​Quotes of the Day:

“Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices – just recognize them.”

– Edward R. Murrow

"Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on."

– Samuel Butler

"If the pen is mightier than the sword then words are weapons and we must learn to wield them well."

– G.K. Chesterton

1. The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans

2. Top Trump Officials Debated War Plans on Unclassified Chat Shared With Journalist

3. What the Trump War-Plan Chat Reveals

4. ANALYSIS: Why were U.S. War plans sent to a reporter?

5. Steve Witkoff Takes the Kremlin’s Side

6. Pentagon’s use of commercial telecoms draw scrutiny after Chinese breaches

7. Still ‘Raging Against the Machines’: Preventive Defense in the Age of Social Media Platforms

8. Russia and Ukraine Hold U.S.-Mediated Talks: What to Know

9. How a Cheap Drone Punctured Chernobyl’s 40,000 Ton Shield

10. Is Russia an Adversary or a Future Partner? Trump’s Aides May Have to Decide.

11. DOGE’s Real Challenge in the Pentagon Isn’t Slashing the Workforce, It’s Boosting Productivity

12. How China Beat Out the U.S. to Become the Top Player in Rare-Earths Refining

13. Concerns about espionage rise as Trump and Musk fire thousands of federal workers

14. Trump’s Advisers Are Divided on Iran. Which Way Is the President Leaning?

15. Innovating Under Fire: Lessons from Ukraine’s Frontline Drone Workshops

16. China Has Already Remade the International System

17. Ukraine will need major rebuilding when war ends − here’s why the US isn’t likely to invest in its recovery with a new Marshall Plan

18.  Funding for R&D isn’t a gift to academia By Todd Young and Matt Pottinger

19. F-47 Was Born Out Of Secret X-Planes Built By Both Boeing And Lockheed

20. China’s Tech Triple Play Threatens U.S. National Security

21. A Call to Restore U.S. Military Medical Supremacy

22. A New Asian Bloc in the Making?

23. What should come after DEI? PFJ.

1. The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans

​Truth is stranger than fiction. Please go to the link to view the screenshots.

Like Mr. Goldberg, I think in this day and age most of us would have thought this was a phishing attack or some kind of disinformation.

So much to parse from this. But what strikes me is that this chat thread reveals a lot about the thinking of these officials. It is abundantly clear how they see themselves, the US, and Europe. And at their core they are truly transactional.  

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans

U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.

By Jeffrey Goldberg

The Atlantic · by Jeffrey Goldberg · March 24, 2025

The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.

I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.

This is going to require some explaining.

The story technically begins shortly after the Hamas invasion of southern Israel, in October 2023. The Houthis—an Iran-backed terrorist organization whose motto is “God is great, death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews, victory to Islam”—soon launched attacks on Israel and on international shipping, creating havoc for global trade. Throughout 2024, the Biden administration was ineffective in countering these Houthi attacks; the incoming Trump administration promised a tougher response.

This is where Pete Hegseth and I come in.

On Tuesday, March 11, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz. Signal is an open-source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering. I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. I did not assume, however, that the request was from the actual Michael Waltz. I have met him in the past, and though I didn’t find it particularly strange that he might be reaching out to me, I did think it somewhat unusual, given the Trump administration’s contentious relationship with journalists—and Trump’s periodic fixation on me specifically. It immediately crossed my mind that someone could be masquerading as Waltz in order to somehow entrap me. It is not at all uncommon these days for nefarious actors to try to induce journalists to share information that could be used against them.

I accepted the connection request, hoping that this was the actual national security adviser, and that he wanted to chat about Ukraine, or Iran, or some other important matter.

Two days later—Thursday—at 4:28 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Signal chat group. It was called the “Houthi PC small group.”

A message to the group, from “Michael Waltz,” read as follows: “Team – establishing a principles [sic] group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours. My deputy Alex Wong is pulling together a tiger team at deputies/agency Chief of Staff level following up from the meeting in the Sit Room this morning for action items and will be sending that out later this evening.”

The message continued, “Pls provide the best staff POC from your team for us to coordinate with over the next couple days and over the weekend. Thx.”

The term principals committee generally refers to a group of the senior-most national-security officials, including the secretaries of defense, state, and the treasury, as well as the director of the CIA. It should go without saying—but I’ll say it anyway—that I have never been invited to a White House principals-committee meeting, and that, in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app.

One minute later, a person identified only as “MAR”—the secretary of state is Marco Antonio Rubio—wrote, “Mike Needham for State,” apparently designating the current counselor of the State Department as his representative. At that same moment, a Signal user identified as “JD Vance” wrote, “Andy baker for VP.” One minute after that, “TG” (presumably Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, or someone masquerading as her) wrote, “Joe Kent for DNI.” Nine minutes later, “Scott B”—apparently Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, or someone spoofing his identity, wrote, “Dan Katz for Treasury.” At 4:53 p.m., a user called “Pete Hegseth” wrote, “Dan Caldwell for DoD.” And at 6:34 p.m., “Brian” wrote “Brian McCormack for NSC.” One more person responded: “John Ratcliffe” wrote at 5:24 p.m. with the name of a CIA official to be included in the group. I am not publishing that name, because that person is an active intelligence officer.

The principals had apparently assembled. In all, 18 individuals were listed as members of this group, including various National Security Council officials; Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East and Ukraine negotiator; Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; and someone identified only as “S M,” which I took to stand for Stephen Miller. I appeared on my own screen only as “JG.”

That was the end of the Thursday text chain.

After receiving the Waltz text related to the “Houthi PC small group,” I consulted a number of colleagues. We discussed the possibility that these texts were part of a disinformation campaign, initiated by either a foreign intelligence service or, more likely, a media-gadfly organization, the sort of group that attempts, and sometimes succeeds, to place journalists in embarrassing positions. I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president.

The next day, things got even stranger.

At 8:05 a.m. on Friday, March 14, “Michael Waltz” texted the group: “Team, you should have a statement of conclusions with taskings per the Presidents guidance this morning in your high side inboxes.” (High side, in government parlance, refers to classified computer and communications systems.) “State and DOD, we developed suggested notification lists for regional Allies and partners. Joint Staff is sending this am a more specific sequence of events in the coming days and we will work w DOD to ensure COS, OVP and POTUS are briefed.”

At this point, a fascinating policy discussion commenced. The account labeled “JD Vance” responded at 8:16: “Team, I am out for the day doing an economic event in Michigan. But I think we are making a mistake.” (Vance was indeed in Michigan that day.) The Vance account goes on to state, “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.”

The Vance account then goes on to make a noteworthy statement, considering that the vice president has not deviated publicly from Trump’s position on virtually any issue. “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”

A person identified in Signal as “Joe Kent” (Trump’s nominee to run the National Counterterrorism Center is named Joe Kent), wrote at 8:22, “There is nothing time sensitive driving the time line. We’ll have the exact same options in a month.”

Then, at 8:26 a.m., a message landed in my Signal app from the user “John Ratcliffe.” The message contained information that might be interpreted as related to actual and current intelligence operations.

At 8:27, a message arrived from the “Pete Hegseth” account. “VP: I understand your concerns – and fully support you raising w/ POTUS. Important considerations, most of which are tough to know how they play out (economy, Ukraine peace, Gaza, etc). I think messaging is going to be tough no matter what – nobody knows who the Houthis are – which is why we would need to stay focused on: 1) Biden failed & 2) Iran funded.”

The Hegseth message goes on to state, “Waiting a few weeks or a month does not fundamentally change the calculus. 2 immediate risks on waiting: 1) this leaks, and we look indecisive; 2) Israel takes an action first – or Gaza cease fire falls apart – and we don’t get to start this on our own terms. We can manage both. We are prepared to execute, and if I had final go or no go vote, I believe we should. This [is] not about the Houthis. I see it as two things: 1) Restoring Freedom of Navigation, a core national interest; and 2) Reestablish deterrence, which Biden cratered. But, we can easily pause. And if we do, I will do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC”—operations security. “I welcome other thoughts.”

A few minutes later, the “Michael Waltz” account posted a lengthy note about trade figures, and the limited capabilities of European navies. “Whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes. Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.”

The account identified as “JD Vance” addressed a message at 8:45 to @Pete Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” (The administration has argued that America’s European allies benefit economically from the U.S. Navy’s protection of international shipping lanes.)

The user identified as Hegseth responded three minutes later: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.”

At this point, the previously silent “S M” joined the conversation. “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”

A screenshot from the Signal group shows debate over the president’s views ahead of the attack

That message from “S M”—presumably President Trump’s confidant Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff, or someone playing Stephen Miller—effectively shut down the conversation. The last text of the day came from “Pete Hegseth,” who wrote at 9:46 a.m., “Agree.”

After reading this chain, I recognized that this conversation possessed a high degree of verisimilitude. The texts, in their word choice and arguments, sounded as if they were written by the people who purportedly sent them, or by a particularly adept AI text generator. I was still concerned that this could be a disinformation operation, or a simulation of some sort. And I remained mystified that no one in the group seemed to have noticed my presence. But if it was a hoax, the quality of mimicry and the level of foreign-policy insight were impressive.

It was the next morning, Saturday, March 15, when this story became truly bizarre.

At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” posted in Signal a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.

The only person to reply to the update from Hegseth was the person identified as the vice president. “I will say a prayer for victory,” Vance wrote. (Two other users subsequently added prayer emoji.)

According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. eastern time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city.

I went back to the Signal channel. At 1:48, “Michael Waltz” had provided the group an update. Again, I won’t quote from this text, except to note that he described the operation as an “amazing job.” A few minutes later, “John Ratcliffe” wrote, “A good start.” Not long after, Waltz responded with three emoji: a fist, an American flag, and fire. Others soon joined in, including “MAR,” who wrote, “Good Job Pete and your team!!,” and “Susie Wiles,” who texted, “Kudos to all – most particularly those in theater and CENTCOM! Really great. God bless.” “Steve Witkoff” responded with five emoji: two hands-praying, a flexed bicep, and two American flags. “TG” responded, “Great work and effects!” The after-action discussion included assessments of damage done, including the likely death of a specific individual. The Houthi-run Yemeni health ministry reported that at least 53 people were killed in the strikes, a number that has not been independently verified.

A screenshot from the Signal group shows reactions to the strikes

On Sunday, Waltz appeared on ABC’s This Week and contrasted the strikes with the Biden administration’s more hesitant approach. “These were not kind of pinprick, back-and-forth—what ultimately proved to be feckless attacks,” he said. “This was an overwhelming response that actually targeted multiple Houthi leaders and took them out.”

The Signal chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly real. Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Signal group, understanding that this would trigger an automatic notification to the group’s creator, “Michael Waltz,” that I had left. No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there. And I received no subsequent questions about why I left—or, more to the point, who I was.

Earlier today, I emailed Waltz and sent him a message on his Signal account. I also wrote to Pete Hegseth, John Ratcliffe, Tulsi Gabbard, and other officials. In an email, I outlined some of my questions: Is the “Houthi PC small group” a genuine Signal thread? Did they know that I was included in this group? Was I (on the off chance) included on purpose? If not, who did they think I was? Did anyone realize who I was when I was added, or when I removed myself from the group? Do senior Trump-administration officials use Signal regularly for sensitive discussions? Do the officials believe that the use of such a channel could endanger American personnel?

Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security Council, responded two hours later, confirming the veracity of the Signal group. “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” Hughes wrote. “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security.”

I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.

Conceivably, Waltz, by coordinating a national-security-related action over Signal, may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information, according to several national-security lawyers interviewed by my colleague Shane Harris for this story. Harris asked them to consider a hypothetical scenario in which a senior U.S. official creates a Signal thread for the express purpose of sharing information with Cabinet officials about an active military operation. He did not show them the actual Signal messages or tell them specifically what had occurred.

All of these lawyers said that a U.S. official should not establish a Signal thread in the first place. Information about an active operation would presumably fit the law’s definition of “national defense” information. The Signal app is not approved by the government for sharing classified information. The government has its own systems for that purpose. If officials want to discuss military activity, they should go into a specially designed space known as a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF—most Cabinet-level national-security officials have one installed in their home—or communicate only on approved government equipment, the lawyers said. Normally, cellphones are not permitted inside a SCIF, which suggests that as these officials were sharing information about an active military operation, they could have been moving around in public. Had they lost their phones, or had they been stolen, the potential risk to national security would have been severe.

Hegseth, Ratcliffe, and other Cabinet-level officials presumably would have the authority to declassify information, and several of the national-security lawyers noted that the hypothetical officials on the Signal chain might claim that they had declassified the information they shared. But this argument rings hollow, they cautioned, because Signal is not an authorized venue for sharing information of such a sensitive nature, regardless of whether it has been stamped “top secret” or not.

There was another potential problem: Waltz set some of the messages in the Signal group to disappear after one week, and some after four. That raises questions about whether the officials may have violated federal records law: Text messages about official acts are considered records that should be preserved.

“Under the records laws applicable to the White House and federal agencies, all government employees are prohibited from using electronic-messaging applications such as Signal for official business, unless those messages are promptly forwarded or copied to an official government account,” Jason R. Baron, a professor at the University of Maryland and the former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration, told Harris.

“Intentional violations of these requirements are a basis for disciplinary action. Additionally, agencies such as the Department of Defense restrict electronic messaging containing classified information to classified government networks and/or networks with government-approved encrypted features,” Baron said.

Several former U.S. officials told Harris and me that they had used Signal to share unclassified information and to discuss routine matters, particularly when traveling overseas without access to U.S. government systems. But they knew never to share classified or sensitive information on the app, because their phones could have been hacked by a foreign intelligence service, which would have been able to read the messages on the devices. It is worth noting that Donald Trump, as a candidate for president (and as president), repeatedly and vociferously demanded that Hillary Clinton be imprisoned for using a private email server for official business when she was secretary of state. (It is also worth noting that Trump was indicted in 2023 for mishandling classified documents, but the charges were dropped after his election.)

Waltz and the other Cabinet-level officials were already potentially violating government policy and the law simply by texting one another about the operation. But when Waltz added a journalist—presumably by mistake—to his principals committee, he created new security and legal issues. Now the group was transmitting information to someone not authorized to receive it. That is the classic definition of a leak, even if it was unintentional, and even if the recipient of the leak did not actually believe it was a leak until Yemen came under American attack.

All along, members of the Signal group were aware of the need for secrecy and operations security. In his text detailing aspects of the forthcoming attack on Houthi targets, Hegseth wrote to the group—which, at the time, included me—“We are currently clean on OPSEC.”

Shane Harris contributed reporting.

The Atlantic · by Jeffrey Goldberg · March 24, 2025

2. Top Trump Officials Debated War Plans on Unclassified Chat Shared With Journalist

​Just a reminder for all those who use Signal (as I do) that it is not a secure communications platform. It may be relatively more secure than others but it is not the same as secure government communications It certainly will not protect against state intelligence organizations,

Top Trump Officials Debated War Plans on Unclassified Chat Shared With Journalist

Texts on Signal encrypted messaging service revealed disagreements about whether to strike Houthis in Yemen

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/trump-us-war-plans-atlantic-editor-c1589558?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Michael R. Gordon

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, Nancy A. Youssef

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 and Alexander Ward

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Updated March 24, 2025 10:56 pm ET

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The use of the nongovernment messaging service Signal comes as the Trump administration has said it is trying to protect classified information by clamping down on leaks. Photo: Samuel Corum/Bloomberg News

Senior Trump administration national-security officials held detailed discussions of highly classified U.S. plans to launch airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi militants using a nongovernment messaging service and mistakenly included a journalist in the conversation, U.S. officials said Monday. 

The chats over the encrypted Signal app spanned days and included specific information about weapons, targets and timing used in the attack, according to the Atlantic magazine, whose editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently included in the discussion and who disclosed the texts. 

National-security experts and former officials say that use of Signal for conducting classified discussions about imminent military action was a serious breach of security procedures governing the handling of sensitive defense information.

It also opened a window into policy differences within the administration earlier this month.

Vice President JD Vance was skeptical of the need to strike the Houthis, who have attacked shipping in the Red Sea for over a year. Little U.S. trade passed through the Suez Canal, connecting the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, whereas “40 percent of European trade does,” he texted.

Attacking the militants, Vance argued, would benefit Europe far more than the U.S. and might lead to a spike in oil prices. “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” he said. While he would support the consensus of the top officials in the chat, Vance said, “I just hate bailing Europe out again.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and an account belonging to “S.M.,” apparently the initials of senior White House aide Stephen Miller, agreed with Vance’s criticism of Europe.

“It’s PATHETIC,” Hegseth said, though he recommended moving forward with the strikes instead of delaying the attack another month, as Vance suggested. The debate about the attack could leak, making the administration appear “indecisive,” or Israel could strike first, Hegseth said.

S.M. broached the idea of European allies and Egypt reimbursing the U.S. for the operation. “If Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what?,” S.M. texted. “If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”

Smoke billowed after this month’s U.S. strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen. Photo: Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images

After the initial wave of strikes, national security adviser Mike Waltz, who appeared to have been pivotal in organizing the Signal chat on the Houthi strikes, texted the emoji of a punch, an American flag and a flame.

Administration officials said President Trump was frustrated by the episode, and was directing his ire at Waltz. But it wasn’t immediately clear if he would move to oust his national-security adviser, the officials said.

Trump asked aides on Monday how Waltz could be so sloppy, one of the officials said.

“President Trump continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team,” including Waltz, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes confirmed the authenticity of the chat in a statement to The Wall Street Journal. He didn’t respond to questions about whether the chat ran afoul of legal procedures for handling classified information.

“The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The continuing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security,” he added.

The Signal chat group that discussed the planned strikes against the Houthis listed 18 users, including Waltz, Hegseth, Vance, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, special envoy Steve Witkoff and a user identified as “MAR,” which appeared to be Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Such conversations would normally happen in the White House Situation Room or over secure government communications networks designed for top-secret information. Signal is a free app run by a U.S. nonprofit.

The use of the Signal chat comes as the Trump administration has said it is trying to protect classified information by clamping down on leaks.

“I never sent any classified information on anything other than a secure U.S. government system. There is no justification whatsoever—none—to use any nongovernmental system,” said John Bolton, Trump’s third national-security adviser during the president’s first term. “This is appalling.” 

A former senior intelligence official said that such a breach would customarily lead to an investigation and punitive action.

President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth discussed a defense program at the White House on Friday. Photo: Yuri Gripas/Press Pool

Former Trump officials argued it was an inadvertent but harmless error to put a reporter onto the sensitive text chain.

“The media will turn this into a story of incompetence or inexperience, which it is not. In the past, Signal has been as secure as many of the so-called top-secret encrypted systems so I would not criticize its use,” said Gordon Sondland, Trump’s ambassador to the European Union during the president’s first term.

Hegseth, speaking to reporters in Hawaii Monday, criticized Goldberg as “discredited” and said that “nobody was texting war plans and that’s all I have to say about that.”

Hegseth has made the pursuit of leakers and what he has described as misinformation a focus early in his tenure at the Pentagon. On Friday, Hegseth’s office released a one-page memo vowing to use polygraphs to track down “unauthorized disclosures” of sensitive information related to the Pentagon. 

Two hours before the strikes began, Hegseth sent the group sensitive information about the strike plan, including “weapons packages, targets, and timing,” the magazine said.

“I will say a prayer for victory,” Vance wrote in one text. Two other administration officials responded with prayer emojis, the article said.

Goldberg wrote that he was initially dubious that the Signal chat group he was mistakenly invited to join was authentic. “I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.”

The article didn’t include the operational details on the strike and withheld the name of a CIA official, Goldberg said.

After reaching out to the White House, which confirmed the existence of the Signal chat group, Goldberg published his article on Monday, more than a week after the strikes began.

The administration officials discussed the need for protecting secrecy about the Yemen operation in their texts. After the initial wave of strikes, Hegseth told the group: “We are currently clean on OPSEC,” an acronym for operational security.

Trump’s first campaign for the White House included repeated criticism of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for using a personal email account to receive official communications, including some that contained classified information.

Waltz criticized the Justice Department two years ago for not investigating his predecessor, Jake Sullivan, for sending what Waltz said were classified messages in 2016 to Clinton’s email address.

National security adviser Mike Waltz was among the officials listed as part of the Signal chat group. Photo: Chris Kleponis/Press Pool

Sen. Jack Reed (D., R.I.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, described the report as “one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) dismissed questions about whether Waltz should face consequences for discussing the Yemen operation on an unclassified chat group that included a journalist. “Clearly I think the administration has acknowledged it was a mistake and they’ll tighten up and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York criticized the administration’s use of Signal. “Classified information should not be transmitted on unsecured channels—and certainly not to those without security clearances, including reporters. Period,” he wrote on X.

The U.S. has hit Houthi targets every day since the initial March 15 attack. U.S. strikes Monday targeted underground storage facilities, missile systems, drone launch platforms, and control centers used by Houthi and foreign military experts, according to local reports.

The U.S.-led military campaign is intended to stop the Yemen rebels from launching attacks on commercial and military ships transiting the Red Sea and nearby waters. The Houthi attacks, which began in late 2023 in response to the war in Gaza, have severely reduced transit through what was once one of the biggest commercial shipping routes.

Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com, Nancy A. Youssef at nancy.youssef@wsj.com and Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

Signal is a nonprofit messaging service. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said it was a commercial messaging service. (Corrected on March 24)

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

Appeared in the March 25, 2025, print edition as 'Top U.S. Officials Discussed Plans For War in Unclassified Group Chat'.

