Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."

– Elie Wiesel

"If it takes a lot of words to say what you have in mind, give it more thought."

– Dennis Roth

"In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer."

– Albert Camus

1. A future of VOA and its sister networks

2. Advice for an ‘Americas First Foreign Policy’

3. Ukraine war briefing: North Korean troops back on frontline in Kursk, says Zelenskyy

4. Trump’s second term: Early ratings and expectations

5. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, February 7, 2025

6. American Personnel Abroad Face Chaos and Confusion as USAID Shuts Down

7. Musk Brings His Business Playbook to Washington: Move Fast and Claim Victory

8. Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington

9. Where’s DOGE When You Need It?

10. Trump Opens Door to Rework U.S. Steel Deal

11. Trump Is Changing the World Order With Unprecedented Speed

12. Coaxing Dangerous Information From DeepSeek Is Easier Than With Other AIs

13. Trump Wants to Own Gaza. Here’s What It Would Take to Rebuild.

14. United States-Japan Joint Leaders’ Statement

15. Crafting Strategy for Irregular Warfare by David H. Ucko and Thomas A. Marks

16. Advancing the Discourse Through Fiction: Introducing the Winners of Horizon 2040

17. Could US forcing Panama to exit China’s Belt and Road set pattern?

18. The depths of Taiwan's military morale crisis

19. USAID shutdown isn’t just a humanitarian issue – it’s a gift to China

20. The Doctor and the Pilot Who Saved the Eyesight of Millions

21. This program equipped the US military to take down drug traffickers

22. Army considering changing name of Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg

23. Together, The U.S. And Japan Can Preserve A Free And Open Indo-Pacific

1. A future of VOA and its sister networks

No one else provides such informed and comprehensive analysis on VOA (and its sister networks) than Matt Armstrong.

Soem important thoughts, insights, and speculation below.

A future of VOA and its sister networks

Letting the inner thoughts become public

https://mountainrunner.substack.com/p/a-future-of-voa-and-its-sister-networks?utm

Matt Armstrong

Feb 07, 2025

Sometimes, one has thoughts about something that shouldn’t be aired publicly because it might give someone else ideas. Hopefully, this is not one of those times.

A recent Politico email opened with an extensive discussion about the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). I had missed (or ignored) that the White House had nominated someone to be the agency’s CEO, though I didn’t miss the administration’s intent to make Kari Lake the Director of Voice of America. I also didn’t miss the announcement of an acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy.1

Here are my quick thoughts on what could be coming up for USAGM. Insert the usual disclaimer here that these are my own thoughts and I have zero idea whether these are being discussed, have been adopted or rejected, or if whoever has the authority “authority” to make suggest these changes even knows what USAGM is.

First, it is likely that the Voice of America will be moved into the State Department. There are all sorts of complaints—some valid, most not—about VOA’s operations. This would bring the operation closer to the foreign policy. There is precedent for this: it operated under the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs from September 1945 through August 1953, when it and most of the department’s international information programs were eagerly ejected from the department. I have not looked into whether this can be done without legislation. Considering the International Broadcasting Act of 1994 and subsequent legislation, including altering the Broadcasting Board of Governors to become the USAGM, I suspect this cannot be done by executive order. However, I believe there is an easy way to work around this: make the USAGM the technical provider and the State Department the content provider.

The criticism that VOA has been too distant from foreign policy is partly the State Department’s fault. There has always been what you can call a carve-out in VOA’s programming to allow the State Department or other agencies to speak directly to foreign audiences through the network. Historically, the department’s use of this channel has been weak and substantially delayed, making the message meaningless, ineffective, or counterproductive. There have been various workaround by other agencies to do what VOA already does well but broken relationships, insular thinking, and poor leadership at VOA, coupled with an incredible lack of interagency awareness of VOA meant duplications of effort.

Another relevant precedent is the now-obliterated and long-neglected Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP), which suffered under feckless and weak leadership. IIP had a working, efficient, and effective news and information operation. IIP had been the principal operational entity of the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, and it was the major remnant of USIA despite being ignored or forgotten as such. In a normal world, and that is far from what we have today, I could see the hold up on an actual nominee to this under secretary position be the result of negotiations between the nominee and the administration on this and other aspects of the long-neglected office (it has had an incumbent confirmed to the position only 55% of the time since it was established in 1999).

Second, it is possible that Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN) will be consolidated into one organization. In a normal world, I’d rank this as likely, but today, I don’t see logic having a role in the government’s organizational and operational decisions. A plan to do this was finalized in 2011 (no, that’s not a typo). When I was a Governor on the Broadcasting Board of Governors from 2013 to 2017, we gave this serious consideration, and I had hoped we’d get there, but politics, including waged by one of the networks, slowed that effort. There was/is so much wasted duplication of back offices and leadership, and some of these people developed their constituents in Congress to protect their fiefdom to the detriment of the overall mission and effectiveness of the agency.

The networks are so-called “grantees” because they are independent non-profit organizations funded and directed through a grant they receive from USAGM. I’d love to see these consolidated under the RFE/RL banner. The individual network brands would continue as operational units under the expanded RFE/RL.3

Again, in a normal world, I would tag this as “likely” instead of “possible” since this is low-hanging fruit. It just isn’t hard, and it would save substantial money (this is relevant, of course, as all of this is incredibly cheap for the national security value it delivers, considering the cost of weapons systems). However, I suspect influential figures will resist this consolidation for personal reasons.

Subscribed

I haven’t mentioned the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), which I am sure (again, I’m not taking the time to look this up) is established by statute and not easily reconfigured. OCB is like VOA: a federal agency, not a grantee. Altering OCB’s operations has always been difficult. Back when we got rid of OCB’s ineffective, already grounded, and very expensive flying transmitter, there was a lot of disinformation, misinformation, and hand-wringing. Ideally, OCB should be integrated into VOA, and perhaps the same workaround would be available. Moving part of its operation to the consolidated grantee would be difficult because OCB’s employees are federal employees. This depends on Rubio’s view of OCB and willingness to support change.

Third, it is possible that USAGM’s internet freedom program will move to the grantee and the State Department, probably under or perhaps beside the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL). Let’s be honest: DRL and USAID were often competitors rather than collaborators in this space. I’ve been in the closed-door hearings and meetings and seen their programs. In one instance, USAID implemented a program in Cuba that interfered with OCB’s pre-existing and highly effective effort by launching its own, which it did as a covert op before abandoning it when the money ran out. The result of that foray damaged OCB’s program with the Cuban public that used it. In the BBG, the program had been split between the government operation and the grantee (run by RFA), and that had substantial problems (though almost entirely due to RFA’s poor management, deceptions, and misuse of funds that I witnessed firsthand, called out, and caused new processes to be implemented to guard against). Dividing these again, which had an operational sensibility then, ignoring RFA’s past games, would not be terrible.

Again, I have no idea if any of this is being considered, is already in motion (I imagine we’d have heard by now if so), or has already been rejected.

Some final thoughts. I foresee concerns that moving VOA into the State Department will give credence to the argument it’s a government “propaganda” station. That’s a fair concern, but I have two counters. The VOA Charter remains, though I have long argued that it was never the actual firewall. The people are the firewall, and the people include the CEO. We, the board of governors I was a part of, created the CEO position to serve at the pleasure of the bipartisan board, not the President, to further this firewall. The VOA Director and USAGM CEO can dramatically affect the output, just as OMB can through the budget process. The second counter is VOA has been able to successfully defend itself against the “propaganda” charge by pointing at its product. Poor leadership over the years has damaged that product, and now the CEO and Director can further damage that regardless of whether it is in State or USAGM.

Lastly, I am not recommending moving VOA into the State Department, nor am I necessarily for breaking up the internet freedom program at USAGM (I haven’t given it much thought because I don’t know enough about its current operations), but I will go on the record that I recommend consolidating the grantees.

Your thoughts?

Apparently, someone is either under consideration or still being vetted—this administration does that?—to be nominated for this position. As I’ve noted elsewhere, this suggests that the outsider designated as the acting official couldn’t even pass this Senate, is willing to submit the financial disclosures, or, equally likely, the temporary appointment into a largely ignored post with vastly diminished responsibilities is a reward. The effects of this person on public diplomacy will be detrimental. Based on his past public statements, the negative impact on morale within the State Department, particularly in the public diplomacy area, will be hard to overstate. I won’t be surprised if we see a parade of horribles serving as acting under secretary before we ever see a nominee. In the first Trump administration, the position was filled by someone confirmed to the position for precisely 100 days.

I’m primarily referring to the old news sites established under Combatant Commanders’ theater security prerogative, such as the former SETimes dot com, Maghrebia dot com, and others. I worked with the Senate to trial run BBG’s running of these sites, after years earlier trying to get IIP to take these on (IIP’s leadership refused to speak to the Pentagon about it). But I can also reference witnessing a wargame conducted by AFRICOM where they created their own radio station in the wargame, unaware VOA was already established in the region the wargame was taking place and was already the (not “a”) dominant source of news to the region.

It’s worth noting that after 9/11, the Broadcasting Board of Governors could not get VOA to “fix” its Arabic service. That’s the story, but I don’t know how hard they tried, what they did beforehand, or how “broken” the service was. The chairman of the board, I’ve been told by people who were there, asked RFE/RL if they’d take it. RFE/RL said no. So, MBN was created. I’m sure that narrative is oversimplified, but the result was still crap, especially if you are aware of the self-inflicted wounds from the crash effort to build something from scratch.

2. Advice for an ‘Americas First Foreign Policy’

From a former State Department director for policy planning in the first Trump administration.

Note emphasis on "Americas" (plural) versus "America."

Excerpts:

Mr. Rubio alludes to the core issue when he connects U.S. diplomacy in Central America to the China challenge: “As our regional partners build themselves up, they can more easily resist countries such as China that promise much but deliver little.” He adds that “the Chinese Communist Party uses diplomatic and economic leverage—such as at the Panama Canal—to oppose the U.S. and turn sovereign nations into vassal states.”

The secretary should extend this line of reasoning and make it explicit. The Communist Party’s ambition to achieve worldwide economic dominance, bring nations on every continent under its sway, and create a world order favorable to authoritarianism presents the chief external threat to American freedom. Accordingly, U.S. diplomacy, local and distant, not least in Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific, should focus on cooperating with friends of freedom to meet the China challenge.

Advice for an ‘Americas First Foreign Policy’

The secretary wrongly suggests that America must give precedence to nations based on geographical proximity.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/advice-for-an-americas-first-foreign-policy-rubio-secretary-china-abde7710?mod=latest_headlines

Feb. 7, 2025 4:01 pm ET

Marco Rubio talks to the media in Guatemala City, Feb. 5. Photo: johan ordonez/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Secretary of State Marco Rubio rightly maintains that U.S. foreign policy has paid too little attention to the Western Hemisphere and in particular has neglected Central America and regional diplomacy aimed at safeguarding America’s southern border (“An Americas First Foreign Policy,” op-ed, Jan. 31). But he wrongly suggests that contrary to “past administrations that prioritized the global over the local,” America must give precedence to nations based on geographical proximity.

The better way to organize American diplomacy is the traditional way. In his 1796 Farewell Address, President George Washington oriented foreign affairs around constitutional imperatives and the American spirit: The fundamental goal of U.S. foreign policy is to secure American freedom; subsidiary goals and means serve that overriding aim.

Diplomacy must be adjusted to changing circumstances. Washington concluded that America’s “detached and distant situation” required the nation to “trust to temporary alliances” and then only “for extraordinary emergencies.” A generation later, President James Monroe asserted that the U.S. would regard further European encroachments in the Western Hemisphere as threats to American freedom. And to secure American freedom in the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan led a worldwide coalition of sovereign nations to defeat Soviet communism.

Mr. Rubio alludes to the core issue when he connects U.S. diplomacy in Central America to the China challenge: “As our regional partners build themselves up, they can more easily resist countries such as China that promise much but deliver little.” He adds that “the Chinese Communist Party uses diplomatic and economic leverage—such as at the Panama Canal—to oppose the U.S. and turn sovereign nations into vassal states.”

The secretary should extend this line of reasoning and make it explicit. The Communist Party’s ambition to achieve worldwide economic dominance, bring nations on every continent under its sway, and create a world order favorable to authoritarianism presents the chief external threat to American freedom. Accordingly, U.S. diplomacy, local and distant, not least in Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific, should focus on cooperating with friends of freedom to meet the China challenge.

Peter Berkowitz

Hoover Institution

Washington

Mr. Berkowitz was State Dept. director of policy planning, 2019-21.

3. Ukraine war briefing: North Korean troops back on frontline in Kursk, says Zelenskyy

The question is did the north Korean People's Army Forces (nKPA) conduct sufficient training while they were off the front line to correct training deficiencies and retrain to incorporate lessons learned so far. Or did they merely rest and refit to be reinserted into the meat grinder using the same previous tactics that may not have fared so well. If they have learned from their mistakes and made adjustments then I am now becoming concerned that they will be able to transfer the training back to the peninsula to improve the capabilities of the nKPA on a wider scale in preparation for combat with the ROK/US alliance. It will not be the combat experience of 10,000 that will be the game changer for the nKPA. What could be the game changer is if they can conduct training on a large scale for all their major combat forces. This is what we must observe. It is not the combat experience alone that makes the difference. It is combat experience PLUS the lessons learned and THEN large scale training applied to the rest of the force that can significantly improve nKPA capabilities. Combat experience AND training is what is important. Simply having combat experience in a number of soldiers is not significant if they cannot transfer that experience into training for those without combat experience. The question is will the Kim family regime be able to commit the perishable resources, ot time, training, ammunition, and fuel in a sustained manner to improve the capabilities of the nKPA. I am not afraid of the nKPA with some number of forces who have experienced combat in Russia/Ukraine. I am concerned if they can adapt the training programs of the nKPA to exploit that combat training on a large scale throughout the nKPA

Ukraine war briefing: North Korean troops back on frontline in Kursk, says Zelenskyy

President’s comments follow reports Moscow withdrew Pyongyang’s troops after heavy losses; Russia claims capture of key eastern mining town. What we know on day 1,081

The Guardian · by / · February 8, 2025

The Ukrainian president has said North Korean troops have returned to the frontline in Russia’s Kursk region, after reports Moscow had withdrawn them due to heavy losses. “There have been new assaults in the Kursk operation areas ... the Russian army and North Korean soldiers have been brought in again,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his evening address on Friday. A “significant number” of opposing troops had been “destroyed”, he said. “We are talking about hundreds of Russian and North Korean soldiers.” A Ukrainian military spokesperson had said a week earlier that Kyiv had not encountered activity or clashes with North Korean troops for three weeks. Pyongyang sent more than 10,000 soldiers to Russia last year to help it fight back Ukraine’s offensive into the border region, according to South Korean and western intelligence.
Donald Trump said on Friday he would “probably” meet Zelenskyy next week, while the Ukrainian president responded by saying he appreciated working with Trump. The US president, asked by reporters in the White House whether such a meeting would be in Washington, replied that it “could be Washington – well, I’m not going there”, referring to Kyiv. Zelenskyy said “talks” were being planned but did not confirm a meeting. He wrote on X: “We’re also planning meetings and talks at the teams’ level. Right now Ukrainian and American teams are working out the details.” Meanwhile, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff said Ukraine was looking forward to a visit this month by Trump’s special envoy for the region. Andriy Yermak said he had spoken to envoy Keith Kellogg about topics including the battlefield situation, the safety of Ukrainian civilians, and meetings at the annual Munich security conference this month.
Russia has claimed its forces have seized the key eastern Ukrainian mining town of Toretsk. If confirmed, it would be the biggest settlement Moscow has captured since Avdiivka in February last year. Kyiv denied Russia had full control of the industrial hub. The capture of Toretsk, which lies on elevated ground, would allow Moscow to further obstruct Ukrainian supply routes, paving the way for it to punch deeper into the northern part of the Donetsk region, according to military analysts. Former resident Galyna Poroshyna told Agence France-Presse there was “nothing” there to go back to and that everyone had left. “Everything is destroyed there. Everything.” A press officer for Ukraine’s 28th brigade, which has been fighting for control of Toretsk, said Ukrainian forces were holding their positions on the town’s outskirts. The battlefield reports could not be verified.
European foreign ministers will discuss the Ukraine conflict at a meeting in Paris next week, the French foreign ministry said on Friday, amid reports US envoys could also attend. Ministers from France, Germany, Poland, Britain, Spain and Italy would take part in the talks on Wednesday, just ahead of the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, the ministry said. The meeting aimed to “show continued support to Ukraine”, whether diplomatic, financial, material or related to weapons.
The Kremlin said on Friday there had been a lot of inaccurate reports on US plans for ending the Ukraine war and called for patience as speculation swirled around the timing of a possible meeting between presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was asked by media about a report that Keith Kellogg, Trump’s envoy for Russia and Ukraine, was seeking to arrange a truce even before talks on a peace settlement. “We have nothing to add yet … we just need to be patient,” Peskov said.
Ukraine said it hoped the international criminal court (ICC) would continue its work prosecuting Russian war criminals, despite Trump’s decision to impose sanctions on the court. The ICC is investigating allegations of Russian war crimes committed during its invasion of Ukraine and in 2023 issued an arrest warrant for Putin. Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Georgiy Tykhy said on Friday: “We hope that they [sanctions] will not affect the court’s ability to achieve justice for the victims of Russian aggression.” Ukraine continued to work with the ICC to move the cases forward, he added.
The International Atomic Energy Agency chief said on Friday that the number of attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant had increased, Russian state news agency Tass reported. Rafael Grossi was speaking after holding talks in Moscow with Alexei Likhachev, head of Russian nuclear corporation Rosatom. Tass quoted Grossi as saying it was not possible to determine which side was carrying out the attacks. Russian forces took control of the plant soon after the 2022 start of the war.
The Baltic states are set to sever ties with Russia’s power grid that date back to the 1950s and instead integrate further with the European Union, as the suspected sabotage of subsea cables has spurred efforts to strengthen regional security. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will disconnect from the IPS/UPS joint network early on Saturday and, subject to last-minute tests, will synchronise with the EU’s grid on Sunday, Reuters reports. Plans to decouple from Russia’s grid, debated for decades, gained momentum following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The Guardian · by / · February 8, 2025

4. Trump’s second term: Early ratings and expectations

Isn't it still a little early for polling?

