during UNGA. Ten people gathered around a conference table at 1PP and another 20 from various ICB components (along with FBI representatives) piped in on a secure video feed. They covered a number of threats quickly, mostly off the record. Talk then turned to an unusual incident.

The previous evening, as the Iranian president’s motorcade was en route to JFK airport to head back home, an IRGC bodyguard had indicated to authorities that he’d left his weapon at his hotel in Midtown. The Iranians requested that their assigned NYPD security detail retrieve it and bring it to their plane before takeoff. That was a nonstarter. Instead, officers were dispatched to the hotel room, where they found not only a knockoff Glock with two loaded magazines, but also an encrypted two-way radio bearing the words “Property of the IRGC.”

Eyes went wide around the room as the group considered the meaning and timing of the incident. Shortly thereafter, as I drove with Weiner to base camp for UNGA operations, Netanyahu’s heavily armed convoy whizzed by in the opposite direction. She didn’t miss a beat, wondering aloud, “Imagine if the IRGC guy killed somebody. That would have been a big deal.” Her team had turned the gun and radio over to the FBI. When I revisited the topic with her later, she said, “We are worried about them killing Trump at the same time that we’re also being called up from a car and asked to return their property. As my nine-year-old would say, ‘It’s very ironical.’ ”

Hours after the intelligence briefing and in a seemingly unrelated development, officials in Washington announced a $20 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of an IRGC operative, Shahram Poursafi, who, according to the FBI, “used encrypted, Internet-based messaging applications to hire criminal elements within the United States to murder a former USG official in Washington D.C. or Maryland, in exchange for $300,000.” John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, was the unnamed target. But, as I would come to learn, he was hardly the only one. (In January, during his first week in office, Trump reportedly ordered that security details be rescinded for Bolton, ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Pompeo’s former deputy Brian Hook, even in the face of apparently ongoing Iranian threats.)

Kelly’s Crew

To understand why Weiner is the consummate heavy for this moment, it helps to understand the story of the unit she now heads—and how it fits into her career trajectory. The tale begins, as so many do, on September 11, 2001. It starts with the guy who would eventually hire Weiner a year out of Harvard Law.

At the time, Dave Cohen was settling into one of life’s elusive second acts after three decades at the CIA, where he had risen to become the agency’s deputy director for operations. “It’s historically the best job in Washington,” he explained. “You’re the head of America’s clandestine service. Nothing matches that.” But he and his wife were ready to shift gears. So he took a position in New York as an adviser to Hank Greenberg at the insurance juggernaut AIG, where, at long last, the stakes were low and the pay was high.

Then the Twin Towers were attacked, and Cohen’s old life came roaring back with a vengeance. “I knew we were at war,” he said. After all, in the days when he was America’s top spy—three years after the first assault on the World Trade Center, in 1993—he had helped establish the CIA’s Bin Laden Issue Station (later nicknamed Alec Station), which was tasked with tracing the tendrils of al-Qaida.

When Michael Bloomberg was elected mayor in late 2001, he appointed Ray Kelly to his second stint as NYPD commissioner. Kelly was already familiar with a landscape that, in Lower Manhattan anyway, had become a hellscape. Bloomberg, in fact, plucked Kelly from his own cushy gig—at Bear Stearns, where he reported to CEO Ace Greenberg.

As crews raced around the clock to recover remains from Ground Zero, Kelly reached out to Cohen, who recalled that Kelly cut to the chase: “He said, ‘I’m going to rebuild the NYPD to deal with the terrorist threat, and I’d like you to come in and join me.’ ” Pushing back politely, Cohen insisted he didn’t want to leave his new boss, Hank Greenberg, hanging. But Kelly wasn’t having it, Cohen laughed. “Without missing a beat, he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, you have your Greenberg problems, I have mine.” The former spy chief felt obligated. With the city still smoldering, he knew he had two options: Take the job or leave town.

In January 2002 the CIA veteran took over an intelligence unit that originated in the early 1900s. It was literally a backwater, relegated to the World War I–era Brooklyn Army Terminal (derided as “the BAT”). “It was pretty much an armpit,” Cohen recounted. “The most important thing that ever came out of the BAT? That’s where Elvis Presley”—drafted into the Army in 1957—“deployed from when he went to Germany.” But even a star turn could not mask the obvious: NYPD Intel was a world away from the department’s center of gravity across the river in Manhattan.

When Cohen finally finagled an office at 1PP, the administrative overlords relegated the former spy chief to Room 301, a storage area chock-full of investigative reports dating back to 1901. He squeezed into a space that was, in his words, “closet-sized,” barely big enough for a desk and a handful of chairs. “I treated 301 as a status symbol. I didn’t want to meld in with the rest of the department. It was important to sustain the mystique.”

But he had something that most of the brass did not: the commissioner’s ear. Every day he had a standing 8 a.m. appointment with Kelly, and everybody knew it. Proximity to power only amplified Cohen’s cachet. He and his boss “had a mindset of building [their agency] along the lines of the OSS,” Cohen told me, referring to the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA’s nimble World War II predecessor. “We’re going to have an analytical program. An operational program. A deep-cover program.” As needs arose, he would add “a cyber capability, a surveillance capability. All of these were sort of bricks in a wall.”

It was a complete paradigm shift. one of Cohen’s early hires, who became his director of intelligence analysis, explained: “Historically, in a police department the motto is collars for dollars. You bring a case for prosecution, and then you get promoted, and then you get more dollars. So the idea that you would run a long-term intelligence collection investigation for a few years—and therefore there would be no collars, and therefore there would be no dollars—was a shock to the culture.”

New York’s Hate Crimes Unit

Cohen’s bureau placed a premium on human intelligence (HUMINT) derived from undercover officers (UCs) and confidential informants (CIs); the collection of open-source intelligence (OSINT); and a strong team of analysts to make sense of it all. He quickly recognized the built-in advantage of a department that could draw on 36,000 cops conversant in 168 languages. His crown jewel, though, was the Special Services Unit (SSU)—a group whose name has never been disclosed in the mainstream press. “They were the pointy end of the spear,” he said. The deep-cover program “enabled you to get inside the operations of a [terror] cell.” By design, it was a separate and stealthy enterprise. Cohen and company scoured applications from the post-9/11 legions looking to join the NYPD and plucked individuals from nontraditional backgrounds who, in spy jargon, could live their cover.

Once selected for the SSU, “they never were allowed to walk into an NYPD facility,” Cohen asserted. “We didn’t want them to learn police jargon. We didn’t want them going to dinner”—say, with assets or targets—“and asking for a receipt. No, you don’t need a receipt if you’re coming with us. There were Afghans, Pakistanis, Egyptians, you name it. We took full advantage, in a positive way, of what the city had to offer.”

The unit quickly encountered resistance from a formidable opponent: the FBI. Though the NYPD and the bureau had worked together for ages, Kelly needed a team he could run—and trust—post-9/11. “From our vantage,” Silber recalled, “the feds had failed in 1993 and in 2001. If there was another plot, we feared there would be a massive capital flight from the city.”

To be fair, the FBI had already been thoroughly excoriated for its failure to connect the 9/11 dots or play nice with other government agencies. The CIA (Alec Station in particular, which bore Cohen’s fingerprints) had also been taken to the woodshed for siloing critical information that might have thwarted or blunted the attack. (Full disclosure: I began my career as an attorney in the CIA’s Office of General Counsel.)

Cohen’s outfit ruffled feathers among Washington’s national security set, nowhere more so than at the FBI. Skirmishes over information-sharing metastasized into turf battles. “We were intruders into their area of responsibility,” Cohen said. “But they couldn’t do what we could do.” The disparity was glaring. In the early aughts, the FBI had roughly 12,000 special agents spread across 56 domestic field offices and 45 US posts abroad. In contrast, the NYPD had three times as many officers operating within the five boroughs alone.

Things came to a head in August 2004, when a confidential informant secretly recorded two men plotting to bomb the Herald Square subway station. “We actually stopped a terrorist attack,” Cohen said. “The bureau didn’t take it seriously. They were wrong. They didn’t think we could do it. They were wrong. And this was like two weeks before the Republican National Convention and a couple of blocks away. This was a big, big deal.” The primary defendant, Shahawar Matin Siraj, was sentenced to 30 years for conspiring to plant explosives. “That was really the first case,” Silber noted, “that proved that the NYPD Intelligence Division could bring value that was unique and distinct.”

Weiner fit neatly into this scrappy yet evolving team. In 2006, as a Harvard international security fellow, she was writing a paper on the risks governments face by outsourcing to private military contractors. One day she happened to attend a panel called Policing in a Time of Terror. Ray Kelly was among the participants and mentioned the unit that he and Cohen had set up. After the talk Weiner approached him and said she wanted to work there. The next day, she got a call, and Cohen brought her on as an intelligence analyst. In short order, Weiner found herself in a cop shop, armed with a law degree and her expertise in foreign affairs, biotech, and nuclear deterrence, as well as her knowledge of the threat posed by radical Islamist groups and the so-called lone wolves they help inspire or recruit.

Cohen’s tenure was not without controversy. At one point he created a so-called “demographics unit,” intended to chart different New York–based diaspora communities, hoping to help identify where a potential militant might go to blend in. Or, as Silber put it, “We knew that in Madrid in the 2004 train attack, people hung out at a certain barbershop. Some of the guys got together for 7/7”—the 2005 London bombings—“in a bookstore in Leeds. Where were those places in New York? Where was the café where hotheads got together to talk about doing something?”

What may have made sense on paper, however, was pegged as anti-Islamic. It morphed into an unmitigated legal and PR disaster. Plainclothes officers visited majority-Muslim neighborhoods, which opened the department up to allegations of racial and religious profiling as well as a full-blown domestic spying scandal, one that the Associated Press earned a 2012 Pulitzer Prize for exposing. Weiner was conscripted to help handle the NYPD’s negotiations with attorneys for Muslim leaders. “The main takeaway is to actually show your hand a bit more,” Weiner explained, looking back. “Part of the issue was the perception of what you’re hiding is going to be much more scary and terrible than the reality of what you’re doing here.”

Perhaps Cohen’s most audacious gambit—which happened to dovetail with Weiner’s interests—occurred sub rosa. He quietly established a program to place detectives in key locations overseas. Their role was to provide intelligence on ever-changing terror tactics as well as early warnings of potential threats to the city. From his CIA days Cohen had strong relationships with foreign intelligence and law enforcement officials and knew plenty of American ambassadors. Even so, he realized that putting members of a metropolitan police force in a US embassy—or anywhere in a foreign country—would draw fire from the feds. But having come from a world where risk was rewarded, he went for it.

Cohen, in an early instance, persuaded Spain’s National Police to host a hard-charging young detective who spoke impeccable Castilian Spanish. They agreed but evidently made the mistake of calling US embassy officials to see if they would mind. Cohen grimaced as he recalled the earful Madrid got from an American diplomat: “Absolutely, we mind. Don’t do it!” When Cohen broke the news to Kelly, Cohen remembered, the commissioner didn’t bat an eye. He purportedly barked, “Send ’em anyway.” Today the NYPD has liaison officers in cities from Abu Dhabi to Bogota, The Hague to Tel Aviv. And Weiner has been a linchpin. She helped foreign counterparts track cells or crack cases, created an intel and threat-analysis program that would become an industry model, and became the first senior member of a local police force to serve on America’s National Intelligence Council.

In 2014 Cohen handed over the reins to John Miller (now CNN’s chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst), who knew the terrain. As a senior FBI official, he’d witnessed the acrimony between the department and the feds. Steeped in both cultures, he spearheaded an effort to get the cops and the G-men, as he put it, to “stop knocking heads.”

Under Miller, the FBI began ramping up its use of SSU’s pool of undercovers. Federal agents tended to be older, more square; Miller’s, and now Weiner’s, were younger, more diverse, multilingual. The FBI’s former special agent in charge of counterterrorism in New York, Bryan Paarmann, gave me the rationale: “Your average FBI agent is hired around age 30. By the time he has his investigative chops and has gone through undercover school and is certified, he may be closer to early 40s. But if you’re talking about a group of young radicals, how do you infiltrate when those guys are 22?” The answer: Tap into the NYPD’s ranks. Over time, that collaboration—almost entirely invisible to the public—expanded nationwide. “We started to cross-certify our undercovers into their program,” Miller said of the FBI. “We became basically an extension of the efforts to protect other American cities from terrorism.”

In one such case—eerily similar to the recent New Year’s massacre in New Orleans—a 25-year-old from Texas caught ICB’s attention in early 2022. “Our undercover finds this guy online who is so aggressive,” Weiner said. The undercover agent starts courting him, posing as a kindred radical. Among other things, according to a federal criminal complaint, the man shares a video clip of himself driving his Ford F-250 pickup alongside a populated area. He can be heard cursing non-Muslims as ISIS propaganda music plays in the background. “Within a couple of weeks, he’s got his videotaped pledge of allegiance to ISIS and invites us out to [Texas] to do some casing of these bars that are on this strip.”

By this point, with the FBI in the lead, the NYPD’s undercover traveled to meet the suspect in person. “He told us he’s looking to carry out an attack on this outdoor pedestrian area in Dallas,” Weiner continued. Moving quickly, Miller said, “the FBI took the guy down on the road because, they said, ‘We’ve got too much threat, too much capability.’ ” The case, he noted, was a prime example of “a fast-moving plot that looked like it was imminent and had to be stopped, and [where] the only person who could get into the guy was the NYPD undercover.” (The man in question ended up pleading to a charge of conspiracy to distribute narcotics and will spend years behind bars.)

