Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be."

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

"What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequences what we do."

– John Ruskin

"All cruelty springs from weakness."

– Seneca

1. The Swedish handbook: “In Case of Crisis or War” (Official Resistance & Resilience Brochure for Citizens)

2. Actions create consequences: contempt – the clearer term for entitlement by Cynthia Watson

3. China swoops in to replace Asian USAID projects axed by Trump

4. Trump Takes Tough Approach to Choking Off China’s Access to U.S. Tech

5. Not Just for US Veterans: 7 Medical Breakthroughs the VA Gave to the World

6. New nuclear arms race looms as US threatens to pull atomic shield

7. Trump’s Strategy for Signal Chat Fallout: Attack, Attack, Attack

8. White House taps Musk to investigate Signal chat mishap

9. Trump shifts Greenland approach amid blowback, Signal scandal

10. Chipping Away a Long-Standing Alliance: The Impact of Tech Restriction Communications on US-Polish Relations

11. Book Review | The Restless Wave: Historical Fiction and the Moral Hazards of War

12. Europe Confronts Reality That Vance’s Hostility Is More Than Just a Show

13. The Group Chat from Hell

14. The real scandal: Those chatty Trump officials’ loathing of U.S. allies

15. Signal leak sparks new calls for modernized messaging options from defense officials

16. Hegseth seeks to reassure jittery allies, partners during inaugural Pacific trip

17. Inside the Norwegian Resistance: Secret Operations in WWII

18. Donald Trump's Russia Strategy Could End NATO as We Know It

19. China Sees Opportunity in Trump’s Upheaval

20. Dan ‘Razin’ Caine, Trump’s nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, set to testify at confirmation hearing

21. Chinese Nationals Arrested on Espionage Charges Tracked Philippine, U.S. Vessels at Subic Bay

22. Philippines wants India, South Korea to join ‘Squad’ amid China tensions

1. The Swedish handbook: “In Case of Crisis or War” (Official Resistance & Resilience Brochure for Citizens)

This is inspiring to me. I listened to a Swedish military officer use this in a presentation recently on national resilience and resistance.. Some of my colleagues use this in their graduate courses on irregular warfare and resistance.

However the most power statement in this handbook is this:

If Sweden is attacked, we will never surrender. Any suggestion to the contrary is false.

I wish the American people could be inspired by this example.

The Swedish handbook: “In Case of Crisis or War” (Official Resistance & Resilience Brochure for Citizens)

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/03/26/the-swedish-handbook-in-case-of-crisis-or-war-official-resistance-resilience-brochure-for-citizens/

by SWJ Staff

03.26.2025 at 09:17pm

This brochure is distributed to every household in Sweden on behalf of the Swedish government. The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) is responsible for the content.

We hope that the contents of this brochure will motivate critical thinking about citizen’s responsibilities during uncertain times.

To all residents of Sweden:

We live in uncertain times. Armed conflicts are currently being waged in our corner of the world. Terrorism, cyber attacks, and disinformation campaigns are being used to undermine and influence us. To resist these threats, we must stand united. If Sweden is attacked, everyone must do their part to defend Sweden’s independence – and our democracy. We build resilience every day, together with our loved ones, colleagues, friends, and neighbours. In this brochure, you learn how to prepare for, and act, in case of crisis or war. You are part of Sweden’s overall emergency preparedness.

Here is a brief survey of major citizen responsibilities during uncertain times.

The brochure emphasizes that individual preparedness contributes to national strength!

Read the full document.

1. Personal Preparedness

Citizens are expected to (pg. 15):
Be self-sufficient for at least one week
Prepare essential supplies:
Water (3 liters per day)
Non-perishable food
Heat sources
Communication devices
First aid supplies
Cash and alternative payment methods

2. Total Defence Duty

Key responsibilities (pg. 9):
Applies to all residents aged 16-70
Potential military or civil defence service
Willingness to support Sweden’s defence system
Proceed to designated wartime posting if called

3. Psychological Resilience

Critical mental preparedness (pg. 22):
Be critical of information sources
Verify information from multiple sources
Resist disinformation campaigns
Maintain emotional stability during crises

4. Community Involvement

Collective preparedness includes (pg. 6):
Joining voluntary defence organizations
Completing emergency CPR courses
Donating blood
Strengthening neighborhood preparedness
Supporting essential public services

5. Emergency Response Readiness

Immediate action protocols (pg. 24):
Run: Get away from dangerous locations
Hide: Secure yourself if escape is impossible
Tell: Report emergencies
Follow official instructions
Avoid spreading unverified information

6. Digital and Personal Security

Cybersecurity responsibilities (pg. 23):
Create strong passwords
Avoid clicking unknown email links
Install security updates promptly
Backup important information

7. Emotional Support and Communication

Personal well-being (pg. 30):
Talk about anxieties with support networks
Manage news consumption
Support children during uncertain times
Seek professional help if needed

“We build resilience every day, together with our loved ones, colleagues, friends, and neighbours.”

Contents:

In uncertain times, it is important to be prepared 5
Together we make Sweden stronger 6
Swedish defence 7
Heightened state of alert 8
Total defence duty 9
Warning systems 10
Seeking shelter during an air raid 12
Home preparedness 15
Evacuation 19
Civil defence shelter 20
Psychological defence 22
Digital security 23
Terror attacks 24
How to stop bleeding 25
Extreme weather events 26
Pathogens 27
If you require special assistance 28
If you have pets 29
If you are worried 30
Talking to children about crises and war 30
Important phone numbers and more information 31

Tags: citizen preparedness, Crisis Response, Preparation for War, Resilience, resistance

2. Actions create consequences: contempt – the clearer term for entitlement by Cynthia Watson

I recommend reading the entire essay. This should be a wakeup call for us all regardless of partisan views.

Actions create consequences

3Upgrade to founding

contempt

the clearer term for entitlement

https://cynthiawatson.substack.com/p/contempt?utm

Cynthia Watson

Mar 26, 2025

America prides itself on freedom, but our chief characteristic for 2025 appears contempt.

The left can’t abide the right and the right finds the left evil. That is merely at the Joe and Joanna Q. Public level of society.

I am overwhelmed by the cases we see hourly, but I will highlight only a couple because the problem is so pervasive and cross-cutting that it defies simple characterization.

Senior foreign policy decision-makers used a commercial, non-secure communication method to discuss details of a significant foreign policy decision. Using military instruments is a big deal, after all. Just last week, the Pentagon warned against using that service for chats because Russians are gaining access to its contents.

The particular use of force discussed over Signal affected not only the mid-March target, the Houthis in Yemen, and their patrons in Teheran but also those conducting the missions themselves. Do we really care about the lives of men and women in uniform if that is our behavior? No, I suppose they are expendable.

The shocking member of the "chat" was not a journalist for a hundred-fifty-year-old respected American publication (remember, Goldberg did not even discuss this for several days after this bizarre chat transpired rather than trumpeting it immediately) but the administration's Middle East envoy, who was in Moscow when the chat circulated. I guarantee Russian (who most certainly accessed his Signal account) knowledge of these conversations had far more significant implications than Jeffrey Goldberg's. Envoy Steve Witkoff never took himself out of the chat while communing with Kremlin officials. The decision to travel to Moscow with a phone--personal or government-issued--was irresponsible. Maybe this isn't important in real estate, but anyone in U.S. government work, much less an envoy, is assuredly a target.

If China is as close to Russia as we fear, why would we assume that the known Chinese cyber thieves would not be sharing their infiltration methods with their Russian buddies? I can't accurately assess the relative potency of Russian versus Chinese hacking. Still, I am confident both countries employ armies of hackers targeting any phone carried by a New York real estate negotiator. The contempt regarding protocols is breathtaking.

I was similarly shocked when Hillary Clinton used her personal computer as a repository for email messages, so let's admit senior people on both sides of the political aisle were contemptuous of the norms that "little people" (aka everyone else) face.

The incident also revealed senior officials' sickening contempt for European allies. Of course, it's their privilege, as it's mine to mourn alliances. Foreign policy leaders discussed our European allies—formal partners for seventy-six years next month—as if they were discardable criminals. Are we genuinely unaware of Europe's contributions that we see them as freeloaders? Seriously?

These countries deployed troops alongside Michael Waltz, a former Green Beret, and Pete Hegseth, an Army National Guardsman, in Afghanistan. No, European allies were not necessarily in the same units as senior officials, but they were there because they sought to support us. Article V of the Atlantic Charter mobilized European forces only after the attack on the United States. Conflict in Southwest Asia wearied the public in each participating NATO member as it did ours. These are the same allies whose forces served in the Middle East as J.D. Vance served as a reporter for the Marine Corps in theater. I know that fifteen years ago, we valued allies who sent forces to augment our own. History is inconvenient too often for Americans.

The generations of NATO allies moving in lockstep with us ended the Cold War, regardless of who paid the bills. Americans are entering a dangerous mindset if we associate the financial remuneration of allies with our crucial national security objectives. How expensive would it have been if Germans, for example, chose not to be central to NATO's unity against the Soviets? Germany was the front line, not us. It would have been a much more expensive proposition without them, but we paid the bills because it was in our interest to do so.

Contempt rises to the highest levels of both parties, friends. That senior advisors for the 46th president sheltered him from adverse scenarios or scrutiny that would reveal the advancing deterioration of his conditions is beyond belief. It's hard enough to govern this country under constant stress, but covering up such mental deterioration is inexcusable and dangerous. Encouraging Biden to continue a quixotic desire to run, despite indicating earlier he would acquiesce to the sands of time, shortchanged debate on a successor, throwing the 2024 campaign into an unwinnable condition. Biden's foible empowered the election of a fact-challenged, often incoherent, and elderly candidate determined to pursue retribution against opponents and play golf rather than govern. This "victor" empowered an unelected co-president to undermine faith in government in conjunction with Project 2025 races to turn back time because of contempt for those powerless to stop these actions.

Some will say that Republicans are worse than Democrats. It's hard to dispute the contempt for less advantaged people as social safety net institutions blow up by Project 2025. It's impossible to explain why our government—and by extension all of us because we are government—lied to veterans who put their lives on the line by curbing their access to facilities such as mental health care. It's challenging to rationalize allowing non-medical personnel to pedal ridiculous conspiracies in the face of replicable evidence.

But stop kidding yourselves: both parties are contemptuous of our society. Dems are hardly offering solutions; instead, they act as a circular firing squad aiming at leaders who need to make way for new thoughts to address these challenges.

Congress refuses to do its two jobs: raise revenue before determining how to spend it and provide oversight of that spending. I defy anyone to show me that either party has a plan for the future beyond homesteading seats via the next election. It's pathetic, isn't it?

We serve the gods of tax breaks as if the proposed spending will lower the deficit. It doesn't work that way: we have already borrowed the money, eating us alive in interest payments. It's ridiculous to pretend otherwise. Millions of people rely on the programs being cut (after all, DOGE occasionally admits they haven't found much graft or corruption), so transferring programs to the private sector will only shift costs rather than terminate the spending.

The judiciary currently tries to enforce the rule of law that we little people live under. Still, our system does not empower the judiciary (or anyone else) to implement the laws against those who ignore them. One party cannot wait for what it hopes will be the ultimate arbitrator, the Supreme Court, to allow an administration's unfettered behavior, while the other party fears that condition. Neither side respects the other side enough to think about what the little people in society want or need.

The lesson is that contempt destroys but never builds a better future. No one is coming out of this with a good look. For 340 million Americans and a world that long looked at us as exceptional, we most definitely are mortals marred in contempt.

Why?

There are many possible explanations, but at its heart, I fear, is the loss of empathy. It affects every single one of us, as hard as we prefer to fight reality. Until we confront that, we are going to sink further.

I welcome your rebuttals, thoughts, questions, and comments. I appreciate your time today. I am so thankful to those who subscribe financially to this column.

3. China swoops in to replace Asian USAID projects axed by Trump

Sigh...

China swoops in to replace Asian USAID projects axed by Trump

https://fortune.com/asia/2025/03/26/china-swoops-in-to-replace-asian-usaid-projects-axed-by-trump/

BYIain Marlow, Philip J. Heijmans and Bloomberg

March 26, 2025 at 1:18 AM EDT

The State Department, which oversees USAID and may now absorb the agency entirely, said in a statement that the U.S. was funding aid programs that make Americans wealthier and more secure.

Kent Nishimura—Bloomberg via Getty Images

The U.S. canceled two aid projects in Cambodia in late February—one to encourage child literacy and another to improve nutrition and development for kids under five. A week later, China’s aid agency announced funding for programs to achieve almost identical goals.

“Children are the future of the country and the nation,” China’s ambassador to Cambodia Wang Wenbin said at the event, standing next to the country’s health minister and a UNICEF official. “We should care for the healthy growth of children together.”

While China’s announcement didn’t include a dollar figure, the Chinese money essentially funds the same types of initiatives and development goals as efforts terminated as part of the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID, according to two people with knowledge of the U.S. projects, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

Both focused on “inclusive education” and the “most vulnerable children,” according to news releases and procurement documents. They both provided school supplies, offering hand-washing materials and improving outcomes for “vulnerable” families and households, newborns and children with disabilities, according to the people.

The price tag for the U.S. programs—$40 million—was small compared with the $27.7 billion in savings the Trump administration said this week it saved by axing thousands of aid contracts. But for Cambodia, whose national GDP is roughly equivalent to that Vermont, it was a big sum, and replacing lost foreign funds has been a priority.

The State Department, which oversees USAID and may now absorb the agency entirely, said in a statement that the U.S. was funding aid programs that make Americans wealthier and more secure. At the same time, it said the U.S. had achieved “significant progress” by investing in Cambodia’s development over the past 30 years, “partnering closely” with the government.

“Despite changes in the U.S. approach to foreign assistance, we hope to see our relationship with Cambodia productively mature as we make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous,” the department added in the statement.

The contracts were terminated on Feb. 26 after President Donald Trump and adviser Elon Musk launched a sweeping overhaul of U.S. foreign assistance, which included dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Although it’s only one example, it appears to confirm fears voiced by Democratic and some Republican lawmakers, aid advocates and former U.S. officials: By slashing foreign aid, Trump is giving China an easy opportunity to fill a vacuum and gain a soft-power advantage in countries where the global adversaries compete for influence.

That’s especially urgent in Cambodia, where the U.S. has spent roughly $1 billion since the 1990s. Washington has long waged an uphill battle with China in Southeast Asia, and Cambodia in particular. The Biden administration raised concerns about Chinese military influence at the country’s Ream Naval Base over the last four years.

But more recently, the U.S. has moved to strengthen defense ties with the government in Phnom Penh, which granted an American warship access to Ream for the first time late last year.

‘Diplomatic gift’

“It’s a diplomatic gift” to China, said Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. “In every country where there’s a serious USAID cut, if they put a small amount of money into a health and education project and say, ‘Look, we’re ramping up,’ that does seem to be a bit of a publicity gift for them. And I’m sure they’re smart enough to take it.”

Since the Trump administration moved to shut down USAID, terminate most of its foreign aid contracts, and furlough or place on leave most of its employees, U.S. lawmakers, development experts and national security professionals have highlighted the geopolitical risks of curtailing U.S. foreign aid in the developing world.

Many of those lawmakers and experts have warned that China could move in, gaining further influence over developing nations after wooing officials in Africa, Asia and South America for years with tens of billions in loans focused mostly on infrastructure through Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

And it certainly has. China already announced funding for a Cambodian de-mining initiative that was dropped, and later restored, by the U.S. In mid-March, Beijing also announced an early childhood development project in Rwanda, where USAID recently curtailed contracts. And Chinese officials have reportedly offered to make up for funding gaps in Nepal, nestled between India and China.