3. What the Trump War-Plan Chat Reveals

​This incident provides deep insight into the officials foreign policy and national security views. They are certainly unlike those of more "conventional" or "traditional" administrations. 

The Signal discussion thread provides more insight into their thinking than any media or think tank analysis could provide.

It provides insights into the thinking of former E4s, O4s, O5s, and O6s (as well as a former CW3) and how they apply their formative experiences to national security. 

What the Trump War-Plan Chat Reveals

Waltz and Hegseth backed the boss and U.S. leadership. Not so Vance.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/yemen-houthi-group-chat-jd-vance-mike-waltz-pete-hegseth-stephen-miller-donald-trump-d8f2f635?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

By The Editorial Board

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March 24, 2025 5:30 pm ET

President Donald Trump speaks alongside Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in the Oval Office on Marh 21. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

President Trump claims to run the most transparent Administration in history, but maybe not like this. His team somehow added a journalist to a high-level Yemen war-planning chat conducted over Signal, the commercial messaging app, with operational details about targets, weapons and attack sequencing.

A National Security Council spokesman confirmed the accuracy of the story in the Atlantic on Monday: “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”

The news is that the characters played to their public type. National-security adviser Mike Waltz was a voice for U.S. leadership—and for carrying out the President’s policy. Vice President JD Vance was a voice for U.S. retreat even when Mr. Trump directed otherwise.

“As I heard it, the president was clear: green light” to take on the Houthis, wrote “S M,” presumed to be Mr. Trump’s senior aide Stephen Miller. Why should Tehran’s proxy get away, as under Joe Biden, with shooting at Navy ships and aircraft and blocking critical waterways for everyone but Iran, Russia and China?

The key exchange began March 14, a day before U.S. strikes on Yemen, when the Signal user “Michael Waltz” wrote, “Team, you should have a statement of conclusions with taskings per the Presidents guidance.” But not all preferred to take that guidance. “I think we are making a mistake,” the user “JD Vance” replied. “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez,” the canal blocked by Houthi fire, while “40 percent of European trade does.”

He continued, “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices.” In sum, “there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”

This counsel of delay—waiting for economic news that may never come—was echoed by Joe Kent, a noted isolationist whom Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had named in the chat as her point of contact.

In reply, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pointed out risks of waiting, stressed Iran’s role and made the case for the operation. “I see it as two things,” he wrote: “1) Restoring Freedom of Navigation, a core national interest; and 2) Reestablish deterrence, which Biden cratered.” Mr. Trump later made similar points in public.

This reflects well on Mr. Hegseth, though it’s notable that he named Dan Caldwell as his point of contact. Mr. Caldwell comes from the isolationist Koch network, which Mr. Trump said he wanted out of his Administration.

Mr. Waltz explained the damage to global trade and the limits of Europe’s navies. “Whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes,” he wrote.

Mr. Vance finally conceded to reality. “I just hate bailing Europe out again,” he wrote. Mr. Hegseth agreed: “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike [Waltz] is correct.” The President’s policy carried the day. Mr. Trump now knows which of his deputies tried to block it and which tried to carry it out.

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Free Expression: Great-power theory would relieve the U.S. of some burdens, but poses risks to the national interest Photo: Xie Huanchi/Sergei Bulkin/CNP/Zuma Press

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

Appeared in the March 25, 2025, print edition as 'What the Trump War-Plan Chat Reveals'.

4. ANALYSIS: Why were U.S. War plans sent to a reporter?

Enquiring minds want to know.

​Excerpts:

There are two other key questions.

First, why were details of top-secret war plans being discussed on a commercial chat application between the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of State, the Director of National Intelligence, and the CIA Director?

Signal is really good at end-to-end encryption, but it by no means is as good as JWICS (Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System), which handles "Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information."

Number two. Did the invitation to Goldberg really come from Waltz or some nefarious entity?

Many in Washington are deeply worried.

ANALYSIS: Why were U.S. War plans sent to a reporter?

https://jjgreenjr.substack.com/p/analysis-why-were-us-war-plans-sent?utm

JJ Green

Mar 25, 2025

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of the Atlantic, in a stunning exposé, revealed that he got advanced notice of the Trump administration’s plans to attack the Houthis on March 15th.

The operation began at approximately 1:44 pm. But Goldberg says he surprisingly, at about 11:44 am, began getting group chat messages with explicit details about the plans.

According to Goldberg, the invitation to join the chat came from National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.

How did that happen?

That’s the question I asked National Security Council Spokesman Brian Hughes.

This is what he said.

“At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security.”

Details included weapons that were used, what the targets were, and the timing of the attacks.

There are two other key questions.

First, why were details of top-secret war plans being discussed on a commercial chat application between the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of State, the Director of National Intelligence, and the CIA Director?

Signal is really good at end-to-end encryption, but it by no means is as good as JWICS (Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System), which handles "Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information."

Number two. Did the invitation to Goldberg really come from Waltz or some nefarious entity?

Many in Washington are deeply worried.

5. Steve Witkoff Takes the Kremlin’s Side

​It sure seems like it.

The Wall Street Journal is expressing more criticism of the administration than might be expected.

Steve Witkoff Takes the Kremlin’s Side

Trump’s favorite negotiator falls for Russian talking points.

By The Editorial Board

Follow

March 24, 2025 5:29 pm ET

Steve Witkoff, White House special envoy, speaks during a television interview outside the White House on March 19 Photo: Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press

Steve Witkoff, the Trump Administration’s special negotiator on Ukraine, says he’s not taking sides as he tries to mediate an end to the war Vladimir Putin started in 2022. He could have fooled us after a podcast interview this weekend in which Mr. Witkoff parroted one specious Russian talking point after another.

The biggest howler during a long podcast with Tucker Carlson—we’ve struggled to narrow down the list—is Mr. Witkoff’s claim that Mr. Putin “100%” doesn’t want to overrun Europe. Mr. Witkoff suggested Russia doesn’t even want to control Ukraine, with the exception, that is, of the large areas Mr. Putin already occupies.

“Why would they want to absorb Ukraine?” he mused of the Russians. “That would be like occupying Gaza. Why do the Israelis really want to occupy Gaza for the rest of their lives? They don’t.” Does Mr. Witkoff know anything about Russian or Mr. Putin’s history?

Tell this to Georgia and Moldova, among others, and especially the Baltic states. All of these are under threat from Mr. Putin’s long-stated intention to reconstitute a Greater Russian empire, and Georgia endured an invasion and Russian land grab in 2008. Russia doesn’t need to occupy Ukraine if it can impose a Russian-friendly, authoritarian government like the one in Belarus. The Soviets dominated Eastern Europe for more than 40 years.

Another Russian talking point Mr. Witkoff has fallen for concerns the regions of eastern Ukraine Mr. Putin attempted to annex in 2014. “They’re Russian-speaking,” Mr. Witkoff said of these regions. “There have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated they want to be under Russian rule.”

Setting aside the many Ukrainians who voted with their feet by fleeing these regions for free parts of Ukraine, Mr. Witkoff thinks a referendum staged by an autocrat under military occupation means something.

Mr. Witkoff also continued the Administration’s bad habit of disparaging allies, as when he described Britain’s peacekeeping proposal for Ukraine as “a posture and a pose.” Europeans, he suggested, have a “simplistic” desire to mimic Winston Churchill. It’s more accurate to say Europeans understand what’s at stake in this major war on their doorstep. Europe will be safer if Ukraine is safe, and Washington can at least not mock allies as they finally take concrete steps to provide for their own and their neighborhood’s defense.

We can understand the need to tone down hostile rhetoric amid negotiations, but the Administration’s propensity to fall for Russian propaganda is something else. Certainly no one would accuse them of following in Churchill’s footsteps. Whether they follow in Neville Chamberlain’s will depend on what the final details are in the peace accord that Messrs. Witkoff and Trump are negotiating.

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Review and Outlook: While Donald Trump focuses on Ukraine's electrical supply, nuclear power plants and rare earth minerals, Vladimir Putin wants much bigger concessions that would cripple the country. Photo: AP/Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

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

Appeared in the March 25, 2025, print edition as 'Steve Witkoff Takes the Kremlin’s Side'.

6. Pentagon’s use of commercial telecoms draw scrutiny after Chinese breaches

Pentagon’s use of commercial telecoms draw scrutiny after Chinese breaches

defenseone.com · by Bradley Peniston

U.S. Navy / Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class David R. Krigbaum|

By Bradley Peniston

Executive Editor

March 24, 2025 05:06 PM ET

• Pentagon
• Communications
• China

The Pentagon’s inspector general is launching a three-pronged investigation into the department’s “failure to secure its unclassified telephone communications from foreign espionage,” a top IG official has informed lawmakers.

The inquest, which follows Chinese penetrations of U.S. telecommunications companies, will look at three ways the Pentagon uses unclassified commercial devices and services, Jaryd Bern, assistant inspector general for legislative affairs and communications, wrote in a March 20 letter to Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Eric Schmitt, R-Mo.

Bern wrote that the IG would first look at the Pentagon’s Spiral 4 contract vehicle for buying mobile communications devices and services—specifically, its security requirements, how well they are enforced, and vulnerabilities in the SS7 telephony protocol. After that report is completed later this year, the office will turn to the encryption of unclassified data and voice communications in collaboration tools. Finally, the office will look into the “use of end-to-end encryption for unclassified voice communications using the desktop Plain Old Telephone System,” which has been replaced by VOIP services in many but not all DOD organizations.

Wyden welcomed the inquest in a Monday statement.

“The Department of Defense knew every major wireless carrier was vulnerable to foreign hacks before it agreed to spend billions with Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. It is disgraceful that DOD failed to even require the companies to adopt minimum cybersecurity defenses or turn over copies of their 3rd party audits,” he said. “The Inspector General deserves credit for also agreeing to investigate DOD's decision to buy dangerously insecure collaboration software, such as Microsoft Teams, which does not use end-to-end encryption by default, leaving DOD communications vulnerable to foreign hacks."

The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Wyden and Schmitt had written to the DOD IG in December, urging an investigation after the China-backed Salt Typhoon effort penetrated up to 80 U.S. and foreign telecommunications providers. The breach reportedly allowed the hackers to access the communications of roughly 150 high-value targets, including people affiliated with then-President-elect Donald Trump.

Nextgov’s David DiMolfetta contributed to this report.

7. Still ‘Raging Against the Machines’: Preventive Defense in the Age of Social Media Platforms

​A controversial case study that should stimulate critical thinking:

Case Study: Internal Discord in the United States – The Fragmenting Fabric of the Union

​Conclusion:

By reapplying the Preventive Defense approach to today’s information warfare, we can forestall the growth of digital insurgency and mitigate the destabilizing effects of disinformation. Just as Perry and Carter urged the U.S. to act preemptively to secure its future in the post-Cold War world, we must now act to ensure that disinformation and social media do no further harm to undermine democratic systems and foster internal discord.

Still ‘Raging Against the Machines’: Preventive Defense in the Age of Social Media Platforms

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/03/25/still-raging-against-the-machines-preventive-defense-in-the-age-of-social-media-platforms/

by Dr. Isaiah Wilson III

|

03.25.2025 at 06:00am

As the global security environment grows more intricate in the context of compound security competition and hybrid warfare, the mechanization and information starvation phenomena continue to persist with near-equal intensity, albeit in evolved forms.

In today’s landscape, warfare is not defined solely by conventional military engagements but also by the convergence of state and non-state actors, cyber and physical domains, and military and civilian targets. Mechanized military approaches, while highly effective in traditional state-on-state conflicts, remain limited in addressing these new hybrid threats where insurgency, cyber warfare, and information operations blur the lines of battle.

The reliance on mechanization in such environments exacerbates information starvation, wherein state and military actors are often disconnected from the socio-political realities on the ground and in the digital sphere. As was evident in Iraq and Afghanistan, the inability of mechanized forces to engage directly with local populations led to the alienation of civilians—an error that has carried over into the cyber frontlines of today’s hybrid conflicts.

In this modern iteration, social media platforms, cyber disinformation campaigns, and algorithmic manipulation create a similar dynamic, where governments and security forces struggle to understand and counteract the narratives driving radicalization to insurgency.

The Problem of Mechanization in Modern Warfare

Historically, mechanized forces, developed during the industrial age, were optimized for mass movement, firepower, and survivability. These attributes, while advantageous in conventional engagements, have proven detrimental in asymmetric warfare.

Research by Jason Lyall and Isaiah Wilson III has demonstrated that mechanized militaries, which rely on advanced machinery and technology, become isolated from the populations they aim to secure​. In past conflicts, this isolation deprived these forces of the on-the-ground intelligence needed to distinguish between insurgents and civilians, leading to broad, indiscriminate tactics that alienated local populations.

Fast forward to the present, and the same disconnection is visible but has migrated to a new domain: social media platforms and information ecosystems. As governments and militaries attempt to combat hybrid warfare threats, they face the challenge of understanding and responding to complex digital insurgencies.

In many ways, the mechanized isolation of the past has been replaced by algorithmic isolation today, where information bubbles and disinformation campaigns distort public discourse and fracture societies. Just as mechanized forces once struggled to understand their human environments, today’s governments struggle to grasp the digital environments that foster extremist ideologies.

Social Media Platforms: Mechanized Machines of the Information Age

In today’s hybrid warfare context, social media platforms function as the modern “machines” of information.

These platforms, through their algorithms, create their own form of lock-in, similar to the industrial-age mechanization that once limited militaries. By prioritizing engagement over truth, platforms such as Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube exacerbate information starvation, promoting emotionally charged content that divides rather than unites. Governments, trapped by these platforms’ commercial interests and algorithms, find themselves disconnected from the very populations they seek to govern and protect.

In much the same way that mechanized military forces once isolated themselves from local populations, the dynamics of modern social media create a digital isolation that prevents governments from understanding the roots of discontent. The result is the emergence of echo chambers and filter bubbles that amplify disinformation and extremist ideologies, depriving security forces of the intelligence they need to counter growing insurgent mentalities.

Case Study: Internal Discord in the United States – The Fragmenting Fabric of the Union

Nowhere is the impact of this digital disconnection more evident than in the contemporary internal discord within the United States.

Over the past decade, the U.S. has faced a growing political and social polarization that threatens the very fabric of its “united” identity. The country has found itself increasingly divided along lines of race, class, geography, and ideology—fractures that are deepened and amplified by social media platforms.

Social media has played a pivotal role in amplifying both sides of this divide. While intended as platforms for open dialogue and exchange, algorithms designed to maximize user engagement have, in fact, exacerbated division.

Whether real or fabricated, content that provokes outrage is prioritized, creating a feedback loop that deepens ideological entrenchment.

Political figures, conspiracy theorists, and foreign actors alike have exploited these dynamics to stoke fears and heighten tensions.

The rise of movements such as QAnon, which spread conspiracy theories about government corruption and elite cabals, demonstrates the capacity of social media to rapidly disseminate disinformation and radicalize ordinary citizens. These online movements often lead to real-world actions, as seen during the January 6th Capitol insurrection in 2021, when a mob—incited by claims of a stolen election—stormed the U.S. Capitol in an unprecedented attack on American democracy.

This insurrection, a culmination of digital disinformation, highlights the fragility of the social contract within the U.S.

For months leading up to the 2020 election and its aftermath, platforms such as Facebook and YouTube acted as catalysts for disinformation campaigns, stoking claims of electoral fraud, eroding trust in democratic institutions, and encouraging violent actions. In essence, the echo chambers of social media exacerbated information starvation in reverse—feeding some populations with over-simplified, unverified, and often false narratives while starving others of truthful discourse. This resulted in a nation unable to agree on basic facts, fostering disaffection among millions of Americans who now question the legitimacy of the U.S. government itself.

The divisions in contemporary America mirror the dynamics seen in traditional insurgencies abroad. The fragmented political landscape, where extremist ideologies find fertile ground, combined with widespread mistrust of institutions, is reminiscent of how insurgencies grow in countries undergoing civil strife.

The widespread dissemination of disinformation, the absence of credible mediating voices, and the loss of a unifying national narrative have placed America on a precarious path, one where insurgent ideologies can metastasize into more frequent and larger-scale acts of domestic terrorism.

As explored in Letters to the Republic, the threat of internal division is perhaps the most pressing security challenge facing the U.S. today. The political gridlock that has paralyzed Congress, the growing influence of white nationalist groups, and the widespread alienation felt by racial and ethnic minorities are all symptoms of a deeper sickness. Social media platforms, by feeding this discontent, have acted as modern mechanizations—machines that drive information starvation and disaffection, amplifying divisions instead of bridging them.

Information Starvation: When Force Structures Obscure Truth

On 09 January 2009, the flagship journal of International Relations, International Organization (IO), published the article, “Rage Against the Machines: Explaining Outcomes in Counterinsurgency Wars,” by coauthors Dr. Jason Lyall and Dr. (and Colonel. US Army, Retired) Isaiah Wilson III.

In that study we sought to explain a peculiar phenomenon. Historically, states held the upper hand in defeating insurgencies, but by the 20th century, this advantage eroded. One key reason: the increasing mechanization of military force structures, which distanced armies from local populations, making it harder to gather reliable intelligence and apply measured responses. Lacking the ability to distinguish insurgents from civilians, modern militaries often resort to indiscriminate tactics that fuel, rather than suppress, rebellion. This phenomenon we labeled Information starvation, which describes the condition where militaries and governments are deprived of critical intelligence from local populations, preventing them from making informed decisions.

Information Starvation in the Social Media Era

This phenomenon extends beyond the battlefield. In today’s digital age, social media algorithms act as a new kind of force structure, shaping public discourse in ways that mimic mechanized warfare’s blind spots. Just as armored divisions isolate soldiers from on-the-ground realities, algorithm-driven content curation isolates societies from nuanced, fact-based discussions. By prioritizing sensationalism over substance, these digital mechanisms create a distorted information environment where truth is fragmented, context is lost, and polarization deepens.

This starvation breeds disaffection in vulnerable populations, who are bombarded with partial truths, conspiracy theories, and extremist content. These populations, who in traditional counterinsurgency theory might have been considered “fence-sitters,” now become digitally radicalized, drawn into online echo chambers that incubate insurgent ideologies, and compromising the fidelity bond between the incumbent government (the public services provider, in more generalizable terms) and the public. The insurgent of today is not necessarily armed with a rifle but may instead wield the power of disinformation, organizing through encrypted messaging platforms and employing guerrilla tactics within the digital space.

Whether in war or in governance, when institutions rely on structures that hinder accurate information flow, they risk strategic blindness—misidentifying threats, misallocating resources, and ultimately, losing legitimacy. The challenge, then, is not just about having access to data, but ensuring that systems—whether military or digital—enhance rather than obstruct the capacity for clear and accurate understanding.

From Industrial Lock-in to Algorithmic Lock-in

The industrial lock-in of mechanized forces has evolved into a new form of algorithmic lock-in, where social media companies hold enormous sway over public discourse. The reliance on these platforms for communication, political messaging, and even intelligence gathering creates vulnerabilities for governments and military forces. As was the case with mechanized armies in traditional conflicts, today’s governments are trapped by the very systems they rely on, with social media algorithms guiding public opinion and driving division rather than unity​.

The profit motives of these platforms further complicate matters. Driven by engagement metrics, platforms elevate content that is divisive or sensationalist, fueling societal fractures and inhibiting the flow of accurate, diverse information. In this way, social media platforms replicate the limitations of mechanized warfare, locking governments into ineffective strategies that fail to address the root causes of discontent and insurgency.

Addressing Digital Insurgency with Preventive Defense

A preventive defense strategy must now be reimagined for the digital age, focusing not only on physical security but also on countering the disinformation and division spread through social media platforms. Just as counterinsurgency efforts in the past required deep engagement with local communities, today’s preventive strategies must focus on engaging digital communities in meaningful, sustained ways.

The concept of Preventive Defense, initially conceived by William Perry and Ashton Carter in the aftermath of the Cold War, focused on preempting emerging threats before they evolved into full-scale crises.

Perry and Carter argued that the absence of a clear existential threat, like the Soviet Union during the Cold War, presented an opportunity for the U.S. to prioritize proactive measures aimed at preventing the rise of new dangers such as nuclear proliferation, regional instability, and terrorism. Their strategy centered on using diplomacy, economic influence, and defense partnerships to avert threats before they materialized​.

This framework of Preventive Defense can be adapted to counter today’s digital insurgencies and the threats posed by disinformation and social media-driven division. In the digital age, social media platforms have become breeding grounds for radical ideologies, undermining social cohesion and enabling hybrid warfare by state and non-state actors alike. As a result, Preventive Defense must now focus on addressing information warfare, cyberattacks, and digital insurgency.

