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Quotes of the Day:
“Laws which prescribe what everyone must believe, and forbid, meant to say, or write anything against this, or that opinion, are often pass to gratify, or rather to appease the anger of those who cannot abide independent mines.”
– Baruch Spinosa.
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
- H. L. Mencken
“A man is like a fraction who's numerator is what he is, and who's denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction”
– Leo Tolstoy
1. China Wanted to Negotiate With Trump. Now It’s Arming for Another Trade War.
2. How the world as we know it changes if China takes Taiwan
3. Battle of Takur Ghar Controversy Continues
4. How Black paratroopers saved the US from Japan’s WWII firebombs
5. Ashburn mom shares her secret career in the CIA
6. Finland Knows Winter Is Coming
7. States caught unprepared for Trump’s threats to FEMA
8. America’s Absence in Myanmar’s Early Earthquake Response: A Moral and Strategic Failure
9. Chinese Control of Darwin Port Becomes Key Issue in Australian Elections
10. CIA Leveraging Digital Transformation Tools in HUMINT Missions
11. Cost of US military offensive against Houthis nears $1 billion with limited impact
12. These Are the 381 Books Removed From the Naval Academy Library
13. Vietnam Offers to Drop U.S. Tariffs to Zero. Will That Be Enough for Trump?
14. Former MI6 boss says Britain must get ready for war as Putin threat looms
15. S’pore must be clear-eyed about dangers ahead; the risks are real, stakes are high, says PM Wong
16. Trump’s Subtle Shift on China: From Economic Coercion to Military Confrontation
17. China's Belt and Road credibility collapsing fast in Thailand
18. Trump goes all in with bet that the heavy price of tariffs will pay off for Americans
19. Taiwan's new 2nm chip set to power the AI revolution
20. Amid anti-DEI push, National Park Service rewrites history of Underground Railroad
21. U.S. Defense Secretary Hegseth To Visit U.S. Army 7th Special Forces Group Amid Growing Focus on Operations in Panama.
1. China Wanted to Negotiate With Trump. Now It’s Arming for Another Trade War.
We are playing chess while China plays Go/WeiChi/Baduk.
Fortress America versus capturing influence over vast amounts of territory of friends, partners, and allies.
China Wanted to Negotiate With Trump. Now It’s Arming for Another Trade War.
Communication between Washington and Beijing is at a standstill, raising the prospects of a long cycle of tariff retaliation. ‘Trump and Xi are locked in a paradox of pressure and pride.’
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-trump-tariff-foreign-policy-6934e493?mod=hp_lead_pos7
By Lingling Wei
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April 5, 2025 9:00 pm ET
Beijing spent the first months of President Trump’s second term trying—and failing—to figure out the new administration’s approach to China. Officials hoping to build lines of communication with Washington had no luck.
With Trump’s latest tariff action, the magnitude of his trade assault hit home and Beijing’s hope for dialogue melted into frustration and anger.
Until now its response had been restrained. On Friday, Beijing matched Trump’s 34% additional tariffs and for the first time it hit all U.S. products, no exceptions. It also restricted exports of certain rare-earth minerals, added U.S. companies to trade blacklists and aimed an antitrust probe at the China operations of U.S. chemicals and materials company DuPont.
Trump’s response to its retaliation suggested things would only get worse. In a social-media post, Trump wrote, “CHINA PLAYED IT WRONG, THEY PANICKED—THE ONE THING THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO DO!”
President Trump after signing executive orders imposing new tariffs at the White House on Wednesday. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
The lack of communication between the two sides shows no signs of letting up. What lies ahead is likely to be a cycle of tit-for-tat retaliation, making it hard to even start negotiations in the near term.
Beijing had been cautiously optimistic in the Trump administration’s first days. Xi Jinping dispatched a top envoy to attend Trump’s inauguration, a move that was seen as an opening for fruitful communication. While Trump had threatened to hit China with tariffs when campaigning for president, he held off on Day One. His only mention of China in his inaugural speech, about wresting the Panama Canal from Chinese control, raised no alarms.
Trump had indicated that he was open to a deal with China, and Beijing hoped to explore one centered on what China was willing to offer, such as more Chinese purchases of American products and more Chinese investment in the U.S.
But in the following weeks, wherever senior Chinese officials tried to engage the new administration, they found only closed doors.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi sought a meeting with Trump’s national-security adviser Mike Waltz in February while he was in the U.S. for a United Nations meeting, according to people who consult with senior Chinese officials. Wang, who had hoped to revive a line of communication he had had with Waltz’s predecessor, Jake Sullivan, got nowhere with the Trump team.
The full-blown trade war during Trump’s first term had strengthened Xi’s resolve to fortify China against a new Trump-like assault. And yet, in the absence of contacts with the Trump team, Washington’s most formidable adversary settled on a wait-and-see approach.
Gone was the swagger Xi’s team often projected in interactions with Biden officials. When Trump set 10% tariffs on Chinese goods in two separate rounds, China’s retaliation was cautious.
Television monitors at Nasdaq headquarters on Friday. Photo: Bryan Smith/Zuma Press
Then came the shock of the extra 34% tariffs Trump slapped on China on Wednesday. That brings the average U.S. import levies on Chinese products to 76%, figuring in the previous 20% tariffs and levies that predate Trump’s second term, according to Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics—more than 20 times what it was before Trump launched his first trade war against China in 2018.
“That amounts to a declaration of ‘strategic decoupling’ with China,” said a senior economist in Beijing, using a term from Trump’s first-term trade czar, Robert Lighthizer. “Can we find a pathway toward negotiations under such maximum pressure? The lack of communication between the two sides might make it difficult.”
Some policy advisers in Beijing described the stunned reaction within the Chinese system over Trump’s latest tariff increases. That, the advisers said, raises questions about whether Beijing has the ability to effectively negotiate with Trump to alleviate pressure on the Chinese economy—and prevent a deeper decoupling with the U.S.
“The Trump administration is driving the agenda,” said Ryan Hass, a former national-security official in the Obama administration and now director of the China Center at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “Beijing is almost entirely in a reactive posture.”
Some foreign-policy and trade analysts say Beijing was smart to wait it out as Trump has also significantly bumped up import levies on traditional allies and other big trading partners, raising the specter of a global backlash against the U.S. that could benefit China.
A key reason for Beijing’s defensive posture, according to the people who consult with senior Chinese officials, is that while Beijing explores whether it’s still possible to strike a trade deal with Trump, Xi doesn’t want to be seen as an overearnest suitor.
“Trump and Xi are locked in a paradox of pressure and pride,” said Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. “Trump’s strategy mixes maximum pressure with sudden diplomatic overtures—he sees leverage and engagement as complementary. Xi, by contrast, is methodical and risk-averse, relying on delay and discipline.”
If Xi engages too soon, Singleton said, he risks looking weak.
Xi Jinping spoke during a meeting of global business leaders in Beijing last month. Photo: Kyodonews/Zuma Press
Trump had suggested a meeting with Xi could come in the “not too distant future.” But given the heightened pressure from the U.S., Chinese officials have indicated to U.S. executives that Xi is unlikely to visit the U.S. soon.
Trump’s latest tariff moves exceeded both markets’ and governments’ expectations, said the China Finance 40 Forum, a Beijing think tank, in a report Thursday. It estimates China’s exports to the U.S. will drop by more than half as a result.
No more back-channeling
The Chinese political system isn’t built to nimbly respond to a leader like Trump. Chinese leaders rely heavily on established ways to engage with the outside world, including through back-channeling with adversaries.
During Trump’s first term, Beijing’s then-ambassador to Washington, Cui Tiankai, built connections with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner that helped facilitate negotiations between the two capitals. With the new Trump team, no such channel has been established.
The current Chinese ambassador to Washington, Xie Feng, has tried in vain to engage with Trump adviser Elon Musk, according to the people who consult with Chinese officials. Beijing had hoped that Musk, whose company Tesla makes half its electric vehicles in China, could help counterbalance the China hard-liners on Trump’s team.
Other U.S. business leaders, such as Wall Street financiers that Chinese leaders have often turned to in periods of trouble, now see little upside in acting as a go-between for Beijing. “Who wants that role?” said a senior American executive. “No one.”
Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai (far left) in Washington with officials and advisers including Trump and Jared Kushner (far right). Photo: White House/Zuma Press
Beijing’s inability to think beyond formal diplomatic protocol has proven to be a mismatch with a Trump team willing to engage only with those closest to Xi. People close to Beijing’s thinking say that when Trump’s people have suggested Xi top aides they would like to talk to—such as Xi’s chief of staff, Cai Qi—Beijing has recoiled, seeing the political risk from such improvisation as unacceptable.
Meanwhile, China’s Commerce Minister Wang Wentao had no luck with February letters to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. Instead, in late March, Greer held an introductory video call with Vice Premier He Lifeng, Wang’s superior and a trusted Xi aide.
‘The wrong side’
The fact that China didn’t appear to figure as a primary focus for Trump in his first two months was unnerving to senior Chinese officials who had expected negotiations between the two sides to begin almost right away.
When Trump in his first two months raised China tariffs by 20%, citing China’s role in the fentanyl crisis in the U.S., senior Chinese officials considered the fentanyl issue as a pretext intended to pressure Beijing, according to the people who consult with Chinese officials. The Xi leadership didn’t rush to talk to Trump or offer him any concessions on the issue like leaders from Canada and Mexico did.
Adding to Beijing’s wait-and-see approach was its belief that tariff hikes threatened to push up inflation in the U.S. and tank the U.S. markets, prospects officials thought might force Trump to back down, the people said.
When U.S. markets started losing ground this year, some Chinese commentators seized on the rise in China’s own stock markets, riding the sudden fame of Chinese artificial-intelligence startup DeepSeek, to revive a Xi adage that “the East is rising and the West is in decline.”
“Within the Chinese government, the view is that the U.S. is taking measures to alienate itself,” said Craig Allen, a senior adviser to Washington-based consulting firm Cohen Group, who attended a high-level economic forum in Beijing in late March. “They think the U.S. is on the wrong side and China is on the right side.”
Trump’s sweeping tariffs could be an opportunity for China to attempt to capitalize on anger against Washington, especially among the U.S.’s traditional allies and trading partners.
Electric vehicles parked for export at an auto trade port in Hangzhou last month. Photo: Cfoto/Zuma Press
There are big challenges. With the new U.S. tariffs, even more Chinese goods will be rerouted to countries in Europe and Asia, where leaders are already concerned about a flood of Chinese products that have jeopardized jobs.
In addition, Beijing has deeply antagonized Europe with its support for Moscow during Russia’s three-year-long invasion of Ukraine.
Leverage lost
Despite Trump’s warning to China over the Panama Canal in his inaugural address, leaders were caught off guard when Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison announced a deal to sell its Panama ports to a U.S. investor group led by BlackRock.
Trump’s statement that China was operating the waterway and that the U.S. was taking it back was barely discussed among senior leaders, according to the people who consult with Chinese officials. No one thought to reach out to CK Hutchison to pre-empt a sale, they said.
If anything, the Xi leadership thought it could use the Panama port issue as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the Trump administration, which they expected to start soon.
Now China is in a no-win situation, trying to regain leverage with an antitrust review of the CK Hutchison transaction. But any move to interfere with the deal could give ammunition to Trump’s charge that China controls the canal.
Officials are eager to not repeat the mistake and give up any leverage it might have with Washington over TikTok as Trump weighs proposals for divesting the app’s U.S. operations from Chinese parent ByteDance.
A cargo ship sails past the Panama Canal’s Port of Balboa, managed by CK Hutchison, last month. Photo: Matias Delacroix/AP
In recent meetings, according to people familiar with the matter, Chinese officials have indicated to visiting U.S. business leaders that Beijing is firmly against any form of what they called “commercial robbery” and in particular, against any sale that would involve China losing control over TikTok’s algorithm, the app’s secret formula for steering content to users.
For now, the people said, no negotiation over TikTok, or any trade or economic matters, has yet taken place between the Trump administration and the Chinese government. China will expect an off-ramp to enter into any kind of compromise, or even talks, one of the people said—for instance, if Trump finds himself forced to pull back on tariffs. After his sweeping action, markets fell around the world, but hardest in the U.S.
For now, whoever is in the driver’s seat of U.S.-China relations, it’s not Beijing.
Write to Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com
2. How the world as we know it changes if China takes Taiwan
Something to ponder on a Sunday. Sensational? Hyperbolic? Unrealistic? Unimaginable?
Please go to the link to view the map/graphic.
We cannot view Taiwan and Korea as discrete and separate security problems.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14570749/The-world-China-takes-Taiwan-America-humiliated-Beijing-rules-new-world-order-Kim-Jong-strikes-South-Korea-chilling-vision-world-know-changes-President-Xi-finally-claims-island-nation.html?ito=rss-flipboard
How the world as we know it changes if China takes Taiwan
The world after China takes Taiwan: America humiliated. Beijing rules new world order. Kim Jong Un strikes South Korea. A chilling vision of how the world as we know it changes if President Xi finally claims island nation
By DAVID AVERRE
Published: 04:43 EDT, 5 April 2025 | Updated: 06:58 EDT, 5 April 2025
Daily Mail · by DAVID AVERRE · April 5, 2025
China deployed dozens of warships and planes to encircle the island nation of Taiwan in menacing, large-scale war games earlier this week.
Chilling satellite pictures also revealed what appear to be Beijing's 'invasion barges' - gargantuan platforms that connect to form a mobile pier that could enable thousands of soldiers and hundreds of vehicles to land on Taiwan's shores.
The multi-day military drills forced Taipei to respond by scrambling fighter jets and warships of their own to dissuade any overzealous members of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) from posing a serious threat.
But these alarming exercises were just the latest addition to a worrying trend that has seen Beijing grow increasingly aggressive toward its island neighbour in recent years.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), headed by authoritarian President Xi Jinping, sees Taiwan as a renegade province to be brought back under Beijing's control, by force if necessary.
But Taiwan's elected Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presides over a self-governing, democratic society and has sought close ties with the US, hoping its political, military and economic heft will keep Xi's expansionist tendencies at bay.
American deterrence, the reliance of China's export economy on the West and the cost of a military operation to seize Taiwan has led most analysts to suggest Beijing is more likely to use less direct means to pressure Taipei.
But politicians, military chiefs and industry leaders the world over can no longer afford to ignore the prospect of a full-scale invasion - a scenario which would shake the foundations of the world as we know it and could well trigger a Third World War.
Now, as Donald Trump pushes Taiwan to pay more for its defence while slapping it with significant trade tariffs, concern is growing that the US President may begin treating Taipei - as one analyst put it - 'as a pawn to trade with China to achieve his interests'.
With the help of international security, development and Indo-Pacific experts, we examine what would happen if China were to pull off a successful storming of Taiwan and wrest back control of its island neighbour.
Chinese troops from the People's Liberation Army are seen patrolling with the Chinese flag on an exercise
This satellite image taken on March 25, 2025 and received on April 3, 2025 by Planet Labs PBC shows three Chinese barges connected via extendable bridges in waters off Zhanjiang city, in southern China's Guangdong province
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), headed by authoritarian president Xi Jinping , sees Taiwan as a renegade province to be brought back under Beijing 's control, by force if necessary
Taiwanese soldiers pose for group photos with a Taiwan flag after a preparedness enhancement drill in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan
Taiwan is a small island adrift in the South China Sea roughly 100 kilometres off China's southeastern shores, positioned at the crossroads of East Asia.
Measuring just 36,000 square kilometres, Taiwan is roughly 1/25th the size of mainland China, or about half the size of Scotland - but it is a territory of immense strategic and economic importance.
The island is a manufacturing and technological powerhouse that occupies a critical part of the global supply chain, while the Taiwan Strait - a narrow waterway separating it from mainland China - is a key trade route facilitating the movement of goods, electronics and oil throughout Asia and beyond.
Taiwan is also an integral member of the 'first island chain', a ring of territories running from Japan to the Philippines, each of which is to some degree allied with the US to form a natural barrier against Chinese military expansion into the Pacific.
For all these reasons and more, a successful invasion of Taiwan by China would herald the advent of a new world order, according to Professor Kerry Jones, Director of the Lau China Institute at King's College London (KCL) and former First Secretary at the British Embassy in Beijing.
China expands its control of Indo-Pacific
This world order would see China 'move from a challenger and competitor into an aggressor and an enemy of the political West', Jones said.
In sheer military terms, seizing Taiwan - or the Republic of China (ROC) - would afford the People's Republic of China (PRC) a strengthened platform from which it could further project air and naval power.
This in turn would allow Beijing to strictly police key transport and trade routes, thereby cultivating great influence over the economy of its neighbours and rivals, having shattered the first island chain.
Dr Philip Shetler-Jones, Senior Research Fellow in Indo‑Pacific Security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think-tank, said: 'If the PRC controls Taiwan, it gains an advantage in controlling air, surface and sub-surface areas astride the main shipping and air routes connecting Japan and South Korea to their sources of critical imports -especially energy - and markets.
'It would be enabled to challenge the US Navy more effectively across the Pacific, because it could move submarines out past the first island chain with more security.'
Sean Kenji Starrs, Lecturer in International Development at KCL, added that such a scenario 'would probably mean the end of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait' altogether.
'These waterways account for the bulk of the world's electronics trade and much else, including to Western Europe and the United States. It would also make it much more difficult for the US to blockade the Straight of Malacca,' he said.
This strait, a stretch of water between Malaysia and Singapore, connects the Indian and Pacific Oceans and constitutes the shortest shipping route between East Asia and the Middle East on which China's export economy is heavily dependent.
Beijing is acutely aware of this vulnerability, fearing that a US blockade of the strait could deal a punishing blow to its economy.
As Starrs points out, taking Taiwan would mean Beijing would reduce the likelihood of this weak point being exploited.
'All of this would basically mean that China could become a peer competitor to the United States in East Asia, thus the end of US hegemony in East Asia,' he concluded.
Military equipment takes part in long-range live-fire drills in waters of the East China Sea, in this screenshot from a handout video released by the Eastern Theatre Command of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) on April 2, 2025
This handout photo from Taiwan's Ministry of National Defence shows Taiwanese soldiers operating tanks
Containers are seen at the Port of Keelung on April 04, 2025 in Keelung, Taiwan
US reputation is destroyed, influence in Indo-Pacific eroded
A successful Chinese invasion and annexation of Taiwan presupposes one of two seismic events - a total defeat of the US military in the Indo-Pacific theatre, or Washington abruptly abandoning a decades-long security partnership with Taipei.
Both scenarios would be catastrophic for America, and by extension, Western interests in the highly strategic region.
Washington's influence in the region would evaporate as Asian nations who have long sought to build strong strategic ties with America, both military and economic, would be forced into a drastic rethink of their allegiances.
Meanwhile, various Western-aligned transcontinental security alliances such as the Quad (Australia, India, Japan, US), AUKUS (Australia, UK, US)- not to mention NATO - would be left reeling from their disastrous failure to safeguard Taipei.
Starrs explained how an American defeat, or refusal to uphold its security commitments to Taiwan in the face of a Chinese attack, would dispel any notion that the US remains the world's dominant political and military power.
'National populations in Japan and South Korea, let alone Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere would likely shift their opinion in favour of China due to the massive shift in power this would entail - otherwise they would risk being the next victim of Chinese attack.
