Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“One should not be afraid of someone who owns a library and reads many books; one should be afraid of someone who owns only one book, considers it sacred, but has never read it.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche.

"The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him."

— Niccolò Machiavelli, born May 3, 1469

“Tue leadership is stewardship, not ownership.”

– Plato

1. America’s New Pacific Army Commander Lays Out His China Strategy

2. Exposing Coercion – Philippine response ‘completely upended China’s South China Sea strategy’

3. Lack of Will Prevents Wars from Being Won

4. The case of the Philippines: A masterclass in strategic collaboration

5. My Take | Forget Mao, Clausewitz is a better guide to the real US-Chinese trade war

6. Ukrainian Naval Drones Shoot Down Russian Jets in Military First, Kyiv Says

7. Trump’s Three Steps to Economic Growth

8. How Bad Is China’s Economy? The Data Needed to Answer Is Vanishing

9. Trump Should Try Operation Warp Speed 2.0

10. Teenage Terrorists Are a Growing Threat to Europe’s Security

11. The Wisdom of Trump’s Trade Austerity

12. It actually makes sense that Trump has given Marco Rubio all these jobs — here’s why

13. The U.S.-China Tariff War – and Some Lessons from History

14. A Commander’s Case for Women, Peace, and Security by Mark Hertling

15. Trump Calls For 100% Tariff on Movies Made Overseas

16. Embattled Voice of America's fate uncertain after brief apparent reprieve

17. Trump Says Third Term Is ‘Not Something I’m Looking to Do’

18. Trump Says ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked if He Must Uphold the Constitution

19. These Thinkers Set the Stage for Trump the All-Powerful

20. One Moment That Foretold It All

21. The State Department Makes an Enemies List – And I am on it by Anne Applebaum

22. ‘The Rock’ reboot?: Alcatraz may get new life under President Trump

23. Beyond the Hype: Why Drones Cannot Replace Artillery

24. Why Public Attitudes are important but neglected in Post-conflict Peacebuilding

25. Deep Rivalry or Elite Obsession? Washington’s Search for Dominance Over China (Book Review)

26. Another Last Supper and a New Era of Defense Giants

27. Trump Says He Asked Mexico to Let U.S. Military In to Fight Cartels

28. The End of the Global Aid Industry

29. Top NSC official wants to normalize offensive hacking as tool of US might

1. America’s New Pacific Army Commander Lays Out His China Strategy

Again, we need to shift from "burden sharing" to "burden owning" where each country owns the burden for their defense ... BUT... also as importantly contributes capabilities to the mutual defense of friends, partners, and allies in an integrated defense structure in the Asia Pacific (Indo-Pacific). We should not be asking how much a country should pay for US forces in the region but how all can contribute collectively to mutual defense (and winning) against the CRINK (China, Russia, Iran, and north Korea).

Excerpts:

The Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally, has faced forceful tactics from China in the South China Sea over the past three years—another example, Clark said, of how the region has become more dangerous. China’s coast guard has rammed Philippine vessels and blasted them with water cannons, and its personnel have threatened Filipino seamen with knives.

While the Trump administration has heavily criticized many of the U.S.’s European allies, it has promised to more effectively shift America’s focus to the Indo-Pacific. At the same time, President Trump has said that Japan and South Korea aren’t paying enough to host U.S. troops, and his tariffs on many of the U.S.’s Asian partners have raised questions about Washington’s reliability on the security front.

Asked whether trade uncertainties hurt Indo-Pacific alliances, Clark said: “The military-to-military relationships a lot of times are the balance for that because you can find commonality in ways that are apolitical.”

China’s actions, he said, were driving America and its friends closer than before. “Having the urgency of an adversary who is gearing up potentially for conflict places a sense of urgency in the strength of our relationships and the quickness with which we do things,” he said.

America’s New Pacific Army Commander Lays Out His China Strategy

Gen. Ronald Clark says ‘extraordinary times’ demand agile ground forces, new missile systems and a different way of thinking

https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/americas-new-pacific-army-commander-lays-out-his-china-strategy-87f2f5b7?st=nzs8Nq&utm

U.S. soldiers check an air-defense system during this year’s Balikatan joint exercises with the Philippines. Photo: Eloisa Lopez/Reuters

By Niharika MandhanaFollow and Timothy W. MartinFollow

Updated May 4, 2025 12:06 am ET

When Gen. Ronald Clark took charge of the U.S. Army in the Pacific in November, his boss in the region, Adm. Samuel Paparo, had a stark security assessment for him: The situation had worsened since Clark was last posted in the Indo-Pacific, three years earlier.

Six months into the new job, Clark agrees. China’s “aggressive behavior” has made the environment more dangerous, he said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

“These are extraordinary times,” said the commander, who has spent 37 years in the military and oversees 106,000 personnel. “Some of the things that you see our opponents and adversaries undertaking are things that really leave you speechless at times.”

Case in point: China’s rehearsals of a potential blockade of Taiwan, he said. Five years ago, Clark said, he wouldn’t have thought Beijing would consider such a maneuver. “Now it’s commonplace that the PLA would make a move like that,” he said, referring to the People’s Liberation Army, as China’s military is called.

Gen. Ronald Clark, in foreground, tours a U.S. Army garrison in South Korea. Photo: Spc. Caelum Astra/U.S. Army

China claims Taiwan as its territory and doesn’t rule out the use of force to seize it. One of the ways in which it could try to squeeze the democratically governed island into submission is to encircle it and cut it off from the rest of the world. Since 2022, Beijing has launched a series of military exercises that simulate such a blockade. It has also intensified its near-daily “gray zone” pressure around Taiwan using combat aircraft, warships, coast-guard vessels, drones and more.

The commander of U.S. Army Pacific—whose area of operations stretches from Hollywood to Bollywood and polar bears to penguins, he quipped—is taking notes. “It gives us an opportunity to really understand how they would go about something like a blockade or potentially a cross-strait invasion, which as we all know is exceptionally difficult,” he said, referring to a potential Chinese amphibious attack to capture Taiwan.

Unlike a blockade, such an operation would involve Chinese warships crossing the Taiwan Strait, a waterway several dozen miles wide, to land troops and equipment on Taiwan.

“To think that you could execute a mission like that over a contested space that’s roughly 80 nautical miles—it would be a challenge,” Clark said. “We just have to make sure that they understand that our efforts to deter that type of activity is exactly what we’re willing to do.”

China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.

China’s bubble

China under President Xi Jinping is undertaking a dramatic military buildup, cranking out warships, missiles and nuclear warheads at a blistering pace. The rapid, root-and-branch transformation has turned the economic powerhouse into the U.S.’s most formidable rival, blunting many of America’s long-held advantages and forcing it to reorient for a new era of great-power competition.

Critics say the U.S. has been slow to respond to the shift, bogged down by the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Its shipyards are already struggling to keep up and its defense industrial base can’t sustain a protracted fight.

Especially vexing for the U.S. are Chinese capabilities, including an ever-expanding arsenal of missiles, aimed at effectively shutting American forces out of critical swaths of the Indo-Pacific. These areas extend from China’s eastern coastline to the so-called first island chain—which includes Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines—and increasingly stretch further out into the western Pacific. This is where some of the region’s most dangerous flashpoints lie, such as Taiwan and the South China Sea.

A satellite image from late March shows barges off China’s south coast that could be used in an amphibious assault. Photo: Planet Labs/AFP/Getty Images

A screen in Beijing broadcasts news footage of Chinese drills conducted in the waters around Taiwan. Photo: Tingshu Wang/Reuters

If a conflict erupted, Beijing would try to restrict U.S. warships and aircraft from joining the fight by making these spaces too dangerous for them. Military planners call this A2/AD, or anti-access/area-denial.

That is where ground forces come in, said Clark. The Army, moving away from the earlier era of fighting insurgencies, has created agile new units to operate on front-line territories including the first island chain. In a conflict, the idea would be for these forces to disperse, hit Chinese targets from land, collect valuable battlespace information and create openings for U.S. air and naval forces to maneuver.

Two such units, called Multi-Domain Task Forces, have been constituted for the Indo-Pacific. A third is in the works.

To help them do their jobs, the Army is deploying new missile systems. That includes the Typhon, which can go after enemy ships, aircraft and land targets as far as mainland China. The Army sent the platform last year to the Philippines—where it remains—accompanied by U.S. soldiers, drawing rebukes from Beijing.

“If it gives them pause, if it causes them to think twice, if it causes them to delay any thoughts they would have about some sort of aggressive action towards Taiwan that would result somehow in reunification, let them have it,” Clark said.

A Typhon system is loaded onto a C-17 transport plane before its deployment to the Philippines last year. Photo: Cpt. Ryan DeBooy/U.S. Army

The tyranny of distance

China has big advantages, including proximity. Any major fight in the region would take place in its vicinity, while U.S. soldiers coming from America risk getting there too late.

Clark sees an opportunity to get around that—now. His forces are spending more time in key locations through a packed schedule of military exercises and other activities that are aimed at strengthening America’s partnerships, which also means that if a fight broke out, they would already be close by.

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In recent days, as part of annual drills called Balikatan, U.S. soldiers and Marines along with Philippine and Australian forces were out on a distant beach along the South China Sea. Their mission: to practice repelling an amphibious invasion. The enemy fleet was imaginary—standing in were makeshift offshore targets, such as barrels lashed to bamboo rafts and small remote-controlled boats. But the hundreds of bullets and missiles the defenders fired were real.

The troops, many of them positioned in trenches in a tree line along the beach, unleashed a range of firepower: precision missiles, antiaircraft weapons, shoulder-fired missiles, rifles, machine guns and more. An American P-8A patrol aircraft and MQ-9 Reaper drone circled overhead.

The finale was the U.S. Army’s Himars system, which shot six training missiles at notional targets in the water. It had traveled to the Philippine island of Palawan by air, sea and land. That meant flying in a transport plane, sailing 100 miles in an amphibious boat and finally rolling off for a drive over jungle terrain to the beachside.

U.S. and Philippine Marines take part in a live-fire exercise on the island of Palawan. Photo: Jam Sta Rosa/AFP/Getty Images

A Himars launcher on Palawan fires toward the water during last month’s drills. Photo: Jam Sta Rosa/AFP/Getty Images

The Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally, has faced forceful tactics from China in the South China Sea over the past three years—another example, Clark said, of how the region has become more dangerous. China’s coast guard has rammed Philippine vessels and blasted them with water cannons, and its personnel have threatened Filipino seamen with knives.

While the Trump administration has heavily criticized many of the U.S.’s European allies, it has promised to more effectively shift America’s focus to the Indo-Pacific. At the same time, President Trump has said that Japan and South Korea aren’t paying enough to host U.S. troops, and his tariffs on many of the U.S.’s Asian partners have raised questions about Washington’s reliability on the security front.

Asked whether trade uncertainties hurt Indo-Pacific alliances, Clark said: “The military-to-military relationships a lot of times are the balance for that because you can find commonality in ways that are apolitical.”

China’s actions, he said, were driving America and its friends closer than before. “Having the urgency of an adversary who is gearing up potentially for conflict places a sense of urgency in the strength of our relationships and the quickness with which we do things,” he said.

Write to Niharika Mandhana at niharika.mandhana@wsj.com and Timothy W. Martin at Timothy.Martin@wsj.com

2. Exposing Coercion – Philippine response ‘completely upended China’s South China Sea strategy’

"Assertive transparency." Excellent work by our Philippine ally.

We must recognize the strategies and actions of our adversaries, understand them, EXPOSE them, and then attack those strategies and actions with a superior political warfare strategy.

Excerpts:

Assertive transparency also could be used in the cyber domain, where government-linked hackers in China — as well as in Iran, North Korea and Russia — increasingly target foreign lawmakers, businesses and voters. The message is harder to illustrate, but not impossible, Powell argues: “There are ways, especially using graphics … to sort of bring that message home to people who are potentially affected by cyber aggression so that people can really come to terms with the fact that China’s campaign is against not just the Philippines, but against its potential adversaries globally.”

Challenges to such transparency are inevitable. Government and military institutions may hesitate to release information quickly because of security concerns, which makes the Philippines’ success even more remarkable, Powell said. Nations also may be unwilling to accept the increased risk from exposing belligerence. In the case of the China’s strategy, however, avoiding a response will not deter the actions, Powell said. “You can sort of lay low and hope that the wave passes over you, but the wave is coming regardless,” he added. “All you’re doing by sort of downplaying the incidents is allowing China to consolidate gains in the darkness instead of being open, instead of having to conduct its aggressions in the light of day.”

Exposing Coercion - Indo-Pacific Defense FORUM

Philippine response ‘completely upended China’s South China Sea strategy’

ipdefenseforum.com

FORUM Staff

China has shown clear intent through its actions in the South China Sea: to control nearly 90% of the economically vital waters, including maritime territory in the Bruneian, Indonesian, Malaysian, Philippine and Vietnamese exclusive economic zones (EEZ). Over decades, however, China has sought to secure its illegitimate claims with lawfare activity conducted in relative obscurity.

Examples include Beijing’s deployment of maritime militia, coast guard and survey vessels to swarm other nations’ outposts, ram and fire water cannons at military and humanitarian patrols, block oil and gas exploration and drilling, and interfere with freedom of navigation in international waters.

The coercion has usually been invisible to most of the world, Ray Powell, a retired United States Air Force colonel and director of the SeaLight maritime transparency group at Stanford University in California, told FORUM. It occurred in distant waters where no public or media scrutiny existed. Governments unwilling to publicly clash with a well-armed military and major trading partner remained silent or responded behind closed doors. For years, China has escalated its aggressive tactics to strengthen positions in the South China Sea, including in the internationally recognized waters of its neighbors, but relied on coercive assaults rather than conventional military force. Beijing’s aim is maritime domination without international condemnation or consequence.

The Philippines “completely upended China’s South China Sea strategy,” Powell said.

Filipinos gather in the South China Sea, preparing to deliver provisions for fishing crews harassed by Chinese vessels.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE VIA GETTY IMAGES

Targeting opacity, deniability

Manila already had scored one victory when an international tribunal ruled in 2016 that China’s vast claims on the South China Sea were invalid. While Beijing defied the court and continues pressing its territorial ambitions, the decision supported Philippine sovereignty and solidified the case that Manila has international law on its side.

“Fast-forward to 2023, and we find ourselves gazing in wonder at a second great Philippine innovation,” Powell and U.S. Air Force Capt. Benjamin Goirigolzarri wrote for SeaLight. “This time Manila’s target is the … opacity and deniability in which China has so relentlessly pressed its advantage, and its chief weapon is photography, applied purposefully, generously and consistently over time.”

In the first salvo of what would become a campaign of assertive transparency, the Philippines released photographs of a China Coast Guard ship using a military-grade laser that temporarily blinded crew members on a Philippine Coast Guard vessel. The Philippine crew was on a mission to resupply the BRP Sierra Madre, the Navy ship that serves as a military outpost at Second Thomas Shoal — less than 200 nautical miles from the Philippine island of Palawan and well within Manila’s EEZ.

The Philippines has continued to expose Beijing’s aggression, publicly sharing a stream of images and videos showing maritime militia boats swarming Philippine territory; coast guard ships blocking, ramming and firing water cannons at Philippine vessels; a barrier installed to block Philippine fishers from a lagoon inside the country’s EEZ; and more.

‘Outright unlawful’

Maritime scholars have described such action — aggression that does not cross the threshold of war — as elements of China’s gray-zone strategy, Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said in May 2024 on Powell’s “Why Should We Care about the Indo-Pacific” podcast. “The biggest contribution of the Philippine government in policymaking and also in academics … is that we are calling these illegal actions, outright unlawful,” he said. “This is not a gray-zone activity. This is not a gray-zone strategy. This is a violation of the international law.”

Exposing China’s actions was risky for Manila, and China responded with increased aggression, Powell said. However, Beijing was also forced to the bargaining table after the world saw its coast guard launch a brutal assault on Philippine personnel at Second Thomas Shoal in June 2024. The resulting agreement saw Manila’s forces resupplying the Sierra Madre without interference or harassment. “China clearly decided that it was in its best interest to sort of deconflict the situation around Second Thomas Shoal,” Powell said. The agreement “at least temporarily succeeded in stabilizing that situation and in a way that was favorable for the Philippines.”

Assertive transparency is only one of the measures Manila has employed under the tense circumstances, he added. The objective for any state enduring China’s aggression is to deter and defeat the coercive activities. Powell and other experts say the Philippines has made strides toward that end by rallying national resilience and strengthening international support.

Adm. Samuel Paparo, Commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, left, and Philippine Armed Forces Chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. meet at the Philippine Military Academy in Baguio in August 2024. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Awareness and engagement

With television, newspapers and social media providing firsthand accounts and dramatic images, events in the South China Sea seized the attention of the Philippine people. Before the nation went public with the information, many Filipinos did not understand the harassment their fishers or Coast Guard personnel faced, Tarriela said. He called public awareness the most positive effect of the transparency campaign.

Powell said that awareness empowered decision-makers. “When the public is engaged, that means its legislators are engaged and want to do things that improve the Philippines’ position, such as increasing budgets for maritime services like the Coast Guard and Navy,” he said. The Philippines plans to add five 97-meter patrol vessels to its Coast Guard fleet by 2028 and is considering acquiring multirole fighter jets and midrange missile systems. “All of those things are positive developments for the Philippines’ security situation, which come as a result of engaging and helping the public to understand why building maritime capacity is important,” Powell said. “Those things don’t happen in a democracy unless the public is engaged.”

Multinational security cooperation

Manila also has gained expanded and deeper partnerships. Nations are backing the Philippines in the South China Sea, including Australia, Japan and longtime treaty ally the U.S. The Group of Seven leading industrial nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the U.S. — have repeatedly expressed support for the Philippines and stated that there is “no legal basis for China’s expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea.”

Meanwhile, Allies and Partners are making commitments to Manila’s security. The U.S. in 2024 pledged an unprecedented $500 million for the Philippines’ military and Coast Guard modernization. Japan is providing a low-interest loan of more than $400 million for the five new patrol boats, and the nations have agreed to allow their respective forces to deploy to each other’s territory for exercises, training and humanitarian relief missions. South Korea pledged to help modernize the Philippine military and strengthen Coast Guard cooperation as the countries elevated ties to a strategic partnership. Canada provided satellite tracking technology that allows the Philippines to detect “dark” vessels — those that turn off legally required automatic identification systems — in its territorial waters. Vietnam held its first Coast Guard exercise with Manila. The Philippines also has increased joint maritime patrols in the South China Sea, including with Australia, Canada, Japan and the U.S. “The Philippines is, because of its public stance on the South China Sea, generating lots of interest among like-minded nations, even including nations like India and Vietnam who want to deepen defense ties,” Powell said.

Such multinational cooperation supports deterrence by building partner capabilities, Lawrence Walzer, a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer and faculty member at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, told FORUM. When Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Kyiv’s security partners had not emphasized the support they would offer, and the world did not anticipate Ukraine’s resolve and tenacity, he added. “If Russia had known, would they have invaded? It’s hypothetical but you could certainly argue that it would’ve given them great pause if they saw what was coming.”

Assertive transparency also helped reveal the regional nature of China’s aggression and prompted a “latticework of alliances,” including among Australia, Japan and Taiwan, Powell said. Countries now recognize that China’s coercive tactics cross borders and extend to all domains. Aggressive air intercepts aim to exert control over areas Beijing claims. Cyberattacks and manipulated information campaigns seek to weaken national resilience in competing countries. Economic coercion attempts to force nations to craft policies favorable to China. “I think the Philippines has really done the region a service by bringing all of this out in the open so that they can start to come up with more of a regional approach,” Powell said.

All-domain utility

Exposing coercive activities has helped deter China’s murky maneuvers. The U.S. Defense Department in 2023 released photographs and video of China’s aggressive and illegal air intercepts in the Indo-Pacific, in addition to reestablishing talks with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Together, the actions led to what U.S. officials called a significant decrease in the PLA’s risky intercepts against U.S. pilots. Powell said the U.S. and its Allies and Partners should consider releasing consistent, immediate information about such behavior to build resilience and deter China.

ipdefenseforum.com

3. Lack of Will Prevents Wars from Being Won

The ultimate strategic question in the first half of the 21st Century is in this conclusion:

Excerpt:

When the Chinese military challenge does come, will the president declare, “this will not stand”? Or back down and not risk a confrontation that could escalate into a world war?

Articles

Lack of Will Prevents Wars from Being Won

Winning depends upon the combination of will and capability. In the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, U.S. capability was twice that of our enemies, and our will was three times less. Consequently, we lost all three wars.

Wednesday, April 30, 2025 2 min read

https://www.hoover.org/research/lack-will-prevents-wars-being-won?utm

By: Bing West

Research Team: Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group

Isaiah Berlin observed that understanding how a person thinks requires drilling down to the central idea he holds, usually hidden behind diversionary rationalizations. In the cases of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the hidden central idea of the policymakers was that America was too rich to lose. In each war, the policymakers believed the enemy—a fraction of our size in population, wealth and modernity—was outclassed. Our weapons and firepower seemed to assure our inevitable success. This Jupiter complex restrained the commitment of both adequate resources and resolute persistence. Since America could not lose and the wars were not existential, our presidents sought to win without inflicting too much harm upon the enemy or committing the required number of American forces, while not arousing the American people by demanding taxes to pay for the wars. Our presidents lacked the will to win. Our enemies had more determination than did a succession of seven American presidents.

Today, the situation is worse. We no longer have a superior capability, let alone the will to win. Under President Reagan four decades ago, America confronted the Soviet Union, and the Defense budget was 6% of GDP. In 2025, America confronted China, and the Defense budget had been slashed in half, to under 3%. Either we spent twice as much as necessary to deter the Soviet Union, or we are foolishly underfunded to deter China, a more formidable foe than was the Soviet Union. We’re like the owner of a fine house in a rough neighborhood who cuts in half his home insurance because he is tired of paying 6% in insurance. Then his house is burnt down.

There is no consensus to increase military funding. Congress annually spends 30% of revenues on welfare payments to fund our least wealthy, and 11% to protect our entire country. There is no historical precedent for that imbalance. It represents a monumental gamble that America will never again fight a major war. China, however, intends to overthrow America as the world’s superpower. There’s no middle ground and no enduring accommodation between two nations with global reach and antagonistic philosophies of human rights. As Professor Graham Allison has expressed it, “when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power, the resulting structural stress makes a violent clash the rule, not the exception.”

With military funding barely keeping up with inflation, our capabilities will eventually be surpassed by China. “The PRC [People’s Republic of China] has made it clear,” FBI Director Christopher Wray warned in 2023, “that it considers every sector that makes our society run as fair game in its bid to dominate on the world stage.”

Chairman Xi is determined to emplace China as the dominant power in the Pacific by subjugating Taiwan. “All indications point to the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) meeting President Xi Jinping’s directive,” Admiral John C. Aquilino, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said in 2023, “to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.”

Taiwan could increase it its defense spending from an inadequate 2.5% of GDP to 6% and produce two million antiship drones every year. China’s invasion fleet numbers 2,000 ships. If each ship had to survive more than a thousand AI-enabled drone attacks, an assault would be impossible. Taiwan refuses to do this because it believes America will fight World War III on its behalf.

The odds are against that. U.S. policy has deliberately left ambiguous whether we will defend Taiwan. Before Xi, in his 70s, passes from the scene, he will test our resolve. An analogy is 1938, when Hitler ordered his military to seize the Sudetenland. His generals objected that the British could send in a superior force. If so, Hitler replied, pull out. Ironically, the British generals told their prime minister the same thing; they weren’t strong enough to resist. In a contest of wills, England backed down and Hitler marched into the Sudetenland without firing a shot.

When, like Hitler, Xi tests America’s resolve, the outcome will depend upon our culture and the president in office. Consider 1991, when Iraq seized the tiny nation of Kuwait. President George W. Bush declared, “this will not stand.” He blurted it out and our nation—our culture—spontaneously agreed. Our coalition swiftly drove Iraq from Kuwait.

