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Quotes of the Day:
"The best morale exists when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear it it's usually lousy."
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm, but the harm (that they cause) does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves."
– T. S. Elliot
"In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him."
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
1. The US must establish credible deterrence in the West Philippine Sea
2. On first Asia trip, US defense chief Hegseth calls for ‘deterrence’ in face of China ‘threats’
3. Crouching Panda, Hidden Dragon: Contesting Chinese Subversion in the Middle East and Central Asia
4. Commentary: The Philippines walks a tightrope with Chinese aid
5. National Security and Strategy Fellowships and Seminars
6. Reinforcement and redistribution: evolving US posture in the Indo-Pacific
7. Taiwan jails four soldiers, including three who worked in presidential office, for spying for China
8. WTF is wrong with Russia?
9. Trump to get Golden Dome options next week: defense source
10. Trump’s Intelligence Community Outlines Top Global Threats
11. Marine Corps to Debut New Philippine Rotational Force at Balikatan 2025 Drills
12. Xi’s Message in Rare Meeting With Global CEOs: Defend Trade
13. Trump Pulls Nomination of Elise Stefanik for U.N. to Protect GOP’s House Majority
14. Russia may be ‘dragging feet’ on achieving peace in Ukraine, Trump says
15. The Real Meaning Behind China’s Live-Fire Drills Near Australia and New Zealand
16. China Moves to Exploit Transatlantic Turmoil
17. SOCOM awards Anduril $86M contract for autonomy software integration
18. Experts warn Pentagon to embrace software-defined warfare to counter China’s military advantage
19. Drones, Mines and Snipers: Ukraine’s Front Line Is a World Away from Peace Talks
20. Taiwan’s Biggest Limitation in Defense Isn’t Spending, It’s Late Deliveries from U.S. Defense Companies
21. United States–Philippines Joint Statement on Secretary Hegseth's Inaugural Visit to the Philippines
22. NATO Without America – How Europe Can Run an Alliance Designed for U.S. Control
23. Hegseth Tells Asian Allies: We’re With You Against China
24. The Japanese Military Has a People Problem
25. Actions create consequences: Spies, will and Taiwan – a reminder by Dr. Cynthia Watson
26. Signal Ascends From Hacker Passion Project to Washington’s Top Messaging App
27. The Signal I Was Waiting For ...my kingdom for a STU/STE App...
28. Drug trafficking as irregular warfare — and what can be done about it
1. The US must establish credible deterrence in the West Philippine Sea
Joe of course uses the correct name for the East China Sea - the West Philippine Sea.
I am reminded of the statement of the Philippine Ambassador to the US:
“The West Philippine Sea, not Taiwan, is the real flashpoint for an armed conflict,”
– Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez February 28, 2024
The US must establish credible deterrence in the West Philippine Sea
by Joseph Felter, opinion contributor - 03/27/25 2:30 PM ET
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5215162-us-philippines-deterrence-china/
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s decision to visit the Philippines on his first official trip to the region this week is commendable and sends a strong signal of commitment and of the enduring strength of the relationship with America’s oldest ally in the Indo-Pacific.
The arrival of the most senior member of the Trump administration to travel to Manila to date comes in the wake of China’s increasing aggression and brinkmanship within Philippine territorial waters over the past year to include the employment of military grade lasers, high-pressure water cannons and even knife and axe-wielding boarding parties attacking Philippine Navy boats and injuring sailors.
It also comes at a time when many U.S. allies and partners are reassessing their view of American alliance commitments going forward.
The capabilities of the Philippine Armed Forces and Coast Guard to deter and defend against Chinese aggression are increasing, thanks, in part, to continued U.S. support and security assistance, but remain far from what is required to change Beijing’s calculus of what it can get away with in the pursuit of its illegal claims.
Compounding this calculation is China’s view that the U.S. will not risk escalation by intervening militarily in response to its ongoing aggressive actions. China’s harassment and overt attacks on Philippine military and coast guard vessels and personnel will continue to escalate, likely resulting in additional Philippine casualties and fatalities, even if by accident or miscalculation.
A perfect storm is brewing that threatens to place the U.S. in a lose-lose position of either risking escalation to conflict or undermining its credibility as a reliable alliance partner — or both. Avoiding either costly outcome requires fast-tracking the establishment of credible deterrence.
This can be achieved in the medium to longer term by continuing robust military and security assistance aimed at modernizing the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine Coast Guard, especially in areas like autonomous systems, surveillance, intelligence collection and other capabilities that enhance maritime domain awareness and other critical capabilities. Credit the ongoing activities of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and other organizations across the Defense and State Departments for supporting these modernization efforts.
In the immediate term, however, a powerful way to bolster credible deterrence and signal that the alliance is indeed ironclad is to formally invoke the Mutual Defense Treaty, specifically its Article III and potentially Article IV, in response to future Chinese aggression.
Article III calls on the parties to “consult together from time to time” when “the territorial integrity, political independence or security of either of the Parties is threatened by external armed attack in the Pacific.” Article IV obliges the parties to respond to common dangers such as an attack by China, “in accordance with its constitutional processes.”
As the treaty dictates, invocation of Article III or Article IV would not require any overt military response but would oblige Congress to review its level of support to the Philippines in light of attacks and the threat of more going forward.
By invoking the treaty, the U.S. can formally and regularly review the level and nature of the assistance it provides the Philippines in response to Chinese aggression. Such proactive measures will show tangible cause and effect to China and bolster the perceived credibility of the U.S. as an alliance partner.
The U.S. can and should demonstrate that it will act when its treaty ally is viciously threatened or attacked. These actions should be measured but substantive and determined in accordance with our constitutional processes.
Acting proactively can help to avoid being forced into an immediate and potentially destabilizing military decision on whether or not to come to the aid of the Philippines militarily in a future crisis when China attacks again and with lethal results.
Formally invoking the Mutual Defense Treaty should not be viewed as provocative but instead as a mechanism to proactively support more robust and effective development of Philippine defense and national security capabilities ex ante to deter further escalation of conflict, not ex post in response to a crisis situation where expectations within the alliance are more likely to diverge with the prospect of a crisis spilling over to a regional war with a nuclear armed adversary.
Such proactive measures will call out and hold China accountable for its illegal and aggressive actions. They will help ensure any U.S. responses to Chinese aggression are measured and deliberate in accordance with our constitutional processes, versus being forced to make an immediate executive decision on whether or not to come to the aid of the Philippines militarily in a future crisis
China will continue to escalate its aggressive actions and push its expansionist agenda in the West Philippine Sea unimpeded. It believes it can be combative without a credible response due to limited Philippine capabilities and a lack of U.S. commitment to come to the aid of their treaty ally.
The U.S. can act to force China to recalculate on both of these counts. It can set expectations of U.S. commitment to the alliance and to upholding an accurate interpretation of its obligations under the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty, concurrent with building capabilities and making investments in restoring credible deterrence.
President Bongbong Marcos Jr., his secretary of national defense and senior leaders in the Philippines are demonstrating courage in standing up for Philippine sovereignty and committing to strengthening the longstanding U.S.-Philippines alliance. This comes at a time when there is a bipartisan consensus in the U.S. that its priority national security interests lie in the Indo-Pacific.
America’s comparative advantage in advancing its interests is through the strengthening of its alliances and partnerships in this priority region. Another perfect storm is brewing — in this case, a positive one.
The U.S. and the Philippines must not squander this opportunity to strengthen the credibility of their alliance and establish the effective and durable deterrence that it presents to maintain peace within Philippine territory and across the entire region.
Joseph Felter is a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and served as deputy assistant secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia in the first Trump administration
2. On first Asia trip, US defense chief Hegseth calls for ‘deterrence’ in face of China ‘threats’
The SECDEF lays down the deterrence marker.
Excerpts:
The defense chief visit comes as the Trump administration has signaled their aim to prioritize “deterring war with China.” Hegseth warned US allies in Europe earlier this year that Washington can no longer be primarily focused on security on that continent as it looks to its “peer competitor” in Asia and the US southern border.
The Philippines has been on the front lines of China’s increasingly aggressive posture in Asia. Beijing seeks to assert its claim over the bulk of the South China Sea, despite an international ruling denying its sovereignty over the waterway.
On first Asia trip, US defense chief Hegseth calls for ‘deterrence’ in face of China ‘threats’ | CNN
CNN · by Simone McCarthy · March 28, 2025
Hegseth's visit comes as the Trump administration has signaled their aim to prioritize 'deterring war with China'
Senior Airman Madelyn Keech/Reuters
Hong Kong CNN —
Deterrence is necessary in Asia in the face of “threats from the Communist Chinese,” US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in Manila on Friday as he opened his first visit to Asia in his role under a cloud of scrutiny for discussing American war plans on Signal.
The US has an “ironclad commitment” to the US-Philippines alliance, Hegseth said in opening remarks ahead of a meeting with Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.
“Friends need to stand shoulder to shoulder to deter conflict and ensure there’s free navigation whether you call it the South China Sea or the West Philippine Sea,” Hegseth said, referring to the strategic, resource-rich waterway that China claims most of.
The defense chief visit comes as the Trump administration has signaled their aim to prioritize “deterring war with China.” Hegseth warned US allies in Europe earlier this year that Washington can no longer be primarily focused on security on that continent as it looks to its “peer competitor” in Asia and the US southern border.
The Philippines has been on the front lines of China’s increasingly aggressive posture in Asia. Beijing seeks to assert its claim over the bulk of the South China Sea, despite an international ruling denying its sovereignty over the waterway.
Hegseth will also visit US ally Japan during his tour, which comes as he seeks to tamp down controversy around his decision to share information about US military strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen on the commercial messaging app Signal.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
CNN · by Simone McCarthy · March 28, 2025
3. Crouching Panda, Hidden Dragon: Contesting Chinese Subversion in the Middle East and Central Asia
As much as I believe geography matters (and it still does and always will), this essay helps illustrate why I do not think we should be overly focused on China's geographic middle kingdom location. We must not only deter China and compete with it in the Asia-Pacific region, we must also do so in the geographic regions around the world where China is operating.
Geography matters but overly focusing on a specific geographic location may strategically hinder us. This of course might call into question how we organize for national security by geographic region. But what would be the alternative? We already have functional combatant commands that operate on a global basis and overlay their functions on the geographic combatant and prioritize their efforts based on the priority of the region. But what happens when the "pacing threat" is not restricted to that geographic combatant command region?
We sut understand One Belt One Road (OBOR) or as the Chinese now call it the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
As an aside, at the irregular warfare conference yesterday I had lunch with an interesting group of people and a gentleman from East Turkestan described for us the history and terrible atrocities of the Chinese against the Uyghurs.
Excerpts:
The 2021 annual DoD report to Congress on the status of PRC military and security developments concluded that the BRI’s objective is to develop deep economic integration with selected countries, shape their interests to align with the PRC’s autocratic practices, and prevent criticism of the CCP’s policies on sensitive issues—like internal subjugation of its Uyghur Muslim population in Xinjiang. Therefore, the BRI is not a grand, benign venture for global peace and cooperation, but a cleverly disguised PRC vector for achieving global economic hegemony and foreign dependency.
The PRC’s global behavior demonstrates it is a predatory neo-colonial power—a dragon in a panda suit. Global campaigning against the PRC must exploit what the PRC truly seeks for partner nations across all geographic combatant commands, not just the Indo-Pacific Command: second-class dependency at the expense of sovereign prosperity and security.
Taken together, cognitive and financial vectors constitute a counter-predation campaign that could deny the PRC the benefit of its neo-colonial approach. Illuminating subversive behavior, inoculating partners against sovereign exploitation, and providing interagency escalation options across the financial and economic instruments power are three critical elements that irregular warfare can bring to a strategy of deterrence by denial. To comprehensively shape PRC decision calculus over Taiwan and other global areas of national interest, the United States must exploit these outsized gray zone deterrence opportunities via irregular warfare to starve the Chinese dragon in the Central Region.
Crouching Panda, Hidden Dragon: Contesting Chinese Subversion in the Middle East and Central Asia
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/03/28/crouching-panda-hidden-dragon/
by Steve Ferenzi, by David Harden
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03.28.2025 at 06:00am
Abstract
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) presents itself as a gentle panda to obfuscate its global predatory behavior. But hiding inside the PRC’s panda suit is a dragon seeking to prey on the Central Region as a core political and economic axis for its neocolonial aspirations. Unfortunately, the singular U.S. focus on Taiwan enables the PRC to capture global strategic geography and human terrain beyond the Indo-Pacific, specifically through its Belt and Road Initiative. To comprehensively shape PRC decision calculus over Taiwan and other areas of U.S. national interest, the United States must exploit outsized gray zone deterrence opportunities via irregular warfare in the Middle East and Central Asia. This counter-predation campaign would deny the PRC the access and influence it seeks to gain by raising the costs of its exploitative activities and strengthening partners against entanglements that usurp sovereign decision-making. As such, irregular warfare offers multiple ways to contribute to deterrence by denial—the cornerstone of pending Undersecretary for Policy Elbridge Colby’s Taiwan strategy, manifesting through cognitive and financial vectors alongside traditional military capabilities.
Pandas, Dragons, and Irregular Deterrence—oh my!
With their charming appearance, gentle demeanor, and playful behavior, pandas are adored worldwide. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) deceptively uses this disarming motif to present itself as a gentle giant while obfuscating its global predatory, neocolonial behavior. But hiding inside the PRC’s cheap panda suit is a red dragon seeking to prey on the Middle East and Central Asia. Unfortunately, the singular U.S. focus on Taiwan creates blinders enabling the PRC to “securitize its greater periphery” by capturing strategic geography and human terrain globally beyond the Indo-Pacific. To comprehensively shape PRC decision calculus over Taiwan and other areas of U.S. national interest, the United States must exploit outsized gray zone deterrence opportunities via irregular warfare in the Central Region. Otherwise, bureaucratic and cognitive stovepipes will impede application of a true trans-regional approach to “integrating” deterrence as U.S. national defense and security strategies call for.
Forgotten in America’s shift away from counterterrorism, the Central Region remains a core political and economic axis for the PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to connect Asia to Europe. Beijing exploits access and influence opportunities along the BRI through economic statecraft with military implications—opened by perceptions of declining U.S. engagement and loss of credibility. Whether through “strategic fulcrums” like the United Arab Emirates or via states under massive debt distress like Tajikistan, the PRC can wield significant ideological, economic, and political power on the global stage. Today, we see the PRC increasing its role in regional peace, security, and diplomacy, while trade with the region has more than tripled over the past 20 years. As the world’s largest crude oil importer, the People’s Republic sources 46% of its oil from the Middle East. To wit—the PRC is truly beginning to “win the Middle East” at the expense of U.S. national security.
To enhance deterrence—“integrated” or otherwise—the United States must approach the Middle East and Central Asia as a focal point for shaping Beijing’s decision calculus in both daily competition campaigning and any crisis-driven Taiwan contingency. The Central Region is fertile ground for a counter-predation campaign that would deny the PRC the benefits it seeks to gain—by illuminating its exploitative activities and strengthening partners against entanglements with the PRC that usurp sovereign decision-making. Irregular warfare offers multiple ways to contribute to deterrence by denial—the cornerstone of pending Undersecretary for Policy Elbridge Colby’s Taiwan strategy, that manifest through cognitive and financial vectors alongside traditional military capabilities.
All Under Heaven, or One Chinese Belt and Road?
When Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping introduced the One Belt, One Road in 2013—known in English as the more disarming Belt and Road Initiative—he claimed a goal to promote peace, regional connections, and economic integration. However, in practice, the BRI is less about altruistic outreach than expanding China’s worldwide economic and political power, and along with it, coercive and anti-sovereign influences. Though China advertises the BRI as benign, it is part of its strategy to supersede the United States as the world’s leading superpower by 2049 and make the world more conducive for autocracy. Fundamentally, the BRI is a mechanism of predatory economic colonialism that facilitates global encirclement of the West.
The PRC’s self-serving activities demonstrate—like the ancient tributary system of the Warring States period—that the People’s Republic is attempting to make all roads once again lead to Beijing.
The CCP’s dominant master narrative is a romanticized version of China as Zhōngguó (“Central Kingdom”). This narrative stems from China’s rich history and cultural heritage, and its adherents believe their civilization to be superior to all others. Beginning with the Han Dynasty (206 BC–AD 220), ancient China led a feudal system of vassal states where the Central Kingdom was the center of the world, and its leader—the “Son of Heaven”—ruled the known world. States in the Central Kingdom’s orbit paid tribute to the Chinese emperor while recognizing Chinese civilizational superiority. This imperial worldview is encapsulated in the ancient cultural concept of tiān xià—“all under heaven.”
However, this master narrative maintains that since the First Opium War (1839–1842), foreign imperial nations forced China to succumb to economic and political domination such as the 99-year lease of Hong Kong to Britain and Macau to the Portuguese. Beijing seeks to end that perceived ignominy, which it calls a “Century of Humiliation” (1839–1949), and gradually reclaim its rightful place as the dominant global power. To this end, CCP leaders have followed a Chinese idiom combining Confucian benevolence with the brutality of the Warring States period (481–403 BC): wài róu, nèi gāng (“be outwardly benevolent, but inwardly ruthless”). Thus, few in the West suspected that the PRC is not the gentle panda it claims to be.
Encircle to Win
The People’s Republic maintains investments in or ownership of approximately 129 foreign ports around the world, processing nearly two-thirds of the world’s container traffic. These global port ventures are clustered around major trade routes and strategic maritime chokepoints—like the Bab al-Mandab Strait and Strait of Hormuz, that allow access to the Middle East. Additionally, the PRC has six port facilities around the world confirmed for both commercial and military use—such as Djibouti and Gwadar.
Beijing envisions the world as a wéi qí (“encircling game”) board game that involves surrounding one’s opponent. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger observed that the United States instead approaches China like playing chess. In Kissinger’s view, chess teaches the player singlemindedness, whereas the wéi qí player learns strategic flexibility [ironically, it was Kissinger’s foreign policy efforts during the Nixon administration that led to the United States becoming economically entangled with the PRC]. Chinese thought thus cultivates achieving victory through psychological advantage rather than direct conflict.
The PRC’s economic practices, global acquisitions, and access to strategic overland routes, ports, and sea lanes harken to the wéi qí strategy whereby Beijing uses the BRI to encircle the United States and its allies and partners to supplant the post-World War II, U.S.-led international order. Ultimately, this strategy conforms to the Sun Tzu axiom that “to subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”
PRC Debt-trap Diplomacy
“Debt-trap diplomacy” involves a creditor country extending debt—which is difficult or impossible to repay due to high interest, to a borrowing nation solely to increase the lender’s political leverage. The West has been concerned for years that Beijing is pursuing this predatory lending practice (BRI loans are as high as 33%) to extort political support from its borrowers by fostering economic dependency.
First, the PRC does not support sustainable and transparent lending practices. According to analysis of one hundred BRI contracts, many contain non-disclosure agreements that obfuscate implementation details—counter to globally accepted norms. Second, the PRC employs widespread use of the “No Paris Club” clause, which expressly prohibits borrowing nations from restructuring outstanding debts to the PRC in coordination with Paris Club creditors. Thus, PRC state-owned banks have positioned themselves as preferred creditors exempt from restructuring, outside the influence of the Western-dominated banking system. Finally, PRC contracts give lenders discretionary authority to cancel loans or demand full repayment. Therefore, BRI contractual terms afford PRC lenders an avenue for unduly influencing the domestic and foreign policies of the borrower.
Beijing’s intransigence on debt restructuring and lack of transparency make it more difficult for borrowers to negotiate debt relief. Based on PRC activity in Africa, where numerous countries are saddled with debt in return for economic partnerships with Beijing, some characterize the BRI as “opportunistic mercantilism.” The PRC’s predatory lending tactics allow Beijing to negotiate debt relief on its own terms, the results of which have facilitated PRC global superpower ambitions by accruing strategic dual-use port and land rights as collateral.
Implications for the Central Region
The Central Region is a critical axis for the PRC’s Belt and Road to connect Asia to Europe. The BRI must pass through two areas in particular—the Central and South Asia (CASA) region and the Gulf states—to be most lucrative for Beijing’s strategic aims. These areas are subject to vulnerabilities driven by the need for foreign investment and the perception of declining U.S. engagement. This allows the PRC to play a role like one played by Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia in the 19th Century—in the original “Great Game.”
The PRC’s “New Great Game” in Central Asia
In the CASA region, multiple countries—among them Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Pakistan—are facing “debt distress” after accepting billions of dollars in loans from Beijing with initially low interest rates. Central Asian states owe a large percentage of their national debt to the PRC: Tajikistan (52%), Kyrgyzstan (45%), Turkmenistan (16.9%), Uzbekistan (16%), and Kazakhstan (6.5%). The PRC exploits corrupt politicians within those governments who often pocketed borrowed funds to enrich themselves to secure deals favorable to the People’s Republic. Beijing eventually increased those rates, which many governments were unable to repay. When recipient countries balked at PRC demands, Beijing leveraged the debt to coerce compliance—often translating into influence over the domestic policies of those countries.
As PRC surveillance technology becomes more integrated into the region, Beijing will increasingly weaponize it for intelligence collection.
Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan provide two cogent examples. In 2016, Tajikistan ceded the rights of two gold mines to a PRC state-owned enterprise (SOE) to repay debt for a power plant and a lavish $230 million parliamentary complex. Chinese commercial culture is rife with bribery, and SOEs use it as part of their corporate strategies. One tactic is charging customers inflated rates for their projects. For example, in Kyrgyzstan in 2018, following the mid-winter failure of a PRC-funded thermal power plant in Bishkek, an investigation revealed the Chinese firm that upgraded the facility had charged a 90% inflated rate on construction materials. The then-prime minister was removed from office on charges of embezzlement, and 30 government officials were charged with corruption that cost the Kyrgyz government $111 million.
More specifically, Pakistan is ground zero for PRC predatory lending. With a debt-to-GDP ratio of 87%, it is the second highest in South Asia after Sri Lanka. Moreover, Islamabad owes 22% of its debt to the PRC. Beijing’s predation manifests most significantly in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and Pakistan’s Gwadar Port. The CPEC is an overland network of roads and pipelines linking western China to Gwadar allowing the PRC to diversify access to the Arabian Sea by bypassing the Strait of Malacca. In terms of debt-trap diplomacy, Pakistan is struggling to repay its loans to China and has asked for a $9 billion bailout from Beijing.
The Gwadar Port illustrates the PRC’s duplicitous bait and switch negotiation tactics designed to secure dual-use infrastructure. In addition to PRC naval bases in Djibouti and Cambodia, Beijing’s seemingly innocuous commercial port investment in Gwadar shifted to something more aggressive than just economic development. After building the deep-water port with Chinese workers and signing a 43-year lease, officials later admitted in 2015 that PRC naval access to nearby global shipping lanes presented a strategic opportunity. “There is an inherent duality in the facilities that China is establishing in foreign ports, which are ostensibly commercial but quickly upgradeable to carry out essential military missions,” notes Abhijit Singh, senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.
Sri Lanka’s debt profile is like Pakistan’s, and the case of the Hambantota port—on the periphery of the Central Region—is a cautionary tale of the PRC’s predatory economic colonialism. In 2017, when Sri Lanka defaulted on $8 billion debt, in part due to presidential corruption, the PRC coerced the government to sign a 99-year lease of the port in a debt-for-equity swap. On the day of the transfer, Xinhua, the CCP’s official news agency, gloated on Twitter that Beijing had usurped foreign territory. This, and other 99-year port leases in Australia and Greece are reminiscent of the former leases of Hong Kong and Macau, which Beijing considers humiliating acts of Western imperialism. Indian officials have also maintained that the CPEC and other BRI ports across the Indian Ocean and Arabian Gulf are intentional PRC efforts to encircle India. As the BRI expands, the PRC will logically seek to expand its naval capabilities to protect strategic supply lines from the Middle East to China.
Middle East Encroachment—Slow, but Intertwined
China views select Middle Eastern states as “strategic fulcrums”—conduits through which it can build military, ideological, economic, and international political influence. The United Arab Emirates—a BRI signatory since 2018—is one such fulcrum where the PRC has been building a secret military base at the Khalifa Port in Abu Dhabi. The Emirati government —reportedly unaware that China intended the facility to serve the PRC’s expansionist agenda—halted construction on the controversial facility in late 2021. The facility would have not only served in an intelligence collection capacity endangering the operational security of U.S. forces stationed in the country, but it also represented the first possible step of a PRC naval access agreement. China is unlikely to cede access to the Emirates so easily, and its activities suggests that Beijing is willing to conduct duplicitous activities in other BRI signatory nations to advance its strategic objectives.
Israel is another of the PRC’s little-known Mideast strategic fulcrums. In 2020, after a period of significant PRC investments in Israel’s high-tech sector, the U.S. government engaged emphatically to warn Israel to prevent PRC multinational tech corporation Huawei from developing the country’s 5G network out of concern it would compromise Israel’s sovereignty. In protest to the deepening Israeli-PRC relationship, the United States initially refused to allow the U.S. Navy’s 6th Fleet to berth in Haifa following PRC control over the port. As a result, Israel scaled back PRC investments and continues to consult with U.S. officials regarding future economic ties with Beijing that may impact the important U.S.-Israeli partnership.
Partner-nation collaboration with the PRC’s Huawei to develop “Smart City / Safe City” networks also places traditional U.S. relationships at risk for PRC exploitation beyond financial leverage. Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt have invested heavily in such technology, with the latter seeking to create a new administrative capital to replace Cairo based on this platform. As PRC surveillance technology becomes more integrated into the region, Beijing will increasingly weaponize it for intelligence collection. The threat is twofold: it encourages authoritarian behavior within states against their own populations, and it allows the PRC to conduct intelligence operations against the host country governments and their peoples.