'Political and economic elites of US allies would still want to integrate with the US, but they would be under pressure to have better relations with China,' he said.
'If the US lost and China successfully occupied Taiwan, then this would entail the military defeat of Japan and South Korea, and probably Australia and NATO as well.'
Starrs went on to posit that China could even seek to seize more territory if it were to take Taiwan without significant losses.
'Chinese military presence in Taiwan would significantly diminish Japanese and South Korean security and increase vulnerability to further attack. Certainly, China would go for the Japanese-controlled Senkaku/Daiyou Islands and perhaps more.'
North Korea emboldened
Just as a successful invasion of Taiwan would entail a collapse of the US military deterrent and a weakening of the West's allies in the region, it would only serve to embolden China's allies.
None more so than North Korea, whose dynastic, dictatorial leader Kim Jong Un maintains his grip on power by keeping his citizens perpetually fearful and hateful of the US and its allies - particularly South Korea, which Kim has called his nation's 'principal enemy'.
Pyongyang has in recent months cut itself off completely from the South, detonating the few roads and railways that kept the two connected while mining the frontier along the demilitarised zone.
Kim also continues to pour resources into military modernisation and arms manufacturing, up to and including his burgeoning nuclear arsenal.
Shetler-Jones was sceptical that Kim would seek to invade or strike South Korea, arguing that the endurance of his regime is contingent on keeping his subjugated population in a constant state of fear and anticipation of an existential clash, rather than actively pursuing a conflict.
But Starrs said North Korea could potentially play a key role in a Chinese ploy to seize Taiwan and would be compelled to act if such a conflict were to break out.
'I think the more likely scenario would be China encouraging or pressuring North Korea to invade South Korea in order to expel US troops... to open a new front against the US so that China could more easily take Taiwan,' he said.
Markus Garlauskas, a former US National Intelligence Officer for North Korea, has also argued that a conflict over Taiwan would 'almost certainly become a region-wide war' that engulfs the Korean Peninsula, with Pyongyang expected to seize the opportunity to 'settle scores with Seoul' and 'exploit the vulnerabilities of a distracted United States'.
Taiwan Air Force personnel conduct pre-flight inspection on Mirage 2000 fighter jets inside Hsinchu Airbase, in Hsinchu, Taiwan, 01 April 2025
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un aims a weapon as he visits the training base of the special operations armed force of North Korea's army at an undisclosed location in North Korea
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, his daughter and an official watch what it says is an intercontinental ballistic missile launching from an undisclosed location in North Korea
Fate of the Taiwanese People
Despite China's insistence that Taiwan is nothing more than a renegade province, opinion polls have consistently shown that the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese people feel they have a distinct identity.
Surveys conducted by the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation in December 2024 and January 2025 showed 76.1% of adults aged 20 and above said they see themselves as Taiwanese.
Just 10.1% of respondents said they felt they had a Chinese identity, and 9% felt both Taiwanese and Chinese.
More than half (51.8%) want to see Taiwan secure full independence from China as an internationally recognised state, and another quarter (24.2%) want to maintain the status quo, in which Taiwan maintains its complete autonomy from China as a self-governing nation.
By contrast, just 13.3% of people said they'd like Taiwan to reunite with the mainland.
If China were to mount a successful invasion, we can say with relative certainty what would happen to the island's flourishing democratic society.
One only has to look at what transpired in Hong Kong after China passed its sweeping National Security Law in 2020 in response to widespread pro-democracy protests the year before.
Starrs said Taiwan would face a similar crackdown on personal freedoms, social and political thought and mobility - but to a far harsher degree, given that China would have had to seize the island by force.
'If China were to successfully annex Taiwan, they would have to shut down democracy as they did in Hong Kong after the passage of the National Security Law in June 2020.
'They would have to ban free and fair elections, shut down or nationalise the media, reform the education system, increase control of the Internet, and - unlike in Hong Kong - would have to have a massive military presence to contain any potential insurgencies, mutinies or even just popular street protests.
'They probably would also have to significantly tighten immigration and emigration controls to try and prevent a brain drain, since many upper income and highly educated Taiwanese have a Green card, US or other citizenship.'
Shetler-Jones added: 'Given the long period over which Taiwanese have enjoyed de facto independence, it is likely that resistance to authoritarian governance would be stiffer and the crackdown would be more severe.'
Taiwan's elected Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), led by Lai Ching-te (centre), steadfastly argues it presides over a self-governing, democratic, capitalist society with overwhelming support from its people
Air Defense and Missile Command of Taiwan Air Force takes part in a military exercise, at an undisclosed location in Taiwan in this handout picture provided by Taiwan Defence Ministry and released on April 9, 2023
How could China take Taiwan?
Recent years have seen Beijing scale up the frequency and intensity of its war games around the island - as evidenced earlier this week.
Meanwhile, the PLA has warned that 'the theatre's troops are ready to fight at all times and can fight at any time to resolutely smash any form of 'Taiwan independence' and foreign interference attempts.'
Taiwan's alliance with the US has afforded it a bristling military arsenal equipped with state-of-the-art American air and sea defence systems, manned by highly trained troops.
But in a straight fight between the might of China's PLA and Taiwan's armed forces, Goliath would inevitably triumph over David - albeit at great sacrifice.
There are two scenarios that defence analysts tend to settle on when thinking about China's military options against Taiwan.
The first is a naval blockade - a tactic which would represent an enormous challenge for an island nation that is reliant upon its ports for survival, given it can only produce roughly a third of its food domestically.
Taiwan is within easy reach of the PLA Air Force, and China's navy would be capable of encircling the island as demonstrated by various war games and simulated blockades.
Beijing's warships operate a large quantity of anti-ship cruise missiles that would pose a major threat to Taiwan's naval forces. China can also equip its fighter planes with various weapons designed to take out naval vessels, while the country's land-based rocket forces wield the mighty DF-26B - which has a range of up to 2,500 miles.
The Chinese navy would likely launch dozens of missiles in salvos designed to arrive at the target location simultaneously while preventing any military or humanitarian aid from reaching Taiwan by sea.
This tactic would enable Xi's armed forces to deny Taiwan the vital food and minerals that the island relies upon, while simultaneously presenting a defensive nightmare for Taipei and any of its partners trying to break the blockade. The goal would be to coerce Taiwan into accepting China's will.
The second scenario is the one which sees China's vast army embark on an amphibious invasion of Taiwan in a similar fashion to the D-Day landings.
This scenario, which might happen as an extension of the naval blockade, would include an extensive preparatory period that Beijing would be unable to hide. An invasion would require – at a conservative estimate – between half a million, and a million personnel, as well as the transport ships to get them to Taiwan.
At some point, the airspace over the Taiwan Strait would be closed and China's army, air force, and navy would begin a massed air and missile attack.
Cruise and ballistic missiles would be directed at Taiwan's air defences, logistics hubs, airfields, and government buildings in the hope of decapitating its ability to maintain and coordinate resistance. Once the PLA's leadership was satisfied that Taiwan's defences had been sufficiently softened, it would begin the invasion in earnest.
The first wave may well include helicopter-borne special forces as well as the PLA Airborne Forces, which have their own armoured vehicles (APCs) designed to be parachuted into combat, and would likely consist of soldiers from the Chinese army's Eastern Theatre Command as well as the Marine Corps.
The APCs would be packed onto amphibious assault ships, and those that survive Taiwan's fierce defences would disembark their APCs to steam onto the target beach.
An animation provided by Chinese military officials to The Global Times showed a simulated attack on Taiwan
In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, a missile from the rocket force of the Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) takes part in operations during the combat readiness patrol and military exercises around the Taiwan Island on Friday, April 7, 2023
Ships of Taiwan Navy take part in a military exercise in Taiwan in this handout picture released on April 10, 2023
This satellite image taken on March 25, 2025 and received on April 3, 2025 by Planet Labs PBC shows three Chinese barges connected via extendable bridges in waters off Zhanjiang city
Once on the beach they would face fierce resistance from Taiwan's armed forces in prepared defences, but China has a huge advantage in terms of the number of bodies it can commit to the fight.
Now, China's 'invasion barges' make the prospect of an amphibious landing yet more alarming.
'These barges may enable Chinese forces to make landings even on the more challenging terrains of the Taiwanese coastline,' said Wen-Ti Sung, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub.
This, he added, 'gives the Chinese military a greater selection of potential landing spots, and spreads Taiwanese defences thin'.
Satellite images from Planet Labs PBC obtained by AFP showed the system deployed in the waters off Zhanjiang city of Guangdong, southern China, at the end of March.
In a programme on state TV last month discussing the barges, military commentator Wei Dongxu touted their ability to transport large numbers of heavy equipment onto an island 'while keeping their feet dry'.
'Once the naval and air forces effectively control the air and sea, then this... barge will appear,' he said.
'It can be said that it is a sign of victory.'
Experts hope Taiwan will never see such violence. Starrs and Shetler-Jones both said the likelihood of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan remains very low.
Although they admitted that Beijing could pursue less drastic measures, such as a naval blockade of Taiwan, cyber attacks, economic sanctions and a ramping up of other diplomatic and political pressures, they felt that a full-scale attack would prove too costly for China's economy and trigger all-out war with America.
'(China taking Taiwan) would be so disastrous for the US that they would not allow it, they would bring the full spectrum of US power to prevent success, up to and including use of nuclear weapons,' Starrs said.
But Professor Brown stressed that Beijing's ongoing war games and increasingly antagonistic rhetoric over Taiwan increases the likelihood that one or a series of errors could quickly spiral, with cataclysmic consequences.
'These (blockades and military drills) are happening so regularly - it shows that China wishes to maintain psychological pressure on Taiwan and to continue to remind the international community of its claims and its resolve to see them ultimately fulfilled.
'The issue with these actions is that they create plenty of opportunity for miscalculation, misunderstanding and mistake.
'Nationalist sentiment in China is high at the moment, but the costs currently of moving against Taiwan are very, very high. Unless provoked, I cannot imagine that China would do this.
'But we are living in very worrying and uncertain times. Alas, this issue is now more dangerous than it has ever been before.'
Daily Mail · by DAVID AVERRE · April 5, 2025
3. Battle of Takur Ghar Controversy Continues
Yes, controversial to say the least.
Battle of Takur Ghar Controversy Continues
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/battle-of-takur-ghar-controversy-continues/?utm
By Sean Naylor
April 4, 2025
New Medal of Honor Museum Plays Down 21st Century Air Force Hero.
Twenty-three years after his heroic death on a frozen Afghan peak, John Chapman is still fighting against the odds.
Chapman, a combat controller with the 24th Special Tactics Squadron (STS), died March 4, 2002, fighting al-Qaida fighters on top of Takur Ghar Mountain in eastern Afghanistan after the SEAL Team 6 element to which he was attached mistakenly left him for dead when they retreated at night under heavy fire. Now those events are back in the headlines, this time because of decisions at the National Medal of Honor Museum, which opened March 25 in Arlington, Texas.
Chapman is the only Airman to be awarded the Medal of Honor in the 21st century and his award was not made without its own share of controversy. He was originally awarded an Air Force Cross for his efforts that day, although some reviewers wondered even then if he merited a Medal of Honor. It wasn’t until years later that the case was reopened and reviewers used video from a drone overhead that showed Chapman fighting on, alone—after the SEAL team withdrew. Momentum then built to upgrade the award.
But the SEALs resisted efforts to upgrade Chapman’s award. A standoff ensued, broken only after an unusual compromise: Chapman’s award would be upgraded, but so would that of now retired Navy Command Master Chief Britt Slabinski, who led the SEALs off Takur Ghar that day and inadvertently left Chapman to fight and die alone. Slabinski believed Chapman was dead when he evacuated the mountain.
President Donald Trump presents the Medal of Honor to Valerie Nessel, the widow of U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. John Chapman, during a ceremony at the White House Aug. 22, 2018. Wayne Clark
Lori Longfritz, Chapman’s elder sister, says the Medal of Honor Museum led her to believe for more than a year that he would be among 200 Medal recipients singled out at the museum with a personal exhibit. Then in January, just two months before the museum’s opening, she learned that would not in fact be the case. Chapman instead would be included within one of the museum’s feature displays, a timeline showing the history of the Medal of Honor, from its creation during the U.S. Civil War to the present. His distinction: His case represented the first use of video evidence to support a Medal of Honor award.
Longfritz might only have been disappointed that her brother would not be among the featured Medal of Honor recipients honored in dedicated exhibits at the museum; but what really rankled her was that while he was not being honored, Slabinski would get star treatment.
Slabinski turned out to be a member of the museum’s board of directors. The museum’s President and CEO, Chris Cassidy, and two other influential board members were also former SEALs; Slabinski’s wife, meanwhile, is employed by the museum as its associate director of recipients and veterans relations. These revelations made the decision to highlight Slabinski at the apparent expense of Chapman more than disappointing.
After his Air Force Cross was upgraded to a Medal of Honor, Chapman, shown here in 2002 in Afghanistan, was posthumously promoted to Master Sergeant. Courtesy
ROOTED IN CONTROVERSY
The dispute at the Medal of Honor Museum traces its origins to one of the earliest and most controversial battles of the War on Terror, a failed mission during Operation Anaconda in March 2002 in which U.S. and coalition forces sought to encircle and destroy eastern Afghanistan’s last remaining mass of al-Qaida fighters. The battle took place in the rugged Shahikot Valley.
Ahead of the first wave of heliborne infantry troops descending on the area, three elite U.S. special operations reconnaissance teams—two from Delta Force and one from SEAL Team 6—had audaciously infiltrated behind enemy lines into the high ground surrounding the valley.
Over several days, the teams used their hidden positions to report on enemy locations and to call in airstrikes, thus helping prevent a battlefield disaster. That success captured the attention of SEAL Team 6 officers at Bagram Air Base, about 100 miles north; Team 6 had seen little action so far in Afghanistan, and they were keen to get their operators into the fight.
Lt. Col. Pete Blaber, a veteran of the Army’s Delta Force, had overseen the first three teams’ infiltration. But in a decision with fatal consequences, the SEALs cut Blaber out of the communication loop and made plans to insert a small combat element onto Takur Ghar, the 10,469-foot mountain that was the valley’s dominant terrain feature.
The eight-man unit, a reconnaissance element called Mako 30, was led by Slabinski, and included six SEALs, an Army signals intelligence specialist, and Chapman. The team’s initial plan was to fly to an offset location about 1,300 meters east of the peak and patrol up the slopes in darkness. That way, their night vision goggles and ability to call in airstrikes would give them an advantage should they encounter any enemy.
Then a series of delays out of the SEALs’ control set their plans back. Slabinski asked to delay the infiltration 24 hours, but was overruled by his bosses in Bagram. With less time to maneuver under cover of darkness, Slabinski chose to fly straight to the top of the mountain, violating a golden rule: Never land directly on the spot that you intend to make your observation post.
An AC-130 gunship had flown over the peak hours previously and reported it to be unoccupied, but when the twin-rotor MH-47 Chinook helicopter arrived to deliver Mako 30 atop Takur Ghar, they found that intelligence to be faulty. Al-Qaida fighters were dug in, occupying the peak with machine guns, bunkers dug into the mountain, and a tent. As soon as the helicopter arrived, the al-Qaida fighters started firing on the U.S. forces.
An al-Qaida bullet severed a critical hydraulics hose on the helicopter, and chaos began to unfold. In the few seconds that it took for Slabinski to absorb this new reality, he tried to tell the pilots to abort the mission, to get the team out of there.
But as the Chinook lifted off, one of the SEALs, Petty Officer 1st Class Neil Roberts, either jumped or fell out of the aircraft, dropping 10 feet into thick snow; it is possible Roberts mistook the call to pull away as a directive to disembark the helicopter. Unable to turn around, the pilot, a seasoned member of the Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, steered the stricken helicopter away from the mountaintop as a crew chief hand-pumped cans of hydraulic fluid into the hydraulics system, desperately trying to keep the aircraft airborne. The leak was devastating, however, and the fluid quickly ran dry. The engine failed, and the pilot crash-landed the aircraft at the north end of the valley.
Slabinski, Chapman and the others were desperate to get back to Takur Ghar to rescue Roberts. But with the helicopter too badly damaged to fly, they had to wait. It took 45 minutes for another helicopter to arrive and fly them 8 miles north to the local special ops base at Gardez, where Slabinski, Chapman, and four others boarded a third Chinook for the return trip to the peak.
The Battle Unfolds
Arriving back at Takur Ghar, hovering above the mountaintop, the helicopter and its crew endured a withering hail of fire as the six operators jumped into the snow. The would-be rescuers could not have known it just then, but Roberts was already dead, killed by the al-Qaida fighters about half an hour before.
A CIA Predator drone captured video of the scene with its infrared camera. Slabinski can be seen to stumble as he lands in the snow, while Chapman moves immediately uphill to suppress heavy fire coming from a bunker. Closing to a distance of no more than 10 feet, he kills the two militants in the bunker.
Then-Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Britt K. Slabinski, was originally awarded a Navy Cross for his actions while leading a team under heavy enemy fire in an attempt to rescue SEAL teammate Petty Officer 1st Class Neil Roberts during Operation Anaconda in 2002. His award was later upgraded to a Medal of Honor, along with that of Air Force Tech Sgt. John Chapman, who died during the same operation. Slabinksi is shown here in 2002 near Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. U.S. Navy
Then machine gun fire bursts from another bunker. Chapman returns fire, but is shot and falls to the ground. Slabinski would later say that he glanced at Chapman and took note: Chapman’s rifle was laying on his chest, its aiming laser rising and falling with his breath. He was still alive. Then another member of the team was badly wounded.
Mako 30 was in danger of being wiped out. With no sign of Roberts, Slabinski knew he had to get his men off the mountain. But where was Chapman? Here is where the story gets murky. Slabinski did not respond to an emailed request for comment for this article, but in 2016 he told this reporter, for an article in The New York Times, that as he and the other SEALs edged off the mountaintop, he crawled over Chapman and determined he was dead.
The overhead footage does not show Slabinski crawling over anyone, but based on all details available, it appears that the body Slabinski thought was Chapman’s was, in fact, the deceased Roberts.
As another of his men was wounded, Slabinski and the rest of Mako 30 retreated off the top of the mountain, taking cover under a rocky overhang. Six hours later, after an arduous movement across a mile of rough terrain, they were picked up by a helicopter.
The CIA Predator, meanwhile, continued to loiter overhead. The intelligence feed proved surprising. Despite Slabinski’s initial account that no U.S. forces remained alive there, the Predator camera captured a gunfight on the mountaintop.
There is only one credible explanation for that firefight: That Chapman had actually survived his initial wound and then fought on alone. The video shows Chapman continuing his one-man stand in the heart of an al-Qaida position for about an hour, killing at least one al-Qaida fighter with well-aimed rifle fire and a second in hand-to-hand combat.
Meanwhile, at Bagram, staff officers at the special ops joint operations center were confused. Communications breakdowns meant they were unaware that two helicopters already had been badly shot up trying to land there. As the first of two Chinooks carrying the quick-reaction force [QRF] approached, Chapman came out from cover, exposing his position, to suppress enemy fire. Hours after first being hit, with possible salvation now only seconds away, Chapman was shot once more, this time fatally.
Again a helicopter was badly damaged, setting the stage for a daylong firefight in which five more U.S. troops would die before the Rangers finally wrested control of the peak from the insurgents.
