Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Mistakes are a great educator when one is honest enough to admit them and willing to learn from them."

– Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go much further than people with vastly superior talent."

– Sophia Loren

"The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity."

– John F. Kennedy

1. U.S. Spy Agencies Know Your Secrets. They Bought Them.

2. US Army Special Forces To Be Deployed on Taiwanese Island Six Miles From Mainland China

3. Special ops expected to play key role in shaping future battlespaces in 'non-physical domains'

4. TikTok told users to contact their representatives. Lawmakers say what happened next shows why an ownership restructure is necessary.

5. The Vicious Cycle Driving Gaza’s North to Famine

6. Shield, sword, or symbol: Analyzing Xi Jinping’s “strategic deterrence”

7. Analysis: For women in Asia, motherhood is a complicated investment

8. ‘Useful expert' from US invents Pentagon's plan to evacuate Zelensky to Lviv

9. How the U.S. military will use a floating pier to deliver Gaza aid

10. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, March 7, 2024

11. What the war in Ukraine means for Asia

12. The Taliban once smashed TVs. Now it fosters YouTubers to promote its image.

13. China steps up grey-zone warfare to exhaust Taiwan, defence report says

14. Plan to Deliver Aid by Sea Faces Big Hurdles

15. We’re Slowly Learning About China’s Extensive Hacking Network

16. Fort Liberty Special Warfare Center and School to get new commander

1. U.S. Spy Agencies Know Your Secrets. They Bought Them.

I do not want the government to have all my personal information though after providing a data dump of information for my security clearance they do possess an awful lot of personal information (and so do the Chinese after the OPM hack).

I am reminded of the saying from gun rights advocates. If you ban the purchase of personal information by the government only enemy governments and malign actors will have access to our personnel information.

But the source of the problem is not the government taking advantage of commercially available information. it is both our personal problem in that we willingly provide personal information for our shopping convenience (and other conveniences, e.g., banking, medical, education, etc) and the commercial entities that have no problem hoovering up all the data to make a profit (which of course is their right in our free market economic system).

We have to think about these problems a lot differently and the solutions start with personal accountability and how we willingly give up information in return for convenience (and I am personally guilty as charged because I like the convenience). How can we put safeguards in place to help us save ourselves from ourselves?

U.S. Spy Agencies Know Your Secrets. They Bought Them.

Commercial data brokers are providing the government with personal information that might otherwise require search warrants. Should that be allowed?

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-spy-agencies-know-our-secrets-they-bought-them-791e243f?reflink=share_mobilewebshare&utm

By Byron Tau

March 8, 2024 11:00 am ET

Last November, Michael Morell, a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, hinted at a big change in how the agency now operates. “The information that is available commercially would kind of knock your socks off,” Morell said in an appearance on the NatSecTech podcast. “If we collected it using traditional intelligence methods, it would be top secret-sensitive. And you wouldn’t put it in a database, you’d keep it in a safe.”

In recent years, U.S. intelligence agencies, the military and even local police departments have gained access to enormous amounts of data through shadowy arrangements with brokers and aggregators. Everything from basic biographical information to consumer preferences to precise hour-by-hour movements can be obtained by government agencies without a warrant.

Most of this data is first collected by commercial entities as part of doing business. Companies acquire consumer names and addresses to ship goods and sell services. They acquire consumer preference data from loyalty programs, purchase history or online search queries. They get geolocation data when they build mobile apps or install roadside safety systems in cars.

But once consumers agree to share information with a corporation, they have no way to monitor what happens to it after it is collected. Many corporations have relationships with data brokers and sell or trade information about their customers. And governments have come to realize that such corporate data not only offers a rich trove of valuable information but is available for sale in bulk.

Data from cell towers, wireless earbuds and Wi-Fi routers can be used to track an individual. PHOTO: CHARLIE RIEDEL/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has used address data sold by utility companies to track down undocumented immigrants. The Secret Service has used geolocation data to fight credit card fraud, while the Drug Enforcement Administration has used it to try to find a kidnapping victim in Mexico. A Department of Homeland Security document revealed that the agency used purchased location data from mobile phones to “identify specific stash houses, suspicious trucking firms in North Carolina, links to Native American Reservations in Arizona, connections in Mexico and Central America which were not known and possible [accomplices] and international links to MS- 13 gang homicides.” And one government contractor, as part of a counterintelligence demonstration, used data from the gay-themed dating site Grindr to identify federal employees having sexual liaisons on the clock.

Whatever the U.S. can do with commercial data, foreign governments can do too. Last week, President Biden signed an executive order to prevent certain adversary countries, especially China and Russia, from buying bulk commercial data sets about Americans, including genetic information and personal movement information. But the order didn’t address the issue of how the U.S. government itself uses commercial data to get around constitutional protections for civil liberties. That issue is now before Congress as lawmakers consider reauthorizing a key surveillance law, prompting a debate over whether it’s appropriate for government and corporate power to become so intertwined.

In January 2022, a group of advisers convened by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence issued a report on the changing nature of intelligence. The report, withheld from the public for nearly a year and a half, concluded that “Today, in a way that [few] Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid,” governments can purchase “information on nearly everyone that is of a type and level of sensitivity that historically could have been obtained, if at all, only through targeted (and predicated) collection.”

Earlier generations of data brokers vacuumed up information from public records like driver’s licenses and marriage certificates. But today’s internet-enabled consumer technology makes it possible to acquire previously unimaginable kinds of data. Phone apps scan the signal environment around your phone and report back, hourly, about the cell towers, wireless earbuds, Bluetooth speakers and Wi-Fi routers that it encounters.

The National Security Agency recently acknowledged buying internet browsing data from private brokers, and several sources have told me about programs allowing the U.S. to buy access to foreign cell phone networks. Those arrangements are cloaked in secrecy, but the data would allow the U.S. to see who hundreds of millions of people around the world are calling.

Car companies, roadside assistance services and satellite radio companies also collect geolocation data and sell it to brokers, who then resell it to government entities. Even tires can be a vector for surveillance. That little computer readout on your car that tells you the tire pressure is 42 PSI? It operates through a wireless signal from a tiny sensor, and government agencies and private companies have figured out how to use such signals to track people.

While it’s unclear how far that capability has penetrated into mass surveillance technology, one Utah company called Blyncsy has put up sensors that collect tire pressure identifiers—data meant to be used for anonymized traffic analysis by highway departments and transportation planners. Blyncsy’s CEO Mark Pittman said in an email that the company has not sold its sensors to police or national security entities and has recently discontinued the product.

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines at a House hearing in March 2022. In recent years, U.S. intelligence agencies have gained access to enormous amounts of personal information thanks to commercial data brokers. PHOTO: EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/REUTERS

It’s legal for the government to use commercial data in intelligence programs because data brokers have either gotten the consent of consumers to collect their information or have stripped the data of any details that could be traced back to an individual. Much commercially available data doesn’t contain explicit personal information.

But the truth is that there are ways to identify people in nearly all anonymized data sets. If you can associate a phone, a computer or a car tire with a daily pattern of behavior or a residential address, it can usually be associated with an individual.

And while consumers have technically consented to the acquisition of their personal data by large corporations, most aren’t aware that their data is also flowing to the government, which disguises its purchases of data by working with contractors. One giant defense contractor, Sierra Nevada, set up a marketing company called nContext which is acquiring huge amounts of advertising data from commercial providers. Sierra Nevada and nContext did not respond to a request for comment.

Big data brokers that have reams of consumer information, like LexisNexis and

Thomson Reuters, market products to government entities, as do smaller niche players. Companies like Babel Street, Shadowdragon, Flashpoint and Cobwebs have sprung up to sell insights into what happens on social media or other web forums. Location data brokers like Venntel and Safegraph have provided data on the movement of mobile phones.“Government agencies rely on mobility and location analytics to properly allocate resources and inform critical decisions, including combating human and sex trafficking, identifying food or health deserts, improving infrastructure planning and informing natural disaster preparedness and response,” said Jason Sarfati, chief privacy officer of Venntel, in a statement. “Agencies use this data within their approved scope of responsibility and in compliance with the laws under which they were formed.”

A group of U.S. lawmakers is trying to stop the government from buying commercial data without court authorization by inserting a provision to that effect in a spy law, FISA Section 702, that Congress needs to reauthorize by April 19. The proposal would ban U.S. government agencies from buying data on Americans but would allow law-enforcement agencies and the intelligence community to continue buying data on foreigners. The effort scrambles the usual partisan lines, with support from Republican firebrands like Jim Jordan of Ohio and Andy Biggs of Arizona, as well as liberal Democrats like Ron Wyden of Oregon and Pramila Jayapal of Washington.

But the Biden administration has been lobbying Capitol Hill against the provision. “I would not compare the way that our government uses data to the way that countries of concern are using data,” an administration official said last month on a conference call with reporters announcing Biden’s executive order. In a bid to convince fellow Democrats to vote against the proposal, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that the proposal to ban the purchase of data “would undermine some of the most fundamental and important activities of the intelligence community and law enforcement.” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, pulled the reauthorization bill for the spy law from the floor in February over concerns from intelligence agencies and their allies in Congress, in part because of the proposed restrictions on using commercial data.

Many in the national security establishment think that it makes no sense to ban the government from acquiring data that everyone from the Chinese government to

Home Depot can buy on the open market. The data is valuable—in some cases, so valuable that the government won’t even discuss what it’s buying. “Picture getting a suspect’s phone, then in the extraction [of data] being able to see everyplace they’d been in the last 18 months plotted on a map you filter by date ranges,” wrote one Maryland state trooper in an email obtained under public records laws. “The success lies in the secrecy.”For spies and police officers alike, it is better for people to remain in the dark about what happens to the data generated by their daily activities—because if it were widely known how much data is collected and who buys it, it wouldn’t be such a powerful tool. Criminals might change their behavior. Foreign officials might realize they’re being surveilled. Consumers might be more reluctant to uncritically click “I accept” on the terms of service when downloading free apps. And the American public might finally demand that, after decades of inaction, their lawmakers finally do something about unrestrained data collection.

This essay is adapted from Byron Tau’s new book, “Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State.” A former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, he is now a reporter at NOTUS, a new nonprofit newsroom in Washington, D.C.

Appeared in the March 9, 2024, print edition as 'U.S. Spy Agencies Know Your Secrets. They Bought Them. Government Is Buying the Data of Our Daily Lives'.

2. US Army Special Forces To Be Deployed on Taiwanese Island Six Miles From Mainland China

More circular reporting. I still question whether there is a permanent presence or a permanent rotating presence it seems ot be th latter though I would be in favor or re-establishing the Taiwan Resident detachment that was present from the late 1950s until the 1970s)

Excerpt:

The NDAA outlines the framework for deploying U.S. personnel to Taiwan, focusing mainly on military training without immediate plans for the placement of civilian officials. Reports indicate a growing presence of the U.S. Special Operations Forces Liaison Element (SOFLE) in Taiwan, with plans to station small teams from 1st Special Forces Group’s 2nd Battalion, Alpha Company. These teams, comprised of three Army Green Berets, are tasked with ongoing joint training missions at the bases of Taiwan’s 101st Amphibious Reconnaissance Battalion and Airborne Special Service Company, acting as permanent training observers. This marks a departure from previous practices involving frequent but non-permanent visits to Taiwanese training facilities.

US Army Special Forces To Be Deployed on Taiwanese Island Six Miles From Mainland China

sofrep.com · by Guy D. McCardle · March 8, 2024

23 hours ago

Special ops expected to play key role in shaping future battlespaces in 'non-physical domains'

With many questioning the role SOF will play post-Global War on Terror in great power competition, officials believe they will be key in shaping conflicts before they begin.

MARK POMERLEAU

MARCH 8, 2024

defensescoop.com · by Mark Pomerleau · March 8, 2024

Special operations forces will be critical to forward posturing capabilities and shaping conflicts before they break out against sophisticated adversaries in the future — including in the so-called non-kinetic realms of military activity, officials say.

With the conclusion of the Global War on Terror and the return to great power competition in 2018 — prioritizing nation-states over non-state actors for the first time since 9/11 — U.S. Special Operations Command has been asked frequently what its role in this new paradigm will be.

Socom was the workhorse during those early 21st century conflicts, pioneering new tactics, perfecting how to hunt down individuals and terror networks, and ultimately, conduct deadly raids.

With the shift to great power competition, outside commentators and lawmakers alike have wondered how these skills and this force will translate in a new geopolitical era.

“We’re looking increasingly to be focused on really shaping the environment so that if there is a fight against a near-peer adversary or an adversary like a China or a Russia, we’re able to shape the conflict before it even occurs, and in many cases, hopefully establish deterrence to ensure it does not occur — or if it does occur, it occurs to our advantage,” Christopher Maier, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, said Thursday at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

While this shaping effort will still have applicability within the traditional kinetic realm of warfare where bullets fly, Maier empathized that it will mostly be in the non-kinetic space where special operations forces will have a big impact in setting up the joint force for success, namely, in what officials term placement and access.

“Of course, there’s the physical domains, the sea, land and air, but increasingly SOF is a key player in the non-physical domains — be that space, be that cyber, the information space, the electronic warfare space,” he said. “It’s having that placement and access to be able to sense when, at times, things are going in a negative direction, being able to know that and then having the capability to respond if need be.”

Placement and access refers to the unique ability of SOF to be on the ground and close to hard targets given their unique ability to be forward in an undetected manner.

“I think if you take the case of, say, cyber or space — and we spent a lot of time in recent years talking about a nexus between SOF, cyber and space — the effects, the incredible exquisite capabilities that space and cyber in our [combatant commands] bring, is sometimes challenged by the lack of proximity. SOF can really help with that last tactical mile, being in that right place at the right time to really unleash some of this capability,” Maier said. “SOF has ability to close kill chains, i.e. solve problems for the joint force to gain placement and access in areas that maybe isn’t as easy to do from a conventional standpoint either because the platforms and assets they’re bringing or are going to attract a lot of attention or they’re just unable to access certain areas because of the defenses that [an adversary] potentially has.”