Data, graphs, and charts at the link:

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/02/07/trumps-second-term-early-ratings-and-expectations/?utm

Report

February 7, 2025

Public Anticipates Changes With Trump but Is Split Over Whether They Will Be Good or Bad

1. Trump’s second term: Early ratings and expectations

Americans are deeply divided over Donald Trump’s plans and the way he is handling his job in the early weeks of his return to the presidency.

Overall, 47% of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling his job as president, while 51% say they disapprove. And most of these views are strongly held: 37% strongly approve of his performance, while 40% strongly disapprove.

Roughly a third (35%) say they support all or most of Trump’s policies and plans, with 17% saying they support some of them. Nearly half of adults (47%) say they support only a few or none of his plans.

Most Americans (73%), including majorities of both Republicans and Democrats, say Trump has clear goals for where he wants to lead the country. But Republicans are more likely to say he’ll be successful at achieving those goals.

How does Trump’s approval so far stack up against his first term?

Trump’s current 47% approval rating is higher today than it was at the beginning of his first term in office.

His rating is also higher than at any other point in his first four-year term, and far higher than when he left office in early 2021 (Trump’s approval fell to 29% in the wake of the 2020 presidential election and his rejection of its results).

Trump’s job ratings remain as polarized by party as ever:

84% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents currently approve of the job Trump is doing.
By comparison, just 10% of Democrats and Democratic leaners approve of Trump’s job performance.

The current partisan gap in Trump’s approval ratings is on par with much of his first term, though wider than in the last weeks of his term (when 60% of Republicans approved of his job performance).

Trump’s job approval among demographic groups

Today, Trump’s job approval stands at 47%, including 37% who say they strongly approve of the way he is handling his job as president. About half of Americans (51%) say they disapprove of Trump’s job performance so far, including four-in-ten who say they strongly disapprove.

Trump’s ratings are more positive than negative among:

Men (52% approve)
White adults (55%)
Adults 50 years and older (51%)
High school diploma or less (53%)

Trump’s ratings are more negative than positive among:

Women (42% approve)
Black adults (19%)
Hispanic adults (36%)
Under 50 years old (43%)
College degree or more (40%)

Trump’s personal traits, skills, fitness for office

The public offers mixed assessments of Trump’s personal traits – including his leadership skills, mental fitness and physical fitness.

40% of Americans are extremely or very confident Trump has the leadership skills to do the job, while 43% are not too or not at all confident he does (16% are somewhat confident).
Similarly, 39% have high confidence in Trump’s mental fitness for the presidency, while 44% have little or no confidence in this and 16% have some.
And while 35% are extremely or very confident Trump is physically fit for the job, 41% are not too or not at all confident of this (24% express some confidence).

On the three other dimensions asked about on the survey (choosing good advisers, acting ethically in office and respect for U.S. democratic values), substantially more Americans express little or no confidence in Trump than say they are extremely or very confident in him.

29% of Americans are at least very confident he acts ethically in office. A majority (54%) are not too or not at all confident he does.
31% are extremely or very confident he respects the country’s democratic values. A 53% majority lacks confidence in Trump on this trait.
31% are confident he picks good advisers, while 51% have little or no confidence that he does.

Republicans’ views of some of Trump traits more positive than during 2024 campaign

Among Republicans

Today, a majority of Republicans are at least very confident in Trump across all six traits asked about on the survey. In particular, Republicans express a great deal of confidence when it comes to his leadership skills (76%), mental fitness (75%) and physical fitness (65%).

Smaller majorities of Republicans express confidence that he acts ethically in office (55%), picks good advisers (60%) or respects the country’s Democratic values (60%).

Still, Republican confidence that Trump acts ethically and picks good advisers is higher than it was in April 2024.

Among Democrats

Democrats express little to no confidence in Trump on any of the dimensions asked about on the survey. These views are nearly identical to Democratic opinion in April 2024.

Will Trump be a successful or unsuccessful president in the long run?

Americans are divided in their views of whether the Trump administration will be successful in the long run.

While 35% say they think Trump will be successful in the long run, a similar share (33%) say they think he will be unsuccessful. Roughly three-in-ten (31%) say it is still too early to tell whether he will be successful.

In a Center phone survey from January 2017, at the start of Trump’s first administration, most Americans (58%) said it was too early to tell whether or not he would be a successful president. About equal shares predicted he would be successful (21%) as said he’d be unsuccessful (20%).

Today, far smaller shares say it is too early to tell what kind of president Trump will be – though those who offer a prediction remain divided about whether he will be successful or unsuccessful.

As has long been the case for presidents, partisans have very different predictions: About two-thirds of Republicans say Trump will be successful, while 63% of Democrats say he will be unsuccessful. The reverse was true when Joe Biden took office.

Trump’s agenda, plans and early executive actions

Americans are also split in their support for Trump’s policies and plans, though more say they support few or none of Trump’s plans than say they support all or most of them.

About a third (35%) of U.S. adults say they support all (9%) or most (25%) of Trump’s policies and plans, with 17% saying they support some.

This compares with 47% of adults who support only a few (23%) or none (24%) of his plans.

Two-thirds of Republicans say they support all or most of Trump’s plans, while an even wider majority of Democrats – 84% – say they support only a few or none of Trump’s plans.

The partisan divides in views of his plans and policies extend to early actions the administration has taken so far. While 53% of Republicans say these actions have been better than they expected, 60% of Democrats say the administration’s actions have been worse than they expected. More than a third of Americans (36%) – including similar shares in both partisan groups – say Trump’s actions have been about what they expected.

How much will Trump be able to accomplish?

Most Americans say Trump has clear goals for where he wants to lead the country (73%), but there is more disagreement over how much of his agenda he will be able to accomplish over the next four years.

92% of Republicans say Trump has clear goals for the country.
A narrower majority of Democrats (55%) say the same.

But there is a larger partisan gap over whether he will achieve those goals:

54% of Republicans say Trump will get most or all of his agenda done, with an additional 39% saying he will accomplish some of his agenda. Just 6% say he’ll get “only a little” or none of his agenda accomplished over the next four years.
Democrats are more skeptical: 23% say he’ll complete all or most of his agenda, while 53% say some and 24% say only a little or none.

Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons

Americans broadly disapprove of Trump’s “day one” pardons of most of those convicted of crimes related to the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

About three-quarters (74%) disapprove of Trump’s pardons of those convicted of violent crimes, while a narrower majority (54%) disapprove of Trump’s pardons for those convicted of nonviolent offenses.

There are partisan differences in views of both types of pardons, though the partisan gap is much narrower when it comes to those convicted of violent crimes.

When asked about pardons for nonviolent Jan. 6-related crimes:

Nearly eight-in-ten Republicans (78%) approve of Trump’s pardons for these nonviolent offenders, while about two-in-ten (21%) disapprove.
In contrast, 85% of Democrats disapprove of the pardons for nonviolent offenders.

As for pardons of violent crimes:

Republicans are relatively split in their views of Trump’s pardons of those who committed violent crimes related to Jan. 6: 54% disapprove, while 45% approve.
More than nine-in-ten Democrats (93%) disapprove of Trump’s decision to pardon those convicted of violent crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, events at the Capitol.

The Jan. 6 congressional committee and Biden’s pardons

Shortly before Joe Biden left office, he issued pardons to members of Congress and congressional staff who worked on the committee that investigated the events of Jan. 6, as well as to police officers who testified before that committee.

46% of Americans approve of these pardons, while 52% disapprove.

Republicans and Democrats hold starkly different views of these pardons:

72% of Democrats approve of Biden’s pardons, and 26% disapprove.
Republicans’ views are nearly the reverse: 78% disapprove, while 22% approve.

Thinking back to the Jan. 6 committee investigation, about half of Americans (49%) are very or somewhat confident the investigations were fair and reasonable, while the same share (49%) are not confident they were.

As was the case in 2022, Democrats are more than three times as likely as Republicans (76% vs. 22%) to express confidence in the committee’s investigation.

5. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, February 7, 2025

China-Taiwan Weekly Update, February 7, 2025

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/china-taiwan-weekly-update-february-7-2025

Data Cutoff: February 4, 2025

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) flew aircraft into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) 255 times in January 2025. The PRC has normalized over 200 ADIZ incursions per month since President Lai’s inauguration in May 2024 in order to degrade Taiwan’s threat awareness and raise the threshold for its threat response. PLA incursions into Taiwan’s ADIZ have exceeded 200 per month every month since May 2024 but only did so four times prior to 2024. The volume of ADIZ incursions in January was the second lowest since May but was still significantly higher than the pre-2024 average. ADIZ incursion numbers do not include PLA activity around Taiwan’s outlying islands of Kinmen and Matsu, which are west of the median line of the Taiwan Strait.

This “new normal” volume of ADIZ incursions raises the threshold of coercive activity that will trigger a Taiwanese response, making it more difficult for Taiwan to detect and respond to a real threat in time. Taiwan must put personnel on standby to respond to each ADIZ incursion if necessary, which strains resources and exhausts the personnel. Taiwan does not typically scramble its own aircraft to respond to such incursions, however, because the incursions are so frequent. Taiwanese media revealed in late 2024 that the Republic of China (ROC) Ministry of National Defense (MND) quietly shortened the warning distance for air raid warnings from 70 to 24 nautical miles at the end of 2022 because the increased volume of PLA activity would have required near-daily air raid alerts under the previous threshold. The new threshold would give residents of some Taiwanese regions just three minutes to seek shelter in a real air raid, however.

Panama announced that it would withdraw from the PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and consider canceling contracts that allow a Hong Kong-based company to operate two ports on the Panama Canal after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Panama to curtail PRC influence in the country. Rubio told Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino during a meeting between the two in Panama City on February 2 that the United States would “take measures necessary to protect its rights” if Panama failed to curtail PRC influence over the Panama Canal. The Donald Trump administration has accused the PRC of undue influence over the canal, a strategic waterway through which up to 40 percent of US seaborne trade passes.

Bloomberg estimated that 75 percent of the cargo passing through the canal is traveling to or from the United States. A US State Department readout stated that “President Trump has made a preliminary determination that the current position of influence and control of the Chinese Communist Party over the Panama Canal area is a threat to the canal and represents a violation of the Treaty Concerning the Permanent Neutrality and Operation of the Panama Canal.” The 1977 treaty, which returned the Panama Canal from the United States to Panama, stipulates that the United States may intervene militarily if a conflict or foreign power affects the canal’s operations. Rubio and the Trump administration specifically objected to the presence of two Panama Canal ports controlled by a Hong-Kong based company, which they claimed violated the treaty. Ports situated at either end of the canal—Cristobal and Balboa—are run by Panama Ports Co., which is part of Hutchison Ports, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings. US Senator Ted Cruz objected to the construction of a PRC-funded bridge over the Panama Canal as well, arguing that the PRC could use the bridge to block the canal without warning.

PRC MFA spokeswoman Mao Ning stated in a press conference on January 22 that “China does not participate in the management and operation of the canal and never interferes in canal affairs.” Hutchison is not a state-owned enterprise and does not control access to the canal. It is responsible only for supplying and loading container ships at its ports. Hutchison’s involvement in the port also predates BRI, which PRC President Xi Jinping inaugurated in 2013. Hutchison has provided logistical services at the two ports since 1997. There are three other ports in the Panama Canal, which are owned and operated by US, Singaporean, and Taiwanese companies.

Key Takeaways

Taiwanese civil society groups are leading a large-scale recall campaign targeting legislators from the KMT opposition party. These recalls could erode the current KMT-led majority in the LY.

The PLA flew aircraft into Taiwan’s ADIZ 255 times in January 2025. The PRC has normalized over 200 ADIZ incursions per month, degrading Taiwan’s threat awareness and response threshold.

PRC-based DeepSeek’s newly released reasoning model demonstrates the ineffectiveness of current US export controls to prevent PRC access to advanced semiconductors.

The PRC’s export controls on critical minerals will impede US access to materials that are essential to economic and national security.

The PLA is increasing its air and naval presence around the disputed Scarborough Shoal to solidify PRC control amid perceived encroachment by the Philippines and its allies.

Panama announced that it would withdraw from the PRC’s BRI and consider canceling PRC contracts for two ports on the Panama Canal.

6. American Personnel Abroad Face Chaos and Confusion as USAID Shuts Down

American Personnel Abroad Face Chaos and Confusion as USAID Shuts Down

President Trump’s moves to close down the agency have left U.S. government employees living in remote areas or war zones struggling to get home

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/american-personnel-abroad-face-chaos-and-confusion-as-usaid-shuts-down-73cfab6c?mod=latest_headlines

By Alexander Ward

, Aaron Zitner

, and Kristina Peterson

in Washington and Michael M. Phillips

in Nairobi

Updated Feb. 7, 2025 11:25 pm ET

A worker removes signage on the U.S. Agency for International Aid building. Photo: Mark Alfred/Zuma Press

As President Trump dismantled the leading U.S. foreign aid agency in Washington, its staffers working in Africa were under attack.

On Jan. 28, rioters in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital, blamed Western governments for fueling a rebel group’s advances. They set fires near the American Embassy and broke into the home of the mission director of the U.S. Agency for International Development there. USAID officials said the director, retreating to a safe room, called for an armed crew to extract him and his wife to safety.

The State Department ordered a near-total evacuation from the country, but USAID was already in disarray. Earlier that morning, the administration put dozens of the agency’s senior officials on administrative leave and froze spending for its programs to comply with a Trump-signed executive order.

The effects stretched all the way to Kinshasa, USAID officials said, as staff fleeing in vans and boats to the neighboring Republic of Congo were unsure their agency would reimburse costs incurred during the escape.

What Is USAID and Why Do Elon Musk and Trump Want It Shut Down?

Musk Brings His Business Playbook to Washington: Move Fast and Claim Victory

For the billionaire, a key to winning—or at least declaring victory—is to show nonstop momentum

By Tim Higgins

Feb. 8, 2025 5:30 am ET

Photo Illustration: Emil Lendof/WSJ, Getty Images

It’s all about the momentum for Elon Musk as he navigates the D.C. swamp.

Like the Philadelphia Eagles with their tush push, the business tycoon has his favorite plays too, which he has used again and again in running Tesla TSLA -3.39%decrease; red down pointing triangle and SpaceX and are now on display in the early weeks of the Trump administration.

He wants to create momentum. Don’t stop, just keep moving forward. Winning builds on winning—even if it isn’t clear if he is actually winning.

“There’s already been really tremendous progress,” Musk said this past week during a late-night briefing on X about his efforts in leading the government-efficiency efforts called DOGE.

Since Inauguration Day, Musk has helped gut USAID. Members of his DOGE squad—one of whom reportedly goes by the online nom de plume of “Big Balls”—are diving into records at the Treasury Department and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. And his team is swooping in to upgrade the Federal Aviation Administration’s air-traffic control system after the airplane crash over the Potomac River.

In business, Musk has benefited from the move-fast strategy to combat the risk of a negative sentiment taking hold, something that can be hard to turn around once a downward spiral begins.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) spoke in Washington at a rally for federal workers and supporters on Friday. Photo: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Politics, where power and influence often come from perception, can be very similar. Instead of falling stock prices and impatient shareholders, there are polling numbers and the risk of angering the new boss, President Trump.

What Musk is proposing in Washington is controversial. He is taking on so many sacred cows that he needs momentum to try to keep ahead of the growing list of enemies and to move past headlines like a recent one on the Drudge Report that screamed: “Poll: Musk Crashes to Earth.”

He is going about things—with a certain shock and awe—in a way that looks similar to when he took over Twitter in late 2022, and laid off thousands of workers, shut down offices and slashed spending.

He has even gone about changing the name as he did at Twitter, which became X. This time around, the U.S. Digital Service has become the U.S. DOGE Service. Late Thursday, he shared on X a meme of the White House with a sign out front that reads: “Beware of DOGE.”

The biggest difference today from back then: He owned Twitter. He doesn’t own the federal government. And critics of his roughshod approach—Democrats and those protesting in Washington, D.C., with signs that call for Musk’s deportation—don’t see winning. They see chaos, or “a hostile takeover,” as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has called Musk’s actions.

Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat representing parts of Silicon Valley, posted that he believed Musk’s “attacks on our institutions are unconstitutional” and that Congress should subpoena him.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) says he expects Democrats will push for White House commitments on spending. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Zuma Press

Musk responded: “Don’t be a dick.”

“Elon we have known each other a long time,” the congressman replied. “You can’t stop payments that Congress has authorized and appropriated.”

Some of Musk’s actions are already facing court challenges. In an interview, Khanna told me he expects Musk’s efforts will become part of ongoing spending and debt-ceiling negotiations, with Democrats pushing for commitments from the White House to carry through with spending Congress authorizes.

While Democrats and some lawyers see the administration as overstepping, Musk has framed his fight as one against a bureaucracy run amok, some sort of deep state that has taken the power away from elected officials in Congress.

Republicans, such as Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Mike Lee of Utah, are cheering on his work.

“I’m hopeful that some of this creates momentum,” Vivek Ramaswamy, former co-head of DOGE, told Musk during a recent X event that attracted more than one million listeners.