Will Parks, the Cambodia representative for the United Nations Children’s Fund, said in a statement that the organization and Cambodia signed a partnership with China in 2024, based on a proposal from 2022. It was launched earlier this month and “complements” funding from other nations, Parks said.

“Cambodia has made tremendous progress for children over the past decade,” he said. “But further reductions of aid budgets could jeopardize these hard-won achievements.”

Cambodia’s government was explicit about drawing a link.

“The Cambodian government works with many partners, and we never rely on any one partner exclusively,” government spokesman Pen Bona said via text message in response to questions. “So if one partner withdraws support, we seek to find another partner to replace it.”

China “will continue to provide assistance to economic and social development” in Cambodia “under the framework of South-South cooperation,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“China’s aid policy remains consistent and clear,” the Foreign Ministry continued. “China’s principles of non-interference, not attaching any political strings, not giving empty promises remain unchanged.”

In a closed-door hearing on Capitol Hill this month, Trump appointee Pete Marocco, who led the assault on USAID, was asked about the Cambodia projects and the timing of China’s swift announcement, according to one person familiar with the session. Marocco brushed off concerns about China increasing its influence, this person said.

Marocco did not respond to a request for comment.

While Trump’s team have said the canceled projects brought no benefits to Americans, Diana Putman, who retired as USAID’s acting assistant administrator for Africa, said the agency’s billions in foreign assistance helped give U.S. ambassadors a crucial advantage.

“Their leverage and ability to make a difference in terms of foreign policy in that country is backed up by the money that they bring, and in the Global South that money is primarily the money that USAID has,” Putman said.

4. Trump Takes Tough Approach to Choking Off China’s Access to U.S. Tech

Good. We need to be tough on these tech issues.

Trump Takes Tough Approach to Choking Off China’s Access to U.S. Tech

Dozens of entities added to trade blacklist as Silicon Valley frets it will lose business from Washington’s curbs

https://www.wsj.com/tech/trump-takes-tough-new-approach-to-choking-off-chinas-access-to-u-s-tech-973f594a?st=N7HEgw&utm

By Liza Lin

March 26, 2025 6:35 am ET

The 2025 Huanmeng AI Intelligent Robot science exhibition in Suzhou, China. Photo: Cfoto/Zuma Press

The Trump administration demonstrated that it wants tougher limits on China’s access to American technology than those introduced by the Biden administration, targeting Chinese companies including a server maker that buys Nvidia chips.

The U.S. on Tuesday added dozens of Chinese companies to a trade blacklist over national security concerns. American businesses seeking to sell technology to these companies will need approval from the government.

Among those added were subsidiaries of Inspur Group, China’s largest server maker and a major customer for U.S. chip makers such as Nvidia, Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. Companies linked to China’s largest supercomputer maker, Sugon, were also added.

The move is the clearest signal yet that the Trump administration intends to further limit what kind of American technology Chinese companies can buy, despite complaints from Silicon Valley companies, including Nvidia, that former President Joe Biden already went too far.

In the Biden administration’s final days, it imposed limits on third countries buying cutting-edge American chips, hoping to prevent those chips from making their way to China. U.S. tech executives have asked President Trump to roll back those limits before they take effect in May.

The latest export controls add to friction between the world’s two largest economies. Since he took office, Trump has imposed cumulative new tariffs on China of 20%, on top of the levies imposed during his first term.

Nearly 80 companies were put on the Commerce Department’s blacklist, known as the entity list. The bulk of them are Chinese. The department said it acted to limit China’s access to high performance computing for military applications and stymie the development of its hypersonic weapons program.

“American technology should never be used against the American people,” said Jeffrey Kessler, the head of the department’s Bureau of Industry and Security.

A spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday called the U.S. action “typical hegemonic behavior that severely violates international law.”

Until now, the U.S. has in general allowed affiliates of entity-listed Chinese companies to purchase controlled technology provided the affiliates themselves aren’t listed.

The Inspur booth at the 2023 Digital China Summit, an annual event focused on new digital technologies in China. Photo: Chen Bin/VCG/Getty Images

The Wall Street Journal reported two years ago that a subsidiary of Inspur Group called Inspur Electronic Information Industry could still buy American technology even though the parent was on the entity list.

On Tuesday, six Inspur affiliates including Inspur Electronic were added to the list. The U.S. said the affiliates were contributing to China’s development of supercomputers for military end use.

According to business-intelligence firm WireScreen, U.S. server maker Aivres Systems is wholly owned by Inspur Electronic. The latter is one-third owned by Inspur Group, according to corporate records.

Aivres has been assembling high-end artificial-intelligence equipment for Nvidia. The AI-chip giant has said that Aivres will make servers using chips in the Blackwell family, Nvidia’s newest and most powerful processors.

Aivres advertises on its website that it sells servers and infrastructure powered by Blackwell chips, which are banned from sale into China. The Aivres website shows its clients include a U.S. university, a Japanese industrial-camera maker and South Korean AI and internet companies. Aivres says on its site that it complies with export controls.

Nvidia declined to comment on the new U.S. rules or its relationship with Aivres. Inspur didn’t respond to a request for comment.

About two months after Inspur Group was added to the trade blacklist in March 2023, California-based Inspur Systems changed its name to Aivres Systems, according to state business records.

Inspur Electronic, the Aivres parent, works with Nvidia in China, assembling and selling AI infrastructure using certain of Nvidia’s Hopper chips, according to Inspur Electronic’s website. Nvidia tailored those chips for the Chinese market, scaling back their capabilities to comply with U.S. export controls.

In its annual threat assessment published Tuesday, the U.S. intelligence community called China the top military and cyber threat to the U.S. They said Beijing sought to displace the U.S. as the top AI power by 2030. The Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said the report reflected an “outdated Cold War mentality.”

Write to Liza Lin at liza.lin@wsj.com

5. Not Just for US Veterans: 7 Medical Breakthroughs the VA Gave to the World

Thank you to our Department of Veterans Affairs.

Not Just for US Veterans: 7 Medical Breakthroughs the VA Gave to the World

military.com · by Blake Stilwell · March 25, 2025

When someone at the Department of Veterans Affairs messes up, it usually makes national news. When the VA is found to be either consistently more efficient than private health care or generally outperforming private hospitals, however, it generally turns fewer heads.

Many might ask why it's important to notice when the VA does what it's supposed to do. With the VA facing more than 83,000 job cuts this year, it's important to remind not only veterans, but also lawmakers, health officials and the American population at large just how much the country -- and the world -- benefits from the work of the department's doctors and researchers.

Here are a handful of medical breakthroughs the world received from work done by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

1. PTSD Treatments

Veterans might be more prone to post-traumatic stress disorder given the work they do, but PTSD isn't something with which only veterans struggle. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) first codified PTSD as a distinct mental health issue in 1980. By 1989, the VA established the National Center for PTSD.

The VA has been at the forefront of many proven PTSD treatment options, including Cognitive Processing Therapy since 2006. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) was first developed in 1987, but was in the VA system by 1990. Dr. Edna Foa developed Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy between 1987 and 1991, and the VA began using it in 2006. These three PTSD therapies are the current "gold standard" for treatment.

2. Nicotine Patches

While some iconic photos of U.S. troops smoking cigarettes have surfaced over the years, anyone who served knows the military and the VA are constantly imploring members to quit using tobacco. The VA's dedication to smoking cessation runs so deep, in fact, that when the VA created the transdermal nicotine patch in 1984, VA researchers tested it on themselves to prove it was safe.

You only need one at a time, veterans.

3. Pacemakers

There are many conditions that might cause one's heart to beat abnormally, from birth defects and atrial fibrillation to, of course, any kind of hardening of the arteries. A pacemaker is an implantable device that uses electrical pulses to keep the heart from beating too slowly. It's a pretty simple concept, so simple that the idea of a pacemaker dates back to the 1880s. But it wasn't until 1960 that researchers at the Buffalo VA first implanted one into the heart of a 77-year-old man, prolonging his life for another decade. Their design became the first commercially produced pacemaker ever.

4. CT Scans/MRIs

Dr. William H. Oldendorf was a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the UCLA school of medicine who wrote the first paper on cross-sectional scanning of the brain with X-rays. He even received the first patent for a scanner based on his research, but found very little interest in the technology. His work, done with the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center, laid the groundwork for nuclear imaging such as CT scans and MRIs.

CT scanner prototype built by VA neurologist William H. Oldendorf to demonstrate the potential of using X-rays to create cross-sectional images of the body’s internal features. (Dept. of Veteran Affairs)

5. Coronary Bypass Surgery

There's a reason the Houston VA Medical Center is named for Dr. Michael DeBakey. He was a World War II veteran, founding doctor of the VA and pioneering cardiovascular surgeon who first used Dacron grafts to repair blood vessels, helped develop the use of artificial hearts and pioneered angioplasty. More importantly, he was one of the earliest doctors to perform a coronary bypass, now the most common heart surgery in adults.

6. Liver Transplants

The "father of transplantation," Dr. Thomas E. Starzl, was a transplant surgeon and research scientist in the VA system for more than 50 years. He performed the first successful liver transplant on May 5, 1963. Others had attempted the operation before, but no patient had previously survived the procedure.

On top of performing the first liver transplant, Starzl was the first doctor to consistently perform kidney transplants that resulted in long-term survival due to his use of post-operative immunosuppressants and steroids. He would spend his career working on anti-rejection medications to increase transplantation survival rates.

7. Radioimmunoassay

Dr. Solomon “Sol” Berson and Dr. Rosalyn Sussman Yalow. Unfortunately, Dr. Berson died before the Nobel Prize award. (Dept. of Veterans Affairs)

Dr. Rosalyn Sussman Yalow, physicist and researcher at the Bronx VA Medical Center, received the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1977. Her work with fellow VA scientist Dr. Solomon "Sol" Berson created radioimmunoassay, a method of using radiolabeled molecules to measure tiny amounts of substances in the blood. It began as an attempt to treat adult-onset diabetes, but instead found a way to tag and measure hormones such as insulin. Immediately, the technique showed that Type 2 diabetics had more insulin instead of less in their blood, when at the time the medical community believed the opposite. It also became helpful in diagnosing hyperthyroidism and Hepatitis B.

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military.com · by Blake Stilwell · March 25, 2025

6. New nuclear arms race looms as US threatens to pull atomic shield

New nuclear arms race looms as US threatens to pull atomic shield

For decades the nuclear weapons 'club' has been limited to nine nations. But fears Trump could withdraw America's 'nuclear umbrella' is threatening proliferation

https://inews.co.uk/news/new-nuclear-race-looms-usa-threatens-pull-atomic-shield-3604636?utm

A total of nine states currently hold nuclear weapons

Cahal Milmo

March 26, 2025 6:00 am (Updated 9:51 am)

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When Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin held their latest phone call a week ago, the leaders of the two countries with the world’s largest nuclear arsenals agreed on “the need to stop proliferation of strategic weapons”.

The point of accord between Moscow and Washington was in many ways the continuation of a stance that has endured for the best part of 80 years – namely, that it is in the interests America, Russia and their respective allies to keep the global “club” of nuclear-armed nations as small as possible.

In order to do so, the United States has extended its so-called “nuclear umbrella” – a promise of nuclear protection in return for allies not seeking atomic weapons themselves – to some 30 countries.

But it is a post-war consensus that is increasingly under strain. Indeed, in his efforts to make his “America First” policy a geopolitical reality, there is growing evidence that Trump is flirting dangerously with starting a new nuclear arms race.

From Berlin to Seoul, alarm bells are ringing that the United States, the lynch stone of the Western security apparatus in Europe and Asia for three generations, is no longer a reliable guarantor of the ultimate deterrence offered by nuclear weapons.

Senior figures in at least five countries allied with America – Germany, Poland, South Korea, Japan and Saudi Arabia – have in recent months floated the previously unthinkable notion of acquiring – or developing the technology needed to acquire – nuclear weapons.

To that list, can also be added an adversary in the shape of Iran, which is assessed by Western intelligence services to be capable of producing an atomic bomb within weeks should its leaders give the go-ahead.

A US Navy Trident ballistic missile is launched from a submerged nuclear-powered submarine (Photo: Corbis via Getty Images)

Other countries, among them Taiwan, Turkey and Egypt, have no declared interest in acquiring their own deterrent but are regarded as being likely to consider changing that stance in the event of other nations heading towards nuclear capability.

The result, according to current and former Western officials as well as defence analysts, is perhaps the highest threat of proliferation beyond the existing nine nuclear states since the Cold War.

As one Western security source put it this week: “Whether he meant it or not, Trump has sent a message that the US nuclear umbrella might one day be folded. That is a sentiment of extreme peril because the list of countries out there with the technical ability to build a nuke is longer than many might realise. Once a South Korea or a Germany signals that they’re going for the bomb, it will be hard indeed to stop others following suit.”

Europe

In March 1963, president John F Kennedy held a press conference in which he revealed he was “haunted” by the idea of an uncontrolled, global nuclear arms race. In less than a decade, he said he could foresee as many as 25 nuclear-armed nations – an outcome he described as “the greatest possible danger and hazard”.

That scenario was ultimately averted by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the international deal struck in 1968 which curtailed the spread of atomic weapons in return for a pledge for those who already held the atom bomb to ultimately pursue global nuclear disarmament.

As far as European leaders are concerned, the cause of recent instability is recent statements and actions from the White House – from Vice President JD Vance’s ideological broadside against Europe at the Munich Security Conference to Trump’s decision to briefly suspend intelligence and weaponry support for Ukraine.

Nowhere has the subsequent change in the atomic calculus been more apparent than in Poland. Earlier this month, Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, became the first leader of the country to openly raise the idea of nuclear capability.

Citing a “profound change in American geopolitics”, Tusk said Poland must consider looking for “opportunities related to nuclear weapons”. He told the Polish parliament: “This is a serious race: a race for security, not for war.”

Tusk floated the idea of Poland building its own atomic bomb – a process which it was acknowledged could take decades – alongside persuading France to extend its “nuclear umbrella” to Warsaw.

At the same time, the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, a political rival to Tusk, said his preference would be for America to move warheads to Poland – a move that would be likely to breach the NPT and be interpreted as a provocation in the Kremlin.

Such discussions are not restricted to Poland. Friedrich Merz, the man who is expected to be Germany’s next chancellor, said in February that the time has come for his country to explore a “nuclear sharing” agreement with Britain and France.

The statement triggered speculation that Berlin, which has hosted American nuclear weapons for the past 40 years, might be contemplating a path to a German atomic bomb. Of all the countries currently outside the nuclear club, Germany overwhelmingly has the technical and industrial capacity to develop a deterrent.

However, such a move would come freighted with huge consequences for a country which has built its entire post-war identity around disavowing militarism in the pursuit of peace in Europe.

Others, however, have suggested Germany should re-consider its attitude towards “nuclear latency” – a peculiarity of the weapons control sphere under which countries go about the business of acquiring the tools needed to build atomic weapons (such as enriching uranium or plutonium, building missile capabilities) without moving to construction.

Major questions remain about the plausibility of Europe moving to shelter under a French, or Anglo-French, nuclear umbrella. French and British nuclear weapon stocks are a fraction of those held by Russia and the US, and it is unclear how such a weapon-sharing arrangement would work in terms of the role played by Nato and ultimate control over how or when to deploy remaining with London and Paris.

