Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"The fish never discovers that it lives in water. In fact, since he lives immersed in it, his life goes by without noticing its existence. Similarly, behavior that is normalized in a dominant cultural setting becomes invisible."

– Michael Foucalt

"Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles."

– Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Ideology separates us. Dreams and anguish bring us together."

– Eugene Ionesco

1. Senior Official Outlines Future Priorities for Special Ops

2. Medal of Honor Recipients Offer Insights at Special Ops Convention

3. A ‘Reverse Kissinger’? Not While Xi and Putin Are Around by Hal Brands

4. Xi-Putin meeting complicates Trump’s ‘Reverse Nixon’ strategy

5. What We Know About How the 4-Day India and Pakistan Clashes Unfolded

6. India and Pakistan: How backchannels and US mediators pulled rivals back from the brink

7. The Danger for India and Pakistan Has Not Gone Away

8. The Chinese Way of Winning

9. Ukraine Insists Truce Must Come Before Putin’s Proposed Peace Talks

10. Stakes Rise as U.S. and China Open Second Day of Trade Talks

11. U.S.-Iran Nuclear Talks Hit Halfway Mark With Major Hurdles to Clear

12. Unwitting Pawns: Companies Are on the Front Lines of a New Global Conflict

13. Wake up, Westerners – the evils of Xinjiang are a taste of the future

14. Joseph Nye Was the Champion of a World That No Longer Exists

15. China’s hit spy drama The Secret Path gets real-life tips from top security agency

16. To Dominate the Arctic, Trump Needs Ice-Breaking Ships. Finland Wants to Help.

17. ASEAN At A Crossroads: Safeguarding Centrality Amid South China Sea Tensions

18. 'Beacon of freedom' dims as US initiatives that promote democracy abroad wither under Trump

19. The Ideological Gurus Battling for the Soul of Trump World

20. President Trump fires Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden

21. One of Alcatraz's last living inmates on Trump's plan to reopen prison

22. Defense Stocks Are Under Fire. How to Play the New World Order.

1. Senior Official Outlines Future Priorities for Special Ops

Excerpts:

"SOF delivers persistent presence, asymmetric advantage and strategic effects across all three priorities every day, everywhere," Jenkins said, adding that SOF is also the only force in the Defense Department that delivers across all three lines of effort.

He then listed five priorities aimed at meeting Hegseth's guidance:

Designing the future force to prevail in future conflicts;
Maximizing the performance and resilience of SOF personnel;
Ensuring training and readiness meet future needs;
Aligning capability development to strategic priorities; and
Strengthening resource oversight and the institutionalization of accountability.

Senior Official Outlines Future Priorities for Special Ops

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4179258/senior-official-outlines-future-priorities-for-special-ops/

May 8, 2025 | By Matthew Olay, DOD News |

Colby Jenkins, performing the duties of the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, outlined his priorities for the future of the special warfare community while delivering remarks today during Special Operations Forces Week 2025 in Tampa, Florida.

Jenkins cautioned the audience that America's adversaries are converging across regions and "the thresholds between peace and conflict."

"We do not need another threat briefing; we need action — focused and unrelenting," Jenkins said.

He added that such action recently came in the form of guidance from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who kicked off SOF Week 2025 with keynote remarks, May 6. Hegseth said his focus is on defending the homeland, deterring Chinese aggression while maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region and shifting burdens to partners and allies.

"SOF delivers persistent presence, asymmetric advantage and strategic effects across all three priorities every day, everywhere," Jenkins said, adding that SOF is also the only force in the Defense Department that delivers across all three lines of effort.

He then listed five priorities aimed at meeting Hegseth's guidance:

Designing the future force to prevail in future conflicts;
Maximizing the performance and resilience of SOF personnel;
Ensuring training and readiness meet future needs;
Aligning capability development to strategic priorities; and
Strengthening resource oversight and the institutionalization of accountability.

Regarding the first priority concerning force design, Jenkins said there needs to be a shift from static formations optimized for crisis response and counterterrorism to "adaptable, tailorable, multidomain SOF formations" meant to prevail in high-end conflict.

"The future of SOF is relentless: smaller teams, faster decisions, smarter systems [and] harder targets," Jenkins said.

As for performance and resilience maximization when it comes to SOF personnel, Jenkins said future operators will need to be agile, resilient, physically and mentally capable, and able to thrive in isolated, high-pressure environments.

"We cannot afford to simply maintain the old standards," he said. "We must sharpen them, modernize them and expand them without losing the warrior ethos that define[s] our special operations."

He also said the goal will be to build and preserve a force where human performance, and not just that of technology, will prove to be a critical advantage over adversaries.

"Because in the end, it is not the weapon, the drone, or the system that wins the contest. It is the person who knows when and how to use all of that technology and who refuses to quit; that person secures victory for us," Jenkins said.

On the topic of ensuring training and readiness meet future needs, Jenkins said the battlefield of the future will be more complex, contested and ambiguous than anything SOF has faced before.

Because of that, he said, future SOF will have to operate in challenging environments while integrating cyberspace and electronic warfare. They will also need to conduct irregular warfare alongside allies, partners and indigenous forces across all phases of competition and conflict.

"Traditional training models and infrastructure focused primarily on physical skills and kinetic action will not be enough," Jenkins said, adding that it will be necessary to rethink training for the future threat environment.

Regarding aligning capability development to strategic priorities, Jenkins said "innovation for innovation's sake" isn't enough.

"We must drive innovation with purpose, laser-focused on building the capabilities that allow our forces to impose costs, create dilemmas and deny advantages to our adversaries," he said.

Jenkins added that SOF must harness artificial intelligence to accelerate decisive advantage.

On the final priority, Jenkins said strengthening resource oversight and institutionalizing accountability are necessary in an era of increasing operational demands and constrained budgets.

"Resources are not just dollars on a spreadsheet; they are the fuel for readiness, resilience and victory," he said, adding that every dollar spent must sharpen readiness, enhance capability or increase strategic leverage.

"We have an incredible opportunity right now to make sure that our enterprise has the resources that it needs and can divest of operations or resources or platforms that we no longer need. So, let's take advantage of that," Jenkins said, adding that no funds should be "wasted on bureaucracy that does not deliver warfighting advantage."After highlighting future priorities, Jenkins appealed to the SOF community for their own ideas regarding shaping the future.

"Whether you are in industry … government or the SOF community itself, you are part of this effort," he said. "Help us develop the capabilities that give our operators the advantage they need at the speed they need."

Jenkins said that winning future fights will not come from doing more of the same but from thinking differently, acting decisively and working together.

"This is our moment to forge the future of special operations," he said. "A future where small teams create strategic impacts; a future where resilience, adaptability and speed win the day, [and] a future where American strength and American values prevail. Now let's get to work."

2. Medal of Honor Recipients Offer Insights at Special Ops Convention

Excerpts:

All three men explained what being a Medal of Honor recipient means to them on a personal level.

"Every time we put the medal on, it's a gracious gift to sit here and talk about it," said Williams, who received the medal for his actions of valor during Operation Commando Wrath in Afghanistan in 2008.

He added that a surprising number of people are unaware of the medal's significance.

"And that significance has nothing to do with the guy wearing it, or the action that they took; but it's the idea that you're willing to put yourself and your life on the line for the guys [to the] left and [to the] right of you," he said.

Plumlee, who received his medal for saving numerous lives by mounting a successful counterattack under heavy fire against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan in 2013, explained that he shared his ceremony with two other recipients, both of whom received the medal posthumously.

"That really brought some gravity," he said.

He also explained that, with credible eyewitness testimony being a requirement for receiving the medal, many SOF personnel may be just as deserving of such an award but will never receive the recognition.

"I know a lot of guys who have done very heroic things, but it's not captured and provable, [so] there's no medal for it," Plumlee said.

Medal of Honor Recipients Offer Insights at Special Ops Convention

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4178870/medal-of-honor-recipients-offer-insights-at-special-ops-convention/

May 8, 2025 | By Matthew Olay, DOD News |

Of the 3,536 Medals of Honor presented since its establishment in 1861, only 61 recipients are alive today, and only a handful of them come from the U.S. special operations forces community.

Yesterday, three of those SOF recipients attended a panel discussion at Special Operations Forces Week 2025 in Tampa, Florida.

Retired Army Sgt. Maj. Thomas P. Payne, retired Army Master Sgt. Earl D. Plumlee and Army Master Sgt. Matthew O. Williams shared experiences and lessons learned from their heroic actions during an hourlong conversation that emphasized the importance of trust, mentorship and resilience in leadership.

All three men explained what being a Medal of Honor recipient means to them on a personal level.

"Every time we put the medal on, it's a gracious gift to sit here and talk about it," said Williams, who received the medal for his actions of valor during Operation Commando Wrath in Afghanistan in 2008.

He added that a surprising number of people are unaware of the medal's significance.

"And that significance has nothing to do with the guy wearing it, or the action that they took; but it's the idea that you're willing to put yourself and your life on the line for the guys [to the] left and [to the] right of you," he said.

Plumlee, who received his medal for saving numerous lives by mounting a successful counterattack under heavy fire against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan in 2013, explained that he shared his ceremony with two other recipients, both of whom received the medal posthumously.

"That really brought some gravity," he said.

He also explained that, with credible eyewitness testimony being a requirement for receiving the medal, many SOF personnel may be just as deserving of such an award but will never receive the recognition.

"I know a lot of guys who have done very heroic things, but it's not captured and provable, [so] there's no medal for it," Plumlee said.

"It's humbling, and I like to say that I'm wearing [the medal] for [the U.S. Special Operations Command] and vast amounts of operators who have done very heroic things for very little recognition, and [who] just went back to work the next day," he added.

"Just letting the medal be a part of my life [has] required me to grow up," said Payne, who received his MOH for saving 70 hostages with little regard for his own life during a 2015 rescue operation in Iraq.

"It's just a process to live up to the standard of wearing the Medal of Honor, which is hard — every single day — and so, it's a 'beautiful burden,'" Payne added, quoting his friend and fellow recipient, retired Marine Cpl. Kyle Carpenter.

The three men also spoke about their shared passion for continued service following their time in uniform.

Plumlee said he gets the most out of inspiring others to serve their country.

"I love talking to people [who] were not thinking about serving — or if they're dabbling in it — and really, you know, mentoring [them] and lighting that fire," Plumlee said, adding that the country is always in need of men and women to sign up for military service and "take ownership of the country."

"Every politician's speech and every successful business is built on the bedrock of the security that the [Defense Department] provides," he said.

Williams also said he enjoys encouraging others to serve, if not in the military, then in some other manner that benefits the country.

"One thing that really shocked me when I received the medal … was how much I enjoyed talking to other people about it and just perpetuating the values that we stand for … especially service, and how important service actually is," Williams said.

"I like just talking about that — engaging specifically with kids and students — and going to schools and hoping to provide a little bit of a glimmer of hope for our country," he added.

Payne said SOF operators like himself and the others on stage have lots of friends buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, and that he and his fellow SOF veterans are fortunate to be alive.

"I've just tried to live an extraordinary life in honor of my teammates … We're on 'plus time' now," he said, adding that, despite having been medically retired from the Army, he continues to find ways to serve his country.

"There's a passion to serve still [and] I'm going to continue to serve in different ways," Payne said.

3. A ‘Reverse Kissinger’? Not While Xi and Putin Are Around by Hal Brands

And we should remember that their relationship (and the one among the entire CRINK) is one of fear, weakness, desperation, and envy. We should exploit that.

Excerpts:

There is a long, arduous path to challenging Sino-Russian relations, but it’s more like the “reverse Dulles” than the reverse Kissinger. In the 1950s, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles argued that the key to eventually breaking the Sino-Soviet pact was to pressure the weaker party relentlessly, so it would make costly, intolerable demands of the stronger. The closer two aggressive autocracies were pushed together, the more miserable they would make each other. It took about 15 years for the Sino-Soviet rupture to prove Dulles right.

The key, today, is to maximize the costs China and Russia must pay for their relationship. This means by sanctioning and penalizing Beijing for its ties to Moscow, while forcing Russia into a humiliating, insecure dependence on China. Doing so won’t bring miracles overnight. But it might subtly widen Sino-Russian rifts, creating the possibility of a break that would create a bigger US opportunity. When might this happen? Perhaps after Putin and Xi, with their strategic bromance, depart the scene.

Until then, however, the reverse Kissinger will remain an illusory shortcut — and an evasion of the historic challenge the tie-up between two hostile giants creates. Xi and Putin get along because they’re both at war with the US world order. The sooner we realize that, the better.

A ‘Reverse Kissinger’? Not While Xi and Putin Are Around

During the Cold War the US split China from Russia by putting pressure on the weaker partner. That’s not going to work against Moscow today.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-05-09/a-reverse-kissinger-not-while-xi-and-putin-are-around?utm

May 9, 2025 at 12:00 AM EDT

By Hal Brands

Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and the Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

Cheers, bro!Photographer: Pavel Byrkin/AFP/Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s team has achieved one “reverse Kissinger”: Splitting rivals is a time-honored strategic tradition. But as Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s trip to Moscow this week affirms, the Sino-Russian relationship won’t be broken anytime soon.

During his first term, Trump saw reconciliation with Russia as a way of isolating China. Some geopolitical dreams die hard. The view, in parts of Trump’s second administration, is that Moscow and Beijing have been forced together by the war in Ukraine. Ending that war, and mending ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, could slow the Sino-Russian convergence — and perhaps even make Moscow a partner in containing Beijing.

The aspiration is admirable. Collusion between the two Eurasian behemoths is a daunting contemporary reality; a breakup would only benefit the US strategic position. Trump isn’t the only recent president to mull something like this: Joe Biden never saw Putin as a potential ally, but he hoped a “stable and predictable” relationship with Russia would focus US energy on Beijing.

It didn’t work, because Putin was less interested in stability than in swallowing Ukraine. And Xi, by showing up for Russia’s highly militarized, annual celebration of its victory in World War II, is demonstrating that divide-and-conquer will fail, again.

To be sure, Xi’s visit can’t hide certain strains. China and Russia, with their long history of eyeing each other’s territory, are natural rivals. The Ukraine war has indeed pushed the autocratic heavyweights into a strategic embrace that feels awkward for both sides.

Not every Russian ultra-nationalist is pleased with Moscow’s deepening dependence on an ambitious, expansionist China. Xi presumably isn’t thrilled that the Ukraine war drove a wedge between China and Europe — and makes it hard for Beijing to exploit Trumpian disruption by posing as the responsible global power. Yet Sino-Russian tensions are still orders of magnitude lower than they were in Kissinger’s day.

The very notion of a reverse Kissinger is misleading, because Kissinger — with his surprise trip to China in 1971 —simply made the most of a split that had already occurred. In 1969, the two neighbors fought a bloody border conflict; the Soviet Union considered striking China’s nuclear facilities. Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong was thus willing to use the “far barbarians” (the US) to counter the “near barbarians” on his borders.

Today, however, the strategic unity of the world’s leading revisionist states is profound. Moscow and Beijing are trying to create a radically different international order — one in which American power is battered, American alliances are broken, and autocracy reigns because democracy’s global dominance has been shattered. Both know, moreover, that they cannot defeat the US if they are simultaneously trying to defeat each other.

China and Russia, says Xi, must fight “back to back” against their common foes. Putin, for his part, might appreciate an easing of American hostility — but he won’t trade Russia’s vital alliance for a fragile bargain with a fickle US.

In fact, an easing of pressure against Russia could be counterproductive. One reason Beijing hasn’t pursued even deeper defense-technological cooperation with Russia is concern that its firms will be ensnared in Western sanctions. If that fear ebbs, ties to Russia might flourish. More fundamentally, a relaxation of US pressure might simply convince Xi and Putin that their partnership is working, while undermining the transatlantic alliance Washington needs to keep both its foes contained.

There is a long, arduous path to challenging Sino-Russian relations, but it’s more like the “reverse Dulles” than the reverse Kissinger. In the 1950s, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles argued that the key to eventually breaking the Sino-Soviet pact was to pressure the weaker party relentlessly, so it would make costly, intolerable demands of the stronger. The closer two aggressive autocracies were pushed together, the more miserable they would make each other. It took about 15 years for the Sino-Soviet rupture to prove Dulles right.

The key, today, is to maximize the costs China and Russia must pay for their relationship. This means by sanctioning and penalizing Beijing for its ties to Moscow, while forcing Russia into a humiliating, insecure dependence on China. Doing so won’t bring miracles overnight. But it might subtly widen Sino-Russian rifts, creating the possibility of a break that would create a bigger US opportunity. When might this happen? Perhaps after Putin and Xi, with their strategic bromance, depart the scene.

Until then, however, the reverse Kissinger will remain an illusory shortcut — and an evasion of the historic challenge the tie-up between two hostile giants creates. Xi and Putin get along because they’re both at war with the US world order. The sooner we realize that, the better.

Brands is also a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the co-author of “Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China,” and a senior adviser to Macro Advisory Partners.

Xi-Putin meeting complicates Trump’s ‘Reverse Nixon’ strategy

https://unherd.com/newsroom/xi-putin-meeting-complicates-trumps-reverse-nixon-strategy/?utm

By Bethany Elliott

May 8, 2025 - 4:20pm

Arriving in Moscow to commemorate the 80th anniversary of victory in the Second World War, Chinese President Xi Jinping took the opportunity to pen an article in a Russian newspaper, praising how “eighty years ago, the forces of justice around the world, including China and the Soviet Union, united in courageous battles against their common foes”.