The Army has pioneered a vision of what it deems the modern triad — which is much different than the nuclear triad of bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and ballistic missile submarines geared toward strategic deterrence that emerged during the Cold War era — that combines special operations, cyber and space. This new triad aims to also contribute to deterrence by combining these capabilities to be more than the sum of its parts.

Officials have begun talking more about its applicability at the joint level with closer partnership between Socom, U.S. Cyber Command and U.S. Space Command.

“When I talk about SOF helping to fill some of the gaps that the conventional force is really struggling with, I see it in some of these ability to gain closer, more proximate access to targets or to key points of military objectives that we’re going to need to affect and hold at risk,” Maier said.

As part of being able to gain unique accesses to targets, SOF forces will have to invest in new capabilities and tactics to hide from sophisticated nation-state threats that were not needed as much during the counterterrorism fights. The environments in Iraq and Afghanistan were relatively permissive. However, high-tech foes will have sensors and integrated air defenses that will make it easier to detect and thwart SOF action.

“We weren’t dealing with advanced conventional capabilities [in the counterterrorism fight], things like integrated air defense systems. We’re going to have to be able to penetrate those systems, and a lot of that’s going to be low visibility or hard to spot or moving fast enough that it can’t be acted on by the adversary set,” Maier said.

He also noted SOF forces must be able to operate more stealthily in the maritime environment from seafloor to subsurface and low-visibility surface — or else they won’t be filling needs for the joint force.

Officials are looking more and more at SOF-peculiar needs, capabilities separate from the conventional force that apply to special operators and their requirements, with low visibility being a top priority.

In addition to low visibility, SOF forces must be better at operating in a challenging electronic warfare environment, something they got a taste of in Syria operating alongside Russian forces.

A prior commander of Socom in 2018 called Syria the “most aggressive” electronic warfare environment on the planet.

“Some of the things we’ve had to deal with [in Syria], again, in primarily a defeat ISIS and counterterrorism context, have fast forwarded our ability to think about this in a contested environment where access is denied and we’re not able to gain the type of proximity we feel like we need,” Maier said.

The key to shaping and having that placement and access is the partnerships U.S. SOF have around the world. By partnering with other nations, these forces will already be present on the ground in theater where they’re able to shape the environment ahead of time.

“Being in the right place at the right time working through allies and partners, of which we have far more than any of our adversaries, we’re at any given point in 70 to 80 different countries around the world as an enterprise,” Maier said.

A spokesperson from Socom in written responses to DefenseScoop said in the last year there has been an increased demand from combatant commands for SOF capabilities in support of campaigning in the gray zone, or the threshold below armed conflict. This builds upon the relationship U.S. special operators have with partner nations, “which facilitate the placement and access necessary for SOF to prepare the operating environment daily, across the globe, below the threshold of armed conflict.”

“After 20+ years of primarily focusing on counterterrorism, SOF is returning to its roots as a force that prevents and prepares, transregionally, to enable the Joint Force to prevail in the event of conflict. SOFs value in these earlier phases ultimately provide options to our senior leaders with agile and tailored capabilities. SOF continues to deliver the best force possible for the personnel and budget provided,” the spokesperson said.

Information operations

Integrated deterrence is a key pillar of the Department of Defense’s national defense strategy that envisions a layer of policies, partnerships and capabilities to dissuade adversaries’ malign behavior.

Information ops will serve as a key enabler of realizing that type of deterrence, Maier said.

“When you think about integrated deterrence, that’s about the cognitive space and that’s about foreign leaders, our adversaries thinking that they don’t want to go to war with us or the cost will be exorbitant and they shouldn’t do that. Information operations plays a key role in amplifying and accelerating some of that,” he explained.

However, recent cuts to Army SOF, namely in psychological operations and civil affairs, will hurt the joint force’s ability to be successful in conducting information ops.

“Within the joint force, Army Special Operations brings a lot of that capability. We’re talking about psychological operations. They’re the real experts in crafting messages, doing these type of information activities in the information environment for military effects. That’s going to be effective of some of the cuts we will take in Army SOF,” he said.

The Army chose to make cuts — roughly 3,000 SOF personnel — as it is making hard choices about modernizing its force to better posture itself for great power competition and make investments in other capabilities and troops. In the Army’s thinking, these psychological operations and civil affairs personnel aren’t as needed in a great power competition fight as other needs — such as indirect fire protection, counter-small drone batteries and maneuver short-range air defenses.

“The Army overall felt the need for a whole host of reasons to draw down into its force structure. Army Special Operations is the largest component of the joint special operations enterprise. From the SOF perspective, we’re going to have to pay our dues, to some degree. We’re going to have to take some cuts because the bigger Army required it,” Maier said. “My concern as the ASD for SO/LIC is when you lower the overall denominator of what you can bring in, you’re going to have a hard time growing to future challenges. I think we haven’t talked about as much here, but we talk a lot of time in the department about the information environment being so critical. Army psyops, Army, civil affairs are among the best capabilities we have across the joint force.”

Maier also noted that the DOD has been playing catch up in the information operations space, given it was not as necessary in the counterterrorism fight.

“We have not invested as a department nearly as much as probably I would like or compared to some of the other domains like cyber and increasingly in space. I think there’s reasons for that — some has been because it was focused on the counterterrorism fight principally and it was really hard to discourage true believers from coming off their ideology,” he said. “As we reflect forward to an environment where we have adversaries who invest far more than we do and see it as a comparative advantage for themselves and operate by much different rules, we tend to try to be truthful when we do things. They have no compunction to do so.”

While competitors have a higher risk calculous to put out misinformation and disinformation, the U.S. should be more targeted when choosing to apply information capabilities to greater effect, he said, adding that he’d love to see more information capability in the conventional force and other parts of the department.

Written by Mark Pomerleau

Mark Pomerleau is a reporter for DefenseScoop, covering information warfare and cyberspace.

defensescoop.com · by Mark Pomerleau · March 8, 2024

4. TikTok told users to contact their representatives. Lawmakers say what happened next shows why an ownership restructure is necessary.

Check out the TikTok graphic meme at the link: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/krishnamoorthi-gallagher-tiktok-bill-calls-children/

("Your freedom to create is at risk")

Excerpts:

"This is exactly the reason why so many of our colleagues voted for the bill. They don't want a foreign adversary controlling social media apps using geolocation to target minor children to call members of Congress or interfere in our elections. This is exactly the reason why this particular legislation is necessary now," Krishnamoorthi said.

While the bill was met with bipartisan support when it unanimously passed through the House Energy and Commerce Committee, it has been criticized by former President Donald Trump. He shared on his Truth Social platform Thursday night, "If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business," calling the social media company "a true Enemy of the People!"

Rep. Mike Gallagher, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the select committee on competition, told CBS News on Friday that passing the bill wouldn't be a death sentence for TikTok. He said its ownership by ByteDance is a "very concrete national security threat."

"Every national security official in the Biden administration has warned about the national security threat posed by TikTok under its current ownership structure. That's what we're trying to get at. Not a ban, but a separation. Think of it as a surgery designed to remove the tumor from the patient and allow the patient to survive," Gallagher said.

TikTok told users to contact their representatives. Lawmakers say what happened next shows why an ownership restructure is necessary.

CBS News · by Aubrey Gelpieryn

Some TikTok users saw their phones flash Thursday morning with an urgent-sounding push notification: "Take action: Speak up against a TikTok shutdown." The alert linked to a page prompting users to enter their zip code, then provided them with a direct link to call their congressional representative. Lawmakers say their offices were inundated with calls as a result.

A screenshot shows the call to action shown to some U.S. users by TikTok on Friday.

And the calls to action have not ended. A new page pushed out to users by TikTok Friday warns, "Your freedom to create is at risk," and once again provides a link to call.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat who serves as the ranking member of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, said Friday this demonstrates exactly why he takes issue with the app, whose parent company is privately owned Chinese technology firm ByteDance. Critics say that as a Chinese company, ByteDance poses security risks.

"Most of these push notifications went to minor children, and these minor children were flooding our offices with phone calls," Krishnamoorthi told CBS News. "Basically they pick up the phone, call the office and say, 'What is a congressman? What is Congress?' They had no idea what was going on."

The congressman said these concerns and the app's access to young children's data are driving factors creating the bipartisan support of the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act," a bill he co-sponsored. The bill calls for ByteDance to divest from TikTok or the app will face restrictions.

"This is exactly the reason why so many of our colleagues voted for the bill. They don't want a foreign adversary controlling social media apps using geolocation to target minor children to call members of Congress or interfere in our elections. This is exactly the reason why this particular legislation is necessary now," Krishnamoorthi said.

While the bill was met with bipartisan support when it unanimously passed through the House Energy and Commerce Committee, it has been criticized by former President Donald Trump. He shared on his Truth Social platform Thursday night, "If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business," calling the social media company "a true Enemy of the People!"

Rep. Mike Gallagher, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the select committee on competition, told CBS News on Friday that passing the bill wouldn't be a death sentence for TikTok. He said its ownership by ByteDance is a "very concrete national security threat."

"Every national security official in the Biden administration has warned about the national security threat posed by TikTok under its current ownership structure. That's what we're trying to get at. Not a ban, but a separation. Think of it as a surgery designed to remove the tumor from the patient and allow the patient to survive," Gallagher said.

Aubrey Gelpieryn is a producer with CBS News Streaming.

Twitter Facebook Instagram

CBS News · by Aubrey Gelpieryn

5. The Vicious Cycle Driving Gaza’s North to Famine

The Vicious Cycle Driving Gaza’s North to Famine

‘Beyond words.’ Disaster is brewing as aid is repeatedly prevented from reaching the enclave.

By Stephen KalinFollow

, Abeer Ayyoub and Margherita StancatiFollow

Updated March 9, 2024 12:02 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/the-vicious-cycle-driving-gazas-north-to-famine-3dc85313?mod=hp_lead_pos2

Fourteen trucks carrying desperately needed aid from the World Food Program were barreling toward the northern Gaza Strip early Tuesday morning when the Israeli military halted the convoy at a checkpoint for hours and then turned them away.

The Israeli military said it stopped the convoy because the route was too crowded and thus unsafe. After the convoy headed back to the south, thousands of desperate people stopped the trucks and took around 200 tons of food, the agency said.

A vicious cycle is preventing almost any basic aid from reaching Gaza’s devastated north, where Israeli bombardment has reduced urban centers to rubble. After ending Hamas’s control, Israeli ground forces limited the flow of aid north, without providing an alternative civilian authority to restore order and basic services for the quarter to half a million people who refused Israeli orders to move south.

Disaster is brewing, with more than a dozen of the first hunger-related deaths confirmed in the past week by local doctors. Scarcity is driving desperate people to crowd in and seize what aid does get in, sparking violence that deters humanitarian groups and the Israeli military from bringing in more aid.

Jabalia

Damaged

buildings

Gaza City

Mediterranean Sea

Al Ma’ani

LEB.

Detail

WEST

BANK

ISR.

Rafah

crossing

ISRAEL

2 miles

2 km

Note: As of March 5

Sources: Damage analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data by Corey Scher of CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University

Emma Brown/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Sheltering in bombed-out ruins, people in the north spend their days scavenging for food. Most people skip at least one meal every day. Many are mixing animal feed into their bread. Hepatitis A and diarrhea are spreading fast, especially among children. Adults say their hair and teeth are falling out and fingernails are breaking, signs of malnutrition.

Mahira Hisham and her husband in Gaza City consume only tea and water some days so their children can eat more of the bread they make from a stinky mix of different flours and rabbit feed that is sold in the market. To put off hunger pangs, their teenage girls sleep until the sun starts to set and then swallow spoonfuls of ground thyme.

“Today, my son woke up and found nothing in the kitchen except for a lemon,” said Hisham, 36, who said the 10-year-old boy added some sugar and ate it. “He broke my heart.”

The north’s dreadful conditions are deepening Washington’s frustration with Israel and driving moves by countries, including the U.S., and aid groups to airdrop food to get around obstacles to ground delivery. But airdrops can only cover a fraction of the growing needs. Aid workers say they are expensive, logistically complex and small compared with truck convoys.

People ran for cover after an Israeli airstrike near the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia in November. PHOTO: MOHAMMAD AHMAD/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Anwar Abdulnabi cries over the body of her daughter Mila at Kamal Adwan Hospital on March 2. The hospital’s director said a lack of food, medicine and fuel was exacerbating the conditions of emaciated children being treated there. PHOTO: OSAMA ABU RBAYA/REUTERS

On Thursday, President Biden said he had directed the U.S. military to build a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza for cargo ships to deliver aid. But the project will take time to scale up, and once ashore, aid could face the same challenges of safe distribution as truck convoys.

A senior administration official said Thursday that the White House was working with Israel to open a new ground crossing in northern Gaza, which an Israeli official said could open as soon as Friday. But it isn’t clear how much aid would enter or for how long. Only a massive and sustained surge can avert a looming famine, aid workers say.

Nearly all aid reaches Gaza via two entry points in the south. Very little of that aid has reached the north of the enclave since the war began in October.

Israel says it is doing everything it can to ensure aid reaches Gaza, and the north in particular. It says it doesn’t limit the amount of aid into the strip within permitted categories, and that it is approving the entry of more aid trucks than the United Nations and NGOs are able to distribute.