Vanguard class nuclear missile submarine HMS Vengeance in Gare Loch heading for sea trials (Photo; Barry Wheeler/Ministry of Defence/PA Wire)

However, there seems to be little doubt that there has been a sea-change in attitudes. In 2020, Ivo Daadler, head of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, an influential US think-tank, warned of a rapidly-developing nuclear arms race.

He said: “Trump’s actions are undercutting the credibility of US extended deterrence to allies.”

Asia

Despite North Korea’s relentless progress in acquiring nuclear weapons, it has been a remarkable testimony to the effectiveness of America’s decades-long non-proliferation strategy that South Korea has not followed the hermit kingdom’s lead in developing an atomic bomb.

South Korean governments have shown an interest in building a nuclear weapon since the 50s and at one point had an active bomb programme. But successive military agreements with Washington and a constant presence of US troops have persuaded Seoul to step back.

This arrangement now appears less certain. Last month, the country’s foreign minister, Cho Tae-Yul, said the idea of developing nuclear weapons was “not off the table”. He said: “We must prepare for all scenarios.”

While running for president in 2016, Trump himself said he would be open to both South Korea and Japan building nuclear weapons to deter North Korea as a means of reducing their reliance on America.

Polling in South Korea has shown a majority in favour of homegrown nuclear weapons for more than a decade.

Middle East

When it comes to the imminent risk of the number of nuclear states in the world reaching 10, there is only one name in the proliferation hat – Iran.

The Islamic republic has conducted a decades-long campaign to amass the nous, technology and – critically – quantities of enriched uranium it would need to build an atomic weapon. According to some nuclear experts, Tehran has reached the point where it could build an atomic bomb within three to five weeks.

When Trump and Putin agreed their position on halting proliferation last week, the White House was quick to underline that it was in particular reference to Iran.

This provides the US and Israel with a critical dilemma about what action to take, including an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, should Tehran refuse to re-enter negotiations that would end its nuclear ambitions in return for a relaxation or removal of the strict sanctions against the regime.

A banner shows missiles being launched, in northern Tehran. Experts believe Iran could be capable of building an atomic weapon in as little as three weeks (Photo: Vahid Salemi/AP)

But it is also the fulcrum upon which turns the nuclear status quo elsewhere in the world’s most volatile region – most significantly in Saudi Arabia. In 2018, the kingdom’s de-facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman laid out its policy on the issue: “If Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.”

Saudi apprehension has its roots in a long-standing fear that Iran, as the seat of Shia Islam, would use an offensive nuclear capability to exert unchallenged political influence over the rest of the region.

Experts point out that there are a number of reasons why it would be difficult for Riyadh to “sprint” for a nuclear weapon in much the same manner as France, China and even America did in previous decades.

Saudi Arabia lacks a fully-fledged civil nuclear programme and the equipment required to fashion a bomb, and is also vulnerable to counter-measures from Iran as well as sanctions such as an arms embargo from America.

It is, however, not beyond plausibility that the Trump administration could tacitly back a Saudi weapons programme as leverage to hobble Tehran’s ambitions.

Frances Tammer, professor of strategy and security at Exeter University, said: “My assessment is that if Saudi decides to go ahead, it may be spurred on by the Trump government, in order to act as an ostensible deterrent against Iran.”

How likely is a new nuclear arms race and can it be stopped?

Multiple sources, including Merz, are quick to point out that for all its determination to shake up global geopolitics, the Trump administration has not directly mooted any fundamental changes to its nuclear stance.

Indeed, one of Trump’s few statements on the question of nuclear weaponry has been to wish for its dismantling. Speaking this month, he said: “It would be great if everybody would get rid of their nuclear weapons. It would be great if we could all denuclearise, because the power of nuclear weapons is crazy.”

On this basis, concern among Washington’s allies about being cast into a nuclear wilderness could be seen as premature. As Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, put it, such a debate is “an escalation in the discussion that we do not need”.

Writing in March, Vipin Narang and Pranay Vaddi, both senior figures in the Biden administration dealing with nuclear deterrence and non-proliferation, warned that allowing America’s allies to acquire nuclear weapons could make it “more likely that the United States gets dragged into a nuclear crisis or war” by effectively surrendering its monopoly on the atomic autonomy of dozens of allies.

They wrote: “The surest way for the ‘crazy’ power of nuclear weapons to boomerang back at the United States… is for Washington to actively dismantle the extended nuclear deterrence architecture it so carefully crafted over three-quarters of a century.”

The potency of nuclear deterrence lies every bit as much as in its psychological and intellectual potency as its unthinkable military power.

On these grounds, it can be argued that all it might take to smooth ruffled atomic feathers from Warsaw to Tokyo is for the White House to issue an unequivocal statement that the US nuclear umbrella remains firmly unfolded.

Professor Tammer said: “A statement on the continuing commitment to the nuclear umbrella is required – against whom and on behalf of whom – for true reassurance purposes.”

She also points out, however, that with the likely exception of Israel, such a statement from a Europe-sceptic Washington is unlikely any time soon.

She added: “This is a radically difficult genie to put back in the bottle, and I’m not sure that Mr Trump or his aides understand what they are playing with here. Nuclear proliferation is the one thing above all that should be stopping us from sleeping at night.”

7. Trump’s Strategy for Signal Chat Fallout: Attack, Attack, Attack

But isn't this strategy keeping this beyond the 24 hour news cycle (that is now 96+ hours and still in the news)? And what news is being sidelined or under-reported because of this?

Trump’s Strategy for Signal Chat Fallout: Attack, Attack, Attack

White House criticizes news media and plays down security risk of group chat that included journalist from the Atlantic

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/trump-signal-group-chat-attack-strategy-c330693c?mod=latest_headlines

By Tarini Parti

, Alex Leary

and Josh Dawsey

March 26, 2025 9:00 pm ET

President Trump has privately expressed frustration about the group chat incident, people familiar with his thinking said. Photo: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

WASHINGTON—The White House is going to war over war plans, dusting off a familiar playbook that President Trump has used for decades to blunt controversies: attack, attack, attack.

The president, senior advisers and top cabinet officials launched a campaign to dismiss one of the biggest crises of Trump’s second term, as Washington grappled with the news that top administration national security officials discussed sensitive military operations on a nongovernment message app that included a prominent magazine editor.

Trump has privately expressed frustration about the incident, people familiar with his thinking said, but he has made a strategic decision to paper over his annoyance and cede no ground in public. Instead, he has attacked the credibility of the Atlantic magazine and its editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, long a target of Trump’s ire. And he has played down concerns from former administration officials, Democrats and some Republicans that the episode exposed serious national security vulnerabilities.

“It’s all a witch hunt,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday. “There was no harm done because the attack was unbelievably successful,” he added. “And that’s the thing that you should be talking about.”

White House taps Musk to investigate Signal chat mishap

by Alex Gangitano - 03/26/25 2:17 PM ET

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5215547-white-house-asks-musk-investigate-signal/

The White House has asked Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to help investigate how a journalist was included on a Signal chat with national security officials.

“The National Security Council, the White House Counsel’s Office, and also yes, Elon Musk’s team,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters when asked who was leading an investigation into the Signal mishap.

“Elon Musk has offered to put his technical experts on this to figure out how this number was inadvertently added to the chat, again to take responsibility and ensure this can never happen again,” she added.

National security adviser Mike Waltz, who apparently added The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg into the chat, told Fox News on Tuesday night that he spoke with Musk and said his “best technical minds” are looking into how Goldberg’s number got into his phone.

Musk, who is a top adviser to Trump, has been tasked with finding waste and abuse in the federal government and DOGE has been behind overhauls and staff cuts at various agencies.

The Tesla CEO wore a shirt that said “tech support” to a Cabinet meeting last month and wore the same title on his shirt for a meeting with Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill earlier this month.

The White House has insisted that no classified information was shared in the chat, which also included Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Vice President Vance, among others. The Atlantic shared more text from the chat earlier on Wednesday, which Goldberg said he didn’t include originally due to national security concerns.

The released text shows that Hegseth shared in the chat the specific timeline of the airstrike and what weapons would be used in the strikes in Yemen that began on March 15.

9. Trump shifts Greenland approach amid blowback, Signal scandal

In the end Greenland will probably provide all the support the US needs because it was ready to cooperate before all this began.

Trump shifts Greenland approach amid blowback, Signal scandal

by Laura Kelly - 03/26/25 7:00 PM ET

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5215886-trump-vance-greenland-visit/

What looked like a Trump administration charm offensive in its gambit to take over Greenland, billed as a cultural heritage tour led by second lady Usha Vance, has turned into something different with the inclusion of her husband and the explosion of a national security scandal at home.

Planned trips this week to Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, and a dogsledding race were canceled in favor of a more limited trip to visit American military installations on the island.

Politicians in Greenland and Denmark, which officially owns the territory, were already lashing out against the official U.S. visit, given President Trump’s expansionist rhetoric. The initial inclusion of national security adviser Mike Waltz and Energy Secretary Chris Wright raised security and economic concerns in Greenland, an island rich in minerals and strategically located amid growing geopolitical tensions over the Arctic.

Amid the blowback from a bombshell Atlantic report on its editor’s inclusion in a Trump administration war plans Signal group chat, Vice President Vance on Tuesday announced he would join his wife on the trip, saying tongue in cheek that he didn’t want her to have all the fun by herself.

Denmark Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen told Danish public broadcaster DR he was supportive of the itinerary changes.

“I think it’s very positive that the Americans have canceled their visit among Greenlandic society. They will only visit their own base, Pituffik, and we have nothing against that,” he said.

The Hill has reached out to Vance’s office to see if Waltz and Wright are part of the trip.

It is apparently smoothing over tense relations between the NATO allies; U.S. officials traveling overseas to American military postings is typically noncontroversial.

But Vance’s inclusion in the trip underscores Trump’s fixation on taking the island — an effort for which he has not ruled out using force or coercion. And the vice president’s disdain for Europe, further laid bare in the Signal chat, indicates the Trump administration is not easing its combative approach.

“The way Trump is basically insisting to capture Greenland, we can know that it is of strategic importance for all the reasons we know,” said Nicolas Tenzer, senior fellow based in Paris with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).

“We do not understand the method. … The leaked things that appeared in the discussions, the Trump administration seems to have a kind of contempt for Europe, Europe doesn’t matter. And it seems that for the Trump administration, all the small or middle-size countries are like pawns in a kind of game that Trump is playing.”

Vance is outspoken in his view that Europe is profiteering from American military and security dominance. But in an extraordinary look at his thoughts behind closed doors, Vance’s remarks reported by The Atlantic demonstrated his deep-seated disdain for Europe.

“I just hate bailing Europe out again,” he said in a group chat that was part of deliberations over whether to launch an attack on the Houthis in Yemen as they attacked commercial shipping and U.S. military ships in the Red Sea.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, also included in the chat, sent messages agreeing with Vance, saying he shared the vice president’s “loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”

“It won’t surprise anyone here,” Ian Lesser, distinguished fellow with the German Marshall Fund and head of its office in Brussels, said of Vance’s comments.

“But it will reinforce existing concerns and perhaps dash hopes that anti-European views were not so widely shared in the administration.”

Vance and Hegseth’s positions reflect Trump’s own criticisms against Europe: Its governments have failed to meet their responsibilities over defense spending and have taken advantage of the U.S. economically. And the president’s fixation on Greenland falls in line with his criticisms that Europe is unfit to care for its own security.

Trump first proposed taking over Greenland in his first term, and his rhetoric has only escalated.

“One way or the other, we’re going to get it,” Trump said during a speech to Congress on March 4.

Vance’s visit to Pituffik Space Base in Greenland will put the vice president on America’s northernmost installation, which supports missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance missions, according to the Pentagon. It’s home to the 821st Space Base Group, part of the U.S. Space Force.

“It’s certainly significant as it’s a very high level-visitor, and it’s one of his first international trips,” said Rebecca Pincus, director of the Polar Institute at the Wilson Center. “I think it points to the attention that is being paid to Greenland and Greenland’s strategic significance, and in particular the security dimensions of Greenland’s significance to the United States.”

While the U.S. presence at the site dates back to the early 1950s, and it was a critical front line during the Cold War, it has taken on increased importance in the competition and defense against Russia and China’s military and technological investments in the Arctic.

The U.S. base hosts a 10,000-foot runway, a deep-water port, radar system that points north and a satellite receiving station.

“It’s this really interesting symbol of — it’s an artifact of the Cold War, but it’s also this incredibly important point for emerging competitive domains like space,” Pincus said, describing all aspects of life driven by the freezing temperatures.

“It’s an incredibly harsh environment, and the ability to operate a base up there is unique and it takes a lot of effort.”

Vance, in a video message posted on social media Tuesday announcing he would join the trip, said the point of his visit is to “check out what’s going on with the security there of Greenland.” He said the island — which has a population of 57,000 people and is largely covered by ice — is a primary target for adversaries looking to threaten the U.S. and Canada. He accused Denmark of failing to take Greenland’s security seriously.

“We want to reinvigorate the security of the people of Greenland because we think it’s important to protecting the security of the entire world,” Vance said.

Earlier this year, Denmark announced it was increasing its defense spending and is on track to put 3 percent of its gross domestic product toward its defense budget, passing NATO’s baseline commitment of 2 percent. In January, Copenhagen announced more than $2 billion specifically for defense spending in the Arctic, a nod to focusing security on Greenland.

The U.S. and Denmark have a bilateral defense agreement that was expanded in 2004, in consultation with Greenland. Independence movements on the island are growing, and Trump’s fixation on owning the island seems to be inspiring a greater desire for autonomy among the population.

Only 6 percent of Greenlanders surveyed in January favored joining the U.S., with an overwhelming 84 percent wanting full sovereignty from Denmark; 45 percent of respondents viewed Trump’s rhetoric as a “threat,” while 43 percent saw it as an “opportunity.”

Greenland’s top politicians rebuked the Trump administration’s initial delegation announcement, with Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte Bourup Egede calling it “highly aggressive.” Jens-Frederik Nielsen, leader of the Demokraatit party and poised to be the country’s next prime minister, said the visit showed a “lack of respect for the Greenlandic people.”

“The Greenlanders I talked to were insulted that we were talking in this way about their own land as if they’re not even there, as if we can just purchase this and buy this as if they are just an object,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) said during a Senate hearing last month examining U.S. policy options on the island.

“If we are trying to solidify our relationship with them, especially in some postindependence position, we are burning those bridges. We are sowing sense of distrust right now, that I think would make it even harder for us to be able to achieve that later.”

10. Chipping Away a Long-Standing Alliance: The Impact of Tech Restriction Communications on US-Polish Relations

Conclusion:

Allies will now be watching how the United States handles technology restrictions closely, each with its own interpretation of its reasoning, implication, and remedies. Meeting Chinese influence means meeting other countries, including Poland, where they are in terms of their own technological ambitions, whether that is security, economic, or diplomatic, all while maintaining a competitive edge. Aligning US technology restrictions with the ambitions of our allies will counteract malign influence, support US national security, and build a Europe capable of providing for its own defense.

Chipping Away a Long-Standing Alliance: The Impact of Tech Restriction Communications on US-Polish Relations

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/03/27/chipping-away-a-long-standing-alliance-the-impact-of-tech-restriction-communications-on-us-polish-relations/

by Ian Murphy, by Marceli Hązła

03.27.2025 at 06:00am

Introduction

In January 2025, the outgoing Biden administration introduced a series of new restrictions on microchips aimed at curbing China’s access to advanced technology and maintaining US leadership in artificial intelligence (AI). This includes a three-tiered system that categorizes countries based on their access to advanced graphics processing units: Tier 1 consists of allied nations with unrestricted access; Tier 2 consists of countries with export quotas and licensing requirements; Tier 3 consists of arms-embargoed nations that are entirely restricted from receiving advanced AI technology. Among other provisions, major US cloud service providers can apply for authorizations to operate AI data centers globally, which allows them to bypass onerous licensing requirements, though not without strict conditions.

