Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Some ideas are so stupide that only intellectuals believe them."

– George Orwell

"To suffer without complaint is the only lesson we have to learn in this life."

– Vincent van Gogh

"All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal."

– John Steinbeck

1. Special Forces Established as a Basic Branch of the Army effective 9 April 1987

2. Open/Closed: To receive testimony on United States Special Operations Command in review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2026 and the Future Years Defense Program

3. Gabbard sets up DOGE-style team to cut costs, uncover intel ‘weaponization’

4. NSA and Five Eyes Get Loomered

5. Report: Trump Planning Military Parade for U.S. Army's 250th Anniversary

6. Judge Orders White House to Restore AP’s Access

7. U.S.-China Brawl Takes Center Stage in Global Trade War

8. Senate confirms Trump’s controversial pick for Pentagon No. 3 job

9. U.S. Commanders Worry Yemen Campaign Will Drain Arms Needed to Deter China

10. Chinese Intelligence May Be Trying to Recruit Fired U.S. Officials

11. Report: Trump Planning Military Parade for U.S. Army's 250th Anniversary

12. 12 Questions for a Writer: Douglas Waller

13. Al Qaeda Punctures Kenya’s Dreams for an Indian Ocean Trade Hub

14. China Denies Military Involvement in Ukraine After Citizens Captured

15. An American-Made iPhone: Just Expensive or Completely Impossible?

16. Back to 13-Marine squads and a new company for infantry battalions

17. Accelerating to Where? How the U.S. Can Better Compete in the Chip War

18. Tariffs will awaken the American Dream

19. The Rise of a New Axis: Great Power Struggle and the Future of Conflict

20. How the Houthis Outsmarted Washington

21. Hunting and the enemy in Modern Counterinsurgency: Malayan developments

22. China Has Readied a Trade-War Arsenal That Takes Aim at U.S. Companies

23. Authoritarians’ Achilles’ Heel: Leveraging Space-Based Internet to Seize Competitive Initiative

24. Taiwan’s Youth Are Not Defeatist — and The Data Proves It

25. Behind the Curtain: How Trump reordered the world in 80 days26.

1. Special Forces Established as a Basic Branch of the Army effective 9 April 1987

As a result of renewed emphasis on special operations in the 1980s, the Special Forces branch was established as a basic branch of the Army effective 9 April 1987, by Army General Order (AGO) No. 35, 19 June 1987. The distinctive green beret was officially authorized in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy.

Here's a more detailed breakdown:

Date of Establishment:
The Special Forces Branch was established as a basic branch of the Army effective April 9, 1987.
General Order:
This was formalized by Department of the Army General Order No. 35, issued on June 19, 1987.
Significance:
This order marked the formal recognition of Special Forces as a distinct branch within the Army, separate from other branches, with its own identity and career path.
Insignia:
The insignia for the Special Forces branch, "Two crossed arrows 3/4 inch in height and 1 3/8 inches," was also introduced at this time.
Historical Context:
The first Special Forces unit in the Army was formed on 11 June 1952, when the 10th Special Forces Group was activated at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

2. Open/Closed: To receive testimony on United States Special Operations Command in review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2026 and the Future Years Defense Program

Testimony from Colby Jenkins, performing the duties of ASD SO/LIC and General Bryan Fenton, CDR USSOCOM.

Their 15 page combined statement can be accessed at the link below. For those with an interest in SOF I recommend watching the approximately one hour of open testimony and reading the statement.

A few key points:

Some 200% in presidential directed crisis response missions.

"Some may think we are done fighting terrorism but terrorism is not done with us."

Good discussion of the flat budget and personnel reductions and their impact on operations and modernization. Risk to deterrence: USSOCOM had to say "no" Geographic Combatant Command recruits some 41 times due to personnel and funding shortfalls.

I noticed something I have not found stated anywhere before: The Interim Defense Guidance priorities: 1) Homeland Defense; 2) Deter China; and 3) Increase Burden Sharing from allies. (Shift burdens to allies as Mr. Jenkins said) It is this last that I had not heard stated before as part of the Interim Defense Guidance. I have searched for any open source references to this priority of increasing burden sharing of our allies. But I have not found any reference to it.

"We are America's Irregular warfare experts."

Shaping the Environment to Prevent Conflict. Irregular warfare is in SOF's DNA, with decades of extensive access and placement to deter conflict.

The SOF enterprise draws upon over a half-century of irregular warfare and decades of combat experience and credibility to execute our critical roles in three specific mission sets: deterrence, counterterrorism, and crisis response.

First, SOF leverage persistent access and placement, shaping the operational environment to prevent conflict by altering adversaries’ decision calculus as America’s irregular warfare specialists.

As America’s premier partnering and irregular warfare force, SOF counter our adversaries’ use of statecraft through persistent access and placement and transregional campaigning against strategic competitors.

Modernized and updated fiscal authorities enable SOF to campaign effectively against state and non-state actors and achieve an outsized impact across multiple mission sets and domains. We greatly appreciate Congress acting last year to codify, expand, and clarify the intent for the former Section 1202 – now 10 U.S.C. § 127d – irregular warfare authority. Your efforts resulted in increased Combatant Command interest in irregular warfare as they look for more opportunities to employ SOF. USSOCOM continues to expand the use of 10 U.S.C. § 127f (Clandestine Operational Preparation of the Environment and Non-conventional Assisted Recovery). This authority provides SOF the flexibility to meet Combatant Commander-directed requirements by setting the conditions for mission execution in potential operational areas. Novel approaches to operational and fiscal authorities will significantly enhance SOF operational effectiveness, efficiency, continuity of effort, and synchronization of SOF activities at the scale necessary to orient towards key threats and keep our enemies deterred. We stand ready to work with Congress to sustain and adapt our operational and fiscal authorities at pace with mission needs, all to provide the Nation with irregular warfare options across the spectrum of conflict.

Also some hard questions on information and influence and that there are no overall organizations responsible for influence. The ASD SO/LIC says he is responsible for information operations for DOD

Also discussion about ASD SO/LICs' Service Secretary like oversight responsibilities from Sec 922. "On the way" to establishing the service secretary like responsibilities.

Open/Closed: To receive testimony on United States Special Operations Command in review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2026 and the Future Years Defense Program | United States Senate Committee on Armed Services

Date: Tuesday, April 8th, 2025

Time: 02:30pm

Location: SD-G50 Dirksen Senate Office Building

You can watch the one hour of open session testimony here: https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/hearings/to-receive-testimony-on-united-states-special-operations-command-in-review-of-the-defense-authorization-request-for-fiscal-year-2026-and-the-future-years-defense-program

You can access the combined Statement for the Record for the acting ASD SO/LIC and CDR, USSOCOM here: https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/mrcolbyjenkinsjointtestimonywithgeneralfenton.pdf

3. Gabbard sets up DOGE-style team to cut costs, uncover intel ‘weaponization’

Excerpts:

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has established a new group to work on cost-cutting and investigate “weaponization” across the 18 spy agencies that her office oversees.

The Director’s Initiatives Group was established in line with President Donald Trump’s executive order to “bring about transparency and accountability” in the intelligence community, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a news release Tuesday.

...

While that effort might save money, much of the $106 billion annual U.S. spy budget pays for expensive satellites and other sophisticated collection platforms, as well as CIA case officers and analysts, who are likely to prove harder to cut without affecting intelligence operations. Details of U.S. intelligence budgets are classified.

So far, DIG has reviewed documents for potential declassification, including information related to covid-19 origins, the U.S. government investigation into Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election — a probe known as Crossfire Hurricane — and Havana syndrome, according to the ODNI.

Gabbard’s focus on “weaponization” is just one of several moves that have unsettled some agency personnel, a number of whom have opted to take an offer to resign early but be paid through Sept. 30, a former official said. The offer is commonly referred to as the “Fork in the Road,” after a similar Office of Personnel Management offer under that title, which itself echoed a Musk effort to downsize Twitter after he bought the social media company in 2022.

Gabbard sets up DOGE-style team to cut costs, uncover intel ‘weaponization’

The Director’s Initiatives Group, or DIG, is staffed by agency outsiders vetted by the White House, officials said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/04/08/tulsi-gabbard-intelligence-doge-cuts-weaponization/

April 8, 2025 at 7:13 p.m. EDTToday at 7:13 p.m. EDT

6 min

Tulsi Gabbard at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in January on her nomination to be director of national intelligence. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

By Ellen Nakashima, Warren P. Strobel and Aaron Schaffer

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has established a new group to work on cost-cutting and investigate “weaponization” across the 18 spy agencies that her office oversees.

The Director’s Initiatives Group was established in line with President Donald Trump’s executive order to “bring about transparency and accountability” in the intelligence community, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a news release Tuesday.

“We are already identifying wasteful spending in real time, streamlining outdated processes, reviewing documents for declassification, and leading ongoing efforts to root out abuses of power and politicization,” the ODNI said in the release.

The composition of the group and its level of access and clearance remain unclear. But one U.S. official familiar with the matter said the group is composed of up to 10 people from outside the agency, vetted by the White House. The official, like several others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

Two weeks ago, Gabbard testified to Congress that the U.S. DOGE Service — the government cost-cutting arm overseen by tech billionaire Elon Musk — “has not been at ODNI.”

Follow Trump’s first 100 Days

The Director’s Initiatives Group, or DIG, is not part of DOGE, but it is looking at ways to cut costs within the intelligence community, officials said. DIG members have been at ODNI headquarters in McLean, Virginia, since late February, one official said.

News of the initiative emerges as the Senate Intelligence Committee is scheduled to hold a confirmation hearing Wednesday for Aaron Lukas and Joseph Kent, who have been nominated as principal deputy director of national intelligence and head of the National Counterterrorism Center, respectively.

Lukas is a career government official who served as an aide to then-acting intelligence director Richard Grenell during the first Trump administration. While Lukas’s LinkedIn profile says he worked for the State Department, a financial disclosure form filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics says he has been a CIA officer since 2004. Kent is a former Special Operations and CIA officer who twice lost a bid for Congress. Both are serving informally as advisers to Gabbard as they prepare for confirmation, and Kent has accompanied Gabbard to the White House for briefings.

Both Gabbard and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, have said they want to trim ODNI, which has grown to about 2,000 people since its founding in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to coordinate intelligence sharing across the often-siloed U.S. spy agencies. Neither has publicly put forward reorganization plans.

While that effort might save money, much of the $106 billion annual U.S. spy budget pays for expensive satellites and other sophisticated collection platforms, as well as CIA case officers and analysts, who are likely to prove harder to cut without affecting intelligence operations. Details of U.S. intelligence budgets are classified.

So far, DIG has reviewed documents for potential declassification, including information related to covid-19 origins, the U.S. government investigation into Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election — a probe known as Crossfire Hurricane — and Havana syndrome, according to the ODNI.

Gabbard’s focus on “weaponization” is just one of several moves that have unsettled some agency personnel, a number of whom have opted to take an offer to resign early but be paid through Sept. 30, a former official said. The offer is commonly referred to as the “Fork in the Road,” after a similar Office of Personnel Management offer under that title, which itself echoed a Musk effort to downsize Twitter after he bought the social media company in 2022.

At least 100 ODNI personnel have taken the offer, some of whom are taking advantage of an opportunity to retire early with full pension benefits, an official said.

But others, many with decades of service in the intelligence community, are leaving because they think the agency’s new leadership is compromised by Trump’s partisan politics, said two former officials.

That group numbers at least 45, according to one former official. “They don’t believe they can continue to carry out the core mission of keeping the nation safe, under these circumstances,” the former official said.

The departure last month of acting general counsel Tricia Wellman has rankled some long-serving employees. Three people familiar with the matter said she left after she provided legal advice that displeased Gabbard. Wellman, a national security lawyer who had served in the ODNI across multiple Democratic and Republican administrations, was advised to take a deferred resignation, the people said.

Asked for comment, an ODNI official said Wellman’s departure had nothing to do with her legal advice. “Tricia Wellman failed to deliver on her responsibilities as Acting General Counsel on numerous occasions,” said the official. “She could have remained in her position as a deputy to the new Acting General Counsel, but she chose instead to take the Deferred Resignation Program and to combine it with Voluntary Early Retirement.”

Career officials at the ODNI have expressed concerns that Gabbard is fundamentally skeptical of the intelligence community and the analysis it provides the president.

Before joining the Trump administration, Gabbard routinely criticized U.S. intelligence agencies, implying that they were politicized. She questioned U.S. spy agencies’ assessment of chemical weapons use by the regime of then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and at times she appeared to echo Russian talking points about the roots of the war in Ukraine.

“People aren’t skeptical of her because she’s calling for more efficiency in the structure,” the second former official said. “They’re skeptical of her over what positions she has taken over many years now.”

The tumult within the intelligence community has reached beyond the ODNI.

Last week, Trump fired Gen. Timothy Haugh, the director of the National Security Agency, and his deputy, along with a slew of officials on the White House National Security Council staff, for apparently political purposes. The dismissals came after Trump met with a far-right activist, Laura Loomer, who accused the officials of political disloyalty.

In recent days, the administration also fired a top Navy admiral assigned to NATO headquarters in Brussels. Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, the U.S. military representative to the NATO Military Committee, was notified of her removal over the weekend, three officials said.

On Friday, also as a result of a Trump order, Walter Weiss, the chief technology officer in the Pentagon’s Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, was notified that he was being removed from his position, according to five current and former U.S. officials. As with all the dismissals, no official reason was given for Weiss’s firing, which was previously unreported. A Pentagon spokeswoman said the department does not comment on personnel matters.

What readers are saying

The comments on the article about Tulsi Gabbard's establishment of the Director’s Initiatives Group to cut costs and investigate "weaponization" in the intelligence community are largely critical. Many commenters express distrust in Gabbard, often suggesting she has ties to... Show more

This summary is AI-generated. AI can make mistakes and this summary is not a replacement for reading the comments.

All comments 32

By Ellen Nakashima

Ellen Nakashima is an intelligence and national security reporter at The Washington Post. She's been a member of three Pulitzer prizewinning teams, for probing the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the hidden scope of government surveillance. Send her secure tips on Signal at Ellen.626 follow on X@nakashimae

By Warren P. Strobel

Warren P. Strobel is a reporter at The Washington Post covering U.S. intelligence. He has written about U.S. security policies under seven presidents. He received numerous awards, and was portrayed in the movie "Shock and Awe," for his skeptical reporting on the decision to invade Iraq. Send him secure tips on Signal at 202 744 1312follow on X@wstrobel

By Aaron Schaffer

Aaron Schaffer is a researcher on The Post's News Research team.follow on X@aaronjschaffer

4. NSA and Five Eyes Get Loomered

Excerpts:

Haugh had no reason to anticipate his early termination. The director received word of his surprise firing when he was in Japan on official business. Since all the key stakeholders – NSA itself, the Pentagon (NSA is a Department of Defense combat support agency), and the White House – have kept mum about the reasons for the termination of Haugh and Noble, we must turn to the statement made by Loomer, who apparently recommended to President Trump that DIRNSA and DDIR had to go. As she posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Apr. 5:

There are a lot of bad actors embedded all over the FBI, DOJ, NSC, NSA, DOD, and State Department. It’s going to take time to hunt these people down, publicly expose them and have them fired and removed from their positions. This is going to need to happen for the sake of Protecting President Trump and our national security. Obama and Biden era intelligence officials have shown they have a hard time with morality, professional ethics, and loyalty.

Hopefully they face consequences for their actions.

If you hate President Trump, you have no place serving in his administration.

That’s not much to go on. Loomer’s purge of the Deep State apparently is guided by witch-hunting criteria understood only by the hunter herself. While many in MAGA ranks have asserted that Haugh and Noble were fired for disloyalty or worse, perhaps even spying on President Trump, Loomer herself made no such claim (much less proffering any evidence). The most she’s stated, semi-coherently, appeared on X on Apr. 4:

As a Biden appointee, General Haugh had no place serving in the Trump admin given the fact that he was HAND PICKED by General Milley, who was accused of committing treason by President Trump. Why would we want an NSA Director who was referred to Biden after being hand selected by Milley, who told China he would side with them over Trump!?!?

The vetters should have been more critical, given the fact that the Pentagon revoked the security detail and clearance for retired general Mark Milley, who called President Trump a FASCIST.

Why would we want Milley’s hand picked choice for NSA DIRECTOR?

We do not! And thus, he was referred for firing.

Given the fact that the NSA is arguably the most powerful intel agency in the world, we cannot allow for a Biden nominee to hold that position.

Here Loomer means partisan or ideological vetting, not security vetting in any sense understood in the intelligence business. If being approved by GEN Mark Milley, the former Joint Chiefs chairman hated by MAGA and Trump himself, constitutes grounds for firing, virtually all serving senior generals and admirals must be terminated. Why Noble was cashiered too, we don’t know.

NSA and Five Eyes Get Loomered

Trump’s Deep State purge accelerates, but MAGA’s real target is the Western intelligence alliance -- who is really behind it?

https://topsecretumbra.substack.com/p/nsa-and-five-eyes-get-loomered?utm

John Schindler

Apr 08, 2025

∙ Paid

Last week was an unprecedented rollercoaster for American national security. Thursday brought a purge of the National Security Council, with several staffers, some of them senior, getting abruptly fired. This represented significant churn for the NSC, just ten weeks into the second Trump administration.

The cloud of scandal was hanging over the NSC, especially its boss, Mike Waltz, since press exposure of the misuse of Signal, the encrypted messaging app, by White House senior national security officials. Waltz had implausibly invited star liberal journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, a longtime Trump nemesis, into this elite chat. Worse, Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth then proceeded to share what appeared to be highly classified defense and intelligence information, which Goldberg reported to the world after Trump’s Intelligence Community leadership stated that no classified information was contained in that Signal group chat.

This was a needless debacle for Trump 2.0, a two-day scandal that was mishandled into a week-long ordeal, which Waltz miraculously survived, despite the president’s anger and Waltz’s own questionable online habits. The price for the disgraced Waltz keeping his job was his participation in the theatrical mass purge of the NSC that followed. The oddest aspect to this strange turn of events in the White House was the central role played by Laura Loomer, the crank-right MAGA superfan and conspiracy monger. Loomer is so far beyond the GOP pale that last year Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who’s nobody’s idea of a moderate, denounced Loomer for her “rhetoric and hateful tone” while the Congresswoman declared that Loomer’s unhinged comments represent “a huge problem. And that doesn’t represent MAGA as a whole.”

President Trump clearly disagrees, since he chose Loomer to be his instrument to select NSC staffers to be fired for alleged disloyalty to MAGA, based upon Loomer’s own assessment. In the aftermath of the NSC purge, Trump praised her as “a very good patron, a very strong person,” adding, “she makes recommendations of things and people and sometimes I listen to those recommendations.”

Terminating those deemed insufficiently MAGA by Laura Loomer then shifted its energy from the White House to the National Security Agency. Without warning, NSA’s director and deputy director, the agency’s top two officials, were fired. This sort of action has never happened in NSA’s long history, and it requires some explanation, given the significance of this Loomering.

Some examination of the newly fired, and their positions, is likewise needed. Air Force Gen. Timothy Haugh only served as NSA Director (called DIRNSA, pronounced “durn-suh,” in the spook trade), with the concomitant appointment of Commander, U.S. Cyber Command, for a year. Since the creation of CYBERCOM in 2010, DIRNSA has been “dual-hatted” in both jobs, an arrangement that’s always been imperfect, yet the much-discussed NSA-CYBERCOM split has never made it through Congress. Haugh is a career USAF officer with over three decades’ experience in intelligence and cyber operations. His appointment in late 2023 to head NSA was seen as relatively uncontroversial. Only serial NSA-haters in Congress raised voices to oppose Haugh’s nomination, without success.

Deputy Director (DDIR for short, pronounced “dee-dur”) Wendy Noble, in contrast, is a career NSA civilian employee who joined the agency in 1987 as a cryptologic linguist and rose up the ranks through a series of assignments in signals intelligence operations, joint collection operations, staff positions, plus professional education. Noble, too, was viewed as an uncontroversial choice in intelligence circles to take the number two job at NSA.

NSA traditionally keeps a lower public profile than the publicity-hungry CIA or FBI, and the agency likes it that way. Until not that long ago, the stock joke was that the letters stood for “No Such Agency.” Not one American in a hundred had heard of Gen. Haugh before his firing made the headlines last week, while hardly anybody outside Intelligence Community circles knew who Wendy Noble was or what DDIR’s job is.

By tradition, going back to NSA’s establishment in 1952, the director is a serving military officer with three stars (upgraded to four stars with the birth of CYBERCOM). For most of the agency’s history, the DIRNSA job rotated among the Army, Navy, and Air Force, with directors serving a three or four-year term. Also, by tradition, the agency’s DDIR was always an agency career civilian. Some DDIRs stayed in the job longer than their uniformed boss did. At the height of the Cold War, Dr. Lou Tordella served as the number two for a record 16 years, starting in 1958. Given his extended tenure, Tordella was the most powerful NSA official, de facto, and it was easy for him to view directors as short-timers whose wishes, if unwanted, could be slow-rolled until they succumbed to bureaucratic inertia.

That system changed only in this century. Starting in 1999, Air Force Lt. Gen. Mike Hayden served as DIRNSA for six years, while his successor, Army GEN Keith Alexander, served for nearly nine years, a record. Both directors witnessed the agency experience significant changes to mission and organization to wage the War on Terror. Since then, Navy ADM Mike Rogers and Army GEN Paul Nakasone served as DIRNSA for a more normal four and almost five years, respectively.

Haugh had no reason to anticipate his early termination. The director received word of his surprise firing when he was in Japan on official business. Since all the key stakeholders – NSA itself, the Pentagon (NSA is a Department of Defense combat support agency), and the White House – have kept mum about the reasons for the termination of Haugh and Noble, we must turn to the statement made by Loomer, who apparently recommended to President Trump that DIRNSA and DDIR had to go. As she posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Apr. 5:

There are a lot of bad actors embedded all over the FBI, DOJ, NSC, NSA, DOD, and State Department. It’s going to take time to hunt these people down, publicly expose them and have them fired and removed from their positions. This is going to need to happen for the sake of Protecting President Trump and our national security. Obama and Biden era intelligence officials have shown they have a hard time with morality, professional ethics, and loyalty.

Hopefully they face consequences for their actions.

If you hate President Trump, you have no place serving in his administration.

That’s not much to go on. Loomer’s purge of the Deep State apparently is guided by witch-hunting criteria understood only by the hunter herself. While many in MAGA ranks have asserted that Haugh and Noble were fired for disloyalty or worse, perhaps even spying on President Trump, Loomer herself made no such claim (much less proffering any evidence). The most she’s stated, semi-coherently, appeared on X on Apr. 4:

As a Biden appointee, General Haugh had no place serving in the Trump admin given the fact that he was HAND PICKED by General Milley, who was accused of committing treason by President Trump. Why would we want an NSA Director who was referred to Biden after being hand selected by Milley, who told China he would side with them over Trump!?!?

The vetters should have been more critical, given the fact that the Pentagon revoked the security detail and clearance for retired general Mark Milley, who called President Trump a FASCIST.

Why would we want Milley’s hand picked choice for NSA DIRECTOR?

We do not! And thus, he was referred for firing.

Given the fact that the NSA is arguably the most powerful intel agency in the world, we cannot allow for a Biden nominee to hold that position.

Here Loomer means partisan or ideological vetting, not security vetting in any sense understood in the intelligence business. If being approved by GEN Mark Milley, the former Joint Chiefs chairman hated by MAGA and Trump himself, constitutes grounds for firing, virtually all serving senior generals and admirals must be terminated. Why Noble was cashiered too, we don’t know.

There’s no doubt that Loomer is being employed as a kind of cover here. More consequential in this top-level purge was the unannounced Mar. 13 visit to NSA headquarters by Elon Musk, the president’s First Buddy and sort-of head of the Department of Government Efficiency. While media coverage presented Musk’s sojourn to central Maryland, including his meeting with Gen. Haugh, in positive terms, multiple IC sources have told me that the meeting didn’t go well. The DOGE honcho is reputed to have been displeased with what he learned at NSA.

In this scenario, Loomer is just a front to allow the White House to fire NSA’s top leadership. Nevertheless, the fact that Trump selected an unhinged kook like Loomer, possessing zero national security experience yet ample ideological fury, to serve as the public face of his war on the Deep State says something about the administration that ought to alarm our friends and allies.