Airdrops of humanitarian aid fell over northern Gaza, as seen from the border with Israel, in March. PHOTO: JACK GUEZ/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

People waiting for food distributed by volunteers in Deir al-Balah in January. PHOTO: OMAR ASHTAWY/ZUMA PRESS

Israeli officials have acknowledged that the lack of order in northern Gaza has impeded aid delivery there, and say that they are trying to help the U.N. to find ways to protect aid convoys, including through private contractors. Israel conducts strict inspections on everything that enters Gaza, allowing food, medicine, tents and drinking water while banning almost everything else out of concern that it could end up in the hands of Hamas.

Israel launched its war in Gaza after Hamas’s cross-border attack on Oct. 7 left 1,200 Israelis dead, most of them civilians. Israel’s ground-and-air offensive has left more than 30,000 Palestinians dead, mostly women and children, say Gaza health officials, who don’t distinguish between civilians and militants.

Gaza residents and aid workers say there is little visible Israeli presence in the north beyond a few checkpoints, and no visible presence of Hamas or Palestinian police.

In the past week, a handful of U.N. missions have made it to the north, mostly small convoys carrying medical supplies rather than food, which is most sought after more than five months into a war that has almost entirely cut the north off from the rest of the world.

Scott Anderson, a senior official with the U.N.’s agency for Palestinian refugees who recently returned from one of those missions, said food was the first thing everybody asked for. He saw hardly any food for sale in the market, except for a few lemons and green leafy vegetables

“There is a way out: There needs to be access from the north, from Israel into the north, preferably more than one crossing point,” said Anderson.

Level of food insecurity

for Gaza inhabitants*

Level of food insecurity

Households are able to meet essential food needs

SECURE

LATEST

PROJECTION

Level 2

Households have minimally adequate food consumption

STRESS

21%

CRISIS

Households are facing high or above-normal acute malnutrition

CRISIS

34%

Level 3

Households are facing mortality and very high acute malnutrition

EMERGENCY

An extreme lack of food with starvation and death evident

FAMINE

53%

Projected level of food insecurity

EMERGENCY

42%

Level 4

South governorates

(Middle, Khan Younis and Rafah)

North governorates

(North Gaza and Gaza)

FAMINE

CRISIS

15%

25%

30%

35%

26%

FAMINE

17%

Level 5

45%

EMERGENCY

*Latest is for Nov. 24–Dec. 7, 2023 and projection for Dec. 8, 2023–Feb. 7, 2024

Source: Integrated Food Security Phase Classification

Ming Li/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Lately, an average of 120 trucks have been entering Gaza daily, compared with 500 before the war, of which 150 carried food.

Israel’s military, which controls access from the south to the north through two checkpoints, denied permission to more than half of U.N.-led aid missions to the north in January and early February on security grounds, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society, the local affiliate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said it hasn’t been allowed to deliver food or medical aid to the north since the end of a week-long cease-fire in late November.

U.N. agencies and charities suspended food-delivery missions to the north altogether on Feb. 5, when an aid convoy waiting near a checkpoint to access north Gaza was hit by Israeli navy fire. Israel said its forces were targeting Hamas infrastructure and that it would investigate the incident. Since then only the World Food Program has made ill-fated attempts to restart food convoys to the north.

The U.N.’s pullback and diplomatic pressure from the U.S. has forced Israel to become more deeply involved in getting aid into northern Gaza. Since late February, the Israeli military has overseen at least five food-delivery missions to the north involving some 100 trucks, most recently on Wednesday. One of those humanitarian operations turned deadly on Feb. 29, when more than 110 people were shot or trampled to death at a roundabout in Gaza City when Israeli forces fired at Palestinians that Israeli officials said were threatening troops. Palestinians said the people were only trying to get food.

Tuesday’s failed WFP effort unfolded just days after that deadly incident. Since then, the agency said two requests to reach north Gaza have been denied by the Israeli military.

Shield, sword, or symbol: Analyzing Xi Jinping’s “strategic deterrence” | Brookings

oel Wuthnow

Joel Wuthnow

Senior Research Fellow - National Defense University

@jwuthnow

March 7, 2024

The Brookings Institution ·

In October 2022, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping raised eyebrows with his pledge at the 20th Party Congress to “create a strong strategic deterrent force system” (打造强大战略威慑力量体系). The line evoked China’s massive nuclear buildup, the contours of which were by then beginning to become clear. It also came less than a year after Russian President Vladimir Putin summoned his own “strategic deterrence” forces to keep NATO at arm’s length in Ukraine and amid rumors that China might soon attack Taiwan. Xi’s comments were not a throwaway line, since the CCP’s 14th Five-Year Plan, released in March 2021, similarly called on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to “build a high-level strategic deterrent and joint operations system” (打造高水平战略威慑和联合作战体系). Yet neither Xi nor other Chinese officials elaborated on the phrase. What were Xi’s intentions and what can the answers tell us about Chinese thinking on deterrence?

Evidence from PLA sources before and after the 20th Party Congress suggests three possible interpretations. First is that Xi was mainly referring to the need to improve China’s deterrence against what he perceived as a more aggressive U.S. antagonist. Second is that he was encouraging a broader idea of tailored coercion (and not “deterrence” in the classic sense) focused on using an array of military instruments to shape the regional security environment in China’s favor. Third is that “strategic deterrence” was a reference to Xi’s support for greater status and resourcing for the PLA Rocket Force, which was the “core force” in China’s expanding nuclear arsenal. Without being inside Xi’s mind, it is difficult to know which interpretation is closest to the truth. But each one illuminates key issues facing the PLA as it seeks to build and employ more credible deterrent forces.

Shield: Responding to perceived U.S. threats

The first interpretation views the “strategic deterrent force system” as a response to upgrades in the U.S. strategic arsenal and Chinese concerns about U.S. intervention in Taiwan. Some discussions within the People’s Republic of China (PRC) filter “strategic deterrence” through the lens of maintaining the strategic balance between the nuclear powers. Twenty years before Xi’s comments, in February 2002, Jiang Zemin delivered a similar injunction to build a “strategic deterrence system” but provided a fuller rationale based on changes in the international strategic environment. Speaking at an enlarged meeting of the Central Military Commission, Jiang stated:

“Strategic deterrence has already become an important feature of the current international military struggle. The United States, Russia, the United Kingdom and France all place nuclear weapons as the core forces of their strategic deterrent. The U.S. has a ‘triad’ strategic deterrent, including nuclear and non-nuclear strike systems, active and passive defense systems, and national defense basic infrastructure; its core thought is the application of strategic deterrent means … We must base ourselves on the existing situation, focus on development, and gradually form a strategic deterrence system that combines multiple means.”

PLA analysts also discussed how the nuclear powers were adjusting their own strategic deterrents. Zhang Yan, a PLA National Defense University scholar, traced the historical evolution of the “strategic deterrent” concept from 1945 through the post-Cold War period, arguing that beginning in the 1990s, “information deterrence, space deterrence, and cyber deterrence play an increasingly important role. Strategic deterrence theory continues to develop into a system.” Into the 21st century, other PLA writings analyzed “strategic deterrent systems” through discussions of upgraded U.S. nuclear and non-nuclear deterrent capabilities, including ballistic missile defenses, global conventional strike, and anti-satellite weapons (see here, here, and here). Scholars also assessed changes in Russian strategic forces, including the rise of long-range hypersonic missiles.

PRC strategists were increasingly concerned that upgrades to U.S. systems in particular could undermine China’s nuclear deterrent. According to research from Henrik Hiim, M. Taylor Fravel, and Magnus Trøan, specific challenges included advances in U.S. missile defense capabilities, the U.S. withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019, and enhancements to U.S. conventional global strike forces. These perceptions, in their analysis, can help explain the nuclear expansion and diversification that Xi may have been referencing in his 2022 comments.

Other discussions contend that strategic deterrence upgrades are needed not only to maintain survivable nuclear forces but also due to PRC perceptions of a hostile turn in U.S. policies toward China under the Trump and Biden administrations, and in particular the possibility that the PLA would need to bolster its ability to deter U.S. military intervention in a Taiwan conflict. In a 2022 article for the CCP journal People’s Tribune, Ge Tengfei, a scholar at the National University of Defense Technology, describes strategic deterrence as the “final, decisive, and reliable strategic military force … in the strategic military struggle against hegemony and bullying.” He specifically notes that the “strong strategic deterrent force system” is a:

“Trump card for safeguarding the country’s core interests. This is also a clear and unequivocal message to external interfering forces not to underestimate the Chinese people’s strong determination, firm will, and strong ability to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Any external interference will inevitably be met with a resolute counterattack by the Chinese people. Any external interference will not succeed.”

Ge’s analysis followed a number of articles assessing the role that Russian strategic capabilities played in limiting NATO intervention in Ukraine. Philip Saunders and David Logan argue that China’s nuclear expansion could provide a “nuclear shield” by countering U.S. nuclear intimidation and potentially deterring conventional intervention as well, giving the PLA more “freedom of action” in a Taiwan crisis. The 2023 China Military Power Report authored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense reached a similar conclusion, arguing that “the PRC’s pursuit of a ‘strong strategic deterrent force system’ is probably driven by threat perceptions of the United States and by specific concerns over Taiwan.”

Sword: Shaping the security environment

A second interpretation is that Xi was referencing the broader idea that China should effectively use forces across all domains to shape the security environment. The premise of this argument is that “strategic deterrence” (战略威慑) is a mistranslation of a concept that includes elements, in Thomas Schelling’s terminology, of both “deterrence” and “compellence.” The “Science of Military Strategy,” a key textbook first published in 2001 and used in China’s military educational system, notes that “strategic deterrence” not only seeks to “dissuade the opponent from doing something,” but also to “persuade the opponent what ought to be done”; “both demand the opponent to submit to the deterrer’s volition.” The term is thus perhaps better translated as “strategic coercion.”

Multiple editions of “The Science of Military Strategy,” including the 2001 version (published by the Academy of Military Sciences) and the 2020 version (published by the PLA National Defense University) outline five categories of “strategic coercion” tools: nuclear, space, information, conventional, and “People’s War,” referring to popular willpower and the ability to mobilize civilian resources for major campaigns. (For further discussion, see analyses by Dennis Blasko, Dean Cheng, and Michael Chase and Arthur Chan). In essence, every military instrument available to the Chinese Communist Party has potential coercive utility, not only in influencing U.S. decisions but also those of China’s territorial rivals through the calibrated and creative application of armed force.

Chinese texts elucidate several ways in which these capabilities can be used to shape adversary decisions. The 2004 classified book “Science of Second Artillery Campaigns” and other PLA writings described various ways in which nuclear forces could be displayed in a crisis scenario, such as raising nuclear alert levels or conducting snap exercises. These tools would be consistent with the “nuclear shield” model outlined above. Other uses, however, are more applicable to day-to-day operations and minor clashes. The 2020 “Science of Military Strategy” noted that displays of advanced weapons, military exercises, and information attacks could all be employed against opponents in the context of “strategic coercion.” Notably, all of these tools were used in August 2022 in the wake of then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.

Another option presented in the 2020 “Science of Military Strategy” chapter on “strategic deterrence” highlighted “interference in the other party’s routine military activities, actions near the other party’s air and sea lines of communications, and threatening the safety of its airways and waterways.” These activities, which the authors label “restrictive military operations,” align with other recent uses of armed force, including using Coast Guard ships to block the entrances to Second Thomas Shoal, where China is locked in a standoff with the Philippines, which most recently prompted the Filipino foreign minister to issue a demarche complaining that Chinese ships had “harassed and blocked“ lawful maritime operations. In a new turn of events, China Coast Guard ships have also begun to conduct patrols close to Taiwan-held Kinmen Island and have boarded a Taiwanese ship. The options to increase a “strong system” of “strategic coercion,” in this interpretation, are facilitated by China’s expanding conventional air and naval forces, as well as the CCP’s greater risk-taking in regional disputes under Xi.

Symbol: Bestowing status on the Rocket Force

A final interpretation is that Xi’s 2022 comments were more bureaucratically focused, useful primarily for signaling his priority attention on the PLA Rocket Force. The starting point for this argument is that statements from top party officials in events such as the 20th Party Congress can signal leadership preferences for the allocation of resources and attention among the bureaucracy. In previous speeches, Xi indicated favorites through subtle messaging, as in 2014 when he referred to the air force as a “strategic service” (战略军种), confirming its identity as a modernizing force with new roles and missions—and one that was spared the budget axe when Xi downsized the PLA beginning in late 2015. In 2016, he described the new Strategic Support Force, responsible for space and cyber operations, as an “important support for the military’s joint operations system.”

Xi has used the discourse of “strategic deterrence” in previous references to the Rocket Force. In January 2016, when he announced the upgrading of the former Second Artillery into a full service known as the Rocket Force, he described the new entity as the “core force for strategic deterrence” (火箭军是战略威慑核心力量). In September 2016, during a visit to Rocket Force headquarters, he used the same formulation and added that the service was the “strategic support for China’s status as a great power and an important cornerstone for safeguarding national security.”

Xi’s 2022 address also complemented how the Rocket Force was speaking about its own status. Commentary at a 2015 military parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II lavished attention on the newly-revealed DF-26 intermediate-range missile, described as “a new weapon on our military’s strategic deterrent system.” After the 20th Party Congress, PLA Daily quoted grassroots personnel from the Rocket Force saying that Xi’s comments about building a “strong strategic deterrent force system” “impressed me deeply,” adding that their brigade is responsible for “a national treasure of the country.” A December 2023 PLA Daily report on Rocket Force training likewise linked Xi’s party congress statement with the service’s mission to supply “powerful weapons” that are needed to secure a “reliable and effective deterrent.” Such comments arguably justified the heavy spending needed to develop and expand the Rocket Force’s arsenal.

