Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is armed.

- Marcus Aurelius

"the essence of philosophy is not the possession of the truth but the search for truth. ... Philosophy means to be on the way. Its questions are more essential than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question."

~ Karl Jaspers

Characteristics of the American Way of War (2 of 13)

2. Astrategic. Strategy is, or should be, the bridge that connects military power with policy. When Americans wage war as a largely autonomous activity, leaving worry about peace and its politics to some later day, the strategy bridge has broken down. The conduct of war cannot be self-validating. For a premier example of this malady, one must cite Vietnam. For example, the United states sought to apply its new-found theory of limited war in the ill-crafted effort to employ modulated, on-off-on coercion by air bombardment to influence Hanoi in favor of negotiations. To resort to Clausewitzian terms again, while war has its policy logic, it also has its own “grammar.” It is prudent to take notice of these words of wisdom from Samuel Huntington: “Military forces are not primarily instruments of communication to convey signals to an enemy; they are instead instruments of coercion to compel him to alter his behavior.

Excellence in strategy has not been an American strength, at least not since George Washington defeated the British strategically. The reasons why Americans talk a lot about strategy, but understand it a lot less and practice it rarely, do not really concern us in this monograph. Suffice it to say that the major causes of the problem are twofold: a long standing tradition of material superiority which offers few incentives for strategic calculation; and the nation's traditional theory of civil military relations, which discourages probing dialogue between policymaker and soldier. Unfortunately, the terrorist and the insurgent are probably functioning strategically. Indeed they can hope to succeed in no other way. As we have commented already, such irregulars are playing a long game. Their tactical behavior is of little, if any, inherent significance. They do not plan and execute would-be decisive military actions; COIN is a quintessentially strategic struggle. Everything that is done by both sides potentially has political implications. This is not exactly a deep insight. What I have just stated is nothing more than Clausewitz’s definition of strategy. A United States that does not really “do strategy,” at least not for long, because it does not truly understand it, will be outfought and out-thought by irregular enemies who must “do strategy” if they are to survive and prosper.

Colin Gray, 2006

1. Special Ops Community Transforming to Meet Current, Future Challenges

2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 7, 2023

3. Russia remains a ‘very capable’ cyber adversary, Nakasone says

4. We’ve entered a new Cold War with China

5. Mar 8: Colin Freeman- I spied on the Russians- with a little help from 'Negroni'

6. March Is Women’s History Month, But Not in Iran

7. Big AUKUS news coming, but Hill and allies see tech sharing snags

8. Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say

9. Special Operations Boss Vows to Stamp Out 'Corrosive' Misconduct After String of Problems

10. USAF Special Ops Buys MQ-9B SkyGuardians To Test Air-Launched Drone Concepts

11. The Daring Ruse That Exposed China’s Campaign to Steal American Secrets

12. AFSOC Teaches Cultural and Air Ops Skills in New Course for Multi-Capable Airmen

13. ChatGPT has thrown gasoline on fears of a U.S.-China arms race on AI

14. China is restructuring key government agencies to outcompete rivals in tech

15. Weaponized balloons challenge US air superiority – quite littoral

16. Semafor partners with Chinese Communist Party-linked think tank

17. US AIMS TO ‘AVOID FIGHTING A LAND WAR IN ASIA’

18. America Is Too Scared of the Multipolar World

19. Pentagon publishes new 'Joint Concept for Competing,' warning that adversaries aim to 'win without fighting'

20. Submarines Will Reign in a War with China

21. Is the Ukraine War an Anti-Colonial Struggle?

22. The Astonishing Endurance of Unity on Ukraine

23. Cyberattacks Are Just One Part of Hybrid Warfare

24. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy plans to meet Taiwan's president in the U.S., sources say

1. Special Ops Community Transforming to Meet Current, Future Challenges

A lot of interesting discussion on SOF issues. I will highlight the excerpt below which tracks a lot of our recent writing.

A tweet reference ASD SO/LIC's discussion of service like responsibilities and my response:

kevinbilms

@kevinbilms

More to be done, but great to see the Service-like activity get its recognition. @JJSchroden

My response to Kevin:

David Maxwell

@DavidMaxwell161

“Service like” will never be enough. To fully realize Nunn-Cohen ASD SO/LIC must have actual service authorities and it must own “LIC” in its entirety which was the original congressional intent. But DOD will never let either be realized. Congress must act. Just saying.

The testimony can be viewed here: https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/hearings/to-receive-testimony-on-the-posture-of-united-states-special-operations-command-and-united-states-cyber-command-in-review-of-the-defense-authorization-request-for-fiscal-year-2024-and-the-future-years-defense

From the joint written statement of Mr. Maier and General Fenton (also attached):

(page 10)

A critical way the Department is seeking to gain and maintain enduring advantage in strategic competition is through SOF-led, but not SOF-limited, irregular warfare (IW) operations, activities and investments. IW is a critical tool to campaign across the spectrum of conflict enhance interoperability and access, and disrupt competitor warfighting advantages while reinforcing our own. To further institutionalize IW across the Joint Force, we are updatingpolicy, informing doctrine, and modernizing IW education and training. Through the establishment of the Irregular Warfare Center, we will continue to strengthen our understandin of IW through research, analysis, and engagement with Allies and partners.

https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2023%20SOLIC-USSOCOM%20Posture%20-%20Maier-Fenton%20-%20SASC%20(7Mar23)%20(FINAL)1.pdf

I will just say as an aside about SOF in INDOPACOM: Based on the Senators' questions you would think there has never been any SOF in INDOPACOM until now. There seems to be no understanding how SOF has been doing so much more than CT for decades, especially in INDOPACOM. You would think that SOF has only been in Afghanistan and Iraq (and Syria and Somalia) for the last 2 decades with no recognition or understanding of what SOF does or has done (e.g., Special Forces, Psychological Operations, Civil Affairs, MARSOC, AFSOC, and Naval Special Warfare). (Although GEN Fenton did especially call out 1st Special Forces Gorups's work in INDOPACOM).

And if ASD SO/LIC needs more personnel for Title 10 support and oversight and Irregular Warfare and other than CT work, I can make some personnel recommendations.

Seantor Sullivan has not a clue about SOF in INDOPACOM. versus CT in the Middle East. His comments were uninspiring and ill-informed. Mr. Maier and General Fenton did a good job of informing him. But it is amazing how the Senators mypocially think SOF only equals CT.

Special Ops Community Transforming to Meet Current, Future Challenges

defense.gov · by Jim Garamone

The Special Operations community is making progress in its transformation to focus more on the challenges of China and Russia while maintaining the expertise to mount counterterrorism operations worldwide, Chris Maier, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict told the Senate Armed Services Committee today.

Special Ops Briefing

Airmen assigned to the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command brief Christopher Maier, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, during a visit to Hurlburt Field, Fla. in July. Maier oversees special operations, irregular warfare, counterterrorism and information operations policy issues, among other responsibilities.

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Photo By: Air Force Tech. Sgt. Michael Charles

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Maier testified alongside Army Gen. Bryan Fenton, the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, and both men were upbeat in their appraisal of where the community is and how it will get to the next level.

While Maier is an assistant secretary, Congress gave his position many of the authorities wielded by service secretaries regarding special operations forces — or SOF, as it is often called.

DOD officials are all in on this aspect, and Maier noted that when the Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III calls a meeting of the service secretaries, he sits at the table, too.

"Sitting before this committee last year, I testified we were at an inflection point in SOF's transformation to focus more on the pacing challenge of China and the acute threat posed by Russia, while maintaining enduring capabilities to counter violent extremist organizations, address Iran's destabilizing behavior and conduct no-fail crisis response around the globe," Maier said.

The assistant secretary stressed that special operations forces are not separate from the rest of the military, and they are pulling their weight in support of the National Defense Strategy.

"We are transforming the SOF enterprise to achieve the goals of the NDS," he said. "While SOF’s role in counterterrorism is widely understood and appreciated, my team and I work daily to ensure the value proposition of SOF in integrated deterrence and campaigning against strategic competitors is accounted for and incorporated into the department's processes."

One way is to exploit the deep relationships special operators have forged with allies and partners over the last two decades of conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa and Asia. This "has produced an international SOF enterprise that provides us unique, firsthand understanding of the global operating environment," he told the senators. "It also has enhanced the resilience of our allies and partners to resist aggression."

These relationships and the U.S. military’s unique ability to deploy and sustain forces to some of the most difficult locations in the world mean special operations forces formations "provide unique access and placement that create options for our nation's leaders, and SOF is adept at creating dilemmas for our adversaries," he said.

He noted the years of training special operations forces provided the Ukrainian forces, which transformed that nation’s military into a highly capable force "that is consistently outperforming Russia on the battlefield today," Maier said.

Maier has also worked to guide special operations forces, writ large. "We have established over the last year in the department a series of recurring processes and delivered key outcomes for the SOF enterprise," he said. "For example, the Special Operations Policy Oversight Council, which I chair, provides a senior-level forum to address SOF-unique challenges across the department. We also have made progress on important initiatives to deter our adversaries and fill warfighting gaps, especially on irregular warfare and information operations."

Austin Greeting

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III shakes hands with Army Gen. Bryan Fenton before a U.S. Special Operations Command Change of Command ceremony at the Tampa Bay Convention Center in Tampa, Fla., Aug. 30, 2022.

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He noted his office played a central role in DOD’s landmark civilian harm and mitigation response action plan.

But everything in special operations goes back to the first "truth" of the community: Humans are more important than hardware. "None of our efforts [is] possible without our most important resource, our people," he said. "We continue to evolve the force and address SOF-unique challenges to optimize physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and now cognitive performance."

Maier said a diverse force is a necessity. Removing barriers to participation and advancement in the community is "an operational imperative if we are to succeed in an ever more complex geopolitical environment," he said.

Fenton said special operations forces remain a national advantage in this decisive era defined by the strategic competition with China and Russia. Those two nations seek to reshape the rules-based international order, he said. "In response, your special operations forces strengthen and sustain deterrence globally as part of the Department of Defense's approach to integrated deterrence," the general said.

Special operations forces really grew out of the cauldron of combat in World War II and they matured through the Cold War and proved their worth in the conflicts since the attacks of September 11, 2001. "Now drawing upon our 20-plus years of hard-won combat credibility and coalition experience, your SOF provides creative tailorable and asymmetric options for our nation, while creating dilemmas for our competitors," Fenton said to the senators. "And as part of the broader joint force, we campaign every day, to deter and prevent aggression, counter coercion, close warfighting gaps and tackle shared challenges alongside allies and partners."

defense.gov · by Jim Garamone

2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 7, 2023

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-7-2023

Key Takeaways

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated on March 7 that Russian forces will have an “open road” to capture key cities in Donbas. ISW continues to assess, however, that Russian forces lack the capability to exploit the tactical capture of Bakhmut to generate operational effects, and will likely rapidly culminate following the capture of Bakhmut.
Russian forces likely lack the mechanized forces necessary to advance beyond Bakhmut, and the tactical “assault detachments” used in assaults against Bakhmut are likely unable to conduct maneuver warfare.
Russian forces have likely captured the eastern part of Bakhmut east of the Bakhmutka River following a controlled Ukrainian withdrawal from eastern Bakhmut as of March 7.
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu reiterated boilerplate rhetoric seeking to deter further Western military aid to Ukraine.
Shoigu additionally outlined long-term and likely aspirational efforts to restore and expand the Russian officer corps.
Russia exchanged 130 Ukrainian prisoners-of-war (POWs) for 90 Russian POWs on March 7.
Russian independent polling organization The Levada Center released poll results that 51 percent of Russians feel negatively toward Russians who left the country due to mobilization, indicating at minimum negative feelings towards those that escaped mobilization, if not overt support for the war.
The New York Times (NYT) stated on March 7 that low-confidence and unverified intelligence reviewed by US officials may suggest that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out an attack on the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022, but made clear this is a very low confidence assessment.
US Air Force General James Hecker confirmed on March 6 that the US has provided Ukraine with Joint Direct Attack Munition Extended Range (JDAM-ER) kits.
Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line.
Russian forces continued ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
A Russian source claimed that Ukrainian forces attempt to conduct operations across the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast.
Russian federal authorities continue to place the onus of solving mobilization issues onto Russian regional authorities who then absolve themselves of ongoing Russian command issues.
Russian occupation authorities continue to import employees from various Russian law enforcement agencies to staff vacancies in occupation administrations.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 7, 2023

Mar 7, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Karolina Hird, Grace Mappes, Nicole Wolkov, George Barros, and Mason Clark

March 7, 8:15 pm ET

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain maps that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated on March 7 that the hypothetical Russian capture of Bakhmut would provide Russian forces an “open road” to Kramatorsk, Slovyansk, and other critical settlements in Donetsk Oblast.[1]

ISW continues to assess, however, that Russian forces lack the capability to exploit the tactical capture of Bakhmut to generate operational effects, and will likely rapidly culminate following the capture of Bakhmut. As ISW has previously assessed, Russian forces would have to choose between two diverging lines of advance after capturing Bakhmut. Russian forces could attempt to push west along the T0504 highway towards Kostiatynivka (about 20km from Bakhmut) or could push northwest along the E40 highway towards the Slovyansk-Kramatorsk area in northwestern Donetsk Oblast (about 40km northwest of Bakhmut).[2] These two potential axes of advance are not mutually supporting, and degraded Russian forces would likely have to prioritize the pursuit of just one to have any chance of success - though Russian commanders have repeatedly stretched their forces too thin across multiple axes of advance throughout the invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian forces have also heavily fortified both of these routes, which are supplied by numerous ground lines of communication (GLOCs) running deep into the Ukrainian rear, and any Russian attempt to advance down these roads would likely be highly costly.[3]

Russian forces additionally likely lack the mechanized forces necessary to advance beyond Bakhmut, and the tactical “assault detachments” used in assaults against Bakhmut are likely unable to conduct maneuver warfare. Recent Russian advances within urban areas of Bakhmut demonstrate that Russian forces can secure limited tactical gains with infantry-led frontal assaults.[4] Russian forces likely lack the mechanized forces necessary to exploit the roads (which are likely highly fortified) west of Bakhmut. As ISW has recently reported, Russian forces are increasingly relying on “assault detachments,” a battalion-size element optimized for frontal assaults on fortified areas, rather than for maneuver warfare.[5] These detachments are artillery-heavy, use simplified tactics, relegate tanks to a fire support role in rear areas, and would almost certainly struggle to effectively conduct operations beyond urban areas. A prominent Russian milblogger echoed this observation on March 7, noting that assault detachments are simply too small to “punch a wide and deep gap” in Ukrainian defensive formations and follow with tank and mechanized battalions, and called for the formation of “breakthrough brigades,” a change likely far beyond the current capabilities of Russian forces in the area.[6] The continuing devolution of Russian force structure towards small assault detachments using simplified tactics, combined with mounting losses among the most effective Russian troops, will likely greatly limit the ability of Russian forces to properly exploit any paths of advance opened by the capture of Bakhmut Russian forces remain unlikely to secure more than a tactical victory following 10 months of assaults.

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu reiterated boilerplate rhetoric seeking to deter further Western military aid to Ukraine during a conference call on March 7.[7] Shoigu reiterated senior Russian officials’ tired claims that Western states aim to destroy Russia by providing arms to Ukraine and have begun an information war targeting Russia. Shoigu invoked the commonly referenced historical memory of World War II to justify the war in Ukraine, calling on Russians to prevent lessons learned from defeating Nazism “to be distorted and forgotten.” Shoigu claimed that Russian forces killed over 11,000 Ukrainian military personnel in February 2023, which he claimed was a 40 percent increase from Ukrainian casualties in January. Shoigu’s speech did not craft any new rhetorical arguments that could shape the Russian information space and garner more domestic support for the war effort, continuing to rely on standard tropes in the absence of any Russian successes.

Shoigu also outlined long-term and likely aspirational efforts to restore and expand the Russian officer corps.[8] Shoigu stated that the Russian military is undergoing a phased increase and needs to recruit about 18,000 students and cadets for officer training. Shoigu noted that the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) needs to increase staffing at Russian universities to provide adequate training for over 280 military specialties and claimed that Russians are increasingly interested in the engineering and flight specialties. Shoigu also stated that children of Russian military personnel and students at select schools will undergo selection for military specialties before taking the necessary exams. Shoigu also noted claimed ongoing efforts by Russian forces in Ukraine to refine training processes, increase the protection of military personnel, and increase the efficiency of military operations.

Russia exchanged 130 Ukrainian prisoners-of-war (POWs) for 90 Russian POWs on March 7. The Ukrainian State Border Service reported that of the 130 Ukrainian soldiers released, 87 fought in Mariupol, including 71 Azovstal defenders.[9] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported that 90 Russian soldiers returned to Russia, and a Russian milblogger posted footage claiming to show the released Russian soldiers receiving new boots and clothes in Belgorod Oblast.[10]

Russian independent polling organization The Levada Center released poll results that 51 percent of Russians feel negatively toward Russians who left the country due to mobilization.[11] Ten percent of Russians polled indicated that they have a positive or understanding attitude toward those that left. The Levada Center poll indicated that Russians over 55 years old and those living in rural areas and cities with fewer than 100,000 residents are most likely to have negative attitudes toward Russians who left due to mobilization. The Levada Center’s polling data demonstrates that the Kremlin retains a strong hold over the domestic information space. The poll did not ask questions regarding attitudes to the war itself, indicating at minimum negative feelings towards those that escaped mobilization, if not overt support for the war.

The New York Times (NYT) reported on March 7 that low-confidence and unverified intelligence reviewed by US officials may suggest that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out an attack on the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022. US officials reported that they know very little about the “perpetrators or their affiliations,” but that they may be “opponents” of Russian President Vladimir Putin.[12] The NYT article emphasizes that US officials refused to disclose the nature of the intelligence and have not settled on an explanation of the Nord Stream attacks, and this leak remains low-confidence.

US Air Force General James B. Hecker, commander of US Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa, and NATO Allied Air Command confirmed on March 6 that the US has provided Ukraine with Joint Direct Attack Munition Extended Range (JDAM-ER) kits.[13] Hecker noted that the JDAM-ERs arrived in Ukraine three weeks ago and have a range of 72km.[14] Russian milbloggers generally had a muted response to the announcement, with one Russian source voicing concern that JDAM-ERs will allow Ukrainian forces to launch strikes against Russian front and near rear positions without running the risk of entering Russian airspace.[15] Another Russian milblogger remarked that Russian troops are responding to the use of JDAM-ERs with their own use of guided bombs to strike Ukrainian positions.[16]

Key Takeaways

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated on March 7 that Russian forces will have an “open road” to capture key cities in Donbas. ISW continues to assess, however, that Russian forces lack the capability to exploit the tactical capture of Bakhmut to generate operational effects, and will likely rapidly culminate following the capture of Bakhmut.
Russian forces likely lack the mechanized forces necessary to advance beyond Bakhmut, and the tactical “assault detachments” used in assaults against Bakhmut are likely unable to conduct maneuver warfare.
Russian forces have likely captured the eastern part of Bakhmut east of the Bakhmutka River following a controlled Ukrainian withdrawal from eastern Bakhmut as of March 7.
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu reiterated boilerplate rhetoric seeking to deter further Western military aid to Ukraine.
Shoigu additionally outlined long-term and likely aspirational efforts to restore and expand the Russian officer corps.
Russia exchanged 130 Ukrainian prisoners-of-war (POWs) for 90 Russian POWs on March 7.
Russian independent polling organization The Levada Center released poll results that 51 percent of Russians feel negatively toward Russians who left the country due to mobilization, indicating at minimum negative feelings towards those that escaped mobilization, if not overt support for the war.
The New York Times (NYT) stated on March 7 that low-confidence and unverified intelligence reviewed by US officials may suggest that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out an attack on the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022, but made clear this is a very low confidence assessment.
US Air Force General James Hecker confirmed on March 6 that the US has provided Ukraine with Joint Direct Attack Munition Extended Range (JDAM-ER) kits.
Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line.
Russian forces continued ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
A Russian source claimed that Ukrainian forces attempt to conduct operations across the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast.
Russian federal authorities continue to place the onus of solving mobilization issues onto Russian regional authorities who then absolve themselves of ongoing Russian command issues.
Russian occupation authorities continue to import employees from various Russian law enforcement agencies to staff vacancies in occupation administrations.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1—Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2—Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
Russian Supporting Effort—Southern Axis
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1— Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and continue offensive operations into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on March 7. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Hryanykivka (54km northwest of Svatove), Nevske (17km north of Kreminna), Bilohorivka (10km south of Kreminna), and Spirne (25km south of Kreminna).[17] Geolocated footage published on March 7 depicting Russian forces storming and capturing Ukrainian positions northwest of Kreminna indicates limited Russian advances.[18] Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai stated that Russian forces are unable to capture Stelmakhivka (15km west of Svatove) and Nevske.[19] A video posted on March 7 claimed to show personnel from the 375th Motorized Rifle Battalion of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) 2nd Army Corps operating in Luhansk Oblast.[20] Geolocated footage published on March 7 shows Ukrainian artillery striking five Russian tanks near Chervonopopivka (6km north of Kreminna), indicating the further degradation of Russian mechanized forces in the area.[21] Haidai stated that Russian forces have increased the number of attack waves in the Kreminna and Bilohorivka directions.[22] Footage published on March 7 claims to show elements of the 4th Separate Mechanized Brigade of the LNR 2nd Army Corps firing rockets at Ukrainian positions near Kreminna.[23]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2—Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces have likely captured the eastern part of Bakhmut, east of the Bakhmutka River, following a controlled Ukrainian withdrawal from eastern Bakhmut as of March 7. Russian forces continued ground attacks in and around the city on March 7. Geolocated footage posted on March 6 and 7 shows Russian positions in eastern Bakhmut within 200m of the Bakhmutka River and Russian forces comfortably operating in areas in eastern Bakhmut where they previously had not been observed, supporting previous Russian claims that Russian forces captured the eastern part of Bakhmut and that Ukrainian troops have withdrawn to central and western Bakhmut.[24] Geolocated footage posted on March 6 additionally shows Russian advances in southwestern Bakhmut.[25] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continue efforts to storm Bakhmut and that Ukrainian troops repelled Russian attacks on Bakhmut itself; northeast of Bakhmut near Fedorivka (15km northeast) and Bilohorivka (20km northeast); northwest of Bakhmut near Dubovo-Vasylivka (6km northwest), Yahidne (1km northwest) and Zalizianske (10km northwest); west of Bakhmut near Ivanivske (5km west) and southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka (7km southwest).[26] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continue to withdraw westward from Bakhmut.[27] One milblogger noted that Ukrainian troops are conducting counterattacks southwest of Bakhmut near the T0504 Kostiantynivka-Chasiv Yar-Bakhmut highway to maintain access to the road.[28] Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that the Wagner Group killed 11,000 Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut over the course of February, and other Russian sources also amplified claims of high Ukrainian losses.[29]

Russian forces continued ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on March 7. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops conducted unsuccessful offensive actions in the Avdiivka area near Krasnohorivka (9km north of Avdiivka), Novokalynove (10km north of Avdiivka), Kamianka (4km northeast of Avdiivka), and Severne (5km west of Bakhmut); on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City near Pervomaiske and Nevelske; and on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City near Marinka.[30] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced 300m in an unspecified location northwest of Donetsk City.[31] Another Russian milblogger remarked that the Russian 114th Brigade of the 1st Donetsk Army Corps (previously the 11th Donetsk People’s Republic Regiment) is active north of Avdiivka and making gains in the area.[32] The milblogger claimed that the 114th Brigade is trying to capture Krasnohorivka in order to cut the E50 Donetsk City-Pokrovske highway.[33] The milblogger stressed the importance of the Avdiivka front and claimed that Russian success in this sector will pose a serious threat to Ukrainian capabilities.[34] Russian forces have been attempting to take Avdiivka since the summer of 2022 without significant success.[35] A Russian milblogger also claimed that Russian forces advanced within Marinka.[36]

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks in western Donetsk Oblast on March 7. Russian milbloggers continued to warn that Ukrainian forces near Vuhledar (30km southwest of Donetsk City) appear to be preparing for an offensive against exhausted and vulnerable Russian troops.[37] A Russian milblogger posted footage of artillery of the 29th Combined Arms Army (Eastern Military District) striking Ukrainian fortifications in the Vuhledar direction.[38] The Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) “Kaskad” tactical formation posted footage of its fighters taking Ukrainian prisoners near Vuhledar on an unspecified date.[39]

Supporting Effort—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

A Russian source claimed that Ukrainian forces attempt to conduct operations across the Dnipro River. A Russian milblogger claimed on March 7 that the Russian 126th Separate Guards Coastal Defense Brigade (22nd Army Corps, Black Sea Fleet) repelled a Ukrainian attempt to land on Velykyi Potomkin Island just south of Kherson City.[40]

Russian forces are reportedly constructing defenses in Zaporizhia Oblast. A Russian milblogger published a satellite image on March 7 purportedly showing Russian forces constructing defensive lines in the Zaporizhia direction.[41] The milblogger speculated that Russian forces could be constructing defensive lines in preparation for a Ukrainian counteroffensive in April 2023. Another milblogger posted similar satellite images calling the purported defenses the “Wagner line,” indicating that Wagner Group forces may be active in this area.[42] It is unclear if the milblogger was alluding to a new “Wagner line” in Zaporizhia Oblast or insinuating that this is somehow an extension of the current “Wagner line” previously constructed in Donbas.[43] A milblogger amplified footage on March 7 purportedly showing 291st Guards Motor Rifle Regiment (42nd Motorized Rifle Division, 58th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) forces firing on Ukrainian positions in the Zaporizhia direction.[44]

Russian forces continued routine shelling west of Hulyaipole and in Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, and Mykolaiv oblasts on March 7.[45]

Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

Russian federal authorities continue to place the onus of solving mobilization issues onto Russian regional authorities who then absolve themselves of responsibility for ongoing Russian command issues. Head of the Russian State Duma Coordinating Headquarters (HQ) for Assistance to Mobilized and Their Families, Dmitry Kuznetsov, announced on March 7 that the HQ analyzed the effectiveness of regional administrations in solving issues with mobilization and noted that regional authorities primarily referred “issues with service” concerns to the HQ.[46] Issues with service included problems with command, individuals performing jobs for which they were not trained, training issues, poor living conditions, and individuals deployed to an area without proper documentation of their location. Kuznetsov complained that some federal subjects, including Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Kaluga, Kursk, and Kaliningrad oblasts either do not want to or cannot resolve certain mobilization issues. Kuznetsov praised Arkhangelsk Oblast, Nizhny Nogvorod Oblast, Primorsky Krai, Lipetsk Oblast, and occupied Sevastopol for solving the most complaints without federal involvement. The Belgorod Oblast Operational HQ deflected a complaint from mobilized personnel who claim they wrongly deployed from Belgorod Oblast to Donetsk Oblast, stating that the redeployment falls under the exclusive purview of the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD).[47] The MoD posted footage on March 6 of a mobilized serviceman from Irkutsk praising his living conditions and treatment by command following a March 5 complaint of such issues from mobilized personnel from Irkutsk, suggesting that the MoD is halfheartedly attempting to rebut these complaints.[48] The constant tension between Russian regions and the Russian federal government on mobilization issues will likely continue to inhibit the proper resolution of these issues.

