Quotes of the Day:

“Of course, even as I write we may be missing yet another grand pattern of history to which the cinematic vividness of the Ukraine and Gaza wars now blind us: for example, a future combination of great-power conflict, periodic terrorist attacks, and cyber warfare integrated with the use of artificial intelligence, which will add new dimensions and uncertainties to warfare. We still have little idea, given the march of post-Industrial technology, what future great-power warfare could be like, just as in the decades following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 few had any idea what future industrial war would be like. The problem with predicting the future is that it usually descends into linear thinking—the mere extension of current trends. That’s why the best futurology may be a description of an aspect of the present that is ignored by the media and beyond the conventional reach of the television cameras.”

– Robert D. Kaplan, Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis 

“War is no longer made by simply analyzed economic forces if it ever was. War is made or planned now by individual men, demagogues and dictators who play on the patriotism of their people to mislead them into a belief in the great fallacy of war when all their vaunted reforms have failed to satisfy the people they misrule.”

– Ernest Hemingway

"Balance your thoughts with action. If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done."

– Bruce Lee

1. American cult: Why our special ops need a reset

2. State Department to Soon Begin Mass Layoffs

3. Decapitating the National Security Council leads to foreign policy chaos

4. The F.B.I. Is Using Polygraphs to Test Officials’ Loyalty

5. Elbridge Colby Is Right About Ukraine

6. Hegseth calls for extensive reforms to Pentagon drone-buying practices

7. What’s Trump’s Next Move on Iran?

8. The Perfect Time for Regime Change in Iran

9. A band of innovators reimagines the spy game for a world with no cover

10. Hunting Down Russian Spies With Norway’s Intelligence Service

11. Trump Doubles Down on Using Tariffs as Tool of American Power

12. How a Pro Bono Project in Gaza Spiraled Into a Crisis for BCG

13. A Persian in the Ranks: Rethinking Military Culture through the Life of a Forgotten Civil War Sharpshooter

14. Taiwan Resists China With Military Displays and History Lessons

15. Pentagon Office That Designed Bombs for Iran Strikes Can't Say If They Reached the Needed Depth

16. Battle damage assessment from Iran strikes could lead to improvements in MOP bomb technology

17. It’s time for a US Indo-Pacific reset

18. Closing NATO’s Indo-Pacific Gap

19. Denmark finalizes US defense deal despite Greenland gripes

20. SOCOM Halves OA-1K Armed Overwatch Buy for 2026

21. Fighting with Robots: The Time to Prepare is Now

1.  American cult: Why our special ops need a reset

I have never run across the author. Based on his bio I do not think he was ever an operator (though he describes himself as "old SOF tribal member") - Below the article is his military experience from his LinkedIn bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-hinman-143525a/details/education/. Note he has also worked at State and for a short time in the Secret Service.

Frankly I do not think he has any significant SOF experience as evidenced by a number of his uninformed comments below.

Although I can infer what must be sour grapes from his experiences I can still read his criticism and accept that there are some valid points. Most importantly if this is how SOF is being viewed by some then we certainly need to work on our strategic communications. But I actually think he is using SOF to target his larger agenda about the US military and (decadent) American society and that America is in constant conflict overseas which is very much in keeping with the Quincy Institute agenda. SOF is just a convenient tool for him to advance his agenda.

Excerpts:

First, to my SOF colleagues past and present, it’s not you…it’s us. Well, it’s mostly us — but a little bit you, too. This is not a screed against SOF; I am an old SOF tribal member, and I have many friends and family members within the community. Our SOF troops are an incredible resource for the country — they are almost invariably brave, patriotic, fit, and spectacularly competent. Regardless of our differing policy views, we should be proud of their professionalism and their many tactical accomplishments over recent decades.

What I am about to say will no doubt anger some of my SOF friends — but mainly because they’ll know that I’m right. In the coming years, we will require an institutional and psychological reset of relations between America and her special operators. The elitism and secrecy of the current “Cult of SOF” is bad for the military, bad for society, and — ultimately — bad for the operators themselves.

...

Today’s operators enjoy a privileged and inverted relationship with their parent services. SOF is now a caste apart, dominating the upper ranks of the military and monopolizing media and cultural attention. The “quiet professionals” many originally envisaged now have a media machine unrivaled across the military. Today’s SOF often treat the conventional military as the minor leagues from which they can selectively draw new talent. This distinction impacts the morale of conventional forces, even if few are prepared to publicly discuss it.

This stratification has impacts beyond hurt feelings, however. Separate chains of command and separate lines of effort can sometimes undermine what should be unified campaign plans. SOF theory begins with the proposition that specially selected and trained small units can have a vastly disproportionate battlefield impact, and this has often been the case. Sometimes, however, conventional units and scarce air assets have had to drastically intervene to pull SOF forces out of untenable situations of their own making, as happened in Mogadishu, and Operation ANACONDA, and elsewhere.

...

At the end of the day, though, redressing the imbalance will be difficult: the Cult of SOF has a long pedigree. An obsession with elite and specialized forces is a phenomenon observed in late-stage empires from Byzantium, with its Varangian mercenaries, through mid-20th century France with its Paras and Legionnaires, all immortalized in Jean Larteguy’s novels.

It is the unfortunate affectation of a restless and decadent society that is in constant conflict overseas, but whose own disaffected citizens feel little obligation to defend their country or to view their wars as anything other than spectator sports.

American cult: Why our special ops need a reset

Time to recognize that in their current state, our elite forces are bad for the military, bad for society, and bad for the operators themselves

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/special-ops/

Analysis | Military Industrial Complex

1. military industrial complex veterans

Richard Hinman

Jul 09, 2025

This article is the latest installment in our Quincy Institute/Responsible Statecraft project series highlighting the writing and reporting of U.S. military veterans. Click here for more information.

America’s post-9/11 conflicts have left indelible imprints on our society and our military. In some cases, these changes were so gradual that few noticed the change, except as snapshots in time.

This is the case with the “Cult of Special Operations Forces (SOF)” that has emerged since 2001, first within the military, and then with society through mass media including popular autobiographies and movies ranging from “Black Hawk Down,” “Lone Survivor” “American Sniper,” “SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden” and many, many others. The Cult has metastasized to many broader cultural accoutrements (video games, fashion, veteran culture, etc.).

As with other situations where we see friends proceeding down an untenable path together, America’s relationship with its special operators requires an intervention.

First, to my SOF colleagues past and present, it’s not you…it’s us. Well, it’s mostly us — but a little bit you, too. This is not a screed against SOF; I am an old SOF tribal member, and I have many friends and family members within the community. Our SOF troops are an incredible resource for the country — they are almost invariably brave, patriotic, fit, and spectacularly competent. Regardless of our differing policy views, we should be proud of their professionalism and their many tactical accomplishments over recent decades.

What I am about to say will no doubt anger some of my SOF friends — but mainly because they’ll know that I’m right. In the coming years, we will require an institutional and psychological reset of relations between America and her special operators. The elitism and secrecy of the current “Cult of SOF” is bad for the military, bad for society, and — ultimately — bad for the operators themselves.

SOF and "Big Army"

Until relatively recently, the U.S. military had a problematic relationship with its special forces. The Vietnam experience soured many in the conventional military on the special operators, whom they saw as ill-disciplined and overrated. Others argued that concentrating superior troops and leaders in single units denied the rest of the force the leavening effect that those soldiers could have added to regular formations.

Despite the skepticism of senior leaders, however, SOF expanded on an ad hoc basis in the years following Vietnam, until its tenuous position with the Pentagon changed with the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, which established an overarching Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and strengthened the position of SOF within the defense structure.

The institutional strength of SOF relative to their conventional cousins was subsequently turbocharged by the 9/11 attacks and their leading role in the ensuing Forever Wars.

Today’s operators enjoy a privileged and inverted relationship with their parent services. SOF is now a caste apart, dominating the upper ranks of the military and monopolizing media and cultural attention. The “quiet professionals” many originally envisaged now have a media machine unrivaled across the military. Today’s SOF often treat the conventional military as the minor leagues from which they can selectively draw new talent. This distinction impacts the morale of conventional forces, even if few are prepared to publicly discuss it.

This stratification has impacts beyond hurt feelings, however. Separate chains of command and separate lines of effort can sometimes undermine what should be unified campaign plans. SOF theory begins with the proposition that specially selected and trained small units can have a vastly disproportionate battlefield impact, and this has often been the case. Sometimes, however, conventional units and scarce air assets have had to drastically intervene to pull SOF forces out of untenable situations of their own making, as happened in Mogadishu, and Operation ANACONDA, and elsewhere.

SOF and Society

America’s worship of its special operators raises uncomfortable questions about who fights America’s wars and how that affects U.S. policy.

For the better part of two centuries, America’s “special sauce” was its ability to raise effective mass forces in wartime. The U.S. ground forces that crushed the Axis represented a large number of (reasonably) well-trained, highly mobile, and lavishly supplied conventional forces, backed by massive firepower and embedded within a joint force capable of asserting and lethally exploiting U.S. dominance of the air and sea (dominance that were themselves products of mass mobilization).

These quality conventional units were by doctrine and design reliant on ordinary conscripts and volunteers. Even elite ground units of World War II, like our five airborne and six marine divisions, were tough but basically accessible to most troops, and, by extension, to the average American. By definition, however, not everyone can be SOF — a hard reality that raises difficult questions about who actually fights today’s wars.

It is a question that policymakers are in no hurry to explore, though. Small and insular SOF units provide a dysfunctional policy community with a lethal, capable, and discrete instrument that they can quietly employ with little political cost. Casualties stay within a self-selecting and narrow segment of society. Policymakers can wage war with minimal impact on broader American society and, all too often, they have little incentive to embed SOF efforts within a viable political strategy. Put simply, SOF can and does offer political leaders easy answers to complicated problems.

That being said, much of SOF’s vaunted secrecy is largely illusory: host country nationals and adversaries soon know that they are there and usually their activities are open secrets within the U.S. With each operation, it is worth asking whether SOF’s secrecy is designed to shield their activities from the enemy or from the American public and our various oversight mechanisms.

The Cult of SOF's Negative Impact on SOF

Even among the operators themselves, adulation can breed arrogance and a lack of accountability.

Most SOF troops will admit to sometimes seeing absurd episodes of indiscipline and favoritism that would have been crushed in even the most anodyne conventional unit, but which are quietly tolerated or overlooked in the fraternity culture of some SOF elements.

Most innocently, this entails quietly covering for illustrious senior troops whose bodies can no longer take the staggering demands SOF life. In other cases, it can give way to more insidious and even criminal conduct. The case of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher may be the best known entry in SOF’s pantheon of misconduct, but is hardly alone. In 2017, a group of SEALS and Marine operators killed an Army Green Beret in a sickening hazing incident in Mali and followed it with a bizarre and shocking apparent ex parte effort to intercede with the soldier’s widow.

This followed a 2012 episode also in Mali, others in Iraq and Afghanistan, another in Erbil, and incident after incident elsewhere. In many cases, the troops involved have faced relatively light consequences for their actions, if, indeed, they faced any at all. To their credit, some SOF leaders themselves have openly addressed the repeated breaches of basic disciplinary standards.

Clearly, at least some SOF felt the strain of multiple combat deployments over the last 20 years. At the same time, however, we can also surmise that the command climate of some units was undermined by the ability to mask problems behind a shroud of public adulation, secrecy, and elitism.

A Warning From History

"When a nation reawakens, its finest sons are prepared to give their lives for its liberation. When empires are threatened with collapse, they are prepared to sacrifice their non-commissioned officers."

—Menachem Begin, The Revolt (1951)

SOF are tremendously skilled and dedicated professionals and America is fortunate to have such troops. At the same time, though, SOF’s place within the broader military and society needs a reset.

Congress and executive branch officials should strengthen oversight of SOF and sharply question whether extravagant demands for secrecy are justified (from whom are we really concealing our hand?) Policymakers should ensure that when SOF is needed, their actions are synchronized with other kinetic and non-kinetic measures and embedded with a broader diplomatic and political strategy. SOF can be an exquisite tool, but they are not a stand alone policy.

The Special Operators themselves currently recognize that discipline and standards within their community need reinforcement. They can also ensure their training highlights their role within a broader force and ensure that the military as a whole is also recognized where appropriate. The fact that even an excellent film like “Black Hawk Down” barely mentions the 10th Mountain Division troops who incurred significant casualties while rescuing Task Force Ranger in Mogadishu should have incurred institutional pushback from the Army technical advisors and, frankly, from the SOF participants themselves.

More broadly, as we enter a different strategic setting from the 20-year war on terror, military commanders should seriously reconsider how SOF will be employed in a new mission set and what types of command relationships will this setting entail. We should note that SOF played a crucial role in the 1989 invasion of Panama and the 1991 Persian Gulf War — two of our more successful military endeavors of the postwar era — but they did so firmly ensconced within, and subordinated to, the larger conventional task force.

At the end of the day, though, redressing the imbalance will be difficult: the Cult of SOF has a long pedigree. An obsession with elite and specialized forces is a phenomenon observed in late-stage empires from Byzantium, with its Varangian mercenaries, through mid-20th century France with its Paras and Legionnaires, all immortalized in Jean Larteguy’s novels.

It is the unfortunate affectation of a restless and decadent society that is in constant conflict overseas, but whose own disaffected citizens feel little obligation to defend their country or to view their wars as anything other than spectator sports.

The public worship of today’s military is, in many ways, a political and emotional tithe that obscures the reality that the American public has outsourced its wars to a small and self-contained subset of society. SOF are simply the apogee of this phenomenon.

Through little fault of the operators themselves, they sit at the pinnacle of a warped religion only slightly of their own making.

Richard Hinman

Rich Hinman is a West Point graduate, a retired Army Officer, and a recently retired Foreign Service Officer from the U.S. State Department. Within the Army, Rich served in a variety of infantry, special operations, and intelligence units, and participated in multiple combat operations. As a diplomat, Rich served in six different embassies as well as on the Department's Policy Planning Staff.

The views expressed by authors on Responsible Statecraft do not necessarily reflect those of the Quincy Institute or its associates.

• Retired Army Officer (since 2016)
• Retired Army Officer (since 2016)
• Aug 1999 - Jun 2016 · 16 yrs 11 mos
• Aug 1999 to Jun 2016 · 16 yrs 11 mos
• (Active Duty: 5/88 – 8/99; Army Reserve: 9/99 – 6/16. Basic Branch: Infantry; Secondary: Strategic Plans and Policies; Rank: Lieutenant Colonel
• 
  
• • Staff Officer, Joint Staff, J5 Strategic Plans and Policies Section, Pentagon. (8/10-2/16).
• 
  
• • Intelligence Analyst, National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC), Charlottesville, VA. (7/08-7/10)
• 
  
• • Staff Officer, European Command, J3 - Information Operations, Germany. (5/05-7/06).
• 
  
• • Battle Captain, Coalition Forces Land Component Command (CFLCC), Kuwait/ Iraq, (3/03-1/04).
• (Active Duty: 5/88 – 8/99; Army Reserve: 9/99 – 6/16. Basic Branch: Infantry; Secondary: Strategic Plans and Policies; Rank: Lieutenant Colonel • Staff Officer, Joint Staff, J5 Strategic Plans and Policies Section, Pentagon. (8/10-2/16). • Intelligence Analyst, National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC), Charlottesville, VA. (7/08-7/10) • Staff Officer, European Command, J3 - Information Operations, Germany. (5/05-7/06). • Battle Captain, Coalition Forces Land Component Command (CFLCC), Kuwait/ Iraq, (3/03-1/04).
• 
  
• Overcome Obstacles, High Pressure and +3 skills
• 
  
• Officer
• Officer
• May 1988 - Aug 1999 · 11 yrs 4 mos
• May 1988 to Aug 1999 · 11 yrs 4 mos
• (Active Duty: 5/88 – 8/99; Army Reserve: 9/99 – present). Basic Branch: Infantry; Secondary: Strategic Plans and Policies; Rank: Lieutenant Colonel).
• 
  
• • Observer-Controller, National Training Center, Ft. Irwin, CA (6/97-7/99). .
• 
  
• • Company Commander, C/2-7 Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division, Ft Hood, TX. (8/95 – 5/97).
• 
  
• • Staff Officer, 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Ft Hood TX (6/94-7/94).
• 
  
• • Support Platoon Leader/Staff Officer, 1st Ranger Battalion, Hunter Army Airfield, GA (9/91-5/93).
• 
  
• • Weapons Platoon Leader 1st Ranger Battalion, Hunter Army Airfield, GA (6/90-8/91).
• 
  
• • Rifle Platoon Leader, C/5-87 Infantry, Republic of Panama (5/89-5/90). .
• (Active Duty: 5/88 – 8/99; Army Reserve: 9/99 – present). Basic Branch: Infantry; Secondary: Strategic Plans and Policies; Rank: Lieutenant Colonel). • Observer-Controller, National Training Center, Ft. Irwin, CA (6/97-7/99). . • Company Commander, C/2-7 Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division, Ft Hood, TX. (8/95 – 5/97). • Staff Officer, 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Ft Hood TX (6/94-7/94). • Support Platoon Leader/Staff Officer, 1st Ranger Battalion, Hunter Army Airfield, GA (9/91-5/93). • Weapons Platoon Leader 1st Ranger Battalion, Hunter Army Airfield, GA (6/90-8/91). • Rifle Platoon Leader, C/5-87 Infantry, Republic of Panama (5/89-5/90). .
• 
  
• Operational Activities, TS and +7 skills

2. State Department to Soon Begin Mass Layoffs

We are going to have a smaller government in many areas. Are these cuts coming with a mission analysis and a thorough assessment of the roles and missions and the resources required to successfully conduct them?