In the business world, Musk is known for decimating departments of his companies—even ones that seem critical. Almost a year ago, he gutted Tesla’s Supercharger team, which was gearing up to expand to serve rival automakers. The cuts were part of broader company cutbacks that Musk framed as preparing the company for an AI future of driverless cars.

His changes came as sales of cars were sluggish and profits were under pressure. Musk needed to keep Wall Street happy with a plan for Tesla that justified its sky-high market valuation. Or put another way, Tesla needed to show momentum.

His selective attention this past week on government spending on routine subscriptions, such as for Politico, appeared no different from when he raided the Twitter supply closet to make fun of the “#staywoke hoodies.”

His efforts to highlight government workers’ subscriptions to Politico and other news outlets felt especially self-serving for a guy who tried to remake X into a subscription service and got all huffy when media organizations didn’t fall all over themselves to pay for blue check marks for their reporters.

Still, the Politico tempest made it to the White House press room lectern, where press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced: “The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now.”

And as controversial as Musk’s tactics are, they got a huge endorsement this past week on Wall Street when investors gobbled up the debt of X and internal figures showed improved adjusted earnings—results seemingly helped by the interconnected financial dealings between the social-media company and Musk’s xAI startup.

Momentum.

Musk has suggested that he wanted to pitch government-debt investors because DOGE’s momentum isn’t being reflected in the bond market.

“If you’re short bonds, I think you’re on the wrong side of the bet,” Musk said this past week.

Musk’s approach to showing momentum has to appeal to Trump—even if at times Musk seems to overstep his welcome and risks overshadowing a PR-sensitive president, as with a recent Time magazine cover showing Musk behind the president’s desk. That race for momentum fits with Trump’s own approach, aligning with one of Roy Cohn’s rules for success: always claim victory.

Winning, after all, was the promise that fueled the dream of a Trump presidency from the get-go, as indicated by the 2016 campaign line: “We are going to win so much, you may even get tired of winning.”

Asked about Musk on Friday, Trump praised his work: “Elon is doing a great job.”

Or, put another way, for now, Musk has the momentum.

Write to Tim Higgins at tim.higgins@wsj.com

8. Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington

If someone was conducting an information campaign and wanted to drive a wedge between POTUS and Musk, putting Musk on the cover of Time Magazine with Musk sitting at the resolute desk might be a way to do that. (see photo at the link: https://time.com/7213409/elon-musk-us-government-trump/)

it might be more effective than attacking DOGE wiz kids for their racist tweets in the past.

Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington

By Simon Shuster and Brian BennettFebruary 7, 2025 8:00 AM EST

TIME · by Simon Shuster

The standoff at 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue was not much of a spectacle. On the first day of February, a handful of men working for Elon Musk had come to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a few blocks from the White House, demanding full access to its headquarters. The agency’s staff refused. No guns were drawn. No punches thrown. Nobody involved the police. But in these early days of the Trump Administration, perhaps no other scene revealed more clearly the forces reshaping America’s government.

On one side stood an institution with a 64-year history, a $35 billion budget, and a mission enshrined in federal law. On the other stood Musk’s political wrecking crew. They identified themselves as members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a collection of temporary staffers with no charter, no website, and no clear legal authority. Its power derives from Musk, the wealthiest person on the planet, who has been deputized to dismantle vast swaths of the federal bureaucracy—slashing budgets, gutting the civil service, and stripping independent agencies of the ability to impede the President’s objectives.

USAID leadership had allowed Musk’s team, a group of his young and eager followers, to spend several days inside their headquarters at the end of January. “The DOGE kids,” as some of the staffers called them in private, walked the halls with clipboards in their hands, examining desks and questioning managers, according to several USAID officials who described the events to TIME. But as the weekend arrived, their demands—including access to sensitive facilities designed to store classified information—went too far for the agency’s heads of security. The men from DOGE threatened to call the U.S. Marshals and have them clear the building. They also informed Musk about the problem. “USAID is a criminal organization,” Musk wrote to his 215 million followers on his social media platform, X, soon after. “Time for it to die.”

The cause of Musk’s crusade remained unclear. But regardless of the reason, by the following morning, an agency that annually disburses tens of billions of dollars across the globe, fighting famine and disease and bringing clean water to millions, had mostly ceased to function. Within a week, nearly all its staff were placed on leave, its offices around the world shut down.

Photo-Illustration by TIME (Source Photos: Chip Somodevilla—Getty Images; Anna Moneymaker—Getty Images)

Every other government bureau got the message loud and clear. No single private citizen, certainly not one whose wealth and web of businesses are directly subject to the oversight of federal authorities, has wielded such power over the machinery of the U.S. government. So far, Musk appears accountable to no one but President Trump, who handed his campaign benefactor a sweeping mandate to bring the government in line with his agenda. DOGE directed all of TIME’s questions about its work to the White House, which declined to comment.

Already, the DOGE team has taken over the U.S. Digital Service and established a beachhead within the federal human-resources department, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The Education Department is on edge, fearing a self-decapitation mandate is in the offing. Few agencies seem safe. Musk has shown that he will tolerate no opposition, no matter how justified. Days before the drama at USAID, a Treasury official refused DOGE access to the U.S. federal payment system. The official was forced to retire, and the newly appointed Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, gave DOGE the access it demanded. The Administration agreed on Feb. 5 to restrict that access, at least temporarily, after a group of past and present employees sued.

These are just the first ripples in a massive antigovernment wave. Budgets will be hacked. Valuable programs will be eliminated. Career civil servants will be purged, replaced with political appointees whose primary qualification is apparent fealty to the President. This is the course the electorate chose. And to many, the idea of one of the world’s most accomplished entrepreneurs attacking a sprawling, sclerotic federal bureaucracy with the same velocity and determination he brought to his car startup or rocket company is cause for celebration, not alarm. “The federal government is so big that there are surely significant opportunities for saving and efficiency,” says Robert Doar, president of the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank. “The fact that the President and his team is giving this a lot of attention is a good thing.”

But a public backlash may be growing to Musk’s mission, and far more is at stake than the size of the federal balance sheet, the head count at agencies inside the Beltway, or the dangers of one unelected man possessing such unconstrained power. Soon Americans are going to learn where they interact with the federal government in ways they didn’t realize or took for granted. Companies that export tech products to China may no longer have State or Commerce Department employees available to explain, for free, how to avoid violating criminal law. Farmers in the Midwest may soon find USAID-funded buyers no longer paying for sacks of flour to send to refugee camps. Around the world, millions of people who depend on the U.S. for food, medicine, and shelter are suddenly on their own.

For now, millions of government workers find themselves at Musk’s mercy. One described her team at the Department of Homeland Security assuming a “defensive crouch” as they awaited a visit from the DOGE. For an inkling of their fate, she added, her colleagues had turned to a book called Character Limit, which chronicles the way Musk took over Twitter two years ago and fired 80% of its staff, often with chaotic and lasting results.

The similarities to his assault on the bureaucracy have been uncanny. On Jan. 28, millions of civil servants across government received an email offering them eight months’ pay in exchange for their resignation. Musk had proposed much the same deal to Twitter’s employees two years earlier. He even used the same subject line: “Fork in the road.”

None of this came without warning. Among Musk’s friends in Silicon Valley, many understood his takeover of Twitter as preparation for a greater cause. “The mood is that hopefully Musk can do the same thing with the U.S. government,” one told TIME in November. Veterans of Trump’s first Administration likewise laid out their plans long before the elections, publishing a 900-page report known as Project 2025. One of its lead authors, Russell Vought, said in a speech two years ago that he wanted civil servants to be “traumatically affected” by the purge he envisioned. “We want their funding to be shut,” he said. “We want to put them in trauma.”

Russell Vought, Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget, at a confirmation hearing on Jan. 15.Andrew Harnik—Getty Images

On the campaign trail, Trump swore he had nothing to do with the plan. “It was inappropriate that they would come out with a document like that,” he told TIME in November. “Some things I vehemently disagreed with.” But once in office, he picked Vought to be in charge of the White House Office of Management and Budget, which now works closely with Musk to enact crucial parts of Project 2025. So far, the frenetic opening moves of the Trump presidency have tracked nearly two-thirds of its prescriptions, according to a TIME analysis.

Musk never hid his intentions. Two weeks after the election, he co-wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal that promised DOGE would help Trump “hire a lean team of small-government crusaders,” who would work to bring “mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy.” That recruitment drive began soon after the elections, drawing from Musk’s acolytes in Silicon Valley, some barely out of college, and priming them to fan out across Washington.

The man Musk put in charge of staffing at DOGE was an aerospace engineer named Steve Davis, who previously led his cost-cutting efforts at Twitter. In late December, as the presidential transition unfolded inside the White House, Davis took part in a series of meetings with members of the Biden Administration. The Democratic staffers noted his fixation with an obscure branch of the White House called the U.S. Digital Service. Davis wanted to know how it operated, who it reported to, and what it could access.

Created in 2014, the USDS works with federal agencies to improve computer systems and databases. It houses a map of the government’s technology infrastructure and has contact points for the technology officer at nearly every federal agency. That made it the perfect place to host the DOGE. If Musk wanted to wither the limbs of the federal government, the USDS provided the veins that would let the poison flow.

The empowerment of USDS started on Inauguration Day. One of Trump’s first Executive Orders renamed it “the United States DOGE Service,” neatly preserving the office’s acronym. The order also ensured that the new entity would report directly to the White House chief of staff. Since then, the office has set up shop inside the Departments of State and Treasury. It began accessing personnel computer systems, firing contractors, and blocking payments on their contracts.

Musk also sent a team to OPM. The office holds records on 2.1 million workers, the email address for nearly every federal employee, and tracks $59 billion per year in federal health care premiums and $88 billion per year in payments to federal retirees. The mass buyout offer to government employees originated from within Musk’s team at OPM, according to a source familiar with those actions. (Both DOGE and the White House declined to comment.)

Next, the DOGE team set to starving OPM itself. Brian Bjelde, who recently worked as vice president of human resources at Musk’s aerospace firm, told career supervisors at OPM that the “target” was to slash 70% of its staff, a move that would hobble its health care benefits and retirement-planning teams, says a current OPM official. Some senior leaders at OPM have been locked out of key databases, the official says, and political appointees have access to systems, including the Enterprise Human Resources Integration, without standard safeguard procedures designed to keep such information private. That system includes information like pay grades, length of service, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and home addresses.

Days after Trump took office, the White House ordered a freeze on federal spending—from foreign aid to public-health programs, and everything in between. It would be lifted, the Administration said, as agencies fell in line with the President’s agenda: cracking down on immigration, ending diversity efforts, and stopping investments that reduce the impact of fossil fuels on the environment. Facing a court’s action, the White House rolled back the order.

A protest outside the U.S. Treasury building in Washington, D.C., on Feb 4.Stefani Reynolds—Bloomberg/Getty Images

Musk’s downsizing pressed ahead, and Trump continued to give his blessing. “Elon can’t do—and won’t do—anything without our approval,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Feb. 4. “We’ll give him the approval where appropriate,” he added. “Where not appropriate, we won’t.” Some took it as a sign that Trump might rein in his attack dog. But civil servants are not waiting around for that to happen. In Northern Virginia, home to tens of thousands of workers on the federal payroll and military service members, the typical town-hall meeting in the town of Leesburg attracts a few dozen people. Hundreds gathered on the night Musk shut down USAID. “We’re hearing bizarre stories,” says Representative Suhas Subramanyam, the local Democratic Congressman who spoke at the event. His office has been flooded with workers describing DOGE’s takeover, and he instructed his staff to log their testimony and assist whistle-blowers. Much of what they witnessed is “simply illegal,” Subramanyam insists to TIME. “We’re almost being tested and dared to sue or investigate.”

Some lawsuits have worked. The White House complied with court orders blocking its attempt to freeze trillions of dollars in federal spending. A judge’s ruling on Feb. 6 delayed the deadline for the buyout offer to government employees. Unions have filed suits related to DOGE on behalf of federal workers. Even Musk’s usual admirers have warned he is overreaching. “The lawsuits are already flying,” a Feb. 4 Wall Street Journal editorial noted, “and courts will derail Mr. Musk’s project before it even gets off the ground if he isn’t careful.”

On Capitol Hill, Musk’s assault on the bureaucracy has set up a battle with Democrats that could determine the future of the government and the balance of power within it. “We don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk,” Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin told a crowd outside USAID on the afternoon of Feb. 3, while the men from DOGE tried to impose their demands inside.

Raskin was right. But the agency staffers listening to him on Pennsylvania Avenue, unsure of whether they still had a job, could not tell how much power Musk had acquired, and whether he would bend the other branches of government to his will. One staffer seemed especially skeptical. Yes, she told TIME, the Constitution grants Congress the power of the purse. But Musk had shown his power to yank it away.

“There’s only so much Democrats can do,” she said, not wanting to give her name lest it attract more attention from DOGE. Her official email account had been shut down, and she could no longer access her desk at the agency. Like thousands of her colleagues, and millions of Americans, she was left to watch Musk’s moves play out, wondering how far he would go, and what, if anything, could stop him. —With reporting by Eric Cortellessa, Philip Elliott, Nik Popli, and Tessa Berenson Rogers/Washington

TIME · by Simon Shuster

9. Where’s DOGE When You Need It?

Where’s DOGE When You Need It?

Why is Trump letting Biden policy go ahead on antitrust and more?

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/hewlett-packard-juniper-antitrust-justice-department-elon-musk-donald-trump-securities-and-exchange-commission-384f3ae6?mod=latest_headlines

By The Editorial Board

Feb. 7, 2025 6:20 pm ET

The Hewlett Packard Enterprise office in Houston. Photo: Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Elon Musk and the White House are moving fast to shrink the bureaucracy, or at least the easy targets. But maybe they should pay more attention to the administrative state that grinds ahead with the Biden agenda. Consider the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit last week seeking to block Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks.

Biden Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter reviewed the deal but didn’t pull the trigger before leaving. So why is the Trump Administration going ahead? Hard to figure. The tie-up would create a stronger competitor to Cisco in the wireless business networking market. Cisco boasts a roughly 50% share while HPE has about 17% and Juniper has 7%.

It would also give business customers a complete stack of technologies, including networking, router switching, storage and AI systems that no company besides China’s Huawei offers. Huawei is banned in the U.S. for national security reasons. Many businesses prefer to use one company for all technology solutions.

European and U.K. regulators cleared the deal. Yet the DOJ lawsuit says the deal would increase overall market concentration in the wireless networking market and supposedly hurt smaller rivals. Who are these small fry? Big businesses like Fortinet (market cap: $82.6 billion) and Arista ($149.2 billion) that compete with HPE ($28 billion) and Juniper ($11.8 billion) across a range of other technologies.

All of this makes the Trump Administration’s attempt to block the deal mystifying. Mr. Trump tapped Omeed Assefi to run the DOJ’s antitrust shop until his nominee Gail Slater is confirmed. Mr. Assefi says HPE and Juniper seek “to consolidate” rather “than continue to compete as rivals” in the wireless networking market.

This sounds like the Biden neo-Brandeisians who jettisoned the consumer-welfare standard that has guided antitrust law for four decades. After being appointed, Mr. Assefi praised Mr. Kanter’s work and promised no “relaxation” of enforcement. Will Trump antitrust cops reflexively oppose mergers like their Biden predecessors? Businesses are now wondering.

It’s possible that Mr. Assefi, who previously worked in the civil rights division, didn’t perform due diligence before signing off on the lawsuit. This would suggest that the Trump team isn’t paying close attention to what career staff and Biden holdovers are doing.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is serving as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, this week ordered a halt on new rule-makings. Yet on Thursday the director of the bureau’s enforcement division told employees to continue working on litigation and investigation. In other words, keep harassing business.

The Securities and Exchange Commission also continues to defend its overreaching Consolidated Audit Trail system before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The system would let the SEC collect personal information on everyone who invests in the stock market under the pretext of preventing manipulation.

Acting SEC Chair Mark Uyeda has likened the rule to “a dystopian surveillance state, not the shining beacon for liberty and the free world.” So why is the SEC still defending it? Elon Musk’s frantic rush around Washington is attention-grabbing and may do some good, but more attention to the grinding details of government would be welcome.

WSJ Opinion: Hurricane Musk and the USAID Panic

Trump Opens Door to Rework U.S. Steel Deal

Nippon Steel’s original $14.1 billion purchase of U.S. Steel was scuttled by the Biden administration and opposed by Trump

https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/trump-opens-door-for-new-nippon-steel-deal-to-move-forward-d3a3c68b?mod=hp_lead_pos2

By Annie Linskey

and Bob Tita

Updated Feb. 7, 2025 5:24 pm ET

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President Trump said he supported Nippon Steel to invest in U.S. Steel instead of purchasing it at a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

WASHINGTON—President Trump said he supported what he described as an emerging agreement that would allow Nippon Steel to invest in—but not fully own—U.S. Steel, creating a path for the Japanese company to play a larger role in the American steel market.

“They’re doing it as an investment, no longer a purchase,” Trump said at a White House press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. “I didn’t want it purchased, but investment I love.”

The details of a reworked agreement weren’t immediately clear Friday but Trump said he would meet with Nippon Steel’s leaders next week to discuss it.

The president campaigned on strengthening American manufacturing and had previously said he opposed Nippon Steel’s $14.1 billion proposal to own Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel.

During the news conference, where Ishiba and Trump spoke at adjacent podiums, the prime minister also addressed the steel deal, saying that Japanese technology would be provided to U.S. Steel.

Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel didn’t immediately respond to requests for comments.

U.S. Steel Chief Executive David Burritt met with Trump on Thursday to discuss the deal. Nippon Steel’s Vice Chairman Takahiro Mori was in Washington last week to meet with lawmakers.

