Quotes of the Day:
However, there is a major difference between irregular warfare and these previous congressionally mandated reforms, in that we do not have a systematic understanding of why we are failing in these conflicts. Mandating the creation of another command structure dedicated to this form of warfare, mimicking the creation of SOCOM by Nunn-Cohen, is one possibility.
I suspect that a thorough review of our strategic failures in these contests may result in broader recommended reforms to our national security enterprise. In particular, I have come to believe that there is a need for the United States to formalize and develop what might be best called irregular statecraft. Irregular statecraft is a form of competition in which state and nonstate actors employ all means, short of war, to support friends and allies and erode the influence, legitimacy, and authority of adversaries and is the modern equivalent of what George Kennan described, in 1948, as political warfare.
Irregular statecraft encompasses offensive and defensive capabilities, both covert and overt, currently dispersed across the U.S. government, including the irregular warfare capability of the U.S. military and complementary capabilities among a multitude of diplomatic, intelligence, homeland security, and other organizations. Existing U.S. expertise in the contemporary use of irregular statecraft is disparate and dormant and would require congressional action to aggregate experts from outside government and representatives from across relevant U.S. agencies to synchronize and mature America’s expertise in this form of global competition.
...
I believe that an independently funded center, or a public-private center supported by both Congress and private citizens, at a university or think tank dedicated to the study of American irregular warfare would provide our country three necessary capabilities. The first is a continuous and independent critique of U.S. capabilities, policies, and strategies in irregular warfare to determine how the United States is performing in its many irregular engagements and might do better in this type of war. Second, it would provide a stable of professionals who are expert in the contemporary use of irregular warfare, both how our adversaries apply this form of warfare and how the United States can deploy irregular warfare defensively and offensively to contest these adversaries, whether state or nonstate. The third would be to capture and analyze irregular warfare experiences, providing a publicly available record of our successes and failures and thus serving as a bridge between irregular warfare practitioners and the American people.11
This center, which might be established in concert with the recommended congressional review and combine a broad range of different expertise, could be focused on irregular warfare or perhaps on the broader concept of irregular statecraft.12 It would be directed by an internationally recognized national security professional who would be essential for both guiding the research and engaging with Congress, the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the CIA, and other diplomatic, intelligence, and homeland security organizations. The staff would include a modest number of academics representing the diverse skill sets necessary for irregular warfare (or irregular statecraft) at the operational and strategic levels, including anthropology, economics, psychology, and sociology, but also practitioners from across relevant U.S. agencies. This center would likely prove a worthy investment of both private and public funds, as it reduces the risk of costly interventions and makes the United States more likely to gain an enduring advantage in global competition.
-The American Way of Irregular Warfare: An Analytic Memoir, pages 217 and 222, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PEA300/PEA301-1/RAND_PEA301-1.pdf
1. US special operators and their allies say taking on Russia and China in Africa requires 'strange bedfellows'
2. A shift from terrorism to China
3. The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online
4. NPS launches Center on Combating Hybrid Threats to address hybrid warfare
5. New commander of 25th ID short on Pacific experience, long on warfighting basics
6. Success in the Shadows: Operation Enduring Freedom–Philippines and the Global War on Terror, 2002–2015
7. How Taiwan is trying to defend against a cyber 'World War III'
8. Investors Are Buying American
9. Review | Faith that the truth can still defeat misinformation
10. How Science Lost the Public’s Trust
1. US special operators and their allies say taking on Russia and China in Africa requires 'strange bedfellows'
Excerpts:
US special-operations forces have long had a presence in Africa. Over the last 20 years, American commandos have focused on fighting terrorism, mainly in North and East Africa.
Now, in addition to fighting violent extremist groups, they have to counter Chinese and Russian overtures in a region where great powers are increasingly competing for access, influence, and resources.
...
But the US is doing "very little" to counter those near-peer competitors in Africa, according to John Black, a retired Special Forces warrant officer with extensive experience in Africa.
"The Chinese are buying up everything, such as mines," Black told Insider. "Right now we are focused on helping the partnered country, however, losing focus of the continent as a whole."
As in any other region, US actions in Africa can trigger Chinese or Russian responses — and vice versa — there or elsewhere in the world. That might explain the reluctance to engage the competition more directly to counter their initiatives.
...
Even with the new focus on China and Russia, countering terrorism and violent extremist organizations — such as Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, and Al Qaeda — remains a high priority for US Special Operations Command.
US commandos will have to balance operations that are more akin to conflict with a traditional near-peer state with the ongoing intelligence-gathering and direct-action missions that served well against terrorist groups over the past 20 years.