State Department to Soon Begin Mass Layoffs

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s plan to downsize a “bloated” department had been on hold after a court ruling.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/us/politics/state-department-mass-layoffs.html

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the changes would better align the department with core American values and root out pockets of “radical political ideology.”Credit...

By Michael Crowley

Michael Crowley covers the State Department and U.S. foreign policy

July 10, 2025

The State Department formally notified employees on Thursday that it was about to begin layoffs as part of a consolidation plan that department officials say will reduce bureaucratic bloat but that critics call a shortsighted blow to American diplomacy.

In an internal message sent to State Department workers on Thursday, Michael J. Rigas, the deputy secretary of state for management and resources, said the department would “soon” begin notifying U.S. employees who are losing their jobs.

Diplomats said that senior department officials had told them to expect layoff notices as soon as Friday morning.

The layoffs are part of a reorganization plan unveiled in May by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who called his department “bloated” and stifled by bureaucracy. Mr. Rubio said the changes would better align it with core American values and root out pockets of “radical political ideology.”

The State Department is proceeding with the cuts two days after the Supreme Court overturned a lower-court order that had blocked the Trump administration from implementing mass layoffs across the federal government.

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The union that represents trained diplomats who rotate overseas, called Foreign Service officers, expects about 700 of those based in the United States to lose their jobs. A larger number of civil service workers, who work mostly in Washington, are also expected to be fired, in what is officially known as reduction-in-force actions.

In all, the department’s U.S.-based work force of about 18,000 people will shrink by about 15 percent. Department officials said that more than half of that proportion would be made up of voluntary departures, including workers who have accepted the Trump administration’s “deferred resignation” offer.

Mr. Rubio’s plan does not include cuts to overseas staffing and operations, such as embassy closures, although a senior State Department official said that all the department’s operations worldwide were subject to ongoing review.

Democrats in Congress and veteran diplomats have decried Mr. Rubio’s plan, saying it will drain the government of diplomatic expertise at a time of global crises, including conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, and as the United States competes with China for influence abroad.

“America’s diplomatic corps is needed now more than ever to peacefully de-escalate ongoing tensions in the Middle East and achieve American foreign policy objectives in an increasingly complicated world,” several dozen House members wrote in an open letter to Mr. Rubio in late June. The downsizing plan, they warned, will “leave the U.S. with limited tools to engage as a leader on the world stage during this critical juncture.”

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Critics also complain that the reorganization plan targets dozens of offices that deal with specific issues, such as human rights, democracy, refugees and war crimes.

Mr. Rubio contends that it is more efficient for regional bureaus to handle most of those issues, but veteran diplomats say they will inevitably be downgraded in policymaking.

The senior official said on Thursday that the cuts were not aimed at specific individuals but rather job positions. The official said some of the cuts targeted redundancies, citing the consolidation of three offices that handle economic sanctions into one.

In theory, workers who lose their jobs can reapply for other positions. But Mr. Rubio recently approved changes to the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual that drastically narrow their job options and effectively make it impossible for many to remain at the State Department.

The cuts follow President Trump’s elimination earlier this year of the independent U.S. Agency for International Development, which had previously employed 10,000 people, including contractors and local workers, around the world.

In Senate testimony this spring, Mr. Rubio complained that the State Department decision-making process was far too cumbersome. He described receiving a memo that had required 40 people to check a box of approval before it landed on his desk.

“That’s ridiculous,” Mr. Rubio said, adding, “We can’t move at that pace in this world.”

Michael Crowley covers the State Department and U.S. foreign policy for The Times. He has reported from nearly three dozen countries and often travels with the secretary of state.

3. Decapitating the National Security Council leads to foreign policy chaos

Decapitating and gutting apparently.

Opinion

Max Boot

Decapitating the National Security Council leads to foreign policy chaos

Blunders on Ukraine and Venezuela point to dysfunction caused by Trump’s hollowing out of the NSC.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/07/10/trump-rubio-hegseth-nsc/

July 10, 2025 at 3:28 p.m. EDT41 minutes ago

6 min

8

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday. (Evan Vucci/AP)

There is so much happening in the Trump administration that events often pass in a blur, and their significance can’t be grasped until weeks, months or even years later. The slow-motion dismantling of the National Security Council is a case in point. At first it seemed like a minor bureaucratic blip, but now it is evident that the NSC’s weakness is contributing to incoherent U.S. policymaking on matters from Venezuela to Ukraine and beyond.

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On April 3, President Donald Trump fired at least five key NSC staffers at the behest of notorious MAGA conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer. A few weeks later, on May 1, Trump got rid of national security adviser Michael Waltz, a former Army officer and member of Congress who was one of Trump’s better-qualified national security officials. His firing offenses included setting up a Signal chat about airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthis that included a prominent journalist and prematurely advocating for airstrikes on Iran — a position that Trump himself came to embrace less than two months later.

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Rather than appoint a strong, new national security adviser, Trump gave the job to Marco Rubio, who was already busy as secretary of state (as well as acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development and archivist of the United States). Rubio thus became the first person since Henry Kissinger to serve as secretary of state and national security adviser simultaneously — without displaying any of Kissinger’s diplomatic genius. Making Rubio’s job all the harder, Trump also decided to fire dozens of NSC staffers in late May, reportedly reducing the NSC’s staff by more than half.

Why does this matter? The NSC was created in 1947 not only to support the president in foreign policy decision-making but also to coordinate all of the various national security agencies — state, defense, treasury, justice, the CIA, etc. — and to ensure that they are all marching in lockstep in executing administration policy. In our system of government, an effective NSC is necessary for effective policy formulation and execution. Having such a diminished NSC is a recipe for chaos and dysfunction — and all the more so when many senior administration policymakers are inexperienced.

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In the wake of the NSC’s decapitation, members of Trump’s national security team have been pursuing their own agendas, sometimes at odds with the agenda of the president or of other officials.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News weekend host, is the worst, though not the only, offender. Hegseth and his strong-willed policy chief, Defense Undersecretary Elbridge Colby, reportedly caught other administration members off-guard recently by announcing a review of the AUKUS (Australia-U.K.-U.S.) pact to sell nuclear submarines to Australia. The review surprised Australian officials and led them to fear, probably wrongly, that the administration is going to deep-six the deal.

Last week, Hegseth and Colby shocked the world again by pausing U.S. arms shipments to Ukraine on the grounds that the munitions were necessary for U.S. warfighting requirements, even though the military’s Joint Staff concluded that U.S. weapons stockpiles were perfectly adequate. The Hegseth-Colby move came as a surprise not only to Ukraine, European allies and members of Congress but also, apparently, to Trump himself.

CNN reported that Hegseth did not notify the White House in advance about his decision to stop the arms shipments. Asked at a Cabinet meeting who authorized the weapons stoppage, Trump was visibly irked, replying, “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?” On Monday, after a contentious call with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, the president told the Pentagon to resume shipping weapons to Kyiv.

But the unilateral Pentagon pause, even though it was quickly reversed, nevertheless sent a message of U.S. irresolution and confusion that can only embolden Putin and complicate Trump’s hopes of ending the war. Such sudden reverses also make it more difficult for Ukrainian officials to plan or to respond effectively to escalating attacks. Hegseth and Colby appear to be pursuing their own neo-isolationist foreign policy at odds with a president who sometimes acts like a warmonger and sometimes like a peacemaker.

The New York Times just uncovered yet another glaring example of the administration’s foreign policy confusion, this time regarding Venezuela. It seems that Rubio was trying to negotiate the release of Americans being held in Venezuela, as well as of Venezuelan political prisoners, in return for roughly 250 Venezuelans who had been deported from the United States to El Salvador. But the deal was never concluded, the Times reported, in part because the Maduro regime received a more generous offer from another Trump administration representative: special envoy Richard Grenell. Grenell, unlike Rubio, was offering to extend Chevron’s license to pump oil in Venezuela.

The mother of one of the Americans detained in Venezuela expressed frustration to the Times: “The sense that we parents had was that you had various people talking, but they weren’t working together — one negotiator would say one thing, and another would say something else. You would think they would be duly coordinated.”

You would think. But that’s not the way things work in the Trump administration. In part, of course, that’s because Trump is so averse to regimentation and consistency. The president changes his mind frequently and keeps all options open until the last second. But that makes it all the more imperative to have an NSC that supervises an orderly policy process to serve up options to the president and make sure his decisions are faithfully implemented. A strong NSC reduces the administration’s dysfunction; a weak NSC amplifies it.

At the moment, unfortunately, the NSC is as weak as it has ever been. Here is how Politico described the situation: The interagency process “is now one in which important meetings aren’t held, career staffers are often in the dark about what’s expected of them and some people or their institutions try to take advantage of power vacuums.”

Such dysfunction will continue to hobble the Trump administration unless and until the president decides to do something about it. If he wants to improve the situation, he needs to appoint an experienced, full-time national security adviser; reduce the number of special envoys like Grenell who are flitting about; and replace incompetent leaders such as Hegseth with officials who know what they are doing. If Trump fails to act, he will continue to find himself unpleasantly surprised by one policy snafu after another.

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By Max Boot

Max Boot is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in biography, he is the author, most recently, of the New York Times bestseller “Reagan: His Life and Legend," which was named one of the 10 best books of 2024 by the New York Times.

4. The F.B.I. Is Using Polygraphs to Test Officials’ Loyalty

As they say, loyalty is earned. I cannot be coerced.

Of course there can be only one loyalty oath - to support and defend the Constitution.

The F.B.I. Is Using Polygraphs to Test Officials’ Loyalty

Some senior officials who have taken the test have been asked whether they said anything negative about the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/us/politics/fbi-polygraph-kash-patel.html

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The use of the polygraph, and the nature of the questioning, is part of the F.B.I.’s broader crackdown on news leaks, reflecting, to a degree, the director's acute awareness of how he is publicly portrayed.Credit...Susan Harris for The New York Times

By Adam Goldman

Reporting from Washington

July 10, 2025

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Typically, the F.B.I. has turned to polygraph tests to sniff out employees who might have betrayed their country or shown they cannot be trusted with secrets.

Since Kash Patel took office as the director of the F.B.I., the bureau has significantly stepped up the use of the lie-detector test, at times subjecting personnel to a question as specific as whether they have cast aspersions on Mr. Patel himself.

In interviews and polygraph tests, the F.B.I. has asked senior employees whether they have said anything negative about Mr. Patel, according to two people with knowledge of the questions and others familiar with similar accounts. In one instance, officials were forced to take a polygraph as the agency sought to determine who disclosed to the news media that Mr. Patel had demanded a service weapon, an unusual request given that he is not an agent. The number of officials asked to take a polygraph is in the dozens, several people familiar with the matter said, though it is unclear how many have specifically been asked about Mr. Patel.

The use of the polygraph, and the nature of the questioning, is part of the F.B.I.’s broader crackdown on news leaks, reflecting, to a degree, Mr. Patel’s acute awareness of how he is publicly portrayed. The moves, former bureau officials say, are politically charged and highly inappropriate, underscoring what they describe as an alarming quest for fealty at the F.B.I., where there is little tolerance for dissent. Disparaging Mr. Patel or his deputy, Dan Bongino, former officials say, could cost people their job.

“An F.B.I. employee’s loyalty is to the Constitution, not to the director or deputy director,” said James Davidson, a former agent who spent 23 years in the bureau. “It says everything about Patel’s weak constitution that this is even on his radar.”

Image

The question asking employees whether they had said anything negative about Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, is sowing mistrust and stoking concerns of a politicized F.B.I.Credit...Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times

The F.B.I. declined to comment, citing “personnel matters and internal deliberations.”

Already, President Trump’s political appointees have tightened their grip on the F.B.I., forcing out employees or putting others on administrative leave because of previous investigations that ran afoul of conservatives and a belief that the bureau had been politicized. The list has ballooned to include some of the most respected officials at the highest ranks of the bureau.

Others have left, fearing that Mr. Patel or Mr. Bongino will retaliate for conducting legitimate investigations that Mr. Trump or his supporters disliked. Top agents in about 40 percent of the field offices have either retired, been ousted or moved into different jobs, according to people familiar with the matter and an estimate by The New York Times, which began tracking the turnover once the new administration arrived.

Tonya Ugoretz, a veteran analyst who ran the directorate of intelligence, was placed on administrative leave about two weeks ago, around the time it was disclosed that she played a role in pulling back a thinly sourced intelligence report from an informant in Albany, N.Y. The informant, who was new and had indirect access to information passed onto the F.B.I., claimed that China had tried to influence the outcome of the 2020 election in favor of Joseph R. Biden Jr., according to bureau documents released to Congress.

As a top official in the cyberdivision at the time, Ms. Ugoretz recalled the intelligence report before the 2020 election because the document had serious shortcomings, according to the emails released to lawmakers. Another colleague who was involved in scrutinizing the report retired from the bureau shortly after Mr. Patel was confirmed as director.

The upheaval has catapulted others into crucial leadership roles. Will Rivers was an assistant director in charge of the security division before ascending to become the bureau’s No. 3 in March. He has endeared himself to Mr. Patel and Mr. Bongino, carrying out their personnel directives.

Jake Hemme is now Mr. Patel’s deputy chief of staff for policy, a rapid rise for someone who, according to his LinkedIn page, became an agent in July 2022.

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Dan Bongino, Mr. Patel’s deputy, with President Trump and Ivanka Trump at the Ultimate Fighting Championship in Miami last year. Disparaging Mr. Patel or Mr. Bongino, former officials say, could cost people their job.Credit...Scott McIntyre for The New York Times

Responding to an editorial in The Times last weekend describing how he and Mr. Patel were reshaping the bureau into an enforcement arm of Mr. Trump’s agenda, Mr. Bongino pushed back. Even as he described the article as “a poorly thought out hit piece,” he acknowledged efforts “to address the dramatic personnel changes we’ve made, along with the enterprise-wide reorganization Director Patel and I have undertaken.”

Although the courts do not typically consider polygraphs admissible, national security agencies widely use them in investigations and background checks for security clearances, among other matters.

Under Mr. Patel and Mr. Bongino, the F.B.I. has deployed the polygraph in a highly aggressive manner. Many of the employees told to take the test have seen their colleagues removed during an initial purge by the administration as others were later pushed out or demoted. In at least one instance, the bureau put an agent on administrative leave and then brought that person back to take a test, according to a person familiar with the matter.

It is among the measures that the F.B.I. has taken that some current and former officials see as vindictive and extreme, engendering distrust among colleagues who believe there is a cadre within the bureau that has embraced snitching.

Michael Feinberg, a top agent in the field office in Norfolk, Va., until the spring, was threatened with a polygraph over his friendship with Peter Strzok, a veteran counterintelligence official who was fired for sending text messages deriding Mr. Trump.

Mr. Strzok played a central role in the F.B.I.’s investigation into whether Trump campaign aides conspired with Russia in the 2016 presidential election and is featured on Mr. Patel’s so-called enemies list published in his book “Government Gangsters.” How bureau leadership learned about the friendship is unclear.

Mr. Feinberg, writing for the national security blog Lawfare, recounted how Dominique Evans, the new top agent in charge of the Norfolk office, told him he would be “asked to submit to a polygraph exam probing the nature of my friendship with Pete.” She was acting at the direction of Mr. Bongino, Mr. Feinberg claimed as he warned of the broader implications of favoring only loyalists.

“Under Patel and Bongino, subject matter expertise and operational competence are readily sacrificed for ideological purity and the ceaseless politicization of the work force,” he wrote.

To keep his job, Mr. Feinberg added that he was “expected to grovel, beg forgiveness and pledge loyalty as part of the F.B.I.’s cultural revolution brought about by Patel and Bongino’s accession to the highest echelons of American law enforcement and intelligence.”

Mr. Feinberg resigned before he could take a polygraph.

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Top agents in about 40 percent of the field offices have either retired, been ousted or moved into different jobs, according to people familiar with the matter and an estimate by The New York Times.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Former polygraphers suggested the question asking employees whether they had said anything negative about Mr. Patel might also have been devised to be what is known as a control question. Such questions are intended to elicit certain physiological responses for the purposes of comparing a participant’s answers to other questions.

Whatever the reason behind the question, it is sowing mistrust and stoking concerns of a politicized F.B.I.

Mr. Patel has proved sensitive to his public image dating to his early days in government, threatening lawsuits against those who portrayed him in a potentially damaging light.

In June, Mr. Patel sued Frank Figliuzzi, a former senior F.B.I. official who contributes to MSNBC News, over his assertion that the director spent more time in nightclubs than in the office. The media organization retracted the claim, but Mr. Patel sued Mr. Figliuzzi, accusing him of defamation and saying that since being confirmed as F.B.I. director, he had not spent a “single minute inside of a nightclub.” Mr. Patel, who lives in Las Vegas, belongs to the Poodle Room, a members-only club at the Fontainebleau resort near his home.

The lawsuit, which asks for $75,000 in damages, is also blunt about its rationale. “Defendant fabricated this story because of his readily apparent animus toward Director Patel, his partisan desire to undermine the new leadership of the F.B.I. under President Donald J. Trump and to promote himself as someone with insider knowledge,” the filing states.

In 2019, Mr. Patel, then a staff member on the National Security Council under Mr. Trump, sued news organizations including The Times over reporting that described concerns about his involvement in policymaking regarding Ukraine. Mr. Patel ultimately dropped the suit against The Times, which named this reporter as a defendant, in August 2021.