Discussion began almost immediately that Chapman had done something remarkable, surviving his initial wounds and fighting on alone. In the aftermath of the battle, both Chapman (posthumously) and Slabinski were awarded service crosses for their actions. At least some on Chapman’s medal review board believed the Airman’s valor merited more: a Medal of Honor.
That is where things stood for more than a decade. But in 2016, as part of a larger Defense Department review, then-Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James initiated a study to determine whether any Air Force awards during the War on Terror deserved to be upgraded to a Medal of Honor. (No Airman had received a Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War.)
Chapman’s Air Force Cross was the obvious candidate.
The Predator as Eyewitness
Requirements for the Medal of Honor are stringent, and until then, eyewitness testimony was necessary. The problem was that no eyewitnesses were on hand as Chapman waged his lonely fight. But there had been witnesses to the Predator feed, and that evidence offered something new: reviewable video of the battle. An Air Force team then combined the Predator footage with video from an AC-130H Spectre gunship, creating a compelling case showing Chapman’s exploits. The service argued that the video was the equivalent of eyewitness testimony, perhaps better even, as memory can be fallible, and that by charging the bunker to kill the two militants inside, then fighting alone on the mountaintop, and finally sacrificing his life to protect the inbound Chinook, Chapman more than met the criteria for the Medal of Honor.
Indeed, retired Lt. Col. Dan Schilling, another 24th STS veteran who was the co-author, with Longfritz, of “Alone at Dawn,” a biography of Chapman, published his version of the video with his own narration that argues that Chapman’s exploits warranted two separate Medals of Honor.
President Donald Trump awarded the Medal of Honor to Slabinski, by then a retired Navy Master Chief, in May 2018. The SEALs initially objected to upgrading Chapman’s Air Force Cross to a Medal of Honor, but relented in exchange for an upgrade to Slabinski’s award. Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Raymond Diaz III
The case for the upgrade ran into pushback almost immediately, however. The SEALs objected to the upgrade, which cast light on their organization’s shortcomings during that mission. The Air Force’s version of events on Takur Ghar necessarily implied that the SEALs mistakenly left behind a living member of their team, Chapman—a finding the Naval Special Warfare Command was unwilling to accept. Led at the time by Rear Adm. Tim Szymanski, who had been one of the officers in the Bagram joint operations center, the command waged an unprecedented campaign against upgrading Chapman’s medal.
After a long and bitter dispute Chapman’s Medal of Honor upgrade was allowed to advance, but only if the Pentagon also upgraded Slabinski’s Navy Cross. The agreement also split Chapman’s citation in two, one part public, the second part classified. This has led to a misunderstanding by some that Chapman earned two awards that day; although, as Schilling points out, the actions, taken separately, each qualified for Medal of Honor recognition, only one medal was awarded.
Each Medal of Honor came separately: President Donald Trump presented Slabinski with his Medal of Honor at a White House ceremony on May 24, 2018. Three months later, on Aug. 22, 2018, at another White House ceremony, Chapman’s widow, Valerie Nessel, accepted his Medal of Honor from Trump on what would have been their 26th wedding anniversary. The following day, Chapman was posthumously promoted to master sergeant.
FIGHT FOR RECOGNITION
Since his death, Chapman’s loudest champion has been his sister, Lori Longfritz.
When Longfritz found out that a National Medal of Honor Museum was being constructed in Texas, she followed its progress closely. In 2022 an acquaintance arranged for her to be put on the email list for biweekly construction updates from the museum’s chief of operations, Darrell Utt. In April 2023, she and other members of her family even held a Zoom meeting with retired Air Force Col. Mike Caldwell, the museum’s director of recipient and executive support, at his invitation, to discuss how the exhibits would be displayed.
In December 2023, she suggested to Utt via email that she visit the construction site with one or more representatives of the 24th STS to discuss artifacts that the unit and Chapman’s family might make available for a Chapman exhibit. He agreed to set up the meeting, and looped in the museum’s curator, Greg Waters. A close reading of the exchanges that follow, which Longfritz shared with Air & Space Forces Magazine, reveals that although no museum official stated that Chapman would have his own exhibit, the museum representatives made no effort to disavow Longfritz of that notion.
An Oct. 5, 2023, contemporaneous email from Longfritz to others in her family indicates that Longfritz understood from Caldwell that her brother would have his own exhibit. “I just got off a call with Col. Caldwell (Ret.) regarding the museum and the displays,” she wrote. “He told me that John’s display will be in a different place/building than Slabinski’s … Col Caldwell said they haven’t quite decided on how each display will be laid out, but did say John’s is special since his MOH is the first with video proof. I’m excited to see how they do it.”
Six weeks later, in a Dec. 20, 2023, email, Waters indicated interest in acquiring artifacts for display: “I would love to learn more about the artifacts that are potentially available that would help us share the John Chapman story with our future museum visitors.” There is no indication that Waters was thinking about a future beyond the 2025 opening of the museum.
Longfritz visited the museum site on Feb. 2, 2024, accompanied by retired Senior Master Sgt. Mike Rizzuto, who had served with Chapman in the 24th STS. “The main reason he was coming is they wanted to be able to offer up any artifacts that the unit had that maybe could be used in the museum,” she said.
After touring the site, Longfritz met with a small group of museum officials in a conference room, she told Air & Space Forces Magazine in February 2025. The group included Waters, Caldwell, and Alexandra Rhue, senior vice president for museum engagement and strategic initiatives, she recalled. Again, she concluded the meeting with the firm impression that the museum planned to give Chapman his own exhibit.
“They actually showed us where they were going to most likely put John’s exhibit,” she said. Waters told her that he and Caldwell would travel to Colorado to meet with Terry Chapman, the mother of Chapman and Longfritz, for whom travel is difficult due to medical issues, according to Longfritz. (In a March 11, 2024, email to Longfritz, Waters wrote, in answer to a query from Longfritz about why her mother hadn’t heard from him: “I haven’t reached out to your mom yet as I’m waiting to coordinate with Mike Caldwell’s schedule.”)
During the meeting in the conference room, Longfritz said, she also “called out the elephant in the room,” asking whether the museum planned to place her brother’s exhibit beside Slabinski’s. “They said, ‘The exhibits will not be together,’” which Longfritz understood to mean that Chapman and Slabinski would each have their own exhibit. For Longfritz, this was key, because she held Slabinski partially responsible for fighting against Chapman’s award upgrade: “I wanted to make damn sure that Slabinski had zero to do with John’s exhibit.” Museum officials assured her that he would not, she said.
A Feb. 5, 2024, email from Longfritz to Waters, Utt, Rhue and Caldwell expressed surprise at learning that Slabinski had a seat on the museum foundation’s board. “How is someone who actively participated in several attempts at squashing another man’s Medal of Honor … the man who saved his life and for whom, thankfully, there was video evidence … allowed on the board?” she wrote. “I’m not looking for an answer; it’s just a headshaker for me.”
In a March 11, 2024, email to Utt, Longfritz inquired whether her earlier comments about Slabinski had upset museum officials. She stated again that she was concerned about any “potential influence on the board” that Slabinski might wield. “John isn’t here to ensure his story is correctly and properly told,” she wrote. “I am; It’s my duty.”
Utt’s reply sought to set Longfritz’s mind at ease. He told her he’d passed her concerns on to Cassidy, the museum president and CEO. “Rest assured, your dedication to ensuring accurate representation is noted and extremely valued,” Utt wrote.
Months later, in November 2024, Longfritz discovered that the museum would not mount an exhibit dedicated to her brother. “Somebody reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, I spoke to someone within the museum and was told that you were misled on your tour back in February,’” she recalled in the interview.
Longfritz was unsure whether to trust this new information; it seemed so at variance with what museum officials had told her. But on Jan. 6, in an email from Waters to Terry Chapman, the family learned that the museum’s only references to John Chapman’s heroism would be a photo portrait in the introduction video that visitors see as they enter the museum and “the timeline of the history of the Medal of Honor,” which would feature the overhead footage. “We initially thought that we could include a few small artifacts related to his story as well,” Waters wrote, “but we later realized that this wasn’t possible due to space constraints.”
Later that day, Rhue sent a similar email to Longfritz. “Of the over 3,500 Medal of Honor Recipient stories, we are able to feature about 200 in the inaugural exhibit,” Rhue wrote. “Through the next few decades, we will be rotating exhibits and expanding on stories. I look forward to sharing more of John’s story.”
Longfritz asked in follow-up emails whether Slabinski would be among the 200 featured exhibits. Rhue confirmed that he would.
Longfritz was irate. Not only did the SEALs appear to have sought to diminish her brother’s heroism, but the museum had apparently knowingly allowed her to believe that John Chapman would have his own exhibit. She had thus spread that word with friends and family and encouraged them to travel to the opening. The museum didn’t reveal the facts until directly questioned.
“They told us that there would be an exhibit. … They knew that there was going to be lots of family and friends going, expecting to see a beautiful exhibit for John,” Longfritz said. “And only at that point in time, while we’re standing there in the museum, was when we would find out that there wasn’t one. … They were willing to let my mother, 83 years old and on oxygen, figure out how to get to Texas to see her son in a museum exhibit, only then to find out that there wasn’t one. Why? What motivates somebody to do that to a family?”
Air & Space Forces Magazine arranged an interview with Caldwell to ask him about these events, but his bosses at the museum canceled the call and referred the magazine to Seven Letter, a strategic communications firm engaged by the museum. A spokesperson, Amber McDonald, declined to provide a museum official for an interview, instead emailing a statement from Cassidy that had been posted online in January. McDonald was provided a list of questions, but she did not reply.
MUSEUM INSIDER’S ACCOUNT
According to a former official at the museum, there was never any intent to mount a Chapman display.
Although Cassidy’s Jan. 31 statement says that the museum did not make its final decisions on exhibits until March 2024, the former museum official who spoke with Air & Space Forces Magazine on condition of anonymity said the decision on Chapman’s exhibit had already been made when Caldwell, Rhue, and Waters met with Longfritz in February 2024.
“That decision was made in late 2022/early 2023 … well, well, well before” Longfritz’s visit, the former museum official said. “They placated her, they lied to her, and said, ‘Oh yeah, maybe we can get some artifacts,’ knowing they were not going to use any of those artifacts.”
The December 2018 addition of Slabinski to the museum’s board ensured that his version of the Takur Ghar battle would take precedence, according to the former museum official. With Cassidy at the helm and retired SEALs Mike Hayes and Chris Sambar also on the board, the SEAL influence won out.
“There’s a connection there,” said the former museum official. “It all had to do with keeping Britt [Slabinski] happy.”
The board’s collective feeling was that giving Chapman an exhibit ran the risk of embarrassing Slabinski, according to the former museum official, who characterized the civilian board members’ view of Slabinski and other Medal of Honor recipients as akin to hero worship.
“The people on the board, they eat up the Medal of Honor recipients,” the former museum official said. “They weren’t going to [give Chapman an exhibit] and take something away from Britt, especially when he does so much for the foundation and his wife works for us.”
Yet there was another reason why the board was keen to stay on Slabinski’s good side, according to the former museum official. In 2023, Slabinski ran for president of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, a completely different organization, but one which has its own small museum on the World War II aircraft carrier USS Yorktown at Patriots Point, S.C.
The society did not have a good relationship with the National Medal of Honor Museum under its previous president, retired Army Master Sgt. Leroy Petry, the former museum official said. “They hated us,” the official asserted. “We did not get along.”
Medal of Honor recipient and Army Lt. Col. Will Swenson was already on both boards, but in 2023 three other Medal of Honor recipients on the National Medal of Honor Museum’s board successfully ran for election to the society’s board, which stipulates members must have received the Medal of Honor. That meant that four of the museum’s five Medal of Honor recipient board members were now on the society’s nine-member board, including the president (Slabinski) and vice president (Swenson).
“We knew that he was going to be going up against Leroy Petry at the next Congressional Medal of Honor Society [election],” said the former museum official, adding that leaders at the National Medal of Honor Museum were hoping that if Slabinski won, they would get more access to the society’s artifacts. As a result, “there was a lot that went into … making Britt happy.”
After Slabinski’s election, “Greg Waters and Alex Rhue went to Patriots Point, S.C., to look at all of their exhibits, to see what was what, what’s the value, is there anything that we need,” said the former museum official, who did not know whether the trip proved fruitful.
THE FIGHT CONTINUES
Museum leaders understood the challenge but decided on a strategy of “kicking the can down the road” when it came to delivering the hard truth to Chapman’s family. Several individuals warned them that they were courting controversy by not giving Chapman his own exhibit, and Cassidy and Rhue were told repeatedly that “there’s a lot of sensitivity in the special operations community about this,” the former museum official said. But those warnings fell “on deaf ears—over and over and over again,” the former museum official added.
In January 2025, the issue exploded into public view. Longfritz voiced her frustrations in a Jan. 9 Facebook post that caught the attention of military-oriented publications and special operations-focused outlets in particular. In his podcast, “The After-Action Report,” Seth Hettena called the situation “Stolen Valor at the Medal of Honor Museum.” Dave Parke, a former Ranger who co-hosts “The Team House” podcast, launched an online petition that, by early March, had garnered 25,000 signatures.
“We ask the National Medal of Honor Museum to revise their decision to not represent John Chapman’s sacrifice and deeds amongst their exhibits,” the statement accompanying the petition says. “The Museum’s choice to honor Britt Slabinsky [sic] without acknowledging John Chapman appears influenced by politics and seems like an extension of the Naval Special Warfare’s efforts to diminish Chapman’s contributions.”
The blowback caught the museum’s executives “flatfooted,” said the former museum official. “They were shocked, and I think that’s why they were so just deathly quiet initially.”
After weeks of criticism, the museum issued its Jan. 31 statement, in which Cassidy stated that the “recipient stories” that the museum chose to highlight “are those for whom we were able to work with family members or other academic institutions to be entrusted with a significant number of artifacts and unique personal items which can be displayed to help bring their story to life.”
The statement ignored evidence shared with Air & Space Forces Magazine that makes it clear that both the Chapman family and the 24th STS reached out repeatedly to the museum to discuss what artifacts the museum might want for a Chapman display—but neither the museum nor its communications agency answered our follow-up questions.
Cassidy’s defense centers on the museum’s timeline feature and its inclusion of a segment of the video that underpinned the upgrade of Chapman’s Air Force Cross to the Medal of Honor. “The video … represents a turning point in the traditional verification criteria for how Medals of Honor are awarded and is part of the Museum’s permanent exhibit which will not be subject to our planned regular rotation,” Cassidy wrote. “This means Master Sergeant Chapman will remain a featured recipient for the foreseeable future.”
But the former museum official said the Chapman video will be only a “very small” piece, one “that’s probably going to get overlooked” by many visitors. By contrast, “Britt Slabinski is getting one of the main exhibits, like [notable Army heroes] Audie Murphy and Alvin York [are] getting.”
All this controversy was avoidable, the former museum official said: “This is a self-inflicted wound. They didn’t think anybody was going to call them out on it, and here they are. They got called out.”
Sean D. Naylor is the author of “Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda” and “Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command.” He covered Operation Anaconda from the Shahikot Valley for Army Times as an embedded reporter. He now edits and writes for The High Side, an online publication he co-founded with Jack Murphy dedicated to investigative journalism on national security.
4. How Black paratroopers saved the US from Japan’s WWII firebombs
Another great story about great Americans and an overlooked part of American history.
I conducted one intentional tree jump in the Pacific Northwest (Ft Lewis) with the modern rough terrain suit, helmet, and rappel ropes pioneered by these men. One was enough.
Excerpts:
Instead of the usual Army attire, the Triple Nickles were issued modified uniforms that were fire resistant, helmets with wire cages to protect from the thick brush, and ropes to lower themselves down from trees.
The precision, tactics and techniques developed and used by the Triple Nickles helped to create strategies for jumping with a parachute into wildfires. They also became experts in getting rid of explosives.
Harris completed 72 jumps during his time with the Triple Nickles. He was honorably discharged after he was seriously injured on a jump when his parachute failed to inflate fully.
Unknown then, hidden again now?
The Black heroes of the 555th did participate with their White brothers-in-arms for the 1946 victory parade in New York City even before the Army and the rest of the military was desegregated.
But they still had to sit at the back of the bus and endure the other hostilities of discrimination.
“It’s like ‘We don’t really respect you, but we need you,’” said Pittman of what his grandfather and others went through.
To historian Bartlett, the patriotism of the Triple Nickles was clear.
“These men loved their country. They loved their country, but their country did not love them,” he said.
“They saw their participation in the war as their duty,” he added. “It was what you were supposed to do.”
How Black paratroopers saved the US from Japan’s WWII firebombs | CNN
CNN · by Sabrina Clay · April 5, 2025
Paratroopers of the 555th Parachute Infantry lineup their "jumpsuit" before leaving on a mission in 1945. Behind them is a C-47 of Troop Carrier Command that will fly them to their destination.
US National Archives
CNN —
A World War II-era plane is set to fly over a veteran’s funeral Saturday. Eighty years ago, elite paratroopers were leaping out of similar aircraft on a secret mission called Operation Firefly.
They jumped into burning wildfires, often landing in trees and having to rappel down ropes. When the ropes were too short, they fell to the ground, learning how to protect their bodies as best as they could.
Their job was to put out the flames caused by balloon bombs that Japan floated across the Pacific Ocean – the first recorded intercontinental weapons.
The paratroopers were highly trained and effective, making 1,200 jumps with the loss of only one man. And they were all Black.
Sgt. Joe Harris.
Courtesy Beyond the Call
Sgt. Joe Harris, who is being laid to rest on Saturday, was one of them. He died last month in Los Angeles at the age of 108, perhaps one of the last of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion known as the “Triple Nickles.”
“He broke barriers, he defied limits, and he proved that bravery knows no color,” Harris’ grandson Ashton Pittman told CNN.
Few knew about the Triple Nickles in their day and Pittman said he was unaware of his grandfather’s wartime heroism until he was a teenager.
“His (wartime) service was just a chapter in a long, extraordinary life,” added Pittman. “But it’s a testament to his resilience and his honor and his unwavering dedication to something greater than himself.”
Fighting a different kind of enemy
Even well into World War II, Black soldiers were typically relegated to menial, non-combat positions in the Army. They cooked, patched roads, did the laundry and guarded the military gates, according to Robert Bartlett, a veteran, retired college professor and Triple Nickles historian.
But 16 soldiers from the segregated 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion became the first Black men to graduate from the Army’s elite Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia. Their unit was nicknamed the “Triple Nickles,” referencing the members’ past as “Buffalo Soldiers” of the 92nd Infantry Division and the “buffalo” nickel of the era, though using the unusual spelling of nickle.
When the Triple Nickles finally received orders for a secret mission, they thought they would be heading to Europe to fight, Bartlett said.
Army parachute riggers work with the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion at Pendleton Army Air Base in Pendleton, Oregon, in 1945.
US National Archives
Instead, their group, now 300 strong, was ordered to Pendleton Army Airfield in Oregon where they learned they would be taking on a different kind of enemy, one they had not trained for: Fires.
The Army was determined to keep “Operation Firefly” a secret, Bartlett said.
“They didn’t want the American people to panic that they were getting bombed by the Japanese, and they didn’t want the Japanese to know that they were successful,” he added.
“It was a secret war that the US was fighting.”