US technology restrictions targeting the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are not new, but the January restrictions have triggered surprising reactions in Poland. These negative reactions are unexpected given the bipartisan consensus in the United States on limiting advanced technology transfers to the PRC and the expectation of an even stricter export regime under a potential second Trump administration. This is especially remarkable considering the strong US-Poland bilateral relationship of the past eight years. This relationship, further cemented by increased security cooperation following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, suggests that Polish concerns likely stem from something other than a fundamental disagreement on defense priorities. The logic here is that a strong, recently reinforced bilateral relationship, particularly on security matters, would generally lead to closer alignment on related policy issues like technology export controls. As such, Poland’s unexpected reaction suggests a different underlying cause for their concerns.

The United States considers Poland a close defense ally, a relationship underscored by significant arms sales and defense cooperation. In the fiscal year 2022-2023, total US arms exports reached US$238 billion, with Poland ranking first among allied nations in contract size. This commitment to Poland’s defense is further exemplified by increased cooperation and high-tech procurement, including the finalized delivery of 32 F-35A Husarz fighter jets in August 2024. This transfer underscores US support for Poland’s security and demonstrates strong trust in Poland’s ability to safeguard sensitive American technology. The US and Poland enjoy a robust relationship encompassing mutual defense cooperation, procurement, and technology transfer.

US Microchip Tiered Export System

Recent US technology restrictions do not signal a pivot in US-Poland engagement on the US side. Instead, many Polish policymakers and commentators view it as a de-prioritization of the relationship. The tiered export system, as it was communicated, is to blame.

Tier 1 countries are considered close allies and partners of the United States, with strong strategic and economic ties. They generally have strong export control systems and are deemed to pose minimal risk of diverting sensitive technology. These countries enjoy essentially unrestricted access to advanced AI chips and can import them without significant limitations or licensing requirements. This tier includes countries like the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and some members of the European Union.

Tier 2 countries generally have a less established relationship with the United States or may have a weaker export control system. They are seen as posing a moderate risk of technology diversion. These countries face export quotas and licensing requirements for advanced AI chips. They can import them, but the quantity and types of chips are subject to limitations and approvals.

Tier 3 countries, including China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other nations under US arms embargoes, are prohibited from acquiring advanced technologies from the United States. In addition to hardware restrictions on advanced semiconductors, there are further limits on the export of closed AI models to Tier 3 countries. This means that powerful AI models can not be hosted within these countries.

A visual depiction is located here.

The tiered system aims to strike a balance between protecting US national security and maintaining economic relationships with key partners. Though there is a logic to the way in which these restrictions are implemented, the tiered system is not without its backlash. Polish reactions to these restrictions have been characterized by disappointment, surprise, and politicians expressing a sense of betrayal and unfair treatment.

Polish Reactions to the Tiered Export System

Many Polish officials and commentators expressed disappointment and surprise at being placed in Tier 2, considering Poland’s status as one of America’s closest allies. Some view the decision as a sign that, at best, Washington does not trust Poland and, at worst, is willing to sacrifice its interests for the sake of containing China. The following comments have been translated from Polish into English by the authors.

President Andrzej Duda: “We were not among the closest allies we ended up in the second basket of countries that are not considered the most friendly and secure, the most trusted by the United States. My personal opinion is that this will be to Poland’s detriment.”

Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski described the decision as ‘incomprehensible and unmeritorious’ and stressed that EU countries should be treated equally by the US. “I have asked the Minister of Foreign Affairs to take firm and urgent action on this matter.”

Official communication from the Ministry of Digitalization: “We find the US administration’s decision incomprehensible and not based on any substantive rationale. The subject was not previously consulted at any stage.”

Minister of Development and Technology Krzysztof Paszyk: “The dispute exposes how easily European allies can become collateral damage in US efforts to contain Chinese technological advances. Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump have stepped up efforts to restrict China’s access to high-tech products, sometimes to the detriment of European companies.”

Deputy Minister for Digitalization Dariusz Standerski: “The problem arises when we talk about multi-year planning and we are actually talking about uncertainty, because this map is tentatively set for 2027, but a new administration will come in, and it may arrange the world completely differently. This causes problems in public procurement, it causes problems in planning not only in Poland, but also in other parts of Europe.”

Prof. Piotr Sankowski from University of Warsaw: “The tone of the document is clear: yellow countries should forget about developing their own superintelligence. And the limits are supposed to be enough for them only for ordinary AI applications because ‘this limit ensures that American technology is available to serve foreign governments, medical providers and other local enterprises. So, God forbid we should think about some global AI.”

Jarosław Królewski, founder and president of Synerise (AI startup): “Classifying Poland as a ‘second tier AI’ country – a country that is a faithful ally of the United States, fighting shoulder to shoulder on many fronts, while educating some of the best computer scientists in the world – computer scientists who often power US AI companies – may be the greatest allied betrayal since World War II.”

In rushing to publish export restrictions in the final days of the Biden administration, poor communication and cooperation with allies on export restrictions is unnecessarily sacrificing US influence in Eastern Europe. While Poland will continue to be a large buyer of US arms, host US troops, and maintain current defense cooperation, the rushed announcement has created uncertainty and doubt over the future of strong bilateral ties in one of America’s most ardent allies.

Opportunity for Improving US-Poland Relations

The PRC has perfectly timed the release of their DeepSeek AI model as US allies, like Poland, are struggling to influence the new administration to change the restrictions on microchips. Despite DeepSeek using an older generation of microchips, that are not explicitly covered by the recent US tech restrictions, the PRC created this model at a fraction of the cost of US models. The market crash in response to the announcement of DeepSeek is the perfect representation of mass uncertainty about the future of US technological innovation and its commitment to international collaboration on emerging technologies. Regardless of our trust in the security, truthfulness, or motivations behind DeepSeek, it is clear that the Trump administration needs to update the export controls.

To build and maintain robust relationships to contain PRC military advancements, the United States must engage allies while maintaining its own innovation momentum. Strong alliances rely on American leadership in all spaces, especially technology, making the need to secure our own intellectual property, proprietary technology, and national security secrets first and foremost. To do so, we must engage our allies and partners to build trusted networks that expand the circle of Tier 1 countries. Working with countries on moving them from Tier 2 to Tier 1 has overlap with their own national security objectives, including their own intellectual property protection, enhancing cybersecurity, and making them economically resilient.

The statements from Polish commentators also reveal that a multipolar world order is forming, where other countries are emerging more capable than they were in previous decades, and thus have their own national objectives and innovative capacity. Poland’s rise as a security leader, not just a security consumer, in Eastern Europe is something that we can work with to better meet the challenges posed by Russia and China. Inviting Tier 2 countries to contribute to a global technology security regime will not weaken US export controls but enhance it – they may even see gaps where we do not.

Allies will now be watching how the United States handles technology restrictions closely, each with its own interpretation of its reasoning, implication, and remedies. Meeting Chinese influence means meeting other countries, including Poland, where they are in terms of their own technological ambitions, whether that is security, economic, or diplomatic, all while maintaining a competitive edge. Aligning US technology restrictions with the ambitions of our allies will counteract malign influence, support US national security, and build a Europe capable of providing for its own defense.

Tags: Microchips, Poland, tiered export system

About The Authors

Ian Murphy
Ian Murphy works as a China Subject Matter Expert at SecuriFense Inc., where he helps organizations understand developments in China’s economy and foreign policy. He is currently a PhD student in International Studies at Old Dominion University.
View all posts
Marceli Hązła
Marceli Hązła is a PhD candidate at Poznan University of Economics and Business (Poland) and a chairman of the Poznan branch of Polish Geopolitical Society. His research interests include the impact of geopolitics, new technologies, climate change and other trends on globalization and international economic cooperation.

11. Book Review | The Restless Wave: Historical Fiction and the Moral Hazards of War

Book Review | The Restless Wave: Historical Fiction and the Moral Hazards of War

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/03/27/the-restless-wave-historical-fiction-and-the-moral-hazards-of-war/

by Josie Carlson

03.27.2025 at 06:00am

Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret.), The Restless Wave, Penguin Press (October 8, 2024), [ISBN: 978-059349073, Hardcover, 400 pages]

Appealing to the national memory of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, The Restless Wave tells the story of a newly commissioned American Naval officer embroiled in the War in the Pacific from Pearl Harbor through Midway. Retired Admiral James Stavridis presents a coming-of-age story infused with questions about the nature of character and military command in a meticulously researched work of historical fiction.

Through references from his career, the author documents the life of a Florida Keys boy growing up on the coast, navigating the US Naval Academy as a midshipman, then thrust into World War II’s inferno in the Pacific. This story examines the constant struggle for success and personal recognition during a time of hardship and national turmoil through the eyes of Scott Bradley James. Whether you are a teen wanting to learn about life at the Naval Academy or a history buff looking for a flawless fictional adaptation of the war in the Pacific, this action-packed story will grab your attention and keep it through its 300 pages.

This new series—yes, a second book is in the works—is different from Stavridis’ previous fictional offerings. Admiral Stavridis first ventured into the fiction world with his highly acclaimed novel 2035, which called for policymakers to consider the threat of a war with China. Although similar in highlighting the timeless danger of gradual escalation, instead of using a potential future threat, The Restless Wave relies on the hardships of academy life and the brutal combat that was World War II in the Pacific as the setting for Scott’s transformation from a boy into a successful Naval officer.

Stavridis thoroughly illustrates the ethical challenges facing midshipmen at the Naval Academy, including a cheating scandal and an untimely death, through the eyes of a maturing protagonist. The author also focuses on issues of morality and the importance of character. He explores these themes through the protagonist’s constant struggle to choose the right thing as he faces a series of ethical dilemmas. Upon Scott’s early graduation, the author seems to shift focus, allowing only snapshots of Scott’s inner bouts with jealousy and unbounded ambition.

Stavridis’s choice to make Scott more emotionally inaccessible after graduating from the Academy is discordant. The author imbued so much detail in early, emotional decisions in the book that its movement into a more action-oriented war story felt as if these were two separate books bound into one. Stavridis’s careful attention to Scott’s wrestling with the Naval Academy’s honor code and the intimate exploration of Scott’s relationship with his girlfriend were left in the dust as the story transformed into one of war heroics.

Upon his assignment in Hawaii, Scott never again looked in the mirror and contemplated his circumstances and what they had changed about him. There were times—the slow moments between battles—when this reflection would have been very beneficial in plot development and consistency. The author’s choice not to incorporate this self-evaluation seemed to be a trade-off for the words spent recounting the battle scenes of war in the Pacific Theater. This deprived the reader of understanding the outcome of a central theme that began in the novel’s first half and never revealed whether Scott had truly matured into an ethical man.

That said, Stavridis moves from the protagonist’s interior battles to provide stunning detail regarding the War in the Pacific. The author vividly presents battle scenes, documenting Scott’s development as a plot device to explore the themes of heroism and destruction in the Pacific Fleet during the first years of World War II. While being tossed between ships due to combat losses, Scott showcases the hardships and the single-minded focus needed to perform at the level required during the war.

In addition to heroism and destruction, Stavridis also explores military innovation, using The Restless Wave to tell the story of the creation of the Combat Information Center (CIC) department within the ships in 1942. To this day, the CIC remains the control center of all command on the ships. However, these operational details came at the price of following Scott’s personal story with the same care and detail that occurred during the book’s first half.

After following Scott’s personal journey through the Academy, the lack of thought given to his friends in Hawaii seemed disappointing. It isn’t until the book’s closing pages that the reader is made aware of Scott’s internal struggles during his time at sea. If Stavridis had leaned on Scott’s moral development throughout the historic battles of Midway and the Doolittle Raid, the reader would have not only seen Scott mature but also felt the impact of his moral struggle.

It seems Stavridis wrote this book to give life to the historic battles and innovations of the Pacific fleet. But, as in his previous works, he also wrote to shed light on a more universal theme: the impact and reality of the human condition and moral struggle during wartime. Scott cannot erase his past moral failings. Through the pages of The Restless Wave, Stavridis attempts to impress on the reader Scott’s ethical development and its relationship to successful military service.

The Restless Wave shines with authenticity. It is packed with scenes containing levels of detail only a naval veteran could render, including impeccable battle scenes and the ambivalence created by seeing those around you rise while you are stuck in a “staff job” ashore. These details make this book an excellent read for those seeking a sweeping war story through the wide eyes of a twenty-something looking to make a mark on the world. Yet, for those who strive to read a deeper introspection of the moral hazards of war, at home and in combat, the book may leave something to be desired.

Tags: Useful Fiction

About The Author

Josie Carlson
Josie Carlson is a current master's candidate at Georgetown University's Security Studies Program, with a concentration in International Security. Carlson obtained her B.A. in Political Science, Peace Studies, and Japanese Studies from Gustavus Adolphus College, during which she authored a thesis addressing Japanese national memory and its impacts on the post-World War II relationship between the United States and Japan.

12. Europe Confronts Reality That Vance’s Hostility Is More Than Just a Show

And sadly every US ally is looking at this incident and asking if this is what the Administration is saying about their alliance with the US.

The lack of trust with our allies will become one of the major strategic weaknesses for the US. It will negatively influence everything from security to the economy.

This could be the turning point for the US alliance system that frankly is the key to US security. The alliance system is key to winning. I am at a loss to see how people in the Administration cannot see how important our allies are to US national security and national prosperity. But to them it seems that they are only freeloaders.

I wonder how the history books will record and interpret the events of this week. It will be interesting to see how things turn out for us if we are to be "going it alone" from here on out.

Europe Confronts Reality That Vance’s Hostility Is More Than Just a Show

Vice president has taken an aggressive stance, sparking fears for the trans-Atlantic alliance

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/europe-jd-vance-trump-8fc67a79?mod=hp_lead_pos8

By Daniel Michaels

, Laurence Norman

and Matthew Dalton

March 26, 2025 8:00 pm ET

Vice President JD Vance has played a role in sharpening tensions between the U.S. and Europe. Photo: Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

European leaders had hoped that Vice President JD Vance’s antagonism was a political show to build domestic support. Now, after Vance expressed disdain for Europe in a private text chat about Yemen attack details, officials are coming to terms with a vocal vice president whose antipathy for Europe appears to run deep.

“I just hate bailing Europe out again,” he said regarding planned U.S. strikes against Houthi rebels, in an exchange published by the Atlantic magazine. He told fellow administration officials that the U.S. was “making a mistake” by hitting the Houthis, whose attacks on Red Sea shipping have scrambled global shipping routes.

He noted that only “3 percent of US trade runs through the Suez. 40 percent of European trade does.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth replied to Vance’s comments: “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”

Vance has played a leading role in sharpening tensions between Washington and Europe, articulating a degree of contempt for the continent that transcends President Trump’s milder scorn. He lambasted European democracies in a speech in Munich last month, calling European Union officials “commissars.” He once called Ukraine “a country I don’t care about.” In the Oval Office recently he berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in front of Trump and international media.

People close to Vance said his stance comes from a desire to bolster Europe with U.S. interests in mind.