China is still coming to the aid of a warring Russia. Xi noted how “in the crucible of the war-torn years […] China, for its part, shipped much-needed strategic supplies to the Soviet Union” and, all those years later, talks between him and Russian leader Vladimir Putin are likely to focus on ensuring Beijing’s continued provision of drones and dual-use components for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

That may not be the end of China’s role in the war, however. While Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko has criticised the idea as “absolutely inappropriate and absurd”, China may be one of the few countries with both the military resources and Kremlin approval necessary to provide peacekeepers in a post-war scenario, given Russia’s repeated refusal to countenance Western troops being sent to Ukraine. Putin may today be interested in assessing Beijing’s interest in such a prospect.

For his part, Xi will also want to discuss the role of the DPRK in this war. The role of North Korea in the war is known to have made Beijing uneasy. Closer ties between Moscow and Pyongyang reduce Xi’s leverage over the North Korean leader by providing Kim Jong Un with another influential ally. What’s more, China has been concerned that the burgeoning friendship between Putin and Kim may encourage closer co-operation between the US, Japan and South Korea in East Asia, a risk to Beijing’s growing power in the region.

Ukraine is not the only battle on the minds of Xi and Putin. Both are grappling with US economic restrictions, whether sanctions in Russia’s case or Trump’s trade war in China’s. The two leaders will be eager to not only share notes about the best methods for handling the volatile US President but to demonstrate that they are economically beyond America’s control. Strengthening Russia-China economic co-operation will therefore be on the agenda, especially regarding the proposed Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, intended to transport Russian natural gas to China via Mongolia. This would increase Chinese purchases of Russian gas to offset the loss of European market share. However, China has previously insisted that the gas supplied should be at Russia’s heavily subsidised domestic rate. Sources claim that China, clearly hopeful of making progress, is willing to compromise and discuss a higher price.

While a parade commemorating 80 years since victory in the war is likely to be heavy on symbolism, among the pomp and pageantry there will be a message in particular for the US President. Trump has been open about his desire to separate the two countries in what would amount to a “Reverse Nixon” move. In October, he told Tucker Carlson that “the one thing you never want to happen is you never want Russia and China uniting. I’m going to have to un-unite them, and I think I can do that”. Standing side by side in Moscow, Xi and Putin will show that Trump has a lot of work to do.

Bethany Elliott is a writer specialising in Russia and Eastern Europe.

BethanyAElliott

5. What We Know About How the 4-Day India and Pakistan Clashes Unfolded

Let's hope the diplomacy holds.

Excerpts:

What Is Ahead

While the scores are still being tallied, and damage assessed, the four days may have fundamentally changed the reality of conflict in this part of the world toward noncontact warfare: barrages from a distance until the very last stages of battle, but still leading to escalation and the potential loss of restraint.

The abundance of new-generation technology, particularly cheap drones and loitering munitions, might initially suggest more precision targeting and less human cost. But in this latest India-Pakistan conflict, those technologies still prompted a cycle of escalation that led to concerns that the use of nuclear weapons could be put on the table.

What We Know About How the 4-Day India and Pakistan Clashes Unfolded

Some details are clouded by contradictory statements and disinformation. But a pattern of rapid escalation brought the conflict to the brink of catastrophe.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/11/world/asia/india-pakistan-what-we-know.html?utm

Listen to this article · 5:31 min Learn more

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Soldiers examining the rubble of a mosque in Muridke, Pakistan, on Wednesday.Credit...K.M. Chaudary/Associated Press

By Mujib Mashal

Reporting from New Delhi

May 11, 2025

Updated 6:43 a.m. ET

The spark for the recent conflict between India and Pakistan was a terrorist attack on the Indian side of Kashmir on April 22. India pointed to its neighbor’s history of sheltering terrorist groups and initiated a cross-border military campaign.

It quickly escalated into four nights of clashes in which the two countries hit deeper into each other’s territory than at any time in half a century, and that was unprecedented in how the use of new-generation technology created a dizzying escalation in the skies.

While the damage on both sides will take weeks and months to tally, particularly in a space of media blackouts and extreme disinformation, here is what we know about how the clashes played out.

The First Shots

In its opening round of airstrikes, in the pre-dawn hours on Wednesday, India struck targets deeper inside the enemy territory than it had in decades, and by all accounts had hit close enough to facilities associated with terrorist groups that it could claim victory.

But it quickly became clear that it had not been a clean strike, but more of a protracted engagement between the two air forces — both sides with their jets in the sky going at each other, with the boundary between them as a line that neither crossed. And India lost aircraft in the exchanges, including at least two of its most advanced fighter jets.

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

The toll from the strikes was conflicting. India’s defense minister told a parliamentary briefing that they had killed “100 terrorists.” Pakistan put the death toll of India’s initial strikes around 30.

The Escalations

On the second day, as a diplomatic push for an off-ramp intensified, India said it had thwarted a Pakistani attempt overnight to hit military targets across over a dozen border cities and towns. In response, it had taken the kind of action that analysts say almost always escalates a conflict: It struck sensitive military targets, particularly air defense systems in the Pakistani city of Lahore.

“A move like that is quite strident and would have concerned Pakistani forces, because in other contexts, taking out air defenses is a prelude to more serious action,” said Kim Heriot-Darragh, a strategic and defense analyst at the Australia India Institute. “You’d knock out defenses to open a corridor through which aircraft could fly and strike their actual target.”

Image

A house damaged by Pakistani artillery in Srinagar, in the Indian controlled part of Kashmir, on Thursday.Credit...Mukhtar Khan/Associated Press

Diplomats and analysts are uncertain about just how the events of early Thursday morning played out, but it is clear that something major had changed and was seen as an important shift in the pattern of escalation. Whether Pakistan was using a mass of drone incursions and missiles to actually try to hit India’s military sites or just to warn India and probe its air-defense systems for something bigger later is still unclear.

Pakistan’s astonishing official response — a complete denial that it had done anything on the second night — left two explanations for the events: that it was just a probing mission that Pakistan did not want to distract from the actual retaliation that was coming, or that it was an initial retaliation that had not succeeded.

But India nonetheless took the opportunity to actually damage crucial Pakistani military sites, and with that all bets were off. Pakistan vowed it would retaliate. The only way the escalation could be arrested was the way it had always been: with an outside power stepping in to tell both sides to knock it off.

Alarm Over Strategic Sites

On the nights of Friday and Saturday, the situation escalated rapidly to an air war with few holds barred, but in which ground forces had not been moved.

Pakistan launched a massive campaign of drone and missile strikes, targeting military bases across several Indian cities — this time with clear acknowledgment from the Indian side that not only there was damage to some bases and equipment, but also that it had lost security personnel.

Image

Smoke billowing after an explosion in Jammu in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir on Saturday.Credit...Anindito Mukherjee/Getty Images

There was clear evidence that India had also managed to create damage on the Pakistani side, targeting air fields and more defense systems, and also striking near one of Pakistan’s crucial strategic headquarters.

What alarmed the United States, and intensified the diplomatic push for the cease-fire that was announced late on Saturday, was not only that the two sides were increasing strikes to sensitive sites but also just what the next step in a rapid escalation ladder for two alarmed nuclear powers could mean.

What Is Ahead

While the scores are still being tallied, and damage assessed, the four days may have fundamentally changed the reality of conflict in this part of the world toward noncontact warfare: barrages from a distance until the very last stages of battle, but still leading to escalation and the potential loss of restraint.

The abundance of new-generation technology, particularly cheap drones and loitering munitions, might initially suggest more precision targeting and less human cost. But in this latest India-Pakistan conflict, those technologies still prompted a cycle of escalation that led to concerns that the use of nuclear weapons could be put on the table.

Mujib Mashal is the South Asia bureau chief for The Times, helping to lead coverage of India and the diverse region around it, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.

6. India and Pakistan: How backchannels and US mediators pulled rivals back from the brink

Seems like a lot of great diplomacy occurred. Let's hope the ceasefire holds.

India and Pakistan: How backchannels and US mediators pulled rivals back from the brink

BBC

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyn617xv4no?utm

7 hours ago

Soutik Biswas and Vikas Pandey

BBC News

Reporting fromDelhi

Reuters

Crowds gathered in Islamabad after the ceasefire announcement

In a dramatic turn of events, US President Donald Trump took to social media on Saturday to announce that India and Pakistan - after four tense days of cross-border clashes - had agreed to a "full and immediate ceasefire".

Behind the scenes, US mediators, alongside diplomatic backchannels and regional players, proved critical in pulling the nuclear-armed rivals back from the brink, experts say.

However, hours after a ceasefire deal, India and Pakistan were trading accusations of fresh violations - underscoring its fragility.

India accused Pakistan of "repeated violations" while Pakistan insisted it remained committed to the ceasefire, with its forces showing "responsibility and restraint."

Before Trump's ceasefire announcement, India and Pakistan were spiralling towards what many feared could become a full-blown conflict.

After a deadly militant attack killed 26 tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir last month, India launched air strikes inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir - triggering days of aerial clashes, artillery duels and, by Saturday morning, accusations from both sides of missile strikes on each other's airbases.

The rhetoric escalated sharply, with each country claiming to have inflicted heavy damage while foiling the other's attacks.

Getty Images

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (left) and President Donald Trump

Tanvi Madan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, says US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's call to Pakistani Army Chief Asim Munir on 9 May "might have been the crucial point".

"There's still much we don't know about the roles of various international actors, but it's clear over the past three days that at least three countries were working to de-escalate - the US, of course, but also the UK and Saudi Arabia," she says.

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar told Pakistani media that "three dozen countries" were involved in the diplomacy - including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the US.

"One question is whether, if this call had come earlier - right after the initial Indian strikes, when Pakistan was already claiming some Indian losses and an off-ramp was available - it might have prevented further escalation," Ms Madan says.

This isn't the first time US mediation has helped defuse an India–Pakistan crisis.

In his memoir, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo claimed he was woken up to speak with an unnamed "Indian counterpart", who feared Pakistan was preparing nuclear weapons during the 2019 standoff.

Reuters

Kashmiri men greeted each other after the ceasefire announcement in Srinagar

Former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan Ajay Bisaria later wrote that Pompeo overstated both the risk of nuclear escalation and the US role in calming the conflict.

But diplomats say there is little doubt the US played an important role in defusing the crisis this time.

"The US was the most prominent external player. Last time, Pompeo claimed they averted nuclear war. While they'll likely exaggerate, they may have played the primary diplomatic role, perhaps amplifying Delhi's positions in Islamabad," Mr Bisaria told the BBC on Saturday.

Yet at the outset, the US appeared strikingly standoffish.

As tensions flared, US Vice President JD Vance said on Thursday that the US was not going to get involved in a war that's "fundamentally none of our business".

"We can't control these countries though. Fundamentally, India has its gripes with Pakistan... America can't tell the Indians to lay down their arms. We can't tell the Pakistanis to lay down their arms. And so we're going to continue to pursue this thing through diplomatic channels, " he said in a television interview.

Meanwhile, President Trump said earlier this week: "I know both [leaders of India and Pakistan] very well, and I want to see them work it out... I want to see them stop, and hopefully they can stop now".

Getty Images

Pakistani people celebrated after the ceasefire between Pakistan and India, in Hyderabad, Sindh province

Ejaz Haider, a Lahore-based defence analyst, told the BBC this appeared to be the only difference from previous occasions.

"The American role was a continuation of past patterns, but with one key difference - this time, they initially stayed hands-off, watching the crisis unfold instead of jumping in right away. Only when they saw how it was playing out did they step in to manage it," Mr Haider told the BBC.

Experts in Pakistan say as the escalation cycle deepened, Pakistan sent "dual signals", retaliating militarily while announcing a National Command Authority (NCA) meeting - a clear reminder of the nuclear overhang.

The NCA controls and takes operational decisions regarding Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

This was around the time US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stepped in.

"The US was indispensable. This outcome would not have occurred without Secretary Rubio's efforts," Ashley J Tellis, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the BBC.

What also helped was Washington's deepening ties with Delhi.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal rapport with Trump, plus the US's broader strategic and economic stakes, gave the US administration diplomatic leverage to push both nuclear-armed rivals towards de-escalation.

Indian diplomats see three key peace tracks that happened this time, much like after Pulwama–Balakot in 2019:

US and UK pressure
Saudi mediation, with the Saudi junior foreign minister visiting both capitals
The direct India-Pakistan channel between the two national security advisors (NSAs)

Despite shifting global priorities and a hands-off posture at first, the US ultimately stepped in as the indispensable mediator between South Asia's nuclear rivals.

Whether overstated by its own officials or underacknowledged by Delhi and Islamabad, experts believe the US's role as crisis manager remains as vital - and as complicated - as ever.

Doubts do, however, linger over the ceasefire's durability after Saturday's events, with some Indian media reporting it was essentially brokered by senior military officials of the two countries - not the US.

"This ceasefire is bound to be a fragile one. It came about very quickly, amid sky-high tensions. India appears to have interpreted it differently than did the US and Pakistan," Michael Kugelman, a foreign policy analyst, told the BBC.

"Also, since it was put together so hastily, the accord may lack the proper guarantees and assurances one would need at such a tense moment."

7. The Danger for India and Pakistan Has Not Gone Away

A sobering subtitle below.

The Danger for India and Pakistan Has Not Gone Away

New developments in the nuclear powers’ harrowing four-day conflict, along with entrenched religious nationalism on each side, could signal more frequent battles ahead.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/11/world/asia/india-pakistan-war-analysis.html

Damaged houses in Jammu, in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, on Saturday.Credit...Adnan Abidi/Reuters

By Mujib Mashal

Reporting from New Delhi

May 11, 2025

Updated 4:38 a.m. ET

India and Pakistan have seemingly pulled back from the brink again. But so much was new about the nuclear-armed enemies’ chaotic four-day clash, and so many of the underlying accelerants remain volatile, that there’s little to suggest that the truce represents any return to old patterns of restraint.

A new generation of military technology fueled a dizzying aerial escalation. Waves of airstrikes and antiaircraft volleys with modern weapons set the stage. Soon they were joined by weaponized drones en masse for the first time along the old Line of Control in Kashmir — hundreds of them in the sky, probing each nation’s defenses and striking without risk to any pilot.

Then the missiles and drones were streaking past the border areas and deep into India’s and Pakistan’s territories, directly hitting air and defense bases, prompting dire threats and the highest level of military alert.

Scenes From India and Pakistan After Days of Conflict

After a terrorist attack in Kashmir, India and Pakistan traded volleys of attacks. The two sides said they had agreed to a cease-fire on Saturday.

May 7, 2025

Only then did international diplomacy — a crucial factor in past pullbacks between India and Pakistan — seem to engage in earnest, at what felt like the last minute before catastrophe. In a new global chapter defined by perilous conflicts, distracted leaders and a retreating sense of international responsibility to keep peace, the safety net had never seemed thinner.

“Going back historically, many of the India-Pakistan conflicts have been stopped because of external intervention,” said Srinath Raghavan, a military historian and strategic analyst.

Image

Streaks of light in the sky as Indian air defense system engaged in Jammu on Saturday.Credit...Anindito Mukherjee/Getty Images

Mr. Raghavan observed that neither country has a significant military industrial base, and the need to rely on weapons sales from abroad means outside pressure can have an effect. But the positions of both sides appeared more extreme this time, and India in particular seemed to want to see if it could achieve an outcome different than in previous conflicts.

“I think there is a stronger sort of determination, it seems, on the part of the Indian government to sort of make sure that the Pakistanis do not feel that they can just get away or get even,” he said. “Which definitely is part of the escalatory thing. Both sides seem to feel that they cannot let this end with the other side feeling that they have somehow got the upper hand.”

The political realities in India and Pakistan — each gripped by an entrenched religious nationalism — remain unchanged after the fighting. And that creates perhaps the most powerful push toward the kind of confrontation that could get out of hand again.

Image

A damaged building in Lahore, Pakistan, on Wednesday.Credit...Farooq Naeem/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Pakistan is dominated by a military establishment that has stifled civilian institutions and is run by a hard-line general who is a product of decades of efforts to Islamize the armed forces. And the triumphalism of Hindu nationalism, which is reshaping India’s secular democracy as an overtly Hindu state, has driven an uncompromising approach to Pakistan.

On Sunday, there was still no indication that Pakistan or India might repair their diplomatic relations, which had been frosty even before the military escalation, or ease visa restrictions on each other’s citizens. And India did not seem to be backing away from its declaration that it would no longer comply with a river treaty between the two countries — a critical factor for Pakistan, which said that any effort to block water flows would be seen as an act of war.

The spark for the latest fighting was a terror attack on the Indian side of Kashmir that killed 26 civilians on April 22. India accused Pakistan of supporting the attackers. Pakistan denied any role.

The crisis ended a six-year lull in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Indian government had taken a two-pronged approach to Pakistan: trying to isolate its neighbor with minimum contact and to bolster security at home, particularly through heavily militarizing the Indian side of Kashmir.

Image

Celebrating after the cease-fire announcement in Hyderabad, Pakistan, on Saturday.Credit...Yasir Rajput/Reuters

Establishing a pattern of escalatory military action in response to terror attacks in 2016 and 2019, India had boxed itself into a position of maximal response. After last month’s attack, the political pressure to deliver a powerful military response was immediate.

But the choices for India’s military were not easy. It publicly fumbled the last direct clash with Pakistan, in 2019, when a transport helicopter went down and when Pakistani forces shot down a Soviet-era Indian fighter plane and captured its pilot.