Biden officials said they’d conveyed to their Iranian counterparts that any attempt on candidate Trump would be considered by the United States as “an act of war.”

While ISIS was a constant worry, so too were new threats from potential attackers aligned with Iran. In a prescient move, Miller tasked Weiner, then his director of intelligence analysis, with charting Iran’s capabilities on the ground in New York City. He remembered being struck that “she came up with this brilliant report which strung together all of these connections that, had the federal government done it, would have been highly classified. But it was all based on NYPD casework—our first clear look into what Iran was up to with Hezbollah and other operators, mapping targets in New York.”

It was only a matter of time before Weiner’s hour would arrive. In July 2023, during a delicate, politicized period, she emerged as a consensus candidate to be Miller’s successor. In appointing her, Mayor Adams noted that protecting the nation was in her blood: “Today, she is following in her grandfather’s legacy and protecting our city and our nation’s security. This is the American dream.” She was soon busy covering the proverbial waterfront, from signing off on security protocols for the Met Gala to monitoring ISIS activities. Last April, Weiner was involved in the decision-making when, at the request of Columbia University, the NYPD would dispatch the Emergency Service Unit to the campus to dislodge pro-Palestinian protesters who had occupied Hamilton Hall. It didn’t hurt that she’s been a Columbia adjunct associate professor.

It also didn’t hurt that her family upbringing reinforced an instinct, as the saying goes, to help “keep the peace.” Or that she has maintained throughout her career a fixed moral compass, an important attribute at a time when several members of the mayor’s administration, including two ex–police commissioners, are under federal investigation for corruption, though no charges have been filed.

Cohen, now 82, echoed Adams’s assessment of Weiner, turning animated when he spoke of the young analyst he’d hired and mentored: “What I would say to all of us who would claim some credit for her success: Don’t. You didn’t do shit for her! She’s a star. And I might add, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, keeping in mind her grandfather.”

“Victim-4:” Donald Trump

In my talks with Weiner and her cohorts, their frequent references to “Iranian lethal plotting” were puzzling. The phrase came up consistently yet obliquely. The gun and encrypted walkie-talkie that the Iranian aide had left in the hotel room had caught my attention, but mainly as an oddity. Then, on October 14—after two failed attempts on Trump’s life, along with the excoriation of the Secret Service from many quarters—Biden officials went public with a pronouncement that stopped me cold. They said they’d conveyed multiple warnings to their Iranian counterparts that any attempt on the welfare of then candidate Trump would be considered by the United States as “an act of war.”

I asked Weiner for the lowdown. The Iranian government, she said, has been “trying to kill either US government officials or prominent activists in retribution for Soleimani,” the head of the Quds force. “This threat has been going on since 2020, and there’s a lot of different tentacles.” She listed people who, based on NYPD and US intelligence, have been among Tehran’s targets. First and foremost was Trump. Others included Bolton, Pompeo, and former CentCom commander Frank McKenzie. “They also want to kill Iranian dissidents. So Masih is part of that threat stream.”

who had been residing in the New York City area, is an Iranian American journalist and activist whose withering criticism of the Tehran regime, including its human rights abuses and rampant corruption, has made her a prime assassination target. In June 2020, authorities contend, a team of Iranian agents allegedly mobilized with the intention of kidnapping her in a scheme that appeared to involve taking her by boat from the New York waterfront and transporting her by sea to Venezuela. From there, according to a federal indictment, she would have been flown to Tehran.

When NYPD officers searched the vehicle, they found a loaded AK-47-style assault rifle, five dozen rounds of ammunition, $1,000 in cash, and a black ski mask.

According to interviews with federal and local law enforcement representatives as well as court records, Iran’s alleged assassination efforts in the US would grow bolder in the lead-up to the election. As far-fetched as the plot against Alinejad may sound, its accused mastermind, Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani, purportedly kept a picture of Alinejad–shown with two other dissidents, Ruhollah Zam and Jamshid Sharmahd–on one of his electronic devices. The photo had an ominous caption in Farsi: “Are you coming, or should we come for you?” Though the plans for Alinejad came to naught, Zam and Sharmahd were successfully lured, respectively, from their homes in France and California; abducted; and taken to Iran, where they were executed. In July 2021 the Southern District of New York indicted Farahani and his alleged coconspirators on counts involving kidnapping, bank and wire fraud, money laundering, and sanctions violations.

Then, on July 28, 2022, a patrol car pulled over a Subaru Forester SUV that a surveillance camera had spotted near a residence associated with Alinejad. The driver had staked out the location and had even ordered Uber Eats while sitting behind the wheel. When NYPD officers searched the vehicle, they found a loaded AK-47-style assault rifle, five dozen rounds of ammunition, more than $1,000 in cash, and a black ski mask. They arrested Khalid Mehdiyev, a Yonkers resident and member of a Eurasian organized crime crew known as the Thieves in Law. The group’s emblem is an eight-pointed black-and-white star, which adherents emblazon on everything from their bodies to birthday cakes, that is said to symbolize that they will “kneel before no one.”

In due course, authorities located Mehdiyev’s purported fellow “thieves”—Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov (since extradited) as well as Zialat Mamedov. Federal prosecutors allege that the men were hired by an IRGC brigadier general, Ruhollah Bazghandi, and given a singular mission: to kill Alinejad. Moments before he was pulled over, Mehdiyev is said to have sent Omarov a video from inside his car displaying his assault rifle along with a message: “We are ready.”

“The Iranians have a whole history of assassinating people,” Weiner said. “Each plot looks a little bit different but usually involves some kind of cutout”—a hired gun with no obvious ties to the recruiter. “It’s a little bit of a throw-noodles-on-the-wall kind of mentality. The reason they’ve gone to this model is for plausible deniability. And yet, they want people with connections.” Meaning experienced criminals willing to do both the crime and the time—or have associates who would.

That was evident in 2023 when Tehran, according to the Justice Department, turned to a 51-year-old IRGC asset named Farhad Shakeri, who was born in Afghanistan but moved to the US as a child. In his 20s he was convicted of robbery in New York and served 14 years in state penitentiaries, including Fishkill, which is where he met Carlisle Rivera (a.k.a. Pop), who was there on a second-degree murder rap. In 2008, Shakeri was deported, only to be imprisoned a decade later in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in connection with the seizure of nearly 100 kilos of heroin. Somewhere along the line he was recruited by the IRGC and wound up living in Iran. As the US entered the 2024 election cycle, and with the Middle East in chaos, Shakeri allegedly contacted Rivera and an associate of his, Jonathan Loadholt, with a proposition: $100,000 to locate and rub out Alinejad.

The hired guns began surveilling the activist, traveling to Connecticut, where she was scheduled to speak that February. The event was canceled at the urging of law enforcement. Rivera and Loadholt, however, were undeterred and, it seems, well armed. Photos retrieved from their devices appear to show an arsenal of assault rifles, firearms, and a shotgun. The men also exhibited tradecraft that had eluded the more penny-ante Thieves in Law. Rivera had procured a burner phone, paying cash. Loadholt seems to have taken pains to remove the South Carolina license plates on his black 2007 Honda Accord. The duo, on multiple occasions that spring, evidently cased and photographed Alinejad’s property.

They were clever but not clever enough. Despite these precautions, the vehicle was spotted by specialized cameras on the Verrazzano Bridge nearly every time it moved between Staten Island (where Loadholt lived) and Alinejad’s home. Cell site location data revealed a pattern: When they were on a stakeout, the men would leave their phones behind and fire up the burner when they were closer to their target. Meanwhile, the same pole camera that triggered Mehdiyev’s arrest recorded Loadholt’s Accord parked in various spots around the dissident’s residence. From his perch in Tehran, authorities believe, Shakeri kept tabs on developments through voice notes that he exchanged with his old friend Pop from Fishkill, who, in April, sent Shakeri an update: “This bitch is hard to catch, bro. And because she [sic] hard to catch, there ain’t gonna be no simple pull up…unless there’s the luck of the draw.”

Luck was in short supply. A joint counterterrorism task force composed of FBI agents and Weiner’s detectives was watching Rivera and Loadholt, ever mindful that Iran, for the third time in three years, was targeting the same person in the same borough. “At the same time,” Weiner recounted, “our intel and counterterrorism people were doing a lot of protective work on her.” As prominent as she was, Alinejad was not a current or former US official and, therefore, not entitled to 24/7 security from the feds. So the NYPD’s Critical Response Command stepped in, deploying well-armed covert and overt teams that, as Weiner put it, were “making sure nobody was trying to whack her.”

While short on specifics, FBI director Christopher Wray telegraphed the precarious security situation. In late 2023 he had told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “I see blinking lights everywhere.” In April 2024 he spoke of a “heightened threat environment” at a House Appropriations Committee hearing, noting, “Looking back over my career in law enforcement, I would be hard-pressed to think of a time where so many threats to public safety and national security were so elevated all at once.”

It wasn’t just a lone dissident in Iran’s crosshairs. That same month, an elusive Pakistani man named Asif Merchant landed in Houston on a flight from Istanbul. His travel records showed that he had made frequent trips to Iraq and Syria—as well as Iran, where he had a wife and children. Purporting to be in the yarn-dyed-clothing business, according to federal records, he flew to LaGuardia last June to see an individual he had been pitching from afar about a job that could net him $100,000. The pair met in a hotel room in Nassau County, where Merchant insisted they place their electronics in a drawer so as not to be monitored.

What Merchant did not appreciate, however, was that his contact had already tipped off the FBI and been signed up as a confidential source. The room was wired and a camera was rolling as Merchant asked the CS to be a middleman for him. Merchant instructed him to hire hit men to kill a prominent person, whom he described as a politician and, at times, a government official. He warned that because the target would be well protected, the CS would not only have to conscript the trigger pullers, but also a woman to perform reconnaissance and then have 25 randos foment a protest on the day of the killing, a distraction that would draw law enforcement attention away from the gunmen.

On camera, Merchant could be seen placing objects on a napkin to map out various assassination scenarios and, according to an unsealed search warrant, “repeatedly asked the CS to explain how the target would die.” The following week, in Manhattan, the CS introduced Merchant to two supposed hit men—both FBI undercovers. Merchant indicated he wanted them to “kill somebody”—a target he described as a “political person.” He would later arrange payment of a $5,000 advance for the job. Finally, Merchant reportedly told the assassins he would be departing the country and that they would receive instructions, including the target’s name, in August or September.

Merchant seemed better versed in operational security than the previous plotters had been. The CS was instructed to photograph and text to Merchant the serial number off of a dollar bill, which he was later asked to produce when he picked up the $5,000 in Queens. Merchant provided the CS with code words to use when communicating about the plot once Merchant was back overseas. In addition, according to a pretrial filing from the deputy attorney general, Merchant disclosed that he himself had been trained by the IRGC in “countersurveillance and other espionage tactics” and kept in touch with his handler via “messages hidden inside gift bags taken overseas by others to Pakistan.”

On July 12, 2024, after witnessing Merchant put luggage in the trunk of his car outside a residence in Houston, the FBI moved in and arrested him. Wray would later describe Merchant as “a Pakistani national with close ties to Iran [who] is straight out of the Iranian playbook.”

The day after that arrest, 1,200 miles away in Butler, Pennsylvania, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired eight rounds from a rooftop overlooking a Trump rally, grazing the president, killing former firefighter Corey Comperatore, and wounding two others. While officials have confirmed to me that Trump was indeed one of Merchant’s targets, they insist the alleged recruiter had no known connection to Crooks or to Ryan Wesley Routh, the construction worker whom a grand jury would charge with attempting to assassinate Trump in West Palm Beach. Neither the feds nor police in Pennsylvania or Florida have credibly linked the two men to Iran.

The Iranian official ordered him to “put aside his other efforts and focus on surveilling, and, ultimately, assassinating, former President of the United States, Donald J. Trump,” described in the filing as “Victim-4.”

Three days after Butler, on July 16, Shakeri, according to an FBI affiant, was back online, using a Maldives-registered phone number to text Pop Rivera, telling him to “take care of it already”—which officials believe was yet another order to kill Alinejad. The men reputedly discussed the $100,000 bounty again, and Shakeri added, with urgency, “Just do it son, I’ll handle the rest.”

Weeks passed without incident—on the Alinejad front anyway. However, on September 30, Shakeri, from his perch in Tehran, had the first of five telephone conversations with the FBI. His stated reason for reaching out was to seek a sentence reduction for someone serving time in US custody. The details of his calls, as laid out in a November 8 complaint, are fascinating and frightening.

By his own admission, Shakeri met more than a dozen times at various restaurants around the Iranian capital with an IRGC official who knew the ex-con had previously lived in New York. They discussed Alinejad (whom prosecutors refer to as “Victim-1”) and at some point the official indicated the IRGC wanted her killed immediately and would pay approximately $1.5 million. But there was a catch: Shakeri—or whomever he hired for the hit—would have to produce videotaped proof confirming Alinejad’s death and showing that Shakeri’s team was responsible for it. (Evidently, authorities surmise, Iran had enough other hit men going after Alinejad that they needed visual corroboration from the actual killer or recruiter himself.) The IRGC official is also said to have requested that Shakeri arrange for the killing of two prominent Jewish businesspeople in New York City (“Victim-2” and “Victim-3”) and signaled a willingness to pay $500,000 for each hit.

Finally, according to a warrant seeking Shakeri’s arrest, he supposedly told the bureau that in September the IRGC official ordered him to “put aside his other efforts on behalf of the IRGC and focus on surveilling, and, ultimately, assassinating, former President of the United States, Donald J. Trump,” described in the filing as “Victim-4.”