What’s really going on here? Loomer is correct that NSA is the world’s most powerful intelligence agency, as the centerpiece of the Five Eyes espionage alliance, the Anglosphere spy partnership dating to the Second World War. While Britain’s GCHQ, Canada’s CSE, Australia’s ASD, and New Zealand’s GCSB all play important roles in Five Eyes, NSA is unquestionably the cornerstone of this international system. Without NSA and its unsurpassed capabilities in signals intelligence and cyber operations, Five Eyes will wither away.

Which would greatly benefit our adversaries, above all Russia and China. It may not be irrelevant that Loomer is a fan of Julian Assange, the Russian intelligence agent and architect of numerous damaging influence operations against our Intelligence Community and Five Eyes. Of course, that’s not a standout anymore given that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is also an Assange fangirl as well as an unrepentant admirer of Assange’s protégé Edward Snowden, the most damaging defector in U.S. intelligence history.

Trump’s assault on NSA, decapitating its top leadership, must be viewed in the broader context of his second administration’s war on American cybersecurity. NSA has a defensive mission too, protecting classified U.S. IT systems from compromise and espionage. If you weaken NSA, you damage our national security at a basic level. Moreover, the White House is determined to also weaken the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency by firing up to one-third of the CISA workforce. Why? Given the rising threats to the U.S. economy and society from foreign cyberespionage, especially Chinese, why would anybody want to gut CISA now? Cui bono?

Congress isn’t silent over the NSA purge. Top Democrats have registered their displeasure and alarm over the abrupt termination of Haugh and Noble. Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, pointedly asked about Haugh’s termination: “At a time when the United States is facing unprecedented cyber threats...how does firing him make Americans any safer?” The top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Connecticut Rep. Jim Hines, sounded a similar note: “I have known General Haugh to be an honest and forthright leader who followed the law and put national security first -- I fear those are precisely the qualities that could lead to his firing in this Administration,” adding, “The Intelligence Committee and the American people need an immediate explanation for this decision, which makes all of us less safe.”

Republicans have mostly kept mum, fearing the wrath of Trump and Musk with their online troll armies, but an exception was Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, who stated in a Sunday interview: “Russia and China today are laughing at us because we just fired the absolute best leaders, the most qualified guys that we spent three-and-a-half decades preparing to have this role, and he’s gone…and it’s heartbreaking to see that that decision was made without explanation, and it hurt us.” FoxNews senior national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin similarly provoked MAGA anger by asking on X: “Why is the administration dismantling the nation’s cyber defenses at such a dangerous time? The President orders the firing of NSA director Gen Haugh after meeting with conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer in the Oval Office without consulting the Pentagon … This after the administration has taken steps to dismantle CISA. What is going on and why isn’t there loud bipartisan demand for answers?”

So far, the White House has offered no explanation for its unprecedented decapitation of our most important intelligence agency. Who will be nominated to head NSA and CYBERCOM now? We simply don’t know. Army LTG William Hartman, the CYBERCOM deputy commander, is acting in those jobs for the moment. Speculation is running rampant about what MAGA’s real agenda is with this shocking move. Does President Trump seek to install a loyalist to head NSA? Given the enormous power that agency possesses to spy on the world, putting a MAGA hack in charge would have alarming implications for global security and American privacy. Or, more optimistically, is this move part of a strategy to decouple CYBERCOM from NSA with the aim of improving cyber operations?

Most IC veterans think there’s more to the NSA purge than that. Reactions from senior spies around the Beltway to the unexpected firing of Haugh and Noble range from shock to dismay, regardless of their political views. Comments I’ve heard in recent days include: “This is a bad omen,” “Trump wants to destroy the IC,” “This is a coup d’êtat,” and “I guess Musk’s deep connections to China really do matter.”

The dreadful counterintelligence implications of DOGE in particular stand out. As this newsletter has explained more than once, Musk’s strange personality combined with his shocking disregard for basic security in his self-styled crusade to reform the federal bureaucracy offers our enemies alarming opportunities to steal American secrets and compromise our national security. This perspective was amplified last week by a detailed assessment which termed DOGE a “counterintelligence nightmare.” Therein the author elaborated how Musk’s cavalier habits are opening the door wide to anyone, castigating “The red carpet rolled out by DOGE to our adversaries to steal our secrets on an industrial scale.”

Then: “Who is checking their work? Certainly not the inspectors general, most of whom were summarily fired. Baseline inquiries about DOGE security precautions from the Senate Intelligence Committee have gone unanswered,” the author stated, adding acidly: “The cardinal rule of sane security is simple: trust but verify. Except, it would seem, for DOGE. It seems to have no supervision, no transparency, no security checks on their personnel or their operations, and no oversight.”

These comments are particularly important since they come from Michelle Van Cleave, who’s spent her long career in the national security arena with an emphasis on counterintelligence. She was the first director of the National Counterintelligence Executive (now termed the National Counterintelligence and Security Center) under President George W. Bush in 2001. Van Cleave is an expert on espionage, no liberal member of the “Resistance” to President Trump. These concluding words from her carry particular weight:

If Trump and Elon Musk were serious about giving their novel experiment in “government efficiency” a chance to be done right, they would stand down DOGE operations until sound security guardrails can be put in place. What has already been compromised may be unrecoverable, but it may yet be possible to stem some of the damage and protect against future unintended loss.

Van Cleave then added: “Unless — as critics have charged — it is loss and destruction that have been the real goals all along. Until then, it’s party time in Moscow and Beijing. And it is future generations of Americans who will bear the cost.”

It’s not every day that a former head of U.S. counterintelligence, who is no partisan bomb thrower, implies that President Trump and his First Buddy might be compromising American secrets and crashing our national security by design.

Neither is this just about NSA. Enter David Ignatius, the veteran Washington Post columnist whose close relationship with CIA means that his columns often serve as de facto press releases for that agency’s leadership (what Langley terms “the seventh floor”). Ignatius’ latest column castigates Trump’s politicization of the IC as a “special poison” that’s doing serious damage to NSA, CIA, and other spy agencies. He cites the recent case of Ralph Goff, a highly respected retired CIA officer from the Directorate of Operations who was selected by Director John Ratcliffe to head agency clandestine operations. A 35-year veteran of the Clandestine Service, including six tours as station chief, Goff’s nomination as Deputy Director for Operations was lauded by many at Langley. Per Ignatius: “The choice was popular with current CIA officers and the agency’s vocal alumni group. Several spoke of Goff as a pragmatist and a professional who could help Ratcliffe rebuild operations. One veteran characterized him as ‘a true patriot’ and ‘not a Trump loyalist.’ But that may have been the problem.”

In the Loomer era, John Ratcliffe is no more running “his” CIA than Mike Waltz controls “his” NSC. For some reason, Goff is no longer under consideration to be DDO. Ignatius depicts Goff’s deselection as having something to do with previous statements that Goff made, some of which were reported in the media, that were too pro-Ukraine and anti-Putin for this White House’s liking.

I’m afraid the truth here is more alarming than that. Multiple IC sources shared with me the reason for the White House demanding Goff be removed from consideration as DDO, over Ratcliffe’s wishes. Goff had uttered statements about Trump that were negative, at least contextually. However, these comments were not searchable on the Internet. Instead, somebody meticulously archived Goff’s unflattering statements about Trump, perhaps modifying them to make them seem more critical of the president than they in fact were. This negative dossier was then shared with Team Trump, resulting in Goff’s removal for consideration to head the Clandestine Service.

The creators of this hit on Ralph Goff were none other than Russian intelligence. We need to ascertain who conveyed this Kremlin information to the Oval Office. We especially need to determine who is feeding Laura Loomer malicious gossip and worse about Timothy Haugh, Wendy Noble, and other senior national security officials.

5. Report: Trump Planning Military Parade for U.S. Army's 250th Anniversary

Excerpt:

“The Army is very excited to celebrate its 250th anniversary with the entire county,” Army spokesman Col. Dave Butler told the outlet. “Our intention is for Americans to be proud of their Army and also proud of their nation. It’s too early to say yet whether or not we’re having a parade but we’re working with the White House as well as several government agencies to make the celebration a national level event.”

Report: Trump Planning Military Parade for U.S. Army's 250th Anniversary

Breitbart · by Elizabeth Weibel · April 8, 2025

President Donald Trump is reportedly planning a military parade to be held on June 14, 2025, the 250th anniversary of the United States Army and Trump’s birthday.

A Washington, DC, “source with knowledge” of Trump’s planning told the Washington City Paper that the military parade will “stretch almost four miles from the Pentagon in Arlington to the White House.”

Takis Karantonis, the chair of the Arlington County Board, told the outlet that he hopes “the federal government remains sensitive to the pain and concerns” of many veterans who reside in the Arlington area. He added that the county received a “heads up” regarding the parade.

“It’s not clear to me what the scope of a parade would be,” Karantonis said. “But I would hope the federal government remains sensitive to the pain and concerns of numerous [military] veteran residents who have lost or might lose their jobs in recent federal decisions, as they reflect on how best to celebrate the Army’s anniversary.”

The Hill also reported that a “senior” Trump administration official had affirmed plans for the military parade to NewsNation:

An Army official confirmed the parade’s length to The Hill, and said that “there are plans for a parade that will involve the Army,” adding that nothing is yet solidified.

The official noted that the Army had planned to celebrate its 250th anniversary with a “robust capability increase in what you would see in previous years.” Planning began last year and the event has since expanded, with the number of unit participating now increased.

“The Army is very excited to celebrate its 250th anniversary with the entire county,” Army spokesman Col. Dave Butler told the outlet. “Our intention is for Americans to be proud of their Army and also proud of their nation. It’s too early to say yet whether or not we’re having a parade but we’re working with the White House as well as several government agencies to make the celebration a national level event.”

Breitbart · by Elizabeth Weibel · April 8, 2025

6. Judge Orders White House to Restore AP’s Access

There could be no other ruling if we are going to protect the First Amendment and our fundamental liberties.

Judge Orders White House to Restore AP’s Access

Trump administration had imposed limits on Associated Press reporters after it refused to adopt ‘Gulf of America’ terminology

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/judge-orders-white-house-to-restore-aps-access-d8f48028

By Jan Wolfe

Follow and Isabella Simonetti

Updated April 8, 2025 10:03 pm ET

President Trump at the White House on Tuesday. Photo: Nathan Howard/Reuters

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the White House to restore the Associated Press’s access to presidential events, saying that the decision to impose limitations violated the news organization’s free speech rights.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden ruled that it was unconstitutional for the Trump administration to punish the AP because it refused to change its style guidance for the Gulf of Mexico, which President Trump renamed the Gulf of America.

McFadden ordered the White House to restore the AP’s access to the Oval Office, Air Force One, “and other limited spaces when such spaces are made open to other members of the White House press pool.” He also directed Trump officials to “immediately rescind their viewpoint-based denial of the AP’s access to events open to all credentialed White House journalists.”

McFadden put his order on hold through April 13 to give the administration a chance to appeal.

The judge wrote that he wasn’t bestowing any special treatment upon the AP or mandating that journalists get access to spaces like the Oval Office.

“No, the Court simply holds that under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists—be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere—it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints,” the judge wrote. “The Constitution requires no less.”

Attorneys for and members of the Associated Press outside a federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., in March. Photo: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

The ruling is a major victory for the AP, one of myriad media outlets that have been targeted by the Trump administration over alleged bias. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has made a number of sweeping changes to the way the press corps operates, including the addition of a “new media” seat and taking over seating assignments in the press briefing room.

“Today’s ruling affirms the fundamental right of the press and public to speak freely without government retaliation,” said AP spokeswoman Lauren Easton. “We look forward to continuing to provide factual, nonpartisan and independent coverage of the White House for billions of people around the world.”

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. When the lawsuit was first filed, White House spokesman Steven Cheung called it “nothing more than a blatant PR stunt masquerading as a first amendment case.”

Associated Press journalists weren’t permitted to join the press pool on Tuesday evening, hours after the ruling.

The AP sued in February, after administration officials informed the media organization that it would be barred from entering certain areas in the White House as a member of the press pool unless it began referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. The AP said it tried to persuade White House officials to reconsider before it took legal action.

In its lawsuit, the AP argued that it had a constitutional right to editorial independence and that permitting the White House’s actions to stand was “a threat to every American’s freedom.”

U.S.-China Brawl Takes Center Stage in Global Trade War

A 20-year trade imbalance between the two economies is at the center of Trump’s tariff battle

https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/china-us-global-trade-war-5cc4e6f7

By Jason Douglas

April 8, 2025 9:00 pm ET

A Shein logistics center in southern China. Photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg News

SINGAPORE—Beijing threatened to “fight to the end” as President Trump was set early Wednesday morning to bring the total of the tariffs imposed on China in his second term to 104%, with both countries digging in for a protracted fight that lays bare the global economic fault line at the heart of the trade war.

While Trump has dramatically expanded his broadsides over trade to encompass allies and adversaries alike, China remains his foremost target. That reflects not just the intensifying geopolitical rivalry but also China’s 20 years of growing trade surpluses with the U.S. that Trump has said have been ruinous for American jobs and industries.

Even as other countries make a beeline to strike deals with the White House, there will likely be no end to trade upheavals as long as that gap between the world’s two largest economies persists. A drawn-out brawl heightens the risk of major disruption to international commerce and a downturn in global growth.

“We are going down the path of a more fractured world economy,” said Neil Shearing, group chief economist at Capital Economics in London.

Beijing vowed on Tuesday to retaliate further if Trump carries out his threat to raise the tariff on Chinese goods by an additional 50%. Trump’s additional 50% threat was itself a response to China’s decision last week to hit back at the so-called Liberation Day tariffs, including a blanket tariff of 34% on U.S. goods and curbs on access to rare-earth minerals.

“The U.S. threat to escalate tariffs on China is a mistake on top of a mistake, which once again exposes the U.S.’s blackmail nature,” China’s commerce ministry said Tuesday. “If the U.S. insists on its own way, China will fight to the end.”

The punch and counterpunch suggest neither side is yet ready to negotiate a truce. China sees Trump’s actions as an existential threat aimed at keeping it from surpassing the U.S. as the world’s biggest and richest economy. Trump sees China’s dominance of global trade as the surest sign that the international trading system is rigged against America.

Though Trump has in the past shown a willingness to change course unexpectedly in pursuit of a deal, for now, “the U.S. and China are stuck in an unprecedented, and expensive, game of chicken,” Nomura chief China economist Ting Lu said in a note to clients Tuesday.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump’s tariffs will go into effect just after midnight on Wednesday, including new duties of 84% charged on products from China. Those tariffs stack on top of 20% tariffs Trump had imposed earlier this year. Along with tariffs maintained by the Biden administration that averaged about 21%, the effective average tariff rate on China would now be about 125%.

Beijing’s warnings on Tuesday included a pledge to deploy unspecified countermeasures against the U.S. if Trump’s tariffs keep climbing. State-owned investment firms have this week stepped in to buy up Chinese stocks in an effort to support prices.

China is the world’s top exporter of manufactured goods. Photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg News

China’s central bank on Tuesday let the Chinese currency drift lower against the dollar. Guiding the yuan’s value lower can undermine the impact of Trump’s tariffs and help Chinese factories by making China’s goods cheaper when purchased in U.S. dollars, though economists say there are limits to the strategy as it could fuel capital flight from China.

After focusing on China in his first term, Trump has broadened his trade fight in his second term, accusing the European Union, Japan, Mexico, Canada and other trading partners of keeping their import barriers high while flooding the U.S. with cars, machinery and consumer goods, squeezing U.S. industries and costing American jobs.

Even so, China has been singled out. The cumulative tariffs announced since his January inauguration mean Chinese imports—worth around $400 billion in 2024—face higher tariffs than those from any other major trading partner.

A U.S. trade representative report published March 31 detailing trade barriers to U.S. imports in dozens of countries devoted almost 50 pages to China, touching on complaints around technology transfer, import quotas, food-safety standards and counterfeit goods. Canada and Mexico, two other recent targets of Trump’s ire over trade, got six and seven pages, respectively.

China’s links to other U.S. trading partners are also facing greater scrutiny, as the U.S. seeks to prevent Chinese firms from dodging tariffs by setting up operations in third countries. Some of the countries facing stiff new tariffs include Mexico, Vietnam and Cambodia, all of which have enjoyed booming exports to the U.S. since 2018 thanks to their role as “connector” economies linking China’s huge factory floor to the U.S. market.

An Apple store in Shanghai. Chinese officials have pledged to boost domestic consumption. Photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg News

“In many ways, Liberation Day was designed to create a tariff wall around China, by disproportionately penalizing the connector economies,” Deutsche Bank analysts wrote in a report published Monday.

Underlying Trump’s push is an economic relationship, built up through years of intersecting policy choices in Washington and Beijing and which Trump now wants to unwind, that made the U.S. the world’s paramount consumer and China its pre-eminent producer.

China in 2024 reported a global goods trade surplus of close to $1 trillion, cementing its place as the world’s top exporter of manufactured goods. The U.S., meanwhile, notched up a deficit in goods trade of $1.2 trillion, the latest in an unbroken run of goods-trade deficits stretching back to 1975.

As well as China, which accounts for some $300 billion of the trade shortfall, the U.S. also runs large deficits in goods trade with Mexico, Vietnam and the EU.

Trump’s tariff strategy aims to reduce the U.S. trade deficit by pinching imports and forcing manufacturers to move production to the U.S.

Supporters of the global manufacturing system say it keeps costs down and provides consumers with an abundance of affordable goods, while allowing the U.S. economy to focus more squarely on technology, services and other high-value activities.

Some analysts, as well as key figures in Trump’s orbit including trade adviser Peter Navarro, argue that trade imbalances reflect barriers to imports, currency manipulation, and lavish industrial subsidies in countries such as China that distort the global economy.

China’s dominance of global manufacturing exports is seen by President Trump as the surest sign that the trading system is rigged. Photo: Bloomberg News

To most economists, however, large and persistent trade surpluses are evidence of an economy that saves too much and consumes too little, while deficits like those in the U.S. simply show an economy saving little and spending a lot, financed in part by borrowing from abroad.

Narrowing persistent U.S. deficits in trade and reducing China’s enormous surpluses would require painful economic overhauls in both economies—and could take years to yield results.

Chinese officials have pledged to boost consumption, but analysts are unsure if their plan is to give the economy a short-term lift or shift it more decisively away from an overreliance on investment and exports. Trump’s tariff plans could squeeze U.S. spending and bring down the deficit, but he also wants to cut taxes and lure foreign investment, which would typically expand it.

“The underlying problem is that China has to consume more and the U.S. has to save more. You are not going to fix this in one day,” said Arup Raha, head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics in Singapore.

Write to Jason Douglas at jason.douglas@wsj.com

8. Senate confirms Trump’s controversial pick for Pentagon No. 3 job

The question is what will change in our alliances?

Excerpts:

Several Democrats voted for the nominee, including Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sens. Mark Kelly (Ariz.) and Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), swing-state moderates who sit on the Armed Services panel.

The Senate Armed Services Committee advanced Colby’s nomination last week in a closed-door vote.

Colby received a boost at his confirmation hearing from Vice President Vance, who called “Bridge” a friend when he introduced him to the Armed Services panel.

Republican senators grilled the nominee last month over his past statements about the strategic importance of projecting military power into Europe and the Middle East. They also questioned him about his views on whether the U.S. should fully commit to the defense of Taiwan.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a member of the panel, warned Colby that his previously stated view that that U.S. should tolerate and attempt to contain a nuclear-armed Iran was contrary to Trump’s policy.

Senate confirms Trump’s controversial pick for Pentagon No. 3 job

by Alexander Bolton - 04/08/25 12:31 PM ET

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5237883-senate-confirms-elbridge-colby-pentagon/

The Senate voted Tuesday to confirm Elbridge Colby, President Trump’s “lightning rod” pick to serve as the Pentagon’s under secretary for policy, despite the private concerns of several Republican senators about Colby’s past statements and views.

The chamber voted 54-45 to confirm the nominee, who will hold the No. 3-ranking job at the Pentagon and be in charge of briefing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on all defense policy matters.

Notably, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), an outspoken advocate for projecting American military strength throughout the world and supporting NATO allies, voted against Colby.

McConnell voiced concern about what he called Colby’s desire to prioritize U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific over those in Europe, Ukraine and the Middle East.

“Abandoning Ukraine and Europe and downplaying the Middle East to prioritize the Indo-Pacific is not a clever geopolitical chess move. It is geostrategic self-harm that emboldens our adversaries and drives wedges between America and our allies for them to exploit,” he said in a statement explaining his vote.

McConnell had voted to advance Colby by voting for a procedural motion Monday afternoon, as he has voted to advance other controversial Trump nominees before later opposing them on the final confirmation vote.

Several Democrats voted for the nominee, including Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sens. Mark Kelly (Ariz.) and Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), swing-state moderates who sit on the Armed Services panel.

The Senate Armed Services Committee advanced Colby’s nomination last week in a closed-door vote.

Colby received a boost at his confirmation hearing from Vice President Vance, who called “Bridge” a friend when he introduced him to the Armed Services panel.

Republican senators grilled the nominee last month over his past statements about the strategic importance of projecting military power into Europe and the Middle East. They also questioned him about his views on whether the U.S. should fully commit to the defense of Taiwan.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a member of the panel, warned Colby that his previously stated view that that U.S. should tolerate and attempt to contain a nuclear-armed Iran was contrary to Trump’s policy.

Colby pledged he would provide the president with “credible and realistic” military options to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear arms.

Several Republican senators had “serious concerns” about Colby’s nomination, a source familiar with the vetting process told The Hill.

The Wall Street Journal in a March 3 editorial called Colby “a lightning rod in the fight between the GOP’s peace-through-strength wing and its retreat-from-the-world faction.”

The Journal described him as the “intellectual front man for a wing of the political right that argues the U.S. should retreat from commitments in Europe and the Middle East.”

Colby told Freddy Gray, the host of The Spectator’s “Americano” podcast, last year that the United States should reduce its support of Ukraine and Europe to focus on the threat posed by China to Taiwan.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations raised “serious concerns” about Colby’s views of U.S. policy toward the Middle East.

The group questioned Colby’s views of former President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and his remarks to conservative media host Tucker Carlson that a military strike to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon lacked “a clear connection to American interests.”

Colby performed well at his confirmation hearing last month by offering nimble responses to senators’ questions and making efforts to settle their concerns.

He assured Cotton, a leading defense hawk, that he thinks Taiwan is “very important” to the United States.

He also told Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) that he views NATO as an important alliance, even though he believes it has to “adapt.”

Colby distanced himself from two controversial Trump administration officials: Michael DiMino, the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for the Middle East, and Andrew Byers, the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia.

He told Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) that he did not choose DiMino for the job and asserted that DiMino’s views did not reflect Trump’s policy in the Middle East.

DiMino has alarmed pro-Israel advocates by arguing that the U.S. doesn’t face a vital or existential threats in the region.

And Colby told Wicker that he did not share Byers’s view that thinking about China through the lens of deterrence is wrong.

9. U.S. Commanders Worry Yemen Campaign Will Drain Arms Needed to Deter China

Excerpts:

U.S. readiness in the Pacific is also being hurt by the Pentagon’s deployment of warships and aircraft to the Middle East after the Israel-Gaza war began in October 2023 and after Houthi militia forces in Yemen started attacking ships in the Red Sea to support the Palestinians, the officials say.

The American ships and aircraft, as well as the service members working on them, are being pushed at what the military calls a high operating tempo. Even basic equipment maintenance becomes an issue under those grinding conditions.

The congressional officials who spoke about the problems did so on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about sensitive military matters.

Adm. Samuel Paparo, the head of the Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific Command since May, will almost certainly be asked about readiness issues when he is expected to testify before Congress on Wednesday and Thursday.

U.S. Commanders Worry Yemen Campaign Will Drain Arms Needed to Deter China

American military officials say the Pentagon might need to dip into stockpiles in Asia to replenish supplies in the Middle East, congressional aides say.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/us/politics/china-weapons-yemen-bombing.html

A B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. The Pentagon has deployed two aircraft carriers, additional B-2 stealth bombers and fighter jets, as well as Patriot and THAAD air defenses to the Middle East.Credit...Carlos Barria/Reuters

By Edward Wong and Eric Schmitt

Reporting from Washington

April 8, 2025,

7:10 p.m. ET

Want to stay updated on what’s happening in China and Yemen? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

U.S. commanders planning for a possible conflict with China are increasingly concerned that the Pentagon will soon need to move long-range precision weapons from stockpiles in the Asia-Pacific region to the Middle East, congressional officials say.

