Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"The greatest evils in the world will not be carried out of men with guns, but by men in suits sitting behind desks."

– C.S. Lewis.

"All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth."

– Friedrich Nietzsche

"The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish feeling there is."

– Stephen Fry.

1. Europe Aims to Forge Its Own Peace Plan for Ukraine

2. Putin Wins the Trump-Zelensky Oval Office Spectacle

3. Oct. 7 Adds to Long History of Spies Missing the Big Picture

4. In Shipbuilding, the U.S. Is Tiny and Rusty

5. Two Small Adversaries of Russia and China Are Swapping Notes to Survive

6. AI Could Usher In a New Renaissance

7. The Tech Revolution and Irregular Warfare: Leveraging Commercial Innovation for Great Power Competition

8. Countering state-sponsored proxies: Designing a robust policy – Hybrid CoE Paper 23

9. Here’s How Government Spending Has Grown—and Where the Money Is Going

10. US intel shows Russia and China are attempting to recruit disgruntled federal employees, sources say

11. GSA tells agencies to terminate contracts with top-10 consulting firms

12. Trump wants to shrink the State Department’s size, reach and focus

13. New products show China’s quest to automate battle

14. Welcome to the Zero Sum Era. Now How Do We Get Out?

15. The United Nations, Ukraine, and the Crumbling Pillars of Global Order

16. PNP probes donations by alleged Chinese spies (Philippines)

17. Trump still really wants to win a Nobel Peace Prize

18. The Putinization of America By Garry Kasparov

19. Green Light Teams: US Nuclear Kamikazes

1. Europe Aims to Forge Its Own Peace Plan for Ukraine

All controversy aside, it may not be a bad thing for Europe to step up militarily and diplomatically. I am sure some will assess that this is POTUS' intent all along and part of his bigger project to make Eruope make itself strong and independent so the US may disengage from the region.

The questions are will that work and what will the world look like if it does or does not happen?

Europe Aims to Forge Its Own Peace Plan for Ukraine

Following a public clash between Trump and Zelensky, the U.K. and France try to broker a compromise solution

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/white-house-clash-raises-tough-question-for-ukraine-how-long-could-it-fight-without-u-s-f780e8c1?mod=hp_lead_pos7

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, right, greeted France’s Emmanuel Macron on Sunday at a gathering of world leaders in London. Photo: Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg News

By Laurence Norman

, Max Colchester

and Ian Lovett

Updated March 2, 2025 6:25 am ET

LONDON—European allies led by the U.K. and France will work with Ukraine to try to forge a peace plan that they would present to President Trump.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Sunday that he had spoken to Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron over the weekend to try to revive diplomatic talks, which suffered a major blow after a public clash between the U.S. and Ukrainian presidents Friday.

“We have now agreed that the United Kingdom along with France and possibly one or two others will work with Ukraine on a plan to stop the fighting and then we will discuss that plan with the United States,” Starmer said Sunday.

On Sunday, leaders from around 18 countries are set to meet in London to try to map a way forward for Ukraine and discuss how Europe can take more responsibility for funding its own defense in the face of a more isolationist America.

Putin Wins the Trump-Zelensky Oval Office Spectacle

Vice President Vance starts a public fight that only helps Russia’s dictator.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/putin-wins-the-trump-zelensky-oval-office-spectacle-e23e9b21?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

By The Editorial Board

Feb. 28, 2025 6:02 pm ET

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) talks with U.S. President Donald Trump (C) and Vice President JD Vance (R) in the Oval Office of the White House on Friday. Photo: Jim LoScalzo/POOL/Zuma Press

Toward the end of his on-camera, Oval Office brawl with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, President Trump quipped that it was “great television.” He’s right about that. But the point of the meeting was supposed to be progress toward an honorable peace for Ukraine, and in the event the winner was Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

“He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Friday afternoon after the exchange, while booting the Ukrainian president from the White House. “He can come back when he is ready for Peace.” The two didn’t sign a planned agreement on minerals that would have at least given Ukraine some hope of future U.S. support.

The meeting between Messrs. Trump and Zelensky started out smoothly enough. “It’s a big commitment from the United States, and we appreciate working with you very much, and we will continue to do that,” Mr. Trump said of the mineral deal. Mr. Zelensky showed photos of Ukrainians mistreated as prisoners of war. “That’s tough stuff,” Mr. Trump said.

But then the meeting, in front of the world, descended into recriminations. The nose dive began with an odd interjection from Vice President JD Vance, who appeared to be defending Mr. Trump’s diplomacy, which Mr. Zelensky hadn’t challenged. Mr. Zelensky rehearsed the many peace agreements Mr. Putin has shredded and essentially asked Mr. Vance what would be different this time.

Mr. Vance unloaded on Mr. Zelensky—that he was “disrespectful,” low on manpower, and gives visitors to Ukraine a “propaganda” tour. President Trump appeared piqued by Mr. Zelensky’s suggestion that the outcome in Ukraine would matter to the U.S. “Your country is in big trouble. You’re not winning,” Mr. Trump said at one point.

Why did the Vice President try to provoke a public fight? Mr. Vance has been taking to his X.com account in what appears to be an effort to soften up the political ground for a Ukraine surrender, most recently writing off Mr. Putin’s brutal invasion as a mere ethnic rivalry. Mr. Vance dressed down Mr. Zelensky as if he were a child late for dinner. He claimed the Ukrainian hadn’t been grateful enough for U.S. aid, though he has thanked America countless times for its support. This was not the behavior of a wannabe statesman.

Mr. Zelensky would have been wiser to defuse the tension by thanking the U.S. again, and deferring to Mr. Trump. There’s little benefit in trying to correct the historical record in front of Mr. Trump when you’re also seeking his help.

But as with the war, Mr. Zelensky didn’t start this Oval Office exchange. Was he supposed to tolerate an extended public denigration of the Ukrainian people, who have been fighting a war for survival for three years?

It is bewildering to see Mr. Trump’s allies defending this debacle as some show of American strength. The U.S. interest in Ukraine is shutting down Mr. Putin’s imperial project of reassembling a lost Soviet empire without U.S. soldiers ever having to fire a shot. That core interest hasn’t changed, but berating Ukraine in front of the entire world will make it harder to achieve.

Turning Ukraine over to Mr. Putin would be catastrophic for that country and Europe, but it would be a political calamity for Mr. Trump too. The U.S. President can’t simply walk away from that conflict, much as he would like to. Ukraine has enough weapons support to last until sometime this summer. But as the war stands, Mr. Putin sees little reason to make any concessions as his forces gain ground inch by bloody inch in Ukraine’s east.

Friday’s spectacle won’t make him any more willing to stop his onslaught as he sees the U.S. President and his eager deputy unload on Ukraine’s leader. Some Trumpologists have been suggesting Mr. Trump will put pressure on Mr. Putin in due time. But so far Mr. Putin hasn’t made a single concession on territory, or on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself in the future after a peace deal is signed.

President Trump no doubt resents having to deal with a war he thinks he might have prevented had he won in 2020. But Presidents have to deal with the world they inherit. Peace in Ukraine is salvageable, but he and Mr. Zelensky will have to work together on an agreement that Ukrainians can live with.

Mr. Trump does not want to be the President who abandoned Ukraine to Vladimir Putin with all the bloodshed and damage to U.S. interests that would result. Mr. Vance won’t like to run for President in such a world either.

Oct. 7 Adds to Long History of Spies Missing the Big Picture

Intelligence agencies’ apparent ability to sometimes miss the forest for the trees is so common that scholars have a name for it

https://www.wsj.com/world/oct-7-adds-to-long-history-of-spies-missing-the-big-picture-48e5e621?mod=hp_lead_pos4

An Israel flag hangs in a house damaged during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. Photo: Baz Ratner/Associated Press

By Dov Lieber

Updated March 2, 2025 12:01 am ET

TEL AVIV—Well before Hamas launched its Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Israel’s military had plenty of evidence that something was brewing.

Israel had been in possession of a secret Hamas plan for a mass invasion for more than a year. Soldiers on the border of Gaza had observed Hamas practicing raids on Israeli military bases and civilian communities for weeks. And the country’s security chiefs had been warning that months of contentious internal debate and protests over political issues had left Israel vulnerable.

The night before the attack, the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, learned that dozens to hundreds of Hamas members had activated mobile phone service on Israel’s networks, a strong signal they planned to be in Israel soon. As the night progressed, Israel’s spies picked up signals that some of Hamas’s leadership had gone underground and that groups of Hamas commandos had begun gathering in spots around the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s vaunted intelligence services debated what it all meant until deep in the night and decided to reassess in the morning. Around dawn, Hamas attacked essentially as outlined in the plan captured a year earlier, leaving roughly 1,200 dead and 250 taken as hostages to Gaza.

Smoke billowed near the border fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images

Israeli troops gathered near the border with Gaza days after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Photo: Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu/Getty Images

Israel detailed its failings in a report on the attack released by its military this week. Along with the discrete mistakes was a big-picture intelligence blunder of a type that has repeated itself regularly throughout history. They are so common that scholars have a name for them—“strategic intelligence failures”—an inability to see the forest for the trees.

They are easy to spot in hindsight but stubbornly hard to guard against as they are unfolding. They stem from the fact that intelligence is as much art as science. Operatives take pieces of information and form theories that can be hard to shake. Layer on intentional misdirection and ambiguous developments—is a big military mobilization a negotiating tactic or a prelude to war?—and what might later have seemed obvious can seem very complicated in the moment.

In that complex matrix, evidence that contradicts the prevailing assessment among intelligence officials and decision makers often gets dismissed.

Vehicles destroyed during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in a compound in Tkuma, Israel. Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

“Part of the theory of strategic surprise is that even good intelligence is hard to use for decision makers,” said John Ferris, a history professor at the University of Calgary who studies intelligence and its failings. “If good intelligence tells you what you think won’t happen, you just won’t use it.”

In the case of the Oct. 7 attacks, Israel was under the impression that Hamas was angling for economic concessions by stirring up tension on the border. The group frequently used protests and threats of attack to agitate for greater access to work permits for Gazans—or so Israel thought. In fact, Hamas was preparing for an attack in plain sight. Yet no senior official thought the U.S.-designated terrorist group, significantly weaker than Israel’s military, actually wanted a full-scale war.

Almost exactly 50 years earlier, Israel had made a similar catastrophic blunder.

Egypt and Syria were mobilizing forces on its border. The Arab states declared their intention to win back territory Israel took from them six years earlier in a decisive victory. Israel had received numerous warnings that war was imminent. This includes information from a top Egyptian official who warned Israel’s spy agency, the Mossad, on Oct. 5, 1973, that Syria and Egypt would invade the next day.

Israeli troops marched on the western bank of the Suez Canal during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Photo: Ilan Ron/GPO/Getty Images

Israeli soldiers in the Golan Heights during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Photo: Getty Images

Yet, right up until just before war broke out, as warned, on Oct. 6, 1973, Israel thought its enemies were bluffing and was caught flat-footed. The warnings of the Egyptian spy were dismissed as a double agent trying to spread misinformation. No way, thought Israeli intelligence at the time, did its neighbors want war again so soon after a crushing defeat in 1967.

Three decades earlier, that error in judgment had been preceded by an even bigger one involving the U.S. Before the Japanese dealt a harsh blow to the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Washington had clear signs of an impending attack.

The U.S. and Japan had been engaged in peace talks. The day before the attack, U.S. intelligence decrypted Japanese messages that indicated they were through with the talks. Weeks earlier, the Japanese fleet had disappeared into the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. Army and Navy sounded warnings of possible hostilities.

Yet, said Ferris, the U.S. top brass didn’t imagine Japan was capable of or interested in war with America and failed to react effectively. Japan was focused on battles closer to its borders, American leaders believed. Even a final opportunity to prepare for the attack—when American radar systems picked up 183 aircraft 137 miles off the Hawaiian coast about an hour before they struck—was mishandled.

After the war, Gen. Sherman Miles, the assistant chief of staff, summed up the intelligence failure. “We had a yardstick. We had no reason to doubt our yardstick’s approximate accuracy. Yet it was wholly false,” he said.

U.S. Navy ships burn following the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941. Photo: Bettmann Archive

About six months earlier, the Soviet Union had made its own blunder. Soviet intelligence had given Joseph Stalin clear evidence that Nazi Germany, purportedly allied with Moscow, was preparing a massive invasion. But historians say Stalin failed to mobilize his army to defend against the onslaught.

Ferris said Oct. 7 was among the most egregious strategic intelligence failures because of how absolutely Israel was taken by surprise and how utterly it had failed to take any precautions for a mass attack from Gaza.

Israeli military officials said the failure to prepare for such a worst-case scenario stemmed from their mistaken belief that their intelligence apparatus was so good that they knew what would happen.

“We were addicted to the precise intel information. The addiction is thinking you know everything,” said one of the officers who presented the findings of the Oct. 7 investigation to reporters. “Sometimes you think you know everything, and by being addicted to that, we thought we would have sufficient understanding of what the enemy will do, what and when.”

Israeli intelligence officials said they also fostered a culture in which opinions contrary to the mainstream assessment were easily dismissed—despite the fact that half a century earlier, they had sought to solve this exact problem.

Following the 1973 intelligence debacle, teams were created inside Israeli military intelligence and later in the Shin Bet who were supposed to challenge mainstream assessments. The “devil’s advocate” unit was small but made of rising stars inside military intelligence’s research division, the organization chiefly responsible for early warnings of war, said Yossi Kuperwasser, who once ran the division.

Over time, as the sting of the 1973 failure subsided, the team stopped drawing from the elite, and the rank of its leader was lowered from a full colonel to a lieutenant colonel, Kuperwasser said.

A bigger problem was built in, said Uri Bar-Joseph, a professor at Israel’s Haifa University and a scholar of intelligence failures. Over time, people got in the habit of dismissing the opinions of the devil’s advocates precisely because they always took the opposing view by design. Created as a fail-safe, it became just another part of the bureaucracy.