As the US Army was training the Triple Nickles to disarm bombs, the men were also being taught by the US Forest Service to become the first military smokejumpers.
“The military is going to train you how to deal with these bombs, but we’re going to have to train you how to jump into the mountains with picks and shovels and put out fires,” Bartlett recounted of what the Triple Nickles were told by the Forest Service.
Paratroopers of the 555th Parachute Infantry drift toward the tree tops not far from a forest fire in Umatilla National Forest, Oregon, in 1945.
US National Archives
Paratroopers of the 555th Parachute Infantry prepare a clearing to keep the forest fire from spreading in Umatilla National Forest, Oregon, in 1945.
US National Archives
Instead of the usual Army attire, the Triple Nickles were issued modified uniforms that were fire resistant, helmets with wire cages to protect from the thick brush, and ropes to lower themselves down from trees.
The precision, tactics and techniques developed and used by the Triple Nickles helped to create strategies for jumping with a parachute into wildfires. They also became experts in getting rid of explosives.
Harris completed 72 jumps during his time with the Triple Nickles. He was honorably discharged after he was seriously injured on a jump when his parachute failed to inflate fully.
Unknown then, hidden again now?
The Black heroes of the 555th did participate with their White brothers-in-arms for the 1946 victory parade in New York City even before the Army and the rest of the military was desegregated.
But they still had to sit at the back of the bus and endure the other hostilities of discrimination.
“It’s like ‘We don’t really respect you, but we need you,’” said Pittman of what his grandfather and others went through.
To historian Bartlett, the patriotism of the Triple Nickles was clear.
“These men loved their country. They loved their country, but their country did not love them,” he said.
“They saw their participation in the war as their duty,” he added. “It was what you were supposed to do.”
A C-47 of Troop Carrier Command carries these parachutists of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion to the scene of a remote fire in Wallowa Forest, Oregon, in 1945.
US National Archives
Bartlett said one reason why the Triple Nickles are not better known is because its members did not talk about their service much.
Omar Bradley, who’d later become mayor of Compton, California, grew up next door to Harris, and said he knew he’d been part of something special.
“It’s very difficult to understand jumping into a fire,” he said. “So, what it took to transform into that kind of man is something they didn’t talk about. But yes, we knew that Mr. Harris was a member of a very elite group.”
Some of the official recognition of the 555th is being lost. A page on the US Forest Service website about the agency’s connection to the Black paratroopers entitled “The Triple Nickles: A history of service, an enduring legacy” is now blank except for the message “You are not authorized to access this page.”
There has also been a purge of Pentagon websites under the Trump administration to remove content related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) that wiped the stories of baseball legend Jackie Robinson, who served during World War II, and the Navajo Code Talkers before they were restored amid public outcry.
Finally, recognized as a hero
After he left the Army, Joe Harris spent decades working as a border patrol officer, according to his grandson Pittman.
The younger man said he has grown more appreciative of some of the things his grandfather gave to him, like his Triple Nickles patch and his World War II jacket. “It means the world to me. It’s a piece of history, but it’s a piece of our family’s history,” Pittman said.
In October to honor his grandfather, he decided to go through paratrooper training, even though he is not in the military.
Ashton Pittman carries his grandfather's photo in his helmet.
Courtesy Beyond the Call
“I felt that I needed to do it to pay respect to him and to people that have served, especially the Triple Nickles,” Pittman said. In the future he hopes to travel and take part on jump teams to show his appreciation for veterans.
The World War II nonprofit Beyond the Call recognized Harris’ life. “Joe Harris’ bravery and selflessness exemplify the spirit of the Triple Nickle Paratroopers,” it said. “His remarkable story serves as a reminder of the sacrifices made by those who served during World War II and the importance of honoring their legacy for future generations.”
That legacy was to be honored Saturday, with a full military funeral complete with the fly-past.
CNN’s Dianne Gallagher contributed to this story.
CNN · by Sabrina Clay · April 5, 2025
5. Ashburn mom shares her secret career in the CIA
Another great story about a great American. You never know who your neighbor really is when you live in northern Virginia.
Ashburn mom shares her secret career in the CIA
https://www.ashburnmagazine.com/neighbors/ashburn-mom-shares-her-secret-career-in-the-cia/
April 2, 2025 Editor Feature Stories, Our Neighbors 0
OUT OF THE SHADOWS
By Chris Wadsworth
For decades, other than her closest family members, no one really knew what Ann Butler did for a living. Not her childhood friends, nor her college friends and certainly not the neighbors her family befriended while living around the globe in European capitals, or North Africa, or Texas or New York. Not even her neighbors right here in Ashburn.
That’s because while Butler’s cover story was that she was a diplomat with the State Department, she was really an undercover officer for the CIA.
“When people think of the CIA, they think it’s kind of exotic and cool and different,” Butler said. “But actually, to me, it was quite ordinary.”
We beg to differ. After majoring in economics at the University of Notre Dame, and pursuing intensive French language and culture studies overseas, Butler knew she wanted an international career. One of the opportunities that popped up on her radar – the Central Intelligence Agency.
She got the job and went on to spend 27 years in a field that most people can only daydream about – frequent travel, secret disguises, covert meetings – all while raising a family of five kids with her husband, Joe Potak.
Let’s face it, it’s not every woman whose water breaks while she’s walking into a top secret rendezvous with a fellow officer.
Now retired from the Agency, Butler continues to work in the field, providing operational support and training services to the CIA via her own company. She and Potak are settled comfortably in Ashburn’s Farmwell Hunt neighborhood – in the same house the family originally bought way back in 2005 during a stint in D.C.
She’s also decided she’s ready to share her story. Her new book – “Wife, Mother, Spy: An Extraordinary Life with Ordinary Days” – has just been published.
In the book, she recounts her nearly three-decade career with the CIA, recruiting foreign assets overseas and working on some of the most sensitive matters affecting the United States and the world.
She also reflects on the impact her career had on her husband, as well as her children, who today range in age from 21 to 32. (It was a career some of her kids didn’t know about until their mom left the Agency in 2013.)
Butler shared some excerpts from her book with Ashburn Magazine. We present them here along with a short Q&A with the author. Together, they will give readers a glimpse into her career and how she blended being a wife and a mom with the world of espionage
EXCERPTS
About wearing disguises…
“I wore a ‘light disguise’ when meeting someone I knew I would likely not see again… It was something simple – a wig, facial marks, glasses. My simple, quickly thrown-together disguise that I kept handy in the safe next to my desk consisted of a blue patterned scarf, a pair of brown-framed glasses, makeup a shade darker than my complexion and a mole to place on my left cheek. It was easy to use, quick to pull together and compact enough to keep in my purse if I needed it in the field. They were all common enough items that no one would question why I even had them. I could easily and quickly change my appearance and present myself differently to someone I would never see again. The wig was slightly more complicated. It was something I wore when I had to dramatically change my appearance – such as having to get in and out of a place or to determine if someone was following me. It totally transformed my look.”
On a meeting in Texas that didn’t go as planned…
“My plan was to pick up my colleague then drive to a nearby restaurant for a brief dinner meeting to discuss the next day’s agenda. I had arranged the airport meeting via our secure communication method at the office. Tom would take over the case while I was away from the office on my maternity leave. We both knew and understood the plan. I had the restaurant picked out and the logistics under control. It was all so straightforward and simple. I drove into the parking lot at the small, regional airport on the outskirts of town. I continued through the gate and found a spot just a few rows away from the entrance. With a slight bit of difficulty, given my large, nine-month pregnancy belly, I extricated myself from behind the wheel of the car. I was running a few minutes behind schedule, so I began to walk rather briskly toward the front door of the terminal. Suddenly, just before reaching the airport entrance, I felt a warm liquid running down my leg. Within seconds, my lower extremities were soaked. My water had broken, and [our son] Kyle was on his way! Despite the hassle of being in labor and the quick change the trajectory of the day was taking, my colleague and I were both quite calm. After all, we were taught how to remain composed under crisis.”
On carrying a gun…
“I had very few outfits that came with a belt, and even if they did, the belt would not have held a holster. Since I was required to have my Glock with me whenever I was working outside the office, two of our technical officers did me a huge favor. They reconfigured my go-to, large, black Coach purse so that I could easily access my weapon whenever it was necessary. It also allowed me to inconspicuously carry it with me wherever I went. When the tech officers had completed their complicated sewing job, I was able to conceal my weapon and still use my bag every day to carry my notebook, wallet, keys and lunch. Essentially, these talented officers created a hidden compartment that securely held my gun. It worked beautifully.”
On meeting a foreign agent in secret…
“He had been working with us for a long time. Through a complicated covert communications system, we arranged a place and time for each follow-up meeting. They were always held after dark. The location needed to be away from casual observers and easy to access and depart from. I would already know how to arrive without dragging surveillance. It was close to 11 p.m. one evening. I had driven around for two hours already. I didn’t have any surveillance. I was clean. I proceeded toward the meeting spot, a pull-off area on a small road reached after several turns. The area was encircled by tall pines, making the spot hard to see. Just before the last turn on the larger road, I stopped, ensuring I wasn’t across from or next to any house. I had already turned the headlights off as I approached the spot. I opened the driver’s door and retrieved the screwdriver from my pocket and an envelope from under my seat. Then, I knelt down near the front bumper. Within a few seconds, I had removed the diplomatic license plate and replaced it with a local plate. I then hurried to the back of the vehicle and repeated the same process. I quietly slipped back into the driver’s seat, stashed the envelope with the plates I had just removed under my seat, put the car into drive, and eased around the corner where Tawfik waited in the shadows of a tree.”
On tough times for the kids…
“Eleven different schools in seven different cities in five different countries. Every new school meant learning a new routine, new ‘rules of the road,’ conferring with new teachers, and understanding a new administration. These moves were difficult for the children. They had it the hardest. They had no say in where we were going to live, what school they would attend, how long we would be there, or where we would go next. We decided it all for them. As we said goodbye to friends in one neighborhood, a place we had only lived two years, Kyle put his head down in his lap and sobbed. Still in elementary school, he was probably thinking of his friends down the street, or running through the neighbors’ backyards, or the sleepovers with his buddies, or the antics at the bus stop and wondering if his days would ever be so fun again.”
Q&A
Q: So, let’s talk terminology. Were you technically a spy? It’s in the title of your book, but how is it used in the CIA?
“That’s a very good question. It’s always met with some consternation, especially from those that work in the Agency. So here is what it means: When we recruit foreigners, they’ll be an agent working for us – a spy, in other words. We are considered [CIA] officers, so the designation is Case Officer or (more recently) operations officer.”
Q: So, you’re not technically the ones doing the spying. You’re recruiting people who are doing the spying on your behalf or the Agency’s behalf.
“That’s right. It’s complicated, and the reason ‘spy’ is in the book title is because it’s what people believe about the Agency. People generally understand that ‘spy’ means someone who gathers intelligence. If I simply said ‘Wife, Mother, Case Officer’ – no one outside the intelligence community would understand.”
Q: It sounds like you had an interesting and even exciting career, but it wasn’t all shootouts and car chases like in the James Bond movies.
“The work that the CIA does, that case officers do overseas, is intentionally discreet. It’s under the radar. We are quiet. We meet people. We go places. But we don’t talk about what we do.”
Q: When we asked if you had photos from your time overseas with the Agency, you didn’t have many. I guess spies don’t snap a lot of selfies.
“I don’t want to raise my hand and say, ‘Hey, look at me.’ I want to do my thing quietly, meet somebody, then go back to my office and write up my report. So, unlike in the James Bond movies – we don’t carry a weapon unless we have to, if it’s a dangerous place. We are taught to only shoot in an extreme situation. We certainly don’t want an international incident.”
Q: With a career like yours, you must have a very understanding husband.
“It was a challenge. My husband never knew where I was going, even if I had to leave the country to travel. He never worried about it because if he had to get a hold of me, there was a system – there were people he could call. He had a very checkered resume because of our moves. He knew what he was getting into marrying me. He had a career that he was excited about, but he had to keep looking for a new job every place we went. He took it in stride because he’s smart and is really good at what he does [network engineering]. He was able to get really great jobs, but it was tough for him to give them up over and over again with every move.”
Q: You’ve been retired from the CIA for a dozen years. Why write a book now?
“I initially wrote it for my children because I wanted to leave a legacy for them. I wanted them to know why we lived the life we lived. As I started writing things down, I realized there’s more to the story than just our life – the whole working mother thing. It’s very possible to have a really cool, interesting, fulfilling, exciting career and a really fun, satisfying family life. I wanted to tell others that it really is possible to have it all.”
HOW TO BUY THE BOOK
“Wife, Mother, Spy: An Extraordinary Life Filled with Ordinary Days” by Ann Butler is available from online booksellers Amazon.com and BN.com.
Butler is also having two “Meet the Author” event.
The first is at the Barnes & Noble store at One Loudoun in Ashburn on April 5 at 1pm. The second is at the Brambleton Library in Ashburn on Wednesday, April 30, from 7 to 8 p.m.
6. Finland Knows Winter Is Coming
Wise Finns.
Excerpts:
The Finns take their preservation more seriously than the European defense-spending laggards the Trump Administration complains about. That is from long experience of sharing an 800-mile border with Russia.
Adding Helsinki to the NATO alliance was a force multiplier, particularly large Finnish military reserves and expertise in winter warfare. But the Finns aren’t betting on peace. They’re reading the room of a more aggressive Russia and a less reliable United States, and reorganizing accordingly.
Finland Knows Winter Is Coming
The Finns ramp up defense spending and leave a land-mine pact. It’s a lesson for Trump.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/finland-defense-spending-nato-land-mine-deal-alexander-stubb-c452765a?mod=hp_opin_pos_6#cxrecs_s
By The Editorial Board
April 3, 2025 5:43 pm ET
Finland's President Alexander Stubb Photo: drew angerer/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The Trump Administration is shaking up world affairs and thinks Europe should handle its own defense. Finland is answering that call with a re-armament announced this week, but it’s a testament to the storm clouds all over the world, which still requires U.S. leadership.
Finland’s President Alexander Stubb said Tuesday that the government “has today taken two key decisions, reflecting the changes in our security environment.” Finland will spend 3% of its economy on defense by 2029, up from about 2.4% now, according to North Atlantic Treaty Organization data. Helsinki will also “prepare for the withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention,” the 1990s treaty aimed at eliminating the use of anti-personnel land mines.
The Finns take their preservation more seriously than the European defense-spending laggards the Trump Administration complains about. That is from long experience of sharing an 800-mile border with Russia.
Adding Helsinki to the NATO alliance was a force multiplier, particularly large Finnish military reserves and expertise in winter warfare. But the Finns aren’t betting on peace. They’re reading the room of a more aggressive Russia and a less reliable United States, and reorganizing accordingly.
The arms-control lobby is howling about the land mine treaty and the danger to civilians if such weapons return to broad use. But that treaty was a luxury of a stable world after the Cold War ended. The Finns are right to cashier it.
Anti-personnel land mines would be crucial to blunting a Russian invasion, and that’s why Poland and the Baltic states also want to leave the convention. The U.S. has wisely declined to sign up for the Ottawa convention in part because land mines are essential to America’s defense of South Korea.
But the larger picture is that Europe is becoming less stable precisely as the Trump Administration is threatening to skip town. The Finns get it, as the kids say. America’s right move now is to propose its own defense investment that reflects the world’s threats and not some fantasy about peace in our time.
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Free Expression: For all its bold talk, Europe could easily remain economically hidebound, politically divided and militarily weak even as tensions with the U.S. rise dramatically. Photo: Emil Nicolai Helms/Zuma Press/Yuri Gripas/Pool/Shutterstock
Appeared in the April 4, 2025, print edition as 'Finland Knows Winter Is Coming'.
7. States caught unprepared for Trump’s threats to FEMA
Long term implications.
I wonder if States will turn to their National Guard forces to fill the gap if there are significant cuts?
States caught unprepared for Trump’s threats to FEMA
FEMA is canceling plans to award states grants to help prepare against future disasters. Federal funds given to states after disasters strike could also be in jeopardy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/04/05/fema-disaster-states-funding/
April 5, 2025 at 7:00 a.m. EDTYesterday at 7:00 a.m. EDT
8 min
938
Tom Jacobs walks outside his flood-damaged home along the shore of McCook Lake in North Sioux City, South Dakota, in November. Months after floods hit the area, many residents continue to rebuild. (Rebecca S. Gratz/For The Washington Post)
By Anna Phillips, Jake Spring, Kevin Crowe and Dan Diamond
Torrential rain fell on Eastern Kentucky in July 2022, turning creeks into rivers that roared through the valleys and hollows, wrecking hundreds of homes and killing 45 people. Since then, the state has been trapped in a cycle of seemingly never-ending disasters, exhausting storm-weary residents in impoverished small towns.
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“Our families are hurting and suffering, and our businesses are being hit and hit again,” said Kristin Walker Collins, chief executive of the nonprofit Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky.
During Donald Trump’s first presidency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency launched a program to break this cycle, awarding billions of dollars to states to repair levees, elevate flood-prone homes and shore up drinking water systems. The program was built on research showing it is many times less expensive to protect against future damage from natural disasters than to pay for repairs and rebuilding afterward. Kentucky received more than $7 million for hazard mitigation projects and upgrading power transmission lines.
FEMA is now canceling plans to award these grants for the 2024 fiscal year, according to an internal memo reviewed by The Washington Post. As Trump’s second administration looks to slash federal spending, money given to states by the federal government after disasters strike could also be in jeopardy. The president has said he wants to eliminate FEMA and shift responsibility for disaster response to the states — which experts said are unprepared to respond to catastrophic disasters without federal assistance.
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The preparedness grant program, known as Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, had made more than $5 billion available since 2020 to help local projects that reduce the impact of disasters. The agency plans to review earlier grants and claw back funding for those that have not yet been paid out, the memo said.
A FEMA spokeswoman said the program, known as BRIC, is ending “non-mission critical programs.”
“BRIC was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program,” she said in a statement. “It was more concerned with climate change than helping Americans effected by natural disasters.”
Some emergency management experts say the president’s proposal to shift the financial responsibility of responding to those disasters to states could prompt chaos in state capitals and city governments, forcing messy political fights about how to pay for disaster relief and fund preparedness offices.
A key reason is that, since FEMA’s creation in 1979, states have come to rely on the agency to pay for their emergency management agencies’ day-to-day operations. In North Dakota, Homeland Security Division Director Darin Hanson said he expects about 89 percent of the division’s budget in the next two years will come from FEMA, paying for 28 of the division’s 45 full-time employees. In Wyoming, which has the smallest population of any state, the Office of Homeland Security is 92 percent federally funded.
If the Trump administration eliminates or cuts state emergency management grants, dozens of layoffs are likely to follow, state officials said, leaving them without the staff or money to manage large disasters.
FEMA did not respond to a request for comment about the impact that changes could have on states.
“For small states, like Vermont or Wyoming, there’s very little capability, especially at the local level,” said Erica Bornemann, who served as Vermont’s emergency management director for 16 years and now works in disaster consulting.
“It would take time for them not only to hire and fund the people necessary to respond to small- to moderate-scale disasters, but also to build a fund to support disaster survivors,” she said.
States may not have much time to adjust. Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem and other administration officials expressed support for stripping the agency of some of its main functions by Oct. 1, such as helping rebuild after disasters strike. In discussions with governors and lawmakers, some state emergency management directors have already asked for more money, anticipating that federal grants will be canceled or slashed.