Interestingly, albeit tangentially, another group in the PLA also appropriated Xi’s comments to justify its own status. On at least two occasions, officials from the PLA’s mobilization system—which plays a role in the more broadly defined version of “strategic deterrence” by handling “People’s War”—have referenced Xi’s party congress statement. At the 14th National People’s Congress in March 2023, a representative from the Guangxi Military District claimed that mobilization and reserve forces “are a solid backing to support victory and have a strategic deterrent function.” In August 2023, an official from the Shandong Military District argued that “national defense mobilization is an important measure to build a strong strategic deterrent force system.” Xi might have had the Rocket Force in mind, but this did not stop others from linking their own raison d’etre to Xi’s invocations.

Implications of a stronger “strategic deterrent force system”

Evaluating which interpretation is closest to Xi’s meaning is difficult because Xi, unlike Jiang twenty years earlier, did not elaborate. Unhelpfully, a compendium of definitions of key terms used at the 20th Party Congress published on the PLA’s official website offered this explanation of a “strong system of strategic deterrent forces”:

“We must comprehensively strengthen military training and preparations, improve the people’s army’s ability to win, innovate military strategic guidelines, develop People’s War strategies and tactics, build a strong strategic deterrent system, increase the proportion of new-domain and new-quality combat forces, and further promote actual combat-oriented military training.”

Based on this meandering definition, the authors probably lacked insight into Xi’s intentions or the ways in which “strategic deterrent forces” would support the 14th Five-Year Plan.

Nevertheless, the three lenses that might be affixed to Xi’s comments help to illuminate how the PLA is developing credible deterrent forces, and the challenges it faces. As a “shield,” the PLA has undergone a rapid expansion and diversification of its nuclear and strategic non-nuclear forces, such as space and cyber weapons, likely with the task of deterring U.S. intervention in a Taiwan crisis in mind. This buildup is likely to continue even as anti-corruption investigations continue; the Department of Defense estimates that by 2030 China will have fielded 1,000 operational nuclear warheads (double today’s figure). Yet these developments have also led the U.S. Department of Defense to consider new doctrine and capabilities designed to promote operations in a contested environment. China’s developments have also instigated the United States and others to refine their own strategic capabilities, exemplified by the focus in AUKUS—an acronym for the trilateral partnership between Australia, the U.K., and the United States—on building hypersonic and counter-hypersonic systems, and Japan’s emphasis on counterstrike weapons.

As a sword that might be used to shape an adversary’s decisions, China’s “strategic coercion” has been on display in regional contests. Recent flare-ups with the Philippines and Taiwan showcase how a larger set of military and paramilitary capabilities has been instrumental in China’s quest for effective control of disputed regions. A 7.2 percent increase in China’s military budget approved at the March 2024 National People’s Congress suggests that funding will be available to expand China’s regional advantage in the air and maritime capabilities needed for these operations, and to fund maintenance and current operations. Yet strategic pressure has resulted in worsening public opinion of China in many countries and has prompted some of them to upgrade their own forces, sometimes in concert with the United States. This was evident in the Duterte administration’s decision to retain a U.S. rotational presence in the Philippines, and the Marcos administration’s granting of additional basing and access to U.S. forces. “Strategic coercion” has thus undermined a focus of PRC grand strategy: to drive wedges between Washington and its allies.

Finally, as a symbol of Xi’s bureaucratic preferences, the Rocket Force has acquired the funding it needs to become a “core force” of the “strategic deterrent force system” through modernized nuclear and conventional systems. However, recent suspicions of widespread corruption within the Rocket Force’s leadership—including Xi’s purges of its commander and political commissar, and their replacement by officers pulled in from the navy and air force—suggested poor oversight of the massive spending circulating through the procurement system. Such scandals could give Xi pause if he questions not only the competence and professionalism of the officers that he himself appointed into sensitive operational roles but especially if he comes to doubt the reliability of the missile forces and other key equipment purchased over the last decade.

In sum, Xi’s lofty rhetoric on “strategic deterrence” at the 20th Party Congress illuminates China’s impressive progress in fielding strategic capabilities, but also the tit-for-tat U.S. responses, regional pushback, and internal mismanagement that have complicated the buildup.

The Brookings Institution ·

7. Analysis: For women in Asia, motherhood is a complicated investment

Analysis: For women in Asia, motherhood is a complicated investment

Women across Asia are grappling with the steep cost of raising children.

An analysis by Boer Deng for RFA

2024.03.07

rfa.org

When Helen* fled her home in Myanmar’s Kayah state, she had only two diapers to take for her soon-to-be-born baby. She had spent the first months of her pregnancy avoiding the war, but the fighting caught up to her hometown and she was forced to leave. Her daughter was born in a hut on New Year's Day, on a farm where she has been hiding ever since.

A few thousand miles away, in Chongqing, China, Ma Jing doesn’t plan to have children at all, despite being married, with a stable job, and being faced with tremendous cultural and political pressure to raise sagging birth rates.

Every person alive was born to someone, meaning that someone made an immensely intensive investment: motherhood.

Across the world, women are grappling with the steep cost of that investment, and that’s certainly true in Asia.

For some, it is facing down the daily anxieties of war, hunger or poverty while raising a child. For others, it is risking bodily harm or social opprobrium related to the decision to have or not have children.

For this year’s International Women’s Day, the UN has declared as its theme “Invest in women”, urging governments to increase what it calls “gender responsive financing” and public spending on social services.

Women train with plastic baby dolls as they take part in a nursing skills class at Yipeitong training center in Shanghai, March 2, 2023. (Aly Song/Reuters)

Yet for many, the investment costs of motherhood can be a much more complicated calculus than is summed up from what money can buy.

Women in higher income economies around the world are having fewer children and the trend is also true in richer Asian economies.

Out of the ten places with the lowest fertility rates around the world in 2020, five are in Asia, according to figures from the World Bank.

That year, Hong Kongers were having on average 0.8 children per woman - the second lowest fertility rate in the world after South Korea.

Since then, the figure has fallen further still, with fertility rates reaching their lowest level on record in 2023. A staggering 40% decline was recorded from 2019 to 2022, according to government statistics.

Yet Hong Kongers were moving to England and Wales to have children, RFA Cantonese found last year – and the reasons were not all financial.

Culture of motherhood

For L*, a single mother who was pregnant while seeking asylum in Britain, the culture of parenthood there made her decide to stay - a sentiment echoed by other Hong Konger parents in the U.K. who spoke to RFA.

"Britain makes people feel that children are welcome to be born here," L said. Instead of being turned away or questioned about her being pregnant alone, “they (hospital staff) would take special care of me,” she said.

People line up at the Coronation Children's Fair organized to encourage newcomers from Hong Kong families to celebrate with the local community, at Trinity Church, in Sutton, London, April 29, 2023. (May James/Reuters)

She was unimpressed with the Hong Kong government’s plan to provide couples with a subsidy to have children. It won’t matter, she said, if the city’s political and social environment make it unappealing to have a family.

Indeed, social pressure often trumps official policy.

A rhyme that was popularized in China after Beijing began encouraging women to have three children ridiculed the policy: “To have four ‘olds’ above/And three babes below/The two in the middle/Might as well be buried with a hoe”.

Women in China told RFA Mandarin in 2021 - the year of the policy change - that the pressure it would place on them to support both elderly parents as well as several young children made it practically unthinkable. In fact, for some, it was not appealing to get married at all, much less plan for children.

“One of my girlfriends said to me ‘it is easier to buy a house than to find a [suitable] boyfriend’,” said Sun Qi, 34, of Shanghai.

“[My] main reason [for not having children] has nothing to do with money,” said Li Dan, also in her 30s and living in Shanghai. “The main reason is that I am single."

(Single motherhood, though rising, is still uncommon and generally frowned upon in China).

Wartime worries in Myanmar

Though there has been no fighting in Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar, Thae Oo, a young married woman, told RFA Burmese that she has decided not to have children because the conflict could come at any time.

She did not want her future children to grow up in the middle of the conflict, she said.

“In normal times, there are no difficulties, but this time, I am struggling to survive, so I decided not to bring a child into this world because I think it shouldn't be a hardship to my child," she said.

A woman poses on the beach in Xiamen in China’s Fujian province on Jan. 10, 2024. (Greg Baker/AFP)

But often, women do not get a choice.

A 2020 report from the New York-based Guttmacher Institute, a charity that researches women’s reproductive issues, found that there is an unmet need for contraceptives for some 21 million women across nine lower and middle income countries in Southeast Asia and 23 million across East Asia. The study defines unmet need as sexually active women who said they wished to avoid pregnancy.

Po Po told RFA Burmese that having been internally displaced from Kyunhla Township, access to modern contraception is impossible.

"Don't even mention birth control pills”, she said, “It's a situation where you can't even buy a pill”. Instead, “people find their own way to prevent having children,” she said.

An Sokhim of Cambodia had not planned to have children immediately after marriage because of poverty. But the Phnom Penh resident did not have access to contraceptives and found herself pregnant. She had children, but was not ready to be a mother, she said.“At the time of my delivery, we were really broke, so for every meal - morning, lunch and dinner - I just ate dried package noodles. Life was very tough, ” she said.

High safety risks

Risks are high and chances of recourse when things go wrong are low. Women in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar – three countries with the highest birth rates, but also the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the region – told RFA of horrors of deliveries that ended in death or harm, low trust in the medical care they could expect to receive and not having access to care in the first place.

In Phnom Penh, Yen Sopheap was lucky to have the funds to give birth in a private hospital.

“At that time, it was recommended that we give birth at the public health center, but I said I did not want to give birth there,” she said - she had witnessed a friend die at one such place when she went into labor.

Several rural Cambodian women said they would have to abort any unintended pregnancies, because doctors would certainly turn them away if they could not pay for delivery, and they could not afford to raise them anyway.

Commuters walk on a platform at Yangon Railway Station in Yangon on March 18, 2020. (Ye Aung Thu/AFP)

After Helen delivered her baby in hiding in Myanmar, she lost so much blood that she apparently suffered a stroke. “I don’t have the luxury of a doctor to entrust my pregnancy to or a way to connect with healthcare providers," she told RFA Burmese.

To “invest” in its most commonly used sense today has meant to put forward a commitment of money that leads to (hopefully) a greater return.

Certainly access to hospitals and childcare and contraceptives and education would do much to relieve the vexations women face, in rich countries as well as poor; in Asia as with anywhere else; when facing a question of motherhood, as with anything else.

But what is the investment that can be made to stop conflict that robs mothers of safety, cultural stigmas that censure choice or social incentives that devalue motherhood? That is a much trickier question to answer.

A woman and her son watch a video on a smartphone next to the Mekong River in Phnom Penh on Jan. 4, 2023. (Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP)

*RFA has used pseudonyms to protect the safety of sources.

Reporting by RFA language services

rfa.org

8. ‘Useful expert' from US invents Pentagon's plan to evacuate Zelensky to Lviv

I have forwarded a number of Stephen Bryen's article from Asia Times including the one referenced below.

If you think about it, the story he "invented" is useful Russian propaganda because it could undermine confidence in Zelensky in both Ukraine and the US.

‘Useful expert' from US invents Pentagon's plan to evacuate Zelensky to Lviv

ukrinform.net

The Hong Kong-based Asia Times and leading Russian media outlets spreading information that "the Pentagon is undoubtedly developing plans to rescue President Zelensky" in the event of a "collapse of his government". The article’s author, Stephen Bryen, is a former US Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (1981-1988) who now positions himself as a "leading expert in security strategy and technology". The article contains an unjustified analogy between this “plan” and the liberation of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from prison by German special forces in 1943. Additionally, it claims that Lviv is the most likely place where the Pentagon could take Zelensky. The article was originally published on the Substack platform and includes many Russian narratives.

The article starts with an extensive description of the rescue of Benito Mussolini by German special forces after his imprisonment in 1943. However, the author then offers a personal opinion that this could be a "model for rescuing Zelensky". In other words, the author resorts to an analogy between the ideologue of fascism and Adolf Hitler's main ally in World War II and the president of a country that is countering full-scale aggression. This corresponds to the Russian narrative of Ukrainians as Nazis.

Bryen then promotes two other Russian narratives: that the West is losing in Ukraine and Vladimir Putin wants peace, while NATO, represented by the US, is only continuing escalation.

The article contains many unsubstantiated and absurd claims. In particular, that Pentagon officials allegedly persuaded French President Emmanuel Macron to "propose the idea of sending NATO troops to Ukraine" and that mobilisation in Ukraine is leading to unrest, including in major Ukrainian cities such as Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa.

Bryan frequently publishes pro-Russian material on the Substack social network, which is then picked up by Asia Times. Additionally, his articles on Zelensky's "war" with the generals, the high costs of Ukraine, and how this hinders US support for Taiwan have been published on the Real Clear Defense website.

Stephen Bryan has shown interest in Russia since at least 2017. For instance, The National Interest published his complimentary material about the Russian S-400 air defence system.

Russian media outlets have shown a great deal of interest in Stephen Bryan, as evidenced by his own tag on leading Russian news sites, such as Lenta.ru.

Earlier, Ukrainian experts refuted Bryan's unsubstantiated claims about moving the capital of Ukraine to Lviv.

Andriy Olenin

ukrinform.net

9. How the U.S. military will use a floating pier to deliver Gaza aid

Photos and video at the link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/03/08/gaza-floating-pier/https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/03/08/gaza-floating-pier/

What I do not like are the accompanying statements from the president emphasized that we will put no boots on the ground. I am sure that is a huge constraint to providing this capability for the military. I know the intent is to make sure no one thinks the US is going to escalate the conflict by employing US troops. But what is the priority - providing an effective humanitarian aid delivery capability or preventing a perception? What we are really doing is telegraphing fear and weakness. The military should be able to do what is necessary to provide the capability which might include some troops ashore to make this work effectively. And probably and effective beachmaster team would be necessary to upt to the initial distribution point on the beach.