“It might look bad from the outside, but what you’re doing is having the tough talks you need to be strong,” said Rep. Brian Mast (R., Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee and a friend of the vice president. He said both he and Vance, who served in the military, have “some level of a chip on the shoulder” because Europe hasn’t been pulling its weight on security, though it has begun to thanks to pressure from the administration. “What we need from Europe is a Europe that doesn’t need America,” Mast said.

The real scandal: Those chatty Trump officials’ loathing of U.S. allies

The Signal chat fiasco sends an alarming message about Trump officials’ stance toward Europe.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/03/26/vance-hegseth-chat-scandal-europe/?utm

Updated

March 26, 2025 at 2:16 p.m. EDTyesterday at 2:16 p.m. EDT

6 min

1182

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks to members of the media alongside Vice President JD Vance on Jan. 25. (Rod Lamkey Jr./AP)

The “Signal scandal” — the fact that top Trump administration officials planned military strikes using the Signal messaging app and included the editor in chief of the Atlantic in their supposedly secret discussions — shows what happens when a president selects senior officials for personal loyalty rather than competence or experience. Thus, you have Cabinet-level appointees and the vice president engaging in shocking “op sec” (operational security) breaches that, if committed by a lower-ranking official, likely would result in immediate dismissal and possible criminal charges.

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It is no coincidence that the defense secretary (Pete Hegseth) is a former Fox News weekend host and junior army officer, or that the vice president (JD Vance) is a former junior senator from Ohio and Marine Corps corporal. They are simply not used to engaging in such top-level national security decision-making, and it shows. Presidential envoy Steve Witkoff — a wealthy property developer who has never previously served in government — denies accessing the text traffic while he was in Moscow negotiating with President Vladimir Putin, writing on X that he did not take his “personal devices” with him to Russia. That still suggests, however, that he was involved in highly sensitive government communications on “personal devices” when not in Russia.

But the scandal also highlights the inability of Trump officials to figure out who America’s friends and foes are. The subject of the group chat was impending U.S. airstrikes against the Houthis, the Yemeni extremist group backed by Iran that has been targeting international shipping in the Red Sea since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023. It is to the Trump officials’ credit that they recognized the traditional U.S. role in policing shipping lanes, but their laudable resolve to act was accompanied by lots of exaggerated complaints about supposed European inaction.

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A member of the group chat identified as Vance wrote: “I just hate bailing Europe out again.” A texter identified as Hegseth responded: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.” A chat participant identified as “SM” — believed to be Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller — even suggested that President Donald Trump had decreed that Europe and Egypt need to pay back the U.S. for the airstrikes. “If Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what?” he wondered. “If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”

Follow Trump’s first 100 Days

The policymakers showed no awareness that European nations and other U.S. allies had already joined U.S. efforts to ensure freedom of navigation through the Red Sea. In December 2023 — a month after the start of Houthi attacks — the Defense Department announced a multinational effort known as Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect commercial shipping. This initiative was led by the United States and joined by Bahrain, Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain. Other nations, such as Singapore and Sri Lanka, subsequently signed on, though some later distanced themselves from the mission.

While Prosperity Guardian was (and is) a defensive operation, another group of U.S. allies joined in Operation Poseidon Archer, a series of airstrikes against Houthi positions in Yemen. The United States and Britain carried out the strikes, beginning in early January 2024, with reported support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands.

Some European nations were uncomfortable with accepting U.S. leadership, fearing that the American approach was overly aggressive and could spark a wider war. So, the European Union launched its own maritime security mission, known as Operation Aspides, which has sent warships to the Red Sea. That mission has reportedly included Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain.

Together, Prosperity Guardian and Aspides were reported to have thwarted 150 Houthi attacks in 2024, while Poseidon Archer was credited for reducing the overall level of Houthi strikes.

So, it is simply incorrect for the Trump officials to suggest that the Europeans are a bunch of freeloaders who are doing nothing to help in the Red Sea. It’s true that the U.S., as the world’s largest naval power, has far more capabilities than its allies, but the Europeans have made an important contribution, too.

You know who isn’t contributing? Russia and China, even though both nations (and China in particular) also benefit from the flow of global commerce through the Bab-al-Mandab Strait. Both Beijing and Moscow are, in fact, essentially the Houthis’ allies. Russia has provided targeting assistance to the group, while China’s buying of 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports ultimately aids Tehran’s financing of the Houthis. Yet, when the Trump administration officials discuss making someone pay for the U.S. military operation, they focus on Egypt and Europe — not on China and Russia.

This is only the latest, worrisome sign of the deep anti-European animus displayed by Trump and his appointees, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in the U.S. since the America First isolationism in the 1930s. The administration is, after all, launching a trade war with the E.U. while at the same time sparking a crisis with a NATO ally by trying to force Denmark to cede Greenland to the U.S. Just this week, the prime minister of Greenland denounced as “highly aggressive” a trip to his territory by an American delegation that will now be led by the vice president. Trump is far nicer to Russia — America’s enemy — than he is to America’s European allies.

The Signal chat, thus, merely confirms what has already been evident: that the transatlantic alliance, forged during World War II, might be on its last legs. As Mike Martin, a former British army officer who is now a member of the House of Commons Select Committee on Defense, wrote on X: “US Vice President and Secretary of Defense loathe Europe (as they try to extort money out of it). I wonder how much more evidence the UK government needs that Trump et al are deeply unreliable and we need to pivot towards Europe.”

What readers are saying

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By Max Boot

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

15. Signal leak sparks new calls for modernized messaging options from defense officials

All controversy aside, this is something that must be done and is perhaps the one good thing that can come out of this incident.

Leaders need secure communications that allow them to communicate and collaborate effectively in real time from any location. Setting aside some of the immature comments, some of the spin was not wrong - leaders need to be able to collapse from dispersed locations in real time and not have to convene a meeting in SCIF to coordinate policy issues (military strike planning is another matter altogether).

Maybe we will see some new communications devices and new procedures come out of this that will provide leaders with flexible secure communications capabilities. They need to mirror commercial processes so that new unwieldy processes do not have to be learned. The bottom line is that we need secure communications that mirror commercial capabilities that people are already experienced in using.

Signal leak sparks new calls for modernized messaging options from defense officials

defensescoop.com · by Brandi Vincent · March 26, 2025

Officials are calling for accountability, clearer policies, and more access to modern platforms that military and government insiders can trust for real-time communications about classified activities, after some of the Trump administration’s top national security leaders shared high-stakes military operational plans in a group chat with an American reporter.

In interviews this week, DefenseScoop spoke to current and former defense officials — many who requested anonymity to speak freely — about the incident revealed by the Atlantic magazine’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who was included in a message chain earlier this month on the encrypted but unclassified messaging app Signal, where some of the president’s closest advisers discussed forthcoming strikes targeting Houthi militants in Yemen.

“This, of course, is a political hot potato — because both sides are going after each other. But I want to move beyond the politics and say, let’s acknowledge the gravity of this,” a former senior defense official said in reference to the implications of classified plans being shared on Signal.

Mixed Signals

Congressional hearings and follow-up statements from the government continue to paint a picture of exactly what happened regarding the “Houthi PC Small Group” chat, as it was named. The conversation Goldberg was added to with more than a dozen top Trump officials included Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and national security adviser Michael Waltz.

In the view of the former senior defense official, who requested anonymity to speak openly about the matter, this blunder is “a sign of people [who lack] serious experience at those levels.”

“Because I just cannot think of the people that I used to work with ever doing something like this. I just can’t — whether it’s in the intel community or in the [Defense Department] — a lot of us took this as seriously as anything we ever dealt with as operational security, because people will die if you get it wrong,” the official said Tuesday.

While it’s difficult to get mobile devices with adequate security to transmit classified material, the former senior official said they did have access to “clunky” capabilities designed for exactly that during their own military service.

“And anybody who’s been around the intel community knows that when senior people travel, they have access to all sorts of communication devices,” they noted.

“So, there is always a temptation to do the quick solution — but the quick solution is not the right solution. You’re violating all sorts of acts and policies and legislation about releasing classified information via unclassified devices or an application that” is not government-approved for sharing sensitive information that could put people or assets at risk, the former senior defense official said.

Regarding exceptions to existing rules, the official said the only scenario they could come up with would be an emergency situation where information had to get out quickly because troops’ lives were on the line.

“But even there, those who know what they’re doing would mask the information by code words or just saying the target is struck, and it would be clear to those who were considered in the ‘need-to-know’ what happened — without revealing anything sensitive,” the former senior defense official said.

Multiple times in the interview, the official emphasized how shocked and frustrated they were about the administration’s choices during and amid the aftermath of the incident.

A current military official expressed similar sentiments in a separate conversation with DefenseScoop on Wednesday.

“We have classified systems that can do this. We have [a version of the Microsoft Teams chat platform for DOD’s Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet]. This is just laziness,” the military official said.

However, in an interview Tuesday, another current defense official said they think the U.S. government needs a broader arsenal of options for platforms that go farther than simple encryption and can be trusted for rapid text exchanges that incorporate sensitive and classified information.

“It is nearly impossible for U.S. government agencies all over the world to chat in real time with current U.S. government-provided systems,” said the defense official.

They added that they were not surprised by what happened, because so many federal agencies and officials — as well as lawmakers, journalists and diplomats — use Signal daily to transmit what they refer to as “official communications” about work.

“There is no efficient way for agencies to chat in real time. For example: Most of your embassies use WhatsApp for communication with DOD, due to the need to be in real-time communication. Most of your staffs across the U.S. government use WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, Facebook Messenger, etc. — and they have for decades,” the defense official said.

Pointing to a potential solution to this challenge, they said that the government needs its own “cross-agency chat or text system that is owned by one agency, but mandated for all.” The system they envision would have classified and unclassified versions, and would be something internal and secure, requiring an official government email to gain access.

The defense official further suggested the government could partner with existing industry platforms — like Signal — because, in their experience, websites and apps created by the U.S. government in the past have “not been good at all.”

Separately, the former senior defense official said that they “completely agree” that it would be helpful for American officials to have approved access to more dynamic tools that meet the expectations of the modern “chat-driven world.”

“We’ve welcomed the help from technology companies, but there’s a different vetting process between classified systems, and Signal and WhatsApp — as good as their encryption are — they’re still not what I would call meant for classified information,” they said. “And I think we’re in a world today where we’re always working with partners and allies, and it can be very cumbersome to get them the information they need. And so you’ll turn to whatever you have.”

‘There will be no secrets.’

Details about all that was discussed in the administration officials’ “Houthi PC Small Group” chat continue to emerge Wednesday. But since Goldberg’s first story was published Monday, questions and concerns have swirled about the legality and possible unforeseen consequences of the high-level officials’ use of the unclassified messaging app.

“There’s going to be great hay made of the fact that this particular group of individuals with security clearances transmitted top-secret information on a commercial, encrypted software. That’s just the reality of politics. Underscoring that is that we need to have government-secured communications, well-encrypted with strong algorithms, that are going to be used for the transmission of federally protected information amongst agencies — and that is an absolute requirement,” Scott White told DefenseScoop on Tuesday.

White served as an officer with the Canadian Forces Intelligence Command and is currently an associate professor and director of George Washington University’s cybersecurity program. He and the other officials who DefenseScoop interviewed highlighted how the issue that underpins this entire incident has been a problem for previous administrations and across political parties.

“President Obama loved to use his Blackberry — and that’s got probably some of the best encryption in the world,” White said.

“In fact, the Saudi government told BlackBerry that they wouldn’t allow them to sell their product in Saudi Arabia unless they gave them the de-encryption codes, and Blackberry said, ‘We’re not giving them to you,’” he explained. “It has one of the strongest encryptions in the world — and even that encryption program, when Obama wanted to use his own Blackberry, they disallowed that.”

President Donald Trump and members of his administration have largely downplayed any critiques of wrongdoing associated with the controversial Signal chat.

When asked if his team’s decision to use the app put U.S. national security at risk during a White House press briefing on Tuesday, Trump responded: “I don’t know anything about Signal. I wasn’t involved in this, but I just heard about it, and I hear it’s used by a lot of groups. It’s used by the media a lot. It’s used by a lot [in] the military, and I think, successfully — but sometimes somebody can get onto those things. That’s one of the prices you pay when you’re not sitting in the Situation Room with no phones on, which is always the best, frankly.”

In response to reporters’ questions about whether he’ll move to mandate an investigation into the matter, the president said, “It’s not really an FBI thing,” so he would instead like to know more about the platform’s security.

“Like, will somebody be able to break in? Are people able to break into conversations? And if that’s true, we’re going to have to find some other form of device, and I think that’s something that we may have to do. Some people like Signal very much, other people probably don’t, but we’ll look into it,” Trump said.

At a press gaggle with reporters in Hawaii on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Hegseth doubled down on his rebuttal that “nobody’s texting war plans.”

Prior to his statements, the Atlantic published screenshots of his texts in the Signal group, where the secretary revealed U.S. Central Command’s schedule for attacks, as well as information about specific targets and locations.

“If you define ‘war plan’ as an ‘O-plan,’ an operational plan, it was definitely not a war plan. It was, however — if I believe Goldberg from the Atlantic and I have every reason to believe them — it included targets, timing, weapons platforms, which are classified. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. There’s no parsing this one out. That information will put lives at stake if somebody has access to it,” the former senior defense official told DefenseScoop.

They noted that there are people who served in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last 15 years “who were petrified about polygraphs because they had to do something in the heat of battle — to release information to an ally or a partner, but had no choice — because people were going to die if they didn’t do something.”

“To think that people at the most senior levels in the government would not acknowledge what they did was wrong. That’s what really is beginning to bug me more than anything else, is this refusal to acknowledge what was done was wrong,” the official said. “It almost feels like it’s another blatant disregard for the rules that everybody else has to follow. I would be led off in handcuffs if I had done what they did, there would be no doubt in my mind — I would be held accountable for sucking up that magnitude of having a reporter in on the classified chat.”

Further, they called the fact that Steve Witkoff — the American real estate investor, lawyer, and Trump’s pick to serve as the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East — was in Russia for meetings with President Vladimir Putin while participating in the group text “absolutely stunning.”

“I would assume everything from the chat has been compromised, because it’s Russia and they’re really good at this stuff. So if you’re not paying attention to that, what else has been compromised?” the former senior defense official said.

Hegseth and other members of Trump’s cabinet have also said that the success of the attacks in Yemen discussed in the chat show that the group message was not compromised.

However, the officials who spoke to DefenseScoop this week pointed out that it’s possible U.S. adversaries could have been hiding in those types of text chains over long periods to learn about the tactics, techniques and procedures that will better position them next time to counter future operations.

“And most people don’t write about this aspect of it, but they can also learn from it and use information operations right back at the president, which they know how to target him very personally and convince him to do things or not do things. So there’s a lot in play here, which is well beyond just this one initial strike,” the former senior defense official said.

White said there’s an onus on government officials, now more than ever, to continue to handle sensitive, classified and top-secret information and distribute that information as securely as possible — because China, Russia, North Korea and Iran are constantly working to intercept U.S. communications for their benefit.

He and other cyber experts also expect major disruptions in the potentially not-so-distant future when quantum computing is fully realized and can be used with AI to break existing encryption services, including those that enable text messages to seemingly disappear after they are sent.

“There will be no secrets. So in the same vein, we’re going to have to use artificial intelligence and quantum computing to create a robust encryption,” White said.

The officials who DefenseScoop interviewed additionally called on the government to use this incident as an opportunity to spotlight one concise policy about what is and isn’t permissible when using unclassified mobile apps for work-related chats.

According to an official DOD memorandum published in 2023, “unmanaged messaging apps” including iMessage, Signal and WhatsApp are “NOT authorized to access, transmit, process non-public DoD information.”