“I don’t know any state who is saying, ‘We’re good,’” said Lynn Budd, president of the National Emergency Management Association and director of the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security. “We’re having conversations with our budget office and our governor’s office, but when you’re 92 percent federally funded, you can’t just make that up.”
Millions of dollars in FEMA funding have been frozen since January. Although a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to release the funds, at least 19 states have not been able to access the money, according to a filing last week by a coalition of 24 states, including those recently hit by major disasters such as California, North Carolina, Kentucky and Hawaii. On Friday, a federal judge ruled that the administration had violated his order by freezing the FEMA grants.
Since 2003, FEMA has distributed $150 billion in public assistance grants to states, local governments and private nonprofit organizations in the wake of natural disasters, according to a Post analysis of OpenFEMA data as of April 4. The agency issued another $87 billion in grants during the coronavirus pandemic.
Among states, Louisiana ($22 billion), New York ($17.6 billion) and Florida ($13.6 billion) received the most in public assistance funds over the past two decades, mostly for damage caused by hurricanes, according to the analysis. About $46 billion was set aside for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands after they were devastated by Hurricane Maria in 2017.
States such as Iowa, Kansas and Kentucky have each seen more than $1 billion in public assistance funding in the wake of disasters — mainly severe storms and flooding — in the past 20 years, excluding funds for pandemic response.
In Kentucky, more than $500 million funded projects to repair roads and bridges, and another $300 million paid for debris removal, according to the Post analysis.
FEMA is intended to be a backstop. The agency’s role is to support state and local officials when hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters overwhelm them — and when governors ask for the federal government’s help. A growing number of climate-driven disasters has put more strain on the agency’s staff and finances in recent years and, its supporters argue, made it all the more essential.
But some former FEMA administrators and state directors say reform is needed. The agency’s aid-delivery process can be slow and bureaucratic, sometimes taking weeks or months to reach survivors — and in some cases only after many appeals. Some agency leaders have also criticized FEMA for allowing states to draw on billions of dollars in federal aid without requiring them to do more, or take steps to prevent future damage, like strengthening building codes.
“There are states that use FEMA as an easy button,” said Mark Ghilarducci, who led the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services for a decade before retiring in 2022. “But if they’re doing all the response and all the recovery, then why should a governor or state legislature put a dollar in?”
California’s emergency response system is “formidable,” Ghilarducci said, and less dependent on federal funding than smaller states. Still, the increase in severity and size of wildfires in recent years has taken a toll, leaving the state to manage multiple rebuilding efforts simultaneously amid spiraling costs. A UCLA analysis of the total property and capital losses from the two urban fires that decimated parts of Los Angeles in January found they could range between $76 billion and $131 billion.
“The federal support to help offset those disasters is really critical, even for a state the size of California,” Ghilarducci said.
In North Dakota, Hanson views the coming changes as mostly manageable, especially for a state that already handles its own disaster response and recovery operations and has not called in FEMA to respond on the ground since the early 2010s, despite receiving financial support.
The state has a rainy-day fund for disasters of about $24.8 million. If FEMA funding were slashed abruptly and a disaster were to hit, it would probably require the governor to call an emergency session to authorize more spending, Hanson said.
“We expect there’s going to be significant changes, but we have shown that state-led can be the way, and it puts the onus on us,” Hanson said.
In the meantime, communities that have recently been through a disaster are waiting to hear whether their FEMA grant applications will be approved — or if they are on their own to sort through the wreckage.
Nearly three years after Kentucky suffered extreme flooding, recovery efforts are “so slow going,” Collins said, and more disasters keep coming. Floodwaters inundated some of the same small mountain towns in 2023 and again this past February, killing 24 people.
After three major floods in four years, Collins said fatigue is setting in among her foundation’s donors. This year, she is aiming to distribute a little more than $2 million to residents and businesses to help them recover from the latest flood, significantly less than the $15 million she gave out in 2022.
“We’re able to get money out faster to people than FEMA or the state,” she said. “But we can’t deliver on the amount of need that our communities have.”
Brianna Sacks contributed to this report.
8. America’s Absence in Myanmar’s Early Earthquake Response: A Moral and Strategic Failure
Are we retiring from the Go/WieChi/Baduk board? Certainly we are ceeding influence to Chinese "stones" over many territories.
Excerpts:
Getting Burma right — both in terms of strategic context and in supporting the people of Burma in building a genuine, inclusive federal democracy — has long been an elusive goal for U.S. policymakers. And it remains a challenge. But there can be no question that the gutting of USAID programs, the lack of a robust response to the earthquake, and now, the imposition of tariffs, is what it looks like to get Burma wrong.
If Washington fails to act, the consequences will be long-lasting. The United States will have ceded both moral authority and strategic influence to adversaries who will not hesitate to use this moment to their advantage. In the end, America’s absence in Burma will not just be remembered as a failure to help those in desperate need; it will be seen as a retreat from the global stage, one that weakens both America’s values and its interests.
America’s Absence in Myanmar’s Early Earthquake Response: A Moral and Strategic Failure
justsecurity.org · by Francisco Bencosme, Michael Schiffer · April 4, 2025
April 4, 2025
It was only a matter of time before a disaster struck to test the real-world effects — and the U.S. foreign policy cost — of President Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk’s chainsaw approach to foreign assistance “reform” and realignment. With this past weekend’s earthquake in Burma (Myanmar), we now have clear evidence that the gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development has not only left that country worse off than it might be with American aid, but also that America itself is morally impoverished, its global leadership is in question, and its security is strategically at risk.
Despite the mistakes the United States has made around the globe over its lifetime – and in part because it often has acknowledged them, even if belatedly — when disaster strikes, the world looks to the United States, not just for its resources but for its leadership. For decades, the United States has been at the forefront of humanitarian response and disaster assistance, recognizing that such efforts are not just acts of generosity but vital tools of diplomacy and national security.
But in the wake of the March 28 earthquake in Burma, the United States has been largely absent, belatedly sending $2 million and a small emergency response team for an assessment. It’s a failure that carries not only profound moral consequences but also strategic costs that may create aftershocks for years to come. To add insult to injury, President Donald Trump, in announcing his tariffs this week, slapped a 44 percent tariff on Burma, deepening its economic and humanitarian crisis.
For decades, the United States has been the “indispensable nation” for the international community in times of crisis — a position that has, in turn, allowed it to both help those in need, living up to the values that have animated the nation since its founding, and also to assure that U.S. interests, along with American values, are well-served. Humanitarian aid was one of the few areas of assistance in which the United States had a comparable advantage vis-a-vis its adversaries.
Yet just 70 days or so into the Trump administration, the U.S. ability to respond — and to lead — is “in shambles,” as former USAID Assistant to the Administrator for Humanitarian Affairs Sarah Charles put it. The U.S. capacity to mobilize resources, coordinate international relief efforts, and set a moral example has saved countless lives in the past, but in Burma this week, that leadership is missing. The earthquake has left thousands dead and many more without shelter, food, or medical care. And all that is playing out in the midst of a civil war. The conditions are so bad that even Myanmar’s military, which long has rejected the international community’s calls to end the war against its own people, is pleading for assistance, though it’s a plea to take with a grain of salt given the reports that the junta continued to bomb its own people even after the earthquake struck until finally matching the unilateral ceasefires of the armed resistance with a temporary truce on April 2.
Scenes of Suffering
Aid workers have described horrific scenes of suffering, yet Washington’s response has been tepid at best. And in one of those twisted ironies of history — the sort that would get you thrown out of a college creative writing class — on the very day that the earthquake devastated Burma, USAID disaster response personnel in the region were receiving notices telling them they were fired.
The moral cost of this inaction is clear. Human suffering on this scale demands a response from those with the means to alleviate it. While local and regional actors have stepped in, their capacity is limited. The United States has the logistical power, financial resources, and diplomatic influence to make a difference. By failing to act, we send a message that American leadership is conditional, selective, and, in this case, absent.
Beyond the immediate humanitarian cost, the absence of U.S. leadership in Burma is a strategic blunder. Disaster response is not just about aid; it’s about influence. In past crises, U.S. humanitarian assistance has not only saved lives but also built goodwill, deepened alliances, and strengthened regional stability. Recall the U.S. response to the tsunami that swept across Indonesia and the Indian Ocean in 2005. In responding — immediately and unconditionally — we did good, and found that in doing good, we did well. The tsunami response turned around negative views of America in that part of the world following the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and opened pathways for diplomatic engagement and partnership that paid dividends for years to come. In other words, it’s a vital tool for our national interests.
China, eager to expand its influence in Southeast Asia, has already moved into Burma to fill the vacuum left by American inaction. Pictures of relief workers in brightly branded “China Search and Rescue” and “China Aid” attire are all across the press (and maybe more importantly, on social media) in Burma and the region. Beijing’s relief efforts are not simply acts of charity; they are strategic investments. By stepping in where the United States is absent, China is positioning itself as the dominant regional power, further entrenching its influence in Burma’s politics, economy, and military affairs.
Washington’s absence also weakens its credibility among allies in the region. Nations such as Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines have long relied on U.S. leadership in times of crisis. If they see America retreating in Burma, where it had been so active in the past to support its nascent democracy before the war, these U.S. allies and partners will question whether they can count on Americans in their own moments of need or on crucial joint strategic issues, including the competition with China that the Trump administration claims is a priority.
Not Too Late
It is not too late for the United States to step up. A robust humanitarian response — led by USAID, in coordination with regional partners such as the Quad (a grouping of the United States, Australia, India, and Japan), or ASEAN (the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations) — would demonstrate that American leadership is not in retreat.
Indeed, the administration’s belated recognition of the imperative to deploy emergency aid, logistical support, and financial resources to ensure that relief reaches those in need can be seen as an acknowledgment that the work of USAID isn’t “waste, fraud, and abuse,” as they’ve too often alleged even as they struggle for evidence, but that it actually serves the national interest. The United States supports people abroad in part so they do not have to be migrants fleeing to U.S. shores in the future. This response should be paired with diplomatic pressure on the Burmese junta to allow full humanitarian access and, ultimately, to end the war and return power to an elected civilian government.
Getting Burma right — both in terms of strategic context and in supporting the people of Burma in building a genuine, inclusive federal democracy — has long been an elusive goal for U.S. policymakers. And it remains a challenge. But there can be no question that the gutting of USAID programs, the lack of a robust response to the earthquake, and now, the imposition of tariffs, is what it looks like to get Burma wrong.
If Washington fails to act, the consequences will be long-lasting. The United States will have ceded both moral authority and strategic influence to adversaries who will not hesitate to use this moment to their advantage. In the end, America’s absence in Burma will not just be remembered as a failure to help those in desperate need; it will be seen as a retreat from the global stage, one that weakens both America’s values and its interests.
Musk has stated several times that he recognizes that DOGE will make mistakes, and that, when those mistakes are pointed out, DOGE will move fast to correct them. The earthquake in Burma has made clear the cost of DOGE’s error-prone attack on U.S. foreign assistance. The only question now is whether Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Musk and his acolytes will recognize it and correct it. Or whether the costs will continue to compound. The Burma earthquake may be the first disaster that tests the Trump administration’s approach. But it surely won’t be the last.
Editor’s note: This piece is part of the Collection: Just Security’s Coverage of the Trump Administration’s Executive Actions
IMAGE: China’s and Belarus’ rescue teams coordinate at the site of a collapsed building in Mandalay on April 2, 2025, five days after a major earthquake struck central Myanmar. Days after a shallow 7.7-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 2,000 people, many people in Myanmar are still sleeping outdoors, either unable to return to ruined homes or afraid of further aftershocks. (Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images)
justsecurity.org · by Francisco Bencosme, Michael Schiffer · April 4, 2025
9. Chinese Control of Darwin Port Becomes Key Issue in Australian Elections
I hate to beat a dead horse but this article and the graphic at this link (HERE) really shows the stones on the Go/WeiChi/Baduk board.
Chinese Control of Darwin Port Becomes Key Issue in Australian Elections
https://maritime-executive.com/article/chinese-control-of-darwin-port-becomes-key-issue-in-australian-elections
Darwin's port is strategically located on the northern coast (Port of Darwin file photo)
Published Apr 4, 2025 12:12 PM by The Maritime Executive
The latest Chinese port operation to come under pressure is Australia’s Port of Darwin which is now a headline issue in the upcoming federal elections. Today, April 4, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared during a radio interview that Darwin “should be in Australian hands.” Concerns have been brewing over the now decade-old deal that ceded control of the port to a Chinese company.
Located on Australia’s north central coast the port while small in scope is seen as a strategic asset. It is Australia’s closest port to Asia and is playing an increasingly significant role in Australia’s expanding offshore oil and gas sector. In the port’s last fiscal year ended in 2024, it reported imports of more than 1 million kiloliters of petroleum products, handling over 280,000 head of cattle and being a major RoRo import operator for cars. It is a base to U.S. Marines and also a popular cruise ship destination.
Faced with financial difficulties, the government of Australia’s Northern Territories put out a public tender in 2014 and the following year concluded a deal with a Chinese company Landbridge. The operator gained a 99-year lease for the port and promised to make investments. Reports indicate that the U.S. with then-President Barack Obama voiced concerns over the Chinese deal.
Accusations have been raised about the operations with the Australian opposition party contending that Landbridge has failed to make the promised investments. In 2024 there were questions when Landbridge’s parent company went into default on an A$107 million (US$65 million) bond.
The company said in November 2024 that the “underlying operations of Darwin Port have improved significantly,” while reporting a nearly 50 percent increase in EBITDA earnings for FY 24. It blamed non-cash charges for an A$34 million (US$21 million) loss before taxes and said “Darwin Port remains a key asset of the group.”
Prime Minister Albanese announced the federal government is in talks with private pension fund investors on a possible deal to take over the operational lease for the port. He said the options were private investment or the federal government taking over the port. When asked in 2023, Albanese had ruled out a similar move to regain control of the port.
Opposition leaders have already spoken publicly about the need for the federal government to take control back from the Chinese. Media reports indicate they were going to make a formal public statement this coming Sunday, April 6, ahead of the May 3 federal elections.
Media reports said in March the federal government had discussions with the new government of the Northern Territory over possible steps. This came after Federal Labor MP Luke Gosling also made a public statement saying the federal government wanted to “return the port to Australian hands.”
Responding to the statements and media speculation, Terry O’Connor, Non-Executive Director for Landbridge in Australia, issued a statement in March calling the minister’s statement “a surprise,” and he asserted “Landbridge and Darwin Port have not been involved in any discussions on the matter.” He said they would engage with the Northern Territory government but the “port is not for sale.”
A local news outlet, NT News, however early in March reported Landbridge “could be willing to sell the port’s lease, but was asking A$1.3 billion (US$795 million). Reports indicate that is nearly A$800 million (approximately US$490 million) more than it paid in 2015 for the 99-year lease.
10. CIA Leveraging Digital Transformation Tools in HUMINT Missions
But we can never remove the Human from HUMINT.
Juliane Gallina / Central Intelligence Agency
Artificial Intelligence/Big Data & Analytics News/Defense And Intelligence/News
CIA Leveraging Digital Transformation Tools in HUMINT Missions
https://executivegov.com/2025/04/cia-digital-transformation-tools-humint-juliane-gallina/
by Pat Host
April 3, 2025 6 mins read
One of the United States’ most secretive agencies is using digital transformation tools such as AI and human-machine teaming as it tries to solve the nation’s toughest national security problems.
Since the CIA established the Directorate of Digital Innovation, or DDI, in 2015, the agency has increasingly encouraged entwining digital technology into its core human intelligence, or HUMINT, mission, where intelligence is obtained from human sources. Juliane Gallina, the CIA’s deputy director for digital innovation, said every DDI mission is guided by human-machine teaming, which starts with data and is improved with AI before being put to use by CIA agents.
“It is important to remember that CIA is not only a HUMINT-focused organization, but we also serve as the functional manager for [open source intelligence, a.k.a. OSINT] for the intelligence community,” Gallina said.
Who Is Juliane Gallina?
Gallina is the latest keynote speaker to be added to the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 Digital Transformation Summit, which will take place on April 24 at the Hilton McLean in McLean, Virginia. CIA officials rarely speak in public, making this a phenomenal opportunity to network with Gallina and hear what the CIA has in store for digital transformation in 2025. Tickets are selling fast. Don’t miss out!
How Does the CIA Use AI?
The CIA expects AI to help officers make sense of an overwhelming amount of information by triaging data faster than any human could alone, while gaining more insights from a mixture of OSINT and clandestine intelligence collection. CIA officers can now triage information in a fraction of the weeks or months it previously took by leveraging the latest in AI technologies and data science to help sort, and make sense of, all the information.
“Failure to harness AI and develop robust human-machine teaming will diminish our ability to generate insight, give advantage to adversaries more advanced in their use of AI and challenge our relevancy,” Gallina said.
Lakshmi Raman, the CIA’s chief AI officer, said in an agency podcast that the CIA is incorporating large language models, or LLMs, in generative AI to help the agency’s open source mission. The CIA is also considering the workforce that will be using generative AI features. The agency, Raman said, has a cohort of data scientists, analytic methodologies, AI professionals and engineers that are helping the CIA ensure its data is AI ready, that it can train and run an AI model and that the agency is incorporating AI into the applications it regularly uses.
“We think it’s the human-machine teaming that is going to get us where we need to go,” Raman said. “We need the benefits and the computational ability that a model can provide to our already incredibly experienced analysts who have really strong tradecraft to help them move … further down the field.”
Why the CIA Created the DDI
The DDI was established to help the CIA respond to its growing need to understand, utilize and respond to emerging digital technologies. The DDI combines the agency’s missions of cyber collection and security, OSINT, IT, data and others. The agency views these technologies as increasingly required for its success in a world of ubiquitous sensing, increasing cyber threats and the exponential growth in data.
One of the DDI’s key functions is to connect the proper subject matter and digital and technical experts across the CIA so the agency can adapt to future and emerging threats in the digital realm. The CIA said on October 9 that the DDI houses the most current version of many former offices that separately focused on technology, HUMINT or clandestine operations, under one roof. This brought together these once disparate disciplines into a single CIA approach for the modern digital environment.
The DDI now has a “Digital C-Suite” comprised of all of the CIA’s senior digital officers, including the CIO, chief data officer and chief information security officer. This transition permits these offices to have a better impact on all the IT work happening across the agency.
Juliane Gallina is among an eye-popping lineup of federal government IT experts who are speaking at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 Digital Transformation Summit on April 24. This is a great chance to learn about business opportunities for government contractors in digital transformation amidst this environment of unprecedented change. Sign up now!
11. Cost of US military offensive against Houthis nears $1 billion with limited impact
It all depends on how we are measuring the impact and what is the "impact" (effect) we are trying to achieve? If we are only measuring this through conventional battle damage assessment and targets destroyed and the capability of the nemy to continue operations? Then yes it is a large expenditure of resources to destroy very cheap weapons capabilities. But if this is part of a broader psychological operation to achieve effects against the sponsors of the Houthis then we might have to wait a time to see the effects. And there are other effects that might be achieved that are not easily identified or expensed to the public and press but would be described as shaping the theater for future operations. Everything is not always as it appears. But it is easy to criticize when we cannot see or understand.