Trucks likely carrying aid for Gaza were gathered in a parking area in Egypt near the border with Gaza in February 2024. Photo: Maxar technologies/Associated Press

Israeli military vehicles in Gaza last month, during a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel. Photo: amir cohen/Reuters

“In the beginning, you take it seriously,” Bar-Joseph said. “But no one takes it seriously after a few years.”

Israel’s intelligence services have redeemed themselves in the eyes of the country’s leaders over the past year after precisely targeted attacks on Iran and the rapid dismantling of the Lebanese militia Hezbollah.

But the country is no longer content to rely on early warning. Israel has carved out a deep buffer along its border with Gaza; it is holding high ground in southern Lebanon after razing Hezbollah infrastructure there; it plans to remain indefinitely in a buffer zone inside Syria across from the Golan Heights; and it is insisting that a swath of southern Syria remain disarmed.

“It is not viable to ‘conflict manage’ against an enemy whose goal is your destruction,” the military said in its report on the Oct. 7 failures.

Write to Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com

4. In Shipbuilding, the U.S. Is Tiny and Rusty

See the graphic at the link. If I was in American shipbuilding I would be embarrassed by the graph. I am not in shipbuilding and I am embarrassed.

What jumps out at me is that perhaps we should create a "JAROKUS" shipbuilding consortium based on our two most important alliances in Asia.

In Shipbuilding, the U.S. Is Tiny and Rusty

Trump seeks to revive production of boxships and tankers that left America long ago

https://www.wsj.com/business/logistics/in-shipbuilding-the-u-s-is-tiny-and-rusty-03fb214e?st=8iViCF&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

A shipyard in Nanjing, China. Photo: Cfoto/DDP/Zuma Press

By Inti PachecoFollow

and Costas ParisFollow

March 2, 2025 5:30 am ET

Asian shipyards churn out hundreds of big boxships and oil tankers a year. The U.S. is lucky if it can finish more than one each year.

It has been that way for decades. Few major American shipyards remain and they now mostly build or repair vessels for the U.S. Navy. Those that do produce new commercial ships mostly make small vessels for U.S. companies operating on domestic routes, not the giant containerships and ocean vessels that underpin global trade.

Shipbuilding tonnage, select countries

33M

Source: United Nations Trade & Development

SOUTH

KOREA

CHINA

U.S.

JAPAN

18M

10M

64,809

2014

’23

2014

’23

2014

’23

2014

’23

The Trump administration has floated a proposal that would seek to reverse the trend by imposing port fees on Chinese-built ships and requiring some U.S. exports to move on U.S.-built ships. The idea faces both labor and financial challenges.

American shipyards employed more than one million people during World War II, but in the decades that followed the U.S. ceded much of the market to other countries. The number of welders, engineers and other people building boats and ships hasn’t reached 200,000 since the early 1980s, though the numbers have ticked up in recent years thanks to military contracts.

In the 1970s, U.S. yards were building about 5% of the world’s tonnage, equating to about two dozen new ships a year. But the number of ships coming out of these yards has slowed to a trickle. The U.S. accounted for about 0.1% of the world’s tonnage in 2023. The few U.S.-made commercial ships now come from just two shipyards: one in Philadelphia and another in San Diego.

A U.S. Navy vessel under construction at a shipyard in the San Pedro area of Los Angeles, in 1982. Photo: Bill Nation/Sygma/Getty Images

China now dominates the shipbuilding industry, accounting for more than half of world tonnage in 2023 and 74% of orders for new ships last year. The biggest shipping lines, such as MSC, Maersk and CMA CGM, now rely on hundreds of Chinese built ships to move goods around the world. They would face new fees to enter U.S. ports under the Trump proposal.

The U.S. shipyards aren’t competitive with foreign rivals in terms of the size of ships they produce, how long they take to build or how much they cost.

Take a look at a pair of recent boxship orders placed with the same company: Hanwha, a South Korean conglomerate that acquired the Philly Shipyard last year and operates shipyards in South Korea.

In September, the Philly Shipyard secured an order from Matson Navigation, a U.S. operator, for three small boxships (capable of holding the equivalent of 3,600 20-foot shipping containers). The cost per ship: $355 million. A similar ship at a Chinese yard would cost around $55 million, according to shipowners.

Around the same time, Maersk ordered six much larger boxships (capable of holding the equivalent of 16,000 20-foot containers) from Hanwha’s South Korean operations. The average price for these ships was about $200 million.

Write to Inti Pacheco at inti.pacheco@wsj.com and Costas Paris at costas.paris@wsj.com

5. Two Small Adversaries of Russia and China Are Swapping Notes to Survive

Taiwan and the Czech Republic work to boost each other in business and security despite superpower headwinds

https://www.wsj.com/world/two-small-adversaries-of-russia-and-china-are-swapping-notes-to-survive-88be37f2?mod=Searchresults_pos4&page=1

By Daniel Michaels

Updated March 2, 2025 12:01 am ET

Vaclav Havel clinked glasses with Taiwan’s first lady Wu Shu-chen as Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian stood between them, in Taipei in 2004. Photo: AP

TAIPEI—In an era of brutal great-power politics, how do lesser powers get by? For this embattled Pacific island, a lifeline comes from landlocked Slavs half a world away.

Taiwan and the Czech Republic, living in the shadow of China and Russia, have found common cause when small powers worry about being trampled by bigger rivals. Of roughly 200 countries and independent territories on Earth, fewer than 10 have significant global sway.

The issue is gaining fresh urgency as U.S. foreign policy under President Trump becomes antagonistic. Many in Taipei see deteriorating U.S.-Ukraine ties as a warning about Washington’s willingness to defend Taiwan in case China—which regards the self-governed island as its own territory—invades.

Denmark, pressed by Trump to sell Greenland, is seeking support from European and other allies. Colombia acquiesced to Trump’s tariff threats and agreed to accept U.S. deportees. The Philippines and other Asian countries worry the U.S. will diminish support in standing up to China.

“It’s about how small countries survive,” said Jakub Janda, a Czech international-security specialist who runs the first European think tank in Taiwan, the Prague-based European Values Center for Security Policy.

Taiwan’s China Airlines launched nonstop flights to Prague in 2023. Photo: AP

Diplomats and business people say the Prague-Taipei friendship—which involves cooperation in intelligence, trade and investment—helps both sides.

For Taiwan, which Beijing works to isolate internationally, Czechs offer a welcome link to the world—even though the two don’t have formal diplomatic relations. The Czech Republic, a member of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, takes more initiative on Taipei’s behalf than other EU members, particularly in building business ties, say officials.

Czechs are channeling Taiwanese humanitarian aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia because Kyiv and Taipei don’t have diplomatic relations. Czechs are Taiwan’s most ardent advocates inside NATO, say diplomats. NATO is building links to Asia-Pacific allies including Japan and South Korea amid fears of China’s malign activities in and near Europe, but is hesitant with Taiwan.

“Every time we need support, the Czech Republic is always there to support us,” said Joseph Wu, the head of Taiwan’s National Security Council and former foreign minister, on a visit to Prague.

Taiwan’s experience facing China, meanwhile, is valuable to Prague and its neighbors.

Taiwan’s then-foreign minister, Joseph Wu, delivered a speech at a summit in Prague in 2023. Photo: martin divisek/Shutterstock

“Every NATO country near Russia wants to talk with us,” said Taiwan’s Deputy Minister for Digital Affairs Chiueh Herming, who oversees cybersecurity, connectivity and digital resilience. He last year attended a conference in Prague on protecting undersea internet cables. Taiwan and Europe since 2023 have faced repeated ruptures in those connections, many of which they suspect were Chinese and Russian sabotage.

Czech Cyber and Information Security Agency Director Lukas Kintr said his team has shared with Chiueh’s ministry extensive information on Russia’s influence campaigns in Europe, which China is studying. “We can learn from Taiwan about China too,” he said.

Czechs know they will never be Taiwan’s top commercial partner because the country of 11 million people lacks economic heft. Some Czechs were disappointed when Taiwanese semiconductor giant TSMC in 2023 announced plans for a $10 billion factory in Dresden, Germany.

But the Czech Republic, 30 miles from Dresden, still benefits. TSMC sees it as a vital part of the plant’s supply chain and the Taiwanese government is working with TSMC suppliers to start Czech operations and business clusters, government officials say.

Nonstop flights to Prague that Taiwan’s China Airlines launched in 2023 are among its most successful, say officials in Taipei, and the carrier wants to increase frequency.

Beijing has worked to cleave the duo and attacked their partnership but holds little leverage: China accounts for less than 2% of Czech exports. Still, Prague treads cautiously.

“We know the Chinese are interested in Taiwanese activities here,” said Czech Counterintelligence Agency Director Michal Koudelka.

Under communism, Prague professed socialist kinship with the People’s Republic of China, not Taiwan. When the Warsaw Pact collapsed in 1989 and Czech dissident playwright Vaclav Havel was elected president, he advocated morality in international relations. The call resonated amid democracy’s apparent triumph over Moscow’s totalitarianism and as Beijing’s crackdown in Tiananmen Square that year drew global condemnation.

Havel quickly became a very public friend of the Dalai Lama, whom China in 1959 had exiled from his native Tibet. The two men together preached peace, drawing Beijing’s ire. Czech ties to the Dalai Lama would repeatedly infuriate China over subsequent decades.

When Taiwan in the early 1990s shed its military-backed autocracy, Havel and the Czech transition became a model for President Lee Teng-hui, who led Taiwan’s shift to democracy. After Havel’s presidency ended in 2003 he visited Lee, further angering China.

Thanks in part to Havel’s support, Taiwanese tech companies picked the Czech Republic as a European base, even before it joined the EU in 2004. Foxconn, which makes iPhones for Apple, and computer makers Acer and Asus were the biggest names in a wave of investments.

But the global financial crisis and China’s economic ascendance “made people start doubting their assumptions” about Western capitalism and Czech-Tawainese ties, recalled Martin Hala, director of Sinopsis, a China-focused think tank in Prague.

An image taken by Taiwan’s Coast Guard in December shows a Taiwanese coast guard ship monitoring a Chinese coast guard ship, a few nautical miles from Taiwan’s northeastern coast. Photo: handout/AFP/Getty Images

In Central Europe, China started building highways and rail lines on apparently favorable terms. EU officials worried that Beijing was wooing its newest and poorest members.

Czechs in 2013 elected a China-friendly president, Milos Zeman, who in 2016 advocated a “restart” of relations with Beijing and hosted Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Prague. Taiwan-China relations separately blossomed.

Then, in a stunning twist, China in 2018 arrested its biggest investor in the Czech Republic for fraud, leaving many Czech partners burned.

Prague’s newly elected mayor, meanwhile, infuriated Beijing by embracing Taiwan, where he once lived. China’s reprisals included rescinding a promise to send pandas to the city’s zoo. Taipei offered Prague a pair of endangered pangolins instead.

“The Czech case with China is a textbook example of what can go wrong,” said Hala.

As Czech opinions of China soured further during the Covid-19 pandemic, opposition legislators rekindled Taiwan ties. In 2020 Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil flew to Taipei and, addressing the island’s lawmakers, cited President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 Berlin speech and declared in Mandarin Chinese, “I am Taiwanese.”

Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil during a press conference in Taiwan in 2020. Photo: ritchie b tongo/Shutterstock

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the time called Vystrcil’s trip a “public affront” that “crossed a red line” for which he would “pay a heavy price.”

Lithuania showed the risk of closeness to Taiwan in 2021, when the former Soviet vassal let Taipei open a “Taiwanese Representative Office.” Beijing considered the name tantamount to recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign country, which it vehemently opposes. Lithuania accused China of retaliating by discriminating against its exports. Vilnius prodded the EU to open a case against Beijing in the World Trade Organization.

In 2023, one of the first moves of newly elected Czech President Petr Pavel, a retired senior NATO general, was taking a call from Taiwan’s president, drawing condemnation from Beijing.

The Czechs soon after sent their largest trade delegation yet to Taiwan, led by the parliament’s speaker. Also on the trip was cyber agency chief Kintr, to deepen ties with his counterparts.

The Taiwanese and Czech military universities separately struck a partnership to conduct joint research and exchange officers for training, among other activities, creating Taiwan’s strongest link with a European military training institution.

Now, with political pressure mounting in both Taiwan and the Czech Republic, the two need to demonstrate that their relations can deliver more, say analysts. High-tech investment doesn’t benefit the large Czech agricultural sector, which wants more exports, said Marcin Jerzewski, who runs the European Values Center’s Taipei office.

“Havel quotes don’t put bread on the table,” said Jerzewski.

Czechs, meanwhile, have struggled to broaden Taiwan ties to other European countries, which remain wary of angering China.

On one front the relationship has yielded unexpected results: Prague’s pangolins from Taipei have had two babies, a rarity in captivity, drawing cheers in both capitals.

Write to Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com

6. AI Could Usher In a New Renaissance

Excerpts:

Superintelligent systems will face inherent constraints, too. Just as human cognition is bounded by physical and biological limits, AI will remain subject to the limits of the physical world. Many scientific experiments, especially those in biology, must be rooted in the material world.

We may also see that this method of brute-force computation—where systems cycle through endless scenarios until a new discovery emerges—isn’t the only, or even the optimal, path to AGI. An alternative approach would use techniques derived from humans, such as reasoning by analogy and synthesizing insights across domains. Einstein didn’t uncover general relativity through exhaustive mathematical iterations, but rather through conceptual leaps that connected seemingly disparate phenomena. If this way of thinking could be instilled in AI systems, the scope of knowledge they might be able to access would extend far beyond our current comprehension.

The advent of AGI could herald a new renaissance in human knowledge and capability. From accelerating drug discovery to running whole companies, from personalizing education to creating new materials for space exploration, AGI could help solve some of humanity’s most pressing challenges. Perhaps most important, it could augment human intelligence in ways that would help us better understand ourselves and our place in the universe.