A reimagined Preventive Defense for the digital age would involve the following strategic pillars:

1. Proactive Digital Engagement and Diplomacy
2. Much like Perry and Carter emphasized diplomatic engagement with emerging powers such as post-Soviet Russia and China, today’s Preventive Defense must include early digital engagement. Governments should work alongside tech companies, civil society, and global institutions to establish trust and transparency in the digital space. By engaging in “track-two” dialogues with both private platforms and international partners, governments can help shape digital norms, ensure freedom of speech, and prevent the unchecked spread of extremism​.
3. Fostering Digital Literacy and Public Resilience
4. In line with the need to preempt threats, digital resilience must be built into the educational infrastructure of modern societies. Just as Perry and Carter focused on preventing nuclear and biological threats through public education and international cooperation, today’s defense must prioritize digital literacy at all levels of society. This means empowering citizens to recognize disinformation, engage critically with online content, and become more resilient against manipulation. Governments and tech companies should collaborate to create public awareness campaigns and educational programs that promote media literacy.
5. Cyber Partnerships and Cooperative Defense
6. Perry and Carter’s Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program targeted the dismantling of Cold War-era weapons before they could fall into the hands of rogue actors.Similarly, Preventive Defense today must involve creating public-private partnerships to monitor and mitigate the risks posed by cyber weapons, disinformation networks, and extremist groups online. This could include cross-border collaborations between governments and tech firms to ensure real-time identification of disinformation campaigns, bot networks, and algorithmic transparency.
7. Algorithmic Accountability and Regulation
8. Perry and Carter advocated for a blend of diplomacy and defense measures to counter potential threats, including nuclear proliferation and terrorism. In the digital context, similar measures must be applied to regulate social media algorithms that prioritize sensationalism and divisive content over truthful information. Governments should implement algorithmic transparency requirements, forcing platforms to disclose how content is curated and take accountability for the spread of harmful content. Additionally, incentivizing the creation of algorithms that promote accurate, diverse, and constructive content could help prevent the escalation of digital insurgency.
9. Preemptive Legal Frameworks and Norm Setting
10. To counter emerging digital threats, legal frameworks must be established that reflect the complexities of modern hybrid warfare. Perry and Carter’s strategy urged the U.S. to shape international norms around weapons of mass destruction. Similarly, today’s Preventive Defense should focus on building international legal norms around cyber operations, disinformation, and data privacy, while also safeguarding civil liberties and democratic principles.

By reapplying the Preventive Defense approach to today’s information warfare, we can forestall the growth of digital insurgency and mitigate the destabilizing effects of disinformation. Just as Perry and Carter urged the U.S. to act preemptively to secure its future in the post-Cold War world, we must now act to ensure that disinformation and social media do no further harm to undermine democratic systems and foster internal discord.

Tags: algorithms, digitial insurgency, Information age, polarization, social media

About The Author

• 
  
• Dr. Isaiah Wilson III
• Isaiah (Ike) Wilson III earned his PhD in Government (Intl Relations and American Politics) from Cornell University and is a professor of practice with the School of Politics & Global Affairs at Arizona State University (ASU). He is president emeritus of the Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), a partner with Gainful Solutions Ventures Inc., and president and CEO of Wilson W.i.S.E. Consulting LLC, which provides advisory services on strategy and operational planning, technology & teaming integration, transitions (change) leadership coaching and organizational re-design and innovation. A decorated combat veteran with combat tours in the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and direct strategic and operational planning and advisory service to six (6) 4-Star Commanders, three Secretaries of Defense, numerous ambassadorial chiefs of mission, and the presidents of three foreign country partner nations, Wilson’s civil-military career has spanned troop-leading, staff-planning, strategic advisory and teaching assignments. He has published extensively on organizational politics, civil-military relations, national security (defense) policy, and grand strategy. His book, Thinking beyond War: Civil-Military Relations and Why America Fails to Win the Peace, along with his service on the 2003 Operation Iraqi Freedom Study Group, helped to increase public attention to the problems and errors in U.S. post-war planning for the Iraq War and sparked governmental movement toward policy reforms. He founded the West Point Grand Strategy Program and has executive directed, taught, and conducted research at several top-tier and top-ranked colleges and universities, including Yale, Columbia, West Point, and the National War College. He is a Life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Senior Future Security Initiative Fellow with New America.

8. Russia and Ukraine Hold U.S.-Mediated Talks: What to Know

​Excerpts:

Mr. Witkoff said on Wednesday in an interview with Bloomberg News that Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin were “likely” to meet in Saudi Arabia within weeks. American officials will also probably continue talks with their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts in the Middle East to discuss details of a limited truce.

But the foundations of the diplomatic process have been wobbly, analysts said, with Moscow and Kyiv ready to continue fighting.

“Both sides still believe that they can continue the war regardless of the American position,” said Dmitry Kuznets, a military analyst with the Russian news outlet Meduza, which operates from Latvia after being outlawed by the Kremlin.

He added, “Moscow’s and Kyiv’s visions of what an agreement could look like are still infinitely far from each other.”

Russia and Ukraine Hold U.S.-Mediated Talks: What to Know

American envoys talked with Russian officials on Monday, a day after meeting with a Ukrainian delegation. The initial discussions were expected to focus on halting attacks on energy facilities.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/23/world/europe/russia-ukraine-truce-talks.html

A building in Sloviansk, eastern Ukraine, on Wednesday after a Russian drone strike.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

By Ivan Nechepurenko and Constant Méheut

Ivan Nechepurenko reported from Tbilisi, Georgia, and Constant Méheut from Kyiv, Ukraine.

Published March 23, 2025

Updated March 24, 2025

Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Russian officials held a round of talks with representatives of the United States on Monday in Saudi Arabia, following a similar meeting a day earlier between American and Ukrainian delegations.

The talks are aimed at ironing out details of a possible limited cease-fire, in what could be a crucial step toward a full cessation of hostilities in Russia’s war with Ukraine.

Russian state news agencies said that the meeting between the U.S. and Russian delegations lasted more than 12 hours. The two sides are expected to publish a joint statement on Tuesday, the news agencies reported.

Here’s what you need to know:

• What’s on the agenda
• The Russian delegation
• The Ukrainian delegation
• Moscow’s position
• Kyiv’s position
• What’s next?

What’s on the agenda

The meetings in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, were expected to focus the details of a tentative agreement between Russia and Ukraine to temporarily halt strikes on energy infrastructure.

Last week, the countries traded accusations of attacks against each other’s energy infrastructure, highlighting the lack of trust between the two countries and how tenuous any deal could be.

Rustem Umerov, the Ukrainian defense minister, said his delegation’s talks on Sunday had lasted about five hours. “The discussion was productive and focused — we addressed key points including energy,” he wrote on social media, without offering details.

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said on Monday that the Russian delegation also would discuss shipping in the Black Sea and the restoration of a grain deal agreed to in 2022 that allowed millions of tons of Ukrainian grain to be exported. Russia withdrew from the agreement in 2023, saying that Western sanctions were severely limiting its own ability to export agricultural products.

President Volodymyr Zelensky had said that Ukraine would prepare a list of infrastructure that could be included in the cease-fire agreement. He added that a third party would have to monitor the cease-fire and suggested that the United States could do so.

Serhii Leshchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian president’s office, said that the delegation from Kyiv would hold additional discussions with U.S. officials on Monday, after the Moscow-Washington talks. But he cautioned against expecting an imminent agreement, telling Ukrainian news media that “negotiations are usually not concluded in a single day; they sometimes take months.”

Image

Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special envoy to Ukraine, in Kyiv, the capital, last month.Credit...Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press

Steven Witkoff, whom President Trump has tapped to be his personal envoy to Mr. Putin, has said that the ultimate goal of the talks is a 30-day full cease-fire that would allow time for negotiations on a permanent truce.

But the path toward such a truce has been shaky. Moscow continues to insist on maximalist positions, including about asserting territorial control and ensuring Ukraine never joins NATO. The Ukrainian government has repeatedly said that it will not concede to the Kremlin’s demands and has accused Mr. Putin of stalling for time.

While Russia and Ukraine may find common ground in talks about energy and shipping, both have laid out conditions for a complete cessation of hostilities that appear irreconcilable — a sign of the steep challenges ahead in any broader peace negotiations.

Unlike previous cease-fire discussions, which involved top government officials from all sides, this new round will focus on technical matters and will mostly involve diplomats and government advisers.

Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special envoy to Ukraine, said the American delegation would include some of his own staff members, along with Michael Anton, policy planning director at the State Department, and aides to the national security adviser, Michael Waltz.

The Russian delegation

The Russian negotiators are led by Grigory B. Karasin, a senior Russian diplomat and lawmaker, and Sergey O. Beseda, an adviser to the head of the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., the country’s domestic intelligence agency.

Mr. Karasin described the talks as “creative,” the Russian news agency Interfax reported.

“It is important to stay in touch and understand each other’s point of view,” Mr. Karasin added. “We manage to do that.”

While Mr. Karasin has been involved in sensitive foreign policy talks before, Mr. Beseda’s choice came as a surprise to some.

Image

Grigory Karasin, right, at the United Nations headquarters in New York in 2023. He has been involved in foreign policy talks before.Credit...Lev Radin/Sipa USA, via Reuters

Mr. Beseda was head of the F.S.B. department responsible for international intelligence operations. He has been described by Russian news outlets as one of the main sources of intelligence that convinced Mr. Putin in 2022 that there was pro-Russian sentiment in Ukraine and that a brisk invasion could easily dismantle the government in Kyiv.

In 2023, Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, called Mr. Beseda a “very problematic person” for Ukraine who “has done a lot of evil.”

The Ukrainian delegation

Mr. Umerov is leading the Ukrainian delegation in Riyadh, along with Pavlo Palisa, a top military adviser to Mr. Zelensky.

Both Mr. Umerov and Mr. Palisa are members of the Ukrainian delegation for peace talks that Mr. Zelensky appointed this month, a group led by his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. Mr. Umerov was a key negotiator for Ukraine in peace talks with Russian diplomats in the early months of the war.

Image

Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s defense minister, in Madrid this past week.Credit...Paul White/Associated Press

Given the technical nature of the talks on energy and shipping, Ukraine also sent seasoned diplomats and civil servants as part of its delegation. Ukrinform, the state news agency, said the team included deputy foreign and energy ministers, along with Mr. Zelensky’s top diplomatic adviser.

Moscow’s position

Last week, Mr. Putin told Mr. Trump in a telephone conversation that Russia would agree to a temporary truce only if Ukraine stopped mobilizing soldiers, training troops or importing weapons for the duration of any pause in fighting.

Mr. Putin also demanded the complete halt of foreign military aid and intelligence to Kyiv, calling it “the key condition for preventing an escalation of the conflict and making progress toward its resolution through political and diplomatic means,” according to the Kremlin’s readout of the call.

The White House said that military aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine would continue despite the Kremlin’s demands. But the Trump administration has been less clear on Moscow’s calls for territorial concessions and at times even appeared to align with the Kremlin’s stance.

Mr. Witkoff echoed a Kremlin talking point on Sunday when he tried to legitimize the staged referendums that the Russian occupation forces held in parts of Ukraine to justify the annexation of those territories taken by military force. “There is a view within the country of Russia that these are Russian territories,” Mr. Witkoff told Fox News. “There are referendums within these territories that justify these actions.” Those referendums were widely denounced as fraudulent and illegal by the international community.

Fundamentally, Russia’s position regarding the conflict has remained the same. The Kremlin says it wants to “eliminate the root causes of the crisis” — essentially demanding that Ukraine capitulate.

Kyiv’s position

Ukraine had previously agreed to an unconditional 30-day truce to cease all combat operations, at the urging of the Trump administration. But after Moscow said that it would support only a partial cease-fire on energy infrastructure, Mr. Zelensky spoke with Mr. Trump and agreed to the limited truce.

In recent days, Ukrainian officials have set out red lines going into negotiations: Kyiv will never accept Russian sovereignty over occupied Ukrainian territory; it will not agree to be blocked from joining NATO or to reduce the size of its army; and it must have security guarantees as part of any peace settlement.

Many Ukrainian officials and analysts have expressed doubt that even a limited cease-fire would hold for long, noting that previous truces between Moscow and Kyiv were routinely violated, with each side blaming the other.

“I do not believe in a cease-fire. We’ve been through this before,” Kostyantyn Yeliseev, a veteran diplomat and former Ukrainian deputy foreign minister who took part in cease-fire negotiations in 2014 and 2015, said in an interview.

What’s next?

Mr. Witkoff said on Wednesday in an interview with Bloomberg News that Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin were “likely” to meet in Saudi Arabia within weeks. American officials will also probably continue talks with their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts in the Middle East to discuss details of a limited truce.

But the foundations of the diplomatic process have been wobbly, analysts said, with Moscow and Kyiv ready to continue fighting.

“Both sides still believe that they can continue the war regardless of the American position,” said Dmitry Kuznets, a military analyst with the Russian news outlet Meduza, which operates from Latvia after being outlawed by the Kremlin.

He added, “Moscow’s and Kyiv’s visions of what an agreement could look like are still infinitely far from each other.”

Maria Varenikova and Minho Kim contributed reporting.

Ivan Nechepurenko covers Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the countries of the Caucasus, and Central Asia. He is based in Moscow. More about Ivan Nechepurenko

Constant Méheut reports on the war in Ukraine, including battlefield developments, attacks on civilian centers and how the war is affecting its people. More about Constant Méheut

A version of this article appears in print on March 24, 2025, Section A, Page 7 of the New York edition with the headline: American Envoys Mediate Separate Talks With Russia and Ukraine. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

9. How a Cheap Drone Punctured Chernobyl’s 40,000 Ton Shield

​How do we not consider nuclear power plants as potential wartime targets?

How a Cheap Drone Punctured Chernobyl’s 40,000 Ton Shield

The steel shell that encloses the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster was built to endure for a century. But war was a scenario its engineers never envisioned.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/25/world/europe/drone-chernobyl-shield-ukraine-war.html

By Kim BarkerPhotographs by Brendan Hoffman

Kim Barker and Brendan Hoffman traveled to Chernobyl hours after the drone strike. They later talked to experts about the damage it has done.

• March 25, 2025

Eric Schmieman worked for 15 years on the modern engineering equivalent of the Great Pyramid — building a giant protective shield for a damaged reactor at Chernobyl that would protect the world from further fallout from the worst ever nuclear disaster.

The steel shell, slid into place over Reactor No. 4 on railroad tracks in 2016, is the world’s largest movable structure. It is as tall as a football field and weighs almost 40,000 tons. More than 45 countries and organizations spent almost $1.7 billion building it.

“We did a lot of safety analysis, considering a lot of bad things that could happen,” said Mr. Schmieman, 78, a retired civil engineer from Washington state who was a senior technical adviser on the project. “We considered earthquakes, tornadoes, heavy winds, 100-year snowfalls, all kinds of things. We didn’t consider acts of war.”

On Feb. 14, a drone with a high-explosive warhead that likely cost as little as $20,000 to produce punched a hole in the steel shell. Ukrainian officials said the Russians deliberately targeted the structure with a Shahed 136 drone. The Kremlin has denied responsibility.

Image

Pieces of what Ukrainian authorities said was debris from a Shahed 136 drone that struck the shield.

While the initial fire was quickly put out, a waterproof membrane inside the insulation of the arch burned and smoldered for almost three weeks, said Artem Siryi, the head of the operations department for the structure, called the New Safe Confinement. Emergency workers in mountain-climbing equipment had to knock holes into the shield’s outer layer, hunting for the fire, and spray water inside a structure designed to stay dry to prevent corrosion, Ukrainian officials and international experts said.

On March 7, Ukraine declared the fire officially extinguished. But by that point, roughly half of the northern section of the shield had been damaged, Ukrainian officials said. The International Atomic Energy Agency said on March 13 that the fires and smoldering had caused “extensive damage, including to the northern side and to a lesser extent to the southern side of its roof,” according to an evaluation that Ukraine shared with the agency.

Radiation levels outside Chernobyl are still normal, the I.A.E.A. and Ukrainian nuclear regulators say. But it is unclear how the shield will be fixed, how much it will cost and how long it will take.

Repairs could take years, nuclear experts warn. That could delay a plan to dismantle the damaged reactor and safely dispose of the radioactive waste that was supposed to begin over the next five years. And there are risks that the steel shell starts corroding — or that the temporary “sarcophagus” Soviet engineers built around the reactor almost 40 years ago, which still sits within the shell, deteriorates further.

Image

A worker with a photograph of the Chernobyl site last summer. The shield is meant to allow safe disassembly of the damaged reactor beneath it.

“The reason the international community spent so much money and time building this structure is because they know the scale of the threat radiologically inside,” said Shaun Burnie, a nuclear specialist at Greenpeace who visited the damaged reactor at Chernobyl after the drone attack.

“It’s an enormous intellectual achievement to build something that could protect Europe, Ukraine and the world from what’s inside,” he said. “And now the Russians have basically blown a hole in it, both physically and metaphorically.”

On Thursday, Greenpeace released a report saying the drone attack severely compromised plans for the damaged reactor and that the shell was no longer functioning as designed. Jan Vande Putte, a nuclear specialist at Greenpeace Ukraine, said the entire shell might have to be removed, dismantled and replaced — a view echoed by Mr. Schmieman and Mr. Siryi. The I.A.E.A. said the shell’s confinement function had been compromised and that the structure needed “extensive repair efforts.”

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Both Russia and Ukraine have targeted one another’s energy infrastructure since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, but both have also stopped short of launching major strikes at nuclear power plants.

On Wednesday, as part of negotiations on a potential cease-fire, President Trump suggested that the United States take over Ukraine’s electrical and nuclear power sites, arguing that this would help protect them.

Drones continue to fly over Chernobyl almost every night, Mr. Siryi said in an interview. “Their motor noise has become a familiar sound,” he added. Many were likely heading toward Kyiv, the country’s capital.

Image

An exclusion zone was established around the power plant after the explosion in 1986. This abandoned schoolroom in the zone was photographed in 2021.

For people of a certain age, the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986, after years of heightened fears of nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States, was the stuff of nightmares. It sent a plume of radioactive material into the air, caused a public health emergency across Europe and led many to question nuclear energy. The Soviets, who initially hid the extent of the disaster, hastily built the concrete-and-steel emergency “sarcophagus” to encase the damaged reactor. Authorities also set up a 1,000-square-mile “exclusion zone” where no one was allowed to live.

The explosion’s official death toll was 31. But many other people got sick or eventually died. Cancer rates, especially for thyroid cancer, increased in areas heavily exposed to radiation.

The sarcophagus, which has become increasingly unstable, was never meant to last. Figuring out how to replace it took decades.

The confinement structure at Chernobyl that Mr. Schmieman worked on was an engineering and construction feat, designed to protect the damaged reactor for 100 years. To minimize radiation exposure, the structure was built about one-third of a mile away from the damaged reactor, then moved into place. It is about 40 feet thick, with an outer and an inner shell that are both made of steel. The humidity level between the shells is kept below 40 percent to prevent corrosion.

The outer shell is the key to keeping out precipitation, Mr. Schmieman said. The inner shell is designed to keep the radioactive dust inside the structure, especially when the cranes already set up start taking apart the sarcophagus and the damaged reactor before safely disposing of the waste in smaller containers.

Image

Extinguishing the fire caused by the drone involved punching further holes, and spraying water into a controlled-humidity space.

By the end of this year, specialists had aimed to finish the initial plan outlining the first dismantling stage. “Unfortunately, that’s no longer possible” because of the drone attack, Mr. Siryi said.

He said experts were evaluating how the shell could be fixed — and even if it could be. Workers would have to close the initial 540-square-foot hole from the drone. But they would also have to seal up the small holes created by workers trying to extinguish the fire. They would have to somehow repair the damaged membrane and insulation and any damaged internal structures. And they would have to reduce the humidity that resulted from hundreds of workers spraying high-powered hoses inside the structure.

Doing that where the confinement shell now sits is probably not possible, experts said, because workers would be exposed to high radiation levels from within. Moving the structure and then fixing it would also be challenging. What would protect the already unstable sarcophagus while that work was carried out?

“Full restoration of the facility is practically impossible,” Mr. Siryi said. “To bring it as close as possible to its original state — well, that would likely require hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Mr. Schmieman said repairing the structure, or building a new one, would be extremely costly. He suggested temporarily covering the holes — with something akin to duct tape — so the ventilation system inside could start reducing humidity. “Don’t immediately look for a quick, permanent solution for the large number of holes in the building, but look for a quick way to reduce corrosion,” he said.

One thing that might help, he said: drones. Largely because of the war, Ukraine has developed drone technology faster than almost any other country. Small drones — much smaller than the Shahed 136 that pierced the structure — could perhaps evaluate the damage inside the shell, and even help with fixing it.

Image

“Full restoration of the facility is practically impossible,” Mr. Siryi said. “To bring it as close as possible to its original state — well, that would likely require hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Oleksandra Mykolyshyn contributed reporting.

Kim Barker is a Times reporter writing in-depth stories about the war in Ukraine. More about Kim Barker

10. Is Russia an Adversary or a Future Partner? Trump’s Aides May Have to Decide.

​I am not a student of Russia but it is hard for me to fathom how Putin or successors with his world view could ever be our partner. I would need some very persuasive arguments to convince me that it would be possible to be partners.

Is Russia an Adversary or a Future Partner? Trump’s Aides May Have to Decide.

On Tuesday, America’s top intelligence officials will release their current assessment of Russia. They are caught between what their analysts say and what President Trump wants to hear.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/us/politics/trump-witkoff-russia-putin.html

“I thought he was straight up with me,” Steve Witkoff, an envoy for President Trump, said of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, during a recent interview with Tucker Carlson.Credit...Maansi Srivastava for The New York Times

By David E. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes

David E. Sanger writes about the re-emergence of superpower conflict, the subject of his most recent book. Julian E. Barnes has reported on intelligence issues from Washington and Europe.

Published March 24, 2025

Updated March 25, 2025, 2:59 a.m. ET

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When the nation’s intelligence chiefs go before Congress on Tuesday to provide their first public “Worldwide Threat Assessment” of President Trump’s second term, they’ll face an extraordinary choice.