Cost of US military offensive against Houthis nears $1 billion with limited impact | CNN Politics
CNN · by Natasha Bertrand · April 4, 2025
A ship fires missiles at an undisclosed location after President Donald Trump launched military strikes against Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis in this screengrab obtained from a handout video released on March 15.
US Central Command/Handout/Reuters
CNN —
The total cost of the US military’s operation against the Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen is nearing $1 billion in just under three weeks, even as the attacks have had limited impact on destroying the terror group’s capabilities, three people briefed on the campaign’s progress told CNN.
The military offensive, which was launched on March 15, has already used hundreds of millions of dollars worth of munitions for strikes against the group, including JASSM long-range cruise missiles, JSOWs, which are GPS-guided glide bombs, and Tomahawk missiles, the sources said.
B-2 bombers out of Diego Garcia are also being used against the Houthis, and an additional aircraft carrier as well as several fighter squadrons and air defense systems will soon be moved into the Central Command region, defense officials said this week.
One of the sources said the Pentagon will likely need to request supplemental funding from Congress to continue the operation, but may not receive it — the offensive has already been criticized on both sides of the aisle, and even Vice President JD Vance said he thought the operation was “a mistake” in a Signal chat published by The Atlantic last week.
The Pentagon has not publicly disclosed what impact the daily US military strikes have actually had on the Houthis. Officials from the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, US Central Command, US Indo Pacific Command, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, and the State Department told Congress in recent days that the strikes have eliminated several members of Houthi leadership and destroyed some Houthi military sites.
But they acknowledged that the group has still been able to fortify their bunkers and maintain weapons stockpiles underground, much as they did during the strikes that the Biden administration carried out for over a year, the sources said. And it has been difficult to determine precisely how much the Houthis still have stockpiled, a defense official said.
“They’ve taken out some sites, but that hasn’t affected the Houthis’ ability to continue shooting at ships in the Red Sea or shooting down US drones,” said one of the sources briefed on the operation. “Meanwhile, we are burning through readiness—munitions, fuel, deployment time.”
The New York Times first reported details of the military operation shared in briefings with Congress.
The operational tempo of the strikes is also higher now that CENTCOM Commander Erik Kurilla no longer needs higher-level approval to conduct strikes—a shift from the Biden administration and a return to the policies of Trump’s first term, when military commanders were given more freedom to carry out missions in order to achieve “a strategic effect” as opposed to needing case-by-case approval from the White House for each strike and raid.
It’s still not clear, though, how long the Trump administration plans to continue the offensive, which CENTCOM has described as a “24/7” operation. Trump has said it will last until the Houthis stop attacking Red Sea shipping, but despite weeks of bombing the Houthis have continued launching missiles and drones at targets in and over the Red Sea. Earlier this week, they shot down another US MQ-9 Reaper drone—the second MQ9 shot down since the offensive began last month, multiple sources told CNN.
Another defense official noted, however, that ballistic missile attacks from the Houthis against Israel have decreased in the last week, and said the relentless US bombing campaign has made it more difficult for the Houthis to communicate and hit things accurately because they’ve been forced to “keep their heads down.”
The people briefed on the operation also all described the Houthi officials who have been killed in the US strikes as mid-level, akin to “middle management.” One exception is the Houthi official in charge of the group’s drone operations, who was killed in a strike last month, officials said.
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz referenced that Houthi leader in the Signal chat in March that was disclosed by The Atlantic. Waltz said in that chat that the Houthis’ “top missile guy” was killed when he walked into his girlfriend’s building in Yemen which “collapsed” amid US strikes.
Two of the sources briefed on the ongoing operation said that comment is indicative of how the US military under Trump is taking a more “expansive” approach to the strikes than the Biden administration did, in terms of being less concerned about collateral damage. The Houthis have long used more populated areas to conceal command and control sites, the sources said.
But one of the defense officials said the building was not a civilian apartment building, but rather a meeting place for Houthi officials, and that the US military is using precision munitions and taking other measures to mitigate the risk of civilian casualties.
The large-scale operation has also rattled some officials at US Indo-Pacific Command, who have complained in recent days and weeks about the large number of long-range weapons being expended by CENTCOM against the Houthis, particularly the JASSMs and Tomahawks, the sources said. Those weapons would be critical in the event of a war with China, and military planners at INDOPACOM are concerned that the CENTCOM operation could have a negative impact on US military readiness in the Pacific.
One of the defense officials also downplayed that concern, calling it “an exaggeration.”
“We employ precision munitions in every strike. We retain authority to use the full capacity of our deployed forces in the Middle East region against the Houthis,” the official said. “We have no concern about employment of long-range weapons when and if needed to maximize our effectiveness.
CNN · by Natasha Bertrand · April 4, 2025
12. These Are the 381 Books Removed From the Naval Academy Library
Coincidentally, my daughter's 10th grade English class is reading Fahrenheit 451 so this is a timely discussion of banned books. Unsurprisingly, her students do not think books should be banned.
Is this an overreaction to the SECDEF's order that is not tempered by common sense and logic?
Is this a deliberate overreaction to the SECDEF's order to illustrate the absurdity of the order?
Is the meeting the real intent of the order and does the SECDEF believe these 381 books should be removed?
And the real question is should any books ever be banned? What are we afraid of in these books, especially at the college level?
It is ironic because banning books is a sign of weakness.
"Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance."
— Laurie Halse Anderson
"Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight."
— Stephen Chbosky
"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."
— Oscar Wilde
These Are the 381 Books Removed From the Naval Academy Library
Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” and books on the Holocaust were among the works removed in response to an order from the office of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/us/politics/naval-academy-dei-books-removed.html?utm
The Naval Academy campus in Annapolis, Md.Credit...Patrick Semansky/Associated Press
By John Ismay
John Ismay reports on the Defense Department.
Maya Angelou’s seminal autobiography, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” and books on the Holocaust were included on the Navy’s list of 381 books that were removed from the U.S. Naval Academy’s Nimitz Library on the Annapolis, Md., campus this week because their subject matter was seen as being related to so-called diversity, equity and inclusion topics.
President Trump issued an executive order in January that banned D.E.I. materials in kindergarten through 12th grade education, but the office of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth informed the Naval Academy on March 28 that he intended the order to apply to the school as well, even though it is a college.
Read Document 19 pages
The list also includes “Memorializing the Holocaust,” Janet Jacobs’s examination of depictions of women in the Holocaust, and “How to Be Anti-Racist” by Ibram X. Kendi. Also listed are “The Making of Black Lives Matter,” by Christopher J. Lebron; “How Racism Takes Place,” by George Lipsitz; “The Fire This Time,” edited by Jesmyn Ward; “The Myth of Equality,” by Ken Wytsma; studies of the Ku Klux Klan, and the history of lynching in America.
The list also includes books about gender and sexuality, like “Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex” by Elizabeth Reis, and “Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the Myth of Two Sexes” by Gerald N. Callahan. President Trump issued a separate executive order in January proclaiming that there are only two sexes.
The inclusion of Maya Angelou’s best-selling 1970 memoir was notable because it has long been viewed by Black women, and men, as transformative. The book, which spent two years on the New York Times best-seller list and was nominated for a National Book Award, chronicles her struggle with racism and trauma, including her account of a rape at the age of 7 by her mother’s boyfriend. Oprah Winfrey famously said that she had been moved to learn from the book that another Black girl had endured sexual abuse. “I read those words and thought, ‘Somebody knows who I am,’” she said.
The Naval Academy began pulling books from the shelves at Nimitz Library on Monday evening and largely completed the task before Mr. Hegseth visited midshipmen on campus Tuesday afternoon.
Helene Cooper contributed reporting.
John Ismay is a reporter covering the Pentagon for The Times. He served as an explosive ordnance disposal officer in the U.S. Navy. More about John Ismay
13. Vietnam Offers to Drop U.S. Tariffs to Zero. Will That Be Enough for Trump?
This is the test. Are tariffs our bargaining technique to coerce concessions from trading partners or are we really going to build fortress America and keep tariffs permanently to change global trade forever?
Vietnam Offers to Drop U.S. Tariffs to Zero. Will That Be Enough for Trump?
In recent years, Vietnam has forged strategic and economic links with the United States, its former foe, making the steep tariff rate all the more of a shock.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/06/world/asia/vietnam-trump-tariff-delay.html
To Lam, Vietnam’s top leader, in Hanoi last month. He was one of the first world leaders to reach out to President Trump after details of the new tariffs were announced.Credit...Pool photo by Minh Hoang
By Tung Ngo and Sui-Lee Wee
Tung Ngo reported from Hanoi, Vietnam, and Sui-Lee Wee from Bangkok.
- April 6, 2025Updated 9:53 a.m. ET
Vietnam’s top leader, To Lam, has asked President Trump to delay the imposition of tariffs for at least 45 days so the two sides can avert a move that would devastate the Vietnamese economy and raise prices for American consumers.
The 46 percent tariff rate the United States has said it will impose on Vietnam is among the highest any country faces. The prospect of such a steep tariff has left Vietnam with a sense of whiplash and deep apprehension. It also presents a sharp contrast to Washington’s recent embrace of Hanoi as an important bulwark against China and a manufacturing destination for many American apparel brands.
Mr. Lam’s proposal to Mr. Trump was laid out in a letter dated Saturday, according to a copy obtained by The New York Times. In the letter, Mr. Lam called on Mr. Trump to appoint a U.S. representative to lead negotiations with Ho Duc Phoc, a Vietnamese deputy prime minister, “with the goal of reaching an agreement as soon as possible.”
Mr. Lam had been one of the first world leaders to reach out to Mr. Trump after the tariffs were announced. In a phone call, he offered to reduce tariffs on U.S. imports to zero, and urged Mr. Trump to do the same, according to the Vietnamese government. Vietnam has said its tariffs on U.S. goods are an average of 9.4 percent.
Mr. Trump later described the call as “very productive.”
In his letter, Mr. Lam asked Mr. Trump to meet him in person in Washington at the end of May “to jointly come to an agreement on this important matter, for the benefit of both our peoples and to contribute to peace, stability and development in the region and the world.”
Tracking Trump’s First 100 Days ›
The Trump administration’s previous actions on North American tariffs
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Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Vietnam, which faces punishingly high tariffs along with China, Cambodia and Laos, would be the hardest-hit economy in Asia if the tariffs are imposed as planned on Wednesday, according to economists. The United States is Vietnam’s largest export market, accounting for about 30 percent of the country’s total exports. A 46 percent tariff rate would put 5.5 percent of Vietnam’s gross domestic product at risk, according to ING, a Dutch financial services company.
It would also hurt American consumers, because Vietnam is crucial in the global manufacturing supply chain. For decades, the country has built its economy around attracting foreign investment with cheap labor and a young work force. It is now a top manufacturer of brands such as Adidas and Lululemon. Nike makes about half of its footwear in Vietnam.
After Mr. Trump imposed tariffs on China during his first term, Vietnam benefited from companies’ shifting their manufacturing there.
Image
A garment factory in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday.Credit...Huu Kha/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Within Hanoi, the recent moves by the Trump administration have cast doubts on the reliability of the United States, which in recent years has assiduously courted Vietnam. In 2023, the two former enemies cemented a new strategic relationship, a move seen as a milestone in U.S. foreign policy. Even though Vietnam fought a brutal, decades-long war against the United States, surveys had shown that many Vietnamese welcomed the political and strategic influence of the United States.
The Biden administration viewed Vietnam — one of the few Southeast Asian nations that has publicly pushed back against China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea — as critical to the U.S. effort to counter China’s mounting ambitions in the region.
“Vietnam’s position in the Pacific, its view on China, its willingness to work with America, was its strongest card,” said Huong Le Thu, the deputy program director for Asia for the International Crisis Group. “Trump doesn’t see it that way. He doesn’t see allies or strategic values. He just sees numbers and tariffs, so Vietnam needs to try harder.”
Analysts say Vietnam had a largely positive opinion of Mr. Trump during his first administration, seeing him as a pragmatic businessman who would not moralize with them over human rights.
While explaining the tariffs, Mr. Trump said: “Vietnam: great negotiators, great people, they like me. I like them.” He said “the problem” was that the country charges the United States “90 percent,” a figure apparently reached by basing it on Vietnam’s current trade surplus with the United States, worth $123.5 billion. (Vietnam disputed that calculation.)
The tariffs come at a precarious time for Mr. Lam, who was named as general secretary of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party last year after the death of the previous party chief, Nguyen Phu Trong. Mr. Lam needs to secure a strong economic performance as he heads into next year’s party congress, where the country’s top leaders will be selected.
Even before Mr. Trump’s tariff announcement, Vietnam was working to win favor with the new administration. It signed provisional deals to import U.S. liquefied natural gas, cut some tariffs on American imports, and allowed SpaceX to open a company to launch its Starlink satellite internet service in Vietnam. The Trump organization is developing a $1.5 billion golf course and hotel project in Vietnam’s northern Hung Yen Province, Mr. Lam’s home province.
Alexandra Stevenson contributed reporting.
A correction was made on April 6, 2025: An earlier version of this article had an outdated reference to Vietnam’s top leader, To Lam. Mr. Lam is no longer the president of Vietnam; he is now general secretary of the country’s governing Communist Party.
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more
Sui-Lee Wee is the Southeast Asia bureau chief for The Times, overseeing coverage of 11 countries in the region. More about Sui-Lee Wee
14. Former MI6 boss says Britain must get ready for war as Putin threat looms
Former MI6 boss says Britain must get ready for war as Putin threat looms
https://www.independent.co.uk/bulletin/news/britain-war-russia-ukraine-mi6-b2727965.html
Sam Kiley
Saturday 05 April 2025 11:44 BST
Former MI6 chief Alex Younger speaks with the Independent (The Independent)
-
Former MI6 chief Sir Alex Younger warns that the UK must prepare for potential conflict with Russia, citing the threat posed by Vladimir Putin's ambitions in Eastern Europe.
- Younger criticises the UK's reduced military capabilities and lack of public awareness regarding the threat, emphasising the need for rearmament and a form of national service to bolster reserves.
-
He expresses concern over the UK's disarmed state and the public's detachment from defence matters, advocating for a more integrated approach to national security.
- Younger discusses the complex relationship between Putin and former US President Trump, highlighting their shared disregard for international norms and the potential implications for global stability.
- The former MI6 head also addresses the increasing use of unconventional warfare tactics by Russia, including cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns, and the need for greater resilience in the face of these threats.
15. S’pore must be clear-eyed about dangers ahead; the risks are real, stakes are high, says PM Wong
I strongly recommend listening to PM Wong's words at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOUbUxa3PVk
It is worth the 5 minutes to listen to it. This is how a nation's leader should speak to his citizens.
Excerpts:
The world is entering a new phase – one that is more arbitrary, protectionist and dangerous, he noted.
“For decades, the US was the bedrock for the free market economies of the world. It championed free trade, and led efforts to build a multilateral trading system, anchored by clear rules and norms, where countries could achieve win-win benefits through trade,” he said.
“This World Trade Organisation (WTO) system brought unprecedented stability and prosperity to the world – and to the US itself.”
This system is not perfect, acknowledged PM Wong, adding that Singapore, and many others, have long called for reform to update the rules and to make the system better.
“But what the US is doing now is not reform. It is abandoning the entire system it had created. Its new approach of reciprocal tariffs, country by country, is a complete rejection of the WTO framework,” he pointed out.
S’pore must be clear-eyed about dangers ahead; the risks are real, stakes are high, says PM Wong
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/spore-must-be-clear-eyed-about-dangers-ahead-the-risks-are-real-stakes-are-high-says-pm-wong
The world is entering a new phase – one that is more arbitrary, protectionist, and dangerous, PM Lawrence Wong said in a five-minute video.PHOTO: SCREENGRAB FROM LAWRENCE WONG/YOUTUBE
Hariz Baharudin
UPDATED Apr 05, 2025, 10:20 AM
SINGAPORE – Singapore must be clear-eyed about the dangers ahead, as global institutions get weaker and international norms erode, said Prime Minister Lawrence Wong on April 4.
Touching on the recent news about the decision by the US to impose tariffs on many countries including Singapore, PM Wong said that the Republic must brace itself for more shocks to come.
“We must be clear-eyed about the dangers that are building up in the world. Global institutions are getting weaker; international norms are eroding,” he said in a five-minute video uploaded to his social media accounts.
“More and more countries will act based on narrow self-interest, and use force or pressure to get their way. This is the harsh reality of our world today.”
On April 2, US President Donald Trump announced a decision to impose a 10 per cent tariff on most goods imported into the US from Singapore and key partners, with higher duties for many other countries.
Describing the announcement as a “seismic change in the global order”, PM Wong stressed how with the move, the era of rules-based globalisation and free trade is over.
The world is entering a new phase – one that is more arbitrary, protectionist and dangerous, he noted.
“For decades, the US was the bedrock for the free market economies of the world. It championed free trade, and led efforts to build a multilateral trading system, anchored by clear rules and norms, where countries could achieve win-win benefits through trade,” he said.
“This World Trade Organisation (WTO) system brought unprecedented stability and prosperity to the world – and to the US itself.”
This system is not perfect, acknowledged PM Wong, adding that Singapore, and many others, have long called for reform to update the rules and to make the system better.
“But what the US is doing now is not reform. It is abandoning the entire system it had created. Its new approach of reciprocal tariffs, country by country, is a complete rejection of the WTO framework,” he pointed out.
The new 10 per cent tariff placed on Singapore, which the US has grouped in the lowest base tier, may have a limited direct impact “for now”, but PM Wong warned that the broader implications are serious – especially if more countries follow the US in turning away from the WTO and choosing to trade “only on their own preferred terms, country by country”.
“If other countries adopt the same approach... it will spell trouble for all nations, especially small ones like Singapore,” he said. “We risk being squeezed out, marginalised and left behind.”
A strong global response to America’s tariffs is expected, said PM Wong. While Singapore has decided to not impose retaliatory tariffs, he warned that other countries may not exercise the same restraint.
This, he said, raises the likelihood of a full-blown global trade war, with the uncertainty of what countries may do next weighing heavily on trade, investment and growth.
“International trade and investments will suffer, and global growth will slow. Singapore will take a bigger hit than others, because of our heavy reliance on trade,” said PM Wong.
On April 3, Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong said that Singapore is reassessing its 2025 growth forecast, and is prepared to provide support for households and businesses if the situation deteriorates.
DPM Gan, who is also Minister for Trade and Industry, had noted that the US and Singapore have a longstanding economic relationship and an existing Free Trade Agreement, and that the Government will engage Washington to clarify the rationale behind the tariffs.
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PM Wong recalled how the last time the world experienced something like this was in the 1930s, noting how trade wars then escalated into armed conflict and ultimately World War II.
“No one can say how the current situation will unfold in the coming months or years. But we must be clear-eyed about the dangers that are building up in the world,” said PM Wong.
The “harsh reality” of the world today is that global institutions are getting weaker, and international norms are eroding, said PM Wong. He underscored how more and more countries will act based on narrow self-interest, and use force or pressure to get their way.
Amid the uncertainty, Singapore will stay vigilant, build up its capabilities, and strengthen its network of partnerships with like-minded countries. “We are more ready than many other countries, with our reserves, our cohesion, and our resolve. But we must brace ourselves for more shocks to come,” he said.