Big-data collection opens the door for the PRC to freely monitor the leaders of participating BRI nations, to include their private diplomatic discussions and intimate relations. Collection on the latter creates opportunities for blackmail. Dr. Evan Ellis, a professor at the U.S. Army War College, warns about the global technological threat: “When you’re at a stage where China has that amount of knowledge over partner nations… the ability to resist or work against China will become extremely difficult.”
In the language of deterrence and compellence, this reality creates an entirely new understanding of holding assets at risk outside of conventional and nuclear warfighting modalities. More specifically, it allows the PRC to pressure critical nodes in partner political networks to effect strategic-level political outcomes counter to U.S. interests—aspects that U.S. military campaigns struggle to address due to cognitive and bureaucratic self-constraints.
The focus on traditional U.S. partners becoming PRC strategic fulcrums merits continued attention. However, U.S. adversaries like Iran and Syria also provide China opportunity to expand unfettered regional access. In March 2021, the PRC and Iran drafted a 25-year strategic accord injecting $400 billion of PRC infrastructure, banking, and telecommunications investments in exchange for a steady supply of heavily discounted Iranian oil. Worthy of note, even within the Iranian government critics protested that Tehran was giving too much away to China.
Similarly, in January 2022 the Assad regime—desperate for foreign capital—signed a “memorandum of understanding” allowing Syria to officially join the BRI. Leveraging Syria’s need for foreign assistance to rebuild its country after a decade-long civil war presented the chance for Beijing to offer purported humanitarian aid and financial investments to promote its interests in the Eastern Mediterranean. Ultimately, it is asserted that the PRC seeks to build a railway through Iran and Turkey into Syria, onward to the Lebanese port city of Tripoli. A Levant BRI corridor would allow the PRC to diversify its trade routes and reduce dependence on the Suez Canal, but risk associated with the ongoing Syria conflict and the fall of the Assad regime tempers Beijing’s current ambitions.
A Way Forward: Irregular Deterrence through Counter Predation
Mark Green, former administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, observed that the BRI is Beijing’s strategy to “stimulate its own economy, gain critical foreign natural resources, obtain strategic assets within recipient nations, and convert economic access into geostrategic influence”—all at the expense of the self-reliance and freedom of the PRC’s purported “partner nations.” The PRC’s self-serving activities demonstrate—like the ancient tributary system of the Warring States period—that the People’s Republic is attempting to make all roads once again lead to Beijing. However, this does not need to be the case. The PRC’s predatory behavior sows the seeds of its own demise, offering sufficient opportunity to illuminate and amplify PRC missteps and subversive behavior through multinational and interagency partner networks.
As such, the Central Region is a focal point to enhance deterrence. More specifically, the Central Region is fertile ground for a counter-predation campaign that denies the PRC the benefits it seeks to gain—by illuminating its anti-sovereign activities, raising the costs of its exploitative approach, and inoculating partners against deals with the PRC that usurp their independent decision-making. Irregular warfare activities provide multiple ways to contribute to deterrence by denial that manifest in the Central Region through cognitive and financial vectors.
First, cognitive access denial works by fostering partner nation resilience against PRC influence operations. The aforementioned cases of PRC SOE corruption in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and UAE are perfect examples of potential inoculation against future PRC attempts to usurp sovereignty. Explaining the backdoor dealing of SOEs to illuminate the debt trap in which partner nations are about to be ensnared is an essential tool.
In the case of Pakistan, fiscal problems with the BRI are compounded by public resentment over high unemployment amid the importation of Chinese workers to complete infrastructure projects. Protesters claimed that the PRC profits from BRI projects at the expense of local workers. Public distrust, at least partly due to Pakistan’s $60 billion infrastructure debt trap, resulted in a “no confidence” vote for Prime Minister Imran Khan’s leadership in April 2022—demonstrating the catalytic potential of people power to deny the PRC’s coercive and anti-sovereign goals in the Central Region.
Financial access denial via counter-threat finance and intelligence support to partner nations and the U.S. interagency offers a complementary way to deny the PRC the benefits derived from its coercive and illicit economic statecraft. Illuminating and targeting prohibited financial activities such as the illegal Iranian-Chinese oil trade, alongside the PRC’s predatory BRI investments that endanger partner sovereignty are high-payoff financial targets—which present additional risk to host-countries of penalties such as sanctions and status in the G7’s Financial Action Task Force.
Starving the Dragon
The 2021 annual DoD report to Congress on the status of PRC military and security developments concluded that the BRI’s objective is to develop deep economic integration with selected countries, shape their interests to align with the PRC’s autocratic practices, and prevent criticism of the CCP’s policies on sensitive issues—like internal subjugation of its Uyghur Muslim population in Xinjiang. Therefore, the BRI is not a grand, benign venture for global peace and cooperation, but a cleverly disguised PRC vector for achieving global economic hegemony and foreign dependency.
The PRC’s global behavior demonstrates it is a predatory neo-colonial power—a dragon in a panda suit. Global campaigning against the PRC must exploit what the PRC truly seeks for partner nations across all geographic combatant commands, not just the Indo-Pacific Command: second-class dependency at the expense of sovereign prosperity and security.
Taken together, cognitive and financial vectors constitute a counter-predation campaign that could deny the PRC the benefit of its neo-colonial approach. Illuminating subversive behavior, inoculating partners against sovereign exploitation, and providing interagency escalation options across the financial and economic instruments power are three critical elements that irregular warfare can bring to a strategy of deterrence by denial. To comprehensively shape PRC decision calculus over Taiwan and other global areas of national interest, the United States must exploit these outsized gray zone deterrence opportunities via irregular warfare to starve the Chinese dragon in the Central Region.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.
Tags: Belt and Road, Belt and Road Initiative, Economic Statecraft, Hybrid Warfare, subversion
About The Authors
- Steve Ferenzi
- Steve Ferenzi is a retired U.S. Army Strategist and Special Forces officer with recent service as lead campaign planner for U.S. Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT). Throughout his career, he has led and contributed to irregular warfare and special operations strategic guidance from the national though combatant command and service levels. He holds a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
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View all posts
- David Harden
- Tech Sergeant David Harden is an 18-year Air Force strategic intelligence analyst with former service in the SOCCENT J2 Intelligence Directorate. He holds a Master of Science in Strategic Intelligence from the National Intelligence University. He previously served in SOF assignments at RAF Mildenhall, UK and Ft. Benning, GA, and as a counterterrorism intelligence analyst at U.S. Strategic Command.
4. Commentary: The Philippines walks a tightrope with Chinese aid
Excerpts:
This suggests the Marcos government is now cautiously steering towards a more selective, opportunistic approach: Carefully accepting Chinese funding when it fits the country’s needs, while pushing back hard on strategic and security issues.
It’s a tightrope walk. As China becomes more assertive in the region and the West cuts back on global aid spending, the Philippines finds itself with fewer alternatives.
Manila wants to assert its sovereignty, but it also needs roads, bridges and power plants. Pragmatism, not ideology, is driving development finance decisions.
The Philippines’ future will hinge on its ability to continue walking this fine line: Benefiting from China’s development support without being boxed in by Beijing’s strategic agenda. That’s no easy task. But in a region increasingly defined by economic opportunity and geopolitical tension, it may be the only option left.
Commentary: The Philippines walks a tightrope with Chinese aid
Manila wants to assert its sovereignty, but it also needs roads, bridges and power plants. Pragmatism, not ideology, is driving development finance decisions, say the Lowy Institute’s Alexandre Dayant and Grace Stanhope.
Alexandre Dayant
Grace Stanhope
28 Mar 2025 06:00AM
channelnewsasia.com · by Alexandre Dayant
SYDNEY: At last week’s Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi, the Philippines’ Armed Forces Chief didn’t mince words, calling on India and South Korea to join an Indo-Pacific “squad” to push back against China’s aggressive tactics in the South China Sea.
But while Manila hardens its security posture, it’s also receiving more development money from Beijing than ever before. So, what gives?
For most of the past decade, the Philippines has been one of Southeast Asia’s most cautious players when it comes to Chinese development finance, even as its infrastructure, education and healthcare sectors cry out for investment.
From 2015 to 2022, China accounted for just 1 per cent of total official development finance to the country, the lowest share among Southeast Asian nations. Unlike neighbours such as Laos or Cambodia, Manila has long preferred traditional partners including Japan, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank.
President Rodrigo Duterte speaks during a gathering of businessmen in Pasay city, Metro Manila, Philippines on Oct 13, 2016. (File photo: Reuters/Erik De Castro)
RODRIGO DUTERTE STEERED CLOSER TO CHINA
But as president, Rodrigo Duterte sought to flip the script. Elected in 2016, Duterte cast aside decades of wariness and steered the Philippines closer to China, hoping to trade diplomacy for development.
In just six years, he signed more than US$28 billion in aid commitments with Beijing, more than triple Japan’s total over the same period. At the height of this pivot, Chinese development finance made up 40 per cent of all new aid commitments to the country.
It could have marked a turning point. Yet, in practice, the grand promises of China-backed megaprojects faltered, mostly because Filipino society and institutions pushed back.
Concerns over environmental impacts, governance standards and sovereignty fuelled resistance to Chinese projects. And with the South China Sea dispute simmering in the background, public trust in Beijing remained low.
Despite the flashy numbers, only 1.5 per cent of China’s promised funds were ever delivered – the lowest in ASEAN – largely due to prolonged negotiations and concerns over several megaprojects.
This gap between promise and delivery highlights something crucial: Development finance isn’t just about the supply of the money, it’s about trust, capacity, and choice – which together form demand. In our latest Lowy Institute Analysis, Hedging Bets: Southeast Asia’s Approach to China’s Aid, we identify three distinct Southeast Asian modes of engagement with Chinese development finance: Constrained, restrained, and opportunistic.
The Philippines straddles the line between restrained and carefully opportunistic, actively diversifying its development partners to avoid overreliance on China, especially amid ongoing territorial disputes, but also remaining cautiously open to Chinese funding when it aligns with interests.
A SELECTIVE APPROACH UNDER FERDINAND MARCOS JR
Under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the pendulum initially swung further away from Beijing.
In 2022, his administration cancelled three major railway projects backed by China, citing implementation delays and rising tensions in the South China Sea, signalling a return towards a more defensive and restrained stance that echoed his strong public criticism of Beijing over the maritime disputes.
But that’s not the full story. Preliminary data from the upcoming 2025 Lowy Institute Southeast Asia Aid Map shows Chinese disbursements have gradually increased under Marcos compared to his predecessor – albeit from a low base – driven by new China Eximbank infrastructure loans supporting Marcos’ “Build Better More” agenda, totalling around US$200 million so far, with more potentially on the horizon.
This suggests the Marcos government is now cautiously steering towards a more selective, opportunistic approach: Carefully accepting Chinese funding when it fits the country’s needs, while pushing back hard on strategic and security issues.
It’s a tightrope walk. As China becomes more assertive in the region and the West cuts back on global aid spending, the Philippines finds itself with fewer alternatives.
Manila wants to assert its sovereignty, but it also needs roads, bridges and power plants. Pragmatism, not ideology, is driving development finance decisions.
The Philippines’ future will hinge on its ability to continue walking this fine line: Benefiting from China’s development support without being boxed in by Beijing’s strategic agenda. That’s no easy task. But in a region increasingly defined by economic opportunity and geopolitical tension, it may be the only option left.
Alexandre Dayant is a senior economist and Deputy Director of the Lowy Institute’s Indo-Pacific Development Centre. Grace Stanhope is a Research Associate at the same centre. This commentary first appeared on the Lowy Institute's blog, Interpreter.
5. National Security and Strategy Fellowships and Seminars
What an excellent contribution and service by Nate Finney. All young national security professionals, practitioners, and scholars, will benefit from Nate's consolidation of this information. I am often asked by young people about opportunities such as these and now I can refer them to Nate's webpage.
National Security and Strategy
Fellowships and Seminars
https://nathankfinney.com/fellowships-and-seminars
John Quincy Adams Society
AEI
The Arms Control Negotiation Academy
British-AmericaN Project
American Academy for Strategic Education
American University, Bridging the Gap Project
Army University Press
Aspen Security Forum
Atlantic Council
Atlantik Brücke
Belfer Center
Cambridge Security Initiative
Carnegie Foundation
Council on Foreign Relations
Clements Center at University of Texas-Austin
Center for a New American Security
College of William and Mary
Columbia University
Center on Strategic and International Studies
East-West Center
Eisenhower Fellowships
Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESOC)
Eurasia Foundation
Foreign Policy for America
Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD)
French American Foundation
Georgetown University & Sandia National Laboratories
globally
German Marshall Fund of the US
George Mason University
Go Government
Halcyon
Heritage
Hertog
HillVets
Hoover Institution
US Indo-Pacific Command
The International Strategy Forum (ISF)
Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society
Jamestown
Johns Hopkins University
McCain Institute
University of Michigan
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MilitaryMentors
NATO
The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (NCUSCR)
New America Foundation
Notre Dame University
Naval Post-Graduate School
Ploughshares Foundation
The Presidential Leadership Scholars
Public Interest Fellowships
RAND Corporation
Schmidt Futures
The Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellowship Program
Society for Military History
Syracuse University
Tobin Project
Trilateral Commission
University of California, Berkeley
US Global Leadership Coalition
US-Japan Leadership Program
The White House Fellows Program
WILD Network
Women in International Security
Wilson Center
Young Professionals in Foreign Policy
6. Reinforcement and redistribution: evolving US posture in the Indo-Pacific
Thank you to IISS. I can update my lecture slides with this information.
Please go to the link to view the graphics: https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/military-balance/2025/03/reinforcement-and-redistribution-evolving-us-posture-in-the-indo-pacific/?utm
I hope the assessment in this excerpt below holds true. We need our allies to be able to win against China in competition (gray zone), crisis, conflict, and war. "America First, Allies Always."
Excerpts:
One piece of the puzzle
The US has developed and, notably, tested in theatre, new capabilities that are relevant for a regional conflict with China. For instance, an air-launched version of the SM-6 surface-to-air missile, the AIM-174B, will enable aircraft to engage China’s high-value airborne targets at longer ranges. US allies in the region are also significantly bolstering their own capabilities. Japan is developing a suite of stand-off missiles, while South Korea is fielding ballistic missiles with multiple-tonne warheads.
In contrast to its approach to its NATO allies, the Trump administration has generally, so far, embraced its security guarantees to its Indo-Pacific allies. Nonetheless, given its emphasis on greater burden sharing (and even burden shifting), it will likely demand, as during its first term, that its allies invest significantly more in their militaries and provide more financial support for hosting US forces.
Military Balance Blog27th March 2025
Reinforcement and redistribution: evolving US posture in the Indo-Pacific
In response to China’s growing military power, the United States has worked over the last few years to reinforce, reform and redistribute its forces in the Indo-Pacific. While progress has been made, US forces continue to face challenges.
A US Air Force F-22A aircraft being operated out of Tinian during exercise Agile Reaper 24 (The appearance of US Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement)
The Trump administration, as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth put it, is ‘prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific’. A factor in this effort is the United States’ regional force posture. The Trump administration inherited an Indo-Pacific posture that was shaped by its predecessor’s efforts to reinforce, reform and redistribute forces to make them more lethal and survivable. The Biden administration pursued a range of initiatives, leading then assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, Ely Ratner, to boast that 2023 was the ‘most transformative year in a generation’ for US force posture.
While progress has been made to bolster US presence, forces in the region still face vulnerabilities. The extent to which the Trump administration will uphold or emulate its predecessor’s posture decisions remains to be seen.
Responding to the threat environment
The continuing modernisation of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) across all domains has altered the military balance and priorities in the region. The PLA is capable of threatening US power-projection infrastructure and capabilities in the region, such as air bases, ports, and carrier strike groups, as well as important enablers like airborne early warning aircraft and aerial tankers. The PLA has enhanced its long-range strike capabilities, with notable increases in the PLA Rocket Force’s inventory of the DF-26 (CH-SS-18) intermediate-range ballistic missile – which can target Guam – and an extension in the engagement range of the PLA Air Force’s J-16 Flanker N aircraft through the PL-17 (CH-AA-12) air-to-air missile.
Such capability advances have driven US efforts over the last few years to make its force posture in the Indo-Pacific – a region home to over 100,000 US personnel and five treaty allies – more ‘mobile, distributed, resilient, and lethal’. The US has gone beyond just deploying and rotating additional or new capabilities at US bases and those of its allies and partners (see Maps 1–3). Actions also include attaining new basing access, reclaiming old airfields, pre-positioning equipment, introducing new concepts and capabilities, and developing infrastructure for missile defence and surveillance.
Lethality and mobility
To strengthen its offensive capability, the US has deployed or plans to station additional and more advanced capabilities in the region. For example, the US Navy shifted in early 2022 to having five Los Angeles-class submarines homeported at Naval Base Guam – up from just two in mid-2021 – having relocated them from Hawaii to enhance its rapid response abilities. The US Air Force (USAF), meanwhile, announced in 2024 that it will modernise its presence in Japan by deploying 48 F-35A Lightning IIs to Misawa Air Base to replace 36 F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft. Japanese officials have said that deployment will start in spring 2026.
The US has also worked to bolster its rotational presence on allies’ territory. For instance, the USAF is increasing deployments of various types of aircraft in Australia, including bombers, while the US Army has temporarily sent the ground-based Mid-Range Capability (Typhon) missile system to the Philippines in April 2024, marking its first ever deployment.
Some US forces, however, in the words of the commandant of the US Marine Corps (USMC), General Eric Smith, are ‘going the wrong way’. As per a 2012 agreement with Japan, the US has begun relocating 9,000 marines from Okinawa, either to be rotationally deployed to Australia or forward deployed to Guam or Hawaii. In December 2024, the first relocation commenced, with approximately 100 logistics support personnel moving to Guam. Smith has expressed concern, stating that this ‘puts us a long way from the crisis theater’, which he identifies as the first island chain.
Military Balance+ | The online defence database from the IISS, delivering authoritative and searchable defence data and insights into military capabilities, policy priorities and commercial opportunities in more than 170 countries.
The US has also reformed regional forces to try to enhance their mobility. For instance, the USMC, as part of its force design transition to optimise for operations in the Indo-Pacific, redesignated two regiments – one in 2022 and another in 2023 – as Marine Littoral Regiments (MLRs). Another is planned for Guam by 2027. MLRs are designed to serve as mobile, self-deployable units that operate from austere, temporary locations for missions like sea denial. To support this new role, in late 2024, the Hawaii-based MLR received the mobile, ground-based NMESIS launcher armed with the 185+ km-range Naval Strike Missile. However, the system’s effectiveness may be limited, with wargames finding that its range is insufficient in most situations. General Smith has also expressed concern about munition stocks, stating ‘we’ve got to build the magazine depth to be able to use that’.
Smith’s point is representative of a wider challenge for US forces. In a high-intensity conflict with China, the US would likely expend significant quantities of long-range, precision-guided weapons. As such, while positioning more (advanced) platforms in the region is valuable, the advantage they could provide in wartime would be diminished without adequate supplies.
The head of US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Paparo, said in late 2024 that the extensive use of such high-end systems in US operations in the Middle East, and donations of Patriot interceptors to Ukraine, has imposed ‘costs on the readiness of America to respond in the Indo-Pacific [...] the most stressing theater for the quantity and quality of munitions’. Even though the US is ramping up production of high-end munitions, Paparo notably stressed that he was ‘already dissatisfied’ with magazine depth prior to recent US engagements.
Resilience and distribution
To improve the survivability of its forces in the Indo-Pacific, the US has also been working to improve active and passive defences of its bases. US airbases are at risk from the PLA’s long-range missile capabilities. To better protect the important military hub of Guam, the US is working to provide the territory with layered air defence as requested by Indo-Pacific Command in 2022.
Progress has been made, with the new land-based Aegis Guam System, integrated with an AN/TPY-6 radar and a vertical launching system, using an SM-3 Block IIA to intercept a medium-range ballistic missile in December 2024, the first ballistic missile defence test executed from the territory. Still, given the PLA’s substantial missile stocks, regional US missile defences, even with upgrades, could be at risk of being overwhelmed, and some important regional sites, including Guam, lack any hardened aircraft shelters.
To remain resilient against airbase attacks, the USAF is also drilling operations from smaller, dispersed locations, as per its Agile Combat Employment (ACE) concept. Exercise Agile Reaper 24, for example, involved establishing an operating site next to Tinian International Airport within 24 hours to service and launch F-22A Raptor aircraft. ACE operations intend to support operational continuity if major airbases become inoperable and expand the target set to increase demands on PLA resources to disrupt air operations.
To facilitate dispersion, the US has been expanding its access to airfields in the region. In 2024, for example, the US recertified Peleliu Airstrip and started clearing the jungle enveloping North Field. Moreover, through separate agreements signed with the Philippines and Papua New Guinea in 2023, the US gained access to several military or dual-use sites in those countries.
The US faces a vulnerability, however, in that its ability to fight from its allies’ and partners’ territory is uncertain. The Philippines has said that US access is not intended for ‘offensive action’; however, it has also indicated that it is possible that it would let the US use those bases in wartime. Japan, although generally seen as the most likely ally to grant the US access to its bases in a Taiwan contingency, could face legal obstacles to doing so if it too has not been attacked. South Korea, meanwhile, has voiced opposition to US forces operating out of the country in such a scenario.
Arguably, the most important obstacle to granting the US access is the fact that doing so, such as in a Taiwan contingency, could significantly amplify the PLA’s incentives to target those allies. Without allies’ permission, the US’s ability to bring power to bear in a conflict would be significantly undermined. Wargames have shown that US access, namely in Japan, is key to effectively defending Taiwan.
One piece of the puzzle
The US has developed and, notably, tested in theatre, new capabilities that are relevant for a regional conflict with China. For instance, an air-launched version of the SM-6 surface-to-air missile, the AIM-174B, will enable aircraft to engage China’s high-value airborne targets at longer ranges. US allies in the region are also significantly bolstering their own capabilities. Japan is developing a suite of stand-off missiles, while South Korea is fielding ballistic missiles with multiple-tonne warheads.
In contrast to its approach to its NATO allies, the Trump administration has generally, so far, embraced its security guarantees to its Indo-Pacific allies. Nonetheless, given its emphasis on greater burden sharing (and even burden shifting), it will likely demand, as during its first term, that its allies invest significantly more in their militaries and provide more financial support for hosting US forces.
Author
7. Taiwan jails four soldiers, including three who worked in presidential office, for spying for China
This obviously is a very real problem for Taiwan since the PLA and intelligence services have infiltrated all aspects of the Taiwan military and society.
There is no easy fix.
I will ever forget attending an asymmetric warfare conference in Taiwan in 2017 and the Chief of Staff of the Taiwan Army in a room full of abou 100 Taiwanese officers and about 20 Americans saying that in this room there are PLA operatives in Taiwanese uniforms.
However, it is imperative that Taiwan (and its allies) recognize thePLA/CCP strategy, understand it deeply, expose its intent and methodologies, and then attack the strategy. This article is helping to expose the PLA/CCP strategy and actions but so much more must be done (and hopefully is in the Taiwan press).
To combat this Taiwan needs to use a reverse of MICE (money, ideology, compromise, and ego) adapted for Taiwan characteristics.
One of the vulnerabilities that leads to recruitment is money, low pay for active duty personnel and especially low pay for retirement pensions.
Money:
One program that could be established is to offer financial incentive to those who have been contacted by PLA operatives for recruitment. The action would simply be to report the contact, the Taiwan military will match the offer of pay from the PLA operatives (and allow them to keep whatever funds are provided by the PLA operatives), and then the Taiwan soldier will then provide Taiwan controlled information to the operative to support Taiwan objectives.
Ideology:
Of course we believe strong patriots would never succumb to recruitment - Taiwan must expose this threat to Taiwanese people's freedom and focus on the fight for freedom versus authoritarian rule. Taiwan must strengthen its ideological foundation and should be able to do so by highlighting such things as how China did not keep its promise in Hong Kong and the same or worse will happen to the Taiwanese people.
Compromise:
As in any counterintelligence situation, Taiwan must identify those who are vulnerable to compromise and protect them from recruitment by "uncompromising" them and using their vulnerability to identify operatives who would recruit them.
Ego:
Those who identify PLA/intelligence operatives will be rewarded as heroes of Taiwan.
The obvious counter to this is that such efforts would be easily compromised because of the PLA/intelligence infiltration of all aspects of the military and society. However, this program would exploit that because knowing about this program will cause the PLA/intelligence operatives to distrust any Taiwanese who agrees to be recruited. It will make them work that much harder to spot, assess, and recruit the right targets but they will never be sure that anyone they do recruit is not acting as a double agent. This could neutralize some of the PLA's intelligence capabilities.
Taiwan jails four soldiers, including three who worked in presidential office, for spying for China
Soldiers had worked for ‘extremely sensitive and important units’ and ‘their acts betrayed the country’, Taipei court says
The Guardian · by Helen Davidson · March 27, 2025
A Taiwan court has sentenced four soldiers, including three who worked in the president’s security team, to jail for up to seven years on charges of spying for China.
The men were convicted of violating the national security law by passing “internal military information that should be kept confidential to Chinese intelligence agents for several months” between 2022 and 2024, the Taipei district court said on Wednesday.
Three of the four convicted were members of a military unit in charge of security for the Presidential Office, while the fourth was a soldier in the defence ministry’s information and telecommunications command. Three of the soldiers were discharged from the military before an investigation was launched in August last year after a tip-off to the defence ministry, and the fourth was suspended.
China has debuted its new landing barges – what does this mean for Taiwan?
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According to the court, the four received payments from around NT$260,000 to NT$660,000 ($7,850-$20,000) in return for taking photographs of information with their mobile phones.
The defendants had worked for “extremely sensitive and important units but violated their duties to accept bribes, and stole secrets by photographing”, the court said in a statement.
“Their acts betrayed the country and endangered national security.”