Mr. Modi’s effort to modernize his military since then, pouring in billions of dollars, was hampered by supply constraints caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine. India was also stressed by a four-year skirmish on its Himalayan border with China where tens of thousands of troops remained on war footing until a few months ago.

When it came time to use force against Pakistan this past week, India wanted to put that lost prestige and those past difficulties behind it. It also sought to show a new, more muscular approach on the world stage, able to wield not just its rising economic and diplomatic power, but military might as well.

Western diplomats, former officials and analysts who have studied the dynamics between India and Pakistan said that India came out of this latest conflict looking assertive and aggressive, and perhaps has established some new level of deterrence with Pakistan.

But the way the fight played out did not suggest improvement at the operational or strategic level, they said.

Image

An Indian Army convoy in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir on Thursday.Credit...Yawar Nazir/Getty Images

In its opening round of airstrikes, on Wednesday, India struck targets deeper inside the enemy territory than it had in decades, and by all accounts had hit close enough to facilities associated with terror groups that it could claim victory.

Each day that followed was filled with language from both India and Pakistan suggesting that they had achieved what they wanted and were ready for restraint. But each night was filled with violence and escalation. More traditional artillery volleys across the border kept intensifying, bringing the heaviest loss of life. And the drone and airstrikes grew increasingly bold, until some of each country’s most sensitive military and strategic sites were being targeted.

What finally seemed to trigger the intense diplomatic pressure from the United States, with clear help on the ground from the Saudis and other Gulf states, was not just that the targets were getting closer to sensitive sites — but also just what the next step in a rapid escalation ladder for two alarmed nuclear powers could mean.

Shortly before a cease-fire was announced late on Saturday, Indian officials were already signaling that any new terror attack against India’s interests would be met with similar levels of force.

“We have left India’s future history to ask what politico-strategic advantages, if any, were gained,” said Gen. Ved Prakash Malik, a former chief of the Indian Army.

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

Mujib Mashal is the South Asia bureau chief for The Times, helping to lead coverage of India and the diverse region around it, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.

8. The Chinese Way of Winning

So you can download Boorman's 1968 book in PDF (256 pages) at the link: https://gwern.net/doc/history/1969-boorman-theprotractedgame.pdf

You can also read this Military Review article from 2018 here: https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/November-December-2018/Schwandt-Wei-Chi/

Excerpts:

In response to Chinese strategery and Western dupery, America-Firsters need to think harder. One path to enlightenment is revisiting classic studies of China’s martial ways. One such is Scott Boorman’s 1969 tome, The Protracted Game: A Wei-Chi Interpretation of Maoist Revolutionary Strategy.

Weiqi (transliterated wei-chi in some earlier systems of romanization) is the national strategy game of China; it is to the Chinese what chess is to Westerners, enjoyed by intellectuals and generals (plus admittedly, plenty of nerds). Also known by its Japanese name, go, weiqi is played with simple, undifferentiated pieces, called stones, white vs. black, on a flat grid. Unlike chess, once a stone is put down on the board, it can never be moved. But it can be removed—if the opposing player succeeds in surrounding it. That’s the object of the game, to defeat the other player by wiping out his forces and occupying the most space on the board. In Boorman’s words, victory comes from “sitting the enemy to death.”

In terms of motion and action, weiqi makes chess seem like pinball. In fact, playing weiqi is more like assembling a jigsaw puzzle, even as you seek to disassemble the opponent’s pieces.

Boorman writes that Mao Zedong was an “avid” player of weiqi. He applied all his wiles over two decades as he led the communists to their 1949 victory over the Chinese government, led by Chiang Kai-shek.

...

Yet China is a lot smarter than was Al Qaeda. The Chinese play quiet weiqi, not noisy jihad. Americans should be reminded: When studying potential enemies, we must understand the game they are playing—which might be much different than the game we like to play. If the Chinese know weiqi and its politico-military applications, then we must be sedulous students—and effective counter-players.

Knowledge is power, and power keeps the peace.

The Chinese Way of Winning

Beijing is playing weiqi with the U.S., planning to beat us in the new great game.

The American Conservative · by James P. Pinkerton · May 11, 2025

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-chinese-way-of-winning/?utm

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Sobering headline in The Wall Street Journal: “Xi Is Ratcheting Up China’s Pain Threshold for a Long Fight With Trump.”

The hottest issue, of course, is trade. Negotiations are in an uncertain state, which seems to be, in fact, the new normal. Plenty more flashpoints, too, including Taiwan, other territorial claims in the Pacific, and the latest threat, Deep Seek, the nimble Chinese AI that seems to be, in fact, a sinister twofer: both a copycat and spyware.

In the Journal’s words, “The Chinese leader wants to harden his country specifically for a confrontation with the U.S., urging officials to engage in what he calls ‘extreme scenario thinking.’” Reaching back to its roots, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs circulated a video of communist supremo Mao Zedong, declaiming in 1953 about the then-raging Korean War: “No matter how long this war will last, we’ll never yield.”

Americans may be a little fuzzy on that conflict, in which nearly 34,000 American GIs died. Yet the Chinese remember it better, as some 150,000 of their soldiers—all “volunteers,” supposedly having rushed to the front to repel the Yankee imperialists—died on nearby territory. Indeed, the regime never lets its people forget; to the CCP, the fight against the USA is a major validator.

For his part, Donald Trump, too, is talking tough: “We’re taking back our country from a sick political class that got rich selling America out and bleeding America dry... After decades of politicians who destroyed Detroit to build up Beijing, you finally have a champion for workers in the White House—and instead of putting China First, I am putting Michigan first and I’m putting America First.”

So it’s America First vs. China First. But how, exactly, could this competition be manifested? To be sure, the CCP regime is spending heavily on its military—although not so much as the U.S. Perhaps the PRC has achieved significant cost-savings by sponging up U.S. intellectual property (IP); many of its weapons do, in fact, look like knockoffs of American designs.

On the overall issue of Chinese IP theft, it’s interesting that this is one topic on which the Trumpified FBI still links to the words of former director Christopher Wray: “The greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality, is the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from China.”

About now, foreign policy realists and the restraint-minded might be asking themselves: Is there any way out of this cycle of great-power competition—this Thucydides Trap, this cold-war, risking a hot war? Perhaps a President Rand Paul would treat these issues in such a way as to moot the Blob and its hawkish presuppositions.

Yet sometimes, war comes anyway. Belgium wasn’t looking for a war in 1914, or 1940, and yet war came. Even those with an essentially defensive outlook still need to think about defense.

So now to Donald Trump. The 47th president is often thought to be the most realpolitik-oriented commander-in-chief since the 34th president, Dwight Eisenhower. Trump’s hopes for settling the Ukraine War seem to echo, in fact, the way Ike settled the Korean War, and Trump seems eager to avoid other conflicts.

As for Xi, no doubt Trump would love to make a “big, beautiful deal” with him. Yet the Thucydidean forces of tragic history might be so strong as to thwart an entente.

Meanwhile, the arms race continues. The U.S. boasts 11 aircraft carriers, while the Chinese have three, with a fourth on the way. Also, China builds 50 percent of the world’s ships, while the U.S. builds just 0.1 percent—although Trump has a plan to up that share. Regarding this rivalry, the historical-tragical mind sees echoes of the early 20th century British–German contest to build the biggest dreadnought.

Today, it’s possible that the Chinese have gained a big edge on a different kind of nautical equipment: landing barges, the kind that could be used to invade Taiwan. (In 2022, this author ventured a solution for Taiwan that, it’s safe to say, has never made it into any Blob briefing paper.)

Yet for the most part, CCP China has avoided direct competition with the U.S. Is that because China is weak? Or because it’s clever? Some 2,500 years ago, the military philosopher Sun Tzu wrote, “All warfare is based on deception… We must make the enemy believe we are far away.” To be sure, all militaries have stealthy traditions, and yet the Chinese have been more inscrutable than most.

Back in the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping set the Sun Tzu tone: “Hide Your Strength, Bide Your Time.” China played the “developing country” card: Don’t mind us, we’re very poor. Indeed, to this day, China gets a small amount of foreign aid money from the U.S., more from the European Union, and much more from the World Bank.

The American political system hardly noticed when PRC agents overcame their presumed poverty and poured cash into Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign. And we also barely noticed that, at the same time, the PRC gained much of our satellite technology.

These were, after all, the days when the U.S. and China declared themselves to be “strategic partners.” Clinton brought China into the World Trade Organization, while George W. Bush looked into the Chinese soul and saw an ally in the “global war on terror.”

In 2017, Xi traveled to Davos, posing as the champion of globalism—in contrast to you-know-who. Why, the Chinese argue that they are upholding the liberal world’s green climate aspirations—even as they themselves are still building coal-burning plants.

All this maneuvering has given the PRC fans in high places, such as The New York Times’s Tom Friedman, who has been writing in praise of the communist regime for decades; just in April, filing from Shanghai, his Steffens-esque headline: “I Just Saw the Future: It Was Not in America.”

In response to Chinese strategery and Western dupery, America-Firsters need to think harder. One path to enlightenment is revisiting classic studies of China’s martial ways. One such is Scott Boorman’s 1969 tome, The Protracted Game: A Wei-Chi Interpretation of Maoist Revolutionary Strategy.

Weiqi (transliterated wei-chi in some earlier systems of romanization) is the national strategy game of China; it is to the Chinese what chess is to Westerners, enjoyed by intellectuals and generals (plus admittedly, plenty of nerds). Also known by its Japanese name, go, weiqi is played with simple, undifferentiated pieces, called stones, white vs. black, on a flat grid. Unlike chess, once a stone is put down on the board, it can never be moved. But it can be removed—if the opposing player succeeds in surrounding it. That’s the object of the game, to defeat the other player by wiping out his forces and occupying the most space on the board. In Boorman’s words, victory comes from “sitting the enemy to death.”

In terms of motion and action, weiqi makes chess seem like pinball. In fact, playing weiqi is more like assembling a jigsaw puzzle, even as you seek to disassemble the opponent’s pieces.

Boorman writes that Mao Zedong was an “avid” player of weiqi. He applied all his wiles over two decades as he led the communists to their 1949 victory over the Chinese government, led by Chiang Kai-shek.

In a 1938 pamphlet, Mao wrote that the Reds’ struggle was

rather like a game of wei-chi. Campaigns and battles fought by the two sides resemble the capturing of each other’s pieces, and the establishment of enemy strongholds (such as Taiyuan) and our guerrilla base areas (such as the Wutai Mountains) resembles moves to dominate spaces on the board.

Boorman adds, “The underlying dynamic of Communist mobilization technique was encirclement, in direct analogy with that key wei-chi process.”

In a war of weiqi, the risk is that you wake up one day and realize that you’re surrounded and overwhelmed. In that same 1938 pamphlet, Mao added, a bit ominously, “If the game of wei-chi is extended to include the world, there is yet a third form of encirclement as between us and the enemy.” (Emphasis added.)

After Mao’s victory in 1949, American politics was vexed by the question, “Who lost China?” Now, eight decades later, we’re asking, “Who helped China get so strong?” There is an even more urgent question: “How do we defend ourselves?” Answering that means examining all the possible threats.

Some say there’s a fifth column in North America. Yet in addition, there seem to be many more infiltrating columns. The Spectator observed, “Scratch at almost any major US political story and sooner or later you’ll hit a big red nerve that belongs to the Chinese Communist party.” Going beyond familiar—but serious—concerns such as trade, cyber theft, counterfeiting, rare earth monopolization, and fentanyl, The Spectator focused on China’s $1 billion investment toward influencing Harvard’s “IP.”

Want more to worry about? Think drones. They’re obviously mobile, and yet their mere presence in the U.S. gives them a potential weiqi vibe of wait and see. According to a 2024 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a single Chinese company, DJI, accounts for 80 percent of world drone production; in the U.S. market, it’s 90 percent.

So here’s a question: If the Chinese make our drones; could they, potentially, turn them against us? Like so many flying Frankensteins? Trojan horses? (Two years ago here at The American Conservative, this author considered some of the implications for homeland security.)

If we escalate up the sneakiness scale, there’s the issue of Covid-19—how it came to be, and how it got loose. Was it a Chinese bio-weapon? That’s the emerging consensus: One close observer, Dr. Richard H. Ebright, blames China for unleashing a pandemic that killed 20 million and cost the world economy $25 trillion. Oh, but wait: According to Ebright (and many others), the Wuhan Bat Lady must share credit with Dr. Anthony Fauci and all the other American gain-of-functioneers. So maybe the PRC has at least something of a point when it seeks to shift blame for Covid onto Americans—at least a few Americans.

Interestingly, the same Rand Paul is now leading the Covid-origin investigation for the U.S. Senate. That’s encouraging in terms of fearless truth-telling, and yet it’s also a reminder that even a hardcore libertarian will find himself enmeshed in China concerns. Even avowed non-interventionists must realize that other countries might be plotting to intervene here.

Another huge window of vulnerability is AI. Last year, the Hudson Institute’s Arthur Herman wrote,

China was paving the way toward an AI-dominated future none of us wants. For the past seven years, China has been moving ahead with its plans to become the world’s AI superpower. This includes building the next high-tech industrial revolution for victory on the battlefield and creating a total surveillance multiverse.

Mindful that anything digital is AI-able, we should look askance at all Chinese electronics and software in America, starting with TikTok. That popular app is routinely found to have delivered troves of personal data back to its Chinese masters.

There’s also that new kid on the AI block, DeepSeek. This Chinese company burst on the scene earlier this year offering supposed technical superiority in the “AIrms race,” even as it fended off questions as to its exact provenance and its true purpose. In the words of a 2025 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “DeepSeek presents risks ... to the United States’ partners and allies, as well as the tech industry.”

The report found, for instance, that because DeepSeek was sloppily built, it lacks basic security protocols. So American AIs, such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini (last year, this author mocked an earlier version; it’s gotten better since) are many times more effective at thwarting hacks than DeepSeek.

In April, the U.S. House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (yes, that’s its exact name) declared,

DeepSeek represents a profound threat to our nation’s security. Although it presents itself as just another AI chatbot, offering users a way to generate text and answer questions, closer inspection reveals that the app siphons data back to the People’s Republic of China, creates security vulnerabilities for its users, and relies on a model that covertly censors and manipulates information pursuant to Chinese law.

Of course, conservatives might be thinking, None of these companies, on either side of the Pacific, are to be trusted. It’s hard to argue that point, but we can say of American companies that there’s always the hope they can be made to operate within the metes and bounds of the U.S. Constitution. Of a bad-actor American company, we can still ask, Compared to what?

In the meantime, we haven’t fully fathomed that DeepSeek is now everywhere in American life: on smart phones, in crypto, and even in HR. Indeed, given the inherent interconnectedness of the internet, it’s possible, even likely, that the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans is now sitting in Chinese databases. So as we think about it, the idea of a fifth column, or a sixth or seventh or eighth column, might need to be revised into infinity.

Can American regulators and defenders keep up? Let’s hope so, because there’s more trouble coming, as other Chinese companies, including Huawei and Alibaba, debut their AIs. In fact, the PRC brags that it has built an AI “supermarket.”

Just last month Xi Jinping told the CCP Politburo, according to a readout translated by ace Sinologist Bill Bishop, “AI can become an international public good that benefits all humanity.” My considerably freer translation: Just as we gained worldwide market share by dumping cheap goods, let’s now cut prices to insinuate our AI into everything around the world, positioning our tech like so many surrounding weiqi pieces. Then, whenever we want to, we can remove opposing stones and occupy their spaces.

Here’s how a conference this month at the American Enterprise Institute summarized China’s strategy: “Rather than competing for AGI [Artificial General Intelligence, the next step for AI] breakthroughs, China’s race is about embedding AI throughout its economy as quickly as possible.” In other words, let the Americans spend money building the niftiest tech—which the PRC can likely then steal, anyway. In the meantime, if Chinese AI is embedded (nice weiqi image) everywhere, from China to other cooperating (or unwitting) countries, Beijing wins the great game.

Mind-boggling tech brings forth nightmare forebodings, straight out of The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror: We wake up one day surrounded by our own machines—which are now their machines.

Yet there’s more: Digital updates notwithstanding, weiqi is eternally about the patient positioning of hard physical objects. The weiqi-minded might see in those impassive stones the inspiration for a devilish plan in line with Xi’s call for “extreme scenario thinking.”

For instance: Is it possible that the PRC has put down “sleeper” nuclear weapons, or other weapons of mass destruction, inside the U.S.? Given the porous-to-open borders of the last three decades—punctuated only by brief periods of Trumpian closure—is it really so hard to imagine that the PRC might have snuck in weapons, or the components of weapons, for later assembly and use? Just like stones in weiqi, these pre-positioned weapons would sit passively, tucked away under American cities, never moving, always waiting. There’d be no need for launch rockets, or guidance systems, just a way of detonating them if the call ever came from Beijing.

The point here isn’t to give the Chinese ideas about devastating America. After all, plenty of thrillers have treated sneak-nukes already, including Tom Clancy’s 1991 best-seller, The Sum of All Fears. After 9/11, plenty more grim scenarios were war-gamed.

Yet China is a lot smarter than was Al Qaeda. The Chinese play quiet weiqi, not noisy jihad. Americans should be reminded: When studying potential enemies, we must understand the game they are playing—which might be much different than the game we like to play. If the Chinese know weiqi and its politico-military applications, then we must be sedulous students—and effective counter-players.