When the ex-con pointed out to his handler that the cost would be “huge,” he allegedly was told, “Money’s not an issue.” The FBI took this to mean that “the IRGC previously had spent a significant sum of money on efforts to murder Victim-4 and was willing to continue spending a lot of money in its attempt to procure Victim-4’s assassination.” For the Iranians, the clock was ticking. On or about October 7, Shakeri’s contact, according to the filings, directed him “to provide a plan within seven days to kill Victim-4” and suggested that were he unable to do so, “the IRGC would pause its plan to kill Victim-4 until after the U.S. Presidential elections” because, Shakeri evidently claimed, his IRGC handler assessed that Victim-4 would lose the election and, in its wake, would be easier to assassinate.

The Biden Justice Department has acknowledged it kept Trump apprised of the alleged plots, along with attempts to hack into the Trump campaign’s communications. Trump’s team was reportedly briefed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and Trump would post on Truth Social: “Big threats on my life by Iran…. Moves were already made by Iran that didn’t work out, but they will try again.”

It was later revealed that America’s nemesis responded privately to Biden’s accusations. According to officials in Washington and Tehran, a message from Iran was conveyed through a third party to the Biden administration insisting that it was not engaged in plots to assassinate the former president. Regardless, the cases against the alleged plotters are proceeding in federal court. Meanwhile, in the months since the election, Iran, even as its representatives have spoken out about wanting to reengage with the US and its allies on a nuclear arms agreement, has reportedly accelerated its nuclear efforts and is producing weapons-grade uranium.

London Calling

In December, Weiner and a small contingent flew to London to reunite with their counterparts from various security services: MI5, SO15, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the FBI. The occasion was a private ceremony commemorating their collective role in Operation Aughtlins, a sensitive and sophisticated tripartite takedown of a terrorist who had bedeviled authorities for decades. Weiner had scheduled several meetings during the visit and, as is typical in her peripatetic life, she stopped before heading off to a dinner to call into a parent-teacher conference back home.

The specifics of Operation Aughtlins and its endgame have been closely guarded. “I can say with confidence that this case has brought the most significant public safety benefit I’ve seen in my 20 years in counterterrorism,” said Dominic Murphy when we sat down at New Scotland Yard on the north bank of the Thames. As chief of SO15, the Metropolitan Police’s counterterror command, the bespectacled 52-year-old thought he had seen it all. “We’ve disrupted 43 late-stage plots since 2017—people imminently wanting to launch terror attacks. And yet Anjem Choudary remained such a focus that you could never drop your eye.”

America’s Top Hostage Negotiator

If the name does not ring a bell, Choudary’s legacy almost certainly will. He is the cofounder and “emir” of a designated terrorist organization known as al-Muhajiroun (ALM), and his acolytes—British citizens inspired by his glorification of violent jihad—are connected to, among other things, the 2013 decapitation of British soldier Lee Rigby and both the 2017 London Bridge and 2019 Fishmongers’ Hall attacks. Choudary has also been a prolific recruiter, persuading hundreds of people in the UK to travel abroad to join ISIS. Among the more insidious of the mujahids was a British-born convert named Siddhartha Dhar who, after serving as Choudary’s close aide and ALM’s spokesman, moved his family to Syria, where he became a key English-language propagandist for ISIS and is suspected of having appeared in one of the group’s gruesome on-camera-execution videos. In 2017 the US Treasury Department named Choudary a specially designated global terrorist.

For Weiner, the London trip had been 18 years in the making. “It was my first case as a baby analyst,” she said, referring to a complicated British-born network she tried to pin down when she first joined the NYPD. Long before they would find direct linkages to Choudary, Weiner and her colleagues were playing a frustrating game of whack-a-mole with what they characterize as a US affiliate in New York, the Islamic Thinkers Society (ITS). “We called it a bug light, where these guys would come in and radicalize and then go on and get arrested.”

Stopping Choudary proved particularly challenging. The charismatic cleric, with a law degree, was careful not to overstep UK counterterrorism statutes in his sermons and other public statements. And when the country banned ALM in 2005, he strategically rebranded. Weiner and various team members kept close watch nonetheless. The hide-and-seek continued until July 2014, when footage appeared of Choudary swearing allegiance to ISIS and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The Brits convicted Choudary for “inviting support for the proscribed organisation known as ISIS.” Following his 2018 release from prison, Choudary was barred for a time from using the internet, public speaking, or associating with extremists. Once those conditions expired, Weiner remembered, he was back to “communicating with the Islamic Thinkers Society. So our undercovers started engaging with him directly.” It would take her and her foreign partners years to bring him to justice.

Since the department has never publicly acknowledged the unit or described its operations, having three "undercovers" and one analyst surface in my London hotel room was a bit of a thing.

Weiner arranged for me to meet with the case agents, who were in town to receive the Commander’s Commendation from SO15 for what Murphy would describe as their “tenacity, courage, professionalism, and detective ability.” At noon on a gloomy December afternoon, four members of Weiner’s SSU filed into my hotel room.

Since the department, as noted, has never publicly acknowledged the SSU or described its operations, having them surface in a London hotel was a bit of a thing. Before sitting down on a couch, “377”—the undercover at the center of the case—was put off by the silence. He turned on the television, explaining that they were trained never to meet without background noise, a tactic to frustrate would-be eavesdroppers. Undercover 377 was accompanied by “Charlie,” his handler, “Kevin,” who supervises undercover operations, and “Debra,” the analyst on the Choudary case. My request to record the conversation for clarity was met with some serious side-eye—as was the entirely coincidental appearance on a shelf behind me of a large coffee table book entitled One of them gave me a quizzical look that suggested I might have planted it there. It was clear that they had never met with a journalist. They certainly seemed to be tight teammates: As they spoke, Charlie and 377 finished each other’s sentences.

A practicing Muslim, 377 had a devil-may-care bearing. He told me that he had so thoroughly infiltrated the American chapter of ITS that he had been promoted to serve as “the muscle,” responsible for vetting those in the US who sought to join. It was the perfect cover, allowing him to turn away dilettantes or to closely watch hard-core ideologues who might pose a real threat. “ITS is an incubator,” Kevin said. “It provides an environment where someone who self-radicalizes can meet like-minded people and then go join a foreign terrorist organization.” Debra added, “We’ve locked up 11 ITS members who were preparing to travel abroad to join ISIS.”

For eight years 377 remained operational inside the US-based ITS movement, where he participated in and reported back on conversations and videoconferences with Choudary (and a handful of other true believers), as well as larger gatherings of 150 or more. The undercover also took to the streets for Da’wah, a traditionally peaceful form of proselytizing that ITS firebrands had turned into provocative stunts to demonstrate that the group was practicing “authentic” Islam. “Doing Da’wah was risky,” 377 told me. “We’d show up on a street corner in the Bronx with signs, looking to incite violence.”

Choudary came to trust and rely on 377. As ITS accounts were shuttered on various platforms—including StreamYard, Zoom, and Discord—the British imam directed the American undercover to create a channel on Telegram, which Choudary apparently believed was more secure. “We saw this uptick of activity after he got released, and we saw him kind of back to his own old tricks,” Weiner recalled. “We started passing [our intelligence] to the Brits, ‘Hey, just by the way, this guy is now directing our meetings and he is back.’ ”

For their part, Canada’s RCMP was running its own undercover, who was monitoring Khaled Hussein, Choudary’s Edmonton-based personal assistant, who would exchange candid voice notes with his boss, including one he shared with a Canadian agent, describing ITS as “being al-Muhajiroun.” MI5 provided wiretaps. In the view of law enforcement, ITS was simply ALM in sheep’s clothing, and Choudary, from East London’s Ilford neighborhood, was pulling the strings. (ITS has claimed it is an “intellectual” group pursuing its struggle through “non-violent means.”)

On July 17, 2023, SO15, MI5, and their North American partners gathered at the Counter Terrorism Operations Centre in West London. Hussein was preparing to fly from Edmonton to London, so officials put a plan in motion. “We waited for him to get into the air,” SO15’s commander said, and “sent in a team to do a forced entry at Choudary’s home.” The cleric was taken into custody. As counterterrorism agents scoured the premises for electronics, another team was dispatched to Heathrow to arrest Hussein when he landed.

Unlike some of his underlings, Choudary demanded a trial. That presented thorny issues. How would Britain introduce evidence gathered overseas by a foreign security service like the NYPD? Were New York’s standards governing entrapment as rigorous as those in the UK? This was a case of first impression, and a risky one.

“A lot of the time, even when UCs are involved in a case that leads to an arrest, we try to, at the very last minute, kind of compartmentalize them so they don’t have to testify because that’ll burn them and then we can’t use them as undercovers anymore,” Weiner said. As a result, “Often a case goes to a plea”—instead of public proceedings. “But we’ve never had this scenario where you have a trial overseas involving our testimony.” In what Murphy called an “unprecedented” move, Weiner directed 377, after 13 years of undercover work, to testify against Choudary, knowing full well that it would blow his cover and end his clandestine career.

I asked about her calculus in making that decision. “For each person who does this work, it’s incredibly stressful, it’s at times very dangerous, and so there’s a shelf life to it,” she said. “But there is always the understanding that if the investigations require you to surface, then you will.” For the British, and for Weiner personally, Choudary had become a Melvillian white whale. She also recognized that 377 had already had some extremely close calls when, at the eleventh hour, ITS members pleaded out. “In this case, I think it probably comes as some degree of relief and a great capstone. If you’re going to have this career, this is a great way to end it.”

“I was nervous, I didn’t know what to expect,” 377 said of his appearance this past summer at London’s Woolwich Crown Court. “They make you stand in the witness box. Had I known, I would have worn more comfortable shoes,” he laughed. “They cleared the court for me and there was a curtain. The judge, the jury, and the defense counsel could see me but Choudary couldn’t.” When I asked how he survived cross-examination, 377 shrugged, “Defense counsel didn’t want me opening up Pandora’s box and doing a lot of damage.”

Last July, after a six-week trial, Choudary was convicted of directing, being a member of, and encouraging support for a terrorist organization. He was sentenced to 28 years in a British prison.

The day after the ceremony to honor their joint effort, Weiner and I had lunch at St. Ermin’s, a legendary London watering hole for spooks—and for moles hoping to glean state secrets. It was clear that, for her, Choudary’s had been no ordinary case and that hers was no ordinary job. Her team had not simply taken a “shameless, prolific radicalizer,” as she phrased it, off the chessboard. Rather, by helping bring about the conviction of a bona fide leader of a terrorist group, they had changed the contours of the game.

Weiner was in good spirits. But she was clearly preoccupied. She would later explain, “It was very cinematic. I was literally in the taxi on the way to the awards ceremony when the assassination happened”—referring to the sidewalk slaying of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. “Then, of course, that’s the dominant thing: the anti-corporate tech bro who hates the health care industry and has caused widespread panic among CEOs.”

Her new boss had been calling and texting her to exchange updates throughout the day. So had her federal partners. She was the NYPD’s counterterror czar—and that encompassed domestic terrorism as well. She hadn’t had the luxury of fully basking in the moment with her crew.

And then her solicitous side kicked in. When a waiter brought me a particularly off-putting gluten-free entrée (a cylindrical cauliflower steak), she insisted that I eat her meal (Dover sole), literally handing me her plate.

Off and on during lunch, from her tableside seat in Westminster, she kept fielding calls from New York, excusing herself at various points. When I asked how she juggled it all—assassinations, bomb plots, not to mention her family, social life, and New York City politics—she answered in signature fashion: “I feel like a qubit in quantum computing. We have to exist in two different states as the same person at the same time. And that’s just the ever-present reality of this work at this moment in time.”

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Vanity Fair · by Adam Ciralsky · February 3, 2025

26. The U.S. Military’s Recruiting Crisis

​A long read. The subtitle asks the key question.

Excerpts:

Like others, Duckworth worries that the military is being asked to do too much with too few recruits, a situation that risks making it even less attractive to enlist. “My fear is a death spiral,” she said. “If you can’t man every position, then you have to extend deployments and the time people stay at sea. The jobs become overwhelming.”

To expand the pool of potential recruits, Duckworth has proposed legislation that would allow certain classes of immigrants—including DACA recipients and Ukrainians and Afghans who have been granted temporary residence in the U.S.—the right to legal residence if they join the military. “If you are qualified and willing to wear the uniform to serve the nation honorably, you ought to be able to earn citizenship,” Duckworth told me.

It is difficult to imagine the bill passing in the current climate. In the early days of Trump’s second term, he has seemed more intent on changing the complexion of the military than on boosting its numbers. He issued an order declaring that trans identity is “incompatible with active duty.” Hegseth has called for women to be kept out of combat roles. To replace them, Trump has ordered thousands of soldiers who were expelled for refusing a COVID vaccine to be restored to service, with back pay. His first task for the military was to help deport undocumented immigrants across the southern border.

Trump’s trans ban contains a phrase that seems unusual in his rhetoric. It refers to “the humility and selflessness required of a service member.” These qualities seem scarce in Trump’s Washington, but they’re easier to find among the young recruits I talked to. At West Point, I met Jillian Pennell, a twenty-one-year-old cadet from Huntsville, Alabama. West Point, like all the country’s élite service academies, is difficult to get into; six out of seven applicants are rejected. Tuition is free, but cadets submit to a rigorous program that strictly limits their personal freedom and takes up almost every minute of their days. Summers are spent in training and internships, and everyone is expected to play a sport. West Point’s mission is to train leaders who inspire by moral, intellectual, and physical example.