Russian sources continue to indicate that the MoD is failing to solve these service problems, however. A prominent, Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger complained that there are extensive management and organization issues among Russian forces in border and other areas in the deep rear, causing Russian personnel who retreated from or are injured in battle to get lost and erroneously labeled as deserters.[49] The milblogger complained that the newly integrated units from the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republic (DNR and LNR) militias suffer the most organizational problems. The milblogger claimed that some formations established dedicated units to catch lost personnel but noted that the MoD should solve the broader organizational issues.

Russian forces, including Wagner Group, are lowering their recruitment standards under the backdrop of high losses in the ongoing battle for Bakhmut. Independent Russian outlet The Moscow Times reported on March 6 that the Wagner Group loosened medical requirements for individuals to serve “to remove unnecessary bureaucracy,” now only refusing to take those with serious, performance-affecting conditions, those with Hepatitis B or C, and drug addicts.[50] Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin accused the Russian MoD on March 4 of not allowing Wagner Group to reinforce itself with fresh recruits, including convicts.[51] Russian opposition outlet Important Stories reported on March 6 that a St. Petersburg health facility distributed military summons to its patients.[52] The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) released an intercepted call on March 6 in which a Russian soldier complained that the Russian military command is staffing his unit with chronically ill personnel due to a lack of suitable personnel.[53]

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of and annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian civilians into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian occupation authorities continue to deploy employees of various Russian law enforcement agencies to staff vacancies in occupation administrations. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on March 7 that Russian authorities are unable to recruit willing collaborators to fill several positions in the occupation bureaucracy and are therefore sending Russian employees from the Federal Security Service (FSB), police departments, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Prosecutor’s Office to occupied areas of Ukraine.[54] The particular focus on employees in law enforcement functions suggests that occupation authorities are struggling to maintain stability in occupied areas and require support from Russia due to a lack of willing Ukrainian collaborators.

Russian occupation authorities continue to prepare for September 10 local elections. Kherson Oblast occupation head Vladimir Saldo announced on March 7 that the Kherson Oblast Central Election Commission met to discuss the upcoming election and will conduct an election campaign in both west (right) and east (left) bank Kherson Oblast, despite the fact that Russian forces have not controlled west bank Kherson Oblast since November 2022.[55]

Russian authorities continue to struggle with the full integration of occupied areas of Ukraine into Russia. Ukrainian Luhansk Oblast Head Serhiy Haidai stated on March 7 that Russian authorities are requiring those traveling from occupied Luhansk Oblast to Russia to fill out “foreign migration” cards.[56] This suggests that Russian authorities still have not established a coherent way to integrate occupied areas into Russian border control and customs infrastructure, since in theory under Russian law travel between occupied regions of Ukraine to Russia should be the same as between Russian oblasts.

Significant activity in Belarus (ISW assesses that a Russian or Belarusian attack into northern Ukraine in early 2023 is extraordinarily unlikely and has thus restructured this section of the update. It will no longer include counter-indicators for such an offensive.

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus, but these are not indicators that Russian and Belarusian forces are preparing for an imminent attack on Ukraine from Belarus. ISW will revise this text and its assessment if it observes any unambiguous indicators that Russia or Belarus is preparing to attack northern Ukraine.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko confirmed on March 7 the February 26 UAV attack against the Russian Aerospace Forces Beriev A-50 airborne early warning and control plane at the Machulishchi Air Base in Minsk, Belarus.[57] The attack’s effectiveness and perpetrators remain unclear despite Lukashenko‘s statement; Lukashenko stated that the attack caused only minor damage to the aircraft and did not impact its functionality and that Russia rotated another A-50 to Belarus while the damaged plane undergoes maintenance.[58] Lukashenko accused the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Ukrainian State Security Service (SBU) of cooperating to conduct the attack using a Ukrainian-born agent who was assisted by over 20 Belarusian accomplices. Belarusian partisans claimed responsibility for the attack on February 26.[59] Russian telegram channels circulated purported interrogation footage of the attack’s alleged perpetrator on March 7, during which the accused man stated he conducted the attack under the SBU’s instructions.[60] ISW is unable to verify Lukashenko’s attribution nor the interrogation video’s veracity.

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/07/europe/ukraine-volodymyr-zelensky-cnn...

[2] https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...

[3] https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...

[4] https://twitter.com/auditor_ya/status/1633102736894881793; https://twitter.com/markito0171/status/1633026348443746304

[5] https://isw.pub/UkrWar02272023

[6] https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10954

[7] https://telegra dot ph/Tezisy-vystupleniya-Ministra-oborony-Rossijskoj-Federacii-generala-armii-Sergeya-SHojgu-na-tematicheskom-selektornom-soveshchani-03-07; https://t.me/mod_russia/24627

[8] https://telegra dot ph/Tezisy-vystupleniya-Ministra-oborony-Rossijskoj-Federacii-generala-armii-Sergeya-SHojgu-na-tematicheskom-selektornom-soveshchani-03-07; https://t.me/mod_russia/24627

[9] https://www.facebook.com/DPSUkraine/posts/pfbid02saPLqMzRpfX9baTY79RKE74... gov.ua/news/shche-odyn-velykyy-obmin-z-vorozhogo-polonu-zvilnyly-130-zahysnykiv-i-zahysnyc-ukrayiny; https://t.me/ermaka2022/2175; https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/statu...

[10] https://t.me/mod_russia/24633; https://t.me/sashakots/38770; https://t...

[11] https://meduza dot io/news/2023/03/07/levada-tsentr-polovina-rossiyan-s-osuzhdeniem-otnositsya-k-lyudyam-uehavshim-iz-strany-iz-za-mobilizatsii; https://www.levada dot ru/2023/03/07/emigratsionnye-nastroeniya-i-otnoshenie-k-uehavshim-iz-rossii/

[12] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/us/politics/nord-stream-pipeline-sabo...

[13] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/winged-jdam-smart-bombs-are-now-op...

[14] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/winged-jdam-smart-bombs-are-now-op...

[15] https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10950; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/22995; https://t.me/rybar/44341; https://t.me/epoddubny/15104

[16] https://t.me/milinfolive/97746; https://t.me/rybar/44336

[17] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0j5dZ69XUT6uJKSev2s9...

[18] https://twitter.com/EjShahid/status/1633148028721811458; https://t.me/b...

[19] https://t.me/luhanskaVTSA/9114

[20] https://t.me/sons_fatherland/10225

[21] https://twitter.com/PaulJawin/status/1632989464787124224; https://twitter.com/neonhandrail/status/1633004319992844288

[22] https://t.me/luhanskaVTSA/9107

[23] https://t.me/sons_fatherland/10224

[25] https://twitter.com/SerDer_Daniels/status/1633026537678155778; https://... https://twitter.com/jbajerski/status/1633031846261825538

[26] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0j5dZ69XUT6uJKSev2s9...

[27] https://t.me/readovkanews/54157; https://t.me/wargonzo/11278; http...

[28] https://t.me/kommunist/16225; https://t.me/dva_majors/10405

[29] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/560; https://t.me/basurin_e/106; ht...

[30] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0j5dZ69XUT6uJKSev2s9...

[31] https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/45875

[32] https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19795; https://t.me/rt_special/3138

[33] https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19795; https://t.me/rt_special/3138

[34] https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19795; https://t.me/rt_special/3138

[35] https://isw.pub/RusCampaignJuly18

[36] https://t.me/readovkanews/54157

[37] https://t.me/readovkanews/54146; https://t.me/readovkaru/2617; https:/...

[38] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79866

[39] https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19817; https://t.me/obtf_kaskad/1867

[40] https://t.me/dva_majors/10405; https://t.me/kommunist/16225

[41] https://t.me/grey_zone/17606

[42] https://t.me/m0sc0wcalling/20858

[43] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[44] https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19802; https://t.me/voinabogovz/392

[45] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0j5dZ69XUT6uJKSev2s9...

[46] https://rg dot ru/2023/03/06/v-gosdume-proverili-uspehi-regionov-po-resheniiu-problem-mobilizovannyh-i-ih-semej.html; https://t.me/StolitsaRassveta/1090; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19801

[47] https://meduza dot io/news/2023/03/07/vlasti-belgorodskoy-oblasti-otvetili-na-obraschenie-mobilizovannyh-kotoryh-iz-teroborony-pereveli-v-shturmovye-otryady-i-zayavili-chto-oni-ne-svyazany-s-teroboronoy; https://t.me/astrapress/22471

[48] https://t.me/Baikal_People/2025; https://t.me/mod_russia/24596; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[49] https://t.me/rybar/44346

[50] https://t.me/KurbanovaNEWS/14859; https://www.moscowtimes dot ru/2023/03/06/vagner-nachal-nabirat-patsientov-psihonevrologicheskih-dispanserov-a35958

[51] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1632148708748935168; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EelfGtZEB1o&t=125s

[52] https://t.me/istories_media/2207

[53] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/cherez-hepatyt-s-skazaly-eho-bystro-vytashchat-s-etoi-bolezniu-ty-voobshche-ne-dolzhen-sluzhyt.html

[54] https://sprotyv.mod dot gov.ua/2023/03/07/okupanty-mayut-deficzyt-kolaborantiv-na-tot-donechchyny/

[55] https://t.me/SALDO_VGA/509

[56] https://t.me/luhanskaVTSA/9103

[57] https://president.gov dot by/ru/events/ceremoniya-vrucheniya-gosudarstvennyh-nagrad-i-generalskih-pogon-1678175601

[58] https://president.gov dot by/ru/events/ceremoniya-vrucheniya-gosudarstvennyh-nagrad-i-generalskih-pogon-1678175601

[59] https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...

[60] https://t.me/sashakots/38767 ; https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/45890; https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/45884

Russia remains a ‘very capable’ cyber adversary, Nakasone says

Defense News · by Colin Demarest · March 7, 2023

WASHINGTON — U.S. Cyber Command is keeping a close watch on digital activity in the Russia-Ukraine war that may coincide with a springtime renewal of military operations, according to the organization’s leader, Gen. Paul Nakasone.

Nakasone, who oversees both CYBERCOM and the National Security Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee March 7 that his teams are monitoring the situation in Ukraine “very carefully,” noting that Russia remains a “very capable adversary.”

“By no means is this done, in terms of the Russia-Ukraine situation,” Nakasone said, responding to questions from Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat. “So, as Russia looks at armaments coming into the country, as Russia looks at different support, how do they react?”

The war in Eastern Europe kicked off Feb. 24, 2022, when Moscow launched a surprise incursion across the border into Ukraine, seeking to topple the government in Kyiv.

The invasion was preceded by a flurry of cyberattacks, including one on Viasat, a California company, meant to cripple command and control networks. The hack had no effect on Viasat’s government customers.

One year later, as winter gives way to spring, the thawed militaries are expected to launch new offensives. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in February said Russian moves — with “thousands of more troops” — were already underway.

Advance work in Ukraine blunted Russian cyber advantage, US says

The Pentagon sought $11.2 billion for cyber in fiscal 2023. That's $800 million, or nearly 8%, over the Biden administration’s previous ask.

Exactly how additional digital belligerence might buttress such campaigns, Nakasone did not say. He did, however, acknowledge that Russian troops “have been very active in Ukraine, in terms of conducting a number of cyberattacks, including destructive and disruptive attacks.”

The CyberPeace Institute, a Switzerland-based nongovernmental organization, cataloged in 2022 more than 50 discrete assaults on Ukrainian critical infrastructure and civilian systems.

Government leaders and analysts have feared similar attacks stateside. While they have yet to come to fruition, Nakasone said U.S. vigilance has not diminished. CYBERCOM is charged with defending U.S. networks and coordinating military strikes in the digital domain.

“We continue to work very tightly with our other partners within the U.S. government, [the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency], FBI, to ensure that our U.S. critical infrastructure is protected, and NATO, in general, to ensure that they’re aware of the tradecraft that the Russians might use,” Nakasone said.

U.S. defense officials consider Russia a near-peer national security threat, alongside the longer-term hazards posed by China.

Neal Higgins, the deputy national cyber director for national cybersecurity, in June warned Russia may become more cyber aggressive as fighting drags on.

Cyber tools, Higgins said at the time, could be “used divide our allies and to dilute international resolve against” Russian efforts.

About Colin Demarest

Colin Demarest is a reporter at C4ISRNET, where he covers military networks, cyber and IT. Colin previously covered the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration — namely Cold War cleanup and nuclear weapons development — for a daily newspaper in South Carolina. Colin is also an award-winning photographer.

4. We’ve entered a new Cold War with China

Excerpts:

And as Mr. Xi starts his third term as president, there are numerous media reports that he and senior Chinese officials have agreed to give the CCP more direct command in sectors dealing with security, finance, technology and culture — indeed, establishing a more centralized governance system, with the CCP in the lead.

Since Mr. Xi abruptly ended China’s zero-COVID policy in December, he has been in a race to repair China’s ailing economy and restore good relations with the international community. Vice Premier Liu He’s upbeat presentation at the Davos 2023 conference was well received, with the goal of encouraging more foreign direct investment in China. State Councilor and Politburo member Wang Yi’s February visits to and meetings with the leadership in Paris, Italy, Hungary, Russia and Germany (for the Munich Security Conference) was part of China’s initial diplomatic offensive to restore the credibility it lost with its support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Economic decoupling with China seems unlikely, given the interdependence of our respective economies, but we may already be in a cold war with China. Such a cold war could heat up quickly, intentionally or by accident, over Taiwan or in the South China Sea.

We’ve entered a new Cold War with China

By Joseph R. DeTrani - - Tuesday, March 7, 2023

washingtontimes.com · by The Washington Times https://www.washingtontimes.com

OPINION:

Although bilateral trade with China in 2022 increased to a record $690.6 billion, bilateral relations deteriorated to their lowest level since the normalization of relations in 1979. One could argue that we’ve entered a Cold War with China.

Chinese military aircraft continue to violate Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone, with the recent incursion of 21 J-10 and J-16 warplanes and four Chinese naval vessels dangerously close to Taiwan’s coast. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s cancellation of his visit to China due to the incursion of a Chinese surveillance balloon shot down after flying over the U.S. for several days and China’s unwillingness to apologize or answer the phone when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin tried to reach his Chinese counterpart, Wei Fenghe, have contributed to even greater distrust between the U.S. and China.

China’s continued support of Russia in its war with Ukraine and reported intelligence indicating that China was considering the provision of weapons to Russia, despite China’s 12-point peace proposal — which neglected to address that it was Russia that invaded Ukraine and previously seized Crimea and other territories in eastern Ukraine with no mention of reconstruction aid to a devastated Ukraine — have put more of a spotlight on China and its true intentions in support of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Indeed, these developments and the recent state visit to China of Belorussian President Alexander Lukashenko, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, have contributed to deep distrust in the U.S. and NATO as to China’s true intentions.

At the recent Group of 20 conference in New Delhi, China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang, and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, opposed two paragraphs in a proposed consensus communique. Interestingly, the second paragraph of the communique that China objected to did not mention Russia or Ukraine; it cited the United Nations principles on international humanitarian law, “including the protection of civilians and infrastructure in armed conflicts” and forbidding “the use or threat of nuclear weapons.”

These and other issues with China — the suppression of Uighurs in Xinjiang, the national security law imposed on Hong Kong, the militarization of islands and reefs in the South China Sea, assertiveness in waters surrounding the Senkaku Islands, the theft of intellectual property and civil-military fusion — have contributed to an exponential downturn in U.S.-China relations.

The U.S. response has been powerful. Huawei Technologies was placed on a trade blacklist in 2019, restricting most U.S. suppliers from shipping goods and technology to Huawei while tightening controls to restrict Huawei’s ability to buy or design semiconductor chips that are used in most of its products. The House Foreign Affairs Committee’s recent decision to effectively ban TikTok on all mobile devices in the United States is another action taken by the U.S. to address China’s efforts to spy on Americans. The Commerce Department last week targeted 28 Chinese firms and individuals that represent potential national security risks. There likely will be more primary and secondary sanctions imposed on Chinese entities that deal directly or through third parties with sanctioned entities in Russia, Iran and North Korea.

Last week, the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party convened its first open meeting to do deep dives into economic and security competition with the CCP.

All this comes at a time when China, on March 5, convened its annual National People’s Congress — its rubber-stamp national legislature that will endorse decisions taken at the October 2022 Chinese Communist Party Congress: securing a third term for Xi Jinping as president, appointing Li Qiang premier and other party officials loyal to Mr. Xi to the State Council, China’s Cabinet. And on its first day, Premier Li Keqiang laid out China’s economic priorities and a new budget in a government work report that included plans for more defense spending, with this year’s economic growth target at “around 5%.”

And as Mr. Xi starts his third term as president, there are numerous media reports that he and senior Chinese officials have agreed to give the CCP more direct command in sectors dealing with security, finance, technology and culture — indeed, establishing a more centralized governance system, with the CCP in the lead.

Since Mr. Xi abruptly ended China’s zero-COVID policy in December, he has been in a race to repair China’s ailing economy and restore good relations with the international community. Vice Premier Liu He’s upbeat presentation at the Davos 2023 conference was well received, with the goal of encouraging more foreign direct investment in China. State Councilor and Politburo member Wang Yi’s February visits to and meetings with the leadership in Paris, Italy, Hungary, Russia and Germany (for the Munich Security Conference) was part of China’s initial diplomatic offensive to restore the credibility it lost with its support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Economic decoupling with China seems unlikely, given the interdependence of our respective economies, but we may already be in a cold war with China. Such a cold war could heat up quickly, intentionally or by accident, over Taiwan or in the South China Sea.

• Joseph R. DeTrani is the former special envoy for negotiations with North Korea and the former director of the National Counterproliferation Center. The views are the author’s and not those of any government agency or department.

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washingtontimes.com · by The Washington Times https://www.washingtontimes.com

5. Mar 8: Colin Freeman- I spied on the Russians- with a little help from 'Negroni'

Quite a story.

Mar 8: Colin Freeman- I spied on the Russians- with a little help from 'Negroni'

https://camarra.substack.com/p/mar-8-colin-freeman-i-spied-on-the?publication_id=849957&post_id=106997969&isFreemail=false

As published on MSN on March 7, 2023

Monique Camarra

Colin Freeman- I spied on the Russians- with a little help from 'Negroni', MSN

For the Russian soldiers occupying the Ukrainian city of Kherson, Anastasia Burlak's cafe-bar was a popular place for R&R. The pizza was tasty, the booze flowed, and their hostess - a smiley, tattooed 30-year old - was always welcoming.

Anastasia Burlak used the codeword 'Negroni' while passing on information to her handler - Colin Freeman for The Telegraph© Colin Freeman for The Telegraph

Yet, as they downed Scotch by the bottle, and tried to flirt with Anastasia and her waitresses, the heavily armed customers relaxed a little too much for their own good. None realised that when her eye occasionally lingered on their uniforms, it wasn't out of admiration for the men wearing them.

For as she plied them with drink, Anastasia was spying on her patrons for Kherson's pro-Ukrainian partisans. Details of any officer with high-ranking uniform badges would be relayed to her military handler, helping the guerrilla campaign that brought Kherson's occupation to an end last year.

"I remember the first time some Russians came in, my hands were literally shaking as I served them, I was so scared," said Anastasia. "But I was also angry - how dare they come to our land and try to decide our affairs for us? I passed any information I could - how many soldiers there were, how many vehicles, and any details of commanders."

It was dangerous work. Anastasia communicated with her handler via private messages on her Instagram feed, which otherwise showed pictures of cats, holiday snaps and nights on the town. She choose a codeword to send if Russian FSB agents ever came knocking at her door: “Negroni". It would signal she was now in jail, and for her handler to erase all traces of their contact. "If the Russians start torturing you for information, they can break the strongest person," she said.

Irina Kabycheva, who spied on Russian troops while out walking with her son, holds a cerficate of congratulation she received from Ukraine's armed forces - Colin Freeman for The Telegraph© Provided by The Telegraph

Vladimir Putin's forces captured Kherson a year ago last Wednesday, making the port of 300,000 the first major Ukrainian city to fall to Kremlin control. During eight months of occupation, thousands were arrested and jailed, with hundreds more killed and many still missing. The Ukrainian flag was finally hoisted in the city again in November, after a counter-offensive that owed much to tip-offs from informants such as Anastasia.

The euphoria that greeted the city's liberation has proved short-lived. Having retreated to the far side of the River Dnipro, Russian troops now simply shell Kherson from afar. Random mortar fire now peppers the streets 24 hours a day, claiming 90 civilian lives in the past three months. The city is even emptier than it was during the occupation, when two-thirds of the population fled. Freedom Square, where huge street parties took place in November, is deserted.

Partisan spies

Yet, for Anastasia and many others who acted as partisan spies, there is still the consolation of knowing that they did their own small bit to win Kherson's freedom back. Most, like her, were not trained espionage agents. Instead, they were ordinary residents: cafe workers, hoteliers, taxi drivers and housewives, who all lived in daily fear of getting caught. Even now, only a few are willing to talk - and still have no idea who else was involved.

"It wasn't a system - most of us acted just on our own initiatives, and that's why the Russians could not stop it," said Anastasia.

Prior to the invasion, Anastasia took little interest in politics, and was convinced that if Vladimir Putin's invasion did go ahead, he would content himself with taking a small slice of extra territory in Ukraine's eastern Donbas. "I just saw Russians as my neighbours and cousins - I now feel ashamed that I didn't pay more attention," she said.

That made the shock of Kherson's fall all the greater - especially when Russian soldiers first entered her premises one day and ordered coffee. "The whole bar went silent," she said. "They were trying to be friendly, though: they asked if they could pay in roubles, and when I said no, they didn't get angry."