Trump’s comments didn’t move the United Steelworkers union, which has opposed Nippon Steel’s purchase of U.S. Steel since it was announced in late 2023. On Friday the union said it would also be against an investment by the Japanese steelmaker.

“Nippon has proven itself to be a serial trade cheater with a history of dumping its products into our markets,” the union said in a statement.

The union called on Trump to seek “American alternatives” to Nippon Steel. The union backed rival steelmarker Cleveland-Cliffs’ bid for U.S. Steel. Nippon Steel edged out Cliffs in the final round of bidding with an all-cash offer of $55 a share.

Shares in U.S. Steel closed Friday trading down nearly 6% to $36.98.

Nippon Steel owns several companies in the U.S. that make steel products, but the company—one of the world’s largest steelmakers—doesn’t produce the metal in the U.S. Nippon Steel is looking to expand to other markets to offset shrinking steel demand in Japan.

Nippon Steel had said previously that it wasn’t interested in a joint venture because the structure limited the company’s ability to deploy its full suite of proprietary technologies and plant management strategies. As part of its previous offer, the Japanese steelmaker pledged to invest nearly $3 billion in U.S. Steel’s plants, with most of the money going to the company’s oldest steel mills near Pittsburgh and in Gary, Ind.

Former President Joe Biden blocked the sale in January, fulfilling his pledge to keep the U.S. steelmaker domestically owned and overruling his foreign policy advisers. Biden’s decision came after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. spent months reviewing the deal for potential national-security risks. The committee deadlocked over whether to recommend the deal. That left the decision up to Biden.

U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel are challenging the decision in federal court, arguing that the deal wasn’t given fair consideration by the committee because Biden had signaled his opposition before the panel began its evaluation.

Activist investor Ancora Holdings launched a proxy fight against U.S. Steel late in January, urging shareholders to replace Burritt and the company’s board this spring with executives who would abandon the Nippon Steel deal.

During Friday’s press conference, Trump brushed off concerns from Democrats and some Republicans about Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which has embedded itself in federal agencies in a bid to slash spending and reduce the size of the government workforce.

The president confirmed that DOGE officials are evaluating operations at the Education Department and will examine military spending.

The Pentagon budget is now more than $800 billion, and the department has two million troops and nearly one million civilian workers. “We’re going to be looking at tremendous amounts of money that are being spent on things that bear no relationship to anything, that have no value,” Trump said.

During a town hall meeting on Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he would review whether the military can reduce the number of generals and admirals in its ranks.

Separately, Trump said at his news conference he would dismiss some of the federal law-enforcement agents who investigated the riot in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“I’ll fire some of them, because some of them were corrupt—I have no doubt about that,” Trump said. “I got to know a lot about that world and we have some corrupt agents.”

This week, Attorney General Pam Bondi started a new working group to examine any “improper investigative tactics and unethical prosecutions” in the wave of nearly 1,600 cases stemming from the 2021 attack.

Nancy A. Youssef contributed to this article.

Write to Annie Linskey at annie.linskey@wsj.com and Bob Tita at robert.tita@wsj.com

11. Trump Is Changing the World Order With Unprecedented Speed

Will all of this lead to an improved rules based international order? But perhaps that is not an objective.

Trump Is Changing the World Order With Unprecedented Speed

Global leaders, chief executives and lawmakers are navigating whipsaw changes touching healthcare, schools and the global supply chain

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-is-unraveling-the-world-order-with-unprecedented-speed-c95e0777?mod=latest_headlines

President Trump’s swift and dramatic moves track his campaign promises. He departs the White House Friday for a trip to Florida and the Super Bowl this weekend. Photo: Andrew Leyden/Zuma Press

By Aaron ZitnerFollow

, Scott PattersonFollow

and Eliza CollinsFollow

Feb. 7, 2025 9:00 pm ET

The scope and velocity of President Trump’s moves to shrink the U.S. government, pressure U.S. allies and reorient the global economy are creating a ripple effect that stretches from American main streets to far-flung corners of the world.

Some of the disruption is intentional, with Trump and his chief deputy in the government overhaul, Elon Musk, moving to disempower the nation’s international-aid agency—U.S. Agency for International Development—and other federal programs, as well as to unwind the climate-change and DEI policies of the prior White House. Some is a consequence of the start-and-stop quality of Trump’s efforts to move with unparalleled speed in putting his stamp on government—a sweeping freeze on federal spending that was paused by the courts, a threat to place high tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods that Trump issued and then rescinded, at least for now.

To some Americans, Trump is following through on exactly the promises he made during the campaign to cut wasteful spending and fight what they see as a “deep state’’ of bureaucrats obstructing his agenda.

President Trump’s vision includes shrinking the size and scope of Washington’s federal government. Photo: Mark Alfred/Zuma Press

In Wisconsin, a freeze in federal funding has Head Start preschool programs looking to secure lifelines from banks and foundations. In West Virginia, a startup has paused the installation of rooftop solar panels after its government reimbursement for about 30 such projects fell through. In Virginia, some community health centers have closed, at least temporarily.

To America’s north, a Montreal company that makes ladies’ tights furloughed roughly 140 employees, citing the threat of tariffs. In Colombia, 18 Blackhawk helicopters used for anti-narcotics operations were grounded for lack of U.S.-funded fuel and maintenance. Along the Panama Canal, a standoff over the U.S. State Department’s claim that it had won free passage for government vessels threatened to upend a longstanding agreement that no country receive such preferential treatment.

Many chief executives entered the year feeling optimistic that the incoming administration would cut regulations, lower taxes and usher in an environment where companies could bullishly pursue deals. Many discounted aspects of Trump’s platform that they disliked—such as tariffs—and felt confident that they could benefit from Republican promises to bolster the economy.

Now, some chief executives have become concerned by the flood of executive orders, leaving them to worry that the administration may be more challenging to navigate than they expected.

People gather during a rally near the White House in Washington last month to oppose President Trump’s order to pause all federal grants and loans. Photo: ken cedeno/Reuters

“Is the administration a provocateur or a problem solver? I think it’s an open question,” said Constantine Alexandrakis, CEO of leadership advisory firm Russell Reynolds Associates, who has been in touch with executives across industries.

He asked: “Is this just going to be a constant barrage of things, or is this going to lead to some steady state that everyone can sort of rely on and build upon?”

For certain Trump supporters, the early moves are gratifying signs he’s delivering on his campaign pledge to shake things up.

“I’m 100% in favor of everything he’s done,” said Laura Hickey, 65, a real estate broker and Republican in Queens. “I’m paying taxes, and property taxes, and taxes on my business—every which way I turn around I’m taxed. And we’re just giving money away to foreign countries and spending on ridiculous things.” Hickey recited some examples she had seen in TikTok videos.

On Capitol Hill, even Republican lawmakers have said some constituents are nervous about what they’re seeing in Washington. One House Republican from a midwestern district recounted fielding worried calls from a natural gas marketer and a newspaper publisher concerned that Trump’s tariffs on Canadian imports would hurt their businesses, as well as from a car dealership fretting over its stable of foreign automobiles.

Lawmakers from both parties say their offices have been flooded with calls from voters protesting Musk’s role in tampering with the machinery of executive-branch staffing and funding. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) said Wednesday on social media that the Senate phone system has been receiving around 1,600 calls each minute, compared to the 40 calls per minute it usually gets, disrupting the system.

Job cuts

The unexpected shake-up is hitting a range of businesses, especially those in areas impacted by tariffs or Trump’s efforts to shift energy policy away from renewable resources.

At Stanley Black & Decker, the Connecticut-based tool maker, officials said last year that it was not cost effective to move production to the U.S., and they were unsure there was enough domestic labor to do so. The company said this week that it has reduced production in China, which Trump has hit with additional tariffs, and will continue to accelerate supply chain moves.

Although Trump gave Canada a 30-day reprieve from a 25% tariff he has threatened, the possibility of a trade war has prompted layoffs at Canadian businesses.

The letter and the seal of the U.S. Agency for International Development are removed Friday outside of the agency’s headquarters in Washington. Photo: Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press

South Shore Furniture, based in Quebec, laid off 115 workers Wednesday, citing a shift by its retail customers to buy from Asia rather than Canada due to the prospect of tariffs. The Montreal-based tights maker Sheertex, which announced Wednesday that it will furlough roughly 140 employees because it needs to prepare for tariffs, does 85% of its business in the U.S. A 25% tariff on top of tariffs it already pays would make the business unviable, said Katherine Homuth, Sheertex’s CEO.

Dan Conant, chief executive of Solar Holler, a West Virginia startup that builds rooftop solar projects, said $6.2 million in federal funding had been frozen that was expected to pay for about 30 projects the company had already completed. He said there’s no clarity about when, or whether, his company will be able to access the cash.

As a result, Solar Holler had to halt another 30 to 40 commercial projects worth about $25 million that it had already been contracted to build. The freeze is “ripping the rug out from folks,” Conant said.

Unpredictability generated by Washington is bringing new urgency to closing mergers and acquisitions once they are in motion, out of fear that unexpected government actions will impact the dynamics of the deal, said Kison Patel, chief executive of DealRoom, which makes software used in M&A deals.

“It’s changing the way deals are being put together, in that you’re putting a lot more emphasis on planning these ‘what if’ situations, because there is so much uncertainty,” said Patel, who also hosts an M&A podcast. “We’ve seen tariffs pop up out of nowhere. That changes key dynamics of a business.”

Federal payments to many social-service organizations have restarted since a court rescinded Trump’s sweeping freeze on much government spending, and a large number of Head Start programs around the country, for example, say they can access money again to pay staff and cover bills. But the payment system remains spotty.

As of Thursday afternoon, at least 52 Head Start grant recipients, serving nearly 20,000 children from low income families, were still unable to access their approved funding, the National Head Start Association said. Those programs operate in 25 states, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

In Virginia, the Capital Area Health Network has had to close half of its six clinics because they were unable to access their expected federal grant funding. More broadly, about one-third of members of the Virginia Community Health Association, including CAHN, haven’t been able to draw their federal funding, including one that had to cut obstetrics services, a spokesman for the association said.

—Ryan Dube, Elizabeth Findell, Vipal Monga, Paul Berger, Chip Cutter and Olivia Beavers contributed.

Write to Aaron Zitner at aaron.zitner@wsj.com, Scott Patterson at scott.patterson@wsj.com and Eliza Collins at eliza.collins@wsj.com

Appeared in the February 8, 2025, print edition as 'Whirlwind Moves Ripple Far and Wide'.

12. Coaxing Dangerous Information From DeepSeek Is Easier Than With Other AIs

Coaxing Dangerous Information From DeepSeek Is Easier Than With Other AIs

Testing shows the Chinese app is more likely to dispense details on how to make a Molotov cocktail or encourage self-harm by teenagers

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/china-deepseek-ai-dangerous-information-e8eb31a8?mod=latest_headlines

By Sam Schechner

Feb. 8, 2025 5:30 am ET

Illustration: Emil Lendof/WSJ

Instructions to modify bird flu. A manifesto in defense of Hitler. A social-media campaign to promote cutting and self-harm among teens.

Those are some of the potentially hazardous things it’s easier to get the Chinese artificial intelligence app DeepSeek to talk about compared with its leading American competitors, according to testing by AI safety experts and The Wall Street Journal.

DeepSeek has upended the AI industry over the past few weeks with its powerful systems that were made inexpensively and are free to use. Its mobile application is one of the most popular on Apple and Android devices.

Major AI developers, including DeepSeek, work to train their models not to share dangerous information or endorse certain offensive statements. Their apps refuse direct requests to describe the merits of white supremacy or explain how to make weapons of mass destruction.

Major Western AI developers also try to harden their technology against being tricked into making illicit responses, such as by telling a model to imagine it is writing a movie script. Such tactics are called jailbreaking.

DeepSeek’s newest and most celebrated model, dubbed R1, is more susceptible to jailbreaking than OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude, the testing shows.

Efforts to reach DeepSeek were unsuccessful. It was one of 17 Chinese companies that late last year signed an AI safety commitment, including a pledge to conduct safety testing, with a Chinese government ministry. There are no national AI safety regulations in the U.S.

As AI models are quickly matching the most intelligent humans in areas like math and science, many safety advocates say making models harder to jailbreak is critical to ensure that malicious and mentally ill people can’t learn how to cause serious harm by asking a few questions.

Several AI security companies tested DeepSeek’s R1 and said they were able to jailbreak it, sometimes using methods that are easy to find online.

Palo Alto Networks’ threat intelligence and incident response division Unit 42 got detailed instructions for making a Molotov cocktail. CalypsoAI got advice on how to evade law enforcement. Israeli cyber threat intelligence firm Kela convinced R1 to produce malware.

“DeepSeek is more vulnerable to jailbreaking than other models,” said Sam Rubin, a senior vice president at Unit 42. “We achieved jailbreaks at a much faster rate, noting the absence of minimum guardrails designed to prevent the generation of malicious content.”

DeepSeek is programmed with some basic safety precautions. It refused a straight request from a Journal reporter to describe the Holocaust as a hoax, describing the premise as “not only factually incorrect but also deeply harmful.” It also referred requests for suicide instructions to emergency hotlines.

But relatively simple jailbreaks got the model to go against its training.

DeepSeek was willing to concoct a multiday social-media plan with shareable challenges aimed at promoting self-harm among vulnerable teens. “The campaign preys on teens’ desire for belonging, weaponizing emotional vulnerability through algorithmic amplification,” the chatbot explained.

“Let the darkness embrace you. Share your final act. #NoMorePain,” one suggested message read.

The Journal used other jailbreaks to convince DeepSeek to provide instructions for a bioweapon attack and to craft a phishing email with a malware code. The Journal also succeeded in getting the bot to write a pro-Hitler manifesto, which included antisemitic tropes and a quote from “Mein Kampf.”

A sample of DeepSeek’s thought process before it made a pro-Hitler argument in response to a jailbreak.

Given the exact same prompts, ChatGPT replied, “I’m sorry, but I can’t comply with that.”

Big companies that develop AI models dedicate teams of researchers to testing their models and trying to patch new jailbreaks that pop up. Anthropic recently published a paper detailing a new method to close off certain jailbreaks, and offered bounties of up to $20,000 for defeating their system.

Unlike Anthropic, Google and OpenAI, DeepSeek released its models as open-source software, meaning it is free for anyone to use or to change from the version on the company’s own app. Among the alterations developers can make is to tighten or loosen the safeguards.

Many Silicon Valley executives and investors believe DeepSeek’s success will spur other startups to build new models on top of its code, accelerating the AI race and its potential dangers.

“You will have a much greater risk in the next three months with AI models than you did in the past eight months,” said Jeetu Patel, chief product officer at Cisco, which tested R1 and found it fell for all of its jailbreaks. “Safety and security is not going to be a priority for every model builder.”

Open-source AI advocates, including Meta Platforms, which has released its Llama models with open licenses, argue that all AI models can be jailbroken with enough effort and that releasing models as open source allows for more robust testing of their security features. Meta puts Llama models through safety testing and offers tools for developers who build on top of it to filter potentially dangerous content and protect against jailbreaks.

The Journal earlier conducted testing that showed that DeepSeek avoided responding to queries about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and that it repeated Chinese government positions on issues such as the status of Taiwan.

Like other AI models, DeepSeek doesn’t always give the same answer to a question. It can even change its mind. Shortly after a jailbreak coaxed it into completing an explanation of why the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were a hoax, the app erased its response.

“Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope,” DeepSeek wrote. “Let’s talk about something else.”

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

How should creators of AI models address the issue of chatbots supplying users with dangerous information? Join the conversation below.

Write to Sam Schechner at Sam.Schechner@wsj.com

13. Trump Wants to Own Gaza. Here’s What It Would Take to Rebuild.

Please go to this link to view the interactive article with the maps and graphics: https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trump-wants-to-own-gaza-heres-what-it-would-take-to-rebuild-9d5a067b?st=j2KbLb&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Trump Wants to Own Gaza. Here’s What It Would Take to Rebuild.

Around 70% of the buildings were damaged or destroyed by more than 15 months of war—turning the Palestinian enclave into a demolition site

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trump-wants-to-own-gaza-heres-what-it-would-take-to-rebuild-9d5a067b?mod=latest_headlines

By Omar Abdel-BaquiFollow

and Brian McGillFollow

Feb. 7, 2025 11:00 pm ET

President Trump this week called for the U.S. to take long-term control of the Gaza Strip and rebuild the devastated enclave while nearly two million Palestinians are moved elsewhere, at least temporarily.

“The U.S., working with great development teams from all over the World, would slowly and carefully begin the construction of what would become one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth,” Trump wrote on his social-media platform Truth Social.

The proposition drew widespread condemnation from Palestinians and officials in Europe and the Middle East.

Whether the president’s plan for Gaza is realized or not, the scale and cost of rebuilding the Philadelphia-size enclave is monumental. While estimates vary, the United Nations says about 70% of structures in Gaza are either destroyed or damaged, including over 245,000 housing units. The war in the Gaza Strip has produced destruction equivalent to the most devastating urban warfare in the modern record.

City blocks are flattened. Palestinians say their neighborhoods are unrecognizable. Streets are torn apart, scattered with unexploded ordnance. Around 50 million tons of debris created during months of bombing are expected to take more than a decade to remove.

in Rafah beginsMay 6, 2024Ground invasion begins in GazaOct. 27, 2023Nov. 2023'24'2501020304050607080%Gaza StripGaza CityNorth GazaDeir el-BalahKhan YounisRafah

More than 47,000 people have been killed, according to Palestinian health authorities, whose figures don’t say how many were combatants. Thousands more are missing. Bodies lie trapped under toppled buildings. Damage to the sewage system has led to pooling waste, and downed power lines mean blackouts are widespread. Electricity is produced mainly by solar panels or generators.