I talked to Pennell in a vaulted room at Taylor Hall, where she was taking a break between classes. She told me she was raised in a Christian household, one that put less stress on church and doctrine than on ethics. “I felt called to service in whatever capacity it was—I felt that from a young age,” Pennell said. She aspires to be an Army helicopter pilot; last summer, she completed Air Assault School, in which she rappelled down from hovering choppers. As a pilot, Pennell will be required to give the Army twelve years of service, without the option of leaving. “It’s very hard here sometimes, but it’s rewarding,” she said. She told me that she looked forward to serving the country. “Most of the cadets here feel that way,” she said.

The U.S. Military’s Recruiting Crisis

The New Yorker · by Dexter Filkins · February 3, 2025

A Reporter at Large

The ranks of the American armed forces are depleted. Is the problem the military or the country?

February 3, 2025

In the Future Soldiers course, trainees who could not pass the armed forces’ physical or aptitude tests go through three months of remedial training, in the hope of preparing them for boot camp.Photographs by Rebecca Kiger for The New Yorker

At Fort Jackson, in South Carolina, the U.S. Army comes face to face with America’s youth. One recent morning, at the Future Soldiers training course, hundreds of overweight young men and women hoping to join the service lined up to run and perform calisthenics before a cordon of drill sergeants. Some were participating in organized workouts for the first time. Many heaved for breath when asked to run a half mile; others gave up and walked. A number hobbled around on crutches. At a weekly weigh-in, dozens of young men stood shirtless, revealing just how far they had to go.

When prospective recruits were asked to drop and do five pushups, many groaned and struggled, unable to complete the task. Some, their faces crimson, could barely hold themselves up.

“You thought you’d join the Army without being able to do a single pushup?” Staff Sergeant Kennedy Robinson barked at a recruit whose arms were twitching in agony.

“Yes, ma’am!” he said. To an extent that would have been hard to imagine a few years ago, he may have been right.

The Future Soldiers program was created, in 2022, to help marginal but willing recruits find their way into the military. Its efforts include not just prodding kids to slim down but also helping them pass the armed forces’ aptitude test—even if that means lowering long-established standards. The course is part of a series of extraordinary adaptations that America’s military is making amid one of its greatest recruiting shortfalls since the draft was abolished, more than fifty years ago.

In 2022 and 2023, the Army missed its recruitment goal by nearly twenty-five per cent—about fifteen thousand troops a year. It hit the mark last year, but only by reducing the target by more than ten thousand. The Navy has also fared badly: it failed to reach its goals in 2023, then met them in 2024 by filling out the ranks with recruits of a lower standard; nearly half measured below average on an aptitude exam. The Army Reserve hasn’t met its benchmark since 2016, and the ranks are so depleted that active-duty officers have been put in charge of reserve units. Some experts worry that, if the country went to war, many reserve units might be unable to deploy. A U.S. official who works on these issues put it simply: “We can’t get enough people.”

At the end of the Second World War, the American military had twelve million active-duty members. It now has 1.3 million—even though the population has more than doubled, and women are now eligible for armed service. “The U.S. military has been shrinking for thirty years,” Lawrence Wilkerson, a former senior State Department official who leads a task force on the challenges facing the armed services, said. “But its global commitments haven’t changed.” The military operates out of bases in more than fifty countries, and routinely deploys Special Operations forces to about eighty. Now, Wilkerson said, “it’s not clear that the military is large enough anymore for America to uphold its promises.”

“A lot of the people who arrive have never eaten healthy foods, or exercised regularly, in their lives,” one officer said.

For decades, the armed forces based their requirements on a defensive doctrine called “win and hold”: the capacity to win one war while fighting a second to a standstill. Today, with the U.S. confronting perhaps its starkest global-security challenges since the Cold War, many analysts fear that even one war would be too taxing. A conflict with China over the disputed island of Taiwan could leave thousands of Americans dead in a matter of weeks—amounting to nearly half the losses the country sustained in twenty years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. But legislators tend to dismiss the possibility of reinstating conscription. “We are not going to need a draft anytime soon,” Senator Roger Wicker, of Mississippi, told CNN last year.

President Trump insists that the decline in recruitment has a single cause: the Biden Administration’s efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion programs chased away potential recruits. During last year’s campaign, he accused “woke generals” of being more concerned with advancing D.E.I. than with fighting wars. His Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, a former member of the National Guard, has made similar accusations in dozens of appearances on Fox News. Hegseth’s book “The War on Warriors” is a protracted rant against what he describes as a progressive campaign to neuter the armed forces. “We are led by small generals and feeble officers without the courage to realize that, in the name of woke buzzwords, they are destroying our military,” he writes.

On the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order banning D.E.I. initiatives in the federal government. He also fired the head of the Coast Guard, Admiral Linda Lee Fagan, in part because she supported such programs. But many of the people charged with filling out the ranks of the U.S. military suggest that these moves will not reverse a trend decades in the making. Recruiters are contending with a population that’s not just unenthusiastic but incapable. According to a Pentagon study, more than three-quarters of Americans between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four are ineligible, because they are overweight, unable to pass the aptitude test, afflicted by physical or mental-health issues, or disqualified by such factors as a criminal record. While the political argument festers, military leaders are left to contemplate a broader problem: Can a country defend itself if not enough people are willing or able to fight?

At the peak of the Vietnam War, when the draft was still in effect, there were some three and a half million men and women in uniform. Despite the size of the force, it did not represent a true cross-section of the country. For much of the war, students in college or graduate school were exempt from service, a policy that generally favored whiter and wealthier draftees. As a result, those killed and wounded tended to come from less educated and less affluent communities.

On the ground, soldiers bridled at having to fight an impossible, unpopular war, and turmoil spread through the ranks. In the last years of the conflict, soldiers deserted, units refused to fight, and officers were “fragged”—attacked by their own troops. Racial tensions were acute, and heroin addiction was rampant. In 1971, Colonel Robert Heinl, Jr., wrote in the Armed Forces Journal, “By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse.”

As the draft became more politically difficult to sustain, President Nixon impanelled a commission, led by the former Defense Secretary Thomas Gates, to consider whether the country could defend itself without imposing a draft. The commission concluded that it could, writing, “A volunteer force will not jeopardize national security, and we believe it will have a beneficial effect on the military as well as the rest of our society.”

In certain respects, the experiment has largely worked. During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, desertions and courts-martial were rare, even after years of stalemate. As William A. Taylor, a professor at Angelo State University, in Texas, put it, “Soldiers were in the military because they wanted to be.” Troops were ordered to fight in areas where the enemy often disappeared into local populations, and war-crimes scandals, including the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the massacres in Haditha and Kandahar, weighed heavily on the public perception of the military. And yet, in the many times I accompanied Army and Marine units in both wars, I found morale consistently high.

But there have been costs, too. Some of those who testified in front of the Gates Commission were worried that an all-volunteer force would weaken the traditional belief that each citizen has a moral responsibility to serve the country. “There was a concern at the time that the military would become cut off from American life,” Taylor said. Although the military remains one of the few institutions that still command widespread public respect—in a Pew Research Center poll last year, sixty per cent of respondents said that the military had a positive effect on society—people are less and less likely to join. In 2021, the Pentagon found that only about nine per cent of young Americans expressed a propensity to serve, the lowest in more than a decade. “You wouldn’t believe the questions I get,” a Marine officer who served three years as a recruiter told me. “A lot of young people don’t even know what the Marines are. They think we’re some kind of police force.”

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a groundswell of patriotic feeling encouraged young people to volunteer for the military. The sentiment held as the U.S. attacked the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and then as it launched an invasion of Iraq, which quickly toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime. But, as those wars dragged on, the public mood soured. The troops deployed there were unprepared and ill-equipped, sent to pursue objectives that could be bafflingly opaque.

The burdens of fighting those wars were shared in a profoundly unequal way. Fewer than three million Americans—less than one per cent of the population—served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Soldiers and marines were deployed again and again, while the rest of the country could safely tune the wars out. The poorest areas in America had markedly higher numbers of fighters killed in action than the wealthiest ones did, according to research by Douglas Kriner, a professor of government at Cornell University. “People were much more likely to die in communities where there weren’t as many opportunities,” Kriner told me. In the Second World War, this disparity did not exist.

Some observers argue that maintaining a military served by a tiny percentage of the population, combined with the practice of financing wars by borrowing, enabled political leaders to carry on with foreign interventions far longer than the public would otherwise have tolerated. When I visited American towns near military bases during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I was struck by a prevailing sense of community involvement, with placards welcoming soldiers home and others mourning the dead. Outside those areas, though, the conflicts barely registered. In 2018, seventeen years after the invasion of Afghanistan, a nationwide Rasmussen poll showed that forty-two per cent of likely U.S. voters were unaware that the country was still at war there.

Last summer, the members of Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion, Eighth Marines, gathered at a resort outside Houston for their first reunion since leaving Iraq. In 2004, Bravo Company led the assault on Fallujah, in what became the war’s bloodiest battle, and the unit suffered horrific casualties. One of the members, Christian Dominguez, told me that the survivors at the reunion felt a pervasive anguish. “Everyone I went to Fallujah with has a deep sense of guilt,” he said. “No one is close anymore. It’s the guilt. So many good guys died.” Many of his fellow-marines experienced significant trauma, Dominguez said. Since coming home, the most troubled of them had turned to painkillers, alcohol, and even meth.

The feeling among many veterans is that both wars were futile, and that the country essentially forgot them once they were over. Thousands of servicemen and women suffered grave wounds or traumatic brain injuries. Matthew Alan Livelsberger, the Special Forces soldier who blew up a Tesla Cybertruck in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day, was apparently among them. “Fellow Servicemembers, Veterans and All Americans. TIME TO WAKE UP!” he wrote in a note on a phone recovered at the scene. “We are being led by weak and feckless leadership who only serve to enrich themselves.”

Trainees exercise three times a day. “I’m so excited to be in the Army,” one trainee said. “I want the discipline.”

Vice-President J. D. Vance was deployed to Iraq to work in public affairs, and says that it profoundly shaped his views about foreign policy. “I served my country honorably, and I saw when I went to Iraq that I had been lied to,” he said on the Senate floor last year. Legislators had convened for a debate over sending military aid to Ukraine—an idea that Vance rejects. “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” he has said. He and Trump campaigned on a promise to scale back America’s foreign entanglements. The message suited the public mood: after the bitter experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan, few Americans seem to have the appetite to send tens of thousands of troops overseas.

Yet Trump’s actual conduct in office is anyone’s guess. In his recent Inaugural Address, he said, “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end—and perhaps most importantly the wars we never get into.” At the same time, he suggested that the United States might forcibly annex Greenland and the Panama Canal, and he has promised to make the U.S. military bigger and more lethal. Hegseth, who was confirmed by the narrowest margin of any Secretary of Defense in the country’s history, has promised to “address the recruiting, retention, and readiness crisis in our ranks.” Neither he nor Trump has offered a plan for how to do it.

The U.S. Army’s recruiting station in Duluth, Georgia, north of Atlanta, has nine recruiters, and each aims to sign up one new recruit a month. It’s a modest goal, but they’ve met it each month for the past four years. “We try to seek out every eligible man and woman in the area—every single one,” the station’s leader, Sergeant First Class Stephen Supersad, told me.

The station has the advantage of a good location. Georgia lies within what the military sometimes calls the Southern Smile, a region, stretching from Arizona to Virginia, that supplies a disproportionate share of recruits. Duluth is also in an area with a large population of Korean Americans, many of them new arrivals or first-generation immigrants. The U.S. can expedite citizenship for green-card holders. The station sits next to a Korean restaurant, and has two Korean-speaking recruiters on staff.

During the day, potential recruits stream in, most of them from working- and middle-class families. When Misty Sanchez arrived, she didn’t immediately strike recruiters as a prime candidate; at eighteen years old, she wore braces and stood less than five feet tall. “Looking at me, you wouldn’t think I wanted to be a soldier,” she told me. But she had aced the entrance exam—and, like many other recruits, she had an older sibling in the service. Her sister Hilda had wanted to become a nurse, but their parents, who emigrated from Mexico, couldn’t afford to pay for college. She joined the Army, trained as a combat medic, and ultimately enrolled in nursing school at the military’s expense. Misty said that the experience had changed Hilda: “She used to be reserved and insecure. Now she’s confident. She takes pride in herself—her appearance even changed.” Misty hoped to make the same transformation. “I want the discipline,” she said. “I want to be tested physically and intellectually.”

Cut off from television and the Internet, trainees spent their time working out and studying.

The next day, at the nearby Norcross High School, Sergeant First Class Mackenson Joseph stood before a group of students who had joined the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, an Army program for high schoolers. Joseph reminded the kids, all in uniform, that they would be graduating in a few months and entering the world as adults. “You’re not going to have your parents to take care of you anymore,” he said. “So you’re going to have to get serious.”

Last year, Joseph was named one of the Army’s top recruiters. Part of what makes him effective is his own story: his mother, born in Haiti, took a raft to Florida in 1994, worked to become a citizen, and then brought her son to Miami. Joseph told the students that he’d joined the Army because he didn’t have the money to pay for college. “My mother pushed me very hard—‘This is why we came to America. You can’t bring shame to the family name.’ ” Fifteen years later, Joseph has two master’s degrees and owns two homes.

One of the students in Joseph’s class, whom I’ll call Rosa, arrived in the U.S. from Guatemala in 2022, after leaving her grandparents to join her long-estranged mother in Atlanta. Rosa travelled north some twelve hundred miles, on foot and by bus, paying smugglers and eluding predators. At the Texas border, she waded across the Rio Grande. When she arrived at Norcross High School, she spoke no English. Frank Cook, a retired lieutenant colonel who oversees J.R.O.T.C. programs in the area, told me that Rosa is his most impressive cadet. “She’s a star—her character, her intelligence, her leadership,” he said.