The four received jail terms ranging from five years and 10 months to seven years.
The number of people prosecuted in Taiwan for allegedly spying for China has risen sharply in recent years as the military and civilian investigative bodies crack down on infiltration and espionage. Many of those prosecuted have been current or retired members of Taiwan’s military, recruited by Beijing or its agents in Taiwan.
Beijing has vowed to annex Taiwan, which it claims is Chinese territory. It has not ruled out using force to do so, but in the meantime runs multifaceted pressure campaigns including greyzone acts of military intimidation, cyberwarfare, disinformation and espionage.
Earlier this month Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, designated China as a “foreign hostile power” and announced a swathe of new measures to counter its efforts. The measures include plans to reinstate military courts to hear cases of espionage and other offences involving military personnel.
Last week Taiwan’s government also announced increases to the base pay rates of Taiwan military personnel.
The relatively small payments disclosed in some cases had drawn attention to the conditions and benefits offered to Taiwan’s serving military. Last year Dr Shen Ming-Shih, a research fellow at the Taiwan government-linked thinktank the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said some recruited spies were lured by financial and sexual incentives, while others were driven by bitterness over their treatment or lack of advancement during their career.
Both sides of the Taiwan Strait have been spying on each other for decades. But analysts have warned that espionage is a bigger problem for Taiwan, which faces the existential threat of a Chinese invasion.
Taiwan’s intelligence agency previously reported that 64 people were prosecuted for Chinese espionage in 2024, compared with 48 in 2023 and 10 in 2022. In 2017 Taiwan’s government estimated there were more than 5,000 spies working for China in Taiwan.
Cases have included soldiers filming themselves declaring they will surrender as soon as China’s military invades, or making written pledges of loyalty to the Chinese Communist party. Some retired officers have allegedly been paid to recruit active soldiers.
The Guardian · by Helen Davidson · March 27, 2025
8. WTF is wrong with Russia?
Excerpts:
It seems that the only reason Russia is playing along the U.S.-backed ceasefire proposals, is to not spoil its surprisingly warm relationship with the U.S. administration.
Russia is still eager to gain full control over four occupied Ukrainian oblasts — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson — none of which it fully controls.
As a result, Putin will agree to hold summits, meetings, phone calls, agree to U.S. proposals but demand something in return and never back down, hoping to outlast Trump's interest on this particular topic.
For Ukraine, however, this is a minefield rather than a negotiation process. Ukraine seems to have no intention to agree to a peace deal that would leave 20% of the country occupied indefinitely. The majority of Ukrainians won't back that.
So Kyiv is choosing the only possible option here — agreeing to the U.S. proposals and hoping that Russians would overplay their hand.
WTF is wrong with Russia?
Read in Browser
Thursday, March 27, 2025
https://mailchi.mp/kyivindependent/wtf-is-wrong-with-russia-09sefjs1ki?e=f0a5d27f46
Oleksiy Sorokin
Deputy Chief Editor
Following two days of intensive shuttle negotiations between the U.S. and the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Riyadh, the parties agreed to implement a ceasefire in an area that remained relatively quiet for over a year — the Black Sea.
As a result, the White House now has itself a deal, while both Ukraine and Russia continue to fight a war as if nothing happened.
Hi, my name is Oleksiy Sorokin, I'm the deputy chief editor of the Kyiv Independent, and this is the latest issue of our Russia-themed newsletter.
Today we will discuss the multiple ceasefires that are being negotiated, and why no one actually wants them, except Donald Trump.
We want to hear from you. Do you have questions about Russia or Russians? About this newsletter or its author? About anything, really. If you do, feel free to email me at o.sorokin@kyivindependent.com or by replying to this email. I'll gladly answer as many questions as possible in a special issue next week.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (R) and Russian President Vladimir Putin's Foreign Policy Advisor Yuri Ushakov (2nd R) attend a meeting between Russia and the United States, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Feb. 18, 2025. (Russian Foreign Ministry / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)
For over a month, the White House has been issuing statements, organizing meetings and proposing ideas on how to stop fighting in Ukraine.
Military aid for Ukraine was halted, intelligence sharing paused, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was shouted at in the White House.
Russian officials and propagandists were served a front-row seat, and they absolutely loved what they saw.
The statements from U.S. officials were getting more and more bizarre.
In an interview on March 21 with American far-right political commentator Tucker Carlson, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff openly parroted Russian propaganda and agreed with most of the Kremlin's talking points.
"They are Russian-speaking, and there have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule," Witkoff said about the Ukrainian regions where Russia forced people to vote at gunpoint in what it called a referendum.
Yet, besides loud statements, nothing of substance was actually achieved.
The first concrete idea came in early March. Ukraine proposed to halt attacks on energy infrastructure if Russia does the same.
In turn, on March 11, the U.S. bullied Ukraine to agree to a U.S.-backed full 30-day ceasefire in return for the resumption of military aid and intelligence sharing.
All eyes were then on Russia, yet Vladimir Putin said no. (Here’s our newsletter from two weeks back on why Russia didn't agree.)
In return for agreeing to the full ceasefire, the Kremlin demanded a halt to American military aid to Ukraine, limits on the size of the Ukrainian military, and that Kyiv end mobilization — terms that were just short of Ukraine's capitulation.
After a few additional weeks of back and forth, the U.S. forced a deal. A deal that no one actually wants.
Let's unpack.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen during the Movement of the First Youth Congress on March 26, 2025, in Moscow, Russia. (Contributor/Getty Images)
Following 12-hour-long negotiations between U.S. and Russian delegations In Riyadh on March 24, and a few shorter ones between the U.S. and Ukraine, the parties agreed to a ceasefire in the Black Sea.
Washington also separately agreed with Ukraine and Russia "to develop measures for implementing (an) agreement to ban strikes against energy facilities of Russia and Ukraine."
In return, the United States said it will "help restore Russia's access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports, lower maritime insurance costs, and enhance access to ports and payment systems for such transactions."
Basically, this meant Russia would get a partial sanctions relief in return for stopping fighting in an area where no actual fighting was ongoing.
It also gave some breathing room for Russia's battered Black Sea Fleet, which now, in theory, doesn't have to worry about potential Ukrainian drone attacks. Kyiv already said that it still sees the Black Sea Fleet as a legitimate target if it is not docked.
As a custom, however, Moscow immediately began to demand more concessions.
According to the Kremlin, for the agreed maritime ceasefire to start, the West must first lift sanctions on Russian food producers and exporters, as well as on Russian-flagged ships involved in food and fertilizer trade. Another condition laid out by Moscow for it to adhere to the ceasefire it already agreed to is that commercial ships traveling to and from Ukraine should be inspected by Russia.
By demanding the lifting of sanctions imposed on Russian food producers, exporters, banks involved in trade, and cargo ships, Moscow attempts to creep back into the global economy and potentially legalize its shadow fleet operations that have become a lifeline for Russia's economy.
Ukrainian officials said Kyiv would not agree to this.
After Russia pulled out of the U.N. and Turkey-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative in July 2023, Kyiv was able to carve out its own trade route by force. The corridor has been a lifeline for Ukraine's economy, allowing cargo vessels to sail safely by hugging the coastlines of Bulgaria and Romania while guided by the Ukrainian Navy.
Ukraine doesn't need a ceasefire at sea to ship its grain from its ports. Providing Russia with sanctions relief and thus bolstering Moscow's war chest is also something that Kyiv wishes would not happen.
The sanctions relief demanded by Moscow might be tied to a special clause in the U.S.-Ukraine deal that Kyiv wishes to see fulfilled — "The exchange of prisoners of war, the release of civilian detainees, and the return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children."
Russia tends to disregard this clause and hasn't mentioned it in any of its official statements.
So what is going on? Why is everything so complicated, and who gets what in the end?
As things stand now, it seems that both sides are attempting to sell Donald Trump some sort of a deal that the U.S. president can present as a win, while attempting to get some concessions in return.
But the big picture is that none of the warring parties are willing to stop the fight right now.
For Russia, they still feel they can win this.
"Putin's alternative to doing a deal right now — (continuing) armed conflict — is actually helping him accomplish that goal," Marty Latz, an expert negotiator, told the Kyiv Independent this week.
"So as long as he is enjoying what he perceives to be military success on the ground, we're not going to have any significant progress toward a cessation of hostilities and peace — his plan B is better than his plan A."
Russia successfully regained most of the formerly Ukraine-occupied parts of Kursk Oblast. Now, according to Zelensky, "Putin is preparing a new offensive, particularly in Sumy and Kharkiv oblasts."
It seems that the only reason Russia is playing along the U.S.-backed ceasefire proposals, is to not spoil its surprisingly warm relationship with the U.S. administration.
Russia is still eager to gain full control over four occupied Ukrainian oblasts — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson — none of which it fully controls.
As a result, Putin will agree to hold summits, meetings, phone calls, agree to U.S. proposals but demand something in return and never back down, hoping to outlast Trump's interest on this particular topic.
For Ukraine, however, this is a minefield rather than a negotiation process. Ukraine seems to have no intention to agree to a peace deal that would leave 20% of the country occupied indefinitely. The majority of Ukrainians won't back that.
So Kyiv is choosing the only possible option here — agreeing to the U.S. proposals and hoping that Russians would overplay their hand.
P.S. As I finished this newsletter right after midnight Kyiv time, an air raid alert sounded on. A Russian attack drone is entering the Ukrainian capital. The war is in full swing.
This newsletter is made possible thanks to support of our readers. For as little as $5/month you can help us keep going.
9. Trump to get Golden Dome options next week: defense source
That was fast. Obviously DOD and defense companies must have already had concepts in the works.
But is a new organization the right way to go? That would seem to go against the Administration's philosophy and intent for government. I think DOGE and administration officials will hear the proposal for a new organization and immediately discount and dismiss any of the proposals. They will view this as the typical bureaucratic action that when faced with a new requirement the bureaucracy must expand.
But we need effective missile defense for the nation.
Trump to get Golden Dome options next week: defense source
The Pentagon may need to create a new organization to build the ambitious missile shield, sources said.
defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker
President Trump next week will consider three options for his Golden Dome missile-defense project, said a defense official who added that DOD might create an office to build the ambitious, futuristic missile shield.
A “tiger team” drawn from various defense and military agencies is putting together options of varying scope and complexity, but all will likely require more coordination than today’s Missile Defense Agency can offer, the official told Defense One on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
“You probably would need to come up with a new organization to handle that,” the official said.
Two other sources familiar with the discussions said a new office is already in the works, with a list of candidates being drawn up to lead it.
The Pentagon is still in the early stages of determining how to pursue what would be the most ambitious missile-defense project in history.
The Golden Dome effort will likely include near-term goals—such as improving the accuracy and effectiveness of ground-based missile interceptors—that can be completed before the 2026 midterm elections, enabling the White House to claim some quick success. More ambitious efforts are likely to take at least five to seven years to arrive, like satellites that track, analyze, communicate about, and destroy incoming missiles, according to the defense official.
The Pentagon has received more than 360 responses to a request for information posted last month. These have included ideas for new sensors, encryption, satellite technology, and more; as well as larger concepts that would integrate technologies and products from multiple companies, the defense official said.
These ideas will eventually inform the requirements and formal program, sources said.
Two of the companies are Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen Hamilton, company representatives confirmed. Others include RTX and Boeing, according to a former senior defense official familiar with the Pentagon’s deliberations on Golden Dome.
The former official and an industry expert said SpaceX—a launch provider that also builds satellites—would also be well-positioned to compete for the program. But they could not say whether Elon Musk’s company would compete. A former senior official said the project might be unattractive to the company since it would do little to enhance SpaceX’s other businesses.
On Thursday, Booz Allen Hamilton officials spoke to reporters about their “Brilliant Swarms” idea: a networked constellation of thousands of satellites flying in 20 orbital planes some 300 to 600 kilometers up. Each would have artificial intelligence to make sense of data from many sources: their own sensors, ground radars, the Space Development Agency’s nascent tracking constellation, and more.
“This network of low-Earth orbit satellites works together, operating autonomously to detect, track, and intercept ballistic missiles just minutes after launch, neutralizing the threat before warheads deploy—and with a much higher probability of success,” company officials wrote on their website this week.
“We would have the ability to track any and all ballistic missiles from birth to death,” Booz space chief Chris Bogdan told Defense One.
Each satellite—weighing between 40 to 80 kilograms and about the size of a “small refrigerator”—would also be a kill vehicle, able to take out an incoming missile by crashing into it, Bogdan said.
At those speeds, a field of plasma would form around the speeding satellite, increasing the energy it would release upon impact with the missile, said Trey Obering, a Booz Allen Hamilton senior executive advisor and former Missile Defense Agency director, citing the company’s tests.
About 40 percent of the satellite “will burn up coming back into the atmosphere,” he said. The majority of the rest of it—plus the plasma field—would strike the target, while “about 2 percent actually could make it to the ground in some kind of debris,” he said.
Booz officials believe that if they win the contract, they would be able to demonstrate the concept in space against multiple “uncooperative” targets by the fourth year of the program, and reach initial operating capability within five to seven years.
But the former senior defense official and an industry expert familiar with the Pentagon’s deliberations said the entire Golden Dome project, as conceived, still suffers from a big flaw: scale. Even with thousands of interceptors in space, missiles will always be easier and cheaper to build on the ground, they said. So an adversary could always build more missiles than there would be interceptors to take them out.
defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker
10. Trump’s Intelligence Community Outlines Top Global Threats
I actually think the biggest threat is adversarial cooperation. I think it is important that the IC recognized this and made it a part of the assessment. I think tall other threats can be connected back to this to include the exploitation of drug cartels for fentanyl trafficking.
ADVERSARIAL COOPERATION
Cooperation among China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea has been growing more rapidly in recent years, reinforcing threats from each of them individually while also posing new challenges to U.S. strength and power globally. These primarily bilateral relationships, largely in security and defense fields, have strengthened their individual and collective capabilities to threaten and harm the United States, as well as improved their resilience against U.S. and Western efforts to constrain or deter their activities. Russia’s war in Ukraine has accelerated these ties, but the trend is likely to continue regardless of the war’s outcome. This alignment increases the chances of U.S. tensions or conflict with any one of these adversaries drawing in another. China is critical to this alignment and its global significance, given the PRC’s particularly ambitious goals, and powerful
capabilities and influence in the world.
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/reports-publications-2025/4058-2025-annual-threat-assessment
I previously provided my critique of what the assessment missed about north Korea.
Trump’s Intelligence Community Outlines Top Global Threats
The 2025 worldwide threat assessment lists drug cartels and China as top dangers.
By John Haltiwanger, a reporter at Foreign Policy, and Rishi Iyengar, a reporter at Foreign Policy.
Foreign Policy · by John Haltiwanger, Rishi Iyengar
March 27, 2025, 5:20 PM
Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report. It has been a whirlwind of a week thanks to Signalgate—the group chat heard around the world.
The evolving scandal has already prompted major concern in Washington and beyond. Signalgate was the main topic in hearings held by both the House and Senate intelligence committees this week that became extremely contentious at times, but we still have many open questions about how it all happened and what the broader consequences will be. On paper, these hearings were meant to focus on the U.S. intelligence community’s annual threat assessment—and we’ll be getting into that more in today’s lead story.
On that note, here’s what’s on tap for the day: The U.S. intelligence community lists drug cartels as a top national security threat, the Trump administration’s OPSEC problems mount, and Trump withdraws Elise Stefanik’s nomination for U.N. ambassador.
The Trump Administration View of the Global Threat Landscape
The U.S. intelligence community recently released its annual threat assessment, which offers a window into the Trump administration’s unconventional worldview. The report’s release was overshadowed by the Signalgate scandal, but reviewing it reveals just how drastically Trump 2.0 is shifting U.S. foreign policy and national security priorities.
Drug cartels listed as top threat. The report cites drug cartels that traffic fentanyl and other synthetic opioids as the top threat, mentioning them even before state actors such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.
“Cartels are largely responsible for the more than 52,000 U.S. deaths from synthetic opioids in the 12 months ending in October 2024 and helped facilitate the nearly three million illegal migrant arrivals in 2024, straining resources and putting U.S. communities at risk,” the assessment states.
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, zeroed in on drug cartels getting ranked above other threats at a hearing on Tuesday, noting, “For the first time, the annual threat assessment lists foreign illicit drug actors as the very first threat to our country.”
President Donald Trump has made combating fentanyl deaths a priority, linking the issue to his hard-line immigration policy as well as the tariffs he has imposed on Mexico and Canada—though just 43 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the Canadian border by U.S. authorities in the last fiscal year. The president this year designated certain cartels as foreign terrorist organizations for the first time via an executive order.
China deemed top military threat. The report states that China presents “the most comprehensive and robust military threat to U.S. national security” and notes that the Chinese military is making “steady but uneven progress on capabilities it would use in an attempt to seize Taiwan and deter—and if necessary, defeat—U.S. military intervention.”
The assessment also characterizes China as a top cyberthreat and highlights Beijing’s ambitions on artificial intelligence. The report warns of China’s ability to compromise U.S. infrastructure via its “formidable cyber capabilities” and states that Beijing “almost certainly has a multifaceted, national-level strategy designed to displace the United States as the world’s most influential AI power by 2030.”
These views don’t represent a major departure from the national security orthodoxy in Washington, where China has for years been deemed a top U.S. adversary by politicians on both sides of the aisle. Trump appears poised to continue taking a hawkish stance toward Beijing, particularly on tech and trade policy—though the president this week suggested that China could receive a tariff reduction to help push through a deal for TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the popular video-sharing app.
Russia and Ukraine. The report states that Russia has “seized the upper hand in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is on a path to accrue greater leverage” to pressure Kyiv and the West for more concessions in peace talks.
It goes on to say the continuation of the war “perpetuates strategic risks to the United States,” including the “unintended escalation to large-scale war” and “the potential use of nuclear weapons.” Further down in the report, the intelligence community also warns that Russia possesses “the largest and most diverse nuclear weapons stockpile that, along with its deployed ground-, air-, and sea-based delivery systems, could inflict catastrophic damage to the Homeland.”
This comes as the Trump administration is rapidly pushing for an end to the war in Ukraine, which has seen the president take an aggressive stance toward Kyiv at times—including lambasting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a now-infamous Oval Office meeting last month, after which the Trump administration temporarily halted aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine.
Critics of Trump have accused him of siding with Moscow over Kyiv and beating up on a friendly country that was attacked by a far more powerful U.S. adversary.
The intelligence community’s assessment raises questions as to whether Ukraine and Russia are committed to quickly ending the war, as Trump has pushed for.
Both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky “are interested in continuing discussions with the United States on how to end the war and have shown a willingness to test partial ceasefires,” the report states, before adding, “However, both leaders for now probably still see the risks of a longer war as less than those of an unsatisfying settlement.”
Trump this week said both countries want to see the war end, but he conceded that the Russians might be “dragging their feet” as Moscow continues to seek major concessions—stalling progress on even partial cease-fire agreements. So far, though, Trump hasn’t publicly pressured Putin the way he has Zelensky.
Climate change not mentioned. The assessment had a glaring omission that’s indicative of the Trump administration’s sharp departure from traditional views on national security in Washington. Though climate change has been listed as a threat in the intelligence community’s annual assessments for years, including under the first Trump administration, it was not mentioned once in the new report.
Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, grilled Gabbard on this at Tuesday’s hearing.
“Every single one of these reports that we have had has mentioned global climate change as a significant national security threat except this one. Has something happened? Has global climate change been solved? Why is that not in this report, and who made the decision that it should not be in the report, when it’s been in every one of the 11 prior reports?” King asked.
Gabbard replied she did not “recall” giving instructions to deliberately omit climate change from the report. “What I focused this annual threat assessment on, and the IC [intelligence community] focused this threat assessment on, are the most extreme and critical direct threats to our national security,” Gabbard said.
Climate change has fueled mass displacement, economic instability, and violent conflict across the world, which is why the Defense Department has characterized climate change as a “threat multiplier” for years.
Leaving climate change out of this year’s threat assessment aligns with the Trump administration’s broader approach to the issue. Trump has repeatedly referred to climate change as a hoax, and his administration has taken rapid steps to dismantle regulations aimed at reducing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, hampering the government’s ability to combat climate change.
“[W]e are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this month.
Let’s Get Personnel
Trump has withdrawn Rep. Elise Stefanik’s nomination for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations over concerns about the Republican Party’s slim majority in the House.
“As we advance our America First Agenda, it is essential that we maintain EVERY Republican Seat in Congress,” Trump said Thursday in a post on his Truth Social platform. “We must be unified to accomplish our Mission, and Elise Stefanik has been a vital part of our efforts from the very beginning. I have asked Elise, as one of my biggest Allies, to remain in Congress to help me deliver Historic Tax Cuts, GREAT Jobs, Record Economic Growth, a Secure Border, Energy Dominance, Peace Through Strength, and much more, so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. With a very tight Majority, I don’t want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat.”
On the Button
What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.
More OPSEC oopsies. Amid Signalgate, journalists have found additional alarming vulnerabilities in the group chat participants’ cellphone usage. On Wednesday, German publication Der Spiegel reported that it had discovered multiple passwords and contact details for Gabbard, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz easily available online—including for purchase on commercial contact databases and as part of password leaks from previously hacked material. Der Spiegel reporters were able to link that data to email addresses and accounts on platforms such as WhatsApp, Signal, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Finding Hegseth’s mobile number and email address was “particularly easy,” they wrote.
Separately, Wired magazine found an account on the peer-to-peer payments app Venmo that appears to belong to Waltz and was set to “public” until they asked him about it, revealing names of several contacts including journalists, lobbyists, military officers, and even White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. This isn’t the U.S. government’s first high-profile Venmo vulnerability, however—in 2021, reporters at BuzzFeed News found then-U.S. President Joe Biden’s Venmo account with similarly lax protections.
RFE/RL reprieve. The Trump administration said on Thursday that it was restoring grant funding to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in response to a lawsuit by the U.S. government-funded media outlet against the administration’s effort to cancel that funding. Royce Lamberth, the U.S. District Court judge presiding over the case, had ruled earlier in the week that the administration could not terminate RFE/RL’s congressionally mandated funding.
“This is an encouraging sign that RFE/RL’s operations will be able to continue, as Congress intended,” RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus said in a statement on Thursday. “This is not the time for RFE/RL to go silent. Millions of people rely on us for factual information in places where censorship is widespread. We must not cede ground to our adversaries at a time when threats to America are on the rise.”
Founded in 1950 and initially funded by the CIA to broadcast U.S. news into Soviet nations behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, RFE/RL and its staff of more than 1,700 journalists currently broadcast in 23 countries across 27 different languages.
Palestinians protest Hamas. Palestinians in Gaza took to the streets this week to protest against Hamas, a rare occurrence in the coastal territory. The protests reportedly marked the largest demonstrations against the militant group since the Israel-Hamas war began. The protests came after phase one of the Israel-Hamas cease-fire expired and the two sides failed to agree on a phase two deal, prompting Israel to renew airstrikes on Gaza, followed by a resumption of ground operations. Protesters could reportedly be heard referring to Hamas as “terrorists” and chanting, “For god’s sake, Hamas out.”
The demonstrations suggest that many Palestinians in Gaza are getting fed up with Hamas, which has ruled the territory since 2007, and want to see a change in leadership on top of an end to the devastating war.
Israel launched its war in Gaza after a Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that saw roughly 1,200 people killed in Israel and hundreds of people taken hostage. The death toll in Gaza recently surpassed 50,000, according to Palestinian health authorities.
Snapshot
Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal poses for a picture with his Oscar for the documentary No Other Land on March 26 as he recovered from what he said was a violent attack by Israeli settlers and a subsequent beating by soldiers while in custody in his village of Susya in the occupied West Bank. One settler whom Ballal named as his attacker as well as the Israeli military have denied the allegations.
Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal poses for a picture with his Oscar for the documentary No Other Land on March 26 as he recovered from what he said was a violent attack by Israeli settlers and a subsequent beating by soldiers while in custody in his village of Susya in the occupied West Bank. One settler whom Ballal named as his attacker as well as the Israeli military have denied the allegations.Hazem Bader/AFP via Getty Images
Put On Your Radar
Tuesday, April 1: The Senate Armed Services Committee is set to hold a confirmation hearing for retired Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, Trump’s pick to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Wednesday, April 2: Trump’s wide-ranging reciprocal tariffs are scheduled to go into effect.
Thursday, April 3: NATO foreign ministers are set to meet in Brussels.
The Costs of War Project at the Watson Institute is hosting a webinar on the rising threats to journalists in conflict zones.
Quote of the Week
“The threat is in the house, the threat is across the dais, and I need to ask these questions. It’s my job to ask these questions of you.”
—Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, a former U.S. Air Force officer, in comments directed at Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe regarding Signalgate during a House Intelligence Committee hearing that was meant to focus on a worldwide threat assessment.
FP’s Most Read This Week
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
This story might haunt your dreams forever. A babysitter in Kansas recently found a man hiding under the bed of a child they were caring for after the kid complained about the presence of a “monster.” The babysitter wanted to reassure the child that there was nothing to be frightened about, only to come face-to-face with the male suspect. “An altercation ensued with the babysitter and one child was knocked over in the struggle. The suspect then fled the scene before deputies arrived,” the Barton County Sheriff’s Office said.
The suspect reportedly used to reside at the house where the incident occurred, but “there was currently a protection from abuse order issued against him to stay away from the property,” police said.
Maybe we should all check under our beds more often—just in case.