Kherson's new overlords did not stay on their best behaviour for long. Despite their claim to be "liberating" the city, Anastasia had already heard of friends being arrested around town. By April, reports of atrocities were also emerging from Bucha, the Kyiv suburb that suffered the brunt of Russia's assault on the capital. "That news made me really angry - I had to do something," she said.

Among those already on the run from the Russians was her friend "Vlad", a member of Kherson's territorial defence force. He warned she would be taking a "big risk" by spying on her Russian customers. But their increasingly boorish behaviour in her bar banished any second thoughts.

"They would come in, drinking a lot, sometimes with prostitutes," she said. "They didn't like to wait long for service, and once they told a waitress that if she didn't hurry up, they'd take to her to an underground prison. I had to say, 'please don't threaten my staff'. I was scared I'd end up in jail with the waitress myself."

Oksana Pohomii, 59, a member of a pro-Western party on Kherson's city council, passed on information about Ukrainians she suspected of collaborating with the Russians - Colin Freeman for The Telegraph© Provided by The Telegraph

At other times, she found herself defusing rows between the Russians and local Ukrainian customers, who would sometimes make a point of speaking in their national tongue. One Russian officer, who was refused service when he walked in just after closing time, threatened to shoot everyone who was still in the bar. "I was so angry: I just said: 'Why are you frightening people?' and he backed down."

Anastasia never found out what her Ukrainian handlers did with her information, nor did she really want to know. "I hope it was helpful but I wanted a simple life," she said. "I didn't really want to take responsibility for people's deaths."

Simply being an informant was stressful enough. Journeying to and from work, she would constantly check she wasn't being followed. She also found herself developing a nervous tic. Asked how she coped, she replied: "Alcohol helped."

[set your translation options]

Codeword - 'Negroni'

That Anastasia never had to resort to codeword "Negroni" may have been due to the old-school attitudes of the Russian army, a blend of chivalry and chauvinism. They tended to view only men as a threat, and seldom stopped and questioned women in the street.

Even if they had done, they would have probably ignored Irina Kabycheva, a 42-year-old housewife who was another member of the spy network. When walking around the city on reconnaissance missions, she would take her 10-year-old son Timur with her, looking the picture of motherly innocence.

"I'd take him out to his judo class, sometimes with my husband as well, and we'd just look like a family going for a walk," she said. "Nobody suspected us at all."

In reality, she was monitoring various hotels and goods yards, noting any requisitioned by the Russians as barracks or vehicle depots.

One of her tips was that Russian officers were using the Don Marco, a restaurant also popular with Ukrainian locals. Her handler told her it would not be targeted, because of the risk to civilians. But a hotel called the Ninel, she said, was hit by a US-supplied Himars rocket in October, killing several Russian officials living inside.

The informants did not just keep their eye on Russians. Oksana Pohomii, 59, a member of a pro-Western party on Kherson's city council, passed on information about Ukrainians she suspected of collaborating with the Russians.

Some were fellow members of the 54-strong council body. Others were seen attending pro-Russian demos, or helping organise September's Kremlin-rigged referendum to become part of Russia. "I passed the information via a Signal chat group - just an inner circle of a few people," she said.

Oksana herself went into hiding in May, after Russian troops came looking for at her house. She continued to post videos denouncing the occupation via a closed Facebook page, having "unfriended" anyone whose loyalties she was unsure of.

As the months passed, the spying campaign yielded results. Several officials in Kherson's Kremlin-installed administration were assassinated. The tip-offs also helped the Ukrainian military pinpoint targets for its Himars missiles, destroying the supply bases the Russians depended on.

Ruthless game

When Ukrainian-flagged military convoys first appeared again in the city on November 11, many feared at first it was a Russian trap, designed to see who would come out to cheer. It was not until the following days that Anastasia and her family celebrated with champagne and cake.

Irina's handler later emailed her a certificate of congratulation, thanking her for "timely provision of important information about the enemy". Oksana's Facebook friends, meanwhile, messaged to thank her for the speeches she'd posted. "They said they'd been too scared to tick ‘like’ on them before," she said.

Anastasia would also later learn how she had become a bit-player in a very ruthless game. "Vlad" disclosed that one night, he'd followed a drunken Russian soldier out of another bar and stabbed him to death. It wasn't quite the shock she expected. "It felt absolutely normal to hear that," she said. "I know the Russians are human, but after all this time, I hate them."

The graffiti outside 74-year-old Valentina Haras' home denounces her as a 'Ruscist' - a Ukrainian play on the words Russia, racism and fascism - Colin Freeman for The Telegraph© Provided by The Telegraph

Neither Irina nor Oksana have troubled consciences either. During eight months of Russian rule, they too lost any empathy for the occupiers. As Irina's husband put it: "They are not human, they came and took our property, torturing people, kidnapping people. I remember seeing a father being taken away at a checkpoint, and his young son just sitting there alone for two hours. What do you think was going through that child's mind?"

The hatred wasn't just born of the serious human rights abuses, but petty indignities. At checkpoints, Russian troops would stop and search entire busfuls of residents if they didn't say good morning cheerfully enough.

"Sometimes, the soldiers would scroll through the photos on someone's phone and find sexy photos that they'd made for their partner," added one Kherson resident. "Then they'd show the photos to the other soldiers. That kind of thing really angered people - it was just so humiliating."

Locals collaborating with Russians?

The bitterness lingers. For while the Russians have now moved on, many locals who were accused of collaborating remain. Some are even suspected of directing the mortar fire that now rains on Kherson daily.

Just a few doors from Irena's home is a house spray-painted with the "Z" symbol used by Russian forces. The graffiti also denounces the occupant as a "Ruscist" - a Ukrainian play on the words Russia, racism and fascism.

Living there is Valentina Haras, 74, a neighbourhood cleaner accused by several locals of supporting the Russians when they came.

"She was walking around with the Russian flag in her hand and accepted Russian humanitarian help," claims Irena. "She has now painted Ukrainian flags next to the Z's, to try to show she's a patriot, but she has always supported Russia."

Had she really? Asked by The Telegraph, Valentina insisted the graffiti had been put there by a neighbour with a grudge. "I'm not pro-Russian - I have a daughter who lives in California," she said. "I've nothing to be ashamed of."

To prove her point, she even brandished a small American flag. She confirmed, though, that Ukrainian police had visited her and taken her phone for investigation. "They asked if I made lists of local people for the Russians - I did, but only so the elderly people could get humanitarian help."

Whether the police deem Valentina guilty as charged, or just the victim of malicious gossip, remains to be seen. Such is the rancour in Kherson right now, however, that many minds already seem made up.

"She was collaborating for sure," said another neighbour stood on a street corner with two other men, who nodded in agreement. "She should be punished by the process of law, though, not by the neighbours."

Might they, as neighbours, then forgive her? With the same certainty that they had just nodded, all three shook their heads.

6. March Is Women’s History Month, But Not in Iran

Conclusion:

While the Islamic Republic continues to undermine women’s rights, the resilience of women in Iran will not fade. In observing Women’s History Month, Biden and the international community must act. Let’s actively support the women of Iran this March—and every other month.

March Is Women’s History Month, But Not in Iran

Hundreds of Iranian schoolgirls are falling ill from poisonings, suspected to be the work of extremist religious groups trying to instill fear and prevent participation in protests.

by Toby Dershowitz Katie Romaine

The National Interest · by Toby Dershowitz · March 7, 2023

“Dear mothers, I’m a mother and my child is in a hospital bed…don’t send your children to school,” one parent in the Iranian city of Qom pleads.

Iranian schoolgirls by the hundreds are falling ill from poisonings. The exact perpetrators of the attacks are unclear, but human rights groups suspect that extremist religious groups that have found fertile ground in the Islamic Republic of Iran are behind it. Analysts speculate one motive behind the poisoning is to instill fear so the girls won’t attend school and will refrain from participating in the mass protests that have spread throughout Iran since September 2022.

The Biden administration, along with its allies, should raise this deeply troubling development at the forthcoming Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Executive Council meeting, which begins on March 14.

March is Women’s History Month. President Joe Biden commemorated it with a call to “create a nation where every woman and girl knows her possibilities know no bounds in America.” The opposite is happening in Iran.

Since November, toxic poisonings, perhaps chemical compounds, in over fifty schools have poisoned more than 1,000 Iranian schoolgirls. Students experienced nausea, numbness in their limbs, difficulty breathing, and heart palpitations, according to the New York Times. The string of attacks has deterred girls from attending school. One teacher told Iranian media that “of the 250 students in our school, only 50 attended classes.” Yet Iran’s interior minister blamed some of the girls’ symptoms on “stress” and condemned foreign news outlets for causing alarm.

The students’ families protested the poisonings, chanting, “we don’t want unsafe schools.” A leaked video shows the arrest of one mother for her solidarity with the schoolgirls.

The poisonings come amid the nationwide protests that broke out in September when twenty-two-year-old Mahsa Amini died in custody after Tehran’s morality police arrested her for allegedly wearing her hijab incorrectly. The protests condemn the clerical regime’s brutality and call for the end of its reign.

Iran’s intelligence ministry and security forces said they are investigating the incidents, but Iran does not have a record of credible investigations. For example, its officials deny that rapes are occurring in prisons, that Tehran has arrested thousands of protestors, and that security forces have killed hundreds of peaceful demonstrators.

After being poisoned twice, a student described the contradictory answers. They told her “All is good, we’ve done our investigation.” However, separately, the school told her father that the closed-circuit television surveillance “has been down for a week and we can’t investigate this.” The school wrongly claimed the student had a heart condition that was to blame for the painful symptoms.

Denial is part of Tehran’s modus operandi. In February, a leaked Iranian government document revealed the Islamic Republic deliberately concealed that Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) agents raped female protesters. It cited “the possibility of this information being leaked to social media and its misrepresentation by enemy groups” as reasons to keep it secret.

In a TV interview, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asked Iranian foreign minister Amir-Abdollahian about regime agents reportedly raping a protestor at an IRGC facility. Brushing off the accusation, Abdollahian said CNN’s reports “are targeted and false … I cannot confirm it. There have been so many such baseless claims made on social media.” Amanpour asserted, “These are not baseless and they weren’t on the internet. CNN spoke to a cleric, a religious person, inside your country and got this story.”

At a recent press briefing, State Department spokesman Ned Price said, “We expect Iranian authorities to fully investigate these reported poisonings.”

This is not enough.

The United States should call attention to the issue at the OPCW’s March Executive Council meeting. Ambassador Joseph Manso, the U.S. representative to the OPCW, should raise the matter now with a view toward recommending a full investigation by the OPCW at subsequent meetings. Iran should but likely won’t agree to such an investigation.

In 2018, OPCW established an Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) to probe Assad’s chemical weapons use in Syria. OPCW found that the Syrian Arab Air Forces had likely conducted a chemical weapons attack that killed 43 individuals and affected many others.

There is more the international community can do to hold Iran accountable. As part of the UN Human Rights Council’s fact-finding mission into Iran’s human rights abuses related to the protests, it should now consider the poisonings as part of its investigation.

The Islamic Republic’s history of hiding the truth makes a third-party investigation into the poisoning attacks necessary. The international community must have a credible investigation to ascertain culpability. A pattern of human rights abuses is why Iran was removed from the UN Commission on the Status of Women last December.

While the Islamic Republic continues to undermine women’s rights, the resilience of women in Iran will not fade. In observing Women’s History Month, Biden and the international community must act. Let’s actively support the women of Iran this March—and every other month.

Toby Dershowitz is senior vice president for government relations and strategy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Katie Romaine is a government relations associate at FDD. Follow the authors on Twitter @TobyDersh and @Katie_Romaine.

Image: Alexandros Michailidis/Shutterstock.

The National Interest · by Toby Dershowitz · March 7, 2023

7. Big AUKUS news coming, but Hill and allies see tech sharing snags

AUKUS must be more than just about technology.

Big AUKUS news coming, but Hill and allies see tech sharing snags

Defense News · by Joe Gould · March 7, 2023

WASHINGTON ― The U.S., U.K. and Australia are poised for a major announcement next week in landmark plans to help Australia build a fleet of nuclear-powered subs, but U.S. lawmakers are setting their sights on a part of the pact that’s seen as lagging: technology co-operation.

Senate staffers are expected to press Biden administration officials on the topic Wednesday when the officials brief them on the coming news behind closed doors on Capitol Hill. Tech cooperation, which includes work on hypersonic weapons, quantum technologies and artificial intelligence, is also part of the tripartite agreement known as AUKUS.

House staffers already received an AUKUS briefing last week, but the countries are keeping a tight hold on what capabilities the trilateral agreement will entail. President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak are expected to reveal details on AUKUS capabilities and technology sharing on March 13.

While the submarine portion of the pact ― known as Pillar One ― is poised for progress, British and Australian officials have said the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations regime threatens to hamstring the pact’s other tech sharing goals ― known as Pillar Two ― and have called for reforms.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee last week advanced a bill that would add scrutiny on the State Department, ordering it to coordinate with the Pentagon on a report to Congress detailing potential impediments to implementing AUKUS, including ITAR.

The report would include an “average and median time” it took the U.S. government to review arms exports applications to Australia and the U.K. in 2021 and 2022. It also requires a list of “voluntary disclosures” between 2017 and 2022 that have resulted in ITAR violations while trying to export defense articles to either country.

The bill also stipulates that the Biden administration must provide Congress with “an assessment of recommended improvements to export control laws and regulations of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States that such countries should make to implement the AUKUS partnership.”

Australia to buy Lockheed aircraft amid mounting tensions with China

U.S. State Dept. also approved weapon sales to Finland ahead of the country's planned ascension into NATO.

One of the main disincentives for cooperation with the U.S. is that jointly developed technologies would be subject to America’s strict approvals process, potentially robbing Britain and Australia of vital export opportunities, according to Josh Kirshner, a former State Department defense trade official who is now with Beacon Global Strategies.

Whether the U.S. would allow cooperation with its most important, secretive and potentially most lucrative development efforts, like Next Generation Air Dominance, is also an open question, he said.

Boeing, which is co-developing the MQ-28 Ghost Bat drone with the Australian military, has found that ITAR “doesn’t quite move at the pace we would want it to if we want to out-innovate the Chinese ― even with our closest allies,” its senior director for international operations and policy, Mike Schnabel, said last week at a virtual event hosted by the Center for a New American Security think tank.

Experts warn that speed is a factor in U.S. competition with China, whose president has instructed his country’s military to be ready by 2027 to conduct a successful invasion of Taiwan. Under AUKUS, Australia seeks to acquire nuclear submarines before 2040.

”If Pillar Two fails, AUKUS will be a failure. Plain and simple,” said Bill Greenwalt, a deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial policy in the George W. Bush administration. “The submarine portion will not happen in time to be relevant to a near-term conflict with China. What happens in Pillar Two could be, but only if ITAR is radically changed.”

The Pentagon, for its part, is making a push. According to Ely Ratner, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security, the Biden administration has been making internal progress on export controls and other “antiquated systems that need to be revised,” as the U.S. works to deepen defense ties in the region.

Without detailing the sensitive efforts, Ratner said at a Hudson Institute event in Washington that policy officials have been bending the bureaucracy to yield a “live evolution of processes” for technology sharing, foreign military sales, the defense industrial base and more.

“I would submit that in our closest alliances and partnerships, we’re having much better conversations about issues related to operations and planning and no-kidding defense areas in a way that hasn’t happened previously,” Ratner said.

Today the Biden administration believes it has the legal latitude to share nuclear propulsion technology as the U.S. did with the U.K. in the 1950s. But to fully realize AUKUS it will likely have to come to Congress at some point to address export controls, Rep. Joe Courtney, the top Democrat on the House Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, told Defense News.

Courtney noted that the initial AUKUS announcement in 2021 received a very positive bipartisan response. Still, there’s a thicket of agencies involved in export controls, which means there’s also a thicket of congressional committees that would have to pass any reform legislation.

“We think there’s going to be a need for us to help with the export control issue, but this stuff can get so challenging in terms of multi-committee jurisdiction, and you know, the different levels of certifications by different agencies ― whether it’s Treasury, State, DoD, Commerce,” Courtney told Defense News.

“My strong belief is that we’ve got to sort of come up with a package, stack hands and move out in terms of the legislative process. Whether that’s all going to happen this year in one fell swoop or whether people do it on an incremental basis, I don’t know the answer to that,” he added.

Biden tells Macron US ‘clumsy’ in Australian submarine deal

Biden and Macron greeted each other with handshakes and shoulder grabs before their first face-to-face meeting since the deal was publicly announced in September, marking the latest American effort to try to smooth hurt French sensibilities. Biden didn’t formally apologize to Macron, but conceded the U.S. should not have caught its oldest ally by surprise.

By Zeke Miller, The Associated Press

As U.S. officials have said they want to share more, Canberra has shown them the information security measures Australia is taking to prevent leaks, Australian ambassador Arthur Sinodinos told the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank earlier this month.

Sinodios praised progress over the last six months, saying the administration has worked to make a “seamless” transfer of technology easier. U.S. lawmakers are waiting to see how far the Biden administration feels it can go and where legislation would come into play, possibly attached to the annual National Defense Authorization Act, he said.

“The attitude we’ve taken is we want to push the administration process as far as possible,” he said. “The Congress wants to help.”

At the CNAS event, Australia’s first assistant secretary of defense for industry policy, Stephen Moore, said there has been “a frustration, I think, amongst all of us that bureaucratic processes need to be better.”

Speaking alongside Moore, Shimon Fhima, director of strategic programs at Britain’s Ministry of Defence, said that while the political will was “absolutely there, to ensure that the barriers that we have are broken through,” it remains to be seen whether the will also exists at the institutional levels.

“The willingness to share really sensitive technologies and capabilities in Pillar One; if we can do that, and we can do that at pace, we must be able to do that in Pillar Two,” Fhima said.

About Joe Gould and Bryant Harris

Joe Gould is the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He served previously as Congress reporter.

Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered U.S. foreign policy, national security, international affairs and politics in Washington since 2014. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.

8. Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say

Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say

By Adam Entous, Julian E. Barnes and Adam Goldman

Published March 7, 2023

Updated March 8, 2023, 12:31 a.m. ET

The New York Times · by Adam Goldman · March 8, 2023

New intelligence reporting amounts to the first significant known lead about who was responsible for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines that carried natural gas from Russia to Europe.

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The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in Lubmin, Germany, last year.Credit...Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg

Published March 7, 2023Updated March 8, 2023, 12:31 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON — New intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year, a step toward determining responsibility for an act of sabotage that has confounded investigators on both sides of the Atlantic for months.

U.S. officials said that they had no evidence President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine or his top lieutenants were involved in the operation, or that the perpetrators were acting at the direction of any Ukrainian government officials.

The brazen attack on the natural gas pipelines, which link Russia to Western Europe, fueled public speculation about who was to blame, from Moscow to Kyiv and London to Washington, and it has remained one of the most consequential unsolved mysteries of Russia’s year-old war in Ukraine.

Ukraine and its allies have been seen by some officials as having the most logical potential motive to attack the pipelines. They have opposed the project for years, calling it a national security threat because it would allow Russia to sell gas more easily to Europe.

Ukrainian government and military intelligence officials say they had no role in the attack and do not know who carried it out. After this article was published, Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Mr. Zelensky, posted on Twitter that Ukraine “has nothing to do with the Baltic Sea mishap.” He added that he had no information about pro-Ukrainian “sabotage groups.”

U.S. officials said there was much they did not know about the perpetrators and their affiliations. The review of newly collected intelligence suggests they were opponents of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, but does not specify the members of the group, or who directed or paid for the operation.

U.S. officials declined to disclose the nature of the intelligence, how it was obtained or any details of the strength of the evidence it contains. They have said that there are no firm conclusions about it, leaving open the possibility that the operation might have been conducted off the books by a proxy force with connections to the Ukrainian government or its security services.

Some initial U.S. and European speculation centered on possible Russian culpability, especially given its prowess in undersea operations, though it is unclear what motivation the Kremlin would have in sabotaging the pipelines given that they have been an important source of revenue and a means for Moscow to exert influence over Europe. One estimate put the cost of repairing the pipelines starting at about $500 million. U.S. officials say they have not found any evidence of involvement by the Russian government in the attack.

Officials who have reviewed the intelligence said they believed the saboteurs were most likely Ukrainian or Russian nationals, or some combination of the two. U.S. officials said no American or British nationals were involved.

The pipelines were ripped apart by deep sea explosions in September, in what U.S. officials described at the time as an act of sabotage. European officials have publicly said they believe the operation that targeted Nord Stream was probably state sponsored, possibly because of the sophistication with which the perpetrators planted and detonated the explosives on the floor of the Baltic Sea without being detected. U.S. officials have not stated publicly that they believe the operation was sponsored by a state.

The explosives were most likely planted with the help of experienced divers who did not appear to be working for military or intelligence services, U.S. officials who have reviewed the new intelligence said. But it is possible that the perpetrators received specialized government training in the past.

The State of the War

Bakhmut: Ukraine’s top generals want to bolster the defenses of the embattled city, signaling that they would pursue a strategy of bleeding the Russian army in a battle of attrition rather than retreat.
Action in the Skies: Against the odds, Ukraine’s helicopter brigades are using aging vehicles to fight a better equipped adversary.
Arming the World: As traditional weapons suppliers like the United States face wartime production shortages, South Korea has stepped in to fill the gap by arming Ukraine’s allies — but not Ukraine itself, to try to avoid provoking Russia.

Officials said there were still enormous gaps in what U.S. spy agencies and their European partners knew about what transpired. But officials said it might constitute the first significant lead to emerge from several closely guarded investigations, the conclusions of which could have profound implications for the coalition supporting Ukraine.

Any suggestion of Ukrainian involvement, whether direct or indirect, could upset the delicate relationship between Ukraine and Germany, souring support among a German public that has swallowed high energy prices in the name of solidarity.

This photo released by the Danish military in September shows gas bubbles from the Nord Stream 2 leak reaching the surface of the Baltic Sea, near the Danish island of Bornholm.Credit...Danish Defense Ministry, via Reuters

U.S. officials who have been briefed on the intelligence are divided about how much weight to put on the new information. All of them spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss classified intelligence and matters of sensitive diplomacy.

U.S. officials said the new intelligence reporting has increased their optimism that American spy agencies and their partners in Europe can find more information, which could allow them to reach a firm conclusion about the perpetrators. It is unclear how long that process will take. American officials recently discussed the intelligence with their European counterparts, who have taken the lead in investigating the attack.

A spokeswoman for the C.I.A. declined to comment. A spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council referred questions about the pipelines to the European authorities, who have been conducting their own investigations.

After this report was published, Russia attacked the credibility of the intelligence, complaining that it had been prevented from taking part in the investigations. “This is obviously a coordinated spread of disinformation in the media,” Dmitry S. Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, told the state-backed Sputnik news agency.

Pipes from Nord Stream 2 work in Sassnitz, Germany.Credit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times

Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, as the two pipelines are known, stretch 760 miles from the northwest coast of Russia to Lubmin in northeast Germany. The first cost more than $12 billion to build and was completed in 2011.

Nord Stream 2 cost slightly less than the first pipeline and was completed in 2021, over objections from officials in the United States, Britain, Poland and Ukraine, among others, who warned that it would increase German reliance on Russian gas. During a future diplomatic crisis between the West and Russia, these officials argued, Moscow could blackmail Berlin by threatening to curtail gas supplies, on which the Germans had depended heavily, especially during the winter months. (Germany has weaned itself off reliance on Russian gas over the past year.)

What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.

Learn more about our process.

Early last year, President Biden, after meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany at the White House, said Mr. Putin’s decision about whether to attack Ukraine would determine the fate of Nord Stream 2. “If Russia invades, that means tanks and troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” Mr. Biden said. “We will bring an end to it.”

When asked exactly how that would be accomplished, Mr. Biden cryptically said, “I promise you we’ll be able to do it.”

President Biden met with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany at the White House in 2022.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times

A couple weeks later, Mr. Scholz announced that his government would block the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from becoming operational. Two days after that, Russia launched the much-anticipated invasion.

Since the explosions along the pipelines in September, there has been rampant speculation about what transpired on the sea floor near the Danish island of Bornholm.

Poland and Ukraine immediately accused Russia of planting the explosives, but they offered no evidence.

Russia, in turn, accused Britain of carrying out the operation — also without evidence. Russia and Britain have denied any involvement in the explosions.

