Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."

– Winston Churchill

"Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty."

– Louis D. Brandeis

"The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking."

– A. A. Milne

1. The U.S. Invests in Asia & Rising Asian Powers Set Strategic Sights on Europe

2. Taiwan must protect its sovereignty, know its own history, president says

3. Israel Strikes Houthi-Controlled Port City in Yemen

4. In a Taiwan war, the US could find itself fighting China without its top allies

5. Secret Service Says It Denied Earlier Trump Requests for More Federal Resources

6. A 20-year-old’s perplexing place in the catalogue of American gunmen

7. China and Philippines reach deal to avoid clashes at disputed reef

8. US to support Philippines' efforts to resupply ship on atoll, Sullivan says

9. Outgoing NCTC Director Lays Out Today’s Very Real Terrorist Threat

10. Build Iron Dome in the United States To Prepare for Israel’s Worst Day

11. Pentagon confronts Gold Star divide among grieving military families

12. Why Trump picking Vance as VP is about US foreign policy

13. Is China's social contract about to break down?

14. The China-Only Republicans

15. Resistance movement burns military equipment at an airfield in Russia

16. Is US Aid To Ukraine Driven By A Brutal Logic? – Analysis

17. How the sixth-generation fighter jet will upend air warfare

1. The U.S. Invests in Asia & Rising Asian Powers Set Strategic Sights on Europe

A useful weekly summary from Strategy Central.

The U.S. Invests in Asia & Rising Asian Powers Set Strategic Sights on Europe

THE STRATEGY CENTRAL WEEKLY

Summaries and Links to This Week’s Curated Articles

July 15 – 21, 2024

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/the-u-s-invests-in-asia-rising-asian-powers-set-strategic-sights-on-europe?utm

THE BIG PICTURE

In the USA, the focus is on the Biden administration's efforts to approve a $2 billion security aid package for Indo-Pacific nations, aimed at countering Chinese aggression. In Asia, Japan's and South Korea's growing involvement in European security matters was showcased at the recent NATO summit. Russia's strategies in Ukraine and its courtship of European leaders like Viktor Orban are an issue, emphasizing Moscow's attempts to exploit geopolitical divides. In the Middle East, Iran and the UAE are expanding influence in regions like the South Caucasus and the Horn of Africa, while in Europe, the EU's struggles with demographic decline are creating challenges, and the EU is recognizing the need for stronger engagement with Asian powers.

This week’s central theme is the interconnectedness of global security issues and the necessity for international cooperation and strategic adaptability. As rising powers like China and India set their sights on Europe, and as the USA shifts its focus towards the Indo-Pacific, traditional geopolitical alliances and strategies are being redefined, requiring nuanced and collaborative approaches to maintain stability and peace.

NATIONS MAKING HEADLINES

THE USA

"America’s Adversaries React to the Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump" by WOTR Staff, War on the Rocks, explores the varied responses from key global adversaries—China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists—to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. In Iran, reactions were mixed, with media closely associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps highlighting Trump’s past actions against Iran. Russian analysts predicted the incident would bolster Trump's electoral prospects, while official reactions were restrained. Chinese media emphasized U.S. political instability, with social media rife with conspiracy theories. North Korea and jihadist groups remained notably silent. The article comprehensively analyzes these geopolitical responses and their potential implications. [Read more] (https://warontherocks.com/2024/07/strategic-outposts-2024-summer-vacation-reading-list/)

"The Imperial Presidency Unleashed" by Sarah Binder, James Goldgeier, and Elizabeth N. Saunders, published by Foreign Affairs, examines the significant implications of the Supreme Court's ruling in Trump v. United States, which grants sweeping immunity to presidents from criminal prosecution after leaving office. The authors argue that this decision removes the last checks on executive power, potentially allowing presidents to act with impunity, even engaging in illegal activities without fear of accountability. This shift places the burden of oversight on Congress and the electorate, who have historically struggled to effectively check presidential power, especially in matters of foreign policy. The ruling, they contend, could have lasting effects on how other nations perceive U.S. leadership and accountability. [Read more](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/the-imperial-presidency-unleashed-donald-trump).

"Something Borrowed, Something Blue: Integrating Maritime Statecraft and Strategy" by BJ Armstrong, published by War on the Rocks, discusses the critical need for the United States to adopt a comprehensive maritime strategy that integrates economic, diplomatic, and military interests. Armstrong emphasizes the historical lessons from Alfred Thayer Mahan and suggests forming a committee of American maritime power to foster collaboration between the executive and legislative branches. This approach aims to address current maritime challenges and enhance U.S. strategic capabilities in the face of global maritime insecurity. [Read more](https://warontherocks.com/2024/07/something-borrowed-something-blue-integrating-maritime-statecraft-and-strategy/)

"Supply Chain Latest: Stiglitz on How to Boost Resilience" by Celine Imensek, Bloomberg, features Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz's insights on improving supply chain resilience. Stiglitz highlights the vulnerabilities exposed by recent crises, such as the pandemic and the 2008 financial meltdown, emphasizing the pitfalls of just-in-time production. He suggests that supply chains need backup capacities and longer-term investments should be incentivized to avoid short-term profit focus. Stiglitz also advocates for environmental taxes and strategic reserves to mitigate future risks. [Read more] (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-11/joe-stiglitz-on-why-supply-chains-are-always-too-fragile).

"USS Eisenhower Back in Norfolk Following Historic, Extended Deployment" by Diana Stancy, Navy Times, reports on the return of the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower to Naval Station Norfolk after a nine-month deployment, most of which was spent in the Middle East. The carrier and its strike group were heavily engaged in operations, including shooting down Iran-backed Houthi drones and missiles. This deployment, described as the Navy's most kinetic conflict since World War II, saw the crew earn the Combat Action Ribbon. The Eisenhower's return marks the end of its participation in Operation Prosperity Guardian, aimed at protecting commercial vessels in the Red Sea. [Read more] (https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2024/07/15/uss-eisenhower-back-in-norfolk-following-historic-extended-deployment/)

"Trump Interview: His Plan for Taxes, Tariffs, Jerome Powell, More" by Nancy Cook, Joshua Green, and Mario Parker, Bloomberg, delves into Donald Trump's strategies for potentially returning to the presidency. During an exclusive interview at Mar-a-Lago, Trump outlined his economic plans, including lowering corporate taxes to 15%, maintaining Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve chair, and imposing extensive tariffs on China and the European Union. Trump also expressed skepticism about defending Taiwan and reiterated his hardline stance on immigration. His economic approach, dubbed 'Trumponomics,' aims to deregulate industries, increase domestic oil production, and support the cryptocurrency sector. [Read more](https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-trump-interview)

RUSSIA

"How Russia Bamboozled the West in Ukraine in 2014" by Julia Kazdobina, Jakob Hedenskog, and Andreas Umland, Foreign Policy, examines the West's failure to comprehend the true nature of Russia's actions during its initial invasion of Ukraine. The article highlights how Russia's use of hybrid warfare and disinformation led to the annexation of Crimea and destabilization of Eastern Ukraine while the West, misled by Russian narratives and a lack of expertise, responded with ineffective sanctions and diplomacy. This misunderstanding persisted until Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, underscoring the importance of recognizing and countering hybrid threats. [Read more] (https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/17/ukraine-russia-war-2014-donbas-crimea-west)

"Ukraine Goes All-In on Ground Robots" by Jack Detsch, Foreign Policy, discusses Ukraine's increasing investment in ground robots to enhance battlefield effectiveness and minimize human casualties. The article highlights the deployment of various robotic systems to support front-line troops, including logistics, reconnaissance, and direct combat roles. This technological shift aims to address manpower challenges and improve operational capabilities amidst the ongoing conflict with Russia. Ukraine's strategic adoption of ground robots represents a significant step toward modernizing its military and safeguarding its personnel. [Read more] (https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/17/ukraine-russia-war-ground-robots-combat)

EUROPE

"Europe’s New Strategic Leadership" by Foreign Policy staff highlights the evolving strategic dynamics within the European Union, particularly focusing on the roles of France, Germany, and Poland in addressing security concerns posed by Russia. The article underscores the importance of cohesive leadership and collaboration among EU member states to bolster the region's defense capabilities and political unity. It also explores the challenges and opportunities for the EU in navigating its relationship with Russia while maintaining internal stability and external influence. [Read more] (https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/19/europe-eu-strategy-leadership-france-germany-poland-security-russia/)

"UK's Lammy and Starmer on Israel, Gaza, and Middle East Policy" by Foreign Policy staff examines the positions of UK Labour Party leaders David Lammy and Keir Starmer on key Middle East issues, including the Israel-Gaza conflict and relations with the UAE. The article highlights their emphasis on balancing support for Israel's security with calls for humanitarian aid to Gaza, as well as promoting diplomatic engagement in the region. The piece underscores the potential shifts in UK foreign policy under their leadership. [Read more] (https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/16/uk-lammy-starmer-israel-gaza-uae-middle-east-policy/)

CHINA

"Xi Seeks to Cultivate Reformist Image at Plenum" by James Palmer, Foreign Policy, explores Chinese President Xi Jinping's efforts to align himself with the legacy of reformist leader Deng Xiaoping during the Third Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party. The event, delayed from 2023, has seen a significant propaganda push to present Xi as a champion of economic reforms, despite fears that his policies mark a return to pre-reform, top-down governance. The Plenum's focus on "new quality productive forces" and technology-driven growth highlights Xi's intent to secure China's geopolitical edge while addressing domestic economic challenges. [Read more](https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/16/xi-seeks-to-cultivate-reformist-image-at-plenum)

"Rising Asian Powers Set Their Strategic Sights on Europe" by C. Raja Mohan, Foreign Policy, discusses the shift in global power dynamics as Asian countries like China and India increasingly influence European geopolitics. The article highlights how Europe, traditionally dominant over Asia, is now becoming a focal point for Asian strategic ambitions. This includes military cooperation between China and Russia, and the involvement of Asian powers in European conflicts like the Russia-Ukraine war. The growing presence of Asian powers in Europe signals a reversal of historical roles and underscores the need for Europe to adapt to these new geopolitical realities. [Read more] (https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/16/asia-europe-strategy-geopolitics-china-india-russia-ukraine-eu/)

"US Close to Sending $2 Billion in Security Aid Across the Indo-Pacific" by Noah Robertson, Defense News, reports on the Biden administration's imminent approval of nearly $2 billion in security aid to bolster Indo-Pacific countries against China's growing aggression. The package includes $1.2 billion for Taiwan, $500 million for the Philippines, and $300 million for other regional partners like Vietnam and South Asian island nations. This aid aims to enhance military capabilities and support defensive measures, such as Taiwan's "porcupine" strategy and the Philippines' efforts in the South China Sea. The urgency of this initiative reflects the escalating threats from China and the strategic importance of the region. [Read more](https://www.defensenews.com/2024/07/19/us-close-to-sending-2-billion-in-security-aid-across-the-indo-pacific)

ISRAEL & THE MIDDLE EAST

"The Palestinian Authority Is Collapsing" by Shira Efron and Michael J. Koplow, Foreign Affairs, examines the severe financial and political crisis facing the Palestinian Authority (PA), which threatens the viability of a two-state solution. The authors argue that symbolic international recognition of Palestine is insufficient without substantial support to rebuild the PA’s governance and financial stability. They advocate for targeted international assistance to strengthen the PA’s capacity, prevent further Israeli encroachments, and rebuild trust among Palestinians. Without this support, the collapse of the PA could lead to increased instability and violence in the region. [Read more] (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/palestinian-territories/palestinian-authority-collapsing)

"Israel Is Stuck in the Year 2000" by Steven A. Cook, Foreign Policy, examines Israel's outdated policy towards Lebanon, highlighting the ongoing security dilemmas that have persisted since its withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000. Cook argues that Israel's military strategies remain unchanged despite the evolving threats posed by Hezbollah, which has significantly improved its capabilities. The current Israeli government's approach to Lebanon reflects a reluctance to adapt to new geopolitical realities, potentially leading to further conflicts without offering long-term solutions. [Read more] (https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/19/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-gaza-palestine-policy-stuck)

"US-Built Gaza Aid Pier Will Be Dismantled After Troubled Mission" by Lolita C. Baldor and Tara Copp, Military Times, details the decision to dismantle a U.S. military-built pier designed to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. The mission faced numerous challenges, including severe weather, security issues, and logistical hurdles that prevented the effective delivery of aid. Despite Vice Adm. Brad Cooper's assertion that the pier achieved its intended purpose, critics labeled the $230 million project a failure. As the U.S. steps away, concerns linger over Israel's plan to use the Ashdod port for future aid delivery. [Read more](https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2024/07/17/us-built-gaza-aid-pier-will-be-dismantled-after-troubled-mission/)

"The Red Sea Crisis Goes Beyond the Houthis" by Ambassador Johnnie Carson, Alex Rondos, Susan Stigant, and Michael Woldemariam, United States Institute of Peace, examines the complex crisis in the Red Sea region, emphasizing that the instability extends beyond the Houthi attacks on maritime traffic. The authors argue that addressing the crisis requires a broad international diplomatic effort, particularly from the United States, to de-escalate conflicts in the Horn of Africa and prevent the worsening of humanitarian conditions in countries like Sudan and Ethiopia. [Read more] (https://www.usip.org/publications/2024/07/red-sea-crisis-goes-beyond-houthis)

2.Taiwan must protect its sovereignty, know its own history, president says

Excerpts:

"Now, our responsibility to unite the people, oppose annexation (by China) and ensure national sovereignty," he said, speaking in Taiwanese, also known as Hokkien, rather than the main language of government, Mandarin.

"We must do our best to let the whole country's people understand Taiwan's own history and culture, and establish a national identity that the 23 million people living in Taiwan are a community of destiny," he added.

China's Taiwan Affairs Office did not answer calls seeking comment outside of office hours on Sunday. China calls Lai a "separatist".

Lai rejects China's sovereignty claims saying only Taiwan's people can decide their future. He has repeatedly offered talks with Beijing but been rebuffed.

Taiwan must protect its sovereignty, know its own history, president says

By Ben Blanchard

July 21, 20243:32 AM EDTUpdated 6 hours ago

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/taiwan-must-protect-its-sovereignty-know-its-own-history-president-says-2024-07-21/

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te attends a graduation ceremony of military academies in Taipei, Taiwan June 27, 2024. REUTERS/Ann Wang/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

TAIPEI, July 21 (Reuters) - Taiwan must protect its sovereignty and know its own culture and history, President Lai Ching-te said on Sunday, rejecting what he said was the previous mistaken belief the island could serve as a base to "retake" China.

Lai, who took office in May, and his ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), champion Taiwan's separate identity from China, a position that frequently angers Beijing which views the island as an inviolable part of Chinese territory.

Speaking to the DPP's annual convention, Lai said those who fought to bring democracy to Taiwan - martial law only ended in 1987 - had a clear understanding of the island's place in the world.

They "did not hesitate to shed blood and used their lives to debunk the mistaken idea that 'Taiwan is a base to retake the mainland', and instituted the national policy of putting Taiwan first," said Lai, who is also DPP chairman.

Chiang Kai-shek and his defeated Republic of China government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong's communists.

