Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“In war the real enemy is always behind the lines. Never in front of you, never among you. Always at your back. That’s something every soldier knows. In every army, since the world began. And plenty of times they’ve been tempted to turn their backs on the enemy — the so-called enemy, that is — and give it to the real one, once and for all… No, my friend, in war the real enemy is seldom who you think.”

- Jean Raspail

"I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim. 'Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.' "

- Susan B. Anthony

"Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

- A.A. Milne

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 16, 2023

2. Russia’s forces ‘greatly eroded’ on ground but remain a multidomain threat, US Army’s Cavoli says

3. Don’t Count China Out as a Peacemaker in Ukraine

4. Chinese Interest in Latin America and the Caribbean | SOF News

5. Russian Officials Unnerved by Ukraine Bloodshed Are Contacting CIA, Agency Says

6. U.S. and Philippines to share real-time military intel on China

7. Thailand's opposition won a landslide in elections. But will the military elite let them rule?

8. Why Xi Is Ghosting Biden

9. TikTok Feeds Teens a Diet of Darkness

10. Quad summit in Australia canceled after Joe Biden shortens Asia trip

11. Post-9/11 wars have contributed to some 4.5 million deaths, report suggests

12. ‘America is broken’: FBI criticized for mass-shooting survival video

13. Haunted by Hiroshima, Japanese Leader to Meet Biden With a Push for No Nukes

14. What Everyone—Except the U.S.—Has Learned About Immigration

15. Computer in Russia breached Metro system amid security concerns, report says

16. Patriot missile defense system in Ukraine likely damaged - US sources

17. How One Millennial Ukrainian Is Defeating Russians: Viral Videos, Collaboration, and Lots of Drones

18. CIA Seeks to Recruit War-Weary, High-Ranking Russians With Video Appeal - The Moscow Times

19. New Taiwan military aid package coming in 'near term', SecDef confirms

20. Army chiefs from 3 nations meet on Oahu

21. Combating US cyber adversaries calls for whole-of-government approach

22. Armed with Storm Shadow, Ukraine could ‘starve’ Russian front lines of logistics, leadership

23. How to read ‘Art of War’ the way its author intended

24. At the Real Embassy, Netflix’s ‘Diplomat’ Draws a Diplomatic Response

25. Can China Thread the Needle on Ukraine?

26. Full-Spectrum Integrated Lethality? On the Promise and Peril of Buzzwords

27. Defense ministers from Japan, China inaugurate hotline

28. Toward the Data-Driven Army of 2040: Avoiding Analysis Paralysis and Harnessing the Power of Analytics

29. The Dialectic of Special Operations Forces: Technological Superiority vs. Human Factors

30. Don’t Read This If You Have a Security Clearance

31. Former U.S. Special Forces Soldier Is Killed in Ukraine

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 16, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-16-2023

Key Takeaways

Russian forces have likely committed to reinforcing their tactical offensive effort in the Bakhmut area despite Ukraine’s apparent focus on limited and localized counterattacks.
The reported Russian reinforcements to the Bakhmut area suggest that Russian forces are continuing to concentrate offensive capabilities there despite an assessed wider effort to reprioritize operations to prepare for potential Ukrainian counteroffensives.
Russia conducted another large-scale drone and missile strike on the night of May 15 to 16.
Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin attempted to downplay his reported cooperation with Ukrainian intelligence on May 15.
The Wagner Group’s continued glorification and normalization of violence is evident in a widely circulated video purportedly showing a killed American volunteer in Bakhmut.
Russia and Iran continue efforts to strengthen bilateral military-economic cooperation.
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) proposed a draft regulatory act that would allow FSB officers to conduct searches without a court order, likely to support the Kremlin’s ongoing efforts to strengthen domestic repression.
Russian forces reportedly shut down another Ukrainian evangelical Christian church in Mariupol likely as part of a systematic religious persecution campaign in occupied Ukraine.
Russian forces are reportedly deploying additional manpower and equipment from Belarus to reinforce their positions in Luhansk Oblast.
Russian forces continued unsuccessful offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kremmina line.
Russian forces have made marginal gains within Bakhmut as of May 16 and continued limited ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
Russian forces are continuing to panic about maintaining their positions in the east (left) bank Kherson Oblast ahead of anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensives.
The Kremlin continues to pass legislation that provides benefits to participants of the war and their families in order to incentivize military service.
Russian authorities continue efforts to consolidate the economic subordination of occupied areas of Ukraine into the Russian economy.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 16, 2023

May 16, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 16, 2023

Riley Bailey, Kateryna Stepanenko, Karolina Hird, Nicole Wolkov, and Frederick W. Kagan

May 16, 2023, 5:30pm ET

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

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

Note: The data cutoff for this product was 3pm ET on May 16. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the May 17 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Important Note: ISW has reindexed its map layer for reported Ukrainian counteroffensives on May 12, 2023. We removed reported Ukrainian counteroffensive coded before May 1, 2023, in order to delineate more clearly new Ukrainian territorial gains from gains secured in previous Ukrainian counteroffensives. ISW retained a few reported Ukrainian counteroffensives polygons from before May 1, 2023, specifically on the Dnipro River Delta south of Kherson Oblast, to preserve context in that complex area of operations. May 1, 2023, is an arbitrary date and does not mark the beginning or end of any assessed Ukrainian or Russian effort. ISW has reindexed its map layers before and similarly removed old reported Ukrainian counteroffensives around Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Chernihiv, and Sumy oblasts following the conclusion of the Battle of Kyiv in April 2022.

Russian forces have likely committed to reinforcing their tactical offensive effort in the Bakhmut area despite Ukraine’s apparent focus on limited and localized counterattacks. Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin claimed on May 16 that Russian forces have strengthened their forces in the Bakhmut area to stabilize the situation, and a prominent Russian milblogger claimed that four unspecified Russian battalions have deployed to the flanks around Bakhmut to prevent Ukrainian breakthroughs.[1] Russian claims about Russian reinforcements are consistent with Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar’s May 15 statement that Russian forces are deploying additional airborne (VDV) forces to defend Bakhmut’s flanks, presumably from other areas of the front.[2] Russian forces have continued to make marginal gains within Bakhmut itself as of May 16, and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) continues to claim that Russian forces around Bakhmut are focused on repelling Ukrainian counterattacks.[3] The Russian MoD claimed on May 16 that elements of the 4th Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Luhansk People’s Republic Army Corps) repelled 10 Ukrainian counterattacks near Ivanivske (6km west of Bakhmut).[4]

Ukrainian military officials continue to indicate that Ukraine is pursuing much more limited operations in the Bakhmut area than Russian forces, who appear to be committed to Bakhmut as a renewed main effort. Malyar stated on May 16 that while Ukrainian forces have liberated roughly 20 square kilometers of territory in recent days, Russian forces are continuing to make marginal gains within Bakhmut.[5] Ukrainian Eastern Grouping of Forces Commander Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi stated that Ukrainian forces are continuing to use the concept of “active defense” in conducting counterattacks in unspecified areas near Bakhmut.[6] Ukrainian Eastern Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty reiterated that the main objective of the Ukrainian defensive operation in the Bakhmut area is to exhaust Russian forces in the area.[7] ISW has geolocated footage published on May 16 of Ukrainian positions in southwestern Bakhmut that suggests that Ukrainian forces have recently made limited gains in the city itself.[8] Geolocated footage published on May 16 indicates that Ukrainian forces made marginal gains east of Orikhovo-Vasylivka (11km northwest of Bakhmut), although ISW has not observed any further Ukrainian gains around Bakhmut as of May 16.[9]

The reported Russian reinforcements to the Bakhmut area suggest that Russian forces are continuing to concentrate offensive capabilities there despite an assessed wider effort to reprioritize operations to prepare for potential Ukrainian counteroffensives. Russian forces have also recently transferred elements of the 6th Guards Motorized Rifle Division (20th Guards Combined Arms Army, Western Military District) to an unspecified area north of Bakhmut, likely from positions along the Svatove-Kupyansk line.[10] The movement of Russian forces from other sectors of the front to the Bakhmut area is likely a response to persisting Russian concerns about the stability of frontlines in the area amid Wagner Group’s continued degradation in the offensive to capture Bakhmut.[11] These concerns were likely more pronounced in recent days that saw limited Ukrainian gains around Bakhmut and may have prompted further Russian concentration on the tactical offensive effort in the area. The reinforcements are also likely meant to enhance Wagner’s ability to capture the remainder of Bakhmut rapidly and present a Russian tactical victory before possible setbacks during a Ukrainian counteroffensive operation. ISW assesses that the Russian military command likely decided to reprioritize operations and sustainment efforts in recent weeks to prepare for potential Ukrainian counteroffensive operations, although the continued concentration on Bakhmut may suggest that immediate tactical concerns could be undermining the larger effort.[12]

Russia conducted another large-scale drone and missile strike on the night of May 15 to 16. Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces launched six Kh-47 Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missiles from six MiG-31K aircraft at Kyiv, as well as nine Kalibr cruise missiles and 10 land-based S-400 and Iskander-M missiles at other rear areas of Ukraine.[13] Ukrainian air defense shot down all missiles, including all six Kinzhals (repeatedly touted by Russian forces as unstoppable) and nine total drones, including six Shahed-131/136s.[14] It is unclear which systems Ukrainian forces used to shoot down the Kinzhals, but Ukrainian officials previously attributed the defeat of a Kinzhal missile to US-provided Patriot air defense system on May 4.[15] Ukrainian Joint Forces Commander Lieutenant General Serhiy Nayev noted that the missile strike on Kyiv is the eighth in the month of May alone.[16] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) notably claimed that one of the Kinzhals struck a Patriot air defense system in Kyiv.[17] An unidentified US defense official told CNN that the Patriot system has likely suffered damage but has not been destroyed and that the US is still assessing the extent of the damage.[18]

Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin attempted to downplay his reported cooperation with Ukrainian intelligence on May 15. Prigozhin responded to a media inquiry about leaked US intelligence report published in The Washington Post that revealed that he attempted to disclose positions of Russian conventional forces to Ukrainian intelligence in exchange for Ukraine’s withdrawal from Bakhmut.[19] Prigozhin stated that ”in any war exchanges are made, and this is not a secret for the warring parties” in an attempt to downplay his reported connections with the Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR).[20] Prigozhin argued that information about troop positions is ”not secretive at all” in modern warfare due to the use of satellite imagery. Prigozhin also paradoxically attempted to deny the validity of the leaked US intelligence documents, claiming that a junior US officer would have not had access to such secret documents. GUR Spokesperson Andriy Yusov stated that Ukraine will not comment on the leaked document.[21]

The Wagner Group’s continued glorification and normalization of violence is evident in a widely circulated video purportedly showing a killed American volunteer in Bakhmut. A Wagner Group-affiliated Telegram channel posted footage on May 16 of Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin and former Russian Deputy Minister of Defense for Logistics-turned-Wagner-Group-deputy-commander Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev showing the documents and body of an American volunteer serving with the Ukrainian military.[22] Prigozhin claimed that he would give the body to US authorities because he likely died a worthy death in war.[23] Prigozhin’s video emphasizes Wagner’s continual promotion of brutality and glorification of war, as the video appeared to showcase Wagner gloating over the death of an American and amplified the graphic nature of his death. ISW previously reported on Wagner’s promotion of violence through the use of widely-shared graphic video footage.[24] A US State Department spokesperson stated that the State Department is ”aware of the reports” and ”seeking additional information.”[25]

Russia and Iran continue efforts to strengthen bilateral military-economic cooperation. Iranian state-run news agency IRNA reported on May 16 that Iranian Ambassador to Russia Kazem Jalali announced that Russia and Iran will sign an agreement on the construction of the Rasht-Astara railway line during Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak’s visit to Tehran on May 16 and 17.[26] This agreement will reportedly advance the completion of Iran’s North-South corridor project by completing a 162km link between the Iranian cities of Rasht and Astara and will create a connection between St. Petersburg and the Persian Gulf.[27] The completion of this sector has been a long-standing Iranian line of effort, partially aimed at strengthening Iran‘s domestic economy and facilitating sanctions evasion efforts. Both Russia and Iran are taking additional steps to further bilateral military cooperation. The White House reported on May 15 that Russia seeks to buy additional drones from Iran after having used most of the 400 Iranian drones purchased since August 2022 in attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure.[28] Iranian media also reported on May 13 that Iran will receive its first shipment of Russian Su-35 multi-role fighter aircraft in the coming week.[29] Moscow will likely continue to pursue mutually beneficial military-economic programs in order to ensure continued Iranian material support for Russian operations in Ukraine.

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) proposed a draft regulatory act that would allow FSB officers to conduct searches without a court order, likely to support the Kremlin’s ongoing efforts to strengthen domestic repression. The draft regulatory legal act would allow FSB officers to conduct operational search activities not associated with an ongoing criminal case without a court order in instances “that are urgent and may lead to the commission of a serious ...crime.”[30] FSB officers would also be allowed to conduct searches without court orders in connection with ”events or actions that pose a threat to the state, military, economic, information, or environmental security of Russia.”[31] ISW has previously assessed that the FSB appears to be currently conducting an overhaul of domestic security organs, and the new regulatory act is likely meant to augment these efforts.[32] The Kremlin has recently supported laws strengthening punishments for trespassing at facilities run by certain federal bodies, for the misappropriation of Russian military assets, and for the discreditation of all Russian personnel fighting in Ukraine to expand pretexts for the arrests of Russian citizens and the removal of officials who have fallen out of favor.[33] The FSB’s involvement in ongoing overhauls and the increasingly broad regulations to conduct searches suggest that the Kremlin is preparing for the FSB to be the internal security organ that would conduct a wider domestic crackdown.

Russian forces reportedly shut down another Ukrainian evangelical Christian church in Mariupol likely as part of a wider systematic religious persecution campaign in occupied Ukraine. Ukrainian Mariupol Mayoral Advisor Petro Andryushchenko reported that Russian forces seized the Ukrainian Christian Evangelical Church of the Holy Trinity in Mariupol and are using the church to house 10 to 30 Russian servicemen.[34] ISW reported on April 9 that Protestants suffered two-thirds of all of the reported religious repression events in occupied Mariupol.[35] ISW identified that Russian occupation officials most commonly persecute members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Protestants, particularly evangelical Baptists.[36]

Key Takeaways

Russian forces have likely committed to reinforcing their tactical offensive effort in the Bakhmut area despite Ukraine’s apparent focus on limited and localized counterattacks.
The reported Russian reinforcements to the Bakhmut area suggest that Russian forces are continuing to concentrate offensive capabilities there despite an assessed wider effort to reprioritize operations to prepare for potential Ukrainian counteroffensives.
Russia conducted another large-scale drone and missile strike on the night of May 15 to 16.
Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin attempted to downplay his reported cooperation with Ukrainian intelligence on May 15.
The Wagner Group’s continued glorification and normalization of violence is evident in a widely circulated video purportedly showing a killed American volunteer in Bakhmut.
Russia and Iran continue efforts to strengthen bilateral military-economic cooperation.
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) proposed a draft regulatory act that would allow FSB officers to conduct searches without a court order, likely to support the Kremlin’s ongoing efforts to strengthen domestic repression.
Russian forces reportedly shut down another Ukrainian evangelical Christian church in Mariupol likely as part of a systematic religious persecution campaign in occupied Ukraine.
Russian forces are reportedly deploying additional manpower and equipment from Belarus to reinforce their positions in Luhansk Oblast.
Russian forces continued unsuccessful offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kremmina line.
Russian forces have made marginal gains within Bakhmut as of May 16 and continued limited ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
Russian forces are continuing to panic about maintaining their positions in the east (left) bank Kherson Oblast ahead of anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensives.
The Kremlin continues to pass legislation that provides benefits to participants of the war and their families in order to incentivize military service.
Russian authorities continue efforts to consolidate the economic subordination of occupied areas of Ukraine into the Russian economy.

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

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

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces continued limited assaults along the Svatove-Kreminna line on May 16. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted offensive operations in the vicinity of Masyutivka (about 13km northeast of Kupyansk) and Novoselivske (about 16km northwest of Svatove).[37] Russian milbloggers continued to claim that unspecified elements of the 6th Combined Arms Army (Western Military District) captured Masyutivka and pushed Ukrainian forces across the western bank of the Oskil River on May 15.[38] Geolocated Russian footage published on May 15 showed Russian drones striking Ukrainian positions east of Masyutivka.[39] Former Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai stated that Russians have not achieved significant advances in the Kupyansk direction.[40] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked Ukrainian positions in Synkivka (about 7km northeast of Kupyansk).[41]

Russian forces are reportedly deploying additional manpower and equipment from Belarus to reinforce their positions in Luhansk Oblast. Independent monitoring organization The Belarusian Hajun Project reported the deployment of military cargo from Brest Oblast, Belarus, in the direction of Luhansk Oblast on May 14.[42] The Hajun Project reported that the train is transferring about 40 pieces of military equipment and at least 200 servicemen to Gukovo station in Rostov Oblast, Russia, which is about 4km east of occupied Luhansk Oblast. The Ukrainian General Staff and Haidai confirmed that Russian forces began to redeploy additional trained forces from Belarus.[43] Haidai added that most of the arriving personnel are newly-mobilized forces or convicts and are deploying to the Kreminna and Svatove areas.[44]

Russian forces continued unsuccessful offensive operations in the Kreminna-Lyman direction on May 16. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults on Bilohorivka (about 13km south of Kreminna).[45] A Russian milblogger published footage purportedly showing elements of the 20th Combined Arms Army (Western Military District) striking Ukrainian forces with a drone on the road between Terny and Novosadove, both within 17km northwest of Kreminna.[46]

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

Russian forces have made marginal gains within Bakhmut as of May 16. Geolocated footage published on May 15 indicates that Russian forces likely made marginal gains in southwestern Bakhmut along the road that leads to Khromove (immediately west of Bakhmut).[47] Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed on May 15 that Wagner fighters advanced 220m in Bakhmut and that Ukrainian forces currently control 1.59 square kilometers of the city.[48] Russian sources claimed on May 15 and 16 that Wagner fighters have cleared several remaining contested areas in western Bakhmut and control at least half of these areas.[49] A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Wagner fighters will likely announce that they have cut the route from Bakhmut to Khromove by May 17.[50] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces unsuccessfully attempted to regain lost positions near Bohdanivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut) and Hryhorivka (9km northwest of Bakhmut) on May 15 and 16.[51] The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that Russian aviation units destroyed an overpass near Ivanivske (6km west of Bakhmut), and Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces used the bridge to transfer supplies and reinforcements along the T0504 into Bakhmut.[52] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued offensive operations in Bakhmut and conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Ivanivske.[53]

Russian forces continued limited offensive operations along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City front on May 16. Geolocated footage published on May 15 indicates that Russian forces likely made marginal advances within Marinka (27km southwest of Avdiivka).[54] Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin claimed on May 16 that Russian forces are advancing near Pervomaiske (11km southwest of Avdiivka) and Avdiivka, where Russian forces are allegedly “within walking distance” of the Avdiivka Coke Chemical Plant in the northern outskirts of the settlement.[55] ISW has not observed visual confirmation of recent Russian gains in either of these areas. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Avdiivka and Marinka.[56]

A Russian milblogger claimed on May 16 that Ukrainian forces regained lost positions near Kruta Balka (4km northeast of Avdiivka) along the H-20 (Donetsk City-Kostyatynivka) highway.[57] ISW has not observed visual confirmation of recent Ukrainian gains in the Avdiivka area and continues to assess that reports of Ukrainian counterattacks in the area are a part of an ongoing pattern of limited and localized Ukrainian counterattacks.

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks in western Donetsk Oblast on May 16.[58]

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

Russian forces are continuing to panic about maintaining their positions in the east (left) bank Kherson Oblast ahead of anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensives. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) published a video on May 15 claiming that Russian airborne (VDV) artillery units are shelling Ukrainian infantry units in forested areas on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast.[59] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that there are ”witch hunts” among Russian troops operating in Kherson Oblast because many accuse each other of exposing Russian positions to Ukrainian forces by cooperating with Russian volunteers or reporting about the situation on the ground.[60] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces launched four KAB-500 bombs from four Su-35 fighter aircraft at Beryslav and Kizomys on the west (right) bank of the Dnipro River.[61] Russian forces also shelled the west bank Kherson Oblast 86 times, and reportedly used incendiary munition to target Kherson City.[62]

Russian and Ukrainian sources reported explosions in Tokmak on May 16. Zaporizhia Oblast occupation official Vladimir Rogov accused Ukrainian forces of shelling Tokmak, while Ukrainian Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov did not specify the reason for the explosion.[63]

Ukrainian state nuclear company Enerhoatom reported that Russian forces are intensifying security measures at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and are increasing military presence at the facility. Enerhoatom reported that there are over 2,500 Russian servicemen at the ZNPP and noted that the 15-day evacuation from Enerhodar ended after Russian occupation officials returned to the city.[64] Enerhoatom reported that Russian forces are introducing new rules for ZNPP employees such as prohibiting them from using cell phones, banning communication among personnel, and restricting movements on the territory of the ZNPP.[65] Enerhoatom reported that Russian forces are introducing such measures to conceal their use of the ZNPP as a military base.[66]

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

The Kremlin continues to pass legislation that provides benefits to participants of the war and their families in order to incentivize military service. The Russian State Duma adopted the second and third readings of law which would provide social benefits to participants in the war and their families on May 16.[67] The law allows military personnel and their families to continue to use housing at their former duty station and provides equal rent compensations to all personnel and their families regardless of the serviceman’s rank or status. United Russia Secretary Andrey Turchak announced on May 16 that the "special military operation” working group developed 20 regional support measures for participants in the war and their families including priority enrollment of children in after-school education, exemption from kindergarten feels, and transport tax benefits.[68]

The Kremlin continues efforts to mobilize Russia’s defense industrial base (DIB) in order to replenish destroyed equipment. Russian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov claimed that Russia produced more tanks in the first quarter of 2023 than in all of 2022 and that the total volume of production of military products will increase by four times in 2023.[69] A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russia’s sole tank factory UralVagonZavod is producing an upgraded version of the T-72 that will go to the front ”soon.”[70] ISW has previously reported that Russia’s DIB is not likely able to produce enough tanks at a rate fast enough to replace destroyed tanks.[71]

Russian casualties in the war continue to disproportionately affect poorer Russian regions and the younger generation. Russian opposition news outlet Mobilization News reported that poorer regions of Russia such as the Tuva, Buryatia, and Altay republics had the highest percentages of deaths of men aged 19 to 49.[72] Mobilization News noted that the top 10 regions with the highest death toll also include Magadan Oblast, Transbaikal Krai, North Ossetia, Pskov, Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Sakhalin Oblast, and the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.[73] Statistics from Russia’s Federal State Statistic Service (Rosstat) also show that half of the men aged 20 to 24 who died in 2022 died because of the war.[74]

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

A Ukrainian source indicated that the May 15 attack on a senior occupation official in Luhansk City may have been conducted by actors within the Russian occupation administration as opposed to a partisan attack. Ukrainian Severodonetsk City Administration Head Oleksandr Stryuk noted that the May 15 explosion targeting Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Ministry of Internal Affairs head Igor Kornet looks like an internal conflict among occupation elements. ISW reported on May 15 that the attack may have been carried out by Ukrainian actors.[75]

Russian authorities continue efforts to consolidate the economic subordination of occupied areas of Ukraine into the Russian economy. Russian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov stated in an interview with Russian state media source TASS that Russia is taking active steps to “restore” industrial enterprises in occupied areas of Ukraine and has installed “Industrial Development Funds” in all four occupied oblasts.[76] Manturov claimed that over 700 industrial enterprises and 1,000 industries are already operating in occupied Ukraine.[77] Manturov also highlighted Russian efforts to create a free-economic zone (FEZ) in occupied areas and claimed that all enterprises in these areas will be fully incorporated into the Russian cooperation and marketing chain by 2026.[78]

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

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

See Luhansk Oblast section.

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

2. Russia’s forces ‘greatly eroded’ on ground but remain a multidomain threat, US Army’s Cavoli says

Excerpts:

"The ground forces are greatly eroded. They have run into big problems. … On the other hand, they've also ingested a lot of people,” Cavoli said. “And you know, the Russian army, the ground force, today is bigger than it was at the beginning of this conflict.”

Meanwhile, Russia’s air force has lost fewer than 100 fighters and bombers, with about 1,000 such aircraft remaining, he said.

“The navy has lost almost nothing, cyber has lost nothing, space lost nothing,” Cavoli said. “So really, when we talk about the Russian military, we have to study it across all domains. And we have to be ready to deal with the Russian military into the future in all domains."

Cavoli’s comments come as the U.S. and its allies in Europe prepare for a NATO summit this summer that will focus on how the alliance’s defense plans for the Continent need to be enhanced to deal with the threat posed by Russia.

Still, there is an ongoing debate about whether Russia’s military failures in Ukraine are an indication that the country poses less of a threat to the alliance than previously thought.

Russia’s forces ‘greatly eroded’ on ground but remain a multidomain threat, US Army’s Cavoli says

Stars and Stripes · by John Vandiver · May 16, 2023

Russian artillery units conduct combat coordination training in Russia's polar region in January, as depicted by the Russian Defense Ministry. The head of U.S. forces in Europe has cautioned that NATO remains under a significant threat from the Russian military. (Russian Defense Ministry)

STUTTGART, Germany — U.S. European Command’s Gen. Christopher Cavoli said Russia’s total military force has sustained less damage during the war in Ukraine than its battlefield failures might suggest, and that some of its capabilities remain untouched since last year’s invasion.

Cavoli, speaking Sunday during a security conference in Estonia, said Russian air power, sea power and cyberwarfare units have continued mostly intact in the time since Moscow’s full-scale attack in February 2022.

“It's very easy to look and to think that the Russian military has collapsed or is in dire trouble, but in fact, it's been uneven,” Cavoli said during the Lennart Meri Conference in Tallinn.

During more than a year of fighting, Russia’s army has been hard hit. The U.S. estimates that Russian casualties have been as high as 100,000 killed or injured in just the last several months of the war alone. Yet Moscow has been able to replenish its ground force ranks, Cavoli said.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, right, shown in an undated photo released by the Russian Defense Ministry April 3, 2023, visits Russian troops deployed in occupied Ukrainian territory. While Russian ground forces have been eroded by the war, they have been able to replenish their ranks, said U.S. European Command’s Gen. Christopher Cavoli during a security conference Sunday. (Russian Defense Ministry)

"The ground forces are greatly eroded. They have run into big problems. … On the other hand, they've also ingested a lot of people,” Cavoli said. “And you know, the Russian army, the ground force, today is bigger than it was at the beginning of this conflict.”

Meanwhile, Russia’s air force has lost fewer than 100 fighters and bombers, with about 1,000 such aircraft remaining, he said.

“The navy has lost almost nothing, cyber has lost nothing, space lost nothing,” Cavoli said. “So really, when we talk about the Russian military, we have to study it across all domains. And we have to be ready to deal with the Russian military into the future in all domains."

Cavoli’s comments come as the U.S. and its allies in Europe prepare for a NATO summit this summer that will focus on how the alliance’s defense plans for the Continent need to be enhanced to deal with the threat posed by Russia.

Still, there is an ongoing debate about whether Russia’s military failures in Ukraine are an indication that the country poses less of a threat to the alliance than previously thought.

U.S. Army Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, the head of U.S. European Command, speaks to the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 27, 2023. Talking Sunday during a security conference in Estonia, Cavoli reiterated the need for caution when assessing Russia's remaining military reserves and capabilities. (European Command)

At the outset of the war, many security analysts expected a quick victory for Moscow. But Ukraine’s effectiveness on the battlefield and an influx of Western arms turned the tables on the larger Russian force.

A bipartisan group of senators in March called on the Pentagon to update its requirements for confronting Russia in Europe, citing Moscow’s failures in Ukraine as the reason.