AI Could Usher In a New Renaissance

It is already better than human intelligence at some tasks. It may become capable of new discoveries.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/agi-could-usher-in-a-new-renaissance-physics-math-econ-advancement-ed71a02a?mod=hp_opin_pos_3#cxrecs_s

By Eric Schmidt

Feb. 28, 2025 2:05 pm ET

Illustration: Richard Mia

The idea of artificial general intelligence captivated thinkers for decades before it came anywhere near being realized. The concept still conjures popular visions out of science fiction, from C-3PO to Skynet.

Even as the interest has grown, AGI has defied a concise, universally accepted definition. In 1950, Alan Turing proposed the Turing Test to assess machine intelligence. Rather than trying to determine whether machines truly think (a question he deemed intractable), Turing focused on behavior: Could a machine’s actions be indistinguishable from those of a human?

Remarkably, some of today’s AI models pass the Turing Test, in the sense that they produce complex responses that imitate human intelligence. But as the technology has advanced, so has the bar for achieving AGI. Some believe that AGI will be realized when AI moves beyond narrow, focused tasks, growing to possess a generalized ability to understand, learn and perform any intellectual task a human can do. Others define AGI more ambitiously, as intelligence that matches or exceeds the top human minds across domains. Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind Technologies, calls AGI-level reasoning the ability to invent relativity with only the knowledge that Einstein had at the time.

These differing definitions create a moving target for AGI, making it both elusive and tantalizing. To sort through all this, it’s helpful to say what AGI isn’t. It isn’t an infallible intelligence; like other intelligent systems, mistakes can be useful for its learning process. Neither is AGI a singular source of truth—our knowledge of the world is probabilistic and complex, notably at subatomic and intergalactic scales, but also in everyday life. Multiple AGI systems could emerge, each with a distinct capability and way of understanding the world.

Even without a consensus about a precise definition, the contours of an AGI future are beginning to take shape. AI systems capable of performing at the intellectual level of the world’s top scientists are arriving soon—likely by the end of the decade.

A key marker of the shift to AGI will be AI’s ability to produce knowledge based on its own findings, not merely retrieval and recombination of human-generated information. AGI will then move beyond the current limits of knowledge. Glimpses of this capability have already been observed. Since 2020, DeepMind’s AlphaFold can predict protein structures even when no similar structures are previously known. DeepMind also created FunSearch, which in 2023 unveiled new solutions to the cap-set problem, a notoriously difficult mathematics puzzle, by incorporating the power of a large language model with an evaluator, iterating between these components to refine results.

The latest reasoning models from OpenAI and DeepSeek build on this iterative training and are unleashing incredible progress. OpenAI’s o3 model achieved a score of 96.7% on the 2024 American Invitational Mathematics Exam. On the ARC-AGI test (designed to compare models’ reasoning against that of humans) it scored nearly 88%. This is no incremental advancement but a real leap toward AGI.

The performance of these reasoning models stems from the marked evolution in training methodologies. Foundation models such as GPT-4 were trained through deep learning, which relies on the transformer algorithm and large-scale neural networks to identify patterns and connections from massive data sets. This is generally implemented through next-word prediction: You give the model a sentence, remove a word, and train the model to put that word back in.

The reasoning models take a different approach by overlaying reinforcement learning with traditionally trained models. Instead of learning from static data sets, reinforcement learning involves actively training models through goal-directed rewards through trial and error. The model attempts a solution, and if it hits a roadblock, it adjusts strategy until it finds a better approach. The latest systems incorporate search- and retrieval-based methods and test-time training, in which they test their work with new approaches to reach better results.

The magic would really kick off—and it does sound like magic—if the systems reach a point at which they become scale-free, meaning that they could train themselves on self-generated data through a process known as recursive self-learning, relying only on electricity to advance. One of the earliest examples of this is AlphaGo Zero, a computer program that taught itself how to play the board game Go. The rules are clear and discrete, enabling systems to optimize for the probability of winning. Areas of knowledge that most resemble a game of skill—with defined rules and feedback—will be the areas where superintelligence first emerges.

There are two domains particularly ripe for this kind of scale-free advancement: mathematics and programming. Unlike biology and other fields that require real-world experimentation, these disciplines are largely self-contained. A mathematical proof can be checked and verified within the system itself. Similarly, AI could identify the code it needs to complete a defined objective, develop that code and improve on it—all without human intervention. These systems would engage in self-directed research, iterating through possible solutions. Not only would they feed answers back into themselves to refine their approaches, but they could also draw on the collective knowledge of the internet and of other models.

Superintelligence in mathematics may already be within reach. In February, DeepMind’s AlphaGeometry 2 officially surpassed top human competitors, solving Olympiad geometry problems at a gold-medalist level. Such superintelligent mathematical tools could be combined with frontier models that are proficient in natural language, bridging the gap between formal and semantic reasoning. This integration could lay the foundation for further advances in reasoning and unlock new discoveries in other fields like physics and economics.

Superintelligent systems will face inherent constraints, too. Just as human cognition is bounded by physical and biological limits, AI will remain subject to the limits of the physical world. Many scientific experiments, especially those in biology, must be rooted in the material world.

We may also see that this method of brute-force computation—where systems cycle through endless scenarios until a new discovery emerges—isn’t the only, or even the optimal, path to AGI. An alternative approach would use techniques derived from humans, such as reasoning by analogy and synthesizing insights across domains. Einstein didn’t uncover general relativity through exhaustive mathematical iterations, but rather through conceptual leaps that connected seemingly disparate phenomena. If this way of thinking could be instilled in AI systems, the scope of knowledge they might be able to access would extend far beyond our current comprehension.

The advent of AGI could herald a new renaissance in human knowledge and capability. From accelerating drug discovery to running whole companies, from personalizing education to creating new materials for space exploration, AGI could help solve some of humanity’s most pressing challenges. Perhaps most important, it could augment human intelligence in ways that would help us better understand ourselves and our place in the universe.

Mr. Schmidt was CEO of Google, (2001-11) and executive chairman of Google and its successor, Alphabet Inc. (2011-17).

The Tech Revolution and Irregular Warfare: Leveraging Commercial Innovation for Great Power Competition

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/03/02/the-tech-revolution-and-irregular-warfare-leveraging-commercial-innovation-for-great-power-competition/

by SWJ Staff

03.02.2025 at 05:50am

Photo: Luke Sharrett/Getty Images

Seth Jones authored The Tech Revolution and Irregular Warfare: Leveraging Commercial Innovation for Great Power Competition, published by the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

From Seth Jones:

The Issue

The U.S. government has not adequately leveraged the commercial sector to conduct irregular warfare against China, Russia, Iran, and other competitors because of significant risk aversion, slow and burdensome contracting and acquisitions processes, and a failure to adequately understand technological advances. There is an urgent need to rethink how the United States works with the commercial sector in such areas as battlefield awareness, placement and access, next-generation intelligence, unmanned and autonomous systems, influence operations, and precision effects.

U.S. adversaries are developing capabilities and taking actions that pose a growing threat to the U.S. military and intelligence community across the globe. China, for example, is investing significantly in artificial intelligence (AI) such as DeepSeek, quantum computing, and other emerging technologies, as well as improving capabilities in areas such as information and influence operations, long-range strike, autonomous systems, cyber, and space. China can leverage an economy that has greater purchasing power parity ($31.2 trillion) than the United States ($24.7 trillion), a situation that the United States did not face with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.1

China’s military-civil fusion (军民融合) development strategy—also called national strategic integration—has created a way for the government to direct and facilitate cooperation with the commercial sector and fuse China’s defense industrial base with its civilian industrial base.2 China has also cooperated with Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other countries to develop greater military, intelligence, and dual-use capabilities that will complicate U.S. military and intelligence activities overseas.3

This analysis focuses on one specific area of competition: actions and capabilities below the threshold of conventional warfare, or what this analysis refers to as irregular warfare. As used here, irregular warfare refers to activities short of conventional and nuclear warfare that are designed to expand a country’s influence and legitimacy. These activities include information operations, cyber operations, support to state and non-state partners, covert action, and economic coercion.

To better understand the changing dynamics of great power competition and the implications for irregular warfare, this analysis asks several questions: How might U.S. adversaries evolve their capabilities in ways that impact the United States’ ability to conduct irregular warfare? What types of missions might U.S. military and intelligence units be asked to conduct, and what types of commercial capabilities will likely be required to conduct these missions? How can military forces and intelligence better leverage the commercial sector to develop and implement these capabilities?

In answering these questions, this analysis makes two main arguments. First, the United States is not adequately prepared for the evolving nature of irregular warfare. China, Russia, Iran, and other states are developing conventional and irregular capabilities that present serious challenges—and opportunities—for intelligence, special operations, and other military forces across the globe. U.S. military and intelligence units will require disruptive capabilities in multiple areas where the commercial sector has a comparative advantage: battlefield awareness; next-generation intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; unmanned and autonomous systems; influence operations; placement and access; and precision effects.

Second, the U.S. military and intelligence communities need to fundamentally change the way they work with the commercial sector in order to compete more effectively in irregular warfare—both on offense and defense. Commercial innovation and production capacity in the commercial sector provides a major advantage for the United States and its allies and partners in irregular warfare, including for Title 10 and 50 activities. But the United States has not adequately leveraged these innovations because of risk aversion, slow and burdensome contracting and acquisitions regulations, and a failure to adequately understand viable options in the commercial sector. There is a significant need to rethink the framework of government collaboration with this sector and to treat commercial entities as partners serving a common goal.4

The rest of this analysis is divided into four sections. The first examines the growing importance of irregular warfare and some of the associated missions and capabilities. The second section argues that U.S. adversaries, such as China and Russia, possess significant capabilities that will likely pose challenges for U.S. military and intelligence operatives. The third section highlights the growing importance of the commercial sector to the development of innovative capabilities for competition in irregular warfare. And the fourth highlights challenges and opportunities for military and intelligence in irregular warfare.

Read the brief by clicking on the title at the top of this SWJ The Discourse or click here.

8. Countering state-sponsored proxies: Designing a robust policy – Hybrid CoE Paper 23

Countering state-sponsored proxies: Designing a robust policy – Hybrid CoE Paper 23

by SWJED

03.02.2025 at 02:21pm

Countering state-sponsored proxies: Designing a robust policy

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/03/02/countering-state-sponsored-proxies-designing-a-robust-policy-hybrid-coe-paper-23/

Dr Vladimir Rauta – February 2025

Subversive activities by state-sponsored proxies – military and non-military non-state actors (NSAs) – are a staple in the strategic toolbox of grey zone operators.1 They are neither new, nor rare. What is more, sponsor-proxy relations are on the rise.2 By 2021, Russian-armed proxy forces in Ukraine had laid waste to the Donbas, causing thousands of fatalities, both civilian and military. In February 2022, Vladimir Putin used the proxy rebels as a pretext for escalating the simmering, low-intensity conflict into Europe’s first land war in a generation. In 2024, NATO countries witnessed a sharp increase in the number of Russian-sponsored attacks carried out by proxies.3 While these proxy attacks varied in nature, targets, locations, and perpetrators, they were consistent in one key respect, namely their strategic goal of undermining the coher- ence and unity of efforts to provide military and security assistance to Ukraine.4

The attacks occurred within the broader context of Russia’s commitment to destabilize European democracies and undermine the rules- based international order. They prompted the newly appointed High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, to accuse Russia of waging a “shadow war” against Europe.5 While ultimately unable to provoke large-scale strategic “disruption, the series of attacks by proxies across Europe presents practitioners with a key question: Given the likelihood of state- sponsored NSA attacks in the future, how should states approach strategies for counter- ing proxies and their state sponsors?

This paper addresses this question by focusing on how targeted states act to prevent and respond to subversive proxies and their sponsoring states. Given that adversaries sponsoring proxies make an intentional choice to limit their scope of engagement, targeted states face cru- cial choices of their own. This is unsurprising, as the grey zone creates a playing field in which countermeasures by targeted states are often caught between responding accordingly and proportionally, or restraining responses to avoid escalation. While this issue has received less attention in the public and academic debate, the practitioner domain has produced manuals and toolkits within national and international frameworks that map deterrence playbooks

for hybrid threats.”

“This paper applies the body of work on deterrence designed and developed by the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE) to the problem of state-sponsored NSAs: first, the publication Deterring Hybrid Threats: A Playbook for” “Practitioners,6 and second, a series of reports, papers, and strategic insight analyses.7 Specif- ically, this paper directly addresses the future issues identified in Hybrid Threats from Non- State Actors: A Taxonomy, the most compre- hensive practitioner attempt to date to map NSAs typologically.8 First, the paper presents an overview of non-state actors as proxies. Second, it discusses the prevalence and variation of NSA-state relationships as a corrective to aca- demic and policy approaches that take a narrow and simplistic view of NSA sponsorship. Third, it shows how a more robust understanding of the phenomenon allows for a more nuanced engagement with the deterrence playbook. To this end, the paper focuses on the situation, self, solutions, and synchronization that the published playbook defines and presents under the moniker of the ‘4S model’.”

“With these aims in mind, the paper invites policymakers to refine the application of the 4S model. The key takeaway is the need to approach state-proxy relationships with a strategy that counters all relevant actors simultaneously and systematically across the stages of the deterrence playbook – situation, self, solutions, and synchronization – through a combination of denial and punishment. In applying the 4S model to state sponsors and their proxies, the paper presents a robust set of recommendations for a change in policy practice to overcome the following limitations: (1) the under-evaluation of NSA-state sponsor relationships, which limits opportunities and scope for action; (2) narrow conceptual thinking about sponsor-proxy relationships that underestimates their complexity and diversity; and (3) short-sighted approaches that fail to articulate integrated strategies capable of situating the fight against individual sponsor-proxy rela- tionships within broader, long-term strategic

thinking.”

Access the report HERE.