Do they stick with their long-running conclusion about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that his goal is to crush the Ukrainian government and “undermine the United States and the West?”

Or do they cast Mr. Putin in the terms Mr. Trump and his top negotiator with Russia are describing him with these days: as a trustworthy future business partner who simply wants to end a nasty war, get control of parts of Ukraine that are rightly his and resume a regular relationship with the United States?

The vexing choice has become all the more stark in recent days since Steve Witkoff, one of Mr. Trump’s oldest friends from the real estate world and his chosen envoy to the Mideast and Russia, has begun picking up many of Mr. Putin’s favorite talking points.

Mr. Witkoff wrote off European fears that Russia could violate whatever cease-fire is agreed upon and a peacekeeping force must be assembled to deter Moscow. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, the pro-MAGA podcaster, Mr. Witkoff said the peacekeeping idea was “a combination of a posture and a pose” by America’s closest NATO allies.

It is a view, he said, that was born of a “sort of notion of we’ve all got to be like Winston Churchill, the Russians are going to march across Europe.” He continued: “I think that’s preposterous.”

Just over three years after Russian troops poured into Kyiv and tried to take out the government, Mr. Witkoff argued that Mr. Putin doesn’t really want to take over all of Ukraine.

“Why would they want to absorb Ukraine?” he asked Mr. Carlson. “For what purpose, exactly? They don’t need to absorb Ukraine.” All Russia seeks, he argues, is “stability there.”

“I thought he was straight up with me,” Mr. Witkoff said of Mr. Putin, a striking characterization of a longtime U.S. adversary, and master of deception, who repeatedly told the world he had no intention of invading Ukraine.

Of all the head-spinning reversals in Washington these days, perhaps it is the Trump administration’s view of Russia and its seeming willingness to believe Mr. Putin that leave allies, intelligence officials and diplomats most disoriented.

Image

Mr. Putin speaking in Moscow last year. Several European leaders have contradicted Mr. Trump on Russia.Credit...Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times

Until Mr. Trump took office, it was the consensus view of the United States and its allies that they had been hopelessly naïve about Russia’s true ambitions for far too long — that they had failed to listen carefully to Mr. Putin when he first argued, in 2007, that there were parts of Russia that needed to be restored to the motherland. Then he invaded Georgia, annexed Crimea and sent the military — out of uniform — to conduct a guerrilla war in the Donbas.

Still, sanctions were slow to be applied, and Europe was far too slow to rearm — a point Mr. Trump himself makes when he presses the Europeans for more funds to defend themselves.

Now, Mr. Trump refuses to acknowledge the obvious, that Russia invaded Ukraine. He has been openly contradicted by several European leaders, who say that even if the United States plans to seek a normalization of relations with Russia, they do not. “I don’t trust Putin,” the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, told The New York Times last week. “I’m sure Putin would try to insist that Ukraine should be defenseless after a deal because that gives him what he wants, which is the opportunity to go in again.”

But for the American intelligence agencies, whose views are supposed to be rooted in a rigorous analysis of covertly collected and open-source analysis, there is no indication so far that any of their views about Mr. Putin and his ambitions have changed. So it will be up to the new director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the new C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe, to walk the fine line of describing Russia as a current adversary and future partner.

Mr. Witkoff headed down that road in his conversation with Mr. Carlson. “Share sea lanes, maybe send LNG gas into Europe together, maybe collaborate on A.I. together,” he said, after imagining a negotiated cease-fire in which Russia gets to hold the lands it now occupies and gets assurances that Ukraine will never join NATO. “Who doesn’t want to see a world like that?”

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the chamber’s Intelligence Committee, said comments by Mr. Witkoff and others in the Trump administration are deeply disorienting to American spies.

Image

Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, said that the shifting American policy on Russia threatens intelligence partnerships.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

“If you grew up in the intelligence community knowing all the awful things Vladimir Putin had done and all of a sudden you have a change in posture where you completely take Russia’s side, how do you make sense of that?” Mr. Warner said.

Mr. Warner said the document that the intelligence community will unveil on Tuesday, its annual threat assessment, is very traditional and in keeping with previous versions of it. But what Mr. Trump’s intelligence leaders will say in testimony is not as clear. So far, Mr. Warner said, the administration’s comments on Ukraine have reflected anything but the traditional view of the threat from Russia.

The shifting American policy on Russia, Mr. Warner said, threatens intelligence partnerships. While America collects far more intelligence than other countries, he said, the combined contributions of key allies are substantial. And if their concerns about American policy and its faithful analysis of intelligence grow, they will share less.

Officials of several allies, while declining to speak on the record, pointed to several of Mr. Witkoff’s statements with alarm, saying they closely reflected Russian talking points. He endorsed Russian “referendums” in four key Ukrainian provinces that were widely viewed as rigged, with voters threatened with torture and deportation if they cast their ballot the wrong way. But Mr. Witkoff spoke as if they were legitimate elections.

“There have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule,” he said. Shortly afterward, Oleksandr Merezhko, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Ukrainian Parliament, said on Monday that Mr. Witkoff should be removed from his position.

“These are simply disgraceful, shocking statements,” Mr. Merezhko told Ukrainian media. “He is relaying Russian propaganda. And I have a question: Who is he? Is he Trump’s envoy, or maybe he’s Putin’s envoy?”

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was more circumspect in an interview with Time magazine released on Monday. He said he believed “Russia has managed to influence some people on the White House team through information.” Earlier, he had talked about the “web of disinformation” surrounding Mr. Trump, saying it contributed to their famously poor relationship.

He noted that Mr. Trump had repeated Mr. Putin’s claim that retreating Ukrainian forces in western Russia had been encircled.

“That was a lie,” Mr. Zelensky said.

Constant Méheut contributed reporting from Kyiv.

David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges. More about David E. Sanger

Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades. More about Julian E. Barnes

11. DOGE’s Real Challenge in the Pentagon Isn’t Slashing the Workforce, It’s Boosting Productivity

​People say the government and military do not "produce" anything. But the US military and government agencies have contributed to tremendous human advances. Would we be where we are today without these advances? Would they have come about without the US military and US government?

Here's a list of some of the most significant inventions or innovations developed by or through the U.S. military that have become public goods or had widespread civilian benefit:

1. The Internet (ARPANET)

• Origin: Developed by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).
• Significance: The precursor to the modern internet; enabled packet-switching communication.
• Impact: Foundation for global communication, commerce, and information sharing.

2. GPS (Global Positioning System)

• Origin: U.S. Department of Defense.
• Significance: Originally designed for military navigation and targeting.
• Impact: Now essential for civilian navigation, logistics, agriculture, disaster response, and smartphones.

3. Jet Engines and Aviation Technology

• Origin: Heavily advanced through military R&D.
• Significance: Development of high-speed, high-efficiency aircraft.
• Impact: Civilian air travel and cargo industries benefit enormously.

4. Computer Technology

• Origin: Military contracts drove early development (e.g., ENIAC, early semiconductors).
• Significance: Used for ballistics calculations and encryption.
• Impact: Basis for modern computing and the tech industry.

5. Radar and Microwave Technology

• Origin: World War II military development.
• Significance: Crucial in detecting enemy aircraft and ships.
• Impact: Civilian air traffic control, weather forecasting, and even microwave ovens.

6. Medical Advancements

• Examples:
• Trauma care innovations → Advanced emergency medicine.
• Tourniquets, field surgery techniques → Used by civilian paramedics.
• Vaccines → Massive military investments in vaccine development (e.g., malaria, anthrax).
• Impact: Civilian healthcare benefits in emergency medicine and disease control.

7. Satellite Technology

• Origin: Military reconnaissance and communication systems.
• Impact: Civilian applications in weather forecasting, TV broadcasting, and global communications.

8. Cryptography and Cybersecurity

• Origin: Developed for secure military communications.
• Impact: Encryption standards for financial transactions, messaging apps, and internet security.

9. Interstate Highway System

• Origin: Initiated by President Eisenhower for national defense logistics.
• Impact: Transformed American commerce, commuting, and regional development.

10. Touchscreen Technology

• Origin: Military-funded research in human-computer interaction.
• Impact: Now ubiquitous in smartphones, tablets, kiosks, etc.

11. Drones / UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles)

• Origin: Military surveillance and strike tools.
• Impact: Used in agriculture, firefighting, film-making, logistics, and search-and-rescue.

12. Nuclear Energy (Peaceful Applications)

• Origin: Manhattan Project (WWII).
• Significance: Developed for atomic bombs.
• Impact: Led to civilian nuclear power generation, medical imaging, and cancer treatments.

13. Freeze-Dried Food

• Origin: Developed to feed troops in remote areas.
• Impact: Used widely today in camping, emergency supplies, and even in space programs.

14. Synthetic Rubber and Materials

• Origin: WWII efforts to replace natural rubber.
• Impact: Used in everything from tires to medical equipment and consumer goods.

15. Mass Casualty Triage Systems

• Origin: Military medicine and battlefield organization.
• Impact: Standardized triage systems in civilian emergency and disaster response worldwide.

16. Advanced Manufacturing and 3D Printing

• Origin: Military-funded research to support rapid prototyping and parts replacement.
• Impact: Now used in medicine, aerospace, automotive, and home manufacturing.

17. Virtual Reality (VR) and Simulation Training

• Origin: Military flight and combat simulators.
• Impact: Now widely used in medical training, gaming, education, and industrial design.

18. Firefighting Techniques and Gear

• Origin: Developed by military and NASA for high-risk environments.
• Impact: Used by civilian firefighting units (e.g., fire-resistant suits, oxygen systems).

19. Night Vision Technology

• Origin: Military development during the Cold War.
• Impact: Civilian applications in security, law enforcement, and wildlife monitoring.

20. Weather Forecasting Satellites

• Origin: Originally developed for military observation.
• Impact: Enabled real-time global weather monitoring and early warning systems for civilians.

21. Digital Imaging and CCD Sensors

• Origin: Military satellite imaging and reconnaissance.
• Impact: Now used in digital cameras, smartphones, telescopes, and medical imaging.

22. CAT Scans (Computed Tomography)

• Origin: Advanced by military and nuclear research facilities.
• Impact: Revolutionized medical diagnostics in civilian hospitals.

23. Speech Recognition and Natural Language Processing

• Origin: Military intelligence and command systems.
• Impact: Used in digital assistants (like Siri, Alexa), transcription, and customer service.

24. Noise-Canceling Headphones

• Origin: Designed for military pilots to reduce cockpit noise.
• Impact: Now used in commercial aviation, offices, and daily life.

25. Helicopters and VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing)

• Origin: Developed extensively during the Korean and Vietnam wars.
• Impact: Civilian uses in emergency response, medical evacuation, construction, and tourism.

DOGE’s Real Challenge in the Pentagon Isn’t Slashing the Workforce, It’s Boosting Productivity - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Erik Schuh · March 25, 2025

When I served at U.S. Air Forces Europe, a daily 15-minute briefing took 43 hours of staff work. This wasn’t an outlier — it was the norm. With the largest discretionary spending item in the federal budget and massive inefficiencies, the Defense Department might seem an obvious target for the Department of Government Efficiency — known as DOGE. With roughly 2.8 million personnel, the Department of Defense spends $299 billion on personnel costs, with billions more allocated towards contractors performing similar jobs. Manpower alone accounts for one-third of the defense budget.

Although DOGE has focused largely on sweeping budget cuts, its core purpose is to modernize federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity. Despite the Department of Defense’s focus on combat efficiency, rarely is there a meaningful push to improve productivity. DOGE could address this gap and strengthen military readiness by automating administrative tasks, streamlining bureaucratic processes, and modernizing information technology systems.

Become a Member

The Problem: Administrative Burdens and Outdated Systems

Despite being a warfighting organization, a significant portion of Department of Defense personnel dedicate substantial time to administrative work. Staff officers devote most of their time to formatting PowerPoint briefings and warfighters are often bogged down by bureaucratic paperwork rather than focusing on mission-critical tasks.

The inefficiencies extend beyond daily workflows. Security clearance processing has become a major bottleneck, preventing personnel from assuming critical roles in a timely manner. As security classifications expand across the force, the backlog has grown to around 100,000 cases as of late 2024, with secret and top-secret clearances taking an average of 68 and 169 days, respectively, to complete. This delay effectively sidelines thousands of personnel, leaving units understaffed and reducing operational readiness. Beyond clearance delays, inefficient processes prevent personnel from seamlessly transitioning between assignments. Many wait months to regain access to the same classified systems they previously used, further stalling productivity and mission effectiveness.

Beyond clearance delays, outdated technology further compounds inefficiencies across the Department of Defense. A prime example is the Navy’s adoption of Microsoft Office 365 to modernize its aging, fragmented networks. This might not seem like a big deal until you notice the platform has been commercially available for a decade. Even after the successful rollout, it took an additional three years before the Department of Defense integrated the platform into its classified networks, highlighting the slow pace of technological adoption.

All of these inefficiencies compound across the department. A 2023 RAND report estimated that outdated software and network systems cost the Department of Defense $2.5 billion in lost productivity annually. And this figure excludes top-secret and special access program networks, which have similar problems. All of these problems culminated in the Government Services Administration finding the Department of Defense ranked lowest in satisfaction with IT support and services among all federal agencies. When personnel spend more time fighting their systems than executing their mission, it not only degrades productivity but also delays critical decisions.

While these inefficiencies may seem like minor headaches, they compound across an organization of 2.8 million people, leading to billions of dollars in wasted time, stalled operations, and degraded effectiveness. The problem is not just the cost — it is that outdated systems and unnecessary bureaucracy actively hinder military readiness. In addition to its current goals, DOGE should prioritize eliminating these inefficiencies to ensure the Department of Defense can operate at peak performance.

Building on DOGE’s Defense Department Strategy

In an effort to cut costs quickly, DOGE has slashed the federal workforce through early retirements, deferred resignations for federal employees, and the termination of probationary employees. While these measures aim to improve fiscal stability, it is important to monitor for any potential long-term impacts. One consequence is the loss of continuity. Since U.S. active-duty servicemembers rotate through two to three-year assignments, civilians are the cornerstone for ensuring knowledge is maintained in an organization. Losing civilians who have served in their roles for decades could reduce productivity, as there would be so few left to transfer expertise or lessons learned.

Deferred resignations may inadvertently retain lower-performing employees while pushing out high achievers. Those who are confident in their skills and believe they can find better opportunities elsewhere may be more likely to take the deferred resignation, while those who lack skills transferable to the private sector remain. This dynamic reduces overall productivity rather than improving efficiency.

Lastly, the firing of probationary employees may compound the problem. Instead of evaluating talent and selectively removing underperformers, this approach eliminates a significant number of potentially valuable employees without consideration of their contributions.

While Elon Musk reportedly used a similar approach of workforce reductions and re-hirings at X (formerly Twitter), the Department of Defense operates under different priorities. As an institution responsible for national security and maintaining constant military readiness, its decisions should prioritize combat effectiveness and operational continuity over cost-cutting alone. DOGE has an opportunity to advance its core mission of efficiency-driven reforms and enhance military readiness through three initiatives:

Automating Administrative Tasks

A significant portion of Department of Defense personnel handle routine administrative tasks — most of which can be automated to free up manpower. For example, in military intelligence, personnel manually analyze data to detect patterns. Machine learning can automate object recognition and data fusion, reducing the number of analysts needed for these tasks.

Similarly, at higher-level headquarters, officers spend hours adjusting PowerPoint slides to accommodate leader’s varying format preferences. While serving in U.S. Air Forces Europe, I saw this inefficiency firsthand. The four-star commander received a daily operations and intelligence briefing that required 43 hours of manual work to prepare — despite lasting only 15 minutes, as I mentioned above. I led an effort to automate this process and quickly found there were multiple other companies tackling similar problems across the Department of Defense. Even though one company’s solution was far superior, U.S. Air Forces Europe was being cornered into using inferior products due to decisions made at higher commands.

This inefficiency partially stems from the Department of Defense’s bias toward government-owned software instead of commercial-off-the-shelf solutions. The fear of being locked into a vendor’s product and the expectation of lower costs creates a belief that government-developed systems would be more cost-effective. The Department of Defense’s software acquisition process helped create these incentives, which is partly why Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently announced a new mandate to streamline software acquisition across the department. Today, enterprise solutions require major tech players like Palantir, Google, and Microsoft to integrate data effectively — not small organizations with no track record of success. While discussions are already underway to revamp the Defense Department’s software acquisition process, DOGE could play a critical role in ensuring the Secretary of Defense’s reforms are actually implemented rather than becoming another bureaucratic dead-end.

Streamlining the Security Clearance Process

Security clearances are essential for military personnel but remain inefficient due to outdated policies. The Trusted Workforce 2.0 initiative initially reduced clearance backlogs, but the backlog has returned due to expanding classification requirements. Two major inefficiencies persist. The first is the redundant clearance reprocessing system, which forces military personnel to reapply for the same clearances they already held when moving between assignments. This can result in months of lost productivity. In my own case, it took five months to regain access to the same system I had used at my previous base.

The second issue is the inherently risk-averse nature of the security clearance process. Security personnel face significant consequences for approving a clearance that later results in a security breach, but little to no accountability for excessive delays or unnecessary denials. While Trusted Workforce 2.0 has pushed to speed up the process, the risk to mission is not accounted for. To address this, DOGE can work with the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency to introduce new performance metrics that track the operational consequences of security clearance delays. By balancing the risk of security breaches with the risk of mission failure, the clearance process can become more efficient and better aligned with national security priorities.

Modernizing Department of Defense Information Technology Infrastructure

Department of Defense information technology systems are often slow, outdated, and unreliable, leading to widespread productivity losses. Upwards of one in ten personnel experience over eight hours of downtime per month due to system failures. Improving the Department of Defense IT infrastructure could recapture billions in lost productivity annually. Furthermore, classified networks are often worse than unclassified systems, despite being mission-critical. In my past three assignments, my top-secret computer rarely worked, a common problem throughout the office. DOGE should prioritize fixing classified network performance, as inefficiencies directly impact combat effectiveness. The Pentagon should transition to cloud-based collaboration tools to reduce redundancy, replace obsolete computers with modern hardware, and improve system uptime by overhauling its network infrastructure.

The Way Forward

While DOGE personnel are already in the Pentagon, there is an opportunity to adopt an approach that balances cost-saving efforts with operational effectiveness. These three initiatives — automation, security clearance reform, and IT modernization — represent low-hanging fruit that can generate substantial savings while enhancing military effectiveness. If DOGE’s goal is to maximize efficiency, prioritizing technology and process improvements will yield sustainable results without compromising readiness. The Pentagon’s readiness depends not on how many people it employs, but on how effectively those people can execute the mission.

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Erik Schuh is an Air Force officer serving as an operations research analyst. The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official guidance or position of the U.S. government, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Air Force, or the U.S. Space Force.

Image: Adobe Firefly

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Erik Schuh · March 25, 2025

12. How China Beat Out the U.S. to Become the Top Player in Rare-Earths Refining

​Like oil, refining is the key.

How China Beat Out the U.S. to Become the Top Player in Rare-Earths Refining

Even if the Trump administration secures more minerals from the likes of Ukraine or Greenland, the U.S. would struggle to process them

https://www.wsj.com/business/how-china-beat-out-the-u-s-to-become-the-top-player-in-rare-earths-refining-e84cc30d?mod=latest_headlines

A dump truck at the Mountain Pass mine in California. MP Materials, the mines’ operator, is weaning itself off Chinese refining. Photo: Joe Buglewicz/Bloomberg News

By Jon Emont

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March 24, 2025 11:00 pm ET

President Trump wants to secure the minerals the U.S. needs for everything from smartphones to jet fighters by striking deals in Ukraine, Greenland and even Russia.

But even if the Trump administration secures more mines for American companies through agreements like the mineral-rights deal being discussed with Ukraine, it may have to send much of the minerals to China—its main geopolitical rival—to be processed.

A prime example of this conundrum is rare earths, a group of minerals used for defense systems that President Trump has said is the focus of his dealmaking in Ukraine.

“We very much need rare earth. They have great rare earth,” Trump said ahead of a recent cabinet meeting.

In truth, the U.S. already has abundant supplies of rare earths, but it relies on China to refine them. That is because the U.S. has lost much of its capacity to process minerals, while China has become the world’s dominant refiner of rare earths, cobalt, copper and many other metals.

“Drill baby drill is not the right focus,” said John Ormerod, a consultant for the rare-earth industry.

A cobalt mine in Idaho. Photo: carlos barria/Reuters

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Democratic Republic of Congo has offered the U.S. access to a trove of minerals, including cobalt and copper, in exchange for helping it defeat a rebel force in the country. But such a deal raises questions about where these minerals would be processed.

During a joint address to Congress earlier this month, Trump said he planned “historic action to dramatically expand production of critical minerals and rare earths” in the U.S. Last week he signed an executive order to streamline permitting and boost government financing for new domestic mineral projects, including processing facilities. 

“President Trump been long committed to unleashing all of America’s God-given natural resources, including critical minerals,” said White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly.

The loss of American refining capacity to China is just one example of how the deindustrialization of the U.S. has ended up favoring its main geopolitical rival. The U.S. has all but stopped manufacturing key products, including containerships, certain pharmaceutical ingredients and some machine tools, as they became cheaper and more efficient to produce abroad, particularly in China.