Foreign Policy · by John Haltiwanger, Rishi Iyengar
11. Marine Corps to Debut New Philippine Rotational Force at Balikatan 2025 Drills
Marine Corps to Debut New Philippine Rotational Force at Balikatan 2025 Drills
https://news.usni.org/2025/03/27/marine-corps-to-debut-new-philippine-rotational-force-at-balikatan-2025-drills?mc_cid=969dc66307
Aaron-Matthew Lariosa
March 27, 2025 4:14 PM - Updated: March 27, 2025 4:36 PM
Philippine Marine Corps Sgt. Julius Malinao, a force reconnaissance Marine with Force Reconnaissance Group, Marine Battalion Landing Team 10, 4th Marine Brigade, and U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Timothy Roberts departing the island of Mavulis, Philippines, May 4, 2024. US Marine Corps Photo
The Marines are set to deploy a new rotational force to the Philippines at a major upcoming exercise.
The 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment will debut the new Littoral Rotational Force-Luzon at the Balikatan 2025 exercise in the Philippines, USNI News has learned.
“When you think MLR, you think of the Philippines,” 1st Lt. Anne Pentaleri, 3rd MLR public affairs officer, told USNI News.
Littoral Rotational Force-Luzon was coined by one of the unit’s officers and will be forward-deployed in the Philippines for Spring’s Balikatan and Summer’s Kamandag exercises, Pentaleri said.
The new formation builds upon three years of consecutive training in the Philippine archipelago in littoral operations and coastal defense, according to the Marines. Compared to Marine Rotational Force-Darwin, another forward-deployed unit in the region, the Philippine force will be headed by the MLR instead of a traditional Marine Air-Ground Task Force.
The new regiments are part of the service’s stand-in force that was developed as part of the Marine Force Design changes built around the idea of creating an island-hopping force to harass warships and other threats in the Pacific.
“Third MLR will continue to enhance its tactics, techniques, and procedures for conducting Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations and stand-in force operations as a lightweight, low-signature, maneuverable formation spread across the Luzon area of operations,” said Pentaleri.
Balikatan 2025 is set to be one of the most intensive iterations of the U.S.-Philippine-led drills to date, hosting a “Full Battle Test simulation.” Between April and May, around 15,000 troops from the U.S., the Philippines and Australia. Japan will also join in the drills for the first time with units in the Philippines and the South China Sea.
US Marine Corps Rouge Fires missile system.
It’s unclear if the rotational deployment will include the unit’s recently activated Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System. Assigned to the littoral combat team’s medium-range missile battery, the unmanned vehicle wields two Naval Strike Missiles that can hit maritime targets up to 100 nautical miles away.
USNI News understands that the 3rd MLR seeks to bring the anti-ship system along for a deployment; approval from Manila for the system to come to the Philippines is ongoing. The Philippine Navy is set to fire an anti-ship missile for a sinking exercise at Balikatan.
The Hawaii-based MLR has been at the forefront of the service’s Force Design 2030 efforts, developing new concepts and tactics to deal with adversaries in the Indo-Pacific region. Exercises in the first island chain, particularly the Philippines, have seen the unit utilize new sensors and expeditionary advanced basing operations across littoral areas. Last month’s pre-deployment training saw the regiment employ recently activated air defense and anti-ship missile assets.
According to documents provided to USNI News, the 3rd MLR will participate in coastal defense drills, maritime domain awareness sensing, and air defense activities in Northern Luzon and Luzon Strait in the upcoming Balikatan exercise. A maritime key terrain security operations drill in Batanes – a strategically located Philippine island group between Luzon and Taiwan – will repeat similarly to last year’s iteration. Among other means, Pentaleri explained that the MLR is expected to collaborate with Army aviation to maneuver across the islands.
A major joint force air defense including 3rd MLR’s new Marine Air Defense Integrated System and AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar at a training area on the coast of Western Luzon facing the South China Sea.
Pentaleri also highlighted the lessons to be learned from training with Philippine forces, noting their experience in operating in the littoral environment. She further noted the importance of supporting the Armed Forces of the Philippines modernization efforts through these exercises.
This new littoral rotational force comes amid the activation of a warehouse in Subic Bay to stage equipment under Marine Corps Prepositioning Plan-Philippines.
American forces have been increasingly involved in exchanges and exercises with their Philippine counterparts amid South China Sea tensions between Manila and Beijing. Following a series of incidents in the fall of 2023, Marine Corps MQ-9As deployed to a Philippine Air Force base to provide intelligence support to Manila.
Related
12. Xi’s Message in Rare Meeting With Global CEOs: Defend Trade
I hate to say I agree with Xi, but I do think globalization is unstoppable, though I do not want to live under China's view of globalization. But I am under no illusion (any more) that globalization and economic liberalization will always lead to political liberalization. I just do not think we can put globalization back in the bottle. And economic retrenchment by the US will only lead to suffering and decline in the US.
Xi’s Message in Rare Meeting With Global CEOs: Defend Trade
Globalization is an ‘unstoppable historical trend,’ Chinese leader tells foreign businesspeople
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-xi-ceo-meeting-trump-tariffs-a378e20a?mod=latest_headlines
By Liza Lin
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and Brian Spegele
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March 28, 2025 5:00 am ET
Chinese leader Xi Jinping, second from right, spoke to foreign executives in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People. Photo: Huang Jingwen/ZUMA Press
Chinese leader Xi Jinping urged foreign business executives to defend trade and said globalization was unstoppable, drawing an implicit contrast between Beijing’s policies and President Trump’s tariffs.
In a rare meeting, the Chinese president summoned a who’s-who list of foreign executives from the likes of Pfizer, Blackstone and Mercedes-Benz to Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Friday.
“Globalization is an unstoppable historical trend,” Xi said, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency. Multinationals shoulder important responsibility in maintaining the world’s economic order, he told the room of about 40 executives and business-group leaders from the U.S., Europe and Asia.
He also assured them China was open for business and eager to help foreign companies thrive.
The charm offensive by Beijing toward Western companies over the past week has included tentative steps at diplomacy with the U.S. On Sunday, Chinese Premier Li Qiang met a Trump ally, Sen. Steve Daines (R., Mont.), and Daines said the meeting laid the groundwork for an in-person summit between Presidents Trump and Xi.
Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone attended the meeting. Photo: Florence lo/Reuters
Beijing’s recent messaging, including at an annual forum for global executives that concluded Monday, presents China as an anchor of stability in a tumultuous world and seeks to turn foreign business leaders into allies in the fight against Trump’s tariffs.
Since he took office in January, Trump has raised tariffs twice on Chinese goods, which now face additional 20% levies on top of earlier tariffs. Both times China has retaliated.
Still, some participants at the forum said it was clear that China’s openness had limits. Beijing’s drive for self-sufficiency in technology and other industries has created a skewed playing field, they said. An increase in competition from local rivals has also eaten away at foreign brands’ market share—for example, in cars.
While concerned about Trump’s tariffs, global CEOs also are uneasy about China’s economy.
Last year, China’s economic growth dropped to 5%, according to official figures, among the lowest levels in decades, and its real-estate market is mired in a multiyear slump. Foreign investment into China fell 29% in 2024 from the previous year in yuan terms, the second straight year of decline.
Friday’s gathering included American CEOs with longtime links to China such as Stephen Schwarzman of private-equity firm Blackstone and Cristiano Amon of chip maker Qualcomm. Others present included Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda, Mercedes-Benz management board chairman Ola Källenius and Georges Elhedery of HSBC.
Xi told executives China was open for business. Photo: Florence lo/Reuters
Xi said China was committed to developing peacefully and opening its markets further to outside investment.
During this week’s China Development Forum, a yearly gathering of foreign executives and Chinese policymakers, China’s premier delivered a similar message.
“China will continue to open its arms,” Li said. “Foreign-invested enterprises are indispensable participants and co-builders of China’s development.”
For China’s leaders, the forum was also useful as foreign dignitaries praised their management of the economy. Some of the heartiest applause from the Chinese participants at the forum was for Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, who blasted the U.S. and praised China’s leaders in a speech on climate change.
“There’s one well-governed place in the world—that’s China,” Sachs said.
Xi may find it hard to persuade foreign enterprises.
“Everybody is going to hold their fire right now,” said Stephen Roach, a senior research scholar at Yale University’s law school, who attended the Beijing forum. “The level of uncertainty is very high, just in terms of what Trump is going to do and how China might retaliate.”
This January, in an annual survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China, 30% of the more than 360 respondents said they were considering or had begun moving to alternative places for manufacturing, a record high in the chamber’s 27-year survey history.
Tightening national-security restrictions and the risk of detention or arrest of staff have unnerved many foreign companies. On that front, Beijing sent a positive signal this week as news emerged that five Chinese employees of the New York-based due diligence firm Mintz Group had been released after they were detained during a raid on the company in March 2023.
Write to Liza Lin at liza.lin@wsj.com and Brian Spegele at Brian.Spegele@wsj.com
13. Trump Pulls Nomination of Elise Stefanik for U.N. to Protect GOP’s House Majority
Domestic politics trumps international relations. And obviously the UN is a low priority for the US now.
Trump Pulls Nomination of Elise Stefanik for U.N. to Protect GOP’s House Majority
New York lawmaker has been close ally of president in Congress
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-un-elise-stefanik-withdraw-0d4cd337?mod=latest_headlines
By Olivia Beavers
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, Meridith McGraw
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and Katy Stech Ferek
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Updated March 27, 2025 11:18 pm ET
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January. Photo: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
WASHINGTON—The White House is pulling the nomination of Rep. Elise Stefanik for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, President Trump said, a remarkable acknowledgment that Republicans can’t afford to lose her vote in Congress.
Trump said on Truth Social that he asked Stefanik, “as one of my biggest Allies, to remain in Congress” to help pass his agenda, rather than leaving the House, which would trigger a special election in her Republican-leaning upstate New York district. “With a very tight Majority, I don’t want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat,” he said.
Stefanik gave up her role in GOP House leadership in preparation to take the U.N. role. She has been one of Trump’s closest allies and top cheerleaders in Congress, and her withdrawal on Thursday shocked Washington. Her confirmation vote—and her planned resignation from the House—had been held up as Republicans looked to fill other vacancies in their ranks first.
A senior White House official said Stefanik’s seat would have been vacant for most of the year before a special election, and there was a sense of urgency in getting Trump’s agenda enacted. The official said expected debt-ceiling and budget votes were going to be tough already because of slim margins in the House, and Republicans couldn’t afford to make things harder on themselves.
There has also been growing concern among Republicans that special elections to fill vacant GOP seats in solidly red areas could be looking more competitive, adding to the party’s uncertainty.
The developments come as the party is moving to pull together a multitrillion-dollar package focused on cutting taxes, trimming spending and boosting border enforcement. Republicans currently have a 218 to 213 majority in the chamber, meaning they can afford to lose no more than two votes on any measure where all Democrats are opposed.
GOP leaders had gently ribbed Trump earlier this year for picking House lawmakers for his cabinet, further thinning what the election set as a 220-215 advantage, one of the narrowest in the country’s history. Trump chose then-Rep. Mike Waltz (R., Fla.) for national security adviser, and he selected then-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) for attorney general. Gaetz later withdrew because of GOP opposition. Stefanik would have been the third vacancy created by Trump.
Republicans have been worried about their majority all year. It widened temporarily in the past month after the deaths of Democratic Reps. Sylvester Turner of Texas and Raul Grijalva of Arizona. While Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) have worked successfully to keep GOP lawmakers largely in line on crucial votes, any handful of dissidents could derail the president’s agenda.
Johnson called Stefanik’s move a “selfless decision” and said he would invite her back into party leadership, but he didn’t elaborate. The House GOP conference elected Rep. Lisa McClain (R., Mich.) to succeed Stefanik as the head of GOP messaging. McClain won’t be resigning from her role as conference chair, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“I have been proud to be a team player. The president knows that,” Stefanik said Thursday night on Fox News. She said she had spoken to Trump several times on Thursday. She said the decision came down to uncertainty about when New York’s Democratic governor would schedule a vote to succeed her, while also nodding to the pending special elections and the tight House margins.
Special elections next week in Florida have been expected to add two more GOP lawmakers to the Republican conference. But one race—for the Waltz seat, which Waltz won by 30 points in 2024—has been looking tighter than expected, fueling GOP concern. There had also been uncertainty about which Republican would emerge as the pick for Stefanik’s seat, which she won by more than 20 points in the most recent election, adding to GOP heartburn.
Trump plans to hold a tele-town hall on Thursday night to support the Republican candidate in the tight Florida race, Randy Fine. Party operatives have criticized Fine for what they saw as lackluster fundraising and get-out-the-vote efforts.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) said Republicans were panicking about the Florida elections and the Stefanik seat.
“The Republican agenda is extremely unpopular, they are crashing the economy in real time and House Republicans are running scared,” he said.
A Harvard graduate, Stefanik was elected in 2014 as Congress’s youngest woman at the time. She moved away from moderate policy positions to embrace Trump’s, following the will of voters in her district, she has said. She began growing close with Trump after she emerged as a group of House GOP defenders during the first House impeachment inquiry. In 2022, she was the first member of Congress to endorse him in the 2024 presidential race.
Stefanik garnered national attention in recent years over her aggressive questioning of Ivy League college presidents, publicly pressuring them to quit over their handling of pro-Palestinian protests. Last year, she was seen as a possible contender to be Trump’s running mate. And her appointment to the U.N. post was seen as a reward for her steadfast loyalty.
The decision to withdraw the nomination came as administration officials were making plans for Stefanik to step into her new role as ambassador. The U.S. mission to the U.N. on Wednesday tasked officials with preparing Stefanik for an April trip to the Middle East, according to a U.S. official. On her personal Instagram account, Stefanik in recent days posted nostalgic photos from her earlier years in Congress.
Write to Olivia Beavers at Olivia.Beavers@wsj.com, Meridith McGraw at Meridith.McGraw@WSJ.com and Katy Stech Ferek at katy.stech@wsj.com
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Appeared in the January 1, 1, print edition as 'Trump Pulls Nominee To Protect House Edge'.
14. Russia may be ‘dragging feet’ on achieving peace in Ukraine, Trump says
I think the President is right.
We must understand why Putin is dragging his feet.
Russia may be ‘dragging feet’ on achieving peace in Ukraine, Trump says | CNN
CNN · by Angus Watson, Jessie Yeung, Ivana Kottasová, Anna Chernova · March 26, 2025
US President Donald Trump at the White House on March 21, 2025.
Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg/Getty Images
CNN —
US President Donald Trump said he believes Russia wants to end its war with Ukraine, but suggested Moscow could be “dragging their feet” after the Kremlin disputed accounts of agreements made with the US.
“I think that Russia wants to see an end to it, but it could be they’re dragging their feet. I’ve done it over the years,” the president told the right-wing cable channel Newsmax in an interview that aired Tuesday night.
“I think Russia would like to see it end and I think (Ukraine’s President Volodymyr) Zelensky would like to see it end, at this point,” Trump said.
His comments came only hours after Russia said it would only implement a US-brokered deal to stop using force in the Black Sea once some of the sanctions imposed on its banks and exports over its invasion of Ukraine are lifted.
Following days of separate negotiations with Ukrainian and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia, the White House said on Tuesday that the two sides had agreed “to ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gestures as he speaks to journalists during his press conference in Kyiv on March 25, 2025, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine will do its "job" and hold up its end of agreements reached with the United States, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on March 25, 2025, as Washington announced that both Kyiv and Moscow had pledged to avoid Black Sea strikes. (Photo by Genya SAVILOV / AFP) (Photo by GENYA SAVILOV/AFP via Getty Images)
Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images
Related article The US may have a deal with Russia and Ukraine. But with the Kremlin, there’s always a rub
But while Zelensky confirmed in a news conference that Ukraine had agreed to stop using military force in the Black Sea, the Kremlin released its own statement on the talks, which included far-reaching conditions for signing up to the partial truce.
Those included lifting sanctions on its agricultural bank and other financial institutions and companies involved in exporting food and their re-connection to the SWIFT international payments system.
The US statements made no mention of the sanctions being lifted as a precondition to the ceasefire.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday afternoon, Trump said his administration was looking at Russia’s conditions. “We’re thinking about all of them right now. There are five or six conditions. We are looking at all of them,” he said.
On Wednesday, Zelensky said sanctions against Russia needed to remain as it continues to occupy Ukrainian territory and that he expects the US to secure the Black Sea agreement without conditions.
“We expect the American side to secure the unconditionality of silence in the sea,” the Ukrainian president said alongside his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, in Paris on Wednesday evening.
His remarks came ahead of Thursday’s meeting of the “Coalition of the Willing” – a group of Western nations that have pledged to help defend Ukraine against Russia.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN Wednesday that Moscow does not believe Zelensky fully grasps the changed nature of US-Russia relations.
“I don’t think so,” Peskov said in a text message when asked about the Ukrainian leader’s comments that Moscow was trying to write additional conditions into the agreement.
Peskov also criticized Zelensky, saying he had “no doubt he remembers the previous Black Sea deal with all the details! … The one that was not implemented in the part of Russia.”
Peskov was referring to the Black Sea grain initiative, which was in place earlier in the war, was signed in July 2022 and renewed three times before Russia allowed it to lapse in July 2023, saying that its demands had not been met including the lifting of sanctions.
Meanwhile, Macron said Russia had shown a “desire for war” by putting conditions on the US-brokered deal. The French president added that Russia had offered “no solid answer” to the US-proposed 30-day ceasefire.
“Russia will not have a say on the support that we give and will give to Ukraine, nor will they dictate the conditions on this durable peace because it’s about the sovereignty of Ukraine and the security of all Europeans,” he added.
Macron continued, “I will not let history be rewritten by the lies of certain people, there is only one aggressor and there’s only one who resists. Russia is the aggressor, and you (Zelensky) are resisting.”
Overnight drone attack
The White House said that Russia and Ukraine also agreed to implement a previously announced pause on attacks against energy infrastructure.
But details of that agreement have also remained opaque. The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday said that Russia stopped targeting energy infrastructure from March 18, when Trump and Putin held a phone call in which they discussed the proposal.
However, Ukraine has accused Moscow of continuing to attack its infrastructure in the past week, with an aide to Zelensky saying there had been at least eight strikes.
At the same time, Russia accused Kyiv of attacking its own facilities, including an oil pumping station in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar.
Further indications that a meaningful truce was long way off came overnight when Russia launched over 100 drones towards Ukraine, after three Ukrainian civilians were killed on Tuesday, including a three-year old girl and her mother, Kyiv said.
Zelensky said the attacks, which targeted multiple regions of Ukraine showed Russia was not interested in a ceasefire.
“Launching such large-scale attacks after ceasefire negotiations is a clear signal to the whole world that Moscow is not going to pursue real peace,” the Ukrainian leader said on X on Wednesday morning.
Black Sea ceasefire could impact Ukraine
Ukrainian and US officials have said the deal to halt strikes in the Black Sea would be a potentially significant step forward, despite it falling short of the 30-day full ceasefire initially proposed by the White House.
But some analysts have pointed out that a ceasefire in the Black Sea and a pause on strikes against energy infrastructure could be disadvantageous to Ukraine.
Some of Ukraine’s biggest military wins have taken place in the Black Sea – it repeatedly successfully struck the Russian fleet and the Kerch Bridge that links Russia with Crimea.
The sinking of the Moskva, one of the Russian Navy’s most important warships, gave a massive boost to Ukraine’s morale and remains among the most significant moments of the war – even though the two sides disagree on why it happened, with Ukraine saying it went down after being hit by a missile and Russia claiming it sunk because of a fire and a subsequent ammunition explosion.
Similarly, Ukraine’s ability to strike against oil depots and other energy facilities deep inside Russian territory have caused major headaches for Moscow, which has long relied on energy exports revenues to fund its war effort.
“The United States should amplify and accelerate not constrain these effective asymmetric warfare approaches (by Ukraine) that also impact Russia’s battlefield operations and force Putin to make hard choices about resource allocation,” analysts at the Institute for the Study of War said in their daily note on Wednesday.
CNN’s Svitlana Vlasova, Daria Tarasova-Markina, Hira Humayun, Joseph Ataman and Lauren Said-Moorhouse, Frederik Pleitgen contributed reporting.
CNN · by Angus Watson, Jessie Yeung, Ivana Kottasová, Anna Chernova · March 26, 2025
15. The Real Meaning Behind China’s Live-Fire Drills Near Australia and New Zealand
Excerpts:
Initial press reporting and commentary regarding the southern far seas deployment argued that the PLA – or more specifically, the Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party – was using it to send a “message” to the Australian population about the Australian Defense Force and other militaries conducting “freedom of navigation” flights and ship transits close to the Chinese mainland. Providing an example to audiences in Asia of PLAN power-projection capability was no doubt one benefit of the deployment. However, the southern deployment should be seen in the context of incremental and important PLAN development in its ability to conduct offensive operations outside the second island chain.
PLA planners know the Pentagon would use the Australian mainland as a secure rear area for logistics support to forward-deployed INDOPACOM forces during a contingency or conflict. They also understand the Australian mainland will serve as a springboard for Pacific Air Forces to create a second maritime front and flow significant strike assets from the south during a Taiwan Strait confrontation, as well as closing the links in the island chain at the Malacca, Sunda, and Lombok Straits.
For Asian military planners, the recent southern far seas deployment suggests the PLAN intends to gain the initiative in any future conflict by taking control of key maritime terrain and conducting deep-strike mobile maritime operations outside the second island chain.
The Real Meaning Behind China’s Live-Fire Drills Near Australia and New Zealand
thediplomat.com
The evolution of PLA Navy far seas training suggests it is getting closer to operationalizing theater-level concepts designed to defeat the U.S. Navy.
By Dougal Robertson
March 26, 2025
The People’s Liberation Army Navy Jiangkai-class frigate Hengyang, part of a three-vessel task force reported to be operating to the northeast of Australia in mid-February 2025.
Credit: Australian Defence Force
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The recent circumnavigation of Australia by People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) warships suggests the PLAN is getting closer to operationalizing theater-level concepts such as blocking key archipelagic maritime chokepoints and disrupting U.S. and allied force flow and sustainment in the South Pacific, part of the PLAN desire to defeat the U.S. Navy in a potential future “high end naval war.”
In a sign of increasing confidence in the PLAN’s ability to operate beyond the second island chain, a PLAN Task Group completed a circumnavigation of Australia during February and March. The deployment included a live-fire exercise in the Tasman Sea roughly halfway between Australia and New Zealand. The activity was noteworthy not just for the circumnavigation of Australia (a first for the PLAN) but also for the inclusion of the Type-055 cruiser in a far seas deployment and for the concurrent maritime training activity in the East and South China Seas.
The PLAN established its “Zhanlan” (湛蓝, meaning “deep blue”) far seas training series of exercises in 2016 as an annual event. As CASI analyst Roderick Lee noted in 2020, while live-fire and combat training often creates the most attention during these types of PLA training activities, the critical outcome from Zhanlan is the training focus on combat support.
There was no public reporting of the PLA’s annual Zhanlan series of far seas training exercises after 2021. However, far seas training events over the Spring Festival (Lunar New Year) period have continued every year since then with a similar task group composition, deployment distance, and stated training emphasis.
It is probable the southern PLAN deployment close to Australia and New Zealand was at least part of this year’s iteration of Zhanlan.
If that is the case, the southern far seas deployment – and similar concurrent activities in the South China Sea and Yellow Sea – reflects the evolution of PLAN training exercises. This event should therefore not be considered unique or a specific “provocation,” but rather a marker on the PLAN’s trajectory toward being able to challenge the U.S. Navy’s dominance in the Pacific. It is likely that similar deployments and exercise patterns will become an annual occurrence in the southern Pacific. Regional governments should prepare for this new reality.
Overview of Training Activity
The high intensity of PLAN South China Sea training and deployments suggests the main indicator of departure from “baseline” training is activity outside the second island chain.
As in previous years, there was no official announcement of a specific training serial or focus period related to Zhanlan or other far seas exercises. The PLAN appears to combine multiple training serials into a single at-sea deployment; public statements reveal that crew can spend up to 200 days at sea when aboard major fleet units. These serials can include a range of activities such as high-intensity combat simulation, replenishment at sea practice and group “formation training.”
The southern far seas exercise appears to have started around February 3. On February 13, three PLAN vessels joined up in the Coral Sea to Australia’s northeast after passing through the Sulu Sea. The task group transited Australia’s east coast, close to Australia’s largest city, Sydney, on February 19 before conducting “live fire drills” in the Tasman Sea on February 21 and 22.
Referred to as “Task Group 107” by the Australian Department of Defense, the deployment consisted of the Renhai-class (Type 055A) cruiser Zunyi (DDG-107); the Jiangkai II-class (Type 054A) guided missile frigate Hengyang (FFG-568); and the Fuchi-class support ship Weishan Hu (AOR-887).
The live-fire activity appears to have been against simulated air and surface targets and occurred roughly halfway between Australia and New Zealand. While the live fire took place in international waters, it aroused significant interest and controversy, as the PLAN did not establish a closure area for air traffic and did not provide notification of an intent to conduct live-fire drills.
Limited public statements on the exercise claimed the training focus was on combat coordination and readiness. The deployment occurred at the same time as other Type 055 training in the Yellow Sea and South China Sea. The exercise appears to have ended around March 7, with DDG-107 and AOR-887 together transiting the Sunda Strait on March 9.
Similarities With Previous PLAN Far Seas Training
Despite the lack of public statements from the PLAN on the purpose and timing of the deployment, there are parallels with previous Zhanlan activities. This suggests that the deployment was planned as part of PLAN ongoing operational preparedness and not as a politically significant “message” to the Australian government.
First, the timing of the exercise aligns with previous Zhanlan/far seas training activities running over the Spring Festival period in mid-February. Second, the exercise ran for 35 days (based on the time the three ships remained in formation) and covered approximately 9,500 nm, both in line with observed Zhanlan exercises between 2016 and 2021. Third, the live-fire area in the Tasman Sea is almost the exact same distance from Southern Theater Command Headquarters in Guangzhou as the position west of Oahu where Hawai‘i comes within the range of the PLAN’s anti-ship and anti-air missiles (approximately 300 nm). This is similar to previous Zhanlan activities that occurred at equidistant ranges to Hawai‘i.