That is because of the large amount of munitions that the United States is using in a bombing campaign in Yemen ordered by President Trump.

U.S. readiness in the Pacific is also being hurt by the Pentagon’s deployment of warships and aircraft to the Middle East after the Israel-Gaza war began in October 2023 and after Houthi militia forces in Yemen started attacking ships in the Red Sea to support the Palestinians, the officials say.

The American ships and aircraft, as well as the service members working on them, are being pushed at what the military calls a high operating tempo. Even basic equipment maintenance becomes an issue under those grinding conditions.

The congressional officials who spoke about the problems did so on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about sensitive military matters.

Adm. Samuel Paparo, the head of the Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific Command since May, will almost certainly be asked about readiness issues when he is expected to testify before Congress on Wednesday and Thursday.

Image

A building destroyed in a reported U.S. airstrike on Sana, Yemen, on Monday. The American military has struggled to balance resources as it bombs the Iranian-backed Houthi militants.Credit...Associated Press

Several Trump aides, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Elbridge Colby, the under secretary of defense for policy, have said that the United States must prioritize strengthening its forces in the Asia-Pacific region to deter China, which is rapidly building up its military and its nuclear arsenal.

Those officials argue that U.S. arms support for Ukraine in its defense against Russia and decades of military campaigns in the Middle East and Afghanistan have siphoned off important resources from Asia. If Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites in the coming months and ignites a wider Middle East war, the Trump administration would almost certainly commit more U.S. military resources to the region.

But the U.S. military has struggled to balance resources as it bombs the Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen.

The New York Times reported last week that the monthlong bombing campaign was much larger than the Pentagon had publicly disclosed. The Pentagon used up about $200 million of munitions in the first three weeks alone, U.S. officials said. The costs are much higher — well over $1 billion at this point — when operational and personnel expenses are taken into account, they added.

The Pentagon has deployed two aircraft carriers, additional B-2 stealth bombers and fighter jets, as well as Patriot and THAAD air defenses to the Middle East. The B-2 bombers make long runs from the tiny island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, where the American and British militaries have a base.

On April 1, Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman, said that the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and its escort ships were being pulled from the Pacific for missions in the Middle East.

Image

A Pentagon spokesman said the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson was being moved from the Pacific for missions in the Middle East. Credit...Son Hyung-Ju/Yonhap, via Associated Press

On Friday, Mr. Trump posted an aerial video on social media that appeared to show a bomb or missile attack on dozens of people. The president said the attack was on Houthi fighters. “Oops, there will be no attack by these Houthis!” he wrote.

But Pentagon officials have told allied counterparts, lawmakers and their aides in closed briefings that the U.S. military has had only limited success in destroying the Houthis’ vast arsenal of missiles, drones and launchers.

A senior Defense Department official recently told congressional aides that the Navy and the Indo-Pacific Command were “very concerned” about how fast the military was burning through munitions in Yemen, a congressional official said.

The Navy’s overall stockpiles were already well below target goals before President Joseph R. Biden Jr. first ordered the U.S. military to attack the Houthis a year and a half ago to try to halt their assaults on commercial ships in the Red Sea.

The senior defense official told congressional aides that the Pentagon was now “risking real operational problems” in the event of the breakout of any conflict in Asia, a congressional official said.

In response to questions about whether U.S. war plans in the Pacific might suffer for lack of available munitions, a spokesman for Admiral Paparo appeared to downplay concerns.

“The U.S. military provides flexible deterrence options to protect U.S. national interests across combatant commands,” said the spokesman, Cmdr. Matthew Comer, “while always maintaining a ready, capable and lethal force in the Indo-Pacific to provide for national defense and to respond to any contingency.”

During a trip to Asia two weeks ago, Mr. Hegseth tried to reassure allies that the United States was committed to deterring “threats” by China in the region.

Image

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, with Gen. Romeo Brawner of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, has said the United States must prioritize strengthening its forces in the Asia-Pacific region to deter China.Credit...Gerard Carreon/Associated Press

Mr. Hegseth said in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, that the Trump administration would “truly prioritize and shift to this region of the world in a way that is unprecedented.”

“Today, it’s the Philippines. Tomorrow, it’s Japan. It will be Australia and South Korea and other nations in this part of the world,” he said, where, together, “we will establish the deterrence necessary to prevent war.”

The long-range weapons used in the Yemen campaign include Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from ships; a type of glide bomb called the AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon; and the stealthy AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, U.S. officials say. Those are also exactly the kinds of weapons that American war planners say would be needed to counter an air and naval assault by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in the South and East China Seas and the Pacific.

The weapons are in stockpiles in U.S. military bases on Guam; in Okinawa, Japan; and elsewhere along the western Pacific, the officials say. The Pentagon has not yet had to dip into those stockpiles to fight the Houthis, but it might need to do so soon, they say.

American-made Tomahawk cruise missiles are also increasingly important for Japan’s military needs. The Japanese Defense Ministry in January 2024 signed an agreement with the United States to buy 400 Tomahawk missiles. American commanders expect that Japan, a treaty ally of the United States, could use the missiles to aid U.S. forces in the event of a war with China.

Mr. Biden bolstered military relations and arms sales with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia to try to deter China from taking any aggressive military action, especially against Taiwan, the de facto independent island that the Chinese Communist Party aims to bring under its rule.

Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has spoken of the need for China to control Taiwan, but he has not publicly stated an explicit timeline for doing so. Mr. Trump has been circumspect on what he would do if China were to try to invade or blockade Taiwan. Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser to Mr. Trump, has said Taiwan should be under China’s control, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said the United States opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo.

Mr. Biden repeatedly said that the U.S. military would defend Taiwan against a major attack by China.

Taiwan remains the biggest flashpoint in U.S.-China relations and the likeliest trigger point for an armed conflict between the two nuclear superpowers.

John Ismay contributed reporting.

Edward Wong reports on global affairs, U.S. foreign policy and the State Department.

Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times, focusing on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism issues overseas, topics he has reported on for more than three decades.

10. Chinese Intelligence May Be Trying to Recruit Fired U.S. Officials

Read the DNI advisory here:

ONLINE TARGETING OF CURRENT & FORMER U.S. GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES

https://www.dni.gov/files/NCSC/documents/products/2025-04-08-NCSC-FBI-DCSA-OnlineTargetingUSGEmployees.pdf

Chinese Intelligence May Be Trying to Recruit Fired U.S. Officials

An advisory says that foreign agencies are posing as consulting firms, think tanks and other organizations to connect with former government employees.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/us/politics/chinese-intelligence-fired-us-workers.html

Former U.S. officials say China now sees an opportunity as the Trump administration shuts down agencies, fires probationary employees and pushes out people who had worked on diversity issues.Credit...Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times

By Julian E. Barnes

Reporting from Washington

April 8, 2025, 7:20 p.m. ET

The National Counterintelligence and Security Center warned on Tuesday that China’s intelligence services were using deceptive efforts to recruit current and former U.S. government employees.

The center, along with the F.B.I. and the Pentagon’s counterintelligence service, said in an advisory that foreign intelligence agencies were posing as consulting firms, corporate think tanks and other organizations to recruit former U.S. officials.

The American government has long said that China uses social networks to secretly recruit people. But former U.S. officials say China now sees an opportunity as the Trump administration shuts down agencies, fires probationary employees and pushes out people who had worked on diversity issues.

The warning advised former officials who have security clearances of their “legal obligation to protect classified data” even after they leave the government. It added that China and other foreign countries were targeting a variety of former officials.

Postings on the social media platform Bluesky targeted researchers dismissed by the National Institutes of Health, offering them a chance to “pursue career development” in Shenzhen, China.

Former officials said other outreach from foreign intelligence services has targeted agents let go from the F.B.I. and military officers who have retired.

“Current and former federal employees should beware of these virtual approaches and understand the potential consequences of engaging,” the counterintelligence center said.

Chinese intelligence services often begin recruitment efforts by offering a small fee for an innocuous research paper. Over time, the requests push for more sensitive material.

The center advised former officials, particularly people with security clearances, to be careful about what they post concerning their government work.

Red flags of the recruiting efforts include offers of disproportionately high salaries and flexible work conditions, the center said. Recruiters can also be “overly responsive” to messages from a former government official and give a strange amount of praise.

Last month, CNN reported that China and Russia had directed their intelligence services to ramp up recruiting of U.S. federal employees working on national security issues, including targeting people who could be fired.

Former officials have said that workers forced out of government jobs can be vulnerable — desperate for work and angry at the government — and could let down their guard. While some approaches, like the ones posted on Bluesky, were obviously of Chinese origin, others may be better disguised, appearing to come from American companies, former officials said.

While intelligence and military officials are trained to recognize such efforts by foreign intelligence services, government researchers do not routinely receive the same level of counterintelligence training.

The intelligence agencies have not cut as deeply as some departments, like the U.S. Agency for International Development, but the C.I.A. has fired about 80 probationary employees. The National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies have also fired workers.

Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.

See more on: National Intelligence Estimates

11. Report: Trump Planning Military Parade for U.S. Army's 250th Anniversary

Excerpt:

“The Army is very excited to celebrate its 250th anniversary with the entire county,” Army spokesman Col. Dave Butler told the outlet. “Our intention is for Americans to be proud of their Army and also proud of their nation. It’s too early to say yet whether or not we’re having a parade but we’re working with the White House as well as several government agencies to make the celebration a national level event.”

Report: Trump Planning Military Parade for U.S. Army's 250th Anniversary

Breitbart · by Elizabeth Weibel · April 8, 2025

President Donald Trump is reportedly planning a military parade to be held on June 14, 2025, the 250th anniversary of the United States Army and Trump’s birthday.

The Hill also reported that a “senior” Trump administration official had affirmed plans for the military parade to NewsNation:

An Army official confirmed the parade’s length to The Hill, and said that “there are plans for a parade that will involve the Army,” adding that nothing is yet solidified.

The official noted that the Army had planned to celebrate its 250th anniversary with a “robust capability increase in what you would see in previous years.” Planning began last year and the event has since expanded, with the number of unit participating now increased.

Breitbart · by Elizabeth Weibel · April 8, 2025

12. 12 Questions for a Writer: Douglas Waller

Part history. Part research and writing practicum. Imagine writing a 350 page outline?

12 Questions for a Writer: Douglas Waller

open.substack.com8 min

April 8, 2025

View Original

Douglas C. Waller is an author, lecturer, and former correspondent for Time and Newsweek Magazines. I've been reading him since 1994. You should get started if you're behind.

https://lethalmindsjournal.substack.com/p/12-questions-for-a-writer-douglas?r=7i07&utm

Lethal Minds Journal

Apr 08, 2025

1. Who are you, what have you written, and why?

In almost two decades as a Washington journalist, I covered the Pentagon, Congress, the State Department, the White House and the CIA. From 1994 to 2007, I served in TIME Magazine’s Washington Bureau, first as a correspondent and then as a senior correspondent. At TIME, I covered foreign affairs extensively as a diplomatic correspondent, traveling throughout Europe, Asia and the Middle East as well as in the Persian Gulf region. I came to TIME in 1994 from Newsweek, where I reported on major military conflicts from the Gulf War to Somalia to Haiti. Before joining Newsweek in 1988, I served as a legislative assistant on the staffs of Senator William Proxmire and then-Representative Edward J. Markey. The Determined Spy is my seventh book on the military or intelligence. For my historical biographies I’ve gravitated toward charismatic yet controversial figures. World War II spy chief Wild Bill Donovan, the subject of one of my biographies, was certainly that kind of figure. People either loved or hated him. Frank Wisner, my latest biographic subject, was that as well. Few were neutral on him. I find as a biographer, that these kinds of subjects are more interesting—and challenging—to tackle.

2. Writing is a solitary pursuit, perhaps even more in an effort that takes as much research as “The Determined Spy.” You have a long resume as a journalist and writer. What is it that compels you to write?

I enjoy diving deeply into a subject. I find writing historical biographies to be fascinating work. You have to accomplish two missions with a historical biography. You must study intensely the person who’s your biographical subject. And you have to research intensely the history of the times in which your biographical subject lived. I like that kind of twin challenge. It is a solitary pursuit. Some people don’t enjoy that. But I do.

3. Tell us about the process you undertook to write “The Determined Spy.”

I write books the way my high school English teacher taught me to write essays—only on a much larger scale. I started The Determined Spy project with what historians call secondary research. I read hundreds of books and articles on Wisner, his times and the people who interacted with him, to see what others had written. I make notes on 3”-by-5” notecards on what I read—just like in high school—and for this project I collected about 15,000 notecards.

Then I dove into the primary research. I worked on this book during the Covid epidemic, which presented a particular challenge. Many libraries and archives shut down, so in a number of cases, I had to get archivist to send me documents from their stacks. I also collected some 50,000 pages of documents from the Internet, in the online archives kept by the CIA, FBI, State Department and Pentagon. Wisner’s family also cooperated. I spent about 50 hours interviewing Wisner’s three sons, who also provided me hundreds of pages of documents from the family’s collection.

After the research I drafted an outline—just like my English teacher taught me—only in this case my outline numbered 310 pages. Finally, I began writing the book, which proceeded fairly quickly because of the detailed outline I wrote. I could crank out about 1,200 words a day.

4. What did you learn in writing this specific book and what surprised you?

I was just a child when the Cold War unfolded in the 1950s, the son of a Naval officer, too young to realize what was happening in the world beyond a vague sense that Russia was this evil nation. Writing The Determined Spy immersed me in the turbulent world of the 1950s and the existential threat the Soviet Union was considered by the top levels of the American government. I was surprised by the lengths Wisner and other senior U.S. officials went to fight the Russians in the shadows. It was fascinating for me to go back to the roll-out of the first Cold War with Joseph Stalin—particularly as I now watch the roll-out of the second Cold War with Vladimir Putin.

5. I read “The Commandos” and “Wild Bill Donovan” when they came out and I spent most of twenty-seven years as a Marine in USSOCOM. This was not my first time reading about Frank Wisner. I find him compelling for both his successes and his flaws, but what it was about him that spoke to you?

Frank Wisner was such a complicated man. It would have been fascinating to be around him. I would have liked to have been a journalist covering Wisner in Washington during the 1950s. Wisner liked reporters. He regularly interacted with them. Her didn’t leak secrets to the press. And Wisner never wanted to see his name in the newspapers. But he did try to manipulate the press and shape stories reporters were writing about U.S. national security to serve the interests of the CIA. Wisner thought saying “no comment” to a reporter was dumb; in effect you were confirming the story the reporter was writing. Far better to talk to the media, he thought.

6. I feel like Frank Wisner represents a time when people from America’s top socioeconomic class served the nation. Maybe that was because they had the income to allow it, maybe it was a societal expectation, maybe it was just the culture that came from an existential war, but it seems like many of our wealthiest citizens are now focused on extracting from the nation more than serving it. Your thoughts?

Wisner did come from the country’s upper class as did many of his colleagues in the CIA’s clandestine service. You can trace this back to William Donovan and the OSS. Donovan recruited the country’s best and brightest for his World War II spy service. And he looked for men and women from the nation’s best families. That was one of the reasons news columnists joked that OSS stood for “Oh So Social.” But Donovan also looked for “a PhD who could win a bar fight,” so it was said of him. Wisner, who came from a well-off Mississippi family, had the same leadership trait as Donovan. He looked for the nation’s upper crust who could be taught the dark arts.

7. What advice do you have for aspiring authors?

I get this question sometimes when I speak to students in writing classes. They ask what they should study to be an author. My answer to them is everything. Obviously, they need to take English and creative writing classes; study the voices of other authors to develop your voice, I tell them. History, political science and foreign language classes are important. But also important are science and math courses. I wrote a book about a U.S. Navy submarine. One of the scenes in the book describes the crew practicing firing torpedoes at a simulated enemy sub. To reach a “firing solution” for the torpedo to hit the target requires the crew to use geometry and trigonometry—two subjects that went into one of my ears and out the other in high school. I had to have the sub’s executive officer give me a crash course in the two math subjects so I could describe in layman’s language the submariners’ complex procedure for engaging an underwater target.

8. What is your favorite book and why?

I have favorite authors rather than favorite books. One of them is Evan Thomas, who was my boss at Newsweek and has written many superb nonfiction books—among them The Very Best Men on the CIA. Another favorite is Rick Atkinson, whose World War II series is unrivaled for research and writing. I also admire James Bamford, who wrote the groundbreaking The Puzzle Palace about the super-secret National Security Agency.

9. It’s not a secret that The Determined Spy spends time on Wisner’s mental illness. The tolerance for that vulnerability for a CIA officer seemed to spring from the chumminess of the OSS and the same country club culture that also made service to the nation a real career option for the uber-wealthy. How should those of us in careers that turn on security clearances and vulnerabilities view Wisner now and what should we take from how they treated him?

The CIA in Wisner’s day had an enlightened and pragmatic attitude toward its officers who developed mental illness, viewing it as a battle casualty. The agency early on formed a psychiatric unit, which, among other things, monitored mental health problems among CIA officers. If the agency couldn’t treat an officer in-house, it had private mental health facilities it could send its officers to, which had been vetted so the CIA could be sure that whatever an officer told medical personnel would not leave the facility. After the treatment ended, the agency tried to return the officer to his old job. In Wisner’s case, after treatment he did not return to the high-pressure job of clandestine service chief. Instead, a less demanding place was found for him as chief of the CIA’s London station.

10. What do you want people to take away from this book?

My hope is that readers will come away from The Determined Spy with a good sense of the life and times of one of America’s early cold warriors. I hope people will find this a compelling and entertaining story.

11. What are you working on now?

I don’t have another project in the works. I’ll be spending all of 2025 promoting The Determined Spy. I’ve never been the kind of author who could hatch a new biography while marketing a current book. I guess I can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.

12. What have I not asked that I should have?

I’m sometimes asked how does today’s CIA compare with the agency in Donovan’s day or in Wisner’s day? My answer is simple: today’s CIA is far better. Donovan’s and Wisner’s organizations were still in the learning phase—there was a lot of trial by error. Today’s CIA along with the rest of the U.S. intelligence community, which includes 17 other intelligence agencies in different parts of the government, is far more seasoned and proficient with a worldwide reach. This community covers the globe with satellites in the sky, agents on the ground, and liaison relationships with friendly foreign spy services. The U.S. government spends more than $1.5 billion a week collecting intelligence. It’s one of the capabilities that defines America as a superpower.

The Determined Spy is as fascinating as Waller’s previous works. You can buy it here.

13. Al Qaeda Punctures Kenya’s Dreams for an Indian Ocean Trade Hub

As General Fenton said yesterday in his Senate testimony, some people think we are finished fighting the war on terrorism, but terrorism is not finished with us."

Al Qaeda Punctures Kenya’s Dreams for an Indian Ocean Trade Hub

Militants based next door in Somalia have stalled the $25 billion plan; ‘This is a white elephant’

https://www.wsj.com/world/africa/al-qaeda-kenya-indian-ocean-trade-hub-plan-35d7f11b

By Michael M. Phillips

April 8, 2025 11:00 pm ET

The Chinese-built Lamu Port in Kenya sits virtually empty. Photo: Michael M. Phillips/WSJ

LAMU, Kenya—Al Qaeda militants are disrupting one of Africa’s most ambitious infrastructure projects, forestalling Kenya’s plans for establishing a new regional trade hub on the Indian Ocean.

For decades, Kenya has planned a $25 billion economic corridor across its impoverished north, with roads, rail lines and an oil pipeline in a 500-yard-wide strip of land connecting the port of Lamu to landlocked Ethiopia and South Sudan.

Progress, however, has slowed to a crawl, in good part because al-Shabaab, a violent Islamist group based in neighboring Somalia, has attacked road construction crews and security forces in the area.

“There’s no proper road, there’s no railway, there’s no pipeline,” said Yusuf Hassan Abdi, a member of the security committee in Kenya’s parliament. “So this is a white elephant.”

Kenya President Uhuru Kenyatta, in tan outfit, inaugurated Lamu Port’s first berth in 2021. Photo: dihoff mukoto/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The Chinese-built Lamu Port sits virtually empty, with just three of 23 planned berths completed, and a sprawling container yard with no shipping containers. Just two inbound cargo freighters unloaded here between its opening in 2021 and the end of last year. A few others have unloaded cargo onto smaller ships which then sailed to their actual destination, Mombasa, a shallower port farther down the Indian Ocean coast.

Virtually all outbound shipping traffic consists of cattle and Merino and Dorper sheep marched to the port and loaded onto ships bound for Oman, hardly the sort of industrial activity the government envisioned.

“There hasn’t been much activity,” a port official acknowledged, but added brightly that recently, “we had a livestock ship with 8,000 animals.”

The elaborate plan, conceived in 1975 and officially launched in 2013, envisioned deep-water berths laid out along the mangrove-lined shores of Lamu County. Cargo would travel on new roads and rail lines to Moyale, on the Ethiopia border, and Nakodok, on the South Sudan border. Oil from Kenya’s isolated Lake Turkana region would travel to the coast by pipeline. Three international airports would be built along the corridor, along with resort cities.

The project, backers predicted, would transform the economic life of northern Kenya, which has been largely left behind compared with the rapid growth around Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, and Mombasa, its only major port city.

Lamu Port was supposed to connect to landlocked Ethiopia and South Sudan through an economic corridor across Kenya’s impoverished north. Photo: Michael M. Phillips/WSJ

“We believe this project will be a game-changer for the people of Kenya,” said Salim Bunu, Lamu regional manager of the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor.

Money has been short, with the Kenyan government always strapped for funds. And on a key, 150-mile stretch of road, from the port to the town of Garissa, the threat of militant attacks has put a stopper in the hoped-for flow of shipping containers.

“As of now, we just have one corridor, and we just have one major port,” Bunu said, referring to Mombasa. “If any floods or anything happens, that means there is no evacuation route for goods and people.”

The vision, however, has been slow to become reality.

Al-Shabaab, an Islamist extremist group affiliated with al Qaeda, has been fighting an insurgency against the Somali central government for nearly 20 years, at one time holding the country’s capital, Mogadishu.

Front-Line Position

Al-Shabaab militants cross the border from Somalia to attack

AFRICA

Djibouti

Somalia

Al-Shabaab fighters are operating in this area

Kenya

Detail

SOMALIA

Boni

National

Reserve

KENYA

INDIAN

OCEAN

A 2020 al-Shabaab

attack on a U.S.-Kenyan

base killed

three Americans

Mokowe

Lamu

port

20 miles

20 km

Emma Brown/WSJ

Hundreds of U.S. commandos and other troops are deployed to Somalia to help local forces battle the militants. Kenyan forces are among African units backing Somali soldiers.

Al-Shabaab fighters often take refuge in the Boni forest, which straddles the Somalia-Kenya border, and have conducted shock attacks on targets in Kenya, including the massacre of 67 people at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in 2013. In 2020, militants attacked a joint U.S.-Kenyan base near the site of the Lamu Port, killing three Americans.

Al-Shabaab has found sympathizers on the Kenyan side of the border, particularly among the Bajuni people along the coast.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, Kenya’s post-independence government resettled Kikuyu people from the central highlands and gave them title to land on the coast. They now constitute a large share of Lamu County’s population, creating tension with the Muslim Banjuni and other local groups, who typically survive by fishing.

Many Banjuni feel the Kenyan government has favored Kikuyu newcomers with schools and other programs, giving al-Shabaab a pool of potential recruits, said Abdi, the parliamentarian. “There are sleeper cells all over,” he said.

Pakistani engineers employed by a Chinese state-owned contractor wear body armor and helmets as they supervise Kenyan workers. Photo: Michael M. Phillips/WSJ

Roads are a specific target. New thoroughfares make it tougher for al-Shabaab to operate. It is harder to bury booby-trap bombs in tarmac than dirt, and security forces respond more quickly on finished roads.

“Security comes in an SUV,” said Theo Aalders, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bonn. Al-Shabaab’s “actions suggest that they’re aware they’re stalling the project.”

During the first two years of attempted construction of the road, beginning in 2021, 16 people were killed and 40 wounded in militant attacks, including Kenyan and Chinese workers, according to Patrick Mutahi, director of the Centre for Human Rights and Policy Studies, a Nairobi think tank.

Al-Shabaab attacks resulted in 30 deaths among civilians and security personnel between January and November last year across Garissa and Lamu counties, though not on the road itself. At least 23 militants died in retaliatory operations.

“They do surprise attacks and go back to Somalia,” said Mutahi. “The security considerations are huge. It is quite delayed.”