Knowledge is power, and power keeps the peace.

The American Conservative · by James P. Pinkerton · May 11, 2025

9. Ukraine Insists Truce Must Come Before Putin’s Proposed Peace Talks

Ukraine Insists Truce Must Come Before Putin’s Proposed Peace Talks

Zelensky welcomed Russia’s consideration of ending the war but said talks can’t take place before a cease-fire

https://www.wsj.com/world/ukraine-insists-truce-must-come-before-putins-proposed-peace-talks-9509ecbc

By James Marson

Follow and Jane Lytvynenko

Updated May 11, 2025 9:08 am ET

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow is ready for direct peace talks with Ukraine. Photo: gavriil grigorov/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Vladimir Putin to implement a full cease-fire starting Monday in order to facilitate talks on an end to the war, countering the Russian president’s offer that said talks should come first.

Putin a day earlier rebuffed a cease-fire ultimatum from Kyiv and its Western allies, instead calling for direct talks aimed at achieving his goal of weakening Ukraine and pushing back NATO.

European leaders had threatened new sanctions on Russia if it didn’t sign up to an unconditional 30-day pause in fighting backed by President Trump.

The tit-for-tat proposals are the latest flurry of carefully measured diplomatic exchanges designed to offer the hope of an advance toward ending the war, which Trump has demanded, without either side making major concessions. Russia is still pursuing its initial war aim of dominating Ukraine, while Kyiv is seeking an end to the brutal three-year invasion of its territory that would leave it in control of its own future and not vulnerable to future attacks by Moscow.

Putin’s offer of talks appears calibrated to strike an accommodating pose and head off the growing pressure on Trump to impose harsher sanctions on Russia. Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with the protracted negotiations to resolve a conflict he had promised to end within 24 hours of coming to office. Last week, he threatened sanctions against any side that refused to sign on to a 30-day, unconditional cease-fire, and he has recently said he would walk away from negotiations without progress soon.

On the battlefield, Russia is ramping up offensives, according to DeepState, an independent Ukrainian battlefield monitoring group, which said Russia conducted more attacks during the recent three-day cease-fire called by Putin in early May than in the same period the previous month.

In calling for talks, Putin is hoping to revive a peace process that stalled in 2022 over Russian demands for a neutered Ukraine. The Russian leader said the aim of proposals laid out at the time was to eliminate the root causes of the conflict—Kremlin shorthand for ending Ukraine’s continued existence as a fully independent and sovereign nation that strives to integrate with the West.

Volodymyr Zelensky, dressed all in black, met with his Polish, British and French counterparts this weekend in Kyiv. Photo: Stefan Rousseau/ZUMA Press

The Trump administration favors a single deal that would both end the fighting and seal the peace. The U.S. has proposed freezing the conflict along the current front line and recognizing Russia’s occupation of Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula it invaded in 2014. Ukraine wouldn’t be required to recognize Russian control of its territory, but it would be barred from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Early Sunday, the president said that he would continue to work with both sides in the conflict to bring the war to an end. “It will be a whole new, much better, WORLD,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. “A potentially great day for Russia and Ukraine!” Trump wrote, without offering details.

Zelensky on Sunday said it was a “positive sign that Russians have finally begun to consider ending the war” but added that the first step to doing so was a cease-fire.

Ukraine, backed by its allies, has in the past said that Putin’s call for talks on root causes appears again to slow-walk the truce offer. President Emmanuel Macron of France dismissed Putin’s offer of talks before a halt in fighting. “There can be no negotiations while weapons are speaking,” he wrote on X on Sunday, when he also delivered a similar message to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country hosted previous talks to end the war.

The first round of tentative peace talks began only days after the February 2022 invasion. Russian and Ukrainian negotiators initially met in Belarus before moving to Turkey and continuing talks on and off until April. Negotiations carried on—even over Zoom—but they eventually stopped altogether in June 2022.

Putin spoke to Erdogan on Sunday about his proposed talks in Istanbul starting May 15, according to Turkish officials. “Noting that a window of opportunity to achieve peace has opened, President Erdoğan said that a comprehensive ceasefire would create the necessary environment for peace talks,” Turkey’s Directorate of Communications said about the call on X.

Stakes Rise as U.S. and China Open Second Day of Trade Talks

Trump cites progress on negotiating a ‘total reset’ on trade

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/us-china-tariffs-trade-talks-switzerland-a3171637

By Brian Schwartz

Updated May 11, 2025 4:37 am ET

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was in Geneva on Saturday for tariff talks with China. Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Key Points

What's This?

U.S. and China officials concluded marathon trade talks in Geneva for the day, with more scheduled for Sunday.
Talks were led on the U.S. side by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, but no deal was announced.
The Trump administration has suggested lowering tariffs, possibly to around 34% or 80%, seeking fairer trade and curbed fentanyl trafficking.

GENEVA—Marathon conversations here between U.S. and China officials resumed Sunday, over the continuing trade war between the countries, according to people briefed on the discussions.

The talks, which are being led on the American side by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, spanned at least eight hours Saturday without an announced deal.

President Trump posted on social media after the first day of talks concluded, saying great progress was made. “A very good meeting today with China, in Switzerland. Many things discussed, much agreed to. A total reset negotiated in a friendly, but constructive, manner,” he wrote, without offering details.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping decided to dispatch his top aides, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. Notably, in addition to his economic right-hand man, He Lifeng, Xi’s public-security minister, Wang Xiaohong, was also expected to be part of the Chinese entourage.

The first day of trade talks set the stage for a potential thawing of trade relations between the world’s two largest economies. Since starting his second term, Trump has slapped 145% tariffs on Chinese goods while Beijing has hit back with 125% duties on American products.

Though some U.S. and China officials departed the Saturday meeting early, Bessent and Greer remained for at least an extra hour to continue talks with the remaining Chinese delegation, according to one of the people briefed on the discussions. Bessent, Greer and other officials from both countries who remained were expected to have dinner at the meeting site. Earlier, Greer and Bessent were spotted having lunch with their respective teams, separate from the Chinese delegation at a nearby Italian restaurant.

The talks are taking place at the residence of the Swiss ambassador to the United Nations. The sprawling property is behind a massive gate on a small, one-way street. Dozens of law-enforcement officials, including the U.S. Secret Service, provided security. Both U.S. and Chinese officials were seen being escorted to the site in black vehicles with tinted windows.

China’s state-run news agency Xinhua described Saturday’s meetings as “an important step toward resolving the dispute” between the two world powers.

Trump has opened the door for lower tariffs. He said in recent days that they couldn’t get much higher than the current 145%, so that it was likely they would eventually come down. And Friday, he suggested lowering tariffs to 80%. On Friday night, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Fox News that the president is expected to keep significant so-called reciprocal tariffs on trade with China but may settle near 34%, which is the rate Trump announced on April 2.

Trump has said he wants fairer trade with Beijing—the president has often criticized China’s manufacturing power—and that he wants to curb its role in fentanyl trafficking into the U.S. It is likely the U.S. would want to see some commitments from China on either front before lowering tariffs.

Some administration officials viewed Trump’s 80% idea as a public message to encourage Bessent to try to get closer to completing an arrangement that would lower China’s tariff rate to around 80%, the Journal previously reported.

Write to Brian Schwartz at brian.schwartz@wsj.com

11. U.S.-Iran Nuclear Talks Hit Halfway Mark With Major Hurdles to Clear

You have to appreciate that the administration has a lot on its plate.

U.S.-Iran Nuclear Talks Hit Halfway Mark With Major Hurdles to Clear

The two sides are meeting for their fourth round of negotiations in Oman on Sunday

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-iran-nuclear-talks-hit-halfway-mark-with-major-hurdles-to-clear-ae6e7a38

By Laurence Norman

Follow and Benoit Faucon

May 11, 2025 4:37 am ET

Tehran insists its nuclear work is for civilian purposes. Photo: ABEDIN TAHERKENAREH/epa-efe/shutterstock/Shutterstock

Key Points

What's This?

Iran and the U.S. remain divided on Iran’s uranium enrichment as they meet in Oman.
Trump set a two-month deadline for talks. Iran refuses to end uranium enrichment.
Negotiations seek sanctions relief for Iran in exchange for rolling back its nuclear program.

MUSCAT, Oman—Halfway to a deadline set by President Trump, Iran and the U.S. remain divided on the key question of whether Tehran will be allowed to enrich its own uranium as the two sides meet in Oman on Sunday.

The continuation of the talks themselves is a sign that both sides would still prefer a deal amid tensions around Iran’s nuclear program and the risk of military action if they aren’t resolved diplomatically.

U.S. chief negotiator Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi are meeting for the fourth round of negotiations since April 12. President Trump, who is embarking on a Middle-East tour this week, laid down a two-month deadline for talks in a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in early March.

Before leaving for the talks on Sunday, Araghchi reiterated Tehran wouldn’t bow to a U.S. demand to end its uranium enrichment. “The blood of our nuclear scientists was shed for enrichment and cannot be compromised or negotiated,” he said, referring to the past assassination of Iranian atomic experts blamed on Israel.

Araghchi criticized the U.S. team for what he said were “contradictions” between the views expressed in public and in private. “This is one of the problems of the negotiations,” he said.

A week ago, prospects for an agreement looked dim. President Trump threatened sanctions on any country that purchased oil from Iran. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was warning Tehran it couldn’t enrich uranium under a new nuclear deal and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was threatening military action against Tehran over its support for Yemen’s pro-Iranian Houthis.

Talks that were expected to take place in Rome, but never confirmed, were delayed. Araghchi hit out at what he called the U.S.’ “unrealistic and irrational” demands.

President Trump’s announcement Tuesday of a truce deal with the Houthis put some momentum back behind talks. The truce removes the most likely immediate military flashpoint between Tehran and the U.S.

On Wednesday, U.S. Vice President JD Vance said talks were “on the right pathway.”

“Without prejudging the negotiations, I will say, so far, so good. We have been very happy by how the Iranians have responded to some of the points we have made,” he said.

At stake in negotiations: Iran’s push for sanctions relief for its beleaguered economy in exchange for rolling back its nuclear program, which U.S. officials say is just months away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.

Trump repeated this week that he would prefer a deal with Iran. The president is hoping to strike a major foreign-policy success after growing increasingly frustrated with a lack of progress in talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine and negotiations to stop the fighting in Gaza.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, which Trump will visit this week as part of his first major trip abroad since being re-elected, have said they want an agreement that will stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi also want other restrictions on Iran, including limits on destabilizing activities around the region.

Trump has continued to warn he could take military action against Iran’s nuclear program if negotiations fail. Tehran insists its nuclear work is for civilian purposes, but it is the world’s only non-nuclear-weapons country producing near-weapons-grade enriched uranium.

Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com

12. Unwitting Pawns: Companies Are on the Front Lines of a New Global Conflict

Excerpts:

Global Guardian’s 2025 Worldwide Threat Assessment explains that hostile state actors have been ramping up attacks on the private sector using methods lacking conventional war trappings.

The logic is simple: Private enterprises are the backbone of a state’s strategic potential. They operate critical infrastructure, extract and process raw materials and conduct cutting-edge AI and semiconductor research. As debt-servicing costs rise and societies move beyond the neoliberal order, nations increasingly tie their geopolitical influence to financial and economic resilience rather than efficiency. In this contest of capabilities, attacking a rival’s private industry has become a primary means of weakening their overall strategic position. Stability in everything from sourcing and operations to market access is no longer a given.

Hackers affiliated with Russia, China and Iran have hacked key systems throughout the US for years. But in the aftermath of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, members of the “Axis of Disorder” — China, Russia, North Korea and Iran — have dramatically increased efforts to harm Western firms, albeit in different ways. Across the globe, saboteurs are cutting communications lines, starting conspicuous fires at manufacturing plants and suspicious aircraft incidents — the list goes on. In 2024, Russia launched a series of attempts to assassinate key defense industry executives across Europe.

Even more concerning are the fat-tail threats of opportunistic and synchronized actions involving two or more members of the “Axis of Disorder” that are underestimated by both Western policy makers and business leaders. Former FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Congress in 2024 that Chinese hackers are penetrating US cyber systems in preparation for possible attacks on critical infrastructure to coincide with an invasion or blockade of Taiwan.

Unwitting Pawns: Companies Are on the Front Lines of a New Global Conflict

fairobserver.com · by Zev Faintuch · May 10, 2025

https://www.fairobserver.com/world-news/unwitting-pawns-companies-are-on-the-front-lines-of-a-new-global-conflict/?utm

May 10, 2025 04:48 EDT

Today’s security landscape reflects threat convergence — a reality where no catastrophe remains localized and the lines between physical and cyber threats and war and peace blur. The result is a cascade of globally interconnected crises, accelerated by the splintering of the American-led order that has dominated geopolitics since 1945. A shipping disruption in the Suez, a pathogen outbreak in Eastern China, a terrorist attack in Southern Israel or even a policy U-turn in Washington — any of these events, once contained by geography or bureaucratic inertia, can now trigger sector-wide disruptions and boardroom emergencies. Conflict now extends beyond governments and nation-states, placing businesses of every size on the front lines.

Pawns of grand strategy

Using companies for mercantilist or geopolitical ends is nothing new. From colonial-era trade monopolies to Cold War-era technology embargoes, states have historically leveraged corporations as instruments of economic warfare. However, today’s efforts to undermine other nations do not stop with overt economic methods. A rising number of insidious attacks have recently taken place using tools such as arson, sabotage, ransomware, hacking or damaging infrastructure and even assassination. These irregular warfare tactics have blurred the distinction between war and peace, placing the boardroom on the front line of conflict.

Global Guardian’s 2025 Worldwide Threat Assessment explains that hostile state actors have been ramping up attacks on the private sector using methods lacking conventional war trappings.

The logic is simple: Private enterprises are the backbone of a state’s strategic potential. They operate critical infrastructure, extract and process raw materials and conduct cutting-edge AI and semiconductor research. As debt-servicing costs rise and societies move beyond the neoliberal order, nations increasingly tie their geopolitical influence to financial and economic resilience rather than efficiency. In this contest of capabilities, attacking a rival’s private industry has become a primary means of weakening their overall strategic position. Stability in everything from sourcing and operations to market access is no longer a given.

Hackers affiliated with Russia, China and Iran have hacked key systems throughout the US for years. But in the aftermath of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, members of the “Axis of Disorder” — China, Russia, North Korea and Iran — have dramatically increased efforts to harm Western firms, albeit in different ways. Across the globe, saboteurs are cutting communications lines, starting conspicuous fires at manufacturing plants and suspicious aircraft incidents — the list goes on. In 2024, Russia launched a series of attempts to assassinate key defense industry executives across Europe.

Even more concerning are the fat-tail threats of opportunistic and synchronized actions involving two or more members of the “Axis of Disorder” that are underestimated by both Western policy makers and business leaders. Former FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Congress in 2024 that Chinese hackers are penetrating US cyber systems in preparation for possible attacks on critical infrastructure to coincide with an invasion or blockade of Taiwan.

Not only does irregular warfare put corporations in the crosshairs of adversarial nations, but the threat of major conflict is dramatically increasing as we reach a showdown over Iran’s nuclear program and as the disincentives for China “reunifying” with Taiwan fade. Last summer’s Congressional Commission on the National Defense Strategy assessed, “The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war.”

Great powers fight wars in our companies, markets and economies. Even without a formal declaration of war, rival nations constantly battle for the top, and corporations are their battlefields.

Preparing to play

The threat of malicious actions from hostile nations is a reality that corporations must prepare for. Whether we like it or not, Western businesses are actors in a zero-sum game, and there is no neutral territory.

No one-size-fits-all solution exists, but one universally bad solution is inaction. Understanding and addressing your vulnerabilities is essential to navigating this new, turbulent world order.

Companies must perform regular, robust security audits to identify physical or digital vulnerabilities. Bringing in a third party to conduct a thorough security analysis can highlight weaknesses that have become familiar features of a company. Areas to search for flaws include: your company’s hardware and software, internet and telecommunications systems, the ability to ascertain the location of your executive team and any gaps in physical security, including access control, camera surveillance and actual guards. By proactively detecting vulnerabilities, businesses can inform their defenses against a potential attack on their operations or personnel.

Once weaknesses are detected, prompt action is required. Whether it’s monitoring social discourse to identify heightened risks or enforcing robust multi-factor authentication to prevent cyberattacks, businesses must act to protect themselves from the rising threats of irregular warfare. Partnering with security firms can free companies to focus on their operations while experts assess and adjust their systems to strengthen physical and digital access control around the clock.

Training is paramount. Turn your biggest vulnerability–people–into your greatest asset. Too often, user error, emotional reasoning and pressure can overwhelm employees into making bad decisions that open the physical or digital gates to intrusion. Managers must train all employees to recognize threats and inform the appropriate personnel if they sense one. Just like in building fire drills, practice improves outcomes. Commit to regular cybersecurity awareness training and run your security incident response plans in real life. Use the insights from feedback to drive improvement in your various crisis response plans.

Finally, it is incumbent on corporate decision-makers to walk through the “what-if” and explore various scenarios that could arise from the current threat landscape. This promotes resiliency and business continuity and protects the workforce and the topline. High-level tabletop exercises and scenario gaming allow key decision makers to strategically allocate resources, diversify operations and develop contingency plans for navigating the increasingly volatile geopolitical climate.