But we can now say that we are "doing something." But what is the mission, intent, and priority for the mission? (e.g.., effective delivery of humanitarian aid or no perception of US boots on the ground?)

How the U.S. military will use a floating pier to deliver Gaza aid

The Washington Post · by Alex Horton · March 9, 2024

The U.S. military anticipates that a floating pier, to be built off Gaza’s coastline in coming weeks, will enable delivery of 2 million meals daily to Palestinians facing starvation, the Pentagon said Friday, describing its plan to address the worsening humanitarian crisis there without deploying American personnel directly into the war zone.

Construction of the offshore pier and causeway connecting it to land will take as long as 60 days and require about 1,000 U.S. troops, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters.

President Biden announced the initiative during his State of the Union address Thursday, as hopes dim for a another cease-fire in Israel’s five-month war with Hamas and his administration contends with withering criticism for the vast supply of U.S. weapons that have contributed to the conflict’s massive civilian death toll. It’s one element of a broader “maritime corridor” that the United States and other countries have pledged to establish amid growing concerns about the situation.

Israel-Gaza war

(Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images)

Amid dimming hopes that an Israel-Hamas cease-fire and hostage-release deal will be reached before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, President Biden has ordered the U.S. military to construct a temporary port and pier on Gaza’s Mediterranean coast to open a new route for providing humanitarian aid.

For context: Understand what’s behind the Israel-Gaza war.

End of carousel

The perceived need for the floating structure is a reflection of the political land mines that have stymied efforts to get humanitarian aid to those trapped by the fighting.

Israel’s deep-water port at Ashdod is less than 25 miles from Gaza, but Israeli officials have refused to open its northern border crossing. Egypt’s El Arish port, just south of Gaza, has been a key arrival point for assistance. But all shipments must go through a laborious process of loading onto trucks that travel to an Israeli inspection site, only to be unloaded and reloaded again to then join an ever-growing line of vehicles waiting to enter the Palestinian territory.

About 576,000 people — more than a quarter of the enclave’s population — are on the brink of famine, United Nations officials said. Gaza’s Health Ministry said earlier this week that at least 20 people there have died of malnutrition and dehydration.

There is “dire, urgent need” for relief, Ryder said in outlining what he characterized as an “emergency mission” still being finalized.

U.S. troops, including the Army’s 7th Transportation Brigade based in Virginia, will take part in the effort. The operation will include construction of a floating pier at sea that will allow ships to deliver aid, which will then be loaded onto Navy support vessels and offloaded onto a floating causeway. The two-lane causeway, about 1,800 feet in length, will be steered onto a landing site ashore and secured to the ground by non-U. S. personnel whom Ryder did not identify. Trucks will then access the causeway to pick up and haul the aid.

Washington is coordinating with other countries in the region, the United Nations and humanitarian groups to determine how the aid will be distributed once it arrives on land, Ryder said. American personnel stay either on the causeway or on the ships, he said.

Asked whether the Pentagon believes Hamas fighters will target U.S. forces operating offshore, Ryder said that’s “certainly possible.” He added that, “If Hamas truly does care about the Palestinian people, then … one would hope that this international mission to deliver aid to people who need it would be able to happen unhindered.”

Biden told reporters Friday that Israel would provide security for the effort. Ryder said the military units involved would have their own force-protection capabilities.

Aid will be routed through Cyprus, where the goods will undergo inspection by Israel.

Deliveries of non-U. S. humanitarian aid to Gaza by sea could begin this weekend, a senior European official said earlier Friday. European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said that the besieged enclave faces a “catastrophe.”

“That is why today the Republic of Cyprus, the European Commission, the United Arab Emirates and the United States — of course also supported by other critical partners — announced our intent to open the maritime corridor to deliver much-needed additional amounts of humanitarian assistance by sea,” she said.

World Central Kitchen, a relief group founded by chef José Andrés, is providing food aid for the mission, as well as “teams in Cyprus and Gaza,” he wrote on social media.

Several logistical and security challenges are expected as the program is begun, according to Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory. “What happens after the aid arrives at the harbor? How does it get on trucks and out to distribution? Those are questions that I don’t think have been answered yet,” he said.

Relief efforts in Gaza are already overstretched, as trucks and fuel remain in short supply. And once the aid makes it to shore, it will face the same distribution challenges as aid that reaches the territory by land.

“The problem we are facing right now is that many of the roads are not operational, or on the roads that are open, it’s difficult to get though the crowds and congestion,” McGoldrick said.

The floating pier operation has underscored the limits of airdropping aid, a complex mission dangerous to civilians below and one that provides relatively little relief in a situation like the Israeli war in Gaza.

Five people were killed and 12 injured there on Friday, said Mahmoud Bassal, Gaza’s civil defense spokesman, after an apparent parachute malfunction caused a loaded crate to fall on some people. Ryder disputed reports that an airdrop from a U.S. aircraft was to blame.

“All of our aid bundles landed safely on the ground,” Ryder said, adding that initial reports of the incident came shortly before U.S. aircraft sent their loads out of C-130 aircraft.

The United States will continue precautions to reduce risk, Ryder said, like limiting pallet weight, identifying drop zones with fewer people and sending messages to civilians before dropping the aid.

Victoria Bisset, Cate Brown, Karen DeYoung and Susannah George contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by Alex Horton · March 9, 2024

10. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, March 7, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/china-taiwan-weekly-update-march-7-2024

Key Takeaways

Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration (CGA) claimed that three Chinese Coast Guard ships entered Taiwan’s contiguous zone off the east coast of the main island on February 27.
The Kuomintang (KMT) initiated a legislative inquiry into the Kinmen capsizing incident to determine the liability of Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration. This supports the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to vilify and undermine domestic Taiwanese support for the Democratic Progressive Party.
PRC Premier Li Qiang’s work report to the National People’s Congress continued a trend of CCP officials using more belligerent language about “reunification” with Taiwan but did not signal a major policy change.
Recent PRC diplomatic outreach in Europe may aim to advance the PRC’s September 2023 Proposal on the Reform and Development of Global Governance, which faults the West for the war in Ukraine.
Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) ships fired water cannons and collided with Philippine ships while attempting to block a Philippine resupply mission to Second Thomas Shoal.

CHINA-TAIWAN WEEKLY UPDATE, MARCH 7, 2024

Mar 8, 2024 - ISW Press

China-Taiwan Weekly Update, March 7, 2024

Authors: Nils Peterson, Matthew Sperzel, and Daniel Shats of the Institute for the Study of War

Editors: Dan Blumenthal and Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute

Data Cutoff: March 7 at 12:00pm ET

The China–Taiwan Weekly Update focuses on the Chinese Communist Party’s paths to controlling Taiwan and relevant cross–Taiwan Strait developments.

Key Takeaways

Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration (CGA) claimed that three Chinese Coast Guard ships entered Taiwan’s contiguous zone off the east coast of the main island on February 27.
The Kuomintang (KMT) initiated a legislative inquiry into the Kinmen capsizing incident to determine the liability of Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration. This supports the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to vilify and undermine domestic Taiwanese support for the Democratic Progressive Party.
PRC Premier Li Qiang’s work report to the National People’s Congress continued a trend of CCP officials using more belligerent language about “reunification” with Taiwan but did not signal a major policy change.
Recent PRC diplomatic outreach in Europe may aim to advance the PRC’s September 2023 Proposal on the Reform and Development of Global Governance, which faults the West for the war in Ukraine.
Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) ships fired water cannons and collided with Philippine ships while attempting to block a Philippine resupply mission to Second Thomas Shoal.

Cross-Strait Relations

Taiwan

Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration claimed that three Chinese Coast Guard ships entered Taiwan’s contiguous zone off the east coast of the main island on February 27.[1] The contiguous zone around Taiwan and its closer islands constitutes the buffer between 12 and 24 nautical miles from the coast.[2] Taiwanese media reported that the presence of Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) vessels in the waters along Taiwan’s east coast is rare, and the three vessels in question usually operate around the contested Senkaku Islands, which Japan controls.[3] The CCG vessels left without incident after the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) deployed to the location and demanded that they depart the area.[4] This incident coincides with a consistently higher presence of PRC ships in the waters around Kinmen since the capsizing incident. The Kinmen capsizing incident refers to the February 14 event in which a PRC fishing boat in Taiwan’s waters capsized while fleeing from a legal Taiwanese Coast Guard pursuit. The capsizing resulted in the deaths of two of the four fishermen onboard. CGA Director General Chou Mei-wu reported increased PRC vessel presence near Kinmen since the incident, with up to 11 vessels per day, including law enforcement and official ships.[5]

The presence of more CCG vessels around Taiwan’s water serves to incrementally challenge and erode the Republic of China's (ROC) sovereignty in its adjacent waters. Normalizing operations around Taiwan’s waters can set conditions for the PRC to apply further pressure on Taiwan in the future. The CCP does not accept Taiwan’s sovereignty over the waters. PRC Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokesperson Zhu Fenglian denied the existence of Taiwan’s so-called prohibited and restricted waters on February 28.[6] The increase in the number of the CCG vessels illustrates the PRC’s opportunism as it capitalizes on heightened cross-strait tensions and political sensitivity stemming from the Kinmen capsizing incident.

The PRC’s intensified maritime activities complement its regular violations of Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). Retired ROC Air Force Lieutenant General Chang Yen-ting pointed out on February 29 that the Ministry of National Defense (MND) detected a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft as close as 23 nautical miles from Taiwan’s northern coast.[7] Chang highlighted the proximity to Taiwan’s airspace and the challenges to the military’s operational depth and early warning time. The ROC Air Force announced on March 6 that it would resume nighttime flight training.[8] Chang stated in an interview that the measure is a necessary response to the higher frequency of PLA aircraft harassing Taiwan in recent years.[9]

The Kuomintang initiated a legislative inquiry into the Kinmen capsizing incident to determine the liability of Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration. This supports the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party to vilify and undermine domestic Taiwanese support for the Democratic Progressive Party. KMT-aligned independent legislator May Chin convened the Legislative Yuan’s Internal Affairs Committee on March 4, summoning Coast Guard and government officials to testify regarding the law enforcement process and subsequent handling of the incident. Chin favors closer relations with the PRC and has a history of meeting with CPP officials, prompting accusations from DPP members that she is under the CCP’s influence.[10] Ocean Affairs Council Minister and DPP member Kuan Bi-ling and CGA Director General Chou Mei-wu faced fierce questioning from Chin and KMT lawmakers about the cause of the incident and the liability of the CGA. Kuan and Chou pushed back against the notion that the CGA vessel’s collision with the mainland fishing boat caused it to capsize. Kuan and other DPP cabinet members stood by the Coast Guard’s actions as lawful and denied insinuations of guilt. DPP legislators disagreed with the KMT’s framing of the incident in a report, claiming it lent itself to the TAO’s position.[11] Kuan refuted allegations that she ordered the Coast Guard to open fire or that she was a hindrance to the reconciliation process. Kuan characterized the rumors as a cognitive warfare strategy by the CCP and emphasized the role of misinformation in shaping public perception of sensitive cross-strait issues.[12]

The KMT and CCP are urging the DPP to disclose the truth about the incident. The PRC blames the DPP and CGA for the deaths and failure of the reconciliation process.[13] The PRC has responded by repeatedly deploying CCG patrols into waters around Kinmen and Matsu, two Taiwan-controlled island groups that are close to the coast of the PRC.

China

The National People’s Congress announced a 5% GDP growth target and a 7.2% defense budget increase for 2024. PRC defense spending has outpaced the GDP growth target for over a decade.[14] Both figures are identical to growth targets announced at the 2023 National People’s Congress session.[15] Premier Li Qiang’s work report to the annual session of the NPC focused primarily on the PRC’s economic goals, including maintaining target growth rates, developing “new productive forces” to drive the economy, and furthering “reform and opening up” policies. Li said the economy was improving with a growth rate of 5.2% in 2023 but acknowledged that achieving the economic growth goals would not be easy.[16] The spokesperson for the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the PRC’s top advisory body which is having its annual session concurrently with the NPC, also signaled that the CPPCC was chiefly concerned about the economy.[17]

The PRC has the world’s second-largest defense budget after the United States and the budget is set to increase to 1.67 trillion yuan ($232 billion) in 2024. Although PRC defense spending has doubled since 2015, annual increases in defense spending have declined to single-digit percentages as economic growth has slowed. Official spending increases in defense have hovered around 7% each year since 2016.[18] The US Department of Defense estimated in 2021 that the PRC’s true spending on defense could be 1.1 to 2 times its official budget.[19] The PRC can likely sustain its military spending despite slowing economic growth, however. The state exerts considerable control over the country’s economy and the distribution of resources to various sectors. The PRC’s official defense spending is also much smaller than US defense spending as a percentage of GDP, equaling 1.6% of GDP in 2022 compared to 3.5% for the United States.[20]

PRC Premier Li Qiang’s work report to the National People’s Congress continued a trend of CCP officials using more belligerent language about “reunification” with Taiwan but did not signal a major policy change. Li stressed that the CCP must “resolutely oppose ‘Taiwan independence’ separatism and external interference.” Li’s predecessor Li Keqiang said in the 2023 work report that the CCP should “advance the process of the peaceful reunification of the motherland,” but Li Qiang dropped the word “peaceful” and called on the CCP to “unswervingly advance the great cause of the reunification of the motherland.” Li Qiang did say the CCP should promote the “peaceful development” of cross-strait relations, however.[21] State-owned media Global Times cited PRC scholars who said that the omission of the term “peaceful reunification” does not signal that the CCP has dropped this goal but rather signals that it considers fighting Taiwanese “secessionism” will be a more urgent task in 2024.[22] The change in the language of the report is consistent with the change of tone in CPPCC Chairman Wang Huning’s speech at the Taiwan Work Conference on February 23, which emphasized the need to “fight” (rather than merely “oppose”) Taiwanese independence and foreign interference.[23]

The premier’s government work report to the NPC also omitted the term “peaceful reunification” in 2016 and 2020, the years that ROC President Tsai Ing-wen won the presidential elections. That the report again dropped the term after the DPP won the 2024 presidential elections indicates that the change in rhetoric signals disapproval of the DPP presidency.[24]

CCP Central Military Commission (CMC) Vice Chairmen Zhang Youxia and He Weidong highlighted the need to improve the military’s preparation for “major missions” at the annual National People’s Congress. Zhang and He participated in deliberations by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and People’s Armed Police (PAP) delegations as they reviewed the government work report at the NPC. Zhang highlighted the need to implement the CMC Chairman responsibility system, step up troop training, strengthen coordination of preparations for “major missions”, accelerate construction and implementation of network-enabled information systems, integrate military and civilian resources, and improve the military's “ability to win.” He Weidong stressed the need to strengthen training in CCP theory in the military and deepen political “rectification” and anti-corruption efforts.[25] Zhang and He’s recommendations provide insight into the PLA’s priorities in improving its readiness for “major missions” such as operations against Taiwan. These priorities include strengthening centralized CCP control over the military, strengthening personnel training and political loyalty, deepening military-civil fusion, and constructing information systems to facilitate joint operations in “informationized” warfare.