As an undocumented immigrant, Rosa is ineligible to join the armed forces, but she was clear about her aspirations. “I’m hoping to change my circumstances,” she told me.

The military has long prided itself on being a meritocratic institution, whose members are judged solely by their performance. In many ways, it has served as a proving ground for racial integration in America, and, though the upper ranks remain disproportionately white, the armed forces have grappled for decades with questions of diversity. There have been initiatives to fight discrimination in the military at least since the Vietnam War. President Obama instituted diversity-and-inclusion programs across the federal government. In 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, Defense Secretary Mark Esper ordered a stepped-up effort to combat racism—but was quickly overruled by President Trump.

In 2021, after President Biden was inaugurated, military leaders took up D.E.I. efforts with renewed vigor. “I want to understand white rage,” General Mark Milley, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced, “Diversity, equity, and inclusion is important to this military now, and it will be important in the future.” He ordered mandatory education programs in the armed services and at academies like West Point, and arranged a multimillion-dollar bureaucracy to implement them. Austin also ordered a department-wide effort to address extremism in the military, prompted by the presence of active-duty and former service members at the January 6th riots. (In the end, Austin’s search identified about a hundred service members, out of some three and a half million uniformed and civilian personnel, who had engaged in extremist activity that year.)

The new D.E.I. trainings varied widely, but most required little commitment. The military spent an average of less than an hour per person on such programs in 2021. A typical airman in the Air Force was obliged to attend between one and four hours of classes during a four-year period. The demands were even less stringent elsewhere. A Navy official told me that the closest thing to a D.E.I. course he knew of was a brief discussion of equal-opportunity issues in boot camp. “We’re too busy,” he said.

Still, some of the new initiatives strayed into controversial areas. In 2022, the Air Force established demographic targets for its officer corps, with specific percentages for each ethnic and racial group. West Point began teaching courses that included discussions of critical race theory, and created a minor in diversity-and-inclusion studies. For a time, the Pentagon encouraged gender-neutral pronouns in some award citations, then stopped after a wave of public ridicule. A Navy recruiting ad featured Yeoman Second Class Joshua Kelly, who identified as a queer, nonbinary drag queen. “Girls, come on!” Kelly, who appears both in uniform and in drag, says. “Leave the saving the world to men?”

The Pentagon’s Covid-vaccine mandate, which Austin ordered shortly after taking office, was particularly controversial. Over ninety per cent of active-duty service members were vaccinated, but more than eight thousand who refused were ultimately discharged. I spoke to one of them, a cadet in the Coast Guard Academy, in New London, Connecticut, who went by Jane. Jane, whose father was an immigrant from Central America, told me that, as a girl, she had suffered from complex regional pain syndrome, which her family believed was aggravated by a typhoid vaccine. When the Covid mandate was announced, she was terrified of similar complications. “I didn’t want to take that risk again,” she said. She declined to follow the order, so, for a full academic year, the school’s administrators ordered her to stand behind a plexiglass shield during class. Finally, they ejected her and six others. A year later, Congress eliminated the mandate, and she was readmitted. But Jane told me that she and many of her colleagues saw both the mandate and the D.E.I. training they received as evidence of overbearing political leadership. Of the seven cadets who were expelled, Jane said, five were minorities. “We were all abiding by their crazy D.E.I. narrative,” she said. “And we were basically the people they were preaching about.” Still, she remained in the force. “I fell in love with the Coast Guard,” she said.

The backlash against these policies has been especially pronounced among veterans, whose families have historically provided the largest share of recruits—and who tend to be more politically conservative. A YouGov survey conducted for Owen West, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, and Ken Wallsten, a professor at California State University, found that the proportion of veterans who would recommend enlisting dropped from eighty per cent to sixty-two per cent in five years. Many cited a “mistrust of political leadership” and “the military’s D.E.I. and other social policies” as major concerns; nearly all opposed racial quotas in the officer corps. Retired officers accused the Biden Administration of injecting politics into an institution that is designed to be apolitical. “There is no officer or leader or commander in the military that isn’t for diversity and inclusion,” said Rod Bishop, a retired Air Force general who co-founded a group called STARRS, dedicated to countering the military’s D.E.I. programs. “They’re just another reason not to join.”

Other military officials disputed the idea that these initiatives hurt recruiting. JoAnne Bass, then the chief master sergeant of the Air Force, told a congressional panel, “I think the narrative that we are focussed on that, more than war-fighting, is what is perhaps hurting us.” When the Pentagon surveys young people about why they don’t want to enlist, only about five per cent list “wokeness”; far more are concerned about discrimination. The biggest reason that they give for not joining up is fear of death or injury, followed by worries about post-traumatic stress. Many recruiters mention the obstacle of the COVID pandemic, which shut down access to high schools. Others note that a growing economy has made it easier to get private-sector jobs.

Trainees eat a carefully monitored diet, with no access to their own food.

But it is clear that recent criticism of the military, by Trump and others, has coincided with a marked decrease in its prestige. As recently as 2018, the armed services enjoyed a seventy-four-per-cent approval rating, according to a Gallup poll. That dropped sharply during the upheavals of Trump’s disputed election and the protests following George Floyd’s death, when Trump pushed to deploy troops to quell rioting. At the height of those disturbances, Trump invited Mark Milley to walk with him from the White House to St. John’s Church and pose with a Bible. Milley later apologized for participating in such an explicitly political stunt.

Some veterans I spoke to chafed at D.E.I. trainings, but regarded them as just more orders to follow. Gabrielle Bryen joined the Army thirty years ago, after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania. She signed up mostly to get help with her student debt, but she found that she liked it. She served two tours in Iraq, counselling traumatized soldiers, and retired as a lieutenant colonel in 2014. Bryen told me that, during her years of service, higher-ups often delivered lectures about racism and homophobia, which most of her comrades regarded as unnecessary. “If you look at the military over time, it’s always been inclusive,” Bryen said. “No one cares about what you look like, or whether you’re gay. When the bullets are flying, you don’t have time to worry about pronouns.” Still, she is pushing her sons and daughters to join when they are old enough. “The Army is a good opportunity for a young person,” she said. When she talks with them about D.E.I. requirements, she sounds like a parent preparing her kids for any exigency of the working world: “Be ready for it and just ignore it.”

The U.S. military’s recruiting troubles came just as it was attempting a fundamental shift in its mission. For decades, the focus was on fighting off terrorists and insurgents. But since 2018, as one Pentagon document put it, the imperative has been “confronting revisionist powers—primarily Russia and China.”

The Russian Army has suffered grievous losses in its invasion of Ukraine, but it is still roughly the same size as the U.S. military. Russian soldiers stand face to face with American troops in places like Lithuania—a NATO ally that the United States is legally obliged to protect, despite Trump’s threats to let the Russians “do whatever the hell they want” to member states that don’t pay enough for defense.

But the greater concern is China, whose economic and military growth threaten to make it a “peer competitor” of a kind that the United States hasn’t had since the Cold War. China’s military is far larger than America’s, with more than two million members. And, as the U.S. hollowed out its industrial capacity, China expanded; its steel industry is the largest in the world. In war games simulating a conflict between the two nations, the United States usually loses. According to the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, an American research firm, the Air Force would run out of advanced long-range munitions in less than two weeks.

The most probable trigger for a war is Taiwan, a thriving democracy that China’s leaders consider a de-facto part of their country. Since 1950, the United States has supplied Taiwan with military aid but has kept security guarantees studiously ambiguous. In recent years, the calculus changed: in 2022, Biden pledged explicitly to defend Taiwan from attack. Last year, China launched a new type of amphibious troop carrier, which appears designed for a military assault of the island.

It’s hard to know what Trump would do if the Chinese made a move on Taiwan. One of his top officials, Under-Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby, is known for hawkish views on China. But the island sits some seven thousand miles from the U.S. mainland, which sharply limits America’s options. As a senior official in the Biden White House told me, “It’s the tyranny of distance.”

Most observers believe that an invasion is not imminent; the risk of an all-out war with the U.S., potentially killing hundreds of thousands of people, is too great. The more likely scenario is that China strangles Taiwan with a blockade, a possibility that it has recently underscored with large-scale naval and air exercises. In such an event, the U.S. Navy could aid Taiwan by escorting commercial vessels in and out—but only for about a year, Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told me: “After that, the Navy would run out of ships.”

The Navy is perhaps the most undermanned branch of the American military. Since the Cold War, its force has shrunk from about five hundred and fifty surface ships to roughly half that. In 2020, Trump declared that he wanted to boost the number to three hundred and fifty. “We couldn’t do it,” Bryan Clark, a Navy veteran who leads the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology, said. “We don’t have enough sailors.”

In March, the Navy announced that seventeen vessels from the Merchant Marine, which provides fuel and cargo to warships, were being taken out of service for prolonged maintenance. Almost forty per cent of America’s attack submarines, among the country’s most formidable weapons, are unable to sail, because the Navy cannot service them quickly enough. The problem, at least in part, is a lack of sailors; ships routinely go to sea without a full crew, and the tasks of maintenance and repairs often go undone. Pilots are also scarce; the shortfall is estimated at seven hundred in the Navy and as many as two thousand in the Air Force. Those they do have work furiously. “We are either deployed or preparing to deploy all the time,” Lieutenant Commander Briana Plohocky, a Navy F-18 pilot, told me.

China has a modestly larger Navy than the U.S. does, with about three hundred and seventy vessels. But its shipbuilding capacity is more than two hundred times greater—making it far more able to replace vessels lost in combat. In the U.S., just seven private shipbuilders make the Navy’s submarines, destroyers, and aircraft carriers. As recently as 1990, there were seventeen. One of those that remain is Huntington Ingalls Industries, which maintains enormous shipyards in Virginia and Mississippi. The yards require some thirty-six thousand people to keep up production, but, at wages negotiated with the Navy during the pandemic, it is difficult to find skilled employees who will stay for the long term, despite offers of free training. “We’re competing with Chick-fil-A for workers,” Jennifer Boykin, the president of one of H.I.I.’s shipyards, told me.

Even in the absence of conflict, Navy officers say that they are unable to adequately protect sea lanes, the essential arteries of international trade. The Navy aims to keep seventy-five surface ships “mission ready” at all times, but it has consistently fallen short. In the Red Sea, the Yemeni rebels known as the Houthis have disrupted trade for months with attacks on commercial vessels. In the South China Sea, Chinese ships have repeatedly harassed foreign vessels; in a bid to control international waters, the government has built a series of militarized artificial islands.

China has problems of its own in a potential war. Its forces have not been tested in battle for decades, and, though it has a vast arsenal of planes, ships, missiles, and submarines, they are believed to be less sophisticated than the United States’. The U.S. Navy’s forty-seven nuclear-powered attack submarines, which carry cruise missiles and other long-range precision weapons, are virtually undetectable underwater. China has six such submarines; last year, a seventh sank in the harbor while under construction.

But China might not be America’s only adversary. Experts increasingly worry that a bloc of authoritarian states—China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—are coöperating on military and strategic matters. In recent months, Iran has begun exporting drones to Russia for use in Ukraine, and North Korea has sent in thousands of troops; China has been buying large quantities of Iranian oil, in violation of American sanctions; and Russia has been providing military assistance to the Houthis for their attacks against Western shipping. O’Hanlon offered a potential scenario: a Chinese assault on Taiwan coördinated with Iranian missile strikes against Israel. At the height of U.S. military strength, this would have been a clear application for the “win and hold” doctrine. “We don’t even claim that as a goal anymore,” O’Hanlon said. “We couldn’t build a two-war capacity even if we wanted to, unless we had a draft.”

To attract recruits, the Pentagon has loosened dozens of strictures. The maximum age has been raised—to as high as forty-one, in the Navy—and pilot programs have been instituted to make it easier for people with a history of asthma or A.D.H.D. to join up. The Army has eased its policies on soldiers’ appearances and struck down rules that forbade tattoos on the neck and hands; tattoos associated with gangs or extremist groups are still prohibited. (Hegseth has tattoos of a Jerusalem cross and the motto “Deus Vult,” both of which are associated with white-supremacist organizations. Though he claims that they are merely Christian symbols, he was barred from joining the security detail at Biden’s Inauguration after another soldier reported them to superior officers.) Pentagon officials are also considering allowing in recruits who have tested positive for marijuana.

Still, these are marginal changes; the real problems are physical and intellectual fitness. That’s why the Future Soldiers training course was created. “We were turning away a large number of kids who had what we most needed—a desire to join,” Christine Wormuth, the Secretary of the Army at the time of the program’s founding, told me. Prospective recruits have three months to achieve the necessary score on the aptitude test or to lose enough weight to meet requirements. Graduates go directly to boot camp; those who fail are sent home.

When I arrived at Fort Jackson, about nine hundred trainees were enrolled in the course. Some of its elements were rudimentary, in a way that revealed the divides in American society: instructors spoke about healthy eating, and a motivational speaker gave a talk on how to project confidence. Some former officers expressed skepticism about the lasting value of Future Soldiers. “If you give a colonel an order to graduate a bunch of students, he’s going to find a way to do it,” Dennis Laich, a retired major general, told me. “And everyone knows that if you go on a crash diet and lose a bunch of weight you’re going to gain it all back very quickly.”

Last year, the Future Soldiers program provided about a quarter of the Army’s recruits.