Lamu town, a historic Swahili trading town on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast. Photo: Michael M. Phillips/WSJ

The violence led the government to send in the army, and work progresses 3 miles at a time—if that—to allow security and construction workers to move in tandem.

Military camps, surrounded by corrugated metal guard posts, line the road. Armored vehicles peek out of the bush. Pakistani engineers, employed by the Chinese state-owned contractor, China Communications Construction, wear body armor and helmets as they supervise Kenyan workers.

In one incident in 2023, a buried bomb—triggered by a militant with a remote detonator—hit one of four security vehicles escorting a convoy of engineers on a road inspection, according to one person who was on the scene. The attack ended in a firefight, with the engineers forced to take cover in a ditch. A few escorts were slightly injured, the person said.

Nonetheless, project supporters remain hopeful. “It is the most phenomenal thing that could happen to Lamu,” said Monicah Muthoni Marubu, a member of parliament from Lamu County. “A project of that magnitude takes time.”

But just 15 miles of the vulnerable Lamu-Garissa road—10% of the stretch—have been successfully tarmacked, according to a government official. The Chinese contractor’s early work failed to meet quality standards, and the Kenyans forced the company to start again, according to Kenyan project officials.

China Communications Construction didn’t respond to a written request for comment.

The continuing violence raises questions about whether the government could protect freight traffic on the road even if it were completed. “We don’t have the capacity to police that whole corridor,” Mutahi said.

And the railroad remains a distant prospect. “It might never even be done in our lifetimes,” said Benard Musembi Kilaka, lecturer at Kenya’s Maseno University.

Write to Michael M. Phillips at Michael.Phillips@wsj.com

Appeared in the April 9, 2025, print edition as 'Militants Stall Completion of Kenya Trade Hub'.

14. China Denies Military Involvement in Ukraine After Citizens Captured

Mercenaries hired by Wagner?

Excerpts:

But he denied Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s assertion that more Chinese have joined Russian forces.

“China is verifying information with the Ukrainian side,” Lin said. “Let me stress that the Chinese government always asks its nationals to stay away from areas of armed conflict, avoid any form of involvement in armed conflict and in particular avoid participation in any party’s military operations.”

Lin said Ukraine’s claim that there are additional Chinese fighters “has no basis in facts.”

The capture of the Chinese citizens in eastern Ukraine added a fresh international twist to the three-year war in Ukraine.

The West, led by the U.S., has supported Ukraine with weapons and financial aid, while Russia has received military supplies from Iran and North Korea. Last fall, North Korea dispatched around 12,000 troops to fight in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces had seized territory.

China Denies Military Involvement in Ukraine After Citizens Captured

Ukraine says the two Chinese men were fighting in the Russian army

https://www.wsj.com/world/china-denies-military-involvement-in-ukraine-after-citizens-captured-ef115398

By James Marson

Follow and Austin Ramzy

April 9, 2025 5:49 am ET

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian denied Ukraine’s claim that there are additional Chinese fighters in the conflict. Photo: jessica lee/Shutterstock

China denied any military involvement in Ukraine, after Kyiv said it had captured two Chinese men in the country’s east.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian on Wednesday said China was still trying to confirm with Ukraine details of the capture of the two Chinese citizens who Ukrainian authorities said were fighting for the Russian military.

But he denied Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s assertion that more Chinese have joined Russian forces.

“China is verifying information with the Ukrainian side,” Lin said. “Let me stress that the Chinese government always asks its nationals to stay away from areas of armed conflict, avoid any form of involvement in armed conflict and in particular avoid participation in any party’s military operations.”

Lin said Ukraine’s claim that there are additional Chinese fighters “has no basis in facts.”

The capture of the Chinese citizens in eastern Ukraine added a fresh international twist to the three-year war in Ukraine.

The West, led by the U.S., has supported Ukraine with weapons and financial aid, while Russia has received military supplies from Iran and North Korea. Last fall, North Korea dispatched around 12,000 troops to fight in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces had seized territory.

Ukrainian soldiers train using a U.S.-made armored vehicle in eastern Ukraine. Photo: Serhii Korovayny for WSJ

China has professed itself neutral but supported Russia economically while stopping short of providing military equipment or troops.

A Western official said the captured men were likely mercenaries, among hundreds of foreign men of a variety of nationalities who have joined Russia’s army for money.

“We are not seeing evidence of state sponsorship here,” the official said.

U.S. officials have accused China of prolonging the war by supporting Moscow, enabling it to keep fighting and resist international pressure for a cease-fire. Moscow owes much of its economic resilience to its oil exports to Beijing, and China is a key source of drone engines and other materials that enable Russia’s weapons production.

“It’s one more country that is militarily supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” Zelensky said Tuesday.

Zelensky said the fact that the Chinese citizens were captured fighting in Ukraine, while the North Koreans fought in Kursk, should be urgently discussed with partners.

“I understand that we are a strong country, but we can’t fight simultaneously with many countries that want something on our land,” he said, according to state news agency Ukrinform.

The U.S. State Department called the development disturbing.

“China is a major enabler of Russia in the war in Ukraine,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said Tuesday. “As President Trump has said, continued cooperation between these two nuclear powers will only further contribute to global instability and make the United States and other countries less safe, less secure, and less prosperous.”

Write to James Marson at james.marson@wsj.com and Austin Ramzy at austin.ramzy@wsj.com

15. An American-Made iPhone: Just Expensive or Completely Impossible?

So is the new American dream to have millions of Americans screwing little screws into iPhones?

Excerpts:

“The army of millions and millions of human beings, screwing in little screws to make iPhones—that kind of thing is going to come to America,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CBS’s “Face the Nation” over the weekend. “It’s going to be automated,” he added.

Except iPhones contain a patchwork of sophisticated parts, sourced from many countries and put together primarily in China, where electronics manufacturing has been perfected over a generation. America doesn’t have facilities that resemble Chinese ones, nor does it have skilled manpower to assemble iPhones at that scale.

...

All of this is going to take moolah. Lots and lots of it. President Trump has pointed out Apple’s willingness to spend $500 billion on U.S. manufacturing. But the company’s commitment is largely for a factory in Houston intended to make AI servers, not iPhones.

Apple would have to spend more to build out the manufacturing ecosystem for an All-American iPhone. And even if it did, would the company be able to maintain iPhone quality while selling them at today’s prices?

“No,” says, well, everyone.

A $1,000 iPhone made completely in the U.S. would be a low-quality product, at least at first, Dai says. “The U.S. has the capacity to manufacture smartphone parts in some areas, but it is not the best across these areas.” America would need to catch up on decades of expertise that Japan has with cameras, and South Korea has with displays, for instance.

An American-Made iPhone: Just Expensive or Completely Impossible?

Trump’s tariffs aim to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. So what—besides magic—would it take to make iPhones here?

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/apple-iphone-us-manufacturing-f730c39c

By Joanna Stern

Follow and Nicole Nguyen

April 9, 2025 5:30 am ET

Illustration: ELENA SCOTTI/WSJ, ISTOCK

The year is 2030. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook takes the stage, waves his new Apple Magic Wand, shouts “Apple-cadabra!” and yanks off a black cloth.

It’s the made-in-America iPhone! Built with lots of money, people, time…and pixie dust.

In the short term, President Trump’s tariffs could mean more-expensive iPhones. The longer-term goal is to reshore high-tech manufacturing to the U.S., including Apple’s cash cow.

“The army of millions and millions of human beings, screwing in little screws to make iPhones—that kind of thing is going to come to America,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CBS’s “Face the Nation” over the weekend. “It’s going to be automated,” he added.

Except iPhones contain a patchwork of sophisticated parts, sourced from many countries and put together primarily in China, where electronics manufacturing has been perfected over a generation. America doesn’t have facilities that resemble Chinese ones, nor does it have skilled manpower to assemble iPhones at that scale.

So we assembled a panel of manufacturing and technology experts to find out how hard it would be for Apple AAPL -4.98%decrease; red down pointing triangle to bring iPhone production to the U.S. The short answer? It’s easier to teach a bald eagle to use a screwdriver.

They unanimously agreed. Building the full stack of iPhone components and assembling it in the U.S.? Impossible. But shifting some manufacturing here? Not totally insane.

Apple declined to comment on the possibility of making an iPhone in the U.S. So come dream with us. Here’s what it would take to build an iPhone—or at least some of it—in the land of the free.

Cross-border cooperation

There are parts from over 40 different countries inside an iPhone with the most complex and specialized components coming from about half a dozen, says Gary Gereffi, an emeritus professor at Duke University who has spent decades studying global manufacturing.

Right now, many of those parts are made in—or near—China, which benefits from its proximity to Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.

The only realistic path to U.S. iPhone assembly is to reconstruct its supply chain by shifting some of its key component manufacturing to the broader North American region, says Gereffi, with some parts made in Mexico and Canada—maybe even Western Europe. If a U.S. assembly operation were to start in the next three to five years, however, it would depend on parts from Asia, too.

The Sum of an iPhone’s Parts

Processor

Taiwan

$90.85

Display

South Korea

$37.97

Battery

China

$4.10

5G cellular modem

$26.62

Memory

U.S.

$21.80

Storage

Japan

$20.59

Rear camera array

$126.95

Main enclosure

$20.79

All other components

$200.06

$549.73

Total

Source: TechInsights, iFixit

Note: The iPhone 16 Pro starts with 128 GB of storage but this pricing reflects the 256 GB upgrade. Some components have multiple suppliers from different countries of origin.

Adrienne Tong/WSJ

When Apple began building the Mac Pro desktop in the U.S., one of the first roadblocks was sourcing enough parts—including screws—close to home.

Even if funding were no object—and we’ll get to that—Gereffi estimates it would take three to five years to build out the scale and quality required for us to join hands in a big American manufacturing kumbaya.

Skilled makers

Speaking of hands, iPhone assembly in the U.S. would require a dramatically increased number of them—both human and robotic.

It wouldn’t be impossible to buy the manufacturing equipment required, but getting enough people who are able to run it might be, says Tinglong Dai, a business professor at Johns Hopkins University, who studies global supply chains. “We have a severe labor shortage,” he says, “and we’ve lost the art of manufacturing at scale.”

Foxconn, which assembles iPhones, has said it employs 300,000 workers in Zhengzhou, China, aka “iPhone City.” In response to tariffs, Apple plans to source more iPhones assembled in India, according to a Wall Street Journal report. India, too, has a large manufacturing workforce.

The U.S. doesn’t. Hiring is one of the biggest problems facing existing American factories.

Then there’s the skills gap. In a 2017 interview with Fortune, Cook said the incentive to build in China wasn’t cheap labor. “The products we do require really advanced tooling,” he said, nodding to the sophisticated iPhone-making equipment. “In the U.S., you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields.”

Robots can help with packaging and testing, but tasks such as routing cables, adding glue and yes, screwing in little screws, still require humans, Dai says.

Mountains of money

All of this is going to take moolah. Lots and lots of it. President Trump has pointed out Apple’s willingness to spend $500 billion on U.S. manufacturing. But the company’s commitment is largely for a factory in Houston intended to make AI servers, not iPhones.

Apple would have to spend more to build out the manufacturing ecosystem for an All-American iPhone. And even if it did, would the company be able to maintain iPhone quality while selling them at today’s prices?

“No,” says, well, everyone.

A $1,000 iPhone made completely in the U.S. would be a low-quality product, at least at first, Dai says. “The U.S. has the capacity to manufacture smartphone parts in some areas, but it is not the best across these areas.” America would need to catch up on decades of expertise that Japan has with cameras, and South Korea has with displays, for instance.

There’s momentum for American semiconductor manufacturing. TSMC, the world’s largest chip maker and Apple’s partner, promised to build several plants in Arizona. But for now the company’s most advanced chips, including Apple’s, can only be made in Taiwan.

Apple partner Foxconn planned to build a 3,000-acre TV-screen plant in Wisconsin, shown here under construction in 2020, but substantially scaled back its investment partly because of high manufacturing costs. Photo: Mark Hertzberg/Zuma Press

In 2017, during Trump’s first administration, Foxconn announced plans to build TV displays in Wisconsin at a 13,000-worker facility. It has drastically reduced its commitment—creating only about 1,000 jobs. Manufacturing costs turned out to be “four to five times more expensive” than in China, says Jeff Fieldhack, a research director at Counterpoint Research.

Before Trump’s tariffs, Fieldhack estimates, Apple could make a U.S. operation in five years, assuming money was no object.

But here’s the kicker: With new fees and tariffs threatening to jack up not just the iPhone components but the cost of factory building materials—lumber, steel and everything in between—“It’s way down the road now,” he says.

Don’t worry, Tim Cook’s working on that Apple Magic Wand.

Write to Joanna Stern at joanna.stern@wsj.com and Nicole Nguyen at nicole.nguyen@wsj.com

16. Back to 13-Marine squads and a new company for infantry battalions

The everlasting infantry debate: 9, 11 (Army), or 12, 13 (or 15?)(Marine) man squads.

Should the squad be the same size in all formations? I vividly remember the rationale in the 1980s for the Army going to a 9 man squad because it was built around the Bradley Fighting Vehicle with a crew of 3 with 6 dismounted infantry. But the leg and airborne infantry units were forced to adopt the 9 man configuration for standardization across the force.

Back to 13-Marine squads and a new company for infantry battalions

Defense News · by Todd South · April 8, 2025

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – The 13-Marine squad is back, and the Corps is creating a new company within the infantry battalion to meet its modern war-fighting needs.

Commandant Gen. Eric Smith announced those changes Monday at the Navy League’s annual Sea, Air and Space Exposition.

The fighting unit had grown to 15 Marines during infantry battalion experiments in recent years. That included adding an assistant squad leader and a squad systems operator to manage the many sensing and firing platforms being added to the unit’s arsenal.

Dropping back to the 13-Marine configuration still gives Marines more personnel than the standard nine-soldier U.S. Army squad. It also returns the squad to its previous size, but instead with a sergeant, rather than a staff sergeant in charge of three fire teams and an organic precision fires specialist in the ranks.

The infantry battalion will also see the formation of a reconnaissance and fires company outside of the headquarters and service company ranks. That new company will include the battalion’s 81mm mortars, organic precision fires, such as drones, and the scout platoon for reconnaissance assets, Smith said.

The decision was made this past week, the commandant said.

When the Corps concluded phase one of its Infantry Battalion experiments in 2023, it reduced the size of the infantry battalion from 965 Marines to 811 and added new technologies for sensing, striking, communication and power generation.

Each of the battalion’s three rifle companies hold individual operations, signal, logistics, electronic warfare and medical sections. Recent plans also called for a Navy corpsman available for each squad.

The Marine Corps first unveiled the 15-Marine configuration in 2018. Prior to that, the service had used the 13-Marine squad model since at least the 1950s, with three fire teams of four Marines and a squad leader.

In 2018, then-Commandant Gen. Robert Neller initially announced he would cut the squad from 13 to 12. That changed after his own experiments recommended otherwise.

The 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, had conducted six months of experimentation with new configurations and gear. Following that work, an article published in the professional journal Marine Corps Gazette recommended a 15-Marine squad.

Iran uses an even larger formation — a 16-soldier squad with a squad leader, sniper, a two-soldier rocket team and three fire teams of four soldiers, all with automatic rifles, according “Infantry Building Blocks,” published in a 2018 issue of Military Review.

The same article described China’s dismounted infantry squads as formations of nine to ten soldiers devoted to anti-armor missions.

Before the Ukraine War, Russia had centered even their dismounted squads around the use of either a BMP infantry fighting vehicle, which is tracked, or a BTR wheeled armored personnel carrier, according to “The Russian Way of War,” published by the U.S. Army University Press.

About Todd South

Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.

17. Accelerating to Where? How the U.S. Can Better Compete in the Chip War

Excerpts:

The new fault lines that Beijing is creating in the semiconductor war are becoming evident. The U.S. Trade Representative recently held a public comment hearing as a part of a Section 301 investigation into China’s acts, policies, and practices for targeting dominance in the semiconductor industry. Participants in that hearing included industry leaders who have felt the unfair competitive pressures of China’s industrial policy up close. Others warned that Beijing is deploying the same approach in semiconductors that allowed it, a decade ago, to conquer the solar sector. Those testimonies underscored that USTR forging ahead with its full force and authorities is a necessary first step to re-setting the competitive dynamics and giving U.S. industry a level playing field against China’s non-market playbook.

However, government defense once China is already on its way to full sector dominance could be “too little, too late.” The U.S. also needs to position ahead of the curve. The U.S. has to start investing in the semiconductor fields that are going to matter – for their markets not just for their technological glitz and glam – tomorrow and doing so all across the value chain. And the U.S. also has to start using its market and narrative strengths to start shaping what semiconductor fields, types, and applications will matter tomorrow, and in a way that aligns with U.S. strengths.

None of this means mimicking China. Rather, it means being deliberate about the strengths the U.S. is cultivating and protecting. And it means working now to shape tomorrow’s game.

Accelerating to Where? How the U.S. Can Better Compete in the Chip War

By Nate Picarsic & Emily de La Bruyère

April 09, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/04/09/accelerating_to_where_how_the_us_can_better_compete_in_the_chip_war_1102835.html?mc_cid=00d2f42690

The “Chip War” remains a critical domain in U.S.-China competition. This was clearly the case during the Biden administration, which made semiconductor investment the focus of its marquee legislation. And the emphasis on semiconductors – and competition with China therein – remains under the Trump administration; the field is front and center for the Commerce Department’s newly announced United States Investment Accelerator.

Still, despite this consistent prioritization, Washington risks heading the wrong direction in the chip war. Washington’s framing of the semiconductor competition misinterprets China’s positioning. In particular, the U.S. risks ignoring the upstream foundations on which all integrated circuits (ICs) are built, and China’s growing stranglehold over that foundation.

Beijing’s industrial, scientific, and technological policy prioritizes the semiconductor sector. And Beijing operationalizes this prioritization according to a practiced and well-documented playbook: Beijing backs companies with State investment and subsidies, directly funds research and development, and leverages international ties to acquire foreign technology and human capital. This playbook has already allowed China to catch up to international leaders in mature nodes of the semiconductor value chain and in the less high-tech, but nonetheless critical, realms of packaging and testing IC products.

But while that playbook might be well documented, its specific priorities – and the threat they pose to the United States – are not. First, the U.S. remains effectively blind to the non-obvious, asymmetric semiconductor sub-sectors where Beijing is doubling down to dominate next-generation capabilities, like wide bandgap semiconductors and photonics. Second, China has prioritized developing dominance over semiconductor materials and other upstream elements of the value chain and now is vertically integrating on top of a foundation that it controls. Together, these campaigns create an asymmetric strategy that seizes on gaps in U.S. policy and capabilities.

The default U.S. approach to tech competition starts from, and focuses on, protecting crown jewels at the forefront of research and development (e.g., ever increasingly small “nm” sizes of chip features and transistor density). But such an approach is akin to assuming that batting average is the only metric that matters for building a baseball roster. And refusing to budge from that assumption even after Billy Beane’s Moneyball revolution and the emergence of alternative, asymmetric logics – like caring about how often a player gets on base.

Beijing, by contrast, is taking a Moneyball approach to the chip war.

Billy Beane used to say that the Oakland Athletics couldn’t “do the same things the Yankees do” and expect to win. China has taken that advice to heart. Their semiconductor policy prioritizes segments, like wide bandgap semiconductors, and metrics, like market share and vertical integration, that others don’t. And right now, Beijing expects to win.

Take, for example, the strategic value, and corresponding resources, China dedicates to wide bandgap, or third-generation, semiconductors (e.g., those made with silicon carbide, gallium nitride, and indium phosphide). These semiconductors feed into emergent downstream applications including new energy vehicles, telecommunications, and data centers needed to power artificial intelligence applications. And Beijing has recognized the field is relatively undefended; that its international competitors are not prioritizing wide bandgap semiconductors in any formidable way. Here, then, is an area in which to overtake.

And in this area – as more generally – China is positioning to overtake through vertical integration that starts at the upstream of the value chain. China is the dominant global source of the gallium necessary for gallium nitride third generation semiconductors. This upstream advantage grants China’s downstream champions cost and process advantages as they develop and scale third generation semiconductor manufacturing. Telecom giant Huawei, for instance, has invested through its corporate venture arm in silicon carbide epitaxial wafer company Tianyu Semiconductor. And vertical integration by the likes of Huawei also fuels the leverage China enjoys over foreign companies and countries, which can be exercised through export restrictions like those applied to gallium in December 2024.

The new fault lines that Beijing is creating in the semiconductor war are becoming evident. The U.S. Trade Representative recently held a public comment hearing as a part of a Section 301 investigation into China’s acts, policies, and practices for targeting dominance in the semiconductor industry. Participants in that hearing included industry leaders who have felt the unfair competitive pressures of China’s industrial policy up close. Others warned that Beijing is deploying the same approach in semiconductors that allowed it, a decade ago, to conquer the solar sector. Those testimonies underscored that USTR forging ahead with its full force and authorities is a necessary first step to re-setting the competitive dynamics and giving U.S. industry a level playing field against China’s non-market playbook.

However, government defense once China is already on its way to full sector dominance could be “too little, too late.” The U.S. also needs to position ahead of the curve. The U.S. has to start investing in the semiconductor fields that are going to matter – for their markets not just for their technological glitz and glam – tomorrow and doing so all across the value chain. And the U.S. also has to start using its market and narrative strengths to start shaping what semiconductor fields, types, and applications will matter tomorrow, and in a way that aligns with U.S. strengths.

None of this means mimicking China. Rather, it means being deliberate about the strengths the U.S. is cultivating and protecting. And it means working now to shape tomorrow’s game.

Nate Picarsic and Emily de La Bruyère, Senior Fellows, Foundation for Defense of Democracies; co-founders, Horizon Advisory

18. Tariffs will awaken the American Dream

I never thought I would hear an American utter these three words: "impede free trade." I guess you do have to burn the village to save it.

I truly hope it works.

It will be interesting to read the work of a descendent of de Toqueville who writes the 21st century version of Democracy in America. How has the character of the rugged individualist, independent, free trading American evolved?

Excerpts:

Trump’s tariff plan is simple: impede free trade so that surviving industrial and craft enterprises can return to prosperity, while other firms both old and new are re-launched with better technology, allowing them to become global exporters while still paying good wages. True, global wealth is favoured by unlimited free trade. But, in the process, lower-income workers in developed countries are impoverished, even as higher income people everywhere get wealthier. While Clinton, the Bushes, and the lord of Martha’s Vineyard Obama supported free trade, as did the wealthy elite they hang out with, Trump is keen to reward his lower income supporters. Unsurprisingly, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times editorialists — free-trade worshippers all — are outraged.

And then there is another thing. It turns out that without a civilian shipbuilding industry, the US Navy can only make hugely expensive prototypes, not the 200 warships we need. The same is true of other sectors, including civilian aviation: Boeing is currently years late in delivering tankers to US and allied air forces (the Israelis must rely on 65-year-old converted airliners), and also terribly behind fulfilling orders for commercial airlines around the world. Why? Because of the collapse of the hundreds of machine shops, which once trained skilled workers who could walk into any Boeing factory at a pinch.

As for the labour supply, cutting gigantic Federal gifts to rich universities — which turn out unlimited numbers of sociologists and sexologists, who often end up working for the government in some capacity — will give us more workers, and perhaps some more plumbers too.

All of the above is more than enough to justify today’s temporary global turmoil, which caused stock markets to temporarily tumble, but there is one more consideration. Unless the US industrial economy is vigorously rebuilt, the US armed forces will have to import their vehicles and weapons. From where? Likely China, so good luck with that.

Tariffs will awaken the American Dream

Trump must ignore the lords of Martha's Vineyard

Edward Luttwak

April 8, 2025 5 mins

https://unherd.com/2025/04/tariffs-will-awaken-the-american-dream/?mc_cid=00d2f42690

For decades, the United States provided a market that was unlimited for most exporters, enabling countries large and small to transfer their populations from marginally productive farms in overcrowded villages to low-tech industries producing garments, footwear, simple hand-tools and such like. In that first stage of one-sided market opening, poor people worldwide became less poor, while working-class Americans started to lose their jobs — and the American ruling elite in both parties remained uncritically devoted to free trade.

How did the US pay for that first tidal wave of cheap low-tech imports? Partly with earnings from American agricultural exports, as well as some irresistible consumer products such as Coca Cola and cigarettes. Increasingly, though, America paid for these products by selling Treasury bonds, eagerly bought up by exporting countries. That, in turn, drove up the dollar, and made foreign wares even more competitive.