Last month, the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article on the newsletter platform Substack concluding that the United States carried out the operation at the direction of Mr. Biden. In making his case, Mr. Hersh cited the president’s preinvasion threat to “bring an end” to Nord Stream 2, and similar statements by other senior U.S. officials.

U.S. officials say Mr. Biden and his top aides did not authorize a mission to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, and they say there was no U.S. involvement.

U.S. officials said they did not believe that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, his top lieutenants or other parts of the government were aware of or involved in the sabotage.

Any findings that put blame on Kyiv or Ukrainian proxies could prompt a backlash in Europe and make it harder for the West to maintain a united front in support of Ukraine.

U.S. officials and intelligence agencies acknowledge that they have limited visibility into Ukrainian decision-making.

Despite Ukraine’s deep dependence on the United States for military, intelligence and diplomatic support, Ukrainian officials are not always transparent with their American counterparts about their military operations, especially those against Russian targets behind enemy lines. Those operations have frustrated U.S. officials, who believe that they have not measurably improved Ukraine’s position on the battlefield, but have risked alienating European allies and widening the war.

The operations that have unnerved the United States included a strike in early August on Russia’s Saki Air Base on the western coast of Crimea, a truck bombing in October that destroyed part of the Kerch Strait Bridge, which links Russia to Crimea, and drone strikes in December aimed at Russian military bases in Ryazan and Engels, about 300 miles beyond the Ukrainian border.

But there have been other acts of sabotage and violence of more ambiguous provenance that U.S. intelligence agencies have had a harder time attributing to Ukrainian security services.

One of those was a car bomb near Moscow in August that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist.

Kyiv denied any involvement but U.S. intelligence agencies eventually came to believe that the killing was authorized by what officials called “elements” of the Ukrainian government. In response to the finding, the Biden administration privately rebuked the Ukrainians and warned them against taking similar actions.

The explosions that ruptured the Nord Stream pipelines took place five weeks after Ms. Dugina’s killing. After the Nord Stream operation, there was hushed speculation — and worry — in Washington that parts of the Ukrainian government might have been involved in that operation as well.

A car bomb near Moscow killed Daria Dugina in August. U.S. intelligence agencies believe that the killing was authorized by what officials called “elements” of the Ukrainian government.Credit...Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

The new intelligence provided no evidence so far of the Ukrainian government’s complicity in the attack on the pipelines, and U.S. officials say the Biden administration’s level of trust in Mr. Zelensky and his senior national security team has been steadily increasing.

Days after the explosion, Denmark, Sweden and Germany began their own separate investigations into the Nord Stream operation.

Intelligence and law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Atlantic have had difficulty obtaining concrete evidence about what happened on the sea floor in the hours, days and weeks before the explosions.

The pipelines themselves were not closely monitored, by either commercial or government sensors. Moreover, finding the vessel or vessels involved has been complicated by the fact that the explosions took place in a heavily trafficked area.

That said, investigators have many leads to pursue.

A specialist aboard a ship preparing a Nord Stream 2 pipe to be laid in 2019. The pipelines were ripped apart by deep sea explosions in September.Credit...Stine Jacobsen/Reuters

According to a European lawmaker briefed late last year by his country’s main foreign intelligence service, investigators have been gathering information about an estimated 45 “ghost ships” whose location transponders were not on or were not working when they passed through the area, possibly to cloak their movements.

The lawmaker was also told that more than 1,000 pounds of “military grade” explosives were used by the perpetrators.

Spokespeople for the Danish government had no immediate comment. Spokespeople for the German government declined to comment.

Mats Ljungqvist, a senior prosecutor leading Sweden’s investigation, told The New York Times late last month that his country’s hunt for the perpetrators was continuing.

“It’s my job to find those who blew up Nord Stream. To help me, I have our country’s Security Service,” Mr. Ljungqvist said. “Do I think it was Russia that blew up Nord Stream? I never thought so. It’s not logical. But as in the case of a murder, you have to be open to all possibilities.”

Reporting was contributed by Rebecca R. Ruiz, Erika Solomon, Melissa Eddy, Michael Schwirtz and Andrew E. Kramer.

The New York Times · by Adam Goldman · March 8, 2023

9. Special Operations Boss Vows to Stamp Out 'Corrosive' Misconduct After String of Problems

Special Operations Boss Vows to Stamp Out 'Corrosive' Misconduct After String of Problems

military.com · by Rebecca Kheel · March 7, 2023

The top general in charge of U.S. special operations forces vowed Tuesday to focus on "eradicating" misconduct from his command.

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., asked Gen. Bryan Fenton, head of Special Operations Command, to comment on a "series of concerning incidents" among the special operations community at Fort Bragg in the senator's home state, including "suicides, murders, overdoses, drug trafficking."

In response, Fenton said that misconduct is "not behavior that is welcome" in Special Operations Command, or SOCOM.

"This type of behavior, atypical to the 70,000-plus that are doing the right thing each and every day -- a majority are absolutely doing that -- first and foremost disrespects that type of work that our SOCOM enterprise is known for," Fenton said. "And the command sergeant major and I, first of all, are very angry when we get reports like that, and we're deliberately, laser-like focused on this. In fact, we talk about it as a corrosive. These are corrosives toward the trust and confidence that this committee, the secretary and certainly the nation has in us. And we're laser-focused on eradicating that from SOCOM enterprise."

Fenton's comments come after U.S. Army Special Operations Command revealed in January that at least 13 soldiers at Fort Bragg are under investigation for drug trafficking, though no arrests have been made.

Also in January, a pair of shootings, including one that killed a soldier assigned to Fort Bragg, also rocked the special operations community there.

Meanwhile, statistics the Pentagon disclosed to Congress last month showed that 31 soldiers at the base died of drug overdoses between 2017 and 2021, accounting for more than 10% of the total number of overdose deaths reported by the military.

An officer at the base also told local media in 2021 that the installation had seen an "over 100 percent increase" in drug-related crime over the course of that year.

The recent woes at Fort Bragg come after an internal review conducted by SOCOM in 2019 found that a culture of extreme focus on mission accomplishment among special operators often allowed misconduct and unethical behavior to go unchecked.

At Tuesday's hearing, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., said the recent trouble makes "additional efforts to build upon" the 2019 review "seem necessary."

"A number of high-profile misconduct cases have reflected poorly on the special operations community," Reed said in his opening statement.

Responding to Budd later in the hearing, Fenton said he's working on stamping out misconduct by emphasizing the need for leadership in preventing drug use and other "untoward, illegal, not ethical and not moral behavior," reinforcing existing policies and standards against such behavior, and holding people accountable for any wrongdoing.

Accountability "sends a very big signal back to the enterprise about, this behavior is absolutely not welcome and not part of the SOCOM enterprise," he said.

"You've got my commitment on this," added Fenton, who previously led SOCOM's Joint Special Operations Command before assuming his current role in August. "I've been in about six months. It's been a top priority because of what it does not only to the trust that this committee and others have in the SOCOM team, but to our overall readiness."

-- Rebecca Kheel can be reached at rebecca.kheel@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @reporterkheel.

military.com · by Rebecca Kheel · March 7, 2023

10. USAF Special Ops Buys MQ-9B SkyGuardians To Test Air-Launched Drone Concepts

USAF Special Ops Buys MQ-9B SkyGuardians To Test Air-Launched Drone Concepts

The Air Force Special Operations Command will acquire three MQ-9B SkyGuardians to help develop the new Adaptive Airborne Enterprise concept.

EMMA HELFRICH

PUBLISHED MAR 7, 2023 2:23 PM

thedrive.com · by Emma Helfrich · March 7, 2023

U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) will be procuring MQ-9B SkyGuardian remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) to prove a concept that would see them used as launch platforms for smaller, more expendable drones. The SkyGuardians would employ the smaller drones at a safe distance from enemy air defenses, sending them into riskier, less permissible environments.

The SkyGuardian is an evolution of the earlier MQ-9A Reaper that has been designed with more range, payload capacity, and endurance, along with other improvements. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI), which makes the Q-9 family of aircraft, announced the new contract with the AFSOC in a Monday press release. Under the deal, the company will provide AFSOC, which has already been flying the Reaper for over 14 years, with three SkyGuardians.

The procurement makes AFSOC the first U.S. buyer of the SkyGuardian platform. A number of international customers have already purchased the RPA, including the U.K., Japan, and Belgium. GA-ASI did not mention if the same concepts will be explored using SkyGuardian’s maritime variant, the MQ-9B SeaGuardian.

“We’re very excited to continue our great partnership with AFSOC well into the future,” said David R. Alexander, president of GA-ASI. “MQ-9B is the ideal platform for inserting air-launched effects [ALEs] into potentially hostile environments. The MQ-9B’s combination of range, endurance, reduced manpower footprint, and overall flexibility will make it a true centerpiece of AFSOC’s future family of advanced UAS systems.”

The GA-ASI press release says that the SkyGuardians will play a key role in fleshing out the AFSOC’s new Adaptive Airborne Enterprise (A2E) concept. In fact, this will be SkyGuardian’s primary objective with the outfit. As Lt. Col. Rebecca Heyse, director of public affairs for the AFSOC told The War Zone, the MQ-9Bs currently slated for AFSOC will not be used operationally.

Heyse explained that the AFSOC’s SkyGuardians will instead “be used to rapidly pathfind A2E concepts and technologies, planned to include sUAS and autonomy integration, beginning in calendar year 2024.” She also added that AFSOC expects to take possession of its first SkyGuardian by the end of this year.

MQ-9B SkyGuardian flies across the Atlantic for the RAF100 event. Credit: GA-ASI

Additional information about A2E was also offered by Lt. Gen. Tony D. Bauernfeind at the Global SOF Special Air Warfare Symposium in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Defense One, which was in attendance for the event, reported that Bauernfeind described A2E as being a "three-phase initiative to develop airborne human-machine teams commanding a family of uncrewed and optionally crewed” aircraft.

Bauernfeind told the audience that launching highly autonomous swarms from MQ-9 variants for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and potentially even strike missions is a primary goal of A2E.

With the help of artificial intelligence, he envisions drones of both small and medium sizes comprising the A2E swarms and ultimately reducing the number of humans needed to operate it down to just one.

An MQ-9 Reaper flies a training mission over the Nevada Test and Training Range, July 15, 2019. Credit: U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class William Rio Rosado

GA-ASI's brief description of A2E largely lines up with Bauernfeind's but with SkyGuardian as the specific launch platform of choice. In realizing the A2E concept, AFSOC’s three new SkyGuardians will essentially become drone motherships for smaller more expendable uncrewed aerial systems (UAS).

A2E would allow the SkyGuardians, which are large, slower unmanned aircraft that operate at medium to high altitudes, to fly in more permissible environments while sending the smaller UASs out ahead into more dangerous airspace. Overall, the introduction of this capability would line up with what has been an ongoing effort on GA-ASI’s part to bolster the MQ-9's survivability and keep the drone relevant and survivable in future high-end fights.

A rendering of the MQ-9B SkyGuardian and SeaGuardian side by side. Credit: GA-ASI

“In contested or denied environments, AFSOC is shifting from multiple operators controlling a single MQ-9A to a single Air Commando directing a family of systems,” Heyse said. “A2E is a concept that marks the evolution from exclusively using the MQ-9 platform for intelligence gathering and strike capabilities to using a family of uncrewed and optionally crewed systems to achieve battlefield effects.”

“MQ-9 units will leverage multiple platforms and incorporate autonomy and eventually artificial intelligence technologies to deliver capabilities to SOF, the AF, and the joint force across the spectrum of operations,” Heyse added.

Development of the SkyGuardian was driven in large part by an international need for a medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) RPA that was certified to fly in civilian airspace. The aircraft has a maximum take-off weight of 12,500 pounds and flight endurance of over 40 hours, providing it with the capacity to be equipped with various armaments and sensor payloads to perform strike, ISR, and a number of other emerging missions, like stand-in jamming support.

An infographic showing various payloads General Atomics has or is developing for the MQ-9. Credit: General Atomics

However, RPAs of this type were really designed to operate in lower-risk airspaces and can be vulnerable to an adversary’s robust integrated air defense systems when flying through or even near more contested environments. This can make it difficult for RPAs like SkyGuardian to safely get to the target areas necessary to successfully leverage its ISR and strike capabilities, further contributing to arguments against the relevancy of these systems.

This is where air-launched effects, like those being conceptualized under the AFSOC’s new A2E initiative, will come into play. Being adapted to perform their own ISR and strike missions, or others, the smaller and more expendable UASs will thereby extend the operational reach and lethality of their launch platform, like SkyGuardian, all while keeping it directly out of harm’s way.

This is something that GA-ASI is also exploring with a U.S. Army-owned MQ-1C Gray Eagle Extended Range drone. Just last month the company completed the Gray Eagle’s first flight with an air-launched and recoverable drone dubbed Eaglet, which is discussed in this past War Zone piece. The company is seemingly pitching it as an option for the Army's ALE program that is working to establish its own family of air-launched multi-purpose unmanned aircraft.

Photo from the February test flight when Eaglet was launched from an MQ-1C. Credit: GA-ASI

During the 2022 Special Operations Forces Industry Conference, GA-ASI also touted Eaglet’s intended compatibility with the Reaper, though there have yet to be any publicized flight tests with the pairing.

“The UAS can launch its Eaglets forward into hostile airspace, where this ALE quartet can work in four-part harmony to extend the sensing envelope of the host UAS, provide electronic or kinetic warfare options, or simply disrupt an adversary’s mission planning,” C. Mark Brinkley, senior director of strategic communications & marketing for GA-ASI, told The War Zone during that event.

While there is no indication that the Army’s ALE and the AFSOC’s A2E are directly related, the efforts share very similar goals. Eaglet is even designed with low-observable (stealthy) features, which could be a characteristic we see from A2E’s drones knowing that GA-ASI will be taking the requirements of special operations forces, which often operate in contested environments, into account.

The Army’s ALE program will also offer a ‘small’ and 'large' category of drones that may be more representative of the types of effects that could come from AFSOC’s A2E concept. The small drones will be under 100 pounds, possibly no more than 50 pounds, and will be able to cruise at 30 knots over a distance of 100 kilometers for at least 30 minutes. Though, the Army is ultimately hoping for a 150-kilometer range and an hour of flight time.

There's even the possibility that A2E drones operating in a networked swarm could be programmed and equipped to perform disparate functions — like scouting, jamming, or striking — with the swarm acting cooperatively to achieve certain objectives. The Army is assessing how its own ALE swarms could be employed in this way.

A graphic showing how various types of Air Launch Effects fired from various platforms could be employed on a future battlefield. Credit: U.S. Army

The A2E drones for AFSOC’s SkyGuardians could inevitably become something like the Area-I Agile-Launch Tactically Integrated Unmanned System (ALTIUS) 600, as well. Launching the ALTIUS-600 from drone platforms like the Gray Eagle while in flight has already been tested to some degree of success.

An MQ-9 flying hundreds of miles away in safer airspace and at higher altitudes could also act as a line-of-sight data fusion and relay node for the smaller drones it has sent downrange. In doing so, it could collect their data via a line-of-sight datalink and then parse that huge amount of data, and relay any valuable information virtually anywhere in the world via satellite uplink in near-real time. It could also relay that info to other platforms in the area and even data entry points on the ground and at sea in its vicinity.

Regardless, the budding relationship between AFSOC, its new SkyGuardians, and the developing A2E program is already reminiscent of a number of other ongoing projects that seek to pair larger UASs with smaller drones. Giving these drones and their operators the option of extending their capabilities in this way while boosting survivability will be key to dominating future battlefields while also keeping currently vulnerable unmanned platforms relevant.

Author’s note: Howard Altman contributed to this report.

Contact the author: emma@thewarzone.com

thedrive.com · by Emma Helfrich · March 7, 2023

11. The Daring Ruse That Exposed China’s Campaign to Steal American Secrets

The Daring Ruse That Exposed China’s Campaign to Steal American Secrets

How the downfall of one intelligence agent revealed the astonishing depth of Chinese industrial espionage.

The New York Times · by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee · March 7, 2023

Credit...Illustrations by Hokyoung Kim

How the downfall of one intelligence agent revealed the astonishing depth of Chinese industrial espionage.

Credit...Illustrations by Hokyoung Kim

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March 7, 2023

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In March 2017, an engineer at G.E. Aviation in Cincinnati whom I will refer to using part of his Chinese given name — received a request on LinkedIn. Hua is in his 40s, tall and athletic, with a boyish face that makes him look a decade younger. He moved to the United States from China in 2003 for graduate studies in structural engineering. After earning his Ph.D. in 2007, he went to work for G.E., first at the company’s research facility in Niskayuna, N.Y., for a few years, then at G.E. Aviation.

The LinkedIn request came from Chen Feng, a school official at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (N.U.A.A.), in eastern China. Like most people who use LinkedIn, Hua was accustomed to connecting with professionals on the site whom he didn’t know personally, so the request did not strike him as unusual. “I didn’t even think much about it before accepting,” Hua told me. Days later, Chen sent him an email inviting him to N.U.A.A. to give a research presentation.

Hua had always desired academic recognition. “When I did my Ph.D., I initially wanted to be a professor in China or in the United States,” he says. But because his studies were focused more on practical applications than pure research, a career in industry made more sense than one in academia. At G.E. Aviation, he was part of a group that designed containment cases for the rotating fan blades of jet engines. The use of carbon-based composites in fan blades and their casings, instead of metal, means lighter engines and a commercial advantage.

“I felt honored to be invited to give a talk,” Hua says. Being recognized back home was especially fulfilling for Hua, who grew up poor in a small village and was the only child there from his generation to go to college. Beyond the prestige, the invitation also provided a free trip to China to see his friends and family. Hua arranged to arrive in May, so he could attend a nephew’s wedding and his college reunion at Harbin Institute of Technology. There was one problem, though: Hua knew that G.E. would deny permission to give the talk if he asked, which he was supposed to do. “Since G.E. is a high-tech company, it is difficult to get approval even to present at conferences in the United States,” he says. The company was concerned about giving away proprietary information.

Hua made it clear to Chen that he would be able to discuss only research on composite materials generally, without going into the specifics of what he did at G.E. Aviation. To prepare, Hua told me, he went back over the work he had done for his doctorate and gathered additional information from scientific papers. He also downloaded a few G.E. training files onto his laptop. These contained instructions from G.E. experts on using composites; Hua thought they would help him save time when putting together his presentation, which he planned to do on his flight.

After he landed in China, Hua took a high-speed train from Beijing to Nanjing, where Chen drove him to a hotel on the Nanjing University campus. The next morning, Chen and Hua went to a meeting with a man who was introduced as Qu Hui, deputy director of the Jiangsu Provincial Association for International Science and Technology Development. Qu gave Hua a welcome gift: loose Chinese tea nicely packaged in a gift box. “I accepted it as an honor,” Hua says. “I’ve liked drinking tea since I was a kid.”

A few dozen students and faculty members attended Hua’s talk. They asked several questions that Hua was happy to answer. “I remember one student asked specifically about the architecture of the material I was talking about in my presentation,” he says. “I said: This is G.E. proprietary information. I am just using this picture as an example, but I cannot share the details of what we are designing or using.”

After the presentation, Chen handed Hua an envelope filled with $3,500 in U.S. dollars — reimbursement for his plane ticket and an honorarium for the talk. Then they went to dinner with Qu and a couple of professors. That night, Hua took a train back to Shanghai; the next day, he flew back to the United States. Once home, he realized he had forgotten to delete his presentation from the computer at the university auditorium in Nanjing. He was concerned because the slides included some pictures with G.E.’s logo. “So,” Hua told me, “I emailed one of the students and said, Hey, can you delete the presentation?” He thought that would be the end of the matter.

The images of a Chinese spy balloon drifting through American airspace last month before being shot down by a fighter jet off the coast of South Carolina were a conspicuous reminder of the escalating geopolitical antagonisms between the United States and China. Although world powers spying on each other is hardly unusual, the impunity with which the Chinese were apparently conducting surveillance over U.S. military sites alarmed many. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning China’s “brazen violation of United States sovereignty” in deploying the balloon, which was fitted with antennas capable of collecting signals intelligence; the Chinese government condemned its downing as an overreaction. The incident — reminiscent of Cold War confrontations — inflamed tensions between two countries already locked in a race for military, technological and economic supremacy.

The spy balloon’s flight over U.S. territory was a very public display of China’s intelligence gathering, but the Chinese government has for decades been conducting a much less visible and possibly more damaging campaign to steal American trade secrets and intellectual property. While weapons and military equipment have always been a focus — Chinese agents and civilians have been implicated in the theft or illicit transfer of various military technologies, including those related to radar, fighter jets, submarines and weapons systems — China’s espionage expanded in the 1980s and beyond to also target commercial technologies as diverse as pesticides, rice seeds, robotic cars and wind turbines.

Although China publicly denies engaging in economic espionage, Chinese officials will indirectly acknowledge behind closed doors that the theft of intellectual property from overseas is state policy. James Lewis, a former diplomat now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, recalls participating in a meeting in 2014 or so at which Chinese and American government representatives, including an officer from the People’s Liberation Army, discussed the subject. “An assistant secretary from the U.S. Department of Defense was explaining: Look, spying is OK — we spy, you spy, everybody spies, but it’s for political and military purposes,” Lewis recounted for me. “It’s for national security. What we object to is your economic espionage. And a senior P.L.A. colonel said: Well, wait. We don’t draw the line between national security and economic espionage the way you do. Anything that builds our economy is good for our national security.” The U.S. government’s response increasingly appears to be a mirror image of the Chinese perspective: In the view of U.S. officials, the threat posed to America’s economic interests by Chinese espionage is a threat to American national security.

Like China’s economy, the spying carried out on its behalf is directed by the Chinese state. The Ministry of State Security, or M.S.S., which is responsible for gathering foreign intelligence, is tasked with collecting information in technologies that the Chinese government wants to build up. The current focus, according to U.S. counterintelligence experts, aligns with the “Made in China 2025” initiative announced in 2015. This industrial plan seeks to make China the world’s top manufacturer in 10 areas, including robotics, artificial intelligence, new synthetic materials and aerospace. In the words of one former U.S. national security official, the plan is a “road map for theft.”

The Chinese government relies not only on its intelligence services but also on businesses, institutions and individuals to gather proprietary information. A 2019 report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a congressional committee, lists the myriad ways in which Chinese companies, often backed by their government, help transfer strategic know-how from the United States to China. The maneuvers range from seemingly benign (acquiring American firms with access to key intellectual property) to notoriously coercive (compelling American companies to form joint ventures with Chinese firms and share trade secrets with them in return for access to the Chinese market) to outright theft. Cyberattacks have become an increasingly common tactic because they can’t always be linked directly to the Chinese government. Over the past few years, however, federal agents and cybersecurity experts in the U.S. have identified the digital footprints left along the trails of these attacks — malware and I.P. addresses among them — and traced this evidence back to specific groups of hackers with proven ties to the Chinese government.

Perhaps most unsettling is the way China has sought to exploit the huge numbers of people of Chinese origin who have settled in the West. The Ministry of State Security, along with other Chinese government-backed organizations, spends considerable effort recruiting spies from this diaspora. Chinese students and faculty members at American universities are a major target, as are employees at American corporations. The Chinese leadership “made the declaration early on that all Chinese belong to China, no matter what country they were born or living” in, James Gaylord, a retired counterintelligence agent with the F.B.I., told me. “They started making appeals to Chinese Americans saying there’s no conflict between you being American and sharing information with us. We’re not a threat. We just want to be able to compete and make the Chinese people proud. You’re Chinese, and therefore you must want to see the Chinese nation prosper.”

Stripped of its context and underlying intent, that message can carry a powerful resonance for Chinese Americans and expatriates keen to contribute to nation-building back home. Not all can foresee that their willingness to help China could lead them to break American laws. An even more troubling consequence of China’s exploitation of people it regards as Chinese is that it can lead to the undue scrutiny of employees in American industry and academia, subjecting them to unfair suspicions of disloyalty toward the United States.

Hua didn’t regard his visit to China to share his technical expertise as extraordinary in any way. Many scientists and engineers of Chinese origin in the United States are invited to China to give presentations about their fields. Hua couldn’t have known that his trip to Nanjing would prove to be the start of a series of events that would end up giving the U.S. government an unprecedented look inside China’s widespread and tireless campaign of economic espionage targeting the United States, culminating in the first-ever conviction of a Chinese intelligence official on American soil.