But in the three decades since, we lost two wars. Trust in our leaders plummeted. Worse, our body politic is divided about what kind of country we have been and what we should be in the future. Confronting the Soviet Union, President Reagan said, “we win, and they lose.” No president has declared that about China, our determined enemy.

When the Chinese military challenge does come, will the president declare, “this will not stand”? Or back down and not risk a confrontation that could escalate into a world war?

4. The case of the Philippines: A masterclass in strategic collaboration

These relationships among our allies are very important. We need to build on them.

Excerpt:

There is no doubt that Japan is truly a reliable partner of the Philippines. This partnership is even more relevant as both countries face asymmetric security challenges.

The case of the Philippines: A masterclass in strategic collaboration

Katrina Guerrero - Philstar.com

May 3, 2025 | 2:55pm

https://www.philstar.com/news-commentary/2025/05/03/2440272/case-philippines-masterclass-strategic-collaboration

Allied vessels (USS Savannah (LCS-28), JMSDF FFM-5 JS Yahagi, BRP Ramon Alcaraz (PS16), USS Comstock (LSD-45), BRP Apolinario Mabini (PS36), and BRP Gabriela Silang (OPV 8301), sail in formation during the Multilateral Maritime Event of the Balikatan exercises, April 2025.

Armed Forces of the Philippines / Released

Building partnerships and reinforcing strategic collaboration, in both the domestic and international levels, are foundational principles that guide the Philippines as it navigates the current geopolitical landscape.

This strategy, increasingly employed by the current administration, reflects an assertive and constructive approach to foreign relations, sparking renewed confidence among like-minded partners.

The 40th iteration of the Balikatan Exercises perfectly illustrates the Philippines’ strategy. Translated in English, Balikatan means shoulder-to-shoulder. It depicts an image of two comrades working as equals to achieve the same goals and objectives. For the Philippines and the United States, the Balikatan Exercises is an annual representation of their ironclad alliance.

This year’s exercise is the largest to date, both in scale and strategic importance. What was once a bilateral military exercise between two countries has now evolved into one of the largest military exercises in the Indo-Pacific.

In terms of scale, this year’s exercise involves the participation of more than 17,000 personnel from 20 nations. These include troops from Japan and Australia, alongside observers from Brunei, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Thailand, United Kingdom and Vietnam.

Four European countries are also observing for the first time including the Czech Republic, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Poland. The participation of these countries shows the high regard placed on the Philippines and its contributions to ensuring security and stability of the world order.

So far, we have seen the “full-scale battle test” among nations, with activities across four domains of operations: land, air, sea, and cyber.

Advanced weapons systems have been deployed including the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) in the Northern part of the Philippines as part of the Maritime Key Terrain Security Operations. The NMESIS’ versatility, being a land-based missile system that can also hit naval targets, enhances both territorial and maritime defense capabilities of the two allies.

The Philippine Navy also exhibited its capabilities with the deployment of its C-Star cruise missile, considered one of its most advanced anti-ship weapons. In the western part of San Antonio, Zambales, the Philippine Navy successfully test-fired two Mistral 3 surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems aboard BRP Jose Rizal.

Another key highlight is the multilateral maritime event (MME) of the Philippines with the United States and Japan. The three nations, through their respective naval and coast guard forces, demonstrated interoperability and readiness through exercises such as communications drills, division tactics, photo exercises, replenishment at sea, and cross-deck landing qualifications among others. This MME marks Japan’s first-ever active participation in the annual drills, following the signing of the Reciprocal Access Agreement late last year.

This year’s annual exercise comes at a time of geopolitical shifts and tensions, with the West Philippine Sea as the main theater. It is a testament of the Philippines’ resolve to strengthen its external defense capabilities and the international community’s support in reinforcing a secure landscape.

The participation of these nations confirms the strategic importance of the Philippines. It substantiates pronouncements that underscore the collective commitment to uphold regional security and the rules-based order. It is an affirmation of friendship grounded in shared democratic principles, and an illustration of cooperation aimed at fortifying regional deterrence.

The Philippines also welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru for a state visit. The visit underscores commitment to strengthen the strategic partnership of the two countries, which encompasses multiple sectors.

Described as the “golden age” of Japan-Philippines diplomatic relations, the strategic partnership offers a wide array of opportunities for cooperation.

On defense, the two countries agreed to initiate discussions for an Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement. This will allow the exchange of logistical support, supplies, and services of the two nations’ armed forces. The new pact is projected to further enhance interoperability and reinforce logistical support during joint exercises, trainings, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief activities.

On economy, discussions focused on strengthening public-private partnerships. Priority areas include boosting connectivity through participation in a submarine cable project and the construction of a 5G telecommunications network, expanding liquefied natural gas facilities and establishing a resilient energy supply chain, supporting the development of flood control mechanisms, working closely on agriculture products, and enhancing cooperation for infrastructure development.

There is no doubt that Japan is truly a reliable partner of the Philippines. This partnership is even more relevant as both countries face asymmetric security challenges.

New Zealand Defense Minister Judith Collins was also in the Philippines last week for another extremely important milestone. The Philippines and New Zealand signed the Status of Visiting Forces Agreement which establishes a framework for military cooperation between the two countries.

More specifically, the agreement will enable the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the New Zealand Defence Force to engage in joint activities and exercises. This milestone reflects the further deepening of bilateral ties and underscores the shared commitment to stability.

The Philippines has never before seen this much diplomatic and military engagement. Finally, the country is making much-needed strides to strengthen partnerships and enhance interoperability and operational readiness. These engagements are increasingly significant as Manila bolsters its external defense capability as part of efforts to safeguard the West Philippine Sea and defend the rules-based order.

Clearly, the current administration is taking decisive action to position the Philippines as a strategic and responsible security partner. As the Philippines maintains this momentum, it is crucial to ensure that the country’s national interests are at the core of all engagements, with a strong emphasis on upholding international law.

Katrina Guerrero is the program and research manager for defense and security at think tank Stratbase Institute.

5. My Take | Forget Mao, Clausewitz is a better guide to the real US-Chinese trade war

A provocative essay. I have always thought that any complex political military problem can be solved by reading Clausewitz and SunTzu. They will not give you the answers but by engaging with their writings and ideas your will discover the solutions. Maybe I can now include solving complex economic warfare problems too.

Excerpts:

You can easily see why state-funded commentators love the Maoist rhetoric. After all, President Xi Jinping has repeatedly called on the party to relearn from Mao, but especially through On Protracted War, to find enlightenment and confidence on the way forward.

Beijing clearly wants to portray itself as standing firm and ready to fight to the end against Washington’s “bullying” tariff tactics.

But, instead of following Mao, the two sides may already be practising what the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz teaches in his classic On War.

One way to understand what is actually happening on the trade war front may be to recast the Prussian general’s famous but usually misunderstood statement as “war is negotiations by other means”.

Let’s call that “implicit bargaining” before the two sides can begin formal negotiations, leading to a ceasefire and ultimately a peace settlement. In our case, that’s a negotiated trade deal between two of the world’s largest economies.

In fact, through implicit bargaining, Washington and Beijing are already climbing down from their maximalist positions, despite their headline tariff rates against each other of 145 per cent and 125 per cent, respectively.

US-China relations

Opinion China Opinion

Alex Lo

My Take | Forget Mao, Clausewitz is a better guide to the real US-Chinese trade war

Trade wars, like real wars, are an implicit bargaining tool before the start of formal negotiations

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3308951/forget-mao-clausewitz-better-guide-real-us-chinese-trade-war?utm_source=rss_feed

Alex Loin Toronto

Published: 9:00am, 4 May 2025

Is a trade war a real war, or is it only a metaphor? Going by Chinese state media, the country is drawing inspiration from Mao Zedong’s series of speeches, collectively published as the famous On Protracted War.

In it, the Great Helmsman counsels against both optimism for a quick victory and defeatism. Rather, there is a need for a realistic assessment of the stages that must be reached before a decisive battle can be risked to achieve ultimate victory.

That, of course, means readying for a long drawn-out and arduous struggle – in his case, against the invading Japanese, and in our case, against Donald Trump and his trade warriors.

You can easily see why state-funded commentators love the Maoist rhetoric. After all, President Xi Jinping has repeatedly called on the party to relearn from Mao, but especially through On Protracted War, to find enlightenment and confidence on the way forward.

Beijing clearly wants to portray itself as standing firm and ready to fight to the end against Washington’s “bullying” tariff tactics.

But, instead of following Mao, the two sides may already be practising what the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz teaches in his classic On War.

One way to understand what is actually happening on the trade war front may be to recast the Prussian general’s famous but usually misunderstood statement as “war is negotiations by other means”.

Let’s call that “implicit bargaining” before the two sides can begin formal negotiations, leading to a ceasefire and ultimately a peace settlement. In our case, that’s a negotiated trade deal between two of the world’s largest economies.

In fact, through implicit bargaining, Washington and Beijing are already climbing down from their maximalist positions, despite their headline tariff rates against each other of 145 per cent and 125 per cent, respectively.

Trump promises to bring US manufacturing back from China, but will his tariffs work?

By mid-April, Donald Trump had already waived his new steep tariffs on many types of smartphones, computers and other electronics imported largely from China. Car and aviation parts may be next up for exemption.

To reciprocate, some types of medicine, microchips and aerospace equipment from the United States have escaped retaliatory duties in China.

Reuters has reported that Chinese firms from dozens of commercial and industrial sectors have been asked to identify critical goods that they need to be levy-free, leading to speculation that more US import items may escape the worst tariff rates.

The two sides are indeed bargaining back and forth, even if they have not yet formally sat down at the negotiating table.

While neither side wants to be the first to pick up the phone and lose face, it’s clear that at some point, they will have to reach an accommodation or settlement when enough pain has been inflicted on each other.

That’s how most contemporary trade conflicts end, rather than pursuing the “beggar thy neighbour” mercantilist policies that led to the outright trade wars of the Great Depression of the 1930s, and ultimately a shooting war.

Just as most trade wars don’t aim to destroy your rival’s economy because you still need to trade with them, so most wars, as Clausewitz teaches, don’t aim for the total defeat or annihilation of the enemy.

This is, I realise, at variance with the picture many people have of Clausewitz, who supposedly advocated “the maximum use of force”, full frontal assault, and absolute and total war – to seek the enemy’s overthrow.

That’s also why he has been blamed for the mass slaughters of the first world war, a picture that holds, at least in the first five short sections of chapter one of On War. That’s what he called the theory, or thesis of pure absolute war.

For Clausewitz, despite its inhumanity as the ultimate form of organised violence, war is at heart a bargaining process

Alex Lo

But like most German-speaking intellectuals of his generation, Clausewitz learned to think or at least write like the then-pre-eminent philosopher Hegel, with his supposed thesis-antithesis-synthesis, though the philosopher himself never used those terms.

The antithesis or the practice of actual warfare is that both sides eventually reach a point where they don’t want to or can’t continue – or rather, one side or the other reaches the policy/political goal that has been the war aim, hence his famous dictum, that war is policy, or politics by other means.

That’s the opposite or antithetical movement of de-escalation, leading to the restoration of equilibrium and peace.

For Clausewitz, despite its inhumanity as the ultimate form of organised violence, war is at heart a bargaining process.

As opposed to pure theory, its primary purpose in real life – usually – is not total annihilation of the enemy, but to achieve political goals, as defined by policymakers, not generals.

In fact, he warned against putting generals in charge, as they have a tendency to escalate towards total or absolute war, such as when the US general Douglas MacArthur advocated nuking the Chinese and Korean communists and openly criticised his ultimate boss, then president Harry Truman.

“I would have dropped between 30 to 50 tactical atomic bombs … That many bombs would have more than done the job,” MacArthur told a reporter a few years later.

Make America Great Again hats with a “made in China” label on sale in New York. Photo: AFP

For Clausewitz, the means and intensity of violence, as limited by your own available resources, are used to convey a message, intent, or desired outcome to your adversary, and to influence and dictate their behaviour – and of course, vice versa with your opponent.

However, what message you send, and whether your enemy gets your message, misinterprets or just ignores it, is another profound question of military science or art.

The Pentagon and the White House used to wax philosophical about calibrating the intensity and frequency of their bombing of North Vietnam – surely one of the worst war crimes of the last century with its tolls on the civilian population – to “send the Vietnamese communists a message” or “teach them a lesson”.

But in this case, Ho Chi Minh learned from Mao’s protracted warfare rather than Clausewitz. Hanoi got the message all right, and that was why it ultimately won.

But I digress. While Trump has been either exaggerating or lying about already negotiating with the Chinese over trade, he is not entirely wrong in a Clausewitzian sense.

By adjusting and exercising waivers on a select but expanding pool of goods and products, the two sides are indeed bargaining, even if they have yet to sit down across from each other.

If Clausewitz were alive today, he would have no trouble working out the dynamics of the US-Chinese trade war. In fact, the Prussian general often uses investing or throwing good money after bad as analogies to analyse committing or withdrawing troops in a battle.

I read somewhere that professional traders in Germany often have their own copies of On War in their workstations.

Some analysts talk about how much pain China and America could take to see which side would blink first. That is the language of war. Clearly, they are trying to find each other’s pain threshold.

By quoting Mao, the Chinese are telling the world that they can take a lot more pain than spoiled Americans, though they are clearly not following him exactly. And that’s a good thing.

Alex Lo

Alex Lo has been a Post columnist since 2012, covering major issues affecting Hong Kong and the rest of China. A journalist for 25 years, he has worked for various publications in Hong Kong and Toronto as a news reporter and editor. He has also lectured in journalism at the University

6. Ukrainian Naval Drones Shoot Down Russian Jets in Military First, Kyiv Says

The future is here (or at least it is in Ukraine).

Ukrainian Naval Drones Shoot Down Russian Jets in Military First, Kyiv Says

U.S.-made missiles destroyed the two planes over the Black Sea, according to Ukraine

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/ukrainian-naval-drones-shoot-down-russian-jets-in-military-first-kyiv-says-bc0eaf08

By Matthew Luxmoore

May 4, 2025 12:03 pm ET

A video released by the Ukrainian military seems to show one of its sea drones striking a Russian jet fighter. Photo: Defense Intelligence of Ukraine

Key Points

What's This?

Ukraine claims its sea drones downed two Russian jets using modified U.S. missiles.
Kyiv says it is the first time a marine drone downed a combat aircraft.
The attack highlights Ukraine’s innovation amid an arms deficit.

KYIV—Ukraine said it downed two Russian jet fighters using sea drones equipped with modified U.S.-made missiles, in what military officials in Kyiv said is the first such attack in the history of warfare.

Magura-7 sea drones deployed by Ukraine’s military-intelligence agency, known as HUR, fired the missiles at two Su-30 jets that were flying near the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, HUR said.

Russia’s military hasn’t commented on the attack, which The Wall Street Journal wasn’t able to verify.

The shootdowns demonstrate the threat Ukraine poses to Russia, with a military-industrial complex that is innovating in order to hold its own against Moscow’s much-larger military.

With Russia grinding slowly forward on the battlefield and Ukraine struggling with a deficit of arms and manpower, the smaller country has found ever more enterprising means of weakening its enemy.

The attacks seek to challenge Moscow’s narrative that its victory in Ukraine is inevitable, and that the U.S. and other Ukrainian allies should push Kyiv to capitulate.

In a video address on Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelensky described the attack as “brilliant” and “a testament to Ukraine’s capabilities.” Kyiv said it is the first instance of a combat aircraft downed by a marine drone.

A video that HUR posted on Saturday showed what appeared through the lens of a shaky camera to be a distant object bursting into flames above the sea. The camera then pivots to show the object plummeting into the choppy waters.

HUR chief Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov told the news site the War Zone that the crew of one Russian plane was rescued from the frigid waters by a commercial vessel, while those on board the second plane didn’t survive.

Ukraine said the missile used to hit the Russian jets on Friday was an American-made infrared-guided AIM-9, which the U.S. and Canada have provided to Ukraine. Kyiv earlier said it downed two Russian helicopters on Dec. 31 using missiles fired from sea drones.

The attack comes amid a slowdown in U.S.-brokered efforts to end the war, now in its fourth year.

The Trump administration has urged both sides to come to the negotiating table. Zelensky on Friday dismissed a four-day truce proposed by Russia for this week as “a theatrical performance,” insisting that Moscow agree instead to a 30-day cease-fire that Ukraine has agreed to with U.S. support.

The Kremlin said Saturday that Russia’s offer of a brief cease-fire is a test of Ukraine’s willingness to work toward peace.

In his video address, Zelensky said that Russia fired 950 aerial bombs against Ukraine last week, with cities targeted by missiles including Shahed explosive drones that Russia launches into Ukrainian airspace every night.

“Currently, the intensity of Russian strikes indicates nothing but Russia’s desire to continue fighting,” he said.

The Black Sea has emerged as a crucial arena of Ukraine’s unorthodox warfare. Ukraine has used small, explosive naval drones to destroy or damage more than a dozen Russian ships there, forcing Russia to withdraw much of its Black Sea fleet from its home port in Crimea. Sea drones have also caused damage to a bridge from Russia to occupied Crimea that Russia used to supply its forces in Ukraine.

Write to Matthew Luxmoore at matthew.luxmoore@wsj.com

7. Trump’s Three Steps to Economic Growth

The Treasury Secretary gives us the plan. Now let's make it work.

Criticize the Administration all you want but it is laying out the plan right here. What is that we used to say - plan the fight, don't fight the plan?

Excerpts:

How do you reunite a country divided by trade? How do you ensure all Americans can succeed going forward, while enhancing national security? These questions are top of mind for the new administration. Our economic agenda seeks to answer them.

Mr. Trump intends to usher in the most prosperous decade in American history—but not at the cost of the spiritual degradation of the working class. The administration has charted a new course for the economy—one that strengthens both the shop floor and the trading floor. We are doing so in three steps:

First, renegotiating global trade. Tariffs are an effective tool for balancing international commerce. They reduce trade barriers in other countries, opening more markets to American producers while also bringing back thousands of manufacturing jobs.

Economic security is national security. The Covid pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in our supply chain and the risk of relying on other countries for critical manufacturing. Tariffs can increase our industrial capacity and strengthen our national security by reshoring supply. They can also raise substantial revenue.

Second, making the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent and adopting the president’s new tax priorities: no tax on tips, overtime and Social Security. Mr. Trump’s tax reforms will improve the quality of life for Americans harmed by reckless trade policies. Advancing these reforms and making the 2017 tax cuts permanent will provide individuals and businesses with certainty and build economic momentum.

...

Third, deregulating the economy. America must build again—not only homes and factories but also semiconductors, power plants, artificial-intelligence data centers and other technologies of the future. Reawakening our industrial capacity is key to raising employment and wages among the working and middle classes and the only way to compete with China for technological and military supremacy.

Trump’s Three Steps to Economic Growth

His tariffs, tax cuts and deregulation efforts make up a coherent strategy to benefit Main Street.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trumps-three-steps-to-economic-growth-tariffs-trade-tax-cuts-deregulation-7804053a

By Scott Bessent

May 4, 2025 1:12 pm ET

Trump discusses a jobs report in the Oval Office, March 7. Photo: Chris Kleponis/Bloomberg News

Readers of this paper know better than anyone: Wall Street has experienced historic success over the last four decades. Since 1980, the S&P 500 has increased more than 5,500%. Our capital markets are the envy of the world, and President Trump intends to strengthen them further.

The president recognizes the critical role Wall Street plays in financing the American dream. But it’s Main Street’s turn to share in the prosperity. This is the guiding ethos of his bold economic agenda.

He wants to ensure working families aren’t left behind in the next era of economic growth—as many were in the last. In the first 100 days of his presidency, we have laid the groundwork to rebalance global trade, restore America’s industrial base, and build an economy that allows Wall Street and Main Street to rise together.

To understand the urgency of this economic rebalancing, it’s critical to understand why it is necessary in the first place. The early 2000s represented the high-water mark of neoliberalism—the “end of history” in which despotism would give way to democracy and free trade.

Not coincidentally, this period also marked China’s rise in global commerce after joining the World Trade Organization in 2001. Economists David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson identified the “China Shock” in a 2016 paper on the uneven effects of trade liberalization: 3.7 million Americans lost their jobs. Offshoring production to China accounted for 59.3% of U.S. manufacturing job losses, and most of these workers entered long-term unemployment.

Proponents of this wrecking-ball policy argued for making up its losses through wealth redistribution—as if a handout could heal the families and communities shattered by outsourcing. In the ultimate show of condescension, some academics labeled this the “compensate the losers” strategy. It failed miserably.

Even though the price of consumer goods declined, the cost of living increased as housing, education and medical-insurance costs soared. Millions of Americans experienced an absolute decline in real income. Every leading politician ignored the national rupture caused by globalization, until Donald Trump.

How do you reunite a country divided by trade? How do you ensure all Americans can succeed going forward, while enhancing national security? These questions are top of mind for the new administration. Our economic agenda seeks to answer them.

Mr. Trump intends to usher in the most prosperous decade in American history—but not at the cost of the spiritual degradation of the working class. The administration has charted a new course for the economy—one that strengthens both the shop floor and the trading floor. We are doing so in three steps:

First, renegotiating global trade. Tariffs are an effective tool for balancing international commerce. They reduce trade barriers in other countries, opening more markets to American producers while also bringing back thousands of manufacturing jobs.

Economic security is national security. The Covid pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in our supply chain and the risk of relying on other countries for critical manufacturing. Tariffs can increase our industrial capacity and strengthen our national security by reshoring supply. They can also raise substantial revenue.

Second, making the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent and adopting the president’s new tax priorities: no tax on tips, overtime and Social Security. Mr. Trump’s tax reforms will improve the quality of life for Americans harmed by reckless trade policies. Advancing these reforms and making the 2017 tax cuts permanent will provide individuals and businesses with certainty and build economic momentum.

Workers and small businesses benefited most from Mr. Trump’s first-term pro-growth tax agenda. The bottom 50% of households saw their net worth increase faster than the top 10%. The administration is now working closely with Congress to ensure those measures don’t expire at the end of 2025. The Council of Economic Advisers estimates that failing to extend the Trump tax cuts would cost a median-income family with two children more than $4,000 in take-home pay.

This year’s tax bill will restore 100% expensing for equipment and expand that incentive to new factory construction to accelerate reindustrialization. The president’s proposed deduction for auto loans on U.S.-made cars will spur more production, jobs and tax relief.

Third, deregulating the economy. America must build again—not only homes and factories but also semiconductors, power plants, artificial-intelligence data centers and other technologies of the future. Reawakening our industrial capacity is key to raising employment and wages among the working and middle classes and the only way to compete with China for technological and military supremacy.

For America to build, government needs to get out of the way. That’s why this administration embraces an ambitious deregulation agenda. Removing harmful regulations will allay the national debt and result in savings for individuals and businesses. Mr. Trump has already saved the average family of four $2,100 simply by repealing Biden-era regulations. In addition to helping Americans save, we want to enhance their access to capital by easing undue compliance burdens on community and other small banks, which play a crucial role on Main Street by providing loans for cars and homes.

Part and parcel of the deregulation agenda is establishing energy dominance. Energy will fuel our manufacturing renaissance. The president has declared a national energy emergency, opened 1.53 million acres in Alaska for energy development, and lifted the Biden administration’s pause on liquefied natural gas terminals. The average price of gasoline is 50 cents lower than a year ago.

Critics of the Trump economic agenda attack individual policies in isolation. This cherry-picking tactic ignores how these policies are interconnected. Trade, tax cuts and deregulation aren’t stand-alone measures but interlocking parts of an engine designed to drive economic growth and domestic manufacturing.

Tax cuts and cost savings from deregulation raise real incomes for families and businesses. Tariffs provide income-tax relief and create incentives for reindustrialization. Deregulation complements tariffs by encouraging investments in energy and manufacturing.

The engine is already starting. For the second month in a row, Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report beat expectations, with 177,000 jobs added in April. More than half a million private-sector jobs have been added since January. Add to this falling inflation and the first decline in consumer prices since Covid.

This is just the cylinder firing. The American people should expect to hear the engine humming during the second half of 2025. With all pistons moving, we’ll see more jobs, more manufacturing, more growth, a more robust national defense, higher wages, lower taxes, less-burdensome regulation, cheaper energy, less national debt and less dependence on China—all while maintaining a strong dollar.

This is how we restore the working class, re-establish the U.S. as an industrial powerhouse, and right the wrongs of lopsided trade policies. This is how we pave the way for Wall Street’s next 40-year run while making sure Main Street runs alongside it. This is how we make America great again for all Americans.

Mr. Bessent is U.S. Treasury secretary.

How Bad Is China’s Economy? The Data Needed to Answer Is Vanishing

Beijing has stopped publishing hundreds of statistics, making it harder to know what’s going on in the country

By Rebecca FengFollow and Jason DouglasFollow

May 4, 2025 9:00 pm ET

Not long ago, anyone could comb through a wide range of official data from China. Then it started to disappear.

Land sales measures, foreign investment data and unemployment indicators have gone dark in recent years. Data on cremations and a business confidence index have been cut off. Even official soy sauce production reports are gone.

In all, Chinese officials have stopped publishing hundreds of data points once used by researchers and investors, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

In most cases, Chinese authorities haven’t given any reason for ending or withholding data. But the missing numbers have come as the world’s second biggest economy has stumbled under the weight of excessive debt, a crumbling real-estate market and other troubles—spurring heavy-handed efforts by authorities to control the narrative.

National land sales, by area

Source: National Bureau of Statistics

Jason French/WSJ

China’s National Bureau of Statistics stopped publishing some numbers related to unemployment in urban areas in recent years. After an anonymous user on the bureau’s website asked why one of those data points had disappeared, the bureau said only that the ministry that provided it stopped sharing the data.

Number of people in urban areas who received unemployment insurance benefits

Source: National Bureau of Statistics

Jason French/WSJ

The disappearing data have made it harder for people to know what’s going on in China at a pivotal time, with the trade war between Washington and Beijing expected to hit China hard and weaken global growth. Plunging trade with the U.S. has already led to production shutdowns and job cuts.

Getting a true read on China’s growth has always been tricky. Many economists have long questioned the reliability of China’s headline gross domestic product data, and concerns have intensified recently. Official figures put GDP growth at 5% last year and 5.2% in 2023, but some have estimated that Beijing overstated its numbers by as much as 2 to 3 percentage points.

To get what they consider to be more realistic assessments of China’s growth, economists have turned to alternative sources such as movie box office revenues, satellite data on the intensity of nighttime lights, the operating rates of cement factories and electricity generation by major power companies. Some parse location data from mapping services run by private companies such as Chinese tech giant Baidu to gauge business activity.

One economist said he has been assessing the health of China’s services sector by counting news stories about owners of gyms and beauty salons who abruptly close up and skip town with users’ membership fees.

State of the economy

Questions over China’s GDP figures go back years. Former Chinese premier Li Keqiang famously told the U.S. ambassador in 2007 that GDP data for a Chinese province he governed at the time were “man-made” and therefore unreliable, according to a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable. Instead, he said he kept track of electricity consumption, rail-freight volumes and new bank loans.

Official GDP figures were “for reference only,” he confided to the ambassador, according to the cable. Li died in October 2023.

China’s official GDP growth of 5% in 2024 exactly matched the target the government had set the previous year. Economists privately dismissed the figure, with one telling the Journal it would have been more credible if authorities had released something lower. Retail sales, construction activity and other data painted a considerably weaker picture, they noted.

Bank of Finland and Capital Economics have generally found bigger swings in GDP than what China reports—and its estimates are lower than official figures in recent quarters.

China’s quarterly GDP growth estimates, change from a year earlier

Bank of Finland

Official GDP

Capital Economics

–5

–10

–15

2003

'10

'20

Sources: National Bureau of Statistics via Macrobond (official GDP); Bank of Finland via Macrobond (Bank of Finland); Capital Economics

Andrew Barnett/WSJ

In December, a prominent Chinese economist at state-owned SDIC Securities, Gao Shanwen, said at a conference in Washington that China’s economic growth “might be around 2%” the past few years, adding, “we do not know the true number of China’s real growth figure.”

China’s leader Xi Jinping ordered that Gao be disciplined and he has been banned from speaking publicly for an unspecified period. The Securities Association of China warned brokerages in late December to ensure their economists “play a positive role” in boosting investor confidence.

China’s statistics bureau has defended its data practices, saying that data quality has improved over the years and that it has taken steps to ensure accuracy and investigate any misconduct during collection.

In February, Goldman Sachs came up with an alternative way of measuring China’s economic growth by crunching figures such as import data, which can be read as proxies for domestic spending. The thinking was that trade data get published frequently and is hard to fudge, since China’s trading partners also report those numbers.

That approach implied that China’s growth in 2024 averaged 3.7%. Using a different method, Rhodium Group, a New York-based research outfit, said growth was closer to 2.4% in 2024.

Vanishing act

Presenting an image of stability is paramount for China’s Communist Party, especially now, with many middle-class Chinese worried about the future and the country entering uncharted territory in its competition with the U.S.

Often, the data that goes missing involves areas of high sensitivity or headaches for Beijing, such as the property market, whose collapse in recent years wiped out billions of dollars of household wealth and triggered protests by frustrated home buyers.

During the boom years, China’s developers furiously bought up land from local governments at sky-high prices. The transactions poured money into local governments’ coffers and signaled future development plans, a key driver of the economy.

The downturn began in 2021, after Beijing tightened credit on the sector. With home sales falling and real-estate developers going bankrupt, a Chinese think tank called Beike Research Institute released a report in 2022 that found the average housing vacancy rate among 28 Chinese cities was higher than the average in the U.S. and other places—a sign of oversupply.

The report drew attention because China doesn’t release an official vacancy rate, and property analysts were trying to figure out how badly developers had overbuilt. A few days later, Beike retracted the report and apologized, saying that some of the data had errors. Analysts said they believed the group pulled the data under government pressure.

Official data went away, too.

Figures show the value of land sales plummeted 48% in 2022—a big problem for heavily indebted local governments, which suddenly lacked funds to pay salaries or carry on with infrastructure projects. That data disappeared at the start of 2023.

National land sales, by value

Source: National Bureau of Statistics

Jason French/WSJ

In this case, there are still private data providers that gather individual land transactions at the local level from public records.

By mid-2023, much of the talk locally revolved around the dismal job market for young people. Many of the students finishing college didn’t have job offers, and viral social-media posts showed them dressed in caps and gowns splayed out motionless on the ground, interpreted by many as a form of silent protest.

Around that time, the official youth unemployment rate hit a record 21.3%. Zhang Dandan, a Peking University economist, made headlines saying she thought China’s true youth unemployment rate might be as high as 46.5%.

In August 2023, authorities announced they would stop releasing the youth unemployment rate, saying they needed to revisit how they calculated the figures.

China's unemployment rate for ages 16 to 24

Source: National Bureau of Statistics

Jason French/WSJ

Five months later, Beijing began releasing a new data series. The real youth jobless rate, it said, was 14.9%.

Officials said the new data series excluded nearly 62 million people who were studying full-time in universities, and so shouldn’t be counted as jobless. But that didn’t make sense to economists. Statistics typically count anyone actively looking for a job as unemployed, including full-time students.

Investor flight

In April 2024, China’s stock market was teetering as economic worries deepened. Foreign investors dumped more than $2 billion of Chinese stocks over a two-week span, spooking domestic individual investors.

China’s two major exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen abruptly announced that they would stop publishing real-time data on inflows and outflows of foreign investors. The Shanghai Stock Exchange said in a statement that it was aligning its practices with other international markets, which don’t disclose real-time trading data of specific groups of investors.

After authorities stopped publishing the real-time data in mid-May, the CSI 300 benchmark index continued its decline for four consecutive months, until authorities announced a blitz of measures to support the country’s weakening economy in September.

Some data are still publicly available but harder to get. Beijing passed a law in 2021 that caused data providers to make certain information—such as corporate registry data and satellite images—accessible only in mainland China.

Chinese data provider Wind Information started to limit international users’ access to certain data sets, such as online retail shopping figures and land-auction records, in early 2023. That led one economist at a foreign bank in Hong Kong to start making regular weekend trips to the neighboring mainland city of Shenzhen to download data, the economist told the Journal.

Also gone in recent years: official figures on Chinese toll road operators’ year-end debt balances and the number of new stock-market investors.

Chinese toll roads’ year-end debt balance†

New stock-market investors in China

$1.0

trillion

million people

0.5

Data

stops

Data

stops

2014

'15

'20

2019

'20

'21

'22

'23

'24

Number of cremated bodies in China

Soy sauce production in China*

million

1.0

million tons

0.5

Data

stops

Data

stops

2001

'10

'20

2000

'10

'20

*Contains historical gaps where data was unavailable.

†Converted to dollars at $1=7.16 Chinese yuan

Sources: National Bureau of Statistics (soy sauce production); Ministry of Civil Affairs (cremations); China Securities Depository and Clearing Corporation Limited (new stock-market investors); Ministry of Transport (toll roads)

Andrew Barnett/WSJ

China stopped publishing national cremation data after it ended its controversial zero-Covid policy to contain the virus in late 2022—a move some analysts had estimated could lead to between 1.3 million and 2.1 million deaths. The government also censored discussions about the impact of the virus on social media.

The country’s low fertility rate has become a major economic liability—and some data pointing to it is gone, too. In the mid-2000s, an economist named Yi Fuxian questioned the accuracy of China’s population data and argued that tuberculosis vaccinations were a better measure of population growth because every newborn in China is required to be vaccinated.

In 2020, 5.4 million such vaccines were administered, according to data compiled by the private Chinese think tank Forward Business and Intelligence. Chinese authorities said the country recorded 12.1 million births that year.

A year later, the National Institutes for Food and Drug Control discontinued the weekly data release of tuberculosis vaccines administered, along with other vaccine data.

Some information that has disappeared defies explanation. Data providing estimates of the size of elementary school toilets stopped being released in 2022, then resumed publication in February. Official soy sauce production data stopped appearing in May 2021, and hasn’t returned.

Write to Rebecca Feng at rebecca.feng@wsj.com and Jason Douglas at jason.douglas@wsj.com

8. Trump Should Try Operation Warp Speed 2.0

Interesting analysis and recommendation.

Excerpts:

Tariffs increase the cost of foreign goods, but they don’t automatically generate the necessary domestic infrastructure or cultivate a skilled workforce or build the production capacity needed to replace those imports at scale. A more forceful and coordinated national industrial plan is needed to translate tariff pressures into real production outcomes within the broader manufacturing landscape. We have the innovation base, the industrial know-how and the entrepreneurial energy. What’s needed is the kind of mission-driven federal leadership we saw during the pandemic—this time to revitalize our manufacturing backbone.

Trump Should Try Operation Warp Speed 2.0

Tariffs alone won’t spark a manufacturing boom.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-should-try-operation-warp-speed-2-0-manufacturing-boom-tariffs-8d15e295

May 4, 2025 2:12 pm ET

Photo: Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

The current administration’s tariff strategy underscores President Trump’s bold intent to revive American manufacturing. But without an equally aggressive industrial mobilization, tariffs alone won’t reverse decades of offshoring or catalyze the comprehensive reshoring and onshoring required for true supply-chain resilience and sustainable economic growth (“Companies Tear Up Outlooks Over Trade-War Uncertainty,” Page One, April 25).

What is conspicuously missing is the kind of aggressive government intervention and capacity stimulation witnessed during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the early days of the pandemic, the U.S. government orchestrated one of the most successful public-private manufacturing mobilizations in recent memory. Through initiatives such as Operation Warp Speed and strategic invocation of the Defense Production Act, the government took risk out of domestic production through substantial direct investment, guaranteed purchase agreements, prioritized allocation of critical materials and equipment and streamlined regulatory processes. This decisive, mission-driven approach enabled the rapid development, approval and manufacturing scale-up of essential goods on a timeline previously thought impossible.

Tariffs increase the cost of foreign goods, but they don’t automatically generate the necessary domestic infrastructure or cultivate a skilled workforce or build the production capacity needed to replace those imports at scale. A more forceful and coordinated national industrial plan is needed to translate tariff pressures into real production outcomes within the broader manufacturing landscape. We have the innovation base, the industrial know-how and the entrepreneurial energy. What’s needed is the kind of mission-driven federal leadership we saw during the pandemic—this time to revitalize our manufacturing backbone.

Eddy Agbo

Baltimore

Appeared in the May 5, 2025, print edition as 'Trump Should Try Operation Warp Speed 2.0'.

10. Teenage Terrorists Are a Growing Threat to Europe’s Security

And I doubt the problem is confined to Europe. Who is working on this problem around the world and what are we going to do about it? What can be done about it? Should we pull the plug on the internet ? (note my attempt at sarcasm).

Do we have sufficient understanding of the phenomena?

Excerpts:

With only a superficial understanding of ideology, most young extremists initially find an attraction to violent narratives online, driven by individual grievances and vulnerabilities, such as psychological distress, loneliness and marginalization, experts say. Online, they find a community around collective crises and traumatic events, such as fear of migration or the war in Gaza, which they connect to their personal struggle.

“People associate themselves with the suffering. And they want to do something about it,” said Kevin Volon, spokesperson for Belgium’s Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis, a governmental center that analyzes extremist threats. Groups of young radicals usually organize online without a formal leader or religious authority. “The extremist landscape is really decentralized,” Volon said.

...

Behind the teen extremism crisis lies a combination of factors: an unprecedented spread of extremist propaganda accelerated partly by artificial intelligence; the powerful hold on youths by social media such as TikTok with increasingly sophisticated means of retaining user attention; and events such as the Gaza war, which has become a defining, and painful, political moment for a generation gaining political awareness.

Teenagers made up two-thirds of the 60 Islamic extremists who were arrested on terrorism charges across Europe in the first eight months following the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, according to Peter Neumann, professor of security studies at King’s College London, who researched that period for a book.

Europe’s young far-right is also a growing threat. Belgian police in January arrested a 14-year-old boy with neo-Nazi views on suspicion of planning an attack on a mosque.

One-third of Belgian terrorism cases from 2022 to 2024 involved minors. In Britain, nearly one in five terror suspects are children. Terrorism arrests declined across all age groups in the U.K. during the pandemic, with one exception: children.

Teenage Terrorists Are a Growing Threat to Europe’s Security

Law enforcers are overwhelmed and warn that a new generation of extremists is being radicalized online

By Sune Engel RasmussenFollow | Illustrations by Aldo Jarillo for WSJ

May 4, 2025 9:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/teenage-terrorists-are-a-growing-threat-to-europes-security-78f3c54b

Key Points

What's This?

European authorities are struggling to counter the growing threat of terrorism committed by increasingly younger individuals.
Extremist propaganda, social-media influence and events like the Gaza war are factors in the radicalization of European teens.
Radicalization is happening faster online, with young extremists finding community and inspiration for attacks.

BRUSSELS—Terrorists in Europe are getting younger, and authorities are struggling to find them.

In recent months, dozens of adolescents as young as 14 have been arrested across Europe for allegedly plotting attacks against music venues, shopping centers and sites of worship.

A 14-year-old girl from Montenegro was arrested in Austria in May last year for allegedly plotting an attack on “nonbelievers.” The police seized an ax, a knife and Islamic State propaganda from her house. Another 14-year-old was arrested in February for plotting to attack a train station, Austrian authorities said.

Three Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna were canceled last year after three suspects ages 17 to 19 were arrested for conspiring on what the Central Intelligence Agency called a “well-developed” plot that could have killed hundreds.

Young people are increasingly drawn into online communities that propagate extremist views, conspiracy theories and violence. While the U.S. has long had a problem with school shooters, the growing teenage threat to Europe comes primarily from Islamists.

Behind the teen extremism crisis lies a combination of factors: an unprecedented spread of extremist propaganda accelerated partly by artificial intelligence; the powerful hold on youths by social media such as TikTok with increasingly sophisticated means of retaining user attention; and events such as the Gaza war, which has become a defining, and painful, political moment for a generation gaining political awareness.

Teenagers made up two-thirds of the 60 Islamic extremists who were arrested on terrorism charges across Europe in the first eight months following the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, according to Peter Neumann, professor of security studies at King’s College London, who researched that period for a book.

Europe’s young far-right is also a growing threat. Belgian police in January arrested a 14-year-old boy with neo-Nazi views on suspicion of planning an attack on a mosque.

One-third of Belgian terrorism cases from 2022 to 2024 involved minors. In Britain, nearly one in five terror suspects are children. Terrorism arrests declined across all age groups in the U.K. during the pandemic, with one exception: children.

“What is new is the number of youths that are directly involved in plotting violent attacks, and that includes very young individuals,” said Thomas Renard, director of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague.

Almost all young extremists are radicalized online, experts say, making it harder for authorities to spot them.

In the past five years, 93% of fatal terrorist attacks in the West were perpetrated by lone-wolf actors, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace, a think tank. The internet has accelerated radicalization. According to the institute’s Global Terrorism Index, it took a person on average 16 months to radicalize in 2002. In 2015, the period had shortened by 40%. Today, it may take just a few weeks.

Online, ideology is fluid, and extremist views that share central tenets, such as misogyny and totalitarianism, often blend, experts say. Young white supremacists admire the doctrine of Islamic State. Young jihadists borrow the language and aesthetics of the far-right. Rather than issue orders, terror groups flood social media with propaganda that gives young people an ideological framework and inspiration to carry out attacks, experts say.

A Gen Z extremist

An example of the kind of extremist that European authorities are worried about is currently on trial in Belgium.

For Abdul Kerim Gadaev, a 19-year-old Chechen refugee, his father’s deportation to Russia from France four years ago is still a source of anger. Following the deportation, Gadaev became alienated at school. Online, he aired his desire to replicate the 2015 Bataclan attack in Paris that killed 90: “A Bataclan 2.0,” a Belgian public prosecutor alleged last month in court.

Belgian police last year arrested Gadaev and three other suspects ages 15 to 17. On Gadaev’s phone, investigators found evidence that he researched the Bataclan attack, the 2015 attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris, and Abdoullakh Anzorov, the 18-year-old Chechen refugee who in 2020 decapitated a French secondary school teacher. They also found a photo of the teacher’s severed head.

As he was questioned in court last month about posting hateful content on social media, Gadaev grew fidgety. Sporting a wispy full beard without a mustache, he nervously scratched his wrist behind his back and pulled his sleeves over his hands. “I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong,” he said.

The radicalization of minors contributes to a growing terrorism threat facing the West. The number of completed, failed and foiled terrorist attacks in the European Union quadrupled from 2022 to 2023—to 120 incidents—according to the bloc’s law-enforcement agency, Europol.

While many attacks are prevented, terrorism-related deaths in the West rose by 61% from 2023 to 2024, and the number of successful attacks roughly doubled to 67 over the same period, according to the Global Terrorism Index.

U.S. government agencies don’t provide data on the age of suspected terrorists, but the trends in right-wing radicalization in the U.S. are similar, experts say.

“Whereas Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan were the main exporters of jihadi ideology, the U.S. has become one of the main exporters of far-right ideology,” said Renard, the director of the Hague-based think tank.

“The online environment provides ample opportunities for terrorists…to connect to young people in seemingly innocuous social media applications and gaming platforms,” an FBI spokesperson said.

Following no leader

With only a superficial understanding of ideology, most young extremists initially find an attraction to violent narratives online, driven by individual grievances and vulnerabilities, such as psychological distress, loneliness and marginalization, experts say. Online, they find a community around collective crises and traumatic events, such as fear of migration or the war in Gaza, which they connect to their personal struggle.

“People associate themselves with the suffering. And they want to do something about it,” said Kevin Volon, spokesperson for Belgium’s Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis, a governmental center that analyzes extremist threats. Groups of young radicals usually organize online without a formal leader or religious authority. “The extremist landscape is really decentralized,” Volon said.

In Chaudfontaine, a small Belgian municipality where Gadaev settled with his stepmother after his father’s deportation, the teen fell behind in school. He found an online community around sports and religion, particularly on TikTok, where his circles became increasingly political.

“I was on my phone 24/7,” he said.

In February last year, he joined an “operational” channel on the encrypted Signal messaging app where members started plotting an attack, according to the prosecutor. Some as young as 13, they discussed how to acquire weapons and shared photos of the target, the Botanique, a concert hall in central Brussels. Gadaev said he was willing to participate as long as the attack was well prepared.

In March 2024, Belgian federal police arrested Gadaev and three others, all minors, across Belgium. French police also arrested three minors in connection with the case. The six underage suspects are handled by the two countries’ juvenile systems, away from the public eye. The Belgian prosecutor is asking for a seven-year sentence for Gadaev.

Gadaev’s defense attorneys said his rhetoric on social media was “performative.” The argument speaks to the challenge facing Western intelligence agencies: how to discern when hateful speech may tip into action.

“We have been saying for some time that the complexity of our investigative casework is like never before, the breadth and depth of what we are dealing with is extraordinary,” said Vicki Evans, the U.K.’s senior counterterrorism policing coordinator. She called on tech companies to help tackle the problem.

Social-media algorithms create a pull effect on young people by suggesting increasingly violent content and creating digital rabbit holes. Artificial intelligence has exacerbated the problem, said Julia Ebner, an expert in online radicalization at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank and the University of Oxford.

“AI generated videos and images tap in to very deep emotions and into human nature,” she said. “AI and the algorithms are partly doing that job of a charismatic recruiter, just a hundred times better.”

Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com

11. The Wisdom of Trump’s Trade Austerity

Some would say that without the American desire to "buy, buy, buy" our consumer based economic growth will come to a screeching halt.

Excerpts:

When I first heard Trump’s “two dolls” comment, I immediately flashed back to something the writer John Updike said amid the 2008 financial meltdown—an episode that the Great American Novelist saw as an indictment of the American tendency to buy, buy, buy regardless of the ramifications. “The recent mortgage crisis and so on indicates how far into debt we’re willing to go to attain immediate objectives,” Updike told Charlie Rose. “When I was a kid, there was all this talk about doing without: ‘It does you good to do without.’”

Today, Updike would undoubtedly have been considered “grinchy” for speaking the truth about the salutary effects of what was always referred to in my household as “cutting back.”

Indeed, that I am sympathetic to this very old-fashioned but morally vigorous philosophy is undoubtedly yet another indication of the impression left on me by my parents, members of the Silent Generation. I have no idea how many dolls my mother owned when she was growing up, but I am certain that the number was more than two but fewer than 30—let alone 30 on an annual basis. She, too, knew that it does you good to do without.

The Wisdom of Trump’s Trade Austerity

The American Conservative · by Peter Tonguette · May 4, 2025

Politics

As my mother understood, it does you good to do without.

Credit: kardelen kobyaoglu/Shutterstock

Peter Tonguette

May 4, 2025 12:01 AM

Loading the Elevenlabs Text to Speech AudioNative Player...

I have become accustomed to Donald Trump in his role as dealmaker, peacemaker, troller of myriad left-wing pieties, and proposer of 51st states, but I admit that I was unprepared, earlier this week, to encounter the 47th president in the guise of endorser of austerity.

During a cabinet meeting in which he addressed legacy media–fueled outbursts over his trade policy, Trump acknowledged that his tariffs might have an impact on the American toy-owning public—happily for the president, not a constituency likely to be old enough to vote in time for the 2026 midterm elections.

“You know, somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are going to be open,’” Trump mused. “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”

Trump’s comments were widely and predictably derided in the usual places. A reporter in the New York Times characterized the president’s prediction of toy deprivation as a “grinchy pronouncement,” and even if that characterization is unfair, most seasoned politicos will concede that the war is lost when one starts to be compared to a certain green creation of Dr. Seuss.

Yet permit me to express a measure of admiration for Trump’s unexpected affirmation of moderation. How many other presidents would dare to suggest that the mildly straitened economic circumstances that will accompany an attempt to institute fairness in America’s trade arrangements could be, and should be, tolerated by the public? In so many words, Trump is saying that we have nothing to fear but fear itself—and we certainly need not fear a dearth of cheap imported toys.

Even so, representatives of the Toy Industrial Complex quickly lapsed into a state of hysteria. “If we don’t start production soon, there’s a high probability of a toy shortage this holiday season,” Greg Ahearn, chief executive of the Toy Association, said in the same New York Times article. But since when does his industry’s economic interests align with the interests of American children? Are we to believe that Christmas will be somehow deficient in the absence of a superabundance of new plastic junk destined to be tossed into the same heap as last season’s plastic junk? What about the giving of books, clothes, or a few American-made toys rather than a surplus of foreign-made toys? Has the meaning of the holiday truly become synonymous with indiscriminate acquisitiveness?

Of course, manufacturers of all kinds operate on the assumption that the average Joe is a perpetual and inexhaustible consumer, but this is not a natural or healthy state of affairs. Theoretically, some purchases should stand the test of time. Several years ago, when I ordered a table made in Maine and a Shaker-style cabinet made in Connecticut—both beautifully constructed out of solid wood—I did so with the expectation that I would never have to purchase replacements. Hanging in my closet are American-made sport coats my father purchased at least thirty or forty years ago that remain in wearable condition. This philosophy of buying things that last—and therefore buying them in fewer quantities and with less frequency—may annoy companies churning out cheap, meant-to-be-replaced goods made overseas, but in the long run, it catechizes ordinary Americans in the neglected virtue of thriftiness.

Back to the present toy-shortage imbroglio: Families with multiple children can certainly attest to the way in which toys that have grown old for one child can become “new” for a younger child. Let me direct you to the character of the elderly aunt in the movie National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, who arrives for a big family get-together armed with packages that are said to be random items she has collected from her home with the intention of re-gifting. What’s wrong with that—except, that is, from the perspective of toy manufacturers?

When I first heard Trump’s “two dolls” comment, I immediately flashed back to something the writer John Updike said amid the 2008 financial meltdown—an episode that the Great American Novelist saw as an indictment of the American tendency to buy, buy, buy regardless of the ramifications. “The recent mortgage crisis and so on indicates how far into debt we’re willing to go to attain immediate objectives,” Updike told Charlie Rose. “When I was a kid, there was all this talk about doing without: ‘It does you good to do without.’”

Today, Updike would undoubtedly have been considered “grinchy” for speaking the truth about the salutary effects of what was always referred to in my household as “cutting back.”

Indeed, that I am sympathetic to this very old-fashioned but morally vigorous philosophy is undoubtedly yet another indication of the impression left on me by my parents, members of the Silent Generation. I have no idea how many dolls my mother owned when she was growing up, but I am certain that the number was more than two but fewer than 30—let alone 30 on an annual basis. She, too, knew that it does you good to do without.

About The Author

Peter Tonguette

Peter Tonguette is a contributing writer to the Washington Examiner magazine and a contributing editor of The American Conservative.

Articles by Peter trending_flat

The American Conservative · by Peter Tonguette · May 4, 2025

12. It actually makes sense that Trump has given Marco Rubio all these jobs — here’s why

He is going to need a helluva team to manage both (or all - see below). But he is also going to have to be fully empowered by the POTUS.

Bubt as I said he needs a team for this. And he needs to choose his team without interference from the administration interlopers.

This might set things up for POTUS to worry about domestic issues he likes to focus on and allow Secretary Rubio to manage nationals security and foreign policy (and he needs a strong partner in the SECDEF and DCIA). It is almost like POTUS is giving Secretary Rubio responsibility for Political Warfare for the nation which might make George Kennan happy.

Unfortunately another word for accountability is scapegoat.

Excerpt:

By tasking Rubio with the oversight of State, the National Security Council, USAID and multiple foreign policy and development agencies, Trump has concentrated operational control under a single accountable leader.

It actually makes sense that Trump has given Marco Rubio all these jobs — here’s why

by Christopher Siddall, Opinion Contributor - 05/03/25 5:24 PM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/5281310-it-actually-makes-sense-that-trump-has-given-marco-rubio-all-these-jobs-heres-why/?utm

You have probably already seen the jokes and memes about how President Trump is putting Secretary of State Marco Rubio in charge of so many orphaned government entities. What next? Will he be appointed to the Supreme Court? To the Fed?

Yes, it’s all good for a laugh. But as someone who has been involved with most of these agencies, I can say with certainty that there is a method to the madness. By making a single person responsible for these specific entities, Trump has fixed a flaw that had been undermining U.S. foreign policy.

By tasking Rubio with the oversight of State, the National Security Council, USAID and multiple foreign policy and development agencies, Trump has concentrated operational control under a single accountable leader.

This is not about elevating a person, but about ensuring that foreign policy reflects the President’s direction, not “the interagency” or the preferences of Hill committees. In my experience leading the shutdown of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the launch of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, we brought in part of USAID and saw how siloed mandates, overlapping authorities, and unclear accountability could slow execution and confuse strategic outcomes.

We were constantly dealing with confusion surrounding who was in charge. We would often be asked or ask for any given deal whether it fell into the category of development or foreign policy, and whether it was a matter for us or for Congress.

At the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, we managed conflicting guidance from multiple stakeholders — State, the National Security Council, USAID, and sometimes Treasury — each with partial say. It cost us time on long eighteen-month deals as we tried to go up against China’s aggressive Belt and Road Initiative.

The launch of the Development Finance Corporation under the first Trump administration doubled investment capacity and added new tools but also required a new alignment between foreign policy and development — that’s USAID in the background.

Trump’s recent move to consolidate foreign policy execution addresses this problem directly. It aligns diplomatic, development, and strategic functions under one roof and one strategy. Agencies that operated autonomously must now coordinate through a central office. Non-profits that built influence by “being the glue” that connected multiple agencies may find that their uncommon knowledge of personnel and policy does not translate to policy or funding leverage. These adjustments might cost some in Washington, but they create clear accountability for Americans whenever things go wrong and help us build on our wins.

Congress also wins. Lawmakers now have a clear field for oversight. If strategy and tactics fail, responsibility will be clear. Who knows — Congress might even respond with a clear and unified budget process.

Trump has acted to ensure that America speaks with one voice abroad — his own. That’s not a power grab. It is a reassertion of constitutional and popular leadership over foreign policy.

Christopher Siddall has led executive branch reforms to streamline foreign policy execution across USAID, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation

13. The U.S.-China Tariff War – and Some Lessons from History

Conclusion:

I believe both the U.S. and China want to resolve the current tariff war. History strongly suggests that a resolution will require three things: getting the dispute off the front page and into negotiating channels; finding face-saving language that both parties can live with; and the involvement of both President Trump and General Secretary Xi.

The U.S.-China Tariff War – and Some Lessons from History

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/the-u-s-china-tariff-war-and-some-lessons-from-history?utm

Posted: May 2nd, 2025

By Martin Petersen

Martin Petersen spent 33 years with the CIA, retiring in February 2005 as Deputy Executive Director and Acting Executive Director. In the course of his agency career, he ran two large analytic units (The Office of East Asian Analysis and the Office of Asian Pacific Latin America Analysis) before becoming Associate Deputy Director of Intelligence for Strategic Plans and Programs, the first Chief Human Resources Officer for CIA, and Deputy Executive Director. He is the author of City of Lost Souls, A Novel of Shanghai 1932.

OPINION — The United States and China are in what you might call a Cold Competition – if not a Cold War. One nation wants to preserve the world order established after WWII and its dominant place in Asia, while the other wants to alter significantly that post-war world order and replace the U.S. as the dominant power in Asia. The “tariff war” is just the latest round in that competition.

It is in the best interests of both parties to settle this dispute—something I believe both sides recognize—and three lessons from the history of U.S.-China relations suggest how this could happen. In both capitals we have strong leaders with outsize egos, and both are dealing with complex internal political situations. One leader’s style is more “in your face” and the other’s is all about saving face, a very important element of Chinese culture. Let me say that I have no issue with the Trump Administration’s efforts to achieve a redress of the U.S.-China trade imbalance—and other bilateral issues—and I wish them well. But I believe a change of tactics would give the U.S. a better chance of achieving its goals.

Imaginging a way out of the tariff war

It is my experience that Beijing can be very flexible in addressing bilateral issues as long as face is preserved, and the outcome can be presented to the Chinese people by its leaders as an outcome favorable to China. The biggest stumbling block to the normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1972 was the status of Taiwan, which the United States at the time recognized as the legitimate government of all China. But in negotiations with Mao and Zhou Enlai on one side and President Nixon and Henry Kissinger on the other, a formula was struck—a principle—that was as truthful as it was ambiguous: Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait agree there is only one China. Embedded in the Shanghai Communique, this principle allowed the U.S. to establish a liaison office in Beijing and eventually paved the way for full normalization during President Carter’s term.

The driving consideration in China at the time was the threat that Beijing saw from the Soviet Union and the belief that a relationship with Washington would work to their benefit. But the Taiwan issue had to be finessed. The lesson here is that China can be terribly practical after some vague principle is agreed to. The Chinese warned the U.S. that it might have to fire off “some empty cannons” to preserve face, but that Taiwan was an issue that could be pushed far down the road.

The intersection of technology, defense, space and intelligence is critical to future U.S. national security. Join The Cipher Brief on June 5th and 6th in Austin, Texas for the NatSecEDGE conference. Find out how to get an invitation to this invite-only event at natsecedge.com

A lesson from 1999

The May 1999 accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade by NATO is a case where a very tense situation between China and the West was diffused. Beijing believed the attack was intentional—intelligence personnel were among the casualties—and rioting in Beijing caused significant damage to the U.S. Embassy and some Consulates in China. PRC leaders initially declined a phone call from President Clinton—the Politburo was probably trying to decide what and how to respond—and state media carried out a blistering attack on the U.S. and NATO.

In a call between Clinton and the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party a week after the incident, the President expressed “regret” for the incident, something just short of a formal apology. Flags were also ordered to fly at half-mast at U.S. diplomatic missions on the mainland and in Hong Kong. Final resolution was reached when the U.S. agreed to a “voluntary humanitarian payment” to the families of three Chinese killed and compensation for the damage to the Chinese Embassy in Belgarde. The PRC agreed in turn to compensate the U.S. for damage done by the rioters.

In April 2001, a U.S. Navy P-3 signals intelligence aircraft was intercepted by two PRC fighter jets. A collision ensued, killing the pilot of one of the Chinese planes, and the P-3 was forced to make an emergency landing on Hainan Island. The Chinese pilot was clearly at fault, and there had been a number of near misses earlier. The U.S. plane and the crew were immediately interned and interrogated as temperatures rose in Washington.

This crisis lasted ten days and was resolved in a familiar way. The Chinese wanted an apology but accepted ‘the letter of two sorries”—sorry that the pilot had died, and sorry the plane entered Chinese airspace because the landing did not have “verbal clearance.” The Chinese exploited the downed aircraft for its intelligence value and even charged the U.S. government for housing and feeding the crew. But the crisis was resolved.

In each of these instances, a way was found to lower the temperature and come up with a diplomatic formula that did not give either side all it wanted but allowed both to “save face” and claim some element of victory. Both sides saw a clear advantage in ending the confrontation, and in each case, the final resolution was achieved out of the public eye.

I believe both the U.S. and China want to resolve the current tariff war. History strongly suggests that a resolution will require three things: getting the dispute off the front page and into negotiating channels; finding face-saving language that both parties can live with; and the involvement of both President Trump and General Secretary Xi.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

14. A Commander’s Case for Women, Peace, and Security by Mark Hertling

Excerpts:

Empowering women in conflict zones is not a “soft” strategy—it’s a force multiplier. It produces better intelligence, enhances legitimacy, and reduces the grievances that feed insurgency. We did not set out to create a women’s rights movement in Iraq. We were trying to stop the killing. And we succeeded, because we recognized that the path to security runs through society, not just the battlefield. Our female soldiers weren’t intent on empowering women for ideological reasons, but because they knew they might be uniquely positioned to solve a problem that men could not.

That insight wasn’t unique to our war. As Kathleen McInnes of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has pointed out,

In Afghanistan, for example, U.S. Female Engagement Teams helped tactical and operational level commanders better understand the human terrain of battle spaces, therefore improving kinetic and non-kinetic targeting. Simultaneously, partner forces also became aware that the intentional presence of women in kinetic fights could have a strategic impact. Kurdish women’s units were fierce fighters against the Islamic State in part due to their combat effectiveness but also because of the reputational damage to Islamic State fighters being forced to fight—and lose—to women. In Ukraine, upwards of 60,000 women are serving in the military, including on the front lines, and women’s networks are critical components of anti-Russian resistance networks.

That is what WPS stands for: the strategic inclusion of half the population in the fight against instability, terror, conflict and chaos. The WPS program reflects the reality that modern combat is not simply about force and lethality—it is about legitimacy, alliances, information, and the ability to create peaceful solutions that endure.

Killing this program won’t make the U.S. military more lethal. But it might make it half blind.

A Commander’s Case for Women, Peace, and Security

The program makes the military more effective. The secretary of defense thinks it’s “woke.”

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/a-commanders-case-for-women-peace-security-hegseth-military-woke-iraq-qaeda-terrorists?utm

Mark Hertling

May 01, 2025

162

(Photo by Eros Hoagland/Getty Images)

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE PETE HEGSETH claims to be focused on “lethality” and “the warfighter,” yet he just proudly announced the end of a program that saves American lives and helps us win fights. “This morning,” he said on April 29, “I proudly ENDED the ‘Women, Peace & Security’ (WPS) program inside the @DeptofDefense,” calling it “yet another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops—distracting from our core task: WAR-FIGHTING. WPS is a UNITED NATIONS program pushed by feminists and left-wing activists. Politicians fawn over it; troops HATE it.”

First, the secretary seems to have overpromised. He’s not ending the program, which is required by law, but, he explained, merely “executive [sic] the minimum of WPS required by statute.” An anonymous administration official further walked back Hegseth’s announcement in a statement to the Washington Post: “‘Ending’ refers to ending the Biden administration’s woke WPS initiatives and returning the program to its original intent.” This shouldn’t be surprising, considering the secretary of state, the secretary of homeland security, the national security advisor, and the president are all proud supporters of WPS.

Second, I commanded one of the key initiatives that informed the WPS strategy and later the WPS Act, which codified in law the government’s commitment to involving women in matters of war, peace, and security, and I have serious doubts about whether the program overburdened the force, distracted from “war-fighting,” and irritated the troops.

IN 2008, I WAS COMMANDING THE 1ST Armored Division in northern Iraq when we began seeing a disturbing and confounding trend: an uptick in suicide bombings carried out by Iraqi women. A series of these attacks were executed in crowded markets, polling stations, and police checkpoints—places where the U.S.-Iraqi security posture was already strained. What made this tactic so effective, and so deadly, was that in traditional Iraqi society, male soldiers and police were prohibited from touching or searching women. And there weren’t any female Iraqi police officers to close that gap. Al Qaeda in Iraq knew that our lack of women was a weakness. And they exploited it.

At first, our intelligence analysts didn’t fully understand the dynamics. We couldn’t figure out why women were now involved in this al Qaeda network of death. It wasn’t just tactical adaptation—it was social manipulation.

Throughout our fifteen-month tour, fighting the insurgency didn’t just mean lobbing ordnance at bad guys. We were also engaged in a broad campaign to improve governance in northern Iraq by helping local officials develop capacity in law, health, education, and justice. To defeat an insurgency, it’s not enough just to destroy the enemy; a successful counterinsurgency force must also contribute to the advancement of the society. Our efforts were seeing progress, as rule of law, education, healthcare, and even business initiatives were countering the terrorist message. But I had neglected a key part of the Iraqi society: the women.

The idea that eventually broke the problem came from a junior female soldier, who suggested something unusual: “Sir, we should also hold a women’s conference; they have a say in their future society, too.” It was, admittedly, an unconventional idea in a male-centric society. But I gave the task to all the female soldiers in our division to pull it off, and a few weeks later, we held that conference in Erbil with more than four hundred women from all of the provinces in northern Iraq—Arab and Kurdish.

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Iraqi women—political leaders, educators, clerics, and civil society figures—gathered to talk about their role in securing their communities. My wife, Sue, opened the conference by addressing the group (through an interpreter) via a satellite video link from Germany. I was one of only two men in attendance, and it sent a clear message that my wife, not I or any other man, was opening the meeting. I was extremely proud when she said, “We women must do more to stop the violence,” and the Iraqi women cheered.

The spark came during the lunch break. One of the women approached me quietly and said, “We can help stop the bombings. But we need you to help get Iraqi women recruits into our police academies.” We had built and were operating multiple police academies to train Iraq’s next generation of male security forces. But the idea of allowing women to enroll—especially to take on active policing roles—met deep resistance from the Iraqi chief of police and the minister of the interior in Baghdad. Eventually, both relented. We started small: 27 women were enrolled. They graduated weeks later. Within months, more than 60 female officers were operating in public spaces across Diyala, Kirkuk, and Salah ad-Din provinces. They became the key to breaking the suicide-vest network.

The breakthrough came when one of the rookie policewomen stopped a 15-year-old girl named Rania from entering a crowded market. Prevented from detonating her vest, she told interrogators she had been drugged and pushed toward a checkpoint by her own mother—a widow of a slain al Qaeda fighter. It turned out that many of the women wearing these vests were widows of slain al Qaeda fighters who had been told, after their husbands’ deaths, there was nothing left for them. No future. No food. No marriage. No status. Many had been forced as teenagers into marrying Iraqi or foreign fighters in the first place and so faced a double social sanction: One for having been married to a terrorist, and another for being a young widow. “Join your husband in the afterlife,” they were told, “and in the process you can take as many infidels with you as you can.” We briefed Iraqi officials about Rania’s testimony, emphasizing that many of these suicide bombers weren’t valiant martyrs but abused and coerced victims of terrorism. Their story eventually became a major topic of discussion in Iraqi society, especially after a female radio host dubbed the policewomen “Doves of Peace.” This wasn’t just good counterterrorism—it was community transformation.

By the time 1st Armored rotated home, not only was the female suicide-vest cell almost completely destroyed, but the overall level of violence in northern Iraq was down significantly and the Iraqi security forces were able to take the lead.

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WHILE OUR EXPERIENCE in northern Iraq antedated the WPS strategy and the later WPS Act, it is precisely the kind of success story envisioned by the bipartisan champions of the program. Across many departments and agencies of the federal government, the program has four pillars:

Participation: Ensuring women’s meaningful involvement in decision-making about peace and security.
Protection: Safeguarding women and girls from violence, coercion, and exploitation.
Prevention: Addressing the root causes of conflict through inclusive and equitable approaches.
Relief and Recovery: Promoting the roles of women in stabilizing communities and rebuilding post-conflict societies.

Each of these principles was present in what we did in northern Iraq in 2008. And the result was not a “woke distraction”—it was lives saved, violence deterred, and long-term security effectuated.

With due respect to Secretary Hegseth, his definition of lethality is troublingly narrow. Yes, lethality can be found in a rifle shot or a perfectly executed combined-arms maneuver. But at the strategic level—where battles are shaped, alliances are built, and where “warfighting” serves aims that promote American interests—lethality also depends on the ability to secure populations, disrupt enemy networks, and build coalitions of trust.

Empowering women in conflict zones is not a “soft” strategy—it’s a force multiplier. It produces better intelligence, enhances legitimacy, and reduces the grievances that feed insurgency. We did not set out to create a women’s rights movement in Iraq. We were trying to stop the killing. And we succeeded, because we recognized that the path to security runs through society, not just the battlefield. Our female soldiers weren’t intent on empowering women for ideological reasons, but because they knew they might be uniquely positioned to solve a problem that men could not.

That insight wasn’t unique to our war. As Kathleen McInnes of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has pointed out,

In Afghanistan, for example, U.S. Female Engagement Teams helped tactical and operational level commanders better understand the human terrain of battle spaces, therefore improving kinetic and non-kinetic targeting. Simultaneously, partner forces also became aware that the intentional presence of women in kinetic fights could have a strategic impact. Kurdish women’s units were fierce fighters against the Islamic State in part due to their combat effectiveness but also because of the reputational damage to Islamic State fighters being forced to fight—and lose—to women. In Ukraine, upwards of 60,000 women are serving in the military, including on the front lines, and women’s networks are critical components of anti-Russian resistance networks.

That is what WPS stands for: the strategic inclusion of half the population in the fight against instability, terror, conflict and chaos. The WPS program reflects the reality that modern combat is not simply about force and lethality—it is about legitimacy, alliances, information, and the ability to create peaceful solutions that endure.

Killing this program won’t make the U.S. military more lethal. But it might make it half blind.

A guest post by

Mark Hertling

Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling (Ret.) (@MarkHertling) was commander of U.S. Army Europe from 2011 to 2012. He also commanded 1st Armored Division in Germany and Multinational Division-North during the surge in Iraq from 2007 to 2009.

15. Trump Calls For 100% Tariff on Movies Made Overseas

Perhaps some might think this is a national security issue but movies are a huge soft power influence.

It really gets to the fundamental question of who controls the narrative? That said, I am sure there are supporters of the administration who do not like the narratives that come out of Hollywood either.

Ironically, if we had VOA, RFA/ RFE/RL journalists would be explaining these issues and the Administration's policies to foreign target audiences. No disrespect to the Wall Street Journal but this information is not being transmitted to foreign target audiences to people living in denied areas. Wall Street Journal and all the mainstream media as well as citizen journalists on YouTube and other platforms are not incentivized to transmit information to denied target audiences.

Trump Calls For 100% Tariff on Movies Made Overseas

The president called the use of incentives by foreign countries to draw filmmakers and studios away from the U.S. a national security threat

https://www.wsj.com/business/media/trump-authorizes-100-tariff-on-movies-made-overseas-757e3a10

By Ben Fritz

May 4, 2025 9:43 pm ET

‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ was shot entirely overseas. Photo: Chris Pizzello/AP

Key Points

What's This?

Trump authorized 100% tariff on films produced overseas in response to other countries’ tax incentives.
Trump calls international filmmaking incentives a national security threat.
It is unclear how the new tariff would work, and reciprocal tariffs could devastate Hollywood studios.

President Trump has found the next industry he wants to bring back to the U.S. with tariffs: Hollywood.

Trump said in a Truth Social post Sunday that he has authorized a 100% tariff on films produced overseas. He said it was a response to tax incentives in countries such as the United Kingdom and Canada that have lured a substantial number of Hollywood films to shoot outside the U.S.

“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” the president wrote. He called international filmmaking incentives “a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”

This year’s highest-grossing film, “A Minecraft Movie,” was shot in Canada. Some of summer’s biggest productions including “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” and “Jurassic World Rebirth” were also made primarily or entirely outside the U.S.

London in particular has become a thriving hub for Hollywood productions. Disney’s Marvel Studios is shooting a pair of upcoming Avengers sequels there.

Trump said he authorized the Commerce Department and the U.S. Trade Representative to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% tariff on movies made abroad.

“We’re on it,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick posted on X Sunday.

It is unclear how such a tariff would work because movies aren’t physical goods that move through ports like most items subject to tariffs. The Trump administration would need to determine how to value a movie in order to apply the tariffs, as well as what the threshold would be to classify it as an import.

If other countries imposed reciprocal tariffs, it could devastate the Hollywood studios, as most big-budget event films earn most of their revenue overseas.

Representatives for the Motion Picture Association of America, the trade group for major Hollywood studios and streaming companies, and the White House didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump in January appointed actors Jon Voight, Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone as his “special ambassadors” to Hollywood. He said they would help bring back Hollywood business lost to foreign countries.

“These three very talented people will be my eyes and ears, and I will get done what they suggest,” he said.

Write to Ben Fritz at ben.fritz@wsj.com

16. Embattled Voice of America's fate uncertain after brief apparent reprieve

The hits just keep on coming. We are committing information and influence suicide. The CRINK (China, Russia, Iran, north Korea) must be enjoying this and I am sure will be sending Christmas cards to the judges who are supporting their continued authoritarian rule with no free press to hold them accountable by informing the oppressed people in denied areas about their autocratic rule and human rights abuses and more.

Embattled Voice of America's fate uncertain after brief apparent reprieve

By Katherine Long and Ben Johansen

05/03/2025 11:36 AM EDT

Updated: 05/03/2025 05:10 PM EDT

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/03/voice-of-america-resume-broadcasting-00325193?utm

Politico

Trump has targeted the government-funded media outlet that has been off the air for almost two months.

The Voice of America building is pictured, June 15, 2020, in Washington. | Andrew Harnik/AP

05/03/2025 11:36 AM EDT

Updated: 05/03/2025 05:10 PM EDT

The future of Voice of America remains in flux after a federal appellate court Saturday paused a ruling reversing the dismantling of the embattled news outlet — a day after journalists were told they would soon return to work.

A Justice Department email sent to attorneys representing VOA employees on Friday said the agency would begin a “phased return” to office and resume programming next week. But by Saturday afternoon, a divided D.C. Circuit Court panel issued a stay of a lower court order that would have restored the outlet.

VOA was set to begin its return after being off the air for almost two months, after the Trump administration halted programming in a March 14 executive order targeting a number of federal agencies and offices including the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the parent agency of the government-funded media outlet.

Now, plans for the outlet are immediately unclear, after the ruling in favor of the Trump administration Saturday.

A spokesperson for the USAGM did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the agency’s plans following the weekend win.

The effort to dismantle the government-backed news outlet has been at the center of a pitched legal battle. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the Trump administration to restore Voice of America in a preliminary injunction issued April 22. Lamberth argued that the administration’s decision to dismantle VOA likely violated the constitution.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brenda González Horowitz confirmed the return to office in an email sent to attorneys representing VOA employees. The email also confirms that all VOA employees have regained system access.

“USAGM currently expects staff to begin to return to the office next week, as security, building space, and equipment issues require a phased return,” González Horowitz wrote in the email, which was obtained by POLITICO. The Washington Post first reported on VOA’s looming return.

VOA has operated for over 80 years to report “accurate, objective, and comprehensive” news that will “present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively,” according to its charter.

The Trump administration in March ordered that federal grants through USAGM will be reviewed and “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” A D.C. Circuit panel paused orders blocking the cuts to USAGM funding for other outlets Thursday, but did not stop the order to return Voice of America staff to work.

The Saturday order changes that, with appellate Judges Neomi Rao and Gregory Katsas — both Trump appointees — ruling together to pause the part of the lower court order requiring the government “take all necessary steps to return USAGM employees and contractors to their status prior” to Trump’s executive order.

They found that the lower court likely did not have jurisdiction to order the employees back to work.

Judge Nina Pillard, an Obama appointee, dissented Saturday, writing that the decision is tantamount to “silencing Voice of America for the foreseeable future.”

But even when employees were looking at a return to work, some question whether or not the agency will be able to return to its previous state.

“We’re going to have to bring VOA out of a deep coma,” Steve Herman, VOA’s chief national correspondent, said in an interview with POLITICO before Saturday’s ruling. “And is it possible that it’ll ever regain full consciousness? That remains to be seen, because so much of the brain of VOA was destroyed by trying to strangle us.”

Politico

17. Trump Says Third Term Is ‘Not Something I’m Looking to Do’

Good. He needed to put this to bed. It would be a terrible distraction and an unnecessary political fight.

Trump Says Third Term Is ‘Not Something I’m Looking to Do’

President indicates that he won’t try for a constitutionally barred third term despite earlier remarks that ‘there are methods’ to do it

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/trump-says-third-term-is-not-something-im-looking-to-do-aca3d262

By Ginger Adams Otis

Updated May 4, 2025 12:58 pm ET

Trump Says ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked if He Must Uphold the Constitution

The president also questioned whether noncitizens are entitled to due process as his deportation efforts stoke conflict with federal courts

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-says-i-dont-know-when-asked-if-he-must-uphold-the-constitution-da6fd937

By Jess Bravin

Updated May 4, 2025 12:15 pm ET

These Thinkers Set the Stage for Trump the All-Powerful

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/opinion/trump-schmitt-strauss-intellectuals.html?referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm

May 4, 2025

Credit...Baptiste Virot

By Damon Linker

Mr. Linker teaches politics at the University of Pennsylvania and is working on a book about Leo Strauss’s influence on the American right.

With a blitz of moves in his 100 days in office, President Trump has sought to greatly enlarge executive power. The typical explanation is that he’s following and expanding a legal idea devised by conservatives during the Reagan administration, the unitary executive theory.

It’s not even close. Mr. Trump has gone beyond that or any other mainstream notion. Instead, members of his administration justify Mr. Trump’s instinctual attraction to power by reaching for a longer tradition of right-wing thought that favors explicitly monarchical and even dictatorial rule.

Those arguments — imported from Europe and translated to the American context — have risen to greater prominence now than at any time since the 1930s.

Mr. Trump’s first months back in office have provided a sort of experiment in applying these radical ideas. The alarming results show why no one in American history, up until now, has attempted to put them into practice — and why they present an urgent threat to the nation.

The tradition begins with legal theorist Carl Schmitt and can be followed in the work of the political philosopher Leo Strauss, thinkers affiliated with the Claremont Institute, a California-based think tank with close ties to the Trump movement, and the contemporary writings of the legal scholar Adrian Vermeule. Many on the right have bristled at presidential power’s being constrained over the past century by two waves of administrative reform. The first dates back to the early 20th century and the rise of the bureaucratic-regulatory state during the Progressive and New Deal eras. The second wave emerged in the 1970s, as Congress responded to the abuses of power by Richard Nixon.

The presidency has evolved to become an office exercising general (and often passive) oversight of vast departments and agencies, which are staffed by career civil servants who stay on across administrations.

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As a result, presidents are constrained by layers of lawyers and others determining what is allowable based on law and precedent. This evolution came about in part because the presidency can be the office most susceptible to despotic or tyrannical rule.

That’s where the more radical critique emanating from the hard right focuses its attention. Schmitt (who died in 1985) developed his most influential ideas during the turbulence and ineffectual governance of Germany’s Weimar Republic. In his view, liberalism has a fatal weakness. Its aversion to violent conflict drives it to smother intense debate with ostensibly neutral procedures that conceal the truth about the nature of politics.

That truth is revealed in emergency situations: Politics often requires making existential decisions about the good of the nation — and especially about who should be considered its friend and who its enemy. Liberalism’s supposed incapacity to make such primordial distinctions led Schmitt to the view that there exists “absolutely no liberal politics, only a liberal critique of politics.”

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For Schmitt, someone must serve in the role of sovereign decider. Legislatures aren’t fit for it, because they easily devolve into squabbling factions. Neither are administrative bureaucracies, because they often defer to established rules and debate without resolution. Both contributed to making the later years of Weimar what Schmitt described, in a lecture from 1929, as an “age of neutralizations and depoliticizations.”

That leaves the executive as the best option for decisive action. It was this line of reasoning that led Schmitt to throw his support behind Adolf Hitler’s efforts in 1933 to transform himself into Germany’s sovereign decider.

Few on the American right today explicitly credit Schmitt for shaping their views of presidential power. That isn’t true of Leo Strauss (who died in 1973), the German-Jewish émigré from Weimar who has influenced several generations of conservative academics and intellectuals in the United States. In his most influential book, “Natural Right and History,” Strauss subtly tames Schmitt’s views of politics, without mentioning him by name, and presents them as the pinnacle of political wisdom.

Strauss sets out a timeless moral standard of what is “intrinsically good or right” in normal situations as the just allocation of benefits and burdens in a society. But there are also “extreme situations” — those in which “the very existence or independence of a society is at stake.” In such situations, the normally valid rules of “natural right” are revealed to be changeable, permitting officeholders to do whatever is required to defend citizens against “possibly an absolutely unscrupulous and savage enemy.”

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Who gets to determine “extreme situations”? Strauss answers that it is “the most competent and most conscientious statesman” who decides. The statesman must also identify foreign enemies as well as “subversive elements” at home.

In recent decades, presidents of both parties have used emergency declarations to enhance their freedom of action. Barack Obama declared a dozen emergencies during his eight years in office. Mr. Trump declared 13 in his first presidency, while Joe Biden declared 11.

In only the first few months of his second term, Mr. Trump has declared eight. He’s invoked the authority therein to deploy the military to the southern border and to impose tariffs. He invoked the Alien Enemies Act to give himself the power — normally reserved for wartime — to round up and deport immigrants he classifies as constituting an “invasion or predatory incursion” of the nation. (The Supreme Court recently blocked the deportation of migrants under this law.)

The Claremont Institute extended this intellectual line in America. Founded in 1979 in California by four students of Harry Jaffa, who studied with Strauss in the 1940s, the institute has cultivated a distinctive account of American history. It begins with veneration for the country’s founding, which institutionalized timeless moral verities. It continues with reverence for Abraham Lincoln’s displays of statesmanship, both before and during the Civil War, which deepened and perfected the American polity by fulfilling the promise of its founding.

For the next half-century, the United States became the living embodiment of the “best regime” described in the texts of ancient political philosophers.

Then came the fall: First Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive movement, and then the New Deal during the Great Depression, introduced the notion of a “living Constitution” that evolves to permit the creation of an administrative state staffed by experts.

This form of administrative bureaucratic rule, often aided and abetted by the judicial branch, stifles statesmanship. That’s why Claremont-affiliated scholars have been at the forefront of attempts simultaneously to roll back the administrative state and to consolidate executive power in the office of the president.

Finally, Adrian Vermeule, of Harvard Law School, combines explicit Schmittian influence with a desire to revive and apply elements of medieval political theology to the contemporary understanding of the presidency.

In an essay published last July, Mr. Vermeule builds on the reasoning deployed by the Supreme Court in several recent decisions to lay out a maximalist theory that “goes to the outer logical limits of presidential power.” This theory asserts that executive power is never “given to subordinate officers or administrative agencies in their own right.” Rather, there is only the executive power of the president, “which alone incarnates and gives legal life to the legal authority of all his subordinates.” What this implies is that no executive-branch employee is independent of the president or can resist, let alone defy, his will.

What ties together these thinkers? A conviction that executive governance combines maximal leeway to act with maximal power to execute decisions without second-guessing from civil servants or lawyers or deference to judges.

No one has contributed more to this view in the administration and connected the president to these intellectual precursors than Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Many of Mr. Trump’s boldest assertions of executive power can be traced back to proposals from Mr. Vought in Claremont-affiliated arenas.

Here you can see why, for instance, Mr. Trump fired inspectors general at more than a dozen federal agencies, despite law requiring the president to give Congress 30 days notice of, and provide cause for, his intent to dismiss them. You can also see why Mr. Trump rejects the very idea of a person or office in the executive branch being independent of his will. He thinks he has unlimited enforcement discretion, allowing him to choose not to enforce duly enacted legislation, as he has done with the law banning TikTok.

The great danger of such a breathtakingly expansive view of executive power is that it threatens to transform the American presidency into a dictatorial office that disregards the separation of powers and seeks unchallenged primacy in its place.

It also asserts for its expansive authority a near-permanent state of emergency.

In a liberal democracy, this can’t be the end of the story. It might be necessary in a genuine crisis for a president to act beyond the bounds of ordinary moral and legal standards to secure the common good, but it is extraordinarily risky to begin treating a state of emergency as a new normal.

Such imperial governance has already led to mass deportations of supposed Venezuelan gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador without due process. It has also led Mr. Trump to force a showdown over the impoundment of congressionally appropriated funds, to disband whole agencies that were authorized by Congress, and to disregard rulings, on more than one occasion already, from federal judges.

That may leave liberals in the somewhat surprising position of having to remind conservatives about the crucial importance of personal character and good faith in politics. The stronger the executive, the more important it is to reserve the office for the most upstanding among us. Mr. Trump’s willingness to bend or break rules that typically constrain presidents might make him an effective wrecking ball for a right-wing agenda. But enhancing the vigor and authority of the presidency also undeniably increases the risk of dictatorial government.

The best way to mitigate that risk is to insist that presidents accept the constraints of ruling within a constitutional order defined by the separation of powers. And the only way to ensure they will accept such limits may be to demand that those who seek the nation’s highest office display an understanding of those limits and accept them as a necessary bulwark against tyranny.

There is room to increase the ability of presidents to act, but only if they show themselves worthy of being entrusted with those dangerous powers.

One Moment That Foretold It All

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/opinion/trump-vance-100-days.html?referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm

May 4, 2025

Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

By Ezra Klein

Opinion Columnist

Times Opinion asked our columnists to reflect on key moments during President Trump’s first 100 days that were revealing about the administration or that reshaped the country. Read Ezra’s Klein’s essay below and the others here.

I’m going to break the boundaries of the prompt and say that the most important — or at least most predictive — day of Donald Trump’s second term came before it even began: It was July 15, 2024, the day he announced that JD Vance was his choice for vice president.

The runner-ups were Marco Rubio and Doug Burgum — representatives of the Republican Party that existed before Trump’s 2016 campaign, choices Trump might have made to reassure voters who doubted or feared him. Vance was of the MAGA movement in a way Rubio and Burgum were not. Vance hated all the right people. Rubio and Burgum were seen as moderating forces; Vance pitched himself as an accelerationist who believed the biggest problem with Trump’s first term was that Trump was surrounded by people who, occasionally, said no to him. Vance was the only one of the three vice presidential contenders to say he would have done what Mike Pence would not: refuse to certify the 2020 election result.

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There was little sense, in the days before Trump’s pick, that Vance held the pole position. Later reporting revealed a lobbying campaign: Rupert Murdoch and his allies tried to talk Trump out of Vance, as did Ken Griffin, the chief executive of Citadel, and even Kellyanne Conway. But Trump was swayed by other voices: Don Jr., Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson, who reportedly told Trump that if he picked Rubio or Burgum he was likelier to be assassinated by MAGA’s enemies.

This was the moment we could see the structure of Trump’s first term giving way to the structure of his second. Trump’s first administration was almost like a European coalition government: Trump governed in an uneasy alliance with a Republican Party he did not fully control or even like, with a business community in which many viewed him as a buffoon, with a staff that saw part of its role as curbing and containing the boss’s most destructive impulses, atop an administrative state that often resisted his demands. That friction frustrated Trump and many of his first-term allies. It was also why the most dire predictions for his first term largely did not come true and why so many wrongly predicted that his second term would follow the same script.

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But Trump’s second term was never going to follow the same script because it has a completely different structure. This isn’t a coalition government; it’s a royal court. Trump is surrounded by courtiers who wield influence so long as they maintain his favor and not a moment longer. When is the last time he heard the word “no,” or was told, “I’m sorry, sir, you can’t”? In his first term, Trump either sought or was steered toward advisers and appointments that would reassure many of his doubters; in his second, he has prized loyalists who will do what they’re told and enforcers who will ensure that others fall in line as well.

I made this argument before the election, and it has proven true: One of Trump’s fundamental characteristics, for good and ill, is his disinhibition. He will do and say what others will barely think. In his first term, that disinhibition sat in tension with people around him who acted as inhibitors — a staff that was willing to think him wrong or even ridiculous, a congressional Republican Party that was not fully rebuilt around loyalty and sycophancy. For those who believed his first term a success, that tension was essential: Trump pushed the Republican Party and the bureaucracy to consider new policies and possibilities, but he was protected from carrying out his dumbest and most destructive ideas.

In his second term, Trump is surrounded by yes men and accelerationists. His staff has no interest in second-guessing the Grand Ayatollah of MAGA. Congressional Republicans are introducing bills to offer Trump a third term or carve his face onto Mount Rushmore. The guardrails are gone. The choice of JD Vance was when that structure came clear. It revealed that Trump’s second term would offer no concessions, contain no skeptics. The ferocity and recklessness of this presidency are by design.

Opinion

What Defined Trump’s First 100 Days? 15 Columnists Weigh In.

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.

Ezra Klein joined Opinion in 2021. Previously, he was the founder, editor in chief and then editor at large of Vox; the host of the podcast “The Ezra Klein Show”; and the author of “Why We’re Polarized.” Before that, he was a columnist and editor at The Washington Post, where he founded and led the Wonkblog vertical. He is on Threads.

A version of this article appears in print on May 4, 2025, Section SR, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: And The One Moment That Foretold It All. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

21. The State Department Makes an Enemies List – And I am on it by Anne Applebaum

Chilling.

“Freedom of the Press,

if it means anything at all,

means the freedom

to criticize and oppose”

― George Orwell

Open Letters, from Anne Applebaum

Upgrade to paid

The State Department Makes an Enemies List

And I am on it

https://anneapplebaum.substack.com/p/the-state-department-makes-an-enemies?r=7i07&utm

Anne Applebaum

May 03, 2025

A few days ago, Eileen Guo of the MIT Technology Review released a scoop: Darren Beattie, one of Marco Rubio’s deputies at the State Department, has requested all records relating to any communications between the Global Engagement Center, a small, now dissolved office that formerly dealt with foreign propaganda campaigns, and a long list of organizations and people. I am on it.

Beattie has also asked for any communications that mention certain buzzwords, including “incel,” “q-anon,” “Black Lives Matter” and “great replacement theory.” Beattie appears to be compiling some kind of document that will serve to “prove” something that did not happen: That the Global Engagement Center, which never operated inside the United States, was somehow censoring American conservatives.

I was certainly in touch with the Global Engagement Center, because I wrote about it, and quoted from some of its investigations. The GEC worked to expose Russian information laundering operations, and to track Chinese and Iranian information campaigns. The GEC is mentioned in my book, Autocracy Inc, and in an Atlantic cover story, The New Propaganda War, that I published last year, and that was partly excerpted from the book. In that article, I mentioned one of several schemes that were rumbled by the GEC:

Pressenza, a website founded in Milan and relocated to Ecuador in 2014, publishes in eight languages, describes itself as “an international news agency dedicated to news about peace and nonviolence,” and featured an article on biolabs in Ukraine. According to the U.S. State Department, Pressenza is part of a project, run by three Russian companies, that planned to create articles in Moscow and then translate them for these “native” sites, following Chinese practice, to make them seem “local.” Pressenza denied the allegations; one of its journalists, Oleg Yasinsky, who says he is of Ukrainian origin, responded by denouncing America’s “planetary propaganda machine” and quoting Che Guevara.

But the GEC became the focus of a wider conspiracy theory, best described by the scholar Renee DiResta in her book, Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality . Unfortunately, by Trump administration has now dismantled the GEC, leaving the US without a team of people who can identify and expose foreign information campaigns. Instead, it looks like the State Department is getting ready to run a campaign against anyone who was ever associated with it.

My colleague at the Atlantic, Tom Nichols, imagined Beattie’s request beginning like this:

Esteemed Comrades of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs! Today we ask you to review your files for any communications you may have had with unreliable elements who are critical of our Party and our leader. If you have had contact with journalists, researchers, or other subversives, we ask you to report these interactions in full to the senior comrades responsible for the important work of ideological vigilance. Also, please indicate if you have encountered any suspicious use of the following terms …

That’s not actually how Acting Undersecretary of State Darren Beattie communicated his request for information to a small office at the State Department, but he may as well have. Beattie is one of President Donald Trump’s self-styled ideological commissars in the executive branch, and he seems to be taking to his duties with gusto.

Another Atlantic colleague, Charlie Warzel, also wrote about this story (and the Atlantic did a terrific graphic design for it)

He observed that Beattie is preparing a similar playbook to the one Elon Musk deployed after he took over Twitter: download a bunch of data, “connect the dots” in conspiratorial ways, smear people and claim to be creating “transparency.” He pinpoints the hypocrisy:

Publishing the internal correspondence of people the administration sees as critics and ideological opponents may very well have a chilling effect on journalists and institutions trying to hold government agencies to account. At the very least, it sends a message that the administration is willing to marshal the information stores it has been entrusted with by its citizens to harass or intimidate others. It is, in other words, an attempt to abuse government power in the precise way that Beattie and Republicans have accused Democrats of doing.

No doubt there will be more to say in due course.

Do Trump Voters Get it Yet?

Last week I talked to Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, for her Focus Group podcast. Sarah, among many other things, runs regular conversations with different kinds of voters, in an attempt to understand how they think. Her team had been talking to people who voted for Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024, asking them specifically about the illegal deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, as well as about Trump’s attack on universities and Harvard’s response. Some of the conversation was…dispiriting. Listen here:

22. ‘The Rock’ reboot?: Alcatraz may get new life under President Trump

We were in San Fransisco a couple of weeks ago. Not only did we ride in a self-driving car a few times for the first time, we also visited Alcatraz (and I thought I had found Kim Jong Un's new home after he was changed by the people inside north Korea).

On a serious note, I do not think Alcatraz could be returned to its primary function without a helluva huge investment in infrastructure because it appears to be pretty run down.

‘The Rock’ reboot?: Alcatraz may get new life under President Trump

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/may/4/alcatraz-may-get-new-life-trump-proposes-reopening-rock/

FILE - Alcatraz Island is shown in San Francisco, on April 16, 2020. The historic island prison was reopened to visitors after being closed since Dec. 2020, because of the coronavirus. U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Saturday, Nov. 20, … more >

By Seth McLaughlin - The Washington Times - Sunday, May 4, 2025

President Trump wants to reopen the maximum security prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay to house the “dregs of society.”

Mr. Trump outlined his vision Sunday on social media, saying he is directing federal law enforcement agencies “to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.”

“Rebuild, and open Alcatraz!” Mr. Trump said in yelling all-capital letters on Truth Social. “For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering.”

Mr. Trump said he sees it as an opportunity to return to a time when the United States was a more “serious nation” and “did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm.”

“No longer will we tolerate these Serial Offenders who spread filth, bloodshed, and mayhem on our streets,” he said. “We will no longer be held hostage to criminals, thugs, and Judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals, who came into our Country illegally.”

The announcement comes as Mr. Trump faces blowback over his efforts to deport illegal immigrants deemed to be gang members to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.

Having once been an Army fort and then an Army prison, Alcatraz became a federal prison in 1934 and closed in 1963, shortly after the only possibly successful escape bid.

Alcatraz is now a public museum and one of San Francisco’s most popular tourist attractions.

But in the mid-20th century, the prison also known as “The Rock” was perhaps the most famous and notorious one in America, having held such infamous criminals as Al Capone, George “Machine-Gun” Kelly, and Alvin Karpis (the first man designated as “Public Enemy No. 1”).

The word “Alcatraz” also became a shorthand way to refer to an especially brutal or fearsome prison, and part of its reputation also was based on its being touted as inescapable.

Its reputation was so large that it was the setting for numerous TV shows and several A-list movies over the decades — from Burt Lancaster’s “Birdman of Alcatraz” and Clint Eastwood’s “Escape from Alcatraz” to Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage in “The Rock.”

Escaping the prison was hard enough, but being isolated on a rocky island in the middle of a cold seawater bay with violent and unpredictable tides made escaping to freedom near impossible.

Only three inmates — Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin — may have escaped, and their 1962 scheme was dramatized in the 1979 Eastwood film.

They escaped their cells but disappeared thereafter. The official report said they drowned in the bay but their bodies never washed up onto the rock, as would be expected in that event. Nor were any ever definitely tracked on the U.S. mainland, even if only to evade capture again.

Their fate remains a mystery.

• Victor Morton contributed to this report.

• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.

23. Beyond the Hype: Why Drones Cannot Replace Artillery

And here is a complementary essay and one of the last articles published on Small Wars Journal 1.0 before we made the transition last year.

Drones Are Not Artillery Yet

By L. Lance Boothe

https://archive.smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/drones-are-not-artillery-yet

Excerpts:

Drones are a valuable addition to the modern battlefield, but they are tools, not harbingers of a revolution in military affairs. The lessons from Ukraine demonstrate that UAVs can augment and expand traditional fires, particularly in situations characterized by shortages and static fighting. However, they cannot and should not be viewed as substitutes for the artillery and rocket forces that are fundamental to operational maneuver and ultimate victory in large-scale warfare. The future of fires lies not in replacing proven capabilities with unproven technologies, but in integrating them to create a more versatile, resilient, and effective fire support network.

The U.S. Army must learn the right lessons from this conflict and from its own experimentation with drone technology. Enthusiasm for new technologies must be tempered with a realistic understanding of their limitations, a respect for the enduring principles of warfare, and a commitment to maintaining a balanced and comprehensive fires capability. Otherwise, we risk developing a fires force optimized for niche threats, but woefully unprepared for the massed, high-intensity combat that future conflicts with peer adversaries will inevitably demand. The key is not to choose between drones and artillery, but to leverage the strengths of both to create a fires force that is capable of dominating the battlefield in the 21st century and beyond.

Beyond the Hype: Why Drones Cannot Replace Artillery

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/05/05/beyond-the-hype-why-drones-cannot-replace-artillery/

by Bill Murray

05.05.2025 at 06:00am

The relentless footage emerging from the Ukrainian battlefield, dominated by images of drones striking tanks, disrupting troop movements, and providing crucial reconnaissance, has fueled a narrative, often breathless and uncritical, that unmanned systems are poised to replace conventional artillery. This idea, however, represents a fundamental misreading of the realities of modern warfare.

While drones undeniably offer valuable and evolving capabilities, they are best understood as powerful additions to, rather than substitutes for, the sustained, massive, and versatile firepower required in large-scale combat. A current, somewhat uncritical embrace of drone technology within the U.S. Army, driven by a desire for innovation and a perceived cost-effectiveness, risks diverting attention and resources from the vital modernization of artillery, a critical need for facing potential conflicts with peer or near-peer adversaries. The allure of a “drone-centric” future must be tempered with a clear-eyed assessment of the enduring strengths of traditional fires and the inherent limitations of unmanned aerial systems.

The U.S. Army faces a real and present danger of drawing the wrong conclusions from the ongoing war in Ukraine, and from the broader proliferation of drone technology. The tactical successes achieved with inexpensive commercial drones and first-person view (FPV) systems are undeniably appealing, offering a seemingly low-cost means of achieving disproportionate effects.

However, an overemphasis on these niche capabilities, often touted as revolutionary, could come at the expense of maintaining and improving the artillery that remains the cornerstone of firepower in any major engagement. A careful and historically informed examination of the conflict in Ukraine, coupled with an understanding of the fundamental principles of warfare, reveals a fundamental truth: unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can enhance fire support, improve situational awareness, and provide tactical advantages, but they are not, and won’t be in the foreseeable future, a replacement for the range, volume, destructive power, and all-weather operability of traditional artillery. The focus should be on integrating drones into a comprehensive fires network, not on attempting to substitute them for a proven and essential capability.

Both Ukrainian and Russian forces have demonstrated remarkable adaptability, rapidly fielding large numbers of drones, both short and long-range, commercial and military-grade, to address resource constraints, a largely static front, and the evolving demands of the conflict. However, this isn’t a strategic shift based on superior capability or a harbinger of a new era of warfare, but rather a pragmatic response to circumstance. As many reports open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysts, and other respected military analysts indicate, the proliferation of FPV drones largely compensates for critical shortages of artillery shells, particularly on the Ukrainian side, filling a gap rather than offering a fundamentally better solution. While FPV drones have proven effective against armored vehicles and in close-quarters combat, at best, they deliver tactical-level precision comparable to battalion mortars, a far cry from the comprehensive impact of artillery fire. They are a tactical tool, not a strategic game-changer. Furthermore, the reliance on drones has created new vulnerabilities, as both sides have developed increasingly sophisticated electronic warfare capabilities to counter them.

The Limits of Drones in Modern Warfare: A Multifaceted Analysis

Drones excel in specific roles, and their utility is undeniable. They provide invaluable real-time intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, significantly enhancing situational awareness for commanders and troops on the ground. They can strike isolated targets with precision, reducing collateral damage and minimizing the risk to friendly forces. They are effective at harassing enemy units, disrupting logistics, and conducting psychological warfare. Yet, as the Institute for Security and Development Policy and other think tanks have pointed out, UAVs are inherently limited by a number of factors. UAVs are significantly hampered by adverse weather conditions; rain degrades sensor performance and can cause electrical malfunctions, while strong winds can destabilize the aircraft, impacting its ability to maintain flight or accurately deliver payloads. These limitations mean UAV effectiveness is often dramatically reduced, or even negated, during inclement weather, making them unreliable.

UAVs’ payloads also restrict their destructive potential, limiting their ability to inflict significant damage on hardened targets or to suppress enemy fire effectively. Their reliance on radio frequency links makes them vulnerable to jamming, spoofing, cyberattacks, and other forms of electronic warfare—a weakness artillery, particularly when combined with robust communications security measures, doesn’t share.

Moreover, the logistical demands of drone operations—battery charging, spare parts, specialized operator training, and the constant need for counter-electronic warfare measures—create new sustainment challenges that would become overwhelmingly complex and costly in a prolonged, high-intensity conflict. Add in the manning requirements for drone units, observers, and support teams, and that heavy draw off of an already stretched force creates a self-inflicted dilemma on force structure.

Artillery, in contrast, delivers massed fires in all weather conditions, over extended ranges, and with significantly greater explosive effect. Even the most advanced FPV drones, as Euromaidan Press and other sources have highlighted, cannot replicate the broad-area suppression, neutralization, and destruction that a battery of 155mm howitzers can achieve in a matter of minutes. Nor can drones match the psychological impact of sustained artillery bombardment, a long-recognized element of attritional warfare. The notion that swarms of small drones could simply replace guns and rocket systems also ignores the economic realities of scaling up drone warfare, especially when considering enemy countermeasures and layered defenses, as David Hambling of Forbes and other defense analysts have argued. The cost of replacing drones lost in combat, coupled with the expense of maintaining a robust logistical tail, and manning requirements quickly erodes any perceived cost advantage. Furthermore, the vulnerability of drones to electronic warfare and physical destruction creates a significant risk of losing critical ISR assets and disrupting fire support operations.

Ukraine and Russia: A Unique Case Study — Circumstance, Not Revolution

The reliance on drones by Ukraine and Russia doesn’t necessarily predict the future of warfare for well-equipped, industrialized militaries. It’s a reflection of their specific circumstances; adaptation born of necessity, resource constraints, and the unique characteristics of the conflict. Drone strikes address tactical needs, achieving limited effects when traditional artillery is unavailable or when precise targeting is required. They enhance reconnaissance and target acquisition, allowing for more efficient use of dwindling artillery resources. However, neither side has abandoned conventional indirect fire. In fact, both are actively working to rebuild their artillery capabilities even as they deploy drones extensively. The Ukrainian plea for more artillery shells from Western allies underscores the continued importance of conventional fires. Drones are a temporary fix, a stopgap measure, not a replacement. Recognizing this distinction is crucial for American military planners. The conflict has also highlighted the importance of counter-drone technology, with both sides investing heavily in electronic warfare systems and physical defenses to mitigate the threat posed by UAVs.

A Potential Drift Towards Amateurism and Fragmentation in the U.S. Army

Currently, it seems that nearly every U.S. Army unit is experimenting with commercially available drones, often without a clearly defined operational purpose or a comprehensive integration plan. The focus appears to be on simply having drones, rather than on leveraging them to achieve decisive battlefield effects. This trend carries the risk of creating a misleading impression of progress, numerous units duplicating efforts, and pursuing minor tactical gains without contributing to a comprehensive fires modernization strategy. The lack of centralized control and standardization could lead to interoperability issues and hinder the effective use of drones in joint operations. This decentralized approach also risks fostering a fragmented, amateur drone culture that consumes valuable time and resources while simultaneously weakening critical artillery capabilities; its lethality, mass, and resilience. Technology adoption without thoughtful doctrinal integration doesn’t lead to innovation; it leads to divergence, a luxury the U.S. military cannot afford in a conflict with a peer adversary like China or Russia. The Army needs a clear, overarching strategy for integrating drones into its fires network, with clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and training requirements.

Charting a Course for the Future: A Balanced Approach to Fires Modernization

The U.S. Army should embrace drone technology, but not at the expense of artillery. It must resist the allure of the “next big thing” and instead pursue a deliberate, disciplined, and balanced fires modernization plan. This requires several key steps:

Prioritize Artillery Modernization: Programs like the Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA), which significantly increases the range and lethality of existing howitzers, and the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), which provides a long-range, surface-to-surface missile capability, must remain central to our modernization efforts. These programs represent a significant investment in the future of conventional fires and are essential for maintaining a credible deterrent. Drones should complement these systems, not supplant them.
Integrate, Don’t Substitute: Small drones should be integrated into fire support cells and battalion fire planning processes as reconnaissance assets and tools for striking point targets, but not as replacements for traditional gun and rocket systems. They should be used to enhance targeting accuracy, provide real-time battle damage assessment, and extend the reach of artillery fires.
Maintain Mass Fires Capability: Precision is valuable, but the ability to deliver massed fires at scale remains essential in major combat operations. Drones will never replicate the overwhelming suppression and deep interdiction effects of artillery. The ability to saturate an enemy position with high-explosive rounds remains a critical capability for breaking enemy defenses and achieving decisive breakthroughs.

Conclusion: A Synthesis of Old and New

Drones are a valuable addition to the modern battlefield, but they are tools, not harbingers of a revolution in military affairs. The lessons from Ukraine demonstrate that UAVs can augment and expand traditional fires, particularly in situations characterized by shortages and static fighting. However, they cannot and should not be viewed as substitutes for the artillery and rocket forces that are fundamental to operational maneuver and ultimate victory in large-scale warfare. The future of fires lies not in replacing proven capabilities with unproven technologies, but in integrating them to create a more versatile, resilient, and effective fire support network.

The U.S. Army must learn the right lessons from this conflict and from its own experimentation with drone technology. Enthusiasm for new technologies must be tempered with a realistic understanding of their limitations, a respect for the enduring principles of warfare, and a commitment to maintaining a balanced and comprehensive fires capability. Otherwise, we risk developing a fires force optimized for niche threats, but woefully unprepared for the massed, high-intensity combat that future conflicts with peer adversaries will inevitably demand. The key is not to choose between drones and artillery, but to leverage the strengths of both to create a fires force that is capable of dominating the battlefield in the 21st century and beyond.

(Disclaimer: The views represented in this articles are the authors and do not represent those of the United States Government, the Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, nor any other government agency.)

Tags: Armed Conflict, Artillery, drone warfare, drones, firepower, FPV drones, innovation, Russia-Ukraine War, Russo-Ukrainian War

About The Author

Bill Murray
Lt. Col. William Murray is the deputy engineer for U.S. European Command, in Stuttgart, Germany. He graduated in 2005 from the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York and he is a 2017 graduate of the School of Advanced Military Studies, Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He also hosts of the Lessons Lost in Time podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/lessons-lost-in-time/id1762473030

24. Why Public Attitudes are important but neglected in Post-conflict Peacebuilding

A view from Japan.

Conclusion:

Despite the reliance of major powers and international organizations on liberal peacebuilding, its unfavorable outcomes prompted rethinking a way to maintain sustaining stability in post-conflict societies. By criticizing the standardized ideas of liberal peacebuilding, locally turned theses shed light on the relevance of local context to the assessment of armed conflict. Among others, surveys are promising tools for understanding local demands and needs. The importance of surveys cannot be emphasized too much for understanding conflicts characterized by civilians’ victimization, fluid cleavage, and motivation for fighting. However, the practical use of survey findings has been hitherto limited by data collection issues. The timely implementation of surveys is key for successful peacebuilding in the aftermath of conflict. Alternative measures, including meta-analyses, would also help in identifying mitigation strategies for post-conflict problems. However, for all these measures to work, the peacebuilding community needs to be literate and receptive to scientific evidence.

Why Public Attitudes are important but neglected in Post-conflict Peacebuilding

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/05/05/why-public-attitudes-are-important/

by Yuichi Kubota

05.05.2025 at 06:00am

army and security control post during the red Khmer or khmer rouge time on a road in the ruins of Angkor near the town of Siem Reap of Cambodia. Cambodia, Phnom Penh, February, 1996,

Introduction

When designing peacebuilding programs, insufficient attention has hitherto been paid to the relevance of public attitudes in the analysis of post-conflict societies. Although recent theses of peacebuilding require focusing on local contexts, extant empirical findings and policies are not bridged sufficiently in terms of the needs, values, and norms of local populations. Armed conflicts are characterized by the involvement and victimization of ordinary civilians. Additionally, violent incidents are concentrated in specific conflict-prone locations, often geographically peripheral areas In this context, urban bias must be addressed when evaluating the causes and processes of conflict. While this nature of conflict encourages us to take advantage of the virtues of public-attitude studies, their practical use is hindered by data collection issues, such as survey timing, case selection, and external validity. By providing a careful consideration of methodological issues, academic and policy communities should support timely fieldwork implementation to investigate local situations in conflicts of concern. A meta-analysis of public attitudes may also help us better design peacebuilding programs that acknowledge the relevance of locals’ experiences and their views on post-conflict reconstruction and development. Still, deliberation is needed on how to use one-size-fits-all evidence whose lessons are expected to be applicable to any conflict cases.

Locally turned peacebuilding

In their implementation, contemporary peacebuilding programs place great emphasis on the liberal ideas of democracy, the free market, human rights, and the rule of law (i.e. liberal peacebuilding). This type of peacebuilding prevails in the foreign policies of great powers and international organizations toward conflict-prone countries. By overseeing the implementation of political affairs, the United States pursued these ideas to establish stability in post-9/11 Afghanistan and Iraq. The United Nations (UN) also has a long tradition of liberal peacebuilding, as it initiated numerous peace operations that aimed to establish liberal institutions in conflict-affected countries in the aftermath of the Cold War. These efforts took the relevant approach as the dominant practice of conflict resolution in recognition of the fact that post-conflict countries should and could (re)develop social, economic, and political institutions in a relatively short time so that liberal norms would be ensured.

However, liberal peacebuilding, specifically regarding post-conflict peacebuilding efforts/practices, have been criticized. Some researchers are skeptical of institutionalist approaches with standardized instruments to manage conflicts that focus on elections or broader democracy-assistance activities. At the same time, others question the application of liberalist policies for political and economic reconstruction. Problematizing its ideological background and coercive approach, post-modernist theses often take “illiberal” interventions by international actors against conflict-affected states as a variation of orientalism, imperialism, or colonialism.

These criticisms primarily center on the failure of liberal peacebuilding in assessing and understanding conflict drivers in a locality. While liberal-peacebuilding programs do not exclude subnational actors, such as civic groups, non-governmental organizations, and the business sector, they often prioritize national-level institutional development and elite-level negotiations and pay less attention to agendas that are relevant to local people’s needs. Consequently, they miss local nuances and develop flawed mitigation strategies. For instance, the early-1990s peace operations in Somalia overlooked clan politics and failed to address key confrontations between them. The neglect of local circumstances is problematic because the absence of a grassroots consensus will lead to peacebuilding projects lacking local legitimacy. Moreover, it undervalues day-to-day activities and customs that can prevent the occurrence of local violence and address nationwide tensions. However, the locals often have informal networks and a set of formulated measures for conflict with neighbors and business partners.

With the emergence of arguments that emphasize the importance of local actors, recent theses have begun to acknowledge and advocate the role of civil society in post-conflict peacebuilding processes. This “locally-turned” approach sheds light on civic life, such as family welfare and community well-being. It is expected that local stakeholders will actively design and implement “open-ended” or “goal-free” peacebuilding by themselves rather than merely take part in one-size-fits-all programs whose goals and measures are predetermined.

Why do public attitudes matter?

Recent peacebuilding theses emphasize the importance of identifying and understanding the historical context and drivers of conflict from the perspective of international actors, the host government, and local populations. Similar approaches could also be applied to post-conflict reconstruction strategies and their implementation. For sustaining peace, it is crucial to understand the needs and demands of locals as the most relevant agents, as well as how they affect peacebuilding outcomes.

The characteristics of armed conflicts can provide answers to the question why public attitudes are important. First, local civilians are often involved and victimized in armed conflicts. In most cases, they are fence sitters not committed to either camp of belligerents. Civilians may be threatened to support either side or both under imbalanced power relations with armed actors. Although such civil–military relations are commonly observed across conflicts, personal interviews from my fieldwork in Cambodia reveled that, in the conflict between 1970 and 1975, Khmer Rouge cadres and government soldiers coerced civilians to provide not only material goods such as food and cloths but also information about the opponent. The refusal of such requests was highly likely to cause the punishment of uncooperative persons by each side of the belligerents. The wartime experiences of collaboration with armed actors would have a great impact on civilians’ sociopolitical life in the aftermath of the conflict, particularly when post-conflict politics hinges on pre-conflict and wartime divisions. In fact, after gaining power, from 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge massacred hundreds of thousands of civilians based on their wartime backgrounds and behavior.

In addition, as the distinction between military battles, organized crime, and civilian abuse has become increasingly blurred in current armed conflicts, civilians have begun to be subjected to mobilization by the armed forces. Being a combatant has an enormous influence on one’s livelihood. Military service is highly risky because soldiers are often physically injured and mentally impaired even if they are not killed in the conflict. Moreover, their close family members and other relatives may be victimized by wartime violence. The loss of these individuals inevitably reshapes social relationships. In the Peruvian civil war (1980–2000), indigenous women of the Andes highlands came to play the role of negotiators with state authorities in search of their detained or disappeared menfolk, despite their lack of Spanish language-proficiency and prior contact with the authorities. This process encouraged some of them to found or join human rights groups.

Second, ordinary civilians matter in peacebuilding processes because violent incidents often occur in specific conflict-prone locations, being often peripheral areas that are occupied by non-elite and non-fighting populations. Although transportation allows the government and security forces to exercise their authority over those politically marginalized areas, the physical distance between capital cities and conflict sites commonly weakens such capacity, regardless whether logistics are well developed or not. In addition, rough terrain decreases clout by keeping clear of the central authority for its accessibility barriers. In the view of political elites in urban cities, such conflicts tend to be caused by the fixed motivations of insurgents. While in a conflict over political regime, rank-and-file individuals are assumed to be mobilized for their ideological commitment, they are supposed to enlist in co-ethnic forces in an ethnic conflict. However, grassroots interactions are often based on more fluid and opportunistic relationships between community and external actors. Urban information and assumptions obscure the importance of local circumstances and result in an a-contextual interpretation of the causes and processes of conflict.

Requirements for the successful assessment of conflict and design of peacebuilding

The inaccessibility and invisibility of civilians in conflict areas need to be addressed in the evaluation of conflicts, and more rigorous and comprehensive efforts must be taken to obtain data from those most directly affected by conflict. To fully and accurately ascertain the drivers of conflict and better facilitate the conditions for lasting peace, it is crucial to gather information on cases of greatest concern at an appropriate timing in a direct way.

Among the various sources available, one of the most powerful measures to obtaining a sense of the civic problems is the implementation of a survey that allows one to capture the public attitudes toward various issues. The determination of public attitudes relies on the answers and reactions of many respondents, who are often ordinary people selected to be surveyed based on certain rules (e.g., random, systematic, stratified, and cluster sampling), to particular questions and experimental interventions. They are advantageous in that public opinion does not limit the focus to specific groups of people but represents the attitudes of a wider population. While former leaders and combatants of the armed forces are direct stakeholders in peacebuilding, ordinary civilians are not negligible either in the development of an environment of sustainable peace.

Survey timing, case selection, and external validity

Despite the importance of integrating local populations into the peacebuilding process, public knowledge and input have not been effectively made use of for the analysis of post-conflict societies. This is ironic in that, although recent theses of peacebuilding require us to focus on local contexts, the empirical findings and policies are not bridged sufficiently. This inevitably generates a gap between local structures such as needs, demands, and peacebuilding interventions. The lack of a link between empirical survey-based findings and policymaking is caused by data collection issues such as survey timing, case selection, and external validity.

First, surveys are not carried out in a timely manner, as the immediate aftermath of armed conflict is the best time for investigators to capture the attitudes of members of the public who have been affected by the conflict. The administration of surveys usually requires considerable manpower; for instance, enumerators need labor to conduct fieldwork in different locations. An unstable environment does not ensure the safety of those enumerators who are tasked with executing surveys in conflict-affected communities. This would also cause a security problem for respondents, since participating in such surveys might put them at risk against any actors who profit from concealing wartime incidents. Therefore, investigators face a dilemma between survey timing and management-related issues. As safety is paramount for all persons involved, the implementation of the survey is often deferred and only becomes possible long after the conflict has been settled.

Online surveys may partially address this problem but access to registered respondents in relevant areas whom investigators want to engage with may not always be possible. These surveys often target opt‐in internet-access panels, that is, groups of respondents who have expressed a willingness to take part in questionnaires on online survey platforms; for instance, market researchers could investigate those registrants to obtain information as to how specific commercial goods are perceived by consumers. However, at this point, we do not have similar pre-registered samples of individuals who experienced civil conflicts. Even if it exists, a relevant platform may not guarantee that the registrants represent the population in question because registration is primarily voluntary. For peacebuilding programs to be effectively designed, investigators need not have an extensive view of the country but instead focus on most conflict-affected areas. Similarly, the sample does not have to be nationally representative but should be so for the areas under study.

The over- and under-representation of specific groups of civilians is another issue in the post-conflict context. In a male-dominated society, for instance, investigators cannot readily access women who suffered greatly as a result of wartime destruction although they are expected to play a major social role after the conflict. Northwestern Pakistan is seriously affected by conflict; namely, Taliban rebels murdered tribal leaders to expand their influence and massive displacement of civilians reshaped socioeconomic relations and structure in the locality. Although women could take on a greater role after male population was victimized by the conflict, patriarchal norms hinder women’s social advancement and keep them underrepresented in the public sphere. Even when socio-political groups or unions are visible and accessible to outsiders, it is still important to recognize the degree to which they are inclusive or exclusive in the entire society.

Moreover, even if a survey can be carried out in a timely manner, the immediate aftermath of the conflict may be characterized by the locals being more focused on short-term humanitarian needs (e.g., emergency health care, food, water, and shelter) than those for enduring peace that require long-term investment of funds and human capital. In many cases this focus reflects the devastation caused by wartime violence and destruction. At the same time, given that conflict-affected local communities are in competition with each other for the acquisition of limited sources of humanitarian aid, those communities would have an incentive to focus on emergency and immediate needs. In this situation, a concurrent, two-tiered approach for the assessment and provision of emergency assistance, as well as long-term issue identification and mitigation, would be an effective measure for conditioning enduring peace. However, this situation makes it difficult for them to consider time-consuming processes of peacebuilding, while the fulfilment of such short-term needs is closely related to communal stability.

Second, related to the above-mentioned point, conflicts of current concern are likely to be investigated not through surveys but through the non-survey assessment of interviews with high-ranking officials and stakeholders and/or secondary sources such as newspapers, briefing reports, and statistical materials. As a result, while public attitudes can be revealed in societies where violence has ceased long ago, analyses of the situation in ongoing and recently ended conflicts tend to lack empirical evidence of wide and well-prepared surveys. Unfortunately, this causes survey research to fail in meeting the expectations of stakeholders and policy interests. Based on expert knowledge and experience, non-survey analyses of conflict-affected societies often provide valuable insights that put together scattered information to draw the implications contributable to policy development. However, armed conflicts influence civilians in various ways throughout their duration. It is impossible to ascertain the needs of these individuals without direct contact because post-conflict public attitudes may reflect those of the pre-conflict period or may have changed due to wartime and/or post-conflict incidents (Figure 1). In this sense, assumptions without appropriate grassroots evidence could mislead one in understanding public demands that should be incorporated into peacebuilding policies because conflict dynamics and peacebuilding outcomes often differ at the national and local levels. In South Sudan, for instance, macro-level institutional settlements after the civil war (1983–2005) did not sufficiently address micro-level disputes among local population such as landownership and property rights, which had a risk of causing another conflict; rather, the legalization of communal customary rights to land addressed these problems. Therefore, an analysis based solely on national-level interactions would fail to capture locals’ daily needs and requirements, as attention to local dynamics is needed for that purpose.