There was no reference to “joint training” this year. Given the sensitivity of deploying vessels so close to Australia – a major U.S. ally – it can be assumed that significant national-level support from the PLA Strategic Support Force (PLA SSF) was provided at Theater Command level. It is possible the deployment also exercised PLA theater-level assets and coordination at Southern Theater Command headquarters in Guangzhou.
Previous iterations of Zhanlan included a “high value unit” such as an amphibious transport dock and an intelligence collection vessel in the task group. These vessels were likely not included this year either to reduce the risk and complexity of the deployment, or to test the capacity of the Type 055 to receive and transmit intelligence and targeting information back to Southern Theater Command HQ.
One of the PLAN’s stated aims for the Type 055 is for the vessel to act as a command hub, either directly supporting carrier operations or as a separate task group coordinating strike operations. An exercise outcome may have been to test a task group’s offensive capabilities without dedicated intelligence collection vessels, including determining the limits of space-based intelligence support. This is a more realistic wartime deployment for an offensive strike task force, as an intelligence collection vessel would not be sent into a high-risk combat zone.
Concurrency
The noteworthy trend observed in this year’s deployment was the conduct of concurrent training operations. As noted above, at the same time the Type 055 Zunyi was sailing along Australia’s east coast there were separate training activities in the South China Sea (Southern Theater Command) and Yellow Sea (Northern Theater Command), both centered on the Type 055.
The South China Sea training focused on combat support; the PLAN would expect to hold the South China Sea as a defensive block for the PLA’s southern flank during a Taiwan Strait contingency. The Yellow Sea activity included live-fire activity and “nuclear defense,” which may be code for ballistic missile defense. The Type 055 has been identified as a platform for ballistic missile mid-course intercept capabilities.
While concurrent naval exercises were noted in late 2020, this year is the first time three concurrent activities centered on the Type 055 occurred and is the first time a distant seas operation occurred as part of a concurrent activity.
Rehearsals for Future Carrier Deployment?
The PLAN demonstrated its acceptance of true “blue water operations” (outside safe aircraft divert range) in late 2022 when the Type 002 carrier Liaoning conducted training in the Philippine Sea. The PLAN Type 003 carrier Fujian recently completed sea trials and the Type 055 is designed and built to escort and protect PLAN carriers. Was this southern task force preparing Southern Theater Command for carrier deployments outside the second island chain?
This seems highly unlikely given the complexity and risk of long-range carrier operations. While the PLAN has grown extremely quickly and is showing increasing competence in integrated strike operations, the type of long-range carrier operations conducted by the U.S. Navy are still potentially up to a decade away. The PLAN is yet to deploy carrier-borne surveillance aircraft, launch (and recover) aircraft carrying air-to-surface weapons, and generate a deck cycle of more than 10 aircraft. While carrier deployments outside the second island chain are to be expected by the 2030s, in the short term PLAN aircraft carriers should be considered supporting assets for ship-based offensive strike within the first island chain.
With the possibility of a “second batch” of Type 055 (potentially the Type 055B) already under construction, future PLAN strike task forces outside the second island chain will likely be based on teamed carrier group-destroyer strike and air defense ships, with multiple frigates conducting anti-surface warfare and anti-ship missile defense for the combat support ship. This aligns with publicly available statements on PLA operational design such as sea mobile operations.
The Concept of “Maritime Mobile Operations”
The PLA National Defense University’s 2020 edition of Science of Military Strategy expanded previous concepts of PLAN deep operations and maneuver operations to the requirement for “maritime mobile operations,” with the purpose to “seize control of important sea areas or control of important strait passages, improve the situation of naval battlefields, or create favorable conditions for other strategic operations.”
Describing the features of these operations, the publication noted that “the dependence on strategic support is large”; that “the relatively short time of engagement has high requirements for command and decision-making”; and that these operations are “far away from the homeland and… difficult to support.”
A recent RAND study observed that while the PLAN has made impressive progress at the tactical level in adapting Communist Party strategy to local circumstances, overall the PLAN struggles to operate with the level of operational flexibility that a theater-level conflict would require, particularly if constant and reliable communication with decision-makers on mainland China is disrupted or denied.
Based on the limited public information available and making assumptions based on previous observations of Zhanlan exercises, the southern far seas deployment conducted training in four of seven “integrating factors” noted by the RAND study as essential for sea control and deep strike: advanced fleet exercises (concurrency), advanced damage control and anti-air warfare, underway replenishment, and advanced intelligence. This suggests that with the technology mostly in place, the PLAN continues to develop its integrative capacity from “naval strike” to “limited sea control and deep strike” towards the final goal of sea control.
Conclusion
Initial press reporting and commentary regarding the southern far seas deployment argued that the PLA – or more specifically, the Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party – was using it to send a “message” to the Australian population about the Australian Defense Force and other militaries conducting “freedom of navigation” flights and ship transits close to the Chinese mainland. Providing an example to audiences in Asia of PLAN power-projection capability was no doubt one benefit of the deployment. However, the southern deployment should be seen in the context of incremental and important PLAN development in its ability to conduct offensive operations outside the second island chain.
PLA planners know the Pentagon would use the Australian mainland as a secure rear area for logistics support to forward-deployed INDOPACOM forces during a contingency or conflict. They also understand the Australian mainland will serve as a springboard for Pacific Air Forces to create a second maritime front and flow significant strike assets from the south during a Taiwan Strait confrontation, as well as closing the links in the island chain at the Malacca, Sunda, and Lombok Straits.
For Asian military planners, the recent southern far seas deployment suggests the PLAN intends to gain the initiative in any future conflict by taking control of key maritime terrain and conducting deep-strike mobile maritime operations outside the second island chain.
Authors
Guest Author
Dougal Robertson
Dougal Robertson is head of Advanced Research at Felix Advisory, an independent Australian air combat and missile defense consulting firm. Prior to working as a consultant he served with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) as an intelligence analyst at squadron and wing level and graduated from the RAAF Air Warfare Instructor Course. He earned Master of Arts degrees from Macquarie University (Sydney) and the University of New South Wales. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect those of the Australian Department of Defence or any other Commonwealth institution.
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thediplomat.com
16. China Moves to Exploit Transatlantic Turmoil
Obviously, China would be foolish not to exploit the turmoil (unless it wants to follow Bonaparte and never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake).
China Moves to Exploit Transatlantic Turmoil
Where some see turmoil, others see opportunity. Beijing’s gaze is firmly on the European continent as old Atlantic allies fall out.
cepa.org · by Chels Michta · March 27, 2025
At the Munich Security Conference in February, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi described his country as a “steadfast constructive force in a changing world.” In other words, the US may change from one election cycle to the next, but China will not.
Following on the heels of speeches by German President Frank Steinmeier, and the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, Wang Yi’s message that “China has always seen in Europe an important pole in the multipolar world” as well as his insistence that “the two sides are partners, not rivals” slotted neatly into the larger theme of the “multi-polarization of the world” that was the banner headline for this year’s top-level political gathering at the Bayerischer Hof.
The message was straightforward: In a transatlantic relationship marked by growing tensions between Washington and key European capitals, especially Berlin, China stood ready to assume the role of reliable partner as a country committed to creating an “equal and orderly multipolar world” (translation — a world “freed” of a preeminent US).
Beijing has reason to be pleased with the state of its relations with key European countries. For nearly a decade China was Germany’s number one trading partner, and while it slipped in 2024 on account of contentious automobile exports, the overall economic relationship between the two countries continues to loom large.
In fact, Berlin voted against EU tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles even though they flouted the World Trade Organization’s rules to offset China’s automotive subsidies. The reason was straightforward: Germany wants to protect its vehicle exports to the People’s Republic as vital to the country’s economic recovery. Berlin’s decision reflected the fact that certain sectors of its export-driven economy have become highly reliant on the Chinese market, and that what was once touted as a path to neoliberal “complex interdependence” has morphed into the straightforward dependence of Germany on China.
Much like Germany, albeit not to the same extent, France remains deeply dependent on its ties to the Chinese economy. In 2024 China’s surplus in its trade with the EU reached €1 trillion ($1.1 trillion), raising alarms in Paris and Brussels.
The situation is not much better across the European Union (EU), with the picture even more challenging when it comes to R&D and research in AI and quantum computing, areas where the Europeans continue to lag. In cutting-edge industrial research, Europe is playing catch-up with China and the United States, with no clear path forward.
Europe’s economic dependence must be weighed against what until recently appeared to be the strong and growing resistance to Chinese influence articulated at the 75th NATO anniversary summit in Washington, particularly when it comes to “de-risking” from Beijing. But with growing tensions across the Atlantic, China is now well-positioned to exploit its strong economic position as Europe’s increasingly indispensable economic partner.
China calculates that it has significant leverage. No other power or trading bloc can match its sheer heft. And given the increasingly difficult transatlantic relationship and the incoming chancellor’s publicly stated position that Germany — and Europe overall — must become more self-reliant and less dependent on the United States for security, Beijing will likely position itself as a “disinterested party.”
It will make the case that it is geographically removed from the continent yet invested in its welfare and intent on shaping Europe’s transition to a world in which the American global commitment to European defense and free trade are no longer a given. This will be a powerful position, especially if the United States ends up in a trade war with the EU, imposing tariffs on its exports to the US as the Trump administration recently threatened.
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What sort of reception does this get in Europe? Europeans appear divided. Friedrich Merz, the incoming German Chancellor, has spoken of the need for “independence from America,” while Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer has instead convened a summit to chart a course on the future of Europe’s assistance for Ukraine while refusing to match US tariffs on UK steel.
If China seeks to offer hard security — with Beijing’s potential peace-keeping role in post-war Ukraine a real possibility — this would carry with it the seeds of a fundamental remaking of Europe’s security architecture, with long-term implications for the Atlantic theater and the peace and stability of Eurasia.
In such a scenario, China would become a broker in the conflict as well as a de-facto “peacemaker,” potentially serving as the power ultimately underwriting the freezing of — and possibly even ending — the Russia-Ukraine war.
The war in Ukraine has already seen several “firsts” when it comes to China and its allies playing an outsize role in a conflict in the European theater, including Chinese supplies to Russia and North Korean personnel deployed in combat on Moscow’s side. These are in and of themselves dramatic indicators of the extent to which traditional assumptions about what is conceivable when it comes to Europe’s security have been turned on their head.
Should China become a behind-the-scenes broker of peace in Ukraine and a guarantor of Europe’s stability and security — even if only partly — this would amount to a dramatic change in Europe’s security and defense landscape.
We are at a potentially historic moment, both when it comes to the future of Europe and the transatlantic alliance as well as the role that a great Asian power may play on the continent.
Nothing is preordained, and relations between Washington and its European allies could stabilize in the coming months. Perhaps the current storm will clear, and the relationship will remain within its traditional parameters.
Even then, however, China’s growing economic influence in Europe has now been augmented by a heretofore absent hard security enabler, i.e., the role Beijing can play as a mediator to bring an end to the most brutal, full-scale war on the continent since 1945.
Should China successfully leverage this opportunity, it will become a “power in Europe,” regardless of its geographic and cultural distance.
This would truly be a revolution in European security affairs, with the consequences reverberating both across the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Chels Michta is a Non-resident Fellow with the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). Chels is a former CEPA Title VIII Fellow and is currently a military intelligence officer serving in the US Army.
The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Army, the US Department of Defense, or the US government.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.
By CEPA International Leadership Council
CEPA’s International Leadership Council outlines key ideas for US and European policymakers to consider as new leadership starts to shape policy for Ukraine and beyond.
February 10, 2025
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CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America.
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cepa.org · by Chels Michta · March 27, 2025
17. SOCOM awards Anduril $86M contract for autonomy software integration
SOCOM awards Anduril $86M contract for autonomy software integration
U.S. Special Operations Command is keen on collaborative autonomy capabilities to aid commandos.
defensescoop.com · by Jon Harper · March 26, 2025
U.S. Special Operations Command has tapped Anduril to help the organization develop and deploy autonomy software that can coordinate the operations of a variety of drones and other robotic platforms on the battlefield, the company is set to announce Wednesday.
Under the three-year, $86 million deal, the contractor will serve as SOCOM’s “Mission Autonomy Systems Integration Partner,” according to a press release.
So-called “collaborative autonomy” capabilities are on the command’s technology wish list.
The organization’s new strategy document, dubbed “SOF Renaissance,” notes that special ops forces must be early adopters at the Defense Department of innovations in areas such as AI, autonomous systems and cyber to enhance irregular warfare capabilities in complex operating environments.
“AI and uncrewed systems are changing warfare through increased automation and autonomy. This leads to more precise targeting and reduced risk to human personnel. The distinction between optimizing and generative AI is crucial and will be a game changer. Swarms of low-cost drones and remote explosive devices, using AI and autonomy, blur traditional human-machine boundaries on the battlefield. SOF must also use these systems to improve decisionmaking and situational awareness,” officials wrote in the document.
The command wants a variety of uncrewed systems for the air, land and sea domains. Officials are even eyeing robotic platforms that can operate in multiple warfighting domains, such as “multi-domain” micro drones and “Drone in a Box” technologies.
“To achieve the benefits of affordable enterprise capability, operators must be able to task teams of diverse, multi-domain autonomous systems to work together and execute a given mission. This requires mission autonomy software capable of integrating and coordinating multiple vehicles’ control systems, sensors, weapons, and other payloads to synchronize effects on the battlefield,” Anduril stated in a press release announcing the new contract award.
The company is touting its AI-enabled Lattice platform as an enabler of the autonomy software infrastructure that will give commandos the tools to interact and wage war with “teams of diverse autonomous systems” and deliver “coordinated mass effects.”
“As the Mission Autonomy Systems Integration Partner (SIP), Anduril will support USSOCOM in developing their infrastructure, enabling them to integrate, test, validate, and deploy government-owned and commercial mission autonomy software and enabling technology across their robotic platforms,” per the release.
The company plans to “prove out” software in the coming months via a series of demonstrations and integration events ahead of operational fielding.
This isn’t the first time that Anduril has been tapped by the Defense Department to provide these types of capabilities.
Last year, the company was one of three firms selected by the Defense innovation Unit to provide tools to facilitate “the automated coordination of swarms of hundreds or thousands of uncrewed assets across multiple domains in order to improve their lethality and efficiency.”
Anduril is offering its Lattice tech for that effort, which is supporting the Pentagon’s Replicator autonomous systems initiative.
“While these [unmanned] systems are valuable as single agents or swarms of like systems, they are most resilient and effective when they operate in combined teams that can collaborate with other types of systems across domains. Resilient C2 and collaborative autonomy vendors will enhance the effectiveness of these systems by providing user interfaces, collaborative autonomy architectures and software, and network orchestration,” DIU officials wrote in a release when the awards for the Autonomous Collaborative Teaming program were announced last year.
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_
defensescoop.com · by Jon Harper · March 26, 2025
18. Experts warn Pentagon to embrace software-defined warfare to counter China’s military advantage
Experts warn Pentagon to embrace software-defined warfare to counter China’s military advantage - Breaking Defense
“China's outproducing us in ships, munitions and other systems,” Peter Modigliani, one of the authors of the report said. “So that's where software is going to be the differentiator.
breakingdefense.com · by Carley Welch · March 27, 2025
Keyboard with China flag key (Getty images)
WASHINGTON — If the US wants to win a war against its adversaries, namely China, the Pentagon must get serious about implementing software-defined warfare, experts from the Atlantic Council said Wednesday.
The Atlantic Council’s new report “Commission on Software-defined Warfare” outlines recommendations for developing a military that pivots from the sole use of legacy hardware and processes to software-defined warfare — a software-centric, hardware-enabled approach that focuses on the continuous integration of cutting-edge, interoperable tech.
When asked what would happen if the Pentagon did not implement software-defined warfare sooner rather than later, Commission Director of the report Stephen Rodriguez told reporters at a Defense Writers Group event, “we lose to China.” Therefore, he said, the recommendations focus on the “near term” before 2027, when several defense leaders theorize that China will invade Taiwan.
“China’s outproducing us in ships, munitions and other systems,” Peter Modigliani, one of the authors of the report and a senior advisor at Govini, added. “So that’s where software is going to be the differentiator. Harnessing America’s commercial advantage in a military standpoint, to then have that so we can rapidly upgrade legacy systems, design new weapon systems, and then have the rapid decision support from C2 [command and control] to logistics, and have that rapid iterative cycle. That’s going to be an advantage.”
Related: To be ready for China in 2027, think new software, not ships: Navy tech officer
Out of the nine recommendations laid out in the report, the authors and other leaders from the Atlantic Council focused on three main ones when talking to reporters: mandating an enterprise data repository and investing in AI enablers; modernizing test and evaluation infrastructure; and enforcing commercial as the “default approach” for software.
Regarding the mandated enterprise data repository, Whitney McNamara, an author of the report said the platform shouldn’t be “prescriptive,” but it could possibly be related to the already-existing DoD-wide data repository Advana. She said the focus is on collecting as much data as possible and making it “discoverable” across the DoD, something she said is tricky at the moment because of the amount of siloed data. If the DoD can better share this data across the joint force, this will be a critical advantage when facing China, she noted.
“We arguably have better and more diverse and more mission relevant data than China does because [of] how expansive our operations are, because of our testing and training, our diversity of platforms, our global reach,” McNamara said. “So if we were able to extract that and actually make it discoverable and leverageable across the department, it means that alone could be a meaningful advantage. It’s not sexy or exciting, data collection, but it really is just like a muscle that we need to continue to flex.”
In terms of modernizing the infrastructure behind software testing and evaluation, the DoD needs to fix the detachment between developers, testers and operators. Instead of these three processes being separate from each other, the people involved at each stage need to better communicate to increase awareness of how a system works, McNamara said.
Also part of the infrastructure recommendation is to get the technology into the hands of the operators at a faster rate, Christine Fox, a commission co-chair at the Atlantic Council and former acting Deputy Defense Secretary said. Though she acknowledged this idea has been at the heart of innovation discussions within the Pentagon for years, the problem isn’t yet fixed.
“Don’t get me wrong, you don’t want to just flood the field with stuff that’s not been checked out,” she said. “But as soon as you can, you put the sandbox in the field, and then you get the T&E [testing and evaluation] there, and then it becomes clear which is going to be helpful and relevant.”
When it comes to enforcing commercial as the “default approach” for software, the report states that “while a preference for commercial products and services is well established in the Title X statute, the DoD continues to develop new software when there are clear commercial alternatives,” adding that “this often results in higher costs, longer schedules, and increased risks.”
“Commercial software is often updated continuously across a broad customer base, of which the DoD could take advantage. Instead, updating software to address threats and bugs or add functionality takes considerable time and funding.”
The DoD needs to buy more software from commercial providers, Modigliani said, but it also needs to include vendors at each step of the process, by creating “checkpoints” in the development process.
He explained that the DoD needs to be asking questions like “did you engage industry?” Adding, “prove to me that you didn’t just do market research and that you have ongoing relationships.”
Though the report has been in the works for several months, it comes at a convenient time, the authors said. Earlier this month Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth released a memo that called for speeding up software acquisition by directing that the department adopt the Software Acquisition Pathway (SWP) as the preferred method for software development. Hegseth’s memo also directly mentioned software-defined warfare, stating in the first line that the Pentagon “has been slow to recognize that software-defined warfare is not a future construct, but the reality we find ourselves operating in today.”
The memo directs the use of Commercial Solutions Openings and Other Transactions as the “default solicitation” and award avenue for acquiring capabilities.
Commercial Solutions Openings is a solicitation process developed by the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) that allows the DoD to work with nontraditional defense companies in a more flexible, faster, collaborative manner. Any contracts awarded as a result of this process are handed out as Other Transaction Agreements.
19. Drones, Mines and Snipers: Ukraine’s Front Line Is a World Away from Peace Talks
Drones, Mines and Snipers: Ukraine’s Front Line Is a World Away from Peace Talks
For soldiers and commanders on the edge of battle, any talk about a lasting cease-fire still feels like a dangerous
fantasy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/world/europe/ukraine-front-line-peace-talks.html?utm_campaign=dfn-ebb&utm
By Marc Santora and Liubov SholudkoPhotographs by Nicole Tung
Marc Santora, Liubov Sholudko and Nicole Tung embedded with Ukrainian forces along the front in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Hunted by drones, stalked by snipers and surrounded by minefields, soldiers fighting in Ukraine can’t risk even a small lapse in concentration.
That is why Col. Dmytro Palisa, commander of Ukraine’s 33rd Mechanized Brigade, instructs his soldiers to ignore speculation about a possible cease-fire.
“They start relaxing, they start overthinking, putting on rose-colored glasses, thinking that tomorrow will be easier. No,” he said in an interview at a command post on the eastern front. “We shoot until we are given the order to stop.”
As diplomats and European leaders thousands of miles away talk about a possible truce and how to safeguard it, Russia and Ukraine are engaged in bloody battles as intense as any of the war. The furious fighting, tearing across the Ukrainian front, is, in part, a late play for land and leverage in the talks, which the Trump administration says are making progress.
But it is also evidence of deep skepticism about the negotiations: Even if incremental steps such as a pause in violence on the Black Sea manage to take hold — few Ukrainian soldiers or civilians believe it would lead to a lasting peace. Both sides are still battling to establish better positions for future fighting.
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Firing toward Russian targets on Saturday. As diplomats thousands of miles away talk about a possible truce, Russia and Ukraine are engaged in bloody battles as intense as any of the war.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine says he believes Russia intends to launch new offensive operations “to put maximum pressure on Ukraine and then issue ultimatums from a position of strength,” as he put it last week.
Kyiv wants to deny Moscow that advantage.
Ukrainian forces remain outnumbered and outgunned — much as they have been since Russia launched its full-scale invasion more than three years ago. But they have largely halted Russian advances so far this year and are now engaged in localized counterattacks to claw back land.
Military analysts tracking battlefield developments confirm that the already glacial pace of Russian advances has largely stalled, even though Moscow’s forces continue to launch assaults along key parts of the front.
‘This war keeps changing the rules’
In interviews from the front line, Ukrainian soldiers and military leaders credited several factors for their resilience: New defensive strategies that more completely integrate drones, rapid adaptation to shifting threats, signs of Russian fatigue and improving morale under a new commander of ground forces, Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi.
“This war keeps changing the rules,” Colonel Palisa said. “That means we constantly have to adapt. Every night, before going to sleep, we already have to plan an alternative strategy for tomorrow.”
The Ukrainian retreat from most of the Kursk region of Russia earlier this month promises to again reshape the contours of the fight. Tens of thousands of soldiers dedicated to Moscow’s seven-month campaign to retake Russian land there can now be redeployed.
Col. Oleh Hrudzevych, 35, deputy commander of Ukraine’s 43rd Mechanized Brigade, said that the Kursk campaign “really pulled a significant part of enemy forces” and firepower from other parts of the front.
For instance, he said, while battles raged in Kursk, there was a 50 percent drop in the number of aerial bombs — one of Russia’s most effective weapons — in the Kupiansk area on the northern edge of the eastern front, where he is deployed.
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A drone team preparing to deploy to their position for the night. Ukrainian forces remain outnumbered and outgunned, but they have largely halted Russian advances so far this year.
Russian forces, he said, have been limited to “mosquito bite” tactics — small assaults that generally end in failure. But he expects that Russia may now redirect some forces to his area.
Capt. Yurii Fedorenko, commander of the 429th Achilles Unmanned Systems Regiment, said that the main task along the northeastern part of the front was keeping Russian troops from expanding their small foothold on the Oskil River.
Unable to erect pontoon bridges because of the threat posed by Ukrainian drones and artillery, the Russian forces have been using small boats to ferry men and equipment across the river under the cover of bad weather.
Captain Fedorenko said that for nearly a month, Russian units had failed to expand their position and continued to pay a heavy price to hold the land they have.
“We conducted a drone flyover of a small tree line about 200 meters long and quite narrow,” he said. “In that one tree line alone, we counted around 190 enemy bodies.”
Drone footage shared by the Ukrainian military with The Times generally supports his account. But it was not possible to independently verify the precise number of Russian soldiers who were killed or injured, or to measure the Ukrainian losses over that same period of time.
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Medics treating an injured Ukrainian soldier at a stabilization point. The Ukrainian retreat from most of the Kursk region of Russia earlier this month promises to again reshape the contours of the fight.
Hundreds of miles away, on the banks of the Dnipro River on the southern front, the Russian forces are searching for weak points in the Ukrainian line.
Two months ago, Russian troops launched a series of cross-river assaults — using some 15 to 20 boats in each attack, soldiers said — but the effort failed.
Now, the Russian military is launching probing attacks, trying to press north along the river toward the city of Zaporizhzhia, which is under Ukrainian control. President Vladimir V. Putin and other Russian officials have said publicly that their goal is to fully control the city and the surrounding area.
But their plans to try to encircle Zaporizhzhia were put on hold when Russian troops were redirected to Kursk, said Sr. Sgt. Andrii Klymenko, who has been fighting in the area for many months. His claim was supported by analysts who track Russian military movements.
“Now they’re simply going to revive it,” he said.
A ‘Mad Max’ aesthetic
Much of the most ferocious fighting continues to be concentrated in the rolling hills and ruined industrial cities of the eastern Donbas region, where after three years Russia has failed to seize control of two coveted targets: the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Colonel Palisa oversees a stretch of Ukrainian defenses south of Pokrovsk, a city in Donetsk, where Russian offensive operations made the bulk of their progress last year.
But Colonel Palisa said that aggressive drone warfare and smart defensive tactics had, for now, blunted Russia’s advantages. “The enemy hasn’t advanced a single meter in this sector for the past three to four weeks,” he noted. “As of now, we can say that we have stabilized the situation.”
At the same time, he added, his forces have had to adjust to a growing threat: the proliferation of Russian drones tethered to ultrathin fiber-optic cables that render them immune to electronic jamming.