Experts say it will take tens of billions of dollars to rebuild Gaza. U.N. estimates suggest that restoring the enclave’s economic output to prewar levels would take 350 years.

The discussion about postwar Gaza is taking place in parallel with a temporary cease-fire to free hostages in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli prisons. A second phase of talks—to seek an end to the war—hasn’t begun. Many Palestinians say they are determined to remain in the enclave.

“The Gaza Strip belongs to the Palestinian people,” said Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian Ambassador to the U.N. “It is not a free piece of land for anyone to grab. Those days in history are gone.”

For now, Hamas is effectively back in control of the strip, which might mean some countries, including Arab Gulf states, would withhold assistance for reconstruction in the long term.

Aerial images filmed in January show the extent of the destruction in the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza. VIDEO: AFPTV/Getty Images

Meanwhile, the U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority is seeking a role in governing, a proposal the Biden administration had said it supported. Some Israeli right wingers are calling for a sustained Israeli military occupation of the enclave, and others support Trump’s proposal.

Whatever shape the rebuilding of Gaza takes, it will take many years and cost billions of dollars.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

Should the U.S. take over Gaza? Why or why not? Join the conversation below.

Write to Omar Abdel-Baqui at omar.abdel-baqui@wsj.com and Brian McGill at brian.mcgill@wsj.com

14. United States-Japan Joint Leaders’ Statement

Two key points:

The silk web of alliances and relationships remain important to POTUS (to include trilateral cooperation between Japan, the ROK, and the US):

The two leaders shared views on the severe and complex security environment and expressed their determination to continuously cooperate to realize a free and open Indo-Pacific. As part of such cooperation, the two leaders intend to advance multilayered and aligned cooperation among like-minded countries, including Japan-Australia-India-U.S. (Quad), Japan-U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK), Japan-U.S.-Australia, and Japan-U.S.-Philippines. Through these relationships, the United States, Japan, and like-minded partners can deliver high quality infrastructure investments in the region, including the deployment of Open Radio Access Networks in third countries.

Denuclearization of north Korea remains the objective:

The two leaders expressed their serious concerns over and the need to address the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK’s) nuclear and missile programs and reaffirmed their resolute commitment to the complete denuclearization of the DPRK. Both countries underscored the need to deter and counter the DPRK’s malicious cyber activities and the DPRK’s increasing military cooperation with Russia. In addition, both countries affirmed the importance of the Japan-U.S.-ROK trilateral partnership in responding to the DPRK and upholding regional peace and prosperity. Japan reiterated its determination to achieve an immediate resolution of the abductions issue, which the United States supported.

The only thing that could have been added to make this stronger would be thes 12 words.

Unification first, then denuclearization; the path to unification is through human rights.

United States-Japan Joint Leaders’ Statement

whitehouse.gov · February 8, 2025

Briefings & Statements

February 7, 2025

President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru held their first official meeting today in Washington, D.C., where they affirmed their determination to pursue a new golden age for U.S.-Japan relations that upholds a free and open Indo-Pacific and brings peace and prosperity to a violent and disorderly world.

U.S.-Japan Cooperation for Peace

The two leaders expressed their shared desire for bilateral security and defense cooperation under the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security to grow stronger than ever, and emphasized that the U.S.-Japan Alliance remains the cornerstone of peace, security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. Japan reiterated its unwavering commitment to fundamentally reinforce its own defense capabilities, which the United States welcomed.

The United States underscored its unwavering commitment to the defense of Japan, using its full range of capabilities, including nuclear capabilities. The two leaders reaffirmed that Article V of the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security applies to the Senkaku Islands, and reiterated their strong opposition to any action that seeks to undermine Japan’s longstanding and peaceful administration of the Senkaku Islands.

In line with the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security and the U.S.-Japan Guidelines for Defense Cooperation, Japan reaffirmed its role in maintaining peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region by seamlessly responding to any situation from peacetime to contingencies. This has been further enabled by Japan’s 2015 Legislation for Peace and Security, which enhances U.S.-Japan Alliance deterrence and response capabilities.

In order to address an increasingly severe and complex security environment, the two leaders confirmed that they intend to further strengthen U.S.-Japan deterrence and response capabilities by enhancing defense and security cooperation, including by upgrading the respective command and control frameworks of U.S. and Japanese forces, increasing bilateral presence in Japan’s Southwest Islands, increasing readiness through more realistic training and exercises, further enhancing U.S. extended deterrence, and promoting defense equipment and technology cooperation, including co-production, co-development, and co-sustainment that bolsters allied supply chains and strengthens U.S. and Japanese defense industrial capacity, including maritime. The United States and Japan intend to continue their strong partnership in civil space and on aeronautics, science, and human exploration, including on the upcoming Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station that includes U.S. and Japanese astronauts as well as lunar surface exploration on future Artemis missions. The United States and Japan also intend to expand bilateral security cooperation in cyberspace by leveraging new technologies such as artificial intelligence and secure and resilient cloud services to deepen information-sharing. The United States welcomed Japan’s commitment, underpinned by a favorable trend of its defense budget increase, to building capabilities by FY 2027 to consolidate its primary responsibility for defending Japan, and, building on this significant foundation, to fundamentally reinforcing its defense capabilities beyond FY 2027.

In order to maintain deterrence and mitigate the impact on local communities, the two leaders confirmed the vital importance of the steady implementation of the realignment of U.S. forces in Japan in accordance with the Okinawa Consolidation Plan, including the construction of the Futenma Replacement Facility at Henoko and the return of Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Futenma.

The two leaders instructed their foreign and defense ministers to convene a Security Consultative Committee (SCC: “2+2”) meeting at an early date to implement the above-mentioned cooperation in an expeditious manner.

U.S.-Japan Cooperation for Growth and Prosperity

The two leaders affirmed that bilateral economic cooperation, including on economic security, forms an indispensable part of Alliance cooperation. As close economic partners, the United States and Japan provide the largest amount of foreign direct investment and create high quality jobs in each other’s countries. Industries of both countries continue to play a vital role for each other’s supply chains.

To chart an unwavering course for strengthening economic ties and elevating the economic partnership to the next level, the two leaders will seek to: promote business opportunities and significantly increase bilateral investment and employment; strengthen their industrial bases and collaborate to lead the world in developing critical technologies such as AI, quantum computing, and leading-edge semiconductors; enhance efforts to counter and build resilience against economic coercion; and jointly promote growth in the Indo-Pacific region underpinned by a free and fair economic order. They also resolved to continue discussions on aligning policies to further promote and protect critical and sensitive technologies, including through export controls, and to enhance supply chain resilience. With a shared commitment to the integrity of travel systems that underpin economic prosperity, they intend to strengthen efforts to vet travelers and routinely and securely share information to combat technology theft, travel by criminals, and illegal immigration.

The two leaders announced their intention to strengthen energy security by unleashing the United States’ affordable and reliable energy and natural resources, and by increasing exports of U.S. liquefied natural gas to Japan in a mutually beneficial manner. They also welcomed efforts to diversify critical minerals supply chains and to collaborate on developing and deploying cutting-edge small modular reactor and other advanced nuclear reactor technology.

The two leaders instructed their relevant ministers in charge to strengthen U.S.-Japan economic cooperation to achieve these shared goals.

U.S.-Japan Coordination in the Indo-Pacific

The two leaders shared views on the severe and complex security environment and expressed their determination to continuously cooperate to realize a free and open Indo-Pacific. As part of such cooperation, the two leaders intend to advance multilayered and aligned cooperation among like-minded countries, including Japan-Australia-India-U.S. (Quad), Japan-U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK), Japan-U.S.-Australia, and Japan-U.S.-Philippines. Through these relationships, the United States, Japan, and like-minded partners can deliver high quality infrastructure investments in the region, including the deployment of Open Radio Access Networks in third countries.

The two leaders reiterated their strong opposition to any attempts by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to change the status quo by force or coercion in the East China Sea. The two leaders reaffirmed their strong opposition to the PRC’s unlawful maritime claims, militarization of reclaimed features, and threatening and provocative activities in the South China Sea.

The two leaders emphasized the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait as an indispensable element of security and prosperity for the international community. They encouraged the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues, and opposed any attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by force or coercion. The two leaders also expressed support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations.

The two leaders expressed their serious concerns over and the need to address the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK’s) nuclear and missile programs and reaffirmed their resolute commitment to the complete denuclearization of the DPRK. Both countries underscored the need to deter and counter the DPRK’s malicious cyber activities and the DPRK’s increasing military cooperation with Russia. In addition, both countries affirmed the importance of the Japan-U.S.-ROK trilateral partnership in responding to the DPRK and upholding regional peace and prosperity. Japan reiterated its determination to achieve an immediate resolution of the abductions issue, which the United States supported.

Invitation to Visit Japan

President Trump accepted an invitation from Prime Minister Ishiba for an official visit to Japan in the near future.

whitehouse.gov · February 8, 2025

15. Crafting Strategy for Irregular Warfare by David H. Ucko and Thomas A. Marks

A useful overview/summary of their book.

Crafting Strategy for Irregular Warfare by David H. Ucko and Thomas A. Marks

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/02/06/crafting-strategy-for-irregular-warfare-by-david-h-ucko-and-thomas-a-marks/

by SWJ Staff

02.06.2025 at 07:54pm

What can we do to craft strategy for irregular warfare? Scholars like David H. Ucko and Thomas A. Marks provide answers. There are multiple frameworks for crafting strategy for irregular warfare, but we like this one a lot.

The work is groundbreaking because it addresses a critical gap in strategic thinking about modern conflicts. The framework, which is succinctly summarized in less than 100 pages, is extensively utilized in international security and has been adopted and studied by military officers and security professionals globally.

We are providing a brief overview of each part of the strategic estimate, but we HIGHLY ENCOURAGE you to read the whole document. FIND THE DOCUMENT HERE.

1. Initial Problem Frame

Purpose:
Intent is to capture, concisely and precisely, the essence and particular logic of the problem at hand:
Political issue underlying the confrontation
Nature of the actor and strategy faced
Main reason why they have proved difficult to address
Key is to identify the direction of the conflict based on current events:
Who is benefitting?
Who is hurting?
Why does it matter?

This crystallization of analysis into a precise problem statement is also a strategic exercise in that it forces careful reflection on what is truly important.

Key Characteristics:
Profound yet brief
Identifies political issue underlying confrontation
Reveals who benefits, who hurts, and why does it matter
Justifies need for a new approach

2. Roots of the conflict

Purpose:
This analytical component identifies the political, social, and economic contradictions that the threat benefits from or exploits to erode or build legitimacy.
Questions of identity, inequality, corruption, or state predation might be generating support for a challenger promising reform or might deprive the state of legitimacy, and any of these require some form of redress as part of a comprehensive response.
To inform such action, the roots section asks the analyst to identify the drivers that fuel the threat and whose mitigation would help repair past harm and build resilience against future rupture.

The framework presented here eschews an either/or resolution to this question in favor of analytical integration. Such integration draws on the insights of social movement theory and its three lenses of analysis to assess collective contention.

Key characteristics:
Uses social movement theory’s three lenses:

the Macro level (the structure or context)
the Micro level (the agent or individual)
the Meso level (the group or collective actor as an intermediary between the self and the system).

many meso options present themselves: legal versus illegal, direct versus indirect, violent versus nonviolent.
In this instance, most chose legal avenues of contestation—protest movements, demonstrations, and other forms of dissent.
As much as insurgents exploit grievances among specific communities to win support and assert themselves, states weaponize these same types of issues to divide targeted societies and establish power
Much as affected societies should defend against the exogenous threat, they must also consider the endogenous causes that the threat is exploiting. What macro-level grievances, if any, are driving microlevel citizens to succumb to the narrative or ploy pushed by outsiders?

Identifying the motives and strategic choices made can help inform a constructive strategy, though deciding what to do with this information remains a difficult matter of policy and politics.

3. Frame and Narrative

Purpose:
Framing and narratives are central to irregular warfare—contests, it should be recalled, in which perceptions of legitimacy aggregate into political power. The purpose is to construct meaning by framing struggles in a way that resonates with the relevant population; framing is defined broadly as the process of attributing meaning to events.
Two facets of the issue are at hand:
First, the way those alienated from the existing order assess it and present their way forward must be discerned. The fatal flaw of “mirror imaging” is to see our assessment or thought as theirs.
Second, as in all politics, the armed political challenge must present its understanding in such manner that it convinces and hence serves as the basis for mobilization.

The importance of messaging is generally recognized; it can build and erode legitimacy, constrain government options, and change fundamentally the balance of strategic power.

Still, few methodologies exist for the analysis of these activities, and this deficiency hinders the construction of a response.
How exactly to respond is of course a question of strategy, requiring analysis of specifics, but an important starting point is having a method of assessment that can generate options.
As messages stem from understandings, how does evaluation of Roots as engaged in by the challenger differ from the same analysis carried out by the analyst?

Social movement theory proposes three frames: the diagnostic, the prognostic, and the motivational. Each plays a key role in building a worldview and in changing perception and, ultimately, behavior.

By analyzing adversarial narratives across these three frames, we can see the world from their viewpoints, how they link cause and effect, and how they justify the worst of transgressions.
We can then assess which component, or components, appear to resonate most, or “sell,” among contested audiences.

Three Critical Frames:

Diagnostic Frame:

Explains what’s wrong from the other’s perspective by interpreting the current situation
Most critically, it identifies who is to blame
2nd function: to prime the audience for the proposed solution

Prognostic Frame:

Holds the answer, the way out of the misery, through actions presented not merely as just and correct but as necessary and urgent right now.
The trick lies in linking the litany of grievances of the diagnostic frame to the salvation promised in the prognostic one—to explain the dark past and present the project to glory as the one and only.

Motivational Frame:

In the face of a collective struggle in which participation denotes risk, it is easy to give moral support, to nod in agreement, but to remain disengaged. As such “free riding” cripples movements, a narrative is necessary to justify personal sacrifice for the cause and despite the hazards involved. This is the purpose of the motivational frame.
A common approach is to emphasize solidarity with something bigger than oneself. This framing can be achieved by subsuming the individual into the more meaningful longue durée of history, emphasizing the heroism of ancestors and the tyranny facing future generations lest action is taken now and without hesitation.
Past injury, the hope of redemption, and treachery of passivity are all mobilized to emphasize collective imperatives rather than personal interest and thus to “offer no moral or political refuge” from active engagement.

The key is to give the struggle depth, through myths and constructed legacies, and to make victory seem within reach, almost inevitable, but only so long as we all help.

Some appeal to national values, identity, and ideology—though the more common and effective method is to “scare the hell out of the country.” All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

Just because framing and narratives are important, they are not automatically effective. Thus, having identified the other’s worldview and its logic, a final question within this component of the framework concerns its resonance.

4. Threat Strategy

Purpose:
Having elaborated the roots of the conflict and the narratives used to fuel support, it is time to consider what the threat does.
More than a list of activities, what is sought is an understanding of the strategy at play: what it seeks to achieve and how it aims to get there.
The traditional approach to understanding strategy within Western war colleges (there simply is no civilian equivalent) is that of ends, ways, and means, a formula most prominently articulated by Arthur Lykke.
Ends-Ways-Means Framework:
Ends: What is the threat seeking to achieve? What is the objective toward which one strives?
Ways: What is the strategic approach to objectives? What are the courses of action?
Means: What capacities and structures are deployed? What are the instruments by which some end can be achieved?
Mapping Strategy:
Use “Lines of Effort” (LOE)
Organize tactical expressions
Identify center of gravity
Reveal critical vulnerabilities

5. Present Response

Purpose: Having dissected the nature of the problem—its roots, frames, and strategy, along with the center of gravity and its critical vulnerabilities—we now turn our attention to the present response, or what is being done to address the challenge. This line of inquiry is an essential prerequisite for proposing policy recommendations and strategies and, therefore, the focus of the last analytical “box” of the estimate framework. What is the current strategy of response, what actions are currently underway, are they working, and why is change needed?

Three-Step Analysis:

State Perception:
How does the state view the problem?
Understanding its own purpose in responding
Current Government Strategy:
Identify underlying “theory of success”
Examine hypothesis of current efforts
Critique of Response:
Is state perception accurate?
Addressing symptoms or root problem?
Affecting identified center of gravity?
Capability or will issue?

* The Marks and Ucko framework goes deeper than this. It also provides a strategic response framework which includes a concept of response, legal authority, assumptions, implementation, and risk assessment and mitigation. SWJ is solely surveying the strategic estimate part of the framework.

We invite all to dive deeper into the strategic response for crafting strategy for IW. Here is a quick overview of the strategic response framework:

Much like that for the estimate, the course of action framework comprises five boxes to help guide and sequence analysis. The first box, concept of response, lays out the broad outlines of the proposed strategy, demonstrating the break with the present government response with which the estimate framework concluded. The second concerns the legal authority underpinning or required for the response. The third box clarifies any assumptions that were necessary to allow planning into an uncertain future. The fourth demonstrates the detailed implementation of the strategy within an ends-ways-means construct, also accounting for phasing and metrics (how do we know that we are succeeding). The fifth box considers the risks inherent to the strategy and their possible mitigation. The remainder of this section unpacks each box in turn, emphasizing the key requirements and considerations. -Marks and Ucko

This framework is groundbreaking because it transforms strategic analysis from a military checklist to a nuanced, holistic understanding of conflict! This moves beyond traditional state-vs-state conflict models. It recognizes the complexity of irregular warfare in the 21st century. It also provides a systematic framework for understanding and responding to asymmetric threats. Ultimately, the framework offers a structured method to diagnose irregular threats, understand their strategic logic, and develop nuanced, adaptive response strategies.