Russia

Recent PRC diplomatic outreach in Europe may aim to advance the PRC’s September 2023 Proposal on the Reform and Development of Global Governance, which faults the West for the war in Ukraine. The proposal calls the root of the “Ukraine crisis” lying “in the problem of security governance in Europe.” The “parties concerned… [must] accommodate each other’s legitimate concerns… [and] abandon the Cold War mentality.”[26] These are thinly veiled references to accommodating Russian historical grievances at the price of NATO unity and Ukrainian territorial sovereignty. The alleged “stabilizing force” of any PRC-negotiated ceasefire along these lines would normalize the principle of revisionist international aggression. This principle would provide the CCP with a precedent for the party to falsely justify aggressive coercion aimed at Taiwan, with the eventual political objective of annexing Taiwan into the PRC.

PRC Special Representative for Eurasian Affairs Li Hui traveled to Europe on March 2 for a round of visits to Russia, the EU, Poland, Ukraine, Germany, and France. PRC MFA Spokeswoman Mao Ning claimed that Li Hui would “pave the way for peace talks.”[27] Li’s comments align with Kremlin talking points, however. The South China Morning Post reported on March 6 that PRC Special Representative for Eurasian Affairs Li Hui reiterated the Kremlin talking point that the discussion of Ukrainian territorial sovereignty could only occur when violence ceases. He also implied that the EU needs to stop sending weapons to Ukraine for this to happen.[28] Li’s claims align with PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s message at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February that the PRC is a “responsible major country” that would serve as a “stabilizing force” amid global turmoil. [29] Wang also repeated his claim on March 7 that the PRC “supports the timely convening of an international peace conference” during a press conference at the annual Two Sessions meeting.[30] CCP leadership delivers policy guidance for the upcoming year to the party cadre at this annual meeting.

The PRC and Russia are collaborating on the development of surveillance and energy-related space capabilities that threaten US access to space and space-based capabilities. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) stated in late February that the PRC plans to construct a surveillance system around the in-progress International Lunar Research Station. The surveillance system will use the Skynet mass surveillance system as a model.[31] Skynet is the PRC’s nationwide camera surveillance system that includes over 600 million cameras.[32] The ILRS is a multinational space station initiative that Russia and the PRC founded in 2021 that is scheduled for competition by the 2030s. CNSA did not specify how it would prioritize surveillance efforts in space. The head of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov also stated on March 5 that the PRC and Russia are considering cooperation to build a nuclear power plant on the moon in the early 2030s.[33] This is a competing initiative to an ongoing NASA project to design a nuclear fission reactor on the moon.[34]

Commander of United States Space Command General Stephen N. Whiting stated that these types of space-based systems compete with US interests during his February 29 testimony to the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services. He warned that the PRC “and the Russian Federation continued to field systems and engage in behavior that threaten U.S., Allied, and Partner access to space and space-based capabilities.”[35]

Southeast Asia

Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) ships fired water cannons and collided with Philippine ships while attempting to block a Philippine resupply mission to Second Thomas Shoal. A CCG vessel attempted to block and collided with a Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) vessel escorting a supply mission to Second Thomas Shoal on March 5, causing minor damage to the Philippine ship.[36] PCG spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea Commodore Jay Tarriela said that the CCG and Chinese Maritime Militia ships attempted “dangerous” blocking maneuvers against PCG vessels in an “unprovoked [act] of coercion.”[37] Two CCG ships also fired water cannons at a Philippine supply ship, injuring four Philippine personnel, and later collided with it. The supply ship returned to the Philippines under PCG escort. Another Philippine ship completed its mission of delivering supplies to personnel on the BRP Sierra Madre, a deliberately grounded derelict warship that serves as the Philippine base on Second Thomas Shoal.[38] The MFA claimed the Philippine supply mission was transporting construction materials.[39]

The CCG claimed that it took “control measures in accordance with the law” to stop the Philippines’ “illegal intrusion” and that a Philippine ship “deliberately rammed” a CCG ship.[40] A PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) spokesperson accused the Philippines of violating its commitments to China to tow the Sierra Madre and violating the PRC’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights by “infringing, provoking and causing trouble” in the waters of Second Thomas Shoal, which the PRC calls “Ren’ai Reef” and the Philippines calls “Ayungin Shoal.”

Second Thomas Shoal is a submerged reef in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea which the Philippines and the PRC both claim. The Philippines controls the shoal with troops based on the grounded warship BRP Sierra Madre. It maintains its presence at the shoal with regular shipments of living supplies for its personnel and construction materials for repairing the World War II-era warship, which is in poor condition. The Philippines began “superficial repairs” on the ship in October 2023 to make it more livable for the roughly dozen Philippine military personnel stationed there.[41]

The PRC opposes these shipments and claims the Philippine military presence is illegal. The PRC claims sovereignty over nearly the entirety of the South China Sea including the Spratly Islands through its “Nine Dash Line” maritime boundary. It rejects a 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling that found the Nine Dash Line claims are unlawful. The PRC has constructed, seized, and attempted to seize many islands in the South China Sea so it can build a military presence throughout the critical waterway. The PRC has built military infrastructure on islands that it has seized control of or artificially constructed to expand its power projection capability, strengthen domain awareness, and increase its ability to block critical Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs) through the South China Sea. Developing the capability to monitor or restrict ships through the South China Sea would support a future PRC effort to implement a blockade of Taiwan or block US and allied reinforcements from reaching the Taiwan Strait in wartime.

The PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs objected to the Philippines’ passage of the “Maritime Zones Act” that codifies Philippine territorial claims in the South China Sea. The act is based on the 2016 Arbitration ruling, which found the PRC’s competing territorial claims in the region to be invalid. The Philippine Senate passed the Maritime Zones Act on February 26. The act establishes the Philippines’ archipelagic boundaries, internal waters, and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in accordance with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the 2016 Arbitral Ruling.[42] The 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration found that the PRC’s “Nine Dash Line” territorial claims to nearly the entire South China Sea, including many Philippine-claimed features, had no legal basis.[43] A PRC MFA spokesperson said on March 5 that the PRC “firmly opposes” the law. She reiterated the PRC stance that the PRC has sovereignty over many islands the Philippines claims, including the Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal. She also asserted that the treaties originally delineating Philippine territory did not include these islands, that the Philippines illegally occupied PRC territory in the South China Sea, and that the 2016 arbitration ruling is illegal under UNCLOS.[44]

The PRC’s use of legal arguments in tandem with maritime operations to assert territorial claims over most of the South China Sea serves to lay the groundwork for PRC military control over the South China Sea. PRC control over the sea could enable it to establish domain awareness or block passage through the waterway to support a blockade or military operations against Taiwan. The legal arguments about UNCLOS and the territorial boundaries of rival claimants are part of a CCP effort to legitimize PLA and CCG actions in the South China Sea. “Legal warfare” is one of the PLA’s “three warfares” strategies of non-kinetic warfare, which also include psychological and public opinion warfare.

Oceania

Compacts of Free Association

The House of Representatives voted to renew the Compacts of Free Association (COFA) on March 6.[45] The bill is now before the Senate for consideration. The COFAs govern the United States’ relationship with Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands while granting the United States military access throughout their territories. The United States renewed COFAs with Palau and Micronesia in May and the Marshall Islands in October.[46] [47] Congress previously funded the COFAs for a twenty-year period in 2003.[48] That funding has now expired. The renewal of the COFAs in 2024 would replenish this funding at a total cost for all three of the twenty-year agreements of roughly $7 billion spread over the period 2024 to 2043, according to the Congressional Research Service.[49]

11. What the war in Ukraine means for Asia

Yet there are some pundits and politicians who do not see or acknowledge the connection (and danger) and think we can abandon one for the other. And then are those who would just abandon all our commitments.

Excerpts:

From Banyan’s discussions there are two possibilities. The most extreme scenario is that a future President Trump shreds America’s security guarantees to its Asian allies. In response they would beef up their own security further. Although defence spending is soaring there is little chance of them being able to counter China’s conventional military threat without America. Instead they might pursue nuclear weapons over the medium term in order to deter China. In South Korea Mr Yoon spoke openly about acquiring nuclear weapons, but stopped doing so partly after America adopted a policy of enhanced deterrence, in which its nukes are more ostentatiously on display in the region.

Similarly, following abandonment by Trump 2.0, America’s democratic Asian allies could decide they have little choice but to pursue an accommodation with autocratic China, ending seven decades of the American-led security order in the region and creating a Chinese sphere of influence. It is the nightmare scenario.

The second—and for now far more probable—possibility is that Asian politicians hug America even closer in the hope this raises the odds of a Trump administration sticking with its Asian security commitments. The master at this was Abe Shinzo, Japan’s prime minister from 2012 to 2020. He worked Mr Trump perfectly, from being the first foreign leader to meet him in 2016, when he was president-elect, to giving him a gold golf club. In Abe’s memoir he recalls emphasising to Mr Trump how important American military power in Asia was. Some on the Trumpian right in America argue Ukraine is a distraction from the real threat: China. America’s main Asian allies might seek to tap into this MAGA mindset and also raise defence spending further to defuse the charge they are free-riders. What is happening at one end of the vast Eurasian landmass is shaping calculations at the other.

Asia | Banyan

What the war in Ukraine means for Asia

Peace in East Asia hangs to a worrying extent on the outcome of the conflict

Mar 7th 2024

The Economist

When Russia invaded Ukraine it jolted the democracies of East Asia—Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, all allies of America. A trip to Japan suggests to Banyan that, as the conflict in Ukraine enters its third year, its implications for East Asian policymakers grow only starker. In Europe the talk is of whether Ukraine can hold on despite dwindling American financial support and the spectre of a second Trump presidency. The consequences for peace in Asia would be devastating if Ukraine loses. A win for President Vladimir Putin might embolden China to reshape the regional order on its terms.

The implications are greatest for Taiwan. China wants to absorb it, by force if necessary. To Taiwanese the parallels between what Mr Putin is doing to Ukraine and what China’s Xi Jinping might do to Taiwan are stark—especially as the two men claim a friendship with “no limits”. China has been upping the military tempo with incursions into Taiwan’s air and sea space. In response, in August the Taiwanese government unveiled a record defence budget, equivalent to 2.6% of gdp—not enough to deter China, yet bigger proportionally than most of Europe.

The incoming president, William Lai Ching-te, promises to increase spending further. Joseph Wu, the outgoing foreign minister, makes clear that American support for Ukraine is critical for Asia, signalling that America will also support Taiwan. This steely sense of realism is found elsewhere. After the Ukraine invasion, Kishida Fumio, Japan’s prime minister, jettisoned a policy of rapprochement towards Russia and embraced Western sanctions. Japan plans to almost double defence spending over five years. Despite being formally pacifist it is closer than ever to being committed to help America defend Taiwan. Military ties have been growing among America, South Korea and Japan. South Korea’s president Yoon Suk-yeol has been coy about shipping munitions to Ukraine, in part so as not to drive Russia and North Korea closer. But with North Korea now sending artillery shells to Russia, some in Seoul argue for a firmer pro-Ukraine stance.

One threat is that Congress fails to fund Ukraine, and that Europe fails to make up the difference. That could lead to a Ukrainian defeat, undermining the credibility of American deterrence in Asia. The other scenario involves Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s all-but-inevitable presidential candidate, who has repudiated America’s guarantees to nato. He admires Mr Putin, dislikes Ukraine and cares little for Taiwan. The Japanese portmanteau phrase moshi Tora—if Trump [returns, then what?]—is the key question.

From Banyan’s discussions there are two possibilities. The most extreme scenario is that a future President Trump shreds America’s security guarantees to its Asian allies. In response they would beef up their own security further. Although defence spending is soaring there is little chance of them being able to counter China’s conventional military threat without America. Instead they might pursue nuclear weapons over the medium term in order to deter China. In South Korea Mr Yoon spoke openly about acquiring nuclear weapons, but stopped doing so partly after America adopted a policy of enhanced deterrence, in which its nukes are more ostentatiously on display in the region.

Similarly, following abandonment by Trump 2.0, America’s democratic Asian allies could decide they have little choice but to pursue an accommodation with autocratic China, ending seven decades of the American-led security order in the region and creating a Chinese sphere of influence. It is the nightmare scenario.