“To me, it probably is clear already — but why not take advantage of this to come out with a policy that says, ‘here’s guidance,’” the former senior defense official said.

“We can’t afford to do this when we’re going against the Chinese adversary in the South China Sea — so we’ve got to learn from this,” they said. “We have to put some things in place to make sure something like this never happens again.”

Written by Brandi Vincent

Brandi Vincent is DefenseScoop’s Pentagon correspondent. She reports on emerging and disruptive technologies, and associated policies, impacting the Defense Department and its personnel. Prior to joining Scoop News Group, Brandi produced a long-form documentary and worked as a journalist at Nextgov, Snapchat and NBC Network. She grew up in Louisiana and received a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland.

defensescoop.com · by Brandi Vincent · March 26, 2025

16. Hegseth seeks to reassure jittery allies, partners during inaugural Pacific trip

Strategic reassurance. Strategic resolve. Do we have one that provides the other?

And since South Korea was omitted from this trip, jitters will remain there.

Hegseth seeks to reassure jittery allies, partners during inaugural Pacific trip

Stars and Stripes · by Wyatt Olson · March 26, 2025

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a gathering at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, March 25, 2025. (Asia-Pacific Center for Security)

America’s allies and partners in the Pacific are important to the Trump administration as it pursues “peace through strength,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday in Honolulu during the first leg of his inaugural trip to the region.

“President Donald Trump has made it clear that we will achieve peace through strength, through an America First approach,” said Hegseth, whose remarks at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies were livestreamed to military and civilian leaders in the Indo-Pacific region.

“But America First does not mean America only or America alone, ignoring allies and partners,” he said. “It means that our military-to-military relationships must make sense for the United States and for our friends.”

Hegseth arrived in Hawaii on Tuesday and met with Adm. Samuel Paparo, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. He next travels to Guam, then to the Philippines and Japan, to meet with senior U.S. and foreign military and civilian leaders.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth presents the Navy and Marine Corps Medal award to Chief Petty Officer Pierce Decker at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickman, Hawaii, March 25, 2025. (Joseph Rolfe/U.S. Navy)

He arrived in Hawaii amid controversy swirling around his role in the reportedly accidental leak of plans for a March 15 attack on the Houthis in Yemen to Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic magazine, via a chat group on the Signal app.

Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security Council, confirmed “the veracity of the Signal group,” according to Goldberg.

Questioned by reporters in Hawaii, Hegseth criticized Goldberg as “deceitful” and “discredited.” On Tuesday, administration officials appeared before a Senate committee to deny that any classified information was shared on the group chat.

“Nobody was texting war plans and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth said in Hawaii on Monday, The Associated Press reported.

While Hegseth sought to reassure allies and partners of their importance during Tuesday’s speech, he hinted that changes to those relationships may lie ahead.

“Where there are imbalances, we will fix them,” he said. “We will find them, and we’re going to fix those imbalances. We will right-size the obligations and responsibilities needed for modern deterrence and defense – a large part of the conversation the admiral and my team had yesterday.”

Trump has long suggested that America’s allies, particularly those in Europe, rely too much on U.S. arms and troops. During his first administration, Trump pushed South Korea and Japan to pay more to support the U.S. military presence there.

Hegseth told the audience the administration would “achieve peace through strength” through the triad of “restoring the warrior ethos, rebuilding our military and reestablishing deterrence.”

Hegseth’s emphasis on these three priorities, however, are more a continuation than a departure of the previous Joe Biden administration.

“The cornerstone of America’s defense is still deterrence, ensuring that our adversaries understand the folly of outright conflict,” former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said during a change-of-command ceremony in April 2021 at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii.

“[W]e’ll use existing capabilities, and build new ones, and use all of them in networked ways — hand in hand with our allies and partners,” he said.

Hegseth told the audience he would look for opportunities to collaborate with defense industries and “press hard to expand capacity and accelerate deliveries.”

He touted the White House announcement last week that Boeing would build the Air Force’s next-generation fighter jet, the F-47, to eventually replace the F-22 and F-35 jets.

The sixth-generation fighter would be “the most capable, most lethal, longest-range, most stealth fighter jet the world has ever seen,” Hegseth told the audience.

It is unclear, however, what appetite many of America’s allies have in continuing to acquire advanced fighter jets from the United States.

Some NATO countries, including Denmark, Portugal and Canada, are reconsidering relying on F-35 jets over concerns about American reliability as Trump at times seemingly regards allies more as foes than friends.

Hegseth dismissed such misgivings as unwarranted.

“We will work with our allies and our partners to deter the Communist Chinese and their aggression in the Indo-Pacific, full stop.

“To paraphrase the president, I say to all of you who are here with me today and listening from around the region, we have been friends, partners and allies for a long time, and we will remain friends, partners and allies for a long time to come.

“But I need — we need — each and every one of our friends and partners and our allies to do their part as well, to be force multipliers alongside the United States of America. That has to be a two-way street.”

Stars and Stripes · by Wyatt Olson · March 26, 2025

17. Inside the Norwegian Resistance: Secret Operations in WWII

Inside the Norwegian Resistance: Secret Operations in WWII

Secret Alliances and Silent Sabotage: Q & A with Dr Tony Insall

irregularwarfare.org · by Christopher Booth, Walker Mills · March 27, 2025

Main Image Credit: The Norwegian Resistance Museum | Norges Hjemmefrontmuseum

Editor’s note: This article is part of Project Maritime, which explores modern challenges and opportunities in the maritime dimension at the intersection of irregular warfare and strategic competition. We warmly invite your participation and engagement as we embark on this project. Please send submissions with the subject line “Project Maritime Submission” and follow us on X (formerly Twitter) @proj_maritime.

Project Maritime had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Tony Insall, Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London. Dr. Insall’s prolific scholarship examines the intersection of special operations, intelligence, and irregular warfare, including in his recent work, Secret Alliances: Special Operations and Intelligence in Norway 1940-1945 – The British Perspective. His expertise spans Norway, Scandinavia, and the Nordic countries during the early Cold War, as well as 20th-century China, British foreign policy, and the origins of the Second World War.

Q: Dr. Insall, thank you for sharing your insights with our readers. As a senior visiting research fellow at King’s College London focused on conflict and security, a retired diplomat, and author of multiple books and articles, we would like to pose some questions largely relating to your work: “Secret Alliances. Special Operations and Intelligence in Norway 1940-1945 – The British Perspective.”

The Norwegian resistance movement during the Nazi occupation may be best known for Operation Gunnerside in 1943- the destruction of a heavy water plant to derail a Nazi atomic bomb. But Norway’s resistance also featured a heavy maritime component—including the famous “Shetland Bus,” the tracking and attack of the German battleship Tirpitz, and British Secret Intelligence Service’s coastal watcher system.

Q: Can you set the stage for us in terms of the role of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in countering the German occupation in Norway?

T.E. Lawrence is one of the spiritual fathers of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) [ed. while SIS operated as the British intelligence service, SOE was purely focused on subversion and sabotage.] He is widely known for his observation, “Irregular war was far more intellectual than a bayonet charge…” But to this, he added, equally relevantly: “…far more exhausting than service in the comfortable initiative obedience of an ordered army. Guerillas must be allowed liberal workroom: in irregular war, of two men together, one was being wasted. Our ideal should be to make our battle a series of single combats, our ranks a happy alliance of agile commanders-]in-chief.” Or perhaps more simply: the smaller the better. Indeed, SOE stations usually comprised three agents, and SIS stations just two. By contrast, the only large SOE operation, involving 41 men, failed.

Most people believe that SIS and SOE had to start largely from scratch to develop resistance activities in the occupied countries of Western Europe when in reality some preparatory work had already been done. In 1936, Britain developed what we can call a “think tank,” run by Lt. Colonel Jo Holland, to study the characteristics of guerilla warfare and to consider (in great secret) the possibility of providing British support for insurgency (i.e. resistance) in any country overrun by the German Army. This was kept secret because, at that stage, the British General Staff was expressly forbidden to hypothesize that an expeditionary force would be sent to the Continent. Given the sensitivity, Holland was ordered to carry out his research under the umbrella of the recently formed Section D of SIS, which was already beginning its own preparations for sabotage and subversive action in any occupied neutral countries.

Holland’s reports attracted attention, and he was authorized to bring in two additional staff officers—one an expert on demolitions, and the other to lead with organization, recruitment, and training. Holland chose Colin Gubbins for the latter post. This was an excellent choice: Gubbins not only spoke French and Russian, but also had personal experience in the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and from the Sinn Fein campaign in Ireland. After the Nazi occupation of Prague in March 1939, section D was transferred to the Director-General of Military Intelligence and became known as MI(R). So, it was here that Gubbins, who was later to become the head of SOE, learned his trade.

Q: Gubbins ended up playing quite an impactful role in Norway—can you say more?

Gubbins had an opportunity to develop his expertise further in the spring of 1940. Although the German invasion of Norway on April 9 took everyone by surprise, MI(R) had already undertaken some contingency planning for amphibious raids on Norway’s western seaboard. Gubbins eventually settled on a plan to form small Independent Companies, which would be armed and equipped to operate in totally independent roles for periods of up to one month. When the Germans invaded Norway, Gubbins was put in command of a group of four such companies, known as ScissorsForce. They performed effectively and were among the few units to come out of the Norwegian campaign with any credit. As a result, Gubbins was later posted to a senior role within the organization.

For their work in Norway, SOE and SIS used British staff who had significant Norwegian expertise (and often some Norwegian parentage). Both Eric Welsh, the SIS controlling officer for Norway who had worked for International Paint in Bergen for more than twenty years, and Frank Foley (who had been head of the SIS station in Berlin before Norway) were similarly well-informed. The early operations of both services, though, were fairly rudimentary. They needed time to work out their strategies and priorities as well as to recruit patriotic Norwegians to the cause.

Norway differed from most of the rest of occupied Europe in one characteristic. SIS sent no British officers there, and SOE sent only two. One of them, Jo Adamson, was captured soon after making a bad landing from a parachute descent, and the other was not involved in any significant operations. So, William Colby’s achievement with Operation Rype [ed. an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) mission to sabotage rail lines and German logistics in the Norwegian mountains], in March/April 1945, was quite unique. After his OSS service, Colby later joined the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where he became an influential Chief of Station during the Vietnam War, and ultimately served as CIA Director.

Q: How critical was the resistance in Norway to the larger conflict in Europe?

While France was always a vital focus for resistance activities, Norway was also extremely significant. Indeed, for much of the war, Hitler was concerned about the possibility of an Allied invasion somewhere on the long Norwegian coast.

Hitler’s concerns were not entirely misplaced. It is well known that British Prime Minister Churchill frequently encouraged consideration of an invasion there – Operation Jupiter. The fact that it was much disliked by his senior generals, who considered it to be impractical, did not discourage him. Many members of the Norwegian resistance continued to harbor hopes of some sort of Allied operation to liberate their country—a dream that the Allies did not discourage.

The scale of resistance efforts in Norway was significant—something made clear by the scale of weapons and equipment shipped and stockpiled there. SOE’s Operation Archer/Heron in northern Norway, received some twenty-four tons of such supplies in 1942. Aware of the potential for resistance, Hitler deployed 400,000 German troops in Norway, far outnumbering the country’s 250,000 able-bodied male Norwegians.

As the war progressed, and the tide turned against the Nazi regime, resistance and sabotage continued to degrade the German war effort. After D-Day, the Norwegian resistance significantly disrupted German attempts to move large numbers of troops to reinforce the army attempting to counter the Allied advance through Western Europe. An extensive series of attacks on railway lines and bridges helped to reduce these numbers. In July 1945, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force estimated that resistance efforts had led to a reduction in the rate of these transfers from four divisions to less than one division per month. Supreme Allied Commander General Eisenhower specifically singled out these operations for praise in a letter he wrote to Gubbins at the end of the war, acknowledging SOE’s contributions.

There were plenty of other significant sabotage operations – particularly Gunnerside, which destroyed the heavy water plant at Vemork. While we now know that the Germans made the wrong choice in pursuing the heavy water route towards an atomic weapon, it doesn’t mean that those operations (particularly Freshman – the ill-fated predecessor to Gunnerside) were a waste of lives. Those aggressive actions helped persuade the Germans that their research was on the right track, which kept them from diverting to other, more productive lines of inquiry. Other highlights includ a range of activities that disrupted U-boat activities, particularly after they were moved to Norway from French bases following the Allied invasion. Huge quantities of fuel were destroyed, and a resourceful storekeeper blew up the torpedo store in Horten, destroying over 160 torpedoes and leaving the Germans with only five live ones in southeast Norway.

Hitherto, we have been considering the impact of sabotage operations, which was massive. But we should not overlook SIS’s work in providing intelligence in Norway, the significance of which certainly matched SOE’s contribution.

Q: Can you say more about the role of land-based Norwegian resistance in countering German naval operations?

The prospect that Germany would operate heavy warships like the Tirpitz from Norway was a significant threat to Atlantic convoys and particularly to shipments of essential war materials to Russia. It had some unwelcome consequences. For example, when Tirpitz was reported to be leaving harbor to attack PQ17, a Murmansk-bound convoy, the British Admiralty unwisely ordered it to disperse. This left it more vulnerable to attack by German aircraft and submarines and led to the sinking of twenty-four out of thirty-seven vessels. Tirpitz was not involved in the attack and returned to harbor.

So, it was not surprising that Churchill was almost obsessed with the threat that Tirpitz posed to both Atlantic and Arctic convoys. The heavily armored battleship was nearly 300 yards long and weighed over 50,000 tons. It carried a more powerful range of armaments than any warship in the Royal Navy. By May of 1942, when Tirpitz had been joined by four heavy cruisers: Hipper, Lützow, Admiral Scheer and Prinz Eugen, they represented an even larger menace to Allied shipping. The cruisers did not remain constantly in Norwegian waters. However, Tirpitz—by its mere presence—tied down significant elements of the Home Fleet which could have been used elsewhere.

Reports from coast-watching SIS stations could lead to prompt responses such as this one by several RAF squadrons in January 1945, which sank several ships and badly damaged the rest in the convoy. Image Credit: foto.digitalarkivet.no

Naval intelligence reporting by Norwegian SIS agents was absolutely crucial. They operated coast-watching stations to gather information. Known as hermit stations because they were so isolated, these sites were located in exposed positions with demanding, often appalling, physical circumstances, where agents often stayed for long periods of up to six months.

At the end of the war, the head of Norwegian intelligence in London, Finn Nagell, claimed that SIS Norwegian agents provided reporting which to a greater or lesser extent contributed to the sinking of the Bismarck, Scharnhorst and Tirpitz, and also to the damage caused to the Prinz Eugen, Hipper and Admiral Scheer. It is worth noting the timeliness of these reports as well, some of which reached the Admiralty barely two hours after the observed passage of a warship. GCHQ [ed. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is the British counterpart to the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA)] could not outdo that achievement forty years later when it provided reporting on Argentine activities around the Falkland Islands.

Moreover, those agents provided reporting on the movement of merchant shipping. One agent alone was responsible for the sinking of twelve merchant ships during a six-month period. While we cannot be sure how much damage their reports contributed to or caused in total, it is safe to say that it was of the order of hundreds of thousands of tons. Taken together, this is a considerable achievement, unmatched by any other HUMINT intelligence operation in its contribution to the degradation of the German war effort.

Q: Are there any key lessons that military professionals and policy makers should take that are still applicable today? Particularly relating to maritime logistics/infiltration, etc.