Chiang hoped to regroup his forces on Taiwan and attack China to destroy Mao's People's Republic of China. Chiang died in 1975 without achieving that dream.

Lai said Taiwan had different priorities.

"Now, our responsibility to unite the people, oppose annexation (by China) and ensure national sovereignty," he said, speaking in Taiwanese, also known as Hokkien, rather than the main language of government, Mandarin.

"We must do our best to let the whole country's people understand Taiwan's own history and culture, and establish a national identity that the 23 million people living in Taiwan are a community of destiny," he added.

China's Taiwan Affairs Office did not answer calls seeking comment outside of office hours on Sunday. China calls Lai a "separatist".

Lai rejects China's sovereignty claims saying only Taiwan's people can decide their future. He has repeatedly offered talks with Beijing but been rebuffed.

China staged war games shortly after Lai's inauguration, and has continued to send warplanes and warships around Taiwan on a daily basis.

Taiwan starts is annual Han Kuang war games on Monday, which this year aim to be as close as possible to actual combat.

Lai said the DPP will always adhere to a democratic and free constitutional system.

"We will never allow Taiwan to suffer the danger of extinction due to the failure of democratic politics," he added.

Get the latest news and expert analysis about the state of the global economy with Reuters Econ World. Sign up here.

Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Lincoln Feast.

3. Israel Strikes Houthi-Controlled Port City in Yemen

Israel Strikes Houthi-Controlled Port City in Yemen

Military action comes a day after the Iran-backed militant group launched a drone attack that killed one person in Tel Aviv

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-strikes-houthi-controlled-port-city-in-yemen-2d84ab06?mod=hp_lead_pos9

By Carrie Keller-Lynn, Benoit Faucon

Follow and Saleh al-Batati

Updated July 21, 2024 3:03 am ET

An Israeli military official said the airstrikes were focused on ‘dual-use facilities’ within the port. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS

TEL AVIV—The Israeli military for the first time staged a direct airstrike against Houthi rebels in Yemen, a day after the Iran-backed militant group launched a drone attack in Tel Aviv that killed one person.

Israel said its F-15 jet fighters struck several targets in the Houthi-controlled port city of Hodeidah, which set fuel tanks ablaze and damaged the city’s power plant, a Houthi official said. Health authorities said several people had died and more than 80 were wounded. Israel’s military didn’t respond to a request for comment on casualties.

Israel’s military said it downed a surface-to-surface missile launched by Yemen on Sunday, using its advanced Arrow 3 aerial defense system. The Houthis later claimed responsibility for launching ballistic missiles toward Israel on Sunday.

Israel said it acted Saturday in retribution for hundreds of Houthi attacks against the country since October, including the one in the heart of Israel’s commercial capital on Friday. That drone strike marked the first time the Houthi militia successfully hit Tel Aviv nine months into Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas militants in Gaza that the Houthis say they are protesting. Israel’s aerial defense array has intercepted most of the Houthi attacks.

Saturday’s attack in Yemen, more than 1,000 miles from Israel, is one of the furthest strikes that Israel’s air force has conducted, said Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military’s chief spokesman.

SAUDI ARABIA

Red Sea

OMAN

YEMEN

ERITREA

Israeli airstrikes

in Hodeidah

San’a

HOUTHI-CONTROLLED

TERRITORY

Gulf of Aden

DJI.

ETHIOPIA

Djibouti

200 miles

Sources: Israeli military (airstrikes); Acaps (Houthi territory)

“From the beginning of the war, I made it clear that Israel would harm anyone who harmed us,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday immediately following the strikes. The fresh attack “makes it clear to our enemies that there is no place that the long arm of the State of Israel can’t reach,” he said.

Israeli and U.S. defense officials said the U.S. was notified before the operation. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke twice with his Israeli counterpart about the hostilities since Friday, said an Israeli defense official.

An Israeli military official said the airstrikes were focused on “dual-use facilities” within the port, which the official called “the main supply route for the transfer of Iranian weapons to Yemen.” Such transfers would violate a nearly decadelong United Nations arms embargo against the group. Tehran denies arming the Houthis despite ample evidence to the contrary. The Houthis likely used a modified version of the Iranian-made Samad drone in its Friday attack, the Israeli military said.

Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdul Salam said the Israeli military struck civilian targets, including oil tanks and a power plant. Hodeidah has been used by the Houthis as a key base to launch missile and drone attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. But it also hosts civilian facilities, including grain silos that are critical to Yemen’s chronically malnourished population.

The damage from the Houthi drone strike was visible on a Tel Aviv building. PHOTO: JAMAL AWAD/ZUMA PRESS

After Saturday’s attack, several Houthi leaders hid in safe houses and in a mosque in San’a and switched off their phones due to worries that Israel could target them, said a separate Houthi official. The Houthis pledged to respond to Israel’s strikes on Hodeidah.

“The strikes are a first and mark a significant escalation,” said Hisham Al-Omeisy, a Yemen analyst at the European Institute of Peace, a Brussels-based think tank.

The Houthis have attacked international shipping near Yemen’s waters as well as fired numerous drones and missiles against Israel in support of Hamas militants in their fight against Israel. Other Iran-backed groups in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon also have attacked Israel in what threatens to expand into a broader regional war.

Chief among the expanded fronts is between Israel and Hezbollah, the U.S.-designated terror group in Lebanon. Tit-for-tat exchanges of fire have forced tens of thousands of civilians in both countries to flee the border region.

Most of the Houthis strikes against Israel since October have been intercepted by Israel’s aerial defense array. PHOTO: YAHYA ARHAB/SHUTTERSTOCK

An Israeli military official also called Saturday’s strike a step up in Israeli activity against the Houthis. “It was calibrated to send exactly the message that we wanted: a message of deterrence to the Houthis and to everybody else who is watching in the region,” the official said.

Until Saturday, Israel had limited its engagement with the Houthis to intercepting the over 200 projectiles it says have been fired at Israeli territory from Yemen since October. The U.S. military had taken the lead with strikes against the Houthis to defend maritime shipping, launching airstrikes on several targets in Yemen in response to at-times deadly Houthi attacks.

An Israeli defense official said Israeli policy had been to let the U.S.-led multinational coalition manage direct engagement with the Houthis. Israel changed policy in response to Friday’s fatal strike, the official said, the first time that the Houthis killed an Israeli civilian in the continuing conflict.

Israel had operational plans for Yemen at the ready, in line with orders the defense minister had issued months earlier.

Nancy Youssef contributed to this article.

Write to Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com

4. In a Taiwan war, the US could find itself fighting China without its top allies

Here is a link to the RAND report: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA3108-1.html

In a Taiwan war, the US could find itself fighting China without its top allies

Business Insider · by Michael Peck

Military & Defense

Michael Peck

2024-07-21T08:00:02Z

The US may be forced to confront a Chinese invasion of Taiwan without the forces of top allies like Japan. Issei Kato/Getty Images

The US military may be forced to confront a Chinese invasion of Taiwan without top allies.
Japan, Australia, the UK and Canada are likely to provide no military forces to counter China.
RAND Corp. analysts said these "middle powers" could help in other ways, however.

If the US decides to defend Taiwan from Chinese invasion, it may have to do so alone.

Several of America's biggest allies are unlikely to commit troops to save Taiwan, either because they lack the military capability or don't want to risk all-out war with an increasingly formidable China, according to a new report by the RAND Corp..

For Japan, Australia, the UK and Canada, aid "would be confined to diplomatic support for Taiwan and endorsement of likely US sanctions on China," concluded RAND, an American think tank, which surveyed experts in the four nations. If this proves right, it means that any military response to a Chinese invasion would be limited to American forces.

This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.

"Our respondents believe that the US will receive logistics and materiel support from other countries, but its forces will have to go it alone in responding to an invasion by China," Rafiq Dossani, a RAND senior economist who co-authored the study, told Business Insider. However, there was more support in Japan and Australia to commit their navies to assisting an American-led effort to break a Chinese blockade of Taiwan.

That Canada, for example, might not be able or eager to rush to Taiwan's defense isn't a surprise. But for Japan, whose security would be gravely affected by a Chinese takeover of Taiwan, the issue is more complicated.

"Despite its military power, commitment to the region, and US backing, Japanese pacifism (both popular and constitutional) and the fear of a retaliatory attack by China are likely to limit Japan's military support for Taiwan, perhaps only to logistics and supplies," RAND said. "Any support that they would offer to a US-led military response would likely be limited to logistics and materiel support."

Secret Service Says It Denied Earlier Trump Requests for More Federal Resources

In a reversal, a spokesman said the service had turned down requests from former President Donald J. Trump’s team over the past two years, though he said the requests did not include the recent rally in Pennsylvania.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/20/us/politics/secret-service-trump-shooting.html

Members of the Secret Service responding to extract former President Donald J. Trump after a gunman opened fire during a campaign event in Butler, Pa., last weekend.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

By Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Maggie Haberman

Published July 20, 2024

Updated July 21, 2024, 8:04 a.m. ET

The Secret Service acknowledged on Saturday that it had turned down requests for additional federal resources sought by former President Donald J. Trump’s security detail in the two years leading up to his attempted assassination last week, a reversal from earlier statements by the agency denying that such requests had been rebuffed.

Almost immediately after a gunman shot at Mr. Trump from a nearby warehouse roof while he spoke at a rally in Butler, Pa., last weekend, the Secret Service faced accusations from Republicans and anonymous law enforcement officials that it had turned down requests for additional agents to secure Mr. Trump’s rallies.

“There’s an untrue assertion that a member of the former president’s team requested additional resources and that those were rebuffed,” Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Secret Service, said last Sunday, the day after the shooting.

Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, said on Monday that the accusation that he had issued the denials was “a baseless and irresponsible statement and it is one that is unequivocally false.”

On Saturday, Mr. Guglielmi acknowledged that the Secret Service had turned down some requests for additional federal security assets for Mr. Trump’s detail. Two people briefed on the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed that the Trump campaign had been seeking additional resources for the better part of the time that Mr. Trump had been out of office. The denied requests for additional resources were not specifically for the rally in Butler, Mr. Guglielmi said.

U.S. officials previously said the Secret Service had enhanced security for the former president before the Butler rally because it had received information from U.S. intelligence agencies about a potential Iranian assassination plot against Mr. Trump.

In a statement provided to The New York Times on Saturday, Mr. Guglielmi emphasized that the federal agency works in a “dynamic threat environment” and that, in the instances where the Secret Service could not provide additional resources, they supplemented security for Mr. Trump’s rallies with state and local law enforcement assets or changed its security plans to reduce Mr. Trump’s exposure.

“In some instances where specific Secret Service specialized units or resources were not provided, the agency made modifications to ensure the security of the protectee,” Mr. Guglielmi said in the statement. “This may include utilizing state or local partners to provide specialized functions or otherwise identifying alternatives to reduce public exposure of a protectee.”

Mr. Guglielmi said the federal agency is limited in the amount of resources it can dispatch to events. Secret Service officials have for years complained that the agency is stretched thin, particularly during election season, when it must protect the sitting president, multiple candidates and political conventions.

The fact that the service might have rejected earlier requests for additional support was previously reported by The Washington Post.

The admission will only fuel the intense criticism that Secret Service Director Kimberly A. Cheatle is expected to face on Monday when she appears at a hearing with the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

Image

Kimberly A. Cheatle, director of the Secret Service, has fielded criticism over how the agency handled security for the rally where Mr. Trump was shot.Credit...Kamil Krzaczyski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Secret Service had already been barraged with questions over why it had excluded from its security zone the warehouse — about 450 feet from the former president — from which the would-be assassin had fired at Mr. Trump on July 13. Mr. Trump, whose right ear was injured in the attack, could be seen touching his ear as popping noises went off, before dropping to the ground and being surrounded by Secret Service agents.

The service did not hold or take part in a public briefing the night of the shooting, while other law enforcement officials held a news conference a few hours after the fact. The service did not hold a public briefing to answer questions in the week after the assassination attempt.

The intensity of the anger between Republicans and top brass at the Washington-based Secret Service after the assassination attempt boiled over during the Republican National Convention. A group of senators chased Ms. Cheatle through Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, saying she was not answering their questions about the shooting.

The Secret Service has faced scrutiny over the way it assigned local law enforcement officers to assist with security at the Butler rally. The agency tasked a sizable contingent of local law enforcement officers with working inside its security perimeter, rather than covering the building where the shooter ended up.

The would-be assassin was able to roam freely outside the perimeter before he took his position on the roof, even though local officers had noticed him acting oddly and notified other law enforcement.

The agency also faced questions as to why it had allowed Mr. Trump to take the stage at the Butler Farm Show grounds, even after receiving information that law enforcement was looking for someone suspicious in the crowd.

In addition to wounding Mr. Trump, the gunman, later identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pa., killed one rally attendee and injured two others. A Secret Service sniper then shot and killed Mr. Crooks. Mr. Mayorkas earlier this week called the incident a “failure” of security, and President Biden has called for an independent review of the security procedures before and after the shooting.

Several Republicans have called on Ms. Cheatle to resign. During Mr. Trump’s speech at the Republican convention on Thursday, he commended the efforts of the agents who rushed to his aid and brought him to safety.

A Trump campaign spokesman declined to comment on the new revelations, pointing only to a post by Mr. Trump on Truth Social after the assassination attempt, in which the former president praised his Secret Service detail for protecting him.

“I want to thank The United States Secret Service, and all of Law Enforcement, for their rapid response on the shooting that just took place in Butler, Pennsylvania,” Mr. Trump wrote.

Nonetheless, the Trump political team has been concerned about a lack of support and additional resources for years, and those concerns have only become more acute as Mr. Trump has faced a series of unprecedented situations for a former president, including four criminal arraignments.

A consistent source of stress, according to a campaign official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, has been the lack of sufficient metal detectors to screen attendees. At one rally for Mr. Trump at a park in the South Bronx at the end of May, the official said, the lack of detectors led to a logjam of people waiting to get in.

But service officials were more concerned, the official said, with matters like limiting the number of picnic tables that people could stand on. In another stark example, the official said, the service initially denied a request by the Trump team for metal detectors when the former president attended his youngest son’s high school graduation in May, saying it wasn’t a “political” event. Ultimately, the service relented.

And, at Mr. Trump’s massive outdoor rally earlier that month in the town of Wildwood on the Jersey Shore, a request by the Trump team for specially trained dogs to search the area was denied, the official said.

Image

Trump supporters waiting in line to get into a campaign rally in Wildwood, N.J., in May. A campaign official said the team had asked the Secret Service for specially trained dogs to search the area, but the request was denied.Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Often, the official said, the requests were denied in a phone call from service officials, rather than put in writing.

The Secret Service has been battered by controversies for many years. They include one in November 2009, when a Washington couple crashed a state dinner at the White House. Two years later, a man with a semiautomatic rifle fired at the White House from a car parked in front of it, while President Obama’s younger daughter Sasha was at home and his other daughter, Malia, was en route to the building. A service supervisor thought the noise had been a backfiring car and told officers they should stand down.

Last year, an intoxicated man was able to evade the security detail of Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and enter his home at 3 a.m. Mr. Sullivan, who confronted the intruder and made him leave, was not harmed in the breach.