Credit...Illustrations by Hokyoung Kim

Around noon on Nov. 1, 2017, a few hours after he scanned his security badge and entered his office at G.E. Aviation, Hua received a call from the company’s I.T. desk asking him to come meet with G.E.’s security officers. The call heightened a sense of anxiety he had felt since that morning, when he and others in his group were asked to hand over their removable hard disks for what I.T. described as a computer security review. A while later, they were asked to turn in their work laptops. Hua couldn’t help wondering if this had anything to do with the secret of his Nanjing trip that he had been keeping from his employer.

Soon enough, his fears were confirmed: The G.E. security officers waiting to interview him in an auditorium wanted to know about his trip to China six months earlier. Where had he visited, and why? Hua told them he had gone back home for a college reunion and spent all his time reconnecting with friends and family.

Then the security officers told Hua that the F.B.I. wanted to talk to him. Two F.B.I. agents, who were already in the building, entered the room. One of them was Bradley Hull, a bright-eyed man with a shaved head and a goatee. He started with the same questions that G.E. security had asked about Hua’s China trip.

Hua was shaking with nervousness, one of the agents told me in an interview. He repeated the answers he had given to his employer’s security officers. Hull proceeded to ask more questions about the trip, giving Hua several chances to amend his story and signaling that he didn’t think Hua was being truthful. Finally, he confronted Hua with evidence showing that Hua had met with people other than just friends and family. He had also paid a visit to the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Hua sank into his chair as if knocked back. It was a crime to lie to a federal agent, Hull told him. He advised Hua to relate everything he could remember about the visit to N.U.A.A. Hua, in shock, wasn’t immediately forthcoming, but over the course of the interview, as Hull pressed him with follow-up questions, Hua ended up providing an account of why he visited Nanjing and what he did there. The agent who spoke to me described the interview as incremental truth telling.

Hua finally disclosed that he had given a presentation at N.U.A.A. about designing airplane parts out of composite materials. He said he had been careful to not divulge any information that was proprietary to G.E., even though he had downloaded certain files that belonged to his employer to help prepare his slides. As Hua provided more detail about his visit, Hull became convinced that he had been hosted at Nanjing by Chinese intelligence officials looking to cultivate the engineer as an asset, someone who could steal trade secrets for them.

Around 4:30 p.m., at which point the interview had been going for a few hours, Hull suggested taking a break to eat some pizza that he had ordered for everyone. He also made Hua an offer: The F.B.I. wouldn’t recommend that charges be brought against him if he agreed to cooperate and take part in a counterintelligence operation against the Chinese. Hua had already been informed that the F.B.I. had been carrying out a search at his home that afternoon, while he was being interviewed; his car had also been towed away to be searched. And here at work, the agents had already caught him lying, which he realized was enough to land him in trouble. Even though he hadn’t shared any trade secrets at his Nanjing presentation, some of the documents downloaded to his laptop before he went to China were marked export-controlled — a government-mandated designation — for which he could face criminal charges. He knew what he had to do to save himself and his family.

“No one begrudges a nation that generates the most innovative ideas and from them develops the best technology,” John Demers, former assistant attorney general for national security, said in a 2018 hearing before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. “But we cannot tolerate a nation that steals our firepower and the fruits of our brainpower.”

The accusation that China has been relentlessly stealing intellectual property from American companies and institutions — although China is now a manufacturing giant, for technology it still relies heavily on the United States and Europe — is neither new nor unfounded. In 2008, a Chinese-born engineer named Chi Mak who worked for a defense contractor in California was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison for having stolen and passed on to China information about several sensitive technologies, including systems for the U.S. Navy. The Chi Mak investigation led to the uncovering of another Chinese spy, Dongfan Chung, an engineer at Boeing who gave his handlers in China thousands of documents containing designs and other technical specifications relating to American fighter jets, the U.S. space shuttle and the Delta IV rocket. In the past decade, individuals working for Chinese entities have been caught taking or trying to take trade secrets across many industries. One notable case involved six Chinese nationals in the United States attempting to steal proprietary corn seeds from fields in Iowa and Illinois. A California engineer named Walter Liew was caught stealing secrets relevant to the production of titanium dioxide, which is used as a whitener in paint and toothpaste. Individuals of Chinese origin have been indicted in recent years for the theft of proprietary information relating to locomotives, semiconductors, solar panels and other high-tech products.

In recent years, China has been recruiting those it considers expat nationals through hundreds of formal “talent” programs, which identify experts in American schools and industries to help fill specific gaps in knowledge back home. “It’s a vehicle to get them to travel back to China to attend conferences, to provide lectures, which allows the opportunity to develop a relationship with them and later take advantage of that relationship to get intellectual property,” Gunnar Newquist, a former counterintelligence agent for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, told me.

The guests are often hosted in luxury hotels, driven around in limousines, taken on sightseeing tours. After receiving this lavish treatment, Gaylord says, some feel obligated to provide information that they might not have initially planned to share. While at the F.B.I., Gaylord interviewed many scientists and engineers of Chinese origin who had been courted in this fashion. Some of them described how they had been pressured. “They would say: ‘Everything in my presentation was approved by my company. After I finished it and stepped down, a gaggle of students surrounded me to ask more questions. And they kept pushing me for more and more sensitive information,’” Gaylord says. “And a lot of them say: ‘You know, after a while, you start to break down. You can’t keep saying, “I can’t talk about this.” You then start answering around the edges, giving away more and more.’”

The Chinese government also offers financial incentives to help Chinese expats start their own businesses in China using trade secrets stolen from their American employers. Gaylord told me about Wenfeng Lu, an engineer who worked at Edwards Lifesciences in Irvine, Calif. Lu’s employer reported him to the F.B.I. after discovering that he had been downloading proprietary information about the company’s heart catheters. Gaylord and his colleagues opened an investigation and discovered, among other red flags, that Lu was often collecting this material right before trips to China. Agents arrested him as he was preparing to leave the country for another visit. On the laptop and thumb drives that he was carrying, investigators found information he had taken from his employer. Searching his house, agents found more documents he had collected from two other U.S. medical device companies where he had worked. “Then, in his laptop, we found agreements between him and municipal government officials in China offering him research offices in an industrial park in Nanjing that would be rent-free for the first three years,” Gaylord says. “In other words, he steals the R. & D. cost our companies incur, and he goes there and develops it for a lot cheaper. And has the whole China market without any revenues going to the American companies.” Lu pleaded guilty to charges of unauthorized possession of trade secrets and in 2019 was sentenced to 27 months in prison.

The F.B.I. is loath to give away sources and methods, so the agency would not disclose to me how agents learned of Hua’s visit to Nanjing. But from the start it suspected that Hua’s hosts wanted more than an innocent academic exchange. As the investigators learned more about the trip, they could see that it had all the hallmarks of an intelligence operation — the initial contact through LinkedIn, the introduction to people who had weaker ties to N.U.A.A. The F.B.I. suspected that the Jiangsu science and technology association was a front for the Chinese government and that Qu Hui, the man who gave Hua the tea, was an intelligence officer.

The agents wanted to learn more about Qu, who seemed to be the key figure behind the Chinese attempt to recruit Hua, and they saw an opportunity to go further than just an investigation into Hua. The agent who spoke to me likened their counterintelligence operation to swimming upstream. And so, in exchange for an assurance that he wouldn’t face charges, Hua became an asset for the F.B.I., willing to communicate with his Chinese contacts at the F.B.I.’s behest.

Deception often lies at the heart of espionage and counterespionage; success for both spies and spy hunters can hinge on finding a foolproof way to deceive their targets. Describing Hua’s communications with his hosts in China, the agent emphasized that the investigators didn’t type anything themselves. Hua wrote the messages himself, to give them the veneer of authenticity that the F.B.I. wanted. A team of agency linguists assisted Hull, who doesn’t know Mandarin, with figuring out what Hua might say and how to say it. Ultimately, though, they needed to rely on Hua’s own judgment about exactly how to phrase things.

The ubiquitous use of iPhones around the world — a result of American technological prowess — was helping to fight back against a rival nation’s efforts to steal technology.

After his return from China, Hua stayed in touch with his hosts in Nanjing. “I will definitely contact you again if I have a chance to visit China in the future,” he wrote to Qu, keeping the door open for another academic exchange at the university. Now, at Hull’s direction, he sent Qu a message over WeChat on Dec. 20, a month and a half after the F.B.I. first interviewed him. He told Qu he would be willing to return for another visit in February, a week before the Chinese New Year. In earlier conversations with Qu, he talked about his responsibilities as the oldest son in the family, and so it made sense for him to want to visit home during the Chinese New Year.

Qu consented to the offer. “I will touch base with the scientific research department here to see what technology is desired and I will let you know what to prepare,” he texted Hua on Jan. 9, 2018.

By now federal agents had obtained search warrants for two email address that Qu had used for his correspondence with Hua: jastxyj@gmail.com and jastquhui@gmail.com. In what would prove to be a lucky break, the investigators found that each email address was the Apple ID used for an iPhone, linked to an iCloud account where data from the phones was periodically backed up. The agents were later able to obtain search warrants for the two iCloud accounts. The one linked to jastquhui@gmail.com opened a treasure trove.

This included confirmation of what they had suspected all along: that Qu worked for Chinese intelligence. His real name was Xu Yanjun. He had worked at the Ministry of State Security since 2003, earning six promotions to become a deputy division director of the Sixth Bureau in the Jiangsu Province M.S.S. Like so many of us, he had taken pictures of important documents using his iPhone — his national ID card, pay stubs, his health insurance card, an application for vacation — which is how they ended up in his iCloud account. There, investigators also found an audio recording of a 2016 conversation with a professor at N.U.A.A. in which Xu had talked about his job in intelligence and the risks associated with traveling. “The leadership asks you to get the materials of the U.S. F-22 fighter aircraft,” he told the professor. “You can’t get it by sitting at home.” The discovery of evidence of Xu’s identity in an iCloud account makes for a kind of delicious reversal. The ubiquitous use of iPhones around the world — a result of America’s technological prowess — was helping to fight back against a rival nation’s efforts to steal technology.

The revelation that the target of their investigation was a senior-level M.S.S. officer raised the stakes for the F.B.I. The agent characterizes the unmasking of Xu as a significant milestone in the effort to combat economic espionage by the Chinese, for reasons that go beyond this one case. When F.B.I. agents go out to talk to companies and universities about the threat, he says, skeptical listeners ask for the evidence that proves the theft of trade secrets is part of a campaign directed by China’s government. In Xu Yanjun, the F.B.I. now had the example it needed. Here was an intelligence officer working as a puppet-master, in one agent’s characterization of the events, cultivating people at American companies in order to steal trade secrets. The F.B.I. was determined to build a case against him and even arrest him if it could.

Credit...Illustrations by Hokyoung Kim

Hua was put on leave without pay by G.E. Aviation right after the F.B.I. interviewed him in November 2017. As he struggled to find paid work in the weeks that followed, his efforts on behalf of the F.B.I. kept him engaged. Under the agency’s direction, he kept up his exchanges with Xu over WeChat and email, expressing eagerness to share information from G.E. “Just recently I’ve heard the speculation about laying off in my department. I, of course, don’t want to be affected, but the possibility is there,” he wrote in a message on Jan. 23. “That’s why I’m trying my best to collect as much information as possible.” Xu asked if Hua could send material relating to the specifications and design process for building an encasement for fan blades. Hua obliged with a document titled “G.E.9X Fan Containment Case Design Consensus Review.” It had the appearance of being useful but didn’t contain anything of real value — G.E. Aviation, which was cooperating with the F.B.I., had altered the document. This bait worked: Xu, emboldened, sent a list of “domestic requirements” that he wanted Hua to collect information for, such as the type of software used in designing composite structures.

On Feb. 5, about a week before Hua arranged with Xu to visit Nanjing again, Xu asked him to copy the table of contents of his G.E. laptop’s directory into a file that he could bring with him. He provided instructions on how to create the file in Notepad. The document would give a high-level picture of the work Hua’s group at G.E. was doing — and more important, it would indicate what information Hua had access to.

The F.B.I. never intended for Hua to travel to China. On Feb. 7, he sent Xu a message saying he couldn’t make the trip because his boss had asked him to go to France in March for work. There was a lot to do in preparation for that trip, he explained, so he wasn’t being allowed to take any time off. “Because the ticket already booked is not refundable,” he wrote, “even my parents are very disappointed.”

He asked if he could still be reimbursed for the airfare. Xu, presumably disappointed that the meeting wasn’t going to happen, was noncommittal. He messaged in response: “Can we resolve all these issues the next time you come back?”

Xu’s interest was rekindled a week later, however, when Hua emailed him a copy of his laptop directory, stripped of any information that G.E. regarded as sensitive. Xu proposed that they get together somewhere in Europe after Hua traveled to France in March. Until this point, they had been communicating by email and WeChat, but on Feb. 27, apparently eager to finalize his suggested meeting, Xu attempted to make a video call to Hua when it was nearly 10 p.m. in Cincinnati. Hua was at home, but with no F.B.I. agents by his side to instruct him on what to do, he couldn’t risk answering. About an hour later, at Hull’s direction, he messaged Xu: “Sorry missed your call. I was trying to put the child to sleep.” He added that he would be visiting France from March 25 to April 6.

When Xu and Hua spoke the next day to arrange a meeting place, Hua suggested Belgium or Germany or the Netherlands — that way, he said, he could get away from his G.E. colleagues.

The real reason was different. The F.B.I. wanted the meeting to happen in a country that would be amenable to arresting Xu. The French government was unlikely to agree.

Xu asked if Hua could bring along the contents of the directory he had sent. “I think that is pretty good stuff,” Xu said.

Hua said he planned to bring his laptop to their meeting.

“The thing is, can you export the stuff out?” Xu asked.

Hua confirmed that he could and assured him again that he would have the files with him.

“All right,” Xu said. “Let’s try our best to meet in Europe.”

In the last week of March 2018, Hua flew to Brussels, accompanied by Hull and other agents. For months he had been playing an active role in their investigation; now he was about to participate in a field operation. His wife was worried. “I tried to explain to her that everything would be fine,” he told me.

Xu had flown to Amsterdam. He wanted Hua to meet him there, but the F.B.I. wanted Xu to go to Belgium. Behind the scenes, U.S. authorities had been working to secure cooperation from a European country, which they ultimately got from the Belgian government. Hull had Hua explain to Xu that he couldn’t come to Amsterdam on March 31 as planned because his boss had asked him to visit a plant in Belgium. He could meet on April 1 instead, and it would have to be in Brussels.

The change of plans flustered Xu. It would be difficult for him to change his itinerary, he messaged back; he suggested they stick to meeting in Amsterdam. In a voice call to Hua over WeChat, he explained that traveling to a new country for the meeting without prior approval from his superiors in China would be considered serious misconduct. He then proposed they meet in Rotterdam — Hua could make it to the Dutch city and return to Brussels the same day.

The F.B.I. had to come up with a reason for Hua to reject Xu’s proposal. “Sunday is Easter, which my boss takes seriously,” Hua messaged Xu over WeChat. “He has reserved an Easter lunch for the traveling team and asked us better to attend.” There was no way he could leave Brussels.

Xu finally gave in, and Hua sent him a photo of a coffee shop in the Galleries of Saint Hubert, a historic landmark in central Brussels whose grand, high-pillared architecture and arched glass-paned roof are a draw for tourists.

The meeting was set for 3 in the afternoon. But Xu went to check out the coffee shop a few hours earlier, accompanied by a colleague from the M.S.S. The two men walked through the galleries. As they approached the coffee shop, Belgian federal police officers placed them under arrest. In addition to two smartphones and about 7,000 euros, Xu and his colleague had $7,000 in hundred-dollar bills — cash that they presumably planned to give to Hua that afternoon. Six months later, Xu was extradited to the United States to face charges of economic espionage.

Credit...Illustrations by Hokyoung Kim

I saw Xu at a pre-sentencing hearing on Aug. 23 last year, in federal court in Cincinnati, dressed in an orange-and-white prison jumpsuit. Despite being somewhat tall, Xu looks compact, with a squarish face that didn’t betray much emotion as the day’s proceedings got underway, except for one moment early on when he was struggling with shackled hands to review some papers his lawyers were showing him. At the judge’s direction, a federal marshal unshackled him. Freed, even if only in a limited sense, Xu gave a nod of gratitude.

It was striking, based on a court filing submitted by Xu’s lawyers, to note the parallels in the early lives of Xu and Hua in China. Like Hua, Xu was born into a family of modest means. Like Hua, he devoted himself to the pursuit of good grades, studying late into the night and on weekends — excelling in academics was one way to build a better life. Like Hua, Xu became the first person in his family to go to college, where he earned undergraduate and graduate engineering degrees. That’s where the similarities between the paths of their two lives end. In 2003, the year Hua left for the United States, Xu started working for the Ministry of State Security.

During a two-week trial in Cincinnati that began in October 2021 — more than three years after Xu’s extradition to the United States — federal prosecutors laid out their case. Xu was represented by a team that included five attorneys from Taft, Stettinius and Hollister, a leading Midwest law firm, which suggests that the hundreds of thousands of dollars required in legal fees was paid by the Chinese government. (The firm declined to comment for this article.) The defense argued that Xu had been tricked; the intent behind his correspondence with Hua was not to steal trade secrets but simply to facilitate an academic exchange between Hua and Chinese scientists. Ralph Kohnen, one of the defense attorneys, said in his closing argument, “What’s happened here is Mr. Xu, my client, has become a pawn, a pawn in the tense place between U.S. industries trying to exploit China and trying to get along with China.”

The prosecution contended that Xu had been systematically going after intellectual property at aerospace companies in the United States and Europe through cyberespionage and the use of human sources. It’s not often that prosecutors find a one-stop shop for much of their evidence, but that’s what Xu’s iCloud account was — a repository of the spy’s personal and professional life. That’s because often Xu used his iPhone calendar as a diary, documenting not just the day’s events but also his thoughts and feelings. Several entries from 2017, for instance, indicate rising tensions with his boss, a man named Zha Rong. “Zha rejected a meal receipt today,” he wrote on March 27. Then, on April 28: “Relationship with Zha has dropped to freezing point.” Other entries from that period — when he started corresponding with Hua — reflect an unhappiness in Xu’s personal life. Such as one from Aug. 17, in which he lamented the breakup of what appears to have been an extramarital romance. She “saw me in the rain yesterday morning, didn’t stop and she walked away with her umbrella.” Things weren’t going well financially, either, as evidenced by a snippet from an entry on May 19: “I lost so much in the stock market. I got myself into this financial hole.”

‘If you ask me, are there days when I have trouble falling asleep? Yes, there are. I regret what I did.’

Also backed up to the cloud were messages that Xu had exchanged with several other U.S. aerospace-industry employees, which prosecutors laid out at trial. One of them was Arthur Gau from a Honeywell division in Phoenix, who testified at trial that Rong and Xu paid him $5,000 and covered his airfare to China for a 2017 visit to Nanjing to make a technical presentation. (In May 2021, Gau pleaded guilty in Arizona to a charge of exporting controlled information without a license. Bloomberg Businessweek covered Xu’s case extensively in an article published last September.) Another was an engineer at the aviation company Fokker, who accepted Xu’s invitation to visit China to share information with a Chinese research institute after Xu arranged to help the engineer’s parents, who had lost their home in China when their building was set to be demolished as part of a development project. An I.T. specialist from Boeing, who testified at the trial under the alias Sun Li, described how Xu attempted to cultivate a relationship with him, first reaching out through an email in which he mentioned having contacted the witness’s dad, an academic in China. The witness subsequently met with Xu, who repeatedly offered to reimburse his round-trip tickets to China in exchange for sharing his knowledge of and experience in I.T. The witness finally stopped communicating with Xu after realizing that Xu was not actually interested in his expertise, which was project management, but in “something else that I could not provide.”

“What they call exchanges are not just a nice invitation,” Timothy Mangan, who led the prosecution, told me, encapsulating a point he made to the jury. “It’s part of a recruiting cycle. Some pan out, some don’t, but this is them throwing the fishing lines out, trying to vet people.”

At Xu’s trial, Mangan buttressed the argument about the so-called exchanges being anything but benign by citing an audio recording of a four-hour meeting between Xu and several Chinese engineers. Why Xu should have recorded this conversation is inexplicable — and surprisingly imprudent in hindsight, given that it ended up in an iCloud account — but in it he explains the approach to soliciting information from Chinese expatriates. “As experts abroad, it would be very difficult for them to directly take large batches of materials due to the fact that their companies’ security is very tight,” Xu tells the engineers, emphasizing the need to consider the risks involved for sources being targeted. At another point in the conversation, he talks about how to spot potential recruits while targeting specific technologies. “For example, if I am an aircraft person, then I would search into Boeing or Lockheed, right? Find it at Lockheed Martin,” Xu said. “After I found the person, I would find out if this person is doing something? Like in charge of overall design or avionics.”

The messages in Xu’s iCloud account enabled investigators to make another damning discovery. Xu had helped coordinate a cyberespionage campaign that targeted several aviation technology companies. Those attacks — described in a report by CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm — started in 2010, shortly after the state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) announced that it had chosen a joint venture between G.E. Aviation and Safran to supply a custom-made engine for China’s first domestically manufactured commercial airliner, the C919. The plan behind the campaign, which was directed against Honeywell, Capstone Turbine and Safran, among others, became clear only later when security researchers connected the dots. “When I started putting all these victims together — I was like, OK, these are all component manufacturers for different pieces of the C919,” Adam Kozy, a cybersecurity expert who runs the security firm SinaCyber and was the lead author of the CrowdStrike report, told me. Although COMAC was prepared to procure components needed to build the aircraft from these companies, the Chinese government was evidently also working to steal intellectual property from those suppliers in order to make domestic manufacturing possible in China, according to the report.

Xu played a role in these efforts, the prosecution argued at trial. In his iCloud account were several messages that Xu had exchanged with a manufacturing engineer employed with Safran named Tian Xi, indicating that they had been plotting to hack into the company’s computer network. The plan was to have Tian — who was working at a Safran plant in Jiangsu — install malware provided by Xu onto the laptop of a Safran employee visiting from France. It took many weeks for the plan to succeed. Tian sent Xu a triumphant text on Jan. 25, 2014, saying, “The horse is planted” — a reference to a Trojan horse, a type of malware. (Tian was indicted on related charges; the case is pending.)

At the end of the trial, Xu was convicted of conspiring and attempting to commit economic espionage and theft of trade secrets. In a sentencing memorandum filed last November, Xu’s lawyers painted a sympathetic portrait of the spy, describing him as a kind man who loved playing soccer with his son and routinely carried groceries up several flights of stairs for elderly neighbors. Xu was simply doing his job, they pointed out, adding that “he was not a rogue operator or criminal mastermind.” A lenient sentence would be appropriate, the memo argued, because the U.S. government couldn’t hope to deter China’s theft of intellectual property by harshly punishing a single intelligence officer. The judge wasn’t swayed. On Nov. 16 last year, Xu was sentenced to 20 years in prison. His conviction is now being appealed.

Xu’s arrest and prosecution could be likened to the capture of an enemy combatant who is then made a prisoner of war, but for an important distinction that U.S. officials make — that this war, or economic espionage offensive, is being waged unilaterally by China. The Chinese government, which maintains that America’s accusations of economic espionage are “slanderous,” has described the charges against Xu as “made out of thin air.” According to Mangan, the evidence laid out during Xu’s trial goes far beyond merely proving his guilt — it uncovers the systematic nature of China’s vast economic espionage. The revelation of Xu’s activities lifts the veil on how pervasive China’s economic espionage is, according to the F.B.I. agent. If just one provincial officer can do what he did, the agent suggests, you can imagine how big the country’s overall operations must be.

A sense of that scale comes from a pair of indictments unveiled in federal court in the District of Columbia in 2019 and 2020 naming five computer hackers in China responsible for intrusions into more than 100 businesses, nonprofits and government agencies in the United States and other countries. The hackers belong to the group APT41, which the Department of Justice says is backed by the Chinese government, and it didn’t restrict itself to the theft of intellectual property and business information. Investigators say the hackers also purloined more than a million detailed call records from telecom companies. APT41 appears to have developed a data-modeling way to mine this type of information and map the social networks of specific targets, including a Tibetan monk living in India and pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong. The cases are pending.