9. Here’s How Government Spending Has Grown—and Where the Money Is Going

Please go to the link for very informative graphics.

https://www.wsj.com/economy/us-federal-debt-budget-deficit-spending-charts-650f2dff?st=tRT3nE&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Here’s How Government Spending Has Grown—and Where the Money Is Going

Social Security remains one of the largest federal spending categories, while net interest on the national debt is the fastest-growing major expense

By Richard Rubin

and Kara Dapena

March 2, 2025 5:30 am ET

Key Points

What's This?

Government spending has increased significantly over the past decade, driven by pandemic relief, rising entitlement costs and increased defense budgets.
Tax revenue per person decreased after the 2017 tax cuts but has since rebounded due to the postpandemic recovery and asset boom.
Major spending increases have occurred in areas such as pandemic relief, interest costs, and entitlement programs due to the aging population.

No matter how you measure it, the U.S. government is spending significantly more than it did a decade ago. As President Trump prepares his joint address to Congress on Tuesday, the debate over federal spending is front and center. Over the past decade, government spending has surged, driven by pandemic relief, rising costs for entitlement programs and increased defense budgets. Now, some Republicans are pushing to roll back spending to 2019 levels, arguing that cuts are necessary to reduce the deficit and offset tax cuts.

Let’s take a look under the hood at where the money is going and where spending has grown the most since 2015:

10. US intel shows Russia and China are attempting to recruit disgruntled federal employees, sources say

Excerpts:

“This isn’t reality TV,” said another former intelligence official. “There are consequences.”

The CIA and Defense Department are weighing significant staff cuts. The Pentagon said in a memo last week that over 5,000 probationary employees, who in most cases have been in their job a year or less, could be fired in the short term. And the CIA has already fired more than 20 officers for their work on diversity issues, many of whom are now challenging their dismissal in court.

The CIA also aggressively seeks to recruit disaffected government employees in adversarial countries “all the time,” noted a former intelligence official — using similar tactics. The agency has released a series of public recruitment videos aimed at persuading disgruntled Russian government employees to spy for the United States, videos that detailed ways to securely contact the agency.

“’Domestic political turbulence in your country? Sign up with us to help us help your country!’” the former official paraphrased the US efforts, adding that those efforts deeply aggravate foreign governments.

The CIA may have already inadvertently put some American secrets within the grasp of foreign spies and hackers. In an effort to comply with the executive order to downsize the federal workforce, the CIA earlier this month sent the White House an extraordinarily unusual email listing all new hires that have been with the agency for two years or less — a list that included CIA officers who were preparing to operate under cover — over an unclassified email server.

Some of those officers, who have had access to classified information about the agency’s operations and tradecraft, may now be terminated as part of the layoffs.

US intel shows Russia and China are attempting to recruit disgruntled federal employees, sources say | CNN Politics

By Natasha Bertrand, Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen, CNN

5 minute read

Updated 9:36 AM EST, Sat March 1, 2025

CNN · by Natasha Bertrand, Katie Bo Lillis, Zachary Cohen · February 28, 2025

Russian servicemen stand with the Kremlin's Spasskaya tower and Saint Basil's cathedral before the Victory Day military parade rehearsal in central Moscow, on April 27, 2023.

Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images

CNN —

Foreign adversaries including Russia and China have recently directed their intelligence services to ramp up recruiting of US federal employees working in national security, targeting those who have been fired or feel they could be soon, according to four people familiar with recent US intelligence on the issue and a document reviewed by CNN.

The intelligence indicates that foreign adversaries are eager to exploit the Trump administration’s efforts to conduct mass layoffs across the federal workforce – a plan laid out by the Office of Personnel Management earlier this week.

Russia and China are focusing their efforts on recently fired employees with security clearances and probationary employees at risk of being terminated, who may have valuable information about US critical infrastructure and vital government bureaucracy, two of the sources said. At least two countries have already set up recruitment websites and begun aggressively targeting federal employees on LinkedIn, two of the sources said.

A document produced by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service said the intelligence community assessed with “high confidence” that foreign adversaries were trying to recruit federal employees and “capitalize” on the Trump administration’s plans for mass layoffs, according to a partly redacted copy reviewed by CNN.

It added that foreign intelligence officers were being directed to look for potential sources on LinkedIn, TikTok, RedNote and Reddit.

At least one foreign intelligence officer directed an asset to create a company profile on Linkedin and post a job advertisement, and to actively pursue federal employees who indicate they are “open to work,” the NCIS document says.

The adversaries think the employees “are at their most vulnerable right now,” another of the sources said. “Out of a job, bitter about being fired, etc.”

“It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see that these cast aside federal workers with a wealth of institutional knowledge represent staggeringly attractive targets to the intelligence services of our competitors and adversaries,” a third source familiar with the recent US assessments told CNN.

The intelligence seems to confirm what was previously a hypothetical fear for current and US officials: that the mass firings could offer a rich recruitment opportunity for foreign intelligence services that might seek to exploit financially vulnerable or resentful former employees. The Justice Department has charged multiple former military and intelligence officials for providing US intelligence to China in recent years.

“China has always been committed to developing relations with the United States on the basis of mutual respect and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs,” said Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu. “We oppose groundless speculation on China without factual basis.”

CNN has reached out to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as well as the embassy of Russia in Washington for comment.

Officials have been discussing the risk

Career officials at the CIA have been quietly discussing that risk and how to mitigate it in the recent weeks, current and former intelligence officials previously told CNN. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard earlier this week suggested that those discussions represented a “threat” made by disloyal government employees — rather than a clinical warning of the potential risks posed by President Donald Trump’s aggressive cost-cutting strategy — and that those involved should be penalized.

“I am curious about how they think this is a good tactic to keep their job,” Gabbard told Fox News’ Jesse Watters on Tuesday. “They’re exposing themselves essentially by making this indirect threat using their propaganda arm through CNN that they’ve used over and over and over again to reveal their hand, that their loyalty is not at all to America. It is not to the American people or the Constitution. It is to themselves.

“And these are exactly the kind of people that we need to root out, get rid of so that the patriots who do work in this area, who are committed to our core mission can actually focus on that,” she said.

Multiple current officials across national security agencies who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity expressed frustration at the administration’s response to what they see as very real warnings — not partisan swiping.

“Employees that feel they have been mistreated by an employer have historically been much more likely to disclose sensitive information,” said Holden Triplett, who served as director of counterintelligence at the National Security Council in the first Trump administration and is a former FBI attaché at the US embassies in Moscow and Beijing. “We may be creating, albeit somewhat unintentionally, the perfect recruitment environment.”

‘This isn’t reality TV’

“This isn’t reality TV,” said another former intelligence official. “There are consequences.”

The CIA and Defense Department are weighing significant staff cuts. The Pentagon said in a memo last week that over 5,000 probationary employees, who in most cases have been in their job a year or less, could be fired in the short term. And the CIA has already fired more than 20 officers for their work on diversity issues, many of whom are now challenging their dismissal in court.

The CIA also aggressively seeks to recruit disaffected government employees in adversarial countries “all the time,” noted a former intelligence official — using similar tactics. The agency has released a series of public recruitment videos aimed at persuading disgruntled Russian government employees to spy for the United States, videos that detailed ways to securely contact the agency.

“’Domestic political turbulence in your country? Sign up with us to help us help your country!’” the former official paraphrased the US efforts, adding that those efforts deeply aggravate foreign governments.

The CIA may have already inadvertently put some American secrets within the grasp of foreign spies and hackers. In an effort to comply with the executive order to downsize the federal workforce, the CIA earlier this month sent the White House an extraordinarily unusual email listing all new hires that have been with the agency for two years or less — a list that included CIA officers who were preparing to operate under cover — over an unclassified email server.

Some of those officers, who have had access to classified information about the agency’s operations and tradecraft, may now be terminated as part of the layoffs.

This story has been updated with new reporting.

CNN’s Sean Lyngaas contributed reporting.

CNN · by Natasha Bertrand, Katie Bo Lillis, Zachary Cohen · February 28, 2025

11. GSA tells agencies to terminate contracts with top-10 consulting firms

But as we downsize the federal workforce aren't we going to have a greater need for contractors?

And what is the definition of "substantive technical support?"

Excerpt:

By March 7, agencies are asked to provide a list of contracts with the 10 firms that they intend to terminate as well as those they will maintain. For those that agencies will continue on with, Ehikian wants a signed statement from a senior official explaining why the work is mission critical and “provides substantive technical support.”

GSA tells agencies to terminate contracts with top-10 consulting firms

Acting GSA Administrator Stephen Ehikian said agencies haven’t taken enough action to terminate contracts with the federal government’s top consultants.

https://fedscoop.com/gsa-tells-agencies-to-terminate-contracts-with-top-10-consulting-firms/

Billy Mitchell

February 28, 2025

Listen to this article

1:53

Learn more.

The General Services Administration (GSA) building is pictured in Washington, D.C., Nov. 21, 2016. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

The top-10 highest-paid consulting firms contracting with the federal government are set to make “$65 billion in fees” in 2025 and beyond, the General Services Administration says. But according to the agency’s acting leader, that “needs to, and must, change.”

GSA acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian issued this week a memo, obtained by FedScoop, calling for the termination of contracts with those top-contracted consultants:

Deloitte Consulting LLP
Accenture Federal Services LLC
General Dynamics IT
Booz Allen Hamilton
Leidos
Guidehouse
Hill Mission Technologies Corp.
Science Applications International Corp.
CGI Federal
IBM

“Consistent with the goals and directives of the Trump administration to eliminate waste, reduce spending, and increase efficiency, the U.S. General Services Administration has taken the first steps in a Government-wide initiative to eliminate non-essential consulting contracts,” Ehikian wrote in the memo dated Feb. 26 sent to senior procurement officers.

By March 7, agencies are asked to provide a list of contracts with the 10 firms that they intend to terminate as well as those they will maintain. For those that agencies will continue on with, Ehikian wants a signed statement from a senior official explaining why the work is mission critical and “provides substantive technical support.”

The issuance of the memo follows GSA’s previous actions earlier this month with agencies to review contracts with the targeted contractors and terminate any that weren’t critical to agencies’ missions. But according to Ehikian, “not enough action has been taken.”

News of the GSA’s memo was first reported by Nextgov.

Written by Billy Mitchell

Billy Mitchell is Senior Vice President and Executive Editor of Scoop News Group's editorial brands. He oversees operations, strategy and growth of SNG's award-winning tech publications, FedScoop, StateScoop, CyberScoop, EdScoop and DefenseScoop. After earning his journalism degree at Virginia Tech and winning the school's Excellence in Print Journalism award, Billy received his master's degree from New York University in magazine writing while interning at publications like Rolling Stone. Reach him at billy.mitchell@scoopnewsgroup.com.

12. Trump wants to shrink the State Department’s size, reach and focus

Excerpts:

Many of the new Trump administration’s foreign policy priorities can be gleaned from its effort to dismantle USAID. At that agency, DOGE has slashed programs that promote good governance, democracy, education and general economic development but is keeping some that deal with health issues and emergency humanitarian aid, according to emails, spreadsheets and other documents seen by POLITICO. The Supreme Court is likely to review a legal challenge to the USAID funding cuts.

The USAID cuts suggest the State Department’s bureau that focuses on human rights and democracy could get scaled down if not axed.

Trump’s anti-immigration stances also suggest that the State Department bureau that focuses on migration and refugees could be scuttled or cut back.

If the trend continues, other State bureaus that could be in danger include the Educational and Cultural Affairs bureau; the Conflict and Stabilization Operations bureau; the bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs. The latter could face suspicion over its climate change-related work, as such programs are not a priority for Trump.

According to the person familiar with the internal discussions, the economic affairs bureau will likely be kept, given Trump’s often transactional view of the world and interest in promoting foreign investment in the U.S.

The person also said that the consular affairs division — which carries out work such as visas, passports and helping Americans stranded overseas — will remain a critical pillar of the State Department. Still, the individual said, that section will see some staffing cuts.

Trump wants to shrink the State Department’s size, reach and focus

By Nahal Toosi

02/27/2025 04:46 PM EST

Politico

Plans call for fewer embassies, cuts to programs to build goodwill abroad and more focus on immediate U.S. interests.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), President-elect Donald Trump's pick for Secretary of State, speaks before the Senate Foreign Relations committee for his confirmation hearing in Washington, on Jan. 15, 2025. | Angelina Katsanis/POLITICO

02/27/2025 04:46 PM EST

President Donald Trump wants to radically shrink the State Department — leaving it with fewer diplomats, a smaller number of embassies and a narrower remit that critics argue could hand China wins across the world.

The Trump administration, fueled by Elon Musk and his acolytes, appears determined to focus the department on areas such as transactional government agreements, safeguarding U.S. security and promoting foreign investment in America. That means cutting back or eliminating bureaus promoting traditional soft power initiatives — such as those advancing democracy, protecting human rights, supporting scientific research or generally fostering goodwill abroad.

The changes would amount to a historic restructuring of the storied department whose work and scope has expanded over the decades to include a variety of efforts to bolster American influence abroad, ranging from helping countries defend their critical networks from hackers to advocating for people with disabilities.

Some of these ideas have been telegraphed in public orders and statements from Trump and others. Additional details about the strategy and what will be cut were described to POLITICO by a person familiar with internal State Department discussions and a former U.S. official with ties to the Trump team. POLITICO also reviewed private documents that provide insight into the plans, which remain fluid. Several people were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.

Supporters say the shakeup would lead to a more focused but still flexible Foreign Service that would better serve U.S. interests.

“Substantial changes at the State Department are necessary to cut down on the bloated federal bureaucracy,” said Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who added in a statement that he had “personally experienced the challenges of an unresponsive and dismissive State Department.”

But critics say the reforms could damage the U.S. long term, especially as it goes head-to-head with an ambitious China. The communist-led country has in recent years surpassed the United States in its number of diplomatic facilities around the world, expanding its foreign influence as America’s dwindles.