“Maintaining outdated plans and assumptions represents a potential threat not only to our objectives in Europe, but also to our allocation of resources in dealing with our security interests elsewhere in the world,” the lawmakers wrote.

The senators, which included Army veteran Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Russia casualties in the range of 200,000 troops overall and the large-scale loss of Russian battle tanks and other fighting vehicles suggest the Russian military has been significantly degraded.

“Russia’s military is not the same as it was in 2021, and shows no signs of returning to its pre-invasion state in the near term. Our European warfighting requirements should reflect this new reality,” the senators wrote.

Cavoli, however, said Russia maintains a wide range of military firepower that demands allies stay on guard.

"How long will it take (Russia) to rebuild? The question is, how long will it take to rebuild to do what? They're capable of doing things today,” Cavoli said. “I think there's not going to be a light switch that goes on or off now. We need to know we need to be prepared.”

Stars and Stripes · by John Vandiver · May 16, 2023

3. Don’t Count China Out as a Peacemaker in Ukraine

All diplomacy is motivated by self interest (national interest).

Excerpts:

Even though China’s leverage is currently modest, it is likely to grow if the war bogs down into a stalemate. China will then be the only party with real influence over Russia, as well as the only world power Putin can trust to be an advocate for Russian interests at the negotiating table.

Instead of dismissing Ambassador Li’s tour of Europe as a cynical Chinese ploy, then, the US and its allies should keep nudging China to turn its rhetoric of peace into action. China’s evolving attitude toward the war may be too nuanced for many — and is obviously being driven by pure self-interest, not altruism. That doesn’t mean the West can’t turn the shift to its advantage and, more importantly, Ukraine’s.

Don’t Count China Out as a Peacemaker in Ukraine

Its shuttle diplomacy may be motivated by self-interest, but that doesn’t mean the West should dismiss it out of hand.

ByMinxin Pei

May 16, 2023 at 6:00 PM EDT

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-05-16/us-shouldn-t-dismiss-china-s-ukraine-peace-bid?sref=hhjZtX76

President Xi Jinping’s decision to dispatch special envoy Li Hui to Europe this week marks a subtle but important evolution in China’s position on the war in Ukraine. Li, China’s former ambassador to Russia, is for now unlikely to do much more than gather and report back to Xi the views of his interlocutors in Ukraine, Russia, Poland, France, and Germany. Instead of downplaying the trip as a PR stunt, though, the US and its allies should seek to exploit it.

Optically at least, Li’s visit is yet further confirmation that Xi is hoping to extricate himself from a no-win situation. The Chinese leader made his first move in late April by calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. This was followed by a previously unannounced meeting between Xi’s top foreign policy adviser, Wang Yi, and US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan last week in Vienna. Notably, the war in Ukraine dominated their agenda, a fact that reportedly stoked fears in the Kremlin.

More than a year after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion, Xi and his foreign policy advisers appear to have finally concluded that the war has severely hurt Chinese interests.

The most consequential casualty for China has been its relationship with Europe. Putin’s invasion is the most direct and deadly threat to Europe’s peace and security since the end of World War II. Because of Beijing’s pro-Moscow “neutrality” and substantial economic aid to Russia, most European countries now see China as complicit in Putin’s aggression. Ties between Brussels and Beijing have fallen to a new low.

Don’t Count China Out as a Peacemaker in Ukraine

Its shuttle diplomacy may be motivated by self-interest, but that doesn’t mean the West should dismiss it out of hand.

ByMinxin Pei

May 16, 2023 at 6:00 PM EDT

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-05-16/us-shouldn-t-dismiss-china-s-ukraine-peace-bid?sref=hhjZtX76

More than a year after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion, Xi and his foreign policy advisers appear to have finally concluded that the war has severely hurt Chinese interests.

Chinese Interest in Latin America and the Caribbean | SOF News

sof.news · by Guest · May 17, 2023

By CW4 Charles Davis.

Never before in modern human history has a state so powerful, so fundamentally put at risk the global institutional order, security, freedoms and prosperity of the rest, employing an approach that was so superficially benign, and disarming its targets from within by playing to their short-term material interests. – Evan Ellis 1/27/2021

In June 2022, the United States hosted its 9th Summit of the Americas. However, a summary Congressional Research Report indicates only 23 of the 35 member heads of state participated.

The decision to boycott, by so many leaders, hinged on President Biden’s decision to exclude Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. And while the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela are undesirable partners for the United States, the response from other Latin American Countries reinforces a regional perception that only US interests are a priority for the United States.Final commitments from the Americas Summit are firmly nested in the Biden Administration’s climate initiatives as it seeks to establish a resilient Caribbean region regarding natural disasters, catastrophic weather events, and migration. However, on a geo-political stage, China may have been the big winner at an event it didn’t even attend. With every American misstep, China’s influence in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) continues to expand.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative

Based on the Green Finance & Development Center reports, of the 33 countries in LAC, 20 state leaders have committed to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the region.

Key among those participants are Argentina, Cuba, Venezuela, Panama, and Chile. While not a member, Brazil remains heavily tied to significant loan obligations as well. These economic ties did not occur overnight, but the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has made significant inroads over the past 20 years while the United States remained focused on the Middle East. Chinese trade in LAC has continued to rise. In 2002 trade peaked at 18 billion USD, reaching 449 billion USD in 2021. From 2005 to 2020 the PRC has used state owned China Development Bank and the Import and Export Bank of China to secure an estimated 99 loans at a staggering 137 billion USD, with Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina carrying 90% of that debt.

These same institutions are the leading lenders in the region while China holds voting interest in local financial institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank and the Caribbean Development Bank. This financial strength has secured China’s place as South America’s top trading partner and primary lender in energy and infrastructure.The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) asserts; China has invested $73 billion USD in LAC’s raw materials sector since 2008, establishing refineries and processing plants for coal, copper, natural gas, oil, and uranium.

The CFR also indicates China’s focus is now the Lithium Triangle countries of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, which the PRC believes accounts for more than half of the world’s lithium, a metal necessary to produce batteries. China in United States’s Backyard

During a June 2021 conference on US-China Strategic Competition, U.S. Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) Commander, Adm. Craig Faller, commented on the importance of the LAC: “I look at this region, our neighborhood here as a region of real promise. The proximity, location matters, the distance to the United States is key. The people, those values associated with the people and the cultural connections [are strategically important]”.

He further spoke of concerns regarding Chinese presence and influence across the continent, commenting on the port of Ushuaia (the furthest port in the southern hemisphere) and the Panama Canal. Both are tied to key commercial navigation routes and of significant interest to China. With Panama a key BRI partner and Argentina a significant investment partner of China, his concerns are well founded.

Maps: Left Google Maps, right, Wikipedia (OpenStreetMap)

The pan-Asian professional services firm, Dezan Shira and Associates, produces the Silk Road Briefing, an online publication which focuses on China’s BRI globally. Their May 2022 assessment of Chinese interests in Ushuaia asserts: “Chinese involvement in the Beagle Channel would also mean that it would be capable of exerting some control of US commercial shipping both north and south of the South American continent.”

The Panama Canal is operated with assistance from Chinese logistics firms on both ends of the canal, at Margarita Island and the Colón Free Trade Zone. Panama is also a member of the Belt and Road Initiative. Given China’s claim to be a near Artic partner, its relationship with the Russian Federation on northern projects and its interests and investment in Argentina and Panama, it seems likely China will be at least the gate keeper if not the key holder to global commercial shipping access.In March of 2022, USSOUTHCOM CDR General Laura Richardson addressed specific concerns regarding Chinese presence and influence in Panama over activities associated with the Panama Canal. GEN Richardson expressed concern the US has not been as invested in projects important to Panama and this has allowed the PRC inroads with this key partner. She also mentioned joint Argentina and PRC space projects, which now allow the PRC to track US satellites. Richardson explained Beijing’s ongoing investments in Central and South American infrastructure, particularly ports, follow the patterns linked to debt trap financing in Africa. Right now, the “Chinese have 29 port projects” across the Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), including a major one in El Salvador that has economic implications for other Central American nations.

Community of Latin American States

The Community of Latin American States (CELAC) provides additional insight into Chinese political influence in LAC. Founded in 2011 as a regional bloc of 32 member states, CELAC serves as an alternative to the Organization of American States (OAS), which is supported politically and economically by the United States. Mexico’s President, Manual Lopez Obrador, serves as the organization’s current President and is pursuing an agenda which would model the European Union, thus negating a need for the American led OAS. This vision is supported through affiliations with China, Russia, Turkey and several Arab States.

The China-CELAC Joint Action Plan for Cooperation in Key Areas addresses political and security cooperations as well as financial support. The plan includes initiatives on trade and links the previously discussed financial organizations to future partnerships through China-LAC Infrastructure Cooperation Forum. Other components of the plan emphasize agriculture, industry, and science and technology partnerships.

Image: Latin American and Caribbean nations with diplomatic ties with Taiwan. (Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2023)

Through the PRC’s sustained presence in these organizations and LAC’s growing reliance on Chinese financial institutions, the PRC has shifted the region’s relationship away from Taiwan. President Xi Jinping has visited the region eleven times since he took office in 2013, and now only eight countries in the region still recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty. The Dominican Republic and Nicaragua are the most recent countries to break ties with Taiwan.

It is not surprising that Nicaragua would demonstrate a willingness to partner with China as its relations with the United States have continued to deteriorate. In November 2021 President Biden addressed Nicaragua’s election, stating “What Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, orchestrated today was a pantomime election that was neither free nor fair, and most certainly not democratic.” Chinese Technology

While the United States is experiencing the cost of deteriorating partnerships and projects across the LAC, LAC states are also forced to exam the cost of partnering with the PRC. Chinese technology is being used to bolster surveillance throughout the hemisphere. While this capability aids in fighting crime and monitoring natural disasters, it also provides data and intelligence collection to the PRC. Evan Ellis, writer for The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), suggests integrators such as Huawei continue to leverage technologies, especially facial recognition and biometrics programs nested in big data repositories. These technologies originate in the PRC where individual privacy considerations are minimal. China then offers this capability to LAC, “where insecurity [and] the fight against corruption make Chinese solutions attractive”.

The United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States have already experienced the costs of allowing companies like Huawei access to national digital infrastructure.Chinese Military Engagement

As in every other region of the PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative, economic and political relationships are followed by engagements with the military. Evans also asserts, “For the [People’s Liberation Army] PLA, engagement in Latin America supports multiple national and institutional objectives as a subset of its global engagement. One of the PRC’s economic and strategic goals is building strong all-around relationships with countries in the region, which includes forging bonds with Latin American militaries.”

Just as with the US military industries, the PLA weapons sales allow for many continuing relationships through training, service contracts and equipment upgrades, and professional military education opportunities.Defense is a key component of the CELAC Action Plan, incorporating a defense forum and fighting transnational organized crime, nuclear proliferation, and violent extremism. The plan also offers exchange opportunities for professional military education to LAC and includes opportunities for PLA members to attend jungle warfare instruction. Given how much of the PRC’s sub-Saharan playbook is being used towards goals in the LAC, the US should take lessons from China’s covert efforts to establish bases. In the United Arab Emirates, classified satellite imagery led U.S. officials to conclude that the Chinese were building some sort of military installation at the port.

Concerning Equatorial Guinea, the US Department of State indicated, “As part of our diplomacy to address maritime-security issues, we have made clear to Equatorial Guinea that certain potential steps involving [Chinese] activity there would raise national-security concerns.” Mr. Ellis also alluded to potential US security concerns regarding the PRC’s military goals being nested in infrastructure projects. “Some have speculated [PLA base construction] could occur as a product of construction work or port concessions going to Chinese companies in Panama, or through the port of La Union in El Salvador. Such caution in close proximity to the United States is consistent with PRC reluctance to acknowledge even the military character of its only current foreign military port facility, which is located in Djibouti, in Africa.”

The PRC continues to lead with Economics but will certainly shore up those efforts with its Diplomatic and Military elements of national power.Consequences of Limited U.S. Interest in LAC

Of all the LAC countries, Peru has the region’s largest Chinese diaspora community, amounting to about 5 percent of the population, or one million people. The PRC’s presence in the LAC will only grow, and the United States will likely have to weigh the consequences of its limited interest in the LAC over the past 20 years. Professor Richard Kilroy recently presented potential scenarios for OAS and CELAC at the Homeland Defense Academic Symposium. There is value in his argument:

“For the OAS to maintain its relevancy in a changing global security environment, it needs to adapt to address the concerns of its member states. President Manual Lopez Obrador’s call for CELAC to replace the OAS should not be dismissed. Rather it should serve as a wake-up call to the United States and the OAS bureaucracy to reimagine its future in the Western Hemisphere. Key drivers for this scenario would include: a new organization structure in the OAS, to include modeling the UN’s Security Council with six permanent members (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Mexico, and the United States) and eight rotating members (two each) from the sub-regions (Caribbean, Central America, Southern Cone, Andean Ridge); movement of the headquarters out of Washington, D.C. to a more central location in the region, such as Panama, utilizing the former military facilities of the U.S. Southern Command which moved to Miami, Florida in 1999; creation of an office of military affairs to coordinate peacekeeping or peace enforcement operations by member states, to include disaster response, pandemics, and responding to transnational criminal threats; and an empowered Secretary General with the ability to act both regionally and globally in expanding the OAS’s ability to interact with other international governmental organizations in confronting trans-regional threats, to include climate change and environmental security.”

Professor Richard Kilroy

Regardless of the chosen path forward, the US must re-evaluate the level of national interest placed on what SOUTHCOM leaders have framed as our back yard. Foreign policy in the region must include not only what is nested in the US National Security Strategy but also that which serves those relevant and specific issues of the member states of the LAC region.

**********

About the Author: CW4 Charles Davis serves on the faculty of the Warrant Officer Career College. He currently instructs International Strategic Studies at all levels of Warrant Officer Education. CW4 Davis is a graduate of the U.S. Army War College Strategic Broadening Program and holds a master’s degree with Honors in Intelligence Studies from American Military University. CW4 Davis is also a recipient of the Military Intelligence Corp Knowlton Award.

Top Image: Maps and flag from Central Intelligence Agency.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN11934

https://greenfdc.org/countries-of-the-belt-and-road-initiative-bri/

https://asiatimes.com/2022/01/belt-road-encircles-latin-america-and-the-caribbean

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10982/15

https://www.bloomberglinea.com/english/chinas-influence-in-latam-is-fueled-by-billions-of-usd-in-investments/

Ibid

China’s Growing Influence in Latin America | Council on Foreign Relations (cfr.org)

Ibid

https://www.southcom.mil/Media/Speeches-Transcripts/Article/2663184/adm-faller-remarks-project-2049-conference-on-us-china-strategic-competition-in/

https://www.silkroadbriefing.com/news/2022/05/30/china-to-finance-development-logistics-of-argentinas-beagle-channel-around-south-america/

https://www.csis.org/analysis/key-decision-point-coming-panama-canal

https://news.usni.org/2022/03/24/chinese-investment-near-panama-canal-strait-of-magellan-major-concern-for-u-s-southern-command

https://media.defense.gov/2022/Jul/14/2003035185/-1/-1/0/HDAS%202022%20-%20RICHARD%20KILROY%20-%20CHALLENGING%20THE%20COLOSSUS%20OF%20THE%20NORTH.PDF

https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbxw/202112/t20211207_10463459.html

Nicaragua abandons Taiwan, recognizes China – The Washington Post

Biden calls Nicaragua’s election a ‘pantomime’ that’s ‘neither free nor fair’ (yahoo.com)

https://dialogo-americas.com/articles/chinas-digital-advance-in-latin-america/#.Y1vZOK9OlhE

https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinese-security-engagement-latin-america

https://www.wsj.com/articles/us-china-uae-military-11637274224

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-seeks-first-military-base-on-africas-atlantic-coast-u-s-intelligence-finds-11638726327

https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinese-security-engagement-latin-america

HDAS 2022 – RICHARD KILROY – CHALLENGING THE COLOSSUS OF THE NORTH.PDF (defense.gov)

sof.news · by Guest · May 17, 2023

5. Russian Officials Unnerved by Ukraine Bloodshed Are Contacting CIA, Agency Says

Whether Russian officials actually make contact because of the video, it is useful PSYOP as it surely could make Putin lose trust in his officials. Sow the seeds of dissent and discord.

Russian Officials Unnerved by Ukraine Bloodshed Are Contacting CIA, Agency Says

Russian-language video on Telegram aims at Russians ‘on the fence’

By Warren P. StrobelFollow

Updated May 16, 2023 6:21 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-officials-unnerved-by-ukraine-bloodshed-are-contacting-cia-agency-says-c1061d18

WASHINGTON—The Central Intelligence Agency’s semipublic campaign to convince Russians disaffected by the war in Ukraine to spy for Washington has borne fruit, CIA officials said this week, as the spy agency released a new video aimed directly at Russian government officials.

Since last fall, the CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigation have used social-media platforms and public appearances to encourage Russians angered by President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to contact them—and have provided what they say are secure Internet channels to do so.

Some Russians have responded, an official involved in the outreach effort said Tuesday. “It is resulting in contact,” the official said.

The official declined to provide details of how many would-be Russian agents have contacted the CIA or what information they were in a position to provide, citing operational secrecy.

Current and former U.S. officials say that despite Mr. Putin’s apparent unchallenged control over Russian society and political life, Russia has emerged as a potentially rich recruiting environment for government officials and others unnerved by the mounting costs of the Ukraine invasion. An estimated 500,000 or more Russians have fled abroad, where they are easier for U.S. spy agencies to contact.

“We’re looking around the world for Russians who are as disgusted with that as we are,” CIA Deputy Director of Operations David Marlowe said in November. “Because we’re open for business.”

The new CIA-produced, Russian-language video was posted on Telegram, a messaging service popular in Russia, and on other social-media channels.

It portrays fictional Russian officials, at home with their families and at work, struggling with a decision to reach out to the American spy service. The war in Ukraine and Mr. Putin are never explicitly mentioned.

The nearly two-minute video closes with the message: “The people around you may not want to hear the truth. We do. You aren’t powerless. Connect with us securely.”

Instructions for contacting the CIA on Tor, an anonymous encrypted Internet communications tool, then flash on the screen.

The CIA hopes to get information on topics such as Russia’s economy, foreign policy and cyber activities. PHOTO: REUTERS

Daniel Hoffman, a retired CIA officer who served as the agency’s Moscow station chief, said any Russian volunteering to help the U.S. would do so at a time or place of his or her choosing.

But the video, he said, helps by “letting them know that we’re here and can securely engage with them.”

That is a “respectful” approach, he said. “It’s designed for people that are on the fence.”

Mr. Hoffman noted that the CIA released the video in the run-up to an expected major Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian military forces on its territory which, depending on its success, could unnerve some Russian citizens further. “You want to be prepared, with your catcher’s mitt, ready to go,” he said.

Russia’s embassy in Washington didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The video was explicitly designed not to be seen as fomenting Mr. Putin’s overthrow or Russia’s destabilization, the official involved in the effort said. “I don’t believe in a revolution,” the narrator says. The Russian leader, however, has long been convinced Washington wants to overthrow him and weaken Russia.

The CIA is hoping Russians will come forward with information on such topics as Russia’s economy, foreign policy, cyber activities and senior leadership, the official said.

Mr. Hoffman said that even if the video results in just a single recruit, “that’s a great operation.”

William Mauldin contributed to this article.

Write to Warren P. Strobel at Warren.Strobel@wsj.com

6. U.S. and Philippines to share real-time military intel on China

"Tackle gray zone operations and irregular warfare."

Excerpts:

Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, accused Beijing of repeated interdictions of Philippine ships operating in Manila's EEZ during a recent interview with Nikkei.

Paparo stressed that U.S. Navy ships "stand ready" to support the Philippine operations.

The defense guidelines direct the U.S. and Philippine militaries to increase interoperability across land, sea, air, space and the cyber domain.

They will intensify efforts to tackle gray zone operations and irregular warfare. China is consolidating effective control over the South China Sea by deploying militia groups and civilian ships so as not to go beyond the threshold of military confrontation.

Defense

U.S. and Philippines to share real-time military intel on China

Defense guidelines unveiled amid growing concerns over Taiwan crisis

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Defense/U.S.-and-Philippines-to-share-real-time-military-intel-on-China

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, far right, meets with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., far left, at the Pentagon in Washington on May 3. © Reuters

RYO NAKAMURA, Nikkei staff writerMay 3, 2023 23:31 JSTUpdated on May 4, 2023 05:07 JST

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. and the Philippines are moving toward real-time sharing of military information and greater coordination to guard against any coercive behavior by China in the South China Sea.

The Pentagon released a fact sheet covering the U.S.-Philippine defense cooperation guidelines Wednesday after U.S. President Joe Biden and Philippine counterpart Ferdinand Marcos Jr. adopted them at their meeting in the White House this week.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin hosted Marcos at the Pentagon on Wednesday. The rare visit by a foreign leader to the Department of Defense indicates the urgency and resolve of both sides to increase defense cooperation.

"The two leaders underscored their shared desire to deepen bilateral planning and operational cooperation including an increased tempo of combined maritime activities, such as joint patrols, to support the Philippines' lawful exercise of its rights in the South China Sea," according to a readout of the meeting provided by Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder.

Ryder stressed in a news briefing Tuesday that Washington and Manila are "standing at a transformational moment," adding that Austin and Marcos will discuss "a wide range of security topics."

According to the fact sheet, the guidelines are intended to "foster a common understanding of roles, missions and capabilities within the framework of the alliance to face regional and global security challenges."

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. inspects the troops at a welcome ceremony at the Pentagon, on May 3. (Photo by Ryo Nakamura)

Washington and Manila aim to drive a "unity of effort across all areas of bilateral security and defense cooperation to sustain focus on principal regional security concerns," the fact sheet said.

The guidelines appear to lay out the groundwork for bilateral planning of responses to contingencies in the South China Sea as well as the Taiwan Strait. The Philippines is near Taiwan, meaning any invasion of the island by Beijing would affect Manila's security.

The Biden administration thinks that deepening cooperation with the Philippines for such a dire scenario will give the U.S. a better chance to deter China from taking such action against Taiwan.

Asked about the recent comment by Marcos on the Philippines not allowing its territories to be used as a "staging point" for military actions, a U.S. senior defense official dismissed the statement.

"I don't particularly take that seriously," the official told reporters ahead of the release of the defense guidelines. The official said that "none of this is about the Philippines or any other ally using them as a staging post for offensive operations," noting that the U.S.-Philippine alliance is defensive in nature.

Real-time intelligence sharing is one of the priorities for defense cooperation.

"All of the agreements that we're putting in place are really focused on ensuring that we're sharing information at the speed that the security environment in the region is moving at," the senior defense official stressed.

The U.S. and the Philippines have vowed to broaden information sharing on early indicators of threats to the security of both countries to ensure they can respond to any challenges.

U.S. President Joe Biden, right, and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at the White House in Washington, on May 1. © Pool photo/Reuters

Washington and Manila agreed to conclude by the end of this year an intel-sharing framework, known as a General Security of Military Information Agreement, when they held a two-plus-two meeting of foreign affairs and defense leaders in April.

The GSOMIA is meant to exchange sophisticated military intelligence in a timely manner. The two sides are expected to finalize details of the agreement in working-level talks.

In the South China Sea, Chinese Coast Guard ships have continued aggressive maneuvers in the Spratly Islands around Ayungin Shoal, also known as Second Thomas Shoal, where both Beijing and Manila claim sovereignty.

A better understanding of the locations and movements of Chinese ships gleaned through real-time intelligence sharing would help the Philippines safely execute resupply missions to the naval ship BRP Sierra Madre, which was deliberately grounded on Second Thomas Shoal in 1999 to reinforce Manila's territorial claims.

The U.S. and the Philippines will work to enhance maritime and security awareness in the South China Sea by conducting "combined maritime activities" such as joint patrols.

The senior U.S. defense official said that "we think preserving their rights to operate within an EEZ [exclusive economic zone] in accordance with international laws is something that's really important."

In 2016, an international tribunal in the Netherlands denied China's claims to historical rights within its self-proclaimed "nine-dash line," which covered most of the South China Sea. The U.S. supports the ruling and has provided assistance for the Philippines to exercise its rights in the EEZ.

Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, accused Beijing of repeated interdictions of Philippine ships operating in Manila's EEZ during a recent interview with Nikkei.

Paparo stressed that U.S. Navy ships "stand ready" to support the Philippine operations.

The defense guidelines direct the U.S. and Philippine militaries to increase interoperability across land, sea, air, space and the cyber domain.

They will intensify efforts to tackle gray zone operations and irregular warfare. China is consolidating effective control over the South China Sea by deploying militia groups and civilian ships so as not to go beyond the threshold of military confrontation.

7. Thailand's opposition won a landslide in elections. But will the military elite let them rule?

How will this impact our alliance, one of our five Asia Pacific alliances?

Excerpts:

Thailand’s “two party system was already breaking down in 2019, but it’s continuing to break down this election,” said Patton.

In a press conference on Monday, Move Forward leader Pita Limjaroenrat said the party would go forward with plans to amend the country’s strict lese majeste laws – a key campaign pledge despite the taboo surrounding any discussion of the royal family in Thailand.

One of his priorities is to support young people facing jail terms on lese majeste charges, and Pita warned that if the law remains as it is, the relationship between the Thai people and the monarchy will only worsen.

His policies “strike at heart of the establishment,” said Thitinan, and even talking about the monarchy openly “is an affront to the palace.”

The Move Forward leader said Monday that he wants to form an alliance with the four other opposition parties to secure a majority in the lower house.

It could take 60 days before a prime ministerial candidate is endorsed by Thailand’s combined houses of parliament, but Sunday’s vote shows the people are ready for change.

However, if Thailand’s turbulent recent history is anything to go by, that could mean little. The military has shown in the past that it has few qualms about ignoring the popular vote.

Thailand's opposition won a landslide in elections. But will the military elite let them rule? | CNN

CNN · by Helen Regan · May 16, 2023

CNN —

Thai voters delivered a powerful message to the country’s military-backed government on Sunday: you do not have the will of the people to rule.

The progressive Move Forward Party, which gained a huge following among young Thais for its reformist platform, won the most seats and the largest share of the popular vote.

Pheu Thai, the main opposition party that has been a populist force in Thailand for 20 years, came second.

Together they delivered a crushing blow to the conservative, military-backed establishment that has ruled on and off for decades, often by turfing out popularly elected governments in coups.

“This is an unmistakable frontal rebuke, a rejection of Thailand’s military authoritarian past. It’s a rejection of military dominance in politics,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist from Chulalongkorn University.

Over the last two decades, each time Thais have been allowed to vote, they have done so overwhelmingly in support of the military’s political opponents. Sunday’s vote – which saw a record turnout – was a continuation of that tradition.

But despite winning a landslide, it is far from certain who will be the next leader.

Supporters of the Move Forward Party react as they watch results come in at the party headquarters in Bangkok on May 14, after polls closed in Thailand's general election.

Jack Taylor/AFP/Getty Images

That’s because the military junta that last seized power in 2014 rewrote the constitution to ensure they maintain a huge say in who can lead, whether or not they win the popular vote.

Neither opposition party won an outright majority of 376 seats needed to form a government outright, they will need to strike deals and wrangle support from other parties to form a coalition big enough to ensure victory.

But that won’t necessarily be straightforward.

Dangerous territory

The first thing to know is that any opposition party or coalition hoping to form a government must overcome the powerful voting bloc of the senate.

Under the junta-era constitution, Thailand’s unelected 250-seat senate is chosen entirely by the military and has previously voted for a pro-military candidate.

Because a party needs a majority of the combined houses – 750 seats – to elect a prime minister, it means opposition parties need almost three times as many votes in the lower house to be able to elect the next leader and form a government.

In 2019, coup leader Prayut Chan-o-cha won the senate votes which ensured his party’s coalition gained enough seats to elect him as prime minister, despite Pheu Thai being the largest party.