In terms of relevant lessons from the Norwegian experience, two things stand out for me.

The first is communications security. Far too many agents were located and captured by the Germans because their radio transmissions were picked up by direction-finding stations. SOE was more aware of these risks and took some appropriate measures, such as encouraging their stations to move regularly. By contrast, SIS and their Norwegian colleagues were unwilling to acknowledge the danger …and they paid a heavy price, as their commanders acknowledged after the war. They lacked the imagination to estimate and try to assess the methods which the Germans might be using or developing against them. So, in terms of my first conclusion: always put yourself in the place of your enemy and use all the resources at your disposal to make your best estimate of what he might be trying to do to you.

Secondly, the nature of your operations is always going to be affected by the terrain. The long Norwegian coastline makes surveillance harder, and – provided you are properly equipped – the mountainous and rugged nature of the country can make safe movement and operational activity rather easier. And while the weather in the North Sea and off the Norwegian coast was often fatal for the small fishing boats used in the early years of the occupation, it bears emphasizing that if you have suitable means for infiltration, such weather is going to be your friend. Moreover, those conditions provide an ideal environment for exercising and testing both your equipment and your abilities.

Q: There’s an apocryphal story about the first Norwegian Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square (and British naval intelligence). Can you say more?

Of course. In February 1942, two Norwegian SIS agents, Dagfinn Ulriksen and Atle Svardal returned to Britain after spending nearly six months manning the SIS coast-watching station “Eric,” north of Bergen, living in a sheepfold without being able to wash or change their clothes. It was one of the first stations to provide a stream of valuable reporting on German naval activities and was much valued by the British Admiralty.

The Norwegian King Haakon heard of their return and asked for them to come down to London – exactly as they were. When he met the filthy and bedraggled pair, the King held his nose and said something which might be better imagined than translated – and then proceeded to question them keenly about their activities. This kind of gesture counted for a great deal among those working for the resistance. When Ulriksen returned to Norway in late 1943 to man another SIS station in the same area, he took advantage of a supply delivery by a Shetlands-based submarine chaser to send back a Christmas tree – which SIS was able to deliver to King Haakon on Christmas Eve. This symbolic gesture almost certainly planted the seed which led to the decision in 1947 by the city of Oslo to donate a Christmas tree every year to Britain in gratitude for wartime support.

Dr Tony Insall spent more than thirty years in the foreign service, working in Nigeria, Hong Kong, China and Malaysia before spending five years in Norway. He was also an editor for the FCO Historians and has published several books and articles mainly on Norwegian and Scandinavian history including The Brussels and North Atlantic Treaties, 1947-1949. He is the author of Secret Alliances: Special Operations and Intelligence in Norway 1940-1945, (Biteback 2021) a comprehensive study of Anglo-Norwegian resistance cooperation during the Second World War. His most recent book is The Madness of Courage, (Biteback 2025) about his great uncle Gilbert Insall, a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps who is the only person to have both won a Victoria Cross and successfully escaped from a German prison camp during the First World War. Dr. Insall is a Senior Visiting Fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

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

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irregularwarfare.org · by Christopher Booth, Walker Mills · March 27, 2025

18. Donald Trump's Russia Strategy Could End NATO as We Know It

Donald Trump's Russia Strategy Could End NATO as We Know It

19fortyfive.com · by Andrew A. Michta · March 26, 2025

Since the ill-fated Oval Office meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, the headlines have been dominated by pronouncements about the end of NATO, the United States’ alleged decision to give up the post of SACEUR and European efforts underway to develop a “5-10 year plan to replace the US in NATO.”

At the core of this unprecedented turmoil in transatlantic relations is what appears to be a fundamental shift in the United States’ relationship with Russia, which is the larger context of the Ukraine cease-fire negotiations.

So far, the benefits of the negotiation process have favored Moscow, as the administration has already effectively taken Russia out of political isolation, while continuing to extend considerable latitude to Russia during this negotiation compared to the pressure it has applied to Ukraine.

During the latest round, which saw Kyiv agree to a thirty-day ceasefire, Moscow announced simply that it would refrain from attacking Ukraine’s power grid only to promptly launch another round of strikes at civilian targets in the country, which shows how skewed this process has become.

A third element of this policy shift is the administration’s relative disengagement when it comes to relations with Europe, with questions raised about the future of transatlantic relations. Key European capitals are not helping either, with President Emmanuel Macron speaking yet again about Europe’s need for “strategic autonomy” and the incoming German Chanceller Friedrich Merz declaring that the time come for Europe to become independent of the United States.

In short, the speed with which the largest European allies appear to have decided in response to the shock the Trump administration has delivered to the NATO ecosystem that their future no longer lies with America augurs poorly for the alliance’s future.

If Washington continues on its current trajectory when it comes to transatlantic relations, and Brussels, Berlin, and Paris continue to act as though they could do without the United States when it comes to their security, the logical endgame will be that eventually the lights may go out at NATO Headquarters and SHAPE loses its raison d’être.

It should be clear now that the gambit pursued by the Trump administration is not just to improve but to build a cooperative relationship with Russia in order to eliminate the points of stress – including the war in Ukraine. The principal objective of his strategy seems to be to put some daylight between Moscow and Beijing, so that even if Washington cannot fully execute a successful “Kissinger-in-reverse” strategy and peel Russia away from China completely, then at least this approach will restrain Putin from supporting Xi in the event of US-China clash in the Indo-Pacific.

If this is the principal design behind America’s rapprochement with Russia, its chances for success are very low and would have to be paid for with dramatic US concessions. Russia’s ability to pursue its neo-imperial drive into Europe hinges on continued Chinese support, without which it would not have been able to stay the course in Ukraine while maintaining a semblance of stability at home.

Regardless of how the ceasefire negotiations in Ukraine end, Russia’s economic weakness will make it imperative to remain aligned with China.

The most important aspect of the Trump administration’s policy realignment vis-à-vis Russia is that it risks undoing the last eighty years of US national security strategy for the Atlantic theater that rested on the principle of deterring and, if need be, defending Europe against Russia’s imperial encroachments.

In the final analysis, for Vladimir Putin the outcome of the ongoing negotiations about ending the war in Ukraine is about how much latitude Russia can get in Europe, i.e., which of its initial demands are going to be met or rejected by the Trump administration.

An ancillary question here is whether America’s national security strategy can be reduced to a series of transactional deals, or if in fact cultural and historical factors will ultimately carry the day.

Is the United States in effect reverting to the 19th century-type of international relations that defined the Age of Empire and where our experience of the past eighty years carries little to no weight?

The US-European alliance has arguably entered its most difficult period in 80 years, one that will define the future of NATO and transatlantic relations going forward.

It is crucial that Washington return to the basics when it comes to its understanding of Russian imperialism.

It must also appreciate the implication of what the potential hollowing out of NATO and, should it come to that, a return to the 19th century type of the spheres of influence in Europe means for American interests, not only on the continent, but perhaps equally importantly in other theaters, including the Pacific.

M1 Abrams tank like in Ukraine. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Devin Nichols/Released)

And at the same time, Berlin and Paris, and especially the leadership of the European Commission, should take a breath and look over the horizon to fully appreciate what a Europe unmoored from the United States would look like, as both the Russians and the Chinese are watching and ready to exploit to the hilt the current chaos and potential decomposition of the democratic West.

It’s time for cooler heads to prevail on both sides of the Atlantic.

About the Author: Dr. Andrew Michta

Andrew A. Michta is a Senior Fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council of the United States. Views expressed here are his own.

19fortyfive.com · by Andrew A. Michta · March 26, 2025

19. China Sees Opportunity in Trump’s Upheaval

"Managing risks of disorder."

Excerpts:

A thoroughgoing European reorientation toward China, however, would require Beijing to change its behavior to a far greater extent. In particular, it would need to curb what Europe sees as China’s industrial overcapacity and distance itself from Moscow. The Chinese market no longer possesses the gravitational pull it once did, thanks to a slowdown in domestic growth, sluggish consumer spending, and a more interventionist and ideological party-state. Beijing now actively competes with European economies, especially Germany’s. And rather than expecting Trump’s overtures to Russia to peel Moscow and Beijing apart, Europe understands that China will remain Russia’s “decisive enabler,” as a NATO statement described it last year. Unless Beijing overhauls these unpopular policies—which it seems unwilling or unable to do—China cannot realistically expect major gains in Europe.

Even modest progress could stall and China’s relations with Europe could deteriorate if lasting peace in Ukraine proves elusive and violence escalates. An intensified conflict would force China into an unenviable choice between distancing itself from Russia, thereby alienating a crucial partner, and openly increasing its military and economic support for Moscow, removing any remaining European doubts about China’s complicity in the war in Ukraine. Beijing would then see its room for diplomatic maneuver sharply constrained across the continent.

Ultimately, the best Beijing may hope to achieve in its relationships with the United States and Europe could be to limit the substantial downside risks of the present disorder. But Beijing is better positioned to make gains elsewhere. The Trump administration’s unconventional and unpredictable foreign policy is creating openings in Africa, Latin America, and among China’s Asian neighbors. Long-standing U.S. allies and partners in these regions may not pivot decisively toward China, but Trump’s actions, including abrupt withdrawals from international agreements, wavering security commitments, and erratic economic policies, are compelling many to reconsider their dependence on Washington. As countries hedge against potential U.S. retrenchment, Beijing stands ready to present itself as a dependable partner. The “profound changes” that Xi sees in Europe and the United States may not yet have provided Beijing with the chance to reimagine its relationships with the West, but the story across the rest of the globe may prove quite different.

China Sees Opportunity in Trump’s Upheaval

Foreign Affairs · by More by Jude Blanchette · March 27, 2025

Beijing’s Strategy for Pursuing a Deal While Managing the Risks of Disorder

Jude Blanchette

March 27, 2025

Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Great Hall of the People, Beijing, March 2025 Florence Lo / Reuters

Jude Blanchette is Distinguished Tang Chair in China Research at RAND and Director of the RAND China Research Center.

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In 2018, Chinese leader Xi Jinping argued that the world was undergoing “profound changes unseen in a century,” a concept that has since become central to Beijing’s geopolitical worldview. The phrase evoked parallels to the dramatic global shifts that followed World War I, including the collapse of European empires and the reordering of international politics. Today, Beijing perceives a similar seismic transformation, this time driven by accelerating technological breakthroughs—in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and quantum computing—coupled with the growing volatility in U.S. and European domestic politics, and a pronounced economic shift toward the Asia-Pacific region, largely driven by China’s own rapid development.

In 2018, Xi’s analysis might have looked premature. Today, his vision seems increasingly accurate. The Trump administration has launched trade wars with its key economic partners. Europe’s largest conflict since World War II continues in Ukraine, with the prospect of a lasting peace fragile and uncertain. The transatlantic alliance is straining under the weight of U.S. President Donald Trump’s explicit disdain for the European Union. Developments in AI and other emerging technologies, meanwhile, threaten to upend economies, societies, and geopolitical power structures in unprecedented and irreversible ways.

The question now is whether Beijing can exploit the global uncertainty to advance its interests with the United States and Europe—or if it will lose ground amid the turmoil. The U.S.-Chinese relationship, in theory, could stabilize through a “grand bargain” between Xi and Trump, which could reduce tensions on both trade and military issues. But entrenched mistrust between the two sides means that such an agreement—if it gets off the ground at all—risks collapsing into heightened great-power rivalry. In Europe, Beijing sees fresh opportunities to repair its relationships, as Trump’s antagonistic approach weakens transatlantic cohesion and tentative peace discussions in Ukraine raise the prospect of greater regional stability. Yet European leaders remain reluctant to pivot decisively toward China. And if peace talks in Ukraine break down, a renewed conflict would force Beijing into an uncomfortable choice between its European economic ambitions and its alignment with Russia under President Vladimir Putin.

Although careful diplomacy might let China pocket some short-term tactical successes, however Beijing plays its cards, the difficulty of winning over the deeply suspicious United States and Europe make it unlikely that Beijing will achieve lasting strategic gains in either relationship. It is in the rest of the world—in Latin America, Africa, and Asia—that China is most likely to reap the diplomatic benefits of U.S. retrenchment.

DEAL OR NO DEAL?

Forecasting the course of the second Trump administration’s relationship with Beijing is a tricky business, thanks to the mixed and often contradictory signals sent by Trump and his team. Trump’s cabinet features prominent figures, such as National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who, if given autonomy, would likely pursue intensified competition with China through measures such as tougher technology export controls and investment restrictions on Chinese firms, particularly in sensitive sectors such as AI and semiconductors. Before joining the administration, these officials supported increases in defense spending, a bolstered U.S. military presence in the Indo-Pacific, and cooperation with partners and allies to counter China’s growing influence. Several administration officials have also supported greater U.S. diplomatic and military backing for Taiwan, and some may be inclined to put political pressure on the Chinese Communist Party by highlighting human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong and shortcomings in the party’s domestic governance. In effect, they advocate a continuation of the highly competitive approach that prevailed in the latter half of Trump’s first presidency.

Yet Trump himself has more idiosyncratic views on China. On the campaign trail last year, he called for a 60 percent tariff rate on Chinese imports, and since taking office, he has placed tariffs totaling 20 percent on Chinese goods, with the possibility of more on the way after a comprehensive trade review is concluded in early April. The Trump administration has unveiled its sweeping (if still aspirational) “America First Investment Policy,” which would scale back Chinese investment in the United States and U.S. investment in China. But Trump has also extolled his personal relationship with Xi, saying just after his second inauguration, “I like President Xi very much. I’ve always liked him.” One of Trump’s first acts after returning to office was to direct the Justice Department not to enforce a law banning the social media app TikTok in the United States until its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sells it to a U.S. entity. He has also said that he would welcome more Chinese investment in the United States, making him one of the sole elected officials to take such a stance publicly.

Trump’s recent claim that he plans to meet with Xi in the “not too distant future” seemingly presents Beijing with an opportunity. A potential grand bargain with the Trump administration might entail a substantial reduction in, or even a cessation of, U.S. tariffs, an easing of U.S. export controls on advanced technology, and expanded Chinese investments in key U.S. sectors. Such an arrangement would offer Beijing significant economic relief, reduced geopolitical tensions, and greater bilateral stability. And given Trump’s previous criticisms of Taipei—such as his accusation that Taiwan “stole” the U.S. semiconductor industry—and his aversion to foreign entanglements, he might even be amenable to negotiating concessions on Taiwan. In Beijing’s eyes, Trump’s eagerness to improve relations with Putin, his antagonism toward traditional U.S. allies, and his apparent disregard for the domestic political repercussions of his trade war show that he is far less constrained by the traditional boundaries of U.S. foreign policy than previous leaders have been.

At the same time, many things could derail a grand bargain before it materializes. Although Trump’s transactional and erratic approach offers short-term tactical openings to Beijing, any deal that Trump signs will be inherently unstable. For one, China may not be able to hold up its end of any bargain. If Trump makes maximalist economic demands on rebalancing trade, dialing back China’s industrial subsidies, or revaluing the yuan, China will find it difficult to follow through on such commitments, if it agrees to them at all. On the U.S. side, Trump’s unpredictable policy shifts, erratic negotiating style, and uncertain domestic political standing mean that any agreement reached might unravel before it can be implemented. A similar story played out in Trump’s first term. Chinese officials initially underestimated Trump's willingness to escalate economic tensions, dismissing his threats as mere campaign rhetoric. Then, when Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese goods in late 2019, Beijing found itself scrambling to respond, eventually settling for limited concessions in the Phase One trade deal in early 2020. But even those modest gains quickly evaporated amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as Trump blamed China for the outbreak and allowed his subordinates wide latitude to pursue aggressive policies toward Beijing.