The Trump administration, instead, is “going to dramatically shrink the ambit of American diplomacy, dramatically shrink the purpose and the practice of our diplomacy and return it, if not to the 19th century, at least pre-World War II,” said Tom Shannon, a former senior State Department official who served under Republican and Democratic presidents.

While it’s not clear yet how many embassies would be closed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is on board with cutting a significant number, the person familiar with the internal discussions said.

The State Department Executive Secretariat has asked the Defense Department, the CIA, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, among others, to rank U.S. embassies in order of importance to their work, according to a State Department official who has seen the request. That official and a second State official said the Pentagon has tasked combatant commands around the world to report back with their respective lists.

The first official said the departments and agencies were to score embassies on a zero to 10 scale (10 being the most important). A quarter of the embassies in each region must be given scores between zero and two; a quarter must score from three to five; and half can receive scores from six to 10, the person said. The criteria to be considered include the department or agency’s overall budget devoted to its presence at the embassy, including for facilities maintenance and the importance of the embassy in the agency or department’s policy priorities, the official said.

POLITICO also obtained a list of potential consulates that could be cut. The targets mentioned are in Rennes, Lyon, Strasbourg, and Bordeaux in France; Dusseldorf, Leipzig, and Hamburg in Germany; Florence, Italy; Ponta Delgada, Portugal; and Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Embassy cuts are more complicated than consulate closures in part because many embassies house overseas functions of other branches of the U.S. government, including trade and even agriculture offices. If carried out, however, the changes could mean more embassies would cover multiple countries, a set-up that already exists in some places, such as the Caribbean.

Representatives of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which has taken the lead in helping Trump cut the size of the federal workforce, are driving the planning. Trump also has issued executive orders that signal the shifts that lay ahead for the State Department — efforts that go well beyond plans for it to subsume the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Many of the new Trump administration’s foreign policy priorities can be gleaned from its effort to dismantle USAID. At that agency, DOGE has slashed programs that promote good governance, democracy, education and general economic development but is keeping some that deal with health issues and emergency humanitarian aid, according to emails, spreadsheets and other documents seen by POLITICO. The Supreme Court is likely to review a legal challenge to the USAID funding cuts.

The USAID cuts suggest the State Department’s bureau that focuses on human rights and democracy could get scaled down if not axed.

Trump’s anti-immigration stances also suggest that the State Department bureau that focuses on migration and refugees could be scuttled or cut back.

If the trend continues, other State bureaus that could be in danger include the Educational and Cultural Affairs bureau; the Conflict and Stabilization Operations bureau; the bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs. The latter could face suspicion over its climate change-related work, as such programs are not a priority for Trump.

According to the person familiar with the internal discussions, the economic affairs bureau will likely be kept, given Trump’s often transactional view of the world and interest in promoting foreign investment in the U.S.

The person also said that the consular affairs division — which carries out work such as visas, passports and helping Americans stranded overseas — will remain a critical pillar of the State Department. Still, the individual said, that section will see some staffing cuts.

James Hewitt, a White House National Security Council spokesperson, justified changes at State by pointing to America’s broader finances. “Well, we are $36 trillion in debt,” he said.

In a statement, the State Department press office insisted it was following presidential directives on “workforce optimization” and assessing its “global posture to ensure we are best positioned to address modern challenges on behalf of the American people.”

The State-related proposals remain tentative, especially amid court challenges to DOGE’s sweeping authority. Some major parts of the State Department are required by legislation, which could make restructuring tricky. And details, such as exactly how many embassies to close, could vary as discussions unfold and logistics make change hard.

Whatever diplomatic outposts and initiatives are left are likely to be staffed by many fewer people. As POLITICO has previously reported, Rubio is on board with at least a 20 percent cut to staffing at the State. And ambassadors overseas have been asked to prepare data on their staff in anticipation of reductions, multiple U.S. diplomats have already confirmed to POLITICO. The department has suspended or canceled some Foreign Service testing to comply with Trump’s broad hiring freeze imposed across the government, and it’s not clear if or when a new crop of U.S. diplomats will be onboarded.

Roughly two-thirds of the State Department’s estimated 75,000 employees are local hires working for U.S. missions overseas. Such foreign nationals are easier to lay off than U.S. civil and Foreign Service officers, who have more legal protections, but all the groups will see some cuts, the person familiar with the talks said. Rubio is expected to soon announce that several hundred employees deemed to be on probation will lose their jobs, according to two State Department officials familiar with the plans.

Trump this month issued an executive order calling for “reforms in recruiting, performance, evaluation and retention standards” for the Foreign Service. The changes would include revamping the Foreign Affairs Manual and other bedrocks of U.S. diplomacy.

The executive order appeared aimed at creating a more pliable group of State Department employees who are easier to fire.

A former senior State Department official warned that it could stop many diplomats from offering dissenting views, either in routine analytical work in embassies or via the official “Dissent Channel,” which sends such views directly to the secretary of State. Discouraging dissent could endanger top U.S. officials’ ability to make well-informed decisions, the former official said.

Staffers and offices that engage in work related to diversity, equity and inclusion — DEI — are being cut across the government, including at State. It’s not clear how the anti-DEI philosophy will affect some special envoy offices at State, such as ones that advocate for disability rights or women’s issues.

That said, special envoy offices have proliferated in recent years, in part due to congressional mandates, and are likely to be trimmed back overall.

It’s also possible that the administration may allow some bureaus or offices to continue to exist on paper but never fill their positions.

“Even statutory departments and functions have significant room for discretionary cuts to staffing and budgets,” the person familiar with the discussions said.

Still, the Trump administration may find that it is harder to staff up if it later decides to restore slashed programs.

“They’re taking a lot of steps now that are going to be pretty hard to reverse engineer,” warned a former Biden administration official, who was granted anonymity because they were worried about facing retaliation from the Trump team.

Eric Bazail-Eimil contributed to this report.

Politico

13. New products show China’s quest to automate battle

Excerpt:

The success of the PLA’s hefty investment in AI-infused tools will hinge on its ability to validate and refine these technologies under real-world conditions. Their challenges include ensuring that they work reliably in complex scenarios and integrating them into a centralized control structure. The PLA’s goal with AI and Big Data, however, is clear: not just to close critical capability gaps but to redefine what is possible in warfare.

New products show China’s quest to automate battle

One system tested in a recent PLA exercise automatically dispatches drones, tracks targets, and assigns strikes.

defenseone.com · by Tye Graham

The drones that fanned out during a recent People’s Liberation Army exercise were dispatched by the Intelligent Precision Strike System, a new product from Chinese defense giant Norinco that used the UAVs’ real-time data to model the battlefield, track targets, devise strike plans, distribute firing information, and execute follow-up strikes.

According to the video playing in Norinco’s booth at the most recent Zhuhai Air Show, almost all of this was done autonomously except giving the commands to fire. Chinese observers also noted how the system fused battlefield intelligence from multiple sources. It epitomizes how the PLA aims to ensure dominance in the next era of conflict: with autonomous capabilities that blur the line between human oversight and machine execution.

Norinco’s Intelligent Precision Strike System is one of the ways that the nascent PLA Information Support Force is building a “network information system” that uses AI, cloud computing, and big-data techniques to fuse data from operational units and create “dynamic kill networks” across domains. PLA commentators emphasize the network information system’s critical role in modern warfare.

All this is part of the PLA’s push towards “intelligentized warfare,” which seeks to integrate real-time battlefield awareness, precision strikes, and psychological operations. To this end, researchers at the PLA National Defense University highlight large language models as pivotal to military operations. By quickly processing vast datasets, they could streamline intelligence analysis, generate code, and accelerate weapons development.

The PLA also aims to use LLMs to produce detailed, realistic operational simulations and training scenarios with a fraction of the time and manpower required today. Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research has called attention to the PLA’s “War Skull” wargaming system, whose second generation, launched in 2020, uses modular strategies to adapt to various adversaries—although its applicability to real-world combat remains uncertain due to challenges like emergent behaviors and unpredictability in complex scenarios.

Similarly, China is seeking to embed AI in military intelligence, planning, and decision-making. The "Aiwu LLM+" system, developed by a lab at the People's Armed Police Engineering University, combines large language models, multimodal big-data analysis, and virtual assistant interfaces to provide intelligent interaction and task planning within command information systems. The PLA also envisions the integration of AI into multi-source intelligence systems that provide commanders with insights and accelerate decision-making.

All this is viewed as helping the PLA move into the next phase of intelligentized warfare, where deep learning and multimodal data processing can refine target recognition, situational assessment, and command decisions. According to PLA commenters, these advancements facilitate iterative feedback loops, improving cross-domain data integration, predictive analytics, and real-time battlefield adaptation—and ultimately forming what the PLA calls “intelligentized operational command.” Meanwhile, integrating “shallow AI” into unmanned platforms bolsters reconnaissance and precision strikes while embedding AI-driven autonomy into existing weapons.

The gains are not just about kinetic effects. PLA Maj. Gen. Zeng Haiqing notes that LLMs could also be used for cognitive warfare, which PLA doctrine describes as the key to winning wars, including by not even having to fight them. Cognitive domain operations merge psychological and cyber tactics, seeking to manipulate adversary perceptions, decision-making, and behavior. Generative AI tools enable the PLA to craft adaptive, context-specific disinformation and execute psychological operations with precision. Advanced language models can generate desired narratives in real-time, using digital platforms to influence perceptions, sow discord, and erode morale. This serves the PLA’s “cognitive confrontation” tactic, which aims to control information flows to disrupt adversary decision-making. AI-powered sentiment analysis and predictive behavioral models can maximize these strategies' psychological and operational impact.

These AI initiatives are accompanied by the PLA’s growing integration of big-data programs that can expand battlefield awareness, refine predictive analytics, and reduce the “fog of war.” Intelligent algorithms can process vast datasets to uncover operational patterns, optimize logistics, and better tactical decision-making.

Industry help

Under China’s military-civil fusion strategy, defense contractors large and small are working to ensure that civilian AI advances can power military applications.

Norinco, for example, showed off more than the Intelligent Precision Strike System at the 2024 Zhuhai Airshow. Nine other new combat systems with cutting-edge AI-enabled warfare capabilities were on display. They included the AI-Enabled Synthetic Brigade, which combines next-generation armored vehicles, swarming drones, loitering munitions, and electronic warfare tools; and the Smart Digital-Enabled Command and Control System, which enables real-time situational awareness. Their effect has already been felt in human confidence levels. Chinese military analysts claim these AI-driven mechanized brigades surpass their U.S. counterparts in battlefield digitization, reinforcing China’s leadership in next-generation land warfare.

Smaller tech firms are also contributing. For example, U-Tenet has developed military-focused AI models and systems that support strategic decision-making and autonomous operations. These include Tianji, a cloud-based “decision-making brain” for operational planning and intelligence analysis; Tianwang, a real-time intelligence repository that integrates multi-source data for situational awareness; and Tianjian, an integrated battlefield-intelligence system. U-Tenet built its AI applications with a proprietary military-intelligence database that contains more than a million high-quality documents and more than 300 terabytes of military imagery, according to ifenxi, a Chinese digital research and consulting firm. The Tianji model can incorporate real-time conflict data, including from the war in Ukraine, Chinese military commentators report.

The success of the PLA’s hefty investment in AI-infused tools will hinge on its ability to validate and refine these technologies under real-world conditions. Their challenges include ensuring that they work reliably in complex scenarios and integrating them into a centralized control structure. The PLA’s goal with AI and Big Data, however, is clear: not just to close critical capability gaps but to redefine what is possible in warfare.

defenseone.com · by Tye Graham

14. Welcome to the Zero Sum Era. Now How Do We Get Out?

I win, you lose.

"The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must."

Welcome to the Zero Sum Era. Now How Do We Get Out?

Zero-sum thinking has spread like a mind virus, from geopolitics to pop culture.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/world/asia/trump-zero-sum-world.html?referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm

By Damien Cave

Damien covers global affairs. He is based in Vietnam.

March 1, 2025

My grandfather’s idea of an Easter egg hunt involved hiding money in colorful plastic eggs sprinkled around his house on Long Island. Most held coins, but there was always one with a crisp, new $100 bill.

My cousin, Billy-O, and I were the only players. We were usually playful partners in mayhem but as competitors, we took on every hunt with gusto, flipping over cushions, throwing open cabinets, knocking each other aside until, without fail, Billy-O found the $100.

The first time he won, I fought back tears. But after a few years of losses, I exploded.

“It’s just not fair,” I yelled.

“Life’s unfair,” my grandfather told us. “You win or you lose.”

This is what’s called zero-sum thinking — the belief that life is a battle over finite rewards where gains for one mean losses for another. And these days, that notion seems to be everywhere. It’s how we view college admissions, as a cutthroat contest for groups defined by race or privilege. It’s there in our love for “Squid Game.” It’s Silicon Valley’s winner-take-all ethos, and it’s at the core of many popular opinions: that immigrants steal jobs from Americans; that the wealthy get rich at others’ expense; that men lose power and status when women gain.

But nowhere is the rise of our zero-sum era more pronounced than on the world stage, where President Trump has been demolishing decades of collaborative foreign policy with threats of protectionist tariffs and demands for Greenland, Gaza, the Panama Canal and mineral rights in Ukraine. Since taking office, he has often channeled the age he most admires — the imperial 19th century.

And in his own past, zero-sum thinking was deeply ingrained. His biographers tell us he learned from his father that you were either a winner or loser in life, and that there was nothing worse than being a sucker. In Trumpworld, it’s kill or be killed; he who is not a hammer must be an anvil.

Mr. Trump may not be alone in this. Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China have also displayed a zero-sum view of a world in which bigger powers get to do what they want while weaker ones suffer. All three leaders, no matter what they say, often behave as if power and prosperity were in short supply, leading inexorably to competition and confrontation..

Until recently, the international order largely was built on a different idea — that interdependence and rules boost opportunities for all. It was aspirational, producing fourfold economic growth since the 1980s, and even nuclear disarmament treaties from superpowers. It was also filled with gassy promises — from places like Davos or the G20 — that rarely improved day-to-day lives.