Even how to guard the Republican National Convention site was a source of dispute between convention officials and the Secret Service. Convention officials repeatedly pressed the service to change the area where protests were allowed, fearing clashes between protesters and delegates. The argument lasted for weeks.

The event was designated as a national special security event, a protocol usually used for large-scale functions, including past conventions and the United Nations General Assembly. The designation allowed the service to pull in additional federal resources.

A correction was made on July 21, 2024: An earlier version of this article misstated the day on which former President Donald J. Trump spoke at the Republican National Convention. It was Thursday, not Saturday.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more

Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent, covering President Biden and his administration. More about Zolan Kanno-Youngs

Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent reporting on the 2024 presidential campaign, down ballot races across the country and the investigations into former President Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman

See more on: U.S. Secret Service, Donald Trump, 2024 Elections, U.S. Politics, Homeland Security Department

6. A 20-year-old’s perplexing place in the catalogue of American gunmen

Humans are cre complex species.

A 20-year-old’s perplexing place in the catalogue of American gunmen

Thomas Matthew Crooks, who used a gun purchased by his father after the Sandy Hook massacre, evokes the profile of a mass shooter. Instead he fired at a former president.

By John Woodrow Cox and Steven Rich

July 21, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by John Woodrow Cox · July 21, 2024

In the months after an isolated, deeply troubled 20-year-old took his mother’s AR-style rifle and opened fire inside Sandy Hook Elementary School, gun sales in America exploded, partly fueled by the threat of a fresh ban on the assault weapons that would become the firearm of choice for some of the country’s most infamous killers.

Millions of Americans rushed to stock up, and among 2013’s gun buyers, investigators would later learn, was a man in western Pennsylvania whose son was also in elementary school. He purchased an AR-style rifle that fired 5.56mm rounds.

A decade later, his son — also isolated, troubled and 20 years old — shouldered that same rifle atop a sloped roof in Butler, Pa., and, according to authorities, fired it eight times in an apparent attempt to assassinate former president Donald Trump.

Thomas Matthew Crooks, shot and killed seconds later, remains enigmatic. A registered Republican who’d once given a $15 donation to a progressive group, he was, according to people who knew him, not overtly political or ideological. He did well in school, drew little attention in his middle-class, Bethel Park neighborhood. He didn’t leave behind a significant online presence or manifesto spelling out his motivation. Why he pulled the trigger, investigators still don’t know or, at least, have yet to say publicly.

Where he fits into the ever-expanding catalogue of notorious American gunmen could take years to understand, according to experts and historians. He’s hard to categorize, in part because his still-evolving portrait evokes the profile of a mass shooter, at least one of whom he researched. But Crooks wasn’t a mass shooter, instead becoming what some historians believe to be the youngest person to make an attempt on the life of a current or past president.

It’s important for investigators to understand what leads to any killing, but it’s essential in this case, at this moment, when some fear the country’s political fissures could lead to more bloodshed, said Jeffrey A. Engel, founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University.

“If this is an individual who was like a school shooter, disturbed and angry, and found this as a way to lash out, that’s a terrible, terrible social problem we need to deal with, but it’s not a question of our democracy,” Engel said. “It’s important that we know whether or not we need to worry about political violence, more than any other violence.”

Three decades ago, the U.S. Secret Service set out to analyze 83 actual or would-be assassins who had acted between 1949 and 1996, eventually publishing a report intended to help law enforcement better understand, and thwart, these attacks.

By study’s end, the researchers had come to a stark conclusion: “There are no accurate — or useful — descriptive, demographic, or psychological ‘profiles’ of American assassins, attackers, and near-lethal approachers.”

Crooks conforms with some of the report’s broader trends: 86 percent were men, 77 percent White; more than half were single, and three in five had no children; most attempts were on presidents, members of Congress or other public figures being protected by the Secret Service.

In other ways, Crooks was anomalous. He was younger than the vast majority, few of whom were students at the time. Just 30 percent used rifles or shotguns, and only one in four traveled elsewhere in their state, or one beside it, in pursuit of their target. There’s little evidence, so far, that Crooks had a “history of resentments or grievances against others,” as 97 percent of those studied did.

And then there are the mass killers Crooks conjures. At a briefing with lawmakers, law enforcement officials shared that Crooks had researched Oxford High shooter Ethan Crumbley as well as his mother and father. Earlier this year, James and Jennifer Crumbley became the first parents of a mass shooter ever convicted of homicide. In a rampage that ended the lives of four schoolmates in 2021, Crumbley, like Crooks, used a firearm that had been purchased by his father.

Crooks parallels the Sandy Hook Elementary shooter, Adam Lanza, in several obvious ways. Besides their ages, both were gaunt and withdrawn, with limited social circles. Both grew up in homes stocked with firearms and had a clear interest in them: Lanza, who aspired to become a Marine, studied guns and fired them with his mother at a shooting range; Crooks, who, investigators and reporters have learned, belonged to a shooting club and died in a T-shirt adorned with the logo of a popular YouTube channel dedicated to guns, had tried out for his high school rifle team but did not make it because he was a poor marksman. Both 20-year-olds showed signs of rising distress — Crooks researched major depressive disorder on his phone, lawmakers were told — before their violent acts. And Lanza, too, committed his assault with a parent’s semiautomatic rifle.

But the similarities end there, said Peter Langman, a psychologist and the author of “Warning Signs: Identifying School Shooters Before They Strike.” With crude explosive devices packed into his car, Crooks traveled to a rally an hour from his home and took aim at a 78-year-old former president, grazing him, killing firefighter Corey Comperatore and gravely wounding two other spectators. In Newtown, Conn., Lanza killed his mother before returning to a school he’d once attended and gunning down six staff members and 20 first-graders.

Their personal lives diverge as well. When Langman assesses young shooters, he consistently finds that they faltered in key “life domains”: education, employment, intimacy, family and social network.

“If you look at Lanza,” Langman said, “he was failing in, essentially, all five of those domains.”

Lanza, who was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, struggled to function in classes, instead attending home school through much of his teens. He suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder and was especially sensitive to light and sound. He stopped speaking to his father two years before the shooting and communicated with his mother, with whom he lived, through email. He was obsessed with death, compiling a detailed spreadsheet of 400 people who’d committed various acts of violence.

Crooks, Langman said, appeared to have been succeeding in several of those life domains.

He worked at a nursing home and, after graduating from community college with an associate’s degree in engineering science, planned to attend Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh this fall. It’s unclear whether he dated or what his relationship was with his parents — both licensed professional counselors — but he still lived with them. Those who knew him said that, at least in high school, he maintained a small but consistent group of friends.

“This is not a case of someone who’s failed in everything and feels like he’s a loser, a nobody, and the only thing he can do with his life is go out in a blaze of glory,” Langman said.

Still, he cautioned, it’s early in the investigation. Langman recalled the case of Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people and wounded 53 others at Pulse nightclub in Florida. A cursory look at Mateen would have suggested that he also led a relatively successful life. He had a wife and child and worked as a security guard.

“People in those situations are not supposed to throw it all away, because it’s too much to live for, but he did,” Langman said. “When you see that, then you have to really look inside the man. Not look at the externals, but look at the internals.”

That look, Langman said, revealed a psychopath.

Mateen beat his wife, she later alleged, and while he did hold a job, he failed in his aspiration to make a career in law enforcement, at least in part because of his preoccupation with violence.

Who Crooks really was has yet to be revealed, but that doesn’t mean it never will. After the Sandy Hook shooting, many people concluded that Lanza had left behind no online footprint.

“It turned out not to be true at all,” Langman said. “He covered his tracks very well.”

So well, in fact, that six hours of audio Lanza recorded wasn’t discovered on YouTube until 2021 — nine years after his death.

And yet, what drove him to such horrific violence remains unknown.

Despite public perception, assassins’ motives can be equally difficult to flesh out.

“When the first crack of the bullet is heard, aimed at a political figure, it’s natural for us to presume, logical even, that this is politically motivated,” said Engel, the presidential historian.

That, he added, is often not the case.

In 1881, President James Garfield’s killer, Charles J. Guiteau, who was delusional, felt slighted over a job he didn’t get. Nearly a century later, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme tried to shoot President Gerald Ford, at least in part to win the approval of cult leader Charles Manson.

“I’m still not sure that we have a great grasp of what was motivating Lee Harvey Oswald,” Engel said of President John F. Kennedy’s killer. “And of course, most famously, John Hinckley, who shot at Ronald Reagan, did it basically to impress a girl” — the actress Jodie Foster.

Crooks, it appears, wasn’t only interested in Trump. On his phone, investigators found images of President Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland and a member of the British royal family. Along with the rally in Butler, Crooks had looked up information on August’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Those disparate inquiries, experts say, suggest that Crooks may have largely been driven by a desire for attention and chose his target out of convenience.

“This is a person likely trying to make headlines, going out in a final act,” said Jillian Peterson, a forensic psychologist and co-founder of the Violence Prevention Project. “This is the thing that they’re going to be seen for.”

Perhaps no school shooter motivated by a quest for fame received more of it than 18-year-old Eric Harris, who, along with a friend, Dylan Klebold, killed 13 people at Columbine High in Colorado in 1999.

“I want to leave a lasting impression on the world,” Harris once wrote. Propelled by intense media coverage of his image, backstory and demented world view, Harris’s persona has inspired dozens of gunmen in the 25 years since, including Lanza.

Over the past decade, public mass shooters have won far less notoriety as their numbers have multiplied. Even some of the deadliest killers — the ones at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Tex., and the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas, for example — are not household names.

In a single week, Crooks’s name has appeared in thousands of headlines as his image spread across the globe. Peterson fears that other disillusioned fame-seekers who once would have turned to a different sort of violence may now be emboldened to attempt this kind.

“It has changed the course of the political conversation. It’s having ripple effects. It’s actually changing politics, and potentially the election in some way,” she said. “So, if one 20-year-old kid with an AR-15 can pull that off, that is something that’s scary.”

Peterson also noted there is only one commonality among all isolated, troubled young men who eventually become shooters, and America has struggled to address it since long before Crooks’s father bought that rifle 11 years ago: their access to a gun.

Perry Stein and Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by John Woodrow Cox · July 21, 2024

7. China and Philippines reach deal to avoid clashes at disputed reef

China and Philippines reach deal to avoid clashes at disputed reef

China and the Philippines have struck a deal aimed at stopping the two countries from clashing over the fiercely disputed Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea, the Philippine government said Sunday. In the past year, the territorial standoff at the reef has flared and came to a head in mid-June when Chinese forces seized and damaged two Philippine navy boats with machetes and improvised spears. Several Filipino navy personnel were injured in the incident.

Issued on: 21/07/2024 - 13:40Modified: 21/07/2024 - 13:464 min

France 24 · by NEWS WIRES · July 21, 2024

China and the Philippines reached a deal they hope will end confrontations at the most fiercely disputed shoal in the South China Sea, the Philippine government said Sunday.

The Philippines occupies Second Thomas Shoal but China also claims it, and increasingly hostile clashes at sea have sparked fears of larger conflicts that could involve the United States.

The crucial deal was reached on Sunday, after a series of meetings between Philippine and Chinese diplomats in Manila and exchanges of diplomatic notes that aimed to establish a mutually acceptable arrangement at the shoal without conceding either side’s territorial claims. Two Philippine officials, who have knowledge of the negotiations, confirmed the deal to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity and the government later issued a brief statement announcing the deal without providing details.

“Both sides continue to recognize the need to deescalate the situation in the South China Sea and manage differences through dialogue and consultation and agree that the agreement will not prejudice each other’s positions in the South China Sea,” the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila said.

China has disputes with several governments over land and sea borders, many of them in the South China Sea, and the rare deal with the Philippines could spark hope that similar arrangements could be forged by Beijing with other rival countries to avoid clashes while thorny territorial issues remain unresolved. It remains to be seen, however, if the deal could be implemented successfully and how long it will last.

Chinese coast guard and other forces have used powerful water cannons and dangerous blocking maneuvers to prevent food and other supplies from reaching Filipino navy personnel at Manila’s outpost at the shoal.

The yearslong territorial standoff at the shoal has flared repeatedly since last year between Chinese coast guard, navy and suspected militia ships and Philippine coast guard-escorted navy boats transporting food, water and fresh navy and marine personnel to an outpost on a long-grounded and rusting warship, the BRP Sierra Madre.

In the worst confrontation, Chinese forces on motorboats repeatedly rammed and then boarded two Philippine navy boats on June 17 to prevent Filipino personnel from transferring food and other supplies including firearms to the ship outpost in the shallows of the shoal, according to the Philippine government.

After repeated ramming, the Chinese seized the Philippine navy boats and damaged them with machetes and improvised spears. They also seized seven M4 rifles, which were packed in cases, and other supplies. The violent faceoff wounded several Filipino navy personnel, including one who lost his thumb, in a chaotic skirmish that was captured in video and photos that were later made public by Philippine officials.

China and the Philippines blamed each other for the confrontation and each asserted their own sovereign rights over the shoal, which Filipinos call Ayungin and the Chinese call Ren’ai Jiao.

The United States and its key Asian and Western allies, including Japan and Australia, condemned the Chinese acts at the shoal and called for the rule of law and freedom of navigation to be upheld in the South China Sea, a key global trade route with rich fishing areas and undersea gas deposits.

In addition to China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have been locked in separate but increasingly tense territorial disputes in the waterway, which is regarded as a potential flashpoint and a delicate fault line in the U.S.-China regional rivalry. The U.S. military has deployed navy ships and fighter jets for decades in what it calls freedom of navigation and overflight patrols, which China has opposed and regards as a threat to regional stability.

Washington has no territorial claims in the disputed waters but has repeatedly warned that it is obligated to defend the Philippines, its oldest treaty ally in Asia, if Filipino forces, ships and aircraft come under an armed attack, including in the South China Sea.

One of the two Philippine officials said the June 17 confrontation prompted Beijing and Manila to hasten on-and-off talks on an arrangement that would prevent confrontations at Second Thomas Shoal.

During final meetings in the last four days, two Chinese demands that had been key sticking points were removed from the draft deal.

China had previously said it would allow food, water and other basic supplies to be transported by the Philippines to its forces in the shoal if Manila agreed not to bring construction materials to fortify the crumbling ship, and to give China advance notice and the right to inspect the ships for those materials, the officials said.

The Philippines rejected those conditions, and the final deal did not include them.

(AP)

Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morning

Take international news everywhere with you! Download the France 24 app

France 24 · by NEWS WIRES · July 21, 2024

8. US to support Philippines' efforts to resupply ship on atoll, Sullivan says

US to support Philippines' efforts to resupply ship on atoll, Sullivan says

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/us-support-philippines-efforts-resupply-ship-atoll-sullivan-says-2024-07-19/

By Reuters

July 20, 20244:42 AM EDTUpdated a day ago

July 19 (Reuters) - The United States "will do what is necessary" to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Friday.

Sullivan said the U.S. would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre, which Manila beached in 1999 to reinforce maritime claims in the South China Sea contested by China.