In the case of rare earths, the U.S. mines around 12% of the world’s supply, putting it only behind China, according to the United States Geological Survey. Most of the bounty comes from a massive deposit in the Mountain Pass mine in California.

But the U.S. exports about two-thirds of its rare earths to China. It has little choice: China is responsible for around 85% of the world’s rare earth refining. Chinese companies then turn the ore into the final product—rare-earth magnets—and export the magnets back to the U.S. 

Similarly, the U.S. sends a chunk of its substantial supplies of copper to China for processing. Even America’s lone nickel mine sends its nickel concentrate abroad to Canada for smelting.

“That so-called midstream piece of processing and refining of ores into chemicals and metals is really important and dominated by China,” said Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines. Given the pace of China’s expanding efforts, “I don’t see it becoming undominated,” he said.

President Trump has talked about buying Greenland, which is rich in rare-earth minerals. Photo: Oscar Scott Carl for WSJ

Until the 1990s, the U.S. was a major refiner of minerals and metals. But then China emerged as the dominant player, powered by its cheap labor force and looser environmental regulations of a sector that can be highly polluting. The voracious need of Chinese manufacturers for raw materials during the country’s years of explosive growth was also a boon for Chinese refiners.

Today, the sheer scale of China’s refining industry makes it difficult for others to compete. According to industry estimates, the cost of building a refinery plant in China is a third of the cost in the U.S.

China’s dominance has grown even further in just the past few years. The world’s top six cobalt refiners are all Chinese and the country’s share of the world’s refined cobalt—needed for defense equipment and batteries—grew from 65% in 2018 to 83% in 2024, according to Darton Commodities, a cobalt trading company. Similarly, Chinese companies now dominate nickel processing after setting up huge plants in Indonesia, the world’s top nickel miner.  

The Trump administration recently said U.S. refining capacity for copper lags behind China and launched an investigation into how imports of the metal threaten U.S. national security.

Rare-earth elements are critical for the production of military equipment, including the F-35 jet fighter. Photo: lillian suwanrumpha/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Under former President Joe Biden, the U.S. granted hundreds of millions of dollars in financing to U.S.-based companies to encourage the processing of critical minerals. But many projects have been held back by environmental and permitting issues, as well as the difficulty of competing with cut-price Chinese minerals.

A nickel processing plant that was intended to be built in Minnesota, near a nickel mine under development, was moved to North Dakota due to local objections about the plant’s environmental impact.

Although the U.S. government pledged $114 million in 2022 to get the North Dakota plant up and running, neither the plant nor the Minnesota mine has begun construction. Meanwhile, a surge in Chinese nickel production in Indonesia has tanked the price of metal, hurting the prospects for new projects.

A spokesman for Talon Metals, the company developing the mine and processing plant, said both projects are moving through permitting, and he was hopeful that Trump’s new executive order could speed things up.

Rare earths

A major focus of the U.S. government in recent years has been rare earths, which are needed for the production of F-35 jet fighters, drones and nuclear submarines. The U.S. was a top player in this industry before Chinese competition hollowed out the sector. Over the past five years, the U.S. government has announced hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to rebuild rare-earth processing plants and factories that make rare-earth magnets.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky has agreed to the framework of a deal that would allow the U.S. access to Ukraine’s critical minerals. WSJ’s Ian Lovett reports from Kyiv on what’s at stake. Photo: Nathan Howard/Reuters

In one of the more ambitious efforts, Lynas Rare Earths, an Australian company, received $258 million in Pentagon financing in 2023 to build a rare earth processing facility in Texas.

Nearly two years later, the project has yet to begin construction, delayed in part by permitting issues related to wastewater treatment. The company may have to redesign the plant to secure the permits.

MP Materials, the Las Vegas-based company that has operated the Mountain Pass mine since 2017, is gradually weaning itself off Chinese refining. Over the past few years, the company has built processing facilities, including a Pentagon-supported plant that does the complex work of sifting out the most valuable minerals to be used in magnets.

In January, the company said it had cracked another crucial step, beginning commercial production of rare earth metals.

The next step for the company is to manufacture the final product—rare-earth magnets—at a commercial scale. It hopes to do so by year’s end, when it would begin sending the magnets to General Motors as part of a supply agreement. While around two-thirds of the company’s rare earth concentrate is still shipped to China, the company is steadily ramping up processing at home.

A worker at a nickel-ore processing plant in Indonesia. Photo: Hariandi Hafid/Zuma Press

Write to Jon Emont at jonathan.emont@wsj.com

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

Appeared in the March 25, 2025, print edition as 'U.S. Seeks Minerals, But Can’t Process Them'.

13. Concerns about espionage rise as Trump and Musk fire thousands of federal workers

Concerns about espionage rise as Trump and Musk fire thousands of federal workers

By DAVID KLEPPER and ERIC TUCKER

Updated 5:16 PM EDT, March 24, 2025

AP · by ERIC TUCKER · March 24, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk work to overhaul the federal government, they’re forcing out thousands of workers with insider knowledge and connections who now need a job.

For Russia, China and other adversaries, the upheaval in Washington as Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency guts government agencies presents an unprecedented opportunity to recruit informants, national security and intelligence experts say.

Every former federal worker with knowledge of or access to sensitive information or systems could be a target. When thousands of them leave their jobs at the same time, that creates a lot of targets, as well as a counterespionage challenge for the United States.

“This information is highly valuable, and it shouldn’t be surprising that Russia and China and other organizations — criminal syndicates for instance — would be aggressively recruiting government employees,” said Theresa Payton, a former White House chief information officer under President George W. Bush, who now runs her own cybersecurity firm.

Many agencies oversee crucial data

Each year an average of more than 100,000 federal workers leave their jobs. Some retire; others move to the private sector. This year, in three months, the number is already many times higher.

It’s not just intelligence officers who present potential security risks. Many departments and agencies oversee vast amounts of data that include personal information on Americans as well as sensitive information about national security and government operations. Exiting employees could also give away helpful security secrets that would allow someone to penetrate government databases or physical offices.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, for instance, maintains information on trade negotiations that could help an adversary undercut the United States. Federal records house data on clandestine intelligence operations and agents. Pentagon databases contain reams of sensitive information on U.S. military capabilities. The Department of Energy oversees many of the nation’s most closely guarded nuclear secrets.

“This happens even in good times — someone in the intelligence community who for personal financial or other reasons walks into an embassy to sell America out — but DOGE is taking it to a whole new level,” said John Schindler, a former counterintelligence official.

“Someone is going to go rogue,” he said. “It’s just a question of how bad it will be.”

Only a tiny fraction of the many millions of Americans who have worked for the federal government have ever been accused of espionage. The overwhelming number are conscientious patriots who would never sell out their country, Payton said.

Background checks, employee training and exit interviews are all designed to prevent informants or moles — and to remind departing federal employees of their duty to preserve national secrets even after leaving federal service.

Even one person can do serious damage

It takes only one or two misguided or disgruntled workers to cause a national security crisis. Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen and former CIA officer Aldrich Ames, who both spied for Russia, show just how damaging a single informant can be.

Hanssen divulged sweeping information about American intelligence-gathering, including details that authorities said were partly responsible for the outing of U.S. informants in Russia who were later executed for working on America’s behalf.

The odds that one angry former employee reaches out to a foreign power go up as many federal employees find themselves without a job, experts said. What’s not in doubt is that foreign adversaries are looking for any former employees they can flip. They’re hunting for that one informant who could deliver a big advantage for their nation.

“It’s a numbers game,” said Schindler.

Frank Montoya Jr., a retired senior FBI official and former top U.S. government counterintelligence executive, said he was less concerned about well-trained intelligence community employees betraying their oaths and selling out to American adversaries. But he noted the many workers in other realms of government who could be targeted by Russia or China,

“When it comes to the theft of intellectual property, when it comes to the theft of sensitive technology, when it comes to access to power grids or to financial systems, an IRS guy or a Social Service guy who’s really upset about what DOGE is doing, they actually are the bigger risk,” Montoya said.

Once military and intelligence officials were the primary targets of foreign spies looking to turn an informant. But now, thanks to the massive amount of information held at many agencies, and the competitive edge it could give China or Russia, that’s no longer the case.

“We have seen over the last generation, the last 20–25 years, the Chinese and the Russians increasingly have been targeting non-national defense and non-classified information, because it helps them modernize their military, it helps them modernize their infrastructure,” Montoya said.

Online activity makes it easier than it once was

The internet has made it far easier for foreign nations to identify and recruit potential informants.

Once, Soviet intelligence officers had to wait for an embittered agent to make contact, or go through the time-consuming process of identifying which recently separated federal employees could be pliable. Now, all you need is a LinkedIn subscription and you can quickly find former federal officials in search of work.

“You go on LinkedIn, you see someone who was ‘formerly at Department of Defense now looking for work’ and it’s like, ‘Bingo,’” Schindler said.

A foreign spy service or scammer looking to exploit a recently laid-off federal worker could bring in potential recruits by posting a fake job ad online.

One particularly novel concern involves the fear that a foreign agent could set up a fake job interview and hire former federal officials as “consultants” to a fake company. The former federal workers would be paid for their expertise without even knowing they were supplying information to an enemy. Russia has paid unwitting Americans to do its business before.

Payton’s advice for former federal employees looking for work? It’s the same as her guidance for federal counterespionage officials, she said: “Be on high alert.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not respond to questions about the risks that a former federal worker or contractor could sell out the country. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently announced plans to investigate leaks within the intelligence community, though her announcement was focused not on counterespionage concerns but on employees who pass information to the press or the public.

In a statement, the office said it would investigate any claims that a member of the intelligence community was improperly releasing information.

“There are many patriots in the IC that have reached out to DNI Gabbard and her team directly, explaining that they have raised concerns on these issues in the past but they have been ignored,” the office said. “That will no longer be the case.”

___

AP · by ERIC TUCKER · March 24, 2025

14. Trump’s Advisers Are Divided on Iran. Which Way Is the President Leaning?

​Excerpts:

If there’s urgency in Trump’s rhetoric, and in the internal Trump administration debate, it’s because this is a unique moment: Iran is both uniquely dangerous and uniquely vulnerable.

Dangerous because Iran has crossed the nuclear threshold. At current estimates, the mullahs could enrich enough uranium for five nuclear warheads in a week. While Iran’s weaponization efforts are unknown—and Iran continues to say it has no interest in a bomb—U.S. intelligence officials believe Iran is accelerating plans to build warheads. Meanwhile, Iran’s successful space launch in December was thinly disguised research into intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could threaten the U.S. homeland.

Yet Iran is also vulnerable. Last October’s Israeli strike on Iranian air defenses and missile sites was remarkably effective. Iran’s strategic position has collapsed: Assad gone in Syria. Hezbollah crippled in Lebanon. Iraq wriggling out of Iran’s grip. Hamas under siege. And the Houthis hammered by Trump.

The president thus has a rare opportunity: Deal Iran a heavy blow and set its nuclear program back decades. A weakened Iran would undermine Hamas, the Houthis, the militias, and Russian forces killing Ukrainians with Iranian drones. Russia and China would see that Trump is serious. The Iranian people would have a chance to overthrow a decadent and despotic regime.

And if Trump accedes to another round of discussions? As always, Iran will try to run out the clock. It will drag out the proceedings, evade sanctions, rebuild defenses, and advance its nuclear research, weaponization plans, and ballistic and ICBM programs. The 85-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei will have pulled another rabbit out of his turban.

“I hope for our sake you wind up in Tehran,” Tucker Carlson told Steve Witkoff.

Trump’s Advisers Are Divided on Iran. Which Way Is the President Leaning?

Trump’s top officials debate foreign policy in the group chat. The divide mirrors the president’s own conflicted view of how to handle Tehran.

By Matthew Continetti

03.24.25 — U.S. Politics

https://www.thefp.com/p/trumps-advisers-are-divided-on-iran

“The president thus has a rare opportunity: Deal Iran a heavy blow and set its nuclear program back decades,” writes Matthew Continetti. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

0:00

-9:57

Jeffrey Goldberg has entered the chat.

The Atlantic editor had the scoop of the second Trump administration (so far) when he revealed Monday afternoon that he had been included in a Signal message group where Trump’s senior national security officials discussed plans to bomb Yemen’s Houthi militia. Since October 7, 2023, the Iran-backed militia has used missiles and drones to shut down Red Sea shipping lanes and engaged the U.S. Navy in its longest surface warfare operation since World War II.

The group chat had it all: emojis, operational plans, major national security concerns, and a breathtaking glimpse of the foreign policy divides within Trump’s inner circle.

The clearest line was drawn between the account identified with Vice President J.D. Vance, who was skeptical of bringing the fight to the Houthis, and the account associated with National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. “I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself,” the Vance account wrote to the message group. “But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”

The Waltz account replied: “Whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes.” Vance deferred. And one day later, the bombing commenced.

Screenshots from the Signal group shows debate over the president’s views ahead of the attack. (The Atlantic)

What makes the Goldberg story compelling is its insider account of the foreign policy split screen you often see in public. Take, for example, the increasing hints of a Trump administration fight over the Houthis’ paymasters in Iran.

On one side of the split screen is Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff, hailed by Tucker Carlson as “the most effective diplomat in a generation.” In a March 21 interview, Witkoff told Carlson that Trump wants peace with Iran and has suggested to Tehran “a verification program so no one has to worry about the weaponization of your [Iran’s] nuclear material.”

Verification is the key word. In Witkoff’s scenario, Iran would retain its nuclear material—the same result as Barack Obama’s deal with Iran.

Waltz sang a different tune during a March 23 appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation. According to Waltz, President Trump’s goal isn’t verification. It’s the “full dismantlement” of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. “Iran has to give up its program in a way that the entire world can see.” Or else.

So which is it? Verification or dismantlement? Diplomacy or a reckoning?

A screenshot from the Signal group shows debate over the president’s views ahead of the attack. (The Atlantic)

President Trump will have to choose. Two months into his second term, Trump’s Iran policy mirrors his first: maximum pressure coupled with conflict avoidance and the prospect of negotiations. Except now there’s a chorus inside and outside the government clamoring for a deal that would let the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism off the hook.

The debate is framed as a personnel fight. Witkoff against Waltz. J.D. Vance versus Witkoff’s critics. Congressional hawks alarmed at Trump Pentagon officials with ties to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft—the think tank funded by Charles Koch and George Soros whose executive vice president once led the pro-Tehran National Iranian American Council.

Yet Trump’s conflicting diplomatic and military impulses are not staffing problems. They are personal ones. Trump prefers tariffs to troops. Force is his last resort. He prides himself on being a rare president who starts no wars. And his opposition to “forever wars” binds together his unwieldy coalition.

Still, Trump values strength above all. He’s opposed Iran’s nuclear program since 2015. He knows Iran is trying to kill him. He’s demonstrated a willingness to act—though not, to date, against targets on Iranian soil.

Recall Trump’s first term. He withdrew from the Obama nuclear deal. He nearly bankrupted Tehran with sanctions. But he hesitated to confront America’s sworn enemy directly.

Trump’s withdrawal of some U.S. forces from Syria, home to pro-Iran militias, prompted Jim Mattis’s resignation as defense secretary in December 2018. John Bolton left as national security adviser the following summer. Part of the reason: Bolton objected to Trump’s last-minute cancellation of a planned retaliatory strike after Iran’s downing of a U.S. drone in June 2019. And Bolton opposed Trump’s (unrealized) desire to meet with the late Iranian president Hassan Rouhani at the UN.

When Iran directed the Houthis to launch a massive drone strike against Saudi oil facilities in September 2019, disrupting energy markets for months, Trump condemned the violence. Nothing else. Only after Iran-backed militias in Iraq killed an American civilian contractor and assaulted the U.S. embassy in Baghdad did Trump order the January 3, 2020, killing of Iran’s famed military leader Qasem Soleimani—and even then, while Soleimani was in Iraq, not Iran.

The strategic ambiguity, easily mistaken for strategic confusion, persists. On February 4, the day he reinstated maximum pressure sanctions, Trump Truthed: “I want Iran to be a great and successful Country, but one that cannot have a Nuclear Weapon. Reports that the United States, working in conjunction with Israel, is going to blow Iran into smithereens, ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED. I would much prefer a Verified Nuclear Peace Agreement, which will let Iran peacefully grow and prosper. We should start working on it immediately, and have a big Middle East Celebration when it is signed and completed. God bless the Middle East!”

Then, directly after ordering sanctions, Trump said Iran would be “obliterated” if it assassinated him. “I’ve left instructions if they do it, they get obliterated, there won’t be anything left.”

Clear as a sandstorm.

In a March 6 interview with Maria Bartiromo, Trump revealed he’d written to Ayatollah Khamenei. “I’ve written them a letter saying, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing.’ You can’t let them have a nuclear weapon. . . . I would prefer to make a deal, because I’m not looking to hurt Iran. They’re great people.”

The difference with Obama is striking. Obama wrote four letters to the Ayatollah, in secret, with no time limit. Trump wrote one, talked about it on Fox Business the next day, and gave Iran two months to decide. The countdown begins.

And Trump is running out of patience. On March 7, he said Iran is “down to the final moments.” And he continued: “We can’t let them have a nuclear weapon. Something is going to happen very soon. I would rather have a peace deal than the other option, but the other option will solve the problem.”

A week later, Trump launched strikes against the Houthis. If Iran continues its support of the Houthis, he Truthed, “America will hold you fully accountable and we won’t be nice about it!”

Two days later, in case Iran was confused, Trump said, “Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!” Then, on March 22, to make himself perfectly clear, Trump ordered a second aircraft carrier to the Red Sea. Subtle, the president is not.

If there’s urgency in Trump’s rhetoric, and in the internal Trump administration debate, it’s because this is a unique moment: Iran is both uniquely dangerous and uniquely vulnerable.

Dangerous because Iran has crossed the nuclear threshold. At current estimates, the mullahs could enrich enough uranium for five nuclear warheads in a week. While Iran’s weaponization efforts are unknown—and Iran continues to say it has no interest in a bomb—U.S. intelligence officials believe Iran is accelerating plans to build warheads. Meanwhile, Iran’s successful space launch in December was thinly disguised research into intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could threaten the U.S. homeland.

Yet Iran is also vulnerable. Last October’s Israeli strike on Iranian air defenses and missile sites was remarkably effective. Iran’s strategic position has collapsed: Assad gone in Syria. Hezbollah crippled in Lebanon. Iraq wriggling out of Iran’s grip. Hamas under siege. And the Houthis hammered by Trump.

The president thus has a rare opportunity: Deal Iran a heavy blow and set its nuclear program back decades. A weakened Iran would undermine Hamas, the Houthis, the militias, and Russian forces killing Ukrainians with Iranian drones. Russia and China would see that Trump is serious. The Iranian people would have a chance to overthrow a decadent and despotic regime.

And if Trump accedes to another round of discussions? As always, Iran will try to run out the clock. It will drag out the proceedings, evade sanctions, rebuild defenses, and advance its nuclear research, weaponization plans, and ballistic and ICBM programs. The 85-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei will have pulled another rabbit out of his turban.

“I hope for our sake you wind up in Tehran,” Tucker Carlson told Steve Witkoff.

The mullahs couldn’t agree more.

15. Innovating Under Fire: Lessons from Ukraine’s Frontline Drone Workshops

​Excerpts:

The consistent appearance of videos showcasing Ukrainian drones effectively striking Russian personnel and equipment highlights the critical juncture militaries find themselves at as they prepare for modern warfare. As military analysts, particularly those focused on the integration of drone technologies into US military strategy, adopt a comprehensive perspective on Ukrainian drone operations, it is imperative to recognize the crucial role of drone workshops within this operational framework. While Ukraine’s rapid innovation in drone manufacturing is admirable, the operational capabilities and continuous improvements achieved at these workshops are pivotal to sustaining drone effectiveness and countering Russian advances.

Understanding and integrating this model could represent a significant opportunity for the US military to mitigate the logistical challenges inherent in modern operations, where US forces could easily find themselves operating in areas thousands of miles away from manufacturing hubs. Without a shift toward a more responsive and agile maintenance approach, US forces risk becoming entangled in inefficiencies characterized by lengthy logistical lines and cumbersome bureaucratic processes that are ill-suited to the speed of today’s battlefields. Now is the critical moment to redefine our approach to the maintenance and operational readiness of the extensive fleet of UAVs. Delaying this transformation could prove detrimental, as future conflicts may demand capabilities that our current structures are ill-prepared to deliver, ultimately endangering lives and operational success. It is essential to heed these lessons from Ukraine to maintain a competitive edge in the evolving warfare landscape.

Innovating Under Fire: Lessons from Ukraine’s Frontline Drone Workshops - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Jorge Rivero · March 25, 2025

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Author’s note: This article draws heavily from interviews conducted in January 2025 with Ukrainian Marines, who generously shared their insights on UAV tactics, organizational structure, and personnel management. The interviews were conducted over five days and provided insights into drone operations, infantry tactics, electronic warfare, and technical innovation during the war.