The US isn't alone in that battle against terrorism. European nations are contributing significantly, with France leading the way in the Sahel G5 region — Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger — since 2014. Several other European nations have contributed conventional and special-operations troops.
"The Americans have helped us in the Sahel, especially indirectly with technological and intelligence support, like drones and other surveillance platforms. Honestly, they have capabilities we don't, or at least not readily available, and it has been good to have them by our side," a French Foreign Legion paratrooper who has completed several deployments to Africa told Insider.
US special operators and their allies say taking on Russia and China in Africa requires 'strange bedfellows'
A US soldier in Somalia.
Tech. Sgt. Christopher Ruano/ AP
- Renewed competition with Russia and China means Africa is growing as an arena for geopolitical maneuvering.
- The US commandos who fought extremist groups in Africa for 20 years now have to counter Chinese and Russian influence there as well.
10 Things in Politics: Get the latest in politics & the economy.
As competition between the US and China and Russia ramps up, Africa is once more becoming a geopolitical battlefield.
US special-operations forces have long had a presence in Africa. Over the last 20 years, American commandos have focused on fighting terrorism, mainly in North and East Africa.
Now, in addition to fighting violent extremist groups, they have to counter Chinese and Russian overtures in a region where great powers are increasingly competing for access, influence, and resources.
Competing with different rules
Russian President Vladimir Putin with African leaders at the 2019 Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi, October 24, 2019.
Sergei Chirikov/Pool via Reuters
The US has a vastly different approach to Africa than its competitors.
Chinese aid, in the form of loans or infrastructure development, is often criticized as predatory and as part of Beijing's quest for natural resources and global legitimacy. Russia sells arms and provides political advisors in addition to hunting for lucrative contracts for natural resources and other geopolitical benefits.
The US focuses on building relationships and promoting the rules-based international system and democratic values. The US also offers loans or grants, though their terms, which often encourage or require reforms, can be a turn-off for autocratic leaders, who gravitate toward Chinese and Russian offers with fewer strings attached.
Military engagement is also an important part of US outreach to the continent, but for many years, Africa fell outside of what the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies considered important. With wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria demanding almost all of its attention, the US largely ignored Africa.
As great-power competition between the US, China, and Russia heats up, the continent is becoming an undeclared battlefield that allows US troops to study the capabilities of their competitors.
Government of National Accord forces parade a Russian-made Pantsir air-defense system in Tripoli after capturing it from forces loyal to strongman Khalifa Haftar, May 20, 2020.
MAHMUD TURKIA/AFP via Getty Images
Africa has been seen as "very low" in importance by people of "high influence" in the US Defense Department, a Special Forces operator who recently rotated back from the continent told Insider.
"Now that the area is proving to be more valuable to other near-peer threats, it is naturally more valuable to us as well, considering the way the near-peer countries are conducting 'business' over there," the Green Beret added.
Contrary to the Chinese and Russian approach, the US dedicates most of its efforts to working with partner militaries, training, advising, and sometimes leading them.
But the US is doing "very little" to counter those near-peer competitors in Africa, according to John Black, a retired Special Forces warrant officer with extensive experience in Africa.
"The Chinese are buying up everything, such as mines," Black told Insider. "Right now we are focused on helping the partnered country, however, losing focus of the continent as a whole."
As in any other region, US actions in Africa can trigger Chinese or Russian responses — and vice versa — there or elsewhere in the world. That might explain the reluctance to engage the competition more directly to counter their initiatives.
US Marine Corps marksmanship instructors coach members of Djibouti's National Gendarmerie, August 30, 2012.
But that reluctance might also mean the US lacks a clear view of how Africa fits into its overall strategic vision. Solving that problem requires a clear and robust national strategy that marries all aspects of diplomatic, economic, and military policy — and communicating it clearly.
"We need our ambassadors to look at the country as a whole and take more risks, use [the US] military arm to effect real change within a country. Most ambassadors are afraid to create a ruckus, if you will. They just want to buy their time until the next guy. Most are State Department and not presidential appointed. They usually hold us back," Black added.
China or Russia might not hesitate to work with a dictator with an abominable human-rights record to further their geopolitical goals. US forces, however, are restricted by humanitarian and legal considerations. This rigidness applies especially to operations with partner militaries that might not abide by the Geneva Conventions.
"We were once working with a local military that had a reputation of being very 'trigger happy' on the field, and all of the guys on the team were surprised we were helping them because of our very strict" rules of engagement, the Green Beret said. "In this job, sometimes you've got to sleep with strange bedfellows to achieve the overall goal, but that's where our training thrives."
What about terrorism?
Nigerian Navy Special Boat Service troops train under the supervision of British special forces during a US military-led counterterrorism exercise in Senegal, February 18, 2020.
Associated Press
Even with the new focus on China and Russia, countering terrorism and violent extremist organizations — such as Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, and Al Qaeda — remains a high priority for US Special Operations Command.
US commandos will have to balance operations that are more akin to conflict with a traditional near-peer state with the ongoing intelligence-gathering and direct-action missions that served well against terrorist groups over the past 20 years.
The US isn't alone in that battle against terrorism. European nations are contributing significantly, with France leading the way in the Sahel G5 region — Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger — since 2014. Several other European nations have contributed conventional and special-operations troops.
"The Americans have helped us in the Sahel, especially indirectly with technological and intelligence support, like drones and other surveillance platforms. Honestly, they have capabilities we don't, or at least not readily available, and it has been good to have them by our side," a French Foreign Legion paratrooper who has completed several deployments to Africa told Insider.
A US soldier talks to a Mozambique soldier next to a US C-130J at the airport in Maputo, Mozambique, April 5, 2019.
US Air Force/Tech. Sgt. Chris Hibben
The US is still a sought-after partner in Africa. Earlier this year, with an Islamist insurgency bearing down on it, Mozambique's government turned to the US for military help. US Army Special Forces teams went in to train and advise their Mozambican counterparts.
"It might seem we've taken a step back from Africa, but the relationships we've created over so many years are still there. When it comes to developing nation militaries, unit-to-unit relationships matter a lot," a reserve Navy SEAL officer told Insider.
"Let's say we've got a terrorist [high-value target] hiding in X country. We could call the local commander of their tier 1 unit — whom we've trained — and set up something. That is a sort of strategic flexibility you won't find anywhere else," the officer said.
Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate.
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2. A shift from terrorism to China
A view from South Korea. Korea of course fears the Nixon or Guam Doctrine in the 1970s. But the author argues that is not likely to happen because of China and A2AD.
Note that it might be useful to review Nixon's Guam doctrine.
USE OF COUNTERINSURGENCY TACTICS
[14.] Q. Mr. President, on the question of creeping involvement and the advice that Ayub Khan once gave you, could you tell us if there is any future in Asia for American counterinsurgency tactics as they have developed since 1960?
THE PRESIDENT. Well, there is a future for American counterinsurgency tactics only in the sense that where one of our friends in Asia asks for advice or assistance, under proper circumstances, we will provide it. But where we must draw the line is in becoming involved heavily with our own personnel, doing the job for them, rather than helping them do the job for themselves.
Now, I know I begged the question with that answer but I intend to do so. I intend to do it because I think that there is one American trait which we saw in Korea, we have seen it in Vietnam, and we see it pretty much around the world: We do things, we think, rather well. And particularly in the military field, where we are pretty advanced, we think that we can do it better than to try to teach somebody else to do it.
That may be the easy answer at the outset, but it is the wrong answer in the long run. I want to be sure that our policies in the future, all over the world, in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the rest, reduce American involvement. One of assistance, yes, assistance in helping them solve their own problems, but not going in and just doing the job ourselves simply because that is the easier way to do it.
Sunday
July 25, 2021
A shift from terrorism to China
Nam Jeong-ho
The author is a columnist of the JoongAng Ilbo.
The U.S. War in Afghanistan — the longest war in U.S. history — will come to an end next month after two decades of America dragging its feet in the rugged hills of the outlandish country since the September 11 attacks in 2001. U.S. President Joe Biden ordered a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan on August 31. Some scholars of international politics claimed that the United States had achieved the goal of the Afghan War by killing Osama bin Laden — the founder of the militant Islamist organization al-Qaeda and the mastermind of 9/11 Attacks — on May 2, 2011 in Pakistan. But others translate the pullout of the U.S. forces into a de facto U.S defeat as it “failed to wipe out the Taliban,” the militant extremist group in Afghanistan.
The Afghan War is often compared to the Vietnam War. What similarities and differences do the two wars have? With the chapter on the extended war on terror to be closed soon, I looked into the lead-up to the pullout and ramifications of the war’s end on the security of the Korean Peninsula.
The war on terror
After the collapse of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, George W. Bush’s administration was engrossed in ferreting out the culprit. After a long investigation, the U.S. government found that the terrorist attack had been carried out by al-Qaeda and that its members were hiding in Afghanistan. Washington demanded the Taliban regime extradite the culprits to the U.S. But the Taliban refused and the U.S. launched the Afghan War to bring them to justice.