But this model came with a downside. In the US, producers of low-tech and craft products started going out of business, even as the newly unemployed were encouraged to abandon hard industrial jobs for splendid new positions in the services sector. Go into marketing analysis foreign-exchange trading, they were told, whose winnings could earn you more money in a day than a lifetime spent turning out garden tools — which now anyway arrived more cheaply from overseas.

In speeches, articles and lectures, the country’s elite hailed the passing of our grim industrial economy, instead looking forward to a future where everyone could be a marketing consultant or a financial adviser.

It was only small-minded people, fixated on the hourly-wage data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who noticed that industrial workers who made $30 an hour working on assembly lines did not in fact become foreign-exchange traders earning $3,000 an hour. When their competition-hit factories shut down, rather, they were much more likely to turn up as shopping mall security guards paid $10 an hour.

In 1993, I myself published a book called The Endangered American Dream, in which I tested the claim that the replacement of the industrial economy by the service economy was a Good Thing. In the event, I found that it was only a Good Thing for South Korea, Taiwan, the lower end of the Japanese economy and the poorest European regions. All these places kept out foreign — including US — imports while exporting vigorously to the US. Stateside, where lower-tech industries were collapsing, the American heartland suffered too.

Fentanyl had yet to arrive. But in those towns, Father could no longer provide a dignified life for his family by going off with his lunchpail to work in the factory down the street. Instead, he counted himself lucky if he could get a job at Walmart at much lower pay, helping to sell cheaper imported versions of what he himself had once made.

My book included a warning that social breakdown would open the way for some form of product-improved fascism in the US. But reviewers failed to notice that, as they contemptuously slammed my protectionist idiocy: I had dared to question the secular religion of the ruling elite: whose dogma was that unlimited free trade would make the whole world richer. That is certainly true, but globalisation also made American industrial workers poorer, too poor to send their children to college, endangering the American Dream.

“Globalisation made American industrial workers poorer, endangering the American Dream.”

Worse was to follow. Instead of prudent and limited protectionism — replacing industrial collapse across the US with a much slower transition, in order to provide enough time to upskill at least the sons of industrial workers — Bill Clinton and the Davos free trade consensus opened the US to unlimited imports from North America. That was a great blessing for Mexican industry, and especially the foreign companies from all over the world that started producing in Mexico, which then trucked their products to the US without any limits.

Nobody in the US elite noticed that every other industrial country impeded US industrial imports, either via arbitrary regulatory hurdles or even outright conspiracies. Consider South Korea. The government finally removed its de facto prohibition of US car imports (rich Koreans loved utterly impractical Cadillacs), only to ensure that General Motors would not be able to rent a showroom anywhere in Seoul. Traitorous landlords tempted to offer their space were threatened with harsh retaliation: by the same officials who had smilingly signed the auto free trade agreement with the US. South Korea, of course, is a country that enjoys the protection of US troops until today.

Then, China’s industrialisation accelerated. That carried the country from Mao’s deep misery — which I experienced first-hand in 1976, when the whole of Beijing smelled like an open sewer — to an ever greater prosperity, very largely built on industrial and craft exports to the US, whose market was totally open to China, even as China’s market was largely closed to US exporters. Some of these barriers have since come down, but the process is not complete even now.

It was Chinese imports that finally drove most US factories out of business, taking much of our remaining industrial base with them. Increasing quality at a steady clip, while constantly expanding capacity, Chinese industrialists were also helped by continued purchases of US dollar bonds. Artificially pushing up the greenback, this again made Chinese imports even cheaper.

Why balk at China’s generosity in offering 97-piece toolsets that can be picked up for a few bucks at Walmart? No reason at all — if Americans are only viewed as consumers. But while the entire US elite celebrated free trade, an astonishing number of Americans lost the last of the good jobs that upheld families, towns and cities.

Trump’s tariff plan is simple: impede free trade so that surviving industrial and craft enterprises can return to prosperity, while other firms both old and new are re-launched with better technology, allowing them to become global exporters while still paying good wages. True, global wealth is favoured by unlimited free trade. But, in the process, lower-income workers in developed countries are impoverished, even as higher income people everywhere get wealthier. While Clinton, the Bushes, and the lord of Martha’s Vineyard Obama supported free trade, as did the wealthy elite they hang out with, Trump is keen to reward his lower income supporters. Unsurprisingly, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times editorialists — free-trade worshippers all — are outraged.

And then there is another thing. It turns out that without a civilian shipbuilding industry, the US Navy can only make hugely expensive prototypes, not the 200 warships we need. The same is true of other sectors, including civilian aviation: Boeing is currently years late in delivering tankers to US and allied air forces (the Israelis must rely on 65-year-old converted airliners), and also terribly behind fulfilling orders for commercial airlines around the world. Why? Because of the collapse of the hundreds of machine shops, which once trained skilled workers who could walk into any Boeing factory at a pinch.

As for the labour supply, cutting gigantic Federal gifts to rich universities — which turn out unlimited numbers of sociologists and sexologists, who often end up working for the government in some capacity — will give us more workers, and perhaps some more plumbers too.

All of the above is more than enough to justify today’s temporary global turmoil, which caused stock markets to temporarily tumble, but there is one more consideration. Unless the US industrial economy is vigorously rebuilt, the US armed forces will have to import their vehicles and weapons. From where? Likely China, so good luck with that.

Professor Edward Luttwak is a strategist and historian known for his works on grand strategy, geoeconomics, military history, and international relations.

ELuttwak

unherd.com · by Edward Luttwak · April 7, 2025

19. The Rise of a New Axis: Great Power Struggle and the Future of Conflict

I think this "fusion of foes" requires a new strategy that looks at these threats holistically rather than as separate ones. The IC's new Annual Threat Assessment recognizes this "adversarial cooperation." So we all should.

I think "great power struggle" may be a better descriptor than strategic competition and great power competition.

Excerpts:

The United States is operating in a different strategic environment today, facing a combination of peer power and major regional power opponents with a shared disaffection towards the American-led order. Adopting a policy and planning framework that is aligned to this reality in order to shape force investments and modernization is a prudent place for the Trump Administration to start. It is not within the scope of this brief discussion to detail what those changes might look like or cost, which at any rate has been illustratively set out recently by both the Strategic Posture Commission and the Commission on the National Defense Strategy.[19] However, addressing the most significant and consequential risks and threats posed by the ambitions of today’s autocratic entente, does point to a number of key areas requiring increased priority. These include space-counterspace, cyberspace, strategic and theater nuclear deterrent forces, homeland and regional missile defenses, advanced autonomous conventional systems and a revitalized defense industrial base responsive to an era of long-term multi-power competition. It is noteworthy that today, the United States spends around 3.5 percent of its GDP on defense, which is significantly lower than the Cold War average of around 10 percent. Adjusting defense spending upward to account for the new threats to American security is feasible. It is a matter of political will and leadership not affordability.

Taking seriously that our adversaries may be preparing for war, which must include measures to restore a defense posture, force structure and budget necessary to deter and defeat simultaneous aggressors, offers the greatest prospect for avoiding costly blunders and preserving peace.

Peppino DeBiaso, The Rise of a New Axis: Great Power Struggle and the Future of Conflict, No. 622, April 8, 2025

The Rise of a New Axis: Great Power Struggle and the Future of Conflict

https://nipp.org/information_series/peppino-debiaso-the-rise-of-a-new-axis-great-power-struggle-and-the-future-of-conflict-no-622-april-8-2025/

Dr. Peppino DeBiaso

Dr. Peppino DeBiaso served in a number of positions in the U.S. Department of Defense, including as Director of the Office of Missile Defense Policy. He has held research and teaching positions at the ANSER Corporation, California State University, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is currently Adjunct Professor in Missouri State University’s Defense and Strategic Studies Graduate Program in Washington D.C. and a Senior Associate (non-resident) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. The views expressed here are his own.

Introduction

The Trump Administration has taken office during a period of perilous transformation that presages a new era in international security. This new era is unlike anything the United States has encountered since perhaps the period leading up to the Second World War. Its most prominent feature is the growing collaboration and coordination among revisionist and belligerent autocratic nations. They are building more lethal militaries while fueling crises and conflicts across Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific. To a large degree, these regimes are aligned in their opposition to the United States and the post-World War II security order established in the wake of American leadership.

China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran are pursuing concerted actions to further a common strategic aim, namely, strengthening each countries’ military capabilities as a means, in the near term, to shift the balance of power in their respective regions, while in the longer term, altering the conditions under which future conflict with the United States and its allies would be waged. If this challenge is to be effectively countered, American political leaders must be clear on the nature of the strategic competition that is underway. While today’s adversaries have varying individual regional interests and goals, they recognize the struggle to forge an alternative order of power can likely be achieved only through an entente that erodes American military preeminence, which is at the core of its freedom of action to deter aggression and prevail in conflict with acceptable risks and costs.

For President Trump and his incoming national security team, the priority should be the formulation of a national defense strategy which takes into account the danger posed by the rise of this latter-day axis and concentrates on rebuilding American military capability and capacity to counter the ambitions of its potential opponents. These ambitions contain echoes of the Axis powers that launched World War II. That period illustrates, in no small measure, how the failure of Western democratic powers to grasp the wider significance of the events surrounding the military compact between Germany, Italy and Japan and its allies, contributed to the rising tide of aggression and the eventual collapse of deterrence culminating in global conflict waged on multiple fronts in Europe, East Asia and across the Pacific.

Axis Powers 1.0

It is said that while history doesn’t repeat itself, it often rhymes. In this regard, it is useful to briefly recall some of the more salient features associated with the rise of the Axis entente to illustrate where today’s developments might lead and how this might inform the administration’s strategy to address the prospect of conflict with multiple challengers of the status quo. Not unlike present-day revisionist regimes, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the lesser authoritarian states who tied their fate to the side they believed would be victorious, were collectively dissatisfied with the existing international order created by the Western democracies in the aftermath of World War I. This hostility towards the status quo was reinforced by their ideological compatibility which held democracy and the democratic powers in contempt. Despite differing geopolitical aims, the Axis powers would come to understand that their strategic ambition of establishing a new international order could only be achieved by breaking the hegemony of western powers. By 1936, the three powers, chafing under Western imposed economic sanctions by the League of Nations to halt their expanding aggression in Europe, North Africa, and East Asia, would draw closer together to end their isolation, evade international restrictions, and begin preparing for large-scale conflict to remake the international political system. They signed a series of strategic agreements over the next 18 months pledging to consult and coordinate with one another in the event of war. Henceforth, the Axis states aligned their general policies and actions, while accelerating the buildup of their respective armies, air forces, and navies, under the broad banner of eroding and then dismantling the post-World War I international system – a system largely constructed by the United States with the declared aim of securing a lasting peace through a new global order based on democratic governance and self-determination.

In a manner not unlike the various “strategic partnerships” being put in place today by China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, the Axis powers focused their shared enmity on the United States with the signing of the Tripartite Pact in September 1940. To bring forth a “new order,” they would “assist one another with all political, economic and military means when one of the three contracting powers is attacked by a power at present not involved in the European war or in the Chinese-Japanese conflict.”[1] The central goal of the Pact was to deter the United States from entering the war against either the Germany-led axis nations in Europe or Japan in Asia by warning the American leadership that if they did so they must be prepared to fight all of the axis powers. Within a short period of time, the United States would find itself in a global conflict confronting multiple major powers who had laid the foundation for war years earlier through the pursuit of a wide range of military measures, and the accumulation of advantages, both small and large. Unfortunately, it would take a surprise attack on the homeland to learn the costs of failing to prepare for aggression in peacetime.

Axis of Autocracies Redux?

While caution should be exercised in drawing together too tightly historical parallels between axis powers past and present, such framing can offer useful insights to inform American and allied strategy and military preparation necessary to address the challenges posed by the emerging partnerships among today’s revisionist regimes. It can be argued, as some have, that the heightened military coordination and mutual support among China, North Korea, and Iran for Russia’s war on Ukraine is predicated on little more than an opportunistic alignment of like-minded anti-Western powers. According to this view, the alignment is either unlikely to outlast the resolution of the conflict or is vulnerable to fracturing through a Kissinger-esque diplomatic engineering of a modern-day Sino-Russian split.[2] However, the linkages being cultivated may belie a deeper and more enduring shift that should not be dismissed as isolated or transient events. Prior to 1936, the Axis states also operated quite independently of one another as they undertook their respective preparations for conflict in Europe and Asia. But this changed quickly as their shared antipathy towards the Western powers and the prevailing status quo hardened.

Today, there are two interrelated trends confronting the United States and its allies that are consequential. The autocratic powers are each challenging the status quo, seeking to compete across multiple domains of military power within the context of advancing their national aims while, concomitantly, coalescing their policies and actions into a common strategic front against the West.

Within the context of their own national agendas, China, Russia, North Korea and Iran are building up and modernizing their respective militaries, with Beijing and Moscow, in particular, constructing forces for global military campaigns.[3] China’s military modernization and growth now outpace that of the United States in terms of force size across land, sea, air, space-counterspace, and in the cyber domain.[4] Along with the largest army, navy and submarine fleet in the world, it is fielding long-range kinetic missiles, including hypersonic weapons, and non-kinetic weapons enabling the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to carry out conventional global strikes against targets in the United States. In parallel with the ongoing transformation of its conventional forces to support long-range operations, China’s strategic nuclear forces are undergoing rapid expansion. It is on a path to achieve at least deployed nuclear weapons parity with the United States by the mid-2030s. This change in the balance of nuclear power will provide Beijing with newly acquired “nuclear top cover” empowering the leadership with greater freedom of action to project military force and influence globally while pursuing more aggressive regional actions, particularly in areas like the South China Sea and Taiwan.[5] Russia, spurred on by its initial setbacks in Ukraine, is in the midst of a major rearmament program which also reinforces its broader revanchist ambitions to reclaim “lost territory” and establish a modern-day cordon sanitaire along its western European front. It is regenerating its conventional military posture while expanding its ground forces for high-intensity land warfare faster than American officials had originally forecast at the start of the conflict.[6] As part of the effort to rebuild its military for large scale operations, it is integrating space, counterspace, and cyber capabilities into its campaign planning to target NATO forces necessary to degrade the effectiveness of American and allied troops to project power into and across Europe during a conflict.[7]

Concurrently, Moscow continues upgrading and diversifying its arsenal of nuclear delivery systems, already the largest in the world, with advanced theater and strategic air-breathing and ballistic missile systems, including hypersonic weapons. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russia’s leadership has lowered the threshold in their military doctrine to allow the employment of nuclear weapons in response to conventional attacks on Russian territory.[8] Moscow’s recent lowering of the threshold for nuclear use is made all the more dangerous by its threats to carry out limited nuclear strikes against the United States and its allies in order to weaken, through the West’s fear of escalation, U.S. and NATO resolve to oppose continued Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Beyond China and Russia, North Korea and Iran present enduring threats to American interests at home and abroad, especially with regard to their programs for nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Each seeks to position itself as the dominant disruptive regional military power committed to stoking crises, instability and conflict across, respectively, Northeast Asia and the Middle East. North Korea places the highest priority on its nuclear weapons and ICBM programs with the ability to threaten or strike the United States. Pyongyang is accelerating the testing and fielding of several new ICBM variants, which puts new pressure on U.S. missile defenses to protect the homeland against attack. Accompanying the qualitative and quantitative expansion in missile capabilities is an increase in the size of its nuclear stockpile which has been directed to grow by Kim Jong Un at “maximum speed.”[9] In tandem with its nuclear and missile programs, North Korea, despite being one of the poorest countries in the world, maintains the fourth-largest conventional military, with more than 1.2 million personnel, capable of inflicting enormous damage on South Korea. Regarding Iran, its anti-status quo strategy remains fueled by a blend of religious zeal and geopolitical ambition focused on fomenting upheaval across the Middle East. Beyond its role as the leading sponsor of state terrorism around the world and its direct support for proxy forces in conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq, its military modernization centers around advancing its nuclear weapons, space launch and ballistic missile programs. Iran is a virtual nuclear weapon state today, reportedly with the ability to produce several nuclear bomb’s worth of fissile material in a matter of weeks.[10] It possesses the largest missile force in the Middle East, which it employed in its first ever direct attacks on Israel in April and again in October 2024 when it launched some 300 and 200 missiles respectively (many of which were destroyed by American and Israeli missile defenses). Finally, Tehran remains committed to the development of a long-range ballistic missile to accompany its nuclear “breakout” potential. Building on its space launch vehicle program, which it is using to mask progress towards an ICBM, an Iranian long-range nuclear missile capable of holding American cities hostage to nuclear blackmail will likely arise quickly when the regime takes the political decision.[11]

Any one of these challenges to American security would be formidable on its own, but the accelerating military collaboration between Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran suggests a shift to a more direct and systemic confrontation with the United States and its allies. All are dissatisfied with the status quo and see it, and the United States in particular, in a state of decline. This is most notably reflected in a hardening of Russian and Chinese antipathy toward the U.S.-led post-World War II international security order. The current structure, in President Putin’s view, is “irreversibly passing away,” and an “irreconcilable struggle is unfolding for the development of a new world order.”[12] This existential struggle with the West is marked by a “rapidly growing potential for conflict and fragmentation” over the existing geopolitical system. China’s leaders hold views sympathetic to Russia’s on challenging U.S. military power and reshaping the global order underpinned by it. Xi Jinping speaks about how Washington and its allies defend and perpetuate “an unfair and exclusive status quo” and that the time has arrived to “construct” a new order, presumably under Beijing’s leadership.[13]

Within this shared strategic purpose among the aggrieved axis powers, is a deepening military and operational cooperation that is augmenting each countries’ capabilities in ways that impose new or additional costs, risks, and vulnerabilities on the United States and its allies that will be borne out in future conflicts.

The most substantial development in this regard is the agreement reached between Presidents’ Xi and Putin in February 2022 declaring a new strategic partnership that would know “no limits.” Over the past two years, the no limits collaboration has only accelerated, making each more dangerous. For example, within the framework of the pact, China is providing military aid in support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It is transferring dual-use technology such as machine tools and microelectronics to assist with Moscow’s efforts to rebuild its conventional military and war supporting industry, including for the increased production of munitions, tanks, armored vehicles, and missiles.[14] This assistance not only advances Moscow’s current wartime objectives, but increases its battlefield proficiency in the event of a wider future conflict in Europe with NATO. In return, Russia is furthering China’s efforts to build advanced weapons through the transfer of technologies related to submarine operations, aeronautical design, including stealth that can be applied to manned and unmanned combat aviation, and improvements to missiles for more accurate targeting. The new technologies China is receiving boost its ability to wage high-intensity warfare against not just American ground, sea and land forces in the Pacific and staging bases such as Guam, but against the allied forces of Japan, Australia and South Korea.

Highlighting the expanding strategic cooperation are mutual defense pacts Russia has recently signed with North Korea and Iran linking their policies and actions to advance individual and joint military capabilities in support of common geopolitical aims. For instance, as a result of its deepening involvement in the war in Ukraine to redraw European territorial boundaries, Pyongyang is providing Russia’s army with desperately needed ballistic missiles, artillery and other weapons. In addition to the material support, North Korea now has 11,000 to 12,000 troops fighting alongside the Russian army in what is the largest joint combat operation in Europe since the end of World War II. In exchange, North Korea is reportedly seeking from Russia military technology and expertise to accelerate improvements to it its short-range nuclear weapons, reconnaissance satellites, ICBMs and missile launching submarines.[15]

This collaboration has a number of implications that expose the United States to greater risk. The augmentation of North Korea’s conventional forces and tactical nuclear weapons, for instance, improves its ability to conduct a rapid, multi-layered attack against U.S. and South Korean forces. Additionally, these advances in both conventional and nuclear capabilities may embolden it to undertake (further) provocative military action against the South in a crisis, with unpredictable escalation dynamics that could well draw China into a conflict with American and South Korean forces, especially if Beijing intervenes to save its client from defeat.[16] At the same time, the military and technical assistance Russia is offering Pyongyang in the space and ballistic missile area generates additional risks to the United States by exacerbating the vulnerability of the U.S. homeland to North Korean nuclear missile blackmail and attack.

In tandem with the deepening strategic military ties described above, Tehran and Moscow are placing their wartime collaboration on a new and potentially more enduring footing. This is evident in the recent decision by Iran’s leadership to aid Russian combat operations by providing weaponized drones and ballistic missiles to target Ukraine’s troops on the battlefield and its critical civilian infrastructure. This cooperation is growing, and most recently includes the deployment of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Russian-occupied Crimea and Kherson for the purpose of conducting Shahed drone attacks, along with the establishment of a joint manufacturing facility in Russia to mass produce Iranian-designed armed drones. Russia, in return, is transferring to Iran sophisticated weapons such as the Sukhoi Su-35 fighters, helicopters, anti-ship missiles and advanced air defenses, which Iran desperately needs to modernize its forces and which have been hobbled by decades of western sanctions. The improvements to Iran’s air-defenses arising from this cooperation make it more difficult in a future crisis or conflict for the United States to blunt the regime’s employment of its large arsenal of ballistic and cruise missiles, which will remain Tehran’s chief means of threatening U.S. and partner military forces in the region.[17]

Next Steps: Preparation and Adaptation

It is not necessarily the value of any individual development or particular advantage on the part of U.S. adversaries that should be accounted for when assessing changes that may alter the conditions under which a future war between the United States and its foes may be lost or won. Rather, it is the accumulated strategic effect arising from the many seemingly small and modest actions and advantages that can enhance military capability on one side while increasing risks and disadvantages on the other.

As the new administration formulates the nation’s defense strategy, it must be centered on a strategic fact that rises above all others when framing the scope and scale of the threat and preparing responses. Namely, there is an accelerating shift in the strategic-operational linkages and cooperation amongst today’s axis states driving regional instability and conflict across Europe, the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East, while simultaneously compounding the vulnerabilities to the American homeland. Not unlike the axis powers of the past, today’s opponents are signaling to the United States that if it chooses to confront the aggression of one state it may have to engage multiple states. Indeed, the military cooperation and ties among today’s revisionist powers are deeper and more expansive than those of Axis powers of World War II. What this suggests is that while the focal point of American defense strategy today on China as the “pacing” long term challenge is appropriate, it would be folly for U.S. policymakers to dismiss the prospect that our adversaries understand that dealing with the “American problem” requires that they collaborate and harmonize their actions during crises as well as in conflict.

It cannot be known whether the autocratic entente will fight together, or in what combinations. However, the current “one war” strategy and force posture that is centered on defeating a single major power disregards the axis nature of today’s threats, leaving the United States ill-prepared to deter conflict and prevail on the battlefield, or more likely, battlefields. American national security planners would do well to recall the warning of Leon Trotsky, the father of the Red Army, who famously observed, “you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Being prepared to deter, defend against and defeat more than one adversary in more than one region is not beyond the capacity of the United States and its allies. During much of the Cold War, the United States fashioned its military strategy, operational plans and force size and composition around the overarching concept of being prepared to fight two large conflicts and one smaller in overlapping timeframes. Deterring adversaries was grounded in the principle of convincing them that the United States and its allies had the military power to defeat multiple enemies, including the possibility of opportunistic aggression, in multiple regions. This standard was largely abandoned at the end of the Cold War.[18]

The United States is operating in a different strategic environment today, facing a combination of peer power and major regional power opponents with a shared disaffection towards the American-led order. Adopting a policy and planning framework that is aligned to this reality in order to shape force investments and modernization is a prudent place for the Trump Administration to start. It is not within the scope of this brief discussion to detail what those changes might look like or cost, which at any rate has been illustratively set out recently by both the Strategic Posture Commission and the Commission on the National Defense Strategy.[19] However, addressing the most significant and consequential risks and threats posed by the ambitions of today’s autocratic entente, does point to a number of key areas requiring increased priority. These include space-counterspace, cyberspace, strategic and theater nuclear deterrent forces, homeland and regional missile defenses, advanced autonomous conventional systems and a revitalized defense industrial base responsive to an era of long-term multi-power competition. It is noteworthy that today, the United States spends around 3.5 percent of its GDP on defense, which is significantly lower than the Cold War average of around 10 percent. Adjusting defense spending upward to account for the new threats to American security is feasible. It is a matter of political will and leadership not affordability.

Taking seriously that our adversaries may be preparing for war, which must include measures to restore a defense posture, force structure and budget necessary to deter and defeat simultaneous aggressors, offers the greatest prospect for avoiding costly blunders and preserving peace.

[1] Details of the Tripartite Pact are available at https://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/triparti.asp.