There are also other threats to the progressive movement’s win. Parties that have previously pushed for change have run afoul of the powerful conservative establishment – a nexus of the military, monarchy and influential elites.

Move Forward Party leader and prime ministerial candidate, Pita Limjaroenrat, attends a press conference following the general election, at the party's headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand, on May 15.

Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

Lawmakers have faced bans, parties have been dissolved, and governments have been overthrown. Thailand has witnessed a dozen successful coups since 1932, including two in the past 17 years.

And the purportedly independent election commission, anti-corruption commission and the constitutional court are all dominated in favor of the establishment.

In the progressive camp’s favor, however, is their large margin over the military-backed parties.

“If the results were murky, or if the pro-military parties got more, then we would be looking at manipulation, trying to shave the margins. But the results are so clear and very difficult to overturn now,” said Thitinan, adding that if there were attempts to subvert the vote, there would be public anger and protests.

Move Forward’s predecessor the Future Forward Party won the third most seats in the 2019 election. Shortly afterward, several of the party’s leaders were banned from politics and the party was later dissolved after a court ruled it violated electoral finance rules.

In the short term, that decision ended the threat from the Future Forward Party. But it also, in many ways, laid the foundation for Sunday’s historic vote.

Youth-led protests erupted across Thailand in 2020 after Future Forward was dissolved and a whole new generation of young political leaders were born, some of whom were willing to debate a previously taboo topic – royal reform.

Those calls electrified Thailand, where any frank discussion of the monarchy is fraught with the threat of prison under one of the strictest lese majeste laws in the world.

Many youth leaders were jailed or face ongoing prosecution linked to those protests. But some also went on to create the Move Forward party that swept to victory in the popular vote on Sunday.

That leaves the military establishment now locked in a political battle with a party that has kept the subject of royal reform on its manifesto.

Experts have said another coup would be costly, and dissolving a party with such a mandate would be “drastic.”

“Dissolving a party is a fairly drastic move. If there’s a way of keeping Move Forward out without dissolving them, then conservative politicians would probably prefer to do that. Because it’s not as strong a step in subverting the will that people have expressed,” said Susannah Patton, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Lowy Institute.

“But you can’t rule that out.”

See why Thailand's ex-coup leader is showing a softer side ahead of election

02:58 - Source: CNN

Vote for change cannot be ignored

Move Forward’s allure went beyond the youth vote on which it built its base.

Unofficial results showed the party captured 32 out of 33 seats in Bangkok – traditionally a stronghold for conservative parties.

“What this shows is that people who are living in urban areas are really fed up with the government that the military has provided for almost a decade,” said Patton.

“They are wanting to choose something different, and Move Forward is not just the youth party but actually can attract a wider cross section of support as well.”

Move Forward’s radical agenda includes reforming the military, getting rid of the draft, reducing the military’s budget, making it more transparent and accountable, as well as constitutional change and to bring the military and monarchy within the constitution.

The party’s win over the populist juggernaut Pheu Thai is also significant. This is the first time a party linked with ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has lost an election since 2001.

And Pheu Thai’s marginal defeat to Move Forward shows voters’ frustration with the old cycle of politics that pitted populist Thaksin-linked parties against the establishment.

Move Forward Party supporters react to a speech from Pita Limjaroenrat, leader of the Move Forward Party, during a campaign rally in Bangkok, Thailand, on Saturday, April 22, 2023. Thailand's Move Forward Party, which is surging in opinion polls ahead of the May 14 election, wants to reclaim the lost decade of military-backed rule with sweeping reforms to revitalize Southeast Asias second-largest economy. Photographer: Andre Malerba/Bloomberg

Andre Malerba/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Thailand's young voters spearhead 'earth-shaking' calls for change in military dominated kingdom

Thailand’s “two party system was already breaking down in 2019, but it’s continuing to break down this election,” said Patton.

In a press conference on Monday, Move Forward leader Pita Limjaroenrat said the party would go forward with plans to amend the country’s strict lese majeste laws – a key campaign pledge despite the taboo surrounding any discussion of the royal family in Thailand.

One of his priorities is to support young people facing jail terms on lese majeste charges, and Pita warned that if the law remains as it is, the relationship between the Thai people and the monarchy will only worsen.

His policies “strike at heart of the establishment,” said Thitinan, and even talking about the monarchy openly “is an affront to the palace.”

The Move Forward leader said Monday that he wants to form an alliance with the four other opposition parties to secure a majority in the lower house.

It could take 60 days before a prime ministerial candidate is endorsed by Thailand’s combined houses of parliament, but Sunday’s vote shows the people are ready for change.

However, if Thailand’s turbulent recent history is anything to go by, that could mean little. The military has shown in the past that it has few qualms about ignoring the popular vote.

CNN · by Helen Regan · May 16, 2023

8. Why Xi Is Ghosting Biden

I was at the Asan Plenum last month. In response to a question from either John Bolton or Paul Wofowitz asking why Xi will not take Biden's calls, Jia Qingguo (BIo HERE) responded that Xi will not do so out of fear of saying something wrong and then suffering the internal party criticism for doing so. I could not figure out if this was a sincere and candid answer, a message the CCP wanted transmitted to us, or some kind of deliberate misdirection.

I also hear from an expert China watcher that we have different views of such phone calls. We look at them as opportunities to diffuse situations in crisis and reduce tensions while the CHinese look at granting the US request for a phone call as a "favor."

Conclusion:

Truth be told, Xi cannot avoid Biden forever, and sooner or later the two leaders will speak again. But as long as these open-ended engagements are wedded to a policy of coexistence rather than reciprocity, the more likely they could lead to the very rupture the Biden administration is desperately seeking to avoid. To maximize its leverage, Washington must talk less, not more, with Beijing. That means withholding dialogue on the issues China most cares about in order to have a fighting chance at forcing Xi back to the negotiating table to discuss everything else.

Why Xi Is Ghosting Biden

Beijing’s refusal to talk to Washington is part of a war of attrition against U.S. influence.

By Craig Singleton, a senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Foreign Policy · by Craig Singleton · May 17, 2023

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is ghosting U.S. President Joe Biden. Indeed, it has been six months since the two leaders last spoke—in the interim, Beijing has blamed busy schedules and even balloons for the extended lapse in leader-to-leader engagement. All the while, Xi found time to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and host high-level diplomatic delegations from France, Germany, and Brazil. Having exhausted every possible excuse, China recently acknowledged that it might not want to talk at all. “Communication [with the United States] should not be carried out for the sake of communication,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin said in March.

In other words: Don’t call us, and we may not even call you.

Washington and Beijing’s communication breakdown should surprise no one. Today’s falling out has been two years in coming—and is merely a symptom, rather than the cause, of the downward spiral in U.S.-Chinese relations. Indeed, relations will likely worsen as long as White House policies remain predicated on bumper-sticker foreign-policy slogans such as “competing to coexist” with China when Xi is clearly competing to win. If Washington is to have any hope of reversing the communication breakdown, it’s time to consider replacing wishful rhetoric about coexistence and “guardrails” with the only language Beijing truly understands: reciprocity.

Regrettably, the Biden administration does not have a China policy—it has several that often conflict with one another. At times tough but typically conciliatory, the administration’s flawed competition framing confuses means with ends, dodging altogether the difficult task of defining the United States’ desired end state vis-à-vis China. Tellingly, Biden has not delivered a single speech outlining his vision for U.S.-Chinese relations. Instead, he has outsourced this messaging to various officials—the secretaries of state, commerce, and the treasury, among others—who have approached it from their own parochial perches. The result has been a fractured policymaking process that produces contradictory pronouncements that, more often than not, contribute to a sense of confusion rather than clarity.

Case in point: Secretary of State Antony Blinken has sought a “fair” and “level playing field” in U.S.-Chinese technology competition, whereas National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has advocated using export controls to maintain “as large of a lead as possible” over Beijing. These two goals imply two very different relationships: the former open competition, the latter technology containment. For her part, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has suggested national security concerns should trump economic considerations in the U.S.-Chinese relationship. But she also claims that such limitations are not intended to provide the United States with a “competitive economic advantage,” even though her peers, such as Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, have clearly suggested otherwise.

Of course, the Biden administration’s competitive contortions are not limited to semiconductors and supply chains. Increasingly, they have been employed in response to crises related to security and sovereignty, most notably involving Taiwan. For instance, following Biden’s repeated gaffes about the U.S. commitment (or not) to defend the self-governed island, as well as in response to other cross-strait crises, the White House has reiterated that Washington “seeks competition, not conflict” with Beijing—comforting diplomatic boilerplate that means everything and nothing at all. This and other mixed messaging on Taiwan has convinced Beijing that Washington is attempting to unilaterally change the status quo. Accordingly, China has begun deploying its forces ever closer to Taiwan’s shores, in effect shrinking the buffer zone and corresponding margin of error that existed previously in the Taiwan Strait.

No challenge better illustrates the administration’s confounding approach to China than its contrived response to this year’s spy balloon saga. These contradictions transcend a general lack of message discipline, with Blinken condemning China for “violating our [U.S.] sovereignty” even as Biden downplayed the incident as not a “major breach.” They include reports that the State Department deliberately blocked attempts by other U.S. agencies to hold Beijing accountable by levying human rights-related sanctions or export controls against Chinese targets. Such measures were reportedly shelved in order to avoid adversely affecting the bilateral relationship, even though it was China that flouted international law and has refused to issue even the hint of an apology.

Even worse, in the months since the spying episode, the Biden administration has repeatedly proposed sending high-level delegations to Beijing, perhaps hoping that mutual professions of each side’s peaceful intentions can resolve the fundamental differences between the two nations. These overtures, which Xi has rejected, were extended without first securing any meaningful changes in Beijing’s behavior, let alone a commitment to stop intruding into U.S. skies. Having concluded he can do no wrong, Xi has unsurprisingly weaponized the Biden administration’s pleas for contact. Chinese officials, such as Foreign Minister Qin Gang, have themselves resorted to geopolitical gaslighting, insinuating that Washington overreacted to Beijing’s bold incursions and that “conflict” is inevitable unless the United States—not China—changes course.

The fatal flaw in Biden’s incoherent China strategy, however, is not that he seeks to stave off a superpower crisis at any cost or that the strategy is based on hollow slogans. Rather, the problem is that Washington misdiagnoses Xi’s geopolitical aims. More specifically, Biden assumes long-term coexistence is compatible with Xi’s vision for a new, Chinese-centric world order and that U.S. policies of extreme caution are what stands in the way of calamity. Neither assertion is accurate. All told, the administration’s fixation on guardrails has led to today’s perverse great-power dynamic, in which Chinese passivity now actively constrains U.S. decision-making. In treating China like an immutable juggernaut, the Biden administration has adopted a negotiating posture that, counterintuitively, accommodates and normalizes China’s behavior. Such an approach contrasts sharply with a strategy of reciprocity, in which Washington would demonstrate firmness while also signaling a willingness to cooperate if and when China behaves cooperatively.

Meanwhile, Xi’s calculus appears clear: Engaging with Washington for the sake of engagement only risks extending the remaining half-life of the liberal world order. The Biden administration’s claims aside, today’s ideological struggle between two totally incompatible social, economic, and political systems cannot end in stalemate or coexistence. Nor will the struggle necessarily be protracted. Xi appears to be increasingly confident that the battle for geopolitical dominance could be decided in the coming years, not decades. Rather than settle for competitive coexistence and risk a redux of the same traps that befell a contained Soviet Union, Xi is taking steps to ensure China comes out on top and soon. Xi’s first-mover mentality was laid bare when he recently remarked to Putin that “there are [geopolitical] changes—the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years—and we are the ones driving changes together.” Indeed, Xi’s new world disorder, one modeled on Marxism as much as Leninism, can only be validated through continuous expansion—which explains Xi’s fervent push to pull as many countries as possible into China’s orbit.

With that in mind, Xi has begun actively promoting an alternative international architecture that eschews universal values and, alarmingly, excludes the United States. His emerging construct—embodied by China’s Global Civilization, Global Development, and Global Security initiatives—pivots from the Western-dominated system of global rules to one that is defined by national governments. Rather than countries “imposing their own values or models on others,” Xi’s system emphasizes respect for each country’s own national values and cultural traditions—as embodied by their governments. This hands-off paradigm, which Beijing beta-tested for two decades at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, enjoys broad appeal from fellow autocrats, across the global south, and among some U.S. partners, such as India and Turkey. The net effect would be to replace the United Nations treaty system with a patchwork of ideological alignments that reflects China’s values and interests. It should be abundantly clear that these efforts constitute a diplomatic war of attrition on Washington’s influence.

Similarly, Xi has accelerated plans to purposefully decouple from the United States—a strategy he first laid bare in 2012 when he warned that the United States had hijacked China’s economy. In the name of zili gengsheng (or “self-reliance”), Xi recently granted unprecedented investigative powers to China’s national security agencies to target foreign businesses and seize their intellectual property, leading to a raft of early-morning raids against Western firms. Xi also severed overseas access to various databases involving corporate registration information, patents, academic journals, and even official statistical yearbooks. These measures construct a wall around the Chinese economy and build on others that have created a risky, inhospitable environment for Western businesses operating in China. In essence, Xi is closing his country off from U.S. influence, regardless of the risks to China’s economy.

What comes now is Beijing’s bare-minimum balancing act. Xi will permit only limited bilateral dialogue in niche areas of vital significance to Beijing while rejecting meaningful engagement on most anything of import to Washington. Xi’s gamble presupposes the Biden administration, so wedded to a policy of détente and seemingly desperate for contact, will accept China’s terms without imposing any costs of its own. In many respects, Xi’s hedge already appears to be paying dividends. U.S. officials, including U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, have begun pleading for Beijing to “meet us [the United States] halfway”—something Xi has no intention of doing unless Washington signals plans to cut off contact on matters vital to China’s near-term development, such as continued access to U.S. capital markets.

Truth be told, Xi cannot avoid Biden forever, and sooner or later the two leaders will speak again. But as long as these open-ended engagements are wedded to a policy of coexistence rather than reciprocity, the more likely they could lead to the very rupture the Biden administration is desperately seeking to avoid. To maximize its leverage, Washington must talk less, not more, with Beijing. That means withholding dialogue on the issues China most cares about in order to have a fighting chance at forcing Xi back to the negotiating table to discuss everything else.

Foreign Policy · by Craig Singleton · May 17, 2023

9. TikTok Feeds Teens a Diet of Darkness

Fentanyl and TikTok: two elements of unrestricted warfare designed to subvert societies? Asking for a friend.

FAMILY & TECH: JULIE JARGON

TikTok Feeds Teens a Diet of Darkness

Self-harm, sad-posting and disordered-eating videos abound on the popular app

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-feeds-teens-a-diet-of-darkness-8f350507

By Julie JargonFollow

May 13, 2023 9:00 am ET

Calls to ban TikTok in the U.S. are growing louder. Government leaders are trying to keep the popular China-owned social video platform away from schools, public workers, even entire states, on the grounds that users’ data could wind up in the wrong hands.

Data privacy, though, might be less worrisome than the power of TikTok’s algorithm. Especially if you’re a parent.

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Family + Tech

Columnist Julie Jargon, a mother of three, helps families find answers and address concerns about the ways technology is impacting their lives.

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A recent study found that when researchers created accounts belonging to fictitious 13-year-olds, they were quickly inundated with videos about eating disorders, body image, self-harm and suicide.

If that sounds familiar, a Wall Street Journal investigation in 2021 found that TikTok steers viewers to dangerous content. TikTok has since strengthened parental controls and promised a more even-keeled algorithm, but the new study suggests the app experience for young teens has changed little.

What teens see on social media can negatively affect them psychologically. Plenty of research backs this up. The simplest evidence may be found in my earlier column about teens who developed physical tics after watching repeated TikTok videos of people exhibiting Tourette Syndrome-like behavior.

A TikTok spokeswoman said the company has a team of more than 40,000 people moderating content. In the last three months of 2022, TikTok said it removed about 85 million posts deemed in violation of its community guidelines, of which 2.8% were suicide, self-harm and eating-disorder content. It also considers the removal of content flagged by users. “We are open to feedback and scrutiny, and we seek to engage constructively with partners,” the spokeswoman added.

Screenshots of TikTok videos, nodding at self-harm, compiled by the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

Two-thirds of U.S. teens use TikTok, and 16% of all U.S. teens say they’re on it near constantly, according to Pew Research Center. Kids’ frequent social-media use—along with the potential for algorithms to lure teens down dangerous rabbit holes—is a factor in the American Psychological Association’s new recommendations for adolescent social-media use.

The group this week said parents should monitor their younger kids’ social-media scrolling and keep watch for troublesome use. The APA also urges parents and tech companies to be extra vigilant about content that encourages kids to do themselves harm.

‘Every 39 seconds’

The Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that works to stop the spread of online hate and disinformation, tested what teens see on TikTok. Last August, researchers set up eight TikTok accounts to look like they belonged to 13-year-olds in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Australia. For 30 minutes, researchers behind the accounts paused briefly on any videos the platform’s For You page showed them about body image and mental health, and tapped the heart to like them.

TikTok almost immediately recommended videos about suicide and eating disorders, the researchers said. Videos about body image and mental health popped up on the accounts’ For You pages every 39 seconds, they added.

Screenshots of TikTok videos, nodding at body-image concerns and suicidal ideation, compiled by the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

After the researchers published their findings, many of the videos they flagged disappeared from TikTok. Many of the accounts that posted the material remain. Those accounts include other videos that promote restrictive diets and discuss self-harm and suicide.

TikTok does take down content that clearly violates its guidelines by, for instance, referring directly to suicide. Videos where people describe their own suicidal feelings, however, might not be considered a violation—and wouldn’t fall under moderator scrutiny. They could even be helpful to some people. Yet child psychologists say these too can have a harmful effect.

TikTok executives have said the platform can be a place for sharing feelings about tough experiences, and cite experts who support the idea that actively coping with difficult emotions can be helpful for viewers and posters alike. They said TikTok aims to remove videos that promote or glorify self-harm while allowing educational or recovery content.

The company said it continually adjusts its algorithm to avoid repeatedly recommending a narrow range of content to viewers.

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‘Sad and lonely’

The Center for Countering Digital Hate shared its full research with me, including links to 595 videos that TikTok recommended to the fake teen accounts. It also provided reels containing all of the videos, some of which are no longer on the site. I also looked at other content on the accounts with flagged videos.

After a few hours, I had to stop. If the rapid string of sad videos made me feel bad, how would a 14-year-old feel after watching this kind of content day after day?

One account is dedicated to “sad and lonely” music. Another features a teenage girl crying in every video, with statements about suicide. One is full of videos filmed in a hospital room. Each of the hospital videos contains text expressing suicidal thoughts, including, “For my final trick I shall turn into a disappointment.”

Screenshots of TikTok videos, nodding at body-image concerns and disordered eating, compiled by the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

Users have developed creative ways to skirt TikTok’s content filters. For instance, since TikTok won’t allow content referencing suicide, people use a sound-alike such as “sewerslide,” or just write “attempt” and leave the rest to the viewer’s imagination. Creators of videos about disordered eating have also evaded TikTok’s filters.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

Do you think people should be able to opt out of algorithms in social media? Join the conversation below.

Policing all the content on a service used by more than one billion monthly users is no easy task. Yet there is a difference between stamping out harmful content and promoting it.

“If tech companies can’t eliminate this from their platforms, don’t create algorithms that will point kids to that information,” said Arthur C. Evans Jr., chief executive of the American Psychological Association.

What parents can do

Watch what your kids are watching. Ariana Hoet, a pediatric psychologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, recommends asking your teens to show you their For You page. If you spot harmful content, it is an indication they’re likely engaging with that type of content. That can give you an opening to start a conversation about it.

Set up Family Pairing. Parents can set up their own TikTok account and use the app’s Family Pairing to restrict age-inappropriate content and limit the time their teens spend on the app.

Filter the feed. People can filter out videos containing words or hashtags they don’t want to see. If content is still slipping through, teens can tap “not interested.”

Refresh the feed. Some teens have told me their feeds became so problematic they closed their accounts and started over. Teens can now refresh their feed without creating a new account. Once again, they must be careful what content they like or linger on, because new rabbit holes are forming all the time.

—For more Family & Tech columns, advice and answers to your most pressing family-related technology questions, sign up for my weekly newsletter.

Write to Julie Jargon at Julie.Jargon@wsj.com

10. Quad summit in Australia canceled after Joe Biden shortens Asia trip

Another self inflicted wound because of foolish American politics. To all the Congressional debt default proponents I hope you understand the damage you are doing.

Quad summit in Australia canceled after Joe Biden shortens Asia trip | CNN

CNN · by Simone McCarthy,Angus Watson · May 17, 2023

Sydney CNN —

A planned summit of Quad leaders from the United States, India, Australia, and Japan in Sydney next week has been canceled after US President Joe Biden pulled out of his visit, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday, adding that talks could still proceed as leaders visit Japan.

Biden was slated to gather with Albanese, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio on May 24 for a meeting of the informal security dialogue, which is widely seen as a counter to China’s aggressive posture in the region.

The late hour cancellation – which also saw Biden pull out of a visit to Papua New Guinea – comes as the US seeks to energize its security ties in the Pacific amid rising competition with Beijing.

But Washington’s fractious domestic politics has curtailed what would have been a significant visit to Asia by a US president.

Biden had been planning to travel to Sydney for the summit as part of a weeklong Asia tour that was set to begin in Hiroshima, Japan, for a Group of Seven (G7) leader summit, and include a stopover in Papua New Guinea for a meeting with Pacific Island leaders.

Biden will still travel to Japan starting Wednesday, but he canceled the additional legs of the trip, due to the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations in Washington, the White House confirmed Tuesday.

'Living standards will go back in time': Hear how US debt default could impact your household

01:54 - Source: CNN

The Quad leaders would instead have discussions in Japan, where all four leaders would be over the weekend, Albanese said Wednesday, adding that no time had been confirmed.

“The Quad is an important body and we want to make sure that it occurs at leadership level and we’ll be having that discussion over the weekend,” the Australian leader said.

The meeting would be the third in-person leaders gathering for the Quad, known formally as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which was founded over 15 years ago but has seen increased prominence in recent years.

The leaders were expected to discuss deepening their cooperation on a range of issues from critical and emerging technologies, to climate change and maritime domain awareness, according to a statement released by the White House last month.

Albanese said the other Quad leaders could still visit Sydney next week and that discussions are underway.

The Australian leader also hinted at Biden’s frustration that events on Capitol Hill had forced his hand.

Biden and Albanese spoke over the phone early Wednesday, when Biden expressed his disappointment “at some of the actions of some members of Congress and the US Senate,” Albanese said.

“It is behavior that clearly is not in the interests of the people of the United States, but it’s also because the US has a critical role as the world’s largest economy. It has implications for the global economy as well, this hold up of the debt ceiling that they’re engaged with,” Albanese said.

Biden has been meeting with lawmakers in Washington as the White House scrambles to avert a potential government default. Congress has failed to come to an agreement on raising the country’s debt ceiling, though negotiations are ongoing.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Thursday said a default could trigger a global economic downturn, “risk undermining US global economic leadership,” and raise questions about America’s ability to defend its national security interests.

Indo-Pacific aims

Both the Quad meeting in Sydney and Biden’s planned Monday stopover in Papua New Guinea capital Port Moresby had been seen by observers as opportunities to strengthen US partnerships in the Indo-Pacific.

The region has taken on a greater importance for Washington as China becomes increasingly assertive over its territorial claims in regional seas, expands its naval capabilities and militarizes islands in the South China Sea.

Beijing has also ramped up its military intimidation of Taiwan, a self-governing democratic island China’s ruling Communist Party claims as its territory. Last month, Beijing launched military drills around the island in retaliation for a visit between Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California.

CNN reporters explain one of the most contentious issues of US-China relations

05:31 - Source: CNN

In Port Moresby, Biden had been slated to meet Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape and other leaders from the region’s Pacific Island Forum.

The visit, highly anticipated by the Marape government as a potential economic boon, was the latest step by the US to re-engage in the South Pacific – a strategically significant region widely seen as having been largely overlooked by Washington since the close of the Cold War.

China has in recent years elevated its own diplomatic outreach in the region and made significant inroads with some Pacific Islands governments, including the signing of a bilateral security deal with the Solomon Islands last year.

Biden’s visit to Port Moresby would have been the first by a sitting US President and would have coincided with negotiations between the two countries on a defense cooperation agreement.

Derek Grossman, senior defense analyst at RAND Corporation think tank in the US, said the impact of the cancellation of the Quad meeting in Sydney might be “negligible,” as the grouping already had “good momentum” from previous meetings.

The cancellation of Monday’s visit to Papua New Guinea, however, could have more far-reaching consequences for US policy toward the Pacific Islands, he said.

The US “has done a good job in elevating its game in the region, but this missed (Papua New Guinea) visit will serve as evidence to the contrary – essentially that Washington is an unreliable partner over the long-term,” he said.

“This feeds directly into Beijing’s narrative and could strengthen its hand,” he said.

CNN’s Brad Lendon contributed to this report.

CNN · by Simone McCarthy,Angus Watson · May 17, 2023

11. Post-9/11 wars have contributed to some 4.5 million deaths, report suggests

This makes quite a contribution to a narrative.

Excerpts:

Determining whether deaths were intentional and who bears direct responsibility is outside the scope of the study, Savell said.

“You can’t separate out who caused the death because there’s lots of different warring parties” and other complicating factors, from authoritarian rule to climate change, Savell said. “The point is to say the U.S. has been involved in these really violent wars. There’s been an intensification as a result of U.S. involvement. And at this point, the issue is really: How do we come to terms with a sense of responsibility?”

Post-9/11 wars have contributed to some 4.5 million deaths, report suggests

The Washington Post · by Miriam Berger · May 15, 2023

The full death toll of violence in the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, let alone of the broader global war on terrorism, remains difficult to determine. But it has long been surpassed by an even larger and more opaque figure: the indirect count of people who have died as a result of post-9/11 conflicts’ far-reaching ripple effects, such as ensuing waves of violence, hunger, the devastation of public services and the spread of disease.

Brown University researchers, in a report released Monday, draw on U.N. data and expert analyses to attempt to calculate the minimum number of excess deaths attributable to the war on terrorism, across conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen — impacts “so vast and complex that” ultimately, “they are unquantifiable,” the researchers acknowledge.

The accounting, so far as it can be measured, puts the toll at 4.5 million to 4.6 million — a figure that continues to mount as the effects of conflict reverberate. Of those fatalities, the report estimates, some 3.6 million to 3.7 million were “‘indirect deaths” caused by the deterioration of economic, environmental, psychological and health conditions.

More than 7,000 U.S. troops were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with more than 8,000 contractors, according to Brown’s Costs of War project. And U.S. forces have suffered cascading effects of their own, including rates of suicide among veterans outpacing the general population. But the vast majority of those killed in the fighting were locals: more than 177,000 uniformed Afghans, Pakistanis and Iraqis and Syrian allies had died as of 2019, according to the Costs of War project, alongside a vast count of opposing combatants and a disputed civilian toll.

“There are reverberating costs, the human cost of war, that people for the most part in the United States don’t really know enough about or think about,” said Stephanie Savell, the paper’s author and co-director of the Costs of War project.

“We talk about it being over now that the U.S. has left Afghanistan, but one significant way that these wars are continuing,” she said, is that “the people in the war zones are continuing to suffer the consequences.”

The legacy of the U.S.-led war on terrorism is dogged by its disastrous consequences for people in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia — a gap, Savell said, that the research, while based on incomplete data, is meant to address by giving a rough estimate of the web of repercussions.

“The exercise of generating this kind of estimate allows us to start to get a handle on what the scale of the problem really is,” she said.

Compiling estimates for just direct civilian casualties in these wars can be politically fraught: Death counts by Washington and its allies are often far lower than those in local reports.

In Iraq, estimated casualties from fighting range from 151,000 to 300,000 to 600,000 people, according to the new report. The Washington Post, among other outlets, has documented severe discrepancies and official undercounting of death tolls from the U.S.-led coalition air and artillery strikes that targeted the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. A Post investigation into casualty payouts in Afghanistan found the U.S. military had an “uneven, typically opaque handling of the civilian toll of battlefield operations.”

Since 2010, a team of 50 scholars, legal experts, human rights practitioners and physicians participating in the Costs of War project have kept their own calculations. According to their latest assessment, more than 906,000 people, including 387,000 civilians, died directly from post-9/11 wars. Another 38 million people have been displaced or made refugees. The U.S. federal government, meanwhile, has spent over $8 trillion on these wars, the research suggests.

But Savell said the research indicates that exponentially more people, especially children and the most impoverished and marginalized populations, have been killed by the effects of war — mounting poverty, food insecurity, environmental contamination, the ongoing trauma of violence, and the destruction of health and public infrastructure, along with private property and means of livelihood.

In an ideal scenario, Savell said, her team could quantify the toll by studying excess mortality rates, or by using on-the-ground researchers to study who is dying and why. But such documentation, even birth and death certificates, is largely unavailable in the war-torn countries in question.

Instead, Savell relied on a calculation by the Geneva Declaration Secretariat, a U.N.-backed initiative to address armed violence and development, which estimates that for every person directly killed by war, four more are killed by its indirect consequences. War, which often brings about general economic collapse that pervades every aspect of society, compromises access to essentials such as water and food and the infrastructure needed for safe movement and medical care.

“The large majority of indirect war deaths occur due to malnutrition, pregnancy and birth-related problems, and many illnesses including infectious diseases and noncommunicable diseases like cancer,” the report finds. “Some also result from injuries due to war’s destruction of infrastructure such as traffic signals and from reverberating trauma and interpersonal violence.”

Two decades on, the extent of the ongoing threats to human life are only starting to be acknowledged and uncovered. A Post investigation found that while Iraqis fell sick and died after exposure to open burning trash pits that U.S. soldiers established by military bases, there has been no American effort to assess, yet alone compensate, the local impact. Last year, U.S. veterans succeeded in a years-long fight for government recognition of the toxic risk.

Determining whether deaths were intentional and who bears direct responsibility is outside the scope of the study, Savell said.

“You can’t separate out who caused the death because there’s lots of different warring parties” and other complicating factors, from authoritarian rule to climate change, Savell said. “The point is to say the U.S. has been involved in these really violent wars. There’s been an intensification as a result of U.S. involvement. And at this point, the issue is really: How do we come to terms with a sense of responsibility?”

The Washington Post · by Miriam Berger · May 15, 2023

12. ‘America is broken’: FBI criticized for mass-shooting survival video

Another contribution to the negative narrative.

Excerpts:

Actually stopping a mass shooter as a civilian is exceptionally rare, according to Texas State University’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center. Less than 3% of more than 430 active attacks in the US ended with a civilian firing back from 2000 to 2021.

A bystander who confronted and disarmed an attacker during a mass shooting that left five people dead and 17 others wounded at a Colorado LGBTQ+ club last year was a US army veteran who had previously gone to war. Richard Fierro had served three tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.

‘America is broken’: FBI criticized for mass-shooting survival video

The 2020 video, which depicts a bar shooting, instructs people to flee, hide and fight in order not to be killed in an attack

The Guardian · by Erum Salam · May 15, 2023

A newly resurfaced FBI video purportedly training Americans to give themselves their best chance of surviving a deadly mass shooting is drawing scorn across the US and abroad.

In the video, released in 2020 by the US’s top law enforcement agency, actors portraying everyday Americans explain to viewers ways in which they could at least survive – or, preferably, even stop – a mass shooting once the bullets start flying.

“If European countries want to deter brain drain to the US they should just play this FBI video to their soon-to-be graduates,” the European tech investor Michael Jackson said on his LinkedIn profile, which has more than 134,000 followers.

Jackson, who shared a link to the video, added that the well-documented gun problem in the US – where rates of mass gun violence are much higher than they are in Europe and in many other parts of the world – was hurting its standing with tourists and its companies’ prospects of hiring talented employees from overseas.

Another typical reaction to the video was on Twitter from an Oklahoma scholarship foundation leader who wrote: “America is broken. Instead of addressing the cause of the carnage, we’re talking about how to survive a massacre like it’s a damn tornado.”

The video begins with a scene of a bustling bar filled with people. A fight breaks out and then the sudden eruption of gunshots sends the crowd into a panic, with people rushing to find an exit or a hiding spot.

A waitress spots a neon red exit sign and proceeds to explain to viewers techniques to avoid getting shot.

“Running makes you harder to hit and improves your chances of survival,” she says as she runs down a stairway with a group of people.

When she makes it downstairs and out the door, she is confronted by police pointing a gun at her. Still out of breath and distressed, the waitress reminds the camera to always keep “empty hands up” and “follow their instructions” when faced with law enforcement.

Another woman hiding under a table then says to find another room and barricade the door if it’s not possible to escape. She ushers every person around her into a nearby closet and reminds viewers to turn their phones off.

She then says to find anything that could be wielded as if it were a weapon – a fire extinguisher or a flower vase would do – and prepare to attack if the shooter breaks down the door.

“Lock and barricade the door,” she instructs viewers as the gunshots can be heard firing in the background.

It doesn’t address what to do if the attacker has a high-powered rifle and can fire through the door and walls enclosing the room.

Someone is later shown not having a tourniquet but still properly applying pressure to a woman with a bleeding gunshot wound.

Toward the end of the video, a man is shown trapped behind the bar with all exits blocked. He tells his audience: “I gotta stay hidden. But I’m no victim. I’m ready for this.”

He lays out an elaborate plan that ends with him seizing the shooter’s gun, which occasionally happens but can cost people their lives if attempted unsuccessfully.

The video ends with a narrator offering a word of encouragement – “you can survive a mass shooting if you’re prepared” – and directs viewers to the website fbi.gov/survive.

The video resurfaced recently as the US is on pace this year to set the record for the highest number of mass killings in recent memory, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.

The online reference site’s data recently showed the country in 2023 was likely to see 60 mass killings, which involve four or more victims who are slain.

There were 31 mass killings in 2019, 21 in 2020, 28 in 2021 and 36 in 2022.

As of Monday morning, there had been at least 224 mass shootings in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more victims are injured or killed.

Congress has been unable to meaningfully restrict access to guns despite the accelerated pace of mass shootings in the US this year.

Actually stopping a mass shooter as a civilian is exceptionally rare, according to Texas State University’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center. Less than 3% of more than 430 active attacks in the US ended with a civilian firing back from 2000 to 2021.

A bystander who confronted and disarmed an attacker during a mass shooting that left five people dead and 17 others wounded at a Colorado LGBTQ+ club last year was a US army veteran who had previously gone to war. Richard Fierro had served three tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.

The Guardian · by Erum Salam · May 15, 2023

13. Haunted by Hiroshima, Japanese Leader to Meet Biden With a Push for No Nukes

Haunted by Hiroshima, Japanese Leader to Meet Biden With a Push for No Nukes

G-7 gathering in city hit by U.S. nuclear weapon comes as hopes for disarmament grow distant

By Peter LandersFollow

in Tokyo and Chieko TsuneokaFollow

in Hiroshima, Japan

Updated May 17, 2023 12:22 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-hiroshima-biden-will-meet-leader-whose-family-knew-atomic-bomb-tragedy-db677b53?page=1

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida says he wants to continue spreading the message of nuclear abolition. PHOTO: KYODONEWS/ZUMA PRESS

Nearly 78 years ago, around a Hiroshima bridge not far from where President Biden is scheduled to meet world leaders this week, a 4-year-old boy named Eiji Kishida was walking with his mother. The U.S. atomic bomb dropped by the Enola Gay exploded above them, less than a mile away.

An aunt of the boy who was also in Hiroshima that day recounted what she saw when she found Eiji soon afterward. “His little body,” she said, was “transformed into an unrecognizable melted chunk of flesh. He kept begging for water in a faint voice until his death released him from agony.”

It was one of countless tragedies on Aug. 6, 1945, unnoted then by the wider world as the war neared its end. Today, three relatives of the boy are well-known. One is actor George Takei, a cousin. The second is the aunt, Setsuko Thurlow, now 91, who spoke those words in 2017 when accepting a Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of antinuclear campaigners.

And the third is Mr. Biden’s host in Hiroshima, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. He is the second cousin, once removed, of Eiji Kishida.

Atomic-bomb survivor and peace advocate Setsuko Thurlow. PHOTO: KYODONEWS/ZUMA PRESS

Mr. Kishida said he decided that this year’s summit of leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized nations would take place in his family’s hometown, to push for progress on nuclear disarmament.

The leaders are gathering in Hiroshima as the push is losing ground. Russia has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons in its invasion of Ukraine, and North Korea is adding to its nuclear arsenal outside of international controls. The plight of Ukraine, which gave up its nuclear weapons in the 1990s, is teaching countries, if anything, the value of a nuclear deterrent.

Mr. Kishida, who represents Hiroshima in Parliament, wrote a book in 2020 called “Toward a World Without Nuclear Weapons” in which he told the story of Eiji’s death and described meeting Ms. Thurlow. He became Japan’s leader a year later.

Yet nuclear disarmament sits uneasily alongside Mr. Kishida’s efforts to bolster Japan’s defenses and strengthen its alliance with the world’s leading nuclear-armed power, the U.S. He has pledged to nearly double Japan’s military spending while buying powerful nonnuclear weapons such as American Tomahawk missiles.

The Japanese public is likewise torn. Polls suggest many people appreciate the threat from nuclear powers North Korea and China, while wanting to preserve the pacifist legacy left by the lessons of Hiroshima as they are understood in Japan.

Under a treaty with Tokyo, the U.S. has promised to defend Japan if it is attacked, implicitly putting its ally under America’s nuclear umbrella.

Still, Mr. Kishida, 65, said in a group interview with The Wall Street Journal and other foreign news organizations that he wanted to continue spreading the message of nuclear abolition.

G-7 leaders are expected to visit Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park during their meeting that starts Friday. PHOTO: RICHARD A. BROOKS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

“I feel that with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the path toward a world without nuclear weapons has become even tougher,” he said. “But precisely because we are in such times, I feel that it is Japan’s responsibility to human civilization, as the only nation to suffer an atomic attack in war, to continue carrying high the banner of idealism toward achieving a world without nuclear weapons.”

Mr. Kishida said he would show Mr. Biden and other G-7 leaders around Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park near where the bomb was dropped. Mr. Biden, who was 2 years old at the time of the atomic bombing, will be the second sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima.

The first was Barack Obama, who on his 2016 visit threaded the needle of honoring victims in Japan without changing longstanding U.S. policy of possessing thousands of nuclear warheads.

In a speech at the peace park, Mr. Obama, now 61, said the U.S. should aspire to eliminate nuclear weapons but it might not happen in his lifetime. He called for other steps short of abolition, saying: “We can stop the spread to new nations, and secure deadly materials from fanatics.”

Mr. Kishida took a similar line last summer when he traveled to New York to speak at a United Nations nuclear-disarmament conference. He advocated gradual reduction of nuclear stockpiles and more transparency.

The G-7 leaders meeting in Hiroshima Friday through Sunday will likely stick to those areas of consensus, as the G-7 foreign ministers did last month when they met in Japan.

Antinuclear campaigners say Mr. Kishida should push the leaders harder to set a concrete path toward abolition. One of them is Ms. Thurlow, the aunt who saw her little nephew die in Hiroshima.

She is a hibakusha, or bomb victim, herself. That August day, she was working at an army office in Hiroshima and was buried in rubble, but managed to crawl toward the light and escape. She has spent much of her life working on the antinuclear cause from her home in Canada, where she moved after marrying a Canadian.

Ms. Thurlow was back in Hiroshima this week, visiting her alma mater. “The Japanese government’s longtime nuclear policy is full of contradictions,” she told students. “Please meet hibakusha and carry forward their memories and thoughts.”

The ruins left from the atomic bomb explosion in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Write to Peter Landers at Peter.Landers@wsj.com and Chieko Tsuneoka at chieko.Tsuneoka@wsj.com

Appeared in the May 17, 2023, print edition as 'Nuclear Issues Revisited in Biden’s Hiroshima Trip'.

14. What Everyone—Except the U.S.—Has Learned About Immigration

We cut off our nose to spite our face. Immigration made America great but we just don't get it in the current political era.

What Everyone—Except the U.S.—Has Learned About Immigration

Washington remains divided over allowing more foreign workers while global rivals lower barriers to ease persistent labor shortages

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-worlds-biggest-economies-cautiously-open-their-doors-to-more-foreign-workers-664c3549?page=1

By Tom FairlessFollow

May 16, 2023 8:47 am ET

Migration to affluent countries is at record highs, and some nations short of workers are overcoming political opposition to open their borders even wider, hoping to fill jobs and ease inflation.

Government actions to attract foreign nationals for skilled and unskilled jobs have spread from Germany to Japan and include countries with longtime immigration restrictions and some with a populist antipathy to streams of foreign workers.

The U.S. remains an outlier. Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers have arrived through back channels, but the country isn’t openly welcoming more legal workers, despite the tight labor market. That hesitancy carries economic costs, including persistent worker shortages and wage inflation, according to economists and some U.S. officials.

Unemployment is at a record low 4.8% across the 38 largely affluent countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. These and other nations report a long list of open positions from truck drivers to baggage handlers to miners.

Beyond being needed to fill pandemic-driven labor shortages, migrant workers are in demand to fill the gap left by retiring baby boomers and declining populations, economists and Western officials say. “The labor forces of richer countries are hollowing out,” said Michael A. Clemens, an economics professor at George Mason University.

Governments across affluent countries are balancing the economic need for more workers with the political reality that very few electorates are enthusiastic about high levels of immigration.

In Europe and North America, the working-age population is expected to decline from 730 million to 680 million over the next two decades, according to United Nations estimates. Such places as South Korea and Taiwan stand to lose more than half their workforce over the coming decades. The working-age population in sub-Saharan Africa, meanwhile, will increase by 700 million by 2050, according to U.N. projections; in Latin America and the Caribbean, the U.N. estimated an increase of 40 million by midcentury.

For many wealthier countries, labor surpluses abroad are hard to resist. The global labor imbalance, in effect, is driving foreign workers into the open arms of nations that need them.

A Vietnamese migrant worker last year in Honjo, Japan. PHOTO: CARL COURT/GETTY IMAGES

Around five million more people moved to affluent countries last year than left them, up 80% from prepandemic levels, according to a Wall Street Journal data analysis. The Journal examined 10 countries that received most of the migration, including the U.S., Germany, the U.K., Canada, Australia and Spain. Migration experts say it is the highest number ever reported. That total includes about two million refugees from Ukraine. Even excluding that surge, net migration was significantly higher than 2019 levels, according to the data.

Germany is rewriting immigration laws to bring in more college graduates as well as blue-collar workers under a new points-based system. Points will be awarded based on age—younger people receive more—educational qualifications, work experience and German-language competency. Canada announced plans late last year to take in nearly 1.5 million more migrants by 2025. Western Australia recently sent a delegation to the U.K. and Ireland to recruit tens of thousands of workers, including police, mechanics and plumbers.

South Korea plans to admit 110,000 low-skill foreign workers this year to work in industries such as farming and manufacturing, up nearly 60% from last year’s quota. Japan, which is opening new visa paths for high-skilled foreign workers, announced in April plans to offer blue-collar workers—including those at factories and farms—a chance to extend their stay and even bring their families. Both countries have been longtime skeptics of immigration.

Spain amended its laws last year to allow more foreign workers from outside the European Union to fill blue-collar jobs left open by a shrinking working-age population. José Luis Escrivá Belmonte, Spain’s minister of inclusion, social security and migration, estimated that his country will need to add 300,000 foreign workers a year to keep the economy running and support the national pension system.

Spain’s unemployment rate is 13% and has been around that level or higher for 15 years. Mr. Escrivá said unemployed Spaniards tended to be age 50 or older and not necessarily suited to fill open jobs needed in sectors such as agriculture, construction or film production.

José Antonio Moreno Díaz, an official at Spain’s Trade Union Confederation of Workers’ Commissions, which represents over a million workers, including migrants, said training opportunities for higher-paying jobs should be offered to citizens. “We are not against bringing in real needed foreign workers,” he said. “But let’s pay attention to unemployed people in the Spanish labor market.”

Opponents in various countries warn of citizens losing jobs to outsiders willing to work for less money. Some say the cost of providing newcomers with healthcare, education and other public services outweighs the economic benefits, especially for low-skill workers who pay little in taxes.

Others argue that such immigration is a quick fix that slows economies in the long term.

“Labor shortages are very healthy,” said Mikal Skuterud, an economics professor at University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. “They force employers to use existing workers more efficiently and invest in technology, that’s all good stuff.”

Finland and Greece are building hundreds of miles of new land barriers to prevent illegal migrant crossings. In Italy and Sweden, voters recently elected governments with a more restrictive approach to immigration, and both are planning reforms to slow both legal and illegal migrant arrivals.

More jobs, higher pay

The U.S. hasn’t made any significant immigration reforms in 33 years, and the last serious attempt in Congress dates back a decade or more. Few issues are so politically divisive in Washington, making any chance of a policy overhaul seem unlikely, according to immigration experts.

Despite restrictive immigration policies, migrants seeking work in the U.S. are finding jobs more quickly and at higher pay than at any time in recent memory. Tens of thousands of people crossed into the U.S. from Mexico illegally and were arrested over the past 10 days, while some 20,000 were detected by various forms of surveillance but not caught, the U.S. Border Patrol chief wrote on Twitter.

In the U.S., the limit on H-1B visas available for highly skilled workers has changed little since 1990. Presidential administrations over the past 15 years have clamped down on illegal border crossings without creating new legal immigration pathways, prompting more urgent discussions about immigration policy and the labor shortage, said Giovanni Peri, chairman of the economics department at the University of California, Davis where he directs the Global Migration Center, whose recent research favors more immigration.

U.S. Border Patrol agents made a record 2.2 million arrests along the Mexican border in the 2022 fiscal year, up from 1.65 million arrests in 2021. The migrant crossings were driven, in part, “because the U.S. economy is screaming out for their labor,” said Mr. Clemens, the economist.

New channels have recently opened. More than 300,000 Ukrainian refugees entered the U.S. since Russia invaded Ukraine last year, many through a Biden administration program called Uniting for Ukraine. That number is more than the total number of refugees admitted into the U.S. through legal channels over the previous seven years. In North Dakota, energy companies are tapping Ukrainians to fill jobs in the Bakken oil fields.

Around 450,000 migrant refugee workers—largely from Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Latin America—entered the U.S. legally in 2021 and 2022 and are working under temporary government protections in industries with labor shortages, according to an April report by FWD.us, a pro-immigration think tank. Those workers are estimated to have filled about a quarter of total job openings this year in such industries as construction, food services and manufacturing, the report said.

Ukrainian refugees attending a job fair this year in Brooklyn, N.Y. PHOTO: ANDREW KELLY/REUTERS

Lines of immigrants last week in El Paso, Texas. PHOTO: JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGES

The labor shortage is pushing inflation in affluent countries where employers, competing for workers, are raising wages to hire and keep them. “I do think more migrant workers would reduce the inflation rate,” said Spencer Cox, the Republican governor of Utah, which has a 2.4% unemployment rate, slimmer than even the U.S. rate of 3.4%.

Gov. Cox and Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb of Indiana, which is also short of workers, want to rally other governors in a long-shot proposal for Congress to give states a measure of authority over legal immigration.

The U.S. and other countries are divided about how to limit illegal immigration while keeping a pathway for a flow of potential employees for various industries. A plurality of Americans think the U.S. should admit fewer migrants, according to recent Gallup polls.

To gather bipartisan support for increased legal immigration, especially for skilled workers, Utah Gov. Cox said the government needs to demonstrate better control over the U.S.-Mexico border. “Scenes of tens of thousands of migrants streaming across the border in a way that could threaten national security,” he said, “make it harder to have that higher-level conversation.”

Learning the ropes

Mathias Senn, a butcher in Germany’s wealthy Black Forest region, posted job ads in newspapers and online, seeking to replace four of 10 employees who were preparing to retire. “There were no interested people,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

Last year, Mr. Senn hired an apprentice from India, taking advantage of a new law that allowed businesses to hire unskilled people from outside the EU. Local business associations are helping hundreds more workers arrive from India. India’s unemployment rate is around 8%, compared with about 3% in Germany.

Mr. Senn’s 22-year-old apprentice, Rajakumar Bheemappa Lamani, makes about 940 euros a month, around $1,020, while learning the ropes. Mr. Lamani said it was difficult to save money because of the high cost of living, but he hoped to stay.

Mathias Senn, right, a butcher in southwest Germany, and his apprentice Rajakumar Bheemappa Lamani from India. PHOTO: DOMINIC NAHR FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Germany needs to add around half a million immigrants a year in the next decades as the baby boomer era draws to a close, said Herbert Brücker, head of migration research at the Institute for Employment Research, a federal agency. “We have in Germany about two million vacancies, an absolute peak historically,” he said.

Young people in Germany aren’t interested in manual work, said Joachim Lederer, a butcher in Weil am Rhein, a town of 30,000 by Germany’s borders with France and Switzerland. His son, who studied and worked at the University of California, Berkeley, and Cornell, is a professor of mathematical statistics.

Mr. Lederer recently hired an apprentice from India who had studied computer science, and he has anointed a young Italian immigrant to take over the butcher shop when the time comes.

The U.K. added a record half-million new migrants in the year ended June 2022, even after exiting the EU, which made it more difficult for EU citizens to obtain visas.

Alan Manning, former chair of the U.K. Migration Advisory Committee, which consults government officials on immigration policy, said people accepted the idea of allowing foreign workers if their skills are needed. But some “get anxious about immigration when they perceive it to be out of control,” he said.

Amjed Nizam, a Sri Lankan design engineer trained in Hong Kong, looked for an exit overseas when Sri Lanka’s economy imploded last year. The 29-year-old discovered a new U.K. program that grants two-year work visas to recent graduates of top universities, even without a job offer.

U.K. authorities approved Mr. Nizam’s online application within three weeks, he said. He arrived late last year, found a job with a broadcasting company and now lives in London with his wife and daughter.

Paul Papalia, a government minister in Western Australia, said the region desperately needs workers in both public and private sectors to serve the mining industry, which is booming from global demand for battery-powered vehicles that rely on locally mined lithium, cobalt and nickel.

Mr. Papalia led a delegation in March to pubs and other spots in the U.K. to try to lure as many as 30,000 British workers with the prospect of better salaries and sunny weather. Nearly 70,000 job seekers expressed interest so far, including 1,100 applications to join the police force, he said.

Only about a fifth of Australians supported more immigration, according to a poll last year by the Lowy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Sydney. Mr. Papalia said voters in his state nonetheless support his recruitment efforts. “They ask, ‘Where are the people who are going to help us build our house?’ ”

Write to Tom Fairless at tom.fairless@wsj.com

Appeared in the May 17, 2023, print edition as 'Affluent Nations Bid For Foreign Workers'.

15. Computer in Russia breached Metro system amid security concerns, report says

Cyber reconnaissance in preparation for Russia's version of unrestricted warfare - attacks on infrastructure to subvert society.

Computer in Russia breached Metro system amid security concerns, report says

The Washington Post · by Justin George · May 17, 2023

A personal computer in Russia was used to breach Metro’s computer network earlier this year after the transit agency repeatedly was warned that cybersecurity deficiencies left its systems open to information theft and national security threats, according to a report released Wednesday.

The unauthorized January log-in into Metro’s cloud-based system from a computer belonging to a former I.T. contractor drew the attention of Metro’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG). The watchdog agency had warned Metro for months that investigators had uncovered widespread and long-standing security issues, including years of missing computer security updates, interdepartmental disputes that hamstring Metro’s cybersecurity team, Russia-based contractors receiving high-level clearances and other security holes that required immediate attention.

Metro’s sluggish response prompted Inspector General Rene Febles in recent weeks to elevate the concerns to federal law enforcement, homeland security and transportation agencies while briefing multiple congressional committees, according to a person with knowledge of the briefings.

The inspector general’s report surfaced deep-rooted problems that the watchdog’s officials say hinder security upgrades and leave the transit agency open to attacks that could threaten train safety. At risk is the nation’s third-largest transit system, responsible for transporting more than 600,000 people a day around the nation’s capital. As Metro increasingly relies on technology — launching a mobile fare card and app during the pandemic while aiming to switch to self-piloting trains this year — investigators said the need for strengthened cybersecurity protections will only rise.

“These vulnerabilities if left unaddressed and subsequently become exploited by a threat, could render [Metro] susceptible to unacceptable outcomes,” the report said.

Metro’s security and audit teams did not find indications that anything from the breached system was copied to a Russia-based computer, the report said.

In a response to the OIG that was included in the report, Metro chief information officer Torri T. Martin as well as chief audit and risk officer Elizabeth Sullivan said Metro brought in a Microsoft team to investigate the breach and make recommendations to improve security.

“Where a new program or process may be needed, we will develop an actionable plan and milestones based on available resources and appropriate [corrective action plans],” Martin and Sullivan wrote.

Congress and the federal government repeatedly cite Metro, including its 97 stations and miles of underground tunnels, as a national security priority. Congress has held hearings to review whether Metro was adequately protected from terrorist attacks, and lawmakers in 2019 passed a provision that banned the agency from hiring a rail car manufacturer in China, concerned they could be built with capabilities for the Chinese government to spy on Washington or to launch cyberattacks.

The inspector general’s office has raised concerns about Metro’s computer security in the past. In 2018, the OIG completed an audit that found the transit agency was vulnerable to attack, but decided to keep the full findings secret so as not to reveal specific weaknesses. In 2020, another report also highlighted opportunities for Metro to improve security. Those details also were also kept secret.

The report released Wednesday says Metro didn’t act on more than 50 previous cybersecurity recommendations from oversight agencies dating to 2019.

“During OIG’s investigation, evidence has surfaced that [Metro], at all levels, has failed to follow its own data handling policies and procedures as well as other policies and procedures establishing minimum levels of protection for handling and transmitting various types of data collected by [Metro],” the report said.

The audit also indicated that some of Metro’s trains were found by an outside contractor in 2019 to have cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Metro hired a firm to probe the trains for vulnerabilities and, according to the report, “the security company determined that the risk to [Metro’s] train in its current configuration was ‘critical.’”

Those findings were not turned over to the inspector general’s office until February this year, the report said. The type of train with vulnerabilities is redacted, but the description of the testing matches an initiative Metro launched to test the security of its latest 7000-series cars.

In its response to the inspector general, Metro said the security testing firm was never able to access the trains’ automatic train controls. The agency said suppliers are working to fix the weaknesses, but that those efforts had been slowed by the pandemic.

The investigation and subsequent report stems from a routine cybersecurity audit that began in January last year by Metro’s OIG, an independent agency that works to ferret out waste, theft, crimes or the misuse of agency property or power.

Weeks after starting the audit, OIG investigators paused it, shifting to determining the depth of issues and making recommendations Metro could use for urgent changes and upgrades. Among the issues were contractors working from Russia on Metro projects. The employees worked for a U.S.-based company not named in the report that had a Metro contract to work on systems containing sensitive information, including the Metro SmarTrip mobile app passengers use to pay fares.

Russia had a bustling I.T. outsourcing sector, but foreign technology companies were quick to pull out of the country after it invaded Ukraine.

Nitish Mittal, a partner at research firm Everest Group, said continuing to maintain ties with Russia presented reputational and security risks after the war began, noting it was relatively easy for I.T. companies to leave. Mittal said companies are increasingly looking to ensure their outside technology teams are in friendly countries, a concept he referred to as “ally-shoring.”

“Going forward, we do see clients trying to future-proof how they source talent,” he said.

Federal cybersecurity officials said they have seen increased cyberattacks from Russia driven by either crippling economic sanctions imposed on the country or because of the material support the United States and allies are providing Ukraine.

On May 9, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued an alert warning businesses and agencies to protect against a sophisticated cyberespionage tool, or “snake,” designed by Russia’s Federal Security Service for long-term intelligence collection on targets such as government networks. The malware was detected in 50 countries, CISA said.

In response, Febles issued a rare alert about a week later to Metro’s then-interim general manager Andy Off. The alert stressed the importance of expediting cybersecurity upgrades.

The OIG continued to investigate the contractors who had been working in Russia and subpoenaed background checks the transit agency requires that contractors conduct on their employees — a process investigators want Metro to review in light of the recent concerns, according to the report.

Those subpoenaed records showed more than one-third of background checks used the same last four digits of a social security number. Metro pledged to resolve the vulnerabilities.

In January, the transit agency’s cybersecurity staff received notice that a computer in Russia had accessed Metro’s system, which the report described as being a “sensitive” Metro directory. According to the report, the OIG investigation traced the breach from the home computer of an employee whose contract had expired. Investigators found the worker’s initial story about the incident not to be truthful, the report said.

OIG investigators determined the man used his still-active log-in and password while remotely accessing his computer in Russia.

“Since the former contractor’s high-level administrative access had not been revoked, he was able to remotely access his personal computer in Russia to log into [Metro] systems containing critical and sensitive [Metro] data,” the OIG report said.

Investigators asked Metro’s I.T. manager, whose role includes terminating such log-ins and passwords, why the account was still active. They learned an I.T. supervisor had allowed the former contractor to retain his high-level access while hoping the company would be rehired, according to the report.

The report does not say whether that occurred, but noted the OIG’s concerns about contractors’ links to Russia “still stand.”

“One of the OIG’s gravest concerns identified … was access to [Metro] data by foreign nationals who were supporting sensitive applications and systems from Russia,” the report said.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The Washington Post · by Justin George · May 17, 2023

16. Patriot missile defense system in Ukraine likely damaged - US sources

Patriot missile defense system in Ukraine likely damaged - US sources

Reuters · by Reuters

WASHINGTON, May 16 (Reuters) - A U.S.-made Patriot missile defense system being used by Ukraine likely suffered some damage from a Russian strike, two U.S. officials said on Tuesday, adding that it did not appear to have been destroyed.

The Patriot system is one of an array of sophisticated air defense units supplied by the West to help Ukraine repel a Russian campaign of air strikes that has targeted critical infrastructure, power facilities and other sites.

One U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity and citing initial information, said Washington and Kyiv were already talking about the best way to repair the system and at this point it did not appear the system would have to be removed from Ukraine.

The official added that the United States would have a better understanding in the coming days and information could change over time.

The Patriot is considered to be one of the most advanced U.S. air defense systems, including against aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. It typically includes launchers along with radar and other support vehicles.

Russia's defense ministry said on Tuesday that it had destroyed a U.S.-built Patriot surface-to-air missile defense system with a "hypersonic" Kinzhal missile in an overnight strike on Ukraine.

Ukraine said earlier that it had shot down 18 Russian missiles overnight, including an entire volley of six Kinzhals. When asked about the Ukrainian claim, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu dismissed it, the RIA news agency reported.

It was not clear which Western weapon Ukraine used. The Pentagon had no immediate comment.

Reporting by Idrees Ali, Phil Stewart and Mike Stone; editing by Grant McCool

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Reuters

17. How One Millennial Ukrainian Is Defeating Russians: Viral Videos, Collaboration, and Lots of Drones

A lot to study about "K-2's" leadership; everything from influence operations and the use of social media - to just good leadership techniques (asking for advice), the use of US style collaborative planning, to getting rid of older less innovative soldiers, to recruiting, to transportation on the battlefield like Uber, and to his own mental health. I am sure some will discount his actions or say they cannot apply to the US or other militaries but I think we should consider what a properly empowered battalion commander might be able to do in the modern era. Some of what he has done would require approvals at the highest levels or those actions would be centrally controlled at the highest levels. Should they be decentralized and pushed to the correct lowest level to be able to achieve effects? (Someone from the leadership departments of Leavenworth, Carlisle, Fort Moore (Benning), and West Point should conduct a deep dive case study on this officer.

What I really like about him is his recognition that he is already an old soldier and knows he has to make way for the new ones. And lastly, who among us has spent nearly 10 years at war - not 10 four or six month rotations in 10 years but 10 years of war at the brigade level and below.

Conclusion:

And after almost a decade of war, K-2 looks forward to the day when the war ends and he can finally retire from the military. He has no specific career plans, he said. “I want to go home, and see my son,” he said.

When he leaves, he’ll presumably have to give up his budding YouTube career. Laid-back and with an easy smile, he’s a natural guest for the several YouTube interview shows he’s recently appeared on, in which he cheerfully talks about competing with other frontline units for success against the Russians.

He sees himself as already an old soldier, he said as he sat near a bank of computer monitors with updates from the battlefield. “You have to make way for the new generation.”

How One Millennial Ukrainian Is Defeating Russians: Viral Videos, Collaboration, and Lots of Drones

But the 34-year-old battalion commander said if he had his enemies’ arsenal, he would “burn them off of the earth.”

defenseone.com · by Sam Skove

Angled down, the cannon of the Ukrainian tank shoots point-blank range at a Russian trench in a video filmed by drone and viewed millions of times since it was posted in April. In another video, a lone Russian soldier surrenders—to a drone.

Both videos come from a battalion fighting in Ukraine’s seasoned 54th Mechanized Brigade, which is currently defending Ukrainian positions in eastern Ukraine near Bakhmut, a city that has become a global byword for devastation during Russia’s nearly nine-month siege.

The battalion’s latest video racked up almost half a million views in under five hours, and its last four videos garnered over 1 million views each. Top Ukrainian news outlets Hromadske and Chanel 5 have covered the battalion in detail, as have international outlets like The Daily Mail.

The battalion’s 34-year-old commander, who goes by the callsign K-2, shows how Ukraine’s army has promoted at least some younger, innovative commanders, even if the service still displays some Soviet-style thinking. The commander spoke with Defense One by video call from the frontline on Orthodox Easter, when Russian guns might be expected to be silent. His battalion is also known as K-2, after his callsign.

A bearded millennial who came of age at the same time as YouTube gained popularity, K-2 said he also craved getting the silver YouTube button given to channels that top 100,000 subscribers. The channel is now far past that, but the button hasn’t arrived yet.

“But if I don’t get one, I’ll go buy one,” he said with a laugh.

K-2 launched the videos as a way to give his soldiers a taste of recognition short of handing out medals. But they have also had the unintended effect of promoting the battalion, which raises money from volunteers to support its operations. Ukraine’s army relies heavily on volunteers for non-lethal support. K-2 said his battalion gets around 90 percent of their vehicles and 60 percent of their drones via donations from volunteers.

His path to becoming a soldier followed Russia’s near-decade of aggression in Ukraine.

After Russia annexed Crimea and launched a proxy war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, K-2 delivered a car to a military unit as part of a wider volunteer-led effort to support Ukraine’s struggling military.

No one else in the unit had experience with the vehicle he delivered though, so he ended up staying on as a soldier, putting to work his previous training as an officer in a police special tactics unit.

“I’m not a career soldier,” K-2 said, although after almost ten years of service he’s now among some of the most experienced soldiers in Ukraine’s wartime army. Until 2017, he served with the 92nd Mechanized Brigade, which saw action in Donbas, before moving to the 54th.

K-2 was eventually assigned to an intelligence unit and rose through the ranks until he was tapped to become the deputy chief of staff for his brigade commander. He had planned to leave the army in 2021, but stayed on out of loyalty to soldiers who had joined the unit to serve with him. Once the war started in February 2022, he felt he had no choice but to keep fighting.

As he moved up the chain, K-2 learned more and more. “I’m not ashamed to ask my commanders for advice,” he said. “I had good teachers.”

Among these commanders was Viktor Nikoliuk, who rose to national prominence in Ukraine for his defense of Chernihiv, a northern city that held under 37 days of Russian encirclement. The 47-year-old Maj. Gen. Nikoliuk now leads training for all of Ukraine’s ground forces.

He also learned by reading military books and training with NATO militaries in the U.S.-built Yavoriv training center. While at Yavoriv, he trained for six months while attending a staff officer intelligence course.

Today, K-2 runs his unit more like a U.S. unit, with a collaborative approach to battle planning that differs from a top-down Soviet style. When planning an operation, K-2 said, he asks his staff to come up with their own solutions for him to review. “I make the decisions, but the whole command does the thinking,” he said.

He also works to cultivate younger soldiers. When he became commander of the battalion, he encouraged older, less innovative soldiers to transfer out. “Those who didn’t agree with my combat methods, I asked to move to other units,” he said. “I really like when people have fresh views.”

The strategy has paid off. The unit has been forced to withdraw just once since the war started, and quickly retook the position.. K-2 even requested and got a larger section of the front than is typical, so he could bring his troops within 200 meters of Russian forces and take advantage of their close-quarter skills.

Russian units, meanwhile, have suffered terribly against his battalion. K-2 said his unit counted 1,200 Russian dead for just 20 of their own in a battle against a unit under Wagner, the Russian mercenary group that recruits from prisons and sends them on human-wave attacks.

With Russia’s army many times the size of Ukraine’s, K-2 can ill-afford to lose any soldiers even if their lives are traded for many times more Russians. “For me it was a critical point,” he said. “They have a resource we don’t have: human life.”

After more than a year of combat, the 54th Mechanized Brigade still has around 60 percent of the troops who joined it before the invasion. His casualty rate is better than many other Ukrainian units. One battalion commander reported a 100-percent casualty rate.

Replacements for the unit get just a month of training, fairly standard for the Ukrainian Army these days but far less than the U.S. allocates for boot camp. If there’s time, they get an extra three days of training with the unit, where they focus on basic skills like tactical medicine.

K-2’s success also means that he retains most of his original equipment, with a few Western additions such as two Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles. He said moving soldiers safely from point to point is like “Uber” on the battlefield. The unit also has two T-80 tanks, taken from the Russians.

Among his most important tools are drones. Before the war began, his thousand-man brigade flew at most five drones. Now at any moment, the unit might have 10 drones in the sky, he said. Each drone is viewed as an expendable item, he said, contrasting older Soviet methods that would instead push individual soldiers into dangerous reconnaissance missions.

According to K-2, 60 percent of his intelligence comes from drones, with the rest coming from intercepted communications and captured prisoners. The unit has used suicide drones to attack Russian troops, and to coordinate battles in real time.

Despite their success, the war’s demands never end. The biggest need the unit has now is for night-vision equipment, to fight off the Russian units that attack in small groups under the cover of darkness. Russia forces also continue to have access to large quantities of ammunition, K-2 said.

For ten Russian shells, K-2’s battalion can only answer with one of their own, so they try to make their single shot as accurate as possible. “If I had as much weapons and ammunition as they have,” he said, “I would burn them off of the earth.”

The war has also taken a mental toll on K-2 himself. After speaking with his commander about the strain he was under, he was granted permission to take two days off every two weeks or so if he needed it.

And after almost a decade of war, K-2 looks forward to the day when the war ends and he can finally retire from the military. He has no specific career plans, he said. “I want to go home, and see my son,” he said.

When he leaves, he’ll presumably have to give up his budding YouTube career. Laid-back and with an easy smile, he’s a natural guest for the several YouTube interview shows he’s recently appeared on, in which he cheerfully talks about competing with other frontline units for success against the Russians.

He sees himself as already an old soldier, he said as he sat near a bank of computer monitors with updates from the battlefield. “You have to make way for the new generation.”

defenseone.com · by Sam Skove

18. CIA Seeks to Recruit War-Weary, High-Ranking Russians With Video Appeal - The Moscow Times

From the Moscow Times. (Independent news from Russia?

CIA Seeks to Recruit War-Weary, High-Ranking Russians With Video Appeal - The Moscow Times

The Moscow Times · by The Moscow Times · May 16, 2023

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) published a recruitment video Tuesday that targets well-connected Russians angered by their leadership’s war in Ukraine.

“Are you a military officer? Do you work in intelligence, diplomacy, science, high technology or deal with people who do?” reads the CIA’s message in Russian.

“Do you have information about the economy or the top leadership of the Russian Federation? Get in touch with us,” it adds.

“Maybe people around you don’t want to hear the truth. We do.”

The nearly two-minute cinematic ad first posted on Telegram, a messaging app popular with Russian speakers, depicts a fictionalized Russian bureaucrat who says he and his family “will live in dignity thanks to my actions.”

The recruitment video then explains how to anonymously and securely get in touch with the U.S. intelligence agency.

It also appears on the CIA’s YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook pages.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the CIA's Telegram channel, which it created to publish the recruitment video and which currently has roughly 700 subscribers, "a very convenient resource for tracking applicants."

Почему я пошел на контакт с ЦРУ: мое решениеhttps://t.co/mhQbzet5X2 pic.twitter.com/1Uj4POAOmm

— CIA (@CIA) May 15, 2023

An agency official told AFP that while they had made the pitch on other social media before, they were now focusing on encrypted Telegram because it is the main medium for Russians to share and obtain information and news, about everything from politics to the war in Ukraine.

The CIA hopes that providing a simple but clear way to leak information via the dark web will convince cautious Russians to take the next step.

"Our aim is to provide avenues that are as secure as possible for them to contact us," the official said on grounds of anonymity.

The official stressed the United States was not seeking to provoke a revolt or regime change, but just hoping that some Russians might see it as a way to help their country move forward.

The official said similar outreach on other social media, much of it blocked now in Russia, did have results.

CIA Director of Operations David Marlowe said in November “we’re open for business” to Russians angry with the course of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

The latest CIA pitch follows the explosive leaks of classified Pentagon documents that contained sensitive information about the war in Ukraine and were based on a variety of sources including human intelligence.

AFP contributed reporting.

The Moscow Times · by The Moscow Times · May 16, 2023

19. New Taiwan military aid package coming in 'near term', SecDef confirms

New Taiwan military aid package coming in 'near term', SecDef confirms - Breaking Defense

“We won't hesitate to come forward and ask for what we need to make sure that we maintain our stocks,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told senators today.

breakingdefense.com · by Ashley Roque · May 16, 2023

Honor guards prepare to raise the Taiwan flag in the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall square. (Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Biden Administration will soon send Taiwan military weapons and equipment from its stockpiles but will require Congress to free up dollars to backfill that delivery, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said today.

When Congress approved the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, it included a provision enabling the administration to send $1 billion military in aid to Taiwan via the Presidential Drawdown Authority — the measure used to expedite weapon deliveries to Ukraine — which takes weapons from existing Pentagon stocks and ships them overseas. When asked about reports that the Pentagon is finally ready to use this power with a $500 million PDA package, Austin confirmed to senators that it is in the works.

“You are correct: We are working on an initiative, and we hope to have an action forthcoming here in the near term,” he told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Austin did not provide lawmakers with a timeline for that plan or detail what it will include, but noted that the Pentagon will need Congress to approve new spending to refill stockpiles with new equipment, a move that could be done via a supplemental spending bill.

“We will absolutely need to have the appropriations to replace those things which we provide,” the retired four-star Army general added. “We won’t hesitate to come forward and ask for what we need to make sure that we maintain our stocks.”

With the rise of China as the primary military threat to America, the US has been looking for ways to boost Taiwan’s defenses, in part to deter Beijing’s military from invading the island. As part of that effort, the US State Department in recent years approved the sale of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, M1 Abrams main battle tanks, amphibious assault vehicles (AAVs), F-16 fighter aircraft and munitions, Volcano minelayers and more. Such capabilities could potentially be pulled from US stockpiles and fast tracked to Taiwan now.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo joined Austin at today’s hearing to field questions about Washington’s relationship with Beijing and challenges facing the US in the Indo-Pacific region. The hearing comes just weeks before the committee is poised to begin marking up FY24 spending bills, to include the DoD’s request for $842 billion in discretionary funds. That portion of the request contains $9.1 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative to help Washington prepare for a military conflict with China with funding for items like air basing, a new missile warning and tracking architecture, defense of the US territory of Guam and Hawaii, and multinational training and experiments.

Although senators did not wade into many of these plans, both Republicans and Democrats said they are concerned Pentagon planning for next year will be hindered if House lawmakers opt to cut defense spending, or lawmakers fail to approve a bill and the DoD must operate on a longer-term continuing resolution. (A CR would require the DoD to adhere to FY23 spending plans).

“No amount of money can make up for lost time and … the PRC is not waiting,” Austin told senators. “Our budget reflects our strategy: We went to great pains to make sure that we linked our budget request to the strategy and so without a budget, it’s difficult to execute the strategy as designed.

He reaffirmed that without the FY24 budget passed, the DoD cannot move forward with new procurement programs and shipbuilding could incur a $9.7 billion “impact.”

breakingdefense.com · by Ashley Roque · May 16, 2023

20. Army chiefs from 3 nations meet on Oahu

US, UK, and Australia. Why isn't this billed as an AUKUS meeting? I think we are missing an influential opportunity. One of the major things that China does not like is our alliance structures. AUKUS is a trilateral security arrangement that is designed to counter the PLA. And AUKUS needs to be about much more than submarines and technology.

They are making the case that this should be described as an AUUS meeting.

Excerpts:

As the carrier group transited the Pacific, U.S., British and Australian officials announced they had signed a new trilateral security pact called AUKUS, which would strengthen military cooperation and technology among the three countries — particularly when it comes to submarines.

“That’s an enormously important deployment, but it’s transitory,” Sanders said. “What land forces provide is persistence — we’re here all the time. And because we’re on land, where people live and where wars ultimately are settled, we’re able to develop close relationships with a range of our allies and partners in the region and help them improve their own capabilities.”

The British military maintains an army garrison in Brunei and the British Defence Singapore Support Unit, a critical naval facility that the U.S. Navy regularly uses to support its own operations in the South China Sea. Sanders noted that through countries in the British Commonwealth, the U.K. continues to have strong ties — and interests — in the Pacific.

“The region matters enormously to us historically, emotionally but also, candidly, because of prosperity and because of trade,” Sanders said. “So much of the world’s trade and the future economy comes from this region. So we’ve got altruistic interests, and we’ve got national interests that we want to try and support as well.”

Army chiefs from 3 nations meet on Oahu

Star-Advertiser · by Kevin Knodell kknodell@staradvertiser.com May 16, 2023 · May 16, 2023

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CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville met with his counterparts from Australia and Britain on Monday at Fort Shafter.
CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
U.S. Army Pacific commander Gen. Charles Flynn, left, British army chief Lt. Gen. Sir Patrick Sanders, U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville and Australian army chief Lt. Gen. Simon Stuart signed a trilateral security agreement Monday at Fort Shafter.

The chiefs of the U.S., British and Australian armies met Monday on Oahu as the three countries pursue closer ties amid boiling geopolitical tensions in both Europe and the Pacific. Read more

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The chiefs of the U.S., British and Australian armies met Monday on Oahu as the three countries pursue closer ties amid boiling geopolitical tensions in both Europe and the Pacific.

The trilateral meeting was held as Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville wrapped up a tour of the region meeting with several other army chiefs across the Pacific and South Asia.

Hawaii is the home of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command at Camp Smith, the nerve center of all U.S. military operations in the region. The command currently — and always has been — overseen by a Navy admiral, and naval services aren’t shy about proclaiming a degree of ownership of the region. Amid recent tensions at sea, countries around the region are trying to bolster their naval forces.

“The Indo-Pacific, when you look at the map, there’s a lot of blue,” said Australian army chief Lt. Gen. Simon Stuart during a roundtable with reporters at Fort Shafter. “We’re going to make sure that we’ve got the right maritime and air capabilities … (but) when you look across the Indo-Pacific, and the militaries that are important in the lives and the economies and the politics of the region, it’s mainly armies.”

“A lot of the attention gets drawn to maritime deployments,” said British army chief Lt. Gen. Sir Patrick Sanders, referencing the Royal Navy 2021 deployment of its newest aircraft carrier, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, to the South China Sea in the first deployment of a British carrier group in the Pacific in decades as the U.K. sought to make its presence in the region known.

As the carrier group transited the Pacific, U.S., British and Australian officials announced they had signed a new trilateral security pact called AUKUS, which would strengthen military cooperation and technology among the three countries — particularly when it comes to submarines.

“That’s an enormously important deployment, but it’s transitory,” Sanders said. “What land forces provide is persistence — we’re here all the time. And because we’re on land, where people live and where wars ultimately are settled, we’re able to develop close relationships with a range of our allies and partners in the region and help them improve their own capabilities.”

The British military maintains an army garrison in Brunei and the British Defence Singapore Support Unit, a critical naval facility that the U.S. Navy regularly uses to support its own operations in the South China Sea. Sanders noted that through countries in the British Commonwealth, the U.K. continues to have strong ties — and interests — in the Pacific.

“The region matters enormously to us historically, emotionally but also, candidly, because of prosperity and because of trade,” Sanders said. “So much of the world’s trade and the future economy comes from this region. So we’ve got altruistic interests, and we’ve got national interests that we want to try and support as well.”

McConville said that the among the topics of discussion during the trilateral meeting was Project Convergence, a U.S. Army program that the service calls a “campaign of learning,” designed to integrate its operations and technology with the other branches of the U.S. military and potentially with allied militaries. McConville said that would give them “the ability to move data very, very quickly between our armies, our joint force, and our two partners here are the first to be involved in that.”

As militaries around the world plan for the future, they have closely watched the war in Ukraine. Russian and Ukrainian forces have faced off in a bloody slugfest as they pummel each other with heavy weaponry while also using drones and launching cyber attacks against each other. The war has killed thousands, turned thousands more into refugees and sent ripples through the global economy.

“What we’ve seen from the conflict in Ukraine is that regional conflicts and great-power conflicts have global consequences,” Sanders said.

“So although much of our attention is inevitably focused on supporting the armed forces of Ukraine and making sure that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin loses this war, and reinforcing peace and security in Europe, we see the threats and the challenges that exist in the Indo-Pacific,” he said.

In the Pacific the dominant concern for the three countries is the Chinese military. Beijing has been locked in a series of territorial and navigation disputes with neighboring countries both on land and at sea, sometimes turning violent.

In particular, regional leaders worry that escalating tensions between China and Taiwan could spark regional conflict. Beijing considers Taiwan, a self-ruled island democracy, to be a rouge province, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping has vowed to bring it under his control by force if necessary.

“To me it’s about peace through strength,” McConville said. “That strength comes from strong allies and partners like our two great partners and allies sitting here.”

McConville said that as they watch Ukraine, the conflict has lessons for the Pacific in terms of “contested logistics” as both sides of the conflict work to cut each other’s supply lines.

“You take a look at the distances that we have out here, logistics become extremely important,” McConville said. “Many of our weapons systems do not operate without fuel, without parts, without ammunition. And that is something that we’ve seen play out in Ukraine … and we certainly see that the importance here, and we are working to develop all those capabilities with our allies and partners out here in the region.”

However, even as China and the United States stare each other down, the region still grapples with a series of ongoing wars in places like Myanmar that has resulted in millions of refugees, and regional governments are concerned about terrorism, arms smuggling and other transnational crime. Stuart said that only underscores the need for meetings and exchanges.

“We can’t possibly cover all the ground by ourselves,” Stuart said. “We’re increasingly working with other partners in our own governments, whether that’s law enforcement, whether that’s trade, whether that’s economic, and making sure that we’re supporting our diplomats in doing their job.”

McConville, Stuart and Sanders are among 14 army chiefs on the island this week as the Association of the U.S. Army prepares to kick off its Land Forces of the Pacific symposium today in Waikiki.

“I think it’s a very powerful illustration of land forces and armies coming together,” said U.S. Army Pacific commander Gen. Charles Flynn, who hosted the three service chiefs at his headquarters at Fort Shafter. “It’s really a demonstration of unity and collective commitment towards what we’re trying to do in the region.”

The Army has made Hawaii a key part of its new Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center, which includes training ranges in the islands, Alaska and an “exportable” set of training held in a different country each year. This year that training will be in Australia, with Hawaii troops set to play a central role.

“A lot of things change, particularly as they relate to geopolitics, technology, economy, but geography is a constant,” Stuart said. “Hawaii’s strategic geography hasn’t changed, and it’s no less important — and arguably more important today — than it’s ever been. So I think it’s a great place for those of us that live in the neighborhood to all come together.”

Hawaii’s new DBEDT boss James Tokioka has a wealth of experience

On the Move: Junko Kawabata, Rachel Foster and Carrie Li

Star-Advertiser · by Kevin Knodell kknodell@staradvertiser.com May 16, 2023 · May 16, 2023

21. Combating US cyber adversaries calls for whole-of-government approach

Not to be snarky but what national security issue does not require a whole of government approach? And we emphasize a whole of government so much and complain that we can not execute such an approach. Why can't we?

Combating US cyber adversaries calls for whole-of-government approach

c4isrnet.com · by Rep. Mark E. Green · May 16, 2023

As the dynamics on the world stage get more complicated, our adversaries only get bolder in their attempts to bring the U.S. to its knees. And they aren’t relying on a traditional stratagem to do it. That’s why we must prepare for a new kind of warfare. The next global conflict won’t occur on the battlefield but in the “cyber field,” and we aren’t ready.

The last several years have shown us concerning developments in our adversaries’ approach to cybercrime. While reported cyber incidents decreased last year, our adversaries have grown more sophisticated in their approach. As we evolve our defenses, our adversaries evolve their tactics.

This is a game of one-upmanship and we’re losing.

For example, multi-extortion tactics—where an attacker exfiltrates data to extort a victim before their data is locked in a ransomware attack—occurred in about 70% of ransomware cases, compared to only 40% in mid-2021. Our adversaries’ ability to exploit the very technology Americans rely on day in and day out is extremely concerning.

Cyber criminals and malicious nation states do not distinguish between industries, business size, or geographical location. These attackers use domestic-based infrastructure to launch attacks on U.S. soil. Leveraging domestic cloud infrastructure, email providers, and other services, bad actors disguise themselves as legitimate network traffic to evade detection.

Preventing and disrupting these attacks will require enhanced public-private partnerships. In the 2018 National Cyber Strategy, the Trump administration called out this challenge and the need to address it. Meanwhile, the Biden administration continues to grapple with a response to this growing threat trend in its 2023 National Cybersecurity Strategy. This is a time for decisive leadership, not hesitation.

While cyber criminals take advantage of gaps in our visibility over domestic infrastructure, foreign nation states, such as Russia, give them safe harbor and shelter them from prosecution. In April 2021, the Biden administration levied sanctions on Russia in part for cultivating and shielding cyber criminals. These sanctions, while necessary, have clearly not been enough to deter Russian-based attacks.

To mitigate the risk of the increasingly complex cyber threat landscape and to deter the harboring of cyber criminals by nations, the U.S. must take a strong, cross-sector, and whole-of-government approach.

Serving as Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I see the immense value of our government agencies working together to address the threat both from home and abroad. Unfortunately, cyber defense is often siloed within each government agency, leaving gaps in communication and interagency cooperation.

The creation of the State Department’s new Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy gives us a tremendous opportunity to improve this interagency cooperation. To make the best of this opportunity, the State Department must prioritize efforts to engage the international community in addressing the growing threat from cybercrime as well as cyber aggression from nation states like China. This should be done in close coordination with the Office of the National Cyber Director, which Congress created to streamline efforts across the government, including with our international partners. Doing this will improve our collective cybersecurity.

As Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, I have oversight responsibility over the Department of Homeland Security, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. CISA plays a vital role in protecting our domestic infrastructure, but over 80% of critical infrastructure is privately owned and operated. This means success is dependent on a voluntary relationship framework, not duplicative bureaucratic red-tape. CISA must build trust and establish close partnerships with the private sector and other government stakeholders, like the State Department and ONCD, to share timely, actionable, and contextualized information to stop cyber-attacks in their tracks.

The need for increased information sharing between the federal government and private industry is not new; it has been a foundational dilemma in cybersecurity for years. CISA’s recent efforts, such as the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, are steps in the right direction. But it’s clear that this effort is a work in progress, and Congress must play a role in refining the process.

This is just a small facet of a complicated threat picture. However, an overarching strategy to guide individual agency and sector efforts across government and industry will help combat cyber threats. The Biden administration’s National Cybersecurity Strategy has the potential to be that strategic guide, as long as a strong and clear implementation plan follows.

When it comes to our nation’s cyber defenses, time is of the essence. Every minute our networks are not properly defended and prepared to meet new threats gives our foreign adversaries the upper hand.

Cybercriminals and nation states do not consider the agencies involved or the boundaries between sectors when they plot and carry out attacks, so it is imperative that our government agencies and the private sector work together to defeat them before it’s too late.

Rep. Mark Green, a Republican, is a physician and combat veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, where he served three tours. He is chair of the House Homeland Security Committee and serves on the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees.

22. Armed with Storm Shadow, Ukraine could ‘starve’ Russian front lines of logistics, leadership

Conclusion:

Ultimately, Woods said, he trusts the Ukrainians to use the weapons where they will do the most damage to Russian operations.

“With the other weapons systems [Ukraine has] actually used them responsibly. So they have never hit civilian targets, they’ve only hit military targets. And they have been using these weapon systems within their own territory. They’re all being used as part of expelling Russia’s illegal invasion … They will be using the weapon systems as they need to fight that deep battle.

Armed with Storm Shadow, Ukraine could ‘starve’ Russian front lines of logistics, leadership

Giving the long-range missile to Ukraine "will help them to hit the command-and-control nodes, the logistics, where you have a sort of coalescence of Russian soldiers,” Rear Admiral Tim Woods told Breaking Defense.

By AARON MEHTA and REUBEN JOHNSON

on May 16, 2023 at 10:05 AM

breakingdefense.com · by Aaron Mehta

A member of the military walks past a MBDA Storm Shadow/Scalp missile at the Farnborough Airshow, south west of London, on July 17, 2018. (BEN STANSALL/AFP via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON and FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The UK’s decision to arm Ukraine with the long-range Storm Shadow missile could serve as a game changer, with a top British officer telling Breaking Defense the weapon will be especially valuable in taking out sites vital for Russia’s logistics.

However, questions remain, including whether Ukraine is operating under restrictions with the weapon, how many weapons are being shipped to Kyiv’s aid, and what platforms might actually be used to deliver the weapons onto Russian forces.

On May 11, UK MoD confirmed several days’ worth of rumors that London would be providing the air-launched, MBDA-made Storm Shadow to Ukraine. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace announced to parliament that the long-range missiles “are now going into, or are in, the country itself.”

Storm Shadow’s 155-mile range more than triples the reach of the longest-range weapon provided thus far from the US as part of the HIMARS rocket artillery system. It plugs a clear gap in Ukraine’s capability for the kind of strike weapon that would enable Ukrainian forces to hit Russian command posts deep inside Crimea.

“These missiles will help them to hit the command-and-control nodes, the logistics, where you have a sort of coalescence of Russian soldiers,” Rear Admiral Tim Woods told Breaking Defense in a Monday interview. “And what that means is, you are much better able to starve the front line of direction, logistics, weapons and people. And so yeah, it’s critical that we have something with this range. Because you know, that enables them to sort of fight that deep battle better.”

Woods serves as the Defence Attache at the British embassy in Washington, making him a key interlocutor for the “special relationship” between the UK and US. But he also carries significant first-hand knowledge of the Ukraine conflict, having served as the military attaché to Kyiv directly before this posting — a term that overlapped with Russia’s invasion.

“I’ve stood on Kramatorsk station, which the Russians have now hit … I’ve been to Bakhmut, and it does break my heart to see the fact that in Bakhmut, there were 70,000 people when I went there, there’s now 7,000 people that have been living for nine months, without clean water, without electricity, hiding in cellars and basements,” he said. “So every time we’ve provided a piece of equipment, it’s been so that Ukraine can defend itself better. And so the idea of these long range missiles is that they can fight the deep battle better.”

In December 2022 Wallace admonished the Russian Defence Minister, Sergei Shoigu, that continuing to attack non-military targets could convince the UK to donate more advanced weapons to Ukraine. Two months later, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak echoed this warning, stating “together we must help Ukraine to shield its cities from Russian bombs and Iranian drones. That’s why the United Kingdom will be the first country to give Ukraine longer-range weapons.”

In Wallace’s May 11 address to the House of Commons, he characterized the decision as “calibrated and proportionate to Russia’s escalations. None of this would have been necessary had Russia not invaded [Ukraine],” he added. (Former MoD officials also tell Breaking Defense that Wallace has been seeking to assume a higher profile in support for Ukraine as part of his aspirations to become the next NATO Secretary General.)

Woods, echoed those comments, noting that the Russians shouldn’t be taken by surprise: “Our embassy in Moscow notified them of the intention to provide Ukraine with this capability. And we made it very clear to the Russians, and why we did that, you know — they could end this war anytime they want.”

Delivery Options Up In The Air

Storm Shadow is one of several projects to result from the creation of MBDA, an Anglo-French defense industrial alliance. In French the missile is designated SCALP EG (Système de Croisière Autonome à Longue Portée — Emploi Général). The weapon’s design is a modification of the French Apache air-launched cruise missile — achieved by substituting the original cluster munitions package with a nearly 1,000 pound warhead.

Since Ukraine has yet to receive any Western fighter aircraft, there is an open question of what platform Storm Shadow will be launched from. Integration of Western weapons onto Russian-design aircraft operated by the Ukrainian Air Force (PSU) has become almost a standard practice. Since the war began, both the US Boeing Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) and the Raytheon AGM-88 HARM anti-radiation missile have been integrated and launched from the Mikoyan MiG-29 aircraft in Ukraine inventory.

While declining to go into operational specifics about what platform could be used, Woods noted that “Ukraine surprised just about everyone on their ability to incorporate these weapons systems in novel ways, and they’re very quick learners.

“So it would not surprise me if these weapons could be integrated onto one of their existing platforms. And you know, they’ve still got some capable platforms, whether it’s the Sukhoi 24s, or Mig-29s — they have shown the innovative and ingenuity to be able to do so. So I think we’re pretty comfortable. And we would not have given Storm Shadow if they couldn’t be used.”

The Sukhoi Su-24M Fencer fighter-bomber, comparable in size to the now-retired US General Dynamics F-111, might be the most likely option. Ukraine was left with a large number of these aircraft after the collapse of the USSR and has been refurbishing older air frames, cannibalizing those which are no longer flyable and bringing new aircraft into inventory literally faster than the Russian Aerospace Force (VKS) and air defense units can shoot them down.

US and other western defense industry officials familiar with the Storm Shadow design feel confident the Su-24 could work with Storm Shadow. One industry source told Breaking Defense that “provided there are no aerodynamic issues involved in the separation of the missile from the [Sukhoi] air frame, the missile could easily be launched from this platform.”

After release from the aircraft, the missile drops to low altitude to avoid air defense radar networks. Weapons like Storm Shadow then “use an imaging IR seeker in terminal phase that compares what it ‘sees’ as it approaches the target coordinates with satellite or ISR platform-produced imagery of the target site itself that was uploaded to the missile on the ground,” the industry source explained. “If what the seeker is viewing and the imagery ‘match’ then the missile commits to its final phase and strikes its target.”

“Therefore, the aircraft’s main mission computer (MMC) being able to ‘talk’ to the missile is less of an issue with a long-range weapon like the Storm Shadow than it is with shorter range tactical munitions due to the targeting data being programmed into the missile before take-off,” he continued.

A Bridge Not Too Far

The central concern of the US and its allies is that if Ukraine were provided longer-range weapons, they would be used to hit targets inside of Russia — provoking an escalatory response from Putin. This had prompted the Ukrainian Defence Minister, Oleksii Reznikov, to provide assurances earlier this year that any longer-range missiles would not be used in this manner.

“Ukraine is ready to provide any guarantees that your weapons will not be involved in attacks on the Russian territory,” he said. “But if we could strike at a distance of up to 300 kilometers, the Russian army wouldn’t be able to provide defense and will have to lose,” he said at an EU forum.

The Storm Shadow has been the UK’s main air-launched cruise missile for decades. (UK MoD)

Reznikov’s “have to lose” comment refers to the Ukraine battle plan to strike strategic targets in Crimea that would make it impossible for Russia to continue its military presence there. Those targets are well within Storm Shadow’s operational range — assuming there are not restrictions placed on the weapon itself, either by political or technical means, in order to make sure the Ukrainians don’t hit Russia proper.

Woods did, however, make one thing clear: As far as the UK is concerned, “Crimea Is Ukraine … It is Ukrainian territory at the end of the day.”

So, what targets will be held at risk with the new weapon? If you are Ukraine “you start hitting targets to make the peninsula untenable for Russian forces,” said Ben Hodges, a retired US Army Lt. Gen. and former US European Command chief, in a late April interview with Newsweek.

You can feel the sweat coming off this tweet, days after the Storm Shadow announcement. https://t.co/vJ4FZg29PQ

— Aaron Mehta (@AaronMehta) May 15, 2023

“If the Ukrainians had the ATACMS, for example, the Black Sea Fleet would have already had to leave Sevastopol, they would have been hitting that place already,” he explained. “You hit Sevastopol and the Black Sea Fleet has to leave, they can’t sit there while precision weapons are raining down on ships, or harbor facilities, fuel, ammo, etc. Same thing with the [naval aviation] airbase in Saki.”

One of the main targets for the Storm Shadow is likely to be the bridge over the Kerch Straits that was originally damaged in an attack by the Ukrainian military in October 2022.

The bridge was constructed to connect Crimea with the Russian mainland after Moscow’s illegal invasion and annexation of this Ukrainian region in March 2014 and has also been a personal vanity project of Putin. Timing the attack in tandem with his birthday reportedly enraged the Russian leader.

Hodges projects that at first the Ukrainians “will not drop that bridge. “I think they’ll leave it up so that people can leave, so they literally have a bridge to get out of there if they see what’s happening, and they don’t want to remain under Ukrainian control.”

A former US military official told Breaking Defense that there are “psychological [warfare] benefits to keeping the bridge intact. A rush of people and vehicles to flee across the bridge adds to the ‘panic’ factor that Ukraine hopes will set in after their major counteroffensive expected within the next month.”

“At some point the Ukrainians will drop it [the bridge],” echoed Hodges in the same interview. “But in the near term, I think they’ll probably leave it up, unless the Russians are using it in a meaningful way after the land bridge has been cut. If they’re pouring in a lot more capabilities over the Kerch Bridge [back into Crimea], then they may decide to drop it.”

Ultimately, Woods said, he trusts the Ukrainians to use the weapons where they will do the most damage to Russian operations.

“With the other weapons systems [Ukraine has] actually used them responsibly. So they have never hit civilian targets, they’ve only hit military targets. And they have been using these weapon systems within their own territory. They’re all being used as part of expelling Russia’s illegal invasion … They will be using the weapon systems as they need to fight that deep battle.

breakingdefense.com · by Aaron Mehta

23. How to read ‘Art of War’ the way its author intended

Excerpts:

Initially, I was disappointed. It seemed Sunzi’s advice was either common sense or in agreement with Western military classics. However, a few years later the Marine Corps trained me as a China scholar, and I spent much of my career working on U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific region. This deepened my desire to understand how leaders in the People’s Republic of China see the world and choose strategies. Looking for insight, I turned to classical Chinese philosophy and finally encountered concepts that helped illuminate the unique perspective of Sunzi’s “Art of War.”

Today, I am an academic researching how Chinese philosophy and foreign policy intersect. To comprehend “Art of War,” it helps readers to approach the text from the worldview of its author. That means reading Sunzi’s advice through the prism of classical Chinese metaphysics, which is deeply shaped by the philosophy of Daoism.

How to read ‘Art of War’ the way its author intended

militarytimes.com · by Scott D. McDonald, Tufts University · May 16, 2023

Editor’s note: This commentary was first published in The Conversation.

In the mid-1990s, I picked up the military classic “Art of War” hoping to find insight into my new career as an officer in the United States Marine Corps.

I was not the only one looking for insights from the sage Sunzi, also known as Sun Tzu, who died over 2,500 years ago. “Art of War” has long been mined for an understanding of China’s strategic tradition and universal military truths. The book’s maxims, such as “know the enemy and know yourself,” are routinely quoted in military texts, as well as business and management books.

Initially, I was disappointed. It seemed Sunzi’s advice was either common sense or in agreement with Western military classics. However, a few years later the Marine Corps trained me as a China scholar, and I spent much of my career working on U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific region. This deepened my desire to understand how leaders in the People’s Republic of China see the world and choose strategies. Looking for insight, I turned to classical Chinese philosophy and finally encountered concepts that helped illuminate the unique perspective of Sunzi’s “Art of War.”

Today, I am an academic researching how Chinese philosophy and foreign policy intersect. To comprehend “Art of War,” it helps readers to approach the text from the worldview of its author. That means reading Sunzi’s advice through the prism of classical Chinese metaphysics, which is deeply shaped by the philosophy of Daoism.

Daoist roots

China’s intellectual tradition is rooted in the Warring States period from the 5th to 3rd century B.C.E., the era during which Sunzi is thought to have lived. Though a time of conflict, it was also a time of cultural and intellectual development that led to the rise of Daoism and Confucianism.

Confucian philosophy focuses on maintaining proper social relationships as the key to moral behavior and and social harmony. Daoism, on the other hand, is more concerned with metaphysics: trying to understand the workings of the natural world and drawing analogies about how humans should act.

Daoism views existence as composed of constant cycles of change, in which power ebbs and flows. Meanwhile, the “Dào,” or “the way,” directs all things in nature toward fulfilling their inherent potential, like water flowing downhill.

Helping nature take its course

The Chinese word for this concept of “situational potential” is 勢, or “shì” – the name of Chapter Five in “Art of War.” Almost every Western version translates it differently, but it is key to the military concepts Sunzi employs.

For example, Chapter Five explains how those who are “expert at war” are not overly concerned with individual soldiers. Instead, effective leaders are able to determine the potential in the situation and put themselves in position to take advantage of it.

This is why later chapters spend so much time discussing geography and deployment of forces, rather than fighting techniques. One does more to damage an opponent’s potential by undermining their scheme than by merely killing their soldiers. Sunzi is concerned about long supply lines, because they lower an army’s potential by making it harder to move and vulnerable to disruption. A general who understands potential can evaluate troops, terrain and scheme, then arrange the battlefield to “subdue the enemy without fighting.”

In Daoist thought, the correct way to manage each situation’s potential is to act with 無為, “wúwéi,” which literally translates as “nonaction.” However, the key idea is to disturb the natural order as little as possible, taking the minimum action needed to allow the situation’s potential to be fulfilled. The term does not appear in “Art of War,” but a contemporary reader of Sunzi’s would have been familiar with the connection between nurturing “shì” and acting with “wúwéi.”

The importance of acting with “wúwéi” is illustrated by the Confucian philosopher Mengzi’s story about a farmer who pulled on his corn stalks in an attempt to help them grow tall, but killed the crop instead. One does not help corn grow by forcing it but by understanding its natural potential and acting accordingly: ensuring the soil is good, weeds are removed and water is sufficient. Actions are most effective when they nurture potential, not when they try to force it.

From the battlefield to the UN

In a Daoist understanding, leaders hoping to chart an effective strategy must read the situation, discover its potential, and position their armies or states in the best position to take advantage of “shì.” They act with “wúwéi” to nurture situations, rather than force, which could disturb the situation and cause chaos.

Therefore, in foreign policy, a decision-maker should attempt to make small policy adjustments as early as possible to slowly manage the development of the international environment. This approach is evident in Beijing’s use of “guānxì.” Meaning “relationships,” the Chinese term carries a strong sense of mutual obligation.

For example, the PRC waged a decadeslong effort to take over the United Nations “China seat” from Taiwan, where the Republic of China government had fled after Communists’ victory in the civil war. Beijing accomplished that by slowly building friendships, identifying shared strategic interests and accruing owed favors with many small states around the world, until in 1971 it had enough votes in the General Assembly.

Trend-watching today

The concept of “shì” also provides a lens for understanding the PRC’s increasing pressure on Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing claims is its own territory.

Sunzi might say that discerning the current trend in the Taiwan Strait is more essential than conventional questions about comparative military strength. Several factors could push Taiwan closer to Beijing, including the island’s loss of diplomatic allies and the pull of the PRC’s massive economy – not to mention Beijing’s growing global clout vis-à-vis the U.S. If so, shì is in Beijing’s favor, and a nudge to persuade the U.S. to stay out is all that is needed to keep the situation developing to the PRC’s advantage.

Or is the potential developing in the other direction? Such factors as a growing sense of a unique Taiwanese identity and the PRC’s troubled economic model may make closer ties with the mainland less and less appealing in Taiwan. In that case, Beijing may see a need to appear strong and dominant so Taiwan will not be lulled into counting on support from Washington, D.C.

A surface reading of Sunzi can easily support an emphasis on troop deployments, intelligence and logistics. However, an understanding of “shì” highlights Sunzi’s emphasis on evaluating and nurturing situational potential. It is not that the former are unimportant, but a decision-maker will use them differently if the goal is to manage situational trends rather than seek decisive battle.

That “Art of War” continues to top sales lists demonstrates its lasting appeal. However, to be useful as a guide to understanding security policy and strategy, my experience in the Indo-Pacific region suggests one must dig into the principles that shaped Sunzi’s view of the world and continue to shape the view of leaders in Beijing.

The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. The Conversation is wholly responsible for the content.

24. At the Real Embassy, Netflix’s ‘Diplomat’ Draws a Diplomatic Response

More on Netflix' "Top Gun" for the Foreign Service.

At the Real Embassy, Netflix’s ‘Diplomat’ Draws a Diplomatic Response

The New York Times · by Mark Landler · May 15, 2023

America’s ambassador to Britain says several top officials have called her to discuss the hit show, implausibilities and all. Now she’s meeting with Keri Russell, who plays her role.

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Ambassador Jane D. Hartley is a well-connected Democratic fund-raiser with a background as a television executive.Credit...Tom Jamieson for The New York Times

Reporting from London

May 15, 2023, 11:28 a.m. ET

This article includes spoilers for the Netflix series “The Diplomat.”

On a tranquil Friday morning, Jane D. Hartley was sitting in the garden room at Winfield House, the baronial residence of the American ambassador to London, listing the many ways her life is different from that of Kate Wyler, the fictional ambassador played by Keri Russell in the popular Netflix drama “The Diplomat.”

“The concept that you could fly from one country to another without ever raising your hand on Capitol Hill,” Ms. Hartley said, noting that Ambassador Wyler never had to undergo Senate confirmation. “Sorry, that doesn’t happen.”

“I also don’t have a D.C.M. who brings racks of clothes into my office and tells me what I should wear,” she said, referring to the deputy chief of mission, who in the series acts as the ambassador’s fashion stylist. “I wear my own clothes.”

A gauzy mix of spy thriller and soap opera, “The Diplomat” debuted last month as the most-watched series on Netflix, and remains in the top 10. It has become compulsive viewing in foreign-policy circles — easy to mock for its Bond-meets-Bourne plot twists but also a source of gratification among diplomats, who feel Hollywood is finally showing them the recognition it has long given C.I.A. agents (though the series has one of those, too).

“It’s about damn time that we’re the heroes,” said Matthew Palmer, the real-life deputy chief of mission in London.

Faced with some of the scenes between Keri Russell, as Ambassador Kate Wyler, and Rufus Sewell, as her husband, “I think my security might do something,” Ms. Hartley said.Credit...Netflix, via Associated Press

Suddenly, Ms. Hartley finds her job the object of fascination, even at the highest levels of the State Department and White House. She said Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, had both quizzed her about the fine points of the eight-part series, having watched it.

As Ms. Hartley’s meeting with a reporter was winding down, her husband, Ralph Schlosstein, passed quietly through the front hall, on his way upstairs. A Wall Street investor, he divides his time between New York and London.

But he neither sits in on Ms. Hartley’s meetings with British officials nor wrestles with her in the garden outside Winfield House during a visit by the American president — as did Ambassador Wyler and her husband, Hal, a jealous, high-octane fellow diplomat played by the British actor Rufus Sewell.

“I think my security might do something if that were to happen,” said Ms. Hartley, 73, a good-humored, well-connected Democratic Party fund-raiser. She is on her second plum assignment, having served as ambassador to France from 2014 to 2017 (John Adams is the only other U.S. ambassador posted to both Paris and London).

With a background as a television executive, Ms. Hartley is sympathetic to the creative license that Hollywood often takes. On Tuesday, she will welcome Ms. Russell, who memorably played a Russian sleeper spy in “The Americans,” and the show’s creator, Debora Cahn, whose credits include “Homeland” and “The West Wing,” to Winfield House to talk about how the “The Diplomat” stands up against real diplomacy.

“Diplomats in pop culture are typically bit players,” Mr. Palmer explained. “In the movie, we might be the ones who come in during the meeting and say, ‘But what about the risks to the long-term relationship?’”

The show uses digital technology to simulate the central London views of the ambassador’s grand residence, Winfield House.Credit...Tom Jamieson for The New York Times

Mr. Palmer’s fictional counterpart, Stuart Hayford (played by Ato Essandoh) doesn’t just help dress the ambassador. He is her constant companion, advising her on the president’s plans to recruit her as vice president and helping hatch harebrained schemes, like when she sneaks into the British foreign secretary’s office to meet an Iranian envoy, who promptly falls dead. The Hayford character is also dating the C.I.A. station chief.

In real life, Mr. Palmer does none of those things. Instead, he manages the embassy, one of the largest American diplomatic facilities in the world, with 1,100 employees. But in his spare time, Mr. Palmer has written four diplomatic thrillers, which gives him an appreciation of both the accurate details and the faux pas.

The portraits of Winston Churchill and Dwight D. Eisenhower in Kate Wyler’s office are copies of those in Ms. Hartley’s. Aaron Snipe, the embassy’s spokesman who posted a gentle fact-check of the series on Twitter, noted that although the producers rented a stately mansion outside London as a stand-in for Winfield House, they used digital technology to add the BT Tower, which is visible from its rear windows.

The far-fetched parts start with the show’s premise, and its emphasis on a sensitive national security role for the ambassador.

Kate Wyler, a career diplomat with a history of derring-do assignments, is diverted to London from Kabul, Afghanistan, after a deadly attack on a British aircraft carrier. She fears she will have to throw garden parties, but instead finds herself at the beating heart of American and British foreign policy during a Tom Clancy-grade geopolitical crisis.

None of this, diplomats say, resembles the actual job of a political ambassador, particularly to a close ally like Britain, when each side’s top national security officials have the others’ cellphone numbers on speed dial.

“The reality is that Jake Sullivan will pick up the phone and call his counterpart, and the ambassador will hear about it afterward,” said Lewis A. Lukens, who served as deputy chief of mission under Ms. Hartley’s predecessor, Robert Wood Johnson IV.

Ms. Hartley was previously ambassador to Paris.Credit...Tom Jamieson for The New York Times

That doesn’t mean Britain’s foreign secretary, James Cleverly, hasn’t cultivated friendly ties with Ms. Hartley. He chatted with her, while sipping a whiskey, at the ambassador’s Christmas party at Winfield House. The Foreign Office gave the producers of “The Diplomat” rare access to film inside its grand headquarters on Whitehall. Mr. Cleverly is even planning to tape a video for Netflix to promote the series.

“The show gets the informality of really good meetings in the foreign secretary’s office, minus the people dropping dead,” said Matthew Barzun, who served as ambassador during the Obama administration.

The key to keeping one’s sanity, Mr. Barzun said, is not to worry about being in every critical meeting. During his posting, he visited British high schools, where he engaged with students about what they admired, and distrusted, about the United States. With her business ties, Ms. Hartley said she planned to focus on apprenticeship and training programs for young Britons — reviving a project she began in Paris.

The last ambassador whose career even remotely parallels Ms. Russell’s character is Raymond G.H. Seitz, sent to London by President George H.W. Bush in 1991. A career diplomat who had served there twice before, Mr. Seitz heard about his new post when he was called out of a bar in Brussels after attending a NATO meeting. On the phone was the president.

“When I came in, I knew half the cabinet,” said Mr. Seitz, now 82, from his home in New Hampshire. “Coming from Washington, I also knew what the thinking was on Europe. Plus, I was charming. Let’s not overlook that.”

So winning was Mr. Seitz that President Bill Clinton decided to keep him on after entering the White House. That meant Mr. Seitz dealt with the fallout from Mr. Clinton’s decision to issue a visa to Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, a political party with ties to the underground Irish Republican Army. Prime Minister John Major, a friend of Mr. Seitz’s, was so infuriated that he refused to speak to Mr. Clinton.

Ms. Russell as Ambassador Wyler, who is appointed in the wake of a lethal attack on a British warship.Credit...Netflix, via Associated Press

Ms. Hartley has gotten a taste of the tensions generated by Northern Ireland. President Biden recently made a brief visit to Belfast, followed by a more leisurely tour of the Republic of Ireland, where he celebrated his Irish roots — a disparity that drew tetchy coverage in Britain’s right-leaning newspapers.

Last week, Mr. Biden ruffled more feathers when he said at a Democratic fund-raiser in New York City that he had gone to Belfast to make sure “the Brits didn’t screw around” with the post-Brexit trade status of Northern Ireland.

It wasn’t a lethal attack on a British warship, as in “The Diplomat,” but for Ms. Hartley, it was a distraction in a “special relationship” that she says is closely aligned on Northern Ireland, as well as the war in Ukraine and other issues.

“I’ve known him for a long time,” she said of the president. “His roots are in Ireland.” Then she added diplomatically, “Biden has English roots as well.”

The New York Times · by Mark Landler · May 15, 2023

25. Can China Thread the Needle on Ukraine?

Excerpts:

The international community should not place too much hope on China’s mediation efforts, nor alter any existing efforts to deter Russian aggression or to create conditions for ending the conflict. China’s efforts are likely to be high in profile but slow and questionable in substance.

Beijing is aware that it will be incredibly difficult to reach any type of political settlement and does not want to be blamed if its efforts are unsuccessful. At the same time, it wants credit for any progress that could be made. These dueling tendencies are evident in Xi’s statement that China “did not create the Ukraine crisis, nor is it a party to the crisis” and his claim that Beijing cannot “sit idly by” as the conflict escalates.

Beijing has also not shown any willingness to impose costs on Moscow if the Kremlin refuses to follow its diplomatic lead. This March, Xi and Putin issued a joint statement in which they rejected the deployment of nuclear weapons abroad. But when Putin declared days later that he would place nuclear weapons in Belarus, China largely avoided criticizing him.

China will proceed cautiously. It will be wary of offering anything more than bringing Ukraine and Russia to the negotiation table. Indeed, Beijing will most likely focus on balancing its competing priorities—on the one hand maintaining its relationship with Moscow and on the other not entirely alienating European countries—by doing just enough to deflect criticism of its role. China wants to show that it is helpful, but it does not want to risk being accused of pushing one side’s interests over another’s in the diplomatic process.

If Beijing does eventually offer any concrete proposals to settle the war, there is a risk that even seemingly neutral proposals, such as freezing the fighting in place, could prioritize the interests of Russia. Beijing is signaling that it wants to play a more active diplomatic role, but the reality is that it is operating in an arena where it has little experience.

Can China Thread the Needle on Ukraine?

Beijing Struggles to Balance Its Ties to Russia and Europe

By Bonny Lin

May 17, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Bonny Lin · May 17, 2023

On April 21, China’s ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, proclaimed that whether Crimea is part of Ukraine “depends on how the problem is perceived.” He added more fuel to the fire by saying that “ex-Soviet countries don’t have an effective status in international law”—questioning not only the sovereignty of Ukraine but also that of over a dozen countries that were part of the Soviet Union. These inflammatory remarks provoked widespread condemnation, with 80 European lawmakers urging the French government to expel Lu. Beijing tried to downplay the situation, stating that Lu was only expressing his personal views.

Five days after Lu made his remarks, Chinese President Xi Jinping went forward with a long-promised phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Although some observers welcomed this call as an effort to contain the damage from Lu’s comments, others suspected that the ambassador’s remarks had been designed to probe how Europe would react if China were to officially embrace his positions. Following Xi’s call, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang visited Germany, France, and Norway in early May. And this week, Li Hui, China’s new special representative to deal with the Ukraine conflict, will visit Ukraine, Poland, France, Germany, and Russia to discuss how to achieve “a political settlement to the Ukraine crisis.”

These events have thrown a spotlight on Beijing’s struggles to balance its conflicting objectives in Ukraine. China aims to prioritize its relations with Russia, its strongest strategic partner, which has biased its position on the conflict in favor of its neighbor. At the same time, Beijing wishes to ensure that Europe does not join an anti-China bloc—an increasingly important goal given Chinese policymakers’ growing pessimism that they can prevent the deterioration of U.S.-Chinese relations. These concerns have led China to try to cast itself as neutral and limit some of its support for Russia. As the war drags on, however, Beijing is finding that this position is increasingly difficult to sustain and that the conflict is weakening its closest strategic partner while complicating China’s security environment.

As a result, Beijing has gotten off the sidelines and has begun to offer its good offices to bring both sides to the negotiating table. It has articulated a vision for global security, issued a position paper on Ukraine, and appointed a special representative to engage all parties involved in the conflict. It also appears to be exploring ways to recast the Ukraine conflict as one driven by a long and complex history in order to undercut external aid to Ukraine and defend Russian interests. In taking this more active role, however, China’s efforts are likely to be high-profile but slow in delivering results. China is likely to do just enough to cast itself as a helpful and responsible global leader but not enough to be held accountable for achieving an end to the Ukraine conflict on terms that would be fair and acceptable to both sides.

GETTING IT WRONG

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, leading Chinese experts provided a range of assessments about the war’s impact and trajectory. Many initially assessed that the conflict would be brief, and some even predicted that it would have no geopolitical implications beyond Europe.

Even as it became clear that there would be no swift resolution to the conflict, the conventional wisdom in Beijing was that China should maintain its hands-off role. One month into the war, a group of top Chinese strategists from different academic disciplines, including the authors of Unrestricted Warfare, an influential 1999 book on new non-military and non-lethal methods of warfare, gathered informally in Beijing to analyze the impact of the Ukraine conflict on the global order. They assessed that the conflict was unlikely to end soon and that China could benefit from a prolonged fight. China should maintain its neutrality, they argued, in order to turn the crisis into an opportunity to recast its relationships with Russia, the United States, and Europe, all of which would suffer mounting costs as the war dragged on.

The Chinese strategists advocated for providing secret assistance to Russia to ensure that it could sustain the fight and would not collapse. However, they counseled against drifting entirely into Moscow’s camp. These experts believed that the conflict could provide Beijing with a chance to partially smooth ties with the United States, particularly since there was a greater chance of working with U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration than with a potential future Trump administration.

They also recommended that Beijing play an active diplomatic role in the conflict’s aftermath. China should advocate positions that most countries support—such as respecting sovereignty and abandoning a Cold War mentality—to position itself to shape the international response in ways beneficial to it. They also pressed China to take on new responsibilities, including acting as an arbitrator and rules-maker for this emerging international order.

Despite China’s efforts, most of the developed world viewed its position on Ukraine as deeply pro-Russia.

Although it is not clear if China’s leadership fully agreed with these experts’ positions, many of their suggestions have been embraced by Beijing. China has tried, for example, to position itself as neutral in the Ukraine conflict. The government’s position paper on Ukraine, published in February, also included these Chinese experts’ specific points about respecting countries’ sovereignty and abandoning a Cold War mentality.

The strategists’ cautious optimism about Beijing’s ability to turn the conflict to its advantage, however, soon collided with reality. Despite China’s efforts, most of the developed world viewed its position on Ukraine as deeply pro-Russia. Many Chinese analysts worried that this perception could poison China’s reputation in Europe, causing governments and the public to see China as an enemy. Similarly, U.S.-Chinese relations have worsened even as the Ukraine conflict has dragged on. China’s response to the war in Ukraine also heightened global concern about Beijing’s possible intentions to use force against Taiwan, thereby strengthening international support for Taipei—and aggravating China’s own security environment.

By the middle of 2022, Chinese experts saw the prolonged conflict in Ukraine as harmful to Chinese interests. The dominant perspective within the country was that the fighting represented a NATO-backed proxy war to weaken Russia, China’s friend in countering Western suppression and encirclement. Many argued that the United States was the conflict’s main beneficiary: it was learning valuable lessons in propping up Ukraine’s fight, including by leveraging coercive sanctions against Russia, and could use these same tactics against China in the future. At the same time, the war had allowed Washington to strengthen and revitalize its alliances in Europe and beyond. It was clear that the Ukraine conflict had weakened Russia, Chinese experts believed, but it was less certain that the United States or Europe had suffered equally.

Beijing’s concerns over the Ukraine conflict intensified over the past year. Not only was Russia facing strong Ukrainian military resistance and running low on weapons and munitions but Chinese experts were also concerned about the possibility of direct U.S.-Russian confrontation and nuclear escalation. These two scenarios could make it impossible for China to stay on the sidelines. Chinese analysts judge that Russia could use nuclear weapons as a last resort and if it felt at risk of losing the war, and Chinese media reported on Russia’s repeated nuclear threats and its October 2022 drills involving its strategic nuclear forces. From Beijing’s perspective, however, the threat of nuclear use does not come only from Russia. China believes that NATO has also engaged in nuclear saber-rattling, including through a nuclear deterrence exercise that occurred at the same time as Russia’s nuclear drills.

Diplomacy could allow Beijing to deflect criticism.

These concerns are evident in Xi’s escalating rhetoric about the Ukraine war. When hosting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Beijing in November, Xi stated that the international community should “oppose the use of or the threat to use nuclear weapons, advocate that nuclear weapons cannot be used and that nuclear wars must not be fought, and prevent a nuclear crisis in Eurasia.” Later that month, in a discussion with Biden in Bali about the Ukrainian crisis, he said that “conflicts and wars produce no winner” and “confrontation between major countries must be avoided.”

Chinese fears about Ukraine are reflected in the stories covered by the country’s media. In December, Chinese newspapers shared Russian expert assessments that the Ukraine conflict risked leading to a direct military confrontation between the United States and Russia in 2023. Chinese media also saw the mid-March incident in which a Russian warplane downed a U.S. surveillance drone as validation of these concerns, and reprinted Western analyses that the episode marked the first direct physical contact between the U.S. and Russian militaries.

At the same time, Beijing detected cracks in Western support for Ukraine. A report published in late February by the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a leading research institution housed under China’s Ministry of State Security, assessed that Western leaders “may object to long-term aid to Ukraine and grow tired of it.” It noted that leaders in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom had begun pressuring Zelensky to negotiate with Russia, and there were also voices in the United States calling for an end of aid to Ukraine and the need to reach a peace settlement. Echoing this line of thinking in his April call with Zelensky, Xi noted that “rational thinking and voices [are] now on the rise” with regard to the conflict and that it is therefore important “to seize the opportunity and build up favorable conditions” for a settlement.

These developments, coupled with continuous international pressure on China to not provide lethal aid to Russia, led Chinese Politburo member Wang Yi to warn at the Munich Security Conference in February that the conflict could be “escalated and protracted.” He repeated Xi’s line that there are no winners in wars and added that the Ukraine conflict “should not go on anymore.” Shortly afterward, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said that China was deeply worried that the conflict could “spiral out of control”—the first time Beijing had used that phrase.

COURSE CORRECTION

These shifting assessments have caused Beijing to alter its approach toward the conflict in Ukraine. Whereas it previously stayed on the sidelines, China has cautiously stepped into the arena in recent months. In particular, the Chinese government has aimed to portray itself as a key actor that can solve international conflicts. On February 21, it released its Global Security Initiative Concept Paper, which laid out Xi’s vision for how to solve the security challenges the world faces. The paper promised to “eliminate the root causes of international conflicts” and “improve global security governance.” It also criticized Washington’s extensive global influence, vowing to change the fact that regional and global tensions have “occur[red] frequently” under U.S. leadership.

Three days later, China released a position paper on Ukraine that laid out a dozen broad principles for a political settlement to the conflict. The paper echoed Moscow’s talking points, even declining to mention that Russia had invaded Ukraine and violated its sovereignty. But it did include points—such as the need to respect sovereignty and territorial integrity—that appeared to account for Ukraine’s interests.

China scored a diplomatic victory in another part of the world during this period. On March 10, Saudi Arabia and Iran announced an agreement to restore full diplomatic relations. This breakthrough, they claimed, was achieved due to “the noble initiative” of Xi and represented the first success of the Global Security Initiative. In reality, China did not initiate this effort—the United States encouraged Saudi Arabia and Iran to begin discussions in 2021. At most, China provided a hospitable venue for the two countries to hash out their differences and represented a neutral party that could convince each side to operate in good faith. But it is possible that this accomplishment made Xi overconfident about what he can achieve on other diplomatic fronts.

Against this backdrop, Xi intensified his efforts in Ukraine. In early March, he hosted Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, a close ally of the Kremlin, and then travelled to Moscow to meet Putin himself. In late March and April, Xi met in person with a number of world leaders to discuss Ukraine—seeking to engage not only with European voices but also to elevate the views of key developing countries. This included Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who called for a “G-20 of peace” composed of of neutral countries to play a leading diplomatic role. Then in late April, Xi called Zelensky at Ukraine’s request and designated a special representative to engage with all parties on how to reach a political solution to the conflict.

Overall, China likely views its diplomatic efforts as affording it a greater role to determine the course of the war, which it views as being manipulated and prolonged by the United States. Diplomacy could allow Beijing to deflect criticism, to try to set a new narrative about the conflict, and to potentially shape the outcome in ways that would be beneficial to it. China could also use its ability to sit down with all parties as a bargaining chip to pressure other countries to respect its interests. It’s possible that French President Emmanuel Macron’s public declaration in April that it is not in France’s interest to support the U.S. agenda to defend Taiwan was at least partially motivated by Paris’s desire for China to play a constructive role in Ukraine.

FALSE HOPE?

The degree to which China can leverage its diplomatic efforts to its advantage depends on how exactly the country seeks to proceed. Beijing has not offered specific proposals on how to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. And if its approach during the six-party talks on North Korea or its mediation between Saudi Arabia and Iran serve as a guide to its efforts in Ukraine, nobody should expect China to put forward creative diplomatic proposals. While Beijing may be able to get both sides to the negotiating table, it has a long way to go if it wants to convince the international community that it is truly an honest broker.

Although Beijing emphasizes its seemly neutral push for finding a path toward peace through direct dialogue, its portrayal of the United States and NATO as fueling the conflict by providing arms to Ukraine is a crucial aspect of its messaging. This narrative is aimed at rallying the global South and seeks to undercut U.S. and European arguments that the international community should support Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

The reality is that Ukraine cannot sustain the fight if its external political, economic, and military support dries up. The United States and Europe have already asked countries that have been on the sidelines to help replenish Ukraine’s weapons stockpiles, and China’s push for dialogue could disproportionately impact Kyiv if countries become wary of doing so. At the same time, China’s call for an immediate cease-fire could allow Russia to consolidate its gains at a time when it still controls significant portions of Ukrainian territory.

Beijing has not shown any willingness to impose costs on Moscow.

China’s evolving foreign policy discourse is also not favorable to Ukraine. Chinese experts are working to resolve the contradiction between Beijing’s emphasis on respect for sovereignty and its refusal to describe the conflict as a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Some Chinese scholars have suggested that sovereignty and territorial integrity should be viewed as only one of 12 core principles for China to balance—in other words, not the most important one, or a value that needs to be respected completely.

But if China wanted to maintain its position that the principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity is nonnegotiable, then Lu Shaye’s questioning of the sovereignty of post-Soviet states might be the solution. It is telling that despite the international condemnation of Lu’s remarks, Beijing has yet to publicly reprimand him in any way beyond disavowing his comments. Last week, China’s Foreign Ministry even came to his defense by denying the “false information” that Lu was recalled to China.

Lu’s comments are actually in line with the spirit of two Chinese talking points: that Russia had “legitimate security concerns” to use force against Ukraine and that the Ukraine crisis was caused by “profound historical backgrounds and complex realistic reasons.” In other words, Beijing could argue that Russia’s 2022 invasion did not actually start the conflict in Ukraine. If that is the case, Russia is not the only aggressor, and resolving the conflict requires going further back in history to a time when Ukraine (and Crimea) was part of the Soviet Union. This could make it easier to push for a political settlement where Russia retains control of the parts of Ukraine it has conquered.

China does not need to argue that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was morally right— and such arguments are likely to be rejected by the West. China just needs to obscure the causes of the war in order to cast doubt on the moral high ground of the United States and Europe. It is possible that Beijing is banking on growing Western division and fatigue as the conflict drags on, which could allow countries from the global South to increase pressure on the West to end the war. As Russian and Ukrainian capabilities are further exhausted, both sides could find themselves looking for a way out of the war.

A QUESTIONABLE PEACEMAKER

The international community should not place too much hope on China’s mediation efforts, nor alter any existing efforts to deter Russian aggression or to create conditions for ending the conflict. China’s efforts are likely to be high in profile but slow and questionable in substance.

Beijing is aware that it will be incredibly difficult to reach any type of political settlement and does not want to be blamed if its efforts are unsuccessful. At the same time, it wants credit for any progress that could be made. These dueling tendencies are evident in Xi’s statement that China “did not create the Ukraine crisis, nor is it a party to the crisis” and his claim that Beijing cannot “sit idly by” as the conflict escalates.

Beijing has also not shown any willingness to impose costs on Moscow if the Kremlin refuses to follow its diplomatic lead. This March, Xi and Putin issued a joint statement in which they rejected the deployment of nuclear weapons abroad. But when Putin declared days later that he would place nuclear weapons in Belarus, China largely avoided criticizing him.

China will proceed cautiously. It will be wary of offering anything more than bringing Ukraine and Russia to the negotiation table. Indeed, Beijing will most likely focus on balancing its competing priorities—on the one hand maintaining its relationship with Moscow and on the other not entirely alienating European countries—by doing just enough to deflect criticism of its role. China wants to show that it is helpful, but it does not want to risk being accused of pushing one side’s interests over another’s in the diplomatic process.

If Beijing does eventually offer any concrete proposals to settle the war, there is a risk that even seemingly neutral proposals, such as freezing the fighting in place, could prioritize the interests of Russia. Beijing is signaling that it wants to play a more active diplomatic role, but the reality is that it is operating in an arena where it has little experience.

BONNY LIN is Director of the China Power Project and Senior Fellow for Asian Security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Foreign Affairs · by Bonny Lin · May 17, 2023

26. Full-Spectrum Integrated Lethality? On the Promise and Peril of Buzzwords

My new "go to" article on buzzwords.

As an aside I followed the author on Twitter over the past few years as she wrote her dissertation and tweeted about it. This article could be taken from her tweets by adding some additional substance and details.

Conclusion:

When facing an entrenched and powerful bureaucracy, there are a range of options for introducing change. Buzzwords are just one weapon in this arsenal. However, they must be used thoughtfully and combined with other tactics. When encountering a new buzzword, don’t only ask what the word means, ask what it seeks to do. “Integrated deterrence” asks you to reconsider your preconceived notions of deterrence. This may require new processes and different allocations of resources, and the buzz of “integrated deterrence” provides an external justification for organizations to reorganize. It is too early to say whether this effort will be successful. Leaders can influence narrative and incentive structures, but it is the actions taken in the name of “integrated deterrence” that will determine success. Organizations can relabel programs far more quickly than they can change. It is easier to slap on a bumper sticker than it is to rebuild a car.

Buzzwords have the potential to be helpful, but this is not a blank check for a buzzword bonanza. Too many new meaningless words can slowly poison the intellectual environment. Much like the emissions of a single car are not enough to destroy the ozone layer, a single, isolated buzzword will not prove fatal. But add more and more buzzword emissions every year and eventually decades of linguistic pollution could leave discourse and strategy burning.

Full-Spectrum Integrated Lethality? On the Promise and Peril of Buzzwords - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Elena Wicker · May 17, 2023

Every few years, there seems to be a new buzzword in the national security establishment. What was once simply “deterrence” has recently become “integrated deterrence.” This follows a decades-long adjectival march through nuclear, conventional, direct, immediate, general, complex, indirect, extended, asymmetric, classical, traditional, modern, pivotal, and perfect deterrence, not to mention deterrence by denial, punishment, entanglement, and detection. Today, at least 27 types of deterrence exist in political science and defense studies.

Across the defense enterprise, the proliferation of attention-grabbing jargon is widely maligned. These new terms can be confusing, duplicative, vague, and generally unhelpful. Buzzwords and jargon are banned in writing guides, legislated into plain language, and constrained through terminology standardization programs. Yet, despite this, buzzwords continue to proliferate. Why?

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Buzzwords are a promising weapon in the arsenal of individuals seeking to shape an organization. Buzzwords introduce a new label that can delink us from our prior knowledge and expectations. They can provide an external or executive-driven justification for new budgeting and organizational structures, thereby deflecting blame from lower-level leaders. When used judiciously and in concert with other tactics, buzzwords can help leaders change organizations. But buzzwords are also perilous. They can be coopted into bumper stickers or denigrated as bingo squares. All buzzwords eventually lose their buzz. It is the actions, or inaction, of individuals and organizations during a buzzword’s lifespan that determine whether it begins a revolution or fades into a bumper sticker.

Delinking and Rethinking

“Buzzwords” and “jargon” are often conflated but they are not the same. Jargon is the set of technical language shared by a group of people in the same profession or specialty. One subset of jargon is “terminology” — the standardized technical words and phrases that have been codified. For example, in my research, “military terminology” is the set of words found codified in military doctrine, the Department of Defense Dictionary, or the service dictionaries. Buzzwords are a different subset of jargon. They are uncodified phrases that are particularly fashionable or attention-grabbing at a specific moment in time. Some are just flash in the pan words that quickly drop out of usage, while others survive for decades. Critically, words can move between these categories: buzzwords that lose their fashionable nature decay into non-buzzy jargon, and with enough support, may eventually be codified into doctrinal terminology.

The first benefit of buzzwords is that they create cognitive distance from something that already exists, creating space for individuals to think in a new way. When individuals enter a profession, they are taught the jargon of their professional community. These words become familiar, even habitual. Jargon is often shorthand for more complex ideas and processes, allowing for faster communication. Because this language is often learned through conversation and context, it is possible to use jargon appropriately without recalling its origins. You’ve experienced this if you have ever used an acronym but cannot recall exactly what it stands for. It is possible to discuss the term “deterrence” without understanding its intellectual history. The 2022 National Security Strategy introduces “integrated deterrence” in an attempt to make readers reconceptualize “deterrence,” breaking out of the habitual shorthand. The document even explicitly calls on readers “to think and act in new ways.”

One of the greatest (unintentional) buzzword designers was Carl von Clausewitz. In On War, Clausewitz used scientific analogies like gravity and friction to capture his theory of war. Ironically, he also warns readers about the “pompous retinues of technical terms” that accompany most studies of war. In Clausewitzian thought, “centres of gravity” are “situated where the greatest bodies of troops are assembled.” After the 1970s boom in On War’s popularity in professional military education, usage of the phrase “centers of gravity” peaked in military professional journals in the 1980s. The argument was that Clausewitz presented a more intelligent way to focus Army combat power. At this same time, U.S. Army leaders were learning from the Vietnam and Yom Kippur Wars, reconceptualizing and extending the battlefield, and implementing change through the AirLand Battle concept of war. Robert Cluley argues that buzzwords provide a “spoonful of sugar” to help organizations explore problem areas that they don’t want to admit are problematic. The “extended battlefield” and “centers of gravity” were that sugar.

The buzz around these ideas would eventually dissipate. But this was not a failure of the buzzwords, rather it was a sign of their success. Leaders like Gen. Donn Starry at U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command were wielding their buzzwords intentionally and thoughtfully in a planned series of talks, articles, and engagements. “Center of gravity” is not in AirLand Battle, but Clausewitzian and AirLand battle narratives converged. In 1986, Army operations doctrine codified AirLand Battle, redefining operational art as the fundamental decisions about when and where to fight. This was to be enabled by the identification of center-of-gravity, defined as “those characteristics, capabilities, or localities from which a military force derives its freedom of action, physical strength, or will to fight.”

In this case, an intentional campaign of AirLand Battle buzzwords merged with the inadvertent buzz of Clausewitz’s lexicon, linguistically anchoring a transformation in Army doctrine. Other services, like the U.S. Marine Corps, were also codifying Clausewitzian theory into their operations doctrine. Nearly forty years later, centers of gravity remain critical to operational design and underpin how U.S. forces assess, plan, and act in combat. The term remains codified in joint doctrine as “the source of power that provides moral or physical strength, freedom of action, or will to act.” Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of an enemy was not a new idea, but “center of gravity” has fundamentally changed how Army forces train, plan, and operate. A foothold in doctrine was all that was needed to shape the thought of an entire generation of soldiers.

“Integrated deterrence” now seeks to shape thinking in a similar way. We all have preconceived notions of deterrence based on our education, occupational background, and numerous other factors. The National Defense Strategy explains integrated deterrence as “using every tool at the Department [of Defense’s] disposal,” in concert with the rest of government, allies, and partners. Needless to say, this is not a new idea. But in practice, “whole-of-government” coordination for deterrence has been difficult to achieve. As with “center of gravity,” “integrated deterrence” seeks to disconnect listeners from their habitual understandings and create a new lens through which a challenging conversation can be revisited.

Funding Lethality

Buzzwords are just words until they are made material. When a new term is introduced, leaders can use this new external or higher-level priority to reallocate resources with less blame falling on them personally. One of the clearest ways to connect a term to material impact is through funding. To be resourced, a program must be named. The first National Defense Authorization Act passed in 1961 was less than one page long. It had three named categories: aircraft, missiles, and naval vessels. The fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act is 4,409 pages long with hundreds of sections, each representing a uniquely named “budget bucket.”

“Lethality” is one such term made fiscally relevant. The concept of “new lethality,” was introduced in the 1976 Field Manual 100-5. Interest in the idea would wax and wane until, in the 2010s, the term was directly connected to resource reallocation. In 2017, the Army’s modernization priorities had “one simple focus: make Soldiers and units more lethal.” “Soldier lethality” became a modernization priority. The 2018 National Defense Strategy defined “joint lethality” as a resource allocation criterion, overtly threatening the existence of any organization that “hinder[ed] substantial increases in lethality.” Even though there was no codified meaning for “lethality” at the time, the term gained material importance.

The connections between names and funding can prove problematic. Michael Spirtas wrote that “poorly understood terms waste time, money, and potentially lives.” After “lethality” was introduced as a metric for funding allocations, a cascade of rebranding occurred across the defense enterprise. In 2018, the Hawaii National Guard participated in the Pentagon’s Showcasing Lethality briefings to discuss their volcano response efforts. Volcano response is a legitimate public service, but the power of the buzzword as a metric for funding required that the program be redefined through a relationship to lethality.

The momentary justification provided by a new buzzword is fleeting by nature. Buzzwords are flashy linguistic lightning rods — they spark debate. When used within a narrative or directly connected to resource distribution, they can underpin concrete change. Over time, however, a word that is initially an intervention in a discourse is often reconfigured into a neutral talking point with no inspirational power. These neutral terms can be chained together into fuzzy language that masks meaningful conversation. George Orwell wrote that “modern writing at its worst … consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.” Once the Department of Defense has been fully wrapped in the fuzzy chains of integrated deterrence and lethality, there is no need or opportunity for it to change further. Volcano response is conducted in the name of lethality. The moment is gone.

Change is success for a buzzword. This change can take the shape of new ideas, new actions, and new funding, but also new language. Buzzwords can fizzle out and be forgotten, but successful buzzwords die a glorious death in legitimate codification. Military dictionaries and glossaries are the cemeteries of successful buzzwords. The most recent edition of the U.S. Army’s Field Manual 3-0 Operations defines lethality as “the capability and capacity to destroy.” No longer simply buzzy, “lethality” is now doctrinal terminology.

Buzzword Bingo

Despite the potential for new thought, redistribution of resources, and new ways of operating, buzzwords are a double-edged sword. A well-designed and thoughtfully wielded buzzword can slice through red tape, but it can also rebound and cause a great deal of damage. In hierarchical organizations, subordinates are incentivized to use the language of their superiors. Using a leader’s language is a public way to show deference to authority. Typically, if a leader introduces a new term, no matter its utility, that word is reproduced in all subordinate documentation. The language cascades down the hierarchy as programs are relabeled to match a leader’s priorities. During these cascades, organizations can refuse to adapt but exploit the buzzword to appear different without substantive change.

Organizations also tend to incorporate as many buzzwords as possible, even if it leads to incoherence. The result is exercises “focused on fires interoperability designed to increase readiness, lethality and interoperability across the human, procedural, and technical domains.” This communal regurgitation of buzzwords was described by a retired military officer I interviewed as “bunnies reproducing on PowerPoints.” Historically and not only in the military, when buzzwords are regurgitated, people keep track. It is not uncommon for individuals to create bingo cards of that moment’s terminology and turn speeches, presentations, or conferences into games of buzzword bingo with their colleagues.

A 2015 comical buzzword bingo card by Steve Leonard, a.k.a. Doctrine Man, reproduced with permission.

This is not a new phenomenon. In 1986, U.S. Navy retired sergeant major Fred Bost published an article titled “Buzzword Cowards,” excoriating commanders for cramming “pizzazz” into the language of enlisted and officer evaluation reports. Earlier, in the 1970s, bureaucratic satirist James H. Boren wrote that the Pentagon was a “graduate school of the mumblistic arts,” dedicating an entire book to the art of “mumbling with professional eloquence.” In this work, he defined mumbling as “the practice of mixing of tonal patterns with multisyllabic words for the purpose of projecting an image of knowledgeability and competence without regard to either knowledge or competence.”

Herein lies the warning. Leaders have a particularly powerful ability to shape an organization’s language. Documents and speeches presented by individuals at the peak of a hierarchy are the ignition point for linguistic virality. When buzzwords are mindlessly adopted in relabeling cascades, critical conversation shuts down. Confident presentation of incomprehensible buzzwords, particularly by authority figures, has the potential to fool even the most educated audience. The more difficult a written work is to understand, the more likely it is to be seen as important and prestigious by peers. However, when communicating outside of your profession, the overuse of jargon can cause readers to judge the writer as less intelligent. Using complex language can lead to the perception of credibility, but complexity and vagueness will undermine listeners’ trust over time.

Cosmetic linguistic change is perilous. Former commander of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, Gen. William E. DePuy cautioned, “conceptual or doctrinal change is much like drastic surgery; it should only be undertaken for the most powerful reasons.” Regardless of intent, the veneer of rank will require subordinates to use buzzwords. But the introduction of new language without intentional presentation and control of its narrative can undermine trust in an organization and its leadership. Words matter, so choose your words carefully and wield them intentionally.

Building a Buzz

When facing an entrenched and powerful bureaucracy, there are a range of options for introducing change. Buzzwords are just one weapon in this arsenal. However, they must be used thoughtfully and combined with other tactics. When encountering a new buzzword, don’t only ask what the word means, ask what it seeks to do. “Integrated deterrence” asks you to reconsider your preconceived notions of deterrence. This may require new processes and different allocations of resources, and the buzz of “integrated deterrence” provides an external justification for organizations to reorganize. It is too early to say whether this effort will be successful. Leaders can influence narrative and incentive structures, but it is the actions taken in the name of “integrated deterrence” that will determine success. Organizations can relabel programs far more quickly than they can change. It is easier to slap on a bumper sticker than it is to rebuild a car.