“When they didn’t have fiber optics, we could still move around,” he said. After the fiber-optic drones appeared, he said, his brigade lost some 10 vehicles in just seven days.
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A mechanic welding a metal cage used to protect large vehicles during drone attacks. Much of the most ferocious fighting continues to be concentrated in the rolling hills and ruined industrial cities of the eastern Donbas region.
“That made me realize that we had to completely change our approach and abandon vehicles altogether,” he said.
Like their Russian counterparts, Ukrainian soldiers now frequently use quad bikes and buggies or move on foot. They often wear cloaks that mask a soldier’s heat signature from drones outfitted with thermal vision cameras.
Netting has been strung over critical supply roads, a simple but effective defense that Colonel Palisa said had cut successful enemy attacks by more than half. And soldiers now routinely carry shotguns along with their assault rifles.
It makes for a sort of ‘Mad Max’ aesthetic as tanks and armored vehicles mix with civilian cars, motorcycles and quad bikes retrofitted with cages and jammers.
The low-tech adaptations, along with a broad restructuring of the military, are strategies that Kyiv hopes will allow Ukraine to continue fighting — even as its primary military ally, the United States, pulls back support, increasingly repeats the Kremlin’s narrative and pressures Ukraine into cease-fire negotiations.
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A soldier searching the skies for Russian drones.
On the front line, any talk about a lasting peace still feels like a dangerous fantasy.
Soldiers say they believe that the fighting will continue until the price of war becomes too high for the Kremlin to bear and Ukraine is made strong enough to deter any future aggression.
“We are fighting for the right to live,” Captain Fedorenko said. “Americans must understand that this is not about pressuring Ukraine into some abstract peace. Such a peace is not possible — because Ukraine did not start this war.”
Olha Konovalova contributed reporting from eastern and southern Ukraine.
Marc Santora has been reporting from Ukraine since the beginning of the war with Russia. He was previously based in London as an international news editor focused on breaking news events and earlier the bureau chief for East and Central Europe, based in Warsaw. He has also reported extensively from Iraq and Africa. More about Marc Santora
A version of this article appears in print on March 28, 2025, Section A, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Even With Truce Talks, Ukraine’s War Rages On. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
20. Taiwan’s Biggest Limitation in Defense Isn’t Spending, It’s Late Deliveries from U.S. Defense Companies
Excerpt:
Taiwan is more than willing to increase its military spending and allocate more of its budget to arms sales. However, due to its democratic system and societal expectations, Taipei requires U.S. or Pentagon-supervised manufacturers to fulfill their contractual promises. Timely and consistent delivery of military assets will ensure continuous, efficient, and effective purchase of weapons, thus enhancing the island’s defense readiness. Without them, allies’ concerns will turn into frustrations. Amid an increasingly turbulent geopolitical landscape, Taipei will inevitably look to Washington for more arms purchases, but Washington should deliver.
Taiwan’s Biggest Limitation in Defense Isn’t Spending, It’s Late Deliveries from U.S. Defense Companies - War on the Rocks
warontherocks.com · by Kevin Ting-Chen Sun · March 28, 2025
When it comes to Taiwan, comments from the Trump administration about the island nation increasing its defense budget to up to 10 percent of its annual gross domestic product have been making headlines, but this isn’t the real problem.
Taiwan relies almost exclusively on the United States for arms sales due to its diplomatic constraints. Such sales from the United States are mandated by the Taiwan Relations Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1979. This reliance renders Taiwan particularly vulnerable to chronic delays and systemic problems in U.S. arms deliveries. Persistent backlogs continue to hamper Taiwan’s defense planning and budgetary momentum — casting a long shadow over even the strongest political and institutional support for arms investment.
If the U.S. government and the defense industry it oversees can’t fix the systemic problems with late deliveries, Taiwan will be left to defend its shores with outdated equipment, including World War II-era artillery.
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Escalating Costs of U.S. Arms Delays
Washington is concerned about Taiwan’s inadequate defense spending level, underprepared military, and any possible signs that would show the island’s lack of willingness to fight. However, the repeated delays in weapon delivery are precisely why Taiwan’s defense budget is unable to grow significantly. The weapon no-shows are hurting Taiwanese taxpayers’ confidence in such spending, and it is increasingly difficult for lawmakers to justify them in front of their electorate. Therefore, Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan has been more cautious with budget review, freezing — but not cutting — the parts that concern U.S. foreign military sales and direct commercial sales that have experienced delays — to track project execution.
Taipei frequently experiences delivery delays of critical military assets purchased from Washington. The $750 million M109A6 Paladin howitzer deal is one example. In 2020, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense prioritized the construction of long-range precision fire, including the procurement of the M109A6 self-propelled howitzer, as detailed in its official statement. The project, proposed via a classified budget, quickly gained the Legislative Yuan’s approval. Yet, In 2022, the Defense Ministry was informed that due to “production line diversion,” the delivery schedule for new artillery would be significantly delayed.
Under the original schedule, the first batch of eight M109A6 self-propelled howitzers was expected to arrive in Taiwan in 2023, followed by 16 units in both 2024 and 2025, completing the full delivery of 40 units by the end of 2025. However, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, delivery has now been delayed to 2026 — and even then, only six units are expected to arrive that year. This marks a delay of more than three years for the overall procurement timeline.
Taiwan’s mechanized infantry still relies on M114 155-millimeter howitzers, first produced in 1942, making them outdated. Limited range and lack of automation have become a significant weakness in the Army’s firepower. Delays further hinder Taiwan’s artillery modernization efforts.
Likewise, the FIM-92 Stinger missiles, initiated by the Ministry of National Defense to address the need for infantry anti-air capabilities, were designated as an “urgent operational requirement” to expedite the project.
The project later underwent price increases and renegotiations, with the quantity purchased increasing from an initial 250 to nearly 2,500. However, Taipei confirmed in 2022 that the deliveries were delayed due to “changes in the international situation.”
Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan, in its budget review resolution, clearly noted that the timeline for the entire Stinger missile program has been extended through FY2031, with the total budget increased to approximately $2.17 billion. However, it also pointed out that the missiles, launch systems, and identification devices have yet to be delivered — a situation deemed unreasonable. Recent news indicates there may be further delays, forcing the Ministry of National Defense to send delegations to the United States to keep track of progress. It should be noted that some Stinger missiles reported to have arrived in 2023 were sourced through U.S. military aid under the Presidential Drawdown Authority, not as part of Taiwan’s original arms purchase program. (In fact, the Ministry of National Defense has remained deliberately low-key about the specific contents of transfers, so details remain unclear). Therefore, the Stinger missiles purchased through Taiwan’s military budget are still undelivered.
Taiwan’s ability to maintain effective air defense capabilities over the Taiwan Strait is increasingly challenged, and the continued delays in acquiring next-generation fighter aircraft have worsened this imbalance. The first batch of new F-16Vs was originally scheduled for delivery in the fourth quarter of 2023. However, due to pandemic-related supply chain disruptions, Taiwan was informed that delivery would be postponed to the third quarter of 2024. As of 2025, no further updates have been provided.
Another ongoing case is the F-16A/B upgrade program, which includes airframe upgrades that have already been completed in 2023. However, certain components — such as the digital radio frequency memory electronic warfare pods and AGM-154C missiles — have been delayed from an original delivery timeline of 2023 to 2026. This program is also one of the cases that saw part of its funding frozen in FY2025.
The same pattern has plagued Taiwan’s Abrams tanks and TOW 2B anti-tank missiles, highlighting a systemic issue in U.S. arms sales execution. These weapons systems were meant to become an immediate deterrent and were continually highlighted by experts as a core element of the porcupine strategy and asymmetric warfare, yet most face delivery delays (the major exception being HIMARS, which were delivered early).
Key Conditions for Legislative Backing
Despite disruptions from the pandemic, the world has long moved out of the shadow of COVID-19, and the Russo-Ukrainian War has become the new normal. These factors no longer justify routine delays in weapons projects, not to mention the fact that most of the purchase of the delayed systems preceded the Russo-Ukrainian War and the COVID-19 pandemic. Even if Ukraine was not directly competing with Taiwan for the same weapon systems, as Jennifer Kavanagh and Jordan Cohen argued, the effects of delays are not evenly felt.
While insufficient investment in the U.S. defense industrial base is a substantial driver of some delays, in the case of the M109A6 Paladin howitzer deal, however, the manufacturer — BAE Systems Inc. — in their response to Taipei’s accusation of its lack of capacity, stated that it had sufficient production capacity to meet Taiwan’s needs and deliver on schedule. Contradicting information and opaque messaging from Washington have confused leaders and stakeholders in Taipei.
Because military expenditure had not translated into improved defense capabilities, repeated reminders and alerts from the Taiwanese equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office have raised public concerns about the central government’s ability to manage military investments and America’s efficiency in arms sales, leading to more stringent budget oversight. The reviews have aimed to ensure the efficiency and accountability of defense spending and procurements.
U.S. arms sales to Taiwan involve complex relationships among governments and arms manufacturers from Taiwan and the United States. Taipei’s policy circle may not have fully grasped the secretive negotiations between power brokers and stakeholders in Washington when arms procurement efforts fall short of expectations. At times, even when the U.S. military recommends a procurement plan to Taipei and Taiwan has allocated the necessary budget, the proposal still fails to secure approval from the State Department or Congress.
For example, Taiwan allocated over $900 million in 2021 to purchase ten MH-60R anti-submarine helicopters, a platform long recommended by the U.S. Navy. The State Department decided not to respond to the request, arguing that the helicopters would not significantly strengthen Taiwan’s defense. Similarly, Taiwan’s planned acquisition of the M109A6 self-propelled howitzers was put on hold after years of negotiation, with U.S. officials later urging a switch to the newer M109A7 variant. More recently, reports indicate that Taiwan may be preparing a new arms request — potentially between $7 billion and US$10 billion — that could include funding for that newer variant.
These cases highlight deeper structural issues: senior officials face limited accountability, there is often a lack of urgency or strategic clarity in prioritizing key sales, and the process itself remains fragmented—without a coherent framework or platform among the Pentagon, State Department, Congress, industry, and partner governments.
Whatever the stated reasons for delivery delays are, including U.S. industrial bottlenecks as Kavanagh and Cohen rightly highlight, less attention is paid to the cascading effects these failed arms procurements have on Taiwan’s internal defense budgeting process. Taiwan must maintain bipartisan political support for defense budgets, and timely delivery is crucial for sustaining public confidence and political consensus. Chronic delays result in public skepticism of a good return on investment and thereby erode legislative trust in procurement, creating a vicious cycle that further slows Taiwan’s defense modernization and the budgets necessary to achieve it.
Despite such concerns among the public, the Legislative Yuan — regardless of party affiliation — has consistently maintained a highly open and supportive stance toward investment in weapons procurement. Newly proposed arms purchases from the United States are rarely, if ever, subject to budget cuts, even when the legislature is notified in only the broadest or most urgent terms.
The only Foreign Military Sales or Direct Commercial Sales project Taipei cut this year was the “attack drone” project, which involves the purchase of Switchblade 300 and ALTIUS 600M-V, due to alleged U.S. manufacturer price gouging to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense. Other defense spending cuts primarily targeted administrative expenses, travel, and publicity costs with low execution rates. In fact, Taiwan’s opposition-led legislature has just approved the largest-ever national defense budget ($14.3 billion — an increase of 8.5 percent from last year). While passing the defense budget has broad political consensus, the public still expects that such spending be both efficient and accountable.
Delays in arms deliveries can hinder increases in Taiwan’s defense budget not merely due to legislative and representative politics. Even if the Legislative Yuan approves funding for weapons procurement, Taiwan’s independent audit body — the National Audit Office of the Control Yuan — also monitors how government spending is carried out. Past audits in 2023 revealed that, out of a total of 419 U.S. arms sales cases, nearly $26.7 billion worth of arms remained undelivered due to delays. These figures show up in the government’s final accounts, which directly affect Taiwan’s ability to secure higher defense budgets in the following year.
Reducing the backlog of undelivered arms is therefore critical for unlocking greater budget support — not only in dealings with legislators, but also when the defense ministry faces auditors or negotiates for more funding within the Taiwanese government during the budget request phase of each cycle.
Overcoming the Backlog Challenge
Change has to start from within. Taipei should strengthen its negotiation skills and demonstrate to its people that it can be a savvy buyer rather than relying solely on the other side’s compliance. Instead of merely reacting to U.S. demands, it needs to adopt a firmer stance in negotiations, actively challenging unfavorable pricing structures, delivery delays, and substandard conditions — while maintaining clear negotiation boundaries.
Specifically, military sales contracts between Taiwan and the United States should be more rigorous, explicitly stipulating delivery conditions and incorporating legal alternatives for obstacles and new conditions. Taiwan’s defense ministry currently lacks an effective mechanism to oversee key aspects of its U.S. arms sales, such as contract execution, project progress, and payments to contractors, but it can be improved. According to the U.S. Department of Defense Security Assistance Management Manual, C6.3.6.1 grants purchasing countries (such as Taiwan) the right to request additional information concerning contract prices. C6.3.6.2 specifies that the release can be considered if the contract is unclassified and only includes requirements for the requesting country. This legal foundation supports a structured framework for regular information exchange, enhancing transparency and efficiency. It is also essential that both legislatures stay informed.
Furthermore, in cases of delayed new equipment deliveries, the U.S. military should at least provide certain stockpiles to Taiwan’s forces for training and doctrine development first. The Biden administration’s use of the Presidential Drawdown Authority in 2023 helped mitigate arms sale delays, but this stopgap approach is unsustainable and not a long-term solution to our defense acquisition strategy.
Most importantly, the United States should revise export limits, streamline arms sales approvals, and improve the underlying evaluation and decision-making processes to ensure consistency, enhance efficiency, and prevent its international partners from receiving contradictory responses. Although all these efforts will require extra effort from the United States, they will effectively allow Taiwan, with sufficient information, to make more self-defense commitments, also easing U.S. defense commitment pressures.
Deliver for Taiwan’s Willingness
Taiwan is more than willing to increase its military spending and allocate more of its budget to arms sales. However, due to its democratic system and societal expectations, Taipei requires U.S. or Pentagon-supervised manufacturers to fulfill their contractual promises. Timely and consistent delivery of military assets will ensure continuous, efficient, and effective purchase of weapons, thus enhancing the island’s defense readiness. Without them, allies’ concerns will turn into frustrations. Amid an increasingly turbulent geopolitical landscape, Taipei will inevitably look to Washington for more arms purchases, but Washington should deliver.
Become a Member
Kevin Ting-Chen Sun is a senior legislative policy advisor to a Kuomintang legislator at the Taiwan Legislative Yuan and a licensed attorney.
Howard Shen was a foreign policy fellow at Taiwan Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee on the Kuomintang staff.
Image: U.S. Army via Wikimedia Commons
Commentary
warontherocks.com · by Kevin Ting-Chen Sun · March 28, 2025
21. United States–Philippines Joint Statement on Secretary Hegseth's Inaugural Visit to the Philippines
Release
Immediate Release
United States–Philippines Joint Statement on Secretary Hegseth's Inaugural Visit to the Philippines
March 28, 2025 |
United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made his inaugural visit to the Philippines as part of his first trip to the Indo-Pacific region to meet with President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. and Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro, Jr. on March 27-28, 2025.
The leaders underscored the enduring strength of the U.S.-Philippines alliance and reaffirmed its importance for upholding a free and open Indo-Pacific region. Secretary Hegseth and Secretary Teodoro reiterated both countries' shared commitment to the 1951 U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) in an increasingly complex security environment. The Secretaries also reaffirmed that the MDT extends to armed attacks against either country's armed forces, aircraft, and public vessels – including those of their coast guards – anywhere in the South China Sea. They also underscored that, in addition to the MDT, the 1998 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) are critical foundations for continued alliance coordination and interoperability.
Secretary Hegseth and Secretary Teodoro agreed to take several bold steps and set a robust agenda for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the Philippine Department of National Defense (DND) to reestablish deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region and achieve Peace through Strength. These efforts will accelerate the defense partnership and ensure that the alliance is postured to address the most consequential challenges in the Indo-Pacific region.
Key new initiatives include:
- Deploying more advanced U.S. capabilities in the Philippines, including the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) and highly capable unmanned surface vessels. Exercising with the NMESIS – a mobile, ground-based anti-ship missile launcher – as part of Exercise BALIKATAN and other service-to-service activities will improve interoperability and strengthen deterrence by providing coverage of strategic sea lanes from coastal positions. Training and testing on NMESIS and unmanned surface vessels as part of realistic exercises in the Philippines will increase the interoperability and operational readiness of U.S. and Philippine forces to leverage cutting-edge military capabilities in Indo-Pacific operational environments.
- Conducting advanced bilateral Special Operations Forces training in the Batanes Islands. U.S. Special Operations Forces and Philippine Marines will train together on complex landing scenarios to enhance interoperability between U.S. forces and the Armed Forces of the Philippines and improve combined capability to conduct high-end operations in the Indo-Pacific region.
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Publishing a bilateral defense industrial cooperation vision statement. The United States and the Philippines continue to advance their alliance through closer defense industrial base cooperation. This is intended to promote more robust military and industry partnerships, build supply chain resilience, strengthen our readiness, and bolster both nations' economies. The Secretaries announced the release of a defense industrial cooperation vision statement that identifies priority areas for near-term cooperation, including potential co-production of unmanned systems and more robust logistics support. The statement includes lines of effort that the United States and the Philippines will explore to advance these priority areas, namely seeking to: reduce barriers, collaborate on new technology, and identify discrete opportunities for collaboration. Both countries intend for this vision statement to serve as a basis to advance regional security, economic security, and Indo-Pacific prosperity.
- Launching a bilateral cybersecurity campaign. The DoD and DND will collaborate to reduce cyber vulnerabilities and enhance resilience across the alliance. This campaign intends to address three primary lines of effort: establishing a secure defense network, developing a capable cybersecurity workforce, and enabling advanced operational cooperation. Enhanced cyber capability and capacity will enable greater information and intelligence-sharing, improve our lethality, and facilitate increasingly advanced operational coordination.
22. NATO Without America – How Europe Can Run an Alliance Designed for U.S. Control
Excerpts:
Yet, even with sufficient money and time, the success of this transition will require Washington’s active support. If the United States were to leave NATO and withdraw from Europe in a rapid and uncoordinated fashion, the integrated structure that has been built up over decades would likely collapse. European countries simply do not have the military and technological resources to immediately replace what has been supplied by the United States—precisely because Washington made it clear to them for decades that building up such capacities was duplicative and wasteful. In some areas, such as nuclear weapons, the United States may even prefer remaining involved with NATO, if the alternative is more European nations building up their own nuclear capabilities.
Europe no longer trusts Washington’s commitment to security on the continent, a collapse of confidence that has already raised far-reaching doubts about the future of NATO. But there is still a way forward that preserves the best of what the alliance has long offered: a strong defense capable of defeating any threat to its security. Europe will now have to finance and provide much of that deterrent. Not counting the United States, NATO’s other 31 members comprise a population of more than 600 million people as well as a collection of economic resources more than ten times those of Russia. These countries, despite having had to rely on the United States for so long, are fully capable of ensuring their future security for themselves. The time to start is now.
NATO Without America
Foreign Affairs · by More by Ivo H. Daalder · March 28, 2025
How Europe Can Run an Alliance Designed for U.S. Control
March 28, 2025
The NATO Allied Reaction Force flag at a training range near Galati, Romania, February 2025 Eduard Vinatoru / Reuters
IVO H. DAALDER is Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and served as U.S. Ambassador to NATO from 2009 to 2013.
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During its 76-year history, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has faced its share of crises, but none have been as grave as what it confronts today. Since returning to office, U.S. President Donald Trump has questioned the two core principles of the alliance’s collective defense commitment: that there is a shared understanding of the threats to NATO members and that security among all those members is indivisible. The United States sided with Russia and against every other NATO member in February when it opposed a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Moreover, Trump has repeatedly called into question NATO’s collective-defense provision by declaring that the United States will not defend allies who “don’t pay”—despite the fact that nearly all NATO members have dramatically increased their defense spending since 2014.
Given Trump’s low regard for the alliance and its collective defense commitment, it would be no surprise if his administration decided to withdraw from NATO. In late 2023, Congress passed a law prohibiting the president from doing this without congressional assent—a bill that, ironically, was cosponsored by then Senator Marco Rubio, who is now Trump’s secretary of state. But if the administration were to decide to flout the law, it is unlikely that the Supreme Court would do anything to stop it. The court has historically deferred matters of foreign affairs to the executive branch and could find that the law itself is unconstitutional.
Even if he doesn’t withdraw from the alliance, Trump has already seriously undermined it. NATO’s Article 5 collective-defense provision—which says that an attack on any alliance member will be considered an attack on all—derives its credibility less from the formal treaty than from a belief among the members that they are all prepared to come to one another’s defense. In practice, this has meant that the United States, with its vast military, would step up to protect any NATO ally that is attacked. Trump’s words and actions since retaking office—including his direct threats against Canada and Greenland, both of which are part of NATO—have eroded these assumptions. As incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stated in February, it is uncertain whether, in a few months, “we will still be talking about NATO in its current form.”
Can NATO survive without the United States, which throughout the alliance’s history has been both its leading member and principal security provider? Theoretically, yes: if the Trump administration withdraws from NATO, the treaty will remain in effect for the other 31 members. Practically, however, the U.S. role in the alliance would be difficult to replace, especially in a short period of time. Given the fundamental changes to U.S. foreign policy under Trump, the most pressing next step for the rest of NATO is to envision a future without the United States and to position the alliance to succeed regardless.
To do so, the other members will need to find more money, buy more time, and secure some measure of continued U.S. cooperation. Leaders in Europe have already freed up more funds, in part by exempting defense expenditures from budgetary restrictions. Now they will have to invest in the kind of critical military capabilities that have long been provided by the United States. They will also need to supply the bulk of the forces necessary to defend themselves—and do so within a matter of years, not decades.
FOLLOW THE LEADER
NATO is unlike any other military alliance. It has its own political and military headquarters, an integrated command structure, common funding, and joint defense planning, training, exercises, and operations. Although these responsibilities are shared among members, the United States plays a pivotal role in each. It is not only the alliance’s largest and most significant military contributor; it has also long insisted that the other members agree to integrate their defense capabilities within this U.S.-led structure, thus ensuring that Washington controls their employment in major military operations.
NATO didn’t start out this way. The United States agreed to sign the North Atlantic Treaty, in April 1949, only at the strong urging of its European partners—who feared Soviet expansionism after World War II. Initially, it was conceived as a collective-security treaty, not a standing alliance or organization. This changed following North Korea’s invasion of South Korea in 1950. That attack served as a warning that the Soviet Union could strike NATO with little or no warning. U.S. policymakers realized that effective deterrence and defense required more than a written commitment but also, most notably, standing forces under a common command and a political body that could mobilize them swiftly in case of a surprise attack.
This is how the North Atlantic Treaty evolved into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Member states appointed permanent representatives to the North Atlantic Council, the governing body of the new organization, and agreed to create an integrated military command structure headed by a supreme commander. (The first person appointed to that position, in early 1951, was the U.S. general, and future U.S. president, Dwight D. Eisenhower.) Ever since, NATO has organized collective defense through this integrated process, which assigns to each member the kinds of capabilities they need to procure and deploy. Although members are responsible for paying for and fielding their own armed forces, the joint command plans, trains for, and, if necessary, commands NATO operations.
Above all, U.S. nuclear weapons constitute NATO’s ultimate deterrent.
Integrated defense planning and operations have guided NATO countries for more than seven decades. But this approach has worked only because the United States has played a dominant and unifying role. U.S. military officers have always occupied the key positions of NATO’s command structure, including by assigning the head of U.S. European Command the role of NATO’s supreme commander. The United States’ land, naval, and air forces perform many of the alliance’s critical military functions. The U.S. military also supplies the core components of its integrated air defense network, which protects European skies; its communications networks; and its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. Above all, U.S. nuclear weapons, including those that are deployed in Europe and shared with allied forces, constitute NATO’s ultimate deterrent.
In return for providing this ironclad security umbrella, the United States asked that its NATO partners fully integrate their armed forces within this U.S.-led structure. Most were happy to do so, because they saw integration as a form of concrete reassurance that the United States would come to their defense. But some hesitated, most notably Charles de Gaulle’s France, which did not fully trust that Washington would always share Paris’s security interests. Ultimately, France not only developed its own nuclear weapons but, in 1966, left NATO’s command structure, although it remained a member of the alliance.
Although France was singular in its desire for independence, it was hardly the only European country that sought greater autonomy for its armed forces. During the 1970s, as differences over America’s war in Vietnam emerged within NATO, some European members feared that they might get dragged into a war that they did not believe affected their security. In the early 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s confrontational stance vis-à-vis the Soviet Union produced growing anxieties that Europe might end up as a smoking, radiated ruin because of differences between Moscow and Washington that they did not share. And some European countries diverged starkly from more contemporary U.S. priorities, including the war in Iraq. After the Cold War, the European Union played a key role in helping European NATO members increase their defense and security autonomy, with EU states pursuing a common foreign and security policy that also featured a growing defense dimension. The 2009 Treaty of Lisbon further enshrined a mutual defense commitment, although it recognized that for members of NATO, the alliance’s collective-security commitment would remain primary.
In theory, the United States accepted Europe’s need to play a greater role in its own security. After all, allowing more European autonomy could result in a more equal sharing of the overall defense burden, a goal of every U.S. administration since the alliance’s founding. But in practice, Washington insisted that Europe do nothing that might undermine the leading U.S. role in NATO or the alliance’s preeminent position in Western security. Greater European contributions to the common defense were fine—indeed, encouraged—but these would need to be in support of NATO and not any independent enterprise. In 1998, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright warned that the United States would judge any European defense effort from the perspective of what came to be known as the “three Ds”: there could be no diminution of NATO’s role, no duplication of its defense efforts, and no discrimination by the EU against NATO’s non-EU members when it came to defense procurement. As such, any suggestion by the United States’ European partners that they might establish separate headquarters, autonomous armed forces, or other forms of independence was summarily dismissed by Washington as incompatible with NATO’s primacy.