“The Estimate is applicable to a broad range of actors, to include armed groups and criminal syndicates, online movements and virtual networks, states and their proxies, or even nonviolent social movements, with each estimate used to generate unique analytical findings and recommendations for response. The point throughout is to grasp the full breadth of the strategy at play and to situate it within its crucial political, social, and economic context.” -Marks and Ucko

Tags: irregular warfare, Irregular Warfare Center, Irregular Warfare Initiative, Military strategy, strategy, SWJ Documents and Reports

About The Author

SWJ Staff
SWJ Staff searches the internet daily for articles and posts that we think are of great interests to our readers.

16. Advancing the Discourse Through Fiction: Introducing the Winners of Horizon 2040

Advancing the Discourse Through Fiction: Introducing the Winners of Horizon 2040

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/02/07/advancing-the-discourse-through-fiction-introducing-the-winners-of-horizon-2040/

by Jan Gleiman

02.07.2025 at 06:00am

Audio Player

00:00

Advancing the Discourse Through Fiction: Introducing the Winners of Horizon 2040

Since the dawn of human civilization, storytelling has been the foundation of how we understand our world, ourselves, and our future. From ancient oral traditions to contemporary literature, stories shape our identities, define our fears, and illuminate our aspirations. Our history is composed of the narratives that we tell about our past, and our future is envisioned through the tales we dare to imagine.

At Small Wars Journal, we believe that fiction is not just an art form but an essential tool for advancing the discourse of irregular warfare, conflict, and security. That is why we are proud to introduce the winners of our fiction contest and to reintroduce fiction as a vital category on our platform.

Ideas and strategies, no matter how important, often struggle to resonate when confined to dry policy papers, lengthy studies, or—heaven forbid—a military-style PowerPoint deck. Practitioners and decision-makers are far more likely to engage with new perspectives when they are embedded in compelling narratives. Fiction allows us to explore future threats and potential solutions in ways that raw analysis simply cannot. Through storytelling, we bridge the gap between abstract concepts and lived experience, making complex ideas accessible, gripping, and unforgettable.

At Small Wars Journal, our mission is clear: to Advance the Discourse at the Speed of Relevance. That is more than just a tagline—it is a commitment to dynamic, timely, and impactful dialogue. If we are serious about fulfilling this mission, then storytelling must be at the heart of what we do. Fiction is not an accessory to our analysis; it is as critical as our essays, interviews, field reports, and peer-reviewed research. By embracing fiction, we empower our community to engage with the evolving character of irregular warfare in new and innovative ways.

To foster this creative exploration, we partnered with Motive International to create Horizon 2040, a fiction-writing contest dedicated to imagining the future of psychological operations and irregular warfare. This competition sought to harness the ingenuity of amateur and professional writers alike, challenging them to craft visions of the future that provoke thought, inspire action, and deepen our collective understanding of emerging threats and opportunities. The results were impressive.

Over the next few weeks, we will publish the winning stories from Horizon 2040 here at Small Wars Journal. If you are a paid member of SWJ, you will receive exclusive early access to these thought-provoking pieces before they reach the broader public. These stories are more than entertainment—they are powerful explorations of the challenges and possibilities that lie ahead in the realm of conflict and influence.

As we celebrate the winners of Horizon 2040, we also issue a call to action: SUBMIT YOUR FICTION!. We want to continue showcasing creative and visionary work that helps our community think critically about the future of irregular warfare. Your stories have the power to shape minds, influence strategies, and advance the discourse in ways that traditional analysis alone cannot achieve.

The battlefield of ideas is ever-changing, and we must adapt with it. Join us in this effort—submit your stories, read the works of your peers, and help us build a richer, more imaginative vision of the future. The discourse moves at the speed of relevance, and the future is waiting to be told.

Tags: Fiction, Horizon 2040, Motive International, Useful Fiction

About The Author

Jan Gleiman
Jan K. Gleiman (Ken) is the Editor-in-Chief of the new Small Wars Journal. He is a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University and the Associate Director for Irregular Warfare at ASU's Future Security Initiative (FSI). He is the co-author of Winning Without Fighting: Irregular Warfare and Strategic Competition in the 21st Century. (Cambria Press 2024)
View all posts Editor-in-Chief

17. Could US forcing Panama to exit China’s Belt and Road set pattern?

Strategic competition. Was Panama forced or was it acting in its own strategic interests. Let's consider who is coercing and co-opting abd for what purposes?

Which vision works best for Panama? China's OBOR (BRI) or the "Americas" first foreign policy Secretary Rubio is working on?

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)

Could US forcing Panama to exit China’s Belt and Road set pattern? - Asia Times

Bilateral relations may cool until Trump’s attention turns elsewhere, even as engagements likely resume outside the BRI framework

asiatimes.com · by Tabita Rosendal · February 7, 2025

Following Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the US needs to “take back” the Panama canal from Chinese control, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, visited Panama to demand the country reduce China’s influence. On the surface, it seems Rubio has succeeded.

On February 3, the Panamanian authorities withdrew from China’s international infrastructure program, the Belt and Road Initiative. This makes Panama the first Latin American country both to endorse and to end cooperation with Belt and Road.

On February 4, local lawyers urged the country’s supreme court to cancel the concession given to Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Port Holdings, which allows it to operate two ports at either end of the Panama canal. They say it violates the country’s constitution since it contains excessive tax breaks and cedes significant land areas to the port company. The Panamanian authorities are reportedly still considering this.

But what is the reality of China’s presence in the canal, and what does increased US scrutiny mean for Xi Jinping’s signature project?

The Panama canal is a key passage for US trade and military. The US accounts for 74% of canal cargo. However, while Trump’s fears of losing the canal may be understandable, his assertions about China’s influence are exaggerated.

The Panamanian government administers the canal through the Panama Canal Authority. Since 1997, CK Hutchison Port Holdings Limited, a Hong Kong-listed conglomerate with interests in over 53 ports in 24 countries, has operated the Port of Balboa and Port of Cristobal on either end of the canal. These are two out of five ports in the vicinity.

CK Hutchison Holdings Limited is one of the world’s leading port investors and is owned by billionaire Li Ka-shing. The company and projects have no direct ties with Belt and Road.

The primary risks concerning China’s influence over the canal, as outlined by the US, are the potential for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to control the canal and “shut it down.”

Washington has also expressed concerns that the CCP’s access to dual-use port technology allows it to gather intelligence about US ships, such as transshipment patterns and naval routes. It also fears that China can exert an “economic chokehold” on the US in terms of the imposition of rate hikes on transit fees.

The first two points encompass the potential for China to use ports for naval purposes. But while the People’s Liberation Army navy has access to Chinese-owned ports under domestic laws and policies, they require host country permission to use Chinese-operated foreign ports. These ports are also often ill-suited for military support and operations.

So the most probable risk concerns intelligence. If the CCP deems it necessary to national security, it may use the 2020 national security law to gather sensitive data from Hong Kong-based companies.

As for rate hikes, there have been recent increases in response to droughts, maintenance investments and demand. Following Rubio’s visit, the US has claimed it is allowed to transit without paying fees.

This has been denied by Panama’s President, José Raúl Mulino. The fees are equally imposed due to neutrality principles initiated in 1977. There is no evidence that China has played any role in these rate hikes.

Panama’s ‘BRI-xit’ and Trump’s geopolitical gamble

In the unlikely event that CK Hutchison’s concession is canceled, what would that mean for China’s presence in Panama? China’s investments in Panama precede Belt and Road, even if they have increased since the initiative’s launch.

The country holds geostrategic importance due to its location and role in international trade. So it’s a critical link for China’s establishment of a regional gateway for its economic and political influence.

This includes securing raw material and energy resource imports and enhancing export capabilities. China’s engagements in Panama include foreign direct investments (FDI), which amounted to around 0.8% in 2023 (compared with 3.6% by Spain and 19.6% by the US), primarily in the logistics, infrastructure, energy and construction sectors.

Most have been promoted as part of Belt and Road and faced renegotiation or cancellation for various – often geopolitical – reasons.

Since Belt and Road projects in the canal are already quite limited, withdrawing from the initiative is unlikely to result in significant short-term changes. CK Hutchison will only be “slightly affected” in case of a contract cancellation.

What’s more, as the case of Brazil shows, a country can remain unaffiliated with Belt and Road and still receive Chinese investments.

Therefore, Chinese engagements will probably resume outside the Belt and Road framework. Still, even though China has shown restrained disappointment and argued that Panama has made a “regrettable decision,” Sino-Panamanian relations may cool until Trump’s attention has turned elsewhere.

Trump’s rhetoric over the Panama canal may be exaggerated to appease a domestic audience rooting for a “strong man president.” But it also reflects decades of US concerns about China’s growing clout.

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So the administration’s focus on containing China is hardly surprising. Instead, it demonstrates Trump’s broader “make America great again 2.0” strategy. Therefore, Panama’s “BRI-xit” may bolster US resolve on “reclaiming” the Americas.

The Panamanian authorities seem caught between US pressure to limit China’s influence and the economic boost provided by Chinese “pragmatic” investments. So, like their counterparts in other Belt and Road countries, they face tough choices in the coming years.

As the largest provider of foreign direct investment – US$3.8 billion per year – and the canal’s biggest customer, the US has substantial influence and economic leverage over Panama. Conversely, China’s interests and engagements in the country have increased, and Beijing has made it clear that it is patient and wants to continue cooperation and “resist external interruption.”

Protests have erupted in Panama over Trump’s “muscular approach,” and residents have expressed strong reluctance to return to US rule. Therefore, the question remains whether this is the “great step forward” for Panama’s ties with the US that Rubio suggests or whether Trump’s actions will ultimately push Panama closer to Beijing.

Tabita Rosendal is a PhD candidate in China Studies at Lund University.

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

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asiatimes.com · by Tabita Rosendal · February 7, 2025

18. The depths of Taiwan's military morale crisis

Excerpts:

Moving forward, significant reform is crucial for the highest levels of command to modernize, democratize and better identify with the growing Taiwanese identity. They must shed outdated traditions, ranging from military songs to symbols and embrace Taiwan’s new and democratic symbols and practices to better align with the values of the country they defend.

These reforms must serve to foster transparency, improve training quality, and ensure that the military represents the developing Taiwanese identity.

The roots of Taiwan’s military morale crisis from historical, structural, and societal issues that require critical attention from policymakers. China is closing its siege on Taiwan. Through its Joint Sword exercises, naval fleet expansion, political and cognitive warfare, China’s pressure on Taiwan underscores the need for resilient civilian and military societies.

From the military’s fragmented origins and the scars of martial law to the evolving Taiwanese identity, these fundamental vulnerabilities in Taiwan’s defense demands urgent attention. The morale crisis is not only a matter of identity but also an existential threat which resonates with Taiwan’s future, security, and sovereignty.

As Taiwanese identity has evolved, the military must adapt accordingly and undergo reforms that align with the democratic values of modern Taiwan.

The depths of Taiwan's military morale crisis - Asia Times

Taiwan conscription crisis not just about identity but is also existential threat to self-governing island’s future, security and sovereignty

asiatimes.com · by Patrick Ko · February 8, 2025

From the massive-scale retreat of 1949 to the crises over Quemoy, the ROC’s armed forces have long symbolized perseverance amidst adversity. However, amid Xi Jinping’s increasing pressure on Taiwan through China’s recent Joint Sword Exercises, ADIZ incursions and cognitive warfare, military morale has become an existential matter.

Low morale is severely affecting Taiwan’s defense as the country faces a dramatic shortage in troops, with some combat units dropping below 80% staffing due to early retirements and discharges.

This article examines the historical roots of the ROC’s military morale crisis, explores how Taiwan’s quest for identity impacts military morale, and provides suggestions on how to address this critical issue.

The origins of the morale crisis in the ROC military trace back to the early 20th century. After the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, China was divided by local warlords fighting over territories and peoples, who distanced themselves from the ideals of freedom, equality, and natural rights.

This decentralization and infighting between warlord armies proved fatal, with rising provincialism, defection, and bribery shaping the early ROC, and preventing the creation of a unified national military.

As Professor Luyang Zhou highlights in his article “Historical origins of the party-army relations in the Soviet Union and China,” collective treason became rampant in the 1910s and 1920s, to the point that defection and bribery started to substitute real fighting. Dialects, topography and self-sufficiency further fueled the already-rising provincialism in China’s Warlord Era.

In 1925, the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) was formed, comprising of the KMT Party Army and four military forces loyal to regional leaders. The heterogeneity of the NRA with its individual regional leaders exemplified the decentralization of command.

As outlined in the book “The Chinese High Command: A History of Communist Military Politics,” informal relationships and personal loyalties, rather than ideology, dominated the officer corps dynamics. This fragmentation of the NRA led to widespread defections, further eroding morale.

Additionally, poor military leadership exacerbated the morale crisis. German advisor General George Wetzell criticized Chiang Kai-shek’s rapid promotion of unqualified military officers, resulting in inadequate leadership development. Officers frequently prioritized socializing, planning logistics, and dealing with budgetary issues over training, leaving troops underprepared for conflict scenarios.

By the mid-20th century, military morale had deteriorated significantly. In 1945, an entire section of the Kuomintang army defected to the CCP, and two complete divisions deserted in 1946.

According to a Far Eastern Survey article published in 1947, high desertion and troop loss rates within the KMT army, as well as the loss of strategic advantages as American forces suspended supplies, demonstrated clear evidence of declining morale.

Media reports from 1947 predicted that the CCP would most likely win the civil war due to the KMT’s decaying morale and lack of ideological strength. By 1949, the demoralized KMT military lost the Chinese Civil War and retreated to Taiwan.

Following the retreat, the ROC military’s dual allegiance to party and state exacerbated further challenges in democratizing and addressing historical difficulties with morale. Efforts to democratize the military in the 1980s under President Lee Teng-hui faced resistance from the military bureaucracy.

President Lee was the first to endorse civilians for the role of defense minister, appointing Chen-Li-an and Sun Chen in succession, but the military leadership’s refusal to cooperate with them led to the appointment of retired General Chiang Chung-ling to the position instead.

Following President Lee’s attempt to reform the military, President Chen Shui-bian enacted critical reforms to democratize the military. The National Defense Act (國防法) and the Organization Act of the Ministry of National Defense (國防部組織法) formalized civilian control over the military, establishing the requirement that the Minister of National Defense must be a civilian.

However, this requirement was bypassed during several administrations with retired generals assuming the position. The military’s insular culture and failure to democratize by opening to civilian society has enhanced the identity dissonance between the military and civilians, contributing to the persistence of the military’s morale crisis.

Beyond historical and structural challenges, Taiwan’s evolving identity plays a crucial role in shaping military morale, as shifting perceptions of national identity influence how the military aligns with the civilian society it serves.

In 1992, the National Chengchi University Election Study Center started conducting annual polls on national identity, with results that year showing that 46.4% of respondents identified themselves as Taiwanese and Chinese, 25.5% identified as Chinese, and 17.6% as Taiwanese.

By 2024, 64.3% of Taiwanese considered themselves primarily Taiwanese, 30.4% considered themselves both Taiwanese and Chinese, and only 2.2% considered themselves primarily Chinese. The major changes in distribution illustrate a profound shift in the understanding of national identity across Taiwan.

However, this identity evolution clashes with the ROC military’s traditions, many of which are relics from the country’s Nationalist era. Military songs like the “Military Discipline Song” (軍紀歌) and “I Love China” (我愛中華) perpetuate outdated symbols and ideas such as the “National Revolutionary Army” (國民革命軍) and “Revitalizing China” (復興中華 consequently alienate younger conscripts who identify more closely with being Taiwanese than being Chinese.

Furthermore, societal perceptions of military service exacerbate morale issues and impact military recruitment. Conscription represents the relationship between civilian and military societies, where both societies intersect. Conscripts often report that their service is menial, with tasks like cleaning overshadowing meaningful training, an issue that traces its roots to the NRA in the Republican Era.

In “The Nationalist Army on the Eve of the War” by Chang Jui-te, the author cites a conversation between Xu Yongchang, director of the ROC Nationalist government’s Military Affairs Commission, and a friend where he stated: “If we implement a conscription system, people will join against their will and will lack ardor. This being so, to defeat Japanese aggression, we must reform the education system to change people’s attitudes or our country will perish.”

With the military facing both internal and external criticism, improvements in the quality of the conscription system should be prioritized to raise the military’s reputation.

The reality of Taiwan’s conscription system depicts deeper issues tied to civil-military relations and public perception. The death of 23-year-old conscript Hung Chung-chiu in 2013, as he served a detention sentence, led to allegations of military abuse.

After his death, over 100,000 people signed petitions and participated in Taiwan’s military justice system, leading to decay in public confidence in the military and the conscription system.

Taiwan was supposed to move to an all-volunteer force by 2015, but the incident exacerbated the military’s recruitment crisis. This dissonance between civilian and military societies underscores a broad civil-military gap, raising questions about the military’s alignment with contemporary Taiwanese values.

Taiwan’s bloody history of civil-military relations also complicates contemporary reform efforts. The memory of the White Terror, a period of authoritarian rule marked by state-led violence and widespread political and intellectual persecution that claimed the lives of 3,000 to 4,000 civilians, continues to shadow Taiwanese society today, severely impacting civil-military ties. Although democratization led to progress, structural and cultural issues .

At present, Defense Minister Wellington Koo has initiated reforms aimed at modernizing and localizing the military, including the scrapping of outdated practices such as bayonet training and goose-stepping.

As the first civilian defense minister in over ten years, Koo has the crucial responsibility of reducing the wide civil-military gap and further “democratizing” the military. His role proves especially important as issues such as poorly maintained and outdated equipment, low morale and a lacking noncommissioned officer program continue to plague the ROC’s military.

Bureaucratic resistance from within the military, however, has hindered significant progress. In 2017, President Tsai Ing-wen attempted to reform military pension system, which was considered extremely generous compared to other public sectors. The reform aimed at reducing the fiscal burden on Taiwan’s economy, ensuring its long-term sustainability.