[2] Lawrence A. Franklin, “Cracks in the New ‘Axis of Evil’: China, Russia, North Korea, Iran,” Gatestone Institute, November 29, 2024, available at https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21163/china-russia-north-korea-fracture. See also Eugene Rumer, “The United States and the “Axis” of Its Enemies: Myths vs. Reality,” Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, November 25, 2024, available at https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/11/the-united-states-and-the-axis-of-its-enemies-myths-vs-reality?center=russia-eurasia&lang=en.

[3] See Eric S. Edelman and Franklin C. Miller, “We Must Return to and Maintain the Two Theater Defense Planning Construct,” RealClear Defense, August 1, 2023, available at https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/08/17/we_must_return_to_and_maintain_the_two_theater_defense_planning_construct_973522.html.

[4] See Department of Defense, Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, December 18, 2024 available at https://media.defense.gov/2024/Dec/18/2003615520/-1/-1/0/MILITARY-AND-SECURITY-DEVELOPMENTS-INVOLVING-THE-PEOPLES-REPUBLIC-OF-CHINA-2024.PDF. Also see the Report on the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, July 2024, available at https://www.rand.org/nsrd/projects/NDS-commission.html.

[5] The expansion of China’s nuclear forces has been described as “breathtaking” by the former Commander of US Strategic Command, Admiral Charles Richard. Remarks available at https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2729519/china-russia-pose-strategic-challenges-for-us-allies-admiral-says/.

[6] Noah Robertson, “‘They’ve grown back’: How Russia surprised the West and rebuilt its force,” Defense News, May 21, 2024, available at https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2024/05/21/theyve-grown-back-how-russia-surprised-the-west-and-rebuilt-its-force/.

[7] Report on the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, op. cit., p. 8.

[viii] Mark B. Schneider, “Russian Use of Nuclear Coercion against NATO and Ukraine,” Information Series, No. 521 (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, May 2, 2022), available at https://nipp.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/521-final.pdf.

[9] Jon Herskovitz, “North Korea Amends Constitution to Enshrine Permanent Growth of Nuclear Arsenal,” Time, September 27, 2023, available at https://time.com/6318150/north-korea-exponential-growth-arsenal-constitution/.

[10] One recent assessment concludes that Iran possesses sufficient weapons-grade uranium to construct its first nuclear weapon within a week and a total of six within a month. See “The Iran Threat Geiger Counter: Reaching Extreme Danger,” Institute for Science and International Security, February 2024, available at https://isis-online.org/uploads/isisreports/documents/Iran_Threat_Geiger_Counter_February_2024_FINAL.pdf.

[11] Robert G. Joseph and Peppino A. DeBiaso, “Homeland Missile Defense: Responding to a Transformed Security Environment,” p. 41, Journal of Policy & Strategy, National Institute for Public Policy, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2024, available at https://nipp.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Analysis-Joseph-DeBiaso-4.2.pdf.

[12] Remarks by Vladimir Putin in the plenary session of the 21st annual meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club. November 7, 2024, available at https://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/putin-plenary-session-2024/.

[13] Ann Scott Tyson, “China’s new world order: What Xi’s vision would mean for human rights, security,” Christian Science Monitor, July 02, 2024, available at https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2024/0702/China-world-order-Xi.

[14] Remarks of Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell. Stuart Lau, “US accuses China of giving ‘very substantial’ help to Russia’s war machine,” Politico, September 10, 2024 available at https://www.politico.eu/article/united-states-accuse-china-help-russia-war-kurt-campbell/.

[15] Michelle Ye Hee Lee, “Kim Jong Un has sent North Korean troops to Russia. What’s in it for him?” Washington Post, November 1, 2024, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/11/01/north-korea-troops-russia-ukraine-kim-putin/. On September 13, 2023, Kim Jong Un met Russian President Putin at the Vostochny space launch facility in the Russian Far East. Asked whether Russia would help North Korea build its satellite launch capabilities, Putin replied, “That’s why we came.” Also see Guy Faulconbridge and Soo-Hyang Choi, “Putin and North Korea’s Kim discuss military matters, Ukraine war and satellites,” Reuters, September 13, 2023, available at https://www.reuters.com/world/nkoreas-kim-meets-putinmissiles-launched-pyongyang-2023-09-13/.

[16]Markus Garlauskas, “The United States and its allies must be ready to deter a two-front war and nuclear attacks in East Asia,” Atlantic Council, August 16, 2023, available at https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/the-united-states-and-its-allies-must-be-ready-to-deter-a-two-front-war-and-nuclear-attacks-in-east-asia/.

[17] Courtney Kube and Carol E. Lee, “Russia is providing ‘unprecedented’ military support to Iran in exchange for drones, officials say,” NBC News, Dec 9, 2022, available at https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/russia-providing-unprecedented-military-support-iran-exchange-drones-o-rcna60921.

[18] See David J. Trachtenberg, “How the Lack of a ‘Two-War Strategy’ Erodes Extended Deterrence and Assurance,” Information Series, No. 590 (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, June 17, 2024), available at https://nipp.org/information_series/david-j-trachtenberg-how-the-lack-of-a-two-war-strategy-erodes-extended-deterrence-and-assurance-issue-no-590-june-17-2024/. Also see David J. Trachtenberg, The Demise of the “Two-War Strategy” and Its Impact on Extended Deterrence and Assurance, Occasional Paper, Vol. 4, No. 6 (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, June 2024), available at https://nipp.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Vol.-4-No.-6.pdf.

[19] For a broad range of recommendations on a U.S. military posture to address the prospect of conflict with multiple adversaries, see America’s Strategic Posture: The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, October 2023, available at https://armedservices.house.gov/sites/republicans.armedservices.house.gov/files/Strategic-Posture-Committee-Report-Final.pdf; and Report on the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, July 2024, available at https://www.rand.org/nsrd/projects/NDS-commission.html.

The National Institute for Public Policy’s Information Series is a periodic publication focusing on contemporary strategic issues affecting U.S. foreign and defense policy. It is a forum for promoting critical thinking on the evolving international security environment and how the dynamic geostrategic landscape affects U.S. national security. Contributors are recognized experts in the field of national security. National Institute for Public Policy would like to thank the Sarah Scaife Foundation for the generous support that made this Information Series possible.

The views in this Information Series are those of the author(s) and should not be construed as official U.S. Government policy, the official policy of the National Institute for Public Policy, or any of its sponsors. For additional information about this publication or other publications by the National Institute Press, contact: Editor, National Institute Press, 9302 Lee Highway, Suite 750, Fairfax, VA 22031, (703) 293- 9181, www.nipp.org. For access to previous issues of the National Institute Press Information Series, please visit http://www.nipp.org/national-institutepress/informationseries/.

20. How the Houthis Outsmarted Washington

Do the Houthis have us in a "strategic box?

Excerpt:

While the Houthis have yet to hit a U.S. warship or manned aircraft, they keep trying. If air power alone cannot eliminate the threat, the United States may have to weigh further escalation, including potential naval quarantine and ground raids. The Houthis have put the United States into a strategic box, leaving no good options. Washington’s credibility cannot continue to afford an extended, stalemated draw. This is a conflict that the United States must resolve, or else pay the strategic consequences. The time may well come when Washington will have no other choice but to escalate further, or be forced to face another Afghanistan-like setback, this time at the hands of the Houthis.

How the Houthis Outsmarted Washington

The National Interest

Topic: Security

Region: Middle East

Tags: Donald Trump, Houthis, Red Sea, Trade, U.S. Navy, and Yemen

April 8, 2025

By: Ramon Marks

The Yemeni terrorist group has skillfully taken advantage of an overstretched U.S. Navy.

The Yemeni Houthis refuse to go away. Despite the efforts of the U.S. Navy and allies, a ragtag, rebel insurgent group has managed to keep one of the world’s most strategic waterways—the Red Sea—blocked for almost two years. The majority of maritime traffic has been forced to take the longer, more circuitous and expensive Cape of Good Hope route around the tip of Africa. Washington has failed to maintain maritime freedom in one of the world’s key maritime chokepoints.

The technological revolution in naval warfare brought by anti-ship missile systems and drones has handed a small rebel group the ability to cut off the Red Sea’s strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait. This continuing standoff carries dangerous implications for the United States as a global maritime power.

The first lesson is obviously technology. Drones and land-based missile systems can now take out surface warships hundreds or even thousands of miles away from littoral coastlines. The Houthis’ Red Sea attacks underscore the challenging situation in which the U.S. Navy finds itself. Already no longer the world’s largest navy—having ceded that position to China’s—the Navy is searching for new approaches to deal with drones and antiship missiles. Its legacy aircraft carriers and other warships, equipped with expensive and sophisticated manned aircraft and missile systems, have proven to be less than ideally suited for this new age of warfare. Evolving to counter these weapons is a process that could take years for the Navy and Congress to develop and refine.

The second lesson is that the Navy is over-stretched. It has been compelled to keep as many as two carrier battle groups tied down in the Red Sea area to fend off Houthi attacks against warships and commercial vessels. Despite those powerful forces, the Red Sea remains effectively blocked. Meanwhile, competing challenges in other parts of the world continue to demand the Navy’s attention, as well, mainly China. Immediately facing the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s 400-plus warships is the U.S. Pacific Fleet, consisting of about 200 ships.

It is highly doubtful that the Navy will ever be able to be as large as China’s navy. America’s aging shipyards do not have the production capacity. The Pacific Fleet’s core mission nonetheless is to defend U.S. treaty allies, the Philippines, Japan, and South Korea, in any conflict with China. It must also be prepared to defend Taiwan even without a defense treaty commitment.

Besides China and the Houthis, the Navy also must be ready for Iran. Earlier this year, it was called upon to help defend Israel from waves of Iranian missile and drone attacks, even as it was also simultaneously fending off Houthis attacks in the Red Sea. A major attack by the Navy on Iran’s nuclear program may be imminent.

In the face of all these diverse challenges, the necessity of tying down one or more U.S. carrier battle groups in the Red Sea—to play expensive and dangerous whack-a-mole with Houthi missile and drone attacks—becomes a costly, and ultimately, an untenable, long-term proposition.

Likely realizing this, the Trump administration has just escalated the Houthis’ campaign, putting greater air power resources (including Air Force B2s) into a more offensively oriented effort to defeat the Houthis once and for all. Whether airpower alone will be sufficient to deliver a decisive victory remains to be seen. The early returns suggest that accelerated air power may not be enough. Despite the reported expenditure of over $1 billion in air munitions in just three weeks, Houthis’ Red Sea attacks have relentlessly continued. If air power cannot permanently silence the Houthis, Washington will have a tough decision to make.

One option is simply to withdraw from the Red Sea and leave it to European allies to continue to deal militarily with the Houthis. Western Europe, after all, is more dependent economically on access to the Red Sea transportation route than the United States. In addition, Washington’s European allies collectively have over 1000 warships at their disposal. Unlike the military situation on land in Europe, where NATO allies have less military capabilities to deal with Russia and Ukraine, their navies should be up to the job in the Red Sea, even if the U.S. Navy withdraws. No doubt this may have been what Vice President JD Vance had in mind when he recently critiqued the Europeans as “freeloaders” in the Red Sea campaign.

However, particularly in the wake of America’s hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan, pulling the United States out of the fight would be the wrong message to send to Iran. It would be interpreted as another sign of U.S. strategic decline. Instead, the Trump administration’s decision to escalate signals that the United States remains committed to safeguarding the freedom of the seas in far-away places, even in situations where America’s economic interests are less impacted than those of allied nations.

In 1988, the United States did just that against Iran in Operation Praying Mantis after a U.S. frigate, the USS Samuel B Roberts, was damaged by an Iranian mine. In response, the United States attacked and sank Iranian warships and destroyed Iranian oil platforms in what was the largest action for the U.S. Navy since World War II.

While the Houthis have yet to hit a U.S. warship or manned aircraft, they keep trying. If air power alone cannot eliminate the threat, the United States may have to weigh further escalation, including potential naval quarantine and ground raids. The Houthis have put the United States into a strategic box, leaving no good options. Washington’s credibility cannot continue to afford an extended, stalemated draw. This is a conflict that the United States must resolve, or else pay the strategic consequences. The time may well come when Washington will have no other choice but to escalate further, or be forced to face another Afghanistan-like setback, this time at the hands of the Houthis.

Ramon Marks is a retired international lawyer who writes regularly on national security issues.

Image: Mariusz Bugno/ Shutterstock.com.

The National Interest

21. Hunting and the enemy in Modern Counterinsurgency: Malayan developments

Some history that we may still learn from. (if we have open minds).

Excerpt:

During the Second World War offensive spirit was encapsulated in the hunter in the Military Training Pamphlets. Then, during the Malayan Emergency these MTPs formed the basis for the teaching at the Jungle Warfare School, which carried the hunting analogy over into the training taking place there. The hunting analogy and training primed soldiers for a jungle war. Operations, however, were not limited to the deep jungle and the shooting war being fought there. As well as in the jungle, operations took place around the jungle’s edge where it was much more likely to encounter civilians. It was in these contested spaces that the principle of minimum force was most important. The training and hunting analogy, along with the Emergency Regulations in the opening years of the Emergency, however, did little to inhibit the use of force and instead primed service personnel to use their weapons. In this way, the training informed the ‘soldier’s dilemma’.

Hunting and the enemy in Modern Counterinsurgency: Malayan developments

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/04/09/hunting-and-the-enemy/

by Thomas Probert

04.09.2025 at 06:00am

Introduction

As the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960) was ongoing, a number of military memoirs were published which gave some insight into its prosecution on the ground. These included Anthony Crockett, Green Beret, Red Star (1954); M.C.A. Henniker, Red Shadow Over Malaya (1955); Oliver Crawford, The Door Marked Malaya (1958); Richard Miers, Shoot to Kill (1959) and J.W.G. Moran, Spearhead in Malaya (1959). In his paper ‘The Military Memoir in British Imperial Culture: The Case of Malaya’ (1994), John Newsinger wrote: ‘Inevitably, a number of these accounts explicitly portray the conflict as a hunt for a particularly dangerous kind of game.’[i] He argues that: ‘These hunting analogies obviously derive from the importance of blood sports within British upper-class culture both at home and throughout the Empire.’[ii] And that: ‘They also reflect the disparity between the two sides in the conflict, the inability of the guerillas to hit back effectively against British troops except under the most favorable conditions.’[iii]

In Terrorism, InsurDarwinism, dian-English Literature, 1830-1947, (2013), Alex Tickell noted that the blood sports narrative had long been associated with the practice of counterinsurgency, being evidenced in India a century earlier as the British suppressed rebellion there.[iv] Robert H. MacDonald, in The Language of Empire: Myths and Metaphors of Popular Imperialism, 1880-1918 (1994), linked the hunting metaphor to imperial narratives of warfare through training, suggesting it was the natural way for British officers to conceptualize the small wars of Empire: ‘To officers encouraged to believe that the best training for war was the field, the story of the hunt was a natural analogue.’[v] John M. Mackenzie (1989) has argued that Scouting for Boys, by Robert Baden-Powell, employed hunting terminology to socialize Britain’s youth for its imperial enterprise.[vi] He goes on to argue that the hunt itself played into ideas about Social Darwinism, ‘the fittest were created through the rugged individualism of the Hunt.’[vii]

Joanna Bourke (1999) has suggested that the hunting metaphor was not specific to the jungle or to counterinsurgency but instead a recurring description of warfare. The metaphor, Bourke has suggested, allowed a certain degree of emotional distancing.’[viii] Simon Harrison has given an anthropological reading of the hunting metaphor in his book Dark Trophies: Hunting and the Enemy Body in Modern War (2014). Harrison writes that in nineteenth and twentieth-century colonialism, the white hunter was a ‘liminal figure’ who inhabited a ‘borderland between civilization and savagery, and between humanity and the animal realm’. He writes that hunting was at once a ‘civilizing’ and ‘natural’ activity, requiring strategy and intellect whilst also being a behavior shared with animals.[ix] The relationship between hunter and hunted was ‘a reduced and attenuated form of sociality.’ The hunting metaphor represented the dehumanization of the hunted and the desocialization of the hunter.[x]

Utilizing a series of reports produced by the Far East Land Forces Training Centre in the opening years of the Malayan Emergency, this paper will argue that the hunting analogy was employed to fashion the self-identity of service personnel in line with the prescribed behavior being taught there.

This paper will also contribute to a further body of literature that has emerged in relation to the Malayan Emergency, namely, the literature on the use of force. According to the practitioner-scholar of counterinsurgency in Malaya, Sir Robert Thompson, in Defeating Communist Insurgency (1966), the military was to be used to hold ground and allow time for a political solution to take place in Malaya. Under this ethos, the use of violence had to be limited to avoid alienating the civilian population and increasing support for the insurgency.[xi] In British Counterinsurgency 1919-1960 (1990), Thomas Mockaitis contended that where the principle of minimum force was contravened in Malaya, brutality was confined to the chaotic opening months of insurgency and was ‘never a matter of policy.’[xii]

Conversely, in his revisionist paper ‘“A Very Salutary Effect”: The Counter-Terror Strategy in the Early Malayan Emergency, June 1948 to December 1949’ (2009), Huw Bennett puts forward the thesis that British acts of brutality, notably in the form of civilian casualties and the destruction of property, were not isolated accidents born of disorganization but rather came to be exploited by the security forces for operational gain. Huw Bennett’s thesis rests in part on what he terms the ‘highly permissive Emergency Regulations,’ a set of orders the leniency of which gave tacit approval to the use of violence in the opening years of the Emergency.[xiii]

In The Communist Insurrection in Malaya 1948–1960 (1975), Anthony Short wrote that many of the incident reports at the beginning of the Emergency recorded that men were shot while running away. He also noted that incriminating evidence was rarely found.[xiv] Short’s own experiences on National Service in Malaya in 1948-9 enabled him to articulate the soldiers’ perpetual dilemma in the counterinsurgency role:

With incidents or information pointing unmistakably to the presence of guerrillas in a particular area, how, in the few seconds of confusion when figures are running from huts into jungle does one decide to open fire or not? If one does not, the best that can happen is that a possible enemy might escape. With a small patrol, what is equally likely is that it will itself be attacked if it has, in fact, succeeded in surprising a guerrilla group. But, unless they are uniformed or obviously armed, there is no guarantee that the people who are running are guerrillas or wanted criminals rather than very frightened men and women who may or may not be willing or unwilling guerrilla supporters.[xv]

Thomas Mockaitis has also examined the soldier’s dilemma from an academic viewpoint. Soldiers were expected to act in accordance with the common law principle of minimum force when acting in aid of the civil power. This meant they were subject to legal action should they exceed what was the necessary amount of force. Conversely, a soldier could be questioned if not subjected to disciplinary procedures should they fail to apply sufficient force to suppress the given situation.[xvi]

For a more empirical realization of the soldier’s dilemma, we can turn back to Huw Bennett’s article. Between July 1948 and April 1949, 77 persons were killed trying to escape, versus the seven wounded, and an additional 30 captured in the same endeavor. He also emphasized the probability that more incidents went unrecorded.[xvii] Thomas Mockaitis recognized Bennett’s suggestion that the figures were incomplete, meaning further incidents may have gone unrecorded, but also made the point that not all of those killed were innocent civilians.[xviii] Again utilizing the reports produced by the Far East Land Forces Training Centre in the opening years of the Malayan Emergency, along with a range of published and unpublished letters, diaries, and memoirs held at the Imperial War Museum, this article will show that the training primed soldiers to use force.

Training during the Second World War

A technical memorandum from the Directorate of Army Psychiatry stated that experienced soldiers ‘are not prey to the anxiety which results from uncertainty and unreal exaggeration of what war is like.’ Advanced training, as stated in the memorandum, must be ‘designed, not to frighten men, but to give them an opportunity to realize the emptiness of much of their fear. Each man’s mental picture of war should become one of attack with a reasonable chance of success.’[xix] In short, the memorandum called for ‘Offensive spirit,’ which it defined as having ‘an active determination to be better trained and to have more speed, initiative, ingenuity and persistence than the enemy.’[xx] It was language that drew on a long history of use within the British Army. Simon Innes-Robbins, for example, has identified the importance that British Generals placed on the concept during the First World War, suggesting that the generalship expected ‘offensive spirit’, even over technique, to be the decisive factor on the Western Front.[xxi] By 1918, this had changed, as the generals had realized that the will to fight had to be allied with the skill to fight, and fresh impetus was placed on training the British infantryman.[xxii]

During the Second World War, the jungle necessitated changes to the tactics and doctrine used in Europe and North Africa.[xxiii] The military training pamphlets were an evolving set of instructions compiled from the growing experience of jungle warfare. The aim was the widespread dissemination of these lessons. The Jungle Book, a prominent example, was mass-produced, with forty-five thousand copies being distributed to both Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers. The lessons were made comprehensible by employing an accessible format and illustrations.[xxiv] In Burma, R. F. Tredgold, Adviser in Psychiatry to Southern Army, India Command, noted that psychiatrists were involved in debunking fears about the superiority of Japanese forces in the jungle. As Tredgold explained: ‘Two extravagant attitudes were noted in 1943-that the Jap was a superman, and that he was undersized. Both were “debunked” – by intelligent instruction in which the divisional psychiatrists played their part.’[xxv] The training pamphlets produced in the Far East both reflected and sought to overcome this fear. While recognizing a certain resilience in their adversary, the pamphlets emphasized that they could be defeated. Perhaps the most virulent example of this can be found in Preparation For Warfare in the Far East (1945), in which then Lieutenant-General Sir William Slim describes the Japanese as tough but stupid insects. To defeat this adversary, Slim emphasized individual and small group training over more complicated larger exercises: ‘We have to produce a tough, self-reliant hunter, who is out to get up to his enemy and kill him.’[xxvi] Slim elaborated on this in his postwar memoir Defeat into Victory (1956). ‘We had to first get the feel through the army that it was we who were hunting the Jap, not he us.’ This meant patrols, not large-scale engagements. These patrols fed a sense of competition when successful and whetted the ‘hunter’s appetite’ when unsuccessful.[xxvii] The pamphlet, and specifically Slim’s contribution, would later become recommended reading at the FTC. His language would also find its way into a dedicated training manual. The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya advanced the concept of the ideal junior leader as ‘a mentally tough, self reliant hunter’.[xxviii]

Walter Walker and Jungle Warfare Training during the Malayan Emergency

As a State of Emergency was declared in Malaya the task of preparing forces to conduct jungle operations was taken up by Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Walker. Walker, a veteran of the Burmese jungles, was first tasked with the training of Ferret Force.[xxix] The Ferret groups were led by a collection of volunteers who were veterans of Force 136 and the Chindits. These were highly motivated individuals who intended to beat the bandits at their own game and on their own ground.[xxx] Walker’s methods were criticized from within this group for being over-planned and rehearsed. In response, Walker later wrote that the Ferret commanders were ‘amateur soldiers [who] did not take favorably to the professional jungle warfare tactics.’[xxxi] In training then, Walker attempted to professionalize, or standardize, their tactics. To achieve this, he had to reign in their over-confidence, in one instance devising an ambush to underline their vulnerability in the jungle and the inferiority of their own tactics.[xxxii]

Ferret Force was a short-lived experiment. With the insurgents mostly around the jungle’s edge, the deep jungle operations of Ferret Force were premature.[xxxiii] By September 1948, Major General Boucher had written to one of its leaders, John Davis, explaining his intention to disband the Ferret groups and instead to replace them with a Ferret Company incorporated into every battalion. Boucher stated his intention to retain ex-members where possible and to employ others as advisors. He also mentioned that the new Jungle Warfare School would be in charge of training incoming instructors as well as the proposed Ferret companies.[xxxiv] Davis’s terse response was that this new role would not attract new recruits, they would be subsumed by the army, be unable to source supplies, and unable to perform what is essentially a police job.[xxxv] To this, Richard Broome, another Ferret group leader, added that the organizational and rank structure of the Army would not lend itself to being broken down into small groups and that the best application of local knowledge is a self-contained force.[xxxvi]

Broome authored a later report, which again focused on the use of intelligence-led operations but this time in conjunction with regular forces. He also emphasized that Ferret Force was not superior to Regular Forces when it came to fighting what he called ‘bandits.’[xxxvii] Reinforcements with no jungle warfare experience were arriving.[xxxviii] This message was more suitable for incoming service personnel. On receiving a copy Major General Boucher informed Broome that he would be circulating copies to commanders across FARELF and to the OC of the Jungle Warfare School and perhaps even to the press.[xxxix] On the face of it, Boucher was keen to retain their accumulated knowledge, but the movement of personnel from Ferret Force to the Jungle Warfare School also signaled a shift toward regular forces and his intent to retain greater control of the forces under his command. The correspondence highlighted the challenge of training personnel for counterinsurgency. An accumulated body of experience had suggested that irregular forces, led by typically independent, self-motivated individuals, were effective. The challenge, then, would be to train regular forces to think and behave like irregulars.