“The reversion to zero-sum thinking now is in some ways a backlash against the positive-sum thinking of the post-Cold War era — the idea that globalization could lift all boats, that the U.S. could draft an international order in which nearly everyone could participate and become a responsible stakeholder,” said Hal Brands, a global affairs professor at Johns Hopkins University and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “The original Trump insight from 2016-17 was that this wasn’t happening.”

What we are now experiencing, especially in the United States, is effectively a rejection of the belief in abundance and cooperation. It is an uprising against the premise that many groups can gain at once — a cynical, contagious us-or-them attitude, spreading across countries, communities and families.

With kids’ games, maybe zero-summing feels like tough love. But on a national and global scale, it’s increasingly hard not to ask: What are we losing with a win-or-lose approach?

‘An Image of Limited Good’

Zero-sum thinking probably seemed to make a lot of sense for our evolutionary ancestors, who were forced to compete for food to survive. But the mind-set has lingered and researchers have become more interested in mapping its impact.

The most recent work in the social sciences builds on the findings of George M. Foster, an anthropologist from the University of California, Berkeley. He did his field work in Mexico’s rural communities where he was the first researcher to show that some societies hold “an image of limited good.”

In 1965, he wrote that the people he studied in the hills of Michoacán view their entire universe “as one in which all of the desired things in life such as land, wealth, health, friendship and love, manliness and honor, respect and status, power and influence, security and safety, exist in finite quantity and are always in short supply.”

Psychologists later confirmed that a sense of scarcity and feeling threatened are fundamental components of zero-sum thinking in individuals and cultures. A 2018 analysis of 43 nations, for example, found that zero-sum beliefs tend to emerge more “in hierarchical societies with an economic disparity of scarce resources.”

But zero-sum thinking is a perception, not an objective assessment. Sometimes people will see zero-sum games all around them, even though for most of us, “purely zero-sum situations are exceedingly rare,” as a paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology recently noted.

Think about two co-workers vying for the same promotion: Yes, one might get it and the other not, but over the long term, their fortunes will also rise or fall together based on how their team or company performs. Even in sports — the prototypical zero-sum contest — losing to a stronger competitor can accelerate the development of important skills — as I keep telling my son when his soccer team struggles to score in a tough, local league.

Essentially, many people slip into what Daniel V. Meegan, a psychologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, has identified as a “a zero-sum bias.” They believe they are in scenarios of cutthroat competition even when they are not.

Many zero-summers like to picture themselves as tough, hardheaded realists — and sometimes a winner-take-all approach can lead to gains or victory, at least temporarily. But the science says zero-sum thinking is rooted in fear. It mistakes Foster’s “image of limited good” for wisdom and treats potential partners as threats, creating blind spots to the potential for mutual benefit.

That’s why zero-sum thinking can be so problematic: It pinches perspective, sharpens antagonism and distracts our minds from what we can do with cooperation and creativity. People with a zero-sum mentality can easily miss a win-win.

But the far greater danger for zero-sum thinking is the lose-lose.

With Us or Against Us

The last time zero-sum thinking guided the world, Europe’s colonial powers of the 16th to 19th centuries saw wealth as finite, measured in gold, silver and land. Gains for one translated to losses for another and empires levied high tariffs to protect themselves from competitors.

Trump Administration: Live Updates

Updated

March 2, 2025, 7:22 a.m. ET3 hours ago

Mr. Trump has romanticized the era’s tail end. “We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913,” he told reporters last month. “That’s when we were a tariff country.”

In fact, the United States is far richer now in household income and economic output. But of greater concern may be Mr. Trump’s refusal to acknowledge the historical context. Economists say the mercantilism and great-power rivalries of that imperial age hindered wealth creation, advanced inequality and often led to the most complete zero-sum game of all: war.

The 80 Years War. The 30 Years War. The Nine Years War. Trade monopolies and empire building produced decades of lose-losing that cost huge sums and caused millions of casualties.

What actually made the United States distinct, according to historians, was a greater adherence to the exuberant capitalism laid out by Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations.”

Published in 1776, the book pivoted away from the scarcity assumptions of mercantilism. Smith showed that wealth could be more than metal. It could be everything an economy does, otherwise known as gross domestic product. New riches could be created through productivity, innovation and free markets that let each country prioritize what it does best.

Nonzero-sum capitalism was pretty compelling for a young nation of striving immigrants. (The foreign-born share of the U.S. population peaked at nearly 15 percent around 1890, a fact Mr. Trump also seems to ignore.) And in a lot of ways, free markets and sharing were harder for Europe’s leaders to embrace. World War I and II were both spurred on by zero-sum approaches to international relations.

That line I included high up in this article — “he who is not a hammer must be an anvil”? It comes from a speech that Adolf Hitler gave about the Treaty of Versailles, which forced Germany to pay reparations, disarm and lose territory after World War I.

“If it’s the 1930s, you correctly understand that if countries are not firmly in your bloc, they might be completely mobilized against you,” said Daniel Immerwahr, a historian of U.S. foreign policy at Northwestern University. Only after the war ended, he added, was there an attempt to “change the rules of the game” — to make the world less zero-sum, by assuring countries that they could get rich through trade rather than by seizing land or starting wars.

The United States built and oversaw that system, mainly through organizations like the International Monetary Fund. Which is not to say that Washington’s outlook was never zero sum, or that the United States never got stuck in a lose-lose of its own.

I covered the Iraq war, after President George W. Bush told other countries they had a zero-sum choice: “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.”

A few months ago, I opened a new bureau for The New York Times in Vietnam. I now live with my family in a country still dealing with the fallout of a zero-sum civil war that the United States joined because of its own zero-sum belief that any country the Communists won amounted to a major loss for America’s way of life.

The consequences were severe: a toll of three million Vietnamese lives and more than 58,000 American soldiers, plus a legacy of psychological trauma.

Maybe the world can avoid repeating such a catastrophic spiral. The global economy is more interconnected now, a potent disincentive to aggression. Many countries that have also benefited from the postwar system — especially in Europe and Asia — are seeking to protect its principle of peace through cooperative deterrence.

Maybe zero-sum thinking can even encourage restraint. In the same paper declaring that purely zero-sum situations are “exceedingly rare,” two psychology professors, Patricia Andrews Fearon, and Friedrich M. Gotz, found that “the zero sum mind-set predicts both hyper-competitiveness and anxious avoidance of competitions.”

Some zero-summers may not compete, they concluded, because they do not want to cause the pain or face the costs that they think are necessary for success. They also may avoid contests that they do not think they can win.

Mr. Trump may end up fighting and fleeing, depending on the circumstances. He views other nations in only two ways, Mr. Immerwahr said: “Either they are completely in your thrall or they are threats.”

Simplistic, yes, but many Americans also see foreign affairs in blunt, personal terms. After I wrote recently about the painful impact of U.S.A.I.D.’s demise on Vietnam’s Agent Orange victims, one reader emailed a short, telling critique: “Get real. That’s MY money.”

Change the Game

What causes this kind of zero-sum thinking?

Economic inequality fosters such a belief about success. But zero-sum Americans may not really be squabbling over taxes, college, jobs or wealth.

Jer Clifton, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania who oversees extensive surveys of primal world beliefs, told me the current backlash may be rooted in a zero-sum conviction about something deeper: importance.

Many Americans seem to fear that if some other group matters more, they matter less. “In 21st-century America, the more common, driving fear is not food or resource scarcity, but not enough meaning,” Dr. Clifton said. “We are a people desperate to matter.”

Under the old order, Americans found meaning in a belief that the United States was special. Our nation was built not on blood or soil but ideas — democracy, freedom, a chance to rise from rags to riches — and we were confident we could inspire and improve other countries.

Today, fewer Americans than ever want the United States to play a major or leading role in international affairs, according to Gallup surveys reaching back to the ’60s. They’re dissatisfied with themselves and the world, and they are wobbly on how to move forward.

Any desired revival of meaning may not come easily. Zero-sum culture breeds hostility and distrust by insisting on domination. You can hear a common response in Friedrich Merz, who is likely to be Germany’s new leader, calling for “independence” from the United States.

“One thing I’ve seen people do if they know they’re being forced into a zero-sum game is minimize investment and hold back resources,” said Michael Smithson, an emeritus professor of psychology at the Australian National University who has studied zero-sum thinking for more than a decade.

Essentially, those who resist the game shun the zero-sum player, who tends to be less happy and hard to be around. Fewer players (and resources) make the game less lucrative — but safer. With time, the “win-winners” add partners and agree to new rules. In the vein of Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” studies have found that people can be taught to see situations as nonzero sum with deliberation and guidance.

Mr. Smithson said he often told students in his classes to see him as their opponent so they would collaborate with one another, not compete.

My grandfather’s Easter egg hunt could have used a similar tilt. With a time limit, Billy-O and I would have had an incentive to cooperate, to make sure we found the $100 egg before the deadline. Instead of win or lose, it could have been “share the work, and the winnings.”

Damien Cave leads The Times’s new bureau in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, covering shifts in power across Asia and the wider world. More about Damien Cave

15. The United Nations, Ukraine, and the Crumbling Pillars of Global Order

The United Nations, Ukraine, and the Crumbling Pillars of Global Order

https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/the-united-nations-ukraine-and-the-crumbling-pillars-of-global-order/?utm

Opinion - February 26, 2025

By Dr. Hasim Turker

On February 24, 2025, the United Nations General Assembly witnessed an event that sent shockwaves through diplomatic circles worldwide. A resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine passed with 93 votes in favor, 18 against, and 65 abstentions. Yet, it was not the overall result that captured global attention—it was the fact that the United States, long considered Ukraine’s staunchest supporter, voted against the resolution alongside Russia. In parallel, the UN Security Council adopted a US-drafted resolution that called for a “swift end” to the conflict but conspicuously omitted any attribution of blame to Moscow. The resolution, supported by Russia and China, stood in stark contrast to previous UN votes that had unequivocally condemned Russia’s actions.

These votes were not just procedural moments in international diplomacy. They signaled a tectonic shift in US foreign policy —one that moves away from the moral and strategic certainties of the past and toward a transactional, interest-driven realignment. The implications of this shift are profound, not just for Ukraine but for the entire fabric of global alliances, particularly in the Asia-Pacific, where long-standing US security commitments are now being scrutinized with heightened concern.

From moral clarity to strategic ambiguity: The US position at the UN

Historically, the United States has used the UN as a platform to advance its vision of a rules-based international order, frequently rallying allies to uphold democratic values and deter authoritarian aggression. The UN votes on Ukraine, however, revealed a stunning reversal of this long-held strategy. By opposing a resolution that explicitly condemned Russia’s invasion, Washington abandoned its traditional role as a guarantor of Ukraine’s sovereignty. As for the US-drafted UNSC resolution, the abstentions from key European allies—France, the UK, Denmark, Greece, and Slovenia—further underscored the growing transatlantic rift regarding how to handle the conflict.

For European nations, the shift in US posture raised existential questions. If Washington could alter its stance on Ukraine so dramatically, what guarantees did NATO allies have that their security interests would remain non-negotiable? Would a similar transactional approach emerge in Asia, where China’s assertiveness threatens US allies such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan?

A signal to Moscow, a green light to Beijing?

The immediate beneficiary of the US policy shift is Russia. While previous UN resolutions had overwhelmingly isolated Moscow, the latest votes demonstrated that the diplomatic tide was turning. By securing Washington’s opposition to an anti-Russia resolution, the Kremlin gained not only symbolic validation but also tangible diplomatic breathing room. The global narrative that once portrayed Russia as an aggressor is now being muddied by the strategic recalibrations of the United States.

Yet, the greater strategic consequence may lie in the Asia-Pacific, where China is closely studying Washington’s evolving foreign policy doctrine. If the U.S. can pivot away from Ukraine so decisively, why should allies in the Indo-Pacific expect unwavering American support in the event of a crisis? This question is particularly pressing for Taiwan, whose security rests on implicit US commitments. If Taiwan were to face military aggression from China, would Washington maintain its traditional security guarantees, or would it adopt a similarly pragmatic, negotiation-driven approach?

The Asia-Pacific: Unraveling the trust factor

Japan and South Korea, two of the most critical US allies in the region, have already begun recalibrating their security postures in response to shifting priorities in Washington. South Korea, for instance, recently announced a record-breaking $46.3 billion defense budget for 2025, reflecting deep-seated concerns about regional stability. Meanwhile, Japan has accelerated its military modernization efforts, focusing on strengthening its air and naval capabilities to counter potential threats from both North Korea and China.

For these allies, Washington’s shifting stance at the UN is not an isolated event—it is a warning sign. The Trump administration’s willingness to negotiate directly with Russia over Ukraine, even at the cost of sidelining Kyiv, suggests that similar deals could be struck elsewhere, depending on shifting US interests. If Taiwan becomes the next crisis zone, Tokyo and Seoul must now contemplate the possibility that Washington might prioritize a grand bargain with Beijing over steadfast support for its Indo-Pacific allies.

The transactional turn in global diplomacy

At the heart of this new paradigm is a fundamental shift in how the United States approaches alliances. The post-World War II model, built on unwavering commitments and long-term strategic partnerships, is being replaced by a framework that evaluates relationships through a cost-benefit lens. Trump’s handling of Ukraine exemplifies this approach: rather than defending Ukraine as a matter of principle, Washington is now considering what it can extract from the situation, including economic leverage over Ukraine’s vast natural resources.

This transactional mindset is not lost on allies and adversaries alike. For nations like India and Vietnam—non-treaty partners that maintain strategic ties with Washington but also engage with Beijing—the lesson is clear: the U.S. is willing to pivot rapidly if its national interests dictate such a move. This could push these nations to hedge their bets, seeking a more balanced approach between the U.S. and China rather than placing full confidence in US commitments.