Over the past three years of war, footage from Ukraine spread on social media has become a daily reminder of the outsized—and growing—role drones play on today’s battlefield. This footage emphasizes the centrality of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War, in particular, while also signaling their transformative role in modern warfare more generally. Drone strikes account for approximately 70 percent of Russian casualties and, in some parts of the front, 90 percent of Russian military equipment losses in engagements with Ukrainian forces. Advanced UAVs have given Ukrainian commanders unparalleled situational awareness, significantly enhancing operational effectiveness during offensive and defensive operations. Drones hasten effective force coordination and employment by enabling persistent surveillance of enemy movements. Additionally, drones play a critical role in mining Russian logistical routes, adjusting artillery and missile strikes, and easing the burden by providing logistics and, in some cases, medical support to Ukrainian forces. This integration of drone capabilities provides real-time aerial intelligence, allowing for tactical decisions executed with precision and responsiveness unattainable ten years ago.

In part, this expansive role for drones in Ukraine’s war effort is a testament to the remarkable growth in Ukrainian domestic manufacturing capacity. But building these platforms is not enough on its own. With millions of UAVs on the front lines, Ukraine utilizes significant resources to ensure these systems stay in the air. The operational effectiveness of top Ukrainian drone units is deeply linked to the efficient maintenance and functionality of their UAVs. This requirement highlights the critical role of Ukrainian drone engineer workshops and electronic laboratories. These facilities function as vital centers for innovation and repair, ensuring that drones are continuously operational and capable of executing missions on the front lines. These workshops provide emergency repair and maintenance in hours, not days or weeks, a crucial factor in a conflict where technological advantages can change rapidly. As the US military seeks to integrate drones into its organizational structure, it is imperative to learn from Ukraine’s complex approach to drone warfare, which prioritizes the incorporation of modern technology, adaptable operational concepts, and decentralized support systems positioned directly at the front lines. In future conflicts, US forces may find themselves operating thousands of miles away from the manufacturers of critical equipment, all while fighting an adversary with persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. And much like in Ukraine, they will be unable to rely on traditional models of resupply to match the speed of consumption. This makes it imperative to learn lesson from how Ukraine deploys and maintains its drone fleets and delivers the support necessary to keep them flying on the front lines.

Ukrainian Drone Workshops: What They Do

Drone workshops are typically integrated within the organizational structure of UAV battalions operating under Ukrainian brigades. These engineering workshops serve as the forward-most resource for addressing technical challenges that could hamper UAV operations. Comprised of ten to twelve specialized Ukrainian soldiers, these units focus on UAVs’ modernization and combat readiness, engaging in developing and innovating new technologies while testing existing equipment. They also cultivate an atmosphere of continuous improvement, essential on a rapidly evolving technological battlefield. The personnel involved are often skilled engineers or technicians, deeply familiar with drone technology, propulsion systems, sensors, and software interfaces. Their expertise encompasses various functions, including diagnostics, repairs, upgrades, and integrating new components into existing UAV platforms.

In-house capabilities, particularly in 3D printing, play a crucial role in these workshops. The workshops can produce on-demand critical drone components with access to advanced additive manufacturing technology. This capability is especially valuable in a conflict where supply lines can be disrupted, and the need for rapid repairs can mean a difference in operational success. By modeling and fabricating parts, these teams significantly reduce reliance on external suppliers and ensure that drones can quickly be restored to operational status after sustaining damage.

Additionally, these small teams conduct thorough maintenance of batteries, which are vital for powering UAV missions. The operations include not only the assembly of new battery packs but also the testing and quality assurance of existing battery systems. Such maintenance tasks are essential to avoid failures during flights, as UAVs heavily depend on reliable power sources to perform their surveillance, reconnaissance, and combat roles effectively—even more so after adding additional weight in the form of munitions like mortars and PG-9 antiarmor rounds and systems like Starlink.

Moreover, the workshops enable a feedback loop between frontline operators and engineering teams, allowing for rapid problem-solving and innovation in response to battlefield demands. Any technical issues encountered by remote operators can be communicated back to the workshops, where engineers work to devise solutions that enhance the operational capabilities of the UAVs. For example, suppose a Russian electronic warfare system is actively jamming a particular frequency along the front line. Instead of going through a lengthy bureaucratic process, these operators can mitigate these problems in-house, often changing tactics and frequencies in hours, not days or weeks. By being embedded within the battalion structure, these workshops demonstrate exceptional agility, recalibrating their focus based on the immediate needs of combat units in the field.

At an even lower level, drone workshops within Ukrainian battalions are also equipped to perform various tasks. They repair and redesign drones, which includes updating or enhancing components such as antennas, remote controls, and batteries. The arrival of 3D printing technology has transformed the repair process, allowing specialists to print necessary parts and spare components to meet the immediate operational requirements of frontline units. This capability is crucial, especially considering the rapid pace at which drone technology evolves. These workshops are essential to deploying advanced software designed to enhance the survivability of drones in hostile conditions. By implementing software updates, technicians can make drones less detectable to enemy systems. This includes modifications that increase drone ranges and altitudes and further adaptations that remove features that transmit identification or locations information, which helps to minimize the risk of interception. Such measures taken by the drone workshop significantly increase the effectiveness of drone missions, allowing units to operate with a lower profile on the battlefield. Additionally, having specialized troops working in the drone workshop eliminates additional burdens on the drone pilots, who are already taxed with flying multiple daily missions.

The drone workshops also have engineering teams, which provide critical but dangerous explosive ordnance disposal expertise. This includes adapting existing munitions for drone delivery and developing improvised explosive devices tailored for use with UAVs. They are responsible for testing and enhancing explosives to ensure maximum effectiveness, which is vital for the ongoing drone campaign in the conflict. As a result, Ukrainian operators can integrate lethal munitions into their drone caches, thereby boosting their combat capabilities.

Vulnerability and Adaptation

Despite their importance, these workshops are not without vulnerabilities. Positioned close to the front lines, they are exposed to risks from Russian artillery, loitering munitions, and missile attacks. The need to maintain these workshops near combat zones is a double-edged sword; while it ensures rapid service support for drones, it also places them within the crosshairs of enemy fire. To counter this, Ukraine has initiated an approach involving deploying high-mobility vehicles equipped with workstations and essential electronic equipment to enable drone repairs as close to the front as possible without compromising safety. These vehicles have capabilities such as routers, storage racks, welding equipment, and assembly areas, stressing the critical role of these mobile units in sustaining drone operations along the front lines.

Moreover, the ongoing support from international partners has allowed for the expansion of mobile drone repair capabilities. The Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union, a state-sponsored paramilitary organization involved in Lithuania’s total defense concept, has taken measures to develop mobile drone repair shops that can accommodate two technicians. These vehicles are outfitted with 3D printers and soldering stations, enabling them to operate independently anywhere in Ukraine for up to two days without external power. These innovative solutions represent a concerted effort to bolster Ukraine’s drone repair infrastructure, ensuring the military can maintain its aerial surveillance and combat capabilities under increasingly challenging conditions. Priced at approximately $36,000, these mobile workshops reflect a cost-effective method to enhancing drone survivability on the modern battlefield.

The consistent appearance of videos showcasing Ukrainian drones effectively striking Russian personnel and equipment highlights the critical juncture militaries find themselves at as they prepare for modern warfare. As military analysts, particularly those focused on the integration of drone technologies into US military strategy, adopt a comprehensive perspective on Ukrainian drone operations, it is imperative to recognize the crucial role of drone workshops within this operational framework. While Ukraine’s rapid innovation in drone manufacturing is admirable, the operational capabilities and continuous improvements achieved at these workshops are pivotal to sustaining drone effectiveness and countering Russian advances.

Understanding and integrating this model could represent a significant opportunity for the US military to mitigate the logistical challenges inherent in modern operations, where US forces could easily find themselves operating in areas thousands of miles away from manufacturing hubs. Without a shift toward a more responsive and agile maintenance approach, US forces risk becoming entangled in inefficiencies characterized by lengthy logistical lines and cumbersome bureaucratic processes that are ill-suited to the speed of today’s battlefields. Now is the critical moment to redefine our approach to the maintenance and operational readiness of the extensive fleet of UAVs. Delaying this transformation could prove detrimental, as future conflicts may demand capabilities that our current structures are ill-prepared to deliver, ultimately endangering lives and operational success. It is essential to heed these lessons from Ukraine to maintain a competitive edge in the evolving warfare landscape.

Jorge Rivero is a retired Marine staff noncommissioned officer. He is a senior information operations planner and previously served as a Russian foreign area specialist. Jorge holds master of arts degrees from the Bundeswehr University in Munich and from George Washington University. He is also an MIT Seminar XXI fellow. His work focuses on Russian information operations, the Russian military, and Russian strategic weapons.

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

Image credit: Mil.gov.ua

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Jorge Rivero · March 25, 2025

16. China Has Already Remade the International System

​Depressing.

Conclusion:

The United States and others are imitating China in large part because China succeeded in a way that was unexpected. Its success in electric vehicles and clean technology did not come from liberalizing economic policies but from state interventions in the market in the name of nationalist objectives. Whether or not the United States can compete with China on China's playing field, it is important to recognize a fundamental truth: the United States is now operating largely in accordance with Beijing’s standards, with a new economic model characterized by protectionism, constraints on foreign investment, subsidies, and industrial policy—essentially nationalist state capitalism. In the war over who gets to define the rules of the road, the battle is over, at least for now. And China won.

China Has Already Remade the International System

Foreign Affairs · by More by Michael B. G. Froman · March 25, 2025

How the World Adopted Beijing’s Economic Playbook

Michael B. G. Froman

March 25, 2025

Trucks loaded with shipping containers outside Shanghai, February 2025 Go Nakamura / Reuters

MICHAEL B. G. FROMAN is President of the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as U.S. Trade Representative from 2013 to 2017 and Deputy National Security Adviser for International Economic Affairs from 2009 to 2013.

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In early February, as he flew in Air Force One above the body of water he’d recently renamed the Gulf of America, President Donald Trump declared that he would levy tariffs on all imported steel and aluminum. Two weeks later, he issued a presidential memorandum laying out new guidance for screening investment from Chinese firms in the United States and U.S. firms into China. And throughout the early weeks of his administration, Trump has emphasized the importance of bringing manufacturing back home, telling firms that, to avoid tariffs, they should make their products in the United States.

Tariffs and protectionism, restrictions on investment, measures designed to drive domestic production: Washington’s economic policy suddenly looks an awful lot like Beijing’s policies over the last decade or so—like Chinese policy with American characteristics.

The U.S. strategy of engagement with China was based on the premise that, if the United States incorporated China into the global rules-based system, China would become more like the United States. For decades, Washington lectured Beijing about avoiding protectionism, eliminating barriers to foreign investment, and disciplining the use of subsidies and industrial policy—with only modest success. Still, the expectation was that integration would facilitate convergence.

There has indeed been a fair degree of convergence—just not in the way American policymakers predicted. Instead of China coming to resemble the United States, the United States is behaving more like China. Washington may have forged the open, liberal rules-based order, but China has defined its next phase: protectionism, subsidization, restrictions on foreign investment, and industrial policy. To argue that the United States must reassert its leadership to preserve the rules-based system it established is to miss the point. China’s nationalist state capitalism now dominates the international economic order. Washington is already living in Beijing’s world.

OPENING UP?

In the 1990s and the early years of this century, there was every indication that China was on an inexorable march toward economic liberalization. Building on a process that began in the late 1970s under the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, China opened up to foreign investment. President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji then kept China on a remarkable, if painful, path of economic reforms. They restructured state-owned enterprises and fired tens of millions of their workers, created more space for private sector activity, allowed businesses to adjust prices in response to market conditions, and ushered in China’s entry to the World Trade Organization.

Jiang and Zhu declared repeatedly that China would inevitably continue to open up. Many in the West went so far as to believe that this economic liberalization would lead to China’s political liberalization, that a capitalist society would become a more democratic one over time. That assumption proved false. China’s leaders never seriously contemplated political reform, but China’s economic advancement was impressive nonetheless. The country’s GDP grew from $347.77 billion in 1989 to $1.66 trillion by 2003 to $17.79 trillion in 2023, according to the World Bank. Hopes were high that integrating China into the rules-based trading system could lead to a more peaceful and more prosperous world. Globalization did lift more than a billion people out of poverty, an astounding feat. But the benefits of that progress were not evenly shared, and some workers and communities in industrialized countries ended up paying the price for the rise of the rest.

Then President Hu Jintao entered the picture, followed by President Xi Jinping. China’s economic trajectory turned out to be less linear and less inevitable than initially expected. Under Hu, China leaned more heavily into state intervention in the economy by aiming to create “national champions” in strategic sectors through massive subsidies. In other words, the government expanded its role rather than pursuing further market liberalization. At the same time, a flood of cheap Chinese imports accelerated the trend toward deindustrialization in the United States—and did so at a rate that few, if any, fully anticipated. China became the world’s manufacturing floor, overtaking the manufacturing giants of Japan and Germany in the first decade of this century. In 2004, China made up nine percent of the world’s manufacturing value added, leapfrogging to a massive 29 percent in 2023, according to the World Bank.

HOW CHINA WON

Washington pressed Beijing to deliver on its reform agenda throughout this period, urging China to open its markets and refrain from imposing high tariffs and other barriers on products being exported from the United States. It advocated for U.S. firms to be allowed to invest in China without being excluded from certain sectors or required to enter joint ventures with—and transfer U.S. technology to—local firms. And Washington demanded that the Chinese government stop subsidizing the production and export of goods, which distorted the global marketplace. But this litany of complaints fell largely on deaf ears.

In 2009, the Obama administration led an effort to terminate the Doha Round—a multilateral trade negotiation under the WTO launched in 2001. It did so in large part because the resulting agreement would have enshrined China permanently as a “developing country” under WTO rules. This would have allowed China to enjoy “special and differential treatment,” which meant that China would have been able to avoid assuming the same level of obligations and disciplines—on market access, intellectual property rights protection, and other issues—as the United States and other industrial countries. Washington faced near-universal criticism at the time for encouraging a rethink of the premises of the negotiation. But it was clear even then that, left unaddressed, China’s economic practices would significantly disrupt the global trading system.

The United States is already living in China’s world.

Similar concerns motivated the Obama administration to pursue the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a high-standard trade agreement negotiated among 12 countries around the Pacific Rim. This initiative was designed to give countries in the Asia-Pacific region an attractive alternative to the model China offered. It brought together a group of diverse countries that were willing to set strong labor and environmental protections, limit the use of subsidies, impose discipline on state-owned enterprises, and address various China-specific concerns, such as intellectual property rights protection. By the time TPP negotiations were completed in 2015, however, trade agreements—even those designed to counterbalance China—had become politically toxic at home, and the United States ended up pulling out of the agreement.

From 2009 to 2017, I served first as deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs and then as U.S. trade representative. During that time, I consistently warned my Chinese counterparts that the benign international environment that had enabled China’s success would disappear unless Beijing modified its predatory economic policies. Instead, China largely maintained its course of action. If anything, it doubled down on its approach. When Xi came to power in 2012, he effectively ended the era of “reform and opening” that had already stalled under Hu, set China on a course to dominate critical technologies, increased production to the point of overcapacity, and committed to export-led growth. Today, as the economist Brad Setser has noted, China’s export volume is growing at a rate three times as fast as global trade. In the automotive sector, it is on a trajectory to have the capacity to produce two-thirds of the world’s automotive demand. And its dominance extends beyond cars; China also produces more than half the global supply of steel, aluminum, and ships.

Eventually, even American businesses, which had always been the ballast in the bilateral relationship, soured on China as their intellectual property was stolen or forcibly licensed, their market access to China was severely restricted or delayed, and China’s subsidies and preferences for domestic firms ate into their opportunity. Without any semblance of reciprocity, the relationship deteriorated. Politicians of both parties and the American public hardened their stance on China. European and major emerging economies grew hostile to Beijing’s policies, as well. In short, the benign international environment disappeared.

Working on an electric vehicle production line in Zhejiang province, China, March 2025 Florence Lo / Reuters

Washington, having failed to convince Beijing to change its predatory economic policies or to move forward with an alternative trading bloc to counterbalance China, was left with one option: the United States had to become more like China. After decades of berating China for imposing high tariffs and other restrictions on U.S. exports, the United States is now putting up the same barriers. As calculated by the economist Chad Bown, Trump imposed tariffs that increased the average rate on imports from China from three percent to 19 percent in his first administration, covering two-thirds of all imports from China. President Joe Biden maintained those tariffs and added tariffs on other Chinese products, including personal protective equipment, electric vehicles, batteries, and steel, slightly increasing the average tariff on imports from China. Less than two months into his second administration, Trump has imposed an additional 20 percent tariff on all U.S. imports from China—a bigger move than the tariffs of his first administration and the Biden administration combined.

Similarly, the United States changed its approach from opposing barriers to most bilateral investment flows to severely restricting China’s investment in the United States and U.S. investment in certain sensitive sectors in China. Annual Chinese investment in the United States plummeted from $46 billion in 2016 to less than $5 billion in 2022, according to the Rhodium Group. And, having urged Beijing to abandon subsidy and industrial policies, Washington itself went all-in on industrial policy during the Biden administration, laying out at least $1.6 trillion on the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

IF YOU CAN’T BEAT THEM, JOIN THEM

To take the Chinese approach one step further could mean adopting a key tool in Beijing’s toolbox: requiring Chinese firms that invest abroad to establish joint ventures with domestic firms and engage in technology transfers. Such a strategy could enhance not just American industrial competitiveness but also that of other countries negatively affected by China’s overcapacity, including many in Europe.

Take the clean energy sector as an obvious example. China’s electric vehicle manufacturers innovate faster and produce high-quality vehicles far more cheaply than U.S. firms; some Chinese vehicles are as much as 50 percent less expensive than their American equivalents, and China accounts for nearly 60 percent of global electric vehicle sales worldwide. China’s battery producers, solar panel manufacturers, and clean energy equipment companies have similar advantages.

In the United States, China’s market share in electric vehicles is nearly nonexistent. Current tariffs and other restrictions are likely to prevent any future influx of imports. At the same time, European auto manufacturers, particularly those in Germany, are getting squeezed by domestic preference policies and the competitiveness of domestic firms in the Chinese market, which they have depended on for growth. And lately, China has been making inroads in the European market, too. The European market share of Chinese electric vehicles grew from virtually zero percent in January 2019 to over 11 percent in June 2024.

Following the United States’ lead, Europe introduced tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles late last year. This slowed the growth in China’s market share. But just holding off a rise in imports may not solve the European auto industry’s problems. To maintain jobs and manufacturing capacity, Europe appears to be open to Chinese investment in electric vehicle production in Europe. (By contrast, it is unclear whether Trump would welcome such investment or would continue to ban Chinese electric vehicles in the U.S. market because of their potential to track citizens’ movements or shut down traffic.) If Europe is to avoid becoming merely a destination for final assembly of Chinese electric vehicles, it might have to borrow a tactic from Beijing and require Chinese companies to enter into joint ventures with European firms and transfer technology and know-how to them.

HOW TO OUT-CHINA CHINA

It is not yet clear whether the United States can outmaneuver China with its own playbook. Beijing seems to have near-unlimited capacity to mobilize capital and manipulate trade and investment policy in service of its long-term objectives. Washington’s Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, meanwhile, were more likely historic anomalies than first steps in a broader trend toward greater industrial policy, given the uneasiness among Republican lawmakers over their passage. Indeed, even as he seeks to boost the U.S. semiconductor industry, Trump has called for the repeal of the CHIPS and Science Act, which provides subsidies for semiconductor manufacturing. The subsidies provided by the Inflation Reduction Act are likely to face political challenges, too.

There is an active debate over whether the Biden administration got sufficient bang for its industrial policy buck beyond a few key sectors. U.S. investment in manufacturing has surged, and arguably industrial capacity has expanded. But as the economist Jason Furman pointed out in Foreign Affairs earlier this year, “The proportion of people working in manufacturing has been declining for decades and has not ticked back up, and overall domestic industrial production remains stagnant—in part because the fiscal expansion Biden oversaw led to higher costs, a stronger dollar, and higher interest rates, all of which have created headwinds for the manufacturing sectors that received no special subsidies from the legislation he championed.” Wherever one comes down in this debate, one thing is clear: even in the sectors that the Biden administration subsidized, such as semiconductors and green energy, the path to regaining global leadership is long and uncertain.

The United States may play the protectionist game as well as others, but soon, inflation, higher costs of living, and job losses in industries or sectors affected by other countries’ retaliation will begin to bite. Trump appears to believe that a wall of tariffs—as well as the uncertainty about whether tariffs are on or off at any particular moment in time—is a powerful incentive for companies to locate their production in the United States, where they can be sure their goods will not be subject to tariffs. But as a general matter, companies that consider making the necessary capital investments to spur industrial production in the United States are looking for predictable policy environments, not tariffs that are imposed in the morning and withdrawn in the afternoon. Most may decide to sit on the sidelines, keeping their powder dry, until it becomes clearer what tariffs are going into effect, against whom, and for how long.

After berating Beijing for its restrictions, Washington is putting up the same barriers.

The historical record of tariffs driving expanded production and manufacturing jobs in the United States is far from definitive. Take, for example, the tariffs imposed by Trump in 2018 on Chinese imports. As a 2024 paper by Federal Reserve researchers Aaron Flaaen and Justin Pierce found, “Tariff increases enacted since early 2018 are associated with relative reductions in U.S. manufacturing employment and relative increases in producer prices. In terms of manufacturing employment, rising input costs and retaliatory tariffs account for the negative relationship, and the contribution from these channels more than offsets a small positive effect from import protection.” Some research estimates 75,000 lost downstream manufacturing jobs as a direct result of the tariffs, not to mention additional losses from retaliatory tariffs. The economic experts Benn Steil and Elisabeth Harding have also found that productivity in the U.S. steel industry tanked while productivity in other sectors rose since Trump imposed 25 percent tariffs on steel imports in March 2018. Output per hour in the U.S. steel industry has tumbled by 32 percent since 2017.