In 1948, Lieutenant Colonel Walter Walker was ordered to set up a school to train soldiers in jungle warfare. This was significant as, prior to its foundation, soldiers received no dedicated preparatory training for this deployment. Under the more formal name of the Far East Land Forces Training Centre (FTC), the Jungle Warfare School was established in an abandoned ‘lunatic asylum’ in Johore at the southern end of the Malay peninsula.[xl] Walker, who had been in charge of training Gurkhas in Burma, thought that training was directed toward conventional war in Europe as a result of the Soviet threat, and that the jungle warfare lessons of the Second World War had been forgotten and would have to be relearned.[xli] To this end, he revivified a body of thought that had been codified within the literature that had emerged from the Far East. Much of the knowledge was transferred directly over from that gained during the war through Walker’s use of Military Training Pamphlets.[xlii] As one of the early reports emanating from the FTC noted: ‘The principles advocated in the above pamphlets have been embodied in the precis which are issued by this Trg Centre to all students attending Jungle Warfare Courses.’[xliii]

In the quarterly reports of the school, Walker emphasized that most Officers and NCOs had little tactical knowledge of jungle warfare and those with some experience had developed bad practice. Training for Walker then was more important than experience.[xliv] While at the FTC, officers and NCOs became schooled on the combat drills needed to conduct and lead operations. The training was designed to remove ‘indecision’ and ‘shyness’ in using weapons. Interactive ranges were used, which also lent realism to the training and primed soldiers to the use of force.[xlv] The wider objective of the course was the transmission of knowledge. The training would filter through the ranks as students returned to their units.[xlvi] Commanding Officer Conferences were set up, and visits arranged to further ‘spread the gospel’.[xlvii] Walker was conscious of both the importance of language and his use of it. In Burma, he had published ‘golden rules’ in his orders and posted them on notice boards, so that these rules ‘stuck in the minds of the men’. In a later interview, he commented that ‘The words I used, the phrases I used, were designed to try and instill in my men a fighting spirit that they must kill every single Jap that they encountered. … It was a code of conduct.’[xlviii]

For Walker, back at the FTC, there was a lack of ‘offensive spirit’.[xlix] What he needed then was a narrative that instilled behavior that was conducive to success and reinforced the lessons of the Jungle Warfare School in its students. Instead of ‘jungle bashing’ what was needed was ‘to move as if hunting’.[l] The general impression Walker got was that ‘the average NCO has little imagination or powers of concentration.’[li] He was frustrated by the language of the British Other Ranks and sought to instill in them a terminology which reflected his attempt to professionalize training and their behavior: ‘An unfortunate term called “jungle bashing” has crept in. The qualities required of the real jungle fighter are not those of the elephant but rather of the poacher, gangster and cat-burglar.’[lii] It was a narrative that Walker felt accurately described the practice of counterinsurgency as he redeployed it in his later writing, both in a forward to a regimental history, and in his autobiography in reference to British involvement in the Borneo confrontation.[liii]

Guiding Force: Booklets, Manuals and Instructions in Malaya, 1948-1952

In June 1949, a revised Imperial Policing and Duties in Aid of The Civil Power booklet made clear that ‘no more force shall be applied than the situation demands.’[liv] The booklet was primarily aimed at guiding troops who were confronted with violent protests as opposed to armed insurrection but also reflected the exigencies of the postwar counterinsurgencies. General Sir Neil Ritchie stated in his September 1949 report that lessons had been drawn from the Malayan Emergency, submitted to the War Office, and included in the revised Imperial Policing and Duties In Aid of The Civil Power booklet (June 1949).[lv] Good discipline was thought to be derived from a clear and ‘un-biased explanation’ of the conditions and objectives: ‘The more troops understand what they are doing and why, the better will be their discipline and morale.’[lvi] By June 1949 then, there was some recognition that operations in aid of the civil power and the use of force required proper guidance.

Further guidance on acting in aid of the civil power, within the bounds of the Emergency Regulations, did intermittently appear. In August 1948, for example, guidance came from Headquarters Malaya Command as formal instructions which stated that no more force than is necessary should be used to effect an arrest. If, however, the person appeared to be or was accused of carrying firearms, then service personnel were entitled to shoot, and, the instructions stated, it was their duty to do so. The assurance was given that if caution was exercised and the instructions followed, service personnel would not be prosecuted in the event of accidental civilian casualties. The instructions came with a covering letter that recounted an incident in which soldiers withheld fire because of ‘doubt’ and were later fired upon by those who had been allowed to escape.[lvii] As Karl Hack has observed, ‘the instructions attempted to encourage aggressive action and a willingness to make snap judgements about who was consorting with bandits, while straining to remain technically within ER limitations. Given the document’s internal tensions, the message that may have stood out most for soldiers was that, provided they could claim they were following these orders, they would not be prosecuted.’[lviii]

Later Emergency Regulations arguably sought to clarify and delimit the use of force. Emergency Regulation 27A of January 1949, for example, allowed weapons to be used when affecting an arrest or preventing an escape but insisted that weapons could be used only after calling ‘in a loud voice’ and giving ‘reasonable’ opportunity to stop and submit to arrest.[lix] Nevertheless, in January 1949 the High Commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney gave the following, much-quoted, statement: ‘[I]t is most important that police and soldiers, who are not saints, should not get the impression that every small mistake is going to be the subject of a public enquiry or that it is better to do nothing at all than to do the wrong thing quickly.’[lx] While the Emergency Regulations, along with instructions, did limit the use of force, the instructions and the covering letter also suggested that action was preferable to inaction. It was a message that appeared to do little to moderate the lessons being instilled in service personnel at FTC.

The counterinsurgency in Malaya demanded its own training pamphlet then. Walter Walker duly mapped out the teachings of the FTC, and lessons of the early years, in The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya (ATOM). This, however, did not become available until 1952. The manual re-emphasized the primacy of training over experience and stated that courses should not stop, even in the face of increased operations.[lxi] This point may have been in reference to the suspension of the FTC in the final quarter of 1949 when no courses were held there due to a building intensity in counterinsurgency operations.[lxii] It was primarily a technical manual laying out in a schematic fashion the mechanics of conducting patrols and ambushes in the jungle, but it also included an introduction that gave some idea of the country, people, and reasons behind the conflict. Importantly, the manual included a section on the Brigg’s Plan, which in 1950 had changed the course of the Emergency, and emphasized that the Army was being used in support of the police.[lxiii] In this way, the manual emphasized the dual role which service personnel would be expected to perform: ‘The primary role of the Army is to seek out and destroy CT in the jungle and on its fringes.’ noted ATOM. ‘The secondary role of the Army is that of supporting the Federal Police in the populated areas by helping to enforce food denial measures, curfews, etc.’[lxiv] These measures were more fully set out within a section on the Emergency Regulations, supplemented by instructions on how to conduct searches.[lxv]

Codifying the lessons of the FTC and the Emergency into a manual meant ATOM became a preparatory text for regiments being deployed to Malaya. One senior officer who later attempted to bring the lessons of Malaya to his troops stationed in Germany also saw the utility of acquiring the manual as early as possible. Brigadier J.L. Brind, commanding officer of the 1st Battalion Somerset Regiment in Malaya from 1952 to 1954, wanted copies before departure: ‘At that time the excellent pamphlet of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya had not reached us. Copies had been promised, but we only received them just before we sailed.’[lxvi] Copies of the manual were also requested by the King’s African Rifles, who were preparing to leave Kenya for Malaya. 14 copies, along with some maps, were sent in August 1953.[lxvii] The small number of copies available, along with its schematic format, however, meant the manual needed officers to interpret and articulate its lessons to the service personnel under their command. Nevertheless, the production of ATOM was a milestone in British counterinsurgency as its lessons could be spread without the cost of being relearned on the ground.[lxviii] This proved timely as in October 1952 a State of Emergency was declared in Kenya. ‘Notes For British Units Coming to Kenya’ pressed ATOM into use while a dedicated manual was being produced for the theatre.[lxix] Then, in 1954 A Handbook on Anti-Mau Mau Operations, a more concise version of ATOM adapted for use in Kenya, was produced.[lxx]

Training and the Hunting Analogy in Action

Ian Gibb, a platoon commander who served in the opening years of the Emergency, stated that framing counterinsurgency as a hunt and having an uncomplicated view of its prosecution lent resiliency to service personnel. ‘I don’t think we were insensitive to the brutality of a jungle war.’, wrote Gibb. ‘Nevertheless we were resilient and also being young we tended to see the issues in black and white. We were on the side of right, they were in the wrong.’[lxxi] Gibb also gave insight into the racial epithets that were used to denote the insurgents. ‘This name calling, plus the fact that the operations were somewhat regarded as a hunt, and even hunting terminology came into it, wasn’t so much of an insensitivity as a sort of cover up for the possibility of being killed.’[lxxii] For Gibb, there was dehumanization of the insurgents, and it was a defense which minimized the insurgents military efficacy and by extension the possibility of being killed.

In A Door Marked Malaya (1958), British infantry officer Oliver Crawford, illustrates how the training and its overarching narrative framed the soldiers’ experience of jungle operations, directed their behavior and primed them for action.

Like big-game hunters in Africa, we no longer looked at what we could see. Instead we kept visual stereotypes in our mind-the picture of a head with a jungle-hat on it, the thatched roof of a hut, the pattern of tracks in mud. If the vague unfocused mass of jungle happened to contain a head with a jungle-hat on it, then the stereotype clicked, the nerve jumped, the shock brought the rifle snap into the shoulder, and the legs slowing to a halt-even before one realised one had seen something.[lxxiii]

A further example of the efficacy of the training for operations out in the jungle comes from the unpublished memoir of Kevin O’Sullivan, a 2nd Lieutenant with the Loyal Regiment. He went through the FTC in Johore towards the end of the Emergency in 1957. The jungle he described as central to their lives: ‘It was a No Mans Land. The only people to be found in it were security forces (us), and CT (them). … It was all-enveloping.’[lxxiv] His memoir highlights the nature of the training. By repeatedly taking attendees through realistic scenarios the aim was to install the appropriate response in soldiers. The training, however, had to overcome competing affective responses that arose while under the stress of a contact.

We learned these routines till we knew them by heart, and almost by instinct. That was important, as I realised later. So shocking is the experience of being shot at close quarters that you need some standard behaviour patterns to fall back on, otherwise, like a rabbit in the headlights, you’d be paralysed.[lxxv]

Then later, acting on intelligence, he led a patrol out ‘hunting’ after their ‘quarry’. The engagement when it came was characteristic of those experienced by servicemen during the Malayan Emergency; brief, confused and at close quarters.

Then something moved. A shadowy silhouette behind the rocks. I looked over the gunsight. The shape of a head in a cap, and shoulders, dodging from side to side, looking my way. CT, not British. Everything was happening in high-definition slow motion. I fired. Smoke obscured everything for a second, and then there was another shot from somewhere and a bullet blasted past my cheek. … Instinct made me clutch the ground, but the training said attack them and the training had become another instinct.[lxxvi]

The training and the conceptualization of jungle operations as a hunt which had been inculcated at the FTC was effective, having informed O’Sullivan’s decision to fire. What is less clear is whether the same training was in full force when operating on the jungle’s edge where civilians were much more likely to be encountered. We can say with more certainty however, that the training, along with the permissive Emergency Regulations, primed soldiers to the use of force.

Conclusion

During the Second World War offensive spirit was encapsulated in the hunter in the Military Training Pamphlets. Then, during the Malayan Emergency these MTPs formed the basis for the teaching at the Jungle Warfare School, which carried the hunting analogy over into the training taking place there. The hunting analogy and training primed soldiers for a jungle war. Operations, however, were not limited to the deep jungle and the shooting war being fought there. As well as in the jungle, operations took place around the jungle’s edge where it was much more likely to encounter civilians. It was in these contested spaces that the principle of minimum force was most important. The training and hunting analogy, along with the Emergency Regulations in the opening years of the Emergency, however, did little to inhibit the use of force and instead primed service personnel to use their weapons. In this way, the training informed the ‘soldier’s dilemma’.

[i] John Newsinger, ‘The Military Memoir in British Imperial Culture: The Case of Malaya’, Race and Class, 35:3, (1994), p.58.

[ii] Ibid, p.58-59.

[iii] Ibid, p.59.

[iv] Alex Tickell, Terrorism, Insurgency and Indian-English Literature, 1830-1947, (Oxon: Routledge, 2013), pp.110-111.

[v] Robert H. MacDonald, The Language of Empire: Myths and Metaphors of Popular Imperialism, 1880-1918, (Manchester: MUP, 1994), p.29.

[vi] John M. Mackenzie, ‘Chivalry, Social Darwinism and Ritualised Killing: The Hunting Ethos in Central Africa up to 1914’. In David Anderson and Richard H. Grove (Eds), Conservation in Africa: Peoples, Policies and Practice, (Cambridge: CUP, 1989), p.51.

[vii] Ibid, pp.53-54.

[viii] Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare, (London: Basic Books, 1999), p.222.

[ix] Simon Harrison, Dark Trophies: Hunting and the Enemy Body in Modern War, (Oxford: Berghahn, 2014), p.155.

[x] Ibid, p.194.

[xi] Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam, (London: Chatto & Windus, 1966), p.106.

[xii] Thomas Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency 1919-1960, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990), p.54.

[xiii] Huw Bennett, ‘ “A Very Salutary Effect”: The Counter-Terror Strategy in the Early Malayan Emergency,

June 1948 to December 1949’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 32:3, (2009), p.418.

[xiv] Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya 1948–1960, (London: Frederick Muller, 1975), p.161.

[xv] Ibid, pp.160-161.

[xvi] Thomas R. Mockaitis, ‘The Minimum Force Debate: Contemporary Sensibilities meet Imperial Practice’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 23:4-5, (2012), p.763-764.

[xvii] Bennett, ‘ “A Very Salutary Effect” ’, pp.435-6.

[xviii] Mockaitis, ‘The minimum force debate’, p.768.

[xix] Directorate of Army Psychiatry. Technical Memorandum No.2., ‘“Suppose You Were a Nazi Agent-” Or “Fifth Column Work for Amateurs”’, pp.7-9, (1942), The National Archives, UK (Hereafter TNA) CAB 21/914.

[xx] Ibid, p.7.

[xxi] Simon Robbins, British Generalship on the Western Front 1914-18: Defeat into Victory, (London: Routledge, 2005), p.73.

[xxii] Ibid, p.93.

[xxiii] T.R. Moreman, The Jungle, The Japanese and The British Commonwealth Armies at War 1941-45, (London and New York: Frank Cass, 2005), p.5.

[xxiv] Ibid, p.104.

[xxv] R.F. Tredgold, ‘The West in the East’, Lancet, 246:6362, (1945), p.154.

[xxvi] Lieutenant General Sir William Slim, ‘Jungle Fighting in Burma’. In The War Office, Military Training Pamphlet No 51 Preparation for Warfare in the Far East, (1945), p.28. TNA WO 231/128.

[xxvii] Field-Marshal Sir William Slim, Defeat into Victory, (London: Cassell and Company Ltd, 1956), p.188-189.

[xxviii] Malaya. Director of Operations, The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya (ATOM), (Malaya Command, 1954), Chapter XV, Section IV.

[xxix] Tom Pocock, Fighting General: The Public and Private Campaigns of General Sir Walter Walker, (London: Collins, 1973), p.86.

[xxx] ‘Ferrets Organisation: Special Jungle Force for Suppression of Terrorism’, Imperial War Museum (Hereafter IWM), 09/5/5, pp.1-3.

[xxxi] General Sir Walter Walker, Fighting On, (London: New Millennium, 1997), p.112.

[xxxii] Pocock, Fighting General, pp.86-87.

[xxxiii] Karl Hack, The Malayan Emergency: Revolution and Counterinsurgency at the End of Empire, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), pp.106-106.

[xxxiv] Major-General C.H.Boucher, Letter to Davis, ‘Ferrets Organisation’, IWM 09/5/5.

[xxxv] ‘A Note by Mr J.L.N. Davis on the Continuing Need for Ferrets’, IWM 09/5/5.

[xxxvi] ‘A Note by Mr. R.N. Broome on the Continuing Need for Ferrets’, IWM 09/5/5.

[xxxvii] Lieutenant Colonel R N Broome, ‘Ferret Force’, p.7, Broome Papers, IWM 85/40/01.

[xxxviii] Pocock, Fighting General, p.88.

[xxxix] Major General Boucher, Letter, Lieutenant Colonel R N Broome, ‘Ferret Force’, IWM 85/40/01.

[xl] Raffi Gregorian, ‘ “Jungle Bashing” in Malaya: Towards a formal Tactical Doctrine’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 5:3, (1994), pp.346-348.

[xli] Pocock, Fighting General, p.89.

[xlii] Daniel Marston, ‘Lost and Found in the Jungle’. In Hew Strachan (Ed), Big Wars and Small Wars, (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), p.98.

[xliii] ‘Half Yearly Training Report for The Period 1 Apr to 30 Sep 49 – FARELF Trg Centre’, p.2, TNA WO 268/116.

[xliv] Appendix ‘B’ To FTC Quarterly Historical Report Quarter Ending March 1949, p.1, TNA WO 268/116.

[xlv] Ibid, ‘Part II – Standard of Weapon Trg.’

[xlvi] Ibid, p.4.

[xlvii] Quarterly Historical Report. FARELF Training Centre. Quarter Ending June 1949, p.1, TNA WO 268/116.

[xlviii] Walter Walker, IWMSA, Catalogue Number 11120, Reel 1.

[xlix] Appendix ‘B’ To FTC Quarterly Historical Report Quarter Ending March 1949, ‘Part II – Standard Of Weapon Trg.’ TNA WO 268/116.

[l] Appendix ‘C’ To FTC Quarterly Historical Report Quarter Ending March 1949, p.4, TNA WO 268/116.

[li] Ibid, p.3.

[lii] Appendix ‘B’ To FTC Quarterly Historical Report Quarter Ending March 1949, p.1, TNA WO 268/116.

[liii] General Sir Walter Walker, Foreword, E.D. Smith, East of Katmandu: The Story of The 7th Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Gurkha Rifles Volume II 1948-1973, (Leo Cooper: London, 1976), p.xv. See also, General Sir Walter Walker, Fighting On, (London: New Millennium, 1997).

[liv] The War Office, Imperial Policing and Duties in Aid of The Civil Power, (June 1949), p.5. Liddell Hart 15/8/221.

[lv] General Sir Neil M. Ritchie, ‘Report on Operations in Malaya – June 1948 to July 1949’, (1949), p.1, TNA WO 106/5884.

[lvi] The War Office, Imperial Policing and Duties in Aid of The Civil Power, p.13.

[lvii] ‘Notes for the Guidance of Commanding Officers’, with covering note from Brigadier i/c Administration, Malaya District, 14 August 1948.’ IWM 09/5/5.

[lviii] Karl Hack, ‘“Devils that suck the blood of the Malayan People”: The Case for Post-Revisionist Analysis of Counter-insurgency Violence’, War in History, 25:2, (2018), p.215-216.

[lix] Ibid.

[lx] FCO 537/4753: Statement by the High Commissioner for Malaya, Annexure ‘A’ to minutes of the 16th meeting of the BDCC (FE), 28 Jan. 1949. Cited in Huw Bennett ‘A very salutary effect’: The Counter-Terror Strategy in the Early Malayan Emergency, June 1948 to December 1949, Journal of Strategic Studies, 32:3, (2009), p.432.

[lxi] ATOM, Chapter XV. Sections I-II.

[lxii] ‘Quarterly Historical Reports FARELF Training Centre Quarter Ending 31 Dec 49’, p.1.

[lxiii] ATOM, Chapter III, Section I.

[lxiv] ATOM, Chapter III, Section VIII.

[lxv] ATOM, Chapter IV, Sections II-III.

[lxvi] Brigadier J.L. Brind, ‘The Somersets in Malaya’, p.5, IWM 67/142/1.

[lxvii] ‘Training of Units for Operations in Malaya’, (August 1953), TNA WO 276/159.

[lxviii] Karl Hack, ‘The Malayan Emergency as Counter-insurgency Paradigm’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 32:3, (2009), p.403.

[lxix] ‘Notes For British Units Coming to Kenya’, p.12, IWM 75/134/4.

[lxx] George Erskine, forward. In General Headquarters East Africa, A Handbook on Anti-Mau Mau Operations, (Nairobi: Government Printer, 1954).

[lxxi] Major I.S. Gibb, ‘A Walk in the Forest’, p.77, IWM 86/3/1.

[lxxii] Ibid, p.77.

[lxxiii] Oliver Crawford, The Door Marked Malaya, (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1958), p.40.

[lxxiv] Lieutenant K.P. O’Sullivan, ‘Loyal Regiment 1956-1958’, p.16, IWM 09/46/1.

[lxxv] Ibid, p.11.

[lxxvi] Ibid, pp.24-25.

Tags: British Army, Counter-insurgency, irregular warfare, Malaya, Malayan Emergency, mindset, World War II

About The Author

Thomas Probert
Thomas Probert completed a collaborative doctoral award between The Open University and the Imperial War Museum in the UK. His work mainly focuses on the psychology and psychiatric impact of soldiering.
View all posts

22. China Has Readied a Trade-War Arsenal That Takes Aim at U.S. Companies

I guess this is in the hope that US business leaders will pressure the administration to reverse tariffs. But while business leaders may complain about the effects of tariffs I doubt the administration will reverse tariffs due to such complaints from business leaders.

China Has Readied a Trade-War Arsenal That Takes Aim at U.S. Companies

Beijing’s strategy to hit back at Trump goes well beyond tariffs, targeting companies who bank on their China ties

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-trump-tariff-trade-war-response-1ac838b0

By Lingling Wei

April 9, 2025 7:30 am ET

China’s President Xi Jinping Photo: Ken Ishii/Press Pool

In the years since President Trump’s first trade war with China, Beijing has built an arsenal of tools to hit the U.S. where it hurts. Now, it is getting ready to deploy those tools in full.

On Wednesday, China said it would increase tariffs on all U.S. imports to 84%, a response to new U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports of 104% that went into effect at midnight—but China’s options don’t end there.

While Trump has focused on tariffs as his trade weapon of choice, China’s strategy goes well beyond imposing its own levies, relying on the lure of the Chinese market for U.S. companies. A central thread running through its calculus is how to inflict hardship on companies that bank on their ties with the world’s second-largest economy.

Tools that Beijing has already used and is likely to expand include export controls of critical materials American companies use to make chips and defense-related products, regulatory investigations designed to intimidate and penalize U.S. companies, and blacklists intended to bar U.S. businesses from selling to China. In addition, authorities are preparing new ways to pressure American companies to give up their crown jewels—intellectual property—or lose access to the Chinese market.

The toolbox underscores leader Xi Jinping’s capacity to engage in a prolonged economic warfare with the U.S. At a time when both capitals appear to move toward decoupling, it also highlights the ever-rising risks for U.S. companies operating or investing in China, or simply trading with the country.

“China has systematically put together a new arsenal of tools that’s intended to minimize the cost to China and maximize the pain on the U.S.,” said Evan Medeiros, a former senior national-security official in the Obama administration and now a professor at Georgetown University. “They’re prepared in a way that gives them an asymmetric advantage in the trade war.”

China’s government and state media have taken a defiant tone, with the Commerce Ministry saying, “If the U.S. insists on its own way, China will fight to the end.”

Trump’s latest China duties went into effect just after midnight Wednesday. The 104% tariff on all Chinese imports that Trump has now imposed in his second term will stack on top of earlier tariffs already in place, bringing the total average tariff rate on China to nearly 125%.

China’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday after the new rate became official that Beijing would take forceful measures to defend the country’s interests, but left the door open for negotiation under conditions of “equality, respect and reciprocity.” China’s Ministry of Commerce noted that the U.S. has long enjoyed a trade surplus with China in services, amounting to $26.6 billion in 2023.

There are some options Beijing will for now be less likely to resort to as the costs to China itself could be high. That includes sharply devaluing the yuan or aggressively selling down its holdings of U.S. Treasurys. Both moves could destabilize China’s own financial market and hurt its strategic goal of bolstering trade relations with other countries.