A future defined by uncertainty

As the dust settles from the UN votes, one reality is undeniable: the credibility of US commitments is now under question across multiple theaters of geopolitical competition. The immediate consequences are already unfolding in Ukraine, where European allies must now decide how to fill the gap left by Washington’s wavering stance. But the longer-term impact will be felt in the Indo-Pacific, where the US security umbrella has long been the bedrock of regional stability.

If the United States is no longer willing to stand unequivocally by its allies, then nations that have historically depended on US security assurances must prepare for an era of greater self-reliance. This could mean more aggressive military posturing, accelerated nuclear deterrence programs, and a fundamental reshaping of regional alliances.

For the broader international system, the consequences could be even more profound. The UN votes on Ukraine may be remembered as the moment when the rules-based international order began to fracture, not because of external threats, but because the world’s leading power chose to play by different rules.

16. PNP probes donations by alleged Chinese spies (Philippines)

PNP probes donations by alleged Chinese spies

https://qa.philstar.com/headlines/2025/03/02/2425175/pnp-probes-donations-alleged-chinese-spies

Emmanuel Tupas - The Philippine Star

March 2, 2025 | 12:00am

Members of the Manila Police District (MPD) prepare for deployment at their headquarters in Ermita, Manila on January 3, 2025.

STAR / Ryan Baldemor

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine National Police (PNP) has started its probe on the alleged donations of vehicles to two police units by Chinese nationals who were arrested for espionage, the head of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group said yesterday.

CIDG director Maj. Gen. Nicolas Torre III said an investigation is underway on the circumstances surrounding the donations, which was reported by Reuters, including how it ended up with police.

“I believe that the chief PNP had already ordered the inquiry on that matter to know the root and the circumstances of the donation,” Torre said at the Dapo Restaurant news forum in Quezon City, referring to Gen. Rommel Francisco Marbil.

Torre stayed at the news forum for about 45 minutes and left for a meeting ordered by Marbil at Camp Crame.

It is unclear if the issue of the donations by supposed Chinese spies was among the topics discussed.

In its news article, Reuters said the Chinese nationals accused by the Philippine government of espionage were leaders of civic groups that have links with the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign influence network.

Reuters identified the four as Wang Yongi, Wu Junren, Cai Shaohuang and Chen Haitao, who were arrested by the authorities last month.

One event occurred in Manila wherein three of the Chinese nationals donated 10 motorbikes to the city’s police force.

The same month, the other Chinese national gave 10 patrol vehicles to the Tarlac police and the city government.

Torre said the PNP has guidelines for accepting donations from other countries and non-government organizations.

For donations from other nations, Torre said the PNP has a foreign liaison division which gets direction from the Department of Foreign Affairs. The donation is then coursed through the Department of the Interior and Local Government.

For the specific cases in Manila and Tarlac, Torre said a review is being undertaken, adding it is possible the vehicles were given to the local government units, which then turned the assets over to their respective police units.

Asked if there is a need to investigate the civic organizations to which the spies are supposedly affiliated, Torre said the PNP is regularly evaluating its allied groups.

17. Trump still really wants to win a Nobel Peace Prize

But frankly I still do not understand why President Obama received it.

Trump still really wants to win a Nobel Peace Prize

The prestigious award may be a tough get for Trump as he increasingly breaks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

NBC News · by Peter Nicholas · March 1, 2025

WASHINGTON — Twice in President Donald Trump’s first term, a Norwegian lawmaker stepped forward to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Now, when Christian Tybring-Gjedde watches Trump maneuver to stop the war between Ukraine and Russia, he doesn’t see the same sort of diplomatic outreach that warrants a third.

“He is dictating terms that the Europeans are very scared of and are really worried about what’s going to come of this,” Tybring-Gjedde said in an interview. “Right now, I don’t think there’s the prospect of a Nobel Peace Prize. But you never know.”

A peace deal looks more elusive now than at any point since Trump’s return to power. His meeting Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy turned dark, with Trump browbeating his counterpart for not being grateful enough for U.S. firepower that helped repel Russia’s invasion.

Negotiations with Ukraine appear to have collapsed for now, jeopardizing Trump’s pledge to bring a quick end to the war — and perhaps spoiling his best shot at winning an award that has been on his mind for years.

Four American presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize, none named Trump. That missing piece of the resume grates on him, former aides say, as was evident during his meeting in the Oval Office last month with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“They will never give me a Nobel Peace Prize,” Trump said in response to a reporter’s question about the award. “It’s too bad. I deserve it, but they will never give it to me.”

If not, it won’t be for lack of trying.

In the space of a few days last week, no fewer than three senior Trump administration officials or nominees made a case for Trump winning the prize, using similar talking points.

Unprompted, both Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, and Rep. Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican nominated to be ambassador to the United Nations, told conservative activists that Trump is a president “of peace” who deserves the award.

“He is going to end the war in Europe. He is going to end the wars in the Middle East,” Waltz told the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“And you know what?” he added. “By the end of this, we’re going to have the Nobel Peace Prize sitting next to the name of Donald J. Trump.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also mentioned the prize during an interview with Fox News. Without prompting, Bessent said Trump’s plan to end the conflict between Ukraine and Russia merits the honor. If “fairly awarded,” he added, “I think in a year he should get it from what I’ve seen.”

The odds are tough and may hinge on the particulars of a truce between Russia and Ukraine — if there is one.

Fears have risen in recent weeks that Trump will use his leverage to end the war on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s terms. His rhetoric has grown discernibly more hostile to Ukraine.

Even before the angry meeting in the Oval Office on Friday, he called Zelenskyy a “dictator” and suggested that Ukraine instigated the war.

Now, Trump’s anger has spilled into public view. As Zelenskyy sat with arms folded, Trump and Vice President JD Vance scolded him like they would a disobedient schoolboy.

“Have you said ‘thank you’ once in this entire meeting?” Vance said to Zelenskyy.

In a testy tone, Trump told the Ukrainian leader, “You’re either going to make a deal or we’re out. And if we’re out, you’ll fight it out. I don’t think that it’s going to be pretty, but you’ll fight it out. But you don’t have the cards.”

At one point, Trump suggested he had bonded with Putin during his first term over what he called a “phony witch hunt” involving investigations into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.

“Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” Trump said.

Afterward, the White House canceled a side-by-side news conference with Trump and Zelenskyy, who was told to leave the building. He’s not welcome back, Trump later said in a statement, until he is “ready for Peace”

If Trump forges an agreement that’s favorable to Russia while leaving the rest of Europe vulnerable to Putin’s aggression, that might sour any prospect of winning the prize. A pro-Russia deal may not sit well with the Nobel selection committee, whose five members are appointed by the Norwegian parliament.

“In Norway, we are bordering on Russia. This is very tough for all of us, because we are the ones who will be in jeopardy if Russia keeps on taking territory,” said Tybring-Gjedde, a member of Norway’s parliament serving on the defense and foreign affairs committees.

The National Security Council did not return a request for comment for this article.

‘They probably will never give it to me’

The Nobel Peace Prize became a running subplot of Trump’s first term. At times he sounded captivated by the award.

At a future farmers event in Indianapolis in 2018, Trump mentioned a previous American winner who had died nine years earlier, Norman Borlaug, a plant scientist who had helped combat global famine.

While praising Borlaug, he said: “Can you believe it? He won the Nobel Peace Prize.”

“They probably will never give it to me, even what I’m doing in Korea, and in Idlib province and all of these places,” Trump added. “They probably will never give it to me. You know why? Because they don’t want to.”

Trump had two real shots at winning one back then: his efforts to rid North Korea of nuclear weapons (that didn’t happen) and to normalize relations between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors (that one did).

In September 2020, Tybring-Gjedde nominated him for the Middle East peace deal known as the Abraham Accords, though when the winners were announced the following year, Trump was skunked.

Co-winners Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov were journalists who had exposed abuses of power in the Philippines and Russia, respectively.

Even the nomination was something the White House chose to celebrate. The White House press office released a statement drawing attention it. Campaigning for re-election in Ohio that month, Trump complained that the press hadn’t paid enough to attention to the nomination, though having one’s name put forward isn’t necessarily a rare distinction.

The list of people allowed to nominate someone is long. Quite long.

Any member of a national legislature can put someone’s name before the selection committee. (Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., nominated Trump last year). So can Cabinet ministers and heads of state (Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominated Trump for the 2019 prize). And university professors. And retired university professors. And someone serving on the board of directors of an organization that once won the prize. And anyone who advised the Nobel Committee in the past.

Since Trump ran his first winning presidential campaign in 2016, an average of 323 people or groups a year have been nominated for the prize. That’s enough to fill the rosters of six NFL teams.

Earlier this week, Trump hosted British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the White House. One topic they discussed was whether Trump would impose tariffs on Britain.

If Starmer wants to ingratiate himself with Trump, there’s an easy way to do it, said John Bolton, the White House national security adviser in Trump’s first term.

“People say, ‘What would you recommend Starmer do?’ and I said I would recommend that he nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize,” Bolton said in an interview.

Trump, he added, “is definitely obsessed with it.”

A look at some previous winners suggests that Trump would be something of an anomaly if he’s chosen. He’s out of step with a few of the past winners.

In 2012, the prize went to the European Union. At his first Cabinet meeting, held this week, Trump said he’d soon be placing a 25% tariff on goods from the E.U., an institution he said was “formed in order to screw the United States.”

Trump’s allies say he has reason to be peeved. The last president to win the award was Barack Obama, who got it just nine months into his presidency, before he had notched any real achievements. Even Obama acknowledged in his acceptance speech that his accomplishments were “slight.”

“I think the fair question to ask is, would Barack Obama have won for helping bring an end to the war” between Russia and Ukraine, Mick Mulvaney, a former Trump White House chief of staff, said in an interview. “And I think we all know the answer to that question.”

The makeup of the Nobel selection committee could impede whatever chance Trump might have. Winners aren’t chosen based on isolated actions. A candidate’s “personality” also comes into play.

“I will only remind you that any candidate for any Nobel Prize must have given a contribution to the greatest benefit of humankind,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, a former chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told NBC News.

The committee’s new chairman, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, is also secretary-general of PEN Norway, a group whose mission includes supporting free expression and “writers at risk.”

That’s not the career path of a MAGA enthusiast. Trump has faced criticism over his treatment of U.S. journalists on free speech grounds. One of his early actions has been to bar The Associated Press wire service from Air Force One and certain events in which only a small group of “pool” reporters are allowed to watch and ask questions.

The punishment stems from the AP’s decision to stick with the name “Gulf of Mexico,” while noting that Trump has renamed it the “Gulf of America.” The AP has filed suit to have its access restored.

Elite recognition

Why would Trump care about the prize? He rode to power as a populist who disdains the elite. Yet the Nobel Peace Prize brims with elite validation.

That’s the duality. Trump may be allied with the MAGA movement, but some part of him seems to pine for elite recognition. He often mentions an uncle who taught at the prestigious MIT. When Pete Hegseth struggled to win Senate confirmation, Trump vouched for him in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” by mentioning that Hegseth had gone to Ivy League schools.

But envy may play a role, as well. Obama’s prize was a sore point for Trump, said Bolton and another former senior White House official from the first term.

“He’s obsessed with the fact that Mr. Obama got it and he didn’t,” the ex-official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk freely.

NBC News · by Peter Nicholas · March 1, 2025

18.The Putinization of America By Garry Kasparov

The Putinization of America

Trump’s deference to the Russian dictator has become full-blown imitation.

By Garry Kasparov

The Atlantic · by Garry Kasparov · February 28, 2025

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We are barely a month into the second presidential term of Donald Trump and he has made his top priorities clear: the destruction of America’s government and influence and the preservation of Russia’s.

Unleashing Elon Musk and his DOGE cadres on the federal government, menacing Canada and European allies, and embracing Vladimir Putin’s wish list for Ukraine and beyond are not unrelated. These moves are all strategic elements of a plan that is familiar to any student of the rise and fall of democracies, especially the “fall” part.

The sequence is painfully familiar to me personally, because I marched in the streets as it played out in Russia at the start of the 21st century. With ruthless consistency, and the tacit approval of Western leaders, Putin and his oligarch supporters used his fair-ishly elected power to make sure that elections in Russia would never matter again.

Of course, American institutions and traditions are far stronger than Russia’s fragile post-Soviet democracy was when Putin took over from Boris Yeltsin, who had already done his share of damage before anointing the former KGB lieutenant colonel to be his successor in 1999. But those who dismissed my warnings that yes, it can happen here at the start of Trump’s first term, in 2017, got quieter after the insurrection on January 6, 2021, and are almost silent now.

Trump’s personal affinity for dictators was apparent early on. His praise for Putin and other elected leaders turned strongmen, such as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, was tinged with undisguised envy. No feisty parliament to wrangle. The free press turned into a propaganda machine for the administration. The justice system unleashed against the opposition. Elections staged only for show. What’s not to like?

Read: Behind the American right’s fascination with Viktor Orbán

Putin and Russia always held a special place in Trump world, however. Russian intelligence and propaganda worked full-time to promote Trump once he won the Republican nomination to face Hillary Clinton in 2016. WikiLeaks, long in the service of Russian intelligence but still nurturing its old whistleblower image, fed hacked documents to a naively cooperative American media. The Mueller Report makes the degree of cooperation between various Russian assets and the Trump campaign clear—damningly so, despite years of MAGA crying “Russia hoax” because Special Counsel Robert Mueller decided not to prosecute.

Trump made Paul Manafort his campaign chair in May 2016, turning the Russia alarm bells into air-raid sirens for anyone paying attention. Manafort was a former fixer for Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, who attempted to thwart Ukrainians’ desire to join Europe only to be deposed by the Maidan Revolution of Dignity and forced to flee to Moscow in 2014.