Figure 1. Conflict process and post-conflict public attitudes

Third, survey findings cannot be immediately applied or extrapolated from one case to another. Given the reasons discussed above, opinion polls are unlikely to be implemented at the best time and location. Conversely, valuable implications are often offered by investigations for conflicts that terminated long ago. These findings have merit for their rich scholarly knowledge but not always respect policy interests because they do not directly touch upon conflicts of current concern, which have unique sociopolitical drivers. However, they could still be viewed as a broad initial guide and used to draw information and make inferences applicable to the analysis of current conflicts of interest. One problem is that public attitudes and even the conflict–attitude link of a specific case do not have a high level of applicability to other cases (i.e., external validity). This is primarily because the structures of conflict differ significantly between cases. In addition to the diverse historical backgrounds, confrontations may occur along social divisions, and such divisions may become blurred as a conflict progresses. Moreover, wartime and post-conflict political processes may also vary across different cases. Some conflicts are settled through negotiations, while others terminate because of military victory and defeat.

For these reasons, a survey in one location contains a limited number of variables that can be referred to for the analysis of another conflict, while questions or interventions relevant to a specific conflict may not be applicable at all to another case. Unlike cross-national surveys, those conducted in conflict-affected societies are case-specific, so that investigators can capture local situations in a specific context. For instance, the timeframe of conflict dynamics is an important information to be recorded because it can contextualize respondents’ answers in major events and changes in the relevant periods. The timeframe varies between conflict cases; while ceasefire agreements separate the periods of conflicts such as in Sri Lanka, Colombia, and Palestine, other cases of conflict are not always interrupted by ceasefires but last to the end, whether they terminate with negotiation or military victory. Even in the latter case, the stages of conflict move forward according to military situations (e.g., seizure of territorial control and victory/defeat in major battles). As the shift of these stages largely depends on the structure and dynamics of each conflict, common triggers are not readily observable. For these reasons, the limited external validity of survey-based findings would cause peacebuilders to refrain from referring to those obtained in cases outside their policy interests.

One-size-fits-all findings?

The practical use of survey results in the development of peacebuilding policies is hindered by challenges in data (collection) such as survey timing, case selection, and external validity. Given these obstacles, at least three measures could be worth consideration to facilitate more favorable peacebuilding outcomes:

support for timely implementation of surveys;
use of meta-analysis results; and
development of a peacebuilding community receptive to scientific findings.

First, the simplest solution would be to conduct a survey to investigate civilians’ needs and demands and to better understand conflicts in terms of policy priorities. Despite the unfavorable environment, the timely administration of such a survey would be of inestimable value. Designing a survey to reveal the causal effects of conflict-related incidents on civic life requires considerable time and effort. However, to obtain the information needed to develop appropriate peacebuilding measures, the timely implementation of surveys should be supported and funded by academic and policy communities. As a representative peacebuilding actor, for instance, UN peace operations could be structured by shifting their organizational orientation from the emphasis on liberal institutional building to the respect for primary information obtained from civilian populations through opinion polls.

Hastily implementing surveys may seriously distort respondents’ reactions, possibly leading to skewed or inaccurate results. Moreover, the difference in nuances between languages may cause disagreement about or ambiguity in the wording of translated questionnaires; peace(building) itself would have different meanings across communities and contexts, ranging from ceasefire to structural and lasting measures to address social contradictions. The recent literature on survey research revealed that response distortion is caused in some environments (e.g., social desirability and sensitive questions) and explored how these problems can be addressed. For these methodological concerns, a division of labor would be expected for data collection between peacebuilders in the academic and policy fields. Surveys can be designed under consultation with experts on the relevant method and implemented and evaluated in collaboration by peacebuilders in both areas.

Second, external validity poses fundamental questions regarding the generalizability of survey findings: how useful is their generalization and how far should it be pursued? Although findings from a single or few cases of conflict are not readily transferable to another, an exhaustive data collection across cases may contribute to revealing the general mechanisms at play regarding armed conflicts and public attitudes. Therefore, meta-analyses are worth considering. This approach has been increasingly producing significant knowledge in the social sciences and humanities. The literature on public attitudes toward conflict has provided scant empirical evidence to turn to a relevant meta-analysis, but it remains on the future agenda. For instance, it could contribute to the debate on the impact of wartime violence on civilians’ sociality and cohesion regarding whether they obtain prosocial attitudes and behave cooperatively with community members in response to the experience of violence. Because communal collectivity is required for long-term development and peacebuilding, relevant findings suggest that people not only need support but can also be key facilitators in post-conflict reconstruction. Additionally, developmental aid interventions may facilitate communal stability by enhancing supportive attitudes among civilians toward service providers. Any related findings are important because a consensus has not been reached as to whether aid and service provision reduce the recurrence of violence or lead to a deterioration of security.

Third, an issue that is not limited to meta-analyses is whether peacebuilders will be receptive to findings that oppose their views, priorities, and policy orientations. How much of a given public attitude toward political stability should be respected by those who (are expected to) take it for granted? Although the recent developments of peacebuilding theses and theories tend to reject the blind reliance on formalized state-building, they also problematize programs preserving social relations that have caused and may cause conflicts in the future.

Finally, we would face déjà vu on the issue of generality versus particularity in peacebuilding, as in the debate on liberal and locally turned arguments. While many scholars and practitioners have criticized the shortcomings of the one-size-fits-all peacebuilding programs, this research team did not focus on discussing the relevance of one-size-fits-all evidence in the development of peacebuilding policies. Therefore, for evidence-based peacebuilding policies, further deliberation is required regarding how surveys should be implemented and how their data should be used.

Conclusions

Despite the reliance of major powers and international organizations on liberal peacebuilding, its unfavorable outcomes prompted rethinking a way to maintain sustaining stability in post-conflict societies. By criticizing the standardized ideas of liberal peacebuilding, locally turned theses shed light on the relevance of local context to the assessment of armed conflict. Among others, surveys are promising tools for understanding local demands and needs. The importance of surveys cannot be emphasized too much for understanding conflicts characterized by civilians’ victimization, fluid cleavage, and motivation for fighting. However, the practical use of survey findings has been hitherto limited by data collection issues. The timely implementation of surveys is key for successful peacebuilding in the aftermath of conflict. Alternative measures, including meta-analyses, would also help in identifying mitigation strategies for post-conflict problems. However, for all these measures to work, the peacebuilding community needs to be literate and receptive to scientific evidence.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Tsunetaka Tsuchiya for his helpful comments. The financial support from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research, KAKENHI, grant number 22K01381) is also gratefully acknowledged.

Tags: : public attitude, Armed Conflict, peacebuilding, survey

About The Author

Yuichi Kubota
Yuichi Kubota is Professor at Department of Political Science and Economics, College of Law, Nihon University in Tokyo. His research interests include civil conflict, peacebuilding, public opinion, and political economy of development in Asia. He is the author of Armed Groups in Cambodian Civil War: Territorial Control, Rivalry, and Recruitment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). He has published articles on civil-military relations in armed conflict, patterns of political violence, and sociopolitical attitude of civilians in post-conflict societies in journals such as Asian Survey, International Studies Review, Journal of Peace Research, Security Studies, and World Development. He received his Ph.D. in political science from University at Albany (State University of New York).

25. Deep Rivalry or Elite Obsession? Washington’s Search for Dominance Over China (Book Review)

Excerpts:

As World on the Brink describes it, Taiwan is the epicenter of the U.S.-Chinese contest — the Berlin of the new cold war. Alperovitch lists various reasons why Taiwan’s security is vital for the United States. But another long section of the book is devoted to the many reasons why America underestimates its own strength. It’s the kind of argument (entirely persuasive, to my mind) that is always best made by an immigrant who more clearly sees the greatness in his adopted homeland. But it leaves the reader wondering how a country so young, so strong, and so innovative could be threatened by the loss of a distant island with a population of 23 million people. Such a loss would be a tragedy for the Taiwanese people, but surely not a major blow for America. Or at least, not a big enough loss to consider fighting World War III to prevent it.

It leaves one wondering if Americans are once again prepared to make the kinds of sacrifices asked of them in the Cold War. The gulf between the American public and its elites on the China question, and the unwillingness of those elites to try to bridge it, suggests that the national resolve needed to fight another cold war is absent this time around.

Deep Rivalry or Elite Obsession? Washington’s Search for Dominance Over China - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Sam Roggeveen · May 5, 2025

https://warontherocks.com/2025/05/deep-rivalry-or-elite-obsession-washingtons-search-for-dominance-over-china/

Dmitri Alperovitch, World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century (PublicAffairs, 2024).

Visit the home of any D.C. foreign policy watcher and you will be sure to find bookshelves groaning under the weight of new China tomes. Every issue of Foreign Affairs, the in-house journal of Washington’s foreign policy establishment, is packed with articles about China. We are routinely told that, in a city more deeply divided by ideology and party affiliation than at any time since the Civil War, China is the one issue that brings the warring tribes together.

Yet from the outside (the writer is based in Australia), this preoccupation, and the apparent political unity on the China question, looks like it is built on weak foundations. This is not a reference to policy differences among the tribes. Rather, it is a comment on the gulf separating Washington from the rest of the United States. Because the evidence — or rather, the lack of it — suggests Americans are far less preoccupied with China than those who govern them.

America’s China debate is largely confined to its policy elites, among them Dmitri Alperovitch, who has written World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century. Alperovitch, a Russian émigré, is co-founder of the tech security firm CrowdStrike and now a Washington policy entrepreneur who in 2020 launched the Silverado Policy Accelerator.

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“The only foreign policy goal in the twenty- first century that really should matter,” he writes, is avoiding “hot conflict with China while ensuring our country remains dominant on the global stage.” Except, that’s two goals, not one. In World on the Brink, as in much of the China commentary emerging from Washington, the tension between them is never resolved. This may be deliberate, because confronting this tension would require choices that Washington’s elites prefer not to make, since they know they have yet to recruit the American people to their cause.

To illustrate the point, it’s worth comparing the competition between Washington and Beijing to that between Washington and Moscow from 1945 to 1991. Alperovitch is among those who claim that the contest with China constitutes a second cold war. If so, then version one ought to offer a benchmark. Yet the differences are more evident than the similarities. We’re all aware of the stark power differential between China and the Soviet Union — Alperovitch quotes Rush Doshi’s bracing observation that the United States has never before faced a rival or group of rivals with more than 60 percent of its GDP, yet China passed that mark a decade ago.

Politics is another big point of difference between the two cold wars: U.S. President Harry Truman attempted to recruit his people to the cause of anti-communism from the start, in a nationally broadcast speech to Congress in 1947, in which he declared that containing Soviet-led communism would henceforth be the nation’s defining mission. President Joe Biden made an early attempt to frame America’s China relationship as part of a larger ideological contest between democracies and autocracies, but that effort faded quickly. Neither Biden nor any of his contemporaries have spoken to Americans about China as Truman did about Soviet containment, even though the economic challenge this time is already much larger. In part, this is because China poses no ideological threat, since it has no evident ambition to spread Marxism globally.

Nor is there much evidence of the China threat shaping American culture, as fear of communism suffused Cold War American cinema, television, and science fiction. Intellectually, there is no equivalent to the debates that produced figures such as Isaiah Berlin, Gertrude Himmelfarb, and William F. Buckley. Even the unlamented “Global War on Terror” generated more intellectual ferment than the so-called second cold war has, raising to prominence figures such as Christopher Hitchens, Andrew Sullivan, and Michael Ignatieff. The intellectual voices prominent in America today — Ross Douthat, Ta-Nehisi Coates, David Brooks, and Jordan Peterson, for example — have almost nothing to say about China, a subject that foreign policy elites such as Alperovitch insist is the defining challenge of our time (Ezra Klein is a notable exception, as are some of Silicon Valley’s “oligarch intellectuals”).

Alperovitch says that “at almost every turn and policy front, the depth, breadth, and scope of China’s threat to the global security order and international rule of law is almost impossible to capture.” A few pages later, he describes it as a “truly existential threat.” He endorses Michael Beckley and Hal Brands’s claim that China’s sense of vulnerability pushes it toward aggression: “The perception of danger everywhere drives a strong impulse to expand. Only by pushing outward can China secure its frontiers, protect its supply lines, and break the bonds a punishing environment imposes.”

While World on the Brink is commendably focused on avoiding a calamitous war between the United States and China, it gives equal weight to maintaining American dominance over China and doesn’t allow that those objectives might be incompatible. For Alperovitch, it’s not enough for the United States to maintain peace with China — it also has to win. The peace must be on American terms.

That’s a familiar framing for those of us who lived through the Global War on Terror. It even has echoes of a quote attributed to Ronald Reagan: “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: we win, they lose.” It doesn’t escape Alperovitch that China is not al-Qaeda, or even that the Cold War with the Soviet Union is the wrong comparison. Still, the massive scale of the China challenge doesn’t deter Alperovitch. The objective, he insists, is American victory, and that can only be secured through dominance.

That doesn’t mean seeking regime change in Beijing, but it does mean that China needs to be convinced to work “within the existing global order, respecting territorial sovereignty, engaging fairly in global trade, and putting an end to the practice of economic and military coercion of other nations.” Needless to say, the United States routinely exempts itself from such standards, but that’s the privilege of dominance, and not one afforded to subordinates in the system.

One suspects Alperovitch would prefer China as a supersized post-World War II Japan or West Germany: an economic giant and a strategic minnow. But that’s not a realistic demand. No nation of China’s size will be content to remain indefinitely subordinate to another great power in its own region. China wants, at the very least, what America has: a regional sphere of influence, and the ability to exclude rivals from it.

The question Americans must ask is whether it is vitally important for their country to deny China this ambition. Must China remain subordinate in a system led by an unrivaled United States? Or can Americans live in a world that sees China and the United States as equals, as envisaged by Singaporean statesman Lee Kuan Yew?

To answer that question, American leaders will need to be much more open with their citizens about what is required to achieve dominance over China — a truly national effort over generations involving most arms of government and broader society. That’s what was needed to win the Cold War, and if this is indeed a new cold war, the challenge will be even greater.

Above all, what marked American commitment to fighting the Soviet Union was a willingness to make sacrifices, to bear heavy burdens, and risk a potentially massive human cost to prevent Soviet world domination. That resolve is what convinced Moscow that a military assault on Western Europe would ultimately be met by an American nuclear response, even if that meant the United States would face retaliation against its own cities.

As World on the Brink describes it, Taiwan is the epicenter of the U.S.-Chinese contest — the Berlin of the new cold war. Alperovitch lists various reasons why Taiwan’s security is vital for the United States. But another long section of the book is devoted to the many reasons why America underestimates its own strength. It’s the kind of argument (entirely persuasive, to my mind) that is always best made by an immigrant who more clearly sees the greatness in his adopted homeland. But it leaves the reader wondering how a country so young, so strong, and so innovative could be threatened by the loss of a distant island with a population of 23 million people. Such a loss would be a tragedy for the Taiwanese people, but surely not a major blow for America. Or at least, not a big enough loss to consider fighting World War III to prevent it.

It leaves one wondering if Americans are once again prepared to make the kinds of sacrifices asked of them in the Cold War. The gulf between the American public and its elites on the China question, and the unwillingness of those elites to try to bridge it, suggests that the national resolve needed to fight another cold war is absent this time around.

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Sam Roggeveen is director of the International Security Program at the Lowy Institute, Sydney. He is the author of The Echidna Strategy: Australia’s Search for Power and Peace.

Image: U.S. Department of State via Wikimedia Commons

Book Reviews

warontherocks.com · by Sam Roggeveen · May 5, 2025

26. Another Last Supper and a New Era of Defense Giants

I love what appears to be an AI generated photo at the link: https://warontherocks.com/2025/05/another-last-supper-and-a-new-era-of-defense-giants/

Excerpts:

Three decades after the original “last supper,” the Department of Defense finds itself hosting another gathering, one in which the table is larger, the menu pricier, and the guests still too few. The department claims to want innovation, diversity, and agility, yet continues setting places only for those who already know the seating arrangement. The risk is clear: An industrial base defined by consolidation and incumbency may be convenient, but it is neither agile nor adaptive enough to address the threats of the modern battlespace.

For small businesses seeking meaningful participation, survival often depends not on the strength of their ideas, but on the strength of their connections. Mandates and instructions offered in new memos and executive orders offer genuine promise, but success depends on whether the Defense Department fully commits to leveraging them at scale rather than as token gestures.

Meeting the challenges of future threats will require more than reshuffling seats around a familiar table. It demands many tables, where a larger number of fresh companies shape the future. Only then will the Defense Department ensure its industrial base remains resilient enough not just to replicate past victories, but to achieve those yet to come.

Another Last Supper and a New Era of Defense Giants - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Nicholas Hooper · May 5, 2025

The Pentagon is claiming to make room for small businesses, but in practice it’s reinforcing a new class of giants, and propping up legacy companies. Despite policy shifts, the Defense Department’s appetite for consolidation remains as strong as ever, leaving small businesses on the menu, not at the table.

Today’s defense market consolidation mirrors the patterns that followed the infamous “last supper” of the 1990s. While emerging defense technology companies position themselves as disruptors, they follow remarkably similar consolidation playbooks to those used by the primes they claim to challenge. The result is not the diverse, resilient industrial base needed for future challenges, but rather a new revolving triangle of influence connecting Pentagon leadership, technology-focused contractors, and venture capital firms.

The Defense Department should enhance enforcement of its established small business policies, ensuring genuine opportunities for innovators while breaking the cycle that rewards past performance over fresh solutions, thereby maintaining the military agility essential for addressing evolving threats. To be sure, I am not a neutral party: I work for a firm called Defense Industry Advisors that helps small businesses succeed with the Defense Department. I believe in the mission and as a former servicemember I understand how vital it is for the most innovative companies to have a real shot at delivering capabilities to the warfighter.

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The Post-Cold War Distillation

As the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall fell, the Department of Defense faced a dramatically altered strategic landscape. The existential threat that had shaped American defense policy for nearly five decades had vanished almost overnight. The peace dividend promised reduced defense spending and, with it, a smaller industrial base. When Defense Secretary Les Aspin gathered industry leaders for the “last supper,” the message was clear: consolidate or disappear.

The merging of the defense-industrial base in the 1990s created clear horizontal market leaders defined by an era dominated by platforms: Lockheed Martin claimed the skies, General Dynamics commanded the land, Northrop Grumman secured space, Raytheon dominated missiles and electronics, and Boeing straddled commercial and military aviation. This horizontal segmentation mirrored the strategic realities of late Cold War military doctrine, where distinct domains of warfare operated with relative independence. Military operations were compartmentalized by service branches with distinct requirements, budgets, and acquisition processes, naturally leading defense companies to organize themselves around these same domain-specific structures.

The Military-Industrial Condition… I Mean Complex

Three decades later, history appears to be repeating itself, though with a crucial twist. While the Department of Defense’s small business strategy claims to lower barriers to entry, in practice, it’s reinforcing a new class of giants. Former disruptors like Palantir now drive the narrative championing the value of defense primes while posting record stock gains. Palantir’s status as a consistent top 5 stock performer, even in today’s market, underscores the irony that yesterday’s industrial base diversification solution has become today’s new defense establishment.

The irony is that today’s defense technology companies, while positioning themselves as disruptors, are following the same consolidation playbook that created the primes they claim to challenge. Anduril acquired Dive Technologies, Copious Imaging, and Blue Force Technologies. Shield AI purchased Martin UAV and Heron Systems. These acquisitions are much smaller than the big maneuvers that shored up market segments in the 1990s, like Lockheed acquiring Martin Marietta, Northrop merging with Grumman, or Boeing with McDonnell-Douglas. However, the purpose of capturing a new market segment is the same. It is mainly the scale and timeframe for return that are different.

The military’s doctrinal shift toward concepts like joint all-domain command and control recognizes that future conflicts will be won by forces that can operate across domains with speed and coherence. As warfare becomes more integrated across domains, defense companies are consolidating to mirror this integration. The result is not greater diversity and resilience in the industrial base but greater concentration, a trend that directly parallels the post-Cold War consolidation.

As the United States confronts this new era of great-power competition, the question is not whether today’s defense technology companies are different from their predecessors, but whether the resulting industrial base will be sufficiently diverse, resilient, and innovative to meet the challenges ahead. History suggests we should be skeptical.

Patriots and Venture Capitalists

Despite the consolidation trends, both past and present, I believe the fundamental motivation for those participating in the defense industry remains the strengthening of the warfighter. Today’s emerging market leaders, much like their predecessors, are not maliciously pursuing dominance for its own sake. Rather, they are positioning themselves as suppliers of relevant critical capabilities delivered at the quality and scale required by modern defense needs. In contrast to the earlier observation of Palantir’s promotional stance concerning the benefit of defense primes to the United States, Shyam Sankar began (and continues) to refer to a “first breakfast” phenomenon, arguing that established defense contractors habitually devour smaller innovative companies through acquisitions or by exploiting incumbent advantages, effectively stifling true innovation.

Ironically, as newer entrants gain market share, they increasingly face the same strategic pressures toward consolidation they once criticized. These companies recognize that addressing complex, multi-domain challenges demand integrated solutions that smaller, fragmented organizations struggle to provide. The consolidation we observe is less about eliminating competition and more about creating entities capable of delivering comprehensive capabilities that meet increasingly sophisticated military requirements. This consolidation results in vendor lock, where only one integrated entity possesses the capability to address complex requirements. This dependency creates significant downstream challenges for the government. When a single prime contractor owns and manages an entire program without viable competitors, sole-source contracting becomes inevitable. The absence of competitive alternatives severely undermines the government’s negotiating position, making it extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to secure fair and reasonable deals. The prime contractor wields disproportionate leverage, dictating terms, timelines, and costs with minimal accountability. Without built-in mechanisms to challenge these consolidated entities or plans for potential replacement, the government becomes perpetually captive to the prime’s demands. This imbalanced power dynamic ultimately compromises both cost-effectiveness and innovation in defense procurement, reinforcing the very inefficiencies the system initially sought to eliminate.

Today’s complex battlespace seems to necessitate the quick injection of cash to maneuver from prototype to production. Venture capitalists have filled this void of government research and development funding. The result is a new revolving triangle of influence. Where power once flowed between Defense Department leadership, traditional consulting firms, and defense primes, today’s triangle connects departmental leadership, technology-focused defense contractors, and venture capital/private equity firms. The players have changed, but the game remains remarkably similar.

A System Built for Repeat Winners

The consolidation within the defense industry, both among established primes and emerging players, responds to complex military requirements demanding integrated solutions. Yet this creates a paradox within Small Business Innovation Research programs supposedly designed to foster innovation. As consolidation absorbs smaller innovators to meet Defense Department needs, Small Business Innovation Research simultaneously reinforces this concentration by favoring repeat players, creating a system where established relationships trump fresh ideas and leaving truly innovative small businesses caught between market pressures and systemic entry barriers.

Despite rhetoric about supporting small business innovation, the statistics tell a different story. Detailed analysis from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the Government Accountability Office reveals that small business innovation research programs have become a revolving door of familiar faces. These companies, sometimes referred to as “SBIR Mills,” have drawn scrutiny from lawmakers like Sen. Joni Ernst, who has sponsored legislation to address this issue of perpetual funding that diverts resources away from truly innovative non-traditional companies and new entrants.

The National Academies report shows that the Department of Defense’s small business innovation funding shows troubling incumbency bias, with 40 percent of awards from 2016 to 2020 going to just 11 percent of companies. Firms with five or more prior awards see success rates nearly triple those of first-time applicants. The Government Accountability Office’s analysis reveals similar figures, with first-time awardees representing less than 15 percent of recipients while 20 percent of funding goes to companies with 30 or more previous awards. The top 1 percent of awardees, about 50 companies, capture 12 to 15 percent of total funding, and firms with prior awards are 3 to 4 times more likely to receive new ones.

Transition Programs That Reinforce Barriers

The problem extends beyond initial awards to the transition programs meant to help companies commercialize their innovations. Programs like the Navy Transition Program, the Army Applied Small Business Innovation Research Program, the AFWERX Project Small Business Innovation Research Open Topic Program, and the Navy Transition Assistance Program all claim to support innovation, but their selection criteria heavily favor those already in the system.

The Small Business Innovation Research program operates in phases, with Phase I providing initial funding to test the feasibility of innovative ideas. Phase II awards are much larger and are meant to further develop promising concepts from Phase I into potential products or services for government use. The Phase II conversion rates (the percentage of Phase I awardees who receive the more substantial Phase II funding) highlight this bias. According to the National Academies, companies with three or more prior awards have Phase II conversion rates approaching 70 percent, while first-time awardees hover around 25 percent. This disparity exists despite independent technical evaluations showing no significant difference in the quality of proposals.

A Closed Ecosystem

These statistics reveal a fundamental truth: The Small Business Innovation Research program has evolved from its original purpose as an innovation pipeline into something resembling a closed ecosystem of preferred vendors. Programs like the Navy Transition Assistance Program and the various service-specific small business innovation research initiatives have become gateways that few newcomers can pass through, regardless of the merit of their ideas.

The result is predictable: True disruption rarely emerges from within this system. Instead, the most innovative defense technologies of the past decade have come from companies that initially bypassed the small business innovation research process entirely, securing private capital to develop their offerings before approaching the Department of Defense.

If the Pentagon genuinely wishes to harness small business innovation, it should confront these statistics honestly. A program where past performance trumps potential, where familiarity outweighs novelty, and where the same companies win year after year is not designed to produce the breakthroughs needed to address emerging threats. It is, rather, a subsidy program for established players masquerading as an innovation initiative.

Finding Solutions in Existing Ecosystems

While defense giants have historically dominated military contracts through their mastery of complex federal acquisition regulations, the Department of Defense’s growing emphasis on Other Transaction Authorities could fundamentally reshape this landscape for small businesses. Recent executive orders establish “a first preference for commercial solutions” in defense acquisition, creating streamlined pathways that enable non-traditional contractors to bypass the bureaucratic hurdles that previously secured the incumbents’ advantage. Evidence of this success is clear: 68 percent of Other Transaction Authorities contracts through the Defense Innovation Unit have gone to small businesses, directly challenging the oligopoly that has long characterized defense procurement.

The Commercial Solutions Opening process developed for Other Transaction Authorities enables the Department of Defense to establish “fast, flexible, collaborative” contracts with innovative companies outside the traditional defense sector. The previously mentioned executive order on defense acquisitions strengthens this commitment by directing procurement officials to prioritize commercial solutions while restructuring performance evaluations to reward employees who implement these approaches.

As discussed in these virtual pages, the defense secretary’s recent memo on software represents a paradigm shift in defense procurement. Beyond merely changing contracting methods, this memo could revolutionize the defense industrial base by attracting commercial technology companies that traditionally avoid working with the Defense Department. The defense secretary’s directive creates an unprecedented opportunity to harness the $43 billion in private capital currently being invested in dual-use technology companies.

These reforms could eliminate some of the bureaucratic hurdles that previously prevented smaller companies from competing effectively. As the Defense Innovation Unit explains, “After a successful prototype, the relationship can continue and grow,” allowing small companies to build credentials through initial contracts and compete for larger opportunities. This creates a practical solution to the Catch-22 that previously trapped small businesses, establishing a clear path from initial engagement to sustained defense partnerships.

Defense Department officials have highlighted how this approach opens doors for smaller companies. The results speak for themselves: Since 2016, Defense Innovation Unit has awarded over 500 Other Transaction Agreements, with 88 percent going to non-traditional contractors and 68 percent to small businesses. Their transition rate from prototype to production has improved from 35 percent to approximately 50 percent in recent years. To date, the Defense Innovation Unit has delivered more than 80 prototypes, with 52 successfully transitioning to the warfighter. These innovations have attracted over $30 billion in private investment and include technologies rapidly deployed to meet urgent national security challenges.

A More Expensive and Convoluted Dinner Party

Three decades after the original “last supper,” the Department of Defense finds itself hosting another gathering, one in which the table is larger, the menu pricier, and the guests still too few. The department claims to want innovation, diversity, and agility, yet continues setting places only for those who already know the seating arrangement. The risk is clear: An industrial base defined by consolidation and incumbency may be convenient, but it is neither agile nor adaptive enough to address the threats of the modern battlespace.

For small businesses seeking meaningful participation, survival often depends not on the strength of their ideas, but on the strength of their connections. Mandates and instructions offered in new memos and executive orders offer genuine promise, but success depends on whether the Defense Department fully commits to leveraging them at scale rather than as token gestures.

Meeting the challenges of future threats will require more than reshuffling seats around a familiar table. It demands many tables, where a larger number of fresh companies shape the future. Only then will the Defense Department ensure its industrial base remains resilient enough not just to replicate past victories, but to achieve those yet to come.

Become a Member

Nicholas Hooper is director of growth and strategy at Defense Industry Advisors. He is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer, with past roles at Boeing as a senior strategy analyst and business development representative. Hooper’s core experience is in analyzing defense acquisition trends, competitive market dynamics, and strategic consolidation patterns across the defense industry.

Image: Midjourney

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Nicholas Hooper · May 5, 2025

27. Trump Says He Asked Mexico to Let U.S. Military In to Fight Cartels

I fear if we did this we would have chinage the spelling of Mexico to "quagmire."

Trump Says He Asked Mexico to Let U.S. Military In to Fight Cartels

President Trump confirmed on Sunday that he had raised the idea with his Mexican counterpart, Claudia Sheinbaum, who rejected it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/us/politics/trump-mexico-sheinbaum-cartels.html

“If Mexico wanted help with the cartels, we would be honored to go in and do it. I told her that,“ President Trump said on Air Force One on Sunday, referring to a conversation with President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

By Maggie Haberman

Published May 4, 2025

Updated May 5, 2025, 4:59 a.m. ET

President Trump confirmed on Sunday that he had pressed Mexico’s president to let U.S. troops into the country to help fight drug cartels, an idea she summarily rejected.

Mr. Trump told reporters traveling with him aboard Air Force One from Palm Beach, Fla., to Washington that it was “true” he had made the push with President Claudia Sheinbaum. The proposal, first reported by The Wall Street Journal last week, came at the end of a lengthy phone call between the two leaders on April 16, The Journal said.

Ms. Sheinbaum has also confirmed that Mr. Trump made the suggestion, and that she rejected it. Mexico and the United States can “collaborate,” she recalled telling him, but “with you in your territory and us in ours.”

Mr. Trump said he proposed the idea because the cartels “are horrible people that have been killing people left and right and have been — they’ve made a fortune on selling drugs and destroying our people."

He said, “If Mexico wanted help with the cartels, we would be honored to go in and do it. I told her that. I would be honored to go in and do it. The cartels are trying to destroy our country. They’re evil.”

He said, “The president of Mexico is a lovely woman, but she is so afraid of the cartels that she can’t even think straight.”

Mr. Trump has had a better working relationship with Ms. Sheinbaum than with Canada’s leaders. But the relationships with both neighboring countries have been strained over trade and immigration.

Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.

28. The End of the Global Aid Industry

So perhaps aid will trickle down to the people that need it after industrialization of their homelands? (apologies for my cynicism.)

But should it be either/or? How many people will suffer and perish before the poor countries china industrialize and reap the benefits? And who will really benefit from this industrialization? The country and its people or the companies that industrialize those countries (or the Countries that do, e.g., China)? But think of the opportunities to industrialize and do it ethically with environmental soundness and with leap ahead technologies. Or will it simply be "extractive" in the way that we extract resources from places like Africa? (Again, please forgive my cynicism - I do think there is merit to this idea)

But per the last line I am reminded of our aid work in Korea in the 1950s following the Armistice. We provided some much food aid (rice) that the Korean farmers were nearly put out of business because of our free rice and Korea could not rebuild its agriculture sector. Until smart people realized that rather than providing direct aid, we should focus on helping the Koreans to develop the economic and financial institutions necessary for a self-sustaining economy, did we allow the Koreans to kick off the Miracle on the Han.

Excerpt:

If proponents of global development embrace industrial transformation as their lodestar, they can help lift people out of destitution while avoiding political blowback. If poor countries industrialize, the entire world will benefit. Global development has the best chance of surviving—and delivering results—if it is seen as more than just charity.

The End of the Global Aid Industry

Foreign Affairs · by More by Zainab Usman · May 5, 2025

USAID’s Demise Is an Opportunity to Prioritize Industrialization Over Charity

Zainab Usman

May 5, 2025

At the refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, March 2025 Mohammad Ponir Hossain / Reuters

ZAINAB USMAN is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C.

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Every decade or so, the global aid industry finds that it must transform to survive. During these periods of change, donor countries restructure their aid agencies, shrink or expand their assistance budgets, and lobby for the creation or dissolution of a UN initiative or two. Typically, once the aid industry conforms to the whims of donor countries, the crisis is averted and business continues as usual. Since U.S. President Donald Trump began his second term, the aid industry has found itself at another inflection point. The Trump administration has gutted USAID, the world’s largest development agency, ending 86 percent of its programs, shuttering its headquarters, and terminating nearly all its 10,000 employees. At the same time, the Trump administration has slashed funding for various multilateral initiatives on climate, global health, and education.

Today’s crisis, however, is different from those that came before: this could truly be the end of foreign aid as we know it. For decades, global development—that is, the attempt to improve and save lives of the poor—has been driven mostly by foreign assistance provided by wealthy governments. Some scholars and analysts deride this process as the “aid-industrial complex.” But even advocates of foreign aid have come to see it as an industry, including in their efforts to reform it, which approach its defects as matters of business inefficiency. And now that governments in many rich countries have sharply lurched to the right and taken more skeptical stances on aid, this industry is collapsing. As a result, many charity workers, researchers, and academics will be out of jobs. More important, millions of poor people around the world will suffer.

Proponents of global development now face a choice. They can wait for attitudes in donor countries to shift back toward support for foreign aid at some point in the distant future. Or they can reimagine the entire concept of global development, detaching it from aid and rooting it instead in industrial transformation: helping countries shift from subsistence farming, informal employment, and primary commodity production toward manufacturing and services. In truth, the aid industry was already adrift. Its interventions had become spread too thin and often failed to address the key obstacles that poorer countries faced as they tried to upskill their workers, build energy and transport infrastructure, and access new markets. Raising people out of poverty in Africa, South Asia, and parts of Latin America will not only improve their lives but also allow rich countries to maintain their prosperity by creating new markets, and by now, industrial transformation has a strong track record for improving economies. If proponents of global development do not adjust its methods with the times, it will lose its relevance to rich and poor countries alike.

AID AND ABET?

The foreign-aid industry’s primary commodity is official development assistance (ODA), or money from donors that flows to governments, individuals, or groups in poorer places, either directly—such as through budget support to struggling governments—or through projects run by organizations such as Save the Children, Oxfam, or FHI 360. Governments in rich countries are the primary purveyors of ODA. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in 2023, governments spent $230 billion on development assistance, compared with $11 billion spent by private foundations. Like any industry, foreign aid has middlemen. But in this business, the middlemen are particularly conspicuous. Third-party entities known as “implementing partners” include international nongovernmental organizations, large private contractors, and consulting firms. If the U.S. government wanted, for example, to distribute fertilizers to small-scale farmers in Bangladesh, they might contract Chemonics, a U.S.-based development contractor, to do it. Indeed, in 2023, Chemonics received the most USAID funds of any of the organization’s contractors: over $1 billion.

To take advantage of network effects and economies of scale, implementing partners cluster around the main sites of production of foreign aid, the capitals of the major donor countries: Berlin, Geneva, London, Paris, Rome, and Washington. As a result, very little aid is distributed by organizations or people in poor countries. In 2020, less than nine percent of U.S. aid was administered by recipient governments or firms based in recipient countries, according to Charles Kenny and Scott Morris, researchers at the Center for Global Development. The visibility of middlemen based in rich countries has long provided fodder to detractors who claim that the aid industry operates inefficiently or even unjustly. There is some truth to this critique. According to an analysis by Devex, a news organization, 47 of USAID’s top 50 contractors are located in the United States.

Previous efforts to correct the distortions in the foreign aid industry focused on trying to reduce waste and increase the proportion of aid money that gets to beneficiaries. Ninety countries signed the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, an agreement that encouraged reforms such as aligning donors’ objectives with recipient countries’ priorities, harmonizing various development interventions, and involving more partners on the ground. Mark Green, USAID’s administrator during the first Trump administration, tried to reduce recipient countries’ dependence on foreign assistance by building their capacity to plan, finance, and manage their own development. Green’s successor, Samantha Power, aimed to increase the share of funding administered by local organizations based in recipient countries to 25 percent by 2025.

The consensus over how much rich countries should spend on aid and what they should prioritize has shifted over time. A 1970 UN resolution recommended that countries should dedicate 0.7 percent of their gross national income to ODA, but as of 2023, only five countries had reached that goal: Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway, and Sweden. In the United States, successive Democratic and Republican administrations maintained a broad commitment to foreign aid, although arguments also simmered, even within the industry itself, about the proper goal of aid. Since 2000, when 189 countries agreed to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, the industry’s main objective has been to reduce poverty; after the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, many governments embraced the idea that, in addition, aid should also be directed toward fighting climate change.

SUPPLY CRISIS

But behind these recent debates lurked a massive shift in the politics and public norms that had allowed the industry to survive. If one sees aid as a form of philanthropy, then rich countries appear as donors and poor ones as beneficiaries. But if one sees aid as an industry, then rich countries appear as sellers and poor ones as buyers. With their development assistance, rich countries are providing a set of projects and institutional norms to achieve a set of expected outcomes: improvements in material conditions in developing countries that will eventually boost their own economies and security—or, failing that, at least a sense on the part of rich countries that they have tried to make a difference. The role of poor countries is to consume these development projects in the hope of achieving desired outcomes—or, failing that, at least a sense that they might be possible someday.

Now this market is experiencing an unprecedented supply crisis. Around the world, people and politicians in the rich countries that had long bought into the basic idea that providing aid is valuable have become skeptical. The aid industry has, for decades, undergone boom and bust cycles resulting from shifts in the domestic politics of donor countries. What is different this time is a deepening disaffection about the prevailing economic model and the aid paradigm associated with it. Since the global financial crisis of 2008, many donor countries have experienced economic stagnation, slow productivity growth, declining competitiveness, and widening inequality. Citizens of rich countries who no longer feel economically secure are questioning why scarce public funds should be devoted to causes abroad when there are needs at home.

This doubt goes beyond the Trump administration. The United States is not the only donor that is cutting foreign aid: in 2024, eight of the top ten donors within the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee reduced their foreign aid budgets and announced their intention to align international development programs more squarely with their national interests—such as by ensuring that development projects use goods and services produced in the donor country. In 2024, Germany, the world’s second-largest bilateral aid donor, announced a $5.3 billion reduction to its foreign-assistance budget. In February, the United Kingdom announced a 40 percent reduction to its aid budget so that it could focus on defense spending. In March 2025, the Netherlands said it would cut 37 percent of its bilateral aid over five years and scale down its financial contributions to some UN agencies.

Many right-leaning voters in rich countries now see foreign aid as wasteful and excessively focused on promoting causes they perceive as linked to the left, such as climate action, gender equality, or democracy promotion. Voters are more dubious of technocrats, policy wonks, and academics committed to foreign aid. Consequently, even left-leaning politicians, such as the Labour government in the United Kingdom, are slashing aid in response to popular sentiment. According to a February 2025 YouGov poll, 65 percent of Britons are in favor of increasing defense spending at the expense of foreign aid.

BLEEDING OUT

The speed and scale of the policy changes make the crisis facing the aid industry existential. Donor governments are fast destroying the industry’s marketplace of actors in irreversible ways. In January, Trump issued an executive order to freeze all U.S. foreign aid, ostensibly so that the secretary of state could review it to make sure that it is aligned with U.S. interests. Within weeks of the order, the world’s largest bilateral development agency, USAID, functionally ceased to exist, and its destruction unleashed a domino effect.

Dozens of small and midsize nongovernmental organizations are folding. Large organizations that implemented projects for USAID, such as FHI 360, Chemonics, and DAI Global, have terminated some country programs, announced the closure of field offices, and laid off hundreds of staffers worldwide. Multilateral organizations are also suffering from U.S. aid cuts. UN agencies such as the International Organization for Migration, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and the World Health Organization rely on the United States for 20 to 40 percent of their funding and have been forced to downsize.

This disruption will likely be compounded by funding cuts to universities. The Trump administration has canceled or frozen hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of research grants to leading American universities, such as Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and Princeton. These cuts will reduce the number of young professionals who are trained in fields related to development, end projects that evaluate the impact of aid, and erode the institutional memory of how aid projects are designed, delivered, and assessed. Entire academic and advocacy fields such as global health, climate action, gender equality, and democracy promotion may collapse.

The short-term impacts of the aid industry’s demise are already appearing, but the long-term effects are unknown. Foreign aid makes up a large percentage of the gross national income of about 25 countries, including Burundi, Liberia, Malawi, Nauru, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen. These places have seen the termination of crucial education and health programs. And it is unlikely that private donors can fill the gap, because private philanthropy makes up less than ten percent of annual foreign aid flows tracked by the OECD. Furthermore, American individual and corporate philanthropists—which constitute more than half of the world’s top 40 private donors—may well draw back, wary of retaliation from the U.S. government.

GET RICH QUICK

Foreign aid has rapidly become a sunset industry. But that does not mean that rich countries should give up fighting poverty entirely. It is in the interest of wealthy states to reduce the pressure of migration by trying to improve the economies and stability of countries in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia. Therefore, policy experts, intellectuals, activists, philanthropists, and humanitarians must save global development by decoupling it from the aid industry and anchoring it in a strategy of industrial transformation. A country becomes industrialized when it adopts technology that allows it to mechanize and digitize, leading to increases in productivity and the skills of its labor force. Eventually, an industrialized country’s workers shift from subsistence agriculture toward higher-productivity sectors such as electronics, pharmaceuticals, green technologies, and digital services. And closely associated with higher incomes and employment in these modern industries are social changes such as more women working in formal jobs, more girls in schools, and fewer child marriages.

Industrialization has transformed many once poor societies into prosperous ones. Over the course of several hundred years, countries including China, Germany, Japan, Poland, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States got rich by industrializing. Today, Thailand and Vietnam are undergoing industrialization thanks to foreign direct investment in manufacturing industries, good connectivity infrastructure, skilled labor, and expanded access to export markets.

Part of the problem with the aid industry is that its benefits have been spread too thinly across a multitude of domains and not focused enough on productivity-enhancing sectors. To this end, advocates of global development should focus on enabling poorer countries to access cheap development financing for targeted investments in sectors that connect people, such as electricity, telecommunications, and mass transit. Development financing must include efforts to stem illicit financial flows. African countries, for example, lose a combined total of about $90 billion every year to elite corruption, illicit capital flight, and tax evasion by multinational corporations. That is more money than the $60 billion of aid that donor governments used to send to the continent annually. Such waste could be reduced if rich countries tightened their regulations on tax havens and offshore financial centers and if the 138 signatories of the global tax treaty—an agreement reached in 2023 that sets a minimum rate of tax for large corporations—accelerated its implementation.

Very little aid is distributed by organizations or people in poor countries.

Poorer countries also need a stable trading environment to thrive. They need access to export markets in wealthy countries for goods and services they produce. And decades of evidence shows that neither poor nor wealthy countries ultimately prosper from protectionism or autarky. Firms in rich countries, especially those in rapidly changing fields such as artificial intelligence, batteries, drones, and renewable energy hardware, need to be able to sell to growing markets in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia.

Professionals who work in global development will need new codes to guide their efforts to support industrial transformation. These may entail creating new rules to regulate the scramble for critical resources that wealthy countries need to manufacture electronics, such as cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo or copper from Zambia. Ethicists and social scientists around the world must help craft rules for the limits of artificial intelligence, drone warfare, and other ways that new technologies directly interface with human societies.

If proponents of global development embrace industrial transformation as their lodestar, they can help lift people out of destitution while avoiding political blowback. If poor countries industrialize, the entire world will benefit. Global development has the best chance of surviving—and delivering results—if it is seen as more than just charity.

ZAINAB USMAN is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Zainab Usman · May 5, 2025

29. Top NSC official wants to normalize offensive hacking as tool of US might

I am reminded of this quote in Kaplan's new book:

“We may be able to more easily predict the second-and third-order effects of a nuclear weapon being detonated in a war than we can predict the effects of a massive cyber conflict, in which redlines have yet to be clearly delineated. We don’t even know the limits of cyber and information warfare, enhanced by artificial intelligence, which conceivably could do far more damage in different ways than a nuclear exchange. The cyberattacks we have thus far seen have been limited in scope, such as hacking a company’s computer system or even, as the Chinese have done, hacking into the Pentagon’s personnel files. But such things as taking down a leading world stock market or electric power grid may soon be within the capabilities of criminal groups and certain states. Cyberattacks could spread in unintended and unknown ways, like chemical or biological attacks.[ 36] We are still at a primitive stage of this phenomenon, and at a relatively early stage of diplomacy in regulating it.”

— Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis by Robert D. Kaplan

Top NSC official wants to normalize offensive hacking as tool of US might

Alexei Bulazel's remarks are the clearest indication yet that the United States is working out ways to hack back against foreign enemies and rivals.

By David DiMolfetta

Cybersecurity Reporter, Nextgov/FCW

May 2, 2025

defenseone.com · by David DiMolfetta

SAN FRANCISCO — In his first major discussion as the top cybersecurity official in the National Security Council, Alexei Bulazel said he wants to normalize the use of offensive cyber activity as a tool of U.S. national power.

At the RSAC Conference here, Bulazel — a former NSC cyber policy director in President Donald Trump’s first term — told an audience of cybersecurity practitioners that the U.S. “could respond in-kind” to cyberattacks from China and other adversaries that have targeted various critical infrastructure systems across the nation.

He said the U.S. could “punch back” and argued that earlier administrations had been more hesitant to do this.

“I’d also add that not responding is escalatory in its own right,” Bulazel said, contending that letting adversaries “walk all over you” incentivizes them to continue their activities. “You need to find some way to communicate this is not acceptable.”

The remarks, delivered just over 100 days into Trump’s second term, are the clearest indication yet from the upper echelons of the White House that the U.S. is working out ways to hack back against foreign enemies and rivals. The dynamic has been in discussions for months, as Trump allies and others said the U.S. needed to respond to hacks carried out by Chinese government-aligned espionage groups that have accessed American telecom networks and other critical infrastructure.

One topic raised were letters of marque, a historically maritime legal mechanism used to authorize private entities to conduct warfare against enemy nations. While there have been discussions about it for years, Bulazel called the concept “ridiculous” and said that ideas to give the private sector legal permission to have more independent hacking authorities have been “taken to the absolute extremes.”

Besides offensive hacking, he said the U.S. should rethink the role it plays in protecting the private sector from cyberattacks, and stressed that administration officials want to engage further with industry counterparts to better share threat information.

As for the Office of the National Cyber Director — whose nominated leader has not yet been confirmed — Bulazel said he expects the agency to continue on a major deregulation push in tandem with regulatory harmonization efforts kicked off during the Biden administration.

Bulazel also discussed the Cyber Safety Review Board, which was established during the Biden administration to investigate major cybersecurity incidents but was disbanded shortly after Trump stepped back into the Oval Office.

He said solutions around that will ultimately be addressed by Sean Plankey — nominated to run the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in DHS — but that in the past, it’s been hard to have experts on the board discuss sensitive cyber issues without raising potential conflicts of interest. Plankey’s nomination has been put on hold in the Senate because a top lawmaker is demanding the agency publicly release a 2022 report on telecom security vulnerabilities.

On CISA itself, Bulazel said the agency had a troubled past when it worked to taper disinformation online, a view widely shared by Trump officials who accused the agency of censorsing politically conservative viewpoints online. The mindset has prompted efforts in Trump 2.0 to significantly reduce the agency’s size and scope.

“In this administration, we’re committed to having CISA stay laser-focused on the two things that are in its name, which are cybersecurity and infrastructure security,” he said.

Bulazel also indicated that he would be open to discussions about whether the dual-hatted leadership between NSA and U.S. Cyber Command should be split up, but did not opine to any particular side.

On spyware, Bulazel flagged that the U.S. recently signed onto the internal Pall Mall pact that commits to curb global spyware abuses, but noted that nation-states are still likely to use spyware as a tool for intelligence collection. “We’re going to obviously recognize the importance of them,” he said.

defenseone.com · by David DiMolfetta

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

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