We will fundamentally alter how we conduct international business in the coming years. Our new chaotic era creates global tensions that heighten local risks, and vice versa. Moreover, the entire global security architecture is undergoing a rewrite by everyone with a large enough pen. Businesses are liable to become collateral damage in a conflict to which they may not realize they are a party. Companies must adapt to the realities of modern warfare. Those that fail will jeopardize their viability; those that succeed will profit and strengthen our nation’s economic foundation.

[Liam Roman edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

13. Wake up, Westerners – the evils of Xinjiang are a taste of the future

This contributes to my assessment: China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions directly and/or indirectly through proxies, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, while displacing democratic institutions through subversion. It takes a long term approach, employing unrestricted warfare and its three warfares to set conditions and achieve objectives, with the main objective being the unification of China (i.e., the recovery of Taiwan)

Wake up, Westerners – the evils of Xinjiang are a taste of the future

The Chinese province has become a testing-ground for cutting-edge technological evil, as journalist John Beck shows in his grim new book

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fiction/review-john-beck-those-who-should-seized-china-xinjiang/

5/5

Tom Tugendhat

Joseph Nye Was the Champion of a World That No Longer Exists

The distinguished scholar, who coined “soft power,” shaped five decades of U.S. foreign policy.

May 9, 2025, 1:08 PM

By Suzanne Nossel, a former U.S. government official and former CEO of PEN America.

Foreign Policy · by Suzanne Nossel

U.S. Foreign Policy
United States
North America

It is poignant yet perhaps fitting to mourn Joseph Nye, the distinguished international relations scholar, just as his life’s work championing U.S. leadership and liberal internationalism has run aground in U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term.

Nye, who coined the term “soft power,” died at the age of 88 on Tuesday. His intellectual leadership, teaching, policy guidance, and diplomatic efforts shaped five decades of U.S. foreign policy. His thinking also molded the U.S. foreign-policy establishment—the collective of scholars, think tankers, officials, and civil society leaders that Ben Rhodes, a former advisor to President Barack Obama, once derisively labeled “the Blob.”

Nye and his confederates held fast to the idea that there was little America could not accomplish if it played its cards wisely: rallying ironclad allies, arguing persuasively, upholding the moral high ground, and outflanking adversaries in what Nye sometimes described as a game of “three-dimensional chess.”

Punctuating decades of decline, the early months of Trump’s second administration have closed the chapter on the U.S.-led postwar order that Nye stood for. Nye’s intellectual progeny must now do as he did: cast out tired theories to summon hardheaded yet imaginative understandings of the emerging world order and how to position the United States within it.

An image with the repeating words "Foreign Policy" in four colors.An image with the repeating words "Foreign Policy" in four colors.

Essay

Soft Power

Joseph S. Nye Jr. explains a key power resource in this essay from 1990.

Born in 1937 in a small New Jersey farming town, Nye studied as an undergraduate at Princeton University before receiving a doctorate and faculty post at Harvard University. His 1977 book, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition, co-written with political scientist Robert O. Keohane, became an instant classic. A salvo against the dominant realism of the Henry Kissinger era, the volume drew on the U.S. experience in Vietnam and the 1973 oil embargo to argue that global interconnectedness posed a series of challenges that did not submit to raw economic or military might and instead demanded cooperation and collective institution-building.

Presaging later notions of globalization, Nye’s early work revealed a careerlong penchant for peeling back the layers of international power dynamics, exposing little-noticed forces that greatly influenced geopolitics.

Nye’s gift in spotlighting, analyzing, and labeling dynamics hidden in plain sight was on sharp display when he introduced the concept of soft power in a 1990 article in Foreign Policy. This term referred to countries’ ability to mold one another’s preferences and actions through the power of example, cultural sway, and moral suasion rather than economic coercion or military force.

Building further on the concept in his 1990 book, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, Nye argued that the United States—with its origin story, constitutional values, and penchant for technological and artistic innovation—was uniquely situated to draw on less palpable sources of power, including to stave off its own relative decline as other nations rose. (A personal note: I was gratified when Nye magnanimously helped popularize my own variation on his idea, which I dubbed “smart power” in a 2004 article that argued for synthesizing Nye’s notion of soft power with hard power and using the two in concert.)

Nye would go on to write and edit nearly two dozen books on topics including nuclear security and ethics in foreign policy, as well as a novel titled The Power Game. His ideas crossed oceans and borders: The European Union, China, Russia and others have put soft power into action through cultural diplomacy, an emphasis on traditional values, and investments in seeding their languages and cultures abroad.

But more than anyone else, his work shaped U.S. foreign-policy makers into values-oriented institutionalists. Diplo-optimists, these ranks held fast to the imperatives of dialogue and cooperation. They had faith that national generosity—in the form of development aid, democracy assistance, defense guarantees, weapons, and favorable trade terms—would return priceless goodwill. These scholars and practitioners of international relations were trained on a toolkit of U.S. power that included multilateral bodies, treaties, alliances and a panoply of government-funded peace, development, and media organizations.

Nye himself was not just a theoretical defender of the role of institutions but a hands-on builder who had the skill to put his ideas into action. Charismatic and refined, Nye won over colleagues and foreign counterparts alike with his engaging demeanor, twinkling eyes, and unflagging passion for policy. He served in key national security roles in the Carter and Clinton administrations, including as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs and chair of the National Intelligence Council. He was the author of a landmark 1995 report on the importance of U.S. engagement in East Asia, which foreshadowed the so-called pivot to Asia that would be realized nearly 30 years later during the Biden administration.

Clinton at right waves as he stands next to Nye and Summers on a stage.

Nye (left) alongside then-Harvard University President Lawrence Summers and former U.S. President Bill Clinton during a speech by Clinton to Harvard students in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Nov. 19, 2001.

Nye, center, smiles as Romney and Kempthorne look toward each other and smile on either side.

Nye, then dean of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, is framed by Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (left) and Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne in Cambridge on May 29, 2003.

Nye was also instrumental in strengthening Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he served as dean from 1995 to 2004. In recent years, he led the Aspen Strategy Group, convening luminaries in his lifelong quest to find order, meaning, and direction where others see only chaos.

Nye’s hope sprang eternal about the prospects for U.S. power. (Many of his books had the word “power” in the title.) But near the end of his life, he wrestled in earnest with the question of whether the United States was in decline. His 2024 memoir, A Life in the American Century, concluded that U.S. dominance might survive another few decades but would look different than it had in his lifetime. He reflected, presciently, that while much of the consternation over the country’s prospects focused on China, his own “greater concern” was “domestic change” that could harm U.S. soft power. “Even if its external power remains dominant,” Nye noted, “a country can lose its internal virtue and attractiveness to others.”

Over the last eight years, the foundations of the belief system that Nye helped construct have corroded beyond repair. The first Trump administration showed the world a bombastic, mercurial, and sometimes ruthless side of U.S. power. A humbled Biden administration proclaimed that America was “back” only to struggle to reconcile its commitment to newfound humility with the ability to project power persuasively in an international landscape that, as Nye had predicted, was growing progressively more diffuse and contested.

More Writing by Joseph S. Nye Jr.

An illustration shows a horseshoe-shaped magnet with a U.S. flag motif attracting a giant crowd of tiny people toward it.An illustration shows a horseshoe-shaped magnet with a U.S. flag motif attracting a giant crowd of tiny people toward it.

The War on Soft Power

The initial months of Trump’s second term have brought a stunning abdication of Washington’s commitment to soft power that Nye helped instill. The current administration has dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); cut funding for civil society groups engaged in humanitarian and human rights work; recast Voice of America as a mouthpiece for the pro-Trump One America News Network; curbed immigration and foreign visas; attacked U.S. universities and research; and reduced Washington’s global diplomatic footprint.

Meanwhile, Trump’s indifference to the trans-Atlantic alliance; indulgence of Russian President Vladimir Putin; threats against Canada, Panama, and Greenland; and ricocheting tariff policies have cracked the bedrock of the country’s postwar identity.

Nye witnessed this unwinding. Just a week before his death, he said in an interview with CNN’s Jim Sciutto, “I am afraid President Trump doesn’t understand soft power. If you think of power as sticks and carrots and honey, he leaves off the honey. But if you could have the three reinforce each other, you get a lot more done. You can also economize on carrots and sticks if you have the attraction of honey. So when you cancel something like USAID humanitarian assistance, or you silence the Voice of America, you deprive yourself of one of the major instruments of power.”

Nye’s arguments about the exercise of U.S. power, innate to generations of us in the policy world, have no grip on the current crop of national security leaders. Nor do they seem to matter much to a majority in Congress or the public, who have witnessed Trump’s wrecking of long-standing instruments of U.S. prowess with scarcely a shrug.

The two men sit a a table with microphones and placards bearing their names. Above them is U.S. eagle seal on the wall.

Nye (right) testifies alongside former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage during a hearing on post-9/11 U.S. strategy before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in Washington on Nov. 6, 2007.Alex Wong/Getty Images

Nye was a product of the postwar era. Nearly 5 years old when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and a week shy of 9 as 13,000 troops paraded up Fifth Avenue to celebrate the Allied victory in 1946, Nye grew up watching a generation of young Americans rise in defense of freedom, save the world from tyranny, and position their nation astride the globe. He came of age during the Cold War as the Soviet Union offered a foil for an idealized United States and the specter of nuclear annihilation loomed. Emotive forces—glory, sacrifice, camaraderie, fear, and resolve—framed the world that Nye saw, explained, and molded.

As the memory of these signature struggles faded, 9/11 gave the United States a renewed sense of purpose, but it also spurred a reflexive overreach that marked the beginning of the end. Protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were fueled by illusions, incentives, and inertia that long outlasted the invasions’ original logic or purpose.

At this point, rising cohorts of Americans can recall no major triumphs in U.S. foreign policy. The globalization that Nye recognized as inevitable exacted a high cost for workers and communities in the United States and accelerated unprecedented income inequalities. Its benefits, including cheap goods and relative peace and prosperity, were ones Americans increasingly took for granted. Nye and Keohane’s concept of interdependence has morphed from a vision of solidarity and shared fate to a set of zero-sum entanglements to be escaped. Trump’s America is not a team player. It sees longtime allies as impediments or, at best, accomplices, rather than partners or friends.

Now, Nye’s intellectual progeny face the task of trying to guide an almost unrecognizable United States beyond the world as he knew it. Though he could not predict when, Nye foresaw that the American century that had defined his career would reach an end. While he thought perceptions of U.S. rectitude and attractiveness might wane, few expected it to happen so fast.

In Nye’s conception, the United States’ identity and its liberal ethos were inextricably intertwined. That fusion allowed all of us in the foreign-policy ranks to advocate for the country we loved and the values we held as if they were one and the same. Despite our nation’s endless betrayals and lapses of virtue, we never lost sight of what America stood for, nor gave up our faith in its better nature.

Under Trump, the country and the set of principles we long associated with it are being cleaved apart. Nye’s disciples must now learn to navigate—and perhaps one day again bridge—the gap between a beloved nation and the treasured values that its current government has left behind. As we lament the loss of Nye, we must also grieve the vanishing world he bequeathed us.

This post appeared in the FP Weekend newsletter, a weekly showcase of book reviews, deep dives, and features. Sign up here.

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Foreign Policy · by Suzanne Nossel

15. China’s hit spy drama The Secret Path gets real-life tips from top security agency

Excerpts:

The dramatisation of China’s anti-espionage drive coincides with the release by the CIA of two social media videos inviting disillusioned Chinese officials to spy for the US in a bid to take advantage of government corruption and repression in China.

China on Tuesday condemned the recruitment advertisements as a “blatant political provocation”.

Espionage

China Politics

China’s hit spy drama The Secret Path gets real-life tips from top security agency

Guided by state security experts, the series shines glam spotlight on counter-espionage tactics amid national security education drive

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3309719/kiss-and-tail-chinas-hit-spy-drama-gets-real-life-tips-top-security-agency?module=top_story&pgtype=section

William Zheng

Published: 2:00pm, 10 May 2025Updated: 6:53pm, 10 May 2025

What’s in a kiss? If it was delivered by one of the stars of China’s new hit television spy drama, the smooch may have come with a plot twist.

The tools of the trade in the world of espionage have taken centre stage in The Secret Path, which made its debut during prime time on China’s state-run CCTV on April 28, about two weeks after Beijing held its 10th annual National Security Education Day.

Like most spy dramas, the series about government agents tasked with protecting China’s nuclear secrets in the shadowy world of counter-espionage comes with plenty of hi-tech gadgets and a few deadly props: a handbag that transforms into a deadly weapon, drops of poison on a door handle, and a scanner powerful enough to steal content from a nearby computer.

Director Liu Jiang said that all of the details of “modern spy warfare” featured in his 28-episode series had been produced “under the guidance” of the Ministry of State Security (MSS), China’s top intelligence agency.

“The crew has rigorously recreated [details, including] the nuclear power plant security process, and hi-tech espionage methods,” Liu said in an interview with the official Beijing Daily published on Wednesday.

State security personnel were on site to check every shot to ensure the drama stayed as realistic as possible without revealing top secrets, according to Liu. They even oversaw seemingly minor production details, such as how a character would use a mobile phone – never during a confidential meeting, while only using personal phones when off duty.

Made-in-China television dramas have rarely featured details of secretive counter-espionage operations, as Beijing has preferred to keep such affairs low profile for security reasons. But in recent years, the MSS has moved into the spotlight in a bid to promote vigilance about national security to the Chinese public, as Beijing and Washington clash on several fronts, resulting in both sides boosting espionage and counter-espionage efforts.

The show depicts various espionage tactics, spy equipment and even drugs used by foreign intelligence agents in China, including modified blood pressure monitors with bugs to eavesdrop on Chinese nuclear experts, and software able to locate Chinese security personnel via food delivery apps. In one case, spies bribe a Chinese cleaning lady to use a special mop to collect fingerprints.

Another plot showed a foreign operative using a micro-syringe to spray drops of poison on a door handle and tea mugs in an attempt to kill high-value Chinese targets with top-secret nuclear information.

In a car chase scene, MSS personnel were followed by foreign spies who tried to use a hi-tech scanner to copy content from laptops held by the Chinese agents.

In the show, MSS characters were also equipped with a range of state-of-the-art devices to thwart plots by foreign intelligence agencies intent on stealing China’s latest technological breakthrough in a fourth-generation nuclear power plant.

One of the most impressive pieces of equipment was disguised as a stylish handbag belonging to the heroine Zhao Yaning, played by Chinese actress Gao Yuanyuan.

The handbag contained made-in-China antidotes for Western poisons, as well as devices that could jam electronic signals, and was even used for self-defence in a fight scene.

A lipstick in the handbag became a trending topic on Chinese social media after it was revealed to be not only a miniature voice recorder, but also a tracking device. It is used by a female character who kisses a target, leaving behind traces of a substance that allow her to trace the location of the subject for up to 48 hours.

Leading man Zhang Luyi plays Yang Guang, a deputy director of a municipal State Security Bureau. Zhang shot to fame for his role in the 2023 television adaptation of the Hugo Award-winning science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem.

Gadgets used by Yang and his team in the drama have included a pen-like recorder to covertly record conversations, and security scanners that can locate hidden cameras and detect unusual electronic signals to catch information leaks.

In a recent episode, the MSS agents used the special scanner to ferret out a mole – an office technician – who stealthily printed copies of secret documents for a foreign intelligence agency, and transferred sensitive information from used toner cartridges.

The MSS in March warned about security risks associated with electronic devices, such as printers and scanners, which generate electromagnetic signals that could be intercepted and analysed by spies when processing secret information.

The ministry also warned about the risks of secrets being stolen from toner cartridges, which could be analysed for residual electronic charges from previously printed documents if they fell into the hands of foreign spies.

The dramatisation of China’s anti-espionage drive coincides with the release by the CIA of two social media videos inviting disillusioned Chinese officials to spy for the US in a bid to take advantage of government corruption and repression in China.

China on Tuesday condemned the recruitment advertisements as a “blatant political provocation”.

William Zheng

William Zheng is a veteran journalist who has served and led major Hong Kong and Singaporean media organisations in his 20-year career, covering greater China. He is now a senior correspondent on the China desk at the Post.

16. To Dominate the Arctic, Trump Needs Ice-Breaking Ships. Finland Wants to Help.

Please go to the link below to view the interactive website and graphics.

To Dominate the Arctic, Trump Needs Ice-Breaking Ships. Finland Wants to Help.

The Nordic nation, with deep Baltic Sea experience, has made and designed more icebreakers than any other country

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/to-dominate-the-arctic-trump-needs-ice-breaking-ships-finland-wants-to-help-e9981c8b?st=Ukdq9r&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

By Daniel Michaels

| Photographs by Juuso Westerlund for WSJ

Updated May 11, 2025 12:08 am ET

Key Points

What's This?

Finland has helped design or build around 80% of the world’s icebreakers.
President Trump wants a new U.S. fleet. Finnish engineers are ready to assist with icebreaker development.
Finland’s expertise in icebreaker technology stems from its Baltic Sea trade.

HELSINKI—Smashing ice is straightforward—except when it is more than 10-feet thick and you’re using a ship, even one designed for the job.

If an icebreaker’s hull is the wrong shape, the ice bends but doesn’t break. Without the right paint, the ship grates against the ice like sandpaper. Spin the propellers too fast or too slow and deflected chunks of subsea ice can make the ship reverberate like a gong.