Furthermore, if China fails to reach a deal with Trump on trade and tariffs, that will likely end the prospects for a quasi-détente, as Beijing will not have a chance to move on to other issues. Without a deal in the near term, China hawks in Trump’s administration will likely have an opening to push hard against Beijing, leading to tougher sanctions, broader technology export restrictions, intensified military posturing in the Indo-Pacific, and stronger diplomatic support for Taiwan.

ENTENTE OR ESCALATION?

Beijing’s prospects for reconciliation in Europe are similarly limited, although the downside risks are smaller. China’s consistent support for Russia’s war effort, combined with years of aggressive political, diplomatic, and economic pressure on European states, has eroded its position across much of the continent. The EU has criticized Beijing for enabling Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine by exporting technology and helping sustain the Russian economy, softening the bite of Western sanctions. China’s joint military exercises and defense consultations with Russia have heightened European concerns about the long-term security threat on Europe’s eastern flank. Even European businesses that once saw China as a critical market have started reassessing the scope and scale of their investments in the country.

Trump’s disputes with Europe, coupled with a potential settlement in Ukraine, certainly present Beijing with a short window to repair its relationships on the continent. Although Beijing has remained on the sidelines of the negotiations the Trump administration is conducting with Moscow and Kyiv, it is exploring opportunities to engage if a cease-fire is agreed upon. Despite its strong partnership with Russia, China has managed to preserve relations with Ukraine, which in turn has carefully managed diplomatic ties in the hope that China might eventually use its influence to restrain Russia from pursuing even more aggressive options.

Chinese support could be valuable to a postwar Ukraine. If a lasting cease-fire or peace arrangement can be established, reconstruction could cost more than $500 billion, according to a recent estimate by the European Commission, the Ukrainian government, the UN, and the World Bank. Few countries are as well positioned as China to support Ukraine’s post-conflict development. Beijing would be happy to play this role, given the relatively limited risks involved and the prospect of using financial support for Ukraine to advance China’s economic, technological, and strategic interests in Europe. China has a well-developed toolkit of state-owned enterprises, private firms, and state-bank lending that can bring financing, operational capability, personnel, and technology to developing countries, as shown by its Belt and Road Initiative. Indeed, Kyiv has already turned to Beijing for just that kind of help. Last year, a senior official led a delegation of Ukrainian companies to Beijing to ask “Chinese companies to take a more active part in helping Ukraine, in particular in developing trade and investment relations.” If a peace deal is reached, expect many more such visits.

Trump’s actions are compelling many to reconsider their dependence on Washington.

Participation in Ukrainian reconstruction efforts would not, by itself, mend China’s relations with Europe, but peace in Ukraine would eliminate a significant source of tension. Already, Xi has worked to capitalize on the fracturing of the transatlantic alliance, dispatching Chinese diplomats across the European continent to promote China as a reliable alternative partner, emphasizing opportunities for stable economic cooperation and criticizing perceived U.S. unreliability and unilateralism. For now, this outreach remains largely rhetorical, but it is setting the groundwork for deeper economic and diplomatic initiatives down the line. An end to the war in Ukraine could allow China to move forward with long-stalled goals, such as by reopening talks on a major EU-Chinese investment deal, the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, which was put on ice in 2021.

A thoroughgoing European reorientation toward China, however, would require Beijing to change its behavior to a far greater extent. In particular, it would need to curb what Europe sees as China’s industrial overcapacity and distance itself from Moscow. The Chinese market no longer possesses the gravitational pull it once did, thanks to a slowdown in domestic growth, sluggish consumer spending, and a more interventionist and ideological party-state. Beijing now actively competes with European economies, especially Germany’s. And rather than expecting Trump’s overtures to Russia to peel Moscow and Beijing apart, Europe understands that China will remain Russia’s “decisive enabler,” as a NATO statement described it last year. Unless Beijing overhauls these unpopular policies—which it seems unwilling or unable to do—China cannot realistically expect major gains in Europe.

Even modest progress could stall and China’s relations with Europe could deteriorate if lasting peace in Ukraine proves elusive and violence escalates. An intensified conflict would force China into an unenviable choice between distancing itself from Russia, thereby alienating a crucial partner, and openly increasing its military and economic support for Moscow, removing any remaining European doubts about China’s complicity in the war in Ukraine. Beijing would then see its room for diplomatic maneuver sharply constrained across the continent.

Ultimately, the best Beijing may hope to achieve in its relationships with the United States and Europe could be to limit the substantial downside risks of the present disorder. But Beijing is better positioned to make gains elsewhere. The Trump administration’s unconventional and unpredictable foreign policy is creating openings in Africa, Latin America, and among China’s Asian neighbors. Long-standing U.S. allies and partners in these regions may not pivot decisively toward China, but Trump’s actions, including abrupt withdrawals from international agreements, wavering security commitments, and erratic economic policies, are compelling many to reconsider their dependence on Washington. As countries hedge against potential U.S. retrenchment, Beijing stands ready to present itself as a dependable partner. The “profound changes” that Xi sees in Europe and the United States may not yet have provided Beijing with the chance to reimagine its relationships with the West, but the story across the rest of the globe may prove quite different.

Jude Blanchette is Distinguished Tang Chair in China Research at RAND and Director of the RAND China Research Center.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Jude Blanchette · March 27, 2025

20. Dan ‘Razin’ Caine, Trump’s nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, set to testify at confirmation hearing

April 1st. How many jokes about that will we hear then?

Dan ‘Razin’ Caine, Trump’s nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, set to testify at confirmation hearing

defensescoop.com · by Jon Harper · March 26, 2025

Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be America’s top military officer, is about to take the next step in his confirmation process when he goes before members of the Senate Armed Services Committee to field questions about his views on critical national security issues.

His confirmation hearing, scheduled for April 1, will be Caine’s most high-profile public appearance since Trump plucked him from relative obscurity after firing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown and announcing his intent to nominate Caine to replace him.

Trump officially submitted his nomination to the Senate on March 10.

If confirmed, Caine would become a four-star general and Trump’s top military adviser amid international conflicts and a major modernization push by the Defense Department to acquire new AI capabilities and other high-tech systems, as well as buy software and other tools more rapidly. The Pentagon is also in the midst of DOGE reviews, hiring freezes and efforts to reduce the DOD’s civilian workforce by more than 50,000 people.

Caine was an unconventional choice to take on the U.S. military’s top role. He had already retired from the military and didn’t hold a four-star rank before being tapped.

Trump has praised Caine for his efforts to combat the ISIS terrorist group during his first administration.

“He’s a real general, not a television general,” Trump said in February during remarks at an investment summit in Miami. “We have the greatest military in the world, but we don’t have the greatest top, top leadership.”

The nominee is a Virginia Military Institute graduate and former F-16 fighter pilot, who held a variety of roles during his decades-long military career. His last assignment was associate director for military affairs at the CIA, which ended in December 2024, according to his Air Force bio.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the top Democrat and ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said during an appearance on ABC News’ “This Week” in February that he wasn’t familiar with Caine, who will be subject to “careful review” by the committee.

“There are obviously a great many questions that we’re going to raise with him, but I think we have to give him the opportunity to make his case and also to make clear that he is going to be willing to speak truth to power, willing to give his best military advice to the president, not just tell the president what he wants to hear — and also to be open and share with the Congress the facts on the ground, not be a political spokesperson for the president. So those are part of the issues that we’ll address as we go forward,” Reed said.

Barring a poor performance at the hearing or unflattering revelations about his prior conduct, it’s likely that Caine will be confirmed. Trump’s most controversial nominee for a top Pentagon post during his second term, Pete Hegseth, narrowly won confirmation as secretary of defense in January despite unanimous opposition from Democrats in the Senate.

After recently meeting with Caine, Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued a statement saying the nominee had his full support and would help “Make Our Military Great Again” as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Written by Jon Harper

Jon Harper is Managing Editor of DefenseScoop, the Scoop News Group’s online publication focused on the Pentagon and its pursuit of new capabilities. He leads an award-winning team of journalists in providing breaking news and in-depth analysis on military technology and the ways in which it is shaping how the Defense Department operates and modernizes. You can also follow him on X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter) @Jon_Harper_

In This Story

defensescoop.com · by Jon Harper · March 26, 2025

21. Chinese Nationals Arrested on Espionage Charges Tracked Philippine, U.S. Vessels at Subic Bay

Chinese Nationals Arrested on Espionage Charges Tracked Philippine, U.S. Vessels at Subic Bay

https://news.usni.org/2025/03/26/chinese-nationals-arrested-on-espionage-charges-tracked-philippine-u-s-vessels-at-subic-bay?utm

Aaron-Matthew Lariosa

March 26, 2025 4:53 PM

Photos released form the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation of alleged Chinese spies. NBI Photo

A group of six Chinese nationals have been charged with espionage by Philippine authorities for intelligence-gathering activities on vessels and critical infrastructure at Subic Bay, including U.S. Navy vessels.

In conjunction with local law enforcement and Philippine Navy SEALs, National Bureau of Investigation director Jaime Santiago personally led the raid that nabbed the Chinese at Grande Island last week. According to a bureau press release, the suspects gave chase during the enforcement of the warrant.

Chinese nationals Nan Ke, Xu Xining, Qui Feng/Quing Feng, Ye Xiaocan, Dick Ang and Su Anlong were arrested in the raid. Melvin Aguillon, a Philippine citizen who acted as the group’s bodyguard, was also arrested for carrying an unregistered firearm.

Located at the entrance of Subic Bay, Grande Island formerly hosted U.S. Army coastal defenses and South Vietnamese refugees. Today, the resort on the island offers views overlooking Subic Bay. Philippine military intelligence claimed that this vantage point allowed the Chinese nationals to gather sensitive data related to national security.

The NBI claimed that the group disguised themselves as fishermen to get close to naval assets and other facilities throughout the bay for intelligence collection. Among the assets employed by the Chinese nationals were drones, which local witnesses saw a day before the raid.

USS Savannah (LCS-28), an Independence-class littoral combat ship, and a Henry J. Kaiser–class replenishment oiler were among the photographed vessels found on the group’s devices.

Photos shown to reporters also revealed that the Chinese nationals infiltrated Subic Bay International Airport during the staging of American military equipment entering the Philippines for exercises. A list detailing the arrival and departure of vessels from the bay in Chinese was also found on the suspects.

Since the U.S. withdrawal from Naval Base Subic Bay in 1992, the area has come under the jurisdiction of the Subic Bay Management Authority, a governmental authority that manages the freeport zone. In recent years – amid increasing tensions with Beijing over South China Sea disputes – Manila has opened a new naval base in the strategically positioned bay. Subic Bay is also slated to host a Philippine Coast Guard station and Philippine Air Force forward operating base.

USNI News previously reported that the new Marine Corps Prepositioning Program – Philippines will stage equipment out of a warehouse in Subic Bay.

Philippine authorities attribute the espionage to the strategic location of Subic Bay to tensions in the South China Sea, with an NBI release on the incident claiming that the Chinese Communist Party-United Front Work is conducting “covert and overt operations aligned with their geopolitical objectives in the region and the whole nation.”

“Subic Bay Freeport is NOT a safe haven for lawbreakers,” stated Subic Bay Management Authority Chairman and Administrator Eduardo Jose L. Aliño in a release.

The incident is the third case of Chinese nationals surveilling Philippine and U.S. military installations and assets since February. A group in Manila utilized light detection and ranging equipment to model bases and buildings in the National Capital Region, while another in Palawan collected data on Navy and Coast Guard ships assigned to the South China Sea.

22. Philippines wants India, South Korea to join ‘Squad’ amid China tensions

A new Squad. A modern Squad. The Mod Squad. (apologies, an attempted joke for old people, IYKYK)

Seriously though, perhaps this would fit nicely into the silk web of friends, partners, and alliances and strengthen the interconnectedness of bilateral alliances and multi-lateral and mini-lateral organizations.

Philippines wants India, South Korea to join ‘Squad’ amid China tensions

philstar.com · by Cristina Chi

Headlines

Cristina Chi - Philstar.com

March 24, 2025 | 3:23pm

AFP Chief Gen. Romeo S Brawner Jr. exchanges insights on regional security challenges during the high-level discussions at Raisina Dialogue 2025, March 2025.

Armed Forces of the Philippines / Released

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines is pushing to expand the informal "Squad" security alliance by adding India and South Korea to the four-nation bloc formed as a counterweight to China's growing assertiveness in the region.

Speaking before an international audience of defense officials and security experts, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. proposed the addition of India and South Korea to the US-led alliance to strengthen security in the Indo-Pacific.

"During the [Raisina Dialogue,] General Brawner engaged in crucial discussions focused on regional security and defense cooperation. Notably, he proposed the expansion of the 'Squad' security grouping to include India and South Korea, aiming to bolster collective security efforts in the Indo-Pacific region," the AFP said in a statement on Monday, March 24.

Brawner had specifically made the proposal during a panel discussion that included his counterpart from Japan, the chief of the Indian Navy, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific command and Australia's chief of Joint Operations, according to a Reuters report last week.

The Squad is an informal security grouping or alliance that currently consists of the United States, Japan, Australia and the Philippines. It was formed in 2023 when defense chiefs from these four nations first met on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. The group had its second meeting in May 2024 in Hawaii, hosted by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The alliance is characterized as a "minilateral" partnership – an ad-hoc, issue-specific cooperation framework addressing a specific range of security threats, particularly in the maritime domain of the Indo-Pacific. It is specifically focused on upholding peace and stability in the region and checking China's growing assertiveness.

During his participation in the India-led Raisina Dialogue, Brawner also highlighted the growing defense ties between the Philippines and India. This includes the two nations' training exchanges, the acquisition of advanced defense systems like the BrahMos anti-ship missile system from India, and joint maritime exercises.

"We find commonality with India because we have a common enemy. And I'm not afraid to say that China is our common enemy. So, it's important that we collaborate together, maybe exchange intelligence," Brawner later said in an interview, as reported by Reuters.

The proposal to include India in the Squad group comes amid growing bilateral security ties between Manila and New Delhi. In December 2024, the two countries held their first-ever government-level maritime dialogue, where they agreed to explore naval and coast guard cooperation while emphasizing their "shared interest in a free, peaceful and prosperous Indo-Pacific region."

During those talks, both nations also explicitly called for "full and faithful compliance" with the 2016 Arbitration Award that invalidated China's expansive nine-dash line claims in the South China Sea.

The Philippines received India's first delivery of its BrahMos missiles in April last year, which Manila acquired as part of the multi-billion AFP modernization program.

In February, Brawner announced plans to purchase additional missiles from India.

philstar.com · by Cristina Chi

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

Company Name | Website

The Swedish handbook: “In Case of Crisis or War” (Official Resistance & Resilience Brochure for Citizens)

This brochure is distributed to every household in Sweden on behalf of the Swedish government. The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) is responsible for the content.

1. Personal Preparedness

2. Total Defence Duty

3. Psychological Resilience

4. Community Involvement

5. Emergency Response Readiness

6. Digital and Personal Security

7. Emotional Support and Communication

contempt

the clearer term for entitlement

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7. Radioimmunoassay

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Dan ‘Razin’ Caine, Trump’s nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, set to testify at confirmation hearing

Chinese Nationals Arrested on Espionage Charges Tracked Philippine, U.S. Vessels at Subic Bay

Related

Philippines wants India, South Korea to join ‘Squad’ amid China tensions

Headlines

Conclusion: