Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“It is not who is right, but what is right, that is important.”

– Thomas Huxley

“People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The less talent they have, the more pride, vanity, and arrogance they have. All these fools, however, find other fools who applaud them.”

– Erasmus of Rotterdam

1. The Case for a Pacific Defense Pact

2. Trump Weighs Sanctions Against Russia as Relationship With Putin Sours

3. The U.S. Reinforces Europe’s Northern Front, Fearing War With Russia

4. The U.S. Senate Won’t Tolerate Putin’s Games

5. Time for a GOP Senate Revolt on Sanctions Against Putin

6. China’s Soft Spot in Trade War With Trump: Risk of Huge Job Loss

7. What Trump Gets Right About China

8. China Is Preparing a “Pearl Harbor” Attack on America, US General Warns

9. Retired general issues terrifying warning about China mining the moon

10. Securing the Flow: Addressing the National Security Vulnerabilities in the US Water Supply

11. The Coming Water Wars: Technology’s Unseen Role in a Growing Crisis

12. Special Operations News – Tuesday, May 27, 2025

13. Trump honors fallen soldiers on Memorial Day, while attacking Biden and judges

14. Reports on China’s victory are greatly exaggerated

15. Russia can attack Europe 2-4 years after war's end, faster with lifted sanctions, Ukrainian intel chief warns

16. Fiona Hill: Trump is terrified of Putin, I’ve seen it first hand

17. These Are The Key Strategic Areas Where China Is Building Overseas Ports

18. 'For Europe to become the new leader of the free world, it must act with courage and conviction'

19. U.S. Spy Agencies Are Getting a One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Most Sensitive Personal Data

20. A turning point in strategic thought on Asia policy?

21. ‘It needs to be a thousand’: US has 500 military trainers on Taiwan, retired admiral says

22. How China Could Counter U.S. Intervention in War Over Taiwan

23. An American Problem – We cannot afford to excuse, indulge, or minimize political violence.

24. Veterans recoil at Trump plan to end Afghans’ deportation protection

25. Majority of Americans believe President must obey court rulings: New poll

26. Commentary: China seeks to remind the world of its rules, with new national security white paper

27. Lights out: Trump silences a lonely bastion of journalistic integrity in Asia.

1. The Case for a Pacific Defense Pact

Ely puts it out there. He said the quiet part out loud. Now we need to have a robust discussion in the US and with our allies.

I am supportive of this initiative in some form.

Optimizing U.S. and Allied Forces for Deterrence and Defense Throughout Indo-Pacom: From Korea to Australia and Everywhere in Between

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/05/24/us-allies-deterrence-indo-pacific/

Interestingly, Ely is now at the Marathon Institute. (https://themarathoninitiative.org/)

Elbridge Colby previously worked there.

The Case for a Pacific Defense Pact

Foreign Affairs · by More by Ely Ratner · May 27, 2025

America Needs a New Asian Alliance to Counter China

Ely Ratner

May 27, 2025

Matt Murphy

ELY RATNER is Principal at the Marathon Initiative. From 2021 to 2025, he served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs in the Biden administration.

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The time has come for the United States to build a collective defense pact in Asia. For decades, such a pact was neither possible nor necessary. Today, in the face of a growing threat from China, it is both viable and essential. American allies in the region are already investing in their own defenses and forging deeper military bonds. But without a robust commitment to collective defense, the Indo-Pacific is on a path to instability and conflict.

Tactical shifts aside, Beijing’s geopolitical aspirations for “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” remain unchanged. China seeks to seize Taiwan, control the South China Sea, weaken U.S. alliances, and ultimately dominate the region. If it succeeds, the result would be a China-led order that relegates the United States to the rank of a diminished continental power: less prosperous, less secure, and unable to fully access or lead the world’s most important markets and technologies.

After decades of pouring resources into its armed forces, China could soon have the military strength to make that vision a reality. As CIA Director William Burns revealed in 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping has instructed his military “to be ready by 2027 to invade Taiwan.” But as Burns went on to note, China’s leaders “have doubts about whether they could accomplish that invasion.” To sustain those doubts—concerning Taiwan but also other potential targets in the region—should be a top priority of U.S. foreign policy. That requires convincing Beijing that any attack would ultimately come at an unacceptable cost.

With that objective in mind, the United States has invested in advanced military capabilities and developed new operational concepts. It has moved more mobile and lethal military forces to strategic locations across Asia. Crucially, it has overhauled its security partnerships in the region. In past decades, Washington’s principal focus was to forge close bilateral ties. In recent years, by contrast, the United States has pursued a more networked approach that gives U.S. allies greater responsibilities and encourages closer ties not just with Washington but among the allies themselves. These changes are creating novel military and geopolitical challenges for Beijing, thereby reinforcing China’s doubts about the potential success of aggression.

The new, more multilateral approach marks a critical step toward stronger deterrence. But the defense initiatives it has produced remain too informal and rudimentary. In the face of continued Chinese military modernization, true deterrence requires the will and capability that only a collective defense arrangement can deliver. Such an alliance—call it the “Pacific Defense Pact”—would bind those countries that are currently most aligned and prepared to take on the China challenge together: Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and the United States. Additional members could join as conditions warrant.

Skeptics may argue that such an arrangement is infeasible with a Trump administration that appears to disavow the importance of the United States’ alliances. But the reality is that leaders in Washington and allied capitals are still working to deepen military cooperation in the Indo-Pacific despite economic and diplomatic tensions. As far as defense matters are concerned, there has been far more continuity than disruption to date. Provided the administration avoids debilitating economic measures targeting U.S. allies, the trends pointing the way toward collective defense in the region are likely to endure. And if the Trump administration ultimately lacks the vision and ambition to grasp this opportunity, defense establishments can and should still lay the foundations for future leaders.

TIMES HAVE CHANGED

This is not the first time Washington has confronted the question of how to design its security partnerships in Asia. After World War II, the United States crafted a network of alliances in the region, hoping to keep Soviet expansion at bay, entrench its own military presence—particularly in East Asia—and curb internecine tensions among its partners. This network, made up of separate security arrangements with Australia and New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, served its constituents well. It insulated large stretches of the Indo-Pacific from great-power conflict, setting the conditions for decades of remarkable economic growth. It also proved resilient, weathering the wars in Korea and Vietnam, successive waves of decolonization and democratization, and even the end of the Cold War itself.

Notably, the network never evolved beyond a set of disparate and almost exclusively bilateral alliances. In Europe, U.S. officials embraced collective defense: an attack on one ally would be treated as an attack on all. (Such was the logic behind the founding, in 1949, of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.) In Asia, however, similar aspirations foundered. As John Foster Dulles, one of the architects of the U.S. postwar security order, wrote in these pages in 1952, shortly before becoming secretary of state: “It is not at this time practicable to draw a line which would bring all the free peoples of the Pacific and East Asia into a formal mutual security area.”

For their part, many Asian leaders preferred strong bilateral relationships with the United States over closer links with former adversaries or historical rivals. Some worried that a collective defense arrangement would draw them into a great-power clash between Washington and Moscow. Others doubted that any such institution could overcome the legacies of conflict and mutual distrust among their neighbors and bring together members that were far apart both geographically and in terms of security concerns. The only seeming exception, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, proved the point. Founded in 1954, SEATO was a motley alliance among Australia, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It suffered from a lack of unity and quietly dissolved in 1977.

But times have changed. The conditions once preventing multilateral alignment in Asia are giving way to fresh calls for collective defense. Just before taking office last year, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba warned that “the absence of a collective self-defense system like NATO in Asia means that wars are likely to break out.” In fact, such a collective defense pact is now within reach. Three trends buttress this conclusion: a new strategic alignment centered on an advancing threat from China, a new convergence of security cooperation among U.S. allies, and the demand for a new reciprocity that gives the United States’ partners a larger role in keeping the peace.

COMMON CAUSE

China’s assertiveness throughout the Indo-Pacific is spreading a sense of insecurity, particularly as leaders in Beijing lean on the military as a central instrument in their revisionist aims. The dangerous and threatening activities of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), combined with its rapidly growing capabilities, have prompted leaders across the region to adopt new defense strategies arrayed against what they perceive as a growing threat from China. New military investments and activities have followed suit.

Nowhere is this strategic reorientation more apparent than in Tokyo. Despite deep economic interdependence between China and Japan, ties between the two countries have been frail for decades, strained by historical animus, trade tensions, and territorial disputes. Relations have only worsened in recent years, as Beijing has leveraged its budding economic and military power to ramp up pressure on its neighbor. A new law, passed in 2021, allows China’s coast guard to use weapons against foreign ships sailing in what Beijing considers its sovereign waters. In the years since, Chinese incursions into the areas surrounding what Japan refers to as the Senkaku Islands—administered by Japan but also claimed by China, which refers to them as the Diaoyu Islands—have become more frequent, with greater numbers of larger and more heavily armed vessels. In March, Chinese coast guard ships entered the territorial waters around the islands and lingered for nearly 100 hours—the longest episode to date in a string of incidents that Japan’s top diplomat described as “clearly escalating.”

Tokyo is responding by loosening long-standing political and legal constraints on its armed forces. As early as 2013, the country’s first-ever publicly released national security strategy warned of China’s “rapidly expanded and intensified” activities around Japanese territories. Not long after, the Japanese government reinterpreted the country’s pacifist constitution, allowing its armed forces to work more closely with partner militaries. In recent years, it has embarked on a historic military buildup, pledging to double its military spending to roughly two percent of its gross domestic product. Tokyo has also moved beyond its erstwhile focus on defensive capabilities and now aims to acquire and deploy “counterstrike capabilities,” including hundreds of long-range Tomahawk missiles. These changes, as the political scientist and Japan expert Michael Green wrote in these pages in 2022, are establishing Tokyo as “the most important net exporter of security in the Indo-Pacific.”

The Philippines is undergoing a similar transformation. For decades, the Philippine armed forces battled insurgents in the southern reaches of the archipelago. Military investments and operations reflected that domestic focus. Today, the insurgency has weakened, but an external threat looms larger and larger: steady Chinese encroachment on Philippine maritime rights and sovereignty, primarily in the South China Sea. In the 2010s, Beijing pursued an unprecedented campaign of land reclamation and built military bases atop reefs and islets that are also claimed by the Philippines and other Southeast Asian states. China has cordoned off one of these atolls, Scarborough Shoal, denying access to Philippine fishing vessels. At another reef, Second Thomas Shoal, violent attacks by Chinese vessels have disrupted efforts to resupply Philippine military personnel. Chinese coast guard ships have even harassed vessels conducting energy exploration inside the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

In Europe, America embraced collective defense; in Asia, similar aspirations foundered.

The view from Manila has sharpened accordingly. Beginning under President Rodrigo Duterte in the late 2010s and accelerating under his successor, Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., the Philippine military has been undertaking an ambitious modernization effort. The government adopted a watershed defense strategy in 2024 to secure the country’s periphery with investments in additional combat aircraft, tougher cyberdefenses, and more unmanned assets for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. There is little doubt about what is driving the overhaul: the need to better monitor and confront China’s coercive activities.

In Canberra, a few thousand miles to the south, the rise of China was once considered benign and beneficial to Australian interests. A series of diplomatic and military incidents in the past decade, however, have convinced many that the opposite is true. Revelations of malign Chinese Communist Party influence in Australian elections and policymaking ignited a political firestorm. And after Australia’s government called for an independent investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, China unleashed a barrage of tariffs and other restrictions on Australian exports.

In the South China Sea, Australian armed forces have suffered the same malign pattern of harassment by Chinese jets and warships. The PLA is also operating closer than ever to Australia’s shores. Earlier this year, Chinese naval vessels circumnavigated Australia and disrupted commercial air traffic with live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea. And amid intense efforts by China to make security inroads with Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and other Pacific Island countries, Australia’s foreign minister said in 2024 that her country is now “in a state of permanent contest in the Pacific.”

Against this backdrop, Canberra, too, is revising its defense priorities from top to bottom. As recently as 2016, the government’s official view was that a foreign military attack on its territory was “no more than a remote prospect.” By 2024, its updated national defense strategy warned that, owing to the present realities in the Indo-Pacific, “there is no longer a ten-year window of strategic warning time for conflict.” Instead of preparing for a wide variety of contingencies around the world, including counterterrorism in the Middle East, the Australian Defence Force is gearing up to fend off major threats closer to home. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has unveiled plans for record military spending, including major investments in stockpiles of critical munitions such as long-range fires, antiship missiles, and missiles for air defense. The reforms highlight a growing conviction that the country’s advantageous geography no longer offers sufficient protection against the PLA. The public shares that apprehension: according to the Lowy Institute, a leading Australian think tank, the share of Australians who believed China would become a military threat to their country nearly doubled from 2012 to 2022. It now stands above 70 percent.

QUAD GOALS

Japan, the Philippines, and Australia have not only come to recognize China as their primary and common threat; they also increasingly acknowledge that their fates are intertwined with the broader region. This is true even on issues as sensitive as Taiwan, once a taboo subject in the region: “A Taiwan emergency is a Japanese emergency,” former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared in 2021. “If something happens to Taiwan, inevitably we will be involved,” the Philippine military chief warned earlier this year.

The view that Chinese aggression would have massive consequences for countries throughout the Indo-Pacific has resulted in an unprecedented deepening of security partnerships among Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and other regional powers. Analysts have described defense cooperation between Australia and Japan in particular as taking on “alliance-like characteristics.” A new reciprocal access agreement allows the Australian and Japanese militaries to operate in each other’s countries. August 2023 marked the first-ever visit by Japanese F-35 fighter jets to northern Australia, followed only days later by the inaugural deployment of Australian F-35s for military exercises in Japan.

Japan is finalizing a similar access agreement with the Philippines, which has emerged in recent years as the largest recipient of Japanese security assistance. In February, defense leaders from the two countries announced a spate of measures for closer security cooperation. In what could be read only as a thinly veiled reference to China, the Philippine secretary of defense explained that Manila and Tokyo’s “common cause” was to resist “any unilateral attempt to reshape the global order.”

That newfound common cause has animated a series of overlapping, complementary initiatives—what, in 2024, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin called “the new convergence in the Indo-Pacific”—that build on the United States’ traditional focus on bilateral ties in the region. The Biden administration in particular worked to supplement the older “hub-and-spokes” model with what it envisioned as a “latticework” of relationships in Asia. The AUKUS partnership brought together Canberra, London, and Washington to help Australia build conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines. As members of the Indo-Pacific Quad, Australia, India, Japan, and the United States joined efforts to provide maritime domain awareness throughout the region. American officials also stepped up trilateral security cooperation with Japan and South Korea.

Among the many partners involved in these efforts, Canberra, Manila, and Tokyo frequently stand out as common denominators. At a meeting of their leaders in 2024, the Japanese, Philippine, and U.S. governments expressed “serious concerns” about China’s “dangerous and aggressive behavior” and announced initiatives on infrastructure investment and technology cooperation, among other measures. Later that year, Australian, Japanese, and U.S. defense leaders unveiled another set of cooperative activities, including three-way military exercises and advanced defense industrial cooperation. Perhaps most promising of all is a new grouping that brings together all four of these parties—Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and the United States. Known informally as “the Squad” (to distinguish it from the Quad), the group conducts regular naval, maritime, and air force exercises in the South China Sea. It also plans to strengthen information sharing and work together to modernize the Philippine military.

A GOOD START

The new convergence in the Indo-Pacific represents a profound development in the security architecture of the region. But it is best viewed as an incomplete evolution—an important period of transition rather than an optimal end state. The shortcomings are significant. There are no mutual defense obligations between U.S. allies, only with the United States. There is no central headquarters to plan and conduct multilateral operations. And the unofficial nature of these groupings means that there is no regular drumbeat of planning among political and military staffs. Coordination is occurring, but only intermittently. As a result, it rarely receives the necessary urgency, attention, and resources.

A collective defense pact would deliver where the current mechanisms fall short. Getting there would not require a panregional security organization such as NATO, which grew from 12 original members to over 30. Instead, the logical starting point for Washington is to form a pact with the three partners that are most strategically aligned and have the fastest-growing and most robust combined military cooperation: Australia, Japan, and the Philippines.

Additional members could join later, circumstances allowing. As an advanced and stalwart ally in East Asia, South Korea would be an obvious candidate, and its contributions could be quite significant. But Seoul would have to decide whether it was willing to focus its defense forces more on China, partner more closely with Japan, and support a broader regional orientation for its own military and the tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed on the peninsula. New Zealand would be another prospective partner, especially since it is already part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group alongside Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. But although New Zealand has recently shown greater willingness to challenge China and align more closely with the United States, it might not yet be prepared to enter a formal collective defense pact.

A military exercise between the United States and the Philippines, Aparri, Philippines, May 2025 Lisa Marie David / Reuters

Critical U.S. partners such as India and Singapore would not be expected to join at the outset but could still participate in certain activities as observers or in some other nonmember capacity, as is common in regional groupings. The inclusion of Taiwan would not be possible or advisable under current U.S. policy, nor would it be acceptable to the other members of the pact. As for the United States’ European allies, they are neither politically nor militarily ready to join as full members right now, but that option could be considered in the future, under different circumstances. Larger defense budgets in Europe could produce militaries with more global reach, provided the continent itself is secure and at peace.

Given the urgency of the China challenge, the United States cannot afford to wait for a perfect alignment among all its partners. There is already a core group in place and room to consider additional members in the future. Preparations should begin now. Given that alliances with the United States already exist, a first-order task is to establish mutual obligations among Australia, Japan, and the Philippines themselves. This will demand skillful leadership and intense negotiations, but the benefits of stronger deterrence and greater security should outweigh the risks of closer alignment. Besides, for Australia and Japan in particular, the practical differences between today’s defense partnership and one of mutual defense are relatively small and shrinking by the day.

From an operational perspective, collective defense could build on existing cooperative projects, including in the areas of intelligence sharing, maritime domain awareness, combined training and exercises, and command and control. One such project is the Bilateral Intelligence Analysis Cell, a new U.S.-Japanese effort at Yokota Air Base that monitors Chinese activity in the East China Sea. Japan and the United States could share the cell’s intelligence with Australia and the Philippines, which could in turn contribute personnel at the air base and provide data from their own unmanned surface and aerial platforms. Likewise, the recently inaugurated U.S.-Philippine Combined Coordination Center near Manila could include Australia and Japan, providing similar functions in the South China Sea.

A collective defense pact would deliver where current cooperation falls short.

The U.S. military has major operating bases in Japan, access to locations in the Philippines, and regular rotations of U.S. troops throughout Australia. With sufficient legal underpinning—including reciprocal access agreements among the three Asian allies— each of these arrangements could be expanded to include forces from the other members. In fact, there are already plans to integrate Japanese forces into U.S. initiatives in Australia.

The four members could also invest in shared military facilities. Major bilateral and trilateral military exercises involving different combinations of the partners could include all four. Together, they could more readily pre-position weapons to ensure sufficient stockpiles in the event of conflict, further strengthening deterrence. Establishing a headquarters for the Pacific Defense Pact and mechanisms for command and control will be essential. Japan could serve as one potential location. In July 2024, the United States announced its intent to upgrade the U.S. military command in Japan to plan and direct more missions in the region with its Japanese counterpart. As new facilities and communications links are established to support this effort, U.S. and Japanese officials should ensure that it will be possible to include military commanders and personnel from Australia and the Philippines. Alternative locations for the headquarters could be considered in Australia or at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii.

The four countries should establish a series of working groups to negotiate the full range of policy and legal issues associated with more integrated planning and operations. Military and civilian staff from defense and foreign ministries could work together to develop proposals for governance and decision-making processes, including personnel structures and consultation mechanisms that form the engine rooms of day-to-day alliance management. This breadth of tasks only underscores the need to start consultations as soon as possible.

ALL FOR ONE

In addition to deepening their collective cooperation with one another, U.S. allies will also need to rebalance their bilateral security partnerships with Washington. In their current form, those partnerships reflect the asymmetries of a different era, when American military primacy appeared uncontested and immutable. Bilateral treaties in the region were restricted in scope to specific local geographies, and the contributions of allied militaries were limited by design. In essence, the United States promised protection in exchange for military access and political-economic comity in Asia but without demanding fully reciprocal protection for itself.

This framework was sustainable—both strategically and politically—as long as the U.S. military retained its dominance in the region, the threat from China was confined, and the potential contributions of U.S. allies were limited to their own self-defense. None of these conditions holds true today. The PLA now poses serious challenges to the U.S. military and the American homeland. And U.S. allies in Asia are now among the wealthiest and most advanced countries in the world, capable of playing a significant role in both deterrence and warfighting. To adapt to this new reality, U.S. alliances need to build on a foundation not of asymmetry but of reciprocity.

Domestic politics in the United States also makes greater reciprocity necessary. Although most Americans support military ties in principle, increasing numbers would like to see U.S. allies contribute more in practice. U.S. President Donald Trump has focused in particular on the notion that allies need to pay their “fair share,” casting doubts on whether the United States would defend NATO members that failed to meet certain levels of military spending. U.S. allies do need to spend more on defense—but reciprocity should extend far beyond bigger military budgets.

Beijing will draw from its playbook of disinformation and economic coercion.

U.S. allies will also need to commit to greater degrees of mutual obligation with the United States. Washington’s security treaty with Tokyo, for instance, is bound only to “the territories under the administration of Japan.” The resulting imbalance is on display at every major bilateral summit, where U.S. leaders reaffirm their commitment to defend Japan and Japanese leaders stay silent on whether their forces would assist the U.S. military elsewhere. Instead, U.S. allies should commit to supporting the United States both in crises throughout the region and in defending the U.S. homeland.

This new reciprocity would further enable collective defense. The upshot of more mutual obligation would be that U.S. allies could take on new roles and missions in crises and conflicts, especially when combined with recent investments in their own militaries. This would, in turn, open new pathways for cooperation that do not exist today in sufficient form: members of the pact could draft combined military plans, more effectively target their defense spending toward specialized and complementary capabilities, and rehearse and improve together through tailored military exercises and operations. These measures would fortify the collective power and deterrence of the United States’ alliances far beyond what is possible under today’s informal mechanisms.

Greater reciprocity should also entail greater clarity on what military strategists refer to as “access, basing, and overflight”—that is, the ability of the U.S. military to operate in and around allied territory. Given the vast distances involved, forward-deployed U.S. forces are essential to ensuring rapid response times and sustaining the military during a contingency. More certainty surrounding U.S. military access would strengthen deterrence in the western Pacific by ensuring that the United States would have the right forces and capabilities ready to fight in the right places. More assured access would also lead to greater infrastructure investments and the deployment of more advanced capabilities, which further enhance the potential utility of various locations. While U.S. allies should not be expected to give the U.S. military a blank check, a robust Pacific Defense Pact will require more flexible and assured access for U.S. forces.

THE CORE FOUR

Collective defense touches on matters of sovereignty and treaty obligations, deeply political issues that require intense negotiations and deft diplomacy. This will be all the more challenging if the Trump administration moves forward with punishing tariffs or other measures that strain Washington’s alliances in the region. But even amid tense diplomatic relations, defense and military establishments can continue laying the foundations for collective defense. Short of a severe break in ties, the four partners should work as best they can to silo security cooperation from economic and diplomatic disagreements. The stakes are simply too high to do otherwise. It is also worth underscoring that the demand for more reciprocal relationships has become a political and strategic imperative that spans the partisan divide in Washington.

The evidence to date is that the United States and its Indo-Pacific allies are managing to deepen defense cooperation despite political and economic headwinds. This is largely owing to the mounting threat from China, the continued demand for a U.S. military presence in the region, and the growing trend of intra-Asian security cooperation. To be sure, the Trump administration may be too divided, distracted, or confrontational to play the winning hand it has been dealt. In that case, many of the building blocks can still be put in place for a future administration. Given the number of tasks ahead, a pact might not be finalized until the next U.S. administration anyway.

For their part, leaders in Canberra, Manila, and Tokyo will need to win the support of their respective domestic publics. Beyond strategic arguments about deterrence and national security, the United States can support these conversations by highlighting the potential benefits to its allies’ domestic constituencies. These could include technology sharing, infrastructure investments, and improved disaster response. In the United States, skeptics can be assured that a defense pact in the Pacific would entail no obligations for the U.S. military beyond what is already in place—but that it would reduce threats to the U.S. homeland and to U.S. troops.

Members of Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force, Yokosuka, Japan, April 2025 Issei Kato / Reuters

Given the historic significance of such an arrangement, Washington should also be prepared to manage reactions and concerns from others in the Indo-Pacific. U.S. officials can underscore that a Pacific Defense Pact would be but one of several components of its approach to the region. In both rhetoric and practice, Washington should remain committed to a network of overlapping and complementary institutions, including the Indo-Pacific Quad, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and trilateral cooperation with Japan and South Korea. The publicly stated objective of the pact should be the pursuit of a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” a goal shared by nearly every country in the region.

Moreover, the pact should remain focused on defense rather than subsuming or taking on the economic and diplomatic roles of other important institutions. Indeed, the pact will be most successful if complemented by a robust regional trade agenda, active diplomatic efforts, and effective foreign assistance programs.

Protests from Beijing will no doubt be as loud as they are predictable. China has long accused the United States of “Cold War thinking” and “bloc politics.” PLA officials have already warned that current U.S. efforts to bring American security partners closer together are “tying the region’s countries to the U.S. war chariot.” These refrains will feature prominently in China’s reaction precisely because a stronger coalition could stymie Beijing’s revisionist ambitions. To push back and make potential members think twice about a new pact, Beijing will likely draw from its traditional playbook of disinformation and economic coercion. With that in mind, the United States should help its allies prepare for China’s efforts to scuttle a collective defense arrangement in Asia.

None of this will be easy. But neither was the great progress that Washington’s allies have already made, not only in acknowledging the threat from China but also in taking unprecedented steps to invest in their own militaries, build ties with their neighbors, and double down on their alliances with the United States. In fact, in recent years, Australia, Japan, and the Philippines have already made moves on defense and security matters that were previously deemed implausible. The conditions are now set for strong leadership to transform a collective defense pact in Asia from something once unimaginable into a defining feature of the region’s future peace and prosperity.

ELY RATNER is Principal at the Marathon Initiative. From 2021 to 2025, he served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs in the Biden administration.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Ely Ratner · May 27, 2025

2. Trump Weighs Sanctions Against Russia as Relationship With Putin Sours

I think we can say the POTUS gave Putin a chance to change and he has rejected that. Now it is time to put the screws to him.

Maybe the problem is not American presidents. Maybe the problem is Putin.

Excerpts:

“President Trump has been clear he wants to see a negotiated peace deal,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in a statement to The Wall Street Journal. “President Trump has also smartly kept all options on the table.”

The developments mark a new deterioration in relations between the U.S. and Russia—which have had ups and downs even in the past few months. Trump came into office believing he was in a unique position to improve ties between the two countries due to what he viewed as his strong personal relationship with Putin.

But Trump has been unable to coax major concessions from the Russian leader on a negotiated peace with Ukraine, and Putin has intensified the war recently. Hours after Trump’s comments Sunday, Russia launched its largest-ever drone-and-missile assault on Ukraine overnight into Monday. Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched more than 350 explosive drones and at least nine cruise missiles. The Russians characterized the strikes as retaliation for Ukrainian bombings within Russian territory.

...

Trump is now on a path familiar to previous U.S. presidents who have believed they could work with Putin, only to see their efforts fail. George W. Bush in 2001 said of Putin that he “looked the man in the eye” and gleaned “a sense of his soul” and had determined that Putin was “very straightforward and trustworthy.” Later, Putin invaded Georgia.

Barack Obama and his administration, in 2009, sought a “reset” with Putin, only to be lectured by the leader and later watch him march into Ukraine and seize Crimea.

During Trump’s first administration, Russia continued to back attacks by separatists in Ukraine, and Trump supplied Ukraine with offensive weaponry. On the campaign trail, Trump said Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if he had been in office and has repeatedly said that he could quickly stop the fighting.

Trump Weighs Sanctions Against Russia as Relationship With Putin Sours

President expresses frustration over new attacks in Ukraine and slow pace of talks

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-weighs-sanctions-against-russia-as-relationship-with-putin-sours-821a1d3b

By Annie Linskey

, Alexander Ward

and Josh Dawsey

May 26, 2025 5:51 pm ET

U.S. President Trump disembarking Air Force One on Sunday. Photo: nathan howard/Reuters

Key Points

What's This?

Trump is considering sanctions against Russia due to Putin’s attacks on Ukraine and slow peace talks.
Trump is tiring of peace negotiations and may abandon them if a final push doesn’t work.
Germany’s chancellor said it, the U.S. and other countries would remove range restrictions on Ukraine’s use of weapons, allowing deeper strikes into Russia.

WASHINGTON—President Trump is eyeing sanctions against Moscow this week as he grows frustrated by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s continued attacks on Ukraine and the slow pace of peace talks, according to people familiar with Trump’s thinking.

The restrictions likely wouldn’t include new banking sanctions, one of the people said, but other options are under discussion to pressure the Russian leader into concessions at the negotiating table, including a 30-day cease-fire supported by Ukraine that Russia has long rejected. Trump might also decide not to impose new sanctions.

Trump addressed the potential of new sanctions on Sunday, saying that he is “absolutely” considering them. “He’s killing a lot of people,” Trump said of Putin. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. What the hell happened to him?”

Trump is also tiring of the peace negotiations and is considering abandoning them altogether if a final push doesn’t work, people familiar with his thinking said, a remarkable change for a leader who campaigned on his ability to end the conflict on his first day in office. It is unclear what would happen if the U.S. retreats from the peace process and whether Trump would continue to provide military support to Ukraine.

“President Trump has been clear he wants to see a negotiated peace deal,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in a statement to The Wall Street Journal. “President Trump has also smartly kept all options on the table.”

The developments mark a new deterioration in relations between the U.S. and Russia—which have had ups and downs even in the past few months. Trump came into office believing he was in a unique position to improve ties between the two countries due to what he viewed as his strong personal relationship with Putin.

The U.S. Reinforces Europe’s Northern Front, Fearing War With Russia

In quest to make NATO more lethal, the Pentagon turns to the high north and the Baltics

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/the-u-s-reinforces-europes-northern-front-fearing-war-with-russia-b499ef50?mod=hp_lead_pos8

By Sune Engel Rasmussen

May 26, 2025 11:00 pm ET

Key Points

What's This?

U.S. military is doubling down in Northern Europe amid concerns about NATO’s future and Russia’s aggression.
NATO allies are conducting joint military exercises in the Nordic and Baltic regions to deter Russia and improve integration.
Gotland, a Swedish island, is a strategic location for NATO. It is undergoing rearmament to serve as a hub for logistics and defense.

GOTLAND, Sweden—At the crack of dawn, a dozen U.S. Marines recently took position in a field on this sleepy Swedish island about 200 miles from the Russian city of Kaliningrad and fired their mobile rocket system.

The dummy munitions splashed into the Baltic Sea, yet they sent a message to Russia: Even as President Trump has thrown NATO into a historic crisis by questioning its efficacy, in Northern Europe, the U.S. military is doubling down.

The Trump administration wants the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to get more “lethal.” A testing ground is Europe’s north, where NATO faces Russia on two sides.

Some European officials worry that America’s commitment to the trans-Atlantic alliance is waning, given Trump’s criticism of it and his stated desire to reduce military engagement abroad, but U.S. military commanders say their posture remains firm.

Military exercises took place on Gotland island, which is among the most strategic locations in Northern Europe. Photo: Zacarias Johansson/Försvarsmakten

American and British forces fire rockets on Gotland. Photo: Joel Thungren

“From a U.S. Army perspective, my orders haven’t changed,” said Brig. Gen. Andrew Saslav, deputy chief of staff for operations for U.S. Army Europe and Africa. While the question of future U.S. engagement is “on my mind,” he said, “I have been doing this too long to get hyperfocused on political winds and messaging that isn’t orders.”

The high north and the Baltics have been thrust into the center of U.S. war planning, as their access to shipping routes, territory and energy reserves will be crucial to the West in a new era of geopolitical conflict. The region is hawkish on Russia and is driving European efforts to rearm and boost defense budgets, including support for Ukraine’s armed forces.

During a three-week exercise, U.S. and U.K. forces joined Nordic and Baltic troops to practice potential war scenarios including live-fire drills, blood resupplies by drone and airborne jumps above the Arctic circle in Norway.

The goal was twofold: deter Russian aggression and more firmly integrate allies in this strategic corner of Europe, including new NATO members Finland and Sweden.

Kola Peninsula

Finland

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russia

Gotland

(Sweden)

lat.

lith.

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(Russia)

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Carl Churchill/WSJ

“Now that Finland and Sweden have become members of NATO, we have a continuous piece of NATO territory north of the Arctic Circle,” said Kristian Atland, senior research fellow with the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, which advises Norway’s armed forces. “The Nordic NATO enlargement has also made it easier for NATO to transfer reinforcements to the Baltic states in the event of a military crisis or conflict in that region.”

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Nordic countries have ramped up military spending. Finland shares an 800-mile border with Russia. Norway’s border with Russia is close to the Kola Peninsula, home to Moscow’s main submarine force, the Northern Fleet. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have long warned of Russia’s militaristic ambitions and provide sophisticated intelligence about their larger neighbor.

Still, officials here say deepening relations between the region and Washington shouldn’t deflect from NATO cohesion.

“It’s not about creating a club inside the club, it’s about making NATO stronger,” said Carl-Johan Edström, Swedish chief of defense staff. “But parallel to that, you can do some bilateral or multilateral cooperation or operations. That is only strengthening the collective defense.”

Troops practiced potential war scenarios during exercises on Gotland. Photo: Daniel Klintholm

Gotland is among the most strategic locations in Northern Europe, allowing the deployment of sensors and long-range weapons systems to dominate air and sea operations in the Baltic region. Former Swedish defense chief Micael Bydén last year said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “both eyes” on Gotland.

“As Russia’s maritime strategic locations in the Baltic Sea are very weak, any conflict will include Russia immediately seeking to occupy key port areas in the Baltics, Finland and Poland,” said Stefan Lundqvist, Sweden chair to the Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies in Alaska. “The key military strategic location of Gotland will most likely be the scene of hostile action in the opening stage of conflict,” he said.

After being demilitarized for years, Gotland is at the heart of Swedish rearmament. In war, the island can serve as a hub for NATO logistics and control of sea line communications, and to help build up offensive capabilities for deep strikes on enemy soil.

The U.S. Senate Won’t Tolerate Putin’s Games

Sen. Lindsey Graham sends a message to Moscow.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-u-s-senate-wont-tolerate-putins-games-vladimir-russia-war-ukraine-sanctions-16780c2f

May 26, 2025 11:41 am ET

Vladimir Putin in Moscow, May 22. Photo: Alexander Kazakov/Associated Press

Regarding your editorial “A Sanctions Message to Putin—and China” (May 21): Since taking office, President Trump has earnestly sought to bring Ukraine and Russia together to achieve a just and honorable peace, ensuring global stability. That is more important now than ever. America’s shameful withdrawal from Afghanistan didn’t merely damage our reputation; it set in motion aggression across the world. If the U.S. continues to lead decisively on bringing the Russia-Ukraine war to an end, that could change. Mr. Trump can restore our reputation—and end the bloodbath.

Yet peace requires willing partners. While Ukraine has made clear it is ready for such an end, Russia has made more excuses than the market can bear. President Trump has asked Vladimir Putin to provide a term sheet outlining the requirements for a cease-fire, bringing the roadblocks to peace to a head. Depending on how Russia responds, we will know which course to take.

The Senate is prepared either way. I have coordinated with the White House on the Russia sanctions bill since its inception. The bill would put Russia on a trade island, slapping 500% tariffs on any country that buys Moscow’s energy products. The consequences of its barbaric invasion must be made real to those that prop it up. If China or India stopped buying cheap oil, Mr. Putin’s war machine would grind to a halt.

The sanctions bill has 82 co-sponsors. As Sen. Thune said last week, if Mr. Putin continues to play games, the Senate will act. I’m hoping for the best, but when it comes to the thug in Moscow, we should all prepare for more of the same.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.)

Seneca, S.C.

Appeared in the May 27, 2025, print edition as 'The U.S. Senate Won’t Tolerate Putin’s Games'.

5. Time for a GOP Senate Revolt on Sanctions Against Putin

Excerpt:

If Mr. Trump signaled that he supports the Graham-Tom Cotton-Richard Blumenthal sanctions bill, it would sail through the Senate. Combined with the promise of more arms to Ukraine when the current supply runs out, these sanctions might change Mr. Putin’s calculations about the price of war. But GOP Senators can act whether or not Mr. Trump approves. They can vote on the sanctions bill, and force the President to face the hard reality of Mr. Putin’s ambitions that Mr. Trump would rather avoid.

Time for a GOP Senate Revolt on Sanctions Against Putin

John Thune can move Lindsey Graham’s secondary sanctions bill and send a message to the White House and the Kremlin.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-senate-sanctions-bill-lindsey-graham-280e7fbb

By The Editorial Board

May 26, 2025 4:56 pm ET

Sen. Lindsey Graham Photo: Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press

President Trump is unhappy with Vladimir Putin. The Russian isn’t heeding the President’s entreaties to stop the killing in Ukraine, and Mr. Trump is nonplussed.

“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever,” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social.

Separately, Mr. Trump told reporters: “I’m not happy with what Putin is doing. He’s killing a lot of people, and I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin.”

Mr. Trump may be the only person in the world still surprised by how Mr. Putin is behaving. The Russian is the same man he’s been for two decades, bent on reconstituting as much of the old Soviet empire as he can get away with. Ukraine is his obsession. He’s not going to modify his ambitions merely because Mr. Trump alternates between begging for peace and scolding outbursts on social media.

Mr. Trump and his advisers fancy themselves steely-eyed realists on foreign policy. No “neocon” idealism for them. But on Mr. Putin they are starry-eyed idealists, mouthing “peace” as if they can make it happen by wishing it were so. Mr. Trump’s naivete is helping Russia continue the killing as long as Mr. Putin wants.

The good news is that the U.S. Senate still has some genuine realists when it comes to Russia. As GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham writes in a letter nearby, he has 82 co-sponsors on a bill that would hit countries that buy Russian oil and gas with tariff sanctions. Energy sales are Mr. Putin’s financial lifeline. President Biden refused to apply these so-called secondary sanctions, and Mr. Trump can’t make up his mind.

If Mr. Trump signaled that he supports the Graham-Tom Cotton-Richard Blumenthal sanctions bill, it would sail through the Senate. Combined with the promise of more arms to Ukraine when the current supply runs out, these sanctions might change Mr. Putin’s calculations about the price of war. But GOP Senators can act whether or not Mr. Trump approves. They can vote on the sanctions bill, and force the President to face the hard reality of Mr. Putin’s ambitions that Mr. Trump would rather avoid.

China’s Soft Spot in Trade War With Trump: Risk of Huge Job Loss

A chronic housing slowdown and high youth unemployment rate have made China more vulnerable than it was in President Trump’s first term.

By Daisuke Wakabayashi Meaghan Tobin and Amy Chang Chien

Daisuke Wakabayashi reported from Seoul, Meaghan Tobin from Beijing and Guangzhou in China, and Amy Chang Chien from Taipei, Taiwan

May 27, 2025, 12:01 a.m. ET

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/business/china-unemployment-jobs.html

President Trump taunted China in his first term, claiming his tariffs had led to the loss of five million jobs there. In a 2019 tweet, he said his trade policies had put China “back on its heels.”

Economists sharply disputed how much pain Mr. Trump’s tariffs caused, but the message underscored the centrality of jobs to China’s export-reliant economy.

Four months into Mr. Trump’s second term, the United States and China are again negotiating over tariffs, and the Chinese labor market, especially factory jobs, is front and center. This time, China’s economy is struggling, leaving its workers more vulnerable. A persistent property slowdown that got worse during the Covid-19 pandemic has wiped out jobs and made people feel poorer. New university graduates are pouring into the labor pool at a time when the unemployment rate among young workers is in the double digits.

“The situation is clearly much worse,” said Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for the Asia-Pacific region at the investment bank Natixis.

As employment opportunities in other sectors disappear, she said, the importance of preserving China’s 100 million manufacturing jobs has grown.

This month, Chinese and U.S. officials agreed to temporarily reduce the punishing tariffs they had imposed on each other while they tried to avert a return to an all-out trade war that would threaten to undermine both economies.

In a research report, Natixis said that if U.S. tariffs stayed at their current levels of at least 30 percent, exports to the United States would fall by half, resulting in a loss of up to six million manufacturing jobs. If the trade war resumes again in full, the job losses could surge to nine million.

Image

Job posting in Guangzhou, home to many of China’s garment factories.Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Times

China’s economy has struggled to recover from the pandemic, expanding more slowly than in the years of Mr. Trump’s first term, when growth was more than 6 percent a year. Although the Chinese government has said it is targeting growth of around 5 percent this year, many economists have predicted that the actual figure will not reach those levels.

In early 2018, China said its urban jobless rate had fallen to 15-year lows and the country had created a record number of new jobs. Since then, government crackdowns and tighter regulations have subdued industries like technology and online education — once-thriving sectors that created heaps of new jobs.

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Over those years, unemployment climbed especially among young people. The jobless rate among 16-to-24-year-olds was 15.8 percent in April, an improvement from the previous month. However, the figure is expected to surge again when 12 million new college graduates join the work force this year.

In 2023, when youth unemployment figures reached a record 21.3 percent, the Chinese government suspended the release of the figures. At the time, one prominent economist claimed that the actual figure was closer to 50 percent. Beijing started distributing the figures again last year with a new methodology that lowered the jobless rate.

At the same time, even those with jobs are in a more precarious position. Fewer companies are offering full-time employment, turning instead to gig workers for services like food delivery and manufacturing. While those jobs offer workers more flexibility, they usually pay less and provide few job protections or benefits.

The United States, for its part, has its own liabilities. American industry is deeply dependent on rare earth metals and critical minerals controlled largely by China, while a halt in Chinese goods heightens inflation risk and could contribute to disruptive product shortages.

If the negotiations boil down to which country is able to withstand more economic hardship, China has an advantage in “trade war endurance,” said Diana Choyleva, chief economist at Enodo Economics, a London research firm focused on China. Beijing can tamp down discontent over labor market shocks more readily than American politicians can withstand anger over empty store shelves, she said.

According to official data, in April, before the United States and China agreed to suspend the heaviest tariffs, new export orders from China fell to their lowest level since 2022. Even over a one-month period, the sky-high tariffs took a toll on employment.

In Guangzhou, the center of China’s garment industry, businesses had closed as orders from foreign buyers dropped before the ultrahigh tariffs were paused. Many said the drop in orders forced them to hire fewer workers.

Image

A job fair in Yantai, China. Youth unemployment is in the double digits and millions of new university graduates enter the labor pool every year.Credit...Reuters

Jane Hu, an office worker in Shanghai, said she lost her job last month, not because of Mr. Trump’s tariffs, but from China’s countermeasure to raise duties on American imports to 125 percent.

She said her former employer, a construction equipment company that had depended on bringing machinery into China from the United States, could not afford the tariffs, which more than doubled the costs of imports.

This compounded problems the business was already facing because of the property slowdown. Sales declined about 40 percent, making layoffs unavoidable.

At 33, Ms. Hu is worried she has too much experience for entry-level positions. Many companies are hesitant to hire women like her who are married without children because they do not want to have to potentially cover the cost of parental leave, she said. Women in her age group have a saying, she said: “We are old and expensive. Why would any company choose us?”

She said she had landed only two job interviews. To bring in additional income, Ms. Hu started driving occasionally for ride-hailing services.

Image

A food delivery worker in Beijing. With fewer companies offering full-time employment, many workers in China are turning to gig jobs.Credit...Wang Zhao/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In late April, Yu Jiadong, a top official at China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said the government had prepared a number of measures to keep employment stable, especially for Chinese exporters. He said Beijing would help companies keep their workers, and he encouraged entrepreneurship for the unemployed.

With so much at stake, sensitivities around employment are heightened. One factory owner in southern China, who asked not to be identified, said he had planned to lay off staff but held off when customers rushed to fill orders after the tariff truce. A government official had told him that if he needed to cut his work force, he should do so properly and quietly to avoid creating a stir.

Factory owners who employ salaried workers are required by law to compensate them in a layoff, said Han Dongfang, the founder of China Labor Bulletin, which tracks factory closures and worker protests. Usually, they are required to pay one month’s salary for every year of employment, making layoffs such an expensive prospect that some factories close down without notice, and the owners disappear.

Employment activity outside the manufacturing sector has contracted for more than two years, according to a monthly survey of industrial firms. The trade war has made firms more wary, adding another concerning factor for job-seeking college graduates.

“The current job market is much worse than before,” said Laura Wang, 23, a graduate student studying accounting in Chongqing. Ms. Wang said that more than 80 percent of her classmates were struggling to find jobs.

She said the market was especially rough for students in finance and accounting. The few jobs and internships that are available have significantly higher requirements. The tariff-related upheaval has left businesses unlikely to take a chance on someone without a proven track record.

“There are a lot of uncertainties,” Ms. Wang said. “For fresh graduates with no experience like me, the impact is even greater.”

Siyi Zhao and Li You contributed reporting.

Tell Us How the Tariff Uncertainty Is Affecting Your Business

May 21, 2025

Daisuke Wakabayashi is an Asia business correspondent for The Times based in Seoul, covering economic, corporate and geopolitical stories from the region.

Meaghan Tobin covers business and tech stories in Asia with a focus on China and is based in Taipei.

Amy Chang Chien is a reporter and researcher for The Times in Taipei, covering Taiwan and China.

7. What Trump Gets Right About China

Graphics at the link.

What Trump Gets Right About China

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-overcapacity-undermined-us-manfuacturing-and-caused-chinese-demographic-collapse-by-yi-fuxian-2025-05

May 26, 2025

Yi Fuxian

When Donald Trump complains that Chinese exports have contributed to the decline of US manufacturing, he has a point. But no one has paid a higher price for Chinese overcapacity than China, which is now staring down the barrel of demographic collapse.

MADISON, WISCONSIN – US President Donald Trump’s embrace of tariffs has been met with considerable criticism, and for sound reasons. But Trump’s diagnosis of the global trading system – and, specifically, its impact on US manufacturing – may not be entirely wrong. The problem, instead, is the treatment: rather than using a chainsaw, which would probably kill the patient, he should reach for a scalpel.

The existing international order, including the global trading system and the dollar-based monetary system, were established in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, near the end of World War II. With Europe in ruins, the United States enjoyed undisputed economic dominance, including in manufacturing: in 1948, four years after the Bretton Woods conference, the US accounted for more than half of all goods produced worldwide.

But one product of that conference – fixed exchange rates – turned out not to be all that good for the US, as it contributed to the precipitous decline of America’s share of global manufacturing value-added, from 55% in 1953 to 24% in 1970. US President Richard Nixon’s 1971 decision to delink the US dollar from gold mostly stabilized this share, which then remained roughly consistent for three decades. But it also turned the US from a surplus country into the world’s largest deficit country, as it fueled the rise of Japanese manufacturing.

Politics
1

Europe’s Existential Choice

Radosław Sikorski urges Europeans, for the sake of their own security, to take Donald Trump both seriously and literally.

The 1985 Plaza Accord – whereby the US convinced the rest of the G5 (Japan, West Germany, France, and the United Kingdom) to help weaken the dollar – succeeded in shrinking America’s external trade deficit. But these gains were eroded in 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, and obliterated after 2001, when China’s accession to the World Trade Organization opened the floodgates for Chinese goods to pour into the US market. In 2001-21, the ratio of US manufacturing exports to imports plummeted from 65% to 45%, and America’s share of global manufacturing value-added declined from 25% to 16%.

So, when Trump complains that Chinese exports have contributed to the decline of US manufacturing, he has a point (the extent to which reducing Chinese imports today would revitalize US manufacturing is another matter altogether). But no one has paid a higher price for Chinese overcapacity than China.

Children are “super consumers”: the more children a household contains, the more it spends. But decades of fertility-control policies have left China with relatively few children. In 1982, three years after the one-child policy was introduced, the country’s total population-to-worker ratio stood at 2.2, reflecting a relatively large number of dependents for each worker (aged 20-59). By 2010, the ratio had plummeted to 1.6, well below the international average of 1.8-2.2. (While this ratio is now rising again in China, it is being driven primarily by an increase in the number of elderly, not children.)

As households shrank, so did their incomes – from 62% of GDP in 1983 to 44% of GDP today. The result has been low and falling consumer demand: since 1983, household consumption has fallen from 53% of GDP to just 39% of GDP, compared to nearly 70% in the US.

Weak domestic consumption left China dependent on a manufacturing surplus – which reached $1.86 trillion, or 10.5% of GDP, in 2023 – to provide jobs. Because the US not only has a huge and voracious consumer market, but also issues the world’s primary reserve currency – and thus provides the world with trade surpluses and liquidity – American overconsumption became the natural counterweight to Chinese overcapacity.

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This relationship, which historian Niall Ferguson and economist Moritz Schularick dubbed “Chimerica,” initially seemed symbiotic. But it quickly morphed into something monstrous, as it simultaneously destroyed US manufacturing – I was warning of a US-China trade war as far back as 2009 – and perpetuated the imbalance between production and consumption within China. In other words, China’s demographic collapse led to overcapacity.

China’s government has few options for addressing its demographic crisis. Its attempts to loosen fertility rules – replacing the one-child policy with a two-child and then a three-child limit – failed miserably, because low household incomes meant that families could not afford to have more children.

The government seems to be pinning its hopes on an “engineer dividend,” as China boasts more engineering graduates than the rest of the world combined. But college graduates typically find jobs in the services sector, which accounts for only 46% of Chinese employment. When other countries reached China’s current tertiary enrollment rate, their service sectors provided 70-80% of jobs. Little wonder that youth unemployment is skyrocketing in China, and the number of new marriages – the backbone of fertility – are plummeting.

By imposing sweeping tariffs on America’s trading partners, Trump risks severely weakening – or even destroying – the global trading system. Since it is China’s trade surplus that perfectly mirrors America’s trade deficit, any effort to revive US manufacturing should start there. Unfortunately for Trump, the only real solution is to boost China’s fertility rate, and that demands rapid progress in raising Chinese household incomes – something no tariff can achieve.

Yi Fuxian

Writing for PS since 2021

24 Commentaries

Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, spear-headed the movement against China’s one-child policy and is the author of Big Country with an Empty Nest (China Development Press, 2013), which went from being banned in China to ranking first in China Publishing Today’s 100 Best Books of 2013 in China.

8. China Is Preparing a “Pearl Harbor” Attack on America, US General Warns

Conclusion:

It should be obvious that China is preparing for a Pearl Harbor-style surprise attack on the United States. But it will not primarily be on Earth, where the last Pearl Harbor attack took place nearly a century ago. It will be in the strategic high ground of outer space. America must prepare accordingly.

China Is Preparing a “Pearl Harbor” Attack on America, US General Warns

May 26, 2025

By: Brandon J. Weichert

The National Interest · May 26, 2025

May 26, 2025

But the main thrust of Beijing’s attack is likely to come far above the Earth, in outer space—where America’s satellites are vulnerable to innovative new Chinese weapons.

United States Air Force Brigadier General Doug Wickert, the commander of the Air Force’s 412th Test Wing, warned an audience of airmen that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is preparing to conduct a Pearl Harbor-style attack on the United States as part of China’s larger effort to conquer Taiwan. Gen. Wickert’s nearly 40-minute talk is available for viewing on YouTube, and it already has well over 400,000 views.

What’s missing from the speech, though, is what form Beijing’s surprise attack might take. The general fixates on known Chinese military training designed to condition Chinese forces to target US Navy warships—particularly the Ford-class aircraft carrier. If the Chinese are going to be successful, though, they will have to conduct a full-spectrum attack upon US assets in space, cyberspace, and the Chinese will have to disrupt the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum.

China Is Undoubtedly Planning a Space Pearl Harbor

Sweeping attacks executed upon critical US satellite architecture will be key for any Chinese invasion of Taiwan to go forward with a modicum of success. Recall that a coterie of military and private sector imaging satellites operate in low-Earth orbit (LEO). These systems will be key for giving the Americans situational awareness if the Chinese military mobilizes to invade Taiwan. Beijing understands this, and has doubtless concluded that blinding those satellites will be a critical first step in a military attack.

China is well-equipped for such a strike. It has prepared a novel anti-satellite (ASAT) laser weapon at the Koral East Test Site in Xinjiang Province. In 2023, the Financial Times reported that the Chinese ASAT laser operates prolifically during what is known as the “solar moon” phase of Earth’s orbit—the period of the day in which many US imaging satellites are most active near China. According to the Financial Times, these lasers fired at undefended American imaging satellites can “seize control of a satellite, rendering it ineffective to support communications, weapons, or intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems.”

Blinding imaging satellites will have immediate, salutary effects for any potential Chinese invasion force. Whatever Western forces try to respond to China’s provocations against Taiwan will do so without any eyes in the sky. A lack of situational awareness is devastating in modern combat. China understands this. And since any possible war with the US would be fought in China’s proverbial backyard—giving Beijing a decisive home field advantage—the lack of situational awareness for US forces could be a killer.

Disabling US Nuclear Weapons and Military Communications in Space

Let’s go higher in the orbital plane. At the highest orbit around Earth, geostationary (GEO) orbit, float some of America’s most sensitive and expensive satellite constellations. Among these systems are nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) satellites. The United States Navy’s Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) is up there as well, as is the US Army’s Wideband Global Satcom (WGS).

The NC3 satellites are key to America’s nuclear triad. Knocking these systems out of orbit won’t end the US nuclear weapons threat to China. But it will severely degrade it. And that just might be all that China needs to go all the way into Taiwan without fearing American reprisals.

That Navy MUOS constellations is the primary way that the Navy coordinates its movements across the globe’s vast oceans. Without that system, the Navy’s ships could not coordinate a counterattack against a possible Chinese threat at sea. Sure, individual ships could—and likely would—respond. But they would be nowhere near as effective as they could be.

What’s more, considering China’s impressive and comprehensive anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) system spread throughout the Indo-Pacific, US Navy warships will be utterly stymied once their satellite architecture is disabled by Chinese ASAT. Losing the WGS constellation would seriously harm the US Army, which relies significantly on that capability for communication and coordination.

China has already demonstrated they have the capability to deploy co-orbital satellites into GEO. These are tiny, maneuverable satellites with grappling arms that tailgate America’s more sensitive systems in that orbital plane, and then physically push them from their orbits—ensuring American forces on the Earth below are deaf, dumb, and blind.

That’s not even mentioning the conventional ASAT weapons that China has spent years building. These are missiles capable of going into low-Earth Orbit (LEO) to physically destroy American satellites there. Of course, the trouble with a conventional ASAT weapon is that it generates tremendous levels of debris that become threats to other satellites in nearby orbits. In other words, unless China wants to risk the entire world losing their satellite capabilities—and endanger spaceflight for a generation or more—it will likely stick to the laser and co-orbital satellite ASAT attacks on American constellations.

Where Do We Go From Here?

It should be obvious that China is preparing for a Pearl Harbor-style surprise attack on the United States. But it will not primarily be on Earth, where the last Pearl Harbor attack took place nearly a century ago. It will be in the strategic high ground of outer space. America must prepare accordingly.

About the Author: Brandon J. Weichert

Brandon J. Weichert, a Senior National Security Editor at The National Interest as well as a contributor at Popular Mechanics, who consults regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. Weichert’s writings have appeared in multiple publications, including the Washington Times, National Review, The American Spectator, MSN, the Asia Times, and countless others. His books include Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine is available for purchase wherever books are sold. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

Image: Shutterstock / Alones.

The National Interest · by Trevor Filseth · May 26, 2025

9. Retired general issues terrifying warning about China mining the moon

Excerpts:

A new space race is warming up after half a century, with Russia, China and America racing to put robots, human astronauts and even lunar trains on the moon.

Rare earth metals - used in smartphones, computers and advanced technologies - are available on the moon, according to research by Boeing.

Most plans for moon mining involve robots doing much of the work, overseen by humans either on moon bases or on orbiting space stations.

Seattle startup Interlune recently released a prototype of excavator for harvesting helium-3 from the moon.

The machine is designed to ingest 100 metric tons of moon dirt, or regolith, per hour and return it to the surface in a continuous motion.

'The high-rate excavation needed to harvest helium-3 from the moon in large quantities has never been attempted before, let alone with high efficiency,' said Gary Lai, Interlune co-founder and CTO.

Retired general issues terrifying warning about China mining the moon

Daily Mail · by RACHEL BOWMAN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM · May 26, 2025

A retired Air Force general has warned that China is mining a rare and powerful element from the moon that could give them the upper hand in the new space race.

China confirmed its plans to build a nuclear plant on the moon to power the research station it's 'dreaming up' with Russia during an April presentation.

The country aims to become a major space power and land astronauts on the moon by 2030. Its planned Chang'e-8 mission for 2028 would lay the groundwork for constructing a permanent, manned lunar base.

However, Steven Kwast, a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General and the CEO of SpaceBilt, claimed China has already started mining helium-3 from the moon.

Helium-3 is a rare form of the gas helium on Earth, but NASA estimates that a million tons of it is on the moon.

Scientists believe helium-3 could provide nuclear energy in a fusion reactor, but since it is not radioactive, it would not produce dangerous waste.

Kwast warned during a recent episode of the Shawn Ryan Show that if China monopolizes the element, they could have enough power to crack any computer code.

'If we were to mine the moon for helium-3, at the current level of electricity use... we could power the energy needs of the human race for thousands of years based on the helium-3 that's on the moon right now,' Kwast said.

Retired Air Force Lieutenant General Steven Kwast (pictured) claimed China is mining helium-3 from the moon and it could give them enough power to crack any code in the world

China confirmed its plans to build a nuclear plant on the moon to power the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) it's 'dreaming up' with Russia (Artist's rendition of ILRS)

'Let's take the scenario where China now has enough helium-3 as they're mining it on the moon and bringing it back to Earth to be able to power the entire world for thousands of years.

'They are the ones that can actually operationalize quantum because they can cool it down to the temperature it needs to actually operate.'

Kwast explained that helium-3 can be used to control the quantum cooling needed for advance technology, and whoever controls it will be able to break any code on the planet.

'When you start combining those three quantum capabilities - sensing, computing, communication - and you can affordably cool it down to the levels where it can be operationalized, now you've broken every code that ever was. I don't care how good your encryption is. They see every secret, every code, everything,' Kwast said.

'So there's an example of why not being in space with logistics and infrastructure to be able to move to see and to operate can make you vulnerable.

'Space is the place where if America does not change our strategy and how we're investing in space, we will become victims to others that use space as a way of dominating the energy market but also the information market.'

While there is no proof that China is actively mining helium-3 on the moon, they have expressed interest in lunar resource extraction.

In June 2024, China became the first country to land on the moon's far side. The Chang'e 6 spacecraft returned with 4.4 pounds of lunar rock samples.

China's Chang'e 6 spacecraft (pictured) returned with 4.4 pounds of lunar rock samples from the moon's far side in June 2024

Seattle startup Interlune recently released a prototype of excavator for harvesting helium-3 from the moon (pictured)

A new space race is warming up after half a century, with Russia, China and America racing to put robots, human astronauts and even lunar trains on the moon.

Rare earth metals - used in smartphones, computers and advanced technologies - are available on the moon, according to research by Boeing.

Most plans for moon mining involve robots doing much of the work, overseen by humans either on moon bases or on orbiting space stations.

Seattle startup Interlune recently released a prototype of excavator for harvesting helium-3 from the moon.

The machine is designed to ingest 100 metric tons of moon dirt, or regolith, per hour and return it to the surface in a continuous motion.

'The high-rate excavation needed to harvest helium-3 from the moon in large quantities has never been attempted before, let alone with high efficiency,' said Gary Lai, Interlune co-founder and CTO.

Daily Mail · by RACHEL BOWMAN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM · May 26, 2025

10. Securing the Flow: Addressing the National Security Vulnerabilities in the US Water Supply

Excerpts:

Conclusion

The challenges facing America’s water systems extend far beyond environmental concerns. These are national security threats hiding in plain sight. Population growth, climate unpredictability, industrial demand—each adds pressure to already strained water resources. A coordinated, resilient distribution system remains absent. Communities remain vulnerable. The nation remains exposed.

This issue concerns security, stability, and readiness for future crises. Water infrastructure is crumbling. Technology is outdated. Systems remain exposed to cyberattacks. The risk is clear—public health, the economy, national stability stand in the balance.

Aging treatment plants, interstate water disputes, foreign control of farmland, agroterrorism—all tie the security of water supply to national resilience. Inaction could lead to contaminated water, displaced communities, economic upheaval, geopolitical friction.

Water is not just an environmental issue. It is a strategic resource. National security depends on its protection. Investment in infrastructure, cybersecurity, long-term policy is essential.

The United States must treat water as a national security asset. Action must follow.

Securing the Flow: Addressing the National Security Vulnerabilities in the US Water Supply

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/05/26/water-security-national-infrastructure-cyber-threats/

by Brandon Schingh

05.26.2025 at 06:00am

Protecting the sanctity of our water supply is not merely an environmental concern, it is a critical national security priority and challenge. As demand for water increases due to population growth, climate change, and industrial expansion, the United States faces significant vulnerabilities in its water supply distribution systems, such as aging infrastructure and outdated information technology (IT) systems which plague water management capabilities at every level, from municipal utilities to federal agencies. Many water treatment plants and distribution networks rely on decades-old infrastructure, making them susceptible to failures and contamination. Additionally, legacy IT systems, often lacking modern cybersecurity measures, expose critical water assets to cyberattacks from state and non-state actors. A targeted attack on the domestic water supply—whether through direct contamination, such as introducing a biological agent into an aquifer, or through a cyberattack on critical command, control, and distribution systems—would be considered an act of aggression with serious consequences. Such disruptions could cripple water distribution, triggering a cascade of problems, from local economic instability to major public health crises like cholera or typhoid outbreaks. If left unaddressed, these emergencies could also escalate into broader political tensions, similar to the ongoing water disputes between Mexico and the US. With water becoming an increasingly contested resource, safeguarding its availability and security must be recognized as a national priority requiring immediate investment and policy reform.

The security of our nation’s water supply is not an isolated concern; rather, it is deeply intertwined with broader national security threats, including agroterrorism–the deliberate release of plant or animal diseases as an act of terror—and foreign exploitation of critical resources such as “virtual water”, the act of using local water by a foreign entity to grow crops for export. Addressing these interconnected threats requires a strategic approach that prioritizes water security as a fundamental pillar of national resilience, supported by the implementation of strategic infrastructure investments, policy reforms, and cybersecurity enhancements.

Growing Demand and Strain on Water Resources

Population growth and urbanization are deeply connected, driving each other in a cycle of rapid acceleration. While David Kilcullen examined this dynamic through the lens of global conflict, its impact extends far beyond, placing immense pressure on our aquatic resources. As cities expand and populations surge, the demand for clean water increases, ecosystems are disrupted, and the strain on freshwater supplies intensifies. These trends are not just shaping our urban landscapes—they are fundamentally reshaping the way we interact with and depend on water.

Rapid urbanization and increased standard of living drives increased demand for water, energy, food, and recreation, intensifying pressure on essential resources. This pressure leads to increased competition over water resources and the potential for conflicts. A notable example of intrastate conflict occurred in 1994, when the City of Los Angeles filed a lawsuit against the Owens Valley Irrigation District. The city alleged that local farmers and ranchers were unlawfully diverting water resources legally allocated to Los Angeles. Disputes between states over access to and control of waterways have been omnipresent throughout US history. In 1931, Massachusetts proposed a plan to divert water from the Ware and Swift rivers, tributaries to the Connecticut River watershed, to be redirected to the Boston area for drinking and other domestic purposes. This interstate water lawsuit ensnarled both states, which eventually made its way to the US Supreme Court, who ultimately sided with Massachusetts.

Another example was the 64-year dispute of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River Basin Compact. The interstate water dispute between Alabama, Florida, and Georgia centered on the allocation of a vital water supply, impacting everything from municipal consumption demand to navigation, agriculture, watershed health, and the Apalachicola Bay oyster industry. Despite efforts to reach a resolution, negotiations ultimately broke down, leading to the compact’s dissolution in 2003. The termination of this contract had lasting consequences for the region, fueling ongoing economic and agricultural hardships. Reduced freshwater flows devastated the Apalachicola Bay oyster industry, strained agricultural production downstream in Alabama and Florida, and disrupted navigation along the Apalachicola River, all of which continue to impact local economies today. Recently, the US Department of State denied Mexico’s request for additional water from the Colorado River, citing the terms of a longstanding water-sharing treaty established in 1944. This decision is likely to heighten tensions between the two nations as water scarcity continues to intensify throughout the border region.

Alongside increasing pressure on surface water supplies, America’s integral domestic supply, contained in underground aquifers and quantified by availability and quality, is reaching critical levels of groundwater depletion. In many regions, withdrawal rates are nearing—or have already surpassed—natural recharge capacities (see Figure 1), posing significant risks to long-term water security and ecosystem stability. A 2023 The New York Times investigation revealed that 45% of the country’s wells had experienced a drop in water levels to record lows since 1980. The report further emphasized the growing threat this posed to the long-term survival of 90 percent of rural communities that relied heavily on groundwater and had few, if any, viable alternatives. Even some major cities, such as San Antonio, Texas rely exclusively on groundwater for all their needs. This trajectory signals an urgent need for robust groundwater governance and coordinated policy action.

California’s Central Valley Aquifer exemplifies the severity of the issue, with groundwater now supplying 60 percent of irrigation needs—up from a historical average of 40 percent—due to prolonged drought and surface water shortages. Alarmingly, this is not an isolated case as 21 of the world’s 37 largest aquifers have been assessed to have crossed a critical sustainability threshold, meaning “more water is removed than replaced”. These trends highlight the pressing need for data-driven water management strategies and long-term investment in resilient water infrastructure.

Figure 1 – Global Aquifer Depletion Levels

Vulnerabilities in US Water Infrastructure

Existing US water infrastructure is plagued by severe vulnerabilities–aging IT control and management systems, distribution networks, and treatment plants–driven by decades of persistent underinvestment. Continued deterioration, and inevitable failure, of domestic systems and networks poses severe risks to public health and industrial output, resulting in public health crises through contamination events and increasingly frequent and prolonged supply disruption.

In recent years, mainstream media has put a growing spotlight on water infrastructure failures, raising public awareness of these critical issues. These failures serve as stark reminders of the vulnerabilities in aging systems and have underscored the urgent need for investment and modernization in aging systems.

In April 2014, the city of Flint, Michigan switched its water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River in an attempt to save money. The Flint River water was more corrosive than the treated water from Lake Huron, and without proper corrosion control treatment, lead from the city’s aging pipes and plumbing leached into the water supply. This led to high levels of lead in the drinking water, exposing approximately 100,000 residents, including many children, to dangerous levels of lead. Lead contamination has been has been linked to damage the central and peripheral nervous system, learning disabilities, shorter stature, impaired hearing, and impaired formation and function of blood cells.

Jackson, Mississippi residents suffered for decades with discolored, oily water, and similarly to Flint, elevated levels of lead due to water treatment plant’s inability to properly filter and disinfect the water. For years, residents endured increasingly frequent/repeated “boil water” notices and water shutoffs. During a bought of storms in August 2022, subsequent flooding caused the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment plant to fail, leaving approximately 150,000 people without access to safe drinking water. Before the crisis, Jackson issued numerous boil water notices due to lead and copper contaminated water, highlighting the ongoing challenges with the city’s water system.

Additional Aquatic Threats

Agroterrorism—the “intentional introduction of plant or animal diseases to incite fear, disrupt food security, inflict economic damage, and destabilize society”—poses a serious risk to both agricultural production, public health, and military readiness. Killing livestock and plants or contaminating food can help terrorists cause economic crises or undermine consumer confidence in the agriculture and food industries. According to Domestic Preparedness Journal, pests, contamination, pathogens, and cybersecurity are the four most probable threats to the food and agriculture sector.

The intentional release of foot-and-mouth disease poses a serious threat to US agriculture and the economy. Defined by the World Organization for Animal Health as a highly contagious livestock disease, the disease was eradicated in the US in 1929 but remains present in parts of South America, Africa, and Asia. The virus is 20 times more contagious than smallpox, capable of airborne transmission over 50 miles, and can survive for weeks under favorable conditions. While not a human health threat, a single outbreak could spread rapidly and disrupt global trade. A clear example of the potential economic devastation was the naturally occurring 2001 outbreak in the United Kingdom, which impacted approximately 9,000 farms and led to the culling of more than four million animals, causing billions in losses and long-term disruption to the agricultural sector.

Furthermore, the increasing trend of foreign ownership of US farmland to solely supply foreign market demand exacerbates water scarcity as vast quantities of local water are consumed for irrigation, only for the harvested crops to be exported abroad. This phenomenon, known as “virtual water,” effectively transfers American water resources overseas, straining local supplies and raising questions about long-term sustainability and national security implications of water management. In 2014, Saudi Arabian dairy enterprise, Almarai, purchased and leased almost 1,800 acres in Arizona to grow alfalfa, only to be shipped back to Saudi Arabia to feed dairy cows. Since the land is outside of the state’s active management area, there is no monitoring of the quantity of water being pumped from the ground. Although virtual water isn’t inherently harmful—and can sometimes reduce water use—its extraction from water-stressed communities is raising concern amid growing water crises.

Cybersecurity Threats to Water Management Systems

Water management systems are exposed to risks not only through their physical infrastructure but also through the digital networks that control automation and cybersecurity. As these IT systems become more interconnected, the threat landscape expands, making them potential targets for phishing attack, brute force attack, system failures, and data breaches. As reliance on automation grows, so does the need for comprehensive protection, reinforcing the importance of a robust, multi-layered defense strategy to safeguard both physical and digital assets.

Security deficiencies of legacy IT systems are potential threat vectors for state-sponsored and non-state actors to conduct cyberattacks. Numerous cybersecurity breaches have occurred across the US and Europe in the last few years and luckily, have been limited to nuisance disruptions and data exfiltration.

While there are many case studies worth examining, a few stand out for their impact and relevance. One such case occurred in July 2022, when hackers from the CLOP ransomware group breached the SCADA systems of South Staffordshire PLC in the United Kingdom. The attackers disrupted the company’s corporate network and accessed sensitive customer data, including personally identifiable information (PII). They even posted screenshots from the Master Station online. This incident mirrors similar cyberattacks on American Water in October 2024 and Veolia North America in January 2024. Despite the breach, the water supply for the 1.6 million people served by South Staffordshire PLC remained unaffected.

In November 2023, the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa in the United States experienced a cyberattack that targeted the operational technology of its water system. The attackers exploited weak security on an internet-connected controller, gaining access by using the device’s default passwords – something easily found online. Once inside, they took the controller offline, which disrupted the system’s ability to maintain proper water pressure. As a result, operators had to switch to a manual backup system to keep operations running smoothly.

A similar incident occurred in Muleshoe, Texas, in January 2024. In that case, hackers remotely adjusted system settings and controls, causing a water tank to overflow for approximately 30 to 45 minutes.

The integration of smart technologies and real-time monitoring within water infrastructure represents a cost-effective approach to mitigating specific cyber threats. However, the human factor continues to pose a significant risk, particularly in relation to fundamental security practices such as changing default credentials. Despite advancements in automation and system intelligence, human error and oversight remain critical vulnerabilities within the cybersecurity landscape.

Economic and Public Health Consequences

Water insecurity poses a profound threat to society, with consequences that extend far beyond immediate shortages. The US may not currently face water scarcity, but it does have a serious water distribution problem.. Contaminated supplies and failing infrastructure endanger public health, while disruptions in water availability can destabilize local economies and strain essential services. Left unchecked, these challenges can erode the foundations of communities, leading to long-term social, economic, and environmental instability. According to Sarango, Senier, and Harlan, “the cost of restoring the nation’s deteriorating physical water infrastructure, improving the quality of drinking water, and fortifying water systems to handle the effects of climate change will continue to drive up consumer rates in the US for years to come.” Addressing water security is not just a matter of resource management — it is essential for safeguarding public health, economic resilience, and societal well-being which overlooked, will have compounding consequences.

Poor water distribution not only is complicit in water insecurity, but it also increases the burden on emergency response systems and healthcare infrastructure. Inadequate sanitation and a lack of potable water can cause a variety of illnesses as well as have adverse effects on mental and social development, especially in children. In the US-Mexico border region, many homes lack piped water and septic systems, leading to high rates of waterborne illnesses like gastrointestinal infections and communicable diseases due to unsanitary storage and living conditions. With rising climate uncertainties and emerging threats, the provision of basic water sanitation services are subject to ever increasing fragilities due to human and environmental hazards, extreme climate events, armed conflict and terrorist attacks, dam failure, and cyber disruptions.

Prolonged water scarcity can quickly destabilize society, much like what we see during natural disasters. As access dwindles, panic sets in—leading to price spikes, hoarding, and conflict over supply. Criminal enterprises may exploit the situation, and tensions between communities can escalate into violence. Law enforcement and emergency services would be stretched thin, and governments may be forced to declare states of emergency. When water becomes scarce, law and order can erode rapidly.

Conclusion

The challenges facing America’s water systems extend far beyond environmental concerns. These are national security threats hiding in plain sight. Population growth, climate unpredictability, industrial demand—each adds pressure to already strained water resources. A coordinated, resilient distribution system remains absent. Communities remain vulnerable. The nation remains exposed.

This issue concerns security, stability, and readiness for future crises. Water infrastructure is crumbling. Technology is outdated. Systems remain exposed to cyberattacks. The risk is clear—public health, the economy, national stability stand in the balance.

Aging treatment plants, interstate water disputes, foreign control of farmland, agroterrorism—all tie the security of water supply to national resilience. Inaction could lead to contaminated water, displaced communities, economic upheaval, geopolitical friction.

Water is not just an environmental issue. It is a strategic resource. National security depends on its protection. Investment in infrastructure, cybersecurity, long-term policy is essential.

The United States must treat water as a national security asset. Action must follow.

About The Author

Brandon Schingh
Brandon Schingh holds master’s degrees from Boston University and Arizona State University, where he focused on unconventional warfare in the Global Security program. His career spans military, law enforcement, intelligence, and private sectors. Mr. Schingh served as a noncommissioned officer in the US Army Airborne Infantry. He later worked as a Federal Air Marshal and as a CIA security contractor and has previously published articles on unconventional warfare and national security.

11. The Coming Water Wars: Technology’s Unseen Role in a Growing Crisis

Excerpt:

Conclusion

If past centuries were defined by struggles for oil, the coming decades may be marked by battles over water. Technological progress has brought extraordinary advances, yet it has also introduced hidden costs that strain the very foundations of human life. As AI systems grow larger, as cryptocurrencies spread and as data centers multiply, the silent competition for freshwater resources will only intensify. Governments, industries and societies may soon find themselves meeting an uncomfortable reality: the greatest battles of the future may not be fought for territory or ideology, but for the control of the most basic resource of all, life sustaining water.

The Coming Water Wars: Technology’s Unseen Role in a Growing Crisis

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/05/27/ai-water-wars-tech-crisis/

by Casey Christie

05.27.2025 at 06:00am

As a lifelong security professional and defense analyst, I have spent and continue to spend my life scanning the horizon for threats – whether to my clients, my country or humanity. Most dangers come and go, some can be mitigated. Others must simply be avoided altogether. Yet one potential risk has stayed with me since my early teens. A holy man I was introduced to as a teenager in India warned that one day wars would be fought over water. I was skeptical at the time, to say the least, but the seed was planted. And for the past 25 years, I have been searching for the catalyst that might turn this prediction into reality. I am now convinced I have found it: artificial intelligence and its unquenchable thirst for clean water.

And for decades the United Nations has warned that water shortage could become one of the greatest drivers of conflict in the twenty-first century. As former World Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin starkly predicted: “Many of the wars of this century were about oil, but wars of the next century will be about water.” Until recently these warnings focused on familiar pressures – climate change, population growth and mismanagement. But a new and less visible force is now accelerating the crisis: the vast, unquenchable thirst of modern technology. Data centers supporting artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies and the broader digital economy are consuming water on an unprecedented scale. As the technological infrastructure of the future expands, it risks tipping already fragile water systems past the point of recovery with serious consequences for global peace and security.

Technology’s Growing Demand for Water

Water is indispensable to modern technological infrastructure. High-performance data centers require massive amounts of water to cool the servers that sustain digital processes. In the US alone data centers consumed an estimated 626 billion liters of water in 2021, with projections indicating a sharp rise as AI models grow larger and demand ever more computational power. Training a single large AI model can require the same amount of water as manufacturing hundreds of automobiles.

Yet this immense demand remains largely hidden from public view.

The rise of cryptocurrencies intensifies the problem: Bitcoin mining alone consumes colossal quantities of electricity and indirectly drives high water usage by increasing the load on power plants and cooling systems. Estimates suggest that crypto mining operations contribute millions of liters of water withdrawals annually, often concentrated in regions already suffering from severe water stress. Unlike traditional industries, tech-driven water use is scattered, private and largely unregulated making it harder to monitor and even harder to manage.

Regional Impact and Emerging Tensions

The consequences are particularly severe in water-scarce regions. In the American Southwest, tech giants have constructed vast server farms that draw from the same groundwater reserves relied upon by farmers and local communities. In Europe, protests have erupted over the environmental costs of hosting data centers in regions facing drought conditions. In parts of Africa and Asia, where water insecurity is already a source of friction, the additional pressure from digital infrastructure risks becoming a destabilizing factor.

Historically water shortage has been a slow-moving crisis evident by the gradual erosion of agricultural viability, rural livelihoods and regional stability. The silent, accelerating drawdown caused by digital technologies could fundamentally alter the speed and scale of this decline. Conflicts over water have often been localized but as major global industries come to depend on colossal and reliable water supplies the competition may become transnational and corporate, complicating traditional notions of state sovereignty and international law.

Policy Responses and Their Limitations

Governments are beginning to take notice. Some US states have introduced limited regulations requiring data centers to disclose water usage and explore more efficient cooling systems. The Netherlands, facing significant public opposition, has placed temporary restrictions on new data center construction pending environmental review. However, such responses remain fragmented and reactive compared to the explosive growth of AI and blockchain industries.

Meanwhile the broader forecasts are grim. The United Nations predicts that by 2030, global demand for freshwater will exceed sustainable supply by 40%. Climate change acts as a force multiplier, exacerbating droughts, reducing river flows and accelerating groundwater depletion. Against this backdrop, the unchecked thirst of modern technologies could serve as the final tipping point toward widespread instability.

Strategic Implications

The security implications are profound. Scarcity worsens inequality and inequality breeds instability and instability invites conflict. These dynamics are well documented, but technology introduces a new layer of complexity. Where past water conflicts have been driven by agricultural needs, municipal demand and territorial control, future tensions may involve multinational corporations, decentralized crypto networks and the necessities of maintaining global digital systems.

There is an enduring hope that technology will eventually solve the problems it creates. Advocates of AI-driven efficiency argue that smarter systems, better recycling methods and more sustainable designs will mitigate water usage. Yet for now, these solutions remain largely aspirational. The infrastructure is expanding faster than mitigation strategies can be deployed and the invisible costs are mounting. And in the wise words of JRR Tolkien “Do not trust to hope.”

Each query to an AI system, each blockchain transaction, each streamed video, carries with it a hidden price paid in freshwater – a resource far more limited, far more irreplaceable, than most seem to realize or care.

Conclusion

If past centuries were defined by struggles for oil, the coming decades may be marked by battles over water. Technological progress has brought extraordinary advances, yet it has also introduced hidden costs that strain the very foundations of human life. As AI systems grow larger, as cryptocurrencies spread and as data centers multiply, the silent competition for freshwater resources will only intensify. Governments, industries and societies may soon find themselves meeting an uncomfortable reality: the greatest battles of the future may not be fought for territory or ideology, but for the control of the most basic resource of all, life sustaining water.

Tags: AI, Artificial Intelligence, Economic Statecraft, Water, water wars

About The Author

Casey Christie
Casey Christie is the Managing Director of Christie and Associates, a London-based private military security and intelligence firm. With decades of experience in security, intelligence, and risk analysis, he has written extensively on geopolitical threats, security and defense, and modern warfare. His work has been published in The Times of London, The South African Sunday Times, and Ukraine's Kyiv Post, among others.

12. Special Operations News – Tuesday, May 27, 2025

Special Operations News – Tuesday, May 27, 2025

https://sof.news/update/20250527/

May 27, 2025 SOF News Update 0

Curated news, analysis, and commentary about special operations, national security, and conflicts around the world.

Photo / Image: U.S. Army Paratroopers assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade, descend onto Frida Drop Zone, Pordenone, Italy after exiting U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules aircraft from the 86th Air Wing during airborne operation on Nov. 16, 2022. The 173rd Airborne Brigade is the U.S. Army Contingency Response Force in Europe, capable of projecting ready forces anywhere in the U.S. European, Africa or Central Commands’ areas of responsibility. (U.S. Army photo by Paolo Bovo)

Do you receive our daily newsletter? If not, you can sign up here and enjoy it 2 or 3 days a week with your morning coffee (or afternoon tea depending on where in the world you are).

SOF News

Green Beret is the New US Ambassador to Mexico. Ronald Johnson, a former Green Beret and CIA officer, has formally presented his credentials to Mexico’s president. This comes at a time that there is increased likelihood that the U.S. will enter the fight against the drug cartels and with difficult trade negotiations on the horizon. Johnson has a deep background in Latin America affairs. “New US ambassador to Mexico formally arrives at a time of busy binational agenda”, Stars and Stripes, May 20, 2025.

Pay Raise for Paratroopers. The Department of Defense announced that hazardous duty incentive pay (jump pay) will increase from $150 a month to $200. Jumpmasters will receive an additional $150 per month on top of the jump incentive pay they already earn.

Prince on Contract in DRC. Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater and former Navy SEAL, has entered into an agreement with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to secure and tax its mineral resources. “Blackwater to secure and tax DR Congo’s vast mineral wealth”, Military Africa, April 30, 2025.

Skyraider II. The OA-1K Skyraider II is a light attack and special operations aircraft developed for USSOCOM. It is part of the “Armed Overwatch” program that will provide CAS, strike, and ISR for SOF units on the ground. Read more in “Skyraider II: Punching Above Its Weight“, Grey Dynamics, May 21, 2025.

New CJCS. An Air Force pilot was taken out of retirement to head up the U.S. military. He has a SOF background which could have impact on the future of the SOF community. “General Dan Caine: Who is the New Head of the US War Machine?”, Grey Dynamics, May 23, 2025.

SOF – One Size Fits All? Special operations forces are sometimes viewed as the solution for many problems. SOF comprise about 3 percent of the active duty force but it receives more than its share of publicity and missions. “Special operations are becoming the Pentagon’s future normal”, Defense One, May 19, 2025.

Help Special Operations Forces (SOF) personnel with spine injuries receive the healthcare options, education, and care they need.

US Space Forces has a Special Operations Command. A dedicated component within USSOCOM will be providing a crucial role in supporting elite ground units with the integration of space-based expertise. “US Space Force setting up its own Special Operations Command”, Futurewwartech, May 3, 2025.

CIA’s SAC. The United States has a group of highly trained operators known as the Special Activities Staff, which is controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency. Over the years, this unit has gone through several name changes, starting as the Special Activities Division (SAD) and most recently being referred to as the Special Activities Center (SAC). Read more in “Special Activities Center (SAC): CIA’s unit for tactical paramilitary operations”, Combat Operators.com, April 4, 2025.

UK Looking for New Commando Insertion Craft. The UK Ministry of Defence has issued a formal procurement pipeline notice for the Commando Insertion Craft (CIC) programme. This is part of the wider transformation of the Royal Marines under the Command Force initiative. “MOD issues procurement update on Commando Insertion Craft”, UK Defence Journal, May 23, 2025.

CIA and Tibetian Resistance. The last surviving CIA officer who trained Tibetan resistance fighters at a secret camp in the United States is interviewed about the project. At least 259 Tibetian fighters were trained at “The Ranch” (Camp Hale, Colorado) for Operation ST Circus. “Inside the CIA’s secret role in the Tibetian resistance”, Radio Free Asia, October 29, 2024.

Video – Commandos – The Future of Modern Warfare?, Royal Marines, March 2025, YouTube, 8 minutes. Royal Marines Commandos demonstrate the evolution of amphibious operations in this short film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhCN7jn4CTE

Ukraine Conflict

Trump on Putin: “I’m not happy with what Putin is doing. He’s killing a lot of people and I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin. I’ve known him a long time … we’re in the middle of talking and he’s shooting rockets into Kyiv and other cities. I don’t like it at all. I’m surprised.”

Pentagon Ukraine Office to be Downgraded? A policy office that is instrumental to the U.S. military’s response to the Russian aggression in Ukraine could be shifted to another office – in what appears to be a demotion. “Pentagon Ukraine hub could see downgrade in policy office reshuffle”, Defense News, May 23, 2025.

Podcast on Drones. “Throughout the ongoing war in Ukraine, Kyiv has overcome its shortfalls in traditional munitions through the effective use of cheap, mass-produced drones. Moscow has followed suit”. Samuel Bendett, an advisor at the Russian Studies Program of the Center for Naval Analysis, is interviewed on this topic. Listen to “Droning On: How Ukraine and Russia Have Revolutionized Drone Warfare”, National Interest, May 19, 2025, 14 minutes.

Who Makes Russia’s Drones? Migrant women are being exploited for Russia’s war economy. Lured to Russia by promises of a work-study program, women from Africa and elsewhere are finding themselves in a factory working long hours making drones for Russia’s war against Ukraine. “Who is making Russia’s drones?”, Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, May 8, 2025.

400 M113 APCs to Ukraine. Italy will reportedly supply Ukraine with a huge armored vehicle package of APCs – nearly 2/3s of its stored fleet. This will double Ukraine’s existing M113 APC force.

References:
Interactive Map. Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine by the Insitute for the Study of War and Critical Threats. On storymaps.arcgis.com See also https://www.national-security.info/ukraine/maps.html
U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine, Congressional Research Service, CRSIF12040, periodically updated, PDF, 3 pages. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12040
Ukraine Conflict, National Security Info. https://www.national-security.info/ukraine-conflict.html

National Security

Military IDs, REAL IDs, and Air Travel. Military-connected travelers will be able to board domestic flights by showing their military ID. This includes IDs issued to dependents. According to this news report, this includes those IDs of retired miliary even if they do not have an expiration date. The Defense Department is in the process of replacing some of the older military IDs with the NextGen ID. “TSA trained to accept military IDs in lieu of REAL IDs, officials say”, Military Times, May 21, 2025.

MAVEN, GeoInt, and Targeting. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is rolling out its AI-powered imagery analysis software system to more users. The NGA MAVEN software has demonstrated a sizable reduction in targeting times in exercises. “AI unchained: NGAs Maven tool significantly decreasing time to targeting, agency chief says”, Breaking Defense, May 22, 2025.

Rise and Fall of GPC. In 2017, under the first Trump administration, Great Power Competition returned. It would later be termed Strategic Competition. However, with the beginning of the second Trump administration it seems to be fading away. Read more in “The Rise and Fall of Great-Power Competition: Trump’s New Spheres of Influence”, by Stacie E. Goddard, Foreign Affairs, May-June 2025 (subscription).

Nordic-Baltic Eight – A New Security Alliance. Northern European countries are strengthening their defense ties in response to the Russian threat. The Nordic and Baltic countries are discouraged by the European Union’s slow response to the crisis posed by Russian aggression in Europe. Russia’s war against Ukraine is a warning to the countries that border Russia – especially those with Russian ethnic minorities within their borders. Russia has increasingly been provoking Europe through inflammatory rhetoric and military posturing. In response to this threat the five Nordic and three Baltic countries are developing a common purpose and a regional bloc deeply concerned with their own defensive posture and united in the belief that Ukraine deserves more assistance. “The Nordic-Baltic Eight: A new security actor?”, by Stefan Hedlun, GIS Reports Online, May 13, 2025.

New DoD Press Secretary. Kingsley Wilson, age 26, will serve as the Press Secretary for the Department of Defense. She has previously served as Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary. She has a background in digital media and communications and has been a long-time supporter of President Trump and causes associated with the MAGA movement. She has a large following on her Twitter and podcast accounts. In the last 4 or 5 months the DoD has only held one press briefing, so maybe things might pick up a bit.

Pentagon Press Corps Reigned In. The Pentagon just updated physical control measures imposed on reporters covering the Pentagon (The Hill, May 23, 2025). The Pentagon Press Association had some strong and scathing statments about that: “There is no way to sugarcoat it. Today’s memo by Secretary Hegseth appears to be a direct attack on the freedom of the press and America’s right to know what its military is doing.”

NSC Staffers Sent Home. Late on Friday afternoon, minutes before a three-day holiday weekend, over 100 National Security Council staffers received an email lhat they had 30 minutes to clean out their desks as they were being put out on administrative leave. With Mike Waltz fired and sent off to be the Ambassador to the United Nations, the downsizing and reshuffling of the NSC was sure to happen. “Multiple National Security Council staffers put on administrative leave”, CNN, May 23, 2025.

USIP Staff Back to Work (For Now). In February 2025 President Trump issued an executive order that led to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) firing of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) board and employees. They were fired in March when DOGE entered the ISIP building and escorted them off the premises. DOGE installed new leadership, ordered a mass firing of nearly all the staf, and handed over the building to the General Services Administration. A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration did not have authority to unilaterally dismantle the institute as it was established by Congress in 1984. “Institute of Peace reclaims its headquarters after court win over Musk’s cost-cutting team”, Associated Press, May 21, 2025.

Information Operations and Cyber Warfare

SOCOM Model for Cyber Command. Congress is considering the idea of a separate cyber force while the Pentagon is looking for a different solution. Lt. Gen. William Hartman of CYBERCOM believes that the US Special Operations Command model is the best one to follow. “Amid lawmaker concerns, CYBERCOM head says SOCOM-like model is best way forward”, by Carley Welch, Breaking Defense, May 16, 2025.

U.S. House Members Concerned on U.S. Cyber Readiness. Members of Congress from both parties are expressing profound unease about the Trump administration’s management of the military’s cyber operations. “Cyber Command Turmoil Vexes House Armed Services Members”, Military.com, May 19, 2025.

“Intelligence Community Data Consortium”. The government is building a centralized platform where intelligence agencies can buy private information about millions of people. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is working on a system to centralize the use of “commercially available information” (CAI) – like the location data derived from mobile ads on cellphones – sometimes called AdTech or MAID data (Wikipedia). “U.S. Spy Agencies Are Getting a One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Most Sensitive Personal Data”, The Intercept, May 22, 2025.

Narrative Warfare. Emily Weinzheimer writes on how narratives will sway how a society views events – sometimes affecting the outcome of conflicts. Read her essay entitled “Conflict Narratives: How Narratives Impacted the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas Conflicts“, Small Wars Journal, May 21, 2025.

Kremlin Narratives, Blogs, and ChatGPT. Pro-Russian narratives are proliferating on internet blogs creating an overwhelming presence online. They are targeted toward viewers around the globe – most with the theme of blaming NATO for the Ukraine conflict. “The new wave of Russian disinformation blogs”, UK Defence Journal, May 18, 2025.

Old Salt Coffee is a corporate sponsor of SOF News. The company offers a wide range of coffee flavors to include Green Eyes Coffee, a tribute to those Navy special operations personnel who operate in the night.

Afghanistan, ME, Africa, Latin America

TPS for Afghans Finished? The Trump administration claims Afghans in the U.S. under temporary protected status no longer meet the threshold for protection. Unfortunately, many of those that the U.S. flew to U.S. bases in the Middle East on military aircraft during the Kabul airlift of August 2021 are in fear of reprisals from the Taliban for their association with the U.S. military. Some critics of granting TPS to Afghans who fled the Taliban say they are security risks; however, they are unaware of the detailed vetting process for Afghans brought into the country during Operation Enduring Welcome. Read more in “These brave Afghans helped the U.S. after 9/11. Now the U.S. wants to deport them”, MSNBC, May 3, 2025.

Veterans Disappointed. The administration claims conditions in Afghanistan have markedly improved under Taliban rule. Those who fought in the war say that’s ‘laughable’. It is widely believed that any wartime allies of the U.S. that are forced to return to Afghanistan will certainly face reprisal by the Taliban. “Veterans recoil at Trump plan to end Afghans deportation protection”, The Washington Post, May 25, 2025. (subscription)

Chad Opposition Leader Arrested. The former prime minister and opposition leader Succes Masra was recently arrested at his residence in N’Djamena, Chad. His arrest follows violence that left over 40 people dead. Human Rights Watch has called for his release. “HRW calls for immediate release of Chad oppostion leder amid crackdown on dissent”, Jurist News, May 18, 2025.

Islamic State Threatens Nigeria’s Northeast. The Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) has increased its insurgent activity since January 2025 across the Borno State. ISWAP’s tactical sophistication and adaptability is growing. “The Islamic State West Africa Province’s Tactical Evolution Fuels Worsening Conflict in Nigeria’s Northeast”, The Soufan Center, May 21, 2025.

New West Africa CT Force. Countries in west Africa are launching plans to establish a “regional counter-terrorism force” that will operate against jihadist groups that have been increasing more active in recent years. “W. Africa Bloc Looks to Regional Force As Jihadist Attacks Spike”, Barrons.com May 21, 2025.

PKK and Turkey. On May 12, 2025, the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) announced its disbandment. This ends the more than 40-year struggle against Turkey. There are wide ranging implications ahead. “The dissolution of the PKK could transform Turkey’s domestic politics and foreign policy”, Chatham House, May 22, 2025.

Haiti – Terror Groups Designated. The Trump administration has designated two Haitian gangs as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). The designations bar gang members from accessing U.S. financial institutions. There is concern, however, that the designations could affect how humanitarian aid is distributed. Read more in “Haiti Struggles with Criminal Insurgency as U.S. Designates Gangs as Terror Groups”, The Soufan Center, May 22, 2025.

Books, Podcasts, Videos, and Movies

Video – The Army’s Grueling Mountain Warfare School, Business Insider, May 15, 2025, 56 minutes. This video provides details on the Army Mountain Warfare School located in Jericho, Vermont. Soldiers are trained on mountaineering, cold weather skills, and high elevation tactics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGtgoelN0tA

Funny Video about a Navy SEAL. A standup comic, Trish Suhr, jokes about her younger brother who is a SEAL. “When Your Brother is a Navy SEAL”, Dry Bar Comedy, Fall 2024, YouTube, 5 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ah3iujikhg

Podcast – How America’s Special Operators are Preparing for a High-Tech Future, War on the Rocks, May 19, 2025, 19 minutes. During SOF Week 2025 Lt. Gen. Frank Donovan, vice commander of USSOCOM, spoke on how U.S. SOF are leading the way on the future of warfare.

https://warontherocks.com/2025/05/how-americas-special-operators-are-preparing-for-a-high-tech-future/

Book Review – Life and Death at Abbey Gate. Sean R. Kentch has reviewed a book that details the fall of Afghanistan and the Digital Dunkirk operation to save the Afghan allies that assisted the U.S. military during the U.S. involvement in the Afghan conflict from 2001 to 2021. The review was published on May 20, 2025 by Military Review.

CRS Report – U.S. Army[‘s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW): Dark Eagle, Congressional Research Service (CRS), May 22, 2205, PDF, 3 pages. The Army’s LRHW, a reported range of 1,725 miles, consists of a ground-launched missile equipped with a hypersonic glide body and associated transport, support, and fire control equipment.

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF11991

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13. Trump honors fallen soldiers on Memorial Day, while attacking Biden and judges

Trump honors fallen soldiers on Memorial Day, while attacking Biden and judges

AP · May 26, 2025

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — President Donald Trump paid tribute to fallen service members during a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, in an address that honored the “great, great warriors” yet also briefly veered into politics as he boasted of a nation he is “fixing after a long and hard four years.”

Though the holiday is one that U.S. presidents typically treat with pure solemnity, Trump began it with an all-caps Memorial Day social media post that attacked his predecessor and called federal judges who have blocked his deportation initiatives “monsters who want our country to go to hell.”

Yet at Arlington National Cemetery, where more than 400,000 have been laid to rest, Trump commemorated the sacrifice of U.S. service members and singled out several Gold Star families to tell the stories of their fallen relatives.

“We just revere their incredible legacy,” Trump said. “We salute them in their eternal and everlasting glory. And we continue our relentless pursuit of America’s destiny as we make our nation stronger, prouder, freer and greater than ever before.”

“Their valor,” he said, “gave us the freest, greatest and most noble republic ever to exist on the face of the earth. A republic that I am fixing after a long and hard four years.”

During his remarks, Trump told the story of Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent, killed along with three other Americans by a suicide bomber in 2019 in Syria, leaving behind her husband, 3-year-old son and 18-month-old son.

The Pine Plains, New York, native was on her fifth combat deployment, he said, embedded with a team hunting Islamic State group militants in Syria, serving as linguist, translator and cryptologic technician working alongside special forces.

“She was among the first women ever to do it, and she did it better than anyone,” Trump said, calling out Kent’s family for applause at the ceremony.

The crowd also heard of Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Elroy Harworth from Erhard, Minnesota, whose plane went down in enemy territory during the Vietnam War, dying while his wife was seven months pregnant. His son, who was cheered in the audience, followed his father’s path and has been in the Army for 20 years.

There was also the story of Army Cpl. Ryan McGhee of Fredericksburg, Virginia, who enlisted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and whose mother was in the audience.

Trump said McGhee knew he wanted to be an Army Ranger since he saw the towers fall on that day, did three tours in Afghanistan, then deployed to Iraq. Sixteen years ago this month, the president said, McGhee died in a firefight, and “gave his life at 21 years old.”

Vice President JD Vance, who spoke before Trump, said the lesson of all the gravestones is: “We must be cautious in sending our people to war.” He urged the crowd to push political leaders to treat the lives of soldiers as the “most precious resource.”

Later in his remarks, Trump pointed to a “big, big celebration” coming next year as the U.S. celebrates its 250th birthday, joking that “in some ways, I’m glad I missed that second term” when he lost to Joe Biden.

“Because I wouldn’t be president for that,” Trump said, as the crowd laughed. “In addition, we have the World Cup and we have the Olympics. Can you imagine? I missed that four years. And now look what I have, I have everything. Amazing the way things work out.”

Prior to speaking, Trump placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a somber tradition for U.S. presidents. The president paused after placing the wreath, then stepped back and saluted during the playing of taps. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth joined him.

The president began the day with a decidedly different tone.

In a social media message in all capital letters, Trump ranted at Biden, calling him the “scum” who spent the last four years trying to destroy the country with radical leftism and who, he said, left behind an open border.

That was after he posted a separate message proclaiming “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!” Wishing people a happy Memorial Day is regarded as verboten because the day is considered a somber one to honor soldiers killed in service.

Vance emphasized as much when he spoke to U.S. Naval Academy graduates in Annapolis on Friday, when he said that he and Trump would “lead the most solemn occasion in our nation, Memorial Day at Arlington Cemetery.

“You will learn as I have that when people say things like ‘Happy Memorial Day,’ you appreciate the sentiment behind it but know that it’s wrong because Memorial Day is not a happy day,” Vance said last week. “Memorial Day is not for those who served and came home, it is for those who served that didn’t.”

AP · May 26, 2025

14. Reports on China’s victory are greatly exaggerated

Excerpts:

Put simply, if the future belongs to China, then China would be highlighting economic statistics that point to a bright picture. Instead, China has stopped releasing important economic data. Clearly, something is rotten in the state of Xi.

The truth is that the U.S. is pulling away from China economically and in the cutting-edge technologies of this century. Trump is making mistakes by alienating allies and driving down investment with his unpredictable tariff wars. Nevertheless, his time in office is limited. All-knowing Xi Jinping will probably rule for the rest of his life.

WashingtonExaminer

verified publisher · 848.6K followers

Reports on China’s victory are greatly exaggerated

https://www.newsbreak.com/share/4020619094616-reports-on-china-s-victory-are-greatly-exaggerated

By James Rogan

In the 1950s and 1960s, professor Paul Samuelson was arguably America’s preeminent economist. His textbook for introductory economics was used at colleges and universities across the United States. He was a close adviser to President John F. Kennedy.

In 1961, Samuelson predicted that the then Soviet Union would overtake the United States in economic size somewhere between 1984 and 1997. By 1980, he continued to suggest that the Soviet Union would become the world’s largest economy within a few decades.

Obviously, Samuelson was wrong. He did not understand that extreme authoritarianism and the rejection of free market capitalism would consign the Soviet Union to the dustbin of history.

Today, however, other respected academics are making Samuelson's mistake in their assessments of Communist China. They opine that in the current century, China will become the dominant global economic power. One researcher from Princeton University wrote recently in the New York Times that the battle for global economic superiority is being “decisively” won by China and that the U.S. is becoming economically irrelevant.

Let's be clear, researchers who predict the ascendancy of China are wrong.

Yes, some of President Donald Trump’s economic policies are misguided and, in the short run, will impede economic growth. But over the coming decades, economic history and current data say the U.S. will continue to be the world’s largest economy.

Financial markets have a way of sorting out political nonsense. Over the past 10 years, the S&P 500, the U.S. benchmark equity index, is up 170% or so. In stark contrast, a broad index of Chinese equities is flat. U.S. equities have soared on optimism about the future of the U.S. economy. Chinese equities have done nothing, reflecting the enormous buildup of debt in China, its demographic decline, and the deep real estate recession that continues to plague the country.

Yes, China has enjoyed many years of rapid economic growth. The problem is that much of that growth was fueled by debt and building infrastructure that sits idle today. China has built cities where few live. It has constructed roads to nowhere. Its vaunted high-speed rail trains are underused. China destroys capital by investing in underused infrastructure projects. China allocates scarce capital to state-owned enterprises, or SOEs, where returns are in the low single digits. At the same time, China starves capital investment in the more economically vibrant private sector. It is almost as if China chooses economic stagnation.

It is true that China is a world leader in a number of industries. But China’s domestic economy cannot absorb the output of those industries. In China, domestic consumption accounts for about 40% of GDP. In most other countries, internal consumption makes up 60% to 70% of national production. In the U.S., private consumption accounts for almost 70% of GDP.

Domestic consumption is also too low in China because there is no social safety net. This plainly evident connection between fear of future impoverishment and low personal spending is something the supposedly beneficent Communist Party doesn't like to think about. Instead, Chinese households have high savings rates. Xi Jinping, the all-powerful chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, does not believe in a social safety net. He says it encourages laziness.

But Xi's intellectual laziness is also coming home to roost.

After all, because China produces a lot but consumes less than it produces, it must export its excess production. China often exports goods at an economic loss. China “dumps” excess production on the global market. But this isn't going down so well around the world.

One academic brags that by 2030, China will account for 45% of global manufacturing. I doubt it. Which countries will absorb China’s excess production and destroy their own domestic manufacturing sectors? Few, I think. Certainly, few nations have democratic sovereignty outside of the debt-dagger loitering power of the Chinese Communist Party. And the U.S. is far from the only country that is saying “no” to importing China’s surplus production. The world sees that China is destroying the German car industry. Consequently, the European Union is erecting trade barriers against China. Countries will protect their industries and their workers.

China faces a cruel choice. It exports, or its economy withers. Already, manufacturing plants are closing in China. The global market is not buying what China’s factories produce. Economists are lowering long-run economic forecasts in China. In fact, respected research institutions say that China is falling behind the U.S. economically.

The U.S. economy is about 40% larger than the Chinese economy. American investment in emerging technologies dwarfs that of China. To illustrate, a few months ago, with much fanfare, China announced a $138 billion venture capital fund — not a big deal compared to U.S. venture capital. In 2024, U.S. venture capital investment exceeded $228 billion, about 60% higher than Chinese VC funding. Moreover, in the U.S., capital is invested with the expectation of very high returns. In China, investment is often made for political reasons. Capital is destroyed in China.

Yes, China has made rapid advances in high technology. Again, however, the strings attached here are suffocating. Consider that China continues to lag the U.S. in the most important high-technology sectors. Artificial intelligence will be the foundation of economic growth for the balance of this century. Superiority in AI is a central policy of the U.S. AI is also at the center of China’s economic ambitions. And while China did shock the world with its DeepSeek AI large language model, that model used semiconductors designed by Nvidia and fabricated by Taiwan Semiconductor, or TSMC. It is well known that China goes to extreme lengths to obtain possession of chips designed by Nvidia. Regardless, U.S. AI models are superior to those of China.

The U.S. is also the world leader in designing semiconductors. Chips are the critical industry of this century. AI is built with chips. Moreover, the U.S. has open access to the semiconductor fabrication technology of TSMC, the world leader. China is shut off from TSMC by U.S. restrictions. Why is that a problem for China? Well, for one example as to why, observe that TSMC is manufacturing 2-nanometer chips and is testing 1-nanometer semiconductors. China’s best fabrication plants are stuck at producing 5-7 nanometer chips. In this case, smaller is better. China wants to change this situation but faces yet another problem in that regard. Namely, that it will be difficult for China to advance to 1-2 nanometer technology because China is denied access to the semiconductor lithography technology of ASML, a Dutch company. ASML’s lithography technology is essential for manufacturing the most advanced chips. The U.S. has access to the semiconductor fabrication technology of TSMC, and the U.S. is able to purchase ASML’s lithography technology. This is a crucial advantage.

Basic economic data points also bear close attention. Note that the U.S. is home to the world’s largest technology companies. This year, Amazon, Alphabet-Google, Meta, and Microsoft will invest almost $330 billion in data centers and AI technology more generally. By contrast, in 2025, China will invest about $55 billion in AI, including data centers. It will be hard for China to be No. 1 in AI when it invests 70% less than the U.S.

In addition to falling behind the U.S. in AI, data centers, and semiconductor technology, China faces myriad additional economic and social challenges. The country is entering the demographic doom loop in which its declining population will weigh heavily on economic growth. Total debt in China equals about 300% of GDP. Arguably, the banking system in China is bankrupt. China’s real estate sector, which had been the growth and investment engine of the economy, remains in a deep depression. For a typical worker, owning a home in a major city is only a dream, unaffordable today and for many tomorrows.

Unemployment is rising in China. Youth unemployment is especially high. As many as 16% of China’s young men and women are unemployed. To make matters worse, recent college graduates in China can’t find work. China’s consumer sector is experiencing deflation because efforts to raise consumption growth are almost impossible when prices are falling. Chinese consumers keep waiting for lower prices before buying.

THE SENATE SHOULD PASS THE STABLECOIN GENIUS ACT

Put simply, if the future belongs to China, then China would be highlighting economic statistics that point to a bright picture. Instead, China has stopped releasing important economic data. Clearly, something is rotten in the state of Xi.

The truth is that the U.S. is pulling away from China economically and in the cutting-edge technologies of this century. Trump is making mistakes by alienating allies and driving down investment with his unpredictable tariff wars. Nevertheless, his time in office is limited. All-knowing Xi Jinping will probably rule for the rest of his life.

James Rogan is a former U.S. foreign service officer who has worked in finance and law for 30 years. He writes a daily note on the markets, politics, and society. He can be followed on X here. He can be reached at RoganJames8202@gmail.com

15. Russia can attack Europe 2-4 years after war's end, faster with lifted sanctions, Ukrainian intel chief warns

Russia can attack Europe 2-4 years after war's end, faster with lifted sanctions, Ukrainian intel chief warns

kyivindependent.com · by Martin Fornusek · May 26, 2025

Russia will be able to restore its combat capabilities and launch an aggression against Europe between two and four years after hostilities in Ukraine end, Ukrainian foreign intelligence (SZRU) chief Oleh Ivashchenko said in an interview with Ukrinform published on May 26.

"If the sanctions are lifted, the rearmament process will proceed much faster," Ivashchenko said in the interview, adding that Kyiv has shared its estimates with European partners.

Western officials have previously shared similar time estimates, underscoring the growing threat of an open clash between Moscow and NATO after the Russian full-scale war against Ukraine ends.

Russia's military is currently heavily engaged in Ukraine, suffering massive losses in manpower and equipment. Christopher Cavoli, commander of U.S. forces in Europe, nevertheless warned in April that Russia is rebuilding its forces much faster than previously anticipated.

Ukraine's military claims that Russia has suffered close to 1 million men killed, injured, or otherwise listed as casualties since the outbreak of the full-scale war.

Kyiv's Western partners — namely the U.S. and the EU — have also sought to restrain Russia's ability to reconstitute its forces by imposing heavy sanctions aimed at cutting off supply chains and throttling Moscow's economy.

U.S., European, and Ukrainian officials and military experts believe that Russia is losing its military edge on the battlefield, presenting it as an impetus to increase pressure on Moscow and force it toward a ceasefire, the Washington Post reported.

Instead, U.S. President Donald Trump said he does not plan any additional sanctions against Russia, so as not to disrupt peace efforts, dashing European hopes of a coordinated strategy. The EU has pledged to ramp up sanctions if Russia continues to reject a ceasefire, and the bloc's 18th sanctions package is currently under discussion.

The Trump administration has previously signaled interest in resuming economic ties with Russia after a potential peace deal, though pledging to maintain the existing sanctions until then.

‘I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin,’ says Trump as Russia unleashes 3rd consecutive attack on Ukraine

“I’ve always gotten along with him,” Trump said of Putin to reporters at an airport in New Jersey on May 25. “But he’s sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don’t like it at all.”

The Kyiv IndependentOlena Goncharova

kyivindependent.com · by Martin Fornusek · May 26, 2025

16. Fiona Hill: Trump is terrified of Putin, I’ve seen it first hand

Obviously this is critical of POTUS.

Fiona Hill: Trump is terrified of Putin, I’ve seen it first hand

Cameron Henderson

Sun, May 25, 2025 at 5:30 AM EDT16 min read

Yahoo

It could of course have been pure coincidence that when Vladimir Putin unveiled Russia’s first hypersonic missile to the world, he did so with a simulation of the weapon plummeting into an unnamed peninsula bearing an uncanny resemblance to Florida.

The similarity was not lost on Donald Trump whose face whitened as he watched on, presumably with visions of his beloved Mar-a-Lago resort reduced to an atomic wasteland, flashing before his eyes.

Standing next to him on that day in March 2018 was Fiona Hill, the president’s Russia tsar at the time.

“That got Trump’s attention,” she said. “Trump was like, ‘Why did he do that? Real countries don’t have to do that.’”

For Hill, a long-term Kremlin watcher who once sat so close to Putin at dinner she could smell the detergent used to launder his clothes, the episode revealed much about how Mr Trump views the Russian leader. “He is deferential towards Putin because he really is worried about the risk of a nuclear exchange,” she said.

The threat of impending nuclear fallout shaped Hill’s early life. Born in County Durham in the 1960s, the daughter of a coalminer and a midwife, she was inspired to study Russian following the war scare of 1983, setting her on an extraordinary trajectory that propelled her all the way “from the coal house to the White House”.

Fiona Hill at a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House in April 2019 - AL DRAGO/NYTNS / Redux / eyevine

She settled on St Andrews University, after a failed interview at Oxford where posh students mocked her for her working-class northern accent. From there she moved to Russia then America, where she met her husband at Harvard, before going on to serve as an intelligence analyst for successive administrations – first for George Bush, then Barack Obama – and finally on the national security council of Mr Trump.

Yet unlike the US president, whom she said remains trapped in a 1980s mindset, both in his foreign policy approach and his musical tastes (see his penchant for YMCA), Hill is at pains to stress that the biggest global threat is no longer a nuclear strike, but more clandestine methods of warfare.

“It’s not the likelihood of a Russian tank coming across the Suffolk Downs or a nuclear weapon taking out Sheffield,” she said, speaking over Zoom from her office in Washington DC. “Now it’s much more about critical national infrastructure and acts of sabotage, poisonings and assassinations.”

That is not to say she believes the world is a safer place today. Far from it. In fact, she believes World War Three is upon us. “World wars are when you have global sets of conflicts that become intertwined,” she said. “That’s where we are.”

Having spent decades in the US capital quietly blowing the whistle on Russian aggression, Hill was thrust into a media firestorm when she testified at Mr Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2019.

Hill arrives to testify at Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in November 2019 - Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America

Her testimony, delivered in her lilting Durham cadence, exposed vulnerability to Russian meddling at the heart of the White House – and caused her inbox to fill up with plaudits and death threats in equal quantities.

She has since released a memoir, There is Nothing Here for You, recalling her father’s advice that spurred her on a dizzying career path to the heights of US geopolitics, been installed as chancellor of Durham University, and was last year appointed by Sir Keir Starmer to lead the UK’s forthcoming Strategic Defence Review.

Since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and even more so following Mr Trump’s return to the White House, her expertise has been in greater demand than ever.

With large chunks of the front lines in stalemate, and Russia on track to reclaim its territory seized by Ukraine in last year’s daring counter-offensive, all eyes have turned to Washington. Mr Trump pledged to end the war on “day one” of his presidency. And as the conflict drags on, the giant question mark hovering over western Europe is how long it will take for the US to make good on its promise.

So, when the two presidents shared an “excellent” phone call on Monday, Hill was uniquely placed to read the tea leaves of the paltry briefings from each side.

How did Mr Trump fare? “Terrible. Let’s give him a pass for effort,” she said, matter-of-factly, as if marking the president’s report card. A former Harvard researcher who serves as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, an influential foreign policy think tank, Hill is a career academic with the manner of a firm but fair head teacher.

“What Trump is doing is answering the wrong exam question,” Hill added.

“Trump thinks it’s just about real estate, about trade and who gets what, be it minerals, land or rare earths,” she explained. What the president doesn’t understand is that “Putin doesn’t want a ceasefire”.

“[He] wants a neutered Ukraine, not one that is able to withstand military pressure. Everybody sees this, apart from Trump,” she said.

Vladimir Putin and Hill in 2010

Hill has previously said that her straight-talking approach is what earned her a place in Mr Trump’s inner circle. Whereas in Britain, she was advised to go to elocution lessons to round-out her vowels, this wasn’t a problem in the US, where Mr Trump referred to her as a “Deep State stiff with a nice accent”. Sexism, however, was a constant, with the president once mistaking her for a secretary.

“In the Trump White House being a woman was something of a liability because I wasn’t going to do the Fox News anchor makeover,” she said. Despite her resistance, she did purchase “a whole array of dresses” (“I got them in flash sales”) to camouflage herself.

“For women, it’s very important to not look, in his view, ‘doudy’,” she said. “It was just this obsession with how you looked which became very bothersome, because if you didn’t look the part, you couldn’t impart the information.”

After his call with Putin, Mr Trump floated the possibility of a “large-scale trade” deal. Putin, in turn, offered syrupy platitudes about negotiations being “on the right track” and the prospect of a “memorandum of understanding”. But one cannot help but detect a growing sense of desperation in the US president’s boosterism. After all, the phone call was only ever a last-minute stand-in for the headline act: direct talks between Zelensky and Putin.

The Ukrainian leader had called Putin’s bluff, inviting him to a face-to-face meeting in Turkey that the Russian president dropped out of. Mercifully, the Trumpometer appears to have swung in recent months from open hostility towards Ukraine, culminating in the infamous Oval Office shake-down, towards more conventional mistrust of Moscow – thanks in no small part to a lucrative minerals deal signed with Kyiv and a tete-a-tete with Mr Zelensky beneath the vaulting dome of St Peter’s Basilica.

Putin’s no-show, despite proposing the talks himself, was the latest in a string of empty promises to work with the US towards a ceasefire.

The US president has so far resisted hitting Putin with further sanctions, instead offering a deal which Hill said provides a “great incentive for the Russians to play along with Trump”. “If you offer the Russians a carrot, they just eat it, or they take it and hit you over the head with it,” she said.

“The entourage, the circle around Putin, have enriched themselves so much by availing themselves of all the goodies that the state can provide, what is it that Trump can give them that they don’t already have?”

Hill at a meeting in Helsinki with Mr Trump in 2018 - BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP

Hill is well-versed in the hard ball tactics of Russian negotiators (and the difficulties of corralling Mr Trump). Indeed, she helped prepare the US team for 2018 talks with Russia in Helsinki – where she was forced to call on the Finnish prime minister for help, imploring him to advise Mr Trump about how to engage with Putin after the president ignored his own advisers.

Putin, who has maintained the same “tight team” of top diplomats around him for the past 25 years, dispatched his Stanford-educated economic adviser Kirill Dmitriev, former ambassador to Washington Yuri Ushakov, and Sergei Lavrov, his comic villain foreign minister, to recent talks in Saudi Arabia.

“These guys are really skilled diplomats. They all speak absolutely excellent English,” said Hill. “They can talk the hind leg off a donkey. They can turn you around in circles. They’ve got an answer for everything.”

Batting for the US are Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, Mike Waltz, Mr Trump’s erstwhile national security adviser, and his special envoy Steve Witkoff, a former real estate dealer. Between them, they have less than a year’s-worth of cabinet-level experience.

So, what does the dancing Russian bear make of these three cotillion debutantes? “They’re eating the neophytes on the US side for dinner,” said Hill.

Mr Witkoff, the president’s long-term golf buddy, comes in for particular scorn from Hill.

Touted as a “killer” by the president, real estate billionaire Mr Witkoff appeared to forget the names of the Ukrainian territories that he was negotiating with Russia over during a recent episode of Tucker Carlson’s podcast.

L-R: Steve Witkoff, Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz are leading peace negotiations - EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/AFP

Having driven around the streets of 1980s Harlem looking for houses to flip in a former life, he has traded in his real estate licence for criss-crossing the globe to negotiate hostage deals and ceasefires on behalf of the US government.

“Witkoff’s probably thinking about condos in Moscow,” said Hill.

“They think it’s really tough being in Queens,” she added. “It’s not as tough as trying to do business in Russia, where people have a propensity to fall out of poorly sealed and easily opened windows from high buildings.”

In her line of work, Hill is all too aware of the dangers of dealing with malign governments in the near east. She fell violently ill after being told she was asking too many questions at a meeting with Chechen separatists. She later discovered she had been poisoned.

As a member of Mr Trump’s security council from 2017 to 2019 , she said the president made it “very clear” that Ukraine “must be part of Russia”. “He really could not get his head around the idea that Ukraine was an independent state,” she told a New York Times journalist.

But what has changed since Mr Trump was last in office, she said, is that he has surrounded himself with “sycophants and courtiers”, with no one pushing back against his more outlandish ideas.

During his first term, she said, “he was a little bit deferential here and there to various people. But now he’s so convinced [in his own abilities] that he doesn’t pay attention to anyone”.

Underpinning Mr Trump’s soft approach to Moscow, she believes, is his personal idolisation of Putin, and their joint belief in “spheres of influence” and “might makes right”. “Trump is enthralled by Putin, and as a result becomes in thrall to him,” she said.

Mr Trump shakes hands with Putin in Helsinki in 2018 - Kevin Lamarque/REUTERS

However, she is equally scathing of European leaders for not coming to terms with this new reality sooner. “The fact that the Europeans are so shocked by his deference to Putin actually shows that they haven’t also done their homework,” she said.

Despite European outrage at Mr Trump’s repeated threats to withdraw American support for Ukraine, Hill gives credit to the US president for sounding the alarm on the need for Europe to increase its defence spending as far as 2016.

“He’s been accurate right from the very beginning”, she said, of the need to reach the two per cent of GDP spending on defence target and of ending Europe’s energy dependency on Russia’s Nordstream pipeline, which, prior to the war in Ukraine, provided more than half of Germany’s gas supply.

Even on the subject of tariffs, Hill said, there is method in the madness. “Europe wanted defence and security provisions from the US, but wanted to be an economic competitor,” she said. “There is an absolute and utter solid basis for why Trump is really pissed off about all of this.”

Hill now believes that America turning its back on Ukraine is “the most likely scenario”, yet despite the gloomy picture, she is optimistic that European sanctions can still bear fruit if the bloc can pull together.

Although sanctions currently rely heavily on the power of the US treasury to act unilaterally, Hill said collective action between the UK and Europe could be “pretty powerful”, but requires “a lot more coordination”.

One possible avenue, she suggested, would be for Europe to leverage relationships with its major trading partners to encourage them to cut ties with Russia.

The Europeans handing an ultimatum to the Chinese, Indians and Iranians if the US withdrew sanctions could provide “some really significant leverage”, she said.

“All these countries that have a vested interest in investing in Europe and doing work with Europe,” she added. “Maybe you don’t do the kind of sanctions that the US does, but Europeans can have very serious conversations.”

Talking to Hill is like opening one of the sets of the encyclopaedia Britannica she used to read on the stairs of her small family home as a child. Seamlessly interweaving politics, philosophy and history, she cross-stitches conversation with references to Thomas Hobbes, Jean Monnet and, in a nod to her adoptive homeland, American football.

Growing up, her family did not have a telephone, a car or a television and often switched off the electricity to save money. A star pupil, Hill won a scholarship to a private school but did not attend because her family could not afford the uniform or the books.

Hill has come from humble beginnings - Dermot Tatlow

In her memoir, Hill writes at length about how mass job losses in working class communities fuel populism. Yet despite the hardships of her upbringing, she was able to rise to the dizzy heights of American politics – a feat she credits to her parents, her teachers and her local MP.

Working in the highest echelons of foreign politics, she was often the only woman in the room. In Russia, this led to her being dismissed, in turns, as a waitress, an aide, and even an upmarket prostitute. But it was also a secret weapon.

“People just forgot you were there and talked as if you were part of the scenery,” she said. “I’d hear and learn all kinds of things that I never would have done under different circumstances.”

When she testified against Mr Trump at his impeachment trial, she was careful about her choice of outfit, opting to dress in deliberately muted tones, so as not to draw attention away from what she was saying. The next day, she earned gushing front page headlines across the US national newspapers, with many marvelling at her accent. She also won a shout out in the Washington Post style section for her “reassuringly dull” black ensemble.

Besides the bouquets of flowers arriving at the door, her daughter, then 12, heard some of the death threats left on the family’s voicemail. Hill told her the callers were “cowards” and said not to worry, but taped up the letterbox in case of letter bombs.

“I’m from the north east of England, I’m not that easily intimidated,” she once said.

Hill became a US citizen in 2002 and lives in Washington DC with her husband Kenneth Keen, a business consultant, and their daughter. But she splits her time between the US and the UK. Her mother lives in a care home in Bishop Auckland, near where she grew up, and she has taken on an advisory role to the British government as a leader and co-author of the Strategic Defence Review.

So how does life in the White House compare to the Ministry of Defence? “I always find it quite refreshing in the UK context now, that people just look normal,” she said. “It didn’t feel like I had to be out there choosing my fanciest frock.”

The review was meant to report in the first half of 2025, but is expected to be delayed until autumn, much to Hill’s frustration (“everyone knows what’s in it. It’s just the whole politics of finding a time.”) Its release has been shrouded in secrecy amid reports that it will recommend protecting critical infrastructure through the creation of a home guard, uncharitably compared to dad’s army – Hill dismisses this as “rubbish”.

Hill said she hopes the review will act as a wake up call for Britain and Europeans to understand that a land invasion is not the only threat we face from Moscow.

Pointing to recent blackouts in Spain and at Heathrow Airport, she said: “What we’re arguing is the physical front lines in terms of the likelihood of an invasion by Russia may be further away, but the other front lines are here all the time. They’re your IT systems, they’re your electrical grids, the power stations.

“Every country is massively vulnerable,” she added. “Ninety per cent of our way of life, everything from you being able to do your orders online for your food, to your ability to function at work would be taken out by a massive strike on all of the power grid.”

Working in the weeds of European defence and fighting a losing battle to convince the US to stay engaged is enough to turn anyone into a cynic. Yet despite everything, she remains optimistic that Britain and Europe will step up. “The UK has absolute potential to play a leadership role at the moment,” she said.

Her message for Sir Keir’s government? “Come on then, get a move on. What I worry about is that people are going to be dithering about for too long, because the time for action was yesterday.”

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17. These Are The Key Strategic Areas Where China Is Building Overseas Ports

Seems like a useful target list to me (not for kinetic attack but for competition and political and economic warfare - and information and influence activities).

These Are The Key Strategic Areas Where China Is Building Overseas Ports

247wallst.com · by Evan Comen · May 26, 2025

Special Report

PomInOz / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

Evan Comen

Published: May 26, 2025 6:41 am

24/7 Wall St. Insights

Chinese overseas investment outranks the U.S. by a factor of 10.
Since 2000, China has funded the construction or expansion of at least 78 ports in 46 countries.
While the Belt and Road Initiative is commercial in nature, critics worry China is laying the groundwork for future naval bases.

Over the past 10 years, no country has invested more in the rest of the world than China. Since commencing its Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, China has invested over $950 billion in infrastructure and other development projects over 140 countries, building roads and railways, cultivating energy supplies, and expanding its influence across the globe.

International ports are one of the largest and most controversial sectors of Chinese overseas spending. Over the last decade, China has invested more than $30 billion in overseas port development, allowing China to gain a critical foothold in key geopolitical hotspots. While the investments have spurred economic development in host countries and improved infrastructure around the world, they have also raised concerns about sovereignty and debt sustainability. Critics argue that many of the more vulnerable recipient countries risk falling into debt traps that may force them to cede strategic assets to China in order to repay loans, bolstering the Red Dragon’s global naval power. A closer look at the data reveals the key ports where overseas investment is allowing China to gain a strategic military foothold.

To determine the key strategic areas where China is building overseas ports, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed data on development projects financed by China in foreign countries from AidData, a research lab at the College of William & Mary. Ports were ranked based on the total, inflation-adjusted value of development projects funded by the Chinese government and state-owned institutions from 2000 to 2021.

Financial values were converted from original currencies to constant 2021 U.S. dollars and aggregated according to AidData recommendations. Supplemental data on primary investment sector and the largest project by amount invested were calculated from the AidData dataset. Investment per capita was calculated using population averages from 2000 to 2021 from the World Bank.

20. Beira Fishing Port (Mozambique)

Jacek_Sopotnicki / iStock via Getty Images

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

Beira’s upgrades were supported through Chinese development loans. While modest in scale, the port helps extend China’s presence along the Indian Ocean coast. It serves more of a commercial than strategic role

19. Port of Santiago de Cuba (Cuba)

xavierarnau / Getty Images

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

China funded refurbishments to Santiago’s port, where the PLAN has made past visits. Cuba’s political alignment with China and regional proximity to the U.S. make it a symbolic investment. Its military utility remains speculative.

18. Nouadhibou Fishing Port (Mauritania)

HomoCosmicos / iStock via Getty Images

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

Three loans supported Nouadhibou’s construction, spearheaded by a Chinese military-affiliated fishing company. Though small, the port illustrates China’s wide strategic interests in maritime fisheries. The quay size limits potential for naval use.

17. Port of Nacala (Mozambique)

Andrew Renneisen / Getty Images News via Getty Images

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

Chinese-funded expansion has transformed Nacala into a deepwater port. Mozambique is broadly aligned with China diplomatically. Still, its port remains more commercial than strategic at present.

16. Port of Sudan (Sudan)

ferozeea / iStock via Getty Images

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

Located along the Red Sea, the Port of Sudan has attracted both commercial and geopolitical interest from China. China’s investment facilitates access to a vital maritime corridor. However, political instability in Sudan adds uncertainty.

15. Port of Colombo (Sri Lanka)

Shakeel Sha / iStock via Getty Images

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

Colombo complements Chinese control over nearby Hambantota. While not a basing candidate itself, it boosts China’s logistics capacity in South Asia. The port enhances China’s footprint in Indian Ocean trade routes.

14. José Petroterminal (Venezuela)

DouglasOlivares / iStock via Getty Images

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

China Eximbank funded this key oil export terminal as part of its broader leverage over Venezuelan infrastructure. The port is the largest China-only investment in Latin America. Venezuela’s deep financial dependence on China could provide Beijing strategic leverage.

13. Port of Tema (Ghana)

Kwame Kwegyir-Addo / iStock via Getty Images

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

Tema is part of a competitive triad of West African ports with heavy Chinese financing. The project included large-scale dredging and berth construction, supported by Chinese and non-Chinese banks. Despite the investment, Ghana’s U.S. ties likely limit Chinese naval ambitions.

12. Doraleh Multipurpose Port and Damerjog Livestock Port* (Djibouti)

mtcurado / iStock via Getty Images

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

China financed both ports with loans totaling $466M, and constructed its first overseas naval base adjacent to Doraleh. Djibouti remains a model for China’s co-located commercial and military infrastructure strategy. The ports also serve the Chinese-built Addis Ababa–Djibouti railway.

11. Autonomous Port of Nouakchott (Mauritania)

mtcurado / iStock via Getty Images

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

Funded by China in two phases, Nouakchott’s port was completed in 2016. Though not currently a strong military candidate, the port underscores China’s quiet, long-term presence in West Africa. Its development predates the Belt and Road Initiative.

10. Gwadar Port (Pakistan)

mtcurado / iStock via Getty Images

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

As a flagship Belt and Road project, Gwadar is emblematic of the China–Pakistan alliance. The port is strategically located near the Strait of Hormuz. Its dual-use potential for commercial and military applications has long been speculated.

9. Port of Bata (Equatorial Guinea)

vestica / iStock via Getty Images

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

Bata has attracted interest as a potential future Chinese naval base, with U.S. officials reportedly raising alarms. Its authoritarian regime and deep Chinese investment make it a plausible site. The port’s location on the Atlantic further adds to its strategic value.

8. Lekki Deep Sea Port (Nigeria)

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

China’s investment in Lekki was made through a public-private partnership and backed by the China Development Bank. It became operational in 2022 and is Nigeria’s first deep-sea port. While strategically relevant, Nigeria’s strong U.S. ties make it less likely as a Chinese military base.

7. Queen Elizabeth II Quay, Freetown (Sierra Leone)

mtcurado / iStock via Getty Images

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

Built by a Chinese consortium, the Freetown port project is closely tied to Sierra Leone’s China-friendly political party. The IMF flagged risks tied to the project’s sovereign loan guarantees. Allegations of corruption and political favoritism have surrounded the investment.

6. Autonomous Port of Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire)

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

Completed in phases through 2022, Abidjan’s expansion included terminals and jetties funded by China Eximbank. The port has suffered financial issues, raising repayment concerns. It represents a significant Chinese stake in West Africa’s shipping infrastructure.

5. Port of Ashdod (Israel)

stevenallan / iStock via Getty Images

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

Despite the scale of investment, Ashdod’s future as a Chinese naval site is doubtful given Israel’s ties to NATO. China’s role has been largely commercial. The project is part of a broader Chinese effort to secure Mediterranean logistics routes.

4. Port of Caio (Angola)

Luke Dray / Getty Images News via Getty Images

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

Caio’s phased development includes a large docking basin and infrastructure for naval-capable vessels. China’s investment in this remote Angolan exclave highlights its interest in secure, controllable port locations. The port enhances access to Angola’s natural resources and reflects Beijing’s strategy of developing off-grid maritime assets.

3. Bayport Terminal at Haifa Port (Israel)

John Theodor / iStock via Getty Images

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

Though China built and partially operates Haifa port, its use as a naval base is unlikely due to Israel’s strong Western alliances. Shanghai International Port Group began operations in 2021. The port marks one of China’s few major investments in a high-income, NATO-aligned country.

2. Autonomous Port of Kribi (Cameroon)

mtcurado / iStock via Getty Images

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

China financed Kribi through multiple loans totaling over $1 billion, including a $604M credit completed in 2018. The port is deep enough to accommodate large warships and is strategically located on Africa’s Atlantic coast. Cameroon’s geopolitical alignment and long-standing political stability strengthen China’s foothold here.

1. Hambantota International Port (Sri Lanka)

mbrand85 / iStock via Getty Images

Funding commitment, 2000 to 2021: $45.4 billion

China’s largest port investment globally, Hambantota was leased to China Merchants Port Holdings in 2017 after Sri Lanka struggled with debt repayments. Its strategic location along Indian Ocean shipping lanes makes it a potential future Chinese naval base. The deal has raised international concerns about debt-trap diplomacy.

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'For Europe to become the new leader of the free world, it must act with courage and conviction'

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2025/05/26/for-europe-to-become-the-new-leader-of-the-free-world-it-must-act-with-courage-and-conviction_6741676_23.html?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=topic/world

Op-Ed

Group letter

Donald Trump's political U-turn in the US offers the EU an opportunity to become the leader in democracy, human rights and freedoms. The EU must embrace this responsibility by defending these values inside and outside its borders, especially in Ukraine, argues a group of associations in an op-ed.

Published yesterday at 11:30 am (Paris) 3 min read Lire en français

Today, in 2025, we can sadly witness that the United States, once the steadfast leader of the free world, has increasingly and rapidly retreated from its global responsibilities. Under the new Trump administration, the US has more and more aligned itself with Vladimir Putin's authoritarian narratives, cut crucial funding for international initiatives, acted against the International Criminal Court (ICC), halted support for several journalists and threatened to expel political refugees and researchers. This retreat has left a void in global leadership, one that only the European Union (EU) can now fill.

The EU has the opportunity to reaffirm its commitment to the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. This means standing firmly against authoritarian regimes that suppress dissent, violate human rights and undermine democratic institutions. The EU should acknowledge its diplomatic and economic strength and use it to pressure these regimes.

The war in Ukraine, in particular, is a test of the EU's resolve. The EU must step up its support and put humanist values at the heart of peace negotiations, as called for by "People First," an international campaign led by Ukrainian and Russian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) united in calling with one voice not to forget the hostages.

In Georgia, pro-European demonstrators have been gathering for weeks, opposing the government's closeness to Russia. ZURAB TSERTSVADZE/AP

In accordance with international law, Europe should demand the immediate and unconditional release of all Ukrainian civilians captured and illegally detained by the Kremlin. Those whose homes are in Russian-occupied areas should be given the opportunity to leave for Ukrainian government-controlled areas if they wish. All children who have been forcibly transferred or deported must be returned, and the timely repatriation of deported Ukrainian convicts and patients of closed medical institutions must be ensured. The EU should also advocate for the repatriation of prisoners of war through exchanges or other means as soon as possible, and no later than the end of active hostilities, as required by the Geneva Conventions.

Russian political prisoners must also be released and face no restrictions on their freedom of movement, including the ability to travel abroad. The same must apply to Belarusian political prisoners and to Georgian activists, journalists and human rights defenders. All those persecuted by the Putin regime and its allies must be supported. Acting for their freedom, Europe takes the right place in peace negotiations, fighting not for potential financial benefits, as the US does, but for human rights.

Refugee reception policy

For Europe to truly become the new leader of the free world, it must dramatically increase funding for researchers and NGOs working on democracy, human rights and civil society issues, and attract more talent from abroad, including from the US and authoritarian regimes. These organizations are on the front lines in the fight for freedom and deserve robust support.

By investing in research and civil society, the EU can build a democratic shield against extremism and authoritarianism, helping people to become better informed and more engaged in democracy, both inside and outside its borders.

This also concerns refugees and asylum seekers, especially those fearing extradition to authoritarian countries. We must not turn our backs on those fleeing persecution because of their pro-democracy and antiwar actions. The EU must adopt a more humane and comprehensive refugee reception policy that prioritizes protection and integration. This includes ensuring that no refugee is forcibly returned to Russia or Belarus, where they could face further persecution.

Furthermore, journalists who have long been voices for freedom and democracy in regions where those values are threatened must be welcomed and supported. This would send a strong signal of the EU's commitment to media freedom and the free flow of information.

Today, the EU must act with courage and conviction. By defending human rights, supporting Ukraine, bolstering researchers and NGOs, adopting a more humane refugee policy, championing media freedom and strengthening the rule of law, the EU can assert its role as a global leader. We urge European leaders to seize this moment and stand up for the values that define us. The world is watching, and the future of freedom and democracy hangs in the balance.

Signatories: Alice Barbe, co-founder of the charity Singa and the Académie des Futurs leaders; Jean-Marc Borello, chair of the executive board of Groupe SOS; Tamara Demuria, president of the advocacy group Géorgie vue de France; Zhanna Nemtsova, co-founder of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom (Germany); Olga Prokopieva, director of the group Russie-Libertés and initiator of this op-ed; Sylvie Rollet, president of Pour l'Ukraine, pour leur liberté et la nôtre; Kety Sharukhia, secretary general of Géorgie vue de France; Vera Yastrebova, director of Eastern Human Rights Group (Ukraine).

Group letter

Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.

19. U.S. Spy Agencies Are Getting a One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Most Sensitive Personal Data

U.S. Spy Agencies Are Getting a One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Most Sensitive Personal Data

The government wants to build a centralized platform where spy agencies can more easily buy private info about millions of people.

Sam Biddle

May 22 2025, 6:00 a.m.

The Intercept · by Sam Biddle · May 22, 2025

The ever-growing market for personal data has been a boon for American spy agencies. The U.S. intelligence community is now buying up vast volumes of sensitive information that would have previously required a court order, essentially bypassing the Fourth Amendment. But the surveillance state has encountered a problem: There’s simply too much data on sale from too many corporations and brokers.

So the government has a plan for a one-stop shop.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is working on a system to centralize and “streamline” the use of commercially available information, or CAI, like location data derived from mobile ads, by American spy agencies, according to contract documents reviewed by The Intercept. The data portal will include information deemed by the ODNI as highly sensitive, that which can be “misused to cause substantial harm, embarrassment, and inconvenience to U.S. persons.” The documents state spy agencies will use the web portal not just to search through reams of private data, but also run them through artificial intelligence tools for further analysis.

Rather than each agency purchasing CAI individually, as has been the case until now, the “Intelligence Community Data Consortium” will provide a single convenient web-based storefront for searching and accessing this data, along with a “data marketplace” for purchasing “the best data at the best price,” faster than ever before, according to the documents. It will be designed for the 18 different federal agencies and offices that make up the U.S. intelligence community, including the National Security Agency, CIA, FBI Intelligence Branch, and Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis — though one document suggests the portal will also be used by agencies not directly related to intelligence or defense.

“In practice, the Data Consortium would provide a one-stop shop for agencies to cheaply purchase access to vast amounts of Americans’ sensitive information from commercial entities, sidestepping constitutional and statutory privacy protections,” said Emile Ayoub, a lawyer with the Brennan Center’s liberty and national security program.

“ODNI is working to streamline a number of inefficient processes, including duplicative contracts to access existing data, and ensuring Americans civil liberties and Fourth Amendment rights are upheld,” ODNI spokesperson Olivia Coleman said in a statement to The Intercept. Coleman did not answer when asked if the new platform would sell access to data on U.S. citizens, or how it would make use of artificial intelligence.

IRS, Department of Homeland Security Contracted Firm That Sells Location Data Harvested From Dating Apps

Spy agencies and military intelligence offices have for years freely purchased sensitive personal information rather than obtain it by dint of a judge’s sign-off. Thanks largely to unscrupulous advertisers and app-makers working in a regulatory vacuum, it’s trivial to procure extremely sensitive information about virtually anyone with an online presence. Smartphones in particular leave behind immense plumes of data, including detailed records of your movement that can be bought and sold by anyone with an interest. The ODNI has previously defined “sensitive” CAI as information “not widely known about an individual that could be used to cause harm to the person’s reputation, emotional well-being, or physical safety.” Procurement documents reviewed by The Intercept make clear the project is designed to provide access to this highest “sensitive” tier of CAI.

The documents provide a glimpse at some of the many types of CAI available, including “information addressing economic security, supply chain, critical infrastructure protection, great power competition, agricultural data, industrial data, sentiment analysis, and video analytic services.”

While the proliferation of data that can reveal intimate details about virtually anyone has alarmed civil libertarians, privacy advocates, and certain members of Congress, the intelligence community sees another problem: There’s too much data to keep organized, and the disorganized process of buying it is wasting money. To address this overabundance, the ODNI is seeking private sector vendors to build and manage a new “commercial data consortium that unifies commercial data acquisition then enables IC users to access and interact with this commercial data in one place,” according to one procurement document obtained by The Intercept.

The ODNI says the platform, the “Intelligence Community (IC) Data Consortium (ICDC),” will help correct the currently “fragmented and decentralized” purchase of commercial data like smartphone location pings, real estate records, biometric data, and social media content. The document laments how often various spy agencies are buying the same data without realizing it. The ODNI says this new platform, which will live at www.icdata.gov, will “help streamline access to CAI for the entire IC and make it available to mission users in a more cohesive, efficient, and cost-effective manner by avoiding duplicative purchases, preventing sunk costs from unused licenses, and reducing overall data storage and compute costs,” while also incorporating “civil liberties and privacy best practices.”

“The IC is still adhering to the ‘just grab all of it, we’ll find something to do with it’ mentality.”

While the project’s nod to civil liberties might come as some relief to privacy advocates, the project also represents the extent to which the use of this inherently controversial form of surveillance is here to stay. “Clearly the IC is still adhering to the ‘just grab all of it, we’ll find something to do with it’ mentality rather than being remotely thoughtful about only collecting data it needs or has a specific envisioned use for,” said Calli Schroeder, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Project.

Once the website is up and running, the procurement materials say the portal will eventually allow users to analyze the data using large language models, AI-based text tools prone to major factual errors and fabrications. The portal will also facilitate “sentiment analysis,” an often pseudoscientific endeavor purporting to discern one’s opinion about a given topic using implicit signals in their behavior, movement, or speech.

Such analysis is a “huge cause for concern” according to Schroeder. “It means the intelligence community is still, to at least some degree, buying into the false promise of a constantly and continuously debunked practice,” she said. “Let me be clear: Sentiment analysis not only does not work, it cannot work. Its only consistent success has been in perpetuating harmful discrimination (of gender, culture, race, and neurodivergence, among others).”

Whether for sentiment analysis or some other goal, using CAI data sets to query an AI crystal ball poses serious risks, said Ayoub. If such analysis worked as billed, “AI tools make it easier to extract, re-identify, and infer sensitive information about people’s identities, locations, ideologies, and habits — amplifying risks to Americans’ privacy and freedoms of speech and association,” he said. On top of that, “These tools are a black box with little insight into training data, metric, or reliability of outcomes. The IC’s use of these tools typically comes with high risk, questionable track records, and little accountability, especially now that AI policy safeguards were rescinded early in this administration.”

In 2023, the ODNI declassified a 37-page report detailing the vastly expanding use of such CAI data by the U.S. intelligence community, and the threat this poses to the millions of Americans whose lives are cataloged, packaged, and sold by a galaxy of unregulated data brokers. The report, drafted for then-director of national intelligence Avril Haines, included a dire warning to the public: “Today, in a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid, CAI includes information on nearly everyone that is of a type and level of sensitivity that historically could have been obtained, if at all, only through targeted (and predicated) collection, and that could be used to cause harm to an individual’s reputation, emotional well-being, or physical safety.”

American Phone-Tracking Firm Demo’d Surveillance Powers by Spying on CIA and NSA

The extent to which CAI has commodified spy powers previously attainable only by well-resourced governments cannot be overstated: In 2021, for instance, The Intercept reported the existence of Anomaly Six, a startup that buys geolocational data leaked from smartphones apps. During an Anomaly Six presentation, the company demonstrated its ability to track not only the Chinese navy through the phones of its sailors, but also follow CIA and NSA employees as they commuted to and from work.

The ICDC project reflects a fundamental dissonance within the intelligence community, which acknowledges that CAI is a major threat to the public while refusing to cease buying it. “The government would never have been permitted to compel billions of people to carry location tracking devices on their persons at all times, to log and track most of their social interactions, or to keep flawless records of all their reading habits,” the ODNI wrote in its 2022 report. While conceding “unfettered access to CAI increases its power in ways that may exceed our constitutional traditions or other societal expectations,” the report says, “the IC cannot willingly blind itself to this information.”

In 2024, following the declassified report and the alarm it generated, the ODNI put forth a set of CAI usage rules purporting to establish guardrails against privacy violations and other abuses. The framework earned praise from some corners for requiring the intelligence community to assess the origin and sensitivity of CAI before using it, and for placing more rigorous requirements on agencies that wish to use the most intimate forms of private data. But critics were quick to point out that the ODNI’s rules, which enshrined the intelligence community’s “flexibility to experiment” with CAI, amounted to more self-regulation from a part of the government with a poor track record of self-regulating.

While sensitive CAI comes with more rules — like keeping records of its use, protecting its storage, and some disclosure requirements — these guidelines offer great deal latitude to the intelligence community. The rule about creating a paper trail pertaining to sensitive CAI use, for example, is mandated only “to the extent practicable and consistent with the need to protect intelligence sources and methods,” and can be ignored entirely in “exigent circumstances.” In other words, it’s not really a requirement at all.

Ayoub told The Intercept he worries the ICDC plan will only entrench this self-policing approach. The documents note that vendors would be tasked to some extent with determining whether the data they sell is indeed sensitive, and therefore subject to stricter privacy safeguards, rather than a third party. “Relying on private vendors to determine whether CAI is considered sensitive may increase the risk that the IC purchases known categories of sensitive information without sufficient safeguards for privacy and civil liberties or the warrant, court order, or subpoena they would otherwise need to obtain,” he said.

The portal idea appears to have started under the Biden administration, when it was known as the “Data Co-Op.” It now looks like it will go live during a Trump administration. Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is already working on building and streamlining access to other large repositories of perilously sensitive information. In March, the Washington Post reported that DOGE workers intent on breaking down “information silos” across the federal government were trying to “unify systems into one central hub aims to advance multiple Trump administration priorities, including finding and deporting undocumented immigrants.” The documents note that the portal will also be accessible to so-called “non-Title 50” agencies outside of the national defense and intelligence apparatus.

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Ayoub argued the intelligence community can’t provide access to its upcoming CAI portal without “raising the risk that agencies like DHS’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) would access the CAI database to identify and target noncitizens such as student protestors based on their search or browsing histories and location information.”

While the ODNI has acknowledged the importance of transparency, usernames for the portal will not include the name of the analyst’s agency, “thus obscuring any specific participation from individual participants,” according to the project documents.

“The irony is not lost on me that they are making efforts to protect individuals within the IC from being identified regarding their participation in this project but have no qualms about vacuuming up the personal data of Americans against their wishes and knowledge,” said Schroeder.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a longtime critic of the Fourth Amendment end run posed by CAI, expressed concern to The Intercept over how the portal will ultimately be used. “Policies are one thing, but I’m concerned about what the government is actually doing with data about Americans that it buys from data brokers,” he said in a statement. “All indications from news reports and Trump administration officials are that Americans should be extremely worried about how this administration may be using commercial data.”

IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.

What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.

This is not hyperbole.

Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.

Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.”

The Intercept has long covered authoritarian governments, billionaire oligarchs, and backsliding democracies around the world. We understand the challenge we face in Trump and the vital importance of press freedom in defending democracy.

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Contact the author:

Sam Biddle sam.biddle@theintercept.com @sambiddle.99 on Signal @sambiddle.com on Bluesky @samfbiddle on X

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The Intercept · by Sam Biddle · May 22, 2025

20. A turning point in strategic thought on Asia policy?

Excertps:

This shift is not merely academic—it has real-world consequences. Whereas Brzezinski’s strategic planning encouraged investment in alliances, multilateral institutions, and ideological messaging, Colby’s doctrine leads to a triage mentality. Europe? Let the Europeans handle it. The Middle East? Contain terrorism, but otherwise disengage. Africa? Irrelevant. It’s a worldview where allies are not partners in a vision, but tools in a defense perimeter.

For South Korea, this shift is more than uncomfortable—it’s dangerous. Under the Cold War logic of thinkers like Brzezinski, South Korea was integral to a broader U.S. plan to prevent continental hegemony in Asia. It wasn’t just about North Korea—it was about embedding U.S. presence in Northeast Asia to shape outcomes across the entire region. But under Colby’s doctrine, South Korea is simply one node in a denial network: relevant only insofar as it helps contain China and secure Taiwan.

This leaves Seoul in a precarious position. The strategy of denial offers no long-term vision for regional prosperity or integration—only militarized stasis. And it assumes continued U.S. dominance that may not exist. As Washington’s focus narrows and its willingness to bear costs declines, South Korea may find that its security is no longer guaranteed by alliance habit, but by its own adaptability.

...

In this emerging paradigm, the world is no longer a chessboard—it is a risk map. And America, it seems, is no longer playing to win. It is playing not to lose.

It is not a chessboard or a risk map. It is a Go/Wie Chi/Baduk board.

Commentary

A turning point in strategic thought on Asia policy?

To compare Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard to Colby’s Strategy of Denial is to compare empire-building to moat-digging. U.S. Asia policy has changed.

https://www.junotane.com/p/a-turning-point-in-strategic-thought-on-asia?r=7i07&utm

May 26, 2025

∙ Paid

The passing of Richard Armitage, Joseph Nye, Henry Kissinger, and just under ten years ago, Zbigniew Brzezinski, marks more than just the end of an era of iconic U.S. foreign policy thinkers. It symbolizes a broader intellectual shift—away from expansive, global strategic frameworks rooted in Cold War imperatives, and toward narrower, regional and tactical defense doctrines.

The intellectual legacy that once prioritized American hegemony through complex balancing across the Eurasian landmass has given way to what Elbridge Colby, a central figure in Trump-era foreign policy, unapologetically calls the “strategy of denial.”

At the core of this transition lies a stark difference in scale, ambition, and underlying philosophical assumptions about America’s place in the world.

In The Grand Chessboard, Zbigniew Brzezinski argued that American primacy hinged on preventing the emergence of a Eurasian hegemon. Eurasia, he noted, was the “chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played”.

For Brzezinski, American power was not simply regional or transactional—it was civilizational, rooted in a blend of military might, economic dominance, and ideological appeal. He conceived of power in panoramic terms: shaping the global balance from Eastern Europe to Central Asia, with American troops, values, and institutions carefully maneuvered to box out rivals.

What made Brzezinski’s approach “strategic” was its long time horizon and comprehensive scope. America was to operate as a global empire in all but name—diplomatically embedded, militarily dominant, and economically entwined with Eurasia’s key regions. This strategy wasn’t just defensive; it was proactive. Even U.S. cultural capital played a role in aligning allies and deterring adversaries. In his view, the ultimate threat to American primacy wasn’t a specific country like China or Russia, but the possibility of any power or coalition filling the Eurasian vacuum America left unguarded.

Elbridge Colby’s The Strategy of Denial is rooted in a fundamentally different worldview. While he shares Brzezinski’s concern about great-power competition, particularly vis-à-vis China, his answer is not global hegemony but regional denial. His framework assumes America can no longer do everything everywhere. The central goal is to prevent China from dominating Asia, especially through a fait accompli attack on Taiwan or similar targets. All else—European security, Middle Eastern stability, even global norms—must be subordinated to this single operational priority.

Colby’s method is unapologetically narrow. He argues the U.S. should structure its military posture to fight and win a limited war in Asia, without risking full-scale nuclear escalation. This is not about long-term diplomacy or building coalitions for shared prosperity—it’s about holding ground at specific choke points like Taiwan and denying China the ability to politically subordinate key allies. His logic is defensive and reactive: delay, deter, and if necessary, defeat China militarily in one theater, then stop.

The intellectual chasm between Brzezinski and Colby could not be wider. Brzezinski operated with the confidence of a unipolar power crafting global order; Colby operates with the anxiety of a declining hegemon preparing to fight one war at a time. Brzezinski sought to stabilize an entire continent by shaping multiple regional balances; Colby assumes that the U.S. can’t afford to fail in even a single engagement. What once was an empire of principles has become a fortress of priorities.

This shift is not merely academic—it has real-world consequences. Whereas Brzezinski’s strategic planning encouraged investment in alliances, multilateral institutions, and ideological messaging, Colby’s doctrine leads to a triage mentality. Europe? Let the Europeans handle it. The Middle East? Contain terrorism, but otherwise disengage. Africa? Irrelevant. It’s a worldview where allies are not partners in a vision, but tools in a defense perimeter.

For South Korea, this shift is more than uncomfortable—it’s dangerous. Under the Cold War logic of thinkers like Brzezinski, South Korea was integral to a broader U.S. plan to prevent continental hegemony in Asia. It wasn’t just about North Korea—it was about embedding U.S. presence in Northeast Asia to shape outcomes across the entire region. But under Colby’s doctrine, South Korea is simply one node in a denial network: relevant only insofar as it helps contain China and secure Taiwan.

This leaves Seoul in a precarious position. The strategy of denial offers no long-term vision for regional prosperity or integration—only militarized stasis. And it assumes continued U.S. dominance that may not exist. As Washington’s focus narrows and its willingness to bear costs declines, South Korea may find that its security is no longer guaranteed by alliance habit, but by its own adaptability.

That means independence—strategic, economic, and diplomatic. South Korea cannot wait for U.S. signals to define its posture. It must make its own calculations, develop its own defense capabilities, and cultivate regional relationships, even with difficult neighbors.

Most provocatively, South Korea may have to come to terms with a reality long denied in public discourse: its strategic position is ultimately dependent on China’s goodwill. Geography and economics are not changing. China is not necessarily a military threat—it is South Korea’s largest trading partner and a critical gatekeeper for regional peace. Pretending otherwise is increasingly untenable. If the U.S. sees Korea as a buffer or a pawn, Korea must begin to see China less as a threat, but as an unavoidable part of its strategic calculus.

To compare Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard to Colby’s Strategy of Denial is to compare empire-building to moat-digging.

The former imagined a United States indispensable to world order; the latter imagines one barely holding the line. In this light, the deaths of Nye, Armitage, Kissinger, and Brzezinski mark more than generational turnover. They signify the burial of a kind of thinking that once tried to mold the world. What has replaced it is less a new strategy than a controlled retreat—realist, perhaps, but no longer grand.

In this emerging paradigm, the world is no longer a chessboard—it is a risk map. And America, it seems, is no longer playing to win. It is playing not to lose.

21. ‘It needs to be a thousand’: US has 500 military trainers on Taiwan, retired admiral says

Why do we trap ourselves with talking about specific numbers? Numbers of troops is the tired old (and only) metric we use. We box ourselves in when we focus on troop numbers.

‘It needs to be a thousand’: US has 500 military trainers on Taiwan, retired admiral says

Stars and Stripes · by Seth Robson · May 27, 2025

Members of Taiwan’s 564th Armored Brigade hold their flag after demonstrating their ability to repel an airborne attack near Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Jan. 11, 2023. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)

About 500 U.S. defense trainers are operating on Taiwan, more than 10 times the number previously disclosed, according to recent congressional testimony by a retired U.S. Navy admiral.

Mark Montgomery, speaking May 15 before the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist party, said the U.S. should double that number to help Taiwan build “a true counter-intervention force.”

“We absolutely have to grow the joint training team in Taiwan,” he told the lawmakers, according to a transcript of his remarks posted on the committee’s website.

Montgomery did not specify whether the personnel are active-duty troops, reservists or civilian contractors.

“It needs to be a thousand,” he said. “If we are going to give them billions of dollars in assistance, sell them tens of billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. gear, it makes sense that we would be over there training and working.”

The U.S. has long provided Taiwan with weapons and military training aimed at deterring Chinese aggression. Beijing views the self-governing island as a breakaway province and has not ruled out the use of force to bring it under control.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has repeatedly stated that reunification with Taiwan is inevitable, and Chinese forces have stepped up military pressure with air and naval exercises around the island in recent years.

While the U.S. does not formally recognize Taiwan diplomatically — a result of its 1979 recognition of China — it maintains unofficial relations under the Taiwan Relations Act, which mandates the provision of arms “of a defensive nature” to Taiwan and a U.S. commitment to resist coercion against the island.

The presence of U.S. military personnel on Taiwan was first confirmed by then-President Tsai Ing-wen in an October 2021 interview with CNN. At the time, she described it as a “small number.” A Congressional Research Service report in May 2024 listed only 41 U.S. military personnel in Taiwan as of December 2023.

Local media reported a significant milestone in bilateral defense cooperation on May 12, when Taiwanese troops fired U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, for the first time during a coastal drill at Jiupeng Base in southern Taiwan.

The 58th Artillery Command launched 33 rockets from 11 launchers into the Pacific Ocean, Taiwan’s state-run Central News Agency reported. Technicians from Lockheed Martin, the system’s U.S. manufacturer, attended the test, said Col. Ho Chih-chung, the unit’s deputy commander.

The scale of the U.S. training mission comes as a surprise, said Ming-Shih Shen, a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei.

The number isn’t fixed, he said in an email Tuesday. “Different people are sent to different projects, such as the Marine Corps, reserves or missile forces,” he wrote.

Shen said U.S. personnel are typically housed by the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto U.S. embassy, rather than being hosted by the Taiwanese military.

The institute’s spokespeople couldn’t be reached by phone or email Tuesday.

“In the future, the number of personnel may be increased due to changes in the situation, or because of increased demand for combat training, or because of the need for US assistance in purchasing new US weapons systems,” Shen wrote. “Some of these personnel may be active duty or reserve personnel.”

Stars and Stripes · by Seth Robson · May 27, 2025

22. How China Could Counter U.S. Intervention in War Over Taiwan

Excerpts:

Broader Chinese attitudes about U.S. commitments and capabilities with respect to a scenario in Taiwan could bolster the plausibility of the “strategic deterrence” option. Beijing’s view of the United States as being in state of irreversible decline — characterized by deep political polarization and economic inequality — could contribute to a perception of weak U.S. political resolve for a long war and could play to the Chinese narrative that reincorporating Taiwan is a core national interest, unlike for the United States.

Growing perceptions that the People’s Liberation Army is eclipsing the capabilities of the U.S. military and that Washington is overburdened by commitments across the globe could also support arguments in China that the United States has little appetite for another conflict.

As a response, the Department of Defense should consider the messages that should be communicated to China’s leaders as it begins work on the next National Defense Strategy. One step should be clarifying that deterrence in the Indo-Pacific and homeland defense are two sides of the same coin, not separate priorities. The next strategy should explicitly connect the two themes to put Beijing on notice that it would, in its own words, be “playing with fire” if it were to threaten any part of the U.S. homeland in the early stages of an operation against Taiwan.

The forthcoming National Defense Strategy should also consider other avenues for messaging to undermine China’s confidence in strategic deterrence. Large-scale military exercises that showcase coordination between U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and U.S.-based forces could be expanded.

The two sides could also resume expert-level dialogues on strategic stability, which could involve crisis simulations and case studies to communicate to China the risks of inadvertent nuclear, space, and cyber escalation that could result from crisis signaling. This could impart a valuable lesson to Beijing, namely that such threats bring escalatory risks.

Finally, the next National Defense Strategy should consider the role that reassurance should play. As Thomas Schelling argued, deterrence and assurance are interrelated. Beijing should be assured that the United States will not change its policy to formally recognize Taiwan’s independence — a clear red line for China — if Beijing refrains from aggressive military action across the strait.

How China Could Counter U.S. Intervention in War Over Taiwan - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Joel Wuthnow · May 27, 2025

Has Beijing found a new “assassin’s mace” to keep the U.S. military out of a fight over Taiwan?

Ongoing debates over how China’s military would counter U.S. intervention often focus on precision strikes against U.S. forces in the Western Pacific. Indeed, some wargames assume that the People’s Liberation Army would throw the first punch. But such a move is not the only option available to China’s decision-makers. Other options include mounting a surprise invasion of Taiwan before the United States can mobilize, pressuring America’s allies to deny U.S. forces access to forward bases, or using strategic deterrence, which seeks to discourage Washington from defending Taiwan in the first place.

Of these options, pursuing strategic deterrence could prove most alluring for Beijing. The logic would be to convince the U.S. government that risks to the U.S. homeland, such as cyber attacks on power grids and telecommunications networks and even the specter of nuclear escalation, are too severe to contemplate. This strategy would leverage China’s expanding nuclear arsenal (and attendant nuclear signals), new intercontinental conventional missiles, space and cyber capabilities, and the belief that Beijing is inherently more resolved than Washington. Chinese leaders who embrace this thinking might conclude that a war could be limited, and thus, they might be more likely to opt for aggression.

To counter the challenge of Chinese strategic deterrence, the Trump administration should further integrate homeland defense with Indo-Pacific regional security. This would ensure unified planning to maintain deterrence both at home and abroad and would convince China that an end run around U.S. Indo-Pacific Command cannot succeed. The administration should also follow a strategic communications campaign to emphasize the grave risks of inadvertent escalation.

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U.S. Intervention: A Key Variable in China’s Calculus

China’s military continues to advance towards the deadline that General Secretary Xi Jinping reportedly gave it to be prepared for war against Taiwan by 2027. However, its chances of success remain doubtful, as at least one U.S. observer has recently concluded. Some of the uncertainty can be attributed to Taiwan itself: Under the presidencies of Tsai Ing-wen and Lai Ching-te, Taipei has been enacting long-needed defense reforms, including higher defense spending and a greater focus on mobilization. However, the critical variable for the People’s Liberation Army remains the possibility of U.S. intervention. Officially, the longstanding policy of strategic ambiguity — which President Donald Trump has appeared to endorse — provides U.S. leaders with flexibility on whether to intervene in a Chinese operation against Taiwan and on how to do so. For their part, Chinese sources such as the Science of Campaigns predict U.S. involvement.

The likelihood of U.S. intervention would pose critical challenges for Chinese forces in both major options for using force against Taiwan: a maritime blockade or a full-scale invasion.

Chinese naval and coast guard forces might blockade the island, leveraging their numerical advantage in ships as well as recent exercises designed to simulate blockade activities. However, this move could provoke a U.S.-led counter-blockade operation. This would cause China to be confronted with a difficult choice: either back down and allow some critical imports such as liquified natural gas to reach the island, thus reducing the blockade’s effectiveness, or risk conflict escalation.

In a full-scale Chinese invasion of Taiwan, U.S. intervention could pose grave risks for the People’s Liberation Army. Effective landing operations would almost certainly require maritime and air superiority. U.S. fifth-generation fighters, nuclear attack submarines, strategic bombers, and ground-based artillery and missiles launched from forward-deployed locations in the first island chain would create doubts that Chinese naval transport ships and airborne forces could cross the strait within an acceptable margin of risk. U.S. forces may also include emerging capabilities. In June 2024, U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander Adm. Samuel Paparo drew attention when he stated that a burgeoning stockpile of cheap attack drones would create a virtual “hellscape” for any forces attempting the crossing.

Conversely, the absence of U.S. intervention or major disruptions in the U.S. military’s ability to move forces across the Pacific would improve Beijing’s chances of convincing Taipei to capitulate or defeating Taiwan in an all-out war. A blockade could last indefinitely, with mounting social and economic tolls, while Taiwan’s defenses would struggle in a one-on-one match with Chinese forces given disparities in manpower, platforms, and munitions. Indeed, without the prospect of direct U.S. involvement in the conflict, Taipei might give up without fighting. Understanding these dynamics, Beijing has therefore carefully considered the ways in which U.S. involvement could be minimized or avoided.

A Menu of Options

There are four ways in which Beijing may attempt to counter U.S. intervention at the outset of a conflict with Taiwan. Counter-intervention is broader than deterrence because some moves seek to preempt or to defeat, rather than deter, external involvement.

The four options vary along two dimensions: whether the theory of victory rests on military action against adversary forces or on political messaging to foreign decision-makers or whether the option focuses directly on the United States or indirectly on it through actions focused on Taiwan or third parties.

Chinese Counter-Intervention Options

System Destruction Warfare

China could use a range of military tools to frustrate the U.S. military’s ability to mobilize, deploy, and sustain forces in the Western Pacific. Beijing has invested in a large inventory of precision weapons to threaten key U.S. targets such as anti-ship ballistic missiles and air-launched long-range missiles. China might also use non-kinetic strikes, including cyber attacks or electronic warfare, to attack critical U.S. information systems and debilitate U.S. satellites.

For the past two decades, Chinese military observers have discussed such kinetic and non-kinetic strikes as being integral to “system destruction warfare.” The goal of system destruction warfare is to destroy an adversary’s critical military systems — intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance; logistics nodes; command and control; and combat generation platforms, such as aircraft carriers — while protecting one’s own assets.

The problem with the “system destruction warfare” option is twofold. First, the approach is provocative and highly escalatory. Preemptive attacks on U.S. bases, aircraft carriers, or critical networks would create an escalatory spiral that Beijing could not control and wants to avoid. The second problem is that such attacks might not yield the desired outcome. China might be unable to locate and destroy critical U.S. capabilities, such as attack submarines or strategic bombers operating from bases in the continental United States, which would still threaten Chinese air and maritime superiority. Moreover, the dispersal and concealment of U.S. forces would increase the probability that key capabilities would survive.

Fait Accompli

Given the risk of direct confrontation with U.S. forces, China could instead use limited faits accomplis to expand influence while avoiding potential escalation. For example, China could stage a series of military exercises near Taiwan, which at some point would mask a conventional invasion. Russia skillfully used this tactic before invading internationally recognized Georgian territory in August 2008. If the ruse was successful, U.S. decision-makers would have little time to mobilize forces. However, the scale of a major war could far exceed the requirements of even a large exercise, which would provide warning to Washington. Intelligence could be declassified to deny Beijing the initiative, just as Russia’s attempt to surprise Ukraine in February 2022 was foiled.

Host Nation Coercion

Another option available to China focuses on coercion of third-country government officials. China could try to convince host nations not to allow basing and access to U.S. forces. At the outset of an operation against Taiwan, Beijing would inform the national leaders of South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia that the use of any facilities by U.S. forces to attack Chinese forces would implicate those countries as combatants and therefore be subject to reprisal. Some governments may yield to Beijing’s demands or limit access to U.S. forces, including expeditionary marine units, tactical aviation, and medium-range missile batteries. Others might resist Chinese coercion, dismissing the threats as merely cheap talk. This option would have less impact on long-range U.S. assets such as bombers that do not require access to close-in basing.

Strategic Deterrence

A final option would be to test the limits of U.S. political resolve to defend Taiwan through a mix of nuclear, non-nuclear, space, cyber, and informational tools. While the concept of strategic deterrence dates to the early 2000s, it gained renewed attention when Xi cited it as a guiding vision of Chinese military modernization in October 2022. Beijing might try to confront Washington with the prospect of a long and costly war that would wreak havoc on the daily lives of millions of Americans. U.S. policymakers may balk, or the Chinese threats could delay a prompt U.S. response as officials debate whether to respond and how to do so. Such a delay would likely hand the Chinese military the initiative in a war over Taiwan.

Xi has been intent on building China’s nuclear forces in recent years. As of December 2024, the Department of Defense reported that more than 600 operational nuclear warheads were produced in the previous year. This number represented a nearly threefold increase from 2020. China has also diversified its nuclear forces to include operational ballistic missile submarine patrols, dual-capable bombers, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles that can carry both nuclear and conventional warheads. These assets could be used in various ways to signal China’s resolve, like how Russian President Vladimir Putin attempted to ward off direct NATO involvement in Ukraine by raising alert levels and conducting snap bomber exercises. Chinese leaders already seem optimistic that such signals could be used in a future cross-strait campaign.

China has also been developing non-nuclear strategic capabilities that could threaten the U.S. homeland. China recently tested an intercontinental ballistic missile — its first such test since 1980. In 2021, it successfully tested a fractional orbital bombardment system that deployed a hypersonic glide vehicle.

Beijing could also threaten major cyber attacks against U.S. critical infrastructure, such as financial systems, telecommunications networks, transportation systems, and electricity grids.

Finally, China could exploit U.S. dependence on GPS and other commercial satellites by threatening to use vast array of direct-ascent anti-satellite weapons and co-orbital satellites as well as “soft-kill” capabilities including jammers and directed-energy weapons.

Taking these possibilities into consideration, China would seek to integrate a range of military and non-military options to threaten the U.S. homeland and discourage the U.S. government from mobilizing forces to defend Taiwan.

A Confidence Game

Broader Chinese attitudes about U.S. commitments and capabilities with respect to a scenario in Taiwan could bolster the plausibility of the “strategic deterrence” option. Beijing’s view of the United States as being in state of irreversible decline — characterized by deep political polarization and economic inequality — could contribute to a perception of weak U.S. political resolve for a long war and could play to the Chinese narrative that reincorporating Taiwan is a core national interest, unlike for the United States.

Growing perceptions that the People’s Liberation Army is eclipsing the capabilities of the U.S. military and that Washington is overburdened by commitments across the globe could also support arguments in China that the United States has little appetite for another conflict.

As a response, the Department of Defense should consider the messages that should be communicated to China’s leaders as it begins work on the next National Defense Strategy. One step should be clarifying that deterrence in the Indo-Pacific and homeland defense are two sides of the same coin, not separate priorities. The next strategy should explicitly connect the two themes to put Beijing on notice that it would, in its own words, be “playing with fire” if it were to threaten any part of the U.S. homeland in the early stages of an operation against Taiwan.

The forthcoming National Defense Strategy should also consider other avenues for messaging to undermine China’s confidence in strategic deterrence. Large-scale military exercises that showcase coordination between U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and U.S.-based forces could be expanded.

The two sides could also resume expert-level dialogues on strategic stability, which could involve crisis simulations and case studies to communicate to China the risks of inadvertent nuclear, space, and cyber escalation that could result from crisis signaling. This could impart a valuable lesson to Beijing, namely that such threats bring escalatory risks.

Finally, the next National Defense Strategy should consider the role that reassurance should play. As Thomas Schelling argued, deterrence and assurance are interrelated. Beijing should be assured that the United States will not change its policy to formally recognize Taiwan’s independence — a clear red line for China — if Beijing refrains from aggressive military action across the strait.

Become a Member

Joel Wuthnow, Ph.D., is a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the U.S. National Defense University. He is on X at @jwuthnow.

This essay represents only his views and not those of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Joel Wuthnow · May 27, 2025

23. An American Problem – We cannot afford to excuse, indulge, or minimize political violence.

Conclusion:

It is not enough to mourn. We must act. Not by censoring ideas, but by enforcing the law, defending civic order, and refusing to normalize an ideology that leads, inexorably, to bloodshed.

An American Problem

We cannot afford to excuse, indulge, or minimize political violence.

By Reihan Salam and Jesse Arm

The Atlantic · by Reihan Salam, Jesse Arm · May 26, 2025

On Wednesday night, a young couple left an American Jewish Committee event in Washington, D.C. Moments later, they were gunned down. As police arrested the suspect, he shouted, “Free Palestine.”

The victims—Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim—were 20-something Israeli Embassy aides. Lischinsky, a devout Christian born to an Argentinian Israeli father and a German mother, had just bought an engagement ring. Milgrim, a Jewish American with a master’s degree from the United Nations University for Peace, was devoted to humanitarian work and cross-cultural dialogue. They were idealists. They were in love. And they were murdered—not for anything they had done, but for who they were and what they represented.

Their alleged killer, Elias Rodriguez, was at one time affiliated with the Party for Socialism and Liberation—a U.S.-based Marxist group tied to China, Iran, and Russia. The group lionizes Hamas and calls for violent “resistance” against Israel. It’s hard not to conclude that this was a political assassination, fueled by a deranged but coherent ideology that’s spreading with alarming speed through American institutions.

Rodriguez didn’t invent this worldview. It has been cultivated for years—by groups that venerate terrorists, by academics who excuse anti-Jewish hate as anti-colonial resistance, and by students chanting “Intifada” while shutting down bridges and storming campus buildings. It is a worldview that divides people into fixed categories of oppressor and oppressed, resents Jewish achievement, embraces violence, and sees Western civilization as inherently illegitimate. It targets Jews first—but never only.

Some call it protest. Our Manhattan Institute colleague Tal Fortgang calls it “civil terrorism”: the use of lawless disruption to intimidate and destabilize. Over the past 18 months, we’ve watched it escalate—from public rallies romanticizing Hamas after October 7, to anti-Semitic harassment on campuses, to slogans openly demanding ethnic cleansing. In this climate, the leap from vandalism to murder was all but inevitable.

The D.C. shooting was not the first incident of its kind. Just weeks ago, the home of Pennsylvania’s Jewish governor, Josh Shapiro, was allegedly firebombed on the first night of Passover by a man upset about his support for Israel. In Michigan, Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel initially pressed charges against demonstrators who assaulted police during a campus encampment—then dropped them under pressure from the left flank of her party. But when extremists escalate and the law falters, the risks to public safety grow.

What we’re witnessing is an issue not with Israel, but with America. When violence aimed at Jews—or those seen as aligned with them—is dismissed, excused, or rationalized, it undermines the civic norms that hold our society together. Elite institutions that once upheld liberal pluralism now indulge a form of identity politics that prizes grievance over justice. Some of the ugliest reactions to the D.C. shooting treated the murders as incidental—or even deserved. That’s not just moral failure. It represents a worldview that treats violence as politics by other means. Such rationalizations have been used to justify the ideological murder of a health-care executive, coordinated arson attacks on Tesla dealerships by anti-capitalist extremists, and, now, executions outside a Jewish museum in the nation’s capital.

The denial of Jewish legitimacy—whether of the state of Israel or of American Jews participating in public life—is no longer a fringe opinion. In too many quarters, it’s treated as respectable. It is not. It is bigotry. And when paired with the belief that those claiming oppression are justified in doing “whatever it takes,” the result isn’t justice. It’s carnage.

We do not argue that speech should be criminalized; our First Amendment freedoms need to be protected. And it is possible to criticize Israeli policies, or those of any other government, without crossing the line into incitement.

But we must be honest about what’s happening. When networks of activists treat unrepentant killers as heroes, coordinate illegal activity, and agitate for the collapse of Western society, they’re not engaged in civil disobedience. They’re waging political warfare. That some of these groups are backed by hostile foreign regimes only underscores the urgency of a serious response.

The way forward is not to panic, but to draw a clear line. We must reaffirm that no political grievance justifies murder. That Americans—of any faith or background—should not have to fear for their lives while leaving a museum event. That violence in the name of justice is still violence. And that democracy works only when we preserve the norms that keep politics from devolving into civil conflict.

The murders of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were horrific. They were also predictable. If Americans continue down this path—excusing, indulging, and minimizing political violence when it comes from favored factions—we will see more such tragedies.

It is not enough to mourn. We must act. Not by censoring ideas, but by enforcing the law, defending civic order, and refusing to normalize an ideology that leads, inexorably, to bloodshed.

About the Authors

Reihan Salam

Reihan Salam is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the president of the Manhattan Institute.

Jesse Arm

Jesse Arm is the executive director of external affairs and chief of staff at the Manhattan Institute.

The Atlantic · by Reihan Salam, Jesse Arm · May 26, 2025

24. Veterans recoil at Trump plan to end Afghans’ deportation protection

Wow. Strong words follow.

Excerpts:

“If they attempt to deport the Afghans, you’re going to see actual physical conflict between veterans and ICE,” predicted Matt Zeller, an Army veteran who became a prominent advocate for America’s Afghan allies after his interpreter saved his life.Follow

Advocacy groups estimate that about 10,000 Afghans in the United States have been dependent on TPS while they navigate the lengthy and complex process for obtaining permanent residency, a process made all the more difficult, they say, by the absolute chaos that defined Afghanistan’s collapse — and by the guidance they received from the U.S. government while trying to escape.

By declaring his intent to end these protections, President Donald Trump risks alienating a key demographic — veterans of the war — at the same time he seeks to court them politically. His administration has intensified its scrutiny of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and demanded accountability for 13 U.S. troops and an estimated 170 Afghans killed in a suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport as the evacuation, hastily orchestrated by the Biden administration, raced to a tragic end.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Veterans recoil at Trump plan to end Afghans’ deportation protection

The administration claims conditions in Afghanistan have markedly improved under Taliban rule. Those who fought in the war say that’s “laughable.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/05/25/trump-afghanistan-deportation/

May 25, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. EDTYesterday at 6:00 a.m. EDT

9 min

2072

Afghan refugees evacuated from Kabul board a bus after arriving at the Al Udeid military base in Qatar on Aug. 31, 2021. (Lorenzo Tugnoli/For The Washington Post)

By Abigail Hauslohner and Emily Wax-Thibodeaux

The Trump administration’s move to end deportation protections for wartime allies who fled to the United States after the fall of Afghanistan has infuriated veterans of the 20-year conflict there, who say the U.S. government is betraying a sacred promise made to some of America’s most vulnerable partners.

This month Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem announced the administration’s termination of temporary protected status, or TPS, for Afghans, exposing thousands, potentially, to deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as soon as July, when the policy is to take effect.

The fear, veterans and other advocates say, is that anyone who returns to Afghanistan will almost certainly face reprisal by the Taliban, the extremist militant group that in 2021 overran the U.S.-trained Afghan military and toppled the government in Kabul.

“If they attempt to deport the Afghans, you’re going to see actual physical conflict between veterans and ICE,” predicted Matt Zeller, an Army veteran who became a prominent advocate for America’s Afghan allies after his interpreter saved his life.

Follow Trump’s second term

Advocacy groups estimate that about 10,000 Afghans in the United States have been dependent on TPS while they navigate the lengthy and complex process for obtaining permanent residency, a process made all the more difficult, they say, by the absolute chaos that defined Afghanistan’s collapse — and by the guidance they received from the U.S. government while trying to escape.

By declaring his intent to end these protections, President Donald Trump risks alienating a key demographic — veterans of the war — at the same time he seeks to court them politically. His administration has intensified its scrutiny of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and demanded accountability for 13 U.S. troops and an estimated 170 Afghans killed in a suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport as the evacuation, hastily orchestrated by the Biden administration, raced to a tragic end.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

In this photo from the U.S. Air Force, crews prepare to load evacuees aboard a C-17 cargo jet at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Aug. 21, 2021. (Getty Images)

Since returning to office, Trump has moved with speed and severity to eliminate legal immigration pathways, particularly humanitarian protections for those who fled crises abroad. In announcing an end to Afghans’ TPS, the administration said there have been “notable improvements” in Afghanistan under the Taliban’s authoritarian rule — a claim the Afghans’ advocates call fundamentally wrong.

“To me as a veteran, that’s incredibly offensive,” said Andrew Sullivan, a former infantry company commander in Afghanistan who works with No One Left Behind, a veterans nonprofit that helps resettle Afghans and Iraqis who risked their lives to serve the U.S. government during its post-9/11 wars.

Sullivan, who last year addressed a Republican-led congressional hearing focused on Taliban reprisals, said he has met with Afghans who were attacked or tortured because of their U.S. affiliation — including one who is now a paraplegic. The Trump administration’s assessment of the safety conditions in Afghanistan, he said, is “laughable.”

“If there was ever a country that deserves TPS,” Sullivan insisted, “it is Afghanistan.”

An international watchdog, Human Rights Watch, wrote in its 2025 report on Afghanistan that the situation there has “worsened” over the past year as “Taliban authorities intensified their crackdown on human rights, particularly against women and girls.” More than half the population needed urgent humanitarian assistance last year, the group found, including nearly 3 million people who faced “emergency levels of hunger.”

CASA, Inc., a national immigrant rights organization, has sued the Trump administration over its decision to end Afghans’ TPS, arguing that Noem, as homeland security secretary, failed to follow “statutorily mandated notice procedures” and callously endangered thousands of people “living and working lawfully in this country.” The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, where the case will be heard, has set an expedited schedule.

Afghan evacuees arrive at Dulles International Airport, outside Washington, on Aug. 31, 2021. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The war’s deadly endgame has been fiercely politicized. Trump tirelessly attacked President Joe Biden over the scenes of violence and despair that marked the two-week retreat from Kabul. In turn, Biden and his aides faulted Trump, who in his first term as president struck an exit deal with the Taliban that Biden maintained he was forced to carry out. Various investigations have determined that both administrations — and the two that came before them — made costly mistakes.

Many Republicans who took part in the frantic effort to rescue Afghan allies now echo Trump’s skepticism about the evacuees.

Since the FBI arrested an Afghan evacuee last year on charges he was planning an Islamic State-inspired Election Day attack, Trump’s backers and fellow immigration hard-liners have argued, without evidence, that a broader swath of the evacuee population poses a threat to U.S. national security.

Rep. Brian Mast (R-Florida), an Army veteran who lost both legs in an explosion while serving in Afghanistan and who convened last year’s House hearing on Taliban reprisals, said he sees a stark contrast between Afghans who worked directly with U.S. forces — who he said would not be affected by the TPS termination — and those who did not.

“They’re not one in the same,” Mast said in an interview. “There’s people that maybe worked on a base, maybe they worked at [TGI] Fridays on a base as a waiter or something like that. That doesn’t mean that they were out on missions with me, rolling people up, right?”

The congressman said he was not immediately concerned that the Taliban might seek to execute or punish such people if they returned to Afghanistan. “I’ll think about how I feel about that,” he said.

Shawn VanDiver, president and board chairman of #AfghanEvac, a coalition of groups that have worked to extricate and protect vulnerable Afghans, said he was appalled by what he called the “political amnesia” of those such as Mast. It was only last year that the congressman “sounded the alarm” about what might happen to America’s Afghan allies if the U.S. government failed to keep its promises to protect them.

“These are real lives, not talking points. And the idea that a cook, a janitor or a mechanic at Bagram [air base] deserves less protection than a combat interpreter is both morally bankrupt and strategically foolish,” said VanDiver, a Navy veteran. “The Taliban doesn’t do performance reviews. They don’t check résumés. They kill people for being associated with us.”

“These are people whose only ‘crime’ is having lived, learned or worked in the United States. And now, with TPS terminated and no viable pathway forward, they face an impossible choice: return to persecution or risk deportation from the very country they trusted,” he said.

Taliban security personnel stand guard as Afghan refugees returning from neighboring Pakistan arrive at a medical camp in Kandahar on May 3. (Qudratullah Razwan/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

Many of those who escaped Afghanistan were simply lucky enough to make it through the panicked crowds thronging Kabul’s airport as the Taliban closed in and began meting out violent retribution to those suspected of working with the United States, or with the Afghan government that Washington had supported.

Tens of thousands of other Afghans, who advocacy groups said were eligible for the Special Immigrant Visas reserved for those who served the U.S. mission, were left behind. Others who made it onto evacuation planes were separated from young children, their spouses or their parents, and have sought to bring them to the United States in the years since.

For veterans of the war who say their survival depended on the relationships they built with Afghan partners, Trump’s abrupt cancellation of deportation protections is a deeply, bitterly shameful slight. Some devoted considerable time and personal expense to help evacuate and resettle their former Afghan partners during Kabul’s collapse.

Advocacy groups such as No One Left Behind say they continue to urge members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, to intervene. But the GOP, which holds majorities in the House and Senate, has yet to demonstrate an appetite to challenge a president who is so determined to lock down U.S. borders and ramp up deportations, no matter the means — and no matter the potential cost.

The Afghans’ plight gained some attention during a recent Senate hearing with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, when Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s top Democrat, appealed for clarity on Trump’s plans. America’s Afghan allies, she said, “have been stranded in Qatar and Albania, and Pakistan and Afghanistan,” she said. “Is this administration going to allow them to come to the United States as promised?”

Rubio was vague in his response, citing an ongoing review. “We are determining,” he said, “whether we are properly vetting people.”

U.S. troops stand guard at Kabul airport in August 2021 after the collapse of Afghanistan’s Western-backed government triggered a desperate bid to flee the country. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images)

Advocates say the Afghans dependent on TPS include women’s rights activists, journalists, humanitarian workers, and former members of the Afghan military and government who are ineligible for Special Immigrant Visas because they did not work directly for the United States. But even for those who are eligible, obtaining them has been extraordinarily difficult because many — at the urging of the Biden administration — sought to evade Taliban detection as they fled and destroyed documents showing their U.S. affiliation.

“Some of these are our closest partners, people that actually worked with us and for us, that are simply using the TPS program because that was the only option,” said Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colorado), a former Army Ranger who fought in Afghanistan and was among the U.S. lawmakers who rallied to help when the evacuation was declared.

“If they’re sent back to Afghanistan,” Crow said, “it would be a death sentence for them.”

What readers are saying

The comments overwhelmingly criticize the Trump administration's decision to end deportation protections for Afghans who assisted the U.S. military, highlighting it as a betrayal of allies who risked their lives. Many express concern that this decision damages the U.S.'s... Show more

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By Abigail Hauslohner

Abigail Hauslohner is a Washington Post national security reporter focused on Congress. She was previously a roving national correspondent, writing on topics ranging from immigration to political extremism. She covered war and politics in the Middle East for seven years, and joined the Post in 2012 as Cairo bureau chief.follow on X@ahauslohner

By Emily Wax-Thibodeaux

Emily Wax-Thibodeaux is a National staff writer who covers national news, with a focus on gender issues and social movements for the America desk. She is an award-winning former foreign correspondent who covered Africa and India for nearly a decade.follow on X@emily_wax

25. Majority of Americans believe President must obey court rulings: New poll

I suppose the 30% who do not believe in judicial compliance do not know what it means to live in a Republic. I know every single person who says that the US is a republic must be absolutely in favor of judicial compliance because separation of powers and checks and balances are at the very heart of a republican form of government.

Excertp:

The survey reveals strong cross-partisan support for judicial compliance, with more than 70 percent of Republicans, Democrats, and independents agreeing presidents must follow court rulings.

https://www.newsweek.com/majority-americans-believe-president-must-obey-court-rulings-new-poll-2077102?utm

Majority of Americans believe President must obey court rulings: New poll

Newsweek · by Adeola Adeosun · May 26, 2025

Adeola Adeosun is the Newsweek Weekend Night Editor based in Atlanta, Georgia. Her focus is reporting on U.S. national news, politics and trends. Adeola joined Newsweek in 2024 and has previously worked for CNN, Bossip, and The Messenger. You can get in touch with Adeola by emailing a.adeosun@newsweek.com. Languages: English.

A new Marquette University Law School Poll has revealed that 79 percent of Americans believe presidents must obey federal court rulings, with even stronger support—84 percent—for compliance with Supreme Court decisions.

The national survey, conducted May 5-15, 2025, interviewed 1,004 adults with a margin of error of +/-3.6 percentage points. The poll gains heightened significance after President Donald Trump's Memorial Day attack on federal judges, whom he called "monsters" who want the United States "to go to hell."

The poll also found that 70 percent of respondents oppose impeaching judges for ruling against presidential actions, despite escalating rhetoric from the Trump administration following a series of unfavorable court decisions on immigration policies.

Newsweek reached out to the White House via email on Monday for comment.

Why It Matters

These findings underscore broad public support for judicial independence at a critical moment as Trump's rhetoric against federal judges has reached new heights. On Memorial Day, the president posted on his Truth Social platform that judges suffer from "an ideology that is sick" and accused them of being "on a mission to keep murderers, drug dealers, rapists, gang members, and released prisoners from all over the world" in the country.

Trump's attacks follow a series of court defeats, including a recent 7-2 Supreme Court ruling that found his administration violated due process rights of Venezuelan migrants during deportations.

What To Know

The survey reveals strong cross-partisan support for judicial compliance, with more than 70 percent of Republicans, Democrats, and independents agreeing presidents must follow court rulings.

However, the data shows significant partisan variations on specific constitutional questions:

Growing Democratic Opposition to Executive Overreach: Among Democrats, support for presidential compliance with Supreme Court rulings surged from 79 percent in December 2024 to 93 percent in May 2025—a 14-point increase that coincides with Trump's return to office.

Republican Consistency Despite Tensions: Republican opinion remained remarkably stable, with 78 percent supporting compliance in May compared to 79 percent in December, even as Trump escalated his attacks on federal judges.

Executive Power Boundaries: The poll reveals clear limits to public tolerance for expanded presidential authority. Some 62 percent say Trump's actions to freeze spending and close congressionally authorized agencies exceed presidential power, with sharp partisan divides: 88 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of independents oppose such actions, while 63 percent of Republicans support them.

Legislative Authority Remains Sacred: An overwhelming 81 percent oppose allowing presidents to make laws unilaterally when Congress fails to act—up from 72 percent in 2020—with even 69 percent of Republicans rejecting such expanded executive power.

Court Blocking Orders Viewed as Proper: When asked about federal courts temporarily blocking Trump administration executive actions, 64 percent call this a proper use of judicial authority. The response splits along partisan lines, with 87 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of independents supporting such judicial interventions, while 61 percent of Republicans oppose them.

What People Are Saying

The escalating tension between the Trump administration and federal judiciary has drawn sharp reactions from key figures:

President Donald Trump's Memorial Day Truth Social message: "U.S. judges were on a mission to keep murderers, drug dealers, rapists, gang members, and released prisoners from all over the world, in our country so they can rob, murder, and rape again—all protected by these USA hating judges who suffer from an ideology that is sick."

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, of the Trump administration-ordered deportations: "Those are the terrorists that President Trump is finding and apprehending that our Democrat judges and Democrat activists are trying to keep on U.S. soil."

The top White House adviser has said the Trump administration is actively exploring ways to expand its legal authority to deport undocumented migrants, including the potential suspension of habeas corpus rights.

Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News that Judge James Boasberg was "meddling in our government" and questioned "why is the judge trying to protect terrorists who invaded our country over American citizens?"

In March, the president called for Boasberg, who had ordered a halt of the Trump administration's deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members, to be impeached, accusing him of being on the "radical left."

Conservative former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig to MSNBC: "No, the judges are not deranged, Pam Bondi. They are simply enforcing their oath to the Constitution of the United States. The same oath that you, Madam Attorney General, took yourself."

He added: "I don't know where this ends…but it appears that, in this moment, the president intends to prosecute this war against the federal judiciary and the rule of law to its catastrophic end."

On recent Supreme Court cases, the poll shows mixed public reception. Sixty-seven percent favor the court's ruling requiring the Trump administration to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, erroneously deported to El Salvador, though 59 percent of Republicans oppose this decision.

Similarly, 65 percent support the court's ruling on due process requirements for deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.

U.S. President Donald Trump, left, greets Chief Justice John Roberts at the U.S. Capitol on March 4, 2025, in Washington D.C. U.S. President Donald Trump, left, greets Chief Justice John Roberts at the U.S. Capitol on March 4, 2025, in Washington D.C. Win McNamee/Getty Images

What Happens Next

Trump's escalating conflict with the federal judiciary appears far from resolution, with the president showing no signs of moderating his rhetoric, despite suffering multiple legal defeats.

The Marquette poll's findings suggest this strategy may face public resistance, with broad bipartisan support for judicial compliance and opposition to impeaching judges for unfavorable rulings. Even among Republicans who oppose recent Supreme Court immigration decisions, substantial majorities—75 percent to 79 percent—still say presidents must obey court rulings.

Newsweek · by Adeola Adeosun · May 26, 2025

26. Commentary: China seeks to remind the world of its rules, with new national security white paper

Excerpts:

National security decision-making will become more centralised under Mr Xi and the party's Central Committee. New national security legislations and regulatory frameworks will be developed to govern critical emerging fields.

The government plans to increase investment in building up national security institutions and human capital, likely leading to an expansion of both the state security and public security apparatus. National security awareness campaigns and academic research will be promoted, potentially bolstering the whole-of-society approach to counterintelligence.

New legislations and regulatory policies – building on existing national security, intelligence, and counterespionage laws – are expected to elevate the importance of national security across the board, possibly reinforcing an unwelcoming climate for foreign businesses.

State security surveillance capabilities will be upgraded, while national security campaigns targeting the public – particularly the youth – will be launched to promote ideological uniformity.

Mr Xi’s direct control over the People’s Liberation Army will be reinforced, a development that could contribute to greater bureaucratic inertia and unpredictability in the use of force.

The defiant tone of the white paper suggests that tensions will only increase. Judging by the current trajectory of US-China relations, it is almost certain that the US will eventually challenge China’s red lines and elicit firm responses, further intensifying their rivalry and leading to greater global instability.

Commentary: China seeks to remind the world of its rules, with new national security white paper

The direct challenge posed by the United States is a prominent theme, but China is far better at describing external forces than internal threats, says Yang Zi from the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/china-xi-jinping-trump-usa-national-security-white-paper-5148916

In this picture taken in Beijing on Mar 11, 2023, a large video screen shows an image of President Xi Jinping taking his oath after his re-election as China's leader. (Photo: AP/Andy Wong)

Listen7 min

27 May 2025 06:00AM

Read a summary of this article on FAST.

FAST

SINGAPORE: As much as China sees almost every aspect of life as an issue of national security, it has never published a white paper on the topic – unlike the United States where each administration typically puts out at least one National Security Strategy. That changed on May 12.

China released its first national security white paper, articulating official positions and strategic priorities. Rooted in the “comprehensive national security” concept President Xi Jinping introduced in 2014, it reflects continuity rather than a departure from past practices.

But if it’s ongoing practice, why did China feel the need to release it as an official document now?

It’s not hard to see why. As the world undergoes unprecedented changes, China aims to project strength, to promote itself as a stabilising force and legitimate counterweight to the US that is shaking up the established international order.

The white paper tells us that even though China has repeatedly said it will “never seek hegemony”, it still wants to remind the world of the rules it plays by.

People walk past a Chinese flag along hutongs at a commercial area in Beijing, Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

Since Mr Xi came to power, China’s definition of national security has become broad and all-encompassing, extending over some 20 domains. Beyond traditional domains like politics and the military, non-traditional fields are also seen as risks to national security – from the economy, food and culture to resources, outer space and artificial intelligence. In 2023, China briefly considered a law to ban clothing that “hurts national feelings”.

Still, the white paper – titled China’s National Security In The New Era – offers valuable insight into how Chinese leaders perceive national security, how these concerns shape national interests, and how the government intends to address emerging challenges.

ASIA-PACIFIC AS ARENA OF BIG POWER CONTEST

China sees the Asia-Pacific as the focal point of great power competitions.

Despite previously advocating that the region should not be “an arena for big power contest”, Chinese leaders now recognise that it has become an inevitability. Compared to the Biden era, US President Donald Trump’s confrontational and unilateralist approach presents a frontal challenge to China’s position in Asia.

The direct threat posed by the US is a dominant theme throughout. US efforts to strengthen regional alliances and expand military presence are depicted as exacerbating existing conflicts and territorial disputes involving China. The white paper also blamed the US’ Asian allies for participating in so-called “exclusive cliques” led by Washington.

Commentary: Why is Beijing sensitive about clothes that ‘hurt the feelings of the Chinese nation’?

Commentary: China is testing Trump in the South China Sea and the region is watching

To counter these, China is positioning itself as a champion of free trade and multilateralism. It calls for leveraging the United Nations as a platform for resolving differences, advocates deeper strategic ties with Russia, and closer engagement with European countries and Global South nations.

China aims to expand security cooperation with ASEAN member states, to offset the impact of the US’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, which it characterises as the “Asia-Pacific version of NATO” designed to contain China.

There are four “red lines” that the US must not cross: “the Taiwan issue, democracy and human rights, China’s path and institutions, and the country’s right to development”.

The last point in particular has gained importance given the spate of US tariffs and export controls, with China affirming a forceful response to any effort to stifle its development, vowing to confront “tariff wars, trade wars, technology wars and public opinion wars”.

The favorable outcome of recent US-China trade negotiations appears to have hardened Beijing’s resolve to stand firm in future conflicts with Washington.

Commentary: What Donald Trump’s tariffs might end up doing to Taiwan

Commentary: Trump blinked again on tariffs, but China isn’t in the clear

INTERNAL SECURITY THREATS ARE BLAMED ON EXTERNAL FORCES

The white paper emphasised the interconnectedness of global and domestic security environments, but it is far better at describing the external forces than the internal threats.

Notably, the document placed the blame for China’s internal security challenges on alleged foreign conspiracies and ideological infiltration. It warned against increasing subversion efforts as the China-US rivalry intensifies.

Political security was named the “lifeline of national security”. At the core of this is the leadership role of China’s Communist Party.

Rehashing hackneyed party lines and longstanding official rhetoric, the white paper claimed that without strong party leadership, China risked political fragmentation and internal disarray with dire consequences for the nation and its people. It cautioned against efforts to divide, westernise, or destabilise China through so-called “Colour Revolutions”.

In response, there must be reinforcement of the party’s authority, suppression of separatist movements, improvements in living standards, economic development, and a more assertive defence of China’s territorial integrity.

STATE CONTROL IS BOUND TO GROW

By incorporating all aspects of public life under the national security umbrella, the state’s influence is bound to expand. The future plans outlined in the white paper confirmed this.

National security decision-making will become more centralised under Mr Xi and the party's Central Committee. New national security legislations and regulatory frameworks will be developed to govern critical emerging fields.

The government plans to increase investment in building up national security institutions and human capital, likely leading to an expansion of both the state security and public security apparatus. National security awareness campaigns and academic research will be promoted, potentially bolstering the whole-of-society approach to counterintelligence.

New legislations and regulatory policies – building on existing national security, intelligence, and counterespionage laws – are expected to elevate the importance of national security across the board, possibly reinforcing an unwelcoming climate for foreign businesses.

State security surveillance capabilities will be upgraded, while national security campaigns targeting the public – particularly the youth – will be launched to promote ideological uniformity.

Mr Xi’s direct control over the People’s Liberation Army will be reinforced, a development that could contribute to greater bureaucratic inertia and unpredictability in the use of force.

The defiant tone of the white paper suggests that tensions will only increase. Judging by the current trajectory of US-China relations, it is almost certain that the US will eventually challenge China’s red lines and elicit firm responses, further intensifying their rivalry and leading to greater global instability.

Yang Zi is an Associate Research Fellow in the China Programme at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

Source: CNA/gt(ch)

27. Lights out: Trump silences a lonely bastion of journalistic integrity in Asia.

An 8 minute video from Australia on Radio Free Asia is worth watching.

https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/rfa/105338916?utm

The transcript is below as well.

Below the transcript are two statements from Australia; one form the head of the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) and onfr from the spokesperson from the Foreign Ministry.

The good thing of all this is that allies of like-minded democracies may invest more in information and try to emulate the world of RFA nad VOA in the region to fill the gap that will be filled by China and north Korea and Russia, etc. I am sure the US administration will take credit and say, see our actions caused this.

Lights out

7h ago7 hours ago

Trump silences a lonely bastion of journalistic integrity in Asia.

Read a statement from Claire Gorman here. And Foreign Minister Penny Wong here.

7h ago7 hours ago

Transcript

Now, to a real life-and-death struggle on the streets of Myanmar.

Two months on from the 7.7 magnitude earthquake that killed almost 4000 people and leveled much of the capital, thousands remain in temporary shelter grappling with a bloody civil war that rages on and on and staring down a monsoon season ahead.

While this critical news soon faded from our bulletins, one news service against all the odds stayed put to report the crisis from on the ground.

This footage was broadcast by Radio Free Asia, one of the only international outlets to capture these dramatic developments, its own headquarters closed since the coup now reduced to rubble.

Established by the US Congress in response to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Radio Free Asia has for almost three decades published independent news designed to penetrate repressive regimes. Reporting civil rights abuses in China, political persecution in Cambodia and the desperate struggle for freedom in Hong Kong.

Each week it broadcasts via shortwave radio and the internet to more than 58 million people in 10 languages. Often at great risk. At least 13 of its journalists and other staff have been imprisoned since 2008. Five remain behind bars as I speak to you tonight, including in Myanmar and Vietnam.

But in March, instead of Radio Free Asia programming, there was a sudden and awful silence as one by one its news services went dark beginning with Laos and Tibet.

Its Burmese service signed off like this:

KYAW KYAW AUNG: It is with deep sadness that we must farewell you, our audience … Our voices have been silenced. But our commitment to the truth remains unshaken.

- Radio Free Asia, 8 May 2025

And why was this programming abruptly suspended?

It turns out Radio Free Asia was finally muzzled not by civil wars or natural disasters but by Donald Trump, as its South East Asia editor Ginny Stein discovered by email:

GINNY STEIN: … our contract which had been signed late last year was no longer … funds were no longer going to be delivered to RFA … and it was just unilaterally decided that we would no longer receive those funds …

- Interview, 22 May 2025

In March, amidst a broad cost-cutting campaign, Trump shuttered America’s other global broadcaster Voice of America.

Clearly no fan of the network, he voiced this opinion five years ago:

DONALD TRUMP: … have you heard what’s coming out of the Voice of America, it’s disgusting.

- PBS NewsHour, 15 April 2020

And brought in a trusted lieutenant to choke off funding for Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe, appointing failed Senate candidate Kari Lake to the organisation overseeing both services the US Agency for Global Media:

KARI LAKE: … it's a very corrupt agency I've learned since I've been here … Some people have said ‘look I've seen Marxist programming going out, I've seen anti-American programming going out, I've seen programming that supports our adversaries. Why is the American taxpayer paying for that?’

- The Matt Gaetz Show, One America News, 4 April 2025

Fellow Trump sycophant Elon Musk described the US-funded outlets as staffed by radical left crazies:

GINNY STEIN: Well I'm not a crazy left wing loon and I'm in charge of these services, I'm a credible journalist and I have been my entire career … our role is to ensure accurate information and that's something we have worked extremely hard at …

- Interview, 22 May 2025

RFA and Radio Free Europe are both fighting to stay alive and have filed lawsuits against the US Government.

In the meantime those expatriate RFA journalists who had been working from the US now face an uncertain future:

MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you think you will be deported?

KHOA LAI: I believe so but I hope not. … If I go back then the Government will snatch me right away.

- CBS News, 22 March 2025

Another casualty closer to home is RFA’s affiliate BenarNews, a digital news service which for 10 years has been filing richly reported stories from the Pacific and South East Asia exposing political repression, corruption and alleged war crimes.

Its website which hasn’t been updated since early April now carries this banner.

Benar News’ recently retrenched Pacific editor Stefan Armbruster told Media Watch the service displaced mis and dis-information across the region and focused on untold and neglected stories like:

… violence against women and massacres in Papua New Guinea, the continuing brutal conflict in West Papua … and the contestation of China’s economic, diplomatic and military expansion …

- Email, Stefan Armbruster, Former Head of News (Pacific), Radio Free Asia/BenarNews, 23 May 2025

He added:

… the Trump administration has trashed the US’s reputation in the region …

- Email, Stefan Armbruster, Former Head of News (Pacific), Radio Free Asia/BenarNews, 23 May 2025

In all, America's global news services reached a combined 427-million people every week, an extraordinary tool of influence promoting the rule of law and the institutions of democracy which the current US administration has chosen perhaps for a lack of interest in such ideals to cast aside like so much flotsam:

That Trump has surrendered a tried-and-tested tool of soft US power decades in the making, a brand trusted by overseas audiences amid the ongoing battle for ideas, can only be good news for those who RFA’s reporting sought to combat.

- The Diplomat, 27 March 2025

And stepping into the vacuum?

China for one which celebrated Trump’s cuts.

Ginny Stein told us Beijing had already been seducing local media outlets not just with free news copy which Radio Free Asia offered but with cash gifts:

GINNY STEIN: I have been met by a number of countries saying that look, we're taking material from China, we've been offered it and we’re not only being offered it, we’re being paid to take it …

- Interview, 22 May 2025

The European Union announced last week it would salvage Radio Free Europe with a five-and-a-half million Euro rescue package. No such suitor is likely however for Radio Free Asia and it’s not just locals who will now miss out:

GINNY STEIN: … it's business people, it's foreign governments, it's people trying to make decisions about investment, about trying to work out whether to come to the aid of people … decisions are made on the basis of accurate information and without that whole systems breakdown …

- Interview, 22 May 2025

Foreign Minister Penny Wong declined to tell us whether she has made representations to Washington about the shuttering of these news services but says the Labor government has awarded more than $40 million to the ABC to expand its coverage of the Indo Pacific alongside other media initiatives in the region.

The ABC’s head of international services Claire Gorman told us:

The US cuts amplify the need for Australia to step up its international media activity across the Asia Pacific … to counter narratives coming from illiberal states which seek to undermine democratic ideals and the rule of law.

- Email, Claire Gorman, Head ABC International Services, 23 May 2025

For the better part of a century Australia had relied on the US not just for its own security but as a bulwark against repressive ideology and authoritarian impulse.

Now with Donald Trump in the White House it seems we can rely on it no longer and nor can the millions across Asia who must once more make do with a sanitised world sanctioned by state-run media.

26-May-2025

Claire M Gorman - Head ABC International

· What outlook does the ABC have with respect to its Asia Pacific news and information services in light of these changes?

The US cuts amplify the need for Australia to step up its international media activity across the Asia Pacific and the ABC's vital role in achieving this. We must be able to offer audiences across the region access to independent, impartial news and current

affairs covering issues that are important to them. This is essential to counter narratives coming from illiberal states which seek to undermine democratic ideals and the rule of law.

I wrote about this challenge in the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s The Strategist published in mid-April. This piece provides an up-to-date summation of our position and our pitch to Government: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/to-counter-anti-

democratic-propaganda-step-up-funding-for-abc-international/

· Has the ABC discussed these events with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade? If so, what is the nature of these conversations?

We're in ongoing discussions with DFAT and DITRDCA regarding the information environment across the region and the key role played by the ABC. We want to expand our capacity to champion local independent public interest media, provide value to regional audiences and assist in filling their information needs.

· Will the ABC be seeking additional government support to fill the vacuum

As stated above, the ABC has ongoing discussions with Government about the role we play now and could play into the future with additional funding for our Asia Pacific services.

23-May-2025

A spokesperson for the Foreign Minister

Australia is a partner our region can count on.

The Albanese Government is committed to supporting independent, resilient, and professional media in our region.

We have rebuilt our international development program, ensuring Australia remains a partner of choice for the countries in our region, with more than $2.1 billion to the

Pacific and $1.28 billion to Southeast Asia.

Recognising the impact of global aid cuts, we have reprioritised our development

assistance to dedicate 75 cents of every Australian development dollar to support the Indo-Pacific.

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

Company Name | Website

The Case for a Pacific Defense Pact

America Needs a New Asian Alliance to Counter China

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QUAD GOALS

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President expresses frustration over new attacks in Ukraine and slow pace of talks

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In quest to make NATO more lethal, the Pentagon turns to the high north and the Baltics

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