On the ground at Fort Jackson, though, the situation seemed more encouraging. One would-be recruit was Savannah Thorn, from Ringgold, Georgia. Two years ago, Thorn, then seventeen, visited an Army recruiting station weighing three hundred and five pounds. Thorn told me she was raised by her grandmother. Her father, a meth addict, was in prison for armed robbery, and her mother, who gave birth to her at the age of twenty, was unable to care for her. Thorn told me that she had struggled with weight her whole life. “I ate chips and played Call of Duty all day long,” she said. Then her best friend joined the Navy, and Thorn saw a way to escape. “I didn’t want the life that was in store for me, living paycheck to paycheck, stuck in the small-town life,” she said. When she arrived at the recruiting station, she said, she could barely climb a flight of stairs, and she was prediabetic. The recruiter told her to come back after she’d lost a hundred pounds. “He thought he’d never see me again,” she said. A year later, Thorn returned, having lost the weight—still too heavy by the Army’s standards but close enough to get into the class at Fort Jackson.

The weight regulations vary with age, gender, height, and waistline, but they are not especially onerous. Thorn told me she needed to get down to about thirty-two per cent body fat, which would put her at about a hundred and seventy pounds. (For men, who generally carry less fat, the allowable percentages are lower.) Prospective recruits in the Future Soldiers course may be no more than ten per cent above the limit; at the end of three months, they are required to be within two per cent, which they have to lose within a year of starting boot camp—and keep off through their careers.

The fitness course seemed mostly a matter of common sense. The recruits ate healthy meals, with no snacks in between, and exercised three times a day. For most, the weight came off quickly. “A lot of the people who arrive have never eaten healthy foods, or exercised regularly, in their lives—that’s just the reality of the America that we’re dealing with,” Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Pfeiffer, who helps oversee the program, told me. (About forty per cent of U.S. adults are obese.) At the camp, recruits can use a cell phone once or twice a week but have no access to the Internet or television or their own food. “It’s a controlled environment,” Pfeiffer said. “They can’t call out for pizza, and they can’t go to the gas station to get random snacks.”

When I met Thorn, she still had a pound to lose and only a few more days to lose it. She was nervous but confident. “I’m so excited to be in the Army—I want the discipline,” she said. “I’ve only been here for three months, and I’m a changed person.”

For the Army, the appeal of a recruit like Thorn seemed obvious: she was smart, curious, and motivated. The only evidence of her previous weight was excess folds of skin. “I plan to spend my career in the Army, defending this country,” she said. Three days later, she passed the test and headed off to boot camp.

At Fort Jackson, Army teachers stood in classrooms trying to impart basic skills: reading comprehension, word problems, and algebra. The course for the military’s aptitude test consisted of math and verbal questions at a junior-high level. Many of the recruits were immigrants or the children of immigrants, suggesting that the obstacle was not intellectual capacity but language. “If the military also administered its test in Spanish and French, we’d have a lot more people passing,” the government official who works on military issues told me. In any case, it seemed clear that the Army was working to minimize the chances of failure: the questions and problems used in the course appeared to be almost identical to those on previous tests.

The aspiring recruits I observed were focussed and alert, traits that some told me they had lacked in high school. Bryant Wehmeyer, from the farming town of Jamaica, Iowa, described his childhood as austere and unforgiving. His mother juggled low-paying jobs—waitress, bookkeeper—and his father, a heavy drinker, was mostly absent. It fell to Wehmeyer to look after his brother, who has autism. “He needs constant care,” Wehmeyer told me.

Still, he was a slacker, often smoking marijuana and downing jello shots before school. “I was never much of a student,” he said. Then, when Wehmeyer was fifteen, his mother suffered a heart attack, and his father walked out. Wehmeyer saw the Army as a way to secure a more stable future for himself and his mother. “I’ve already given her access to my bank account,” he told me.

But, when Wehmeyer took the entrance exam, he scored far below what he needed. Then he entered the Future Soldiers course. On his third and final try, he passed. He said that he was looking forward to graduating from boot camp. “I can’t wait for my mom to see me,” he said.

To the extent that the Army has staved off its recruitment crisis, it is because of the Future Soldiers initiative. Last year, the program provided about one in four of the Army’s recruits. The Navy has started a similar course—and has also allowed in more recruits who scored in the lowest admissible category of the aptitude test. Previously, these candidates could make up no more than four per cent of the Navy’s recruitment pool; since 2022, they have accounted for as much as twenty per cent.

After raising her score on an aptitude test, a trainee reviews paperwork for the next step in enlisting.

The military tried once before to accept recruits of below-average intelligence. In 1966, at the height of the Vietnam War, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara instituted Project 100,000, in which recruits whose aptitude had been determined to be too low to serve in the military would be admitted and sent to fight. McNamara declared that he could use video training to make the soldiers more competent; critics contended that he created the program to avoid doing away with draft deferments for college students, which were popular among affluent families. Some three hundred and fifty thousand men were recruited under McNamara’s initiative, and they were killed at disproportionate rates. “They were cannon fodder,” Myra MacPherson, a journalist who studied the program, told me.

Of course, most people who join the armed forces, through the Future Soldiers program or otherwise, will never see combat. For every “trigger puller,” the military needs several supporting players—the vast array of truck drivers, cooks, supply officers, and, increasingly, tech workers who keep the machinery of operations working. The ratio of combatants to support staff is captured with a metric called “tooth to tail.” These days, the Army’s ratio is about three to one; in a service of about four hundred and fifty thousand, there are roughly a hundred thousand close-combat forces. Both teeth and tail are deployed to contested places around the world: securing the border with North Korea, patrolling the seas around Japan, monitoring flare-ups in the Middle East, providing a firewall in Eastern Europe. Even in those places, most will never experience combat, let alone need to pass another aptitude test. Deterrence rests on the idea that, if you have enough bodies in uniform, your adversaries won’t try anything rash.

Michael O’Hanlon, the Brookings fellow, argues that the Army could get by with its current numbers if it managed deployments differently. The military prefers to cycle forces in and out of the places where deterrence is most crucial, which requires maintaining several soldiers at home for each one overseas. In theory, O’Hanlon said, “You could just home-base them in a place where you know they’re going to be needed.” But the military regards these deployments as essential to keeping forces trained and ready. And, as O’Hanlon acknowledges, the prospect of a foreign posting helps entice recruits to sign up in the first place. “Most people who join the military don’t just want to stay at some base in remote Texas,” he said. “They want to see the world.”

The Marines, with just over two hundred thousand members, are the smallest of the armed services (aside from the tiny Space Force). And, like the Army and the Navy, they have fewer troops than they used to. But the Marines routinely meet their recruiting goals, even with an ethos of exclusivity (“the few, the proud”) predicated on pushing potential entrants away. The Marines’ boot camp is considerably longer than those of the other services and notoriously brutal. Recruiters boast about it.

Sam Williams, a former sergeant who worked as a recruiter during the Iraq War, told me, “My approach was ‘I don’t know if you’re tough enough to be a marine.’ ” Williams would show up at a high school in his dress uniform and pick out the most charismatic student. “I’d find the top dog and walk right up to him and look him in the eye and tell him I didn’t think he was good enough,” he said. “Once I got him, his friends usually joined as well.” Major General William Bowers, the head of Marine Corps recruiting, told me that this approach is designed to attract dedicated people. “It’s human nature—value is determined by its difficulty to attain,” he said.

For the rest of the services, the process of recruiting new members has become increasingly transactional. “I try to lay out a plan for them that’s tailored to what they want to do,” Mackenson Joseph, the Army recruiter, told me. “You want to open your own business six years from now? I can help you do that. You want to be a nurse? We can train you to be a nurse. And I can put money in your pocket right now.”

In the days of the draft, a typical recruit’s salary amounted to a tiny fraction of what an equivalent private-sector worker would earn. But years of congressionally mandated pay increases have nearly closed the gap. And the military offers benefits that are rarely seen in the private sector: sailors and soldiers can often have their housing and health care paid for, and can retire at half pay after twenty years, with continued medical care for them and their families. The military typically helps cover college tuition for soldiers, a benefit that, if unused, can be passed to a spouse. Those who live on base have access to affordable child care. Those who live off base can qualify for subsidized mortgages. In the weeks that I spent talking to prospective recruits, most mentioned the economic benefits, especially college tuition, as their principal motivation. “People don’t want to serve the country anymore,” Joseph told me. “It’s ‘What’s the military offering me?’ ”

A family reunites after the end of training.

Many first-time Army recruits, some of them as young as seventeen, can receive a signing bonus of fifty thousand dollars. In other branches, rarer skills command larger bonuses. Naval recruits with certain kinds of technical expertise can get a hundred thousand dollars in bonuses and loan forgiveness. Navy Captain Ken Roman—the commander of a squadron of nuclear-powered Ohio-class submarines, which patrol the world’s oceans for months at a stretch—re-upped in 2024, and expects to make two hundred thousand dollars in bonuses in the next four years. But he says that the money isn’t what kept him in. At forty-six, Roman could have long since retired and followed many of his former colleagues into the private sector. At sea, though, “I get to work with some of the smartest people in the country, and the work is dynamic and important. Plus, I’m not a cubicle guy.”

To keep the numbers steady, the military needs a minimum of about a hundred and fifty thousand recruits a year. As the Pentagon scrambles to attract and retain people, its costs have soared; personnel now accounts for as much as a third of the defense budget. Barring a major war, that budget is unlikely to grow markedly. In the last years of the Cold War, military spending represented about six per cent of the nation’s G.D.P.; last year, it amounted to about half that. “There really isn’t any chance that the services are going to get larger,” Bryan Clark said. “They need to figure out ways to make do with fewer people.”

The military is rapidly adopting drones, robotics, and other technologies to replace humans. For decades, Nimitz-class aircraft carriers maintained crews of more than five thousand; newer carriers just setting sail require about seven hundred fewer people. The Pentagon’s Replicator initiative seeks to deploy thousands of unmanned air- and seaborne vehicles. “A swarm of drones will not need a swarm of drone operators,” Mark Montgomery, a retired rear admiral and a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told me.

The rapid automation of warfare—airborne and undersea drones, unmanned ships and planes, and weapons operated by artificial intelligence—suggests that the battlefield of the future may contain far fewer soldiers. But the systems that run this equipment will require highly trained specialists. So will the demands of what Montgomery calls “offensive cyber war”—that is, hacking enemies. “We need Python coders,” Montgomery told me. “Fat kids welcome!” Officials in the Navy recruit heavily at a handful of tech schools, including M.I.T., Georgia Tech, and Carnegie Mellon, to find students with the knowledge and the aptitude to carry out such demanding tasks as operating nuclear reactors on aircraft carriers. “No dumb kids in those jobs,” Montgomery said. “They need to be really smart, which means they will have a lot of other opportunities.”

One provocative plan to fix military recruitment comes from Senator Tammy Duckworth, of Illinois. Duckworth served in the Army National Guard and retired as a lieutenant colonel (outranking Hegseth, a major). Like many people who join the armed forces, she came from a military family; her ancestors, she told me recently, have served during every major conflict since the French and Indian War. In 2004, a Blackhawk helicopter that she was piloting over Iraq was knocked out of the air by a rocket-propelled grenade. Duckworth lost both of her legs, but she served ten more years.

Like others, Duckworth worries that the military is being asked to do too much with too few recruits, a situation that risks making it even less attractive to enlist. “My fear is a death spiral,” she said. “If you can’t man every position, then you have to extend deployments and the time people stay at sea. The jobs become overwhelming.”

To expand the pool of potential recruits, Duckworth has proposed legislation that would allow certain classes of immigrants—including DACA recipients and Ukrainians and Afghans who have been granted temporary residence in the U.S.—the right to legal residence if they join the military. “If you are qualified and willing to wear the uniform to serve the nation honorably, you ought to be able to earn citizenship,” Duckworth told me.

It is difficult to imagine the bill passing in the current climate. In the early days of Trump’s second term, he has seemed more intent on changing the complexion of the military than on boosting its numbers. He issued an order declaring that trans identity is “incompatible with active duty.” Hegseth has called for women to be kept out of combat roles. To replace them, Trump has ordered thousands of soldiers who were expelled for refusing a COVID vaccine to be restored to service, with back pay. His first task for the military was to help deport undocumented immigrants across the southern border.

Trump’s trans ban contains a phrase that seems unusual in his rhetoric. It refers to “the humility and selflessness required of a service member.” These qualities seem scarce in Trump’s Washington, but they’re easier to find among the young recruits I talked to. At West Point, I met Jillian Pennell, a twenty-one-year-old cadet from Huntsville, Alabama. West Point, like all the country’s élite service academies, is difficult to get into; six out of seven applicants are rejected. Tuition is free, but cadets submit to a rigorous program that strictly limits their personal freedom and takes up almost every minute of their days. Summers are spent in training and internships, and everyone is expected to play a sport. West Point’s mission is to train leaders who inspire by moral, intellectual, and physical example.

I talked to Pennell in a vaulted room at Taylor Hall, where she was taking a break between classes. She told me she was raised in a Christian household, one that put less stress on church and doctrine than on ethics. “I felt called to service in whatever capacity it was—I felt that from a young age,” Pennell said. She aspires to be an Army helicopter pilot; last summer, she completed Air Assault School, in which she rappelled down from hovering choppers. As a pilot, Pennell will be required to give the Army twelve years of service, without the option of leaving. “It’s very hard here sometimes, but it’s rewarding,” she said. She told me that she looked forward to serving the country. “Most of the cadets here feel that way,” she said.

Published in the print edition of the February 10, 2025, issue, with the headline “Half the Battle.”