“The global calm and stability we once knew will not return anytime soon. We cannot expect that the rules which protected small states will still hold.
“I am sharing this with you so that we can all be mentally prepared. So that we will not be caught off guard. Let us not be lulled into complacency. The risks are real. The stakes are high.”
He acknowledged that the road ahead will be harder, and called on Singaporeans to stay resolute and united.
“If we stay resolute and united, Singapore will continue to hold its own in this troubled world,” he said.
16. Trump’s Subtle Shift on China: From Economic Coercion to Military Confrontation
Excerpts:
The quiet removal of the U.S. State Department’s statement, “We do not support Taiwan independence,” within the first month of Trump’s second presidency is telling. No matter how transactional his approach to politics, Taiwan appears to be an exception.
A newly revealed secret Pentagon memo further underscores Trump’s pivot to hard power in dealing with China. The memo designates deterring a Chinese takeover of Taiwan as a U.S. military priority – a stance that aligns conveniently with the Pentagon’s proposal to cut 8 percent of its budget over the next five years while increasing funding for the U.S. military command focused on China.
Trump may not entirely rule out a deal with Beijing, but the ongoing stalemates in Ukraine and Gaza are pushing him to seek breakthroughs elsewhere. With domestic economic stagnation – or even recession – looming, he is in dire need of a foreign policy victory to solidify his presidency’s legitimacy. If his third-term ambitions are serious, it would not be surprising for him to shed the anti-war image he touted on the campaign trail and once again label himself a “wartime president,” much as he did in 2020. As economic coercion falters, targeting China – this time on the military front – may not be as politically irrational as it seems, no matter how extreme it sounds.
Trump’s Subtle Shift on China: From Economic Coercion to Military Confrontation
Trump may not entirely rule out a deal with Beijing, but the ongoing stalemates in Ukraine and Gaza are pushing him to seek breakthroughs elsewhere.
https://thediplomat.com/2025/04/trumps-subtle-shift-on-china-from-economic-coercion-to-military-confrontation/
By Jiachen Shi
April 03, 2025
Credit: Depositphotos
Three months into his return to the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump has churned out a series of sweeping domestic and foreign policies. The underlying motivation behind these moves is crystal clear: to solidify a loyal inner circle and consolidate power in Washington – especially as he considers seeking an unconstitutional third term. Trump’s China policy is no exception to this broader strategy.
At the same time, China is also serving as a test case for Trump’s growing authority, a reality underscored by his ongoing restructuring of the Washington bureaucracy. These changes subtly signal a shift in approach, from economic coercion to military confrontation.
In an era of deepening ideological polarization, foreign policy success is often more effective in bolstering a leader’s overall popularity than domestic policy victories. This is because successful foreign policy not only shifts public focus from internal divisions to external challenges – offering a unifying effect – but also because domestic policies take longer to yield tangible results and are unlikely to satisfy an increasingly diverse electorate.
Historically, a U.S. president’s success in handling China can be interpreted in two ways: as either a significant improvement in bilateral relations, as seen in the China policies of Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, or as a demonstration of strength in navigating tensions without causing a major deterioration, exemplified by George W. Bush’s response to the EP-3 incident.
If Trump’s first term established his reputation as the most controversial president in American history, his second term is only deepening that perception. This time, he recognizes that to maintain the support of his hardline conservative base, he must push even more aggressively right-wing domestic policies – albeit at the risk of further alienating independents. Compounding this challenge is his growing impatience, driven in part by supporters frustrated that their lives have not improved as quickly as he promised on the campaign trail. These dynamics help explain his increasingly grandiose foreign policy ambitions, including talk of acquiring Greenland, reclaiming the Panama Canal, and even exerting control over Canada.
While Trump may adopt a more overtly aggressive stance toward weaker political entities like Greenland and Panama, he knows that dealing with a powerhouse like China requires a more calculated approach. After losing his first trade war with Beijing and facing backlash for attempting another, he should by now recognize that economic coercion alone will not yield a successful China policy.
Could Trump use diplomacy to achieve success in his China policy? He could, but at this juncture he won’t, for two key reasons. First, his past diplomatic efforts with China yielded little success. The Phase One trade agreement, which his administration worked hard to secure, ultimately flopped as China failed to uphold its commitments. Given this failure, another similar attempt would be politically irrational.
Second, Trump’s ongoing efforts to downsize the federal bureaucracy will make effective diplomacy even more difficult. Modern diplomacy relies on bureaucratic institutions to advance a country’s soft power initiatives. This is particularly true for the United States, where efforts to promote democracy and human rights are central to its global influence. Engaging diplomatically with China is not just about managing bilateral ties – it is also about maintaining the international order. But Trump’s lack of interest in this broader purpose, combined with his “America First” approach, means diplomacy with China is simply not a priority.
So if the Trump administration claims it wants to counter China while simultaneously shrinking the State Department and restructuring agencies like USAID, what is its actual plan?
The answer is to replace soft power with hard power. If Trump has learned anything new about foreign policy in his second term, it is that effective leverage requires credible threats – something he appears to have grasped through his mediation in the Ukraine-Russia ceasefire talks.
For weeks, U.S. and Russian officials have been negotiating a deal to end the war. But when Russian President Vladimir Putin complicated the process by proposing a U.N.-backed interim government to replace Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump lashed out, threatening to impose a 50 percent tariff on countries purchasing Russian oil unless Putin agreed to a ceasefire. The Kremlin quickly sought to de-escalate, with Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov affirming that Russia was still “working with the U.S.” This episode suggests Trump is learning how to apply the right amount of pressure to achieve what traditional diplomacy cannot.
If oil tariffs were the right threat against Moscow, what would work against Beijing? Economic coercion – such as tariffs – is no longer an effective tool, especially as China has responded by forming a regional trade agreement with Japan and South Korea. That leaves only one viable option: military confrontation, particularly in the Taiwan Strait.
Although many doubted Trump’s willingness to support Taiwan – especially after he accused the island of stealing the U.S. chip industry – he is not irrational enough to abandon it as a geopolitical card. Taiwan may appear to him as an economic threat, but its strategic value in countering China far outweighs that concern.
The quiet removal of the U.S. State Department’s statement, “We do not support Taiwan independence,” within the first month of Trump’s second presidency is telling. No matter how transactional his approach to politics, Taiwan appears to be an exception.
A newly revealed secret Pentagon memo further underscores Trump’s pivot to hard power in dealing with China. The memo designates deterring a Chinese takeover of Taiwan as a U.S. military priority – a stance that aligns conveniently with the Pentagon’s proposal to cut 8 percent of its budget over the next five years while increasing funding for the U.S. military command focused on China.
Trump may not entirely rule out a deal with Beijing, but the ongoing stalemates in Ukraine and Gaza are pushing him to seek breakthroughs elsewhere. With domestic economic stagnation – or even recession – looming, he is in dire need of a foreign policy victory to solidify his presidency’s legitimacy. If his third-term ambitions are serious, it would not be surprising for him to shed the anti-war image he touted on the campaign trail and once again label himself a “wartime president,” much as he did in 2020. As economic coercion falters, targeting China – this time on the military front – may not be as politically irrational as it seems, no matter how extreme it sounds.
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Jiachen Shi
Jiachen Shi is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Tulane University.
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17. China's Belt and Road credibility collapsing fast in Thailand
If only we had something like a GEC and VOA and RFA to exploit this in the information space.
Excerpts:
Philip J Cunningham, a researcher of Asian politics in media, said CREC’s website, after the earthquake, deleted photos, quotes and other pages related to the SAO building, including CREC’s earlier announcement:
“In response to the national Initiative of the Belt and Road, China Railway 10th Bureau set up an Asia-Pacific branch, taking entry into the Thai market as the first step to fully open up new Southeast Asian markets!
“The National Audit Office of Thailand…is the highest height and largest single-building construction project undertaken by the 10th Bureau so far,” a deleted quote said according to Cunningham.
China Railway No. 10 was also constructing a behind-schedule $20 million airport terminal at Narathiwat in southernmost Thailand, local media reported.
At a hospital under construction for outpatients and accidents in the southern city of Songkhla, the hospital director told reporters, “The quality of construction materials is under strict control and the building was designed to withstand earthquakes.”
Investigators, meanwhile, are checking if any other Chinese nationals used fake contracts to hide their collaboration with other Thai construction firms.
China's Belt and Road credibility collapsing fast in Thailand - Asia Times
Quake-caused collapse of Thai high-rise exposes shoddy construction and likely corruption in BRI-ballyhooed project
asiatimes.com · by Richard S Ehrlich · April 6, 2025
BANGKOK – China’s Belt and Road Initiative projects are being scrutinized in Thailand after Myanmar’s 7.7 earthquake pancaked a 30-floor building 966 kilometers (600 miles) away that Chinese engineers were constructing in Bangkok.
The incomplete skyscraper was the only building to collapse in the lightly damaged Thai capital. But the disaster exposed allegedly substandard steel reinforcing rods that had snapped, reducing the building to a huge rubble pile that crushed about 87 construction workers, including 15 confirmed dead and 72 who disappeared.
“I watched multiple clips of the building collapse from different angles,” a stunned Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said.
“From my experience in the construction industry, I have never seen an issue like this.
“We must investigate thoroughly because a significant portion of the budget was allocated, and the deadline for completion had been extended,” Paetongtarn said.
The investigation began with a bizarre, troubling sight. Two days after the March 28 quake, four Chinese men were filmed grabbing in their arms as many construction-related documents as they could carry and running away from the rubble site.
Police detained, questioned and released them. China’s embassy in Bangkok and Thailand’s powerful interior ministry, which oversees the police, met to discuss the skyscraper’s collapse, but their talks were not made public.
China’s image is vital for Beijing’s prestigious standing among Thais.
Washington and Beijing have been unofficially competing with each other for decades to influence Bangkok’s diplomacy, politics, economy and military through financial aid, investment, tourism, education, ancestorial ties and other ways.
In the collapsed skyscraper’s debris, investigators extracted two different types of steel reinforcing bars, also known as rebars, which were supposed to provide support for the building while encased in cement pillars.
After the earthquake, the Iron and Steel Institute of Thailand reportedly discovered the chemical composition, mass, and stress strength of the rebars appeared to fail its tests.
Photographs displayed by the industry ministry and local media showed a word embossed on a steel rebar dug out of the wreckage.
That brand name was allegedly linked to a Chinese steel-making company in Thailand, the Bangkok Post reported April 2.
Concern about China’s role in the unfinished skyscraper’s deadly collapse comes at a time when some Thais have expressed anxiety about Beijing’s increasing reach into the kingdom.
The earthquake also hit Thailand’s troubled economy, sophisticated tourism industry, multi-billion-dollar high-rise condominium and construction market, insurance rates and other sectors.
This Southeast Asian nation faces an estimated loss of more than $1 billion because of the quake, economists said.
At least 30 high-rise buildings in Bangkok were deemed uninhabitable because of the earthquake, the Public Works Department said on April 2.
“We will focus on communicating a single message, ensuring that Thailand is safe for travel,” Tourism and Sports Minister Sorawong Thienthong said.
Thailand’s government institutions for inspecting building contracts, design plans and materials used in construction, and its anti-corruption policies, are being criticized by the public and Thai media for having been unable or unwilling to correct the doomed skyscraper’s flaws before the earthquake.
Many Thais noted, with grim irony, that the only building to collapse in Bangkok was the State Audit Office’s (SAO) new headquarters. That government agency is tasked with preventing fudged contracts and dodgy government-linked projects.
“The Facebook page of the State Audit Office is no longer accessible on Wednesday (April 2) after it came under heavy criticism and was accused of corruption related to the collapsed building with over 70 construction workers still unaccounted for,” reported Khaosod English news.
The construction contract was a joint project between the Chinese government’s China Railway No. 10 Engineering Group and the Thailand-based Italian-Thai Development (ITD) public company.
ITD was founded in 1958 by an Italian and a Thai who met while salvaging a ship stuck on Thailand’s Chao Phraya River.
Its website says ITD is “the largest infrastructure construction company in Thailand, and one of the largest in Southeast Asia.
“ITD has expanded internationally to numerous regions, including India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, the Philippines, Madagascar etc,” it says.
Among its many projects in Thailand is the 2006 construction of a passenger terminal at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport.
China Railway No. 10 Engineering Group, meanwhile, is part of China Railway Engineering Corp (CREC), one of the biggest engineering and construction firms in the world.
“All concerned agencies were instructed to delve deeper to find out how many other projects the company has undertaken,” Prime Minister Paetongtarn said April 1.
“All buildings in Bangkok must meet legal standards. Safety must be the top priority,” she said.
In Thailand, CREC and Railway No. 10 are driving China’s proudly showcased Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI is an international development and financial expansion strategy boosted by Beijing’s investments and loans.
CREC’s projects for the BRI include China’s impressive Beijing-Shanghai and Qinghai-Tibet railways and, in East Africa, the Mombasa-Nairobi railway across Kenya.
CREC is an enterprise owned by the Communist Chinese government and has completed and worked on other projects in Thailand.
These include laying tracks on a link in what will eventually become a high-speed railway connecting Beijing and Singapore via Bangkok by train for the first time.
CREC helped construct one of Bangkok’s underground metro lines and was bidding for others.
The Commerce Ministry, Royal Thai Police Economic Crime Suppression Division and Revenue Department, meanwhile, reportedly opened investigations into a dozen other projects in Thailand allegedly linked to CREC and China Railway No. 10.
Before the quake, CREC proudly heralded the Bangkok SAO skyscraper construction contract as the “first high-rise building for the bureau overseas.”
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Philip J Cunningham, a researcher of Asian politics in media, said CREC’s website, after the earthquake, deleted photos, quotes and other pages related to the SAO building, including CREC’s earlier announcement:
“In response to the national Initiative of the Belt and Road, China Railway 10th Bureau set up an Asia-Pacific branch, taking entry into the Thai market as the first step to fully open up new Southeast Asian markets!
“The National Audit Office of Thailand…is the highest height and largest single-building construction project undertaken by the 10th Bureau so far,” a deleted quote said according to Cunningham.
China Railway No. 10 was also constructing a behind-schedule $20 million airport terminal at Narathiwat in southernmost Thailand, local media reported.
At a hospital under construction for outpatients and accidents in the southern city of Songkhla, the hospital director told reporters, “The quality of construction materials is under strict control and the building was designed to withstand earthquakes.”
Investigators, meanwhile, are checking if any other Chinese nationals used fake contracts to hide their collaboration with other Thai construction firms.
Richard S. Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based American foreign correspondent reporting from Asia since 1978, and winner of Columbia University’s Foreign Correspondents’ Award. Excerpts from his two new nonfiction books, “Rituals. Killers. Wars. & Sex. — Tibet, India, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka & New York” and “Apocalyptic Tribes, Smugglers & Freaks” are available here.
Shawn W. Crispin contributed editing to this report from Bangkok.
asiatimes.com · by Richard S Ehrlich · April 6, 2025
18. Trump goes all in with bet that the heavy price of tariffs will pay off for Americans
We will have to give it time to see. Tariffs do not provide a magic immediate payoff so we have to wait and see.
Trump goes all in with bet that the heavy price of tariffs will pay off for Americans
By ZEKE MILLER and STEVE PEOPLES
Updated 8:15 PM EDT, April 5, 2025
AP · by ZEKE MILLER · April 5, 2025
WASHINGTON (AP) — Not even 24 hours after his party lost a key Wisconsin race and underperformed in Florida, President Donald Trump followed the playbook that has defined his political career: He doubled down.
Trump’s move Wednesday to place stiff new tariffs on imports from nearly all U.S. trading partners marks an all-in bet by the Republican that his once-fringe economic vision will pay off for Americans. It was the realization of his four decades of advocacy for a protectionist foreign policy and the belief that free trade was forcing the United States into decline as its economy shifted from manufacturing to services.
The tariff announcement was the latest and perhaps boldest manifestation of Trump’s second-term freedom to lead with his instincts after feeling his first turn in the Oval Office was restrained by aides who did not share his worldview. How it shakes out could be a defining judgment on his presidency.
The early reviews have been worrisome.
Financial markets had their worst week since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, foreign trade partners retaliated and economists warned that the import taxes may boost inflation and potentially send the U.S. into a recession. It’s now Republican lawmakers who are fretting about their party’s future while Democrats feel newly buoyant over what they see as Trump’s overreach.
Democratic activists participated in rallies across the country Saturday in the largest demonstrations since Trump returned to office in January. “The winds are changing,” said Rahna Epting, who leads MoveOn, one of many organizing groups.
Trump is unbowed.
He has promised that the taxes on imports will bring about a domestic manufacturing renaissance and help fund an extension of his 2017 tax cuts. He insisted Thursday as the Dow Jones fell by 1,600 points that things were “going very well” and the economy would “boom,” then spent Friday at the golf course as the index plunged 2,200 more points.
The White House stayed the course Saturday. “This past November, America resoundingly rejected the business-as-usual policies coming out of D.C.,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai, adding, “The entire Trump administration is aligned on delivering on President Trump’s mandate to reject the status quo.”
In his first term, Trump’s tariff threats brought world leaders to his door to cut deals. This time, his actions so far have led to steep retaliation from China and promises from European allies to push back.
Even some Trump supporters are having their doubts.
Frank Amoroso, a 78-year-old resident of Dewitt, Michigan, said he is concerned about short-term rising interest rates and inflation, although he believes the tariffs will be good for the country in the long run.
Amoroso, a retired automotive engineer who voted for Trump, said he would give the president’s second-term performance a C-plus or B-minus. “I think he’s doing things too fast,” he said. “But hopefully things will get done in a prudent way, and the economy will survive a little downfall.”
Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., in a telephone town hall with constituents Thursday night, expressed reservations about the broad nature of the tariffs.
Hill, who represents a district that includes Little Rock, said he does not back tariffs on Canada and Mexico. He said the administration should instead focus on renegotiating a U.S. trade agreement with its two neighbors.
“I don’t support across-the-board tariffs as a general matter, and so I don’t support those, and I will be urging changes there because I don’t think they will end up raising a bunch of revenue that’s been asserted,” Hill said. “I wish I thought they did, but personally I don’t think they will. But I do support trade diplomacy.”
Still, much of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” coalition remains publicly supportive.
Doug Deason, a prominent Texas-based Republican donor, said he loves the president’s tariff plan, even if it causes some economic disruption.
“He told us during the election there would be pain for every American to get this ship turned around,” Deason said. “It is hard to watch our portfolios deteriorate so much, but we get it. We hope he holds course.”
As Trump struggles with the economy, Democrats are beginning to emerge from the cloud of doom that has consumed their party ever since their election drubbing in November.
They scored a decisive victory in Wisconsin’s high-profile state Supreme Court election on Tuesday, even after Elon Musk and his affiliated groups poured more than $20 million into the contest. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker then breathed new life into the Democratic resistance by delivering a record 25-hour-long speech on the Senate floor that centered on a call for his party to find its resolve.
Booker told The Associated Press afterward that a significant political shift has begun even as his party tries to learn from its mistakes in the 2024 presidential election.
“I think you’re seeing a lot more energy, a lot more determination, a lot more feeling like we’ve got to fight,” Booker said. “You can’t sit back any more. You can’t sit on the sidelines. There’s a larger, growing movement.”
Booker, a 2020 presidential candidate, acknowledged he is not ruling out a 2028 run, although he said he is focused on his 2026 Senate reelection for now.