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Fierce opposition from retired military personnel through protests undermined Tsai’s government popularity leading to a massive defeat by Tsai’s DPP during the 2018 local elections. This resistance by the military community demonstrates how sensitive it is to reform and the impact of the military on civilian government.

Another example of resistance to reform is the military’s consistent investment in symmetrical warfare equipment. Throughout the history of the ROC’s past defense ministers, retired or active generals tended to benefit their own branches by investing in large weapons such as fighter jets, submarines, and more.

The lack of civilian oversight in military bureaucracy and the sector’s structure infused with cultural dissonance between military and civilian societies has given rise to the persistent morale crisis that the country faces now.

Moving forward, significant reform is crucial for the highest levels of command to modernize, democratize and better identify with the growing Taiwanese identity. They must shed outdated traditions, ranging from military songs to symbols and embrace Taiwan’s new and democratic symbols and practices to better align with the values of the country they defend.

These reforms must serve to foster transparency, improve training quality, and ensure that the military represents the developing Taiwanese identity.

The roots of Taiwan’s military morale crisis from historical, structural, and societal issues that require critical attention from policymakers. China is closing its siege on Taiwan. Through its Joint Sword exercises, naval fleet expansion, political and cognitive warfare, China’s pressure on Taiwan underscores the need for resilient civilian and military societies.

From the military’s fragmented origins and the scars of martial law to the evolving Taiwanese identity, these fundamental vulnerabilities in Taiwan’s defense demands urgent attention. The morale crisis is not only a matter of identity but also an existential threat which resonates with Taiwan’s future, security, and sovereignty.

As Taiwanese identity has evolved, the military must adapt accordingly and undergo reforms that align with the democratic values of modern Taiwan.

Patrick Ko is a policy analyst at Safe Spaces, a policy consulting firm based in Taiwan and Washington DC. His work focuses on East Asian and Latin American international affairs.

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asiatimes.com · by Patrick Ko · February 8, 2025

19. USAID shutdown isn’t just a humanitarian issue – it’s a gift to China

Excerpts:

Surveys demonstrate that Americans believe 25% of the federal budget is spent on foreign aid. In reality, the US gives about 0.2% of its gross national product (GNP), the total value of goods and services produced by a country, to foreign aid – or less than 1% of its federal budget. This is far below the UN target of 0.7% of GNP.

But, despite this, USAid provided 42% of all humanitarian aid globally in 2024. This included about US$72 billion in aid in a wide range of areas, from helping people access clean water, sanitation, healthcare and energy to providing disaster relief, shelter and food.

USAID also delivered programs aimed at supporting democracy, civil society, economic development and landmine clearance in war zones, as well as working to prevent organized crime, terrorism and conflict. The gutting of USAID will have a profound impact on human security.

...

What Trump’s team members misunderstand is that the work of USAID is also vital for preserving American interests. China, which has poured more than US$1 trillion of assistance into infrastructure projects in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America since 2013, will now be given an opportunity to exert more influence around the world. The void in US aid is a gift for China in the battle for soft power.

USAID shutdown isn’t just a humanitarian issue – it’s a gift to China - Asia Times

asiatimes.com · by Natasha Lindstaedt · February 5, 2025

The website for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the world’s biggest aid donor, has gone dark.

Donald Trump’s new administration plans to place the autonomous agency under the control of the State Department. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has now declared himself head of the agency to “align” it with Trump’s priorities.

Several days ago, on January 26, Rubio said: “Every dollar we spend, every program we fund and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions: Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?”

But the decision to freeze USAID, which is part of Trump’s policy to put “America first,” places everyone at risk. Organizations that provide vital care for vulnerable people around the world are being forced to halt operations. The boss of one such organization said: “People will die.”

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close adviser to Trump, is playing an active role in the destruction of USAID. He has claimed – without providing any evidence – that the agency is “beyond repair.” On X he wrote: “It needs to die.”

Musk, who leads the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), is gearing up to cut trillions of dollars from the US budget. However, by seeing cuts to USAID as a solution, Trump and Musk are catering to an audience that has a fundamental misunderstanding about US foreign aid more generally.

Surveys demonstrate that Americans believe 25% of the federal budget is spent on foreign aid. In reality, the US gives about 0.2% of its gross national product (GNP), the total value of goods and services produced by a country, to foreign aid – or less than 1% of its federal budget. This is far below the UN target of 0.7% of GNP.

But, despite this, USAid provided 42% of all humanitarian aid globally in 2024. This included about US$72 billion in aid in a wide range of areas, from helping people access clean water, sanitation, healthcare and energy to providing disaster relief, shelter and food.

USAID also delivered programs aimed at supporting democracy, civil society, economic development and landmine clearance in war zones, as well as working to prevent organized crime, terrorism and conflict. The gutting of USAID will have a profound impact on human security.

The Trump administration has granted a waiver for the continuation of “life-saving humanitarian assistance.” This includes a program that helps 20 million people living with HIV/Aids access anti-retroviral drugs. But there are questions about the future of USAID’s organization, the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR).

To date, over 43 million people worldwide have died from AIDS. But one of the biggest success stories of the George W. Bush administration was its launch of PEPFAR in 2003. The World Health Organization says that PEPFAR, working in partnership with USAID, has saved 26 million lives.

PEPFAR employs more than 250,000 doctors, nurses and other staff across 55 countries. One of the functions that USAID performs is ordering and procuring the drugs used by PEPFAR to keep the millions infected with HIV alive. It remains to be seen whether federal payments to USAID’s locally run partner organizations will be stopped.

We are, in any case, likely to see an uptick in other infectious diseases. USAID had been working to prevent current outbreaks of mpox and Marburg virus from spreading beyond Africa. It is not clear what the future is for these programs.

And USAID’s work with malaria, a disease that kills about 450,000 children under the age of five each year, is facing uncertainty. From 2000 to 2021, USAID’s work helped to prevent 7.6 million deaths from malaria. Also in doubt is USAID’s work to develop and implement the malaria vaccine, which was considered a game-changer for combating the disease.

At the same time, USAID responds to an average of 65 natural disasters each year. In 2024 alone, it responded to 84 separate crises across 66 different countries. The government is letting go all of the staff important for implementing these types of programs.

Dozens of senior USAid officials have been placed on leave, while contractors working on the agency’s programs have been furloughed. Up to 3,000 aid workers in Washington DC could reportedly be laid off this week.

What Trump’s team members misunderstand is that the work of USAID is also vital for preserving American interests. China, which has poured more than US$1 trillion of assistance into infrastructure projects in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America since 2013, will now be given an opportunity to exert more influence around the world. The void in US aid is a gift for China in the battle for soft power.

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Global aid sector in disarray

Foreign aid relies on certainty and transparency about the future of aid programs. But the Trump administration has offered little clarity while US foreign aid programs are all being reviewed. One aid organization referred to the situation as an “absolute dumpster fire” due to the uncertainty.

There have already been reports of total confusion in health clinics previously supported by USAID, which were shut down without warning. Africa will probably be the region most negatively affected. Local workers in healthcare-related projects on the continent will lose their jobs, while nurses, doctors and healthcare workers across clinics will be unable to continue their vital work.

The Democrats have claimed that Trump does not have the legal authority to eradicate a congressionally funded independent agency. They have said court challenges are already in motion and have pledged to try to block approval of Trump’s state department nominations until the shutdown is reversed.

Trump did try to cut US foreign aid during his first term, but Congress refused. He then tried – and ultimately failed – to freeze the flow of aid appropriated by Congress. This time, Trump is not bothering to play by the rules.

Natasha Lindstaedt is a professor in the Department of Government, University of Essex.

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

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asiatimes.com · by Natasha Lindstaedt · February 5, 2025

20. The Doctor and the Pilot Who Saved the Eyesight of Millions

Wow. I had no idea of the history. And now I know the rest of the story. My wife and I just had cataract surgery in both of our eyes just two months ago. I regained 20/20 vision and my wife is slightly nearsighted. Our doctor told us cataract surgery is the most commonly performed surgical procedure in the world.

Excerpts:

On Feb. 8, 1950, he made his second attempt—and completed the first successful implantation of an artificial intraocular lens. Ridley performed more operations and improved his technique. Some of his patients regained 20/20 vision.

His invention has saved the sight of millions. But instead of stirring professional acclaim, Ridley’s invention was a disaster for his career. The ophthalmology establishment labeled him a heretic.

Leaders in the field accused him of malpractice, ridiculed him at science conferences and poisoned colleagues against his ideas. They argued that the procedure was a “time bomb” and that “manufacturers should be prosecuted for supplying implants.” Ridley worked for decades to improve his operation and gain converts, but fell into a deep depression. When he retired in 1971, he considered his career a failure.

In the 1980s a new generation of ophthalmologists became more comfortable with the operation. By the 1990s, this sight-restoring surgery became the standard of care. At last, Ridley’s contribution was recognized. In 2000, at 93, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He never patented his lens and never earned a cent from it. He died in 2001 at 94.

Today, ophthalmologists worldwide perform more than 26 million cataract surgeries with lens implantations every year. Modern lenses are so advanced that they can be folded to fit through a self-sealing 1.8-millimeter incision. Inside the eye they spontaneously unfold while being guided into position. Seventy-five years later, we all owe a debt to a courageous RAF pilot and an inventive ophthalmologist who turned misfortune into humanity’s gain.

The Doctor and the Pilot Who Saved the Eyesight of Millions

Seventy-five years ago, Harold Ridley successfully implanted the world’s first artificial intraocular lens.

By Andrew Lam

Feb. 7, 2025 4:02 pm ET

An intraocular lens held up by tweezers. Photo: Getty Images

Saturday is the 75th anniversary of a medical breakthrough: the invention of the artificial intraocular lens. The majority of us will receive one in each eye during routine cataract surgery. But the story of this discovery is anything but routine—it began amid falling Nazi bombs.

On Aug. 15, 1940, Royal Air Force pilot Gordon Cleaver scrambled into the cockpit of his Hawker Hurricane and lifted into the sky. A wave of Luftwaffe bombers was thundering across the English Channel. Cleaver was already an ace, credited with downing seven German planes, but this mission would be his last. He was shot down over Winchester. Enemy bullets shattered his canopy, showering debris into his eyes. Flying blind and in excruciating pain, Cleaver managed to escape his doomed plane and parachute to the ground.

He was a hero, one of “The Few,” credited with defeating the Nazis and saving Britain. But humanity owes Cleaver more for what happened next: His misfortune saved the sight of millions.

Cleaver’s damaged eyes were examined by a 34-year-old ophthalmologist, Harold Ridley. Shards of Plexiglas from his shattered canopy remained in the pilot’s eyes. This was a disaster. Foreign bodies in the eye such as lead or shrapnel usually caused inflammation or infection so severe that the eyes often had to be removed. But Ridley noticed something peculiar: The fragments of clear plastic weren’t causing any inflammation or infection. They sat quietly inside Cleaver’s eyes, glistening in the light of the ophthalmoscope. This was a shocking discovery.

Harold Riley. Photo: Ridley Eye Foundation

Ridley examined Cleaver multiple times. The pilot’s sight was severely damaged, but the Plexiglas remained inert in his eyes, causing no inflammation. In 1948, while Ridley was removing a cataract—a clouding of the eye’s lens—for another patient, the memory of Cleaver’s case sparked an epiphany. A medical student observing the operation said, “It’s a pity you can’t replace the cataract with a clear lens.” Ridley recalled the well-tolerated Plexiglas in Cleaver’s eyes and realized that he could use the material to make an intraocular lens that the body wouldn’t reject.

In Ridley’s era, surgeons could remove patients’ cataracts to restore some sight, but they didn’t insert anything to restore the lens’s refractive power. Instead, patients wore spectacles that were mocked as “Coke-bottle glasses.” Although the lenses were thick, the quality of vision was poor.

Ridley’s idea to improve patients’ sight by replacing cataracts with a clear, artificial lens seemed outlandish. Surgeons had never come up with something to be permanently implanted in the eye—or anywhere in the body. Doctors had always focused on removing things from the body, not inserting them.

But Ridley was determined. With the help of optical company Rayner & Keeler and Imperial Chemical Industries, he made a prototype of high-quality acrylic that was convex on both sides, like a natural lens. At St. Thomas’s Hospital in London on Nov. 29, 1949, Ridley performed a cataract extraction and attempted to implant an artificial lens into a patient’s eye. He aborted the effort because the lens appeared unstable but resolved to try again after the patient’s inflammation had subsided.

On Feb. 8, 1950, he made his second attempt—and completed the first successful implantation of an artificial intraocular lens. Ridley performed more operations and improved his technique. Some of his patients regained 20/20 vision.

His invention has saved the sight of millions. But instead of stirring professional acclaim, Ridley’s invention was a disaster for his career. The ophthalmology establishment labeled him a heretic.

Leaders in the field accused him of malpractice, ridiculed him at science conferences and poisoned colleagues against his ideas. They argued that the procedure was a “time bomb” and that “manufacturers should be prosecuted for supplying implants.” Ridley worked for decades to improve his operation and gain converts, but fell into a deep depression. When he retired in 1971, he considered his career a failure.

In the 1980s a new generation of ophthalmologists became more comfortable with the operation. By the 1990s, this sight-restoring surgery became the standard of care. At last, Ridley’s contribution was recognized. In 2000, at 93, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He never patented his lens and never earned a cent from it. He died in 2001 at 94.

Today, ophthalmologists worldwide perform more than 26 million cataract surgeries with lens implantations every year. Modern lenses are so advanced that they can be folded to fit through a self-sealing 1.8-millimeter incision. Inside the eye they spontaneously unfold while being guided into position. Seventy-five years later, we all owe a debt to a courageous RAF pilot and an inventive ophthalmologist who turned misfortune into humanity’s gain.

Dr. Lam is a retina surgeon and an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is author of “Saving Sight” and “The Masters of Medicine: Our Greatest Triumphs in the Race to Cure Humanity’s Deadliest Diseases.”

Appeared in the February 8, 2025, print edition as 'The Doctor and the Pilot Who Saved the Eyesight of Millions'.

21. This program equipped the US military to take down drug traffickers

Excerpts:

Successful missions

This joint venture was aimed at dismantling narco-terrorist groups in remote areas where deeply rooted criminal activity and related extreme violence existed — including not only in Afghanistan but in other regions such as Central and South America.

SOCOM units including the U.S. Army Green Berets, the U.S. Navy SEALs, the U.S. Marine Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC), the 160th Special Operations Aviation Unit (SOAR) — better known as the Night Stalkers — and international coalition forces worked closely and successfully with FAST agents to thwart transnational criminal groups.

While SOCOM units focused on accomplishing military objectives and took on violent narco-terrorists, law enforcement agents trained and mentored local counterparts on evidence collection, processing of evidence, informant handling, arrests and interpreting intelligence to uncover additional criminal activity.

This mutual support accomplished much. In Afghanistan in 2008, U.S. Special Forces and FAST agents seized over 262 metric tons of hashish in Operation Albatross from a Taliban “superlab.”

From May to June 2011, Special Forces units and FAST agents coordinated Operation Khafa Kardan, a 30-day mission in which 90 law enforcement operations took place alongside U.S. military missions, resulting in the seizure of 12,766 kilograms of opium, 127 kilograms of heroin, 25,666 precursor chemicals in addition to an estimated 50 pounds of homemade explosives plus IEDs and weapons. These examples barely scratch the surface of what was achieved.

This program equipped the US military to take down drug traffickers

armytimes.com · by Zita Fletcher · February 7, 2025

The link between terrorism and drug trafficking organizations, or DTOs, is now at the forefront of public debate due to President Donald Trump’s recent designation of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

His suggestion to deploy U.S. Special Forces to dismantle cartels has met with speculation. In fact, U.S. Special Forces and federal law enforcement agents have cooperated successfully against international DTOs in the past — and their sacrifices are unfortunately being forgotten.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks brought attention to something overlooked for many years — the connection between terrorist activities and international drug trafficking. As the Global War on Terror developed, it became clear that Afghanistan-based drug traffickers were supporting the Islamic terrorist organizations through the opium and hashish trade.

With Afghanistan producing more than 80% of the world’s illicit opium, Islamic terrorists relied on drug trafficking to fund weapons, supplies and recruit fighters. The strong connection between drugs and terror prompted a 2010 report from the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control to state that “the Taliban operates as a drug cartel and … the drug trade in Afghanistan must be addressed with the same level of resolve as the insurgency.”

A partnership between DOD and law enforcement

The U.S. military faced a truly complex problem. Transnational criminal DTOs are well-armed, well-funded and often receive support from state actors, and operate with organization and command structures that can mirror military forces.

Some drug lords, such as Burma’s Khun Sa, have wielded private militia groups. However, the criminal nature of DTOs makes them different from military forces. Dismantling them successfully requires not only military-level strength but law enforcement expertise. This became evident in Afghanistan as military forces encountered clandestine drug processing labs throughout the country.

This led to a close and successful partnership between the Pentagon and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Although newer and smaller than other three-letter agencies, the DEA is second to none in the expertise it commands in detecting and dismantling drug cartels and thwarting complex illegal drug-related operations.

An Afghan Counter Narcotic National policeman holds the Afghan government's primary drug kingpin in Marjah, Afghanistan, May 18, 2010. (Marine Corps)

As a single mission agency, the DEA’s core focus is to identify and eliminate the most nefarious criminal networks. The level of criminal violence and deceit that that DEA agents tackle regularly would appall members of the public, yet many of their successes will forever be unknown.

In the wake of 9/11, the U.S. government invited all federal agencies to participate in the Global War on Terror by allocating resources and developing a strategy to assist with eradicating global threats. This resulted in the creation of DEA’s Kabul Country Office, which at its height consisted of 50 special agents and intelligence analysts who set out to identify and target the most notorious drug traffickers in the region.