Knowledge of pitfalls like these is why Finland has helped design or build around 80% of the world’s icebreakers. Finns say they can churn out icebreakers more quickly and cheaply than anywhere else, putting them in prime position as countries race to access the Arctic’s thawing seas.

President Trump, who has pledged to buy or conquer Greenland, views the Arctic as a zone of future commerce and potential conflict. He has called for the U.S. to make a new fleet of icebreakers—and engineers from Finland are lining up to help.

“Ice is our playground,” said Mika Hovilainen, chief executive of Finnish icebreaker designer Aker Arctic. The company, which has a 246-foot-long ice-simulation tank, is now designing ships for countries including Canada and Sweden, and hopes to play a role in U.S. development plans.

“We want to be involved in every Western icebreaker,” said Hovilainen, who was lead designer on 10 icebreakers, including one that can operate sideways.

Aker Arctic, which has a 246-foot-long ice-simulation tank, is designing ships for several countries and hopes to play a role in the U.S.’s plans.

Hovilainen has a shot at achieving his ambition because Aker is part of the world’s leading network of companies making Arctic-ready engines, heating systems, antennas and other frostproof equipment. Finnish engineers have spent decades studying ice and how to design ships for it.

“What does Finland have to offer the United States? Number one is icebreakers,” said Finnish President Alexander Stubb in an interview. “We build them faster than anyone in the world and at about half the price.”

Trump, after recently meeting Stubb, posted on social media that he wanted to boost U.S.-Finnish ties, “and that includes the purchase and development of a large number of badly needed Icebreakers for the U.S.”

The U.S. has struggled to build icebreakers. The Biden administration in July struck a deal with Canada and Finland called the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort Pact to share expertise. The three governments in March reaffirmed their commitments to the ICE Pact.

Finland learned to make icebreakers out of necessity.

Icebreakers are purpose-built, which drives up costs. Only a few are produced worldwide annually, and they can last half a century. In most countries, know-how evaporates in the generation or so between new ships. But in Finland, because it has helped design or build more than 120 icebreakers over the past century, knowledge has deepened.

Alongside Aker, Finland has three shipyards that can make icebreakers and has a network of suppliers. That equipment includes swiveling external engine pods that can pivot a ship in any direction and “mill” their way through ice like a blender. According to local industry lore, the concept was developed by engineers sweating in another ultra-Finnish design: the sauna.

“Wherever you look in icebreaking, you’ll find a Finn,” said Peter Rybski, a retired U.S. Navy officer now living in Helsinki.

While Japan and South Korea are advanced economies that can still compete in building big commercial ships in large quantities, Rybski notes, Finland is unusual in its ability to profitably produce complex ships in small runs.

Across town from Aker is Finland’s largest icebreaker producer. Helsinki Shipyard, which was owned by Russian investors for a decade from 2013, just signed a contract to build an icebreaker for Canada. The yard’s new Canadian owner, Davie Shipbuilding, wants to leverage the yard’s know-how to win orders from Washington and to produce icebreakers in the U.S. Designs, components and production savvy could come from Finland.

An icebreaker under construction in Helsinki in 1963. Photo: Gerd Herold/Picture Alliance/Getty Images

For the nation of 5.6 million people, which has Europe’s longest border with Russia, unique skills for operating in the high north are a valuable asset. Icebreaker expertise has put Finland in demand inside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which it joined in 2023.

“It’s a significant capability whose value is only going to increase now with the…contested Arctic,” said Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen.

Finland learned to make icebreakers out of necessity because much of its trade with the West is via the Baltic Sea—one of the world’s busiest waterways but the only crowded one that routinely ices up.

Some Finns worry that icebreaker-production deals with shipyards in Canada or the U.S. could hand North Americans some of Finland’s valuable expertise, said Rybski. The fear is overblown, he reckoned, because Finns’ experience can’t easily be replicated.

During and after the Cold War, when Helsinki worked to stay friendly with Moscow, Finland was one of Russia’s top icebreaker suppliers. Helsinki Shipyard even made hulls for nuclear-powered models that were completed in Russia around 1989 and still operate. Petroleum and minerals in the vast Russian Arctic fueled orders for extreme-weather ships.

After Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, that cooperation stopped. Finland forced Helsinki Shipyard’s Russian investors to sell. In swooped Canadian company Davie Shipbuilding, owned by British investors who have focused on making complex, specialized vessels and innovative financing.

The Niirala border crossing between Finland and Russia.

Davie already runs a large shipyard in Quebec and recently won a contract for one of two planned Canadian icebreakers, which will be partly designed and built in Helsinki.

Davie Chief Executive James Davies said a big part of what attracted his company to the Helsinki yard was Finland’s unusual system for beginning ship construction while plans are still being completed, which is how the country can slash the time and cost to produce an icebreaker.

“When you look at the data, their approach is so well supported,” said Davies.

Rybski credits Finland’s democratic approach to business and few administrative hurdles, which means almost anyone can resolve questions quickly.

Effective cooperation is critical because icebreakers are assemblies of complex systems built to handle some of the world’s harshest conditions. Designers must understand from the outset a ship’s mission, such as scientific research or bashing a path through ice for cargo ships.

Mika Hovilainen and Arto Uuskallio of Aker Arctic, components used in the manufacture of the ships, and the company’s simulation pool.

Many icebreakers can brave temperatures down to minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit, but if a ship won’t face such frigid conditions, the cost savings can be significant.

On top of that, every shipboard system must be engineered to withstand extreme cold. Plumbing for firefighting and cooling engines must avoid freezing. Air vents can’t get blocked with snow or machinery may malfunction. If a ship can’t handle the vibrations caused by bus-sized chunks of ice hitting propellers, said Aker’s Hovilainen, “you’ll be raining antennas” as they shake loose.

Adding to the complexity, icebreaking can’t be modeled on computers the same way as motion through water and air. Impurities in ice like dust and sand introduce randomness that makes it impossible to predict exactly how a ship will behave.

To understand which details are important, Aker runs scale-model ships through its tank repeatedly and sends teams out on actual icebreakers to compare real-world results with their predictions. Aker and its peers continually refine their computer models and understanding of how ships and ice interact.

“You cannot learn that from books,” Hovilainen said.

Helsinki Shipyard executives and a model of an icebreaker the company built for Russia.

Write to Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com

17. ASEAN At A Crossroads: Safeguarding Centrality Amid South China Sea Tensions

Excerpt:

In conclusion, ASEAN’s central role in the South China Sea dispute is both essential and at risk in 2025. The bloc’s effectiveness in maintaining regional order depends on its ability to harmonize differing national interests with a unified, rule-based approach. Without significant reforms—such as establishing cohesive legal frameworks, improving decision-making processes, and implementing practical incident-management protocols—ASEAN faces the danger of marginalization as great-power rivalry intensifies. By embracing strategic autonomy, strengthening its legal foundations, and fostering regional solidarity among both elites and the wider society, ASEAN can maintain its credibility and influence. The prompt execution of these initiatives will be crucial in determining whether the bloc can continue to shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for decades to come.

ASEAN At A Crossroads: Safeguarding Centrality Amid South China Sea Tensions – OpEd

eurasiareview.com · by Simon Hutagalung · May 10, 2025

The South China Sea crystallized in 2025 as a pivotal arena for Southeast Asian diplomacy, reflecting a labyrinth of disputes, sovereignty, strategic competition, and economic imperatives. Its waters one one-third of global shipping energy, harbor reserves estimated at eleven billion barrels of oil sustain, and fish stocks vital for 3.7 million coastal livelihoods.

Amid escalating tensions between claimant states and external powers, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) confronts the urgent task of safeguarding its centrality in shaping regional security. Despite its well-established commitment to multilateral dialogue and a rule-based order, ASEAN’s capacity to address the South China Sea disputes is significantly undermined by internal divisions and external pressures.

Recent maritime incidents highlight the challenges of achieving ASEAN solidarity. According to data from the Information Sharing Centre of the Cooperation Regional Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia, there were seventy-two encounters between fishing vessels and maritime militias in contested waters during the first half of 2025. The Philippines and Vietnam experienced the majority of these confrontations, accounting for nearly sixty percent of the recorded protests against Chinese maritime activities. The uneven distribution of these encounters highlights the varying stakes each state claims and complicates efforts to formulate a unified ASEAN response.

The economic dimension adds complexity to ASEAN unity. In 2024, bilateral trade between ASEAN and China reached 890 billion US dollars, reflecting a 4.5 percent year-on-year increase. This growth solidified China as ASEAN’s largest trading partner, accounting for twenty percent of its exports and providing twenty percent of its imports. Meanwhile, the United States remained the second-largest export destination for ASEAN, receiving fourteen percent of its outbound shipments. This dependency generates divergent priorities among member states since some fear that a hardline stance in South China could trigger economic retaliation while others prioritize access market and stability.

In light of this particular predicament, ASEAN members have sought alternative partnerships to mitigate geopolitical risks. For instance, the Philippines has intensified its defense cooperation with the United States through a reinvigorated Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, which allows for the rotational deployment of American forces at four additional bases. Meanwhile, Vietnam has increased its defense budget by 8 percent for fiscal year 2025, directing funds toward naval modernization, including the acquisition of six new offshore patrol vessels. Although Indonesia is not a claimant, it has responded to overlapping Chinese claims in the Natuna Sea by boosting its maritime patrols by thirty percent and hosting trilateral exercises with Australia and Japan. These initiatives indicate a gradual shift among some members toward hedging strategies that extend beyond the ASEAN consensus.

Diplomatic progress on a Code of Conduct has been difficult to achieve. Since negotiations between ASEAN and China began in 2018, they have not resulted in a substantial framework as of May 2025. Leaked diplomatic cables indicate ongoing disagreements regarding dispute-resolution mechanisms and the geographic scope of any agreement related to features within the nine-dash line. ASEAN’s approach, known as the “ASEAN Way,” emphasizes non-binding understandings and consensus. However, this reliance on unanimity can be hindered by the objections of a single member. With no timeline established or enforcement measures, the Code remains symbolic more than practical.

The strategic competition between the United States and China is intensifying, further exacerbating ASEAN’s institutional constraints. Both powers have significantly increased their naval deployments and conducted high-profile exercises to reassure allies and demonstrate their resolve. In March 2025, the U.S. Navy carried out Freedom of Navigation Operations within twelve nautical miles of disputed features four times, prompting formal protests from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In response, China conducted extensive maritime drills near the Paracel Islands in April, involving over fifty vessels and twelve military aircraft. This cycle of action and counteraction increases the risk of miscalculation and undermines ASEAN’s capacity to act as a buffer between the great powers.

To navigate these multifaceted challenges, ASEAN must decisively undertake institutional reforms. First, member states should urgently commit to a unified interpretation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, establishing an ASEAN legal task force to harmonize national maritime claims domestically and with international legislation norms. ASEAN’s consolidated position would strengthen the bloc’s negotiating posture in future Code of Conduct discussions. Second, ASEAN must enhance its decision-making by reconsidering the strict consensus threshold, potentially adopting a qualified vote majority for urgent security matters to prevent deadlock. Third, deeper people-to-people connectivity through academic exchanges, joint research on maritime ecology, and civil and society forums would cultivate a shared identity and mutual understanding across member states.

Furthermore, adopting a regional incident-management protocol with clearly delineated escalation thresholds would mitigate the probability of maritime altercations spiraling into broader conflicts. Such a mechanism could integrate real-communication time channels among claimant Coast Guards and navies supported by confidence-building measures such as joint search-and-rescue exercises, shared and hydrographic surveys. These practical steps operationalize ASEAN centrality by fostering mutual trust and demonstrating tangible cooperation.

In conclusion, ASEAN’s central role in the South China Sea dispute is both essential and at risk in 2025. The bloc’s effectiveness in maintaining regional order depends on its ability to harmonize differing national interests with a unified, rule-based approach. Without significant reforms—such as establishing cohesive legal frameworks, improving decision-making processes, and implementing practical incident-management protocols—ASEAN faces the danger of marginalization as great-power rivalry intensifies. By embracing strategic autonomy, strengthening its legal foundations, and fostering regional solidarity among both elites and the wider society, ASEAN can maintain its credibility and influence. The prompt execution of these initiatives will be crucial in determining whether the bloc can continue to shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for decades to come.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own.

References

Schultheiss, C. (2024). Ocean Governance and Conflict in the East and South China Sea: Negotiating Natural Resources, Institutions and Power. Amsterdam University Press.
Carty, A. (2024). The History and Sovereignty of the South China Sea Islands. New Star Press.
Guo, Y., & Pou, S. (Eds.). (2024). Sustainable Peace of the South China Sea: The 20th Anniversary of Signing the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (Series on Asian Regional Cooperation Studies, Vol. 11). World Scientific Publishing Company.

eurasiareview.com · by Simon Hutagalung · May 10, 2025

18. 'Beacon of freedom' dims as US initiatives that promote democracy abroad wither under Trump

Sadly, these initiatives contribute to effective political warfare, irregular warfare, and unconventional warfare (though I am sure none of the agencies that execute these programs want to be thought of in that way).

'Beacon of freedom' dims as US initiatives that promote democracy abroad wither under Trump

By CHRISTINE FERNANDO

Updated 7:39 AM EDT, May 11, 2025

AP · May 11, 2025

CHICAGO (AP) — Growing up in the former Soviet Union, Pedro Spivakovsky-Gonzalez’s father and grandparents would listen to Voice of America with their ears pressed to the radio, trying to catch words through the government’s radio jamming.

The U.S.-funded news service was instrumental in helping them understand what was happening on the other side of the Iron Curtain, before they moved to the United States in the 1970s.

“It was a window into another world,” Spivakovsky-Gonzalez said. “They looked to it as a sort of a beacon of freedom. They were able to imagine a different world from the one they were living in.”

When Spivakovsky-Gonzalez and his family heard of President Donald Trump’s attempts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media — the agency that oversees VOA, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia –- he said it was a “gut punch.”

The first months of the second Trump administration have delivered blow after blow to American efforts to promote democracy abroad and pierce the information wall of authoritarian governments through programs that had been sustained over decades by presidents of both political parties.

The new administration has decimated the Agency for Global Media, restructured the State Department to eliminate a global democracy office and gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development, which just last year launched an initiative to try to halt democratic backsliding across the globe. In all, the moves represent a retrenchment from the U.S. role in spreading democracy beyond its borders.

Experts say the moves will create a vacuum for promoting freedom and representative government, and could accelerate what many see as anti-democratic trends around the world.

“The United States has historically been the leading power in spreading democracy globally. Despite different administrations, that has remained the case –- until now,” said Staffan Lindberg, a political science professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

Targeting a broad swath of democracy and civil society initiatives

David Salvo, managing director for the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund, said promoting democracy abroad has been “a pillar of American foreign policy in the last 50 years” as a means of ensuring more stable, peaceful relationships with other countries, reducing the threat of conflict and war, and fostering economic cooperation.

Yet among Trump’s early actions was targeting democracy programs through the State Department and USAID, which had launched a new global democracy initiative at the tail end of Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency. The Treasury Department halted funding to the National Endowment for Democracy, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in April he would shutter a State Department office that had a mission to build “more democratic, secure, stable, and just societies.”

Funding cuts have hit the National Democratic Institute, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems and U.S. nonprofits that have worked for decades “to inject resources into environments so that civil society and democratic actors can try to effect change for the better,” including through bolstering unstable democracies against autocrats, Salvo said.

Whether global democracy programs are worth funding was central to a hearing Thursday held by a U.S. House Foreign Affairs subcommittee as Rep. Maria Salazar, R-Fla., repeatedly asked how to “ensure our return on investment is really high.”

About 1.2% of the federal budget went to foreign aid in the 2023 fiscal year, according to the Pew Research Center.

“I understand the committee is interested in how we can improve ... and get back to basics,” Tom Malinowski, a former Democratic congressman from New Jersey and assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor under President Barack Obama, told lawmakers. “The problem is the administration is eliminating the basics right now.”

Uzra Zeya, who leads the international nonprofit Human Rights First after serving in the Biden State Department, said it was “heartbreaking and alarming” to watch the U.S. essentially dismantle its democracy and human rights programs.

“The potential long-term impacts are devastating for U.S. national security and prosperity,” she said.

Diminishing the messaging pipelines for freedom

For more than 80 years, VOA and its related outlets have delivered news across the world, including to more than 427 million people every week in 49 languages, according to a 2024 internal report. The broadcaster began during World War II to provide Germans with news, even as Nazi officials attempted to jam its signals. The Soviet Union and China attempted to silence its broadcasts during the Cold War. Iranian and North Korean governments have also tried to block access to VOA for decades.

But the most successful attempt to silence VOA has been through its own government. It was effectively shut down in March through an executive order.

Lisa Brakel, a 66-year-old retired librarian in Temperance, Michigan, said VOA was a “mainstay” when she was a music teacher in Kuwait in the 1980s. She and her colleagues would listen together in the apartment complex where the American teachers were housed, using it as a way to stay up-to-date with U.S. news.

“When I saw the news, I thought, ‘No, they can’t shut this down. Too many people depend on that,’” Brakel said. “As a librarian, any cuts to free access to information deeply concern me.”

Cuts will likely embolden US competitors

The broadcaster’s future remains in flux after a federal appellate court paused a ruling that would have reversed its dismantling. This was just a day after journalists were told they would soon return to work after being off the air for almost two months. Even if they are allowed back, it’s not clear the mission would be the same. This past week, the Trump administration agreed to use the conservative and heavily pro-Trump media network OAN’s feed on VOA and other services.