ALL FOR ONE
After insisting for decades on its centrality within NATO, the United States has now indicated it no longer wants to lead the alliance. In his first appearance before NATO, in mid-February, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made this crystal clear: “Stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe,” he said, adding that the transatlantic alliance’s endurance would require “European allies to step into the arena and take ownership of conventional security on the continent.” But other than calling on European countries to spend more on defense—he suggested they dramatically increase their budgets to five percent of GDP—Hegseth didn’t address how Europe might take ownership of an organization that was built and sustained over decades to ensure U.S. dominance and control.
Answering this question now must be the foremost priority for NATO’s other members and the primary purpose of the alliance’s civilian and military leadership. NATO’s new regional defense plans, drawn up since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, provide the framework for doing so. These plans set out the specific force requirements that NATO collectively needs in order to defend its northern, eastern, and southern flanks in Europe. If European nations and Canada commit to fulfill most, if not all, of these force requirements over the next few years, it will result in a defense posture that is far less reliant on the United States than it is now.
The Europeanization of NATO will require three things that are currently in short supply: money, time, and U.S. cooperation. The cost of undertaking this fundamental shift will require a significant increase in European defense spending—with members allocating “considerably more than three percent” of their GDPs to defense, according to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. Even with sufficient resources, however, it will take years, if not a decade, to procure the necessary capabilities, train and equip forces, and deploy them into the field. Because of this, Europe will require Washington’s active cooperation in shifting responsibility from the United States to other NATO members. In some areas—notably, nuclear weapons—it isn’t clear anyone would benefit from a wholesale transition.
Fortunately, European leaders seem to understand the challenge they face and are starting to act accordingly. At an EU summit in early March, European leaders agreed to borrow 150 billion euros ($162 billion) for defense production and to exempt defense spending from budgetary rules that limit annual spending for EU members, potentially adding another 650 billion euros ($701 billion) for defense over the next ten years. Significantly, Germany, which has long spent relatively little on defense despite being Europe’s largest economy, has made a major shift in its own spending rules. In March, its parliament agreed to exempt defense spending, intelligence-service financing, and aid to Ukraine from the country’s strict budgetary restraints, a move that could add as much as 400 billion euros ($432 billion) to its defense spending over the next few years. Many other governments are following suit.
Europe no longer trusts Washington’s commitment to security on the continent.
These additional defense resources should go to filling out NATO’s force requirements. At a minimum, European member states should commit to providing 75–80 percent of the forces necessary to implement the alliance’s regional defense plans by the early 2030s—and in the longer term to provide nearly all of those forces. This will include developing critical capabilities—including satellite communications and advanced air and missile defenses—to conduct high-intensity and sustained combat operations. European leaders should also double down on recruiting, training, and exercising their military forces.
Yet, even with sufficient money and time, the success of this transition will require Washington’s active support. If the United States were to leave NATO and withdraw from Europe in a rapid and uncoordinated fashion, the integrated structure that has been built up over decades would likely collapse. European countries simply do not have the military and technological resources to immediately replace what has been supplied by the United States—precisely because Washington made it clear to them for decades that building up such capacities was duplicative and wasteful. In some areas, such as nuclear weapons, the United States may even prefer remaining involved with NATO, if the alternative is more European nations building up their own nuclear capabilities.
Europe no longer trusts Washington’s commitment to security on the continent, a collapse of confidence that has already raised far-reaching doubts about the future of NATO. But there is still a way forward that preserves the best of what the alliance has long offered: a strong defense capable of defeating any threat to its security. Europe will now have to finance and provide much of that deterrent. Not counting the United States, NATO’s other 31 members comprise a population of more than 600 million people as well as a collection of economic resources more than ten times those of Russia. These countries, despite having had to rely on the United States for so long, are fully capable of ensuring their future security for themselves. The time to start is now.
IVO H. DAALDER is Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and served as U.S. Ambassador to NATO from 2009 to 2013.
Foreign Affairs · by More by Ivo H. Daalder · March 28, 2025
23. Hegseth Tells Asian Allies: We’re With You Against China
Good message. We need our allies and our allies need us to effectively compete with China.
"America First, Allies Always"
Hegseth Tells Asian Allies: We’re With You Against China
Defense secretary declares a shift in U.S. priority to a region looking for signs of a stable relationship
https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/hegseth-tells-asian-allies-were-with-you-against-china-9ade8622?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1
By Timothy W. Martin
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in Seoul and Gabriele Steinhauser
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in Singapore
March 28, 2025 7:13 am ET
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said U.S. resolve to defend its interests in the region shouldn’t be questioned. Photo: Lisa Marie David/Reuters
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered a message of reassurance on his first official trip to Asia, telling U.S. allies grappling with challenges from Chinese aggression to North Korean missile tests that the Trump administration is committed to their security.
Following stopovers in Hawaii and the U.S. territory of Guam, Hegseth cast his Friday visit to the Philippines as reflective of America’s determination to deter China.
“What the Trump administration will do is deliver, is to truly prioritize and shift to this region of the world in a way that is unprecedented,” Hegseth said at a news conference in Manila alongside his Philippine counterpart.
U.S. resolve to defend its interests in the region shouldn’t be questioned, he added.
Hegseth’s trip has been overshadowed by the release of text messages in which he detailed the plans of an imminent military strike in Yemen in an unclassified group chat. Hegseth has described the messages, which were made public by the Atlantic magazine, as routine updates.
Chinese military aircraft were photographed flying above the South China Sea earlier this week. Photo: Maxar technologies/Reuters
Asked about the texts in Manila, Hegseth said he took pride in a successful operation in the Middle East. “I’m responsible for ensuring that our department is prepared and ready to deter and defeat our enemies,” he said.
Hegseth’s embrace of Indo-Pacific partnerships struck a different tone from his visit last month to Europe, when he rebuked allies there for relying too much on the U.S. for their defense.
U.S. allies aware of the Trump administration’s tough rhetoric on China will want to see if it results in more American ships, aircraft and personnel in the region, said Grant Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine colonel who served in several Indo-Pacific roles.
But putting more of an onus on allies will strengthen the collective posture against China, he added. “More independence tends to build confidence—both military and political,” said Newsham, who is now a senior research fellow at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy.
Hegseth promised on Friday to deploy additional American military assets, including an antiship missile system, for annual joint exercises next month in the Philippines, a treaty ally that has repeatedly clashed with Beijing’s vessels in the contested South China Sea.
Hegseth, an Army veteran and former Fox News host, arrived in a region uncertain about the direction of U.S. relations. Some top Indo-Pacific allies, including Japan, South Korea, Australia and Taiwan, have some of the biggest trade surpluses with the U.S., with President Trump’s tariffs on steel, aluminum and cars stinging their export-heavy economies.
The U.S. and the Philippines held joint military exercises in April last year. Photo: jam Sta Rosa/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
A forging of closer military coordination with U.S. allies—despite any trade conflicts—would send a powerful message to China and give Trump more negotiating leverage at a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, said Ji Hye Shin, chief researcher at the Taejae Future Consensus Institute, a Seoul-based think tank.
“It would show the U.S. is sitting strongly together with allies,” she said. “This could put Trump in a very advantageous position when he meets Xi.”
Unlike in Europe, where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization provides a centralized military alliance, no such regional grouping exists in Asia. That means Washington allies in the Indo-Pacific—even those neighboring one another—often lack weapons-system interoperability, joint training or even a commitment to show up and fight, security experts say.
The Biden administration had sought to establish more cross-regional ties. It was eager to deepen a coalition, known as the Quad, with India, Japan and Australia. Former President Joe Biden hosted a summit at Camp David with the leaders of Japan and South Korea, which later knitted together their missile-radar systems for the first time. Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. formed a new defense partnership—called Aukus—focused on nuclear-submarine technology.
President Joe Biden hosted the leaders of South Korea and Japan for a summit in Camp David in 2023. Photo: Michael Reynolds/ZUMA Press
But Trump has tended to favor bilateral, leader-to-leader relationships and warned of changes for allies.
Partners in Asia have publicly acknowledged the need for U.S. protection. Taiwanese military planners, in a security road map published this month, called U.S. support essential. A senior Japanese foreign-ministry official recently said there was no Plan B after America. South Korea would have a fierce military posture against the North by strengthening its alliance with the U.S., the country’s acting president said Friday.
“Asia has not been in the crosshairs in the way Europe was,” said Ankit Panda, the Stanton senior fellow in the nuclear-policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “But on some level, all of these allies in Asia need to demonstrate to the U.S. they’re ready to do business like buying munitions or American weapons.”
Write to Timothy W. Martin at Timothy.Martin@wsj.com and Gabriele Steinhauser at Gabriele.Steinhauser@wsj.com
24. The Japanese Military Has a People Problem
Excerpts:
In my discussions with politicians, bureaucrats, and demographers in Japan last summer, many feared that the solution to the demographic crisis is far too crass to say out loud. Japan needs more consumers, soldiers, and taxpayers, and so families need to have more children. But few ministries have implemented policies that will address the stubborn gender norms that make it extremely difficult for women to have children, maintain their careers, and enjoy a healthy work-life balance. Invoking national security needs will do little to spur couples into action. “If you want babies, you can do it and the government will support it,” one Japanese official told me. “But to argue that we have to increase the birthrate because of our national security, it is a very difficult thing to put in the right context.”
The United States can pester Japan all it wants about dedicating more resources to defense, but Japan is not likely to fulfill either country’s dream of a stronger, more equal U.S.-Japanese alliance. If it were up to Ishiba, Japan would already be on its way to reaching that goal. But there are few guarantees that Ishiba will be able to follow through on the agenda set by his predecessor, especially after his party lost its legislative majority in October. Doubling Japan’s defense spending now will strengthen the country’s national security, but such increases are unlikely to stretch into the long term, Japanese troops are not likely to be able to deploy in large numbers abroad, and the Japanese government will not eagerly turn to military force over diplomacy. Both Tokyo and Washington must adjust their expectations for what Japan—and other partners facing similar demographic declines—can reasonably achieve, especially in the long term, when the consequences of an aging and shrinking population will be even more severe.
The Japanese Military Has a People Problem
Foreign Affairs · by More by Tom Le · March 28, 2025
When Depopulation Becomes a National Security Risk
March 28, 2025
Japanese soldiers inside a transport ship near Okinawa, Japan, November 2023 Issei Kato / Reuters
TOM LE is Associate Professor of Politics at Pomona College. He is the author of Japan’s Aging Peace: Pacifism and Militarism in the Twenty-First Century.
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In 2024, the number of babies born in Japan fell to a record low for the ninth year in a row. With about 1.6 million deaths and 720,988 births, there were about two deaths for every new baby born. Japanese governments have proposed policies to reverse this trend, but they have so far had little success. Thirty percent of the country’s population is over the age of 65, and by 2070, this number is projected to be 40 percent. The shrinking and aging of Japan’s population will transform Japanese society. But it will have a particular effect on a major concern of the government: national defense.
The Japanese government passed a record defense budget in 2024, in line with its commitment to increase its defense spending to two percent of its GDP by 2027. The country’s new prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, has long sought to bolster Japan’s independent security capabilities and become a more equal partner in its military alliance with the United States, which has for decades pressured Japan to step up. Even before President Donald Trump’s re-election, Japan had begun to make bolder military pledges. Under former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who led the country from 2021 to 2024, Japan outlined plans to double its defense spending by 2027, loosen restrictions on weapons development, and strengthen relations with like-minded countries around the world.
The battering of the Liberal Democratic Party in recent national elections has cast doubt on whether these increased investments in defense will be possible. Although the LDP remains the largest party in the National Diet, with Ishiba as its leader, the party lost 56 seats in October 2024, failing to reach a majority. Trump’s determination to put pressure on U.S. allies to pay their “fair share” in maintaining security partnerships has only heightened the stakes.
But even if Ishiba manages to garner the necessary political support for more defense spending, Japan will have to face the dire demographic headwinds. The decline of its population will almost certainly ensure that it will fall short of the grand aspirations of Japanese policymakers and their U.S. counterparts. Japan’s population is so old, and shrinking so quickly, that it may not be able to field and fund an adequate defense force to meet growing alliance demands in an increasingly volatile world. The size of its forces are already vastly outmatched by its primary adversaries; Japan’s military is one-tenth the size of China’s active forces and one-fifth of North Korea’s.
If present population trends continue, they could severely limit recruitment for the already chronically understaffed Japan Self-Defense Force, restrain the state’s ability to tax the population to fund increased defense expenditures, and stifle the innovation needed to compete in the defense sector. Without more people, Japan will struggle not only to address its current security threats but also to play the larger role in global affairs that Japanese and U.S. officials want it to. The solution is at once simple and improbable. People need to have more children, but few leaders are willing to say this out loud or to address the obstacles that younger generations face in balancing their careers with their family lives.
STRENGTH IN NUMBERS
Japan is not the only country suffering from these trends. Several U.S. allies and partners have even lower fertility rates than Japan, facing declines that could soon affect defense preparedness. Ukraine, which had a low birthrate even before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, now has one below one child per woman, according to the UN Population Fund. Taiwan has a fertility rate of around 0.87. (Demographers generally set the “replacement level,” at which a country’s population remains stable, at 2.1 children per woman.) In South Korea, academics and former military professionals have warned that a shrinking population may force an eventual downsizing of its armed forces. And policymakers in the United States will also have to face the reality that the country’s falling birthrates and declining pool of eligible recruits could eventually weaken U.S. forces if such trends continue.
The Japanese military is particularly vulnerable to the consequences of demographic change. Since its founding in 1954, the force has rarely met its recruitment targets, and decades of economic stagnation, stigmas around military service, and recent sexual harassment scandals have discouraged many young Japanese from enlisting. Further, part of the reason Japan needs more troops is that the world is becoming a more dangerous place, and many young people don’t want to put themselves on the frontline. The Ministry of Defense has sought to appeal to younger generations—by using celebrities, messages about peace, and anime in its advertising, for example—and has raised the maximum age of recruits from 26 to 32. But these efforts have had little effect: in 2023, the ministry missed its recruitment goal by more than 50 percent. That failure is not helped by Japan’s ever-dwindling pool of possible recruits. In fact, over the last three decades, the number of Japanese 18- to 26-year-olds, the primary recruiting population, has declined by around 40 percent, from 17.43 million in 1994 to 10.2 million in 2024. To meet its recruitment quotas for the coming decade, Japan would need to eventually enlist more than one percent of its entire population—a herculean task.
The effects of dwindling numbers are already being felt across the ranks. In 2018, Noboru Yamaguchi, a retired lieutenant general in Japan’s army, told me that the warped ratio between senior and junior noncommissioned officers, with many senior officers having only a few junior officers to supervise, has hindered leadership development in the forces, leading to low morale and the belief among senior officers that their job is unimportant and unfulfilling. The inability to fill the military ranks will also eventually require painful decisions over where to deploy the limited troops and what additional alliance duties Japan can take on.
This challenge is particularly alarming given the massive disparities between the present size of the militaries of Japan and its closest allies compared with those of its primary adversaries. In 2022, the number of Japanese military personnel stood at a measly 227,843, while the United States had approximately 1.3 million active forces and South Korea about 500,000 (Seoul has around a further 3 million reserve forces). China’s military, on the other hand, features approximately 2 million active personnel, and North Korea’s about 1.2 million. Indeed, when it comes to a possible conflict between Japan and China and North Korea, retired Vice Admiral Yoji Koda told Reuters in 2022 that “manpower is the real issue.”
LESS ISN’T MORE
The effect of an aging society on defense goes beyond recruitment. It also constrains the national budget and stymies innovation. Japan’s new defense strategy, unveiled in 2022, will require an estimated $300 billion through 2027. But entitlement demands continue to dominate spending as the single largest government expenditure, with over 37.7 trillion yen ($222 billion), or 33.5 percent of the national budget, allocated for social security in 2024—three times the level in 1990. These demands will only grow as the population continues to age and the workforce continues to shrink, with increasing reliance on national health care and pension systems and a contracting tax pool to fund them. The last three decades of economic stagnation—the stock market only returned to its 1990 high in 2024—has further impeded efforts to raise revenue, and efforts by Kishida to raise taxes for defense during his term floundered.
Japan’s shrinking population is complicating the country’s efforts to develop a larger indigenous defense sector and decrease its reliance on U.S. weapons and munitions—a crucial pillar of its defense overhaul. In 2023, Japan ranked 32nd on the International Institute for Management Development’s World Digital Competitiveness Ranking—its worst placement since the list began in 2017. The country is facing engineer shortages in the vital chip industry, a shrinking college-age population, and a falling number of doctoral degree recipients, further weakening Japan’s prospects for economic productivity. This all means less brain power for research and development and less physical labor for assembly lines and transportation.
Japan’s Ministry of Defense has been forthright in acknowledging that the demographic crisis will affect national security. It outlined, in its new security strategy in 2022, how the rapid population decline would require a more efficient use of its budget and labor force. The Japanese military has tried to adapt its operations to a smaller force, including by retrofitting vehicles and ships to operate with fewer people and relying on advanced technology to carry out tasks traditionally assigned to people. In December 2024, the Ishiba government approved funding within its 2025 fiscal budget to increase wages and implement new measures to improve work-life balance in the armed forces.
Yet even with a more efficient and technologically enabled force, Japan’s military will still require manpower. Applying a strategy of so-called minimal manning—working with as few service members as possible—is not a solution but a Band-Aid. To develop, produce, and operate new and increasingly indispensable technologies, Japan will need more highly trained—and highly paid—soldiers for advanced warfare. And infrastructure such as ships require several hundred people to operate.
Fewer people will therefore mean that troops have to endure longer deployments, commanders will have less flexibility in deploying troops, casualties will exact a greater toll on the capacities of the military, and the military will face greater constraints in staffing new battalions and engaging in operations. All of this will put further stress on current service members, making military jobs even less desirable. And it will mean that Japan cannot dedicate the resources needed to become a stronger, more equal partner in its alliance with the United States, never mind take on a larger role in the Indo-Pacific.
MANAGING EXPECTATIONS
Most of the Japanese government’s proposals to address the country’s demographic challenges have thus far not gained traction. In recent years, Japanese leaders have pursued policies to encourage families to have more children. In 2023, for example, Kishida introduced a plan to double government spending on childcare support by 2030, but the new childcare law passed in 2024 under Ishiba amounts to less than half the amount Kishida outlined. Kishida’s other scheme, to pay for college tuition for families with three or more children, was widely criticized on Japanese social media as unserious and impractical, and helped sink his approval rating; although the measure passed, its effect will be almost impossible to measure for at least two decades.
Another solution that scholars and pundits often propose is to encourage more immigration; Japan has historically not welcomed many immigrants, and some analysts imagine that a significant reset of this policy will bring needed dynamism and vitality to the economy and Japanese society. But immigration is not a permanent fix. Newcomers could eventually replicate Japanese birthrates. They would also bring in new costs, namely when it comes to social integration, and the government would also eventually have to pay for further entitlements if immigrants settle and age in Japan. And in terms of recruitment to the country’s military, only Japanese citizens can join Japan’s armed forces.
In my discussions with politicians, bureaucrats, and demographers in Japan last summer, many feared that the solution to the demographic crisis is far too crass to say out loud. Japan needs more consumers, soldiers, and taxpayers, and so families need to have more children. But few ministries have implemented policies that will address the stubborn gender norms that make it extremely difficult for women to have children, maintain their careers, and enjoy a healthy work-life balance. Invoking national security needs will do little to spur couples into action. “If you want babies, you can do it and the government will support it,” one Japanese official told me. “But to argue that we have to increase the birthrate because of our national security, it is a very difficult thing to put in the right context.”
The United States can pester Japan all it wants about dedicating more resources to defense, but Japan is not likely to fulfill either country’s dream of a stronger, more equal U.S.-Japanese alliance. If it were up to Ishiba, Japan would already be on its way to reaching that goal. But there are few guarantees that Ishiba will be able to follow through on the agenda set by his predecessor, especially after his party lost its legislative majority in October. Doubling Japan’s defense spending now will strengthen the country’s national security, but such increases are unlikely to stretch into the long term, Japanese troops are not likely to be able to deploy in large numbers abroad, and the Japanese government will not eagerly turn to military force over diplomacy. Both Tokyo and Washington must adjust their expectations for what Japan—and other partners facing similar demographic declines—can reasonably achieve, especially in the long term, when the consequences of an aging and shrinking population will be even more severe.
TOM LE is Associate Professor of Politics at Pomona College. He is the author of Japan’s Aging Peace: Pacifism and Militarism in the Twenty-First Century.
Foreign Affairs · by More by Tom Le · March 28, 2025
25. Actions create consequences: Spies, will and Taiwan – a reminder by Dr. Cynthia Watson
Also per the Guardian article I forwarded earlier as well as the 2025 Intelligence Assessment.
Excerpt:
Taiwan’s aspirations for retaining autonomy simply butt up against some harsh realities beyond geography. The report indicates that Taibei is increasing military pay which is a tentative but relative step: military service remains less than desirable in a booming commercial economy. Single child families, much as true across northeast Asia, do not want their sons to serve for fear of the family line ending. President Lai’s recent proclamation that Beijing is a major hostile force is insufficient, particularly in a democracy, to assure that the country would either have the resources or the political will to seal themselves off from China. Indeed, the major opposition party, the Guomindang, still harbors efforts by former president Ma Ying-jeou to bring the two societies closer together.
Spies, will and Taiwan
a reminder
https://cynthiawatson.substack.com/p/spies-will-and-taiwan?utm
Cynthia Watson
Mar 28, 2025
Those optimistic that a decisive military defeat of China will end the island’s vulnerability to PRC demands for reunification would do well to consider a report from today’s Guardian. Three soldiers in the presidential security detail were among four individuals prosecuted by Taiwan’s authorities for espionage on Beijing’s behalf. Their convictions garnered each between five and seven years’ imprisonment. The presidential detail, of course, is the equivalent of the Secret Service. The fourth soldier was in the Ministry of Defense’s information and communication command. They betrayed their society by taking photographs of crucial targets in exchange for bribes. It must have been a chilling revelation for President Lai Ching-te today and his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen.
This occurred within an ever-increasing number of spying cases further undermining the RoC’s determination to maintain its current separate status, regardless of its de jure position in the global community. Since 2022, the report cites roughly two dozen additional criminal trials for spying annually. The government in Taibei proudly notes these increased prosecutions but faces a daunting task—as does any government around the globe today—in thwarting China’s espionage efforts. The Guardian cites Taiwan’s acknowledged challenge as 5,000 spies operating on the island eight years ago but that number sounds small to my untrained eye.
This week’s U.S. intelligence community 2025 Annual Threat Assessment highlighted the Chinese attempts to undermine our system where we have a far more robust intelligence community. But the size of Taiwan’s counter-intelligence operations isn’t the crux of the problem. Taiwan’s population, even those native to the island for generations, almost invariably have links back to communities on the mainland. Most people on Taiwan have no specific physical markers of being natives—nor do infiltrators appear “foreign”. Taiwanese is a separate dialect from those spoken in China but not unrecognizable because it’s close to Fujianese along the southeast coast. Mandarin serves as the unifying language for commercial operations fundamental to the island’s economy, linking them to that single largest trading partner China. It might have been apocryphal but twenty years ago Taiwan’s national security community acknowledged that a million (out of a population of 23 million at the time) Taiwanese businessmen worked on the mainland on any given day. Many of those individuals had second or third families on the mainland, only complicating things further. This is a counter-intelligence nightmare for recruiting military personnel or any sensitive government position. It’s almost as if there is no need for “Fifth Column” infiltration as the intertwining of the populations is pervasive.
Taiwan’s aspirations for retaining autonomy simply butt up against some harsh realities beyond geography. The report indicates that Taibei is increasing military pay which is a tentative but relative step: military service remains less than desirable in a booming commercial economy. Single child families, much as true across northeast Asia, do not want their sons to serve for fear of the family line ending. President Lai’s recent proclamation that Beijing is a major hostile force is insufficient, particularly in a democracy, to assure that the country would either have the resources or the political will to seal themselves off from China. Indeed, the major opposition party, the Guomindang, still harbors efforts by former president Ma Ying-jeou to bring the two societies closer together.
In the end, Taiwan’s future depends on political will more than any other single factor. I would argue that will is unclear at present. Even if Taiwan were to abandon the dynamic, spirited democracy it developed over the past thirty plus years following the end of martial law to protect against Beijing, the threats its position as a Taiwanese nation are many. We are naive to assume we can make a difference if Taiwan isn’t sure what it seeks but I am not convinced that a majority on this beautiful, enchanting island have answered that question yet.
Thank you for taking time to consider these issues and consequences. I welcome your comments, rebuttals, or thoughts of any type. A dialogue is multiple voices so please offer yours.
Thank you to all readers but especially the financial subscribers who make this possible. An annual subscription is just over a dollar a week. Monthly subscriptions are $8 each. But your investment helps me a great deal.
We are concluding an early spring visit to the heartland today. Being a midwesterner, I recognized the local spirit effused with statues, flags, and openness vistas. Yesterday we ventured to the lovely town of Hudson, Wisconsin. While I would prefer seeing the trees green and flowers providing color across the town, it was a lovely afternoon for a walk along the St. Croix River.
Get outside this weekend if weather permits as I am convinced the sun makes it all better at this time of the year. Be well and be safe. FIN
Helen Davidson, “Taiwan jails four soldiers, including three who worked in presidential office, for spying for China”, TheGuardian.com, 27 March 2025, retrieved at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/27/taiwan-jails-four-soldiers-including-three-who-worked-in-presidential-office-for-spying-for-china?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2025 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, dni.gov, 25 March 2025.