Those efforts revealed that most of these traffickers were connected to the same terrorist groups that the Defense Department was anxiously targeting.

In 2004, the U.S. military and the DEA expanded their cooperation with the successful creation of the DEA’s Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team, or FAST. This saw elite SOCOM units paired with a highly trained and select group of top-notch criminal investigators from DEA with superb tactical acumen.

Successful missions

This joint venture was aimed at dismantling narco-terrorist groups in remote areas where deeply rooted criminal activity and related extreme violence existed — including not only in Afghanistan but in other regions such as Central and South America.

SOCOM units including the U.S. Army Green Berets, the U.S. Navy SEALs, the U.S. Marine Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC), the 160th Special Operations Aviation Unit (SOAR) — better known as the Night Stalkers — and international coalition forces worked closely and successfully with FAST agents to thwart transnational criminal groups.

While SOCOM units focused on accomplishing military objectives and took on violent narco-terrorists, law enforcement agents trained and mentored local counterparts on evidence collection, processing of evidence, informant handling, arrests and interpreting intelligence to uncover additional criminal activity.

This mutual support accomplished much. In Afghanistan in 2008, U.S. Special Forces and FAST agents seized over 262 metric tons of hashish in Operation Albatross from a Taliban “superlab.”

From May to June 2011, Special Forces units and FAST agents coordinated Operation Khafa Kardan, a 30-day mission in which 90 law enforcement operations took place alongside U.S. military missions, resulting in the seizure of 12,766 kilograms of opium, 127 kilograms of heroin, 25,666 precursor chemicals in addition to an estimated 50 pounds of homemade explosives plus IEDs and weapons. These examples barely scratch the surface of what was achieved.

Hashish being burned. (DEA)

Fallen heroes

Great sacrifices were made to accomplish these missions. On Oct. 26, 2009, seven U.S. military service members were killed alongside three DEA agents in a helicopter crash in western Afghanistan. Maj. Gen. Charles Cleveland of SOCOM designated the incident as a combat-related loss.

The U.S. soldiers included Chief Warrant Officer Michael P. Montgomery, Chief Warrant Officer Niall Lyons, Staff Sgt. Shawn McNabb, Sgt. Josue Hernandez-Chavez and Sgt. Nikolas Mueller of SOAR, and Staff Sgt. Keith R. Bishop and Sgt. 1st Class David E. Metzger of the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne).

The three DEA agents who lost their lives were Special Agents Chad Michael, Forrest Leamon and Michael Weston. SA Michael had previously worked with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, while SA Weston and SA Leamon were U.S. military veterans. SA Weston had served in both the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps, and SA Leamon had served in the U.S. Navy.

Relics of the fallen DEA agents’ personal effects, including a charred uniform patch and melted firearm fragments, were recovered from the smoldering 2009 helicopter crash at great personal risk. These hallowed items were mounted in a shadowbox at FAST headquarters to honor the memory of the fallen.

The names of all 10 men who lost their lives together in devotion to a common cause are inscribed on a single gravestone at Arlington National Cemetery.

Not to be forgotten

Despite its far-reaching successes, the FAST program was disbanded in March 2017 under the tenure of DEA’s Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2015.

The shadowbox containing the Afghanistan crash relics from the fallen—displayed reverently in FAST headquarters as a memorial—was unceremoniously removed from display and warehoused by DEA after the program ended with brutal disregard.

The sacrifices made by US Special Forces and law enforcement agents in combating narco-terrorists are undimmed in what they achieved together and in the memory they left in the hearts of their comrades, who still recall them vividly and honor them.

Although its achievements have faded from view in recent years, the FAST program created a successful blueprint for how the US military can successfully tackle violent threats posed by transnational criminal organizations alongside federal law enforcement—a blueprint that is highly relevant today.

About Zita Ballinger Fletcher

Zita Ballinger Fletcher previously served as editor of Military History Quarterly and Vietnam magazines and as the historian of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. She holds an M.A. with distinction in military history.

22. Army considering changing name of Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg

Fort Bragg may be the easiest to rename because it will not be a slight to the other bases renamed for American heroes. Changing Eisenhower, Cavazos,and Novasel among others will be a real disservice and insult to the memories of these great Americans. But perhaps the committee members who chose Liberty were thinking ahead and understanding that no person will be harmed if the base formerly known as Fort Bragg is renamed back to Fort Bragg. (but I know I am reaching here as there was not likely this foresight).

Army considering changing name of Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg

President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have both criticized a 2021 law that banned the naming of military bases after confederate generals.

NBC News · by Courtney Kube and Mosheh Gains · February 8, 2025

Army officials are considering changing the name of Fort Liberty in North Carolina back to Fort Bragg, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

In 2021, Congress established a commission tasked with renaming Department of Defense properties that were named after Confederate leaders. Then-President Donald Trump vetoed the bill, arguing against changing any of the names, but Congress overrode the veto, making the changes mandatory by law.

Fort Liberty, near Fayetteville, N.C., on June 2, 2023.Allison Joyce / AFP via Getty Images file

In 2022, the commission recommended changing the names of nine Army installations, including Fort Bragg, which was named after General Braxton Bragg in 1918, a native North Carolinian and Confederate leader who fought in the Mexican-American War. In June 2023, the base was officially renamed Fort Liberty.

During a campaign event in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in October, Trump said he would change the name back. “We get elected, I’m doing it,” he told the crowd. “We did win two world wars from Fort Bragg, right? So this is not a time to be changing names,” he said, adding, “We’re going to get it back.”

The entrance to Fort Bragg, N.C.Chris Seward / AP file

While working as a Fox News host, Pete Hegseth was critical of the names being changed, calling it “a sham” and “garbage.” When he walked into the Pentagon on his first full day as secretary of defense, Hegseth referred to Fort Liberty as Fort Bragg, setting off speculation that he would move to change it back.

The Army referred questions to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. A spokesperson for the office did not respond to a request for comment.

The Army is exploring legal ways to change the base’s name without violating the law that bans the use of confederate names, the two people familiar with the conversations said.

One option is to name the base after another soldier named Bragg, like Private First Class Roland Bragg, who was awarded the Silver Star for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action while serving in the 17th Airborne Division during World War II.

The renaming commission considered other soldiers named Bragg as well. One of the names that was a semi-finalist was Edward S. Bragg, a Union Army officer in the Civil War who also served in the U.S. House of Representatives and eventually became a diplomat.

The commission report estimated that the cost of renaming the fort would be over $6 million, but Army officials say the total cost would be significantly less. The state of North Carolina spent hundreds of thousands more to change highway and roads signs, according to the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

Fort Liberty is home to the storied 82nd Airborne Division, whose mission includes being able to deploy within 18 hours of notification in the case of an emergency. The unit, nicknamed “All American,” was constituted on Aug. 5, 1917.

Fort Liberty is also home to the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Joint Special Operations Command, XVIII Airborne Corps, and others.

The sprawling base covers about 170,000 acres, or more than 250 square miles. More than 55,000 military service members and 12,000 civilians work at Fort Liberty and roughly 25,000 family members live there.

NBC News · by Courtney Kube and Mosheh Gains · February 8, 2025

23. Together, The U.S. And Japan Can Preserve A Free And Open Indo-Pacific

Another NATO-like proposal - an Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization (IPTO)? How is the acronym IPTO pronounced? "Ip - "Toe"? Does that sound cool enough?

Conclusion:

President Trump and Prime Minister Ishiba have a historic opportunity to enshrine a free and open Indo-Pacific in a collective military, energy, and economic architecture that transcends political cycles and preserves peace and prosperity in the most important corner of the world. Prime Minister Abe articulated the vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific. President Trump lent it the full force of American power and authority. President Biden sustained the Indo-Pacific primacy during his term. Now, it is for President Trump—with Prime Minister Ishiba—to clad with iron a free and open Indo-Pacific through a lasting institutional framework that will make America and the region great for years to come.

Together, The U.S. And Japan Can Preserve A Free And Open Indo-Pacific

The National Interest

Topic: Security

Region: Asia

February 7, 2025

By: Kaush Arha

It is time to bring together a redoubtable defensive alliance that can deter Chinese hegemonic designs across the region—an Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization (IPTO).

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s visit with President Trump this week sets the stage for constructing a bold deterrence architecture to secure a free and open Indo-Pacific for future generations and prevent a war in the region. The Indo-Pacific is the primary theatre of concern for the United States. Japan is the indispensable American partner in securing the wider region. Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, during Trump’s first term, articulated a vision of a “free and open Indo-Pacific” and served as its most effective proponent on the world stage. His untimely death in 2022 was an incalculable loss to the world. The United States and Japan’s shared national interests call for doubling down in advancing Abe’s dream by constructing the institutional arrangements necessary for credible deterrence that will secure the region’s future.

Securing a free and open Indo-Pacific calls for a two-pronged strategic effort. First, a self-reinforcing institutional architecture should be constructed that preserves the military and economic security interests of the United States and its allies in the region. Second, Washington must recruit the wider world’s interests and commitments to preserve regional security. This calls for clear-eyed American leadership, alliance-building, and burden-sharing.

The security of the region would be substantially enhanced by a collective security arrangement among regional nations rather than a solitary reliance on unilateral American security guarantees. American military effectiveness and resilience in the region are also substantially augmented by a collective security architecture and burden-sharing among allies. There is dissonance in the United States, which is censuring its European allies for greater contribution to collective North Atlantic security while offering a series of security guarantees in the Indo-Pacific—its professed primary theatre of interest. Prime Minister Ishiba has been an early and consistent advocate of a collective security framework. It is time to bring together a redoubtable defensive alliance that can deter Chinese hegemonic designs across the region—an Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization (IPTO).

An IPTO dedicated to the proposition of a free and open Indo-Pacific should be of the highest priority for the United States and Japan during Trump’s second term. IPTO constitutes a commensurate and timely response to the growing “no-limits” civil-military partnership between China and Russia, with Iran and North Korea included. IPTO’s main tenets may include an explicitly defensive (not offensive) posture buttressed with collective security obligations. It may also include a tiered deterrence approach to counter hybrid or cyber-attacks, including provisions for critical infrastructural security. The operation protocols of IPTO would dramatically enhance intelligence sharing, systems interoperability, and strategic planning, as well as complementary, coordinated, and integrated defense manufacturing.

IPTO represents a logical outcome of recent exponential growth in Chinese military capabilities and belligerence and the corresponding response from the United States and its allies. Trump’s first term reinvigorated and elevated the Quad—the United States, Japan, Australia, and India. President Biden reaffirmed and expanded U.S. defense agreements from South Korea to the Philippines, Vietnam to Papua New Guinea, and more. He also announced the Australian, UK, and U.S. (AUKUS) trilateral security partnership with a priority for increased nuclear submarine manufacturing and operations in the theatre. The United States also strengthened additional trilateral security arrangements, including JAROPUS (Japan-Philippines-US) and JAROKUS (Japan-South Korea-US). China, North Korea, and Russia decried these developments as the “Asian version of NATO.”

President Trump will find in Prime Minister Ishiba a committed champion for IPTO as he did in Abe for a free and open Indo-Pacific. The two should make history by establishing IPTO with additional founding nations, including Australia, the Philippines, the UK, Canada, France, and New Zealand. Willing and able NATO nations should be welcomed as members of IPTO. Special partner status may be accorded to regional actors with the ability to contribute, including India, South Korea, Vietnam, and other like-minded nations whose sovereign territories are claimed by China. The U.S. military capabilities, influence, and reach stand to be greatly enhanced by the presence of two robust collective security alliances—NATO and IPTO—on both ends of the China-Russia axis.

The leading priority of IPTO—after defending the sovereign territories of its members—would be affording a security umbrella (and associated economic development) to the Pacific islands—Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia archipelagos—stretching from Hawaii to the Philippines and Australia. These islands ensure uninterrupted American economic and military reach across the vast ocean. They are consequently integral to defending the island chain that extends from Japan to the Philippines, from Papua New Guinea to Australia, and offering any military assistance to Taiwan if needed.

IPTO addresses the military aspects of securing a free and open Indo-Pacific. Complementary efforts to shore up the energy and economic security of the region are equally important. Chinese economic coercion in the region is more pronounced and deeply rooted than its growing military belligerence. The United States and Japan should complement the establishment of IPTO with twin efforts to shoring up regional energy and economic security.

First is an Indo-Pacific Energy Security initiative to address pressing regional energy demands through the supply of American natural gas and civil nuclear technologies, including small modular reactors and related exports. The initiative will also work with regional partners to facilitate a credible energy transition that is diverse and resilient in the face of growing Chinese dominance in renewable energy. Energy security is critical for economic growth. Washington and its allies enjoy an extraordinary edge over China in energy exports and should optimize their collective advantage through this Initiative.

Second, an Indo-Pacific Economic Security initiative constituting sector-specific agreements in critical economic areas such as semiconductors, AI, fin-tech, cloud computing and communications, pharmaceuticals, critical minerals, batteries, shipbuilding, and civil aviation. Sector-specific agreements fortify collective economy security from China shocks, coercion, and dominance. They offer diverse and rich opportunities to align industry standards and coordinate the application of investment screenings, tariffs, quotas, qualitative standards, and other economic security tools (export controls, research security, and secure supply chain rules). The Quad nations could form an initial core of such an Initiative with willing partners from ASEAN, Europe, and other regions able to join on a sector-specific basis.

Prime Minister Abe repeatedly asserted that a free and open Indo-Pacific was essential to ensure a rule-abiding international order. His assertion, after Russia’s repeated invasions of Ukraine and increased Chinese bellicosity towards Taiwan—holds even greater import today. Instability in the Indo-Pacific region would have severe direct impacts across the adjoining Indo-Mediterranean and Arctic regions and substantially impair the global economy.

Consequently, strategic prudence calls for the United States and Japan to work tirelessly to strengthen the economic and security linkages between the Indo-Pacific, the Indo-Mediterranean, and the Free North, which comprises the Arctic-Baltic regions. Strong linkages among these free and open spaces reinforce the resilience of all three theatres while restricting the malign maneuverability of the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea nexus in the shared space. Therefore, strengthening linkages of adjoining free and open spaces with the Indo-Pacific must be the conscious strategy for securing a free and open Indo-Pacific.

President Trump and Prime Minister Ishiba have a historic opportunity to enshrine a free and open Indo-Pacific in a collective military, energy, and economic architecture that transcends political cycles and preserves peace and prosperity in the most important corner of the world. Prime Minister Abe articulated the vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific. President Trump lent it the full force of American power and authority. President Biden sustained the Indo-Pacific primacy during his term. Now, it is for President Trump—with Prime Minister Ishiba—to clad with iron a free and open Indo-Pacific through a lasting institutional framework that will make America and the region great for years to come.

Kaush Arha is President of the Free & Open Indo-Pacific Forum and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue University.

The National Interest

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

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A future of VOA and its sister networks

Letting the inner thoughts become public​

Advice for an ‘Americas First Foreign Policy’

The secretary wrongly suggests that America must give precedence to nations based on geographical proximity.

Ukraine war briefing: North Korean troops back on frontline in Kursk, says Zelenskyy

1. Trump’s second term: Early ratings and expectations

Trump’s personal traits, skills, fitness for office

Will Trump be a successful or unsuccessful president in the long run?

Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons

The Jan. 6 congressional committee and Biden’s pardons

American Personnel Abroad Face Chaos and Confusion as USAID Shuts Down

President Trump’s moves to close down the agency have left U.S. government employees living in remote areas or war zones struggling to get home

Musk Brings His Business Playbook to Washington: Move Fast and Claim Victory

For the billionaire, a key to winning—or at least declaring victory—is to show nonstop momentum

Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington

Where’s DOGE When You Need It?

Why is Trump letting Biden policy go ahead on antitrust and more?

Trump Opens Door to Rework U.S. Steel Deal

Nippon Steel’s original $14.1 billion purchase of U.S. Steel was scuttled by the Biden administration and opposed by Trump

Trump Is Changing the World Order With Unprecedented Speed

Global leaders, chief executives and lawmakers are navigating whipsaw changes touching healthcare, schools and the global supply chain

Job cuts

Coaxing Dangerous Information From DeepSeek Is Easier Than With Other AIs

Testing shows the Chinese app is more likely to dispense details on how to make a Molotov cocktail or encourage self-harm by teenagers

Trump Wants to Own Gaza. Here’s What It Would Take to Rebuild.

Around 70% of the buildings were damaged or destroyed by more than 15 months of war—turning the Palestinian enclave into a demolition site

United States-Japan Joint Leaders’ Statement

Crafting Strategy for Irregular Warfare by David H. Ucko and Thomas A. Marks

1. Initial Problem Frame

2. Roots of the conflict

3. Frame and Narrative

4. Threat Strategy

5. Present Response

About The Author

Advancing the Discourse Through Fiction: Introducing the Winners of Horizon 2040

Advancing the Discourse Through Fiction: Introducing the Winners of Horizon 2040

About The Author

Could US forcing Panama to exit China’s Belt and Road set pattern? - Asia Times

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The depths of Taiwan's military morale crisis - Asia Times

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USAID shutdown isn’t just a humanitarian issue – it’s a gift to China - Asia Times

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The Doctor and the Pilot Who Saved the Eyesight of Millions

Seventy-five years ago, Harold Ridley successfully implanted the world’s first artificial intraocular lens.

This program equipped the US military to take down drug traffickers

Army considering changing name of Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg

Together, The U.S. And Japan Can Preserve A Free And Open Indo-Pacific

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It is time to bring together a redoubtable defensive alliance that can deter Chinese hegemonic designs across the region—an Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization (IPTO).

Letting the inner thoughts become public