In Asia, dismantling Radio Free Asia would mean losing the world’s only independent Uyghur language news service, closing the Asia Fact Check Lab as it reports on misinformation from the Chinese Community Party, and curbing access to information in countries such as China, North Korea and Myanmar that lack free and independent media, the broadcaster’s president, Bay Fang, said in a statement.

“Their invaluable work is part of RFA’s responsibility to uphold the truth so that dictators and despots don’t have the last word,” Fang wrote in May in The New York Times.

Experts who monitor global democracy said the information gap created by the administration will embolden U.S. competitors such as Russia and China, which already are at work trying to shape public opinion.

Barbara Wejnert, a political sociologist at the University at Buffalo, who studies global democracies, said diplomatic efforts through U.S. broadcasters and democracy nonprofits helped precipitate a “rapid increase in democratizing countries” in the late 20th century.

“Especially today when the truth is distorted and people don’t trust governments, spreading the notion of freedom and democracy through media is even more vital,” she said.

___

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

AP · May 11, 2025

18. The Ideological Gurus Battling for the Soul of Trump World

Are these the political philosophies (and people) we want influencing the future of America?

The Ideological Gurus Battling for the Soul of Trump World

Techno-libertarian Curtis Yarvin and Catholic conservative Patrick Deneen have just one thing in common: a desire to destroy the American establishment.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/maga-idiology-curtis-yarvin-patrick-deneen-9f93d566?st=4LndAK&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

By Joshua Chaffin

and Zusha Elinson

May 9, 2025 12:45 pm ET

Trump’s advisers are split between tech futurists like Musk and conservative Catholics like Vance.
Tech futurists envision a libertarian world, while conservative Catholics want a return to tradition.
Curtis Yarvin, a philosopher, gains influence with ideas of dismantling democracy.

When President Trump announced last month that he would upend decades of American trade policy by imposing massive tariffs even on longtime allies, he aroused the competing spirits of his closest advisers. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, was all too aware of the disruption tariffs would pose to his electric vehicle company, Tesla, with factories and suppliers around the world. He blasted Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, as “a moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks.”

Vice President JD Vance, on the other hand, is an ardent defender of a trade policy that Trump insists will restore industrial jobs to the Rust Belt, including Vance’s home state of Ohio. “What has the globalist economy gotten the United States of America?” he asked on Fox News last month. “We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture. That is not a recipe for economic prosperity.”

Within that clash were strains of two radical and conflicting philosophies that have animated Trump’s first 100 days. On one side are tech bros racing to create a new future; on the other, a resurgent band of conservative Catholics who yearn for an imagined past. Both groups agree that the status quo has failed America and must be torn down to make way for a new “postliberal” world. This conviction explains much of the revolutionary fervor of Trump’s second term, especially the aggressive bludgeoning of elite universities and the federal workforce.

But the two camps disagree sharply on why liberalism should be junked and what should replace it. The techies envision a libertarian world in which great men like Musk can build a utopian future unfettered by government bureaucrats and regulation. Their dark prince is Curtis Yarvin, a blogger-philosopher who has called for American democracy to be replaced by a king who would run the nation like a tech CEO.

The conservative Catholics, in contrast, want to return America to a bygone era. They venerate local communities, small producers and those who work with their hands. This “common good” conservatism, as they call it, is bound together by tradition and religious morality. Unlike Musk, with his many baby mamas and his zeal to colonize Mars, they believe in limits and personal restraint.

Patrick Deneen, seen here in 2017, is a leading thinker in the Catholic movement known as ‘common-good’ conservatism. Photo: Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame

The Catholics’ worldview may be best expressed by Patrick Deneen, a political philosopher at the University of Notre Dame whose 2018 book “Why Liberalism Failed” garnered a recommendation from Barack Obama. David Deane, a Catholic theologian, says that Deneen’s 2023 book “Regime Change” offered a preview of the Trump administration’s intention to breathe fire on America’s cultural institutions. The book “flagged for many of us the fact that Vance would be waging war on the universities. They will, in turn, wage war to a certain extent on the media. They’ve already waged war on American NGO activity,” said Deane, author of the book “The Tyranny of the Banal” and a close observer of the ”common good” movement. “For them politics is wholly insufficient to bringing about the kind of transformation of our social order that they yearn for.”

Like others, Deane marvels at Trump’s ability to corral tech futurists and religious traditionalists into the same political movement—those thrilled by the prospect of transhumanism and those committed to protecting the dignity of the human person. “There’s few figures less Catholic than Musk!” he quipped, calling him a “neo-pagan.” But he also wonders how long it will last. “At some stage a civil war is coming to the Trump movement,” he predicted. “And I think Musk and Vance will be on two very different sides of that civil war.”

‘Democracy Is Bunk’

On a recent evening at the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge, Mass., the shaggy-haired Yarvin, dressed in a leather jacket and jeans, was laying out some of his ideas for a standing-room-only crowd that had come to watch him debate Danielle Allen, a Harvard professor of political philosophy. The event was not sanctioned by the university and, for security reasons, the venue was kept private.

It wasn’t always easy to follow a man who speaks in pages, not paragraphs. Yarvin was often obscure, digressing from the Boer War to Machiavelli, universal basic income and 1980s Japanese mercantilism. He was also provocative: “I’m like, do you want democracy? This abstraction, this ideal that people are talking about? Or do you want to be in a competently governed country that is not in a state of cold civil war?”

More than a decade ago, when Yarvin blogged under the name Mencius Moldbug, he was widely dismissed as an internet troll for arguing that “democracy is bunk” and that Americans should “get over their dictator-phobia.” But his profile has grown so quickly that Allen, a celebrated Ivy League political theorist, engaged seriously with his argument for an American monarchy. Writing on The Wall Street Journal’s oped page this week, Allen explained that Harvard students invited her to debate Yarvin and ”when students ask for help thinking about intellectual material, my job is to provide that help.”

Curtis Yarvin, once dismissed as an internet troll, at the Harvard Faculty Club on May 5, after his debate with political theorist Danielle Allen. Photo: Jennifer Levitz/WSJ

At the event, Allen argued that Yarvin “thinks we need an absolute monarch unaccountable, no separation of powers, no checks and balances, no limits and so forth. Could be Trump. He kind of elected him. Maybe that’s already happening…Could be Musk…Hard to say.”

Allen also questioned Yarvin’s grasp of history. “It is not the case that autocracies over the course of history have delivered good for human beings,” she said. “They have consistently violated freedom.”

Afterward, Yarvin held court for students and other attendees. He praised JD Vance for his clarity about the decline of rural America and his ability to speak both “populist language” and “the language of Yale,” where the vice president went to law school. But he attacked Christopher Rufo, another leading figure in the conservative movement. Rufo was instrumental in instigating Claudine Gay’s resignation as president of Harvard and has earned praise from Vance as “a leading voice in the movement to restore merit and excellence” to universities, but Yarvin dismissed him as “a grifter selling fake civil war.”

In an email, Rufo responded that Yarvin had backed off his previous goal of “liquidating” Harvard to embrace his own of “re-orienting” it. “I’ve advanced that project in real terms,” Rufo wrote. “He’s mumbled about it whilst wearing a leather jacket. The real debate is within Curtis’ fevered mind.”

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Aidan Fitzsimons, a Harvard senior who attended the event, hailed Yarvin as a vital force in the new administration. “I think the biggest difference between Trump 2016 and Trump 2024 is that a sufficiently sizable chunk of the center-slash-tech right swung for Trump. And I think for a lot of intellectuals, Yarvin was like a really big part of that,” he said, describing him as a leading figure in an ascendant West Coast “counter-elite.”

It was Yarvin’s willingness to break political taboos that earned him a following in Silicon Valley, where powerful men chafed against the structures of the state. “A verbose and dyspeptic geek with an abiding distaste for the mainstream Left,” Yarvin became the “house political philosopher” for PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, wrote journalist Max Chafkin in his biography of Thiel, “The Contrarian.”

Long before Trump took aim at Harvard, Yarvin argued that government recognition should be withdrawn from elite universities, which held too much sway over American politics and culture. (He himself graduated from Brown.) Long before DOGE, Yarvin advocated for what he called RAGE: Retire All Government Employees.

Yarvin’s writing caught the attention of the new right, including Vance, who praised his idea for eliminating the “administrative state” on a podcast in 2021. “I’m sympathetic to that project,” the vice president said at the time. The same year, Yarvin bantered on a podcast with Michael Anton, now the director of policy planning in Trump’s State Department, about how a president might seize more power.

Yarvin’s school of thought has been called the “Dark Enlightenment” or the neo-reactionary movement. The “Nerd Reich” is how Gil Duran, a veteran Democratic staffer who is now an independent journalist, describes it.

“These are crazy ideas that should have been lost in an internet chat forum,” Duran said. “But when billionaires decide that they’re good ideas, we all have to deal with them.”

The Virtues of ‘The Many’

Yarvin, an atheist with a devil-may-care attitude, would appear to have little in common with the coat-and-tie wearing Deneen, who despaired in a recent speech about the casual dropping of the “F-bomb” in modern society.

But both are outsiders of a sort. Deneen spent years on the faculties of Princeton and Georgetown as a Catholic conservative with few allies before arriving at Notre Dame in 2012. “Why Liberalism Failed” drew the attention of readers seeking to understand Trump’s rise—as did Vance’s book about his own Appalachian roots, “Hillbilly Elegy.” Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019 and gravitated toward Deneen’s intellectual circle. After his selection as Trump’s running mate, Deneen praised Vance as “a man of deep personal faith and integrity, a devoted family man, a generous friend and a genuine patriot.”

In 2023, when “Regime Change” was published, then-Senator Vance attended a talk by Deneen at Washington, D.C.’s Catholic University extolling the virtues of “the many”—ordinary people who are pious and rooted and know how to fix their own cars. “I’m looking at you, JD,” Deneen said.

Vice President JD Vance at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., Feb. 28. Patrick Deneen has praised Vance as ‘a man of deep personal faith and integrity.’ Photo: ting shen/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Vance later joined his mentor on stage for a panel discussion, along with Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation and architect of Project 2025, a right-wing blueprint for Trump’s second term. “You need to make it much more profitable to invest in the United States, and much less profitable to invest overseas,” Vance said during their discussion, presaging the Trump tariffs. He also lamented that the common man was at the mercy of “an American regime” of merged corporate and government elites that betrayed the common good.

It is fair to say that Deneen doesn’t believe technology will save the world. He bemoans an America ravaged by economic and social liberalism—a fallen country in which divorce, out-of-wedlock births and abortion are celebrated as examples of liberation. In the populist uprisings of Brexit and Trump, he said in the 2023 talk, he saw an inchoate plea from below: “I want to overturn the party of progress and restore the party of order.”

Like Vance, Deneen sometimes drips with contempt for elites who “like nice restaurants.” He can also be brooding. In 2021, speaking at the National Conservatism conference in Orlando, Fla., he described America’s oligarchs as fomenting “an ideology of rapine and plunder—the stripping of wealth from a ship that they are sinking while busily stocking the lifeboats until the last moment when they will be able to cut loose.”

Yet when Trump and Vance took the oath of office in January, some of the world’s richest men—including Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg—were there to pay homage, in an extraordinary spectacle of wealth and power.

Elon Musk at a cabinet meeting in the White House, April 30, 2025. Curtis Yarvin has proposed giving NASA’s budget to Musk instead: ‘I bet we would get a lot more cool space stuff.’ Photo: Evan Vucci/Associated Press

For Musk and Bezos, the “lifeboats” Deneen talked about are rocket ships, which will allow humanity to start a new civilization on the Moon or Mars. At Harvard this week, Yarvin proposed giving Musk control of NASA: “If you basically said, all right, NASA spends $25 billion on cool space stuff, let’s give Elon Musk $25 billion a year to spend on cool space stuff. I bet we would get a lot more cool space stuff than what NASA delivers.”

An Unwieldy Coalition

It remains to be seen which side will gain the upper hand in the White House—Musk or Vance, Yarvin or Deneen. Will the administration prioritize policies to encourage women to bear more children, or the establishment of “freedom cities” in which technology companies rule and are free to test their newfangled ideas?

There are some policies on which Catholic conservatives and tech libertarians can agree, even if their motivations differ. Both back the eradication of DEI, for example. For the tech bros, it undermines meritocracy, penalizing great men like Musk in their pursuit of wealth and dominance. Vance, meanwhile, has dismissed DEI as a way for elite liberals to flatter themselves while ignoring the plight of the working class.

Ultimately, it is the vice president himself who may determine the future of this unwieldy coalition. Both sides have reason to believe Vance is one of theirs: He is a common-good Catholic who went to work for Thiel’s venture-capital firm in 2017 and credits him as a friend and mentor. The billionaire, in turn, donated millions to Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign.

“If Vance ever ascends to the presidency or runs for President…there’s going to be a lot of Catholics, a lot of Silicon Valley types and a lot of reformed Protestants who are going to see in JD themselves,” predicts Brad Onishi, a religious scholar who hosts a podcast on Christian nationalism. “Not somebody that could be in their interest, but themselves.” That will require finesse to manage.

Meanwhile, Yarvin, ever coy, downplays his own political influence. “I’m actually, um, much more distant from Washington than most people think,” he said after the Harvard event. “People imagine me as some kind of Svengali whispering in these people’s ears. I just post blog posts on the internet. Right?”

Appeared in the May 10, 2025, print edition as 'The Ideological Gurus Battling for the Soul of Trump World MAGA’s Rival Prophets'.

19. President Trump fires Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden

Of course it has books published about DEI.

The Library of Congress gets a copy of every book published in the United States. It is required for copyright purposes.

Excerpts:

“The current #LibrarianOfCongress Carla Hayden is woke, anti-Trump, and promotes trans-ing kids,” AAF said on its X account earlier Thursday, just hours before the firing was made public. “It’s time to get her OUT and hire a new guy for the job!”

...

The Library of Congress, with its stately buildings across from the U.S. Capitol, holds a vast collection of the nation’s books and history, which it makes available to the public and lawmakers. It houses the papers of nearly two dozen presidents and more than three dozen Supreme Court justices.

It also has collections of rare books, prints and photographs, as well as troves of music and valuable artifacts — like a flute owned by President James Madison, which the singer and rapper Lizzo played in a 2022 performance arranged by Hayden.

President Trump fires Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden

AP · by SEUNG MIN KIM · May 9, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump abruptly fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden on Thursday as the White House continues to purge the federal government of those perceived to oppose the president and his agenda.

Hayden was notified in an email late Thursday from the White House’s Presidential Personnel Office, according to an email obtained by The Associated Press. Confirmed by the Senate to the job in 2016, Hayden was the first woman and the first African American to be librarian of Congress.

“Carla,” the email began. “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as the Librarian of Congress is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service.” A spokesperson for the Library of Congress confirmed that the White House told Hayden she was dismissed.

Hayden, whose 10-year term was set to expire next year, had come under backlash from a conservative advocacy group that had vowed to root out those standing in the way of Trump’s agenda. The group, American Accountability Foundation, accused her and other library leaders of promoting children’s books with “radical” content and literary material authored by Trump opponents.

“The current #LibrarianOfCongress Carla Hayden is woke, anti-Trump, and promotes trans-ing kids,” AAF said on its X account earlier Thursday, just hours before the firing was made public. “It’s time to get her OUT and hire a new guy for the job!”

All around the government, Trump has been weeding out officials who he believes don’t align with his agenda, from the Justice Department to the Pentagon and beyond. At times, the firings come after conservative voices single out officials for criticism.

Earlier Thursday, the acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was pushed out one day after he had testified that he did not agree with proposals to dismantle the organization. Trump has suggested that individual states, not FEMA, should take the lead on responding to hurricanes, tornadoes and other crises.

At the Pentagon, more than a half-dozen top general officers have been fired since January, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. CQ Brown Jr. The only two women serving as four-star officers, as well as a disproportionate number of other senior female officers, have also been fired.

The unexpected move Thursday against Hayden infuriated congressional Democrats, who initially disclosed the firing.

“Enough is enough,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who called Hayden “a “trailblazer, a scholar, and a public servant of the highest order.”

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said Hayden was “callously fired” by Trump and demanded an explanation from the administration as to why she was dismissed.

“Hayden, has spent her entire career serving people — from helping kids learn to read to protecting some of our nation’s most precious treasures,” said Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee that oversees the Library.

“She is an American hero,” he said.

The Library of Congress, with its stately buildings across from the U.S. Capitol, holds a vast collection of the nation’s books and history, which it makes available to the public and lawmakers. It houses the papers of nearly two dozen presidents and more than three dozen Supreme Court justices.

It also has collections of rare books, prints and photographs, as well as troves of music and valuable artifacts — like a flute owned by President James Madison, which the singer and rapper Lizzo played in a 2022 performance arranged by Hayden.

The Democratic leaders praised Hayden, who had been the longtime leader of Baltimore’s library system, for a tenure that helped modernize the Library and make it more accessible with initiatives into rural communities and online.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., applauded Hayden as “an accomplished, principled and distinguished Librarian of Congress.”

“Donald Trump’s unjust decision to fire Dr. Hayden in an email sent by a random political hack is a disgrace and the latest in his ongoing effort to ban books, whitewash American history and turn back the clock,” Jeffries said.

“The Library of Congress is the People’s Library. There will be accountability for this unprecedented assault on the American way of life sooner rather than later,” he said.