An aerial view shows the BRP Sierra Madre on the contested Second Thomas Shoal, locally known as Ayungin, in the South China Sea, March 9, 2023//File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Speaking to the Aspen Security Forum conference in Colorado, Sullivan said the United States has made clear to China that its mutual defense treaty with the Philippines applies to the Sierra Madre.

"The most important thing right now is to see de-escalation and to see the ability of the Philippines to do resupplies," he said.

Get the latest news and expert analysis about the state of the global economy with Reuters Econ World. Sign up here.

Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Eric Beech; Editing by Doina Chiacu

9. Outgoing NCTC Director Lays Out Today’s Very Real Terrorist Threat

A long interview.

Excerpts:

Director Abizaid: You asked about travel patterns to United States, and I didn’t answer the question, not deliberately, but mostly because I went off in a different direction. I want to be pretty clear of the foreign terrorist organization attacks that have happened in the United States since 9/11, there’s about 45, 46, 47 of them. None of them have been connected to somebody who has entered the country through our southwest border. In fact, the southwest border is a vulnerability, but all of our borders are a vulnerability. Our air borders, our land borders, north and south, our sea borders. And the work that we do in the counterterrorism community is not just about border security, it’s about collection overseas that helps border security. It’s about interior security and law enforcement work that responds to threats should they get through.

It’s a layered defense that has to work and work together to make sure that we’re dealing with threats and being clear-eyed when they present themselves. And so in this job, in the last three years, I’ve grown increasingly concerned about the vulnerability of our southwest border, but we’ve maintained attention to the security of all of our borders just as a matter of what the CT enterprise does.

The Cipher Brief: We’ve seen a big change in the traffic pattern across that border too from a decade ago.

Director Abizaid: Absolutely. It’s completely different. And you’ve got a process for some of these individuals entering the country where they’re not trying to avoid border security agents. They’re trying to find them so they can claim asylum. And that these are big populations of people, and whether we know everything possible about each individual as soon as we encounter them or not, is a really strong part of our border security screening and vetting enterprise. That’s what a really big challenge as the volume of people encountered increases.

There’s a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding about encounters with watch-listed individuals on the border, and what that means about how deliberately terrorists are taking the opportunity of vulnerability at our border and trying to take advantage of that.

The Cipher Brief: Are you seeing state sponsors?

Director Abizaid: That’s a little bit difficult to answer only because there’s large migration patterns that are associated. And look, I’m well outside my lane. I’m not a border security person. But we’re seeing lots of Chinese migrants. We’re seeing lots of Russian migrants. We’re seeing lots of central Asian migrants. We’re seeing a lot of sort of what the border security and homeland security community will call extra hemispheric migration. Within that extra hemispheric migration. We’re concerned about certain populations that could tie back to a terrorist group and that we should increase scrutiny on.

But we’re also working really hard as a counterterrorism community to understand what terrorists overseas intend to do and whether in fact this is a pathway that they’re trying to exploit. And so we’re really clear-eyed about the challenge on the border. But I think that the conversation about the border gets really complicated really quickly for lots of different reasons. But from a threat perspective, it’s something that we recognize as a vulnerability, but we’re trying to be really balanced about understanding what’s actually happening versus sort of the scenarios that can be imagined but aren’t actually present in the country.

The Cipher Brief: It’s got to be somewhat challenging to do that in a political environment where everything can be spun one way or another.

Director Abizaid: That’s true, but that’s always true for the national security community. Your job is to be objective, clear-eyed, exercise, sound judgment about what you know to be the threat, and that’s what we do. So, politicization or not, we’ve got to be really focused on the real threats, not the ones that are imagined. And that’s what we do.

Outgoing NCTC Director Lays Out Today’s Very Real Terrorist Threat

Christine Abizaid talks candidly about Sunni jihadist terrorism and domestic violent extremism

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/outgoing-nctc-director-lays-out-todays-very-real-terrorist-threat

EXCLUSIVEPosted: July 19th, 2024

By The Cipher Brief

EXPERT Q&A — Christine “Christy” Abizaid was sworn in as director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) in June of 2021, as the threat of terrorism was already on the rise. Domestic terrorism investigations had grown by 357% over the decade prior to her swearing in as the new head of the organization tasked with collecting and sharing information on those threats with federal, state and local government partners.

Just months after Abizaid was sworn in to the role, The Cipher Brief sat down with her at The Cipher Brief Threat Conference in her first public interview as director, to talk about how the terrorist threat to America was changing.

“First of all, we’ve got to recognize just how ideologically diverse the threat is,” she said during the onstage interview. “If you think about where the threat to the homeland is most likely to emerge from, it’s most likely to emerge from individuals who are inspired to act by some ideology, whether that’s a domestic violent extremist ideology, or whether it’s an Al-Qaeda-inspired ideology.”

Three years later, as she prepares to retire, the threat landscape is no less diverse.

FBI Director Christopher Wray told the House Appropriations Committee in April that he was hard-pressed to recall a time “where so many threats to our public safety were so elevated all at once” telling the committee that, “we’ve seen the threat from foreign terrorists rise to a whole ‘nother level after October 7.”

“We’ve got Sunni jihadist terrorism, we’ve got domestic violent extremism, we’ve got Iranian-sponsored terrorism,” director Abizaid told The Cipher Brief earlier this month. “And all of this is happening below the radar in ways that we as the intelligence community, have to build an indications and warning architecture, so we stay ahead of it.”

The Cipher Brief sat down with Abizaid in an exclusive exit interview as she turns the helm over to Acting Director Brett Holmgren, to talk about her three years in the role, how the threat of terrorism has changed and what she’s most concerned about today.

(You can listen to this interview and other interviews with national security leaders by subscribing to The State Secrets podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts).

The Cipher Brief: NCTC was stood up after 9/11 to ensure that the multiple intelligence agencies in the United States shared information in time to address the kinds of threats that we saw on 9/11. What is NCTC’s mission today?

Director Abizaid: It’s broadly the same. We serve as the knowledge center for the United States government on all things counterterrorism. We have to maintain a known and suspected terrorist database, which is really fundamentally about identity intelligence and how we can understand who presents the threats and how we as a government should respond to them.

We integrate and analyze all terrorism information across the board, and that includes information that if it’s an FBI holding, then CIA can have it. If it’s in CIA’s holdings, we make sure that if FBI needs it, they can have it. It includes information out of NSA and DHS. This sort of integration function of both holding important terrorism data, but then also making sure that we understand what it means about the threat environment and how the threat environment has evolved, is really important.

When I think about all of the different functions that Congress mandated for NCTC, there’s a strategic operational planning component. There’s a watch and warning component. All of those are hugely relevant today. And in fact, in some ways what Congress told us we needed to do almost 20 years ago now, is more important now than ever in an environment where there are fewer and fewer organizations and agencies whose sole purpose is to do counterterrorism. So, the center serves as this stabilizing function for what is a persistent threat that we must be postured against as the United States government, but also allows other agencies to go deal with other major national security challenges, knowing that the threat is covered down at least by NCTC and the functions we serve.

The Cipher Brief: In an increasingly complicated world unfortunately, issues related to terrorism don’t really make the headlines until an event occurs. So how should the average American be thinking about the terrorist threat today versus 20 years ago?

Director Abizaid: I hope the average American doesn’t have to think about the terrorism threat today as much as they had to in previous decades, in part because we’ve done a good job as the United States government across successive administrations in keeping that threat at bay. The way I think about it is let’s not have the public have to worry about this, let’s make it the job of the counterterrorism enterprise to have to worry about it.

And to be honest, we’ve got our work cut out for us. We are in a very complex threat environment. It’s not at all like what we dealt with immediately after 9/11. It’s very different than when ISIS came onto the scene after having declared a global caliphate. But it is no less complicated, no less concerning, and you want our intelligence agencies, our law enforcement agencies, our border security and homeland security agencies to be focused like a laser on preventing the effects of terrorism in the United States homeland and globally. So, it does not bother me that it is not at the top of American’s minds. In fact, I think that’s a sign of our success. And our job is to do our best to keep it off of their minds.

The Cipher Brief: I’m interested in diving into how this work gets done. Can you talk a little bit about the workforce and the efforts that go into making NCTC good at what it’s doing?

Director Abizaid: NCTC is like no other place in government. There are so many unique things about being here. One of them is that we exist to be almost a melting pot of the IC. We have detailees from other agencies, CIA, DHS, FBI, NSA, we have representation from all sorts of agencies, Secret Service, Coast Guard, diplomatic security, State Department, NGA. We make sure that in doing the work of counterterrorism, you’re doing it in a fundamentally collaborative way that understands not just what our job is here – to analyze a threat and produce products that help policymakers – but to know how the entire CT enterprise is supposed to function and to make sure that functioning is happening in a way that prevents the next attack.

This sort of swivel chair analysis where you can turn around and talk to your counterpart who has a great knowledge set based on the good work they’ve been doing at FBI, but now are doing as a detailee at NCTC, is really phenomenal. So, the work is looking at all of the terrorism information available to the United States government and discerning what the threat is to the American public and communicating that as clearly as possible. And our job is not just to communicate that to the policymaker, to the president of the United States, but it’s to communicate it to the first responder, the state and local tribal territorial authorities. We have a broad array of customers that are responsible for keeping our communities safe, and we think very broadly about our mandate to make sure they know what they need to know to protect Americans.

The Cipher Brief: As director for the past three years, what would you say have been NCTC’s most significant achievements?

Director Abizaid: That’s a really good question. It’s been three years and I keep telling myself I need to reflect. I have not yet had the chance to reflect. But there have been some pretty seminal moments in my time here. It started with the fall of Kabul and this incredible whole of government effort to evacuate American citizens and Afghan partners from the city and the country and bringing them to the United States in a way that they could start a new life with the safety and security here.

And NCTC has a big part of that mission and making sure that the people that come here are the people that are those partners and allies we care so much about while protecting against bad people who might want to enter the country. And so there was a significant effort that we put forth on a 24/7 basis with volunteers from across the community to come here and be part of what was a major crisis period for the United States government. And it was my first couple of months here and I was just incredibly proud of that. Right after that, we had the 20th anniversary of 9/11. President Biden came to our ops center and we talked to him about how we thought about the overall threat environment.

We were a key part of evaluating the impact of the death of Ayman al-Zawahiri sitting in downtown Kabul and helped the president think through that decision by providing analysis on what it would mean. We worked across DOD, the IC, other agencies when we determined that an individual in northern Somalia was key to ISIS’s global financing realm and worked through the decision-making process, provided the analysis that was critical to that to inform the president’s decision to take on a pretty risky mission and take that individual out.

We’ve got this post-October 7th environment which is ahistoric, there is no historical context for the counterterrorism environment like we’re seeing in the post-October 7th environment. And watching my team respond both to an Iranian threat network or the way that ISIS is capitalizing on it, or how Al-Qaeda might respond, or looking at racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists and how they’re borrowing lessons from Hamas’s attack on October 7th, just trying to predict what Hamas’s end game is and how it thinks about itself as a global actor, not just an actor in Gaza. These are all really important critical questions that help our government determine its way forward, not just in the Middle East, but globally from the counterterrorism perspective. And seeing my team respond in so many different ways to the demands of that has been incredible. We’ve just dealt with a major disruption here in the United States, and the work that the intelligence community did to support that, that we’re still doing to make sure that we understand what’s happening here in the context of this heightened global threat environment is important.

The Cipher Brief: Can you talk about that major disruption event?

Director Abizaid: A little over a month ago, DHS and FBI took law enforcement action to disrupt several Tajik individuals who are here in the United States who had ties to ISIS leaders overseas. And the presence of these individuals in the United States raised significant concern to us for all the obvious reasons. But it was happening in this context of a global threat, where ISIS in some ways is resettling after a period of disquiet, ISIS-K has accomplished these major attacks in Iran and Russia using individuals of a similar profile to who we found here in the United States. And it really raised the specter for those of us in the counterterrorism community of the possibility of an attack like that happening here in the homeland.

We’ve seen disruptions over the course of the last couple of years in Europe that have this same sort of profile, and it’s the kind of threat, the kind of change to the threat environment, that we exist to understand and respond to. In helping enable DHS and FBI to take action against one of the most concerning terrorism developments that I’ve seen in my tenure was… That’s the job. That’s what we’re here for. And I was incredibly proud to see this whole community operate the way that we’re supposed to when faced with a real challenging situation.

The Cipher Brief: There have been several events over the past few years on a global scale, and you mentioned October 7th. A lot of counterterrorism analysts are concerned that the way that war is being carried out could be inspiring more terrorist recruits. Have you seen trends like that? And when you talk about disruption, have you seen differences in the three years since you’ve been here about how people are getting into the country?

Director Abizaid: In terms of the trends, we’re quite concerned about how the post-October 7th environment will create a generational impact on terrorist adversaries for the next decade in a way that we’ve got to be on guard for and attentive to. And it’ll affect the global threat landscape in some ways that we can’t predict. We know that it has increased the susceptibility of many across the world to terrorism messaging, terrorism propaganda. It has inspired individuals who may not agree with Hamas, but who see what Hamas accomplished and want to find ways into a similar project.

It has inspired individuals who may have been looking for a reason to mobilize anyway, and all of a sudden, this attack happens. It’s almost like a whole new generation of individuals are being exposed to an age-old conflict for the first time and finding cause with it in ways that are encouraging some of those individuals – not all, and probably a very small percentage – to act out in ways that are highly unpredictable and could significantly increase the threat.

When we look at radicalization timelines across the terrorism landscape, it’s something like an average of 20 months between someone experiencing a radicalizing event and their mobilization to violence.

I think we haven’t seen the impact of Gaza on the global threat landscape. We’ve started to, but we haven’t seen the full impact and probably won’t for a couple of years. And that’s happening in a social media environment that’s unique. It’s happening in a technological environment that’s unique, and it’s happening at a time when the threat landscape is more diverse than we have ever seen it making it highly unpredictable and very complicated as a matter of intelligence challenge.

The Cipher Brief: But I do want to talk about the challenges that do still exist and will be facing the next Acting Director. Sometimes when leaders pass the baton, they leave a letter for the incoming leader. Are you planning to do the same thing and if so, what would be in the letter?

Director Abizaid: I have not decided about a letter, but I am lucky enough to be leaving this job but having a really strong colleague and excellent CT professional come in and step in an acting capacity when I leave, Brett Holmgren. He’s excellent, and we’re doing a little bit of turnover. I’m not sure I need to put it in writing. But as I think about some of the most important aspects of this job, obviously understanding the threat environment and preventing the next attack is the number one challenge. There are a lot of pieces to doing that well. And some of those reside here in NCTC, but some of those are just about leadership across the CT enterprise, the entire executive branch that is in charge of keeping Americans safe.

And thinking broadly about this role, about the charge you have not just as a direct report to the Director of National Intelligence, but as a key advisor to the president on counterterrorism matters, having a complete view of how the counterterrorism enterprise is postured against that threat that you’re otherwise predicting and being really precise about what you need and what you have and don’t have to be able to deal with the threat today and where it will evolve to, that’s the job. And it’s in a time of shifting resources and a time of transformation for this community is just an incredibly important function that whoever sits in this seat should understand. They’re carrying the weight of making sure we have what we need to keep Americans safe.

The Cipher Brief: You mentioned that it’s a complicated world. You mentioned that you briefed the president some three years ago. If you were to brief the president today, would it be a different brief?

Director Abizaid: Yeah, in fact, I have recently briefed the president, and it was quite a different brief. The threat environment today is completely different than we were experiencing on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. At that point, I think I was saying, including publicly, but also to the president, that we are in an environment where the threat to the United States homeland is less acute than it had ever been since 9/11. And in the post-October 7th environment, in this environment of sort of a diverse landscape of different terrorist groups all sort of activated at the same time, in part by that, but also other geopolitical events like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and you have something like the Olympics looming large and so many changes in the overall threat environment happening alongside it.

We’re no longer talking about a less acute threat than at any time. We’re talking about one that is elevating from the trough. Now, an elevated threat environment today is different than an elevated threat environment on 9/12 or in 2014, after ISIS’s declaration of a caliphate. But it is elevating, and we’ve got to be really clear eyed about that as a terrorism community, as a US government, and focus on the kind of international partnerships, the kind of operational partnerships that are going to matter to keep that threat at bay.

The Cipher Brief: Let’s talk for just a minute about strategic shifts and countermeasures. Given the shift of the center of gravity in Sunni globally global jihad relating to Africa, how is the US adjusting its counterterrorism strategies to address that expanding influence of ISIS and al-Qaeda regional affiliates, in the Africa continent in particular?

Director Abizaid: This is a really important challenge. From an intelligence perspective, we’re doing all the right things to try and understand what the contours of that threat are and what it means for the future of the threat to the West. In general, this transition of the center of gravity to different parts of Africa for both al-Qaeda, but also ISIS has meant a sort of localization trend that has focused these groups on expanding their purchase in these communities in especially west Africa, east Africa, but not necessarily projecting that threat from those regions.

However, if you don’t forestall their advancement now, the likelihood that in five years you’ll face a transnational threat emerging from this new center of gravity is quite high. So the policy work, the operational work, the intelligence work is all about understanding the threat as best we can discern it, being able to position ourselves so that if that threat changes, if it becomes transnational, we understand it’s coming and have done the work to stop the spread, and to enable our partners in the region, in some ways to generate new partnerships where other CT partnerships didn’t exist in the past so that they can deal with this at its nascent stage, not when it’s so advanced it’s coming at us.

The Cipher Brief: Let’s talk about emerging threats and intelligence assessment. The recent threat assessment, the latest one, highlights the growing risk of attacks using chemical, biological, radioactive and nuclear materials (CBRN). Can you elaborate on the current capabilities of terrorist groups in that domain? How concerned are you that we might see a different kind of terrorist attack?

Director Abizaid: The evolution of terrorist TTPs is always a major concern. I would say that the CBRN capabilities of terrorist groups, especially on the Sunni extremist side, is about where it’s been for the last several years. Where I’m very concerned is where state sponsors can introduce capability to terrorist actors in ways that have significant gains. When you look at organizations like Iraqi Shia militant groups, or Lebanese Hezbollah, those tie closely to Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism it’s concerning.

Though, I would say that the evolution of TTPs that I’m most concerned about are less in the CBRN realm and more about the proliferation of drones and that being used as a tactic against us. We see that in Iraq and Syria against U.S. forces, including to really terrible consequences. But we’re also worried about how easy that tactic is to replicate in other areas where you don’t have major force protection schemes for U.S. forces or U.S. diplomats.

Other technological advancements that really matter tie into AI and ubiquitous encryption and all things that the democratization of technology is also enabling terrorist groups and terrorist elements in ways that we’ve got to keep peace with. And so there are a number of different ways in which we have to do that.

The Cipher Brief: How are you thinking about the vulnerabilities of Americans overseas? Can you talk about what you just did, which is state sponsors getting involved in these new alliances that are now forming between Russia, China, North Korea, Iran? Iran has been an active player in terrorism for decades.

Director Abizaid: Yeah, it’s interesting. On the one hand, you have the Sunni extremist threat, the Al-Qaeda and ISIS type threat, which is, as I said, elevated from a relative trough, but still not what it was. Lower sophistication in actors, a little bit more informal in its formation than it was at least certainly in prior years. But you know that even though that threat is less sophisticated, they’re always intent on attacks, and the more harm they can do, including to civilians, including against soft targets they will want to do.

That’s really an intelligence challenge of understanding capability, not intent. When you look at state sponsors, when you look at Iran, you look at Hezbollah, you look at groups that understand the significant escalatory consequences to going too far, intent becomes a much more important part of the equation to understand how will this threat affect Americans. And then when you are in escalation periods like we are in the Middle East right now, knowing how those escalation periods could affect that calculus, what it means for the US presence worldwide. Because it’s not so much whether they have the capability that it’s whether they’re willing to bear the consequences of using that capability in a terrorist act and generate the kind of response that the United States would then pursue.

And so we have an Iran that I think is probably more brazen as a state sponsor than we’ve seen in decades in this current environment. As they’ve been managing through what the consequences look like in the Middle East of further escalation, you’ve seen some pragmatism both from Hassan Nasrallah as the head of Hezbollah, but also by the supreme leader in Iran. But that can change quite quickly.

And so we’re constantly monitoring that. We’re constantly looking for ways to understand what that Iran threat, how it presents, where it’s most likely to affect us outside of the obvious places in the Middle East and what we should do to combat it. And so when you see disruptions in Brazil of a Hezbollah plot, you certainly perk up.

The Cipher Brief: How are you thinking about potential terror sleeper cells in the U.S.?

Director Abizaid: I do not view our current threat in the United States as one of sleeper cells, as one of al-Qaeda having infiltrated and then gone to ground. Or even ISIS, even in relation to this last threat, having infiltrated or gone to ground. Hezbollah is very sophisticated. It’s got all the sort of state actor concerns that we have. I am frankly more concerned right now about Iran, Iranian state agents working through surrogates to do assassination plotting against former U.S. officials and what infrastructure they’re trying to use in the United States to make that happen.

The Cipher Brief: They’re actively still working on these plots?

Director Abizaid: Absolutely. There is no question in my mind that the Iranians are still intent on or avenging the death of Qasem Soleimani. They’re absolutely still intent on that. When they’re willing to pull the trigger, in what way they’re going to pursue it, who they’ve identified as potential targets for retribution, that’s all sort of fair game, and we’re constantly looking at that. But the strategic intent is there and it’s not going to go away.

The Cipher Brief: And you feel confident you know who these targets might be?

Director Abizaid: There’s a recurring list of individuals that we’re always making sure we protect.

The Cipher Brief: In light of Hezbollah’s ongoing provocations along Israel’s northern border and it’s anti-US stance, what are the current assessments of Hezbollah’s capability to target US interests both regionally and globally?

Director Abizaid: I’m more worried about Hezbollah’s intent than capability. They do have a capability. I think they’ve got a capability that is in Europe, it’s South America, we’re worried about what could be here. But whether or not they’re going to be involved in a major escalation in terms of external attacks that I think is about whether they intend to be in this current environment, understanding the significant escalatory consequences. Something like a war in Lebanon is high on our mind for exactly those kinds of implications.

The Cipher Brief: What about the rise of transnational racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists posing significant challenges? What are the main drivers behind that movement, and how are you thinking about NCTC’s understanding of that environment?

Director Abizaid: The way that we see it manifest now, whether in attacks in the United States or attacks overseas or just threats overseas, goes all the way back to an attack in Norway by the Anders Behring Breivik who is constantly cited again and again, his manifesto, his ideology is sort of recycled through every subsequent attack, whether it’s Christchurch that happened in New Zealand or El Paso here in the United States. We saw elements of Breivik’s writing, Terrance writing, the El Paso shooters writing, a Poway attacker, all come through in a Buffalo attacker’s shooting of black Americans at a supermarket in New York.

And it’s this sort of ethos of leaderless resistance informed by many different ideas, but generally sort of a belief in replacement theory and accelerationism, a belief in the superiority of the white race. And in Germany, they talk a lot about neo-Nazism. We’ve seen some of that in places in Brazil. There are other aspects that can be quite anti-authority and anti-government. For us at NCTC, when we’re focused specifically on the foreign nexus of a threat that presents here or anywhere else, these individual attacks that happen in different countries, seemingly disconnected, but all sort of sharing the same fundamental ideology all referencing each other in some cases, lionizing each other as saints makes it not a domestic problem in the United States, not a domestic problem in Germany, not a Norway or Nordics problem or something that’s happening separately in Brazil or Australia. It means it’s all interconnected.

And because it presents so differently than an al-Qaeda threat or an ISIS threat or Hezbollah or Iran threat, as a counterterrorism community, we’re having to find new ways and new processes to understand what’s happening in our individual countries as part of a global problem, not just individual domestic problem.

The Cipher Brief: And then sharing that information.

Director Abizaid: Sharing that information is always a challenge. But we have been actually working… I’ve been really proud of our team at NCTC, working closely with the White House, but also our counterparts overseas to make sure that we’re engaging this conversation, understanding it’s the next evolution of a different kind of threat that we have got to stay on top of.

The Cipher Brief: What’s next for Christine Abizaid?

Director Abizaid: I do not know. I think my big plan is to be a class mom for my son’s pre-kindergarten class. But I’m going to take a vacation with him.

The Cipher Brief: It’s a lofty goal. It may be more stressful than what you’re doing now.

Director Abizaid: I actually think I’m terrified of it. I think it might be the hardest job I’ve ever done, so I haven’t yet pulled the trigger on that. Can I actually go back on one thing?

The Cipher Brief: Absolutely.

Director Abizaid: You asked about travel patterns to United States, and I didn’t answer the question, not deliberately, but mostly because I went off in a different direction. I want to be pretty clear of the foreign terrorist organization attacks that have happened in the United States since 9/11, there’s about 45, 46, 47 of them. None of them have been connected to somebody who has entered the country through our southwest border. In fact, the southwest border is a vulnerability, but all of our borders are a vulnerability. Our air borders, our land borders, north and south, our sea borders. And the work that we do in the counterterrorism community is not just about border security, it’s about collection overseas that helps border security. It’s about interior security and law enforcement work that responds to threats should they get through.

It’s a layered defense that has to work and work together to make sure that we’re dealing with threats and being clear-eyed when they present themselves. And so in this job, in the last three years, I’ve grown increasingly concerned about the vulnerability of our southwest border, but we’ve maintained attention to the security of all of our borders just as a matter of what the CT enterprise does.

The Cipher Brief: We’ve seen a big change in the traffic pattern across that border too from a decade ago.

Director Abizaid: Absolutely. It’s completely different. And you’ve got a process for some of these individuals entering the country where they’re not trying to avoid border security agents. They’re trying to find them so they can claim asylum. And that these are big populations of people, and whether we know everything possible about each individual as soon as we encounter them or not, is a really strong part of our border security screening and vetting enterprise. That’s what a really big challenge as the volume of people encountered increases.

There’s a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding about encounters with watch-listed individuals on the border, and what that means about how deliberately terrorists are taking the opportunity of vulnerability at our border and trying to take advantage of that.

The Cipher Brief: Are you seeing state sponsors?

Director Abizaid: That’s a little bit difficult to answer only because there’s large migration patterns that are associated. And look, I’m well outside my lane. I’m not a border security person. But we’re seeing lots of Chinese migrants. We’re seeing lots of Russian migrants. We’re seeing lots of central Asian migrants. We’re seeing a lot of sort of what the border security and homeland security community will call extra hemispheric migration. Within that extra hemispheric migration. We’re concerned about certain populations that could tie back to a terrorist group and that we should increase scrutiny on.

But we’re also working really hard as a counterterrorism community to understand what terrorists overseas intend to do and whether in fact this is a pathway that they’re trying to exploit. And so we’re really clear-eyed about the challenge on the border. But I think that the conversation about the border gets really complicated really quickly for lots of different reasons. But from a threat perspective, it’s something that we recognize as a vulnerability, but we’re trying to be really balanced about understanding what’s actually happening versus sort of the scenarios that can be imagined but aren’t actually present in the country.

The Cipher Brief: It’s got to be somewhat challenging to do that in a political environment where everything can be spun one way or another.

Director Abizaid: That’s true, but that’s always true for the national security community. Your job is to be objective, clear-eyed, exercise, sound judgment about what you know to be the threat, and that’s what we do. So, politicization or not, we’ve got to be really focused on the real threats, not the ones that are imagined. And that’s what we do.

The Cipher Brief: How has technology impacted your mission?

Director Abizaid: So definitely technology has impacted the way in which terrorist groups operate, both the tactics that they employ, but also the way that they can avoid scrutiny. And that’s been a challenge. But we’ve got to be better as a United States government at leveraging technology to our benefit. You look at something like the debate around FISA 702, and that’s fundamentally a story of U.S. technological innovation and the way in which it has affected the globe and how we need to make sure that we’re taking advantage of that in ways that protect the country.

If you look at the big data challenge that every organization big and small are dealing with, that’s true of the intelligence community. How do we understand what information is sitting in that big data and we use it to discover real threats? How do we reveal to ourselves what’s going on that we should pay attention to from a terrorism perspective?

So the story of technology is not just about the threat, but it’s how we respond to the threat. And any leader in this organization or the IC has got to get really creative about how to keep pace with technological change, and frankly, we’ve got to do it faster than we are.

The Cipher Brief: Final question. What are you going to miss the most about this role?

Director Abizaid: Oh, the people. I love this job. This is my favorite job ever. The organization is such a unique organization. And the way that CT professionals and NCTC professionals in particular just take on the responsibility of their job. This place in crisis is a real thing to behold. Seeing people charged with doing some of the hardest things we do as a government and watching them shine every time, it’s been really inspirational actually. So I am actually incredibly sad to leave this job. It’s been three years. It’s time, but it’s really hard to say goodbye.

Disclaimer: Our Interview with Director Abizaid was conducted using NCTC recording equipment in a secure facility. NCTC reviewed the audio before providing it to The Cipher Brief.

Who’s Reading this? More than 500K of the most influential national security experts in the world. Need full access to what the Experts are reading?

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.

10. Build Iron Dome in the United States To Prepare for Israel’s Worst Day

Build Iron Dome in the United States To Prepare for Israel’s Worst Day

By Bradley Bowman & Lydia LaFavor

July 20, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/07/20/build_iron_dome_in_the_united_states_to_prepare_for_israels_worst_day_1045936.html

The Marine Corps’ Medium-Range Intercept Capability prototype successfully hit several simultaneously-launched cruise missile representative targets during a recent live-fire test. (Courtesy photo by Michael Klapp)

Israel is racing to build more Iron Dome air defense systems amid a growing threat of war with Hezbollah, which has a massive stockpile of more than 150,000 mortars, rockets, and missiles. Yet Iron Dome systems themselves and their manufacturing facilities within Israel may become targets for Hezbollah, which is why the United States and Israel need to build a full, redundant Iron Dome production and integration capacity in the United States.

Iron Dome is an air defense system designed to destroy incoming rockets, artillery, and mortars and can also intercept some unmanned aerial vehicles and cruise missiles, in certain conditions. The system has four primary components: the Tamir interceptor, a launcher, a radar, and a battle management and control system.

Suppliers based in the United States now help produce more than half of the parts for Iron Dome and a higher portion of parts for its interceptor. In addition to producing parts, nascent efforts are underway to eventually build the entire Tamir interceptor in the United States. That is an essential endeavor, but it is not sufficient.

In a full-scale war, Hezbollah would employ much of its massive stockpile of mortars, short- to long-range unguided rockets, unguided short-range ballistic missiles, precision-guided munitions, and unmanned aerial systems to target Israel. Some of that effort would be focused on attempting to destroy Israel’s Iron Dome systems to enable more effective subsequent attacks.

This is not theoretical conjecture. Hezbollah released a video on June 5 suggesting it had targeted an Iron Dome launch site, likely revealing an element of the terror group’s plans in a major escalation. Israel would need to replace destroyed Iron Dome launchers, in addition to replenishing its depleted Tamir stockpile.

In response, some may shrug and point to existing factories in Israel to produce replacement Iron Dome systems and Tamir interceptors, suggesting that Israeli production capacity is sufficient and arguing that the significant cost of establishing redundant production capacity is not worth it. The problem is that those production facilities in Israel themselves could be damaged or destroyed by Hezbollah to reduce, delay, or even eliminate Israel’s ability to replace destroyed Iron Dome systems or expended Tamir interceptors.

It is worth noting that on June 18, Hezbollah released a video emphasizing its drone reconnaissance of Iron Dome sites and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems facilities around Haifa.

Even if most Iron Dome and Tamir production facilities in Israel were not damaged or destroyed, a significant number of workers in those production and supply facilities would be mobilized as reservists. Following October 7, Israel activated over 360,000 reservists, one of the largest mobilizations since 1973. Ten to fifteen percent of the tech sector workforce was mobilized for reserve duty. Seventy percent of Israeli high-tech firms that responded to a survey by the Israel Innovation Authority reported the mobilization impacted their productivity.

In a full-scale war with Hezbollah, Israel could be forced to implement a much larger call-up of reservists. Many of them would include Israelis who work in the country’s defense industries, including in facilities that build and resupply the Iron Dome system. A possible outflow of workers could complicate and slow the ability to replenish its air and missile defense capabilities at the worst possible moment. If the war is longer than some expect, as we have seen in Gaza, these complications could compound.

So, what’s to be done?

In addition to producing and fielding more systems and munitions, the United States and Israel should work together to strengthen the Iron Dome and Tamir supply base in the United States and create a redundant full production and integration capability in the United States for every major component of the Iron Dome system.

This effort, no doubt, would come with a significant cost. But the benefits are numerous and clear.

The creation of this redundant production capacity in the United States would allow American industry to temporarily replace the production capacity of damaged or destroyed factories in Israel. And if Hezbollah fails to successfully target the facilities in Israel, the American facilities could come alongside factories in Israel to speed up the rate of replacement and replenishment.

In addition to helping Israel defend itself, the establishment of this redundant production capacity in the United States would create American jobs and third-country export opportunities (necessary to sustain the production lines), while strengthening the U.S. economy and defense industrial base. That, in turn, would help to ensure U.S. forces are equipped with the best and most advanced capabilities possible.

Recognizing the logic of this argument and the need for redundant production capacity in the United States, efforts are already underway in Camden, Arkansas, to replicate Rafael’s integration facility in Haifa and produce fully assembled Tamir missiles and the U.S.-licensed version: SkyHunter. Industry broke ground in Camden on February 21, and officials forecast that the Camden facility will manufacture up to 2,000 Tamir full missiles per year, including 325 SkyHunter missiles for the United States Marine Corps’ Medium-Range Intercept Capability (MRIC) program. But that Tamir integration facility in Camden is not scheduled to be up and running until 2026.

Congress should watch this effort closely and ensure it is not delayed.

But legislators should not stop there. They should also take two more steps.

Congress should authorize, fund, and require the Pentagon to work with industry and Israel to establish a redundant full integration and production capacity in the United States for all components of the Iron Dome system.

Congress should also require the Pentagon to provide a written report without delay identifying any sole source suppliers in the Iron Dome (including Tamir) supply base and mandate that the Department of Defense contract with a second U.S. supplier in each case to eliminate any single points of failure in the supply base that could delay system replacement or interceptor replenishment.

Laudable efforts are underway to produce more Iron Dome systems to help Israel defend itself. But those efforts are not enough. Congress should ensure the administration works with Israel and industry to establish as quickly as possible a full production and integration capability for all Iron Dome components in the United States. There’s no time to waste.

Bradley Bowman is senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Dr. Lydia LaFavor is a research fellow.

11. Pentagon confronts Gold Star divide among grieving military families

Pentagon confronts Gold Star divide among grieving military families

Some want to preserve a strict interpretation of who qualifies for a status revered within the military community. Others seek a more inclusive definition.

By Dan Lamothe

July 15, 2024 at 5:00 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Dan Lamothe · July 15, 2024

First Lt. Daniel Weiss was a 25-year-old Army Ranger preparing for his fourth combat deployment to Afghanistan when he died by suicide at his Tacoma, Wash., apartment in 2012. There were difficult days after that, recalled his father, Andy. But what proved both surprising and hurtful, he said, were efforts to ensure his son’s death was viewed differently than those of fellow service members who had been killed in action.

The family learned, for instance, that Daniel’s name would be excluded from a monument at Joint Base Lewis-McChord memorializing casualties of war. A few years later, at a brunch for military survivors back home in Illinois, the Weisses were told their invitation had been an accident. Though they were allowed to stay, he said, it was made clear the event was for Gold Star families.

“To this day,” Andy Weiss said he feels a “profound sense of loss” when thinking about his son — a pain made worse by “this divisive ‘you’re a Gold Star and you’re not.’” There should be no distinction, in his view. To suggest otherwise, he added, is “ridiculous.”

Weiss’s frustrations are part of a larger, emotionally charged dispute over how America recognizes the families of deceased U.S. troops. The debate was expected to come to a head soon, after the Biden administration spent months reviewing the recommendations of a congressionally appointed working group assigned to settle on a standardized definition for Gold Star families — a process that included consideration of not only troops killed in combat but also suicide victims like Daniel Weiss, and those who die in tragic accidents, such as helicopter crashes, or from fatal service-related illness.

On Friday, however, after multiple inquiries from The Washington Post, the Pentagon withdrew the working group’s proposal — which remains shrouded in secrecy — as it awaited final approval. Maj. Grace Geiger, a Defense Department spokeswoman, declined to detail the group’s recommendation but said the decision to pull it back was based on initial feedback from within the administration. It will be resubmitted, she added, “at an appropriate time.”

The “Gold Star” term dates to World War I, when families hung window banners in their homes bearing blue stars for loved ones fighting overseas and gold ones for those who died. Congress later passed legislation stating that the families of those who die overseas shall receive a Gold Star lapel pin, a small, distinctive decoration with a gold star and purple background. Among the actions that qualified were dying “in military operations involving conflict with an opposing enemy force” or in a terrorist attack against the United States.

The family of service members who die off the battlefield qualify for what’s called the Next of Kin pin. And while both kinds of families generally receive the same government benefits, culturally one stands apart, some say.

The Gold Star title is a “unique and special honor for those who have given their lives in defense of this nation in combat,” said retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, who as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until last year, and a wartime commander for many years before that, developed a kinship with many families of those killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. In an interview, Milley said he supports maintaining the narrow definition the Pentagon has had in place for years.

This report is based on interviews with more than 20 people familiar with the issue. No matter what decision is made, those most closely involved in the discussion said, the outcome is certain to cause pain to grieving families and inflame long-simmering tensions among organizations typically united in their support for military families.

The broadest proposed change would encompass families of combat casualties and those whose deaths were from suicide, accident or illness. The latter category could include President Biden, whose son Beau, a lawyer in the Army National Guard, died of brain cancer in 2015. The president has linked his son’s death at age 46 to noxious smoke he inhaled while deployed to Iraq years earlier.

The White House declined to discuss its preferred course of action. In a statement, the National Security Council said the president “respects — and remains deeply grateful for — all those military families” grieving.

“Each loss hurts,” the statement says. “Each one tells a story. Each story deserves the country’s solemn recognition.”

The dispute

The effort to broaden the Gold Star definition is led by the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), an influential nonprofit established in 1994. Andy Weiss leads Chicago-area grief support groups for the organization. Its founder, Bonnie Carroll, lost her husband, Army Brig. Gen. Tom Carroll, in a plane crash in Alaska two years earlier, and in 2015 received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work.

In a June letter to senior lawmakers, TAPS and a few dozen other military and veterans nonprofits made their case that it’s time for Congress to legislate an “inclusive definition” that recognizes an array of military deaths. The signatories estimated that doing so would cover about 3 million people, and include all kinds of survivors, any time Congress looks anew at the government benefits provided to military survivors. Past legislation, they argued, has not included consistent language, muddying understanding of what a Gold Star family is.

“Creating a consistent, legal definition,” the letter said, “will ensure future legislative proposals improve benefits for ALL surviving families.”

Among the organizations that co-signed were Blue Star Families, the Independence Fund and the Military Officers Association of America. But other major nonprofits withheld their support, including the American Legion, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the Travis Manion Foundation and the Wounded Warrior Project.

Ryan Manion, chief executive officer of the Travis Manion Foundation, said the definition of a Gold Star family doesn’t need to change to properly recognize other grieving military families. Her brother, a Marine Corps officer, was killed in Iraq in 2007.

“Loss is loss, and I run an organization that represents and has programming for families who have lost a loved one, no matter the circumstances,” she said. “But I think we run a slippery slope when we try to take a specific designation or recognition and expand that.”

Allison Jaslow, an Iraq War veteran who is CEO of IAVA, credited TAPS for its work on behalf of grieving families, but said she sees this proposal as overly broad.

“What I wouldn’t want to do,” she said, “is for the sake of inclusivity not appropriately honor those who truly made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of our country.”

The American Legion in May drafted a resolution defining Gold Star status narrowly as close family members of someone who has been killed or died in a variety of other actions overseas. Matthew Shuman, a senior official with the organization, said members discussed the issue for some time and decided to act as it became apparent Congress was interested.

Carroll, the TAPS founder, said that ultimately her objective is to eliminate the “hierarchy of grief” that can compound the challenges mourning families face.

Leaders ‘need to step up’

The dispute’s volatility caught senators by surprise two years ago in an episode that has not been reported previously.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) united to introduce legislation that would have created a new federal holiday, Gold Star Families Day, on the last Monday of September, elevating a day first recognized by Congress in 1936. The proposed legislation defined Gold Star families broadly as the immediate loved ones of any service member who died “while serving in the Armed Forces” or “from a service-connected injury or illness.”

That definition, supported by TAPS, caused a backlash from the families of service members killed in combat and some senior defense officials, prompting some co-sponsors of the bill to withdraw their support and effectively tanking the legislation, said Tony Cordero, president of Sons and Daughters in Touch, a nonprofit supporting the children of U.S. troops killed in action during the Vietnam War. Two other people familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue, confirmed the account.

Warren’s office declined to comment. Ernst, a retired Army officer, “has spoken directly to Gold Star spouses and families, and understands the importance of honoring their fallen loved ones accordingly,” her office said in a statement. The bill never received a vote.

Cordero, whose father, William, was killed when his plane went down during a mission over North Vietnam, said his group is “adamantly opposed” to an “all-of-the-above approach.” He recommended instead a rebranding and redesign of the Next of Kin pin, and encouraged the Pentagon to regard the designation with appropriate seriousness such that those families don’t feel slighted.

“It is incredibly difficult to thread the needle with the precise words so that you don’t offend someone who’s loved one died of natural causes, died in a training accident, died of suicide, died of anything other than combat,” Cordero said. “Because the minute you use the wrong word, the entire conversation descends into an emotional mess, and that’s not good for anybody.”

Others are split on the issue.

Jane Horton, whose husband, Christopher, was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2011 while serving in the Army National Guard, said the issue can’t be left to surviving military families to decide because “it is not possible to make an unemotional decision regarding our loved one’s service and sacrifice.” Horton, who worked on military casualty assistance issues in both the Obama and Trump administrations, said senior military leaders “need to step up and make hard decisions” to define the Gold Star designation “once and for all.” She declined to share her opinion on how the issue should be handled.

Pam Zembiec, whose husband, Douglas, died in an ambush in Baghdad while serving in the Marine Corps in 2007, said the Pentagon is not diminishing the deaths of U.S. troops outside combat zones by withholding the Gold Star designation from them. She supports keeping the designation focused on those killed in action.

“It’s not about the grief and the death and the loss,” she said. “It’s about taking away from history.”

Nancy Mullen said that while her husband, Sean, was killed in action in Afghanistan while serving in an Army Special Forces unit in 2013, she favors making the title apply broadly.

“We don’t choose how our loved one dies, and they die from service,” she said. “I hate to see our community fighting over that when there are so many other things that are more important.”

The Washington Post · by Dan Lamothe · July 15, 2024

12. Why Trump picking Vance as VP is about US foreign policy

I would not consider Vance very knowledgeable about foreign policy. I think the extent of his foreign policy experience is as a Marine journalist for a tour in Iraq. But I suppose the views below appeal to certain factions, perhaps especially those of the Quincy Institute.

Excerpts:

The pick set off a political firestorm unlike any vice presidential announcement in recent memory, with much of it centered on Vance’s foreign policy views. Vance’s detractors have gone over his positions with a fine-tooth comb, grasping for convenient labels. Within less than one day of the announcement, Vance was described as everything from an “arch-isolationist” who spells the end of Reaganism to a “hawk” on virtually every issue except for the Ukraine war.The pick set off a political firestorm unlike any vice presidential announcement in recent memory, with much of it centered on Vance’s foreign policy views. Vance’s detractors have gone over his positions with a fine-tooth comb, grasping for convenient labels. Within less than one day of the announcement, Vance was described as everything from an “arch-isolationist” who spells the end of Reaganism to a “hawk” on virtually every issue except for the Ukraine war.

On the level of party dynamics, Vance’s selection marks nothing less than a stunning rebuke of a tired, fading foreign policy consensus that is increasingly divorced from the challenges confronting the U.S. It is as strong a signal as any that Trump, if victorious in November, will likely seek to bring the Ukraine war to a swift conclusion as one of his first policy items. It’s also possible, depending on a wide array of domestic and external factors that are difficult to predict, that with influence from Vance and others, Trump could pursue a broader re-posturing away from reflexive interventionism and needless foreign entanglements.

It is in this light that Vance’s defiant stance on Ukraine poses a means to a much larger grand strategic goal. He believes, as does a large share of the American people and, at least to some degree, the man at the top of the GOP ticket, that the nature of the trans-Atlantic relationship needs to change in order for the U.S. to find a strategically sustainable footing in an era of renewed great power competition.