One day last September, I traveled to Cincinnati to ask Hua about what he had gone through. He agreed to meet on the condition that I protect his identity. Even though he testified in court under his real name, he wanted to draw as little attention to himself as possible, especially out of a concern for his family. We met at a Chinese restaurant for lunch. Walking over to the table where I was sitting with his attorney, he greeted me with a gentle handshake and asked me to excuse him for speaking softly because of a rib injury he’d suffered while jogging.

Hua told me he had spent the past few years rebuilding his life. During the time he was helping the F.B.I. with its investigation, he was effectively unemployed — G.E. fired Hua after he was on leave for several months — except for a couple of weeks when he worked as a driver for Uber Eats. He finally found a job with an engineering company unrelated to his expertise. Still, he didn’t see himself as a victim. “Why did I have to accept the invitation without consulting my employer, my family?” he said. “I bear the consequences of what I did.”

He brightened when I asked him about his interest in composites. “It’s a fascinating field,” he said. “You can design a composite in many ways. You can think out of the box, you have a lot of flexibility in engineering it.” When I asked if he’d thought about returning to the field, however, he shook his head. “I don’t want to,” he said. He seemed worried that going back to designing composite structures would somehow open a fresh portal to the trauma he was trying to leave behind.

A few times during our conversation, I saw his eyes glisten and his lips quiver. But whenever I pressed him to describe how he felt about what he had been through, his face would take on a stoic expression, as if he was trying to keep his emotions in check. “If you ask me, are there days when I have trouble falling asleep? Yes, there are. I regret what I did. But I always tell myself, that’s the past, what can I do? I can only look forward, to see what I can do tomorrow.”

When Hua told me how he agreed to assist the F.B.I. to save himself and his family, I couldn’t help thinking of him and Xu as chess pieces in a geopolitical game that they had little control over — two men of similar background whose lives had collided, with unfortunate results for both. I asked Hua if he felt any anger toward Xu for arranging his visit to Nanjing. “No,” Hua replied. “He was just doing what he was asked to do.”Weeks later, after Xu’s sentencing on Nov. 16, Hua relayed a message to me through his attorney to say that he was saddened to hear that Xu would be spending such a long time in prison. “He’s not my enemy,” Hua said. “We are all just normal people.”

Yudhijit Bhattacharjee is the author of “The Dinner Set Gang” and “The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell.” He last wrote for the magazine about scam calls and where they come from. Hokyoung Kim is an illustrator from South Korea living in New York. She is known for a filmic style with narrative focus and dramatic lighting.

The New York Times · by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee · March 7, 2023

12. AFSOC Teaches Cultural and Air Ops Skills in New Course for Multi-Capable Airmen

AFSOC Teaches Cultural and Air Ops Skills in New Course for Multi-Capable Airmen | Air & Space Forces Magazine

airandspaceforces.com · by David Roza · March 7, 2023

March 7, 2023 | By David Roza

AURORA, Colo.—Eight Airmen are testing a new training program at Hurlburt Field, Fla., that combines cultural awareness, cross-cultural negotiation and communication, and the nuts-and-bolts skills of setting up air operations overseas.

The first-of-its-kind, three-week course seeks to enable multi-capable, culturally literate Airmen who the Air Force and the wider military may depend on in a future conflict.

“You typically hear ‘multi-capable Airmen’ as Airmen who can work more than one Air Force Specialty Code,” Walter Ward, a retired Air Force colonel and head of the Air Force Culture and Language Center, said March 6 at the AFA Warfare Symposium. “But in the ACE environment, you’re going to be doing those tasks with your host nation counterparts out there. So language and culture, to be able to get the operational outcomes we want, have to be part of the [multi-capable Airmen] MCA skillset.”

Agile Combat Employment (ACE) is the Air Force’s strategy for deploying small, nimble units of Airmen overseas for launching and recovering aircraft. ACE is meant to complicate an enemy’s targeting process by decentralizing airpower. However, ACE cannot work without collaboration with the host nation, Ward said. That is where the eight Airmen training in Florida come in.

The eight Thai-speaking Airmen are all Language Enabled Airmen Program (LEAP) scholars. LEAP is a program within AFCLC where Airmen and Space Force Guardians who have significant experience in a foreign language can apply to serve as cultural and linguistic experts for their fellow service members. The goal of the LEAP program is to help the Air Force and the broader military overcome linguistic and cultural barriers in order to work more closely with foreign partners. National security experts say America’s allies and partners may mean the difference between victory and defeat in a possible conflict with China.

“If you want to understand how your phone works, you need to understand the operating system of that phone. Culture is the operating system of humans,” Ward said.

LEAP scholars keep their culture and language skills fresh through online mentoring courses or through Language Intensive Training Events—which could take the form of living abroad or of a course like the one at Hurlburt. At the Hurlburt course, Thai-speaking contractors and experts from the Defense Language Institute teach classes in Thai history, politics, cuisine, religious beliefs, and even the role of Korean and Japanese pop music in Thai culture.

The first week of the course was taught in English as the LEAP Airmen learned techniques in cross-cultural negotiation and communication from instructors at Air Force Special Operation Command’s ‘intercultural skills for engagement’ course. The scholars also learned how to assess and report whether foreign airfields can support military or humanitarian operations. The eight Airmen come from a wide range of career fields, including maintenance, intelligence, and airfield operations.

“You’re typically not using terms like ‘load-bearing capacity’ in a dinner time conversation,” Ward said. “But if you can nail all those things with your Thai partners … look at the velocity we get in a bed-down, the velocity we get in putting combat power into the air.”

The second and third weeks of the course will be taught entirely in Thai as the LEAP scholars brush up on their cultural and linguistic proficiency and practice their cross-cultural negotiation and airfield assessment skills.

The schedule includes role-play sessions where the LEAP scholars conduct pre-deployment site surveys, set up operations centers for humanitarian and disaster relief missions, and even buy fuel for the airfield. Sprinkled in between those sessions are visits to a nearby Thai market, a Buddhist temple, and the Hurlburt chapel kitchen for a Thai cooking session. The goal is to train Airmen who can immediately build bridges with Thai colleagues if the U.S. military ever needs to operate with them in the future.

“There is a speed that a team can work at when it connects and communicates effectively, [and] there’s a speed much less than that for teams that can’t connect and communicate effectively,” Ward said.

AFCLC plans to teach similar courses later this year in Tagalog, Spanish, French, and Russian. Overall, there are about 3,600 service members speaking more than 90 languages who have participated in LEAP.

The Air Force keeps a database of LEAP scholars so they can be called on when needed. For example, if the military needs an airman who can speak Filipino and also help teach Filipino troops how to use unmanned aircraft, then commanders know where to look for that airman. LEAP is highly competitive, with about 1,200 Airmen and Guardians applying every year for a total of 400 slots, Ward said. When AFCLC can join forces with other Air Force organizations like AFSOC through efforts like the Hurlburt course, it is a win-win, he said.

“It really shows a good business relationship within the Air Force where we’re taking best-of-breed capabilities [and]working together to all support our flagship operational concept,” he said. “This particular cohort, it applies to the airfield operating concept. But our imagination is the only limit of where we could potentially spin this.”

AWS 23

Operational Imperative 7: Readiness to Deploy And Fight

Warfighter Training

airandspaceforces.com · by David Roza · March 7, 2023

13. ChatGPT has thrown gasoline on fears of a U.S.-China arms race on AI

Excerpts:

ChatGPT has shown how easy it may become for a country to create persuasive propaganda on a large scale and ship it abroad, potentially accelerating a conflict, said Joe Wang, a senior director for foreign policy at the Special Competitive Studies Project, a nonprofit set up by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt to “strengthen America’s long-term competitiveness.”

And the potential for other applications has no clear ceiling yet.

“We are at the beginning of the beginning, in terms of a new era of not just strategic competition but how a new technology is changing the landscape of literally everything,” said Wang, a former official at the State Department and the National Security Council.

ChatGPT has thrown gasoline on fears of a U.S.-China arms race on AI

The race to develop the next generation of AI isn’t just between tech companies like Microsoft and Google — it’s also between nations, which are working furiously to foster and develop their own technology.

NBC News · by David Ingram

Last month, as the tech industry was buzzing about ChatGPT, the research arm of the Defense Department put out an artificial intelligence announcement of its own: An AI bot had successfully flown an F-16 fighter jet in the skies above Southern California.

The news got relatively little attention, but it revealed an overlooked truth: The race to develop the next generation of AI isn’t just between tech companies like Microsoft and Google — it’s also between nations, which are working furiously to foster and develop their own technology.

An international competition over AI technology is playing out at a time of high tensions between the U.S. and China, and some experts said they fear how high the stakes have gotten.

“If the democratic side is not in the lead on the technology, and authoritarians get ahead, we put the whole of democracy and human rights at risk,” said Eileen Donahoe, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council and now executive director of Stanford University’s Global Digital Policy Incubator.

AI has become increasingly intertwined with U.S. geopolitical strategy even as chatbots, digital artwork and other consumer uses are stealing the headlines. What’s at stake is a host of tools that countries hope to wield in a fight for global supremacy, according to current and former U.S. government officials and outside analysts.

And it’s not just about military weapons like autonomous fighter jets. Some of the same advances that are powering ChatGPT may be useful for such varied geopolitical tools as large-scale propaganda machines, new kinds of cyberattacks and “synthetic biology” that could be important for economic growth.

“Within the technical community and some parts of the policy community, this race has been going on for quite some time,” said Jason Matheny, CEO of the Rand Corp., a nonprofit that provides research assistance to the U.S. government.

“But what’s different now,” he added, “is that this is a topic of conversation among the general public. There’s millions of people now who’ve interacted with a large language model” — specifically, ChatGPT and its cousin on Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

Congress faces question over how to regulate AI technologies

Feb. 14, 202303:41

On the surface, chatbots may not have much in common with autonomous weapons, but they’re built on similar ideas. AI technology is made up of a series of separate advances going on in parallel including new specialized microchips and a new computing architecture called a “transformer” that Google engineers developed. The “T” in ChatGPT stands for transformer.

One casualty so far is the exchange of technology across borders, similar to the way the internet itself has splintered into competing factions. China’s regulators have told Chinese companies not to offer access to ChatGPT services, Nikkei Asia reported last month, and the Biden administration has tightened controls on the export of AI-related technologies to China.

From the Chinese perspective, the competition has resulted in a “decoupling” that hurts both countries but China even more so, according to a report earlier this year from academics at the elite Peking University. The report was later taken offline, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

But in response to U.S. export controls, Chinese President Xi Jinping has emphasized a goal of technological self-reliance.

AI dominance isn’t necessarily winner-take-all. China does more with facial recognition tech than other countries do, using it as a form of control, but censorship may hold it back in the area of large language models.

Matheny said that for the U.S. to maintain an edge, it has to look at several essential components: computing power with microchips, large amounts of data, advanced algorithms and talented engineers.

“Each of these is sort of a strategic resource,” he said. “There’s not an endless supply of people who have the expertise needed to build these large AI models.”

To make the race even more complicated, the biggest source of advanced chips is Taiwan, the island that China claims as its own.

“It’s an inconvenient feature of geography that one of the most important parts of the AI supply chain is also one of the most complicated places geopolitically, 100 miles from mainland China,” Matheny said.

Both the U.S. and China have committed vast resources to AI development. The Defense Department is spending $1.5 billion over five years on AI, and last year Congress added another $200 million. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which tested the F-16 jet, has separately said it was spending billions of dollars. China’s spending is less clear, but estimates are in the billions of dollars.

In the private sector, the U.S. and China are Nos. 1 and 2 for total private investment in AI, with U.S. investment three times higher than China’s, according to a 2022 report by Stanford University.

“It’s not just about what AI gets invented. It’s about who applies it first,” said Christopher Kirchhoff, a former director of strategic planning for the National Security Council who helped lead the Pentagon’s Silicon Valley office, in an email.

Jake Sullivan, the Biden administration’s national security adviser, has underscored how important AI capabilities are in the eyes of the White House. In what he called a strategic shift, Sullivan said in a speech last year that it was no longer enough for the U.S. to be ahead of other nations on AI but instead “must maintain as large of a lead as possible.”

The competition has most of the elements of a new arms race, analysts said, with all the terrifying scenarios, big budgets and international maneuvering that the phrase entails.

Calls for de-escalation — and even a treaty — are growing louder.

“This is Cold War logic all over again,” said Wendell Wallach, the co-director of an AI program at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

“Are we ratcheting up the tensions between ourselves and China to the point where we’re putting ourselves in a trap?” he asked.

Last month, the Dutch and South Korean governments co-hosted what they said was the first global summit on “responsible” applications of AI in warfare, and more than 50 participating countries including the U.S. and China endorsed a nonbinding statement on “the need to put the responsible use of AI higher on the political agenda.”

Also at the summit, the Biden administration proposed a set of ideas to keep AI weapons under control, such as one proposal that deadly arms be “capable of being deactivated if they demonstrate unintended behavior.”

A week later, Costa Rica hosted a regional conference on the same subject, demonstrating how widespread the concerns are.

AI is now so tied up in international affairs that it’s become a fixation lately for Henry Kissinger, the 99-year-old former secretary of state. At an event last year, he called on the U.S. and China to begin negotiating limits of some kind, because without them, he said, “it is simply a mad race for some catastrophe.”

Other countries besides the U.S. and China seem to believe that if they’re not competitive on AI, their security will be at risk.

“The one who becomes the leader in this sphere will be the ruler of the world,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told a group of students in 2017. The next year, Russia said it was testing a semi-autonomous tank in Syria, though it got poor reviews, and in Ukraine, both Ukrainians and Russians are pursuing autonomous drone technology, Wired magazine reported.

ChatGPT has shown how easy it may become for a country to create persuasive propaganda on a large scale and ship it abroad, potentially accelerating a conflict, said Joe Wang, a senior director for foreign policy at the Special Competitive Studies Project, a nonprofit set up by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt to “strengthen America’s long-term competitiveness.”

And the potential for other applications has no clear ceiling yet.

“We are at the beginning of the beginning, in terms of a new era of not just strategic competition but how a new technology is changing the landscape of literally everything,” said Wang, a former official at the State Department and the National Security Council.

NBC News · by David Ingram

14. China is restructuring key government agencies to outcompete rivals in tech

Excerpt:

"It is set to address the long-standing contradictions and problems in financial areas," Xiao Jie, secretary-general of the State Council, said of the finance restructuring proposals in a statement.

China is restructuring key government agencies to outcompete rivals in tech

NPR · by Emily Feng · March 7, 2023

Chinese State Councilor and Secretary-General of the State Council Xiao Jie bows to delegates before delivering a speech during the second plenary session of the National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Tuesday. Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images

TAIPEI, Taiwan — China is proposing to vastly restructure its science, technology and finance regulators as part of an ambitious, ongoing effort to outcompete geopolitical rivals while also tamping down risk at home.

The reorganization attempts to modernize the Science and Technology Ministry and will create a new, consolidated financial regulator as well as a data regulator.

The changes were proposed by the State Council, akin to China's cabinet, during annual legislative and political meetings where Chinese leader Xi Jinping is also expected to formally confirm his third term as president.

Much of the annual meetings this year — called the Two Sessions in China — has been aimed at boosting the country's self-reliance in key industry and technology areas, especially in semiconductors, after the United States imposed harsh export sanctions on key chip components and software on China.

"Western countries led by the U.S. have implemented comprehensive containment, encirclement and suppression against us, bringing unprecedented severe challenges to our country's development," Xi was quoted as saying this week, in a rare and direct rebuke by name of the U.S.

Broadly, the Science and Technology Ministry will be reconstituted so as to align with state priorities in innovation, investing in basic research and translating those gains into practical applications, though the State Council document laying out these proposed changes had few details about implementation. The proposal also urges China to improve its patents and intellectual property system.

These changes, released by the State Council on Tuesday, still need to be officially approved this Friday by the National People's Congress, though the legislative body's delegates seldom cast dissenting votes.

China has undergone two ministerial reorganizations since Xi came to power in 2012, but this year's changes are the most cross-cutting yet.

The country will set up a national data bureau to specifically deal with data privacy and data storage issues, a responsibility previously taken on by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). "A new regulatory body for data makes perfect sense," said Kendra Schaefer, a Beijing-based partner at consultancy Trivium China. "[CAC] was neither designed nor equipped to handle data security, particularly cross-border data security."

Also among the proposed reforms is melding the current banking and insurance watchdogs into one body, to expand the number of provincial branches under the central bank, and to strengthen the securities regulator.

Under Xi, China has stepped up regulatory oversight of banking and consumer finance. Finance regulators quashed a public offering of financial technology company Ant Financial and put it under investigation for flouting banking standards. Regulators also cut off lending to heavily indebted property companies, sending the property prices and sale spiraling downward. After three years of costly COVID-19 controls, China is also struggling to manage ballooning local government debts.

"It is set to address the long-standing contradictions and problems in financial areas," Xiao Jie, secretary-general of the State Council, said of the finance restructuring proposals in a statement.

NPR · by Emily Feng · March 7, 2023

15. Weaponized balloons challenge US air superiority – quite littorally

Excerpts:

What’s different today is that balloons guided by artificial intelligence can both cheaply access and persist in the space littoral, thanks to a combination of technological advancements and commercial processes. Commercial companies are increasingly accessing the space littoral, using high-altitude balloons for ultra-high resolution imagery, internet communications, and scientific research. These dual-use space assets will increasingly place the capabilities to contest the space littoral in more adversaries’ hands.

Adversaries will seek to gain an advantage by operating in the zone of domain convergence between air and space. A 2018 article in the PLA Daily, the official newspaper of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), called the space littoral a “new battlefield in modern warfare.” Though a Chinese spy balloon floating across the United States is not contesting air superiority — it is transiting airspace — the episode hints at other possibilities.

Beijing could use high-altitude balloons to launch missiles or swarms of drones against air bases and known radar sites. China seems to recognize these possibilities. “At present and for a long time to come, the vast majority of air defense weapons will not threaten targets in near space,” China’s Aerospace Security Strategic Concept concluded in 2016, characterizing the space littoral as “an important penetration channel for rapid and long-range strikes.” But these are more than mere words. In 2018, the Chinese state media reported the test of a high-altitude balloon carrying hypersonic missiles.

Weaponized balloons challenge US air superiority – quite littorally

Defense News · by Kelly A. Grieco · March 7, 2023

The future of 21st-century air warfare conjures up images of hypersonic missiles, swarms of smart drones, directed-energy weapons, and artificial intelligence. Balloons don’t immediately come to mind. But with the recent downing of a Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon over the Atlantic Ocean, after it crossed the continental United States, we are reminded that what was once old is new again.

Just as the emergence of the submarine, the self-propelled torpedo, mines, and aircraft during the early twentieth century added sub-surface and above-surface threats in the contest for sea control, small drones, loitering munitions, missiles, and, yes, balloons add threats to air control from above and below the altitudes of conventional air superiority.

To gain an asymmetric advantage, U.S. adversaries increasingly seek to operate at the edges of the air domain — that is, at altitudes below and above the “blue skies,” where high-end fighter and bombers typically fly. In the air littoral, located below 15,000 feet, adversaries can exploit a mix of old and new technologies, such as man-portable air defense systems, radar-guided antiaircraft artillery, cruise missiles, dual-use drone technologies, and loitering munitions — to keep the airspace contested. The recent intrusion of a Chinese surveillance balloon into American airspace points to the potential emergence of an analogous set of littoral threats at highest reaches of the air domain.

The Space Littoral

The Chinese balloon incident offers a first glimpse of the contest to control the “space littoral” — that is, the airspace at altitudes between about 60,000 feet (known as the Armstrong Limit) and the edge of space, roughly 330,000 feet (or the Kármán line). The use of high-altitude spy and military balloons is itself not new. The Japanese lofted incendiary balloons into the jet stream toward the West Coast in World War II, and the United States conducted a series of spy balloon missions over the Soviet Union in the 1950s and even more recently tested the use of mass surveillance balloons across the United States.

What’s different today is that balloons guided by artificial intelligence can both cheaply access and persist in the space littoral, thanks to a combination of technological advancements and commercial processes. Commercial companies are increasingly accessing the space littoral, using high-altitude balloons for ultra-high resolution imagery, internet communications, and scientific research. These dual-use space assets will increasingly place the capabilities to contest the space littoral in more adversaries’ hands.

Adversaries will seek to gain an advantage by operating in the zone of domain convergence between air and space. A 2018 article in the PLA Daily, the official newspaper of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), called the space littoral a “new battlefield in modern warfare.” Though a Chinese spy balloon floating across the United States is not contesting air superiority — it is transiting airspace — the episode hints at other possibilities.

Beijing could use high-altitude balloons to launch missiles or swarms of drones against air bases and known radar sites. China seems to recognize these possibilities. “At present and for a long time to come, the vast majority of air defense weapons will not threaten targets in near space,” China’s Aerospace Security Strategic Concept concluded in 2016, characterizing the space littoral as “an important penetration channel for rapid and long-range strikes.” But these are more than mere words. In 2018, the Chinese state media reported the test of a high-altitude balloon carrying hypersonic missiles.

Other Chinese military writings also demonstrate interest in these ideas. In 2020, two Chinese strategists argued that “near-space weapons have incomparable advantages over traditional weapons.” Owing to the advantage of height, they explained, “reconnaissance field of view and strike coverage” area of high-altitude balloons is “much larger than that of traditional aircraft,” adding, “near space-weapons enable fast, agile, and stealthy ground strikes” and “its stealth ability is strong, so it is not easy to be detected and identified by radar, infrared and other detection equipment.”

Because these balloons have a very small radar cross-section, which renders them harder to detect and eliminate, they could pose a persistent threat to airborne systems, including aircraft, operating in the blue skies below them. Indeed, Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, the head of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, has acknowledged the United States failed to detect previous incursions by Chinese spy balloons into American airspace, exposing a “domain awareness gap.” Last month, after NORAD expanded its filter for slow-flying objects, it started detecting more objects, leading to the shoot-down of three other objects later determined to have a “benign purpose,” having most likely been launched by private companies or research institutions. Even if detected, high-altitude balloons will still pose the challenge of filtering out actual threats from the background noise.

China also might employ balloons to detect and engage American air-defense radars, effectively blinding the entire system. Chinese researchers have made the case for employing balloons to “induce and mobilize the enemy’s air defense system, providing the conditions for the implementation of electronic reconnaissance, assessment of air defense systems’ early warning detection and operational response capabilities.”

Even if the United States manages to intercept enemy balloons, they are cheap. The United States used a $250 million F-22 fighter armed with a $472,000 AIM-9 Sidewinder missile to shoot down a Chinese surveillance balloon that probably cost thousands of dollars. The exchange rate for the other three shoot-downs was likely even more unfavorable. If an adversary were to employ hundreds of these balloons, this approach would quickly become unsustainable. In short, the Chinese balloon incident portends a future in which cheap, persistent capabilities will challenge aspects of U.S. air superiority.

A Littoral Paradigm

The US Air Force needs to prepare for this future now. This calls for doctrinal innovation, not technological invention or incremental adaptations of existing weapon systems. New thinking, not technology or legacy ideas, is the answer. The first step is to recognize and name the problem. Incorporating the concepts of the “air littoral” and “space littoral” into service and joint doctrine would help to build a common language around the problem the force wants to solve. The second step is to develop new operational concepts and vertical schemes of maneuver for operating in these zones.

The littorals are the messy middle area between sea and land, ground and sky, and air and space. The characteristic of domain convergence makes them simultaneously more challenging and more critical for military operations: they are the avenues of transit, paths of attack, and waypoints of cross-domain maneuver. They are also now becoming areas of persistent contestation, whether the U.S. Air Force likes it or not.

Maximilian K. Bremer is a U.S. Air Force Colonel and the director of the Special Programs Division at Air Mobility Command. The opinions expressed here are his own and do not reflect the views of the Department of Defense and/or the U.S. Air Force.

Kelly A. Grieco (@ka_grieco) is a senior fellow with the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center and an adjunct associate professor of security studies at Georgetown University.

16. Semafor partners with Chinese Communist Party-linked think tank

Uh oh.

Semafor partners with Chinese Communist Party-linked think tank

Axios · by Sara Fischer,Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian · March 7, 2023

Semafor, the 5-month-old news startup, is drawing criticism in the U.S. for partnering with a think tank in China that is known to have close ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The group has in the past obscured those ties to Western audiences.

Why it matters: The collaboration is notable because the organization Semafor is partnering with — and its leader — has a track record of misleading Western audiences about its affiliation with the CCP.