New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, the top Democrat on the Senate panel that oversees funding for the library, said the firing, which he said came at 6:56 p.m., was “taking his assault on America’s libraries to a new level.”

“Dr. Hayden has devoted her career to making reading and the pursuit of knowledge available to everyone,” he said.

Robert Newlen, the principal deputy librarian, said he would serve as acting librarian of Congress “until further instruction” in a separate email seen by the AP.

“I promise to keep everyone informed,” he wrote to colleagues.

Hayden spoke recently of how libraries changed her own life, and opened her to the world.

“Libraries are the great equalizer,” she posted on X during National Library Week last month.

“And when you have a free public library in particular,” she said, it’s an “opportunity center for people all walks of life, and you are giving them the opportunity to make choices on which information, entertainment and inspiration means the most to them.”

AP · by SEUNG MIN KIM · May 9, 2025

21. One of Alcatraz's last living inmates on Trump's plan to reopen prison

I visited Alcatraz a couple of weeks ago. A fascinating place. I am sure there is probably a billion dollars in reconstruction work necessary to restore it to a functioning prison.

One of Alcatraz's last living inmates on Trump's plan to reopen prison

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yep08r9vjo?utm

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Madeline Halpert

BBC News, New York

Lily Jamali

BBC News, Alcatraz Island

Daniel A. Edwards

Hopkins has moved back to his home state of Florida since he was released in 1963

When Charlie Hopkins thinks back to the three years he spent in one of America's most famous prisons, he remembers the "deathly quiet" the most.

In 1955, Hopkins was sent to Alcatraz - a famed prison on an isolated island off the coast of San Francisco - after causing trouble at other prisons to serve a 17-year sentence for kidnapping and robbery.

Falling asleep at night in his cell on the remote island, he said, the only sound was the whistle of ships passing.

"That's a lonely sound," Hopkins said. "It reminds you of Hank Williams singing that song, 'I'm so lonesome I could cry.'"

Now 93 and living in Florida, Hopkins said the San Francisco National Archives informed him that he is likely the last surviving former Alcatraz inmate. The BBC could not independently verify this.

In an interview with the BBC this week, Hopkins described life at Alcatraz - which formed the setting for the 1996 film The Rock - where he made friends with gangsters and once helped plan an unsuccessful escape.

Although it closed decades ago, US President Donald Trump recently claimed that he wants to re-open it as a federal prison.

When Hopkins was transferred to the high-security prison in 1955, from an Atlanta facility, he remembers it being clean, but barren. And there were few distractions - no radio at the time, and few books, he said.

"There was nothing to do," he said. "You could walk back and forth in your cell or do push-ups."

Hopkins kept busy part of the time with his job cleaning Alcatraz, sweeping the floors and buffing them "until they shined", he said.

He was sent to prison in 1952 in Jacksonville, Florida, for his role in a series of robberies and kidnappings. He was part of a group that took hostages to get through roadblocks and steal cars, he said.

The men who broke out of Alcatraz with a spoon

National Archives

Charlie Hopkins spent three years in Alcatraz prison after causing trouble in other facilities

At Alcatraz, Hopkins had some infamous neighbours. The facility housed many violent criminals over its 30 years - Al Capone; Robert Stroud, a murderer known as the "Birdman of Alcatraz"; and crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger - making it the subject of a host of films and television shows.

A 22-acre island, 1.25 miles (2km) off San Francisco and surrounded by freezing waters with strong currents, Alcatraz was originally a naval defence fort. It was rebuilt in the early 20th century as a military prison. The US Justice Department took it over in the 1930s, transforming the facility into a federal prison to address rampant organised crime at the time.

Even in the high-security prison, Hopkins said he still managed to get into trouble and spent many days in the facility's "D Block" - solitary confinement where inmates who misbehaved were held and rarely let out of their cells.

His longest stint there - six months - came after he tried to help several other prisoners, including notorious bank robber Forrest Tucker, escape Alcatraz, Hopkins said. He helped steal hacksaw blades from the prison's electric shop to cut the prison bars in the basement kitchen.

The plan didn't work - prison guards discovered the blades in other inmates' cells, Hopkins said. "A few days after they locked them up, they locked me up," he said.

But that did not stop one of the inmates.

In 1956, when Tucker was taken to a hospital for a kidney operation, he stabbed his ankle with a pencil so prison guards would have to remove his leg irons, Tucker told the New Yorker. Then, as he was taken to get an X-ray, he overpowered hospital orderlies and ran away, he said.

He was captured in a hospital gown in a cornfield hours later.

As more prisoners attempted to escape Alcatraz over the years, officials ramped up security, Hopkins said.

"When I left there in 1958, the security was so tight you couldn't breathe," he said.

All told, there were 14 separate attempts over the years involving 36 inmates, according to the National Park Service.

One of the most famous involved Frank Morris, and brothers Clarence and John Anglin, who escaped in June 1962 by placing papier-mâché heads in their beds and breaking out through ventilation ducts. They were never found, but the FBI concluded that they drowned in the cold waters surrounding the island.

A year later, the prison shut down after the government determined it would be more cost-effective to build new prisons than to keep the remote island facility in operation.

Now it's a publicly run museum visited by millions each year that generates about $60m (£45m) a year in revenue for park partners.

The building is decrepit, with peeling paint, rusted pipes, and crumbling toilets in each cramped cell. Construction on the main prison facility began in 1907, and more than a century of exposure to the elements has rendered the place all but uninhabitable.

Trump said this week, however, that he wants his government to re-open and expand the island prison for the country's "most ruthless and violent offenders".

A tour group visits Alcatraz

Alcatraz "represents something very strong, very powerful" - law and order, Trump said.

But experts and historians said Trump's proposal to re-establish the prison is far-fetched, as it would cost billions to repair and bring up to date with other federal facilities.

Hopkins agrees. "It would be so expensive," he said.

"Back then, the sewage system went into the ocean," he added. "They'd have to come up with another way of handling that."

Hopkins left Alcatraz five years before it closed down for good. He had been transferred to a prison in Springfield, Missouri and given psychiatric medication that improved his behaviour and helped him heal psychological issues, he said.

But the avid Trump supporter said he does not believe the president's proposal is serious.

"He don't really want to open that place," Hopkins said, adding that Trump was trying to "get a point across to the public" about punishing criminals and those who enter the US illegally.

Hopkins was released in 1963, working first at a truck stop before taking on other jobs. He went back to his home state of Florida, where now he has a daughter and grandson.

After several decades reflecting on his crimes and life in Alcatraz, he wrote a 1,000-page memoir, with nearly half of the book detailing his troubled behaviour, he said.

"You wouldn't believe the trouble I caused them when I was there," he said. "I can see now, looking back, that I had problems."

Trump orders reopening of notorious Alcatraz prison

22. Defense Stocks Are Under Fire. How to Play the New World Order.

Charts and graphics at the link.

Defense Stocks Are Under Fire. How to Play the New World Order.

Traditional contractors L3Harris and Northrop look like winners. Upstarts like AeroVironment, Karman, and Kratos are worth watching, too.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/defense-palantir-boeing-rtx-lockheed-northrop-stocks-b5f0c622

By Al Root

May 09, 2025, 1:00 am EDT

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Disruption has come to the military-industrial complex. Defense stocks have lost the first battle, but they can still win the war.

The past year has been a trying one for defense companies like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics as they fight disruption on two fronts. In the first, the way wars are fought has changed, from the Russia-Ukraine conflict, where cheap drones have been weaponized to make up for lack of manpower and equipment, to the Middle East, where unmanned aerial vehicles have become essential combat tools for offensive purposes, reconnaissance, and targeting.

It’s a world where the $13 billion U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that took eight years to build, can be threatened by hypersonic missiles or autonomous subs and torpedoes costing mere millions. When cheap technology can make any weapon obsolete, long development times and billion-dollar price tags feel like luxuries no one can afford.

If that weren’t enough, defense companies are fighting on the home front, too. Every new administration brings change, but the early days of the Trump administration have been more chaotic than usual. Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was barely confirmed by the Senate —Vice President JD Vance had to cast the deciding vote—and President Donald Trump fired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff C.Q. Brown, an unusual step for an incoming president.

With leadership in turmoil—and a series of Elon Musk tweets arguing that new artificial-intelligence enhanced technology from upstarts such as Palantir Technologies and Anduril Industries should replace long-established military programs—it’s little wonder that shares of Lockheed, Northrop, General Dynamics, and L3Harris Technologies have slumped 10% on average since the election, while shedding about $25 billion in market value. On the surface, the defense sector looks like could be fighting a rear-guard action for years to come.

But looks can be deceiving. Disruptive change can’t always be accomplished by existing players, and traditional defense contractors have a history of being able to deliver new weapons when needed. That should be the case even as the military shifts toward cheaper, smarter, AI-enhanced weaponry. At the same time, there will still be a need for more-traditional jets, boats, tanks, and missile systems that only the likes of Northrop and Lockheed can provide.

With shares of defense prime contractors’ stocks trading lower valuations than they did when the 2011 Budget Control Act threatened to slash military spending, now seems like a good time to bet that their stocks won’t fade away but emerge stronger from the skirmish.

“There’s no Amazon and Barnes & Noble analogy,” says Capital Alpha Partners analyst Byron Callan of the clash between disrupters and traditional companies. “It’s Amazon and Walmart.”

War always changes. Arrows give way to bullets, wood to iron, propellers to jets. Every new discovery is then iterated on and perfected, until new technologies emerge and the process starts again. That is true now more than ever. Battlefields around the world have become laboratories for new weapons and strategies. In early May, Ukraine claimed to have shot down two Russian fighter jets with seaborne drones. The U.S. has been using its Maven AI system to hunt for Houthi targets, which had resorted to shooting down drones and missiles from Yemen with RTX-made Patriot missiles. Patriots are effective, but firing the million-dollar missiles at cheap drones is like exchanging a queen for a pawn.

When the enemy has cheap weapons at their disposal, bringing down costs matters—a lot. Much of the current system is based on “cost-plus contracts,” essentially agreements that provide weapons producers with a guaranteed profit margin. There’s a logic to the system. There’s no commercial market for jet fighters, for example, and few alternatives for the Pentagon if it isn’t happy with one price. It ensures the military has what it needs, usually when it needs it.

The potential problem, though, is obvious: Cost-plus provides a tacit incentive to inflate costs throughout the supply chain. A “hard bid” system, where companies offer a price and then deliver the goods, would make more sense. It might not work for aircraft carriers or fighter jets, but it can work for drones and munitions.

The Pentagon is aware of the need to balance cost and performance. The U.S. military already uses dozens of unmanned systems on land, sea, and air, with more on the way. Drone advancements are why the Army killed the more expensive Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft program in 2024. Trump also endorsed unmanned collaborative combat aircraft, or CCAs, where one pilot might command 10 pilotless planes, while simultaneously awarding a sixth-generation manned fighter-jet program to Boeing.

Defense contractors have proven that they can act quickly and cheaply when pressed. During the first Gulf War, traditional defense contractors and the U.S. military designed, tested, and deployed a bunker buster called the GBU-28—capable of destroying Saddam Hussein’s facilities, buried 150 feet underground—in less than a month. It helped end the war. That is the speed at which things can happen when requirements and motivations align.

The ability to align, however, has been lacking in the Trump administration. The president has fired inspectors general, who are charged with ensuring that the government gets value for its money, and infighting has led to threats of polygraph tests for senior officials suspected of leaking. The Pentagon declined to comment on the reports.

Trump’s goal, however, is clear. He wants a stronger, more efficient military apparatus that can rapidly deploy new technology, ensuring America’s military dominance in the face of growing threats from China and elsewhere. Barring an outbreak of world peace, the U.S. will be spending roughly 3% of gross domestic product on national security for years to come. Trump’s initial request for fiscal-year 2026 is just north of $1 trillion, up 13% from 2025. The $113 billion year-over-year increase includes money to expand shipbuilding, fund the F-47 next-generation fighter jet, modernize America’s nuclear arsenal, and develop Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense shield. It’s only a proposal, but it’s a bullish sign.

(Illustration by Owen Freeman)

The devil will, of course, be in the details. For investors, the risk is that more money goes to start-ups and less to the big defense companies. One to watch is privately held Anduril, which was founded in 2017 to do to defense prime contractors what SpaceX did to the space launch industry. Its goal is to leverage commercially available technology, combined with software and AI, to build lower-cost, more-capable products faster, says co-founder and executive board chairman Trae Stephens.

Anduril is still small but growing. Contract awards total some $4 billion. It’s also worth some $30 billion in private markets. L3Harris has a market value of about $41 billion and a current backlog north of $33 billion. Still, says Callan, Anduril is “placing a lot of different bets across a lot of different market segments”—and that’s a departure from other start-ups.

Anduril isn’t the only defense upstart worth watching. So are privately held Mach Industries, which works on low-cost strike drones, and Shield AI, which works on AI for military hardware. Publicly traded AeroVironment, Karman Holdings, and Kratos Defense & Security Solutions are small-cap stocks that are working on smart munitions and drone technology. The presence of these upstarts could push the legacy defense companies to move faster and work more cheaply. “It’s fantastic to have new competition,” says AeroDynamic Advisory managing director Richard Aboulafia.

While investors can’t buy Anduril, they can buy AeroVironment, which makes Switchblade loitering munitions—remote-controlled kamikaze drones with a camera—and Puma reconnaissance drones. Once a hot stock, its shares have been hit hard by America’s volatile policy toward Ukraine. In its fiscal-year 2024, Ukraine accounted for 38% of total sales, about $274 million. That has fallen off, creating an air pocket for sales—and for the stock. Shares are down 29% since the November election.

There is more growth ahead, though. The company just completed a merger with autonomous systems provider BlueHalo. Combined sales in fiscal-year 2026 should be $2 billion, says Jefferies analyst Greg Konrad, while earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization should be about $350 million. That Ebitda justifies a 25 times multiple or a share price of $190, he says, up 22% from a recent $156. “Everything that AeroVironment sees today, from its backlog to the pipeline to opportunities with BlueHalo, supports that [it] has never been better positioned than today,” Konrad says.

Among traditional defense prime contractors, L3Harris Technologies looks like a winning bet thanks to the diversification of its business. Its Integrated Missions Systems unit makes radar warning systems for jet fighters and avionics for commercial aircraft, among other products, while its Space & Airborne Systems group builds satellites. A communications business sells products such as radios for the Army, and its acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne in July 2023 gave L3Harris a fourth business, making rocket engines.

“L3Harris is not highly concentrated [on] one program and is therefore well positioned to benefit from a growing defense budget, but is also better protected from budget changes,” says Goldman Sachs analyst Noah Poponak, who has a Buy rating and $283 price target for the stock, up about 31% from a recent $216.

Northrop looks like another winner. Perhaps best known for its stealth bomber, Northrop is diversified across aerospace, missile defense, nuclear weapons, surveillance, unmanned systems, and space. It’s everywhere. It could also get a bump if it can win the contract over Boeing for the Navy’s Next Generation Air Defense, or NAGD, program, which is set to design and build the Navy’s six-generation manned fighter jet.

While Northrop shares trade at 19 times 2025 earnings estimates, a 12% premium to Lockheed Martin, the premium is warranted, says Morgan Stanley analyst Kristine Liwag. Its earnings are expected to grow at about 9% a year for the next three years, two percentage points faster than Lockheed. Liwag calls Northrop her “top pick” in the sector, while her price target of $570 a share suggests 22% upside from a recent $467.

Lockheed is in a tougher spot. A Barron’s pick in June 2024, things were going relatively well into late 2024 until a Nov. 24 tweet from Musk deriding manned fighter jets created a hurricane-force headwind. Lockheed shares have fallen 14% since then. It now trades at 15.5 times 2026 earnings, a 15% discount to the S&P 500 index, even larger than the one Lockheed had from 2011 to 2015, when military spending was declining and the stock traded at a 10% discount to the market.

Musk’s tweet creates a problem for Lockheed’s F-35 fighter jet, the $2 trillion defense program that accounts for more than a quarter of the company’s sales. At the turn of the century, the Pentagon wanted one plane for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines. They got the F-35, a $100 million machine that costs hundreds of millions more to maintain over its useful life. Part of the reason it costs that much is because it does a lot—combining stealth and advanced sensors for surveillance and air-to-air and air-to-surface combat. It can even take off and land vertically. It still represents American air dominance and will be in service for decades to come, even if Musk wants to kill it.

For now, though, tension with the administration will probably keep a lid on the stock, says Vertical Research Partners analyst Rob Stallard. “Lockheed is probably at an appropriate multiple,” he says. “It’s fairly valued.” He rates shares Hold and has a $505 price target for the stock, up 8% from a recent $467.

Beaten-down Booz Allen Hamilton Holding, however, looks downright cheap. The stock, down 36% since November’s election, has been hammered ever since the Department of Government Efficiency took the scalpel to government contracts. That is particularly bad news for Booz, which gets about three-quarters of its business from national security.

Booz, however, is much more than a consultant. After 9/11, it built the system that American security agencies use to share information. In December, Booz partnered with Palantir to bring AI-infused software and hardware to U.S. warfighters. The combination of “AI” and “national defense” is a big reason that Palantir trades for 163 times estimated 2026 earnings. Booz trades for about 16.6 times. Headline risk remains, but earnings are expected to grow 11% for the next couple of years, a little faster than the S&P 500, and its valuation is the lowest over the past five years.

War may be changing, but defense companies like Booz will always find a way to profit from it.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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

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