Perhaps Trump’s approach to moving production back to the United States will bear fruit, but for that to happen, the U.S. government would have to permit foreign firms to actually make such investments. Both Biden and Trump opposed the Japanese company Nippon Steel’s acquisition of U.S. Steel, and U.S. policymakers are still debating whether Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund can acquire a controlling stake in the PGA Tour, which organizes U.S. golf tournaments—hardly a critical industry.

The United States and others are imitating China in large part because China succeeded in a way that was unexpected. Its success in electric vehicles and clean technology did not come from liberalizing economic policies but from state interventions in the market in the name of nationalist objectives. Whether or not the United States can compete with China on China's playing field, it is important to recognize a fundamental truth: the United States is now operating largely in accordance with Beijing’s standards, with a new economic model characterized by protectionism, constraints on foreign investment, subsidies, and industrial policy—essentially nationalist state capitalism. In the war over who gets to define the rules of the road, the battle is over, at least for now. And China won.

MICHAEL B. G. FROMAN is President of the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as U.S. Trade Representative from 2013 to 2017 and Deputy National Security Adviser for International Economic Affairs from 2009 to 2013.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Michael B. G. Froman · March 25, 2025

17. Ukraine will need major rebuilding when war ends − here’s why the US isn’t likely to invest in its recovery with a new Marshall Plan

​Everyone likes to tout the Marshall Plan. I think most scholars and analysts understand it was uniquely suited to post-WWII Europe because of the unique conditions of Euroep before and after the war and it cannot be replicated in most places where people calf or it. But I wonder if Ukraine is one place where the conditions might be right for it to work. But it will have to be a European Plan paid for by the Europeans because we Americans will not pay for another Marshall Plan.

Excerpts:

Modern-day Ukraine mirrors the Western European countries of the Marshall Plan era in meaningful ways.

It suffers from the physical devastation of war, with its major cities heavily damaged. The threat of military attack from hostile neighbors remains urgent. And it has a functional, democratic government that would – in peacetime – be capable of receiving and distributing aid to develop the nation’s economic growth and stability.

U.S. global leadership, however, has changed dramatically since 1948.

Outright American taxpayer financing of Ukraine’s reconstruction seems impossible. Any plan to reconstruct the country after war will likely require public funding from multiple nations and substantial private investment. That private investment could well include mineral extraction and refinement ventures.

Ultimately, Ukraine’s recovery will most likely involve Ukraine and neighboring nations reaching agreement to restore its economic and military security. The European Union, which Ukraine also seeks to join, has the bureaucratic and economic resources necessary to reconstruct Ukraine, restore peace and ease tensions on the continent.

Any future Marshall Plan for Ukraine will probably be European.

Ukraine will need major rebuilding when war ends − here’s why the US isn’t likely to invest in its recovery with a new Marshall Plan

theconversation.com · by Frank A. Blazich Jr.

President Donald Trump wants Ukraine to repay the United States for helping to defend the country against Russia’s invasion.

Since 2022, Congress has provided about US$174 billion to Ukraine and neighboring countries to assist its war effort. Trump inflated this figure to $350 billion in a March 2025 White House meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron. Separately, he has suggested Ukraine could reimburse the U.S. by giving America access to its minerals.

Ukraine is rich in titanium, graphite, manganese and other rare earth metals used to produce electric vehicle batteries and other tech devices.

Mining and refining these critical mineral resources would require major investment in infrastructure and economic development, including in parts of Ukraine severely damaged by fighting. Some analysts are calling for a return to the European Recovery Program, commonly known as the Marshall Plan.

The Marshall Plan used $13.3 billion in U.S. funds – roughly $171 billion in today’s dollars – to rebuild war-torn Western Europe from 1948 to late 1951. It is often evoked as a solution for reconstruction following global crises. Yet as a military historian and curator, I find that the Marshall Plan is not well understood.

For the U.S., the economic gains of the Marshall Plan did not come from European countries’ repaying loans or allowing the U.S. to extract their raw materials. Rather, the U.S. has benefited enormously from a half-century of goodwill, democratic stability and economic success in Europe.

European nations turn inward

After World War II ended in 1945, Western Europe faced a staggering burden of destruction and upheaval.

The German city of Cologne in ruins, 1945. Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

Allied bombardment of major industrial areas and German cities such as Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne had created massive housing shortages. Meanwhile, fighting through agricultural areas and a critical manpower shortage had curtailed food production. What harvest there was could not get to hungry civilians because so many of Europe’s roads, bridges and ports had been destroyed.

The United Kingdom, Italy, France, Germany and other European governments were buried in debt after so many years of war. They could not afford to rebuild on their own. Yet rather than cooperating on their mutual economic reconstruction, European nations looked inward, focusing primarily on their own political challenges.

The continent was politically and militarily divided, too. Europe’s western half was influenced by the democratic, capitalistic forces led by the U.S. Eastern Europe was beholden to the communist, command-economy forces of the Soviet Union.

In a 1946 speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill articulated Europe’s growing postwar divide. Over the ruins of proud nations, he said, “an iron curtain” had “descended across the continent.”

US looks abroad

Unlike Europe, the U.S. emerged from World War II as the wealthiest nation in the world, with its territory intact and unharmed. Its steel and oil industries were booming. By 1947, the U.S. was the clear successor to Great Britain as the world’s superpower.

But President Harry Truman feared the ambitions of the war’s other great victor – the Soviet Union. In March 1947, he announced a new doctrine to contain communist expansion southward across Europe by giving $400 million in military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey.

Around the same time, U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall met with Soviet officials to plan Germany’s future. Following the Nazis’ surrender in May 1945, Germany had been divided into four occupied zones administered by U.S., British, French and Soviet forces.

Each nation had its own goals for its section of Germany. The U.S. wanted to revitalize Germany politically and economically, believing that a moribund Germany would thwart the economic reconstruction of all of Europe.

Marshall hoped that the Soviets would cooperate, but Soviet ruler Josef Stalin preferred extracting reparations from a prostrate Germany to investing in its recovery. A vibrant German economic engine, the Soviets felt, could just as easily rearm to attack the Russian countryside for the third time that century.

The Truman administration chose to unilaterally rebuild the three western Allied sectors of Germany – and Western Europe.

Marshall outlined his plan at a commencement address at Harvard University in June 1947. American action to restore global economic health, he said, would provide the foundation for political stability and peace in Europe. And an economically healthy Western Europe, in turn, would inhibit the spread of communism by plainly demonstrating the benefits of capitalism.

“Our policy is not directed against any country,” Marshall said, “but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.”

Marshall’s plan

Marshall invited all European nations to participate in drafting a plan to first address the immediate humanitarian aid of Europe’s people, then rebuild its infrastructure. The U.S. would pay for it all.

For nearly bankrupt European nations, it was a lifeline.

Reconstruction begins in the shell-damaged town of Nipsa, Greece, as part of the Marshall Plan, in 1947. Keystone View Company/FPG/Getty Images

In September 1947, the new Committee for European Economic Co-operation, composed of 16 Western – but not Eastern – European nations, delivered its proposal to Washington.

It would take a masterful legislative strategy for the Democratic Truman administration to persuade the Republican-led Congress to pass this $13 billion bill. It succeeded thanks to the dedicated effort of Republican Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, who convinced his isolationist colleagues that the Marshall Plan would halt the expansion of communism and benefit American economic growth.

In April 1948, Truman signed the Economic Cooperation Act. By year’s end, over $2 billion had reached Europe, and its industrial production had finally surpassed prewar levels seen in 1939.

NATO is born

Along with economic stability, the Truman administration recognized that Europe needed military security to defend against communist encroachment by the Soviet Union.

In July 1949, 12 European countries, the U.S. and Canada established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO committed each member country to the mutual defense of fellow NATO members.

Since 1947, NATO has steadily expanded eastward to include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and other former Soviet satellite states directly bordering Russia.

Ukraine, which declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, is not yet a NATO member. But it desperately wants to be.

Ukraine applied for NATO membership in 2022 after Russia’s invasion. Its application is pending. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said any peace deal with Ukraine must bar NATO membership.

Would a Marshall Plan work for Ukraine?

Modern-day Ukraine mirrors the Western European countries of the Marshall Plan era in meaningful ways.

It suffers from the physical devastation of war, with its major cities heavily damaged. The threat of military attack from hostile neighbors remains urgent. And it has a functional, democratic government that would – in peacetime – be capable of receiving and distributing aid to develop the nation’s economic growth and stability.

U.S. global leadership, however, has changed dramatically since 1948.

Outright American taxpayer financing of Ukraine’s reconstruction seems impossible. Any plan to reconstruct the country after war will likely require public funding from multiple nations and substantial private investment. That private investment could well include mineral extraction and refinement ventures.

Ultimately, Ukraine’s recovery will most likely involve Ukraine and neighboring nations reaching agreement to restore its economic and military security. The European Union, which Ukraine also seeks to join, has the bureaucratic and economic resources necessary to reconstruct Ukraine, restore peace and ease tensions on the continent.

Any future Marshall Plan for Ukraine will probably be European.

theconversation.com · by Frank A. Blazich Jr.

18. Funding for R&D isn’t a gift to academia By Todd Young and Matt Pottinger

​Excerpts:

Sustained investment in fundamental and transformational science is consistent with the president’s stated vision of a new Golden Age, particularly in the area of innovation. Just days into his second term, Trump issued an executive order to ensure American leadership in artificial intelligence.

Our policymakers should lock arms with the science-and-technology dreamers and doers across the country — from Silicon Valley to the Silicon Prairie — and recognize that basic research isn’t a federal handout to help sustain academia.

Instead, it is a vital ingredient in our innovation future, economic and geopolitical competitiveness, and national security.

Funding for R&D isn’t a gift to academia

Investing in scientific research and development is vital to U.S. security.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/03/24/research-development-china-national-security/

March 24, 2025 at 6:45 a.m. EDTYesterday at 6:45 a.m. EDT

4 min

358

(Washington Post staff)

By Todd Young and Matt Pottinger

Todd Young, a Republican, represents Indiana in the U.S. Senate. Matt Pottinger chairs the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and was deputy national security adviser from 2019 to 2021.

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As President Donald Trump pledges to win the artificial intelligence race, send Americans to Mars and sustain U.S. military dominance, we would do well to remember a key reason the United States achieved its technological edge in the first place: federal investment in ambitious research and development. The U.S. is racing against its adversaries to lead not only in artificial intelligence but also biotech, quantum computing, robotics and other technologies that will be pivotal for U.S. prosperity and security. The pace of innovation and deployment of these next-generation capabilities will only accelerate.

The Chinese Communist Party — our primary strategic adversary — is leveraging China’s engineering talent and manufacturing prowess to advance the regime’s interests, diminish U.S. power, and assert a totalitarian model of censorship and surveillance on users of China’s technology products worldwide. Beijing’s explicit strategy for global technological dominance hinges not only on its well-known theft of American technology but also on significant investment in China’s own R&D efforts.

China’s public spending on R&D has grown 16-fold since 2000, placing it second in the world behind the United States for total spending. This month, China announced an 8.3 percent increase in science and technology spending, among other investments unveiled in an effort to surpass the United States’ lead. In several critical technologies — from drones to advanced manufacturing using robots to quantum communications — China is gaining on or already beating the United States in terms of making discoveries and applying them in the real world.

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Just as China’s commitment to research and development has grown, the U.S. government’s has waned. Federal funding for R&D has declined significantly as a share of total spending since its Cold War peak, leaving strategic blind spots in our research ecosystem.

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Our private sector and capital markets are the best in the world. But investors tend to gravitate toward easily marketable solutions in sectors such as health care, energy and consumer software apps, while avoiding more challenging or long-term investments in emerging technologies critical to our national security. Beijing’s heavy subsidies for its national champions make it even less enticing for American private companies to try and compete in many strategic sectors — further jeopardizing U.S. national security.

Just as we did when the Soviet Union drew ahead in the space race, the U.S. must meet the moment by accelerating strategic investments in scientific research and development of future technologies. The space race and U.S. commitment to putting a man on the moon led directly to our world-leading aerospace, microelectronics and internet industries — as well as the trillions of dollars in private economic activity it spurred.

Borrowing lessons from this and other successes from the Cold War, the United States can again widen its technological lead. We should follow two steps:

One, policymakers must sufficiently fund federal investment in basic and applied science research as part of the annual congressional appropriations process. The United States’ biotechnology innovators, our electronics wizards and our military leaders uniformly point to the importance of a strong science-and-technology ecosystem that starts with the university. Through public funding sources such as the National Science Foundation and the Defense Department, these targeted investments lead to advancements in materials, lifesaving therapies, and weapons for warfighters. Importantly, this research is often driven by curiosity, not profit.

Second, these innovations need to find pathways out of the labs and into boardrooms and factories. It is not enough for smart scientists and researchers to discover new solutions in the U.S. We need to make sure they develop them and bring them to market here, too. To make this a reality, we need a regulatory and business environment that incentivizes talented people to make things in America. Policymakers must take steps to streamline outdated regulations that hinder cutting-edge research.

Sustained investment in fundamental and transformational science is consistent with the president’s stated vision of a new Golden Age, particularly in the area of innovation. Just days into his second term, Trump issued an executive order to ensure American leadership in artificial intelligence.

Our policymakers should lock arms with the science-and-technology dreamers and doers across the country — from Silicon Valley to the Silicon Prairie — and recognize that basic research isn’t a federal handout to help sustain academia.

Instead, it is a vital ingredient in our innovation future, economic and geopolitical competitiveness, and national security.

19. F-47 Was Born Out Of Secret X-Planes Built By Both Boeing And Lockheed

​F-47. Took me a while to figure out the significance of the number. It went right over my head at first.

F-47 Was Born Out Of Secret X-Planes Built By Both Boeing And Lockheed

Each firm built a demonstrator jet, one flying in 2019 and the other in 2022, that logged hundreds of hours, resulting in major program risk reduction.

Tyler Rogoway

Posted on Mar 23, 2025

twz.com · by Tyler Rogoway

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We are already getting more information about the F-47’s origins. Both Boeing and Lockheed Martin built an x-plane in their quest to win the manned tactical fighter component of the Next Generation Air Dominance initiative. As we already knew, a demonstrator first flew in 2019. Now we know another one took to the skies in 2022.

To catch up on everything we know about the F-47, as well as our initial analysis, click here.

Air Force Chief of Staff Alvin put out a statement following the award to Boeing, saying that “For the past five years, the x-planes for this aircraft have been quietly laying the foundation for the F-47 — flying hundreds of hours, testing cutting-edge concepts, and proving that we can push the envelope of technology with confidence.” At the time it was not clear that both of the finalists had flown demonstrator aircraft.

The revelation comes from a DARPA release regarding the F-47 contract award. In it, the ‘bleeding edge’ defense tech agency says its involvement with what became the F-47 began in 2014 as part of the Air Dominance Initiative study, which resulted in its Aerospace Innovation Initiative. The release also quotes DARPA Acting Director Rob McHenry as stating:

“It is often only in future decades when DARPA’s disruptive impact can be unveiled – today, we’re proud to be able to share the 10-year DARPA research arc that has culminated in the F-47 program, defining the next era of American air dominance.”

The crewed sixth-generation combat jet component of NGAD traces its roots back to a requirement for what was originally termed a Penetrating Counter-Air (PCA) platform, ostensibly to succeed the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter, which emerged publicly in the mid-2010s. This, in turn, was an outgrowth of aforementioned work the Air Force had done in cooperation with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Frank Kendall, the previous Secretary of the Air Force, was heavily involved in those efforts while he had the position of Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics.

It had been claimed that up to three demonstrators aircraft flew as part of the secretive program in recent years. It’s possible that Northrop Grumman, which elected to drop out of the program around 2023 to focus on other priorities, such as the B-21 Raider, and the upcoming Navy 6th generation fighter program that is also under the name NGAD, also flew a demonstrator, but the existence of it was withheld. At the same time, these claims could have been inaccurate as they were never confirmed, and just demonstrators from Lockheed Martin and Boeing entered the flight test environment.

DARPA also states that both Boeing’s and Lockheed Martin’s x-planes flew “several hundred hours each” during the evaluation. It’s unclear what the state of these aircraft are now. They could have served their finite purpose — not uncommon for flight demonstration vehicles with limited airframe hours designed into them — or they could continue to support NGAD and other programs, we just don’t know. Boeing’s aircraft could remain of particular value.

Regardless, the fact that both have flown so many hours means that substantial risk was reduced, especially if they were somewhat production representative, which is a more common development tactic in an age of digital engineering and advanced rapid manufacturing. This also means the decision to choose Boeing was based on a lot of real performance data via flight testing, presumably in a quasi head-to-head manner. This may be a large factor in whether or not Lockheed Martin moves to protest the award decision.

Hopefully we will get additional details about the F-47 and its developmental history in the near term, but in just two days the picture of what led to it is becoming clearer.

Contact the author: Tyler@twz.com

Tyler Rogoway

Editor-in-Chief

Tyler’s passion is the study of military technology, strategy, and foreign policy and he has fostered a dominant voice on those topics in the defense media space. He was the creator of the hugely popular defense site Foxtrot Alpha before developing The War Zone.

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Boeing Wins F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance Fighter Contract (Updated) Boeing Wins F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance Fighter Contract (Updated)

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20. China’s Tech Triple Play Threatens U.S. National Security

​Excerpts:

Policymakers can begin by tightening outbound investment screening and export controls. That means scrutinizing U.S. capital and technology flows into Chinese firms linked to China’s military-industrial base, ensuring that American money and know-how no longer subsidize Beijing’s military modernization. Simultaneously, federal agencies should adopt ‘clean network’ standards for software, hardware, and data, effectively establishing cyber quarantines for critical infrastructure. This would bar high-risk Chinese devices from power grids, ports, and telecommunications systems—treating them as inherently untrusted until proven otherwise.

Equally important is imposing meaningful consequences on Beijing’s cyber intrusions. Diplomatic protests and token indictments of mid-level hackers have failed to alter China’s calculus. Instead, Washington should consider stronger penalties—including financial blacklisting of major Chinese firms or banks—to send an unmistakable message that continued infiltration carries real costs.

Finally, we must commit to robust innovation at home. America can’t meet the Chinese challenge simply by playing defense. Expanding federal R&D, incentivizing private-sector breakthroughs, and aligning workforce development with future technology needs will ensure that the United States remains a leader in the very fields—biotech, AI, quantum computing, energy storage—where China seeks supremacy.

Xi’s “main battlefield” is already upon us, and America can no longer afford complacency. China’s triple threat—penetrating, prepositioning, and profiting—targets the core of our national resilience. If we fail to respond decisively, we risk losing our technological edge and compromising our security. By fortifying our networks, enforcing meaningful consequences on malicious actors, and investing in American innovation, we can ensure Xi’s ambitions do not come at the expense of our prosperity and safety.

China’s Tech Triple Play Threatens U.S. National Security

By Craig Singleton

March 25, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/03/25/chinas_tech_triple_play_threatens_us_national_security_1099692.html?mc_cid=4ef3c65801

Chinese Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping has defiantly declared that technological innovation is the “main battlefield” in China’s quest for global preeminence. But, Beijing’s bold bid to transform itself into a global science superpower is not merely an economic imperative—it is a means to strengthen China’s military might and cyber capabilities, with grave implications for the United States.

At the center of Xi’s vision are what he calls China’s “new productive forces”—breakthroughs in advanced batteries, biotech, LiDAR, drones, and other emerging technologies that promise to redefine the next industrial revolution. By dominating these sectors, Beijing aims to ensure Chinese technology is deeply embedded within critical American supply chains—everything from power grids and ports to communications networks —thereby converting China’s commercial success into a powerful geopolitical tool of leverage.

Here at home, Beijing’s strategy is unfolding in three interlocking phases—penetrating, prepositioning, and profiting—which together form an insidious framework that both erodes America’s technological edge and undermines homeland security.

Recently exposed Chinese state-sponsored hacking campaigns—Salt, Volt, and Flax Typhoon—exemplify Beijing’s systematic approach to penetrating U.S. networks and critical infrastructure. The Salt campaign exploited vulnerabilities in telecommunications systems, allowing attackers to intercept voice and text communications and thereby compromise both civilian privacy and government operations. The Volt operation targeted industrial control systems, breaching energy and manufacturing networks to gain remote control over essential infrastructure. Meanwhile, Flax Typhoon focused on defense and government networks, exfiltrating sensitive data and installing persistent backdoors to facilitate future sabotage.

Collectively, these campaigns reveal how Chinese hackers methodically exploit software and hardware weaknesses to harvest critical intelligence and maintain enduring access to sensitive U.S networks, often with next-to-no consequences. Yet infiltration is not an end in itself. Once inside, Beijing systematically prepositions latent capabilities throughout our physical and digital supply chains, setting the stage for future coercion.

Today, Chinese-made LiDAR devices underpin smart city systems, autonomous vehicles, and certain aerial reconnaissance platforms. Similarly, Chinese-produced surveillance cameras and drones are integrated throughout our transportation network, including at major U.S. airports. Even critical infrastructure components like cranes in U.S. ports and batteries connected to our grids have morphed into strategic choke points, according to Congressional investigations.