Ultimately, former officials say, the polygraph question is odd on its face. In interviews, many former agents acknowledged having criticized previous directors, including Robert S. Mueller III, who ran the bureau for 12 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Who hasn’t complained about their boss, one former F.B.I. official mused.

Adam Goldman writes about the F.B.I. and national security for The Times. He has been a journalist for more than two decades.

A version of this article appears in print on July 11, 2025, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Polygraphs Used To Gauge Loyalty To F.B.I.’s Leader. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

5. Elbridge Colby Is Right About Ukraine

One of the few "pro-Colby" articles. (or the only one I have found)

Elbridge Colby Is Right About Ukraine

The National Interest · by Brandon J. Weichert · July 10, 2025

Topic: Security

Blog Brand: The Buzz

Region: Americas

July 10, 2025

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From the outset of Trump’s diplomacy attempt, the Russians have been clear: the only way to a peace negotiation is for the US and NATO to stop flooding Ukraine with weapons.

“We’re going to send some more weapons [to Ukraine]. They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now. They’re getting hit very hard. We’re going to have to send more weapons, defensive weapons primarily, but they’re getting hit very, very hard.” So said President Donald Trump during a recent meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—resuming the vital lifeline of supplies that have kept Ukraine afloat in its ongoing three-year war against Russia.

Trump Puts Elbridge Colby in the Hot Seat

This move by President Trump, with both Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe sitting to his left at the table in the White House, was a direct presidential countermand to a move by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby last week.

To be clear, Colby is one of the few remaining true Trump-aligned realists in a senior role at the Pentagon. He is surrounded by neoconservatives who have pushed constantly to send whatever arms and funds the Americans can proffer to Ukraine.

Colby’s decision to temporarily halt the arms shipments intended for Ukraine came after a classified review was conducted of America’s arsenals. That review apparently found that the cupboards were nearly bare—and Colby calculated that America should not hand over its few remaining key systems to Ukraine rather than keeping those defensive systems in reserve, in the event the United States required these weapons somewhere else.

Critics of Colby immediately lambasted him, launching an unremitting mudslinging campaign across social media for the three days leading into Netanyahu’s visit on Monday of this week. When Trump publicly decided to reverse Colby’s order to halt aid to Ukraine, he publicly undermined one of the most effective members of his administration—and weakened America by draining its arsenals for a losing cause.

What Is Trump Really Trying to Achieve by Restoring Ukraine Aid?

Trump’s decision was also a significant reversal from his stated policy aims. According to Trump throughout the campaign last year, he just wanted to “stop the killing.” Then-candidate Trump insisted that he desired above all else to get the combatants in the war—mainly Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy—to meet with him and hash out a peace agreement.

As president, however, Trump has changed his tune. He has expressed continual outrage about Putin, infamously describing the Russian president as “absolutely crazy,” after Russia launched a massive missile attack against Ukraine at a time when the Russians were meeting with American representatives to discuss peace terms over Ukraine. Trump had not been briefed on an alleged assassination attempt against Putin the weekend before those strikes, targeting his presidential helicopter deep inside Russia.

Later, as Trump was supposed to be engaged in negotiations with Putin, Ukraine conducted its “Operation Spiderweb,” a shocking drone attack deep inside Russia that targeted key Russian long-range bombers. Either Trump was not aware of what was happening, or he was, but continued negotiating with Russia while America’s Ukrainian allies plotted to strike Russia in such a way that would undermine the negotiations.

From the outset of Trump’s diplomacy attempt, the Russians have been clear: the only way to a peace negotiation is for the US and NATO to stop flooding Ukraine with weapons. The Trump administration has refused at every turn. Between that refusal and the constant antagonism from the West toward Russia during a time when peace should be on the menu, the war has continued—largely to Russia’s benefit

Russia Is Losing Faith in Trump’s Mediation

It has now been six months since Trump began his second non-consecutive term. If Trump truly wanted peace, he would have been at the negotiating table now, not doing a will-they-won’t-they dance with Putin. For their part, the Russians have all the pieces in place to strike decisively against Ukraine regardless of what the Americans and their NATO partners do. And Moscow’s forces are now unrelentingly and unapologetically blasting Ukraine apart.

The fact of the matter is that the Russians simply do not need a deal with Trump and the Americans. Plus, Moscow now believes that Trump is either not serious about getting a deal—or else is influenced by forces inimical to a deal in both Washington and Brussels. There is also speculation that America’s European NATO partners are planning to escalate on their own in Ukraine, trigger a direct retaliation from Russia, and then invoke Article V of the NATO Charter—thereby forcing the United States to commit militarily to defending whatever is left of Ukraine.

This, by the way, is Kyiv’s dearest wish. Because if negotiations are off, with the Russians galvanized as never before against Ukraine, and the Europeans spasmodically trying to provoke the bear into greater military action against Europe, if the government in Kyiv wants to survive whatever Putin has planned for it, they will need direct US military involvement.

Trump Is Making Dangerous Moves in Ukraine

All this comes as the United States and NATO run out of precious ammunition and weapons—and their defense industrial base is simply unable to replenish the lost supplies in time. Elbridge Colby saw this, and it prompted him to call for the cessation of military aid to Ukraine.

But Trump, a man preternaturally disinterested in pesky details such as the size and availability of America’s arms—and with a false sense of its invincibility—overrode that cautionary order from Colby. Trump thought he was helping. Perhaps Trump believes by playing hardball with the Russians, he might force them to come to the table and be more amenable. But he is wrong.

So long as the Russians have the leverage that they currently have, Moscow has no real need to negotiate, other than to try to create a more favorable modus vivendi with the Trump administration. Instead, the Trump administration is merely prolonging an unwinnable war in Ukraine—and risking the national security of the United States in the process.

About the Author: Brandon J. Weichert

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

Image: Shutterstock / Dmytro Larin.

The National Interest · by Brandon J. Weichert · July 10, 2025

6. Hegseth calls for extensive reforms to Pentagon drone-buying practices

The SECDEF's memo is at this link: https://media.defense.gov/2025/Jul/10/2003752117/-1/-1/1/UNLEASHING-U.S.-MILITARY-DRONE-DOMINANCE.PDF

The signing ceremony must have been quite a spectacle. I am pretty much avoiding all television news these days so I missed it if it made the mainstream media. I am sure it will pop up on many of my news feeds and on YouTube and social media.

Hegseth calls for extensive reforms to Pentagon drone-buying practices

Defense News · by Courtney Albon · July 10, 2025

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday announced sweeping changes to the way the Pentagon buys and fields uncrewed air systems, or UAS, with a goal of establishing “UAS domain dominance” by 2027.

Hegseth announced the policy changes in a video recorded on the Pentagon’s front lawn. With Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” playing in the background, a quadcopter delivered a memo announcing the policy changes, which Hegseth then signed.

“While our adversaries have produced millions of cheap drones, before us we were mired in bureaucratic red tape,” he said in the video, which he posted from his official X account. “Not anymore.”

The memo lists three broad goals: bolstering the U.S. drone manufacturing base, delivering thousands of low-cost systems to military units over the next few years and integrating drone operations into training programs.

“Next year I expect to see this capability integrated into all relevant combat training, including force-on-force drone wars,” Hegseth wrote in the memo.

The announcement builds on a June 6 White House executive order that calls for normalizing drone operations and integration into the national airspace as well as investment in production and emerging technologies across commercial, civil and national security sectors.

Specifically, Hegseth’s expansive memo rescinds past policies established by the Defense Department in 2021 and 2022 that provide guidance for implementing congressional mandates that restrict the U.S. military from buying drones and components produced by Chinese companies. It gives procurement authority to combat units to buy, test and train with small UAS that comply with statute and encourages “local innovation” like 3D printing parts.

The memo also references a Defense Innovation Unit-led effort called Blue UAS — established in 2020 as a process for certifying commercial drones for military use. According to the memo, DIU will now work with the Defense Contract Management Agency to scale its “Blue List,” an inventory of compliant drones.

“The Blue List will be dynamic, retaining all previous component and supply chain findings, and including updated performance evaluations from testing and key lessons learned from training,” the memo states.

The document says that DOD has failed to field UAS at speed and in the numbers that the modern battlefield requires. It calls for department-wide reforms to how the military services buy drones and directs the secretaries of each department to “modify or delete” any policies that overregulate testing, training, procurement and fielding.

Further, it directs the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps to each create active duty formations by September, built for the sole purpose of scaling the use of small drones across DOD — with initial systems delivered to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command by 2026.

The services must also create and resource “unsubordinated program offices” focused entirely on rapidly acquiring drones. The memo also tasks them to identify, by September, any existing programs whose requirements would be better met by uncrewed systems. The services will be required to detail improves they’ve made to acquisition processes as part of their fiscal 2027 budget submissions.

Hegseth also tasks the Department of Government Efficiency and the Office of Strategic Capital with presenting financing options — like direct loans or advance purchase commitments — to inject funding into the U.S. drone industrial base.

“Our adversaries have a head start in small UAS, but we will perform a technological leapfrog and establish small UAS domain dominance by the end of 2027,” Hegseth wrote. “We will accomplish this urgent goal by combining the Nation’s best qualities, including risk-taking. Senior officers must set the tone. Accelerating this critical battlefield technology requires a Department of War culture.”

About Courtney Albon

Courtney Albon is C4ISRNET’s space and emerging technology reporter. She has covered the U.S. military since 2012, with a focus on the Air Force and Space Force. She has reported on some of the Defense Department’s most significant acquisition, budget and policy challenges.

7. What’s Trump’s Next Move on Iran?

What are the NSC, State, and DOD doing to provide him options? Who is developing an Iran strategy for POTUS?

What’s Trump’s Next Move on Iran?

The President still wants a nuclear deal, but that will take more sanctions and other pressure.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/iran-tries-to-talk-its-way-out-of-defeat-national-security-foreign-policy-e7039c63

By The Editorial Board

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July 10, 2025 5:32 pm ET

President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio monitor the mission that struck three Iranian nuclear sites on June 21 at the White House. Photo: Handout/Getty Images

The aftermath of the 12-day war with Iran looks mixed more than two weeks later. Iran’s nuclear program was badly damaged and likely set back for years. But the Ayatollah’s government isn’t admitting defeat and shows no signs of dropping its revolutionary or nuclear designs. That puts into focus the next policy question for the U.S.: Will Mr. Trump’s cease-fire give way to diplomacy that deepens the achievements of the war, or will it put those achievements at risk?

Iran is still talking tough and rejecting Mr. Trump’s demands, even after bailing out of the fight with Israel and failing to respond in any serious way to the U.S. strikes. In a video message released several days after the U.S. bombing, a frail-looking Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed that the U.S. had to intervene to rescue Israel, and that Iran had “dealt America a slap in the face.”

Mr. Trump didn’t take kindly to the Ayatollah’s revisionist history, which he corrected on Truth Social. The President added that “Iran has to get back into the World Order flow, or things will only get worse for them.”

But there’s no sign Iran will surrender the remains of its enrichment program. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said after the war, “Our people have endured sanctions for this, and a war was imposed on our nation over this issue. No one in Iran will abandon this technology.”

More ominously, Iran has driven out United Nations weapons inspectors, who left the country last week. It may drop out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This will make it impossible for inspectors to make a ground-level estimate of the damage done and track or collect any nuclear material that remains.

Iran isn’t hankering for normal relations with the West either. Senior regime clerics have called for Mr. Trump’s execution. Iran’s regime proclaims death to America and Israel, and it wages its forever war accordingly. Meanwhile, evidence is building that Tehran has escalated its terror campaign at home, with arrests and executions of opponents and minorities.

What’s the U.S. policy to grapple with all of this? White House envoy Steve Witkoff said a meeting with Mr. Araghchi will take place in the next week or so. Iran’s Foreign Minister has been stalling, but a senior White House official tells us Iran wants sanctions relief as well as U.S. help with a civilian nuclear program.

“We have a very big ask” in return, the U.S. official says. It starts with removing whatever nuclear material and enrichment infrastructure remains, and continues with hard limits on Iran’s missile program and an end to its support for regional terrorism. The return of inspectors and on-demand searches is essential.

To extract concessions, Mr. Witkoff will need the full pressure arsenal. That should include public and other support for the Iranian people. Especially helpful would be so-called snap-back U.N. sanctions that were part of the 2015 nuclear deal. These would restore international bans on Iranian enrichment and nuclear-capable missiles. They’d also bar other states from helping Iran on those fronts.

The U.S. will also have to enforce its sanctions against Iran’s oil exports. Iran’s oil output is now at a seven-year high, per U.S. Energy Department data. That’s the regime’s main source of financing. Will it be put in danger?

The successful Israel-U.S. military operation has the regime more vulnerable than at any time since the Islamic revolution. Now is the moment to capitalize for a safer Middle East.

As talks with Iran get underway, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth condemns the news media's misleading coverage of the bunker bomb strikes on Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, amid a mission briefing from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine.

Appeared in the July 11, 2025, print edition as 'What’s Trump’s Next Move on Iran?'.

8. The Perfect Time for Regime Change in Iran

An option, perhaps. But this will stir up opposition within POTUS' isolationist faction.

Some would say this would be lighting a match and having no control of the fire that is started.

The Perfect Time for Regime Change in Iran

America remembers the lessons of Iraq in 2003. The current situation is more comparable to that of 1991.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-perfect-time-for-regime-change-in-iran-4558de38?mod=hp_opin_pos_2

By Seth Cropsey

July 8, 2025 4:33 pm ET

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, July 5. Photo: Iran's Supreme Leader/Zuma Press

What does President Trump actually want to do with Iran? The week that the U.S. struck the country’s nuclear sites, he posted on Truth Social that “if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!” But since then he has been pushing to end the Israel-Iran war.

The instinct behind Mr. Trump’s post was the right one. If unimpeded, Iran’s jihadist rulers will rebuild their nuclear program. Iran’s deputy foreign minister told NBC News on July 3: “Our policy has not changed on enrichment.” To prevent Iran from achieving its ambitions, the U.S. should press its advantage and work openly with Israel and the Gulf states to undermine the regime.

The phrase “regime change” understandably makes Americans nervous. Since the Soviet Union’s collapse, the U.S. has struggled to match military capability with coherent political purpose. Washington didn’t define a clear political objective during its long Afghanistan campaign. The goal should have been to maintain an Afghan government in Kabul that would deny al Qaeda and the Taliban a haven at a low cost to America and allies. The U.S. objective instead became an impossible transformation of the country. It’s no surprise this failed.

Compared with this incoherence, Mr. Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear program and then engineer a rapid cease-fire looks like a strategic masterstroke. Tehran’s nuclear program has always been about weapons development, and crippling it was the right move.

The Iranian threat to America, however, is broader. Iran’s support for its terrorist proxies endangers regional stability and U.S. lives. Iranian assistance with Russia’s illegal oil exports reduces America’s ability to pressure Moscow on the Ukraine war. Because China also relies heavily on Iranian and Russian crude, keeping Iran in check would give the U.S. more leverage over Beijing.

Iran remains a dangerous threat, and the policy question is whether taking out that threat requires deposing the current regime now rather than waiting it out. History suggests the time to act is now.

Much like Mr. Trump aimed to do with his strikes on Iran, in the 1991 Gulf War the U.S. used overwhelming force to achieve a clearly defined political objective: the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi conquest. America suffered almost no losses and received broad international backing. The U.S. so thoroughly humiliated Saddam Hussein that American forces could have removed him from power. But President George H.W. Bush declined to do so, fearing regional instability.

The Iraqi threat to U.S. lives persisted. After the Gulf War, America discovered that the Central Intelligence Agency and International Atomic Energy Agency had underestimated Iraq’s nuclear weaponization progress in the 1980s. The IAEA’s inspectors determined that without the Gulf War, Iraq could have built a nuclear device in the early 1990s, although delivering it on a missile would have taken much longer. Iraq also maintained chemical and biological weapons infrastructure through the 1990s. After international actors supervised the destruction of Iraq’s Scud missile arsenal after the Gulf War, Saddam insisted on producing indigenous missiles. In 1994, Iraq again menaced Kuwait. Saddam likely planned to invade, according to high-ranking Iraqi sources. Rapid U.S. military deployments deterred him. But Iraq remained a threat to American interests given its regional designs, support for international terrorism, and interest in destructive weapons.

The result of U.S. hesitancy in 1991 was that America became embroiled in another, more complex and difficult war after a decade of sanctions and intermittent bombing. In 2003 the U.S. invaded Iraq. As before, American victory was swift. A relatively small force swept to Baghdad and ejected Saddam from power. But bureaucratic problems and a commitment to chimerical “democratization” led to a power vacuum and an insurgency, which destroyed American will for major foreign interventions.

As the Iraq problem persisted after the Gulf war, the threat from Iran persists after Operation Midnight Hammer. The Trump administration can’t repeat the mistakes of 2003, occupying a country with no serious plan. But it shouldn’t repeat the mistake of 1991 either. The Iranian regime will remain a threat to America until different leaders occupy Tehran. If Mr. Trump leaves the clerics in charge, the U.S. will eventually have to deal with an even worse conflict—as it did in Iraq.

If Iran is left to its own devices, there is little possibility of a domestic transformation. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, still lives, as do many leading officials. The assaults on American positions in Qatar and Iraq are unlikely to be the end for a regime that regularly pronounces “Death to America.” The only way to eliminate this threat is to eliminate its ideological source—the regime led by Ali Khamenei.

Now is the perfect time to target Mr. Khamenei and thereby decapitate the regime in Tehran. Airstrikes by Israel and the U.S. have done serious damage. Israeli action against the Houthis, Hezbollah and Hamas, along with the Assad regime’s collapse, have also debilitated the Axis of Resistance.

Removing the supreme leader would set off a power struggle inside Iran. Such a move is unlikely to lead to representative government, but that shouldn’t be the goal. Mr. Khamenei’s absence would likely elevate a military-led regime that could be convinced—through an appeal to self-preservation—to dismantle its nuclear program and end its proxy wars. Such a plan would require coordination with Israel. The U.S. should preposition military assets to hunt down Iran’s remaining ballistic missiles if Tehran’s reaction warrants it. The U.S. should ensure that European powers reinstate sanctions on Iran. Finally, the U.S. should work with the Gulf states, Israel and Turkey to create a policy for a post-Khamenei Iran that could offer incentives for Tehran’s good behavior.

While striking Iran’s nuclear sites was a triumph, the challenge of transforming that tactical success into a strategic victory remains. Leaving the jihadist clerics in charge would assure a future confrontation that is far more dangerous.

Mr. Cropsey is president of Yorktown Institute. He served as a naval officer and as a deputy undersecretary of the Navy and is author of “Mayday” and “Seablindness.”

As talks with Iran get underway, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth condemns the news media's misleading coverage of the bunker bomb strikes on Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, amid a mission briefing from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine.

Appeared in the July 9, 2025, print edition as 'The Perfect Time for Regime Change in Iran'.

9. A band of innovators reimagines the spy game for a world with no cover

New meaning to "hiding in plain sight."

Please go to this link to view the photos and graphics and properly formatted article.

https://wapo.st/4lEIIWm

Opinion

David Ignatius

A band of innovators reimagines the spy game for a world with no cover

https://wapo.st/4lEIIWm

July 10, 2025 at 7:00 a.m. EDTYesterday at 7:00 a.m. EDT

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aron Brown was working as a CIA case officer in 2018 when he wrote a post for an agency blog warning about what he called “gait recognition.” He cautioned his fellow officers that computer algorithms would soon be able to identify people not just by their faces, or fingerprints, or DNA — but by the unique ways they walked.

Many of his colleagues, trained in the traditional arts of disguise and concealment, were skeptical. One called it “threat porn.” But Brown’s forecast was chillingly accurate. A study published in May reported that a model called FarSight, using gait, body and face recognition, was 83 percent accurate in verifying an individual at up to 1,000 meters, and was 65 percent accurate even when the face was obscured. “It’s hard to overstate how powerful that is,” Brown said.

Brown’s story illustrates a profound transformation that is taking place in the world of intelligence. For spies, there is literally no place to hide. Millions of cameras around the world record every movement and catalogue it forever. Every action leaves digital tracks that can be studied and linked with others. Your cellphone and social media accounts tell the world precisely who and where you are.

Further, attempts at concealment can backfire in the digital age. An intelligence source told me that the CIA gave burner phones to a network of spies in a Middle Eastern country more than a decade ago and instructed them to turn the phones on only when sending operational messages. But the local security service had devised an algorithm that could identify “anomalous” phones that were used infrequently. The network was exposed by its attempt at secrecy.

“The more you try to hide, the more you stand out,” Brown explained. He wouldn’t discuss the Middle East case or any other operational details. But the lesson is obvious: If you don’t have a cellphone or a social media profile these days, that could signal you’re a spy or criminal who’s trying to stay off the grid.

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Brown, a wiry former Army Ranger and CIA counterterrorism officer, is one of a small group of ex-spies who are trying to reinvent American intelligence to survive in this age of “ubiquitous technical surveillance,” or UTS. He launched a new company this year called Lumbra. Its goal is to build AI “agents” that can find and assess — and act upon — data that reveals an adversary’s intentions.

Lumbra is one of nearly a dozen start-ups that I’ve examined over the past several months to explore where intelligence is headed in 2025. It’s a dazzling world of new technology. One company uses data to identify researchers who may have connections to Chinese intelligence. Another interrogates big data systems the way an advertising company might, to identify patterns through what its founder calls “ADINT.” A third uses a technology it calls “Obscura” to bounce cellphone signals among different accounts so they can’t be identified or intercepted.

Most of these intelligence entrepreneurs are former CIA or military officers. They share a fear that the intelligence community isn’t adapting fast enough to the new world of espionage. “Technologically, the agency can feel like a sarcophagus when you see everything that’s happening outside,” worries Edward Bogan, a former CIA officer. He now works with a nonprofit called 2430 Group — the number was an early CIA cover address in Washington — that tries to help technology companies protect their work from adversaries.

The Trump administration recognizes this intelligence revolution, at least in principle. CIA Director John Ratcliffe said during confirmation hearings he wants to ramp up covert operations, with officers “going places no one else can go and doing things no one else can do.” That’s a commendable goal, but if the agency doesn’t reinvent its tradecraft, Ratcliffe’s bold talk may well fail. Traditional operations will only expose the CIA and its sources to greater risk.

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A CIA spokesperson said this week in response to a query: “Today’s digital environment poses as many opportunities as it does challenges. We’re an adaptable agency, and it is well within the ingenuity and creativity of our officers to develop ways to navigate effectively in complex environments. In fact, we are exploiting many of the same technologies to recruit spies and steal information.”

Brown takes hope from the work that younger CIA officers are doing to reimagine the spy business: “Some of the agency’s smartest people are working on these tradecraft problems from sunup to sundown, and they are coming up with unique solutions.”

The CIA’s technology challenge is a little-noted example of a transformation that’s happening in every area of defense and security. Today, smart machines can outwit humans. I’ve written about the algorithm war that has revolutionized the battlefield in Ukraine, where no soldier is safe from drones and precision-guided missiles. We’ve just seen a similar demonstration of precision targeting in Israel’s war against Iran. For soldiers and spies everywhere, following the old rules can get you killed.

(Illustration by Raven Jiang/For The Washington Post)

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he art of espionage is thousands of years old. The Bible speaks of it, as do ancient Greek, Persian and Chinese texts. Through the ages, it has been based on two pillars: Spies operate in secret, masking who they are and what they’re doing (call it “cover”), and they use techniques to hide their movements and communications (call it “tradecraft”). Modern technology has shattered both pillars.

To recall the mystique of the CIA’s old-school tradecraft, consider Antonio J. Mendez, the agency’s chief of disguise in the 1980s. He described in a memoir how he created ingenious facial masks and other deceptions that could make someone appear to be a different race, gender, height and profile. Some of the disguises you see on “The Americans” or “Mission Impossible” use techniques developed by Mendez and his colleagues.

The CIA’s disguises and forgeries back then were like works of fine art. But the agency in its first few decades was also a technology pioneer — innovating on spy planes, satellite surveillance, battery technology and covert communications. Its tech breakthroughs were mostly secret systems, designed and built in-house.

The Silicon Valley tech revolution shattered the agency’s innovation model. Private companies began driving change and government labs were lagging.

Seeing the disconnect, CIA Director George Tenet in 1999 launched the agency’s own venture capital firm called “In-Q-Tel” to connect with tech start-ups that had fresh ideas that could help the agency. In-Q-Tel’s first CEO was Gilman Louie, who had previously been a video game designer. In-Q-Tel made some smart early investments, including in the software company Palantir and the weapons innovator Anduril.

CIA Director George Tenet listens to a question posed by a member of the Senate Armed Services committee on Feb. 3, 2000, on Capitol Hill. (George Bridges/AFP/Getty Images)

But the CIA’s early attempts to create new tradecraft sometimes backfired. To cite one particularly disastrous example: The agency developed what seemed an ingenious method to communicate with its agents overseas using internet addresses that appeared to be news or hobby sites. Examples included an Iranian soccer site, a Rasta music page and a site for Star Wars fans, and dozens more, according to investigations by Yahoo News and Reuters.

The danger was that if one agent was caught, the technology trick could be exposed — endangering scores of other agents. It was like mailing secret letters that could be traced to the same postbox — a mistake the CIA had made with Iran years before.

Iran identified the internet ruse and began taking apart CIA networks around 2010. China soon did the same thing. The agency’s networks in both countries were largely destroyed from 2010 to 2012.

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In a 2012 speech during his stint as CIA director, Gen. David H. Petraeus warned that the fundamentals of spying had changed: “We have to rethink our notions of identity and secrecy. … Every byte left behind reveals information about location, habits, and, by extrapolation, intent and probable behavior.”

But machines moved faster than humans in the spy world. That’s what I learned in my weeks of on-the-record discussions with former CIA officers working to develop the espionage tools of the future. They describe a cascade of commercial innovations — instant search, mobile phones, cheap cameras, limitless accessible data — that came so quickly the CIA simply couldn’t adapt at the speed of change.

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uyane Norman was one of the CIA officers who tried to move the system. In 2014, he returned from overseas to take a senior operations job. The agency was struggling then to recover from the collapse of its networks in Iran and China, and the fallout from Edward Snowden’s revelation of CIA and NSA secrets. Norman remembers thinking that “the foundations of our tradecraft were being disrupted,” and the agency needed to respond.

Norman convinced his superiors that in his next overseas assignment, he should try to create what came to be called “the station of the future,” which would test new digital technology and ideas that could improve offensive and defensive operations. This experiment had some successes, he told me, in combating surveillance and dropping outmoded practices. But the idea of a “station,” usually based in an embassy, was still a confining box.

“You’re the CEO of Kodak,” Norman says he warned Director Gina Haspel when he retired in 2019, recalling the camera and film company that dominated the industry before the advent of digital photography. Kodak missed the chance to change, and the world passed it by.

When I asked Norman to explain the CIA’s resistance to change, he offered another analogy. “If Henry Ford had gone to transportation customers and asked what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses.’

“That’s what the CIA has been trying to build. Faster horses.”

The intelligence community’s problem was partly that it didn’t trust technology that hadn’t been created by the government’s own secret agencies.

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Mike Yeagley, a data scientist who runs a company called cohort.ID, discovered that in 2016 when he was working with commercial mobile phone location data. His business involved selling advertisers the data generated by phone apps. As a cellphone user moves from work to home — visiting friends, stores, doctors and every other destination — his device reveals his interests and likely buying habits.

Yeagley happened to be studying refugee problems back then, and he wondered if he could find data that might be useful to NGOs that wanted to help Syrians fleeing the civil war into Turkey. He bought Syrian cellphone data — cheap, because it had few commercial applications. Then, on a whim, he began looking for devices that dwelled near Fort Bragg, North Carolina — where America’s most secret Special Operations forces are based — and later appeared in Syria.

And guess what? He found a cluster of Fort Bragg phones pinging around an abandoned Lafarge cement plant in the northeast Syrian desert.

Bingo! The cement factory was the headquarters of the Joint Special Operations Command task force that was running America’s war against the Islamic State. It was supposed to be one of the most secret locations on the planet. When I visited several times over the past decade as an embedded journalist, I wasn’t allowed to walk more than 50 yards without an escort. And there it was, lighting up a grid on a commercial advertising data app.

Yeagley shared that information with the military back in 2016 — and they quickly tightened phone security. Commanders assumed that Yeagley must have hacked or intercepted this sensitive data.

“I bought it,” Yeagley told them. Even the military’s security experts didn’t seem to realize that mobile phones had created a gold mine of information that was being plundered by advertisers but largely ignored by the government.

Thanks to advice from Yeagley and many other experts, data analytics is now a growing source of intelligence. Yeagley calls it “ADINT,” because it uses techniques developed by the advertising industry. Who would have imagined that ad salespeople could move faster than secret warriors?

(Illustration by Raven Jiang/For The Washington Post)

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lenn Chafetz had been station chief in three countries when he returned to Langley in 2018 to take an assignment as the first “Chief of Tradecraft” in the operations directorate. It was the agency’s latest attempt to adapt to the new world, succeeding the Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance Working Group, which in turn had replaced the CCTV Working Group.

“People realized that the problem wasn’t just cameras, but payment systems, mobile apps, WiFi hubs — any technology that produced data that lived permanently,” Chafetz recalls. But there was still a lack of understanding and resistance from many officers who had joined the CIA when there were no cellphones, digital cameras or Google.

For the older generation, tradecraft meant executing “surveillance detection routes” to expose and evade trackers. Case officers had all gone through field training to practice how to detect surveillance and abort agent meetings that might be compromised. They met their assets only if they were sure they were “black,” meaning unobserved. But when cameras were everywhere, recording everything, such certainty was impossible.

Chafetz lead a team that tried to modernize tradecraft until he retired in 2019. But he remembers that an instructor in the agency’s training program admonished him, “New officers still need to learn the basics.” The instructor didn’t seem to understand that the “basics” could compromise operations.

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The tradecraft problem wasn’t just pervasive surveillance, but the fact that data existed forever. In the old days, explains Chafetz, “If you didn’t get caught red-handed, you didn’t get caught.” But now, hidden cameras could monitor a case officer’s meandering route to a dead drop site and his location, long before and after. His asset might collect the drop a week later, but his movements would be recorded, before and after, too. Patterns of travel and behavior could be tracked and analyzed for telltale anomalies. Even when spies weren’t caught red-handed, they might be caught.

The CIA’s default answer to tradecraft problems, for decades, was greater reliance on “nonofficial cover” officers, known as NOCs. They could pose as bankers or business consultants, say, rather than as staffers in U.S. embassies. But NOCs became easier to spot, too, in the age of social media and forever-data. They couldn’t just drop into a cover job. They needed an authentic digital history including things like a “LinkedIn” profile that had no gaps and would never change.

For some younger CIA officers, there was a fear that human espionage might be nearly impossible. The “station of the future” hadn’t transformed operations. “Cover” was threadbare. Secret communications links had been cracked. The skeptics worried that the CIA model was irreparably broken.

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fter all my conversations with veteran CIA officers, I’ve concluded that the agency needs an entirely new tool kit. Younger officers inside recognize that change is necessary. Pushing this transformation from the outside are scores of tech-savvy officers who have recently left the CIA or the military. It’s impossible at this stage to know how many of these ventures will prove successful or important; some won’t pan out. The point is the urgent need to innovate.

Let’s start with cellular communications. That’s a special worry after Chinese intelligence penetrated deep inside the major U.S. telecommunications companies using a state-sponsored hacking group known as “Salt Typhoon.” A solution is offered by a company called Cape, which sells customers, in and out of government, a mobile network that can disappear from the normal cellular grid and protect against other vulnerabilities.

Cape was founded in 2022 by John Doyle, who served as a U.S. Army Special Forces sergeant from 2003 to 2008 and then worked for Palantir. His “Obscura” technology bounces mobile phone identifiers among thousands of customers so it’s impossible to trace any of them. He calls his tactic “opportunistic obfuscation.”

One of the most intriguing private intelligence companies is Strider Technologies, founded in 2019 by twin brothers Greg and Eric Levesque and chief data officer Mike Brown. They hired two prominent former CIA officers: Cooper Wimmer, who served in Athens, Vienna, Baghdad and Peshawar, and other locations; and Mark Pascale, a former station chief in both Moscow and Beijing. The company also recruited David Vigneault, former head of Canadian intelligence.

Strider describes itself as a “modern-day economic security agency.” To help customers secure their innovation and talent, it plucks the secrets of adversaries like China and Russia that steal U.S. commercial information. China is vulnerable because it has big open-source databases of its own, which are hard to protect.

Using this data, Strider can analyze Chinese organizations and their employees; it can study Chinese research data, and how it was obtained and shared; it can analyze the “Thousand Talents” programs China uses to lure foreigners; it can track the contacts made by those researchers, at home and abroad; and it can identify connections with known Chinese intelligence organizations or front companies.

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Eric Levesque explained to me how Strider’s system works. Imagine that a software engineer is applying to work for an international IT company. The engineer received a PhD from a leading American university. What research did he conduct there? Was it shared with Chinese organizations? What research papers has he published? Who in China has read or cited them? What Chinese companies (or front companies) has he worked for? Has this prospective employee touched any branch of the Chinese civil-military conglomerate?

Strider can operate inside what China calls the “Great Firewall” that supposedly protects its data. I didn’t believe this was possible until Levesque gave me a demonstration. On his computer screen, I could see the links, from a researcher in the West, to a “Thousand Talents” program, to a Ministry of State Security front company. It turns out that China hasn’t encrypted much of its data — because the authorities want to spy on their own citizens. China is now restricting more data, but Levesque says Strider hasn’t lost its access.

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e’ve entered a new era where AI models are smarter than human beings. Can they also be better spies? That’s the conundrum that creative AI companies are exploring.

Scale AI sells a product called “Donovan,” named after the godfather of the CIA, William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan. The product can “dig into all available data to rapidly identify trends, insights, and anomalies,” says the company’s website. Alexandr Wang, the company’s founding CEO (who was just poached by Meta), explains AI’s potential impact by quoting J. Robert Oppenheimer’s statement that nuclear weapons produced “a change in the nature of the world.”

William (Wild Bill) Donovan, center, who headed the U.S. Office of Strategic Service during World War II, is greeted by Maj. General C. L. Chennault, second from the left, in Hong Kong on Jan. 3, 1950. (AP)

Vannevar Labs, another recent start-up, is creating tools to “influence adversary behavior and achieve strategic outcomes.” Its website explains: “We develop sophisticated collection, obfuscation, and ML (machine learning) techniques to provide assured access to mission relevant data.”

The company’s name evokes Vannevar Bush, an MIT engineer who headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, which oversaw all major U.S. research projects during World War II, including the launch of the Manhattan Project.

Lumbra.ai, the company launched in March by Brown, seeks to create what he describes as a “central nervous system” that will connect the superintelligence of future AI models with software “agents.” After leaving the CIA in 2021, Brown met with Sam Altman, the founder of Open AI, to refine his thinking. To describe what agentic AI can do, he offers this hypothetical: “We can find every AI researcher, read all the papers they’ve ever written, and analyze any threats their research may pose for the United States.” Human spies could never be so adept.

“No one said we have to collect intelligence only from humans,” Brown tells me. “When a leader makes a decision, someone in the system has to take a step that’s observable in the data we can collect.” Brown’s AI agents will create a plan and then build and use tools that can gather the observable information.

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Brown imagines what he calls a “Case Officer in a Box.” Conceptually, it would be a miniaturized version of an agentic system running a large language model, like Anthropic’s Claude. As an offline device, it could be carried in a backpack by anyone and left anywhere. It would speak every language and know every fact ever published. It could converse with an agent, asking questions that elicit essential information.

“Did you work in the Iranian weaponization program?” our Case Officer in a Box might ask a hypothetical Iranian recruit. “Where was your lab? In the Shariati complex? Okay, then, was it in the Shahid Karimi building or the Imam Khomeini building? Did you work on neutron triggers for a bomb? How close to completion was your research? Where did you last see the prototype neutron triggers? Show me on a map, please.”

The digital case officer will make a great movie, but it’s probably unrealistic. “No one is going to put their life in the hands of a bot,” cautioned Wimmer, a fabled CIA recruiter. The agent would suspect that the AI system was really a trick by his own country’s spies. Brown agrees that recruiting a human spy will probably always require another human being who can build the necessary bond of trust. But once that bond is achieved, he believes technology will enhance a spy’s impact in astonishing ways.

Here’s the final, essential point. Human spies in the field will become rare. Occasionally, a piece of information will be so precious that the CIA will risk the life of one of its officers, and the life of an agent, to collect the intelligence in person. But that kind of face-to-face spying will be the exception. The future of espionage is written in zeros and ones. The CIA will survive as a powerful spy agency only if it makes a paradigm shift.

David IgnatiusDavid Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column for The Washington Post. His latest novel is “Phantom Orbit.” @ignatiuspost

10. Hunting Down Russian Spies With Norway’s Intelligence Service

A whole of society approach is necessary? The highlighted quote in the excerpt below is advice that could be applied to a broad range of strategic problems we face today.

Excerpts:

Johan Roaldsnes, the regional chief of the PST who operates in the town, says these grey-zone operations blur the traditional lines between war and peace. “It’s the feeling that something is wrong but you can’t pinpoint it,” he said. “When you get the sneaky kind of off-feeling that somebody is doing this on purpose, this is not natural, you get a bad taste in your mouth.”

For Roaldsnes and other authorities trying to combat Russian hybrid threats, escaping from their own presumptions is key. “Part of the problem is that you’re using your own Western logic to understand the situation,” Roaldsnes said. Instead, in this part of the Far North, all forms of legitimate acts have to be treated with suspicion.

Onlookers would be forgiven for not paying attention to Russian fishing trawlers that dock in Kirkenes almost every day from Murmansk, the home of Russia’s northern fleet and a region where many of its strategic nuclear weapons are located.

Hunting Down Russian Spies With Norway’s Intelligence Service

A small Arctic town has become a hub for suspicious activity following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/hunting-down-russian-spies-with-norways-intelligence-service-649c7653

By Matthew Luxmoore

Follow and Eve Hartley

Follow

July 11, 2025 12:01 am ET

A Norwegian town on the border with Russia has become a target for hybrid attacks. WSJ follows an intelligence chief from Norway’s domestic security agency on the hunt for illegal activity. Photo: Eve Hartley

Key Points

What's This?

• Kirkenes, Norway, is a suspected hub for Russian hybrid warfare, with residents feeling watched and intelligence officials on patrol.
• Norway’s PST patrols for Russian spies in Kirkenes, highlighting the challenge of combating grey-zone operations that blur lines of war.
• Following the Ukraine invasion, Russian vessels docking in Kirkenes are viewed as risks.

KIRKENES, Norway—Paranoia pervades the placid border town of Kirkenes in Norway’s far north. Residents are routinely trailed by unknown men. The Wall Street Journal’s camera crew was photographed and followed around town by a suspicious vehicle with no license plate. Most locals warn you to keep your wits about you because, as one said in a hushed tone, “the Russians are watching.”

The Journal’s video shows us accompanying Norway’s domestic intelligence agency, the PST, on patrol for Russian spies. We meet residents convinced they are under Russian surveillance and we find out firsthand what it feels like to be trailed.

European intelligence officials say Kirkenes is a laboratory for Russia’s hybrid warfare—a potential ground zero for the kinds of espionage and sabotage attacks that have ramped up across Europe in recent years.

Johan Roaldsnes, the regional chief of the PST who operates in the town, says these grey-zone operations blur the traditional lines between war and peace. “It’s the feeling that something is wrong but you can’t pinpoint it,” he said. “When you get the sneaky kind of off-feeling that somebody is doing this on purpose, this is not natural, you get a bad taste in your mouth.”

For Roaldsnes and other authorities trying to combat Russian hybrid threats, escaping from their own presumptions is key. “Part of the problem is that you’re using your own Western logic to understand the situation,” Roaldsnes said. Instead, in this part of the Far North, all forms of legitimate acts have to be treated with suspicion.

Onlookers would be forgiven for not paying attention to Russian fishing trawlers that dock in Kirkenes almost every day from Murmansk, the home of Russia’s northern fleet and a region where many of its strategic nuclear weapons are located.

But following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, all civilian vessels—and the Russians who man them—are labeled as a risk.

Moscow also regularly probes the defenses of a Norwegian border that is patrolled by teenage conscripts with little combat training. The soldiers’ job is to keep a close watch on their Russian counterparts and to make sure they “don’t take pictures of our military infrastructure,” said 19-year-old Magnus Karlsvik.

In the winter months, they peer through their binoculars and carefully study footprints in the snow in an attempt to spot any Russian threat.

“Some people say it’s dangerous,” Karlsvik said, “But if the time comes and we get in trouble with Russia, then I know that me and my team—we are prepared and we can handle ourselves.”

Write to Matthew Luxmoore at matthew.luxmoore@wsj.com and Eve Hartley at eve.hartley@wsj.com

11. Trump Doubles Down on Using Tariffs as Tool of American Power

Our major foreign policy and national security tool today.

Is it in line with American values? And what are the second and third order (non-economic) effects especially in terms of our necessary alliances? Have we grouped our allies into the "other" category and made them out to be the bad guys along with immigrants, the elite, and the deep state?

Trump Doubles Down on Using Tariffs as Tool of American Power

President uses levies to cajole nations on political priorities—many unrelated to trade

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-doubles-down-on-using-tariffs-as-tool-of-american-power-c59ca442

By Gavin Bade

Follow in Washington and Marcus Walker

Follow in Rome

July 10, 2025 9:56 pm ET

President Trump’s moves have shaken the global trade order established in the 1940s. Photo: Will Oliver/Press Pool

Key Points

What's This?

• President Trump threatened Brazil with a 50% tariff on imports, citing the trial of Jair Bolsonaro, a close political ally.
• Trump’s move breaks with decades of precedent, using tariffs for political leverage beyond trade, risking legal and economic backlash.
• Experts note Trump’s approach is unprecedented, differing from historical uses of tariffs and potentially destabilizing global trade.

President Trump’s threat for a 50% tariff on Brazilian imports expanded his use of punitive duties over matters that have nothing to do with trade, breaking with more than a half-century of global economic precedent.

Trump cited the trial of the president’s close political ally, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, as the rationale for new tariffs set to take effect Aug. 1 on imports from the largest economy in Latin America.

It is one of the latest—and perhaps most brazen—examples of Trump using tariffs as a cudgel for political priorities outside of trade. In January, he threatened tariffs on Colombia over repatriation flights for migrants back to that country. Then he imposed steep duties on Canada, Mexico and China over their role in the fentanyl trade, and threatened eye-watering tariffs on countries that buy oil from Venezuela. He has also used the threat of tariffs to attempt to secure more military spending from Asian nations such as Japan and South Korea.

And on Thursday evening, in a new letter to Canada’s leader, Trump said the U.S. would impose 35% tariffs on some Canadian imports starting Aug. 1, citing the fentanyl crisis among other grievances with the country.

The president is betting the threat of reducing access to the American consumer will force nations to capitulate on his political priorities. But he risks getting rebuked by the courts—and political blowback if prices for goods rise.

Trump “views tariffs as a tool that is effective in getting results, not just in terms of economic impact, but also leverage in all sorts of situations,” said Kelly Ann Shaw, former deputy director of the National Economic Council in Trump’s first term.

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro holding a photo of himself and President Trump. Photo: Fábio Setti for WSJ

Bolsonaro is facing charges that he plotted to overturn his 2022 election loss by fomenting a January 2023 insurrection at the Brazilian Congress, when thousands of his supporters overran the legislative body after the election of current left-leaning president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In his tariff letter, Trump called the trial “nothing more, or less, than an attack on a political opponent — Something I know much about,” adding “LEAVE BOLSONARO ALONE!”

Trump’s moves have shaken the global trade order established in the 1940s, when market economies sought to put tariffs and trade among them on a stable footing. 

Although often controversial and sometimes volatile, such as when the Smoot-Hawley Act hiked U.S. tariffs in 1930, tariffs have generally been motivated by economic or domestic political goals. For twisting the arm of another country, usually a geopolitical adversary, trade embargoes were often used, such as when Napoleon tried to cut off Britain from all trade with continental Europe, or when the U.S. cut off Japan’s access to American oil in 1940 to punish the country for expansionism.

After World War II, the U.S. led an international effort to build a rules-based trading order that kept politics out of tariffs. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, signed in 1947, required countries to stick to agreed tariffs and not discriminate against imports from other nations. Its core principles were adopted by GATT’s successor, the World Trade Organization, in the 1990s.

The rise of China as a state-backed export juggernaut and the decline of manufacturing jobs in Western countries have undermined the consensus for the postwar trading order.

“The perceived gains from a rules-based trading system came to be taken for granted,” said Jennifer Hillman, a trade-law specialist at Georgetown University and a former U.S. and WTO official. “Major shifts in geopolitical power, and perceptions of unfairness and growing income inequality in the U.S. and other importing countries, are seen as justifying the breaking of the rules.”

A view of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT, conference in Geneva in 1987. Photo: Pascal Volery/AP

Since 2010, China has pioneered the use of trade restrictions to punish other countries over political issues unrelated to trade. Among other incidents, China slapped heavy tariffs on Australian wine and barley after Australia called for an international inquiry into the origins of Covid-19.

During Trump’s first term, the president baffled U.S. allies such as Canada when he invoked national security to justify tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. 

But his second-term linkage of trade measures with a growing array of political concerns has little precedent.

“This is brand new,” said Hillman. “What we don’t know is, is this purely Trump, or is this the future?”

Trump’s approach carries legal risks. In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade struck down many of the president’s tariffs, saying they weren’t justified by the emergency legal authority that he cited. An appeals court will hear the case on July 31, a day before Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs are scheduled to go back into effect on Brazil and scores of other nations.

Trump’s Brazil tariffs risk compounding those legal risks. The reciprocal tariffs were justified in part on the grounds that persistent trade deficits with other nations constitute a national security threat. The U.S., however, runs a trade surplus with Brazil—over $7 billion last year. 

Steel coils in Duisburg, Germany. Photo: Martin Meissner/AP

The administration argues the U.S. government has always used economic tools to extract foreign-policy concessions from other nations, like the extensive use of economic sanctions against adversarial nations such as Russia, Iran, Cuba and more. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said Trump believes that the U.S. has “gotten over our skis” on sanctions and that they could be driving nations away from the U.S. dollar.

“Other countries routinely use tariffs to advance their foreign policy and national security interests, and President Trump is committed to using every tool at his disposal—including access to the American economy, the world’s biggest and best consumer market—to put Americans and America First,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai.

Many Trump allies are supportive of the president’s shift to use access to the U.S. consumer market as leverage to extract concessions across a number of political issues. Others in Trump’s own party have decried the economic uncertainty.

“The idea of haphazardly talking about 50% tariffs on a country based on different policies that are going on in that country is chaotic for the markets, it makes it hard for businesses to predict, and if it’s done for every country’s current events, will lead to chaos,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), a frequent critic of Trump’s trade wars.

Trade-reliant U.S. businesses say the tariffs make it harder to plan investments.

“Businesses and consumers will face cost pressures every time the president follows through on his tariff threats,” said Jake Colvin, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents large U.S. firms.

Write to Gavin Bade at gavin.bade@wsj.com and Marcus Walker at Marcus.Walker@wsj.com

12. How a Pro Bono Project in Gaza Spiraled Into a Crisis for BCG

No (attempt at a) good deed goes unpunished? Or what BCG perhaps thought was going to be viewed as a good deed?

What are the second and third order effects of this? Wth the decline in US foreign assistance and humanitarian aid the private sector could step up and support non-profit organizations to try to fill the gap. But will this episode make corporations more reluctant to support nonprofits?

How a Pro Bono Project in Gaza Spiraled Into a Crisis for BCG

Two BCG partners are stepping down from leadership roles as the consulting firm tries to contain the fallout among clients and staff

https://www.wsj.com/business/bcg-gaza-humanitarian-aid-project-cd066b87

By Chip Cutter

Follow and Mark Maurer

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Updated July 10, 2025 7:02 pm ET

Palestinians at an aid-distribution point set up by the privately run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in the central Gaza Strip in June. Photo: eyad baba/AFP/Getty Images

Key Points

What's This?

• Boston Consulting Group is in crisis over its involvement in an Israeli-backed aid project in Gaza.
• Two senior partners stepped down from leadership roles and two partners were fired for unauthorized work.
• The firm faces scrutiny after work included a financial model for voluntarily relocating Palestinians.

The crisis engulfing Boston Consulting Group over its involvement with a humanitarian project in Gaza deepened Thursday when the firm announced two senior partners were stepping down from leadership roles over their connection to the work.

The firm got involved last fall in an effort that became a widely criticized Israeli-backed aid-distribution initiative. Hundreds of Palestinians seeking supplies have been killed in recent weeks after troops fired toward crowds near aid sites, according to local health authorities. The Gaza work has spiraled into the most significant crisis in BCG’s roughly six-decade history.

Long-term clients are expressing outrage. Employees and BCG alumni are pointing fingers, asking how one of the best-known corporate advisory firms got involved in Gaza in the first place. 

The project began as a pro bono effort to help solve food-supply challenges in Gaza. The firm says it turned into an unauthorized project by two other partners against the firm’s instructions. That work included a postwar financial model to voluntarily relocate Palestinians. 

In the latest leadership shuffle, BCG’s chief risk officer, Adam Farber, and the head of its social-impact practice, Rich Hutchinson, are stepping down from those roles but remain as senior partners. According to people familiar with the matter, both were aware of early phases of the work but not all of the details.

Those moves follow the June firing of two partners, Matt Schlueter and Ryan Ordway, who BCG suggests essentially went rogue in the months after starting the project. Both Schlueter and Ordway had worked in BCG’s public sector defense and security practice before being ousted.

“In late 2024, a BCG partner misrepresented pro bono work. Months later, he began a paid phase of work without authorization, and in parallel, he and another partner undertook off-the-books modeling on Gaza reconstruction scenarios, directly against BCG instructions,” the firm told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. 

BCG added that it immediately stopped that work once it became aware of it and that it wasn’t being paid for any of it.

“An independent investigation confirmed this was the result of individual misconduct coupled with failures in oversight and judgment,” the firm said. “We’ve taken swift action to ensure this does not happen again.”  

Farber, as BCG’s chief risk officer, and others had evaluated the pro bono project in its earliest stages. At the time, according to people familiar with the matter, the firm expected to be supporting a broad, internationally recognized coalition. The early work on the pro bono effort fell under the social-impact practice led by Hutchinson, who allocated hours within the firm to the project.

Both Farber and Hutchinson will now focus on full-time client work, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Boston Consulting Group is headquartered in Boston. Photo: Alamy

The consulting firm’s efforts in Gaza began in October. BCG signed on to help develop a feasibility study to establish a new aid organization in Gaza. The firm was contracted by Orbis Operations, a Washington security firm owned by the private-equity firm McNally Capital. Orbis is made up of former Central Intelligence Agency agents and other counterterrorism officials.

The efforts ultimately led to the creation of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been assailed by international aid groups, the European Union and governments of more than 20 countries for endangering citizens and forcing Palestinians to move through combat zones to have a chance at collecting supplies. Israel’s military, which said it fired toward crowds because of threats posed to soldiers, has since pledged to reorganize the way it operates around the aid-distribution sites.

In March, BCG’s work turned into a paid engagement, working on behalf of McNally Capital to help a private logistics and operations provider, Safe Reach Solutions, people familiar with the matter said. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation used Safe Reach to help secure sites as it distributed aid.

Over time, the two partners did work that went beyond what BCG had approved, the firm said. That included developing a postwar financial model to determine the cost of relocating Palestinians out of Gaza, the people said. McNally had no role in the postwar planning work, one person familiar with the matter said.

The involvement of BCG employees in a plan to relocate Gazans has been especially contentious inside and outside of the firm. The nonprofit group Save the Children, which has longstanding ties to BCG, said it suspended its pro bono partnership with the firm last month.

Christoph Schweizer, chief executive officer of Boston Consulting Group Photo: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg News

In a letter to BCG alumni sent earlier this week and viewed by the Journal, BCG’s leaders acknowledged its image had been tarnished. 

“Even if this was not in any way, shape, or form a formal BCG project, our association with it is real—deeply troubling, and reputationally very damaging,” BCG CEO Christoph Schweizer said in the letter.

Some former partners have also criticized BCG’s internal risk processes, noting that Farber, the chief risk officer, was still expected to spend much of his time overseeing revenue-producing client work while serving in that role. An intensive review of internal processes and controls across the business is now under way at BCG, according to a person familiar with the matter. In the interim, a group of three senior leaders will oversee BCG’s risk and compliance.

Former BCG employees also said they found it strange and surprising that BCG would be involved in the Gaza war effort at all. That is in part because the firm’s leaders often emphasize the importance of risk management and say the firm will only take on work it deems ethical, the ex-employees said.

The fired partners, Schlueter and Ordway, had a good reputation inside the firm, with colleagues describing them as collegial and respected. Schlueter regularly represented BCG at high-profile international events, like the Munich Security Conference.

The Middle East is a small but growing source of business for consulting firms like BCG. The region’s consulting market totaled about $8.72 billion in revenue in 2024, or 3.4% of the industry’s global market, according to data from Source Global Research. That is up 11% from $7.87 billion the previous year. 

After reports of violence outside aid sites in Gaza, the Wall Street Journal analyzed satellite imagery, video and witness testimony, and found that the U.S.-led, Israel-backed process has led to chaos and deaths. Photo Illustration: Xingpei Shen, OCHA/UNIFEED

Consulting firms sometimes join with humanitarian agencies working in the Middle East to deliver pro bono projects, said Dane Albertelli, senior research analyst at Source Global Research. That work is largely aimed at building relationships with decision makers and showing the extent of their expertise, Albertelli said. 

Pro bono work spans all levels of large consultancies, from partners to entry level, often as a tool for training and mentoring new staff, said Mark O’Connor, chief executive at Monadnock Research, a research firm tracking the consulting industry. 

“Everybody at a large consulting firm who’s been there for even three years has likely done some pro bono work,” O’Connor said.

BCG now faces additional scrutiny. This week, a U.K. parliamentary committee sent a letter to BCG’s Schweizer demanding more answers. It asks the BCG CEO to provide a detailed timeline of the firm’s involvement with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The letter, which requests a response by July 22, also asks the firm to outline the scope of the ousted partners’ work on modeling the costs of relocating Palestinians from Gaza. 

“Who commissioned or requested this work?” it states.

Write to Chip Cutter at chip.cutter@wsj.com and Mark Maurer at mark.maurer@wsj.com

Appeared in the July 11, 2025, print edition as 'Gaza Strip Food Project Spiraled Into a Crisis for Consulting Firm'.

13. A Persian in the Ranks: Rethinking Military Culture through the Life of a Forgotten Civil War Sharpshooter

Excerpt:

John Emmahi Khan was not alone. While his Persian origins and Civil War service are highlighted here, his experience as a liminal soldier—needed for battle, discarded in peace—echoes a broader pattern across imperial formations.

A Persian in the Ranks: Rethinking Military Culture through the Life of a Forgotten Civil War Sharpshooter

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/07/11/john-emmahi-khan-civil-war-sharpshooter/

by Siamak Naficy

|

07.11.2025 at 06:00am

In military history, the West often casts itself as having invented the clean, decisive, and morally superior way of war. From Victor Davis Hanson to popular portrayals of elite modern forces, the story is familiar: Western armies fight in fair, organized fashion, while others rely on chaos and cunning. Tarak Barkawi, a critical scholar of war and empire, dismantles this fiction. In his work, he shows that military culture is not national, not even truly Western—it is transnational, imperial, and embodied, forged in colonial entanglements and sustained by shared practices, not state ideologies.

Few stories illustrate this better than that of John Emmahi Khan (also known as Mohammed Khan), a Persian-born Muslim who fought as a sharpshooter for the Union Army during the American Civil War. Khan’s extraordinary life reveals that the motivations of soldiers are not grounded in patriotism or ethnicity but in a military culture of loyalty, discipline, and blood-debt, a point that lies at the heart of Barkawi’s critique of conventional war narratives.

It is a view echoed by anthropologist Anna Simons, who in her work on military anthropology argues that soldiers often do not join armies for ideological or nationalist reasons. Instead, enlistment is frequently rooted in personal relationships, social momentum, or situational pressures, and sustained by the internal culture of the military itself. Khan’s story, full of such contingencies and loyalties, offers a compelling case in point.

Military Culture as Embodied Practice: The Making of a Sharpshooter

Khan was born in Tehran in 1823, raised in Afghanistan, and emigrated to the United States shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. On August 2, 1861, while living in Boston, Khan enlisted in the 43rd New York Infantry Regiment—an all-white unit. By his own account, he did so after being encouraged by friends and under the influence of liquor. Whether he was shanghaied, persuaded, or swept into war by the swirl of male camaraderie and inebriated spontaneity, this reflects Simons’ core insight: that many soldiers are drawn into war for embodied, contingent reasons, not abstract ideological commitments.

This “social pressure plus situation” model aligns precisely with Barkawi’s rejection of methodological nationalism. Once in the army, Khan quickly adapted to the rituals and bodily disciplines that constitute what Barkawi calls the military habitus: drill, coordination, formation, and endurance. He even became a sharpshooter, a role requiring acute physical control and a stoic mental disposition under fire.

He moved through the ranks not by belonging, but by adapting—mastering the rituals of military life. This capacity to inhabit multiple identities without collapsing into any one of them gave Khan the aura of a man at the margins—unfixed, unreadable, and difficult to categorize. His role as a sharpshooter only deepened this enigma. Unlike foot soldiers who advanced amid chaos, a sharpshooter or sniper often acts alone, with deliberate patience and lethal focus. Khan struck from a distance, unseen yet deeply felt—a spectral presence on the battlefield. In him, cultural ambiguity, martial discipline, and existential resilience converged. He becomes not merely a historical footnote, but a figure who lingers in the margins of memory: unconventional, elusive, and profoundly compelling.

His loyalty remained with his unit—the 43rd New York Infantry, today memorialized at Gettysburg with a dedicated statue. That Khan, a Persian immigrant and outsider, identified with and remained loyal to his unit despite profiling and exclusion speaks volumes about the power of military culture to create identity and belonging where the civilian world offers little.

The Racialized Borders of Inclusion—and the Persistence of Brotherhood

During the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, Khan was separated from his unit and arrested—not by the enemy, but by his own side. Khan’s dark complexion and long black hair convinced a Union guard that he was Native American and thus could not really be serving in the 43rd Infantry which was a white unit. This guard decided that his appearance “did not fit” that of a typical white Union soldier, and so he was mistaken for a Native American. But of course, he did serve in the unit so he did pass as white to some. Still, at this time he was detained and sent to Philadelphia with a group of escaped slaves.

This is a moment of racialized misrecognition, an imperial phenomenon Barkawi highlights and which Simons would call a collision of identity, bureaucracy, and embodied presence. Khan was neither white nor Black nor Native—he was an ambiguous figure who didn’t fit cleanly into the racial taxonomy of 19th-century America, especially within its rigidly segregated military system.

And yet Khan refused erasure. He found another New York regiment (14th New York Infantry) bound for the front and rejoined his unit at Spotsylvania. When asked why he kept returning, he humorously quipped: “Because I am stupid.”

Both Barkawi and Simons help us decode this self-deprecating response. What Khan called stupidity was more likely a reflection of blood-debt and soldierly solidarity. According to Simons, once inside the military, the motivations that bind soldiers shift from external ideologies to internal relationships—who they train with, suffer with, and depend on. Khan’s loyalty to his regiment wasn’t about the Union or emancipation; it was about the men he fought beside.

Empire, Race, and the Complexity of Identity

John Emmahi Khan was not alone. While his Persian origins and Civil War service are highlighted here, his experience as a liminal soldier—needed for battle, discarded in peace—echoes a broader pattern across imperial formations.

Take the Sepoys of the British East India Company, many of whom revolted in 1857, not from ideological opposition but due to perceived violations of ritual honor and betrayal of trust. Or consider the Tirailleurs Sénégalais, West African soldiers recruited into French colonial armies, who were celebrated in wartime propaganda and later marginalized, denied equal pensions and buried in separate cemeteries. The U.S. Congressional Record (2007) notes that by 1970, there were more Filipinos in the U.S. Navy than in the Philippine Navy. Indeed, Filipino Scouts and Puerto Rican Borinqueneers served the U.S. military in the 20th century under conditions of racialized ambiguity and legal precarity—expected to fight with honor while often denied full civic belonging. They were good enough to fight, but not for citizenship.

These men were bound together not by flags, but by the shared weight of empire’s contradictions: conscripted into wars not of their making, sustained by military brotherhood, then excluded from the spoils of citizenship and memory. Like Khan, they slipped between categories—neither fully colonizer nor colonized.

Tarak Barkawi’s argument resonates powerfully here: imperial armies are forged through transnational entanglements, not nationalist narratives. Khan’s story, reframed through this comparative lens, becomes less an anomaly and more a case study of the soldier as a trans-imperial subject—loyal, disciplined, haunted.

The Military, Society, and the Spaces in Between

Khan’s story, like so many others in imperial armies, illustrates the interplay between military service and racial identity. He married a woman described as a “yellow woman,” likely a “quadroon”—someone one-quarter African by the racial codes of the day. She was referred to in pension records as a “brightly looking colored woman.” Together, they had a family in Boston, placing them at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities—Muslim, Black, immigrant, poor.

Anthropologist Victor Turner’s concept of liminality—the state of being “betwixt and between” social categories—offers a useful lens here. And Simons adds that military service often becomes a “liminal zone” where normal social rules are suspended or rewritten. Khan occupied a liminal space, neither fully accepted nor entirely rejected, navigating the complexities of race, religion, and nationality in a society structured by rigid classifications. His interracial family, while likely marginalized in civilian life, may have been partially shielded by the respect he earned as a veteran. Yet, as Barkawi would argue, imperial inclusion is always provisional. Soldiers like Khan are indispensable on the battlefield but rarely fully recognized afterward.

Indeed, his pension was not approved until 1881, twenty years after enlistment, and only following a Congressional case in 1884. Despite multiple combat wounds and hospitalizations in Washington and Philadelphia, he had to fight again—this time for the state’s recognition of his service. He was one of the few known Muslims to serve in the Civil War.

The Afterlife of a Forgotten Soldier

John Emmahi Khan fought two wars—one with a rifle, one with paper. His second war lasted longer.

Despite being wounded in combat, hospitalized multiple times, and ultimately returning to his regiment after being misidentified and detained, Khan’s military pension was not approved until 1881. The wheels of recognition turned only after a Congressional intervention in 1884, more than two decades after his enlistment.

He died in 1891 in Manhattan and is buried at Cypress Hills National Cemetery in Brooklyn, a Civil War graveyard. He lies among the ranks of the remembered and forgotten—a veteran marked by stone, but largely erased from collective memory.

Yet his life story is anything but forgettable. It is Barkawi’s and Simons’ theories made flesh: the story of a man pulled into war by social gravity, shaped by martial ritual, bound by blood-debt, and discarded by the very nation he served. His motivations were embodied and interpersonal, not ideological. His loyalty came from within the military system, not from the state that barely recognized him.

Conclusion: Soldiers, Not States

John Emmahi Khan’s story helps us move beyond the stale frameworks of nationalism and into the real, human terrain of soldiering. His enlistment, likely propelled by intoxication and peer dynamics, reflects what Anna Simons sees as the social anthropology of war—that people join militaries as much for company, pressure, or momentum as for any belief. His persistence in rejoining his regiment, despite racial profiling, affirms Barkawi’s concept of blood-debt and Simons’ notion that soldiers fight for each other far more than for abstract ideals.

Khan was not “stupid.” He was loyal. And loyalty, in war, is not rational—it is relational.

In an age of renewed interest in global military histories and postcolonial memory, Khan’s life asks us to stop thinking like states—and start thinking like soldiers.

Tags: civil-military relations, diversity, military culture

About The Author

• 
  
• Siamak Naficy
• Siamak Tundra Naficy is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School. An anthropologist by training, he brings an interdisciplinary perspective to the study of strategic culture, conflict resilience, and the human dimensions of security. His work draws from both naturalist and classical realist traditions, emphasizing how power, interests, the history of ideas, and human nature shape conflict. His research interests span conflict theory, wicked problems, leadership, sacred values, cognitive science, and animal behavior—viewed through an anthropological lens. The views expressed are his own and do not represent those of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Army, or the Naval Postgraduate School.

14. Taiwan Resists China With Military Displays and History Lessons

I understand the M1 Abrams tank gunnery was live streamed. I wonder how the PLA assesses these capabilities?

Excerpt:

On the sidelines Thursday, President Lai Ching-te oversaw the first public live-fire demo of Taiwan’s new U.S. M1A2 Abrams tanks, a long-awaited upgrade from the Vietnam War-era Pattons that its army has relied on for decades. At a coastal firing range in Hsinchu, a tank platoon faced the choppy waters of the Taiwan Strait and unleashed live shells at static and moving targets.

Taiwan Resists China With Military Displays and History Lessons

Amped-up drills and new U.S. tanks add bite to President Lai Ching-te’s Taiwan-is-a-country lecture tour

https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/taiwan-resists-china-with-military-displays-and-history-lessons-c6044067

By Joyu Wang

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July 10, 2025 11:00 pm ET

Soldiers at Taiwan’s first public display of M1A2 Abrams tanks on Thursday. Photo: Joyu Wang/WSJ

Key Points

What's This?

• Taiwan is holding its annual defense exercise, which is twice as long as in the past, amid growing concerns about China’s military.
• Taiwan’s drills include a record number of reservists, new weapons systems, and urban warfare scenarios to deter a Chinese invasion.
• China has condemned the drills as a bluff and has sanctioned Taiwanese defense companies, but Taiwan says it will continue to develop its defense.

HSINCHU, Taiwan—The island democracy of Taiwan is demonstrating its fortitude against the threat of Chinese invasion with an annual defense exercise that is twice as long and far bigger than in the past.

The expanding event, which opened Wednesday, parallels what security officials describe as the growing menace of China’s armed forces as they muscle in on territorial claims and try to prevent the U.S. and its partners from challenging Beijing’s influence in its own neighborhood.

“We need to make China understand that any military action it takes will now carry greater uncertainty,” said Lt. Gen. Sun Li-fang, spokesman for Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense. “It will face stronger resistance from us.”

Taiwan opened the 10-day exercises with the unprecedented call-up of 22,000 reservists. Other additions include newly commissioned Himars, a U.S.-made rocket-launching system delivered late last year that puts targets along China’s southeastern coastline within striking range. Drills involving drones are also a new focus for Taiwan. 

On the sidelines Thursday, President Lai Ching-te oversaw the first public live-fire demo of Taiwan’s new U.S. M1A2 Abrams tanks, a long-awaited upgrade from the Vietnam War-era Pattons that its army has relied on for decades. At a coastal firing range in Hsinchu, a tank platoon faced the choppy waters of the Taiwan Strait and unleashed live shells at static and moving targets.

In the weeks leading up to the exercises, Lai had already reinforced his message with a lecture tour. The president has been delivering a series of elaborate slide shows illustrating his position that—despite Beijing’s claims that the island is Chinese territory—Taiwan is a country and has always been separate from China.

Authorities in Beijing assail such statements and routinely disparage Lai. Chinese military spokesman Senior Col. Jiang Bin accused him on Tuesday of “distorting history and twisting the facts” to increase public fear of China in the interest of his own agenda.

Jiang called Taiwan’s military exercises “nothing more than a bluff.”

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te oversaw the tank demonstration in Hsinchu. Photo: Joyu Wang/WSJ

An Abrams tank near the Taiwan coast. Photo: Joyu Wang/WSJ

As the drills opened, China’s Commerce Ministry on Wednesday sought to punish Taiwan defense companies that build jet fighters, submarines and other assets for the island’s military, barring eight Taiwan entities from sourcing supplies from China for civilian or military use. Taipei’s Mainland Affairs Council said China’s move wouldn’t change Taiwan’s policy of developing its domestic defense industry.

Beijing has threatened to use military force to seize Taiwan, and this year’s drills envision a potential Chinese attack by 2027, a time frame that has figured in statements by U.S. defense officials.

For more than four decades, the annual Han Kuang exercises have simulated a Chinese invasion and tended to end the same way after five tense days: tanks and artillery fighting off amphibious assaults, warplanes roaring overhead and victory declared by Taiwan.

But military planners see any prolonged fighting as a question of whether Taiwan’s forces will be able to hold on long enough for the U.S. to come to the rescue. In a recent lecture, Lai praised U.S. support and aid for Taiwan’s defense, including weapons and training.

The variety of drills staged this year is intended in part to warn Beijing against attacking.

“When we’ve got strong military power, good international support, and a tough, resilient society that backs our military,” said a Taiwan security official, “if you were [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping, you’d see this as a tough nut to crack.”

This year’s exercises include a naval operation to mine a port, part of Taiwan’s focus on using smaller, more mobile weapons.

The drills now extend to a scenario in which Chinese forces succeed in landing, forcing Taiwan troops to hold them off in a complex urban landscape. Drills include defending critical infrastructure such as transportation hubs and keeping invading forces out of the heart of the capital.

A military graduation ceremony in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Photo: Cheng-Chia Huang/Zuma Press

Reservists review combat tactics during training. Photo: Joyu Wang/WSJ

As Chinese military power grows, “the chances of actually stopping them at sea and in the air are getting smaller…and there’s also no guarantee we can even stop them right at the coastline,” said Chieh Chung, a defense analyst who teaches at Tamkang University. “In other words, it’s getting more and more likely that a homeland defense fight could happen.”

Taiwan’s standing military isn’t large enough to fight a major war, making the mobilization of reservists crucial to the island’s defense, said Ian Easton, associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College. “They provide specialized skills and lots of manpower. They fill defensive gaps across the nation,” he said.

At a middle-school campus on Wednesday, several hundred reservists, part of an infantry brigade stationed in northern Taiwan, reviewed their weapons skills, including rifles and mortars, relearned map-reading and practiced close-quarters combat. 

It was the first time an entire brigade of reservists—around 2,000 to 3,000 people—had been called up, an effort to assess how quickly such a large number of people can be trained and mobilized.

The exercises this year include civil-defense drills intended in part to remind the island’s 23 million residents that war is possible. An air-raid drill on Thursday sent a dozen shoppers into the basement of a Taipei supermarket, seeking cover from an imaginary missile strike.  

The first three days of drills this year also feature practice in responding to China’s routine “gray-zone” activities, which include cyberattacks and disinformation—and what officials in Taiwan see as the threat that Chinese military drills around the island will turn into an actual assault. 

Given “the danger of a sudden amphibious attack,” Taiwan’s invasion-warning timelines are likely to be continually eroded, said Easton. “It is imperative that Taiwan develops a ‘fight tonight’ mindset and plans and trains accordingly.” 

Beijing’s new ships can land on beaches and link to form massive mobile piers. Analysts say they’re intended to rapidly offload military equipment, setting the stage for a D-Day-style invasion of Taiwan. Photo Illustration: WSJ

Write to Joyu Wang at joyu.wang@wsj.com

Appeared in the July 11, 2025, print edition as 'Drills Display Taiwan’s Resistance to China'.

15. Pentagon Office That Designed Bombs for Iran Strikes Can't Say If They Reached the Needed Depth

Pentagon Office That Designed Bombs for Iran Strikes Can't Say If They Reached the Needed Depth

military.com · by Konstantin Toropin · July 10, 2025

Top officials at the Pentagon office that played a key role in designing the bombs used in the strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities more than two weeks ago cannot say whether the weapons were successful in reaching the deeply buried bunkers.

At a press briefing days after the strike, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that "for more than 15 years" a pair of officers at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency "lived and breathed this single target -- Fordo -- a critical element of Iran's covert nuclear weapons program" and hailed the agency as "the world's leading expert on deeply buried underground targets."

However, in a press briefing Thursday, a senior defense official at the agency told reporters that they didn't know whether the bombs they designed specifically for this strike reached the depths for which they were engineered. They also defined the effects of the strike in incredibly narrow terms that boiled down to the bombs falling where they were intended.

The officials, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, argued that the historic U.S. strikes on three key Iranian nuclear facilities were successful and their 30,000-pound bombs, 14 of which were dropped on two sites, accomplished their goals.

Top political appointees in the Trump administration, along with President Donald Trump himself, have asserted that the strike left Iran's nuclear program "obliterated." However, since then, reporting has indicated that that may not have been the case.

Reports emerged days after the strike that initial assessments by the Defense Intelligence Agency found that the airstrikes on Iran had likely not eliminated its nuclear program and only set it back months.

Days later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spent a large portion of a press conference berating the media over what he felt was bad coverage of the report and the strikes as a whole -- even as lawmakers, following a classified briefing, told reporters that it was too early to know the damage.

When a reporter pushed the DTRA officials Thursday on their claims of success, the senior defense official deferred to Caine's remarks and said that "we achieved the objective that we had set. ... They achieved the effects intended."

"That's the success I was claiming."

When asked whether those effects included the destruction of the facilities, the senior defense official said that the agency was still "awaiting full battle damage assessment."

Under further questioning, the senior official said that the achieved effects that they were referring to were simply that "we were able to strike the facilities as planned and strike where intended."

While such fine parsing of language would be typical for officials of any highly specialized and technical office, it comes at a time when both the White House and Pentagon leaders, eager to convince the American public of the resounding success of the Iranian strikes, have spoken in sweeping and dramatic terms.

Last Wednesday, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told reporters the bombing led to "the total obliteration of Iran's nuclear ambitions."

Yet later in the same briefing, Parnell also said that the nuclear program was degraded -- not obliterated -- "by one to two years I think. ... We're thinking probably closer to two years."

Furthermore, in the weeks after the strike, experts were quick to note that the type of argument the Pentagon was employing -- that the mission was successful because it matched the models and plans -- was flawed.

"A strike can go 'precisely as planned' and still fail, if the model of the facility is wrong," Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said on social media two weeks ago.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, The New York Times, citing an Israeli official, reported that at least some of Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium -- a key component of a nuclear weapon -- survived the U.S. and Israeli attacks last month.

military.com · by Konstantin Toropin · July 10, 2025

16. Battle damage assessment from Iran strikes could lead to improvements in MOP bomb technology

Battle damage assessment from Iran strikes could lead to improvements in MOP bomb technology

A senior defense official discussed the Massive Ordnance Penetrator weapon during a briefing with reporters Thursday.

By

Jon Harper

July 10, 2025

defensescoop.com · by Jon Harper · July 10, 2025

Information gleaned from the intelligence community’s assessment of the effects of recent American military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities will help inform future versions of weapons like the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, according to a senior defense official.

The 30,000-pound GBU-57, also known as the MOP, played a key role in Operation Midnight Hammer last month. Air Force B-2 stealth bombers dropped 12 MOP bombs on two different ventilation shafts at Fordow. Another two were used against the Natanz site.

The technology is designed to be capable of attacking underground targets. It can reportedly hit locations hundreds of feet below ground level.

“MOP is a large, GPS-guided, penetrating weapon with the ability to attack deeply-buried and hardened bunkers and tunnels. The warhead case is made from a special high‑performance steel alloy and its design allows for a large explosive payload while maintaining the integrity of the penetrator case during impact,” according to an Air Force description of the system.

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency was heavily involved in testing, modeling and simulation of the system for many years prior to Midnight Hammer, in partnership with the Air Force.

“What we do try to do is test [technologies] in what we call a ‘threat representative environment.’ And in this case, we built a test site to test the munitions against, in collaboration with the Air Force and DTRA’s test organization, to try to ascertain the effects that the MOP would have in certain environments. We’ve continued to do tests over time to then determine what those effects are, and then we use that information to support our modeling and simulation programs. Those models that we’ve built include the weapons effects that we saw during all of the testing events, and include a number of other factors that our experts have brought to bear. That model is also part of that targeting and weaponeering support that we talked about [with regard to Midnight Hammer]. So in addition to the threat representative testing that we did, where we were able to see how does the MOP act in certain situations and certain geographies and architectures, if you will, we also then use that information to support our further modeling and simulation to lead to our best targeting analysis to support those decision makers,” a senior defense official told reporters Thursday during a background call.

U.S. intelligence agencies are still working to complete a final battle damage assessment to better understand the impact of last month’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites.

“We don’t conduct the BDA here, but we eagerly anticipate the intelligence community completing BDA on this so that we can assess the models vice what actually happened according to their analysis, and then take a look at how accurate the projections were, so we can use information there to improve our modeling output and our targeting decision support packages that we put together. We also will be able to assess whether or not the weapon performed as planned, according to the BDA,” the senior defense official said.

“Then that information may go into future iterations of the technology,” they added. “We will take this information and determine did things work the way that we wanted them to, in which case, how can we continue to improve upon it? Or did things not work exactly as planned, and how can we fix that so that in the future our next-generation capabilities work that much better? We don’t have that information yet, but we look forward to receiving it so that it can inform our next investments in this arena.”

Notably, MOP fuzes can be programmed.

The bomb is “comprised of steel, explosive and a fuze, programmed bespokely [for] each weapon to achieve a particular effect inside the target. Each weapon had a unique desired impact, angle, arrival, final heading and a fuze setting. The fuze is effectively what tells the bomb when to function. A longer delay in a fuze, the deeper the weapon will penetrate and drive into the target,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine told reporters last month during a press briefing about Midnight Hammer.

The Air Force is pursuing a MOP modification program to integrate a “smart fuze” capability into the weapon. The so-called Large Penetrator Smart Fuze is intended to provide “increased probability of kill” against hard and deeply buried targets “by mitigating the risk of target intelligence uncertainty,” according to a report from the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation.

On Thursday’s call, the senior defense official declined to say whether the MOPs used in Midnight Hammer were equipped with the smart fuze capability.

Written by Jon Harper

Jon Harper is Managing Editor of DefenseScoop, the Scoop News Group’s online publication focused on the Pentagon and its pursuit of new capabilities. He leads an award-winning team of journalists in providing breaking news and in-depth analysis on military technology and the ways in which it is shaping how the Defense Department operates and modernizes. You can also follow him on X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter) @Jon_Harper_

defensescoop.com · by Jon Harper · July 10, 2025

17. It’s time for a US Indo-Pacific reset

We have been resetting (or pivoting toward) the Asia-IndoPacific for more tuna a decade but this is an argument for the South Pacific and Pacific Islands too.

Excerpts:

In the Pacific, the most vulnerable inhabited US territories are American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Marianas. Beijing is playing a brilliant game of Go to outflank these territories, which are integral parts of the United States. China has growing security arrangements with the Cook Islands, Fiji and the Solomon Islands.

From a geostrategic perspective, American Samoa’s defensive position is precarious: the Cook Islands are about 824 miles to the southeast, Fiji is about 836 miles to the southwest, and the Solomon Islands are about 2000 miles to the northwest.

By contrast, Hawaii (the closest US state with significant military capabilities) is about 2,585 miles north of American Samoa. Safeguarding Taiwan, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, Japan and Australia from China is an unnecessary security burden and does not enhance the ability of the US to safeguard any of its Pacific territories.

It’s time for an Indo-Pacific reset and refocus on US vital national interests.

It’s time for a US Indo-Pacific reset - Asia Times

Defend US island territories and protectorates – let bigger countries that are current allies see to their own security

asiatimes.com · by Samir Tata · July 10, 2025

As the recent struggle to pass a budget for the US government illustrates, yet again, the immutable reality of limited fiscal resources, it’s time to reconsider America’s vital national interests in the Indo-Pacific and maintain a laser-like focus on safeguarding its territories in the Pacific.

The United States is a Pacific power with significant territorial reach: the states of Alaska, California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii; the inhabited territories of Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa; as well as eight uninhabited islands. In addition, via Compacts of Free Association, the US has three protectorates: Republic of Palau, Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Federated States of Micronesia.

Accordingly, President Donald Trump should clearly delineate a geostrategically coherent Pacific Region security envelope that encompasses these territories and stretches in an arc from Alaska to Palau to Cape Horn at the southern tip of the Americas. In effect, such a Trump Doctrine framing a Pacific Region security envelope would be a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (which acknowledged the Americas as a vital national interest).

Correspondingly, President Trump should also announce the intention of the United States to terminate, in a phased manner over the remainder of his term, the existing burdensome security arrangements with countries in the Indo-Pacific region that fall outside the recalibrated Pacific Region security envelope: Taiwan, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, Japan and Australia.

These countries should adjust to the emerging multipolar world and assume the responsibility for making their own independent security arrangements to safeguard their vital national interests.

Manifestly, American security guarantees have allowed these countries to neglect their own defense needs. The United States cannot afford to bear the cost of strategic altruism to the detriment of its vital national interests.

Washington relies on debt to bridge the gap between insufficient revenues and excessive expenditures and is careening recklessly towards a fiscal meltdown. In Fiscal Year 2024 the US government had total debt outstanding of $35.46 trillion, which is far greater than the size of the country’s economy. Interest payments now exceed defense spending.

Almost 14 years ago, Admiral Michael G. Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned Congress: “I believe our debt is the greatest threat to our national security.” He added, “[W]e have not been forced to be fully disciplined in our choices …. We must now carefully and deliberately balance the imperatives of a constrained budget environment with the requirements we place on our military in sustaining and enhancing our security.”

Instead of heeding Admiral Mullen’s prudent advice, America’s decisionmakers continue to ignore the need to recalibrate and prioritize vital national interests to align them better with realistically available financial resources.

Fiscal discipline and strategic discipline are inextricably linked. Just as a lack of financial discipline leads to ballooning debt, a lack of strategic discipline leads to mushrooming security burdens under the cloak of strategic ambiguity.

So, without realizing that the US approach of strategic ambiguity to address the threat posed by China is tantamount to strategic profligacy, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in his speech at the 2025 Shangri-La Dialogue unwittingly described what the unintended result would be for Washington rather than Beijing: “More dilemmas, more complications, more questions, more concerns, more variables, more reasons to say, ‘It’s not worth it’.”

While strategic ambiguity may be useful for strategic flexibility, it is not a panacea. The key to strategic discipline is strategic clarity. It is essential to identify which vital national interest of the United States is put at risk by an increasingly powerful China.

A vital national interest must be existential in nature – something for which the country is willing to go to war using all the power available, including nuclear weapons. Surely the paramount vital national interest of the United States must be safeguarding its territorial integrity.

In the Pacific, the most vulnerable inhabited US territories are American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Marianas. Beijing is playing a brilliant game of Go to outflank these territories, which are integral parts of the United States. China has growing security arrangements with the Cook Islands, Fiji and the Solomon Islands.

From a geostrategic perspective, American Samoa’s defensive position is precarious: the Cook Islands are about 824 miles to the southeast, Fiji is about 836 miles to the southwest, and the Solomon Islands are about 2000 miles to the northwest.

By contrast, Hawaii (the closest US state with significant military capabilities) is about 2,585 miles north of American Samoa. Safeguarding Taiwan, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, Japan and Australia from China is an unnecessary security burden and does not enhance the ability of the US to safeguard any of its Pacific territories.

It’s time for an Indo-Pacific reset and refocus on US vital national interests.

Samir Tata is founder and president of International Political Risk Analytics, an advisory firm based in Reston, Virginia, USA, and author of the book Reflections on Grand Strategy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).

asiatimes.com · by Samir Tata · July 10, 2025

18. Closing NATO’s Indo-Pacific Gap

In conversations with my friends from Europe there is recognition of the importance of the Asia-Indo-Pacific to European and global security.

Closing NATO’s Indo-Pacific Gap

European allies should strengthen NATO’s Indo-Pacific ties as Washington wavers.

By Lynn Kuok, the Lee Kuan Yew chair in Southeast Asia studies at the Brookings Institution.

Foreign Policy · by Lynn Kuok

July 9, 2025, 12:44 PM

The much-anticipated NATO summit in The Hague in late June accomplished its core objectives: securing a 5 percent defense pledge, managing U.S. President Donald Trump, and reaffirming a commitment to collective security. But the summit also drew criticism for sidestepping or neglecting hard questions.

Among the hard but crucial questions left unaddressed was NATO’s engagement with the Indo-Pacific. Forging deeper relations with the alliance’s regional partners, known as the Indo-Pacific Four (IP4)—Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea—will be critical to NATO’s ability to counter growing cross-regional threats to Euro-Atlantic security. Absent refocused attention, these relationships risk being undermined by unconstructive and erratic U.S. policy.

NATO’s partnerships with the IP4 have progressed steadily since 2022. At the Madrid summit that year, the leaders of all four countries were invited to attend for the first time. Their presence signaled growing alignment, notably around NATO’s new strategic concept, which identified China as posing “systemic challenges” to Euro-Atlantic security. In 2023, the alliance formalized ties with the IP4 at the Vilnius summit by signing Individually Tailored Partnership Programs (ITPPs)—a key mechanism for structured cooperation with nonmembers.

By the 2024 Washington summit, NATO had moved toward operationalizing IP4 engagement. Several initiatives were launched, including support for Ukraine’s military health care, cooperation on cyber defense and initiatives to counter disinformation, and joint work on responsible military uses of artificial intelligence.

The logic of this engagement is clear. While NATO’s area of responsibility is the North Atlantic, threats from the Indo-Pacific—ranging from unlawful and coercive Chinese actions in the South China Sea to North Korean arms transfers and troop deployments to Russia—have direct consequences for Euro-Atlantic security. Stronger Indo-Pacific partnerships are essential for confronting cross-regional threats and upholding the international rule of law, and therefore for safeguarding NATO’s core interests.

Yet, this trajectory of IP4 engagement faltered at The Hague. After three consecutive years of leader-level participation, only New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon attended.

The absence of the other leaders should not be overinterpreted. Australia sent its deputy prime minister and defense minister, who announced a planned deployment to Europe of a Royal Australian Air Force Wedgetail aircraft and up to 100 Australian Defence Force personnel. Japan was represented by its minister of foreign affairs, and South Korea by its national security advisor. NATO and the IP4 also issued a joint statement that, while light on specifics, reaffirmed “shared strategic interests and common values” and pledged to “explore collaboration” in areas such as space, maritime security, and defense industrial ties.

Still, the absence of three of the four IP4 leaders—all U.S. allies (New Zealand is the only IP4 country that is not a formal U.S. treaty ally)—points to potential fault lines. Their decisions to skip the summit appeared to be rooted in mounting frustrations with or concerns about Washington.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba canceled after Tokyo withdrew from a planned 2+2 meeting in Washington, reportedly after the United States asked Japan to boost defense spending to 3.5 percent of its GDP, higher than Washington’s earlier request. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is said to have declined to attend after his scheduled bilateral meeting with Trump at the G-7 in Canada was abruptly scrapped with no rescheduling in The Hague. South Korea, meanwhile, was worried about navigating its response to the Israel-Iran crisis and how Washington might react. Even under its previous government, Seoul had paused ammunition transfers that could support Ukraine after Trump’s reelection, purportedly awaiting clarity on U.S. policy toward Ukraine and NATO under the new administration.

Despite clear progress since 2022, the strength of IP4 engagement with NATO still appears to be a function of each country’s bilateral relationship with the United States. This is a fragile basis for transregional cooperation. If Euro-Atlantic interconnectedness with the Indo-Pacific is to be more than a slogan, the IP4 countries must decouple their NATO engagement from the ups and downs of their ties with Washington. NATO, for its part, should focus on deepening ties with the IP4 directly, building relationships robust enough to withstand strains in partner ties with the United States.

To NATO’s credit, outreach to the IP4 over the past three years has been significant. While the United States helped catalyze the deepening ties, the momentum also came from a broader consensus within the alliance. The challenge moving forward is to sustain and insulate this progress from U.S. disruption.

This will require stronger institutional links. One such option is a standing coordination mechanism for NATO-IP4 engagement. This would provide continuity and coherence, helping to sustain strategic dialogue, track progress, and guide practical collaboration, even amid instability in U.S. relations with individual IP4 partners.

Such a mechanism could oversee a set of issue-specific working groups focused on shared priorities. Among these would be maritime domain awareness, technical space cooperation, and the initiatives launched at the Washington summit—namely, military medical support for Ukraine, cyber defense and counter-disinformation, and the responsible military uses of artificial intelligence.

Critics of NATO’s Indo-Pacific engagement typically raise two concerns. First, even as the regions become more interconnected, they argue that NATO is not the right vehicle for engagement. Indeed, many Indo-Pacific countries, apart from the IP4, worry that NATO involvement could heighten tensions or contribute to militarization. Second, critics warn that NATO—with war on the continent and limited resources—cannot afford to stretch itself further.

What critics miss, however, is that NATO’s Indo-Pacific role is not to project military force. This is not always clearly or consistently communicated, or perhaps even internalized, allowing China to distort the alliance’s role and intentions in the region. But the reality is that NATO is seeking to engage in strategically relevant, defense-adjacent areas, such as maritime domain awareness, space, cybersecurity, disinformation, and emerging technologies.

In these domains, the alliance should strengthen defense-related cooperation with like-minded partners, coordinate deterrence across theaters, and reinforce international law. Several European members—France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands—already deploy naval assets and personnel to the Indo-Pacific. NATO could help coordinate these national efforts, lending coherence and continuity.

With a clearly defined scope, NATO could ease regional concerns about its role and intent, and its efforts would complement, rather than duplicate, the work of the European Union, the G-7, minilaterals, or regional organizations. As for overstretch, Europe’s security is already wrapped up in the Indo-Pacific. China’s material, technological and diplomatic support for Russia, along with North Korean weapons and troops, have extended the war in Ukraine and intensified long-term pressure on Europe. Instability in the Indo-Pacific could also draw U.S. resources away from the continent. It is therefore in Europe’s interests to help bolster deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, regardless of whether Washington thinks this is a good idea.

The Hague summit achieved what it set out to do. But NATO should now widen its aperture—not only to deepen European capability, but also to strengthen Indo-Pacific ties, whether with the IP4 or beyond. This will require NATO to clarify its legitimate interests in the Indo-Pacific, the role it will play, and how it will add to peace and prosperity there.

To navigate a more contested world with uncertain U.S. support, NATO must forge Indo-Pacific partnerships resilient enough to weather the storms ahead.

Foreign Policy · by Lynn Kuok

19. Denmark finalizes US defense deal despite Greenland gripes

Denmark finalizes US defense deal despite Greenland gripes – DW – 07/09/2025

Teri Schultz

07/09/2025July 9, 2025

President Trump refuses to rule out forcibly annexing Greenland. Yet the Danish parliament has just passed a law allowing the US military free access to bases. Why?

DW

At first glance, it doesn't seem to make any sense. The US president has deeply rattled Denmark by reiterating several times he may invade and occupy the semi-autonomous island of Greenland for "national security" reasons. But rather than looking at how it could bolster its national defenses against a possible — even if unlikely — incursion, the Danish parliament on June 11 overwhelming approved an agreement to let the US military enter the country whenever it wants, for whatever reason it sees fit.

"[T]he purpose of such presence of US forces is to further the efforts of the Parties to promote peace and security in the areas of mutual interest and benefit and to take part in common defense efforts," the Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) states. Some areas may even be put under the exclusive control of the US, although Greenland — which already hosts a US base — and the Faroe Islands are excluded.

Denmark criticizes Vance's remarks on Greenland

The DCA was drafted in 2023 with the Biden administration, at a time when transatlantic trust and cooperation were the norm and the notion of an unwelcome US deployment into any Danish territory was inconceivable. Why would Copenhagen advance the deal now?

DCA: Denmark Can't Argue?

"We didn't have any option but to say yes," explained Royal Danish Defense College military analyst Peter Viggo Jakobsen, acknowledging some heightened public opposition to the move ahead of the final parliamentary vote. Ultimately, he told DW, Denmark needs the DCA more than the US does.

Holding off ratification to show displeasure with the White House's Greenland statements, as some have advocated, would be "pointless" in Jakobsen's view. He doesn't think a land grab is actually likely to happen regardless of the president's bluster, so he advises just keeping Danish angst under wraps. "You saw what happened to Zelenskyy," when Ukraine's president tried to argue with Trump, Jakobsen reminded. "He was blown out of the water, and it was fantastic television. We're not really in a position where we want to do that, so I think you need to be tactical about it."

Danish Royal Defense College analyst Peter Viggo Jakobsen says "this was not the time to rock the boat" and protest US statements on Greenland. Image: Arno Mikkor/Lennart Meri Conference

And being tactical for this analyst means emphasizing the original intent of the DCA, which is creating the conditions for the US to come quickly to the aid of Denmark in case of emergency.

"We will be deploying Danish forces on the Russian border in one of the Baltic countries" as part of NATO's presence there, Jakobsen explained, "and we need [the US] for air support if something should go wrong … and to enhance deterrence in order to make sure that the Russians don't attack our forces in the Baltics."

Danish MEP: "Terrible mistake"

But Danish lawmaker Per Clausen, a member of The Left group in the European Parliament, is among those who wanted his fellow parliamentarians back home to reject the DCA. "The idea that the US should have troops in Denmark and the US decides when the troops should be here and where they should be — it's a terrible mistake!" he told DW.

Danish member of the European Parliament Per Clausen opposes the DCA, saying the US is a "dangerous country which is threatening us."Image: The Left parliamentary group

"[Trump] had threatened Greenland. He had shown in his behavior against Ukrainians that we couldn't trust him," Clausen recalled, and "even in that situation, the Danish government said the 'US is our closest ally'. It will take some time to come out of this illusion, I think."

Clausen believes Copenhagen's real allies lie in Europe, especially its nearest neighbors, and that the government should be weaning itself off of dependency on the US instead of binding itself closer. "We need to strengthen the cooperation with other Nordic countries and with Canada in the situation we are in now," he added.

Nordic nods

But Clausen may not find many kindred spirits wanting to distance themselves from US cooperation in the other Nordic countries: Finland, Sweden and Norway had all signed DCAs before Denmark did.

Only in Sweden — which granted the US access to 17 bases or training areas in its agreement — was debate over the deal particularly "vociferous," as the Swedish Defense Research Agency's Niklas Granholm puts it.

In a five-hour session in the Swedish parliament, the deal was accused of opening up the possibility for American soldiers to run amok all over the country and for the US to deposit nuclear weapons on Swedish territory. These arguments were "at best uninformed or something else worse than that, in my view," Granholm said, and may also have been the "last hurrah of those who were against NATO membership and military alignment." It nonetheless passed handily.

Redundant deal?

Speaking of NATO, why do these countries, which are now all covered by the alliance's mutual security guarantee, Article 5, even need a separate pledge that Washington would defend them if needed? Granholm describes it as a second layer of assurance. "There are NATO plans and there are US plans for Europe," he explained, and with 32 allies each having the right to hold up consensus on a call for Article 5 back-up, "you can imagine that there's some kind of blockage" in the midst of an emergency. He believes this was the main reason for Sweden's push for the DCA.

The Nordic countries are now all members of NATO but they each also have a bilateral security agreement with the US Image: ANDERS WIKLUND/TT News Agency/AFP/Getty Images

But in Denmark, Peter Viggo Jakobsen has a more pessimistic rationale for why the DCA is necessary now more than ever. "Imagine that NATO should fall apart," he suggested. "It's no longer inconceivable, given what we've just experienced [with Trump] the last six months."

He says under such a scenario, US self-interest would take over and they'd need a presence in northern Europe. "They're very concerned about the Russian nuclear weapons that are based on the Kola Peninsula. And if you want to take them out, then you need to be present in Greenland, you need to be present in Iceland, you need be present in Norway and in Finland and in Sweden."

And, Jakobsen added, "it's also useful to be able to place aircraft in Denmark." Now with the DCA, the US won't even have to ask first.

DW

20. SOCOM Halves OA-1K Armed Overwatch Buy for 2026

SOCOM Halves OA-1K Armed Overwatch Buy for 2026

airandspaceforces.com · by Chris Gordon · July 10, 2025

July 10, 2025 | By Chris Gordon and Greg Hadley

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U.S. Special Operations Command is once again slowing its purchases of the new OA-1K Skyraider II multipurpose counterinsurgency plane, as the Pentagon pivots its budget to prepare for a high-end conflict following two decades of wars in the Middle East, officials told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The command is planning on cutting its fiscal 2026 buy by half, from 12 aircraft to just six. That move follows on a cut in fiscal 2025, from 15 to 12.

The new Air Tractor-based scout planes are designed to conduct light attack, close air support, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions.

“OA-1K aircraft procurement has been reduced due to resource constraints,” U.S. Special Operations Command spokesperson Lt. Cmdr. Kassie Collins told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The move marks another blow for Armed Overwatch program, which emerged after previous experiments to field a new light attack aircraft for the U.S. military over the past decade floundered.

SOCOM, however, says the program of record—the official requirement for the fleet size—remains 75 aircraft, despite signs over the past few years that the Defense Department wants to scale back the program.

In 2022, SOCOM selected the Sky Warden—an AT-802U cropduster modified for military use by L3Harris—as the winner of the Armed Overwatch program.

The requirement then, as now, was for 75 aircraft, but in the fiscal 2025 budget request, the combatant command detailed plans to cut its purchases over the next several years from 75 down to 62 aircraft. The command also cited money constraints for that move.

According to budget documents, the 2026 buy of six aircraft will result in 45 planes on contract, with deliveries extending into 2028. The command has not detailed future spending plans for fiscal 2027 and beyond.

The OA-1K is designed to replace the U-28 Draco, a modified Pilatus propeller plane, and the MC-12W Liberty, another turboprop, a modified Beachcraft—both of which are used for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance to support special operations missions. While procured by SOCOM, the new aircraft are controlled by Air Force Special Operations Command.

The OA-1K is designed to be modular, allowing for the swapping of different sensors, communications equipment, and combat payloads

AFSOC has only recently accepted the first operational Skyraiders. The aircraft was initially supposed to be delivered in 2023, but the first operational aircraft arrived at Hurlburt Field, Fla., earlier this year after delays in the program. Eight aircraft have been delivered so far, and six more OK-1A are scheduled to be delivered by the end of 2025, Collins said.

Despite the cut, Air Force Special Operations Command says demand for its assets is not going away.

“Since 2019, demand for your Air Commandos has surged, in some cases even exceeding the peak levels seen during the Global War on Terror,” AFSOC boss Lt. Gen. Michael Conley told the House Armed Services Committee in February. “We commit almost 100 percent of our forces in each deployment cycle. There’s no excess left. In order to do other things, it means trade-offs for what we’re currently tasked to do.”

But a government watchdog organization has questioned whether SOCOM’s money—some $2 billion for the Armed Overwatch program—should be devoted to the OK-1A. The Government Accountability Office released a report in December 2023 that suggested the military needs a “substantially smaller” fleet of aircraft and recommended that the Pentagon slow down the program, arguing that SOCOM had not properly analyzed how the shift in the U.S. military’s footprint should affect the fleet size.

“The Pacific is incredibly important to us. … We get it. But we’ve also got the rest-of-the-world mission that I’m responsible for, as well, and I want to have all the cards I can play to fight wherever they need us to,” Conley said in September 2024. Earlier that month, the GAO released a mostly classified report that said SOCOM “still hasn’t completed the justification” for the reduced buy of 62 aircraft.

While Conley has not endorsed the GAO’s findings, he did acknowledge concerns about the relevance of AFSOC’s platforms over time.

“My concern is that by the time we get a fleet of 50 aircraft of any flavor updated to where they need to be, the technology’s already irrelevant,” Conley said in his HASC testimony in February. “So it’s this constant loop of trying to catch up with the enemy threat. We largely overcome that by training our way out of it to the extent we can through … new tactics and procedures, but that’s only a small piece of what we really need as far as advanced modifications.”

So far, the aircraft remains on track to achieve its scheduled initial operating capability by the end of fiscal 2026, according to SOCOM.

“OA-1K government verification testing, operator training, and tactics development are ongoing with these fielded aircraft. The program is on schedule to support Initial Operational Capability and Full Operational Capability for U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command,” Collins said.

Air

airandspaceforces.com · by Chris Gordon · July 10, 2025

21. Fighting with Robots: The Time to Prepare is Now

Conclusion:

The Army of 2030 and beyond will not simply fight with boots on the ground—but with algorithms in the cloud and robots in formation. The time to prepare is now. By investing in education and training tailored to robotic integration, we will ensure that future leaders are not just operators of technology, but commanders of it.

Fighting with Robots: The Time to Prepare is Now - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Kevin Bradley · July 10, 2025

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On December 20, 2024, Ukraine’s successfully conducted an “all-robot” ground and air attack, with dozens of drones in the air and unmanned ground platforms coordinated in an assault against a Russian position in Kharkiv oblast. The remarkable achievement highlighted the rapid integration of robotic systems into current military formations. Human-machine integrated formations are no longer speculative concepts—they are operational necessities. US Army Futures Command, created to transform the Army to ensure war-winning readiness, is developing unmanned ground and aerial drones in order to not sacrifice the lives of soldiers in our next fight. Use of unmanned systems allows the Army to automate our riskiest tasks and to field robotic systems that enable leaders to make faster, better-informed decisions. The tactical formations of tomorrow will be hybrid in nature—comprised of soldiers and intelligent machines fighting together.

But fielding robotic platforms is not enough. The materiel component of this change in the character of warfare is paired with a cognitive element. To effectively command in the future, young leaders must understand robotic systems and how to employ them. Leaders must know what is required to win with robots, and the time to begin preparing is now.

Building the Skill Set: What Future Leaders Need to Know

If you polled senior Army leaders, the number one characteristic they would say a future leader must possess is adaptability. In doctrinal terms, they must be able “to influence conditions and respond effectively to changing threats and situations with appropriate, flexible, and timely actions.” To effectively lead a human-machine integrated formation, soldiers must develop technical and digital fluency that matches their physical endurance and tactical knowledge. Tactical decision-making will increasingly rely not only on the warfighting expertise honed by hard training, but also on the ability to operate and understand complex systems—both hardware and software.

Future leaders—whether officers, noncommissioned officers, or soldiers already serving, cadets preparing to begin their careers as military leaders, or high school students with an inclination to serve—should prioritize classes and other learning opportunities that will give them a basic understanding of software programing, data management, as well as the fundamentals of robotic design and repair. For example, becoming conversational in common robotic and AI software programming languages such as Python and C++ provides a basis for troubleshooting and adapting each system. Similarly, learning to build, repair, and design both air and ground robots, including those with sensor integration and autonomous navigation, will provide the fundamentals to then apply these systems in a fight. These skills won’t just enhance your effectiveness on the battlefield, but will create opportunities for advancement in a rapidly evolving military force.

Equally important is proficiency in network management and cybersecurity, as ground and aerial drones rely on resilient, fast data communications. Leaders must understand how these systems operate within the wireless (electromagnetic) spectrum and how their data moves—both to protect friendly systems and to exploit or deny enemy ones.

Training for the Future: Educating the Modern Warfighter

For the Army to accomplish its goals and foster a force fully optimized for human-machine integration, military education programs must evolve. Officer development pipelines such as Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and the US Military Academy at West Point must prioritize exposure to robotics, coding, and AI principles like we did for earlier generations with engineering principles. Partnerships at the university and high school level with robotics and coding clubs or programs is an easy win. Competition breeds excellence and students who participate in competitions, such as national robotics competitions, give future leaders a leg up in real-world problem-solving under stress.

Introducing elective tracks in cybersecurity, unmanned systems operations, or artificial intelligence within curriculums would empower students to specialize early. At the institutional level, the Army should explore embedding military instructors into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs or expanding internships with government research organizations like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or Army Research Laboratory.

The Army of 2030 and beyond will not simply fight with boots on the ground—but with algorithms in the cloud and robots in formation. The time to prepare is now. By investing in education and training tailored to robotic integration, we will ensure that future leaders are not just operators of technology, but commanders of it.

Colonel Kevin Bradley is assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division and most recently served as the director of the Next Generation Combat Vehicles Cross Functional Team, a component of Army Futures Command, based at the Detroit (Michigan) Arsenal.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Sgt. Dominick Smith, US Army

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Kevin Bradley · July 10, 2025

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com