Buzzwords have the potential to be helpful, but this is not a blank check for a buzzword bonanza. Too many new meaningless words can slowly poison the intellectual environment. Much like the emissions of a single car are not enough to destroy the ozone layer, a single, isolated buzzword will not prove fatal. But add more and more buzzword emissions every year and eventually decades of linguistic pollution could leave discourse and strategy burning.

Become a Member

Elena Wicker is a Presidential Management Fellow at U.S. Army Futures Command. She has a Ph.D. in International Relations from Georgetown University. Her research explores the history of military lexicography and the power of U.S. military terminology and jargon. You can follow her on Twitter at @ElenaWicker.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Elena Wicker · May 17, 2023

27. Defense ministers from Japan, China inaugurate hotline

Defense ministers from Japan, China inaugurate hotline

Defense News · by Mari Yamaguchi, The Associated Press · May 16, 2023

TOKYO — The Japanese and Chinese defense ministers inaugurated their long-awaited hotline on Tuesday as a step to build trust and improve communication at a time when Japan and other neighbors are concerned about Beijing’s increasingly assertive military activities.

Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada and his Chinese counterpart, Li Shangfu, talked for about 20 minutes through the hotline for the first time since it was established on March 31, the Japanese Defense Ministry said.

The two ministers welcomed the start of the operational use of the hotline and affirmed the importance of “the maritime and aerial communication mechanism,” which includes the hotline, in building trust between the two sides while avoiding contingencies.

Tokyo and Beijing are embroiled in a dispute over tiny Japanese-controlled islands in the East China Sea, known as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. China routinely sends Coast Guard vessels and planes into waters and airspace surrounding the islands to harass Japanese vessels, with Japan’s military scrambling jets in response.

China’s naval fleet also regularly circles around Japanese coasts, sometimes in joint military exercises with Russia, irking Tokyo. Japan is increasingly worried about the tensions around self-ruled Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory and has threatened to annex by force if necessary.

Hamada, noting the row over the islands and other disputes between Japan and China, said candid communication between them is necessary especially when their relations are not as good.

Hamada and Li also ensured the hotline was working properly and agreed to continue communication between their respective defense authorities.

The idea for the hotline was initially agreed in 2018 between then-prime ministers Shinzo Abe and Li Keqiang as a way to avoid accidental clashes between their militaries.

28. Toward the Data-Driven Army of 2040: Avoiding Analysis Paralysis and Harnessing the Power of Analytics

Conclusion:

AI-driven analytics are rightly making a splash in Army modernization efforts. The Army is rapidly moving to develop the technological tools and talent necessary for a data-driven force. But exploiting the advantages of such a force on future battlefields will hinge on the leaders directing it. The Army must ensure its leaders know how to learn from data, while avoiding the pernicious effects of analysis paralysis increasingly prevalent in data-driven organizations. Doing so requires clear thinking. Commanders and staffs must think clearly about outcomes, recognize the uncertainty inherent in noisy data, and employ efficient strategies to disentangle relationships among variables of interest. Otherwise, the Army of 2040 will struggle to capitalize on the advantages offered by the technological tools and talent it is investing in today.

Toward the Data-Driven Army of 2040: Avoiding Analysis Paralysis and Harnessing the Power of Analytics - Modern War Institute

mwi.usma.edu · by Brian Forester · May 17, 2023

Editor’s note: Last year, Army Futures Command’s Directorate of Concepts announced an essay contest to generate new ideas and expand the community of interest for the Army’s next operating concept focused on 2040. Contest entries were invited to respond to the following question: With AI maturing, autonomous systems and robotics becoming more prevalent on the battlefield, and battlefield transparency increasing, how should Army forces operate, equip, organize, and array the battlefield 2040 to overcome those challenges? This entry, from Lieutenant Colonel Brian Forester, was selected as the overall winner.

Technology alone is not enough for the Army to win in the data-rich environment of 2040. Data already permeates virtually every facet of life. However, the earlier promises of big data have been replaced by the perils of data overload. The Army’s emerging approach to the data overload challenge emphasizes technological tools such as advanced analytics software, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and enabled by a tech-savvy talent base. The promise of AI is that it can close the gap between the information-processing requirements of future military operations and the limitations of human cognition. Sophisticated algorithms cull vast amounts of data, identify patterns, and forecast outcomes.

Will AI-driven analytics lead to better military decision-making? A pitfall lurks in the proliferation of available data, increasingly advanced analytical tools, and decision-making tendencies embedded in human psychology: analysis paralysis. Under such a condition, organizations become consumed with iteratively collecting and analyzing data at the expense of making timely decisions. With an infinite array of variables and model specifications, and the requisite tools to explore, data analysis options are virtually endless. As psychologist Barry Schwartz captures in his work on the paradox of choice, the presence of more options heightens the fear of making the wrong choice, leading to paralysis. Not surprisingly, this phenomenon is increasingly common in organizations employing analytics to aid decision-making. Risk-averse organizations, such as the Army, are especially susceptible to analysis paralysis as leaders focus on gathering and analyzing more data at the expense of making timely decisions.

The conditions for analysis paralysis are ripe now and will be riper still for the Army of 2040. Commanders and staffs eager to feed new data to their algorithms will run the risk of pushing their organizations into analysis paralysis. The very technological tools designed to help military organizations make decisions with data may have the opposite effect. The solution to this quandary is not found in technology or even by building a cadre of uniformed data specialists. It requires decision makers—commanders and the staffs supporting them—who think clearly about what they hope to learn from data. The data-driven Army of 2040 must have leaders who think clearly about potential outcomes of interest, the uncertainty inherent in statistical estimates, and efficient strategies to uncover relationships among relevant variables. Clear-thinking leaders will turn data centricity into future battlefield victory.

Clear Thinking Is Paramount

Avoiding analysis paralysis begins with a crystallized understanding of the question underlying any analytic effort. It requires thinking. University of Chicago political scientists Ethan Bueno de Mesquita and Anthony Fowler argue this point explicitly in Thinking Clearly with Data: A Guide to Quantitative Reasoning and Analysis. The authors open with the assertion that “thinking clearly in a data-driven age is, first and foremost, about staying focused on ideas and questions.” This maxim is especially relevant for Army leaders who will navigate the complexity of data-driven operations in 2040. Rather than technical acumen, clear thinking in data-driven operations is about applying sound quantitative reasoning to outcomes of interest, the uncertainty of estimates, and relationships among variables.

To enhance decision-making, analytics focus on how some feature of the world, the outcome, relates to other features of the world, the predictors. For instance, how battlefield performance (outcome) relates to military technology (predictor) is one such relationship of interest to Army leaders. Bueno de Mesquita and Fowler note that one of the most common mistakes when reasoning with data is “selecting” on the outcome variable. When we only examine cases with similar or identical values of the outcome (e.g., battlefield victories), we lose the information associated with the alternative outcome (e.g., battlefield losses). Such one-sided analysis is common in studies of military innovation. Eliminating variation in the outcome variable prevents the discovery of correlations with predictors, as “correlation requires variation.” Clear-thinking commanders and staffs will ensure they obtain data with variation on the outcome variable. Failing to do so will result in a biased analysis with low predictive power. Frustrated by the mismatch between expectations and reality, organizations will continue churning on new data and only deepen paralysis.

Battlefield performance, like most outcomes encountered in the world, is a function of both signal and noise. Signal is the meaningful and systematic pattern of activity, the detection of which is the focus of machine learning algorithms. Sophisticated algorithms use predictors to detect signal and predict future outcomes. Numerous predictors can detect the signal of battlefield performance, including military skill, will, organization, and leadership. Noise is the idiosyncratic and random component of outcomes that is the realm of chance, interfering with prediction. Unexpected weather, equipment breakdowns, and breaks in communications are examples of the noise leading to uncertainty in battlefield performance.

Commanders and staffs must think clearly about both signal and noise. Estimates of the signal will carry uncertainty, and the noisier the data the higher this uncertainty will be. Staff officers must clearly communicate the uncertainty associated with an estimated outcome to their commanders. Conversely, commanders must resist the temptation to overcorrect when the observed outcome of an operation does not go exactly as an algorithm predicted. As Bueno de Mesquita and Fowler note, extreme observations will typically be followed by observations closer to the mean (average) for any outcome that is a function of both signal and noise. If bad luck with chance variables such as weather or timing affect the outcome, it may be prudent for commanders to exercise tactical patience before hastily changing course and levying new analysis demands on their organizations. In other cases, the problem may be with signal detection, and reassessing the weight of predictors underlying the algorithm may be prudent. Western analysts arguably overweighted skill and technology while undervaluing will and leadership in the early phases of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Clear thinking about signal and noise is essential for efficient analytical strategies that avoid paralysis.

Sometimes the goal is not prediction but understanding the relationship between a specific predictor and an outcome. Exploring such a relationship requires careful consideration of—and controlling for—confounding variables that may influence both the predictor and the outcome. For example, democratic regime type has long been associated with superior battlefield performance; all else equal, democracies outfight nondemocracies. Subsequent research demonstrates, however, that democracy does not predict battlefield performance when also controlling for economic development. The exclusion of economic development from statistical models in earlier research biased the estimate of democracy’s effect. In the same way, Army leaders must think clearly about potential confounding variables between their variables of interest. Failing to account for them can bias estimates of the predictor’s effect, leading to incorrect conclusions regardless of model sophistication.

Experimentation is an efficient way to analyze the relationship between a treatment (predictor) and outcome. Robust experimentation is essential to keep pace with the rapidly changing character of combined arms warfare. Properly designed, randomized control trials cut through the noise of data with random assignment to treatment and control conditions. Using the scientific method as a guide, Army leaders considering experimentation must think clearly about the unit of analysis, the hypothesis of interest, and the assignment of units to treatment and control. Well-designed experiments can quickly lead to robust learning about the relationship using relatively limited data. Conversely, poorly designed experiments can lead to confusion over the nature of the relationship, increasing the need for further analysis.

Toward Clear-Thinking Leaders

How does the Army cultivate clear-thinking leaders for the data-driven force of 2040? An initial step is the reform of all levels of its professional military education system to give leaders a baseline set of critical-thinking skills to operate in a data-saturated environment. Thinking Clearly with Data provides a good reference point for appropriate material that could serve as a foundation of such efforts. Curating widespread habits of thought, though, will necessarily go beyond professional military education. A number of innovative data-literacy programs now exist through Army People Analytics, XVIII Airborne Corps, and Joint Special Operations Command. Expansion of these types of training programs across the force is critical to the development of the clear-thinking leaders needed in 2040. And perhaps more important than workforce development, unit-level training programs foster the broader cultural change needed that emphasizes evidence-based reasoning and clear thinking with data.

Several minor structural changes could also help leaders employ sound quantitative reasoning techniques. Private industry increasingly recognizes the value of analytics translators in connecting decision makers with the technical specialists analyzing data. Critically, these personnel translate a leader’s intent into variables of interest that can be collected, measured, and analyzed by technical specialists. As the synchronizer and functional integrator, the operations officer should fill this role in Army organizations. Intermediate Level Education should be adapted to train this skill set.

The Army should also consider placing data-management specialists down to battalion-level operations sections. While most AI-driven capabilities will likely reside at echelons above battalion, the effectiveness of those capabilities depends on the quantity of high-quality data fed to them. The demand for high-quality data will thus be constant. Data-management specialists at the battalion level should be highly skilled in the data preparation necessary to keep pace with demand, while also serving as a source of expertise for data efforts across the organization. Much as a trained master gunner is to a combined arms battalion, the data-management specialist will be a critical asset to data-driven operations at the tactical level. Finally, the Army must continue experimenting with new formations that enhance data-centric problem solving among commanders and staffs. Such initiatives will have a broader spillover effect across the Army.

AI-driven analytics are rightly making a splash in Army modernization efforts. The Army is rapidly moving to develop the technological tools and talent necessary for a data-driven force. But exploiting the advantages of such a force on future battlefields will hinge on the leaders directing it. The Army must ensure its leaders know how to learn from data, while avoiding the pernicious effects of analysis paralysis increasingly prevalent in data-driven organizations. Doing so requires clear thinking. Commanders and staffs must think clearly about outcomes, recognize the uncertainty inherent in noisy data, and employ efficient strategies to disentangle relationships among variables of interest. Otherwise, the Army of 2040 will struggle to capitalize on the advantages offered by the technological tools and talent it is investing in today.

Lieutenant Colonel Brian Forester is an Army officer and Goodpaster Scholar who recently completed a doctorate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research uses computational and design-based tools of social science to analyze international military cooperation.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Maj. Jason Elmore, US Army

mwi.usma.edu · by Brian Forester · May 17, 2023

29. The Dialectic of Special Operations Forces: Technological Superiority vs. Human Factors

Yin and Yang. Not either/or but both/and.

The Dialectic of Special Operations Forces: Technological Superiority vs. Human Factors

linkedin.com · by Sal Artiaga

The Dialectic of Special Operations Forces:

Technological Superiority vs. Human Factors

Introduction

In the intricate tableau of global geopolitics, the strategic role of Special Operations Forces (SOF) is undeniably significant. This becomes particularly salient as the post-9/11 era of counterterrorism transitions into a period increasingly defined by great power competition. Consequently, the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) is compelled to reassess its operational philosophy and strategic approach. This discourse engages in a nuanced exploration of two pivotal paradigms within USSOCOM: the proclivity towards technological superiority and hyper-lethality on the one hand, and the emphasis on human factors and resistance training on the other. Furthermore, the implications of these paradigms are evaluated within the evolving framework of Multidomain Operations and the notion of integrated deterrence.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Hyper-Lethality Paradigm

The hyper-lethality paradigm, characterized by an emphasis on technological superiority, constitutes a major component of the Special Operations Forces' strategic arsenal. Technological sophistication is indisputably a significant contributor to mission success, offering superior firepower, enhanced situational awareness, and advanced operational capabilities. However, an over-reliance on technology can potentially engender a form of tunnel vision, resulting in the neglect of the human-centric aspects of conflict. The Afghanistan and Vietnam wars serve as salient historical reminders of technologically superior forces succumbing to less-equipped adversaries, underlining the need for a balanced approach.

Advantages and Disadvantages of the Human Factors Paradigm

In contrast, the human factors paradigm prioritizes the cultivation of human capital and the mastering of soft skills, such as cultural intelligence, language proficiency, and resistance training. While these elements can significantly enhance the effectiveness of SOF in irregular warfare and unconventional warfare scenarios, they could potentially compromise the ability to respond effectively to high-intensity, technologically advanced threats. Hence, while this approach is invaluable, it should not entirely supplant the focus on technological prowess.

Interweaving the Paradigms, The Future of SOF in Multi-Domain Operations and Great Power Competition

As the security landscape evolves, the concept of Multidomain Ops emerges as a crucial factor shaping the future of Special Operations Forces. Multidomain Ops envisages a seamless integration of capabilities across multiple domains - land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. In this context, the integration of hyper-lethality and human factors paradigms becomes increasingly important. The dichotomy of these two paradigms, seemingly opposites, is in reality a dialectical relationship where each approach complements and strengthens the other in the complex mosaic of modern warfare.

The incorporation of irregular warfare expertise into the Multidomain Ops framework is crucial, especially considering the resurgence of great power competition. This necessitates an approach that embraces the technological superiority of the hyper-lethality paradigm, while simultaneously recognizing the importance of human factors in shaping geopolitical outcomes. Moreover, the concept of integrated deterrence – the strategic use of all aspects of national power to deter adversaries – further underlines the need for a comprehensive approach that amalgamates both paradigms.

Conclusion

Navigating the Future – An Imperative for Balance

In the intricate chessboard of great power competition, the future of Special Operations Forces rests on their capacity to evolve, innovate, and integrate. The complexities of the modern battlefield necessitate a delicate equilibrium between the cutting-edge technology of the hyper-lethality paradigm and the subtle, nuanced human-centric approach embodied by the human factors paradigm. As such, the future of SOF in the era of integrated deterrence and Multi-Domain Operations hinges on this synthesis of operational philosophies. The lessons gleaned from history and the challenges of the present must inform the strategies of the future, ensuring that the SOF remains a potent instrument of national security. Ultimately, neither technology nor human elements can singularly guarantee success; it is the dynamic interplay between the two that will shape the trajectory of the Special Operations Forces in the evolving theatre of global conflict.

linkedin.com · by Sal Artiaga

30. Don’t Read This If You Have a Security Clearance

Security experts may weigh in and explain why this is not absurd.

Don’t Read This If You Have a Security Clearance

An absurd Department of Defense policy bars employees from looking at leaked documents—even when they’ve already been made public.

By Thomas Rid

The Atlantic · by Thomas Rid · May 12, 2023

In 1969, the KGB pulled off one of the cleverest deceptions of the Cold War, slipping forged documents into a leak of otherwise authentic U.S. war plans in an effort to pit America against its NATO allies. More than 50 years later, I was invited to run a training session on disinformation for a U.S. intelligence agency. In my back-and-forth with the official in charge, I proposed a game of spot-the-fake using the 1969 leak. The exercise would test whether the intelligence officers could recognize one of the best forgeries in the history of spycraft. But the official shot down my idea. The leaked material technically may still be classified, he explained, so we weren’t allowed to use it. In fact, although the documents had been sitting in public view since before most of us were born, the officers in the class weren’t even allowed to look at them.

For this I had the Department of Defense to thank. On June 7, 2013, days after the Edward Snowden story broke, the Pentagon issued an immediate security guidance: Employees or contractors “who inadvertently discover potentially classified information in the public domain shall report its existence immediately to their Security Manager,” read the new rule. This reporting requirement was onerous enough on its own to scare federal employees. To make things worse, those who didn’t just stumble across classified documents but looked for them deliberately would be punished: Contractors or employees “who seek out classified information in the public domain, acknowledge its accuracy or existence, or proliferate the information in any way will be subject to sanctions,” stated the notice. (The directive was grounded in a similar 2010 rule issued by the Office of Management and Budget.) Given that the Snowden revelations were being published by media organizations and blasted around the internet, the policy effectively turned mundane activities like watching the news, browsing social media, searching Google, and even reading books into a risky proposition for any federal employee or contractor.

Ten years later, the illogic of this policy has only grown clearer. In the pre-internet age, leaks of classified documents were rare. Today, thanks to the internet, they’re regular events. In the past dozen years, the United States has seen five mega-leaks, each with hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of documents spilled into the public domain. The names of the leaks are infamous in national-security circles: Cablegate in 2010, enabled by Chelsea Manning; the Snowden disclosures of 2013; the Shadow Brokers episode of 2016; the release of the Vault 7 files of 2017, stolen by Joshua Schulte; and, most recently, the Discord leaks, courtesy of Jack Teixeira.

These leaks can cause major geopolitical headaches. They can even get people killed. But, like the KGB leak of 1969, they also provide rich troves of material that advance expert understanding of how tradecraft is conducted—by both the U.S. and its adversaries. Snowden exposed how intelligence agencies adjusted their methods to the digital era, how signals-intelligence development evolved, and much more. The Shadow Brokers and Vault 7 exposed how implant platforms are designed and how the NSA does digital counterintelligence. The Discord leaks revealed invaluable knowledge on a range of geopolitical crises. It is simply impossible to understand the story of technical spycraft and computer-network penetrations in the 21st century—a discipline that first emerged in secret—without studying these unauthorized disclosures.

Read: The limits of signals intelligence

Yet the U.S. government has decreed this literature taboo for precisely the people who would most benefit from viewing it. Last month, on the heels of the Discord leaks, the deputy secretary of Defense reaffirmed the 10-year-old rule, warning that “failure to appropriately safeguard classified information”—even information that’s already public—“is a reportable security incident.”

The authors of this policy meant well, and some elements of the rule make sense. If a government official denies a certain element of a leak, for example, they are implicitly affirming the rest of it. More generally, the government wants to avoid the precedent that a bulk leaker could effectively become a rogue declassification authority. But trying to stop members of our own national-security establishment from even looking at leaked documents that are already being viewed by the public—not to mention by rival nations—tips into the absurd.

This became apparent in late 2016, in the wake of the Shadow Brokers disclosures. The hackers behind that leak, who still have not been identified, released not just documents that could be read but computer code that could be used. Suddenly, hostile actors around the world had access to NSA hacking tools that could be deployed against American commercial and government targets. Network defenders for the Department of Defense faced a dilemma. They needed to scan for incoming hacks—but they technically were not allowed to look at the hacking tools that were already being used by some of the most determined adversaries of the United States, including Russian military intelligence and North Korean cyberoperators. To do their job, they would have to violate the department’s official policy.

The issue of defending against forbidden code wasn’t limited to government employees. It extended to U.S. security companies that employ contractors with security clearances. These contractors are bound by the Department of Defense’s rule even when they’re not performing work for the government. I once asked a U.S. cybersecurity executive how his company handled the banned-documents problem in the context of securing the networks of their own clients. His answer: They would assign U.S. leaks to British analysts and leaked U.K. documents to American analysts.

As a professor of strategic studies and cybersecurity, I’m particularly concerned about the rule’s effect on students. Although the Pentagon guidance does not say so, most of my students at Johns Hopkins assume that reading leaked files will reduce their chances of getting a security clearance down the line. It’s what they pick up at happy hours, at receptions, and on social media from peers and alumni who work in the national-security establishment in and around Washington, D.C. The risk-averse culture in this town treats the leaks as forbidden fruit that should not be tasted. Yes, some of my students seriously believe that learning could harm their career prospects. Some therefore avert their eyes not just from primary-source documents but also from social-media feeds that might carry forbidden screenshots. Some go so far as to limit their news consumption and express concern about reading assigned books that use technically still-classified primary sources.

Even fellow scholars of intelligence history and cybersecurity sometimes avoid reading primary-source documents, for they see them as banned knowledge. They’re missing out. I have found that studying leaked files helps me better understand intelligence reports. Just this week, the Five Eyes alliance released an advisory attributing a sophisticated, stealthy implant known as “Snake” to Russia’s Federal Security Service. I trust that report more because I learned from the Snowden leaks how the NSA and its British counterpart built even stealthier implants and refined the means to detect such cyberespionage tools.

Read: Of course this is how the intelligence leak happened

The Pentagon’s policy is even more unfortunate as applied to the Discord leaks, because the pool of people who could learn from them is much wider than with past document dumps. Teixeira disclosed finished intelligence reports, not raw slide decks or technical manuals or hacking tools. These reports, which include military assessments about the war in Ukraine and accounts of behind-the-scenes diplomatic maneuvering, are of interest to a broad range of expert readers, not just technical nerds like me. Some of my colleagues, for example, closely follow China and Taiwan, or North Korea’s missile ambitions, or Iran’s covert actions, or the war in Ukraine. They may still hold an active clearance but have no strict “need to know” and hence no access to current intelligence reporting. In the early days after the leaks, when documents were beginning to get passed around, I noticed one intelligence report about Vladimir Putin’s health. I shared a screenshot with a fellow professor at my school who closely follows the Ukraine war. I expected him to be excited to read it. Instead, his response was, “I’m not supposed to be looking at these things.” I quickly deleted the screenshot from our chat. Reporters face a version of this problem too: When they approach experts for insight or a quote, those experts often decline out of fear that they’ll get in trouble for looking at a document that the press already has its hands on.

The regular spillage of secrets brings a larger paradox into sharp relief: Even democratic governments have secrets that they must work hard to protect. Yet, once those secrets are out, open societies must work hard to understand and learn from the facts that now are no longer secret, whether they are still technically classified or not.

Studying the leaks is in the U.S.’s national interest. Attempting to prevent an educated conversation about details and capabilities that are already public isn’t just quixotic—it’s also wasting an opportunity. Once the horse has bolted, you might as well ride it. A secret that has been publicized is no longer a secret. The task for government therefore must shift from protecting the information to making sure that the right lessons are drawn from it. The most pressing task of the U.S. intelligence establishment in this still-young century has been, and will continue to be, to expose and attribute the espionage, subversion, and sabotage of authoritarian spies and their global proxies. Mega-leaks can frustrate those efforts—but they also give the world a glimpse at an impressive set of tools and capabilities. One of the biggest revelations in the era of the mega-leak, ironically, is that the NSA and CIA are generally quite creative and effective at what they do. That’s one fact the government should not want to cover up.

The Atlantic · by Thomas Rid · May 12, 2023

31. Former U.S. Special Forces Soldier Is Killed in Ukraine

Former U.S. Special Forces Soldier Is Killed in Ukraine

Nick Maimer had cautioned against indifference to the war, noting that the bloodshed is “not happening to someone else, it’s happening to our fellow humans.”

Allison Quinn

News Editor

Updated May. 16, 2023 8:28PM ET / Published May. 16, 2023 2:14PM ET

The Daily Beast · May 16, 2023

via Facebook

A former Green Beret who traveled to Ukraine to help train troops there has been killed in Bakhmut, his family has confirmed.

Nick Maimer, an Idaho man and 20-year military veteran, had been teaching English in Europe last year when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Russia’s notorious Wagner Group on Monday boasted about killing Maimer in fierce fighting in Bakhmut, and his death was later confirmed by his family to The Idaho Statesman.

Maimer’s uncle, Paul, identified the body seen in a video shared by Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin as that of his nephew.

“He persevered through a lot in his life. I had the utmost respect for him. A lot of people can learn from who he was and what he had accomplished in his short life. In 45 years, he lived a lot. He went over there as a humanitarian trying to do good for this world,” Paul Maimer told the Statesman.

While watching the horror unfold during the first days of the war, Maimer told the Idaho Statesman he’d felt a “calling” to help Ukrainians defend themselves against one of “the most clear-cut unjust invasions in recent history.”

He arrived in Ukraine in May 2022, and according to a video he posted on Facebook, he set out not to take part in combat, but to help train Ukrainian troops.

“I was in Poland when the war started, and because I am a retired soldier with a lot of experience- I did over 20 years-I knew I could come help them. But I didn’t necessarily want to fight, because I have a lot of specific training on training foreign militaries,” he said in a video shared on Facebook.

In a later update on his work training Ukrainian troops, he said he was looking forward to “lots of good things, lots of good work to be done, hopefully saving lives.”

He cautioned against American indifference to the war, noting that the bloodshed and violence is “not happening to someone else, it’s happening to our fellow humans.”

Maimer’s aunt, Cheri, told The Daily Beast the family supported his traveling to Ukraine to help them fend off Russian forces.

She said it had been difficult to keep in close touch with him given his location, but that the family had made a point to check his Facebook profile to make sure he was still active and alive.

Another aunt, Heidi Maimer, told The Daily Beast that he was a “great guy” who cared deeply about his community.

“I’m a teacher and the kids called him ‘snake guy’ because he had a lot of reptiles,” Heidi Maimer said. “He would bring his six foot snake boa constrictor to the classroom and he touched the lives of a lot of kids. He volunteered his time and always gave back to the community. He was a passionate human being and a great guy.”

Upon first arriving in Ukraine, Maimer had briefly linked up with the Mozart Group, a private military company made up of Western volunteers with military experience.

After that, Maimer began working with a nonprofit group offering help with evacuations and supplies for Ukraine, AFGFree. The founder of that group, Perry Blackburn, a retired lieutenant colonel, told the Statesman he’d reached out to Maimer to invite him to help with training for Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Force.

The two put together a training program they hoped Ukrainian commanders would soon begin implementing for new recruits, with Blackburn describing Maimer as the leader of that program last June.

Blackburn told the Statesman that Maimer had been providing “firsthand training” to Ukrainian troops when he “got caught behind enemy lines” in Bakhmut.

“It’s just a crazy, crazy time right now. And then having Nick die over there, it’s just brutal,” he said.

The Daily Beast · May 16, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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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