In a conflict—or even a severe diplomatic crisis—these systemic dependencies could confer a decisive advantage to China. By withholding critical parts or inflating prices at a pivotal moment, Beijing can exploit these supply chain choke points to hamper U.S. readiness.

Prepositioned exploits could degrade or disable U.S. command-and-control systems, sabotage energy grids, or paralyze transportation networks—potentially stalling America’s response before a single shot is fired. Even if such disruptions remain hypothetical, the mere suspicion of sabotage can erode policymaker confidence and delay military mobilization efforts, effectively handing Beijing a silent veto over our crisis decision-making.

The final phase of Beijing’s strategy is profiting from these dependencies, turning commercial dominance into a revenue stream that reinforces its military-civil fusion. Chinese high-tech exports, ranging from advanced sensors and biotech innovations to drones and surveillance cameras, generate billions in revenue every year for Beijing. These profits are not reinvested merely for commercial growth; they are often funneled directly into programs bolstering People’s Liberation Army’s R&D efforts.

The stakes could hardly be higher. The House Homeland Security Committee, along with other congressional panels, has convened hearings spotlighting how Chinese hackers sit in vital infrastructure systems and how Beijing’s infiltration extends into our supply chains. The bipartisan consensus emerging from these discussions is clear: we must move swiftly from passive defense of American networks to proactive deterrence.

Policymakers can begin by tightening outbound investment screening and export controls. That means scrutinizing U.S. capital and technology flows into Chinese firms linked to China’s military-industrial base, ensuring that American money and know-how no longer subsidize Beijing’s military modernization. Simultaneously, federal agencies should adopt ‘clean network’ standards for software, hardware, and data, effectively establishing cyber quarantines for critical infrastructure. This would bar high-risk Chinese devices from power grids, ports, and telecommunications systems—treating them as inherently untrusted until proven otherwise.

Equally important is imposing meaningful consequences on Beijing’s cyber intrusions. Diplomatic protests and token indictments of mid-level hackers have failed to alter China’s calculus. Instead, Washington should consider stronger penalties—including financial blacklisting of major Chinese firms or banks—to send an unmistakable message that continued infiltration carries real costs.

Finally, we must commit to robust innovation at home. America can’t meet the Chinese challenge simply by playing defense. Expanding federal R&D, incentivizing private-sector breakthroughs, and aligning workforce development with future technology needs will ensure that the United States remains a leader in the very fields—biotech, AI, quantum computing, energy storage—where China seeks supremacy.

Xi’s “main battlefield” is already upon us, and America can no longer afford complacency. China’s triple threat—penetrating, prepositioning, and profiting—targets the core of our national resilience. If we fail to respond decisively, we risk losing our technological edge and compromising our security. By fortifying our networks, enforcing meaningful consequences on malicious actors, and investing in American innovation, we can ensure Xi’s ambitions do not come at the expense of our prosperity and safety.

Craig Singleton, a former U.S. diplomat, currently serves as a senior fellow at the non-partisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

21. A Call to Restore U.S. Military Medical Supremacy

​Conclusion:

Imagine two futures. In one, our MHS acts with urgency to establish high-volume military trauma centers while also continuing to collaborate with civilian centers to re-gain and even exceed the level of system-wide excellence we demonstrated a decade ago. In the other, we allow the “peacetime effect” to take hold, frittering away the ability to rescue our servicemembers when injuries occur, inevitably adding to the toll of preventable battlefield deaths when the next conflict erupts. As Edward Churchill observed after serving on the front lines of World War II, “In every new war … soldiers lose their lives and limbs because the doctor was ignorant of past experience.” We can turn away from the urgent need to restore and sustain a combat-ready MHS to our peril or embrace the challenge to re-establish our military medical supremacy. Those who serve our nation deserve medical supremacy.

A Call to Restore U.S. Military Medical Supremacy

By Jeremy Cannon

March 25, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/03/25/a_call_to_restore_us_military_medical_supremacy_1099682.html?mc_cid=4ef3c65801

The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee recently asked how our struggling Military Health System (MHS) would respond to a large-scale conflict with a peer enemy. As I testified, to meet this looming threat, the MHS needs urgent intervention to get back to its singular focus on lifesaving combat care. The good news: we already have many of the building blocks in place. Let me illustrate with the story of an unexpected trauma survivor.

In 2010, U.S. Army Seargent Erik Ramirez* returned home to San Antonio, Texas, after suffering a devastating injury to his chest while serving in Afghanistan. Few patients wounded in battle had ever survived such devastating injuries, and before 2010, none had survived his specific injury—a sniper’s bullet that entered just above his body armor, crossed through his chest, and destroyed the major vessels of his right lung. The story of why SGT Ramirez came home alive to his friends and family is a decades-long tale of a few dedicated military and civilian visionaries pushing the MHS to learn from experience and to embrace cutting-edge medical innovations. In the middle of a combat zone, he was placed on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a form of heart and lung bypass to rescue his failing heart after life-saving “damage control” surgery. This miraculous intervention occurred within a highly organized system that achieved combat medical supremacy—one that stopped at nothing to minimize preventable death on the battlefield and to bring every servicemember with survivable injuries home alive.

Over the past decade, our casualty numbers have thankfully waned significantly. But now our MHS struggles to maintain its edge in preparing medical teams for combat. While military hospitals provide essential medical care every day, it more commonly takes the form of preventive care and treatment for healthy patients, not time-sensitive, emergency procedures in patients with severe traumatic injuries or organ failure. In fact, a recent study found that only 10% military general surgeons are getting experience they need to be combat-ready. As a result, we now stand perilously close to letting the strategic advantage of our military medical system slip into obsolescence.

History has shown that allowing our combat medical system to fully dismantle will cost our military dearly in the next conflict. Since the start of World War II, we estimate that the decline in combat medical readiness during peacetime has cost over 100,000 U.S. servicemember lives. This means that up to one in four combat deaths over the past century were potentially preventable. Doctors, nurses, medics—in short, our entire military medical system—entered World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and even Afghanistan and Iraq unprepared, and service members died needlessly as a result.

How do we reverse this alarming repeat of history? First, we must continue to invest in the innovations that enabled the lifesaving innovations teams performed on SGT Ramirez in 2010. Founded in 2004, the Joint Trauma System (JTS) embraced our combat wounded from the point of injury through rehabilitation served as the essential bedrock. Upon this foundation we added advanced technology like heart-lung bypass. Leveraging the expertise of the JTS in five to six accredited military trauma centers would afford a strategic geopolitical advantage and build surge capacity into our MHS.

The MHS should also continue to leverage key civilian partners to train the military trauma teams we will need at scale. Over the past few years, the Health and Human Services (HHS) Pandemic All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA) has supported innovative military trauma training at civilian trauma centers including my trauma center at the University of Pennsylvania through the Mission Zero Program. This program promotes bi-directional military-civilian medical learning, support for our local community in west Philadelphia, and advanced trauma training for our Navy partners. Authorization for this program expired in December 2024. A new, expanded Mission Zero Program funded by both HHS and Department of Defense would greatly strengthen our nation’s ability to respond expertly to acts of terrorism, acts of war, and natural disasters.

Imagine two futures. In one, our MHS acts with urgency to establish high-volume military trauma centers while also continuing to collaborate with civilian centers to re-gain and even exceed the level of system-wide excellence we demonstrated a decade ago. In the other, we allow the “peacetime effect” to take hold, frittering away the ability to rescue our servicemembers when injuries occur, inevitably adding to the toll of preventable battlefield deaths when the next conflict erupts. As Edward Churchill observed after serving on the front lines of World War II, “In every new war … soldiers lose their lives and limbs because the doctor was ignorant of past experience.” We can turn away from the urgent need to restore and sustain a combat-ready MHS to our peril or embrace the challenge to re-establish our military medical supremacy. Those who serve our nation deserve medical supremacy.

*Name changed to protect patient privacy.

Jeremy Cannon is a Veteran Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and Assistant Dean of Veteran Affairs at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine

22. A New Asian Bloc in the Making?

​Searching for the anchor?  

Conclusion:

To be sure, nothing could come from the meeting in Tokyo. There is tension between the U.S. and its Asian allies: Japan has resisted U.S. demands to increase military spending, and South Korea resents being designated a “sensitive nation” – that is, a nation engaged in nuclear weapons development. And diplomatic actions are just gestures. Still, even gestures can have significant meanings. In this case, they suggest China has been forced to reconsider its geopolitical imperatives and move closer to the U.S. Either way, it’s further evidence that in an unanchored world, countries are searching for an anchor.

A New Asian Bloc in the Making?

By George Friedman -

March 24, 2025

Open as PDF

https://geopoliticalfutures.com/a-new-asian-bloc-in-the-making/?tpa=MjA1OTFmMjgyMzQ3Nzg5Y2M2NzIyZjE3NDM2OTUzOTg4Y2QwYzQ&mc_cid=4ef3c65801

Senior officials from China, South Korea and Japan will soon meet in Tokyo to try to establish a more formal relationship, replete with security and economic benefits. Informal talks had already been held between China and Japan, so it appears the two found enough to agree on in principle to proceed to the next level. In practice, it’s unclear what a partnership entails. Japan has said it wants to increase agriculture exports to China and to force North Korea to abandon its nuclear program. Naturally, the latter point brought South Korea into the talks.

Beijing is in a dangerous geopolitical position. The emerging U.S.-Russia entente leaves China in an isolated position at a time when its economy has weakened dramatically. Contrary to appearances, Russia and China have never been truly aligned. Russia has been a threat to China throughout history, and several wars have been fought between them. Not even the commonality of communism could unite them. Under Mao, China was outright hostile to Russia, which it accused of betraying communism during the Khrushchev era.

Geopolitically, Mao worried that a U.S.-Russia detente would preface a joint policy against China. So when Henry Kissinger visited China to open relations in the 1970s, heavy fighting broke out along the Russia-China border – a significant row that lasted several months. Russia meant for the attack to pose as a warning to China about what could happen if its relationship with the U.S. threatened Russian interests. China understood it as such.

China opened diplomatic relations with the United States shortly thereafter in a move that would prove critical to China’s eventual emergence as a global power. The Chinese economy was in shambles at the time of Mao’s death. His successor, Deng Xiaoping, passed a series of reforms that resurrected the Chinese economy, thanks in no small part to the U.S., which first allowed Chinese products into its massive market and later invested heavily in Chinese industry.

The problem was that this was not a sustainable process. China’s meteoric rise was accompanied by a commensurate surge in military power. And under President Xi Jinping, China’s rhetoric toward the U.S. has tended to be more hostile the worse the economy is. This rhetorical hostility, coupled with the post-COVID-19 economic downturn, has led to declining levels of U.S. investment in China, as well as to capital flight, which has triggered crises in banking and the economically vital real estate industry.

Meanwhile, China’s relationship with Russia stayed mostly the same. It didn’t see Moscow as a threat, but neither did it see it as an economic savior. China’s stance on the Ukraine war could be described as rigorously neutral; rather than siding with Russia after the invasion, it abstained from the United Nations vote to denounce it. China sold weapons to Russia but never deployed troops.

It’s possible that this status quo could change. For China, even the prospect of reconciliation between the U.S. and Russia is a nightmare. A two-pronged threat from Russia and the U.S. would put China in an untenable position, and because the extent of the possible reconciliation is unknown, China has to act fast. Thus followed the Chinese initiative to form an Asian security and economic bloc.

Japan and South Korea are military allies of the U.S., and both sides want to maintain the arrangement. China cannot join a bloc with Japan and South Korea without abandoning its military posture – including dropping its bluff to invade Taiwan. But with a possible U.S.-Russia entente, China’s future becomes uncertain, and being in a security relationship with two of the United States’ closest allies may make China much safer than without. And this is to say nothing of the economic opportunities that would be available to China from its new partners.

I have consistently written that, despite its gigantic military, China is not much of a military threat to the U.S. (So far, I’ve been right.) And a formal Asian grouping might soften the U.S. position on China. So unless South Korea and Japan want to fully break with the U.S. and become completely dependent on China for their defense, the U.S. has nothing to lose. In a best-case scenario, Japan and South Korea could have a moderating effect on China, since challenging the U.S. would put both countries at risk.

Tellingly, Chinese Premier Li Qiang, who had not met with U.S. business leaders for two years, met with a delegation led by U.S. Senator Steve Daines that included the heads of Boeing, Qualcomm, Pfizer and Cargill. He did not meet with corporate heads of any other countries. A close Trump ally, Daines is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has done extensive business in China. The meeting might have been driven by China’s fears over U.S. tariffs, or it might be a sign that Japan and South Korea are less motivated by forging a local arrangement and more by moving into a different relationship with the United States.

To be sure, nothing could come from the meeting in Tokyo. There is tension between the U.S. and its Asian allies: Japan has resisted U.S. demands to increase military spending, and South Korea resents being designated a “sensitive nation” – that is, a nation engaged in nuclear weapons development. And diplomatic actions are just gestures. Still, even gestures can have significant meanings. In this case, they suggest China has been forced to reconsider its geopolitical imperatives and move closer to the U.S. Either way, it’s further evidence that in an unanchored world, countries are searching for an anchor.

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George Friedman

https://geopoliticalfutures.com/author/gfriedman/

George Friedman is an internationally recognized geopolitical forecaster and strategist on international affairs and the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures.

Dr. Friedman is also a New York Times bestselling author. His most recent book, THE STORM BEFORE THE CALM: America’s Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond, published February 25, 2020 describes how “the United States periodically reaches a point of crisis in which it appears to be at war with itself, yet after an extended period it reinvents itself, in a form both faithful to its founding and radically different from what it had been.” The decade 2020-2030 is such a period which will bring dramatic upheaval and reshaping of American government, foreign policy, economics, and culture.

His most popular book, The Next 100 Years, is kept alive by the prescience of its predictions. Other best-selling books include Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe, The Next Decade, America’s Secret War, The Future of War and The Intelligence Edge. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Dr. Friedman has briefed numerous military and government organizations in the United States and overseas and appears regularly as an expert on international affairs, foreign policy and intelligence in major media. For almost 20 years before resigning in May 2015, Dr. Friedman was CEO and then chairman of Stratfor, a company he founded in 1996. Friedman received his bachelor’s degree from the City College of the City University of New York and holds a doctorate in government from Cornell University.

23. What should come after DEI? PFJ.

Spoiler: PJF - Power, Justice, Freedom.

Opinion

Perry Bacon Jr.

What should come after DEI? PFJ.

DEI should not have been dismantled. But something better should replace it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/03/24/trump-progressives-dei-pfj/?utm

March 24, 2025 at 5:45 a.m. EDTYesterday at 5:45 a.m. EDT

7 min

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Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at Howard University in D.C. on Nov. 5. (Shedrick Pelt/For The Washington Post)

The Trump administration is so eager to demonize and outlaw anything related to diversity, equity and inclusion that it has removed (and then restored because of political pressure) content from government websites and videos celebrating the Tuskegee Airmen and Jackie Robinson. But even though the right’s war on DEI has gone way too far, liberals shouldn’t seek just to preserve what remains of DEI and restore it when Democrats regain power.

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What Native Americans, women and other groups who have often experienced discrimination in America really need is not DEI, but PFJ — power, freedom and justice.

“We were so obsessed with protecting the DEI frame. But that was kind of a compromise. Now that the federal government is trying to scrub even the mildest of diversity initiatives, we might as well focus on the real deal,” Natasha Warikoo, a sociologist at Tufts University who has written extensively about race and class, told me.

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I’m generally supportive of diversity initiatives at companies, colleges and other institutions, and I’m disheartened that they are being rolled back. The Trump administration and state-level Republicans are essentially discarding any policy that acknowledges race, gender, sexual orientation or other forms of identity in favor of a doctrine of identity-blindness. In the Trumpist worldview, the problem in America is that we acknowledge various identities too much, causing division and reverse bigotry against men, Christians and White people in particular.

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That’s nonsense. We can’t suddenly ignore history and reality and decide by fiat that identities don’t matter. African Americans have much less wealth on average than White people in part because of past and present racially discriminatory policies. The sexual harassment of women in the workplace remains a huge problem. It’s probably harder to get a job in the United States if you are Muslim instead of Christian.

The right’s identity-blindness is deeply flawed, but the concepts of diversity and inclusion, more popular on the left, have shortcomings, too. Diversity has come to be understood as celebrating when people from different races, genders, faiths and other identities are joined in a workplace or other setting, and as being concerned when a particular group isn’t represented. But women’s colleges such as Smith, as well as Howard University and other historically Black colleges, bring significant value to our society even though they are obviously lacking some forms of diversity. Most mainstream institutions no longer formally ban women and people of color, but they often do not meet their needs or treat them as well as these alternative, less diverse places do.

Also, diversity suffers from vague and even conflicting interpretations. Demands for greater gender and ethnic diversity, usually coming from the left, have resulted in people on the right pushing for ideological diversity (more conservatives) and geographic diversity (usually, more people from the South, Great Plains and other conservative areas). If anything can be justified on diversity grounds, the concept loses meaning.

Perhaps most importantly, diversity often falls prey to what the Georgetown University philosophy professor Olúfémi O. Táíwò refers to as “elite capture” — the individuals who get the spoils from a focus on diversity often don’t share the interests of the broader group. For example, there are more African Americans than ever in top roles in the Democratic Party. But I don’t know how useful it was to the average Black person last year to have a Black presidential nominee (Kamala Harris) and House Minority Leader (Hakeem Jeffries of New York) who spoke more passionately about defending Israel than issues that affect Black people in the United States.

Inclusion is generally understood as making sure that minorities not only get roles in institutions but also feel welcome and part of the decision-making process. It suffers from the same problems as diversity. Who exactly is being included (average Black people or Jeffries) and how?

Equity is the most useful idea of DEI. The concept is essentially that giving people equal rights and resources is great but often not enough. Children with poor parents need to have their schools spend more time and money on them than those from wealthy families. But the values of equity can fit into power, justice and freedom.

By power, I mean autonomy and sufficient resources to use that autonomy effectively. For example, there are Black professors and administrators at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But a few years ago, when conservative White power brokers at UNC stalled the appointment of renowned journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones to be a tenured professor there, Howard hired her. The university allowed Hannah-Jones to create an institute for journalism and democracy that hosts events for journalists and experts of all races.

At Howard, African Americans have a lot of power over appointments, and it’s the rare historically Black college with a fairly large budget.

I am not necessarily calling for more institutions that are exclusive — a college for transgender students, for example. But too often, African Americans, women and people from other traditionally marginalized groups who have jobs and titles at organizations see their priorities ignored. Power is what they really want and deserve.

“Diversifying a group technically just means taking something homogeneous and introducing heterogeneity into it. What advocates actually want is more equitable representation of nondominant group members for the purposes of empowerment, not quota-filling,” Lauren Goldstein, a pollster at Change Research who works extensively with social justice groups, told me. “We are trying to correct a specific imbalance of power, not doing blind, agnostic randomization.”

We usually think of freedom in terms of individual and civil rights. And that framing is important, particularly as the Trump administration keeps adopting new restrictions on transgender Americans. But greater economic freedom is also critical for disadvantaged groups. People of color in the United States often work in jobs that pay low wages, have unpredictable hours and don’t offer the opportunity to join a union or otherwise be involved in setting workplace policies. I would much prefer Starbucks pay its workers significantly more than have the company celebrate additional religious holidays as part of a diversity and inclusion effort.

The importance of economic freedom for minority groups isn’t a new idea. The 1963 event where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have A Dream” speech was called the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”

Justice nods at the idea of equity but is a superior concept. Equity is often treated as a synonym of equality, and the words obviously sound similar. In contrast, justice evokes the idea of fairness and morally correct outcomes. Giving reparations to African Americans, providing extra funding to schools with low-income children of color and creating national museums for Black, Latino and Native Americans are different ways of acknowledging that the U.S. has treated those groups unjustly and should redress that now.

“Power is the inequality, and justice is the remedy,” Warikoo said.

In many ways, diversity initiatives have been an attempt to address long-standing inequalities in an indirect, noncontroversial way, a kind of social justice on the cheap. PFJ, in contrast, is a straightforward, assertive vision.

Getting PFJ adopted in America will be difficult. Power, freedom and justice might be even more threatening — and therefore unpopular to men, White Americans and in particular conservatives — than diversity, equity and inclusion. It is hard to imagine Target or the companies that had heavily invested in DEI creating PFJ departments. The conservatives who dominate the U.S. Supreme Court would probably be skeptical of this approach.

But in my lifetime, I’ve watched affirmative action, diversity and then DEI be fairly ineffective in achieving large-scale change and still generate enough opposition to be dismantled. Liberals should name our true goals — and then fight hard to achieve them.

What readers are saying

The comments reflect a wide range of opinions on the shift from DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) to PFJ (Power, Freedom, Justice). Some commenters argue that both DEI and PFJ are flawed, focusing too much on identity politics and not addressing the root issues of class and... Show more

This summary is AI-generated. AI can make mistakes and this summary is not a replacement for reading the comments.

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By Perry Bacon Jr.

Perry Bacon Jr. is a Washington Post columnist. Before joining The Post, Perry had stints as a government and elections writer for Time magazine, The Post's national desk, theGrio and FiveThirtyEight. He has also been an on-air analyst at MSNBC and a fellow at New America. He grew up in Louisville and lives there now. perry.bacon@washpost.comfollow on Xperrybaconjr

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