Manafort’s recent expertise was mostly in money and reputation laundering. Adding him to the campaign when Trump’s oddly pro-Putin rhetoric (“strong leader,” “loves his country,” “you think our country is so innocent?”) was already drawing attention seemed a little too on the nose: Why double down? From affinity, the campaign tilted into deeply suspicious fealty toward the Kremlin. Manafort’s subsequent plea of guilty for conspiracy to defraud the United States, and Trump’s later pardon, only threw more wood on the raging collusion fire.

Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, during President Barack Obama’s second term. It annexed Crimea and entered eastern Ukraine, offering up feeble pretexts about protecting Russian speakers (whom it bombed indiscriminately), Nazis in Ukraine (also, naturally, the Jews running Ukraine), NATO expansion, and so-called Ukrainian separatists. Russia launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, in the second year of Joe Biden’s presidency, attempting to take Kyiv in what the Kremlin famously planned to be a three-day special military operation. The timing led Trump and his defenders to say that he had been tough on Russia: The invasion would never have occurred on Trump’s watch.

Now that the second Trump administration is racing to tick off every point on Putin’s long wish list, the reason for this has become clear. In Trump’s second term, Putin was expecting him to abandon Ukraine, lift sanctions on Russia, create divisions within NATO, and leave Ukraine relatively defenseless before Europe could get organized to defend it. That is, exactly what is happening today.

But Trump lost to Biden in 2020, and, entering his 23rd year in power, Putin needed a new conflict to distract from the dismal conditions in Russia. Dictators always wind up needing enemies to justify why nothing has improved under their eternal rule, and once the domestic opposition is eliminated, foreign adventures are inevitable. Putin didn’t expect much resistance from Ukraine or from the West, which he had successfully corrupted, bluffed, and bullied for decades. But then an unlikely hero appeared in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a former comedian and actor who, it turned out, could perform a phenomenal impression of Winston Churchill under enemy fire.

Ukraine’s brave resistance to the supposedly overwhelming might of the Russian military lasted long enough to force the United States and Europe to join its defense, albeit reluctantly and slowly. Three long years have passed. Iranian drones crash nightly into Ukrainian civilian centers; Russian artillery and missiles reduce entire cities to rubble; China supports Russia’s attempt at conquest while hungrily eyeing Taiwan. Three years of documented reports of Russian torture, rape, and the mass kidnapping of children. North Korean soldiers have arrived to fight and die in Russia’s invasion, while NATO nations stand by, letting Ukrainians die in the war NATO was created to fight. Yet somehow Ukraine holds the line while Russia’s military losses grow and its economy wobbles.

Once more unto the breach arrives Donald Trump, back in office with more help from the Kremlin—and the inept Democrats—ready to throw his old pal Putin a lifeline. At his side is someone new: the richest private citizen in the world, Elon Musk. (Putin controls far more money than Musk or Trump—do not underestimate how that affects their perceptions of him as the big boss.) With Musk arrives an overused and misunderstood word in the American vernacular: oligarch.

Read: The party of Reagan is selling out Ukraine

Although it’s not a Russian word, post-Soviet Russia popularized its use and attempted to perfect the system it described. In the 1990s, those most capable of manipulating the newly privatized markets became the richest people in Russia. They quickly seized the levers of political power to expand their resources and fortunes, persecute their rivals, and blur the lines between public and private power until they were erased.

Putin, a nondescript technocrat, was a useful front for billionaires such as Boris Berezovsky: Putin appeared to be the hard veteran of the KGB, cleaning up corruption—while what he was really doing was bringing it inside, legitimizing it, and creating a mafia state. Oligarchs could bend the knee and profit, or resist and end up in jail or in exile, their assets ripped away.

Russian democracy had no institutional memory, no immune system to fight off these attacks. It was like a baby deer hit by a locomotive. The Russian Duma, purged of real opposition, became a Putin cheer squad under the new United Russia party. Judges and the security services fell in line or were removed in purges. Oversight was twisted into enforcement of the presidential will. Economic policy aimed to nationalize expenses and privatize profits, looting the country to line the pockets of a few dozen well-connected oligarchs. Foreign policy also moved out of public view, conducted by billionaires in resorts and on yachts. A flood of Russian money washed over European politicians and institutions. Kremlin troll farms and bots made social media into a national and then global weapon.

If all of this is starting to sound a little familiar, welcome to the Putinization of America, comrade! Trump’s deference to the Russian autocrat has become full-blown imitation. Musk’s promotion of Kremlin-friendly candidates in Germany and Romania and his attacks on Ukraine are bizarre but not random. Berezovsky, who elevated Putin to power from behind the scenes, was soon exiled and replaced with more compliant oligarchs. He also met a grisly end—found hanged at his Berkshire mansion at 67—a precedent that might give pause to anyone thinking of risking his business empire to play that gray-cardinal role for the likes of Trump and J. D. Vance.

Trump didn’t campaign on cutting cancer research and foreign aid any more than he did on threatening to annex Greenland and Canada or lifting sanctions on Putin’s dictatorship and extorting Ukraine. What these things have in common is that they provoke conflicts with allies, which then allow him to distinguish the truly loyal.

Imitation and servility aren’t the same thing. Trump and Musk could attempt to undermine American democracy and create a Russian-style power vertical without kowtowing to Putin or abandoning Ukraine. But they haven’t. And while imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, affinity and envy aren’t enough to explain the abruptness and totality of the Trump administration’s adoption of every Russian position. On Monday, the anniversary of Russia’s all-out invasion, the United States even joined Russia in voting against a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Ronald Reagan gave a famous speech supporting Barry Goldwater for president in 1964 in which he said, “No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size … A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” As a “Reagan Communist” myself back in the U.S.S.R., I sympathize with those who want to shrink and limit government power. But replacing it with a junta of unaccountable elites—the Putin model—is not an improvement.

Cutting bureaucracy isn’t usually associated with despotism and power grabs. We tend to think of wannabe dictators packing the courts and increasing the size and power of the state. But that isn’t what you do when you want to make the government impotent against private power—your private power. The Putin model was to weaken any state institution that might defy him and to build state power back up only when he had total control.

But why has Trump made Putin’s agenda his top priority? The GOP has been compliant with every Trump move so far, but a few members still take issue with Trump calling Zelensky a dictator while cozying up to Putin. So why pick fights with his narrow congressional majorities over Russia so early, with such urgency? The same could be asked of Musk’s reckless slash-and-burn tactics with DOGE, which are beginning to provoke backlash as popular programs are cut and job losses pile up, along with lawsuits.

We may never know why Trump is so perversely loyal to Putin. We don’t know exactly why Musk went all in for Trump and Russia or what his deep conflicts of interest in the U.S. and China portend. But the urgency of their actions I do understand, and it’s a dire warning.

Read: There’s a term for what Trump and Musk are doing

These are not the acts of people who expect to lose power any time soon, or ever. They are racing to the point where they will not be able to afford to lose control of the mechanisms they are ripping up and remaking in their image. What such people will do when they believe that mounting a coup is the lesser risk to their fortunes and power cannot be predicted.

There may be a Pulitzer Prize awaiting the person who discovers the answer to the question “Why?” But stopping Putinization—the looting by cronies, the centralization of authority, the moving of decisions into unaccountable private hands—is the vital matter of the moment. Trump admiring Putin is far less dangerous than Trump becoming him.

The Atlantic · by Garry Kasparov · February 28, 2025

19. Green Light Teams: US Nuclear Kamikazes

Some history.

Green Light Teams: US Nuclear Kamikazes

greydynamics.com · by Artem K. · March 1, 2025

Green Light teams were United States special forces units that operated during the Cold War. Their mission was delivering man-portable Special Atomic Demolition Munitions (SADMs) behind enemy lines in case of a nuclear exchange. They trained to covertly deliver these tactical nuclear weapons by air, land, and sea, and ensure the detonation of the payload. These teams represented a unique intersection of special operations and nuclear warfare. The nature of such missions put these special operators at extremely high risk.

The programme became public in 1984. The US eventually fully took it down by 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union. An estimated 300 SADMs were in circulation between 1964 and 1988. [source]

Images Sourced From: US Army, Glen George,

A U.S. Army Special Forces paratrooper (a Green Beret) conducts a high-altitude low-opening military freefall jump with an MK–54 SADM, part of the Green Light Teams of the Cold War.

1 History

In the 1950s, the Soviet Union’s military capabilities exceeded those of the United States and its NATO allies. People around the globe feared that the Cold War was on the brink of “turning hot,” and lived in fear of a widespread nuclear conflict.

US and Soviet Union leaders, however, imagined military scenarios with limited use of nuclear devices on tactical levels. This fostered the development of portable nuclear weapons.

The US developed the first man-portable SADM, the B-54, in the 1960s. Weighing approximately 26.5 KG (58.5 pounds), and measuring 45cm (18 inch) in height, the B-54 was designed for quick deployment and portability. The size allowed it to fit into a large rucksack. Target areas for “backpack nukes” were in Eastern Europe, Iran, and North Korea. The devices were pre-positioned in countries adjacent to their targets for quick forward deployment. [source]

Green Light teams consisted of specially selected soldiers from various branches of the military, including Army Special Forces, Navy SEALs, and the Marine Corps. As such, they already had special forces training. [source, source]

SADMs were designed as tactical weapons and as such had a smaller explosive power compared to strategic nuclear bombs, like the one dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. SADMs were modified to different “strengths,” but most data suggests a common explosive yield of 1 kiloton of TNT. In comparison, the Hiroshima bomb, known as “Little Boy,” had an explosive yield equivalent to about 15 kilotons of TNT. Fortunately, SADMs never saw combat use the Green Light Teams program was abandoned by the end of the Cold War. [source, source]

After the program became public, some NATO members, such as Germany, pressured the United States to remove the devices from their soil. [source]

In 1997, reports indicated that the Soviet Union possessed similar portable “suitcase nukes.” [source]

Carrying case for the SADM. The case was waterproof and doubled as a housing for underwater emplacement.

2 Mission set

The primary mission of Green Light Teams was to use SADMs against enemy targets behind the front lines in case of an armed conflict. This included supply lines, communication centers, tunnels, bridges, mountain passes, dams, canals, ports, railroad hubs, and oil facilities across the Warsaw Pact, North Korea, and later Iran. The goal was to slow the advances of enemy forces. [source, source]

Military planners envisioned the use of SADMs within a strategic scenario in which a limited nuclear exchange could occur amid larger conventional combat operations. By employing tactical nuclear weapons, the US hoped to have a response that would prevent a full-scale nuclear war or other significant conventional military escalations. The impetus behind such planning was a perceived need for a quick, but strong response against any Soviet aggression. It allowed for more flexibility in military responses, adding a “third option” to a potential defeat against a superior force or a (potentially suicidal) nuclear exchange. [source, source]

US nuclear doctrine prescribed that no single individual can have means to employ a nuclear weapon on their own. Thus, teams consisted of at least two. The detonation code was split between the two Green Light operators, with both parts needed to start the countdown. [source]

In case of capture by enemy forces, Green Light Teams were prepared to destroy the SADM with conventional explosives. This would prevent a detonation at the cost of scattering nuclear waste, not unlike a radiological dispersion device. [source]

The soft nylon carrying bag for SADMs.

3 Training

The training of Green Light Teams was a highly specialized and intense process. It was designed to prepare soldiers for the unique challenges of deploying SADMs. Recruits underwent rigorous selection and training over the course of a week at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. It included eight to twelve hours of classroom and field training daily with a focus on nuclear safety protocols, mission planning, and device handling. They also engaged in exercises that simulated real-world scenarios for insertion – scuba diving, kayaking, parachuting, land navigation, and skiing. Team members carried dummy SADMs that were identical to real ones (minus the nuclear material) during training in diverse terrains. [source, source, source]

Additionally, training included disguising and burying the SADM to make detection more difficult. Disguises could look like beer kegs, trash cans, or mailboxes. Some operators received language training and trained to dress like ordinary citizens of a target country to blend in. Training was done in pairs, but deployment teams ranged between six and ten operators. [source]

After their training, operators were subject to regular follow-up training and evaluations to maintain their fitness in handling nuclear weapons. [source]

SADM carrying case.

3.1 Operational Challenges

Despite their intensive training, Green Light operators would face tremendous risks and challenges, if ever deployed. The most significant risk related to carrying nuclear weapons into hostile territory without support of friendly forces. Their only support were weapons and supplies hidden across Eastern Europe and marked on special maps. [source, source, source]

During training, instructors told that operators have about 30 minutes to leave the blast radius. However, many team members expressed skepticism about their chances of survival if discovered or if their mission failed. SADMs were equipped with mechanical timers, which became less accurate the longer they were set for. They could potentially detonate up to eight minutes early or up to 13 minutes late. Operators were often expected to protect the charged device from detection, which necessarily involved some operators to remain in closer proximity. In the event of a detonation, beyond the damage caused by the blast, casualties were predicted to be high due to radioactive fallout. Also, mission scenarios were to operate without support from friendly forces and command structures. Hence, many operators viewed their operations as “suicide missions”. [source, source, source]

Green Light operator parachuting with SADM during training. [Image source]

4 Conclusion

Although Green Light Teams never deployed on real combat missions, their existence provides a unique perspective on a time when all military options were on the table. They showcase the unique lengths to which the US military was willing to go to prepare for a potential large-scale conflict.

The establishment of these special teams to carry tactical nuclear weapons converges the realms of special operations and nuclear warfare. Their high-level readiness marked the level of military and political tension present during the Cold War and by the threat posed by nuclear weapons.

While modern delivery systems make human “couriers” largely obsolete, the looming threat of tactical nuclear weapons remains real as they lower the threshold of nuclear weapon use without the fear of mutually assured destruction. Both the US and Russia deploy their tactical weapons abroad, in Europe, but other countries–such as Pakistan–base their tactical devices within their own borders and continue to develop such delivery systems for use against nearby threats. [source]

5 Additional resources

Declassified training film released by the Sandia National Lab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zBhtFFkUDI&t
SADM Delivery By Parachutist/Swimmer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zBhtFFkUDI&t=33s

greydynamics.com · by Artem K. · March 1, 2025

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

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