“Taiwan President Formally Designates China a ‘Foreign Hostile Force’”, StraitsTimes.com, 14 March 2025, retrieved at https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/taiwan-president-formally-designates-china-a-foreign-hostile-force
26. Signal Ascends From Hacker Passion Project to Washington’s Top Messaging App
I am pretty much done with "signalgate," just this article and one following from CDR Salamander. I think this is some interesting background for those of us who do routinely use Signal.
I think we too often forget that Signal is a not-for-profit app that demonstrates that some people create capabilities for good intentions.
Signal said app downloads this week are double what they were last week. Suddenly, the not-for-profit app that competes with Meta Platforms’s WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessage with a paltry $50 million annual budget is ascendant.
Signal Ascends From Hacker Passion Project to Washington’s Top Messaging App
Downloads of encrypted app surged in the past week after the Atlantic published texts among White House officials detailing a military strike
https://www.wsj.com/tech/signal-ascends-from-hacker-passion-project-to-washingtons-top-messaging-app-1d25a1ec?mod=hp_lead_pos9
By Sam Schechner
Follow
and Robert McMillan
Follow
Updated March 27, 2025 10:47 pm ET
Meredith Whittaker, president of the foundation that runs Signal, as she addressed employees at Google during a protest in 2018. Whittaker founded Google’s Open Research Group. Photo: Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press
Key Points
What's This?
- Signal, an encrypted messaging app, has experienced a surge in popularity after the Atlantic reported on a group-chat blunder involving Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
- Signal's privacy-focused approach and lack of data collection have made it a trusted tool for dissidents, journalists, and Washington, D.C.'s elite.
- Signal's growth from a hacker project to a global communication network is attributed to its open-source encryption software and efforts to make the app accessible to anyone.
Meredith Whittaker spent her first few years running Signal preaching the encrypted-messaging app’s benefits for sensitive conversations, regardless of whether users had anything to hide.
This week her pitch got a lot easier. Signal attracted a wave of users after the Atlantic published the details of a group chat in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared attack plans with a group that included key members of the Trump administration, including the vice president, as well as the magazine’s editor in chief.
Signal said app downloads this week are double what they were last week. Suddenly, the not-for-profit app that competes with Meta Platforms’s WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessage with a paltry $50 million annual budget is ascendant.
“Every time there is what we call a big tech screw-up or a massive data breach, we see spikes in Signal growth,” Whittaker said in an interview last fall with the podcaster Kara Swisher. Whittaker declined to comment for this article.
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What's Next for Trump and Hegseth Amid Fallout from Signal Chat Controversy
Play video: What's Next for Trump and Hegseth Amid Fallout from Signal Chat Controversy
The Signal chat about U.S. plans for a strike against Houthi militants revealed how the Trump administration is conducting policy. WSJ’s Alex Ward reports. Photo: Mandel Ngan/Zuma Press, Andrew Leyden/AFP/Getty Images
Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike, a hacker with anarchist leanings, this week reflected on the app’s transition from a privacy passion project to a tool trusted by dissidents, journalists, spies and Washington’s elite.
“There are so many great reasons to be on Signal,” he said on X. “Now including the opportunity for the vice president of the United States of America to randomly add you to a group chat for coordination of sensitive military operations.”
The app, which now has 30 million monthly users, collects virtually no user data and makes it difficult to discover others on Signal, making a viral Signal post a near-impossibility. Whittaker has touted its privacy and security over that of rival apps and said it exists to help the masses, not any one group or cause.
“We are really laser-focused on the mission of maintaining a meaningful way to communicate intimately and privately with the people we care about in a world where that is decreasingly possible,” she said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last year.
Whittaker in January. She took over Signal’s day-to-day operations in 2022. Photo: Matthias Balk/Zuma Press
Funded by donations and grants to cover expenses such as bandwidth and hosting, Signal got its start as a messaging service hatched by a self-described crypto enthusiast.
When Marlinspike—an alias—first proposed the software that would become Signal, it was his way of striking a blow against the surveillance powers of government and big business.
Marlinspike laid out the struggle to preserve privacy in 2010, while speaking to a room full of hackers at a Las Vegas conference. The fight, he said, pitted data-collecting entities such as Google and the government against “cypherpunks”—the pro-privacy hackers and cryptographers who wanted to be online and anonymous at the same time.
“What cypherpunks wanted was actual software that people could download and use right now so that people could communicate securely,” he said.
After a brief stint at Twitter early in his career, Marlinspike merged his texting and voice software into a new app in 2014, calling it Signal. He funded its development with a hodgepodge of grants and donations.
For Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike, pictured in 2015, the encrypted app was a way to circumvent the surveillance powers of government and big business Photo: Jason Henry for WSJ
A year later, Signal got its first big endorsement when National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden said Signal could help thwart government surveillance. In 2016, James Clapper, then U.S. director of national intelligence, told journalists that Snowden had sped up adoption of encryption by seven years.
Scaling up from a small project into a global app grew expensive. The foundation that runs the app reported $5.1 million in expenses in 2018, once it became a nonprofit. The company now spends roughly $50 million a year, according to Whittaker.
Whittaker, who studied literature and has described herself as an art-school kid, left Google in 2019 after organizing protests against its business practices and contracts with the Defense Department. She has been critical of big technology companies’ focus on selling ads and social media, and an evangelist for Signal’s privacy and simplicity: encrypted messaging in a crisp, ad-free app.
She joined the Signal Foundation board in 2020 and became president of the foundation in 2022, taking over day-to-day operations from Marlinspike. Since then, she has encouraged parents, spouses, friend groups and advocates to shift their communications there.
Much of Signal’s current operating costs are for infrastructure, renting servers and hardware from big tech companies such as Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe were on a Signal chat in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared war plans. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
WhatsApp co-founder and Signal foundation Executive Chairman Brian Acton has lent the foundation a total of more than $105 million, according to the foundation’s most recent federal nonprofit filing.
Signal has capitalized on key moments over the past decade to surge in popularity as a default choice for digital gabbing, endorsed by figures from Elon Musk to the organizers of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Signal was able to grow from a hacker project to a global communication network in part because it makes its encryption software open-source, building trust over time with security-conscious users, Whittaker said this month during an interview at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. She said Signal also works hard to make its app useful for people who don’t care much about privacy—creating a network effect that couldn’t easily be rebuilt.
“I feel sometimes like a dragon outside a cave, just protecting this jewel that we have,” she said. “We have to sustain it.”
Write to Sam Schechner at Sam.Schechner@wsj.com and Robert McMillan at robert.mcmillan@wsj.com
27. The Signal I Was Waiting For ...my kingdom for a STU/STE App...
Oh how I hated using a STU/STE back in the day (where is that key?)
Hopefully this will be the last piece I send on "Signalgate." This is a thoughtful analysis.
Please go to the link to view the screenshots. https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/the-signal-i-was-waiting-for?utm
Excerpts:
The most optimistic take I can form is that thanks to Goldberg’s restraint, this is simply a no-harm to the nation own-goal that has a good result. The good result is that bad guys were sent to the afterlife. The bad part is that it is clear that our government is too lazy to have an option besides Signal for senior leaders to communicate with each other in a modern way.
This as an embarrassing moment, but, but an opportunity to learn a lesson and correct it so we don’t get unlucky in the future.
This isn’t like a single individual was trying to reach a Russian oligarch on the sly or anything. This is like being told you are in a closed session but no one realized that sitting in one of the chairs against the wall, being nice and quiet, was one of the kids from a field trip to the HQ who got lost and took a seat in the back.
Some claims made early on by Goldberg have been shown to have been over the top, but that is a minor error. Goldberg has been around, but you can tell he doesn’t know much of how things work. That’s OK, even people who have spent decades as operators don’t understand everything. Goldberg claimed that the CIA director revealed a field agent’s ID in the chat. Well, now, as outlined in this clip: it was Ratcliffe’s Chief of Staff’s name.
...
We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. This is not new territory. The only person in this group older than me is John Ratcliffe. These are all digital natives. I am sure in their private life they have patterns like I do. I will talk with (almost) everyone in normal chat. Some people there and on Signal, others only on Signal. Some on regular chat and WhatsApp, others only on WhatsApp. It all depends on context and content. We can do this.
Have we seen a great moment in national security statecraft? No.
Do we have an opportunity to tighten up how our leaders communicate? Yes.
Should anyone lose their job over this? That is the CINC’s call, and I think he’s made it.
We all like to protest against a no-defect command climate, so … perhaps everyone is getting a mulligan here because, in the end, nothing leaked early.
As for me, I’m ready to move on. I hope we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and ban Signal use, that is counterproductive. Hopefully there is some action being taken to get a bespoke communications app appropriate to the people and their position.
For everyone else: in your personal and professional life, practice good communications hygiene. Don’t be a walking tempest hazard.
The Signal I Was Waiting For
...my kingdom for a STU/STE App...
CDR Salamander
Mar 27, 2025
As I mentioned on X yesterday, one of the hardest disciplines—and one I fail at regularly—is to wait at least 24 hours until forming an opinion with breaking news that seems sexy. When the issue is highly political and being pushed by questionable characters, one should wait even longer. This approach paid off with the Signal issue Jeffrey Goldberg raised in The Atlantic earlier this week.
Depending on the jersey you wear, there was a mad rush to validate one’s priors via assuming the worse, or dismissing the possible…as we usually see in such breaking events.
I had a little fun with it on X, but in the back of my head I remembered the wisdom of holding back as I described at the top of the post. Glad I did.
Before outlining where I stand this Thursday AM, let’s back up a bit.
Years ago, I had a person ask me, “Are you on Signal?” I wasn’t, but knew of the program. So, I loaded it on my iPhone and was able to pick up the conversation with them from there.
After our conversation, I dug around for some more details on it, and then reached out to a Navy cryptologist-type for his opinion. He was very clear with me: “This is legit.” All the endorsement I need.
I’ve been using it since as needed for years. For those who are not familiar with it, it essentially uses the same interface you have with other messaging/texting programs…it just has end-to-end encryption and asks for your pin now and then. The great thing about end-to-end encryption is that your line/transmission path does not have to be secure.
After my first use, a half decade ago or so, I thought, “I bet the National Security Agency has a government-only version of this for use by important people. I see a lot of very senior people using smart phones, and there is no way we would have these people just ride on the back of a civilian app like Signal, regardless of how good it is. Something like a STU/STE-Phone App for a smart phone. It is the 21st Century, after all.”
Well, Tuesday night, CIA Director Ratcliffe let me know my assumption was wrong. You can watch the video below, but the game was up at the 2:16 mark.
“One of the first things that happened after I was confirmed as CIA director, Signal was loaded on to my computer at the CIA, as it is for most CIA officers. One of the things I was briefed on very early Senator, was by the CIA records management folks about the use of Signal as a permissible work use.”
Well, that made a few things clear to me:
- No, the government never created its own version of Signal. A stupid and lazy mistake.
- Signal was authorized and encouraged to be used even up to the highest level since at least the Biden Administration.
- Records Act concerns are covered.
Number 2 and 3 above were the first concerns I had with this outside the initial reports that “classified war plans” were shared.
Was Signal authorized and did it meet records requirements? They were told yes to both, and it appears that using Signal had been accepted use for years, so off they went. So, green light here.
Sorry, once a Navy Information Systems Security Officer (ISSO), always an ISSO.
The second thing that came to mind was a concern with what controls were being made on who you were communicating with. As everyone was told to use the garden variety of Signal, this was a free-play. Eventually, someone was going to make the mistake in adding the wrong people from their contacts list to Signal. This event was only a matter of time. So, yellow light here.
Then the question was what were you discussing over it? What were people told were the upper limits? This is important, as you’d be amazed the level of things I’ve heard discussed over a round of golf in front of Buddha and everyone.
In the larger testimony below both the CIA Director and DNI both confirmed that nothing classified was in the exchange.
They testified in open-session to Congress. If they are lying, which I don’t think they are, they would have larger problems. Technically, there were no classified materials attached to the Signal chat, correct. After their testimony the full exchange was released by Goldberg. Now we get into a flashing red area.
Were there things with classification levels stamped at the top and bottom of documents attached? No. Were things discussed that you would not put in NIPRNET emails but would shift to SIPRNET or higher systems? Does it depend on the definition of what “is” … is?
Again, what is the direction and guidance for official use of Signal? Does one even exist, or are we handing out scissors at a track meet?
Well…we’ll cover more of this down thread.
There are two serious problems here that I see:
- Who invited and then fat-fingered Jeffrey Goldberg into the Signal chat. That was most likely an innocent human error, but needs to be answered.
- Goldberg, an uncleared person, received 2-hours notice of upcoming strikes.
As covered in his article, Goldberg said he received a request from Waltz to connect on Signal, and then a couple of days he was invited to the chat.
It sounds to me like it was a different “JG” that Waltz wanted. Some have speculated it was supposed to be U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, but who knows. That one attention to detail fail, on par with talking on a STU/STE on speaker with the door open with the spouses club walking past your door, started all that follows.
We’ve all invited the wrong person when building group chats and invites. By myself and others, I can think of a half-dozen events over the years, but nothing more serious than cat pictures were exchanged. Of course, if the government made its own Signal equivalent, safeguards would have been in place to prevent Goldberg’s number being added—if properly designed—but we are expecting too much of the bureaucracy, I guess. A proper interface would mitigate this risk. Our bloated and distracted bureaucracy never made the effort, and here we are.
Early on in this kerfuffle, we did not have all of the chat exchange, but now we have the full, unredacted exchange. Let’s dive in and see the full picture:
Well, we now know it was National Security Advisor Waltz or his staff who made the human error of the initial invitation to connect on Signal and then join the group to Goldberg…but bad on everyone on the chat. I don’t know about you, but when I find myself in a group chat on Signal or anywhere else, I check who is on it. If I can’t tell who someone is, I ask, usually DM’n the person who started it. Just good communications hygiene, but it is a best practice, not a requirement.
Nothing classified there but…if you are going to play at this level, full names please.
What’s next?
Here was the first opportunity for everyone to get your “GREEN NET” vs. “RED NET” straight. From Waltz, “…in your high side inboxes.” BZ to Waltz. He knew this was encrypted, but not approved for highly classified material. No classified attachments, thank goodness.
Considering all that follows, that is where the rest of the conversation should have taken place. Yes, I can sea-lawyer that “no classified information was exchanged”, but only if I am very generous due to one point we’ll get to in a bit.
First some good things.
A little “creative friction” pushback from the VP. OK. Good staff officer 101 going on here from him, Kent, and Ratcliffe...but…still: this is Signal with people on the net who should not be. Not quite but perhaps BEADWINDOW 02.
I know Ratcliffe mentioned the CIA team told him he was good-to-go for Signal, but I will repeat myself here and in other places on this post out of frustration: is there any guidance on specific limitations in what is or is not authorized on Signal?
Again, Goldberg in the chat is the problem here. A nod of respect for him not putting this out early. This is the big takeaway here…we need a better way to let our leaders coordinate in a modern manner with modern time expectations.
Nothing in the above about Europe we have not discussed here and on the Midrats Podcast for two decades. I’m still cringing the lack of INFOSEC sanitation…but here we are.
That said, good on Waltz for the correction and reminder that the USA with its Navy is the indispensable nation. Not bad for an Army guy.
I’m a bit embarrassed for Europe here, but they know this, and they have been told this to their face in open source SEPCOR. Nothing shocking. At this point, the old staff officer in me is begging someone, anyone, to say—let’s take this to the high-side…but maybe this is normal practice the last half-decade? IDK, but it all makes me itchy.
The next, for me, is when things clearly went over the line. Well-meaning, fair-minded, apolitical people are well within reason stating the below timeline was best not put on Signal before the strike unless there is guidance stating Signal is OK for this. If not, this was a mistake. While I understand the position of, “Never admit a mistake that makes your enemies happy”, I think here there is no problems saying, “Yeah, this was not the best practice here. Won’t happen again.” That is pretty much what the CINC said, so benchmark that and move on.
Hey, I was BEADWINDOW’d once during Desert Storm when up on RED saying what should have been on GREEN. My bust, but I learned. Never happened again in two decades.
I’m sorry SECDEF Hegseth, but we were not clean on OPSEC. You didn’t know that at the time, but that is the whole lesson we all need to learn. Thank goodness Goldberg thought he was being punked and kept this info to himself.
Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell did say:
Yeah, this is true Sean…but we did give times. Yes, Goldberg turned his knob to 11 in places, but this isn’t a hoax. It was contained in real time and only revealed after the event, but it’s not nothing.
Not great, not terrible
The senior editor of The Atlantic was on the chat with knowledge of the strike two hours before time-on-target. This could have been VERY ugly…but, like or hate Goldberg, you have to at least give him credit for sitting on it. I do.
I know I am repeating myself, but I can’t help it. At some point is has to be clear that the principals here all were briefed that Signal was OK for communications in such circumstances. Were they so briefed, or has the permanent INFOSEC nomenklatura just not done their job? Did they do their job but were ignored? We don’t know, but we should. That would have been a good question for Congress to ask, but there was too much grandstanding in the time they had.
The most optimistic take I can form is that thanks to Goldberg’s restraint, this is simply a no-harm to the nation own-goal that has a good result. The good result is that bad guys were sent to the afterlife. The bad part is that it is clear that our government is too lazy to have an option besides Signal for senior leaders to communicate with each other in a modern way.
This as an embarrassing moment, but, but an opportunity to learn a lesson and correct it so we don’t get unlucky in the future.
This isn’t like a single individual was trying to reach a Russian oligarch on the sly or anything. This is like being told you are in a closed session but no one realized that sitting in one of the chairs against the wall, being nice and quiet, was one of the kids from a field trip to the HQ who got lost and took a seat in the back.
Some claims made early on by Goldberg have been shown to have been over the top, but that is a minor error. Goldberg has been around, but you can tell he doesn’t know much of how things work. That’s OK, even people who have spent decades as operators don’t understand everything. Goldberg claimed that the CIA director revealed a field agent’s ID in the chat. Well, now, as outlined in this clip: it was Ratcliffe’s Chief of Staff’s name.
Still amazed that no one demanded, “Hey, who is “JG”, and “S M”? I think that “TG” it Tulsi Gabbard and “MAR” is Marco Antonio Rubio, but could you confirm?”
Why are there double entries? Two phones? Who knows…but again, the whole thing just seems loose and sloppy. 19 members is not a “Small Group.” Five or so is a “Small Group.”
In the end, we got lucky. This didn’t get leaked in real-time. Thank you, Mr. Goldberg. If it were, it would at best be even more embarrassing, at worse, something else.
I do have a final nit to pick. As a former Operational Planner—and a pedant—I would like to take an issue with the use of the term, “War Plans.”
We don’t have “War Plans.” We have Operational Plans (OPLANS). They are HUGE files, usually shared as PDFs with equally HUGE PPT slide-decks that go with them. These are highly classified.
When this first broke, I thought we were in a situation where someone attacked at TS-SCI PDF or PPT slide-deck to a Signal chat, or other non-high-side medium.
That would be a big deal, but all that happened here is that senior officials were using a phone app that was loaded on their phone by their people, and were told it was approved for appropriate use.
Perhaps now we can get a government approved and firewalled secure communications app with the same functionality and end-to-end security of Signal, but doesn’t let someone in a hurry accidentally fat-finger people who should not be in conversations.
We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. This is not new territory. The only person in this group older than me is John Ratcliffe. These are all digital natives. I am sure in their private life they have patterns like I do. I will talk with (almost) everyone in normal chat. Some people there and on Signal, others only on Signal. Some on regular chat and WhatsApp, others only on WhatsApp. It all depends on context and content. We can do this.
Have we seen a great moment in national security statecraft? No.
Do we have an opportunity to tighten up how our leaders communicate? Yes.
Should anyone lose their job over this? That is the CINC’s call, and I think he’s made it.
We all like to protest against a no-defect command climate, so … perhaps everyone is getting a mulligan here because, in the end, nothing leaked early.
As for me, I’m ready to move on. I hope we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and ban Signal use, that is counterproductive. Hopefully there is some action being taken to get a bespoke communications app appropriate to the people and their position.
For everyone else: in your personal and professional life, practice good communications hygiene. Don’t be a walking tempest hazard.
28. Drug trafficking as irregular warfare — and what can be done about it
It is the number one threat now in the 2025 IC Threat Assessment.
Drug trafficking as irregular warfare — and what can be done about it
Defense News · by Zita Fletcher · March 28, 2025
On March 15, President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act against drug traffickers — a move that has been met with astonishment, particularly since the act originated in 1798 and has rarely been used since — beyond when the United States has been at war.
Although discussions surrounding the act are focusing on its effect on immigration, what is often getting lost in debates is the White House’s argument that drug trafficking constitutes a form of irregular warfare. Similarly, the administration has stirred up controversy by classifying drug traffickers as terrorists.
Can it be the case that drug traffickers are terrorists carrying out a form of irregular warfare — and if so, how could the U.S. military address this at a strategic level?
Can drugs be weapons of war?
The word “terrorism” has taken on new meaning in recent years. Although arguments can be made as to what signifies a terrorist activity, the concept of terrorism is most often associated with those who choose to do harm against civilians through acts of extreme violence or by mass casualty.
The attacks on the USS Cole, the World Trade Center and Benghazi usually come to mind when referring to acts of terrorism. Yet it is the subtle terrorist attacks that often go unnoticed.
The correlation between drugs and terrorist organizations is not new. In fact, most terrorist organizations rely heavily on criminal conduct to support their activities, such as the illicit drug trade, human trafficking, sex trafficking and money laundering. While it is true that illegal drugs finance terrorist and criminal groups, the situation today has changed.
It has become well known that the primary killer of U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 45 is fentanyl. In 2019 it was reported that fentanyl death rates had risen by over 1,000% within just six years.
Fentanyl pills seized by U.S. Custom and Border Protection officers at the Port of Mariposa in Nogales, Arizona, November 2023. (Jerry Glaser/CBP)
Unlike in the past, when the goal of illicit drug trade was to increase profits to fund terrorist attacks, fentanyl not only increases criminal profits but is a means of destruction — harming a large portion of the U.S. population and causing over 100,000 deaths per year. Mexican cartels have been identified as being responsible for the influx of fentanyl into the U.S., which led Trump to designate them as terrorist organizations.
Can drugs like fentanyl accurately be described as weapons of war? Although it may seem surprising, history shows us the answer is often yes.
Organized crime groups have often deliberately flooded drugs into the U.S. with the goal of inflicting mass casualties on civilians. In 2005, Afghan drug lord Haji Baz Mohammed was extradited to the U.S. and convicted after having orchestrated attempts to use heroin as a form of “jihad,” stating that he and his colleagues were “taking the Americans’ money and the heroin was killing them,” according to court documents.
State actors and corruption
Political entities wishing to undermine the United States often have deep ties to the drug trade and use it to cause harm. One example is the conviction and sentencing of Juan Orlando Hernandez, who served as president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, and was eventually sentenced to 45 years in prison in June 2024 for what U.S. prosecutors described as “state-sponsored drug trafficking.”
The case made history as Hernandez became the first former president sentenced in the U.S. for narcotics trafficking. According to the Justice Department, Hernandez’s co-conspirators benefited not only from political protection but military-style weaponry, including AK-47s, AR-15s and grenade launchers.
Mexico presents a unique challenge in terms of its geographic proximity to the U.S. and its role as a major international trading partner. Due to deep corruption, it has proved problematic in the past for U.S. law enforcement to put a stop to cartel activities affecting American citizens.
Recently, the Mexican government extradited 29 drug lords to the U.S., including Rafael Caro Quintero, a Sinaloa cartel leader responsible for the murder of DEA Special Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena in 1985. Camarena was kidnapped, brutally tortured and killed at the hands of the Sinaloa cartel in one of many tragedies experienced by the DEA while it was operating in Mexico for over 40 years.
Quintero evaded justice for decades, a demonstration of the the difficulties of taking on cartels as well as the problem corruption has posed in stifling their illicit activities.
To take on the cartels who are responsible for the deaths of American civilians will take more than military or law enforcement action alone.
The need for joint solutions
While turning its attention to Mexico, the current administration has deployed U.S. military forces to establish control of the border. However, such efforts will require combined experience, knowledge and the integration of expertise beyond the armed forces.
Since the illicit drug trade is a major activity for the Mexican cartels, the model for a solution can be replicated based on the Afghanistan-based partnership between the Defense Department and a foreign-deployed advisory support team, or FAST.
This highly successful joint effort saw the U.S. military work with DEA agents on the ground to target Taliban heroin traffickers. What brought success then was options and the ability to target narco-terrorists through an array of authorities that could be used on the battlefield.
The same concept could be used to address the threats from Mexico by exploiting DOD assets and combining them with DEA expertise. Alongside vetted Mexican authorities, this partnership would yield shared intelligence gathering, training and joint operations.
FAST drew its methodologies from U.S. special operations by merging small unit tactics, operational planning and tactical combat casualty care with DEA’s investigative techniques, evidence processing and handling of informants to create an unprecedented approach to effectively extinguish threats from criminal groups.
In a few short years, FAST became a valuable resource for the Special Operations Command to target Taliban principals and remove terrorist leaders from the battlefield. It remains a partnership highly valued by those who served on DEA’s FAST program.
Although the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have since ended, the lessons learned from this cooperative approach still hold value. This strategy may be revisited as a method of unconventional warfare aimed at dismantling the most nefarious criminal organizations.
Neither the U.S. military nor federal law enforcement acting alone are enough to deal with the complex problem of cartels. Forging a new partnership between DOD and DEA using the FAST model could prove to be the most efficient solution.
About Zita Ballinger Fletcher
Zita Ballinger Fletcher previously served as editor of Military History Quarterly and Vietnam magazines and as the historian of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. She holds an M.A. with distinction in military history.
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
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