The second—and for now far more probable—possibility is that Asian politicians hug America even closer in the hope this raises the odds of a Trump administration sticking with its Asian security commitments. The master at this was Abe Shinzo, Japan’s prime minister from 2012 to 2020. He worked Mr Trump perfectly, from being the first foreign leader to meet him in 2016, when he was president-elect, to giving him a gold golf club. In Abe’s memoir he recalls emphasising to Mr Trump how important American military power in Asia was. Some on the Trumpian right in America argue Ukraine is a distraction from the real threat: China. America’s main Asian allies might seek to tap into this MAGA mindset and also raise defence spending further to defuse the charge they are free-riders. What is happening at one end of the vast Eurasian landmass is shaping calculations at the other.■

Read more from Banyan, our columnist on Asia:

Also: How the Banyan column got its name

The Economist

12. The Taliban once smashed TVs. Now it fosters YouTubers to promote its image.

I guess the Taliban is a learning organization. It knows it must compete in the information space.

The Taliban once smashed TVs. Now it fosters YouTubers to promote its image.

The Washington Post · by Rick Noack · March 9, 2024

KABUL — The Taliban-run government is fostering a thriving community of YouTube influencers and video bloggers in Afghanistan, seeking to shape a positive narrative about the country by rewarding those who have welcome viewpoints with access to stories that can draw millions of views online.

The Taliban, which smashed televisions and burned films in the 1990s during its first stint in power, is now using modern video technology in its radical campaign to remake Afghanistan. The regime grants influencers coveted broadcasting licenses that put them on an equal footing with TV networks and radio stations, and threatens to withdraw the licenses of those who break official rules. Influencers whose work is seen as benefiting the regime have been allowed to embed with government ministries and showcase their achievements.

Meanwhile, videos that are critical of the Taliban have largely disappeared from platforms such as YouTube over the past two years as a result of Taliban pressure and self-censorship, according to interviews with 10 content creators in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. The government has tightly restricted what can be said and worn in online appearances, and two influencers said they were detained and interrogated after running afoul of the Taliban’s rules.

Often, however, relations between influencers and the Taliban are mutually rewarding. The most successful influencers can earn thousands of dollars in foreign advertising revenue per video, say Afghan owners of YouTube channels, a striking figure in a country where a monthly salary of a few hundred dollars counts as good income. To bypass Afghanistan’s banking system, which is under international sanctions, some Afghan YouTubers have hired associates in the United States or Europe to receive payments and pass them on.

One of the top channels, “Our Afghanistan,” with over 350,000 YouTube subscribers, has focused on a widely known backer of the Taliban named General Mobin, often shown distributing donated winter clothing, talking to soldiers or visiting hospital patients. Some channels, such as “Dostdaran Kabul” with over 40,000 subscribers, focus almost entirely on urban development under the Taliban.

Others, such as Milad Azizi’s “Kabul Lovers,” mix scripted entertainment videos with content featuring Taliban officials. That approach has made “Kabul Lovers” one of the country’s most successful YouTube channels over the past two years. Azizi, 23, has hired about 20 employees and rents space in a high-rise building.

His channel recently drew more than 2.6 million views with a series in which his video team embedded with morality police from the Ministry of Vice and Virtue as they searched for what they said were suspected witches. In one of the videos, a woman being investigated for alleged sorcery looks anxiously into the camera. “Why are all you men here today?” she asks, apparently fearing arrest. She later confesses to investigators on camera that she practiced magic.

Asked for comment, the ministry confirmed past “connections” with Azizi’s channel “to educate the public.”

Although officials have decided against letting the team join possible future witch-hunting operations, Azizi said, other collaborations with the government are being planned. “It helps them a lot,” he said.

A large audience abroad

Camera salesman Mohammad Mujib Nabizada, 20, said he has seen so many influencers rise to fame after frequenting his store that he is considering launching a channel himself.

“When they start off, they usually only come here to buy cheap microphones,” he said. “But soon after, when the money starts pouring in, they return to buy the big cameras.”

Internet speeds and mobile data allowances remain limited in Afghanistan, so influencers here primarily target the estimated 6 million Afghans living abroad as migrants or refugees. (Most of the content is in Dari, the country’s most widely spoken language.) They account for about 90 percent of visitors to some of the most popular Afghanistan-based YouTube channels, with most views coming from the United States and Europe, content creators said. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid unwanted scrutiny from the government.

Afghans abroad are often eager to watch videos about how their country is changing under the Taliban. Kabul-based YouTuber Amir Mohammad Yaqobi, 24, said he gets the most views with videos about new roads and other construction. “It’s good for my channel,” he said.

More than 140,000 people watched a recent 38-minute video, on a channel called “Afghanistan Streets,” in which a presenter praises the quality of concrete in a tunnel construction project overseen by the government. “It will help the tunnel last forever,” the presenter says in the video.

In other clips, presenters accompany Taliban government officials as they burn expired food, crack down on drug dealers, or — in a video titled “An Afghan dream is coming true” — build a major canal across the north of the country.

Making sure viewers get the point, an Islamic scholar on a channel focusing on social issues called “Kabul Show,” with 80,000 subscribers, urged at a recent conference, “We should value our current government.”

Some Afghans in Kabul say they have begun getting calls from relatives abroad asking if the country is really on the rise under the Taliban, as YouTube content suggests.

Influencers who successfully navigate the Taliban’s rules may still run afoul of YouTube itself. The company said it had terminated a number of Afghan channels for posting “content that glorifies or promotes violent tragedies.” After operators reactivated several of these channels, including “Afghanistan Streets” and “Our Afghanistan,” YouTube again terminated them in recent days for violating the company’s terms of service, according to Jack Malon, a spokesman for Google, which owns YouTube.

Asked about the activities of YouTube channel owners in Afghanistan, Malon said, “YouTube is committed to compliance with all applicable sanctions and trade compliance laws, including U.S. sanctions against the Afghan Taliban. If we find an account believed to be owned and operated by the Afghan Taliban, we terminate it. Further, our policies prohibit content that incites violence.”

A tightening grip

Before the Taliban takeover in August 2021, Afghan social media was on many days dominated by clips of the aftermath of bomb blasts and shootings. But for urban Afghans, it was also a space where they felt they could express themselves freely.

Afghan YouTube has changed dramatically since then. The Taliban-run government has banned music in videos and mandated that female presenters wear a headscarf and a mask over their mouth for modesty, several content creators said.

A 20-year-old female YouTuber in Kabul said she began publishing videos after the Taliban closed schools and universities for women. She primarily uses her channel to read poems or share recipes that are popular among her minority Shiite Muslim community, and she has largely flouted the Taliban’s rules on how to dress in videos, hoping officials will be unable to identify her.

But a growing number of viewers have responded angrily to her uploads or threatened to report her to the authorities. “I won’t stop,” she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of drawing the attention of officials. “I love doing this.”

There are signs the government intends to further tighten its grip on influencers who do not play by its rules. It has already blocked mobile internet access to TikTok, saying the platform wastes the time of young Afghans and raises moral concerns.

Although some Afghan video creators have used YouTube’s geo-blocking tools to hold back their most sensitive content inside Afghanistan, Afghan officials now appear to be using VPN to see what is being published outside the country, according to the owner of a major Afghan YouTube channel.

New warnings

Many YouTubers have in recent weeks received warnings over alleged violations or been asked by the government to cooperate with it more closely, several influencers said.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban government’s spokesman, confirmed that warnings are being issued to all channels that “violate the rules,” and that serious violations can result in legal charges. YouTubers can work freely in the country, Mujahid said in a series of WhatsApp audio messages to The Post, but added: “If they only present the negative side, it doesn’t serve the country.” What serves the country better, he said, is a focus on “development, progress, unity, brotherhood and peace.”

Ajmal Haqiqi, a well-known male fashion YouTuber, held such optimistic views when the Taliban took power. He decided to stay in Kabul to keep publishing videos. But he soon faced a growing number of threats and was eventually detained for allegedly mocking the Quran.

“I wanted to serve my country,” said Haqiqi, who recently moved to Pakistan. “But all I achieved was going to prison for six months.” Yet even in prison, his YouTube fame earned him envy; guards and inmates came up to him to say: “Lucky you, you must be rich.’”

Azizi, the highly successful head of “Kabul Lovers,” was arrested in 2022 for a video that included criticism of the Taliban. He acknowledged that he, too, is now facing more hurdles, such as demands from officials for more paperwork, even though, he said, “we never say anything against them.”

Lutfullah Qasimyar and Haq Nawaz Khan contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by Rick Noack · March 9, 2024

13. China steps up grey-zone warfare to exhaust Taiwan, defence report says

It is all about the gray zone.

China steps up grey-zone warfare to exhaust Taiwan, defence report says

By Yimou Lee

March 6, 20249:20 PM ESTUpdated 3 days ago

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-steps-up-grey-zone-warfare-exhaust-taiwan-defence-report-says-2024-03-07/?utm

A Chinese coastguard ship sails during a military drill near Fuzhou, Fujian Province, near the Taiwan-controlled Matsu Islands that are close to the Chinese coast, China, April 8, 2023. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

TAIPEI, March 7 (Reuters) - China has stepped up grey-zone warfare against Taiwan, aiming to make the areas around the democratic island "saturated" with balloons, drones and civilian boats, a Taiwan defence ministry report said on Thursday.

Taiwan, whose government rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims, has complained in recent years that China has been using so-called grey-zone warfare, which wields irregular tactics to exhaust a foe without resorting to open combat.

In a report sent to parliament, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, the ministry said Beijing has launched "multi-front saturated grey-zone" tactics to harass Taiwan, including increased patrols of ships and planes.

China has attempted to "increase burdens of our naval and air forces and to obscure the existence of the median line in the strait", the report said, referring to an unofficial border between the two sides, which China's forces have began regularly crossing in recent years.

It added China has also incorporated research and militia vessels in a move to "disguise military activities with civilians".

China's Taiwan Affairs Office did not immediately respond to request for comment.

To counter the Chinese threats, the ministry said it was working on measures to "preserve" its troops in the event of a war by boosting the resilience of its infrastructure and running drills to ensure Taiwan forces survive in a prolonged conflict. It also said it was drawing lessons from the war in Ukraine and the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

The ministry said it is stockpiling weapons and fuel to endure a prolonged war with China.

In a conflict, China will try to speedily seize Taiwan and prevent external intervention, the ministry added. To complicate that, the island is working to diversify its command systems and incorporate more mobile and long-range weapons, as well as artificial intelligence, while boosting "connections" with democratic allies, including the United States. The report did not elaborate on what those steps entailed.

China said this week it would boost its defence spending by 7.2% this year, fuelling a military budget that has more than doubled under President Xi Jinping's 11 years in office as Beijing hardens its stance on Taiwan.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of parliament, Taiwan Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng said Taipei would not join an arms race with Beijing because it was an "indisputable fact" that China's military is more powerful than Taiwan's.

"The only thing we can do is to boost every aspect of our training," he said.

Taiwan Defense Ministry this week said it would this year increase the number of missile drills and begin night-time exercises for pilots.

Beijing last month begun regular coast guard patrols around the Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands, which hug the Chinese coast, after two Chinese fishermen died trying to flee Taiwan's coast guard.

Reporting By Yimou Lee. Editing by Gerry Doyle

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Yimou Lee

Thomson Reuters

Yimou Lee is a Senior Correspondent for Reuters covering everything from Taiwan, including sensitive Taiwan-China relations, China's military aggression and Taiwan's key role as a global semiconductor powerhouse. A three-time SOPA award winner, his reporting from Hong Kong, China, Myanmar and Taiwan over the past decade includes Myanmar's crackdown on Rohingya Muslims, Hong Kong protests and Taiwan's battle against China's multifront campaigns to absorb the island.

14. Plan to Deliver Aid by Sea Faces Big Hurdles

The LatestUpdated

March 9, 2024, 11:38 a.m. ET9 minutes ago

9 minutes ago

Middle East Crisis

Plan to Deliver Aid by Sea Faces Big Hurdles

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/09/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

Image

A Palestinian boy stands among rubble of a destroyed house in southern Gaza on Friday.Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock

U.S. officials have conceded it will take weeks to make maritime aid delivery practical but say it will eventually enable them to significantly increase the amount of aid to Gaza.

Here’s what we’re covering:

There are enormous logistical hurdles to deliver much-needed aid to Gaza by sea.

Image

Aid being transported on Sunday in Rafah, in southern Gaza.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An international plan to bring desperately needed food, water and medicine to Gazans by boat will face enormous logistical challenges, diplomats and aid officials say, making the proposition both expensive and likely to take some time.

Aid officials have criticized the plans, saying delivering aid by truck is by far the most efficient way to help Gazans. They have called for Israel to open new crossing points in northern Gaza and to ease its entry restrictions. U.S. officials have conceded it will take weeks to establish a maritime corridor, but say it will eventually enable them to significantly increase the amount of aid.

Kerem Shalom is one of two border crossings through which aid has been allowed to enter Gaza; most of it transits through the Rafah crossing with Egypt. The U.N. has said it can be very challenging for aid to go north beyond Rafah.

Gaza does not have a functioning port, and its coastal waters are too shallow for most vessels — particularly the large barges that would be necessary to ferry the cargo necessary for hundreds of thousands of hungry Palestinians.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the E.U. executive body, said Friday that officials expected to test the process in the coming days during what she described as a pilot project. But it was not immediately clear how or where any vessels would unload their cargo or how it would be distributed amid Israeli bombardment and attacks on aid trucks as hunger grows in the enclave.

On Thursday night, President Biden announced a U.S.-led initiative to establish a temporary floating pier off Gaza’s coastline to enable the transit of goods. U.S. officials hope to ultimately use the pier to enable the delivery of two million meals a day for Gaza’s 2.3 million people, Here are some of the hurdles ahead.