New Yorker Favorites

• Searching for the cause of a catastrophic plane crash.
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• How Colonel Sanders built his Kentucky-fried fortune.
• What does procrastination tell us about ourselves?
• Fiction by Patricia Highsmith: “The Trouble with Mrs. Blynn, the Trouble with the World”

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Dexter Filkins is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of “The Forever War,” which won a National Book Critics Circle Award.

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The New Yorker · by Dexter Filkins · February 3, 2025

27. Trump names Washington’s Joe Kent to lead counterterrorism agency

​No reporting of this in the mainstream or Washington media, only in the Northwestern local media and a few overseas outlets that picked up the local reporting.

• 
  
• Politics

Quick Reads

Trump names Washington’s Joe Kent to lead counterterrorism agency

https://washingtonstatestandard.com/briefs/trump-names-washingtons-joe-kent-to-lead-counterterrorism-agency/

By: Jerry Cornfield - February 3, 2025 5:55 pm

 Congressional candidate Joe Kent debates the issues with U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez at KATU studios in Portland on Monday night, Oct. 7, 2024. (Amanda Cowan/The Columbian)

President Donald Trump on Monday nominated Joe Kent, a former Army Special Forces soldier and two-time Republican candidate for a congressional seat in southwest Washington, to be director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

“As a soldier, Green Beret, and CIA officer, Joe has hunted down terrorists and criminals his entire adult life,” Trump wrote on X. “Joe will help us keep America safe by eradicating all terrorism, from the jihadists around the World, to the cartels in our backyard.”

A short time later, Kent responded on the social media platform.

“It’s an honor to serve our nation again, time to keep our nation safe & strong!” he wrote.

Trump’s announcement comes three months after Kent lost a bid for a U.S. House seat for a second time to Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.

The first run came in 2022. Kent, an ardent Trump supporter, beat incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler in the 3rd Congressional District primary. He and other conservative Republicans targeted Herrera Beutler for her vote to impeach Trump in 2021.

But that fall, Kent couldn’t hold the seat for Republicans, losing to Gluesenkamp Perez, a relative unknown, by 2,629 votes in what was considered one of the biggest upsets of that year’s elections.

In their rematch in November, Gluesenkamp Perez beat Kent by 16,000 votes.

Kent is an Oregon native. He grew up in Portland and, at 18, enlisted in the U.S. Army. He had 11 combat deployments and served as a Ranger and Special Forces soldier. He has a degree in strategic studies and defense analysis from Norwich University. In 2020, he served as a foreign affairs advisor to the Trump campaign.

In 2019, his wife, Shannon Kent, a Navy cryptologic technician, was killed by an Islamic State group suicide bomber in northeastern Syria. Kent remarried in 2023 and lives in Yacolt. 

Kent would lead an agency founded in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and tasked with gathering and analyzing information to help thwart terrorism. He would oversee a staff of more than 1,000 people and answer to the director of national intelligence.

The appointment is subject to Senate confirmation.

During his 2022 run for Congress, Kent drew scrutiny for links to far-right groups and his embrace of election conspiracy theories.

“He’s a destructive choice to lead the National Counterterrorism Center,” Washington state Democratic Party chair Shasti Conrad said in a statement on Monday. “Someone who called for defunding the FBI and promotes conspiracy theories cannot be trusted with our national security.”

Washington state Republican Party chair Jim Walsh applauded Trump’s selection of Kent. “Excellent news!” he posted on social media.

28. Does globalisation have a future? by Joseph S Nye Jr

​Another way to ask the questions is: can you stop globalization? And since the answer to that question is no (we cannot turn back the clock), then the next question is how can we survive and thrive in a globalized world?

Excerpts:

The widespread use of the internet began at the start of this century, and now billions of people around the world carry a computer in their pockets that would have filled a large building half a century ago. As AI progresses, the scope, speed and volume of global communication will grow exponentially.

World wars have reversed economic globalisation, protectionist policies can slow it down, and international institutions have not kept pace with many of the changes now underway. But so long as we have the technologies, globalisation will continue. It just may not be the beneficial kind.

Does globalisation have a future? | The Strategist

aspistrategist.org.au · by Joseph S Nye Jr · February 4, 2025

As wildfires raged through Los Angeles in January, the infamous American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones posted on X (formerly Twitter) that they were ‘part of a larger globalist plot to wage economic warfare & deindustrialize the [United] States’.

While Jones’s suggestion of causality was absurd, he was right that the fires had something to do with globalisation. Last year was Earth’s hottest since recordkeeping began—and likely the hottest in at least 125,000 years—eclipsing the record set in 2023. For the first time, global average temperatures exceeded the Paris climate agreement’s target of 1.5 degrees C above preindustrial levels. For this, scientists overwhelmingly blame human-caused climate change.

Globalisation refers simply to interdependence at intercontinental distances. Trade among European countries reflects regional interdependence, whereas European trade with the US or China reflects globalisation. By threatening China with tariffs, US President Donald Trump is trying to reduce the economic aspect of our global interdependence, which he blames for the loss of domestic industries and jobs.

Economists debate how much of that loss was caused by global trade. Some studies have found that millions of jobs were lost to foreign competition, but that is not the only cause. Many economists argue that the more important factor was automation. Such change can boost overall productivity, but it also causes economic pain, and populist leaders find it easier to blame foreigners than machines.

They also blame immigrants, who may be good for the economy in the long term, but are easy to portray as the cause of disruptive change in the near term. The migration of humans out of Africa is arguably the first example of globalisation, and the US and many other countries are the result of the same basic phenomenon. But as these countries were being built, earlier immigrants often complained about the economic burden and cultural incompatibility of newcomers. That pattern continues today.

When immigration (or media coverage of it) increases quickly, political reactions are to be expected. In nearly all democracies in recent years, immigration has become the go-to issue for populists seeking to challenge incumbent governments. It was a key factor in Trump’s election in 2016, and again in 2024. Social media and artificial intelligence may be more important sources of disruption and anxiety, but they are less tangible (and thus less attractive) targets.

This is why some people blame the populist backlash in nearly all democracies on the increased spread and speed of globalisation, and why populists themselves blame trade and immigrants for most of their countries’ problems. Trade and migration did indeed accelerate after the end of the Cold War, as political change and improved communications technology led to greater economic openness and lowered the cost of cross-border flows of capital, goods and people. Now, with populists’ influence growing, tariffs and border controls may curtail these flows.

But can economic globalisation be reversed? It has happened before. The nineteenth century was marked by a rapid increase in both trade and migration, but it came to a screeching halt with the outbreak of World War I. Trade as a share of total world product did not recover to its 1914 levels until nearly 1970.

Now that some US politicians are advocating a full decoupling from China, could it happen again? While security concerns may reduce bilateral trade, the sheer cost of abandoning a relationship worth more than a half-trillion dollars per year makes decoupling unlikely. But unlikely is not the same as impossible. A war over Taiwan, for example, could bring US-China trade to a screeching halt.

In any case, trying to understand the future of globalisation requires us to look beyond economics. There are many other types of global interdependence—military, ecological, social, health and so forth. While war is always devastating for those directly involved, it is worth remembering that the COVID-19 pandemic killed more Americans than have died in all of the US’s wars.

Similarly, scientists predict that climate change will have enormous costs as global ice caps melt and coastal cities are submerged later in the century. Even in the near term, climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of hurricanes and wildfires. The perverse irony is that we may be in the process of limiting a type of globalisation that has benefits, while failing to cope with types that have only costs. Among the second Trump administration’s first moves was to withdraw the US from the Paris agreement and the World Health Organization.

So, what is globalisation’s future? Long-distance interdependencies will remain a fact of life as long as humans are mobile and equipped with communication and transportation technologies. After all, economic globalisation spans centuries, with roots extending back to ancient trade routes such as the Silk Road (which China has adopted as the slogan for its globe-spanning Belt and Road infrastructure-investment program today).

In the fifteenth century, innovations in ocean-going transportation brought the Age of Exploration, which was followed by the era of European colonisation that shaped today’s national boundaries. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, steamships and telegraphs accelerated the process as industrialisation transformed agrarian economies. Now the information revolution is transforming our service-oriented economies.

The widespread use of the internet began at the start of this century, and now billions of people around the world carry a computer in their pockets that would have filled a large building half a century ago. As AI progresses, the scope, speed and volume of global communication will grow exponentially.

World wars have reversed economic globalisation, protectionist policies can slow it down, and international institutions have not kept pace with many of the changes now underway. But so long as we have the technologies, globalisation will continue. It just may not be the beneficial kind.

aspistrategist.org.au · by Joseph S Nye Jr · February 4, 2025

29. Curtis Fox: Greetings to the SOFREP Community From a Former Green Beret and Your Newest Weekly Columnist

​Because this touches on the OSS and the author is going to be writing about it in future columns.

Curtis Fox: Greetings to the SOFREP Community From a Former Green Beret and Your Newest Weekly Columnist

sofrep.com · by Curtis L. Fox · February 4, 2025

13 hours ago

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(DVIDS)

The SOFREP Team has seen fit to offer me a weekly column, and I have eagerly accepted the opportunity. SOFREP published a number of my past essays, and it became a frequent outlet for airing some of my more controversial conclusions. I’ve appreciated the editorial staff’s willingness to let me say what I believe to be true, and I think SOFREP has come to appreciate the hard research, historical context, and institutional mechanics that I apply in my analysis. I look forward to contributing to the SOF community dialog.

I considered how best to spend our first weeks together, and since we are about to begin a new political cycle with a new President and a new Congress, both of which ran on a basket of Government reforms in which the Department of Defense featured prominently, I figured now would be a good time to talk about healthy changes.

My column will begin with a multi-part series on my community—Army Special Forces. I will explain how the institution works, give voice to persistent challenges, and suggest reforms. In time, I’d like to cover other units in the SOF community (SEALs, Raiders, Rangers, PJs, CCTs, Civil Affairs, Psyops, etc.). I don’t hail from those communities and am a little less familiar with their challenges (and potential solutions), so I plan to allow for a great deal more time to conduct interviews. I will be slower in releasing this material.

Meanwhile, I am currently doing a deep dive into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). This was the wartime intelligence service created by Wild Bill Donovan during World War II, and it served as the institutional foundation for the creation of the CIA in 1947 and Army Special Forces in 1952. The more war changes, the more it stays the same—or perhaps, times may change, technology may change, but people (especially warriors) do not. For this reason, there is wisdom in understanding the past.

The OSS pioneered modern American special operations, intelligence collection, and analysis, propaganda, covert action, and all of the dark arts belying these practices. We will dive into the OSS’ institutional mechanics, with pieces on the OSS Directorate of Strategic Services and Directorate of Intelligence Services, as well as pieces on the OSS Branches (Secret Intelligence, X-2, R&D, Foreign Nationalities, Censorship & Documents, Special Operations, Operational Group Command, Morale Operations, Maritime Unit, Field Experimental Unit, Special Projects, etc.). We will examine how OSS operatives trained and deployed. We will explore how British experts from MI6 and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) participated in the creation of the OSS, including floating Wild Bill Donovan’s name to President Roosevelt. We will analyze OSS missions (Detachment 101 in Burma, Detachment 202 China, Detachment 404 in Malaya and Thailand, Operation Jedburgh, etc.) and identify not only how those missions were successful, but which missions actually delivered value to their respective campaigns.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the OSS was the speed in which it was created, and the shocking proficiency shown by its novice personnel. In many ways, the OSS was truly American in the way its members grappled with the impossible, pioneered new methods, and journeyed out into the unknown.

Conversely, not all branches of the OSS really delivered value. Many OSS components were largely ineffective—despite a steep price tag and profound commitments in personnel, resources, and war materials.

My hope is that military thinkers, especially those of the SOF community, will harness this timeless example of espionage, special operations, risk-taking, leadership, competence, and human fallacy to examine best practices in USSOCOM and the U.S. Armed Services as a whole.

The SOFREP Team has seen fit to offer me a weekly column, and I have eagerly accepted the opportunity. SOFREP published a number of my past essays, and it became a frequent outlet for airing some of my more controversial conclusions. I’ve appreciated the editorial staff’s willingness to let me say what I believe to be true, and I think SOFREP has come to appreciate the hard research, historical context, and institutional mechanics that I apply in my analysis. I look forward to contributing to the SOF community dialog.

I considered how best to spend our first weeks together, and since we are about to begin a new political cycle with a new President and a new Congress, both of which ran on a basket of Government reforms in which the Department of Defense featured prominently, I figured now would be a good time to talk about healthy changes.

My column will begin with a multi-part series on my community—Army Special Forces. I will explain how the institution works, give voice to persistent challenges, and suggest reforms. In time, I’d like to cover other units in the SOF community (SEALs, Raiders, Rangers, PJs, CCTs, Civil Affairs, Psyops, etc.). I don’t hail from those communities and am a little less familiar with their challenges (and potential solutions), so I plan to allow for a great deal more time to conduct interviews. I will be slower in releasing this material.

Meanwhile, I am currently doing a deep dive into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). This was the wartime intelligence service created by Wild Bill Donovan during World War II, and it served as the institutional foundation for the creation of the CIA in 1947 and Army Special Forces in 1952. The more war changes, the more it stays the same—or perhaps, times may change, technology may change, but people (especially warriors) do not. For this reason, there is wisdom in understanding the past.