What's happening: Semafor last week announced a new initiative called “China and Global Business” to serve as a platform for business leaders to discuss U.S.-China relations.

The partnership has been developed with a group called the Center for China and Globalization (CCG). The center's founder and director, Wang Huiyao, sits on the board of Semafor's initiative.
Semafor published a blog post Sunday evening with details about the partnership. The platform "will be exclusively underwritten by corporate partnerships with no financial contributions from our local Chinese partners or the Chinese government," CEO Justin Smith wrote. Smith is the former CEO of Bloomberg Media. Under his tenure, Bloomberg struck a partnership with another Chinese think tank that helped the company put on a marquee event in China.
Smith said Semafor "deliberately and explicitly structured" its agreements with partners of the initiative to protect its journalistic independence. "We have 100% editorial and commercial control and the project is fully owned and operated by Semafor," he wrote.

Catch up quick: CCG claims to be independent but was founded under the auspices of the Western Returned Scholars Organization.

That group is directed by the United Front Work Department (UFWD), a bureau of the Chinese Communist Party focused on amplifying support for the party and marginalizing dissent, both inside and outside of China's borders.
Alex Joske, an Australian expert on UFWD, wrote in a 2018 report that Wang is an "adviser to the UFWD, a member of several united front groups and an important figure in the development of China’s talent recruitment strategy."

In the past, CCG and Wang have denied any affiliation with the UFWD. In 2018, Wang bowed out of appearing on a panel discussion about the UFWD after his affiliation with that department became public.

Wang also does not list anywhere in his current bio on his website that he has been an adviser for the UFWD specifically or that he is affiliated with the Western Returned Scholars Association.
But he previously wrote in his Chinese-language biography on the center's website that he held a position as adviser to the UFWD specifically. (He didn't disclose that detail on his English-language bio at the time.)
He deleted the mention from his Chinese language bio after Foreign Policy reported the affiliation in 2018. Some of his U.S. interlocutors have said that he has denied it, according to sources with knowledge of the matter.
CCG at the time tried to downplay Wang's ties to the UFWD, writing on its website that Foreign Policy's article "does not accurately reflect how nonprofits work in China."

CCG did not respond to a request for comment.

Wang's bio on his personal and think tank websites in 2018 included his affiliation with the United Front Work Department: "Member of the expert advisory group of the United Front Work Department" (highlighted). Source: Internet Archive

Between the lines: Wang is well-connected in China. According to Semafor, CCG will "secure required approvals, and issue formal invitations to Chinese speakers and audience members. CCG will take on local administrative responsibilities and coordinate with local sponsors, and Semafor will pay CCG for their services."

Other members of Semafor's initiative board include former People's Bank of China governor Zhou Xiaochuan and Chen Deming, the former minister of commerce.

Be smart: The speech and activities of Chinese Communist Party-linked groups are strongly influenced by Beijing.

Semafor has not detailed how it plans to disclose to its audiences during live events or via digital coverage details about the group's affiliation to the CCP.
"We’re entering this endeavor with our eyes wide open and we welcome the scrutiny that comes with it," Smith said in the blog post explaining the partnership. "We aren’t under the illusion that Chinese business leaders or other local groups operate independently of the Chinese Communist Party."
While national security agencies have developed protocols for how they deal with CCP-linked groups, any transparency standards set by Semafor in its dealings with the center would be noteworthy.

The big picture: Semafor launched in October after raising roughly $25 million from a slew of wealthy individuals and family offices.

Earlier this month, Semafor said it would buy out the $10 million it raised from disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

Asked to clarify who is on Semafor’s board and whether any of the people who fund Semafor are linked to foreign governments or wealth funds, Semafor spokesperson Meera Pattni said:

"Justin [Smith] is the sole director and we are in the process of building out an independent board consistent with industry best practices for a new company."
"We expect to have an independent board in place by the time we raise our first priced fundraising round. On the latter question — No."

Axios · by Sara Fischer,Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian · March 7, 2023

17. US AIMS TO ‘AVOID FIGHTING A LAND WAR IN ASIA’

https://www.ausa.org/news/us-aims-avoid-fighting-land-war-asia

Photo by: U.S. Army/Spc. Aleksander Fomin

Mon, 03/06/2023 - 06:50

Even as the Army grows its footprint and relationships in the Indo-Pacific, it is not looking for a fight in what the service’s top civilian leader calls a “complicated neighborhood.”

“Our goal is to avoid fighting a land war in Asia,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said. “This is all about deterrence. We want to lower the temperature in the relationship with China.”

Speaking Feb. 27 alongside Gen. Charles Flynn, commander of U.S. Army Pacific, at an event hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, Wormuth said she does not believe an amphibious invasion of Taiwan is “imminent.”

“But we have to obviously prepare,” she said. “We’ve got to be prepared to fight and win that war, and I think the best way we avoid fighting that war is by showing the [People’s Republic of China] and countries in the region that we can actually win that war.”

The Indo-Pacific is not just an air or maritime theater, Flynn said. “This is a joint theater,” he said. “It’s got joint challenges and joint problems, and it requires joint solutions.”

Flynn, who has served multiple assignments in the Indo-Pacific since 2014, said the People’s Liberation Army is on a “historical trajectory.”

“The military arm that they have created is extraordinary,” he said. “They are rehearsing, they are practicing, they are experimenting. They are preparing those forces for something. You don’t build up that kind of arsenal just to defend and protect.”

The Chinese also have some advantages, Flynn said, including mass and “magazine depth—a lot of munitions, a lot of arrows in their quiver.”

The Army’s ability to provide land power is “staying power,” Wormuth said. As the Army builds strong relationships with allies and partners in the region with more training and exercises, it is complicating China’s decision-making, she said.

“It’s not just relationships for relationships’ sake,” Wormuth said. “Showing we have a strong network of allies and partners in the region is really critical.”

The Army also is working to enhance its access in the region, including looking to build theater distribution centers for items such as supplies and fuel across the region, starting, potentially, in Australia and maybe the Philippines, Wormuth said.

Additionally, through its Operation Pathways series of exercises, the Army is putting combat-credible forces in the region. The goal is to have Army forces in the region seven to eight months out of the year, she said.

The Army also has stood up the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center, a combat training center with campuses in Hawaii and Alaska and an exportable capability that can be used anywhere in the region, Flynn said. “What we’re doing at JPMRC is generating readiness, and we’re projecting that into the region,” he said.

If all its deterrence efforts fail, the Army has five core tasks, Wormuth said. As DoD’s linchpin force, it will be the Army’s job to build, secure and protect staging bases for the other services. The Army also will have responsibilities to sustain the force, provide secure communications and command and control at multiple levels. It also can provide long-range fires and counter-attack forces if needed, Wormuth said.

Despite all these efforts, Flynn, like Wormuth, emphasized that the U.S. military is not looking for a fight. “Our goal out there is no war,” he said. “But we have to be in the position to deter that from happening.”

In May, the Association of the U.S. Army is hosting the LANPAC Symposium and Exposition in Honolulu. An international symposium dedicated to land forces in the Indo-Pacific, the in-person event is scheduled for May 16–18. For more information or to register, click here.

18. America Is Too Scared of the Multipolar World

Excerpts:

Make no mistake: For the United States, and perhaps the entire globe, the multipolar future is not without significant downsides. Weaker states in a world of competing great powers can play off each other, which means that U.S. influence over some small states is likely to decline. Competition among the great powers in Eurasia could foster miscalculation and war, just as it did before 1945. More states may decide to seek nuclear weapons, in an era when technological advances may convince some people that those weapons might be usable. None of these developments are to be welcomed.

But assuming the United States remains first among unequals in an emerging multipolar order, its leaders should not be overly concerned. Washington will be in an ideal situation to play the other major powers off against each other, and it can let its partners in Eurasia bear more of the burden of their own security. Although U.S. leaders have long concealed their realist proclivities behind a cloud of idealistic rhetoric, they used to be pretty good at balance-of-power politics. As multipolarity returns, their successors just need to remember how this is done.

America Is Too Scared of the Multipolar World

The Biden administration is striving for a unipolar order that no longer exists.

Walt-Steve-foreign-policy-columnist20

Stephen M. Walt

By Stephen M. Walt, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University. FP subscribers can now receive alerts when new stories written by this author are published.

Foreign Policy · by Stephen M. Walt · March 7, 2023

After the United States moved from the darkness of the Cold War into the pleasant glow of the so-called unipolar moment, a diverse array of scholars, pundits, and world leaders began predicting, yearning for, or actively seeking a return to a multipolar world. Not surprisingly, Russian and Chinese leaders have long expressed a desire for a more multipolar order, as have the leaders of emerging powers such as India or Brazil. More interestingly, so have important U.S. allies. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder warned of the “undeniable danger” of U.S. unilateralism, and former French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine once declared that “the entire foreign policy of France … is aimed at making the world of tomorrow composed of several poles, not just one.” Current French President Emmanuel Macron’s support for European unity and strategic autonomy reveals a similar impulse.

Surprise, surprise: U.S. leaders don’t agree. They prefer the expansive opportunities and gratifying status that come from being the indispensable power, and they have been loath to abandon a position of unchallenged primacy. Back in 1991, the George H.W. Bush administration prepared a defense guidance document calling for active efforts to prevent the emergence of peer competitors anywhere in the world. The various National Security Strategy documents issued by Republicans and Democrats in subsequent years have all extolled the need to maintain U.S. primacy, even when they acknowledge the return of great power competition. Prominent academics have weighed in too—some arguing that U.S. primacy is “essential to the future of freedom,” and good for the United States and the world alike. I’ve contributed to this view myself, writing in 2005 that “the central aim of U.S. grand strategy should be to preserve its position of primacy for as long as possible.” (My advice on how to achieve that goal was ignored, however.)

Although the Biden administration recognizes that we are back in a world of several great powers, it seems nostalgic for the brief era when the United States didn’t face peer competitors. Hence its vigorous reassertion of “U.S. leadership,” its desire to inflict a military defeat on Russia that will leave it too weak to cause trouble in the future, and its efforts to stifle China’s rise by restricting Beijing’s access to critical technological inputs while subsidizing the U.S. semiconductor industry.

Even if these efforts succeed (and there’s no guarantee they will), restoring unipolarity is probably impossible. We are going to end up in 1) a bipolar world (with the United States and China as the two poles) or 2) a lopsided version of multipolarity where the United States is first among a set of unequal but still significant major powers (China, Russia, India, possibly Brazil, and conceivably a rearmed Japan and Germany).

What sort of world would that be? International relations theorists are divided on this question. Classical realists such as Hans Morgenthau believed multipolar systems were less war-prone because states could realign to contain dangerous aggressors and deter war. For them, flexibility of alignment was a virtue. Structural realists such as Kenneth Waltz or John Mearsheimer argued the opposite. They believed bipolar systems were in fact more stable because the danger of miscalculation was reduced; the two main powers knew the other would automatically oppose any serious attempt to alter the status quo. Moreover, the two main powers were not as dependent on allied support and could keep their clients in line when necessary. For structural realists, the flexibility inherent in a multipolar order creates greater uncertainty and makes it more likely that a revisionist power will think it can alter the status quo before the others can combine to stop it.

If the future world order is one of lopsided multipolarity and if such orders are more war-prone, then there is some reason to worry. But multipolarity might not be that bad for the United States, provided it recognizes the implications and adjusts its foreign policy appropriately.

For starters, let’s recognize that unipolarity wasn’t that great for the United States, and especially not for those unfortunate countries that got the brunt of U.S. attention in recent decades. The unipolar era included the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, two expensive and ultimately unsuccessful U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some ill-advised regime changes that led to failed states, a financial crisis that altered U.S. domestic politics dramatically, and the emergence of an increasingly ambitious China whose rise was partly facilitated by the United States’ own actions. But the United States hasn’t learned much from the experience, given that it is still listening to the strategic geniuses whose actions squandered Washington’s Cold War triumph and hastened unipolarity’s end. The only restraint on a unipolar power’s actions is self-restraint, and self-restraint is not something a crusader nation such as the United States does very well.

The return of multipolarity will recreate a world where Eurasia contains several major powers of varying strengths. These states are likely to eye each other warily, especially when they are in close proximity. This situation gives the United States considerable flexibility to adjust its alignments as needed, just as it did when it allied with Stalinist Russia in World War II and when it mended fences with Maoist China during the Cold War. The ability to pick and choose the proper allies is the secret ingredient of the United States’ past foreign policy successes: Its position as the only great power in the Western Hemisphere gave it “free security” that no other great power possessed, and it made the United States an especially desirable ally whenever serious trouble arose. As I wrote way back in the 1980s: “For the middle powers of Europe and Asia, the United States is the perfect ally. Its aggregate power ensures that its voice will be heard and its actions will be felt … [but] it is far enough away so as not to pose a significant threat [to its allies].”

In a multipolar world, the other major powers will gradually take on greater responsibility for their own security, thereby reducing the United States’ global burdens. India is building up its military force as its economy grows, and pacifist Japan has pledged to double its defense spending by 2027. That’s not entirely good news, of course, because regional arms races have their own risks and some of these states may eventually act in ways that are dangerous or provocative. But apropos my first point above, it’s not as if the United States has done such a great job keeping order in the Middle East, Europe, or even Asia in recent decades. Are we 100 percent sure the local powers will do worse, or that it would matter to Americans if they did?

Even if multipolarity has its downsides (see below), trying to prevent it would be expensive and probably futile. Russia may eventually suffer a decisive defeat in Ukraine (though that is by no means certain), but its vast size, nuclear arsenal, and abundant natural resources will keep it within the great power ranks no matter how the current war turns out. Export controls and internal challenges may slow China’s rise and its relative power may peak in the next decade, but it will remain a major player and its military capabilities will continue to improve. Japan is still the world’s third largest economy; it is beginning a major rearmament program; and it could acquire a nuclear arsenal quickly if it ever felt it had to. India’s trajectory is harder to forecast, but it will almost certainly wield greater weight in the decades ahead than it has in the past, and the United States has neither the ability nor wish to prevent this. Instead of engaging in a futile effort to roll back the clock, therefore, Americans should start getting ready for a multipolar future.

Ideally a world of lopsided multipolarity will encourage the United States to move away from its instinctive reliance on hard power and coercion and to put greater weight on genuine diplomacy. During the unipolar era, U.S. officials became accustomed to dealing with problems by issuing demands and ultimatums and then ramping up pressure, starting with sanctions and threats of force and then turning to shock and awe and regime change if gentler measures of coercion didn’t work. The disappointing results, alas, speak for themselves. In a multipolar world, by contrast, even the strongest powers must pay more attention to what the others want and work harder to persuade some of them to strike mutually beneficial bargains. Take it or leave it diplomacy must give way to subtler approaches and a lot more give-and-take; relying primarily on the mailed fist will just lead others to distance themselves. In the worst case, they’ll start lining up in opposition.

Make no mistake: For the United States, and perhaps the entire globe, the multipolar future is not without significant downsides. Weaker states in a world of competing great powers can play off each other, which means that U.S. influence over some small states is likely to decline. Competition among the great powers in Eurasia could foster miscalculation and war, just as it did before 1945. More states may decide to seek nuclear weapons, in an era when technological advances may convince some people that those weapons might be usable. None of these developments are to be welcomed.

But assuming the United States remains first among unequals in an emerging multipolar order, its leaders should not be overly concerned. Washington will be in an ideal situation to play the other major powers off against each other, and it can let its partners in Eurasia bear more of the burden of their own security. Although U.S. leaders have long concealed their realist proclivities behind a cloud of idealistic rhetoric, they used to be pretty good at balance-of-power politics. As multipolarity returns, their successors just need to remember how this is done.

Foreign Policy · by Stephen M. Walt · March 7, 2023

19. Pentagon publishes new 'Joint Concept for Competing,' warning that adversaries aim to 'win without fighting'

We comment on the JCC at Small Wars Journal here: https://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/joint-concept-competing

Pentagon publishes new 'Joint Concept for Competing,' warning that adversaries aim to 'win without fighting'

defensescoop.com · by Mark Pomerleau · March 7, 2023

The Department of Defense has released a new concept formally recognizing it is engaged in a competition on a daily basis below the threshold of all-out war or conflict, with chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley asserting that for the U.S. “more of the same is not enough.”

The document, which was not publicly released by DOD but was posted online by a third party, was published in February by the Joint Staff and titled “Joint Concept for Competing.” A Joint Staff spokesperson confirmed the document’s authenticity to DefenseScoop.

The concept signifies a paradigm shift. Adversaries have viewed conflict on a continuum while the U.S. has traditionally viewed it as a binary state of either war or peace.

“Simply put, U.S. adversaries intend to ‘win without fighting.’ In this context, U.S. challengers intend to pursue their objectives while avoiding armed conflict-rendering traditional Joint Force deterrence less effective,” Milley writes in the document’s forward. “Facing this dilemma, more of the same is not enough. By ignoring the threat of strategic competition, the United States risks ceding strategic influence, advantage, and leverage while preparing for a war that never occurs. The United States must remain fully prepared and poised for war, but this alone will be insufficient to secure its strategic objectives and protect its freedoms. If the United States does not compete effectively against adversaries, it could ‘lose without fighting.’”

For the last few years, DOD officials have discussed this new state of competition, emphasizing the importance of countering competitors on a daily basis. The document now formally recognizes this conflict continuum and “advances an intellectual paradigm shift to enable the Joint Force, in conjunction with interagency, multinational, and other interorganizational partners, to engage successfully in strategic competition.”

Adversaries have observed how U.S. forces have fought dating back to Operation Desert Strom in the early 1990s and “responded by seeking to circumvent U.S. deterrent posture through competitive activity below the threshold of armed conflict with the United States,” the document says.

“Adversaries are employing cohesive combinations of military and civil power to expand the competitive space. Adversaries aim to achieve their strategic objectives through a myriad of ways and means, including statecraft and economic power as well as subversion, coercion, disinformation, and deception. They are investing in key technologies designed to offset U.S. strategic and conventional military capabilities (e.g., nuclear weapons, anti-access and area denial systems, offensive cyberspace, artificial intelligence, hypersonic delivery systems, electromagnetic spectrum),” it notes.

International competitors have engaged in election meddling, stolen intellectual property through cyber means, probed networks and critical infrastructure through cyberspace and, most recently, engaged in provocative forms of surveillance with platforms such as high-altitude balloons.

The new Joint Staff document stems from the limited ability of combatant commanders to compete successfully in strategic competition. In June of 2020, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff directed the development of the joint concept.

The document notes that strategic competition is enduring and not a “problem to be solved.”

“This central idea of the JCC requires that the Joint Force expand its competitive mindset and its competitive approaches. A Joint Force with a competitive mindset will view strategic competition as a complex set of interactions in which the Joint Force contributes to broader [U.S. government] efforts to gain influence, advantage, and leverage over other actors and ultimately to achieve favorable strategic outcomes,” it states.

Several U.S. military entities have recognized this and are seeking to beat back adversaries’ efforts.

According to a Joint Staff spokesperson, the optimal outcome of the concept is to increase the effectiveness of the joint force given it has identified its ability to engage in strategic competition as an emerging challenge.

The concept is already being used to inform doctrine, they told DefenseScoop, noting it will go through a period of wargaming and experimentation to validate it. It will also be used to inform force design and development.

In This Story

defensescoop.com · by Mark Pomerleau · March 7, 2023

20. Submarines Will Reign in a War with China

Excerpts;

Imagine if the Navy had, say, half a dozen Columbia-class SSGNs that could be surged into the western Pacific during a crisis with China, alongside perhaps twice as many SSNs. It might not be a force that could definitively defend Taiwan on its own, but it would carry significant firepower—particularly if the submarines were outfitted with ASCMs in addition to land-attack missiles. At a minimum, such an approach would represent a far less risky strategy than deploying vulnerable carrier strike groups.

This raises an important, if morbid, consideration: Depending on type, U.S. nuclear submarines generally have crew sizes between 130 and 160 sailors. A strike group has around 7,000 personnel, some 5,000 on the carrier alone. However unpleasant, such considerations must factor into planning for a fight in the western Pacific, particularly if the United States wants options to intervene that limit its mass casualty risks.

Accepting that the submarine is ascendant, as Keegan argued, could be a difficult pill to swallow after eight decades of carrier dominance. But just as the Navy was able to transition from the battleship to the aircraft carrier during the interwar period, refocusing today on undersea warfare as the primary mode of combat is not impossible. Such changes begin with mental frameworks. In that regard, the “empty ocean” remains a prescient metaphor.

Submarines Will Reign in a War with China

General Prize Essay Contest—First Prize

Is the Ukraine War an Anti-Colonial Struggle?

Fellow victims of Russian imperialism are finding solidarity with Kyiv.

By Emily Couch, a British freelance writer on politics and culture in Eastern Europe and Eurasia.

Foreign Policy · by Emily Couch · March 7, 2023

In January, an eye-catching yurt providing free electricity, food, and tea appeared in Bucha, Ukraine, where Ukrainian forces discovered horrific Russian war crimes when they retook the town last April. It was the first of a set of “yurts of invincibility,” funded by private Kazakh companies and erected by members of the Kazakh diaspora, which are being touted as manifestations of postcolonial and anti-imperial solidarity between Kazakhstan and Ukraine. Initiatives supporting Ukrainians in the same spirit as the yurts have emerged across countries, that were once under Moscow’s control.

Ukrainians and their allies have been clear that the Russian invasion is an explicit act of imperial aggression, and have sought to use this argument to galvanize support from countries and peoples that also suffered from the violence and erasure of Russian colonialism. The question is to what extent this framing resonates with the millions of people in countries once part of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire, and how sustainable any nascent anti-colonial sentiment or solidarity really is.

In the West, the terms “anti-colonial,” “decolonial,” and “postcolonial” are most often associated with Africa, Latin America, and South Asia and the legacies of British, French, Spanish, and Belgian colonialism. As Botakoz Kassymbekova, assistant professor of modern history at the University of Basel, recently wrote for Al Jazeera, the overlooking of Russian colonialism is largely due to the Russocentric nature of Western knowledge of Eastern Europe and Eurasia.

Ukrainian journalist Maksym Eristavi has been working hard to challenge these assumptions and foster connections between people and communities impacted by Russian colonialism through Ukrainian Spaces, a podcast he founded with digital activist Valeriia Voshchevska. Responses to the episodes, he said, had shown a real eagerness among listeners in the region to engage with the idea of anti-colonial solidarity.

“The episodes we did with Kazakh and Kyrgyz allies have been the most listened-to episodes in the history of our project,” Eristavi said. “The first episodes we did with Ukrainians would turn into group therapy sessions, a safe space to share our generational trauma …. The same dynamic played out with our Central Asian friends and allies. There were moments when we would feel absolutely the same, when we would intimately feel what they were trying to convey.”

This sense of emotional kinship founded upon similarly traumatic experiences is emerging after decades of Soviet propaganda, said Azamat Junisbai, a Pitzer College professor of sociology focusing on Central Asia. The Soviet Union was in many ways a successor to the Russian empire, given the privileged position it granted to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and Russian culture and the way it treated minorities, he said. But the notion that the Soviet Union could be a colonial power was deeply taboo in a Communist state that trumpeted its supposedly anti-imperialist credentials. “Growing up as a kid in Kazakhstan, the notion that we were a colony of Russia was never ever mentioned,” Junisbai said. Decades of imbibing this propaganda prevented many Kazakhs from acknowledging—and therefore resisting—Russian colonialism, although the process was slowly happening. Junisbai believes Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine “put this process on steroids,” he said.

Maria Yeryoma, Belarusian media manager at the Kyiv Independent and former employee of the independent media outlet TUT.BY, said the invasion had also brought the concepts of colonialism and anti-colonialism to the fore for pro-democracy Belarusians. “We saw that narrative [being used by Ukrainians] and felt that it was somewhat relatable to us as well,” she said.

While Russia’s war has spread the anti-colonialism terms beyond the limited academic and cultural circles to which they were previously confined, she says, their usage by Belarusians is most often “borrowing” from the Ukrainian context, rather than an expression of any homegrown approach to the concepts. Inga and Alina, Belarusian volunteers who had relocated to the Polish city of Przemysl to help Ukrainians fleeing across the border, also rarely used the terms colonialism or anti-colonialism, more frequently referring to “resisting Russian influence and aggression.”