Why Trump picking Vance as VP is about US foreign policy

The Ohio senator's vision on Ukraine can be the blueprint for a revised GOP orthodoxy

responsiblestatecraft.org · by Mark Episkopos · July 19, 2024

quincyinst.org

Jul 19, 2024

German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, known for his sardonic quips, famously remarked that the United States is buffered by weak neighbors to the north and south and by fish to the east and west. Though Bismarck sought to highlight America’s latent geographic advantages, its remoteness brings another blessing that has become emblematic of post-Cold War U.S. domestic politics: the U.S. has the power and resources to shape the international system, but is simultaneously detached from it in ways that its Old World counterparts cannot afford to be.

There has thus been a striking contrast between America’s historically unprecedented ability to influence the world and the sheer lack of foreign policy substance in its public discourse. That is, until now.

Former President Donald Trump’s decision to name Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate bucked two well-established trends: vice presidential picks being inconsequential, and foreign policy being a non-factor in American domestic politics.

The pick set off a political firestorm unlike any vice presidential announcement in recent memory, with much of it centered on Vance’s foreign policy views. Vance’s detractors have gone over his positions with a fine-tooth comb, grasping for convenient labels. Within less than one day of the announcement, Vance was described as everything from an “arch-isolationist” who spells the end of Reaganism to a “hawk” on virtually every issue except for the Ukraine war.

Yet this piecemeal approach to understanding Vance and his significance on the GOP ticket misses a larger and much more important context. It is true that Vance has made Ukraine something of a signature foreign policy issue, emerging as one of the most forceful Senate critics of a Western Ukraine policy that has not yielded the results anticipated by its architects in the White House. But Vance’s views on the Ukraine conflict, compelling and well-formulated as they are, underlie a deeper set of convictions that reflects the changing face of American politics.

On the level of party dynamics, Vance’s selection marks nothing less than a stunning rebuke of a tired, fading foreign policy consensus that is increasingly divorced from the challenges confronting the U.S. It is as strong a signal as any that Trump, if victorious in November, will likely seek to bring the Ukraine war to a swift conclusion as one of his first policy items. It’s also possible, depending on a wide array of domestic and external factors that are difficult to predict, that with influence from Vance and others, Trump could pursue a broader re-posturing away from reflexive interventionism and needless foreign entanglements.

It is in this light that Vance’s defiant stance on Ukraine poses a means to a much larger grand strategic goal. He believes, as does a large share of the American people and, at least to some degree, the man at the top of the GOP ticket, that the nature of the trans-Atlantic relationship needs to change in order for the U.S. to find a strategically sustainable footing in an era of renewed great power competition.

There is little question that the Ukraine war and the West’s reaction to it has weakened Europe, hobbling its economic dynamism and rendering it increasingly dependent on the United States. To a new generation of realist foreign policy thinkers, this dependence should not be celebrated as a form of “unity” but is, instead, a liability that further exacerbates a longstanding pattern of U.S. overcommitment in Europe.

Vance has championed the view that Europe should stand on its own two feet militarily and do more to provide for its own defense. This argument, which is resonant with a new style of populist politics that has radically transformed the GOP over the past decade, cuts past the usual talking points around the need for greater “burden sharing” to the more fundamental realization that America’s post-Cold War alliance structures need to be updated to better reflect the challenges that the U.S. faces today.

This is not an argument for abandoning Europe or leaving NATO, which is something that no prominent figure in the realism and restraint coalition supports, but to strive for a transatlantic relationship that is characterized by partnership over what has increasingly been a kind of one-sided dependence. None of this is possible while Europe is roiled by the most destructive war on its continent since 1945, which explains the urgency with which Vance and others representing the new populist face of the GOP seek to bring a negotiated end to the Ukraine war as it enters its third year.

On a broader level, Vance’s political ascendance represents a generational passing of the torch to a new wave of politicians who have taken up the difficult task of reimagining America’s place in the world after decades of policy decisions steeped in a hubristic, ill-conceived drive to preserve the waning post-Cold War unipolar moment during which the U.S. was able to act virtually unchallenged on the world stage. These leaders, who defy the established left-right political spectrum, are drawing national attention to the fact that America’s balance sheet of resources and commitments has been unsustainable for years. They perceive the link between overcommitment abroad and decline at home and seek to find ways to end this ruinous cycle.

The debate over means and ends in foreign policy has long been a sideshow in the overarching drama of American politics, relegated to small expert circles in the academic and think tank worlds. But even a great power as strongly advantaged as the U.S. was in the 1990s and early 2000s can only stretch itself so much, and for so long, before retrenchment becomes unavoidable.

The global challenges confronting America have reached a critical mass; a veil of normalcy and “business as usual,” underwritten for decades by America’s massive comparative advantages and the absence of peer competitors, has been abruptly lifted with simultaneous crises in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Trump’s VP decision was presaged by an unprecedented explosion of public interest in foreign policy among concerned voters from all across the country. In a longue durée view of American history, Vance’s selection may very well turn out to be a watershed moment for the democratization of U.S. foreign policy. After decades of benign complacency, American voters have concluded that foreign policy is too important to be left to the technocrats and special interest groups. Whatever comes next, a Rubicon has been crossed in Milwaukee. ›

Mark Episkopos

Mark Episkopos is a Eurasia Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is also an Adjunct Professor of History at Marymount University. Episkopos holds a PhD in history from American University and a masters degree in international affairs from Boston University.

Consolidated News Photos / Shutterstock.com

13. Is China's social contract about to break down?

Is China's social contract about to break down?

unherd.com · by John Rapley

July 19, 2024 - 1:00pm

Steady as she goes. That was the message from the Third Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party, which concluded yesterday. Watched closely as an indicator of the ruling elite’s policy intentions, the communique that emerged from the meeting suggested no major change to the country’s economic direction.

But Xi Jinping saying everything is going to plan is starting to sound a bit like Joe Biden saying he’s going to beat Donald Trump in November’s election. Because in an unfortunate piece of timing, as the Plenum began the Chinese statistical agency reported that economic growth had recently fallen below the talismanic 5% figure.

For quite some time, economists have been warning that the current Chinese growth strategy is running out of road. Building manufacturing industries to export to the world has delivered Beijing the phenomenal rise in income it has experienced in the last 30 years. However, there’s only so much capacity on the planet to absorb Chinese products.

Decades of cheap Chinese goods flooding the world enabled Western shoppers to keep shopping and Western firms to reap the profit bounty by outsourcing production to China. But that also led to the decay of industrial heartlands, stirring the rise of populist politicians who made their names on bashing China. Now those populists are in power or knocking at the doors across the West. With a second Trump presidency currently looking likely, the reception Chinese trade delegations will receive on their travels will get even frostier.

Yet the response in Beijing has been to double down on export promotion with subsidies and supply-side reforms that will cut the cost of doing business. Still, the fundamental imbalance remains: China exports far more than it imports, and buys relatively little of what it produces.

While the government could reinvigorate the economy by reducing its export subsidies and instead using the money to raise local incomes, thereby enabling Chinese consumers to buy more of what their factories are producing, the leadership is so far resisting such an approach. Xi Jinping dislikes “welfarism”, and wants to build Chinese supply chains across the globe so as to secure his nation’s future.

Instead, the Plenum communique referred to the need to “maintain social stability” and “strengthen public opinion guidance”, a hint that if the social situation deteriorates, greater repression may be in order. These are not the words of a self-confident ruling party.

But in the long term, this approach doesn’t look sustainable. Throughout Chinese history, the “Mandate of Heaven” has always been an essential component of the country’s social contract: the leaders can enjoy absolute power, provided they deliver the goods. In a country that has always had strong regional power centres, maintaining control by force alone seldom works over anything more than the medium term.

The social contract between the Communist Party and the Chinese people has itself been a simple one. In return for giving up Western-style freedom and democracy, their government will deliver them Western-style prosperity. Until now, that has worked. But in recent years, as the economy began slowing, social discontent began rising. So far this hasn’t burst into open protest. but the eruption of civil unrest during the Covid lockdowns shows just how difficult it can be to maintain social order in a country of over one billion people.

That’s why the 5% growth target has assumed such importance, standing as proof that the governing class is keeping its end of the bargain. So we needn’t be surprised if later in the year the government caves and engages in some kind of demand-focused stimulus spending, if only to juice the figures enough to hit their target.

John Rapley is an author and academic who divides his time between London, Johannesburg and Ottawa. His books include Why Empires Fall: Rome, America and the Future of the West (with Peter Heather, Penguin, 2023) and Twilight of the Money Gods: Economics as a religion (Simon & Schuster, 2017).

14. The China-Only Republicans

Excerpts:

The international system is, in a word, rather more complex than the China-only camp would have it. The world used to be bipolar during the Cold War, but it is not yet bipolar today. China is aiming for the status of America’s rival superpower, but it still has some way to go before it gets there, if it gets there. To be sure, Chinese efforts to reach that status threaten American hegemony, but they are still far from threatening the United States.

In contrast, Russia has decisively lost the competition for equal superpower status, as the Ukraine war has exposed Russia as a paper tiger. But Russia’s nuclear rattling—something that China studiously avoids—makes Russia a direct and potentially immediate existential threat to the United States.

Which country therefore deserves more U.S. policy attention? They both do, but for different reasons. China is a rising power, that appears to be largely committed to maintaining much of the international status quo. Russia is a declining power that wants to throw out every possible rule book. Neither can or should be ignored. Both arguably deserve equal attention from the United States.

The China-Only Republicans

nationalsecurityjournal.org · by Alexander Motyl · July 18, 2024

Ukraine War

Published

U.S. Senator J. D. Vance speaking with attendees at the 2023 Turning Point Action Conference at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. Image Credit: Gage Skidmore.

The Republican concern with China’s threat to America is understandable, arguably even laudable, as many of China’s economic, security, and human rights policies do, in fact, challenge America.

When that laudable concern turns into a single-minded obsession, however, then it does more than a disservice to America. It becomes exactly that which it was supposed to deter: a threat to America’s security.

Both former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, along with the Heritage Foundation and scores of conservative analysts, suffer from this obsession.

If China were the only big country that matters in the world, the China-only camp would be right. But because China isn’t the only country that matters to U.S. interests, the China-only camp is wrong. This is elementary.

The China-only camp could counter that while it’s definitely true that India, Brazil, Mexico, Europe, and Nigeria also matter, China outdoes them in terms of strategic importance that a China-only foreign policy is warranted.

There’s something to this view, but only if we close our eyes to other countries. Surely India, with its huge population and territory, nuclear weapons, and economy, is in the running for second place after America. Ditto for the European Union and Russia. The former has an enormous economy and large population while being weak on the military side of things. The latter has an economy and military in tatters due to its strategically myopic invasion of Ukraine. However, it still has thousands of nuclear weapons and is ruled by a dictator who is evidently willing to place the existence of the world on the line in pursuit of his ends.

The international system is, in a word, rather more complex than the China-only camp would have it. The world used to be bipolar during the Cold War, but it is not yet bipolar today. China is aiming for the status of America’s rival superpower, but it still has some way to go before it gets there, if it gets there. To be sure, Chinese efforts to reach that status threaten American hegemony, but they are still far from threatening the United States.

In contrast, Russia has decisively lost the competition for equal superpower status, as the Ukraine war has exposed Russia as a paper tiger. But Russia’s nuclear rattling—something that China studiously avoids—makes Russia a direct and potentially immediate existential threat to the United States.

Which country therefore deserves more U.S. policy attention? They both do, but for different reasons. China is a rising power, that appears to be largely committed to maintaining much of the international status quo. Russia is a declining power that wants to throw out every possible rule book. Neither can or should be ignored. Both arguably deserve equal attention from the United States.

But there’s an even more compelling reason for paying attention to both. As conservatives surely know, China and Russia have become, or say they’ve become, the closest of allies. We’ll see whether an alliance between a rising power and a declining power is sustainable in the long run, but for the time being it’s a reality. Which means that, willy-nilly, even an unwarranted obsession with China necessitates paying attention to China’s main ally, Russia. Since China appears to have tied its horse to the decrepit Russian wagon, the two countries cannot be viewed independently of each other. If China sneezes, Russia will catch a cold. If Russia gets into even more trouble over Ukraine or invades another former imperial territory, China may not experience massive instability, but it will feel the consequences and the pain.

This is why Vance’s casual dismissal of Ukraine—“ I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other”—is not just a repudiation of the geopolitical priorities conservatives claim to endorse. It’s also a recipe for disaster: a Russian victory would empower the Kremlin and Beijing to challenge the United States in Europe and Asia, thereby threatening the United States with the one thing conservatives claim they want to avoid at all costs—American involvement in a world war over the Baltic states or Taiwan.

Vance’s stance overlooks the one cheap, easy, and quick way for the United States to diminish China’s challenge. A Russian defeat in Ukraine would be a Chinese defeat (as well as an Iranian and North Korean defeat). A Russian defeat wouldn’t just humiliate China; it would also break the alliance or transform Russia into a full-fledged colony that would draw China’s resources and attention from the United States to the sick man of Eurasia, Russia.

Conservatives can do better, as can a Yale Law School graduate who may become America’s next Vice-President. An America First policy won’t work if the United States adopts a China-only policy. It will work only if the United States adopts a Russia-defeat policy.

About the Author: Dr. Alexander Motyl

Dr. Alexander Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires, and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, including Pidsumky imperii (2009); Puti imperii (2004); Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (2001); Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities (1999); Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism (1993); and The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919–1929 (1980); the editor of 15 volumes, including The Encyclopedia of Nationalism (2000) and The Holodomor Reader (2012); and a contributor of dozens of articles to academic and policy journals, newspaper op-ed pages, and magazines. He also has a weekly blog, “Ukraine’s Orange Blues.”

nationalsecurityjournal.org · by Alexander Motyl · July 18, 2024

15. Resistance movement burns military equipment at an airfield in Russia

Resistance movement burns military equipment at an airfield in Russia

mil.in.ua · by Андрій Тарасенко

News Articles Blogs Video content Eng Укр Pol Esp

Eng Укр

Defense industry of Ukraine Ukraine War with Russia World Military assistance Europe

18 July, 2024 Burning military equipment at Bolshoe Savino airfield, Perm, Russia, July 2024. Photo credits: Freedom of Russia Legion

Fires Occupants elimination Russia War with Russia

The Freedom of Russia Legion committed sabotage by setting fire to equipment at a military airport with MiG-31 fighter jets.

The Legion’s press service reported these news on its social media page.

The Russian resistance movement announced the destruction of several units of military equipment at the Bolshoye Savino airport, which belongs to the Russian Ministry of Defense.

The Freedom of Russia Legion entered the territory of the military facility and burned vehicles. In particular, the video shows the process of setting two KAMAZ trucks on fire.

Bolshoye Savino is a dual-purpose airport used as a civilian facility and a permanent deployment point for tactical aviation of the Russian Aerospace Forces.

It is reported that MiG-31 fighter jets from the Sokol aviation group of the 6980th Aviation Base of the Russian Aerospace Forces (military unit 69806-2) are based at this airport.

According to publicly available data, up to 24 MiG-31DZ and MiG-31BS long-range fighter jets are based at the military facility.

Satellite image of Bolshoye Savino airport

This is not the first such sabotage since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. At the end of 2022, unidentified persons infiltrated the Russian Veretye military airfield in the Pskov region, where Ka-52 attack helicopters are based.