The OSS pioneered modern American special operations, intelligence collection, and analysis, propaganda, covert action, and all of the dark arts belying these practices. We will dive into the OSS’ institutional mechanics, with pieces on the OSS Directorate of Strategic Services and Directorate of Intelligence Services, as well as pieces on the OSS Branches (Secret Intelligence, X-2, R&D, Foreign Nationalities, Censorship & Documents, Special Operations, Operational Group Command, Morale Operations, Maritime Unit, Field Experimental Unit, Special Projects, etc.). We will examine how OSS operatives trained and deployed. We will explore how British experts from MI6 and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) participated in the creation of the OSS, including floating Wild Bill Donovan’s name to President Roosevelt. We will analyze OSS missions (Detachment 101 in Burma, Detachment 202 China, Detachment 404 in Malaya and Thailand, Operation Jedburgh, etc.) and identify not only how those missions were successful, but which missions actually delivered value to their respective campaigns.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the OSS was the speed in which it was created, and the shocking proficiency shown by its novice personnel. In many ways, the OSS was truly American in the way its members grappled with the impossible, pioneered new methods, and journeyed out into the unknown.

Conversely, not all branches of the OSS really delivered value. Many OSS components were largely ineffective—despite a steep price tag and profound commitments in personnel, resources, and war materials.

My hope is that military thinkers, especially those of the SOF community, will harness this timeless example of espionage, special operations, risk-taking, leadership, competence, and human fallacy to examine best practices in USSOCOM and the U.S. Armed Services as a whole.

Sincerely and respectfully,

Curtis Fox

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

One team, one fight,

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

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More from SOFREP

sofrep.com · by Curtis L. Fox · February 4, 2025

30. China’s Preparations for a ‘Major-Power War’ RADM Mike Studeman (Ret.)

​Excerpts:

Nagorski: You’ve painted a pretty stark picture of the road ahead. What should the United States be doing about any of this?

RADM Studeman (Ret.): I think we’re doing a lot. But I think we’ve lost a lot of time. We probably rightly committed to the global War on Terror to make sure we eliminated threats that existed to our interests in a lot of different places. Better to fight afar than to let those kind of threats come near. 

At the same time, we were doing some investments in modernizing our military — just not in enough places and fast enough. Now in the 2020s, we find we’re behind in many areas. Whether it’s conventional forces, long-range fires, directed energy, laser, space, cyber, nuclear, the list goes on. These are very expensive capability areas to be in a major competition, not just with one peer, but essentially, on the nuclear front, a two-peer challenge with Russia and China colluding together. 

This is a major test of American industrial might. Can we recover and get more capability in our manufacturing side for defense? Can we bring those concepts together that we’ve been developing that have promise? And can we take a look at the world around us, and see that in fact we are back to 20th century issues where nuclear elements come into play with regard to any kind of contingency planning that we do?

China’s Preparations for a ‘Major-Power War’

The world’s largest military complex is only the latest example of China’s military expansion

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/chinas-preparations-for-a-major-power-war?utm

EXPERT INTERVIEW

Military delegates leave the Great Hall of the People on March 4, 2024 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Posted: February 5th, 2025

By The Cipher Brief

EXPERT INTERVIEW – A report from China about a massive new military command center – a complex that, when completed, is expected to be 10 times the size of the Pentagon – has raised eyebrows and brought fresh attention to China’s military expansion.

The Financial Times reported that the command center – dubbed by some analysts “Beijing’s Military City” – is being constructed on some 1,500 acres on the western edges of the capital, in an area known as the Western Hills. The complex will reportedly house not just military leaders and facilities, but also deep bunkers built to withstand American bunker buster bombs, and even a possible nuclear strike. 

China has been on a large-scale military spending spree recently, an effort aimed at achieving parity or supremacy vis-a-vis the United States in everything from warships to missile capability to the size and variety of its nuclear arsenal. 

The 2024 iteration of the Pentagon’s annual China Military Power Report, issued in December, highlighted “key modernization milestones” in China’s People’s Liberation Army. “The PLA Air Force…with respect to its modernization and indigenization of its unmanned aerial systems, is quickly approaching US standards,” the report said. Regarding China’s nuclear arsenal, the report assessed the PLA has over 600 operational warheads and estimates it will have over 1,000 by 2030.

China’s military ambitions are widely seen to be tied to its regional ambitions – the potential for conflict over Taiwan and the South China Sea in particular – and President Xi Jinping’s project of “national rejuvenation.”

The Cipher Brief turned to Rear Admiral Mike Studeman (Ret.), a former Commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence and a member of our expert network with deep understanding of China’s military, to assess the importance of the new military command center in Beijing and discuss China’s military development more broadly.

“The Chinese intend to have the ability to walk up the nuclear ladder and hold their own, if not be dominant at every rung,” Studeman told us. “That requires them to develop the nuclear force on pace and in parallel with the advancement of the conventional forces in every warfare area.”

RADM Studeman spoke with Cipher Brief Managing Editor Tom Nagorski. Their conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. You can also watch the full discussion on our YouTube channel.

RADM Mike Studeman (Ret.)

RADM Studeman (Ret.) was former Commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence. He also served as Director of the National Maritime Intelligence-Integration Office (NMIO) and as principal advisor to the Director of National Intelligence as National Intelligence Manager-Maritime, as well as the Director of Intelligence (J2) at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Honolulu and Director of Intelligence (J2) at U.S. Southern Command, Miami (2017-2019.)

Nagorski: How did you receive the news of this new military facility in China? How should we receive it?  

RADM Studeman (Ret.): It’s part of a pattern of behavior with regard to the Chinese military buildup and their intent to ensure that they’re ready for a major-power war. There are so many different indicators that the Chinese are being told to get ready by 2027 for a variety of contingencies that will have nuclear elements associated with them, if the Chinese commit aggression. So, the Chinese are very serious about preparing for conventional and nuclear outcomes in any potential war. 

They’d love to get their way without fighting. They love to intimidate and show that there’s no possibility of holding the Chinese leaders at risk in a future war, and they’re building the capabilities to ensure that that would be the case. They had a bunker in Western Hills for many years. I suspect that they reviewed their nuclear posture and looked at the defensive side, and decided they needed to have more assured protection for a variety of different kinds of weapons all the way up to the high-end nuclear types. And so I think they embarked on this particular element, but all as part of the whole. This is a small element of a larger growth in capabilities designed to bring the Chinese up to be on par in terms of a nuclear capability with the United States and any other country.

Nagorski: Is this part of preparation for a specific contingency?

RADM Studeman (Ret.): I think we need to see it in multiple lights, and I think they’re mutually reinforcing. 

First of all, the Chinese understand that they need to grow their comprehensive national power. That’s an aggregate of every kind of power – across sharp, hard, and soft power. This is one important area for them to develop their capabilities and essentially harden their society, their leadership, their critical infrastructure, to be able to withstand a worst-case scenario. Part of it is, I need these capabilities because it gives me a dominant position in the world; I intend to come back into center stage; I intend to build up my comprehensive strategic power and to be able to have it so that it at least meets, if not exceeds, the United States and the West and any others. There’s that conceptual element of where they see themselves by their rejuvenation date of 2049, or earlier. 

And then there’s the very specific case that if there’s any likely war on the horizon, it’s going to be regarding their core sovereignty issue, and Xi Jinping’s intent to assimilate Taiwan. He’s been very clear that this is an essential part of “rejuvenation.” They intend to look at every potential outcome in the process of assimilating that stretch of territory, and they know that the likelihood of U.S. intervention is high. So they intend to be prepared for any contingency. That includes all the way up to this nuclear escalation ladder, and they do not want to be seen as vulnerable at any part of that ladder, including the possibility that there may be strikes against Beijing in a way that was designed to decapitate the CCP [Chinese Communist Party].

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Nagorski: Let’s talk for a moment about that nuclear escalation ladder. China, by all accounts, is marching up the ladder of buildup. The most recent figure we’ve seen is up to 600 operational warheads; the U.S. assesses they’ll have 1,000 by 2030. Given what we understand about nuclear deterrence, what is the reasoning and the need to get to that level? Is it simply to match American capabilities?

RADM Studeman (Ret.): [Former] STRATCOM (U.S. Strategic Command) Commander, Admiral [Charles] Richard, was very clear when he said that in all respects, the Chinese capabilities are a breakout capability in terms of nuclear development. Weapons, command and control, all the way through the protection side of it, launch on warning. The new triad, where they now have bombers with nuclear-tipped missiles, in addition to submarines, which they continue to build more of. You’ll see a new SSBN (Ship, Submersible, Ballistic, Nuclear) with a more advanced missile called the JL-3. Advanced ICBM types, some of them are silo-based, some of them are road-mobile. These huge silo fields that they’re building out in the west. Detection capabilities, the ability to do orbital bombardments, hypersonic capabilities, penetration. The list goes on. 

The Chinese intend to have the ability to walk up the nuclear ladder and hold their own, if not be dominant at every rung. They were threatened before with nuclear weapons, and it was the way that the crises of the 1950s over the offshore islands were resolved. The Chinese remember their history. When Mao Zedong was shelling Kinmen and Matsu, the 1954, ‘55, and then ‘58 crisis, our presence threatened nuclear weapons. That resolved the issue. They do not want to see Taiwan resolved because we have any kind of nuclear edge with which to compensate for conventional force issues, or to be able to use it in a way where the Chinese can’t respond. That requires them to develop the nuclear force on pace and in parallel with the advancement of the conventional forces in every warfare area. 

The Chinese have learned from their past. They know that the United States would be tempted to potentially use nuclear supremacy as a way to resolve the situation, and they’re not going to let that happen. That’s the reason you find them investing in these capabilities; they’re locking out nuclear as an option for the United States. Essentially, all you have to do is reach sufficiency to achieve a mutually assured destruction capability. You just have to have enough capability to hold the United States at risk, and to do counter value in a way that essentially would be existential on our side.

They’re approaching that already. They intend to have more warheads. They intend to have a family of systems that include theater options, not just thermonuclear. Think about smaller [weapons] tailored for selective use with less overall damage, but designed for devastating effects inside the theater, using them against Guam or at sea against carrier strike groups. That’s the kind of thinking that China is walking through, because if you have more options than your opponent, then you’ll prevail. 

In peacetime, they hope that we’ll take a look at this and go, There’s no way that we could prevail in a conflict with China, we shouldn’t even embark down that path. There’s a whole influence game in peacetime. And then there’s the real thing — if you end up in it because of miscalculation and decisions that are made, they intend to prevail in time of war as well. That’s the reason why they’re spending so much in each of these capability areas across the military.

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Nagorski: The Pentagon puts out an annual report on China’s military power. It referenced issues with commanders and other personnel in China – what the People’s Liberation Army itself acknowledges are the “five incapables.” And I’ll just read from this report: “Some PLA commanders are incapable of judging situations, understanding higher authorities’ intentions, making operational decisions, deploying forces, or managing unexpected situations.” Give us your assessment of that.

RADM Studeman (Ret.): I do think that when it comes to the PLA inspiring confidence of civilian leaders, the Chairman, the Central Military Commission, and the Politburo writ large, there’s enough room for them to be concerned whether or not they’re truly ready for a high-intensity warfare environment. They judge themselves harshly and are constructively critical. They allow their forces lots of opportunities to exercise, and when they don’t deal well with weather or new contingencies, that report goes in, and they look at ways to become better in the future. 

They have a dilemma. If you’re in a society where freedom isn’t enjoyed, but you need to kowtow up your hierarchy, there’s a great deal of fear spore in the air. Fear as a motivator only gets you so far. The fear of that system — making a misstep, doing something that your bosses didn’t want to see happen — you can’t always predict what those are, but it creates a hesitation or an intimidation effect down the chain for people to take independent action in a way that we do within the U.S. military and other Western militaries. That’s a very real deficiency. I’m not sure they’re ever going to fix that, but they are trying to create leaders who in fact do have that blend of political loyalty, but have more confidence in employing military forces.

This is something that I think they’re going to have to struggle with for quite some time. They’re also affected by these corruption sweeps that are occurring, and so there’s more fear there about what that means. Corruption has been part of their promotion system for many years. They’ve tried to clean up some parts of it, but it still exists. It calls into question whether or not you really have the most competent, capable officer there at the senior colonel level or the general or admiral level. 

There are deficiencies there, but I would warn people who want to use those as an excuse to say that the PLA can’t fight, and that they haven’t fought since 1979 – that the sheer material strength of what they produce, the amount of live fires that they do of every missile system, the amount of training and exercise time that they give them, the amount of training they get in their wartime operations areas across the China seas all the way through and around Taiwan and then east of Taiwan, don’t underestimate a force of this size with this many advanced capabilities across every warfare area. We would underestimate them at our peril. I think we’re treating them seriously here, but I wouldn’t use those old deficiencies as a way to say that the PLA can’t engage and win based on proximity and sheer weight of their forces.

Nagorski: You’ve painted a pretty stark picture of the road ahead. What should the United States be doing about any of this?

RADM Studeman (Ret.): I think we’re doing a lot. But I think we’ve lost a lot of time. We probably rightly committed to the global War on Terror to make sure we eliminated threats that existed to our interests in a lot of different places. Better to fight afar than to let those kind of threats come near. 

At the same time, we were doing some investments in modernizing our military — just not in enough places and fast enough. Now in the 2020s, we find we’re behind in many areas. Whether it’s conventional forces, long-range fires, directed energy, laser, space, cyber, nuclear, the list goes on. These are very expensive capability areas to be in a major competition, not just with one peer, but essentially, on the nuclear front, a two-peer challenge with Russia and China colluding together. 

This is a major test of American industrial might. Can we recover and get more capability in our manufacturing side for defense? Can we bring those concepts together that we’ve been developing that have promise? And can we take a look at the world around us, and see that in fact we are back to 20th century issues where nuclear elements come into play with regard to any kind of contingency planning that we do?

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

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