Georgian journalist and director of Open Caucasus Media Mariam Nikuradze said Georgians also don’t use the terms, despite being the direct victims of Russian military aggression in 2008. “We barely hear anything about Russian colonialism,” she said. “I don’t remember previous government officials framing it this way either …. I wouldn’t say Georgians saw the 2008 war as an act of colonial aggression.”

Similarly, in my conversation with Eka Gigauri, executive director of Transparency International Georgia, Russian “occupation” was the most commonly used term, rather than Russian “colonialism,” although it often had similar connotations. “We all understand that [Ukrainians] fight our fight as well,” Gigauri said. “We have experienced the same disasters; we understand what it means to be occupied by a country with whom you have nothing in common.”

Solidarity can mean symbolic actions such as the gathering of Georgians and Ukrainians in Tbilisi, Georgia, to decorate Christmas trees with their countries’ flags; the performance of a Ukrainian song in the center of Minsk, Belarus, by singer Meriem Herasimenka; and the protest performance by activists from the Oyan, Qazaqstan! (“Wake Up, Kazakhstan!”) group, in which members lay on the ground covered in Ukrainian flags outside the Russian embassy. It can also, as exemplified by the yurts of invincibility, mean tangible aid provided by ordinary citizens. The evacuation of Ukrainian citizens to Poland by Belarusian activist Andrei Kulakov in his eye-catching blue and yellow minibus is another example of very real support.

But expressions of solidarity can also be intangible. Eristavi said that, for him, anti-colonial solidarity means amplifying each other’s stories.

“The foundation of any colonial ideology is making you feel small and like whatever happened to you is an isolated case,” he said. “It robs you of the understanding [that] there is a larger scheme behind it. … When we share our stories, when we amplify each other, the empire starts to crack.”

Junisbai said the Russian invasion marked a definitive anti-colonial awakening for many Kazakhs. He compared the residual positive attitudes towards Russia to a hot air balloon kept afloat by the older generation’s nostalgia for the Soviet Union. “The war has punctured that balloon,” he said. “It is coming down. There are hardly any people left who remain under any illusions.”

Yet if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has become the engine of anti-colonial trends and discourses in the region, they may run out of steam when the war ends.

Hanna Liubakova, a Belarusian journalist and activist, said Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s repressive regime was “a product of Russian colonialism,” referencing the authoritarian leader’s adherence to Soviet values and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s long-term support for the dictator next door. “They are now in the same basket,” Liubakova said. “Those who hate Putin hate Lukashenko, and those who hate Lukashenko hate Putin.”

The connection between Belarus’s democratic movement—the burgeoning of which preceded Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by many years—and resistance to Russian colonialism suggests that anti-colonial awareness in the country will continue to grow even after the war’s conclusion. There is also hope in Uzbekistan that such awareness will outlast the war. Temur Umarov, an expert on Central Asia and fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: “The narrative right now is in the hands of young people. More than 50 percent of the population [in Uzbekistan] is younger than 30, which means that they … have many more questions about the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire, [such as] why we are not talking about decolonization?”

A key tenet of decolonization is moving away from political and cultural paradigms that center on the imperial metropole, valorizing indigenous and local experiences, cultures, and identities. There is a tragic paradox in the fact that much of what now joins such disparate countries together, providing the basis for solidarity, is a direct result of colonial policies. As in the former colonies of the British Empire, the language of the colonizer, Russian, continues—to varying degrees—to dominate communication between these now independent societies. A shared language, however, does not mean entirely shared experiences. In the social and political hierarchies of both the Russian empire and the Soviet Union, an ethnic Kazakh would have experienced colonial practices very differently from an ethnic Ukrainian. “Racism was not so prominent in Russia’s colonization of Ukraine as it was in its colonization of Central Asia,” Eristavi pointed out.

For now, the war binds many people together in opposition to Moscow. But what might anti-colonial solidarity look like in the post-war era? In this immensely diverse region, the metropole provides a common enemy against which vastly different countries can unite. The question, then, is the extent to which solidarity between these countries can exist outside of this oppositional paradigm. Upon what basis can these countries and peoples build and sustain solidarities with each other if not the rejection of the old imperial master? Are these kinds of relations necessary, or even desirable, in the long term?

The two institutions claiming to represent these countries’ “shared interests”—the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organization—are dominated by Russia and largely serve as vessels for the Kremlin’s strategic agenda. While the governments of member states such as Armenia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan remain dependent on Moscow politically and economically—and, indeed, while they remain authoritarian or hybrid regimes—these institutions are never going to embody the emerging anti-colonial sentiments in their societies. The true potential for anti- and decolonial solidarities in the region lies not with governments but the grassroots. People-to-people initiatives—of the kind we are now seeing as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—that bring ordinary citizens together and create spaces for organic dialogue and mutual learning will provide the momentum for their continued development.

Beyond the commonalities imposed by the Soviet authorities, Eurasia’s cultural and political landscape is immensely varied. While Belarusian culture may share traits with Ukrainian culture, both are distinct from the cultures of Central Asia. Last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the European Parliament that Ukraine is part of Europe. “This is our Europe,” he said. “This is our way of life, and for Ukraine it’s a way home.” The narrative that Ukraine is a historically European nation—with all the value and civilizational judgements that term entails—separated by Russia from its natural home is not something that can be adopted by Central Asian countries that cannot aspire to EU membership.

Rather than assuming commonalities, solidarity in the cultural sphere means negotiating differences after decades of Russian-enforced homogeneity. Katie Boudreau Morris, a scholar who focuses on migration and settler colonialism in Canada, wrote that settlers could only engage in true solidarity with indigenous communities through “constant and uncomfortable engagement with difference—an engagement that is based on mutual recognition and connection.” That remains true even between communities that were both colonized; acknowledging and grappling with difference remains relevant in order not to erase the variety of experiences.

Each society grapples with the heritage of Russian dominance. One way civil society could foster ongoing solidarity is through providing spaces where people from such immensely varied backgrounds could share experiences and learn from one another as they seek to reclaim their languages and distinct cultures. In Ukraine, thousands have turned away from Russian—even if it is their first language—and switched to Ukrainian, with similar trends occurring in Belarus and Kazakhstan. It is in the process of decolonization where solidarity among former Russian colonies can flourish.

Solidarity does not mean sameness. . The manifold initiatives that have emerged to support Ukraine and its people across what was once the Russian empire demonstrate a readiness to reject Moscow’s long shadow, as well as fertile ground for grassroots cooperation after the war ends. No matter in what terms one understands it, Russia’s full-scale invasion has brought discussions of identity—individual, social, and political—to the fore. Only if and when Ukraine wins will we begin to see where these conversations lead.

Foreign Policy · by Emily Couch · March 7, 2023

22. The Astonishing Endurance of Unity on Ukraine

I hope the Ambassador is right and that the west's resolve is not only bolstered but can be sustained.

Excerpts:

The resilience of transatlantic unity has discredited defeatist assumptions that the West will weaken before Russia does. Putin still believes that it will; his theory of victory depends on this outcome. Western unity must not be taken for granted, therefore, but rather sustained in four ways.

First, the United States and its allies must remind one another that any end to the war that leaves Russia in a position to renew its campaign against Ukraine poses a long-term threat to vital Western interests. It is even more important to ensure Moscow’s failure today than it was at the start of the war. If Russia had succeeded in its initial operation last year, the West would have suffered a severe setback. If Russia succeeds now, after Western nations have mounted an enormous effort to prevent such an outcome, it would shatter Western credibility around the world.

Second, the West must reinforce the moral case for unity by meticulously documenting and publicizing Russia’s abuses—primarily those committed against Ukrainians but also those committed against its own citizens. Reinforcing the ethical stakes of the war will help sustain Western cohesion and resolve.

Third, the United States and its allies must develop domestic policies to sustain their commitment to Ukraine—in particular, targeted welfare policies to ensure that poorer citizens are protected from the economic fallout of the war. Security begins on the home front.

Finally, Western governments must remain vigilant about Russia’s efforts to sow doubt and division. Moscow is skilled in disinformation and deception. Russia is certain to intensify its efforts at manipulation over the coming year.

During the Cold War, the combined wealth of North America and Western Europe was more than double that of the Soviet bloc. Today, the West is at least 12 times richer than Russia in terms of purchasing power parity (the comparison most favorable to Russia). Qualitative advantages compound this vast gulf. If the West commits to giving Ukraine whatever it takes to prevail, it can outstrip Russia’s war effort at far lower proportionate cost to its economy—and the quicker, the better. The richer side always wins in a long war. Unity is thus a vital strategic asset. If the West can win the contest for resolve on the home front, Ukraine can win on the battlefield.

The Astonishing Endurance of Unity on Ukraine

Russia’s Threat to Security and Moral Values Has Bolstered the West’s Resolve

By Nigel Gould-Davies

March 8, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Nigel Gould-Davies · March 8, 2023

Ever since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, many analysts have worried about the durability of Western support for Kyiv. Not a week goes by without new reports of weakening resolve, war fatigue, or cracks in the coalition. Yet a year into the conflict, the West’s commitment to Ukraine is undiminished—and, measured by aid delivered, stronger than ever.

This unity is unprecedented and underappreciated, and it far surpasses the strongest periods of transatlantic cohesion during the Cold War. It runs across states, societies, and companies. Every EU and NATO member state except Hungary has rallied behind Ukraine, despite deep divisions that preceded the war—over Poland’s authoritarian drift, for instance, and the United Kingdom’s ill-tempered exit from the European Union. Troubled economies roiled by war-fueled inflation have not led any major political party to argue that the costs of backing Ukraine are too high or that it is time to accommodate Russia’s demands. Pro-Ukraine policies have passed electoral tests in Italy and Sweden, where governments have turned over but support for Kyiv has endured. French President Emmanuel Macron beat off a challenge from far-right opposition leader Marine Le Pen, who came to see her long-standing ties to the Kremlin as a liability and destroyed thousands of leaflets picturing her with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This overwhelming official support for Ukraine reflects widespread popular sympathy across Western society, visible in the Ukrainian flags, stickers, and badges displayed in homes and businesses. Many retail outlets now invite customers to donate in support of Ukraine. Thousands of families have taken in refugees. The war has produced almost none of the polarization, conspiracies, or willful disregard for evidence that have beset other major events, such as the outbreak of COVID-19 or the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Russia’s narratives about the war have gained no real purchase. Among the wider public, empirical truth and moral clarity have returned to political discourse.

Most remarkable of all, Western support for Ukraine has spread across the private sector. Companies from industries as varied as oil and tech began to withdraw from Russia within days of its invasion. In the past, the private sector complied with sanctions regimes but privately argued for their easing. Now they voluntarily reinforce such restrictions. Those companies that remain in Russia face growing pressure to follow suit.

The extraordinary breadth and depth of Western unity is a product of a rare alignment of threats: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine challenges the West’s security and sense of morality in equal measure, something that no conflict has done since World War II. This alignment has enabled Western countries to act faster and take greater risks in defense of Ukraine—and offers hints about how such cohesion and resolve can be maintained.

COLD WAR, LUKEWARM ALLIANCE

Throughout the Cold War, divisions within and between NATO countries strained the alliance. At no point did Western states, societies, and companies share a common view of the Soviet threat or the appropriate response to it. This was true even in the Cold War’s most dangerous phase in the early 1980s. Initiatives such as the Reagan administration’s anti-missile defense program openly alarmed Western Europe. Even Washington’s closest ally, the United Kingdom, resisted U.S. extraterritorial sanctions to prevent the building of the Siberian gas pipeline to Europe. Millions of Europeans marched against the deployment of U.S. intermediate-range nuclear weapons in their backyard. Major European political parties adopted antinuclear policies. And many observers worried that these divisions could decouple Western Europe from the United States, splitting the Atlantic alliance.

Intra-Western divisions since February 2022 pale by comparison. They are spats, not splits—mostly disagreements over tactics, timing, and rhetoric—that are amplified by social media but quickly resolved. The controversy over whether to send tanks to Ukraine is a good example. In January 2023 Germany refused to provide Leopard 2s but changed its mind within days. Several other states have committed heavy materiel to Kyiv. In a pattern repeated since the start of the war, the unthinkable became doable.

The West has stayed unified even as it has radically hardened its position. It has escalated military support to Ukraine and economic coercion of Russia and has devised new policy instruments, such as a price cap on Russian oil, to do so. The EU is weaning itself off Russian energy. In December 2022, Germany announced that it would stop buying oil from Russia in 2023—an astonishing about-face for a country that had made gas imports from Russia a central part of its economic strategy.

The West is also locking in its hardened position by permanently changing its institutions. Finland and Sweden are set to join NATO, which has adopted a new Strategic Concept that will increase the alliance’s rapid-reaction force from 40,000 to 300,000 troops. The EU has accepted Ukraine’s candidacy for membership and is arming Ukrainian troops through the European Peace Facility fund. In addition, Western countries are preparing major new demands on Russia, including accountability for war crimes, reparations for Ukraine’s reconstruction, and the return of millions of abducted Ukrainians. Any postwar settlement will have to go far beyond answering the question of how lines are drawn on the map.

ONE OR THE OTHER

These historic shifts, accomplished in a matter of months, reflect the fact that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is both a potent security threat and a compelling moral cause. Not since World War II have these forces pulled so strongly in the same direction. One or the other has dominated—until now.

The West fought the Cold War principally to contain the security threat from the Soviet Union. The moral struggle between free and totalitarian systems reinforced the West’s conviction but was always secondary. When security needs came into conflict with ethical principles, security usually prevailed. The West cooperated with authoritarian states, including communist China, and occasionally undermined democratic ones to advance its security interests—for instance, by backing a coup against Iran’s democratically elected government in 1953. Western businesses were keen to sell to Soviet bloc markets, and many people were unnerved by the moral certitude of U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s characterization of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.” When the Soviet Union used force in Eastern Europe, strategic stability, balances of interest, and management of superpower relations took priority over human rights, albeit never fully eclipsing them.

After the Cold War came Western humanitarian interventions, and the balance of security and morality reversed. Civilian suffering in other parts of the world presented a strong ethical case but a weak or nonexistent security one, making for costly commitments. The moral compulsion to act was constrained by reluctance to commit significant resources—and in particular, to incur or inflict major casualties. The U.S. withdrawal from Somalia in 1993, Western prevarications in the Bosnian war of the mid-1990s, and NATO’s high-altitude bombing of Serbia in 1999 all illustrated this tension.

The war in Afghanistan is the exception that proves the rule. Throughout the 1990s, the West paid little attention to the Taliban’s brutal regime. But after the 9/11 attacks highlighted the Taliban’s role in facilitating international terrorism, a U.S.-led coalition quickly intervened to remove the group from power. The rationale for the U.S. occupation then gradually shifted from security to reconstruction: the operation became in essence a humanitarian one. When the West ceased to see the return of the Taliban as a threat to its security, it withdrew. It was no longer willing to bear the costs of an indefinite moral commitment.

THE MAINTENANCE PHASE

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created a new reality. Security and morality unambiguously reinforce each other, without the tradeoffs that marked the Cold War and the humanitarian interventions that followed. Political leaders understand that a Russian victory would present a dire security threat, and the U.S. and European publics are appalled by Russia’s indiscriminate attacks on civilians and systematic war crimes. This blend of security imperatives that mobilize state resources and moral outrage that energizes popular support fuels the West’s remarkable resolve.

The resilience of transatlantic unity has discredited defeatist assumptions that the West will weaken before Russia does. Putin still believes that it will; his theory of victory depends on this outcome. Western unity must not be taken for granted, therefore, but rather sustained in four ways.

First, the United States and its allies must remind one another that any end to the war that leaves Russia in a position to renew its campaign against Ukraine poses a long-term threat to vital Western interests. It is even more important to ensure Moscow’s failure today than it was at the start of the war. If Russia had succeeded in its initial operation last year, the West would have suffered a severe setback. If Russia succeeds now, after Western nations have mounted an enormous effort to prevent such an outcome, it would shatter Western credibility around the world.

Putin still believes the West will weaken before Russia does.

Second, the West must reinforce the moral case for unity by meticulously documenting and publicizing Russia’s abuses—primarily those committed against Ukrainians but also those committed against its own citizens. Reinforcing the ethical stakes of the war will help sustain Western cohesion and resolve.

Third, the United States and its allies must develop domestic policies to sustain their commitment to Ukraine—in particular, targeted welfare policies to ensure that poorer citizens are protected from the economic fallout of the war. Security begins on the home front.

Finally, Western governments must remain vigilant about Russia’s efforts to sow doubt and division. Moscow is skilled in disinformation and deception. Russia is certain to intensify its efforts at manipulation over the coming year.

During the Cold War, the combined wealth of North America and Western Europe was more than double that of the Soviet bloc. Today, the West is at least 12 times richer than Russia in terms of purchasing power parity (the comparison most favorable to Russia). Qualitative advantages compound this vast gulf. If the West commits to giving Ukraine whatever it takes to prevail, it can outstrip Russia’s war effort at far lower proportionate cost to its economy—and the quicker, the better. The richer side always wins in a long war. Unity is thus a vital strategic asset. If the West can win the contest for resolve on the home front, Ukraine can win on the battlefield.

NIGEL GOULD-DAVIES is Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a former British Ambassador to Belarus.

Foreign Affairs · by Nigel Gould-Davies · March 8, 2023

23. Cyberattacks Are Just One Part of Hybrid Warfare

Questions answered?

1. What is hybrid warfare?

2. How has it been used in the Russia-Ukraine war?

3. What are the hallmarks of cyberwarfare?

4. Who are the players in cyberwarfare?

5. Aren’t attacks on civilians supposed to be off-limits?

6. What can be done?

Cyberattacks Are Just One Part of Hybrid Warfare

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-07/cyberattacks-are-just-one-part-of-hybrid-warfare-quicktake?sref=hhjZtX76

ByJeff Stone and Jordan Robertson

March 7, 2023 at 1:33 PM EST

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, was immediate top news worldwide due to eyewitness accounts and images of missile strikes shared on television and social media. By contrast, a near-simultaneous cyberattack on satellite systems that Ukraine relied on to coordinate troop and drone movements — systems that also provided broadband service to more than 100,000 internet users in at least 13 countries across Europe and North Africa — was cloaked in mystery for weeks, and to this day Russia’s government denies any involvement in it. Such is the nature of the modern form of combat known as hybrid warfare, which marries unambiguous brute force with stealth, subterfuge and heaps of plausible deniability.

1. What is hybrid warfare?

It’s a term for the mixing of conventional and unconventional tactics — violent and nonviolent, virtual and real-world, overt and covert — that countries can deploy against each other. They include state-on-state cyberattacks — cyberwarfare — as well as disinformation, economic pressure, propaganda, sabotage and the use of irregular forces, such as uniformed soldiers without identifying insignia. Hybrid warfare is “used to blur the lines between war and peace and attempt to sow doubt in the minds of target populations,” according to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Ambiguity and plausible deniability are hallmarks of hybrid warfare.

2. How has it been used in the Russia-Ukraine war?

Since hybrid warfare is intentionally difficult to attribute, that’s hard to say. But a few episodes stand out. In the days prior to Russia’s February 2022 invasion, an automated wave of internet traffic slammed Ukrainian banks and government agencies, knocking websites offline and creating the false impression that Ukrainians would be unable to access their money. Months later, after underwater explosions damaged Russian-controlled pipelines carrying natural gas to Germany, Russia blamed the US, Ukraine and Poland. But the US and its allies suggested Russia may have sabotaged its own pipelines, thus assuring Europe would have to survive the winter without significant Russian gas flows.

A cyberattack that wipes out data centers, scrambles bank records to cause financial panic or disables essential services such as telecommunications or electricity might raise suspicions that a state or its proxies was behind it. Even disinformation campaigns, such as Russia’s targeting the 2016 U.S. president election, can be thought of as a softer but still damaging type of cyberwarfare. One incident that’s become public and is generally agreed to be an act of cyberwarfare was the so-called Stuxnet attack, which was discovered in 2010 and involved computer code that destroyed as many as 1,000 nuclear centrifuges in Iran. The New York Times reported that this was a joint operation between the US and Israel code-named Olympic Games and that, had it failed, the US was ready with a broad cyber battle plan against Iran that would have taken out its power grids.

4. Who are the players in cyberwarfare?

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The Council on Foreign Relations says 34 nations are suspected of sponsoring cyberattacks since 2005, with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea behind more than three-quarters of them. While the US is on the list of cyberattack sponsors, it’s also by far the biggest target of significant cyberattacks — including those on government agencies, defense contractors or high-tech companies — followed by the UK and India, according to a review of data kept by the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

5. Aren’t attacks on civilians supposed to be off-limits?

Real-world military confrontations are guided by rules of war that date back centuries and are meant to reduce civilian suffering. The Tallinn Manual, published in 2013 by a think tank affiliated with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was an attempt to apply those rules to cyberwarfare — defining which targets are off-limits (schools and hospitals, for example) and under what circumstances a country can respond to a hack attack with military force. But the manual carries no official weight.

6. What can be done?

Dozens of European countries plus the US, the UK and Canada support the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, which opened in Helsinki in 2017. It conducts simulations and other exercises and recommends ways that member states can become less vulnerable and more resilient to hybrid attacks. Ukrainian officials say some Russian cyberattacks meant to hurt civilians constitute war crimes and should be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court in the Hague. A 2022 US law aims to expedite and centralize reporting of cyberattacks that target critical infrastructure.

The Reference Shelf

Bloomberg Businessweek detailed the cyberattack, blamed on Russia, that knocked out satellite internet connections in Ukraine and across Europe.
The BBC visited the joint NATO-EU center on hybrid threats.
The Cyber Operations Tracker maintained by the Council on Foreign Relations.
A Wired magazine article on how Russia used Ukraine as a cyberwar “test lab.”

— With assistance by Katrina Manson

24. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy plans to meet Taiwan's president in the U.S., sources say

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy plans to meet Taiwan's president in the U.S., sources say

CNBC · March 7, 2023

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy wields the speaker's gavel as members of Congress gather to attend U.S. President Joe Biden's State of the Union address on Feb. 7, 2023.

Leah Millis | Reuters

U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy plans to meet Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen in the U.S. in coming weeks, two sources told Reuters on Monday, a move that could replace the Republican Speaker's anticipated but sensitive trip to the democratically governed island claimed by China.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tsai had been invited to speak at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library during a transit through California on a planned visit to Central America, and that McCarthy was likely to meet her in the United States.

One of the sources said should the U.S. meeting go forward — likely in April — it did not necessarily rule out McCarthy visiting Taiwan in the future.

McCarthy's office did not respond immediately to Reuters' questions on the matter, including whether the planned meeting was an effort to avoid raising tensions with China, which was angered by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in August.

The Financial Times first reported the plans to meet in California.

During a CNBC interview earlier on Monday, McCarthy declined to answer whether he would visit Taiwan, saying he would announce any travel plans when he had them.

Four other sources — including U.S. officials and people with knowledge of the U.S. and Taiwan administrations' thinking — said both sides were deeply uneasy that a future visit by McCarthy would severely increase tensions across the Taiwan Strait at a time when the island is preparing for its own presidential election early next year.

The Reagan Library and China's Embassy in Washington did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

Taiwan's de facto embassy in Washington said it had "no information to share" when asked about the meeting.

"In general terms, arrangements for President Tsai's visits to Taiwan's diplomatic allies and transits through the United States are carried out in line with the usual practice," it told Reuters.

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China views engagements between U.S. and Taiwanese officials as a breach of its sovereignty, a perceived slight sharpened by the fact that the Speaker of the House is second in line to the U.S. presidency.

But Taiwanese presidents, including Tsai, have a record of traveling through the U.S. en route to other countries, though the U.S. government has generally avoided meeting with senior Taiwanese officials in Washington.

Pelosi, a Democrat, visited Taiwan and met Tsai last year, defying warnings from China, which launched military drills around the island in response, raising fears that Beijing may carry out its threat to take Taiwan by force if necessary.

Since then, Taiwan has welcomed a wave of U.S. lawmakers, and speculation has swirled around whether McCarthy would travel there this year. McCarthy last year expressed interest in visiting Taiwan if he became speaker, a role he assumed in January after Republicans took control of the House in November's midterm elections.

Like most countries, the U.S. does not have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but is bound by U.S. law to provide the island with the means to defend itself.

Washington has long stuck to a policy of "strategic ambiguity," meaning it does not make clear whether it would respond militarily to an attack on Taiwan. However, President Joe Biden said in September that U.S. forces would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, his most explicit statement on the issue.

CNBC · March 7, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy plans to meet Taiwan's president in the U.S., sources say