Cost: Building the floating pier will be pricey and time-consuming. U.S. officials say the project could take up to 60 days to complete, and Gazans need more aid now. United Nations officials warn that famine is imminent in the enclave.
Two Western diplomats briefed on the project said they were told the full cost could be tens of millions of dollars over six months, although it was unclear whether that was just the port itself or included the cost of the intended supply shipments as well. Several countries, including Britain and the United Arab Emirates, have announced they will back the project, although they have not said how much they will chip in.
Some have called for Israel to fully open the Israeli port of Ashdod just north of Gaza to allow international aid to flow into the enclave. The harbor is already largely equipped to scan and process aid deliveries. After U.S. pressure, Israel began allowing some shipments of flour and other goods to enter there in January.
Security and distribution: It is also unclear who will manage and secure the temporary port area and the convoys of trucks that would be needed to distribute the aid.
In response to a question on who would secure the port, President Biden told reporters Friday that “the Israelis” would provide security. He did not elaborate further, and there was no immediate comment by Israeli officials.
Israel’s ground invasion successfully toppled Hamas’s government in northern Gaza and nothing has filled the vacuum. The result has been widespread lawlessness. Some of the few trucks ferrying food and medicine to northern Gaza have been attacked by both ordinary Palestinians and well-organized gangs, according to aid officials.
The desperation was made apparent last month when, according to Gazan health officials more than 100 Palestinians were killed after thousands of people massed around an Israeli-organized aid convoy. Witnesses described extensive shooting by Israeli forces, and doctors at Gaza hospitals said most casualties were from gunfire.
The Israeli military acknowledged firing at members of the crowd who approached them “in a threatening manner,” but said most of the victims were trampled in a crush of people trying to seize the cargo.
The remaining employees of Hamas’s civilian police could step in for security, U.N. officials have said, but their involvement would likely be unacceptable to Israel and the United States because of their connection to the militant group. In a briefing with reporters last month, Jaime McGoldrick, a senior U.N. relief official, said the organization was seeking to work with what remains of the police on crowd control. But they were hesitant to escort the convoys north, fearing Israeli airstrikes, he said.
The Israeli military could deploy to patrol the convoys, but their presence would pose a challenge for the United Nations, which takes pains to avoid being seen as too close to any side. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, for example, “does not provide any assistance anywhere with the presence of the Israeli Army nor does it ask it to provide security for its convoys,” said Juliette Touma, the agency’s director of communications.
One proposal on the table would be for private Palestinian contractors to handle the distribution while coordinating with the United Nations, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation.

— Aaron Boxerman

15. We’re Slowly Learning About China’s Extensive Hacking Network

Excerpts:

An old game played in new ways

U.S. intelligence has tracked China’s cyberespionage activities for over twenty years. The typical activity of state-backed hackers has been intelligence gathering or cybertheft. Dell SecureWorks and Microsoft report that targeting infrastructure is new for China’s state-backed hackers. U.S. officials have said that an attack on U.S. infrastructure would be considered an act of war, similar to bombing bridges, water treatment facilities, or power plants.

Attacks on infrastructure were uncommon prior to 2010. The first instance of using a cyberattack as a weapon for international conflict was the Stuxnet worm, likely developed by the U.S. and Israel to disrupt Iran’s uranium enrichment process. Since then, the Russia–Ukraine war has escalated the use of cyberattacks as a weapon for war.

According to CSIS’s timeline of cyberattacks, since February 2022 when the war began, Russian cyberattacks have primarily targeted Ukrainian infrastructure. Previously, Russia was responsible for taking down Ukraine’s power grid in 2015 and 2016 and crippling several businesses, including banks, using a virus called NotPetya.

Taiwan is watching Ukraine’s response to Russia, particularly how it is thwarting cyberattacks, in anticipation of an escalating threat from the Chinese military.

We’re Slowly Learning About China’s Extensive Hacking Network

mindmatters.ai · by Heather Zeiger March 7, 2024 6 China, Computer Security, Crime, Surveillance · March 7, 2024

Heather Zeiger

March 7, 2024

China’s state-backed hackers have embedded malware within U.S. programs used to manage clean drinking water, the power grid, and air traffic, among others

The first two months of 2024 featured several revelations on the extent of China’s extensive hacking network. A joint cybersecurity advisory alert was recently posted from the CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency), the NSA, and the FBI on the extent to which Chinese state-backed hackers have had access to key U.S. infrastructures over the past five years, and planted malware that could trigger widespread disruptions to society. It was co-authored by the U.S. Department of Energy, the EPA, and the Transportation Security Administration, as well as by Canada’s, Australia’s, New Zealand’s and the United Kingdom’s cybersecurity centers.

I’ve reported in the past on China’s massive intellectual property theft and cyberespionage here and here. These activities included obtaining emails and communications from government officials.

The recent high-level alert escalates tensions

China’s state-backed hackers have embedded malware within critical U.S. infrastructure, such as programs used to manage clean drinking water, the power grid, and air traffic, among others. According to CISA director Jen Easterly at a hearing on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party,

This is truly an Everything Everywhere, All at Once scenario. And it’s one where the Chinese government believes that it will likely crush American will for the U.S. to defend Taiwan in the event of a major conflict there.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said that Chinese state-backed hackers have been lying dormant in critical U.S. infrastructure for five years, pre-positioning malware. In the event that there is a U.S.–China conflict, China can enact a cyberattack that will weaken U.S. operations. Intelligence analysts link this threat to a potential conflict over Taiwan, which the U.S. has promised to defend in the event China attacks the island. Taiwan operates as a de facto nation but is claimed by Beijing as part of the People’s Republic of China.

Wray has described China’s hacking program as larger than that of every nation combined:

In fact, if you took every single one of the F.B.I.’s cyberagents and intelligence analysts and focused them exclusively on the China threat, China’s hackers would still outnumber F.B.I. cyberpersonnel by at least 50 to one.

How the hackers get in

The hacking network responsible for infiltrating U.S. infrastructure has been labeled “Volt Typhoon” although the group is known under other names: Vanguard Panda, Bronze Silhouette, Dev-0391, UNC 3236, Voltize, and Insidious Taurus (The Guardian 02/13/24).

Volt Typhoon used sophisticated “living off the land” techniques to surreptitiously infiltrate networks through routers and other internet connected devices. One of the biggest security weaknesses in U.S. digital networks and infrastructure is out-of-date technology that is no longer supported. Another weakness is human error; workers may fall for phishing techniques that retrieve administrator credentials and user passwords.

In December, the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI obtained a court order to dismantle a sweeping botnet that used out-of-date small office and home office (SOHO) Cisco and Netgear routers to infiltrate key infrastructure systems. The agencies obtained the court order to go into the routers’ systems without the owners’ permission because the level of risk warranted immediate action.

Hackers can install malware into existing files within the operating system rather than uploading a new file, which is easier to find. Dell’s SecureWorks blog describes several ways that Volt Typhoon/Bronze Silhouette quickly entered a system and then deleted any evidence of the hacker’s presence.

Dell SecureWorks believes that this new type of infiltration is in response to the U.S. State Department’s identification of several Chinese hackers:

These tradecraft developments have likely been driven by a series of high-profile U.S. Department of Justice indictments of Chinese nationals allegedly involved in cyberespionage activity, public exposures of this type of activity by security vendors, and the consequential likely increased pressure from PRC leadership to avoid public scrutiny of its cyberespionage activity.

The 2018 Justice Department indictment can be found here.

In 2023, Microsoft reported that Chinese state-backed hackers had positioned themselves to disrupt communications between the U.S. and other Asian countries in the event of a conflict in the South China Sea. This is likely in preparation for a conflict over Taiwan.

An old game played in new ways

U.S. intelligence has tracked China’s cyberespionage activities for over twenty years. The typical activity of state-backed hackers has been intelligence gathering or cybertheft. Dell SecureWorks and Microsoft report that targeting infrastructure is new for China’s state-backed hackers. U.S. officials have said that an attack on U.S. infrastructure would be considered an act of war, similar to bombing bridges, water treatment facilities, or power plants.

Attacks on infrastructure were uncommon prior to 2010. The first instance of using a cyberattack as a weapon for international conflict was the Stuxnet worm, likely developed by the U.S. and Israel to disrupt Iran’s uranium enrichment process. Since then, the Russia–Ukraine war has escalated the use of cyberattacks as a weapon for war.

According to CSIS’s timeline of cyberattacks, since February 2022 when the war began, Russian cyberattacks have primarily targeted Ukrainian infrastructure. Previously, Russia was responsible for taking down Ukraine’s power grid in 2015 and 2016 and crippling several businesses, including banks, using a virus called NotPetya.

Taiwan is watching Ukraine’s response to Russia, particularly how it is thwarting cyberattacks, in anticipation of an escalating threat from the Chinese military.

Paralleling the Soviet Union

The Chinese Communist Party has a long history of paralleling the former Soviet Union. In an earlier article, I reported on commentators who see the fall of the Soviet Union and the Arab Spring as Xi Jinping’s “two great insecurities.” China’s government is modeled after the former Soviet Union, although it is often branded as distinctly Chinese. Today, again, we see Russia treading the Soviet Union’s path, while China takes notes.

China’s cyber activities are not impenetrable. In an upcoming article, we’ll look at a recent leak of files from a hackers-for-hire group contracted by Beijing.

Heather Zeiger

Heather Zeiger is a freelance science writer in Dallas, TX. She has advanced degrees in chemistry and bioethics and writes on the intersection of science, technology, and society. She also serves as a research analyst with The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity. Heather writes for bioethics.com, Salvo Magazine, and her work has appeared in Relevant, MercatorNet, Quartz, and The New Atlantis.

mindmatters.ai · by Heather Zeiger March 7, 2024 6 China, Computer Security, Crime, Surveillance · March 7, 2024

16. Fort Liberty Special Warfare Center and School to get new commander

I wonder where Brig. Gen.Beaurpere is headed. I have not seen any news about his next assignment.

Again, this is historic in that a Civil Affairs officer will be commanding SWCS which also serves as the proponent for Special Forces, Psychological Operations, and Civil Affairs.

Fort Liberty Special Warfare Center and School to get new commander

By biography fayobserver.com

View Original

FORT LIBERTY — The U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Liberty will see a new commander, the Department of Defense announced this week.

In a news release Monday, officials said Brig. Gen. Jason C. Slider will be the new SWC commander.

Slider is currently deputy commander of operations for the French army’s 3rd Division.

The DOD has not yet announced when the command change will happen or the next assignment for SWC’s current commander, Brig. Gen. Guillaume “Will” Beaurpere, who took command in August 2022.

SWC oversees the Special Forces assessment and selection course, training for Special Forces and special operation forces and foreign language training, with more than 100 courses for civil affairs, psychological operations, Special Forces, allied and sister service students.

Under SWC are the school, Special Forces Warrant Officer Institute, the Noncommissioned Officers Academy, the 1st Special Warfare Training Group, 2nd Special Warfare Training Group and the Special Warfare Medical Group.

According to Slider's , he enlisted in the Army as an infantryman in 1990, before completing the Army’s Officer Candidate School in 1992.

His previous local assignments have included commanding U.S. Army Special Operations Command detachments and companies from 2004 to 2008; serving as deputy commander for the 95th Civil Affairs Brigade; serving as chief of staff for the 18th Airborne Corps and being commander of the 95th Civil Affairs Brigade from 2016 to 2018.

SWC will also be getting a new deputy commander, according to the DOD news release, but an individual has not yet been announced.

Brig. Gen. Sara E. Dudley, SWC’s current deputy commander for modernization, is leaving to become the next deputy commander of operations for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

In other Special Forces changes, the DOD also announced that Brig. Gen. Joseph W. Wortham II, deputy commander of operations for the 1st Special Forces Command, will be the new assistant commander of support for the Joint Special Operations Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, also at Fort Liberty.

The DOD has not announced who will replace Wortham at the 1st Special Forces Command.

Security Forces Assistance Command change

The DOD also announced that Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Lambert, deputy commander of V Corps in Germany, will be the new commander of the Security Force Assistance Command, based at Fort Liberty.

The DOD has not yet announced the next assignment for the SFAC’s current commander, Maj. Gen. Donn Hill, who’s led the command since May 2022.

The Security Force Assistance Command sustains readiness, manning and training of five regular Army brigades, one National Guard brigade and a training battalion, that support combatant commanders and partner nations in training, and advise and assist operations.

Other Fort Liberty changes

Other leadership changes at Fort Liberty include:

• Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Smith will be deputy commander and chief of staff for the U.S. Army Forces Command. He most recently served as commander of the 7th Infantry Division at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington.

• Brig. Gen. David W. Gardner will be FORSCOM’s next deputy chief of staff for operations and training, civil-military operations and information operations. Gardner is currently commander of Fort Johnson and the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Johnson, Louisiana.

• Maj. Gen. Scott M. Naumann, current FORSCOM deputy chief of staff, will be the next commander of Fort Drum, New York, and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum.

• Brig. Gen. Sean P. Davis, commander of the 13th Expeditionary Sustainment Command at Fort Cavazos, Texas, and Operation Spartan Shield in Kuwait, will be FORSCOM’s next deputy chief of staff for logistics.

• Brig. Gen. John P. Cogbill, deputy director of Operations Fires and Effects for the U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, will be the next deputy commander for the 18th Airborne Corps.

• Maj. Gen. Colin P. Tuley, the current 18th Airborne Corps deputy commander, will be the next commander of Fort Moore, Georgia, and the U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Moore.

• Brig. Gen. Andrew O. Saslav, deputy commander of operations for the 82nd Airborne Division, will be the next to deputy chief of staff of operations and training for the U.S. Army Europe-Africa in Germany.

Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3528.

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

Company Name | Website