In recent weeks, for instance, Chinese officials have reached out to some countries in Southeast Asia including Cambodia, Laos and Thailand to try to boost trade with them as well as promoting the use of the Chinese yuan in settling transactions, according to people familiar with the matter.

During those discussions, the people said, Chinese officials have indicated that Beijing is eager to keep the yuan largely stable to advance its “de-dollarization” goal of conducting more trade in yuan.

Tensions between Beijing and Washington have been spiraling, as each round of Trump’s tariff increases on China has led to Xi’s government to punch back against the U.S. The Xi leadership’s early hopes of negotiation with the new administration have now morphed into frustration and anger.

The mix of China’s latest countermeasures illustrates its increased focus on targeting U.S. companies, especially those engaged in high-end technology. In its intensifying firefight with Washington, Beijing continues to rely on the lure of the Chinese market for companies, despite China’s recent sluggish growth, as it also seeks to win the race over technology.

While new foreign direct investment in China has plunged in the past couple of years, various recent surveys have shown many multinationals ranging from carmakers to pharmaceutical companies to chip makers are choosing to stay engaged with the country.

Still, companies are finding themselves increasingly vulnerable to risks posed by China. A new report commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation found that most of the roughly 200 American companies surveyed in the past couple of years identify China as their No. 1 source of geopolitical risk.

One tool Beijing has increasingly used to advance its geopolitical goals is its antimonopoly rules. For instance, some merger deals that could have benefited U.S. companies, such as Intel’s proposed takeover of Israel’s Tower Semiconductor, failed to go through after Chinese authorities dragged their feet on approving them.

In response to Trump’s recent tariff actions, China last week launched an antitrust probe into the China operations of DuPont, which relied on the mainland and Hong Kong for 19% of its revenue last year, without giving much explanation.

China’s antitrust regulator also is reviewing a deal that would shift control of two ports in Panama from CK Hutchison, controlled by the family of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, to an investor group led by BlackRock. Even though none of the companies or assets involved are in mainland China, Beijing’s probe threatened to delay the deal, which has become a flashpoint between the U.S. and China.

Another powerful trade weapon Beijing has developed is the so-called unreliable-entity list, its equivalent to a list the U.S. maintains that restricts foreign companies and individuals deemed harmful to national security from doing business with American companies.

China created the blacklist in 2019, after the U.S. placed Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies on its list. Companies China identifies as unreliable entities are banned from investing in the country or engaging in trade with Chinese companies and face, among other restrictions, entry bans for their key employees.

A new academic paper by Medeiros of Georgetown and Andrew Polk, co-founder of research firm Trivium China, shows that China’s deployment of the unreliable-entity list has been slow and cautious—until recently.

It started to use the tool in 2023 when it put Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Missiles & Defense on the list for their involvement in arms sales to Taiwan. The move has had limited impact on both companies because neither does much defense-related business in mainland China. The listing hasn’t affected Raytheon-linked commercial subsidiaries in the country.

However, in the fall of 2024 and early 2025 Chinese authorities ramped up use of its entity list, both in frequency and in scope, according to the paper by Medeiros and Polk, published in the Washington Quarterly journal earlier this week.

Most recently, in response to Trump’s tariff assault, Beijing has broadened its blacklisting of U.S. companies from defense-related businesses to companies such as PVH, the U.S. parent company of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, and U.S. biotechnology firm Illumina. PVH provoked ire from Beijing after it said it was removing Xinjiang cotton from its production to comply with U.S. law, while Chinese officials believe Illumina has lobbied to exclude its Chinese competitors from parts of the U.S. market.

Until early this week, according to Medeiros and Polk, China has blacklisted 38 U.S. entities and will likely target more American companies as part of its broader competition with the U.S.

Write to Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com

23. Authoritarians’ Achilles’ Heel: Leveraging Space-Based Internet to Seize Competitive Initiative

And what organization in the US should lead this effort?

Is the US still serious about getting information to oppressed people in denied areas ruled by dictators and authoritarian regimes?

Conclusion:

Expanding the concept of information warfare by providing space-based, uncensored internet access to populations within authoritarian regimes is the most impactful investment the United States can make in the current strategic competition. America can restore its competitive initiative by seizing this opportunity created by a maturing revolution in information technology. Taking this step requires a significant change to traditional modes of thought and operation, but builds on the competitive mindset needed in this strategic environment.

Authoritarians’ Achilles’ Heel: Leveraging Space-Based Internet to Seize Competitive Initiative - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Christopher Culver · April 9, 2025

Share on LinkedIn

Send email

For approximately thirty years, China has been modernizing with a competitive strategy focused on capabilities tailored to attack key vulnerabilities of the US military: targeting aircraft carriers, satellites, forward air bases, and command-and-control nodes to deter or prevent its ability to intervene in a potential regional conflict. The strategy has yielded an array of kinetic and nonkinetic counterspace systems, missiles, air and naval assets with multilayered ranges and effects, and cyber capabilities—supported by an exponential increase in satellites that can detect US forces and an arsenal of at least six hundred operational nuclear warheads, projected to grow to one thousand within five years. This unprecedented pace of modernization will continue as the People’s Liberation Army matures its multidomain precision warfare concept to leverage artificial intelligence and big data to rapidly identify and launch precision strikes against US vulnerabilities.

The US military’s ability to project traditional military power across the Pacific is seriously threatened by these capabilities. But seeking to compete by developing systems that can overcome them requires expenditures that, while potentially beneficial if they become politically feasible, are not sustainable. The United States faces an enduring challenge because of the difficulty and expense of projecting power over such vast distances while the China fights from home. Beijing can therefor respond to US investments with less time and expense, fueled by an industrial base that is outpacing the United States and a political system that can deliver military resources with greater consistency and long-term focus.

There is a better way, one that does not accept China’s chosen framework for this competition but instead expands the way information warfare is conceptualized and leverages space-based internet connectivity.

Regaining the Initiative

For the United States to regain competitive initiative, it must attack China’s vulnerabilities rather than just reacting to its military modernization with an unsustainable cycle of spending. The US military’s Joint Concept for Competing encourages this mindset and recognizes the military’s role outside of armed conflict. It recommends “actions designed to shift the focus of strategic competition into areas that favor U.S. interests or undermine an adversary’s interests.” While the concept does not identify specific ways to do this, it hints at possibilities, including, “the opportunity to subvert an adversary’s government, economic system, or civil society.” It further suggests that the weaponization of information can “trigger a chain of events in an adversary’s society that gradually degrades its domestic unity, undermines societal trust in its government and institutions, and diminishes its international stature.”

Emerging and maturing information technologies are creating an opportunity for the United States to expand the scope of information warfare in ways that can create competitive leverage against authoritarian competitors. Historically, internet connectivity was provided through internet service providers connected by a network of wired connections. Access to this network was then distributed to end users through a combination of wired networks and cell towers, with a small market for internet reception from geostationary satellites. This architecture has allowed authoritarian governments the ability to censor and control information flow through their sovereign control of internet service providers and the underlying physical infrastructure. Subsequent technological upgrades, such as fiber-optic cable and 5G, did not significantly alter the architecture of internet delivery, but space-based internet is ushering in a revolutionary change.

Current technology now allows internet connectivity through proliferated low-Earth orbit (pLEO) satellites to portable, personal terminals of increasingly smaller size and cost. This technology is evolving toward handheld devices with direct space-based internet connectivity that can be provided outside the control of authoritarian governments. The technological capability to deliver internet access from space, beyond the control of domestic governments, is becoming relatively inexpensive and ubiquitous. As a consequence, the ability to censor and control information will become increasingly costly. The United States must exploit this changing technological landscape and seize the strategic initiative by providing space-based, uncensored internet access to populations under authoritarian regimes of US competitors.

These regimes already expend considerable effort and resources to censor and control information within their own borders, and are more sensitive to US deterrent efforts that focus on information tools than military ones. This demonstrates the massive and even existential vulnerability to authoritarian regimes posed by the free flow of information. For this reason, there are an increasing range of policy options for the United States government to impose costs on China and “undermine [Beijing’s] information and communication controls.”

Operationalizing Expanded Information Warfare

Current discussions of information warfare often narrowly focus either on countering disinformation in the public domain or the more technical aspects of command and control involving the management of targeting information during armed conflict. An expanded concept of information warfare would instead focus on broadening its three primary components: compelling narratives and messages (munitions), audience (targets), and the medium of delivery (platforms). Uncensored, space-based internet as a delivery platform has the potential to circumvent censorship and information controls currently enforced in authoritarian regimes, enabling the free flow of information within and across borders to a broader audience. Authoritarian rulers are particularly vulnerable to information and must adjust their behavior based on the beliefs and support of both elites within their regime and public sentiment—both of which can be deliberately influenced by foreign actors.

This expanded form of information warfare would give US policy makers a set of tools that can be calibrated to apply across the spectrum of competition and conflict. Consider these examples:

Turning on or off uncensored internet access within a target country or audience, allowing that population’s members to disseminate and consume content of their own choosing.
Delivering targeted messaging that counters adversary misinformation.
Delivering consistent narratives that reinforce the mutual benefits of cooperation in the rules-based international order.
Supporting a narrative of partnership between the American people and populations under authoritarian rule, potentially depicting unaccountable regimes as the obstacle to that cooperation.
Providing content reinforcing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and highlighting authoritarian leaders’ violation of those rights, including “the right to freedom of opinion and expression” and to “receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” (Article 19), “the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association” (Article 20), “the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion” (Article 18), and “the right to take part in the government . . . directly or through freely chosen representatives” (Article 21).
Providing evidence of authoritarian leaders’ actions in opposition to the interests of their populations.
Delivering direct criticisms of authoritarian leaders and encouraging accountability.
Delivering content encouraging or enabling peaceful protest and reform.

Utilizing these tools is unlikely to achieve immediate effect—no one should expect populations to suddenly change course and demand reform from authoritarian leaders. Many will also reject foreign messaging. However, authoritarian competitors will be forced to respond and expend resources to counter these flows of information. This will impose costs and shift the focus of competition to areas where authoritarian regimes have enduring vulnerability and weakness. Also, Chinese and Russian attempts to influence the American population demonstrate the threat and utility of the informational instrument of power, even on the margins of a population. While some may see democracies as more susceptible to informational attacks, authoritarian regimes expend massive effort to control information while democracies expend almost no resources to do so. Democracies are inundated with true and false information flowing freely and are thus effectively inoculated against major informational effects. Authoritarian regimes, however, see free-flowing information as a potentially existential threat, even if only a small portion of the population is affected. This is an enduring vulnerability that can be exploited.

Many netizens in authoritarian regimes can already bypass censorship through virtual private networks, though governments tend to reign in these tools if they show any sign of risk to the regime. Research demonstrates that while citizens behind firewalls are unlikely to seek out methods to bypass censorship, once they begin accessing uncensored information their demand for it is sustained and their attitudes toward their government change. Authoritarian regimes pay high costs to defend this vulnerability even though the United States is not yet directing the resources and technologies at its disposal to exploit it.

Authoritarian leaders are already in a technological race to keep information out of their own citizens’ hands, but this digital era favors the dissemination rather than suppression of information. This is a natural imbalance that the United States must exploit. Just as the Soviet Union could not keep up in a globalized world by centralizing economic planning, authoritarian regimes will not keep up in a digital world if they try to centralize information—they are fighting a losing battle. They are temporarily succeeding in their suppression of information only because no one is using the available technological tools to fight against them at mass. The United States can impose significant costs if it supports access to information beyond censorship faster than authoritarian leaders can censor it.

Implementation

Providing space-based, uncensored internet access is becoming technologically and economically feasible. It relies on two primary technical components. The first is a constellation of pLEO satellites. Initial investments in pLEO internet delivery from Starlink, AST Space Mobile, Amazon Kuiper, and the Pentagon range from $1 billion to $15 billion. The second component is a terminal or compatible device that can connect to the pLEO constellation. Distribution of these terminals or devices may be a significant challenge as authoritarian regimes resist, but the difficulty is likely to decrease over time for two reasons. First, gaining access to uncensored internet will incentivize private actors within and outside authoritarian regimes to facilitate the distribution of these terminals and devices, especially if they are supported by the United States and its democratic allies. Second, the portable or handheld size of these devices makes mass distribution and smuggling across borders feasible and policing by authoritarian regimes extremely difficult and costly. Iterative improvements in technologies and increase in popular demand will force authoritarian regimes to expend increasing resources over time to maintain control over information flows while eroding public support and legitimacy.

Providing space-based internet access within authoritarian regimes could be accomplished by a number of actors, but the US military is currently best positioned to accomplish the task. There is no other US government entity tasked with developing the capabilities necessary to conduct information warfare, particularly with this expanded competition mindset. In addition, the likely cost is in the normal range of significant DoD programs, but well beyond what any other US government organization can fund.

An alternative course of action might be legislation to reestablish the US Information Agency with a budget and mission to develop and employ this capability, though there are challenges to this approach. Regardless of the bureaucratic tool employed, the authority, accountability, and resourcing for conducting information warfare across the whole of government in today’s technological landscape needs to be established. Unless and until significant legislative or administrative action makes this happen, the US military, in partnership with other agencies, is best suited to provide this national capability.

The concept of expanding information warfare by providing uncensored internet access would provide significant leverage against multiple authoritarian actors. Most importantly, the Chinese Communist Party has developed the most extensive and sophisticated censorship regime in history while also executing a competitive strategy that imposes significant costs on traditional US military approaches to warfighting. Expanded information warfare shifts the competition back to an area where China has enduring vulnerabilities. Authoritarian leaders in Russia, Iran, and North Korea also expend consider resources to control information and free-flowing, uncensored information would create dilemmas, impose costs, and constrain their available options.

Normative Concerns and Risk

Employing this expanded concept of information warfare would deviate from existing norms in two important ways. First, it would require significant US military investment in a capability that does not directly achieve conventional warfighting objectives. However, US competitors have gained advantages by fusing military and nonmilitary capabilities to achieve national objectives, and the United States must do the same. Second, US efforts to circumvent censorship controls within authoritarian regimes will likely be perceived as a break from international norms of sovereignty. However, US competitors have already shattered these norms through intervention in democratic elections, intellectual property theft, cyberattacks, and covert and overt military intervention. The United States must find a way to respond to these violations of sovereignty for both practical and ideological reasons and can do so with the normative backing of the universal human right to “receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Expanding strategic competition also carries an inherent risk of escalation. Attacking competitor vulnerabilities and creating new threats is likely to solicit a strong response, especially where it threatens a regime’s sense of stability. However, this is the goal of competition—it provides leverage because it forces a response and shifts the focus of competition away from areas that are advantageous to competitors. This expanded concept of information warfare opens a new front in competition, forcing authoritarians to respond to informational threats as they simultaneously evaluate the use of traditional military force and economic coercion, but it also offers tools to manage escalation, create leverage, and force difficult tradeoffs for competitors.

Expanding the concept of information warfare by providing space-based, uncensored internet access to populations within authoritarian regimes is the most impactful investment the United States can make in the current strategic competition. America can restore its competitive initiative by seizing this opportunity created by a maturing revolution in information technology. Taking this step requires a significant change to traditional modes of thought and operation, but builds on the competitive mindset needed in this strategic environment.

Christopher Culver is a pilot in the United States Air Force currently serving as an analyst on the Headquarters Air Force staff. He previously served as a speechwriter for the secretary of the Air Force, faculty member at the United States Air Force Academy, and MQ-1B Predator instructor pilot. He has a PhD in political science from Pennsylvania State University and a Master in Public Policy from Harvard University, and has authored multiple academic publications in the field of international political economy. He is a Truman Scholar and CSIS Strategy and Statecraft Fellow and is proficient in Mandarin Chinese.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, Department of the Air Force, or Department of Defense. The discussion of nonfederal entities, methods, products, or services and the appearance of hyperlinks do not imply any endorsement by any agency of the United States government.

Image credit: Airman 1st Class Sebastian Romawac, US Air Force

Share on LinkedIn

Send email

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Christopher Culver · April 9, 2025

24. Taiwan’s Youth Are Not Defeatist — and The Data Proves It

Good, because we cannot want to defend Taiwan more than the Taiwan people. And although counterintuitive, the stronger their self defense efforts and appearance of less reliance on outside help may actually generate greater external support for their cause.

Taiwan’s Youth Are Not Defeatist — and The Data Proves It

A wide body of academic surveys with nationally representative samples shows Taiwanese people’s willingness to fight to defend their homeland, including those under 30.

https://thediplomat.com/2025/04/taiwans-youth-are-not-defeatist-and-the-data-proves-it/

By Wen-Chin Wu and Hsin-Hsin Pan

April 09, 2025

Credit: Office of the President, ROC (Taiwan)

In a recent guest essay for The New York Times, Ms. Yintai Lung, a writer and former minister of culture in Taiwan, suggested that recent events in Ukraine have caused many in Taiwan – especially the youth – to favor surrender over resistance in the event of a Chinese invasion. Her conclusion was based on an informal, unscientific poll conducted on Dcard, a Taiwanese social media equivalent to Reddit. While the sentiment expressed by some users on the platform is undoubtedly genuine, Lung’s argument risks misrepresenting the broader reality of Taiwanese society – and particularly its younger generation.

As researchers of public opinion on security issues in Taiwan, we find the use of this online poll not just misleading but potentially dangerous. The Dcard poll, like many social media “snapshots,” lacks even the most basic standards of survey methodology: the sample is self-selected, the demographic characteristics of respondents are not reported, and no weights are applied to reflect Taiwan’s actual population. Drawing sweeping conclusions about the youth’s resolve from such data does a disservice to both readers and policymakers trying to understand Taiwan’s security posture.

Quite contrary to what Dcard polling shows, a wide body of academic, well-executed surveys with nationally representative samples paints a very different picture of Taiwanese people’s willingness to fight in the past two decades.

Between 1998 and 2012, the World Values Survey in Taiwan found that between 84 percent and 86 percent of respondents were willing to fight for Taiwan in the event of war. Even in 2019, that figure stood at 77 percent. More recently, the 2020 Taiwan Social Image Survey conducted by the Institute of Sociology at Academia Sinica found that 77 percent expressed a willingness to defend Taiwan, while the Institute’s 2021 China Impact Survey recorded an even higher level at 81 percent.

In addition, the Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR), a think tank affiliated with Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, launched a series of nationally representative polls between 2021 and 2024. These five waves of data show that between 74 percent and 81 percent of Taiwanese citizens consistently say they would fight to defend their country against a Chinese military attack. Even the most recent American Portrait Survey, conducted in March 2025 amid growing global uncertainties and Taiwan’s geopolitical risks, found that 63 percent of respondents said they would resist a Chinese invasion “at all costs.”

What about young people specifically? Across these surveys, youth are not only engaged but often deeply committed. Among respondents aged 18 to 30, the willingness to fight for Taiwan ranges from 53 percent to 88 percent. While support among younger cohorts tends to be slightly lower than among older respondents – a common global pattern reflecting younger generations’ embrace of post-materialistic values – it is simply false to suggest that Taiwanese youth would fold at the first sign of conflict.

The following chart summarizes the trend across the aforementioned surveys over time.

Why does this matter?

First, the mischaracterization of Taiwan’s youth as apathetic or defeatist feeds a damaging narrative, one that could weaken international support and undermine peace. If allies believe that Taiwan lacks the will to fight, they may hesitate to extend assistance in a crisis. Conversely, if Beijing believes that the Taiwanese public – especially its youth – will not resist, it may miscalculate the costs of aggression.

Second, the reality of public resolve strengthens Taiwan’s democratic resilience. In contrast to authoritarian regimes that depend on coercion and propaganda, Taiwan’s self-defense rests on a democratic consensus. Public opinion does not just follow policy; it helps shape it in democracies. Taiwanese people’s strong and consistent willingness to defend the homeland reflects a society that takes its sovereignty seriously. In addition, it serves as a “focal point” to coordinate citizens’ collective action to defend the country.

Taiwan’s younger generation grew up in a free and open society. They are digital natives, globally connected, and politically aware. Their caution about war is understandable. But caution is not surrender. The survey data collected via rigorous and scientific procedures show that when it comes to defending Taiwan, young Taiwanese are more than ready to stand up.

Authors

Guest Author

Wen-Chin Wu

Dr. Wen-Chin Wu is a research fellow at the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica.

Guest Author

Hsin-Hsin Pan

Dr. Hsin-Hsin Pan is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology at Soochow University and a co-principal investigator of the World Values Survey in Taiwan. Both are co-principal investigators of the American Portrait Survey tracking Taiwanese public opinion on Taiwan-U.S.-China relations.

25. Behind the Curtain: How Trump reordered the world in 80 days

Behind the Curtain: How Trump reordered the world in 80 days

Axios · by Jim VandeHei,Mike Allen · April 9, 2025

President Trump has done more unprecedented, lasting things in 80 days than many presidents do in a four-year term.

Why it matters: There are 1,382 days to go in this term.

So let's step back and appraise the indisputable acts of power that have changed America in Trump's first two months and three weeks, as synthesized by Axios' Zachary Basu:

1. A new global economy.

Trump has declared an all-out war on globalism, detonating every one of America's trading relationships — allies and adversaries alike — by imposing the largest tariffs in nearly a century.
Trump's push for a manufacturing renaissance has helped secure at least $1.6 trillion in U.S. investment pledges. But his tariff rollout melted markets globally and dramatically raised the threat of a recession.
The renewed trade war with China carries the biggest potential blast radius, with the world's two largest economies engaged in a tit-for-tat escalation that could snarl global supply chains.

2. A new world order.

The rules-based system forged after World War II is dead: Trump has withdrawn from multilateral institutions, threatened to expand U.S. territory to Greenland, Gaza and Panama, and alienated America's closest allies.
Canada, stewing in nationalist fervor from Trump's tariffs and his "51st state" mockery, has declared our close relationship "over" and is looking to other allies for security and economic cooperation.
Europe is in the midst of its own radical transformation, singed and stunned by Trump's tariffs, constant insults, undermining NATO and siding with Russia over Ukraine.
Years of U.S. strategy designed to isolate China is up in flames, with Asian allies turning to Beijing for trade refuge and Taiwan fearing it could meet the same fate as Ukraine.

3. A vast expansion of executive power.

Trump is testing — and in some cases, obliterating — legal boundaries around presidential authority, including by punishing his political enemies and major law firms caught in the crossfire.
Courts are grappling with hundreds of lawsuits challenging Trump's ability to override Congress on spending, immigration and federal employment — and facing intense pressure from his base over "traitorous" rulings. Attorney General Pam Bondi said this weekend on "Fox News Sunday" that since the inauguration, "we've had over 170 lawsuits filed against us. That should be the constitutional crisis right there. Fifty injunctions — they're popping up every single day."
Trump has installed loyalists atop the Justice Department and FBI — declaring himself the country's "chief law enforcement officer" — and purged career officials and lawyers viewed as insufficiently MAGA.

4. A shrinking federal government.

Elon Musk's DOGE cost-slashing has resulted in mass layoffs and the dismantling of whole agencies, including USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
An estimated 60,000 federal workers have been fired in a broad effort to reduce the size of government, with deeper cuts still coming. Thousands have been reinstated, either through court orders or because officials moved impulsively.
Changes to Social Security phone services: The Social Security Administration posted on X that beginning next Monday, officials "will perform an anti-fraud check on all claims filed over the telephone and flag claims that have fraud risk indicators. … Individuals who are not flagged will be able to complete their claim without any in-person requirements." SSA found that changing an existing account over the phone was a rife source of fraud.

5. A sealed border.

Illegal border crossings have plummeted to the lowest levels in decades, a testament to Trump's aggressive approach to curbing immigration through any means possible.
That includes the unprecedented invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which Trump used to deport hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to a notorious mass prison in El Salvador.
Trump also has taken aim at legal immigrants, revoking visas for college students involved in pro-Palestinian activism on the grounds that their presence could have "potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences."
In both cases, lack of due process has deeply alarmed immigration activists and civil libertarians — while Trump's broader crackdown has had a chilling effect on foreign travel to the U.S.

Coming for subscribers: Axios AM Executive Briefing — with expertise from Axios tech policy reporters Maria Curi and Ashley Gold — is about to publish a subscriber-only special report on the collision of AI and Washington.

Editor's note: Updates with statement from Social Security Administration.

Axios · by Jim VandeHei,Mike Allen · April 9, 2025

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

Company Name | Website