There is broad agreement among Democrats — and even some Republicans, privately at least — that what Trump has unleashed on the global economy could help accelerate the Democratic comeback.
Ezra Levin, co-founder of the progressive resistance group known as Indivisible, has been critical of Democratic officials’ response in recent weeks to Trump’s leadership. But on Friday, he was somewhat giddy about the political consequences for Trump’s GOP after the tariffs announcement.
“Raising prices across the board for your constituents is not popular,” Levin said. “It’s the kind of thing that can lead to a 1932-style total generational wipe out of a party.”
___
Peoples reported from New York. Associated Press writers Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Isabella Volmert in Dewitt, Michigan, contributed to this report.
AP · by ZEKE MILLER · April 5, 2025
19. Taiwan's new 2nm chip set to power the AI revolution
is the "silicon shield" a sufficient defense of Taiwan?
Taiwan's new 2nm chip set to power the AI revolution - Asia Times
Taiwan’s cutting-edge chip will reshape the tech landscape while fortifying its ‘silicon shield’ against a China invasion
asiatimes.com · by Domenico Vicinanza · April 5, 2025
On April 1, 2025, the Taiwanese manufacturer TSMC introduced the world’s most advanced microchip: the 2-nanometer (2nm) chip.
Mass production is expected for the second half of the year, and TSMC promises it will represent a major step forward in performance and efficiency – potentially reshaping the technological landscape.
Microchips are the foundation of modern technology, found in nearly all electronic devices, from electric toothbrushes and smartphones to laptops and household appliances. They are made by layering and etching materials like silicon to create microscopic circuits containing billions of transistors.
These transistors are effectively tiny switches, managing the flow of electricity and allowing computers to work. In general, the more transistors a chip contains, the faster and more powerful it becomes.
The microchip industry consistently endeavors to pack more transistors into a smaller area, leading to faster, more powerful and energy-efficient technological devices.
Compared to the previous most advanced chip, known as 3nm chips, TSMC’s 2nm technology should deliver notable benefits. These include a 10%-15% boost in computing speed at the same power level or a 20%-30% reduction in power usage at the same speed.
Additionally, transistor density in 2nm chips is increased by about 15%, over and above the 3nm technology. This should enable devices to operate faster, consume less energy, and manage more complex tasks efficiently.
Taiwan’s microchip industry is closely tied to its security. It is sometimes referred to as the “silicon shield”, because its widespread economic importance incentivizes the US and allies to defend Taiwan against the possibility of Chinese invasion.
TSMC recently struck a US$100 billion deal to build five new US factories. However, there is uncertainty over whether the 2nm chips can be manufactured outside Taiwan, as some officials are concerned that could undermine the island’s security.
Established in 1987, TSMC, which stands for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, manufactures chips for other companies. Taiwan accounts for 60% of the global “foundry” market (the outsourcing of semiconductor manufacturing) and the vast majority of that comes from TSMC alone.
TSMC’s super-advanced microchips are used by other companies in a wide range of devices. It manufactures Apple’s A-series processors used in iPhones, iPads, and Macs, it produces NVidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) used for machine learning and AI applications.
It also makes AMD’s Ryzen and EPYC processors used by supercomputers worldwide, and it produces Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors, used by Samsung, Xiaomi, OnePlus, and Google phones.
In 2020, TSMC started a special microchip miniaturisation process, called 5nm FinFET technology, that played a crucial role in smartphone and high-performance computing (HPC) development. HPC is the practice of getting multiple processors to work simultaneously on complex computing problems.
Two years later, TSMC launched a 3nm miniaturization process based on even smaller microchips. This further enhanced performance and power efficiency. Apple’s A-series processor, for example, is based on this technology.
TSMC makes the world’s most advanced microchips. Photo: Michael Vi / Shutterstock
Smartphones, laptops and tablets with 2nm chips could benefit from better performance and longer battery life. This will lead to smaller, lighter devices without sacrificing power.
The efficiency and speed of 2nm chips have the potential to enhance AI-based applications such as voice assistants, real-time language translation and autonomous computer systems (those designed to work with minimal to no human input).
Data centers could experience reduced energy consumption and improved processing capabilities, contributing to environmental sustainability goals.
Sectors like autonomous vehicles and robotics could benefit from the increased processing speed and reliability of the new chips, making these technologies safer and more practical for widespread adoption.
This all sounds really promising, but while 2nm chips represent a technological milestone, they also pose challenges. The first one is related to the manufacturing complexity.
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Producing 2nm chips requires cutting-edge techniques like extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. This complex and expensive process increases production costs and demands extremely high precision.
Another big issue is heat. Even with relatively lower consumption, as transistors shrink and densities increase, managing heat dissipation becomes a critical challenge.
Overheating can impact chip performance and durability. In addition, at such a small scale, traditional materials like silicon may reach their performance limits, requiring the exploration of different materials.
That said, the enhanced computational power, energy efficiency, and miniaturisation enabled by these chips could be a gateway to a new era of consumer and industrial computing.
Smaller chips could lead to breakthroughs in tomorrow’s technology, creating devices that are not only powerful but also discreet and more environmentally friendly.
Domenico Vicinanza is an associate professor of intelligent systems and data science, Anglia Ruskin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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asiatimes.com · by Domenico Vicinanza · April 5, 2025
20. Amid anti-DEI push, National Park Service rewrites history of Underground Railroad
Oh come on. This is one of the greatest "special operations" and resistance operations in American history. It should not be whitewashed.
We must stop the insanity. What American is not proud of Harriet Tubman and her leadership of the underground railroad?
Amid anti-DEI push, National Park Service rewrites history of Underground Railroad
Since Trump took office, the park service -- an agency charged with preserving American history -- has changed how its website describes key moments from slavery to Jim Crow
Today at 8:01 a.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2025/04/06/national-park-service-underground-railroad-history-slavery/?utm
9 min
690
(Illustration by Lucy Naland/The Washington Post; Library of Congress; National Park Service; iStock)
By Jon Swaine and Jeremy B. Merrill
For years, a National Park Service webpage introduced the Underground Railroad with a large photograph of its most famous “conductor,” Harriet Tubman. “The Underground Railroad — the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, through the end of the Civil War — refers to the efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage,” the page began.
Tubman’s photograph is now gone. In its place are images of Postal Service stamps that highlight “Black/White cooperation” in the secret network and that feature Tubman among abolitionists of both races.
The introductory sentence is gone, too. It has been replaced by a line that makes no mention of slavery and that describes the Underground Railroad as “one of the most significant expressions of the American civil rights movement.” The effort “bridged the divides of race,” the page now says.
A National Park Service webpage titled ‘What is the Underground Railroad?’ changed substantially after Trump took office. The text and photograph in red were deleted, and the portions in green were added. (NPS.org/Internet Archive)
The executive order that President Donald Trump issued late last month directing the Smithsonian Institution to eliminate “divisive narratives” stirred fears that the president aimed to whitewash the stories the nation tells about itself. But a Washington Post review of websites operated by the National Park Service — among the key agencies charged with the preservation of American history — found that edits on dozens of pages since Trump’s inauguration have already softened descriptions of some of the most shameful moments of the nation’s past.
Some were edited to remove references to slavery. On other pages, statements on the historic struggle of Black Americans for their rights were cut or softened, as were references to present-day echoes of racial division. The Post compared webpages as of late March to earlier versions preserved online by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
Changes in images, descriptions and even individual words have subtly reshaped the meaning of notable moments and key figures dating to the nation’s founding — abolitionist John Brown’s doomed raid, the battle at Appomattox and school integration by the Little Rock Nine.
An educational page on Benjamin Franklin, which examined his views on slavery and his ownership of enslaved people, was taken offline last month, the review found. Mentions of Thomas Stone, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, owning enslaved people were removed from several pages on the website of the Stone National Historic site in Southern Maryland.
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A reference to other “enslaved African Americans” in that region was changed to “enslaved workers.”
THOMAS STONE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE, MARYLAND
Stone’s tenant farmers and enslaved population pressed some of the fruit into cider, brandy, or vinegar.
After Trump took office, the words in red were deleted from a Thomas Stone National Historic Site webpage. (NPS.org/Internet Archive)
Trump has pursued broad executive orders and other measures aimed at dismantling “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs across the public and private sectors. His Inauguration Day order targeting DEI programs in government did not explicitly call for websites to be edited. But it has been interpreted aggressively by some officials, most notably at the Defense Department, which purged many pages that celebrated notable minority veterans. After an outcry, some were later restored.
At the Interior Department, which oversees the Park Service, political appointees directed senior career officials to identify webpages that might need to be changed, according to two Park Service employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution.
The senior career officials asked staff members to compile lists of potentially problematic pages, the employees said. Those lists were sent up the management chain for consideration. The employees did not know whether the changes identified by The Post were made as a result of this process, but one said that some staff members were expansive in selecting pages for edits. The employee said staff members received only vague guidance and that the selections were made amid a “frenzy of fear,” at a time when thousands of federal workers were losing their jobs.
“You draw as broad a brush as possible, because the consequences of missing something are a lot more severe than the consequences of doing too much,” the employee said.
A third NPS employee, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that some webpage changes resulted not from demands from above, but from lower-level employees seeking to comply with what they believed Trump wanted.
An Interior spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on the employees’ accounts.
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Asked about the website changes, a Park Service spokesperson offered a statement but didn’t address specific edits. “The National Park Service has been entrusted with preserving local history, celebrating local heritage, safeguarding special places and sharing stories of American experiences,” the statement said. “We take this role seriously and can point to many examples of how we tell nuanced and difficult stories about American history.”
The Post examined changes on thousands of Park Service webpages. The vast majority were routine; a handful added mentions of slavery or enslaved people. The Post could not identify every change made since Trump took office, in part because the Wayback Machine’s archives are not comprehensive.
On the website of Minute Man National Historical Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts, a passage about the lack of recognition for Black soldiers who fought for American independence was removed.
“Why don’t we hear more about this part of the American Revolution,” the passage began, according to archived versions of the site. “Unfortunately, systemic racism and historical bias have erased or buried many records of Black and Indigenous people who played a prominent role in the founding of the United States.”
A statement about the legacy of John Brown, who hoped to start a revolt by enslaved people in the run-up to the Civil War, was removed from a page on the website of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia.
“John Brown’s complex legacy remains a powerful symbol in America’s ongoing dialogue on race, justice, and the fight against oppression,” the line said.
Extensive changes were made to multiple Park Service pages about the Underground Railroad, and a landing page directing children to educational materials about it has been offline since last month. Since 1998, the Park Service has been required by federal law to recognize the Underground Railroad and to produce educational materials about it.
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Andrew Diemer, a professor at Towson University and author of a book on one of the network’s founders, said that while some White abolitionists supported the Underground Railroad, changes identified by The Post minimized the “legal and political forces” arrayed at the time against enslaved African Americans.
“Overall, the revisions seek to emphasize ‘harmony’ and ‘unity’ and to de-emphasize conflict in a way that is out of step with how historians have written about the Underground Railroad in recent decades,” Diemer said.
Other changes appear on the website of Appomattox Court House National Historical Park in Virginia, where Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union forces in April 1865, leading to the Civil War’s end.
One page, about the surrounding town, was rewritten in a way that incorporated two new mentions of slavery in the years before the war.
But on other pages about the battle and the subsequent emancipation of local enslaved people, all references to President Abraham Lincoln’s views of the war were removed, as were some references to Union Army commander Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s views. Some mentions of slavery were cut, along with details of how White hostility in the area thwarted the efforts of freed Black people to enter their society.
Greg Downs of the University of California at Davis, a specialist in Civil War history who has written several Park Service publications, said the changes warped history. “A country that cannot tell the truth about itself cannot assess what has led it to moments of greatness in the past and what could lead it again to greatness,” he said.
Alterations were also made to Park Service content about major figures and events in the Civil Rights movement during the 20th Century.
A page about the Niagara Movement, a group founded in 1905 by the African American civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois, was changed to remove two references to the struggle for “equality.” For example, a description of the group’s “renewed sense of resolve in the struggle for freedom and equality” became simply its “renewed sense of resolve.”
THE NIAGARA MOVEMENT AT HARPERS FERRY, WEST VIRGINIA
The organization continued until 1911, when almost all of its members became the backbone of the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). There, the men and women of the Niagara Movement recommitted themselves to the ongoing call for justice and the struggle for equality.
The sentence in red was deleted from a Niagara Movement webpage after Trump took office. (NPS.org/Internet Archive)
Shawn Leigh Alexander, a Du Bois biographer and professor at the University of Kansas, described the alterations as “subtle yet profound” in suggesting that racism no longer required confrontation in the United States at the time.
“Although these changes may appear inconsequential to some, they collectively contribute to the erasure of the historical narrative of Black struggle for civil, political, and economic rights, which continues to this day,” he said.
Similar amendments were made to the website of the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site in Arkansas, which marks the place where nine young African American students braved a racist mob and military resistance from state authorities to integrate a previously White-only school in 1957.
Students at Little Rock's Central High School shout insults at Elizabeth Eckford as she calmly walks toward a line of National Guard troops. (Will Counts/Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/AP)
Proclamations that the students “opened doors” for others pursuing “equality and education around the world” were edited on at least six pages to remove the word “equality.”
One of the surviving members of the Little Rock Nine, Elizabeth Eckford, told The Post that the edits masked the fact that the group had explicitly fought for equality of opportunity.
“They’re trying to rewrite history,” Eckford said. “We can never have true racial reconciliation until we honestly acknowledge our painful but shared past.”
Lucy Naland contributed to this report.
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Federal workers: The Trump administration continues to work to downsize the federal government — eliminating thousands of jobs at agencies, including HHS, USAID, the IRS, the Social Security Administration, the Education Department, the Defense Department, the National Weather Service and the National Park Service.
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21. U.S. Defense Secretary Hegseth To Visit U.S. Army 7th Special Forces Group Amid Growing Focus on Operations in Panama.
I am sure he will have a productive visit to the "Red Empire."
Hopefully he will announce a return of 3-7th SFG to Panama! ( said with only half sarcasm - we need more SF permanently stationed overseas in theater).
AI Overview
Learn more
The 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), also known as the "Red Empire," is a U.S. Army Special Forces group, and they are known for their covert operations and training, often seen practicing on bases like Eglin Air Force Base and Camp "Bull" Simons.
Here's a more detailed look:
- Nickname:
- "Red Empire" is a nickname for the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne).
- Other Nicknames:
- They are also known as "Green Berets," "Quiet Professionals," "Soldier-Diplomats," "Snake Eaters," and "Bearded Bastards".
- Motto:
- Their motto is "De Oppresso Liber," which translates to "To Free the Oppressed".
- Activities:
-
They are known for their covert operations and maintain a low profile, but they occasionally welcome visitors to their compound for "Red Empire Community Day," an open house that often features performances by army parachute teams and other military organizations.
- Training:
- They take their training seriously, and members are often seen practicing on bases like Eglin Air Force Base and Camp "Bull" Simons, including battle drills like reacting to contact, snipers, and casualties.
- Region of Responsibility:
- The 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) is responsible for a region encompassing 32 countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean, covering about 15.6 million square miles.
- Memorial:
- The group has a memorial honoring their fallen comrades, and the community has stepped up to donate money and services for its construction.
- Insignia:
- The crown of the 7th Special Forces Group beret bears a red felt shield and a pin of black and silver and black crossed arrows over a sword with the motto "De Oppresso Liber".
- Instagram:
- The 7th Special Forces Group (A) has an Instagram account (@7thspecialforcesgroup) where they share information and photos of their activities.
U.S. Defense Secretary Hegseth To Visit U.S. Army 7th Special Forces Group Amid Growing Focus on Operations in Panama.
https://armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2025/u-s-defense-secretary-hegseth-to-visit-u-s-army-7th-special-forces-group-amid-growing-focus-on-operations-in-panama
Announced by the U.S. Department of Defense on April 4, 2025, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is scheduled to visit the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, a move that underscores the Biden administration’s renewed strategic focus on Latin America—particularly the pivotal role of Panama. The visit highlights the operational importance of the 7th SFG(A) within the region, especially as the U.S. intensifies its engagement in hemispheric defense partnerships. It also comes just days ahead of Secretary Hegseth’s participation in the 2025 Central American Security Conference (CENTSEC) in Panama City, where senior defense and security leaders from across the region will convene to reinforce collaborative efforts and strengthen multinational security frameworks in the Western Hemisphere.
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U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers from the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) conduct joint training with Panamanian special forces, enhancing interoperability and strengthening bilateral defense cooperation in support of regional security missions. (Picture source: U.S. DoD)
The U.S. Army 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), or 7th SFG(A), plays a crucial role in U.S. military operations throughout Latin America, particularly in Central America and the Caribbean. With a mission that includes unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, and counter-narcotics operations, the unit is the backbone of special operations in a region marked by persistent security challenges, such as transnational organized crime, narcotrafficking, and growing external influence from global powers. Panama, in particular, is central to the group’s area of responsibility—not just due to its geography and the Panama Canal, but also because of the country’s historical and operational significance to U.S. military strategy in the region.
Secretary Hegseth’s visit underscores the Pentagon’s recognition of the 7th SFG(A)’s enduring contributions to regional security. The unit has a storied history of working closely with partner nations’ armed forces, and Panama has long stood out as a close ally. From Operation Just Cause in 1989 to modern-day training and advisory missions, the relationship between U.S. and Panamanian forces remains robust. The group’s deployments and joint missions help build partner capacity, ensure rapid crisis response, and serve as a counterweight to rising instability and foreign intervention in the hemisphere.
The visit also gains added relevance following the first official U.S.-Panama Special Operations Forces (SOF) talks held on February 18, 2025. These talks, held alongside concurrent joint combined exchange training (JCET) exercises, marked a significant milestone in U.S.-Panama defense relations. According to the U.S. Department of State, these engagements "underscore a decades-long bilateral partnership and highlight the global impact of U.S. special operations forces." The 7th SFG(A), through its leadership and operational involvement, played a key role in facilitating these discussions, which focused on interoperability, mutual threat assessments, and enhanced regional readiness.
This strategic momentum aligns with recent statements and ambitions expressed by current U.S. President Donald Trump, who has shown increasing interest in Panama and the Panama Canal as part of his broader Western Hemisphere security and economic agenda. President Trump has publicly emphasized the importance of securing American influence over key global trade arteries and countering adversarial encroachment—specifically referencing concerns about Chinese commercial and political activity near the canal zone. The recent agreement that saw a Hong Kong-based conglomerate sell its controlling stake in Panama’s ports to a U.S.-led investment group has only intensified attention on the region.
In this context, Secretary Hegseth’s twin engagements—first with the 7th Special Forces Group at home, and then with Panamanian and regional defense leaders abroad—send a strong signal of U.S. resolve. The trip demonstrates the operational readiness of America’s special forces and reaffirms Washington’s intent to deepen its alliances and influence across Latin America. The 7th SFG(A)’s mission readiness, cultural expertise, and long-standing regional relationships make it a cornerstone of this effort.
As great power competition resurfaces in Latin America, the U.S. Department of Defense appears committed to investing in longstanding partnerships, leveraging elite units like the U.S. Army's 7th Special Forces Group, and strengthening regional coalitions to promote security, stability, and sovereignty in the Western Hemisphere.
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
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