According to the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, two helicopters exploded and were destroyed at the Veretye military airfield on the night of October 31 as a result of sabotage. Two other combat aircraft were severely damaged.

In September 2023, the saboteurs planted explosives and blew up aircraft and a combat helicopter at the Russian Chkalovsky Air Base in the Moscow region.

Unidentified persons planted explosives at the airfield and blew up An-148 and Il-20 aircraft (both belonging to the 354th Special Forces Aviation Regiment), as well as a Mi-28N helicopter, which had previously been actively involved in shooting down loitering munitions over the Moscow region.

Photo of the Chkalovsky Air Base with damaged IL-20, An-128 aircraft, August 18, 2023. Photo credits: DIU

And at the beginning of 2024, the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine released footage of a Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber being set on fire at a military airfield in Chelyabinsk. The fighter-bomber belonged to the aviation regiment of the 21st Mixed Aviation Division of the Russian Aerospace Forces.

mil.in.ua · by Андрій Тарасенко

16. Is US Aid To Ukraine Driven By A Brutal Logic? – Analysis

Excerpts:

But even if US policymakers are not truly Machiavellian, it is still important that a Realpolitik logic underpins American aid to Ukraine. At some level, US policymakers must appreciate the appeal of a great-power adversary breaking apart and then fighting itself. No American leader may ever admit it, and they might be shocked at the very notion, but this ruthless logic lurks in the background. And so, at the very least, Realpolitik thinking smooths the path to helping Kyiv. After all, if US aid to Ukraine worked against Realpolitik logic, there might be greater opposition.

American aid to Ukraine promotes a noble cause, is in US interests, and serves a tough-minded Realpolitik logic—all at the same time.

Is US Aid To Ukraine Driven By A Brutal Logic? – Analysis

eurasiareview.com · July 20, 2024

By Dominic Tierney

(FPRI) — Last week, at NATO’s 75th anniversary summit in Washington D.C., the United States and its NATO partners agreed to support Ukraine “on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.” President Joe Biden also announced the “Ukrainian Compact” and promised that any future Russian armed attack on Kyiv would be met with “the provision of swift and sustained security assistance and the imposition of economic and other costs on Russia.”

The path to Ukraine’s membership of NATO remains long and winding, but the summit underscored the remarkable degree of Western backing for Kyiv over the last two years. Since 2022, the United States alone has sent over $100 billion in aid to Ukraine. Despite pushback from Donald Trump and the populist right, bipartisan majorities in Congress have consistently backed support for Kyiv. In April 2024, Congress approved a $61 billion aid package with a majority of 311 to 112 in the House and 79 to 18 in the Senate. Why has the United States shown such strong support? Aiding Ukraine is a deeply moral cause, and it also serves US national interests. But there is also a hidden—and brutal—strategic logic for sending assistance. No one talks about it, and yet Machiavelli might offer an approving smile.

The Biden administration cast US aid to Ukraine in starkly moral terms. In 2023, the president said: “Faced with a threat to the peace and stability of the world, to democratic values we hold dear, to freedom itself, we did what we always do: The United States stepped up.” The ethical rights and wrongs in global politics are often murky—but not in this case. In 2022, authoritarian Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of its democratic neighbor, attempted to annex territory, and engaged in systematic war crimes. In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for: “Mr Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, born on 7 October 1952, President of the Russian Federation.”

As well as the moral stakes, there is also a compelling case for aiding Ukraine based on US national interests. Russian aggression threatens NATO territory, encourages Moscow to align with rogue actors like North Korea, and could even embolden China to attack Taiwan. The 2022 US National Security Strategy described how: “Russia now poses an immediate and persistent threat to international peace and stability.”

In global politics, American values and interests rarely line up so neatly. Sometimes, there is a moral imperative to act but few compelling interests at stake, like stopping genocides in Rwanda or Sudan. Other times, US interests might favor a policy that is ethically dubious, like the mass bombing of Germany and Japan in World War II. Ukraine is different. There is a powerful reason to act based on ethics and interests.

Moreover, there is a deeper—and more secret—rationale for the United States to help Ukraine: brutal Realpolitik. Let us take a step back and imagine a highly simplified world of ruthless geopolitics, almost like a game of Risk. In this world, countries compete incessantly. Politics is coercive and utterly cold blooded. There is no room for moral considerations. This world is driven by the law of power, not the power of law. Now imagine that in this world there are two great powers, A and B, each plotting to defeat the other.

How might A defeat B? Of course, A could launch a direct war against B, but this might be extremely costly. A smarter strategy would be for A to weaken B internally, for example, by inciting civil war, state collapse, or secession. Let us assume that this works and B splits apart into two states: B (the remaining rump state) and C (a new smaller country that seceded from B).

If you are A, the world already looks a whole lot better. Your main rival is weaker, and you can divide and rule. But Machiavelli would not stop now. The next step is to provoke B and C to fight each other, which will weaken B even more.

And then we are ready for the coup de grace. A should aid whichever side in the war is weaker—in this case C. Just to be clear, A is not trying to help a plucky David resist the mighty Goliath. Rather, the aim is to stop B from defeating C, absorbing its neighbor, and becoming a peer competitor once again.

At this point, we might expect A to play its hand carefully. Ideally, A would not get dragged into the war between B and C. It would just let them pummel each other. A quick loss for B is fine, but B might lick its wounds and recover. The best outcome is a prolonged war, where B gets bogged down in a quagmire, and is too exhausted to resist A.

It is undeniably a grim vision of global politics. Do states actually behave this way in the real world? One example of this kind of logic is the American Civil War. In 1861, A was Britain and B was the United States. The United States (B) suddenly collapsed into civil war and a new actor emerged, the Confederacy (C). Some British officials were tempted to back the Confederacy based on Realpolitik logic. After all, the United States was getting too big for its boots. But in the end, London stepped back from the brink, partly because the Union won battlefield victories and partly because of moral concerns about slavery.

Another example where hints of this logic are present is the United States and China. In 1949, China effectively split into two: the Communist mainland and non-Communist Taiwan. Just as Realpolitik logic would predict, the United States supported the weaker part, Taiwan. Beijing certainly suspects that ruthless reasoning guides American thinking, and Washington seeks to keep China divided and weak. When the United States and China normalized relations in the 1970s, Washington “acknowledged” Beijing’s position that Taiwan is part of China, but refused to recognize China’s sovereignty over Taiwan, despite Beijing’s repeated demands. As strategic competition between the United States and China escalated, the US position on Taiwan has also toughened. In 2022, Biden signaled that US forces would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, and it is not just Taiwan. At times, the United States flirted with support for Tibet’s secession from China. As one scholar put it, “The leveraging of Tibetan separatism occurs in the context of a global US stratagem, which uses secession as one approach to recalcitrant countries and what US strategic planners term peer competitors.”

Now, let us turn to Ukraine. At first glance, the model seems to fit neatly. Back in the Cold War, the United States was A and the Soviet Union was B. In the 1990s, the Soviet Union split apart into Russia (B) and Ukraine (C). In 2022, Russia and Ukraine went to war, the United States helped the weaker side, Ukraine, and Russia became trapped in a quagmire. Does this mean that US policy toward Ukraine is driven by brutal Realpolitik—fighting until the last Ukrainian?

Not really.

First of all, yes, the United States won the Cold War, but Washington did not directly engineer the collapse of the Soviet Union. Instead, Soviet reformers like Mikhail Gorbachev mainly responded to internal problems. In other words, rather than being murdered, the Soviet empire, as Vladislav Zubok put it, “committed suicide.” Furthermore, US officials were quite ambivalent about the breakup of the Soviet Union, fearing potential chaos and loose nukes.

Today, it is hard to imagine the Biden team sitting around, working out how best to lure B and C into war. After all, Washington warned Moscow against invading Ukraine. And of course, in the real world, many additional factors that are ignored in this model are involved, including morals and norms, as well as third-party actors like China and Europe.

But even if US policymakers are not truly Machiavellian, it is still important that a Realpolitik logic underpins American aid to Ukraine. At some level, US policymakers must appreciate the appeal of a great-power adversary breaking apart and then fighting itself. No American leader may ever admit it, and they might be shocked at the very notion, but this ruthless logic lurks in the background. And so, at the very least, Realpolitik thinking smooths the path to helping Kyiv. After all, if US aid to Ukraine worked against Realpolitik logic, there might be greater opposition.

American aid to Ukraine promotes a noble cause, is in US interests, and serves a tough-minded Realpolitik logic—all at the same time.

About the author: Dominic Tierney is a Senior Fellow with FPRI’s Program on National Security and associate professor of political science at Swarthmore College.
Source: This article was published by FPRI

eurasiareview.com · July 20, 2024

17. How the sixth-generation fighter jet will upend air warfare

How the sixth-generation fighter jet will upend air warfare

Defense News · by Stephen Losey · July 19, 2024

The next generation of fighter aircraft could bring greater speed, range and ability to penetrate deep into enemy airspace — and it might even feature a revolutionary new type of engine, experts and retired U.S. Air Force officer say.

The aviation world has seen five generations of fighters, ranging from the subsonic F-86 Sabre after World War II to the current, stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Now, militaries around the world are working on jets they believe will represent technological leaps significant enough to qualify as sixth-generation aircraft.

And while the precise definition of a sixth-generation aircraft isn’t set in stone yet, experts agree on some common attributes, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Clint Hinote told Defense News.

The Air Force’s effort to build a sixth-gen fighter family of systems is known as Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, and experts say the platform will be asked to do a lot of things.

“You want it to be fast, you want it to fly high,” said Hinote, who was the Air Force’s former deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements. “You want it to fly a long way. You want it to be as stealthy as possible — not only in radar frequency … [but also] in the infrared spectrum as well.”

Hinote and Heather Penney, a retired F-16 pilot and senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said speed, stealth and range will be among the most crucial elements of a sixth-generation fighter — particularly if it is needed to cross long distances in the Pacific and enter Chinese-controlled airspace.

“Range and the ability to penetrate will be absolutely critical for sixth-generation aircraft, especially given that we’re looking at the Pacific theater and China as our primary pacing threat,” Penney said.

Fifth-generation aircraft such as the F-22 and F-35 were conceived at a time when the United States military still had a Europe and NATO-focused mindset, Hinote said.

“The [F-35] requirements were basically developed right after the Cold War,” Hinote said. “It’s a short-range fighter. That makes total sense in NATO, where you’ve got hundreds of runways everywhere to operate off of. It makes no sense in the Pacific, where the situation is much different [and] you only have a few runways to operate off of.”

It needs to be able to communicate without giving its position away, Hinote said, and it must be able to carry larger payloads than fifth-generation aircraft carry today.

“That allows you to get to a position in the battlespace and the airspace where you can enforce your will through the use of force, if necessary, the concept of air superiority,” Hinote said.

A B-21 Raider conducts flight testing, which includes ground testing, taxiing, and flying operations, at Edwards Air Force Base, California. The B-21 will interoperate with our allies and partners to deliver on our enduring commitment to provide flexible strike options for coalition operations that defend us against common threats. (Courtesy photo)

And the ability to maintain a plane without damaging its stealth coating will be crucial, Penney said.

Early versions of stealth technology on aircraft such as the F-117A Nighthawk and B-2 Spirit bomber were delicate and difficult to maintain, she said.

Stealth has made considerable leaps forward over the years to be more practical and reliable, Penney said, and a sixth-gen fighter’s stealth capabilities also need to take another step forward to be maintainable and provide better performance.

Hinote and Penney said the next generation of aircraft must both take in large amounts of detailed data and fuse it in a way that sorts out the battlespace.

A sixth-gen aircraft “should be able to not only have those advanced sensors, not just forward looking, but side and aft, looking across [multiple] phenomena” such as radar, infrared and other frequencies, Penney said.

And the Air Force wants NGAD to team up with AI-operated drone wingmen known as collaborative combat aircraft, or CCA, as part of the “family of systems” concept. CCAs could carry out strike missions, jam enemy radars, conduct recon, or even serve as decoys.

The Air Force has so far planned for NGAD to have a new type of propulsion system known as an adaptive engine, which can shift to different, more efficient configurations depending on the flying situation. Pratt & Whitney and General Electric Aerospace are each developing their own adaptive engines as part of the Next-Generation Adaptive Propulsion program.

An adaptive engine, however, would be very expensive, Hinote said. And with serious budget crunches prompting the Air Force to reconsider its plans and designs for NGAD, the service is considering whether to scale down its engine to bring NGAD’s price down.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in a June interview with Defense News that making NGAD’s engine smaller and less complex is an option being considered.

But better dogfighting ability would likely not be on the wish list for sixth-generation fighters, Hinote said. He does not expect those aircraft to have advancements in slow-speed maneuverability or an emphasis on cannons that would allow fighters to go toe-to-toe in relatively close quarters.

“The F-22 can get a high [angle of attack] in ways we’ve never seen,” Hinote said. “The Sukhoi Su-57, same thing. I don’t think it’s relevant for enforcing air superiority in the Pacific.”

The Defense Department does not keep a hard-and-fast taxonomy of aircraft generations. But in 2017, a spokesman at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia took a crack at it.

In his column, Jeffrey Hood of the 633rd Air Base Wing’s public affairs office said the first generation of fighter jets that emerged following World War II took advantage of novel jet technology and swept wings, as opposed to the perpendicular wings that were previously standard. But those fighters, such as the F-86 Sabre, were limited to sub-sonic speeds and machine guns.

All that changed after Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947. This opened the door to a second generation of jets, such as the F-104 Starfighter, that could break Mach 1 and even Mach 2, and carry on-board radar and air-to-air missiles, Hood wrote.

The third generation — which included the Vietnam-era F-4 Phantom — incorporated advanced radars and better guided missiles that could engage enemies beyond visual range. After that came the F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon, and F-18 Hornet — fourth-generation fighters that can maneuver at high G-forces, use digital data links to share information, track multiple targets, and strike surface targets using lasers or GPS guidance.

In a 2016 study published by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, now-retired Gen. Jeff Harrigian said fifth-generation fighters such as the F-22 and F-35 include stealth, improved self-defense, sensing, and jamming abilities, integrated avionics, and more.

And depending on one’s perspective, the first sixth-generation aircraft could already be flying.

Northrop Grumman has touted its B-21 Raider bomber as the first sixth-gen aircraft. In an interview with Defense News before the B-21′s 2022 rollout, a Northrop official said the bomber’s cutting edge stealth, use of open systems architecture, and use of advanced networking and data sharing technologies to connect sensors to shooters across multiple domains make it “the first of the sixth-gen systems.”

Those abilities are probably enough for the B-21 to qualify as a sixth-generation aircraft, Penney said, though she said its high levels of classification make it hard for outside observers to gauge whether it lives up to the hype.

Hinote looks at Northrop’s claims with a bit more skepticism and thinks it’s more of a marketing angle, but notes these generational definitions are largely matters of opinion.

“If they want to call it sixth-generation, sure,” Hinote said. “I don’t necessarily believe that the stealth characteristics and the open architecture of the B-21 automatically makes it a generational change in what we’ve got. It’s an incremental step, it’s a good step, I’m glad that we’re doing it, but it’s probably not so big that it’s truly generational.”

About Stephen Losey

Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

Company Name | Website