At that time, the United States used the strategy of attacking the Taliban regime through anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. The U.S. therefore dispatched only a small number of special forces to Afghanistan, while backing the Northern Alliance with massive air bombings. Washington did not want mass casualties from Afghanistan as in Vietnam.
In the initial stages of the war, America won an overwhelming victory thanks to the competitive edge of its military power. With huge support from the U.S., the Northern Alliance captured Kabul, capital city of Afghanistan, just a month after the 9/11 attacks and took Kandahar, a stronghold of the Taliban, two months later. In the lead-up to the capture of the two major cities, only 16 U.S. soldiers were killed whereas about 10,000 Taliban soldiers were dead. That explicitly shows the remarkable imbalance of the war from the start.
The Taliban, who fled to Pakistan under attack from U.S. forces and the Northern Alliance, rekindled its crusade against the U.S. from 2003. On the Pentagon’s part, seizing Afghanistan was easy but stabilizing the country — and winning the people over — was not. In the meantime, allies of the Taliban sprouted up across the country after being disappointed at the incompetence of the Afghan government led by President Hamid Karzai, a U.S. puppet. The Taliban were able to resist the Karzai administration with the weapons the U.S. had offered the Mujahideen, Islamic guerillas, when they fought against the Soviet forces in the 1980s.
As the Afghan War protracted, the Obama administration found and killed Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011 after a decade-long international manhunt. The U.S. found the justification for ending the war. Afterwards, the U.S. was actively engaged in peace negotiations with the Taliban. But the problem was the possibility of the Taliban taking control of Afghanistan if the U.S. troops pull out, as happened in Vietnam. So, the Pentagon kept delaying the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country, but has decided to pull out after the commander in chief’s decision.
Vietnam War vs. Afghan War
The U.S. war in Afghanistan was called another Vietnam because of two stark similarities: protracted wars in foreign countries and U.S. withdrawals after failing to establish a pro-U.S. regime. The Vietnam War lasted nine years and the Afghan War 20 years. Another similarity is the huge cost of war. (Approximately $1 trillion were spent in each war)
For the U.S., the two wars were very different from other wars. First, America could not trust the South Vietnamese and Karzai governments, both U.S. allies. The two regimes were incapable and corrupt enough to sell their U.S. weapons for personal gain. In fact, as many of the South Vietnamese forces and the Karzai troops were extremely undisciplined and secretly kept in touch with the enemy, Uncle Sam was reluctant to share sensitive military information with them.
Second, the U.S. forces had to fight the enemy without clear distinction between soldiers and civilians as the Viet Cong and the Taliban rebels suddenly attacked the U.S. forces after hiding among civilians. If the U.S. troops had not slaughtered all of them, they couldn’t have avoided ambushes.
Third, the U.S. forces had to fight with underground enemies in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Small-framed Viet Cong could dig a narrow and tight web of tunnels underground and endured the U.S. bombings. But American soldiers with a big build could not enter even if they discovered such potholes. In Afghanistan, the rebels used mountain caves as a hideout. It was nearly impossible for the U.S. forces to annihilate Taliban fighters with airstrikes.
Despite such similarities between Vietnam and Afghanistan, some military experts point to stark dissimilarities. The first involves their comparative damage on human lives. Compared to the Vietnam War, which killed over 58,000 people and injured more than 300,000, only 2,400 people were killed and about 20,000 injured in Afghanistan — thanks to the deployment of precious few special troops and employment of unmanned drones for attacks on rebels.
On July 8, Biden claimed that Afghanistan is entirely different from Vietnam. But many security experts believe it is only a matter of time before the Taliban take over Afghanistan unless U.S. forces maintain security of the country.
End of Afghan War and Korea
The Vietnam War had a huge impact on the security of the Korean Peninsula. Due to the enormous losses of human lives and astronomical cost for war, U.S. President Richard Nixon declared in 1969 that the United States would support allies facing military threats with economic and military aid rather than with ground troops from then on. After the announcement dubbed the “Nixon Doctine,” the Nixon administration pulled out the 7th Division from South Korea in 1971, after which the U.S. Forces Korea were downscaled to about 40,000 from 66,000.
What impact will the end of the Afghan War have on the Korean Peninsula? Compared to the Vietnam War, the war in Afghanistan does not directly affect security on the peninsula. Instead, the U.S. withdrawal signifies the end of the War on Terror, a major U.S. global strategy since 9/11. Thanks to the persistent maneuvers by U.S. intelligence agencies and military, most radical groups in the Middle East have been neutralized. The U.S. has begun preparing for a war with a new enemy — China. Since the National Security Strategy was published in 2017, the U.S. defined China as the only strategic threat to America.
The U.S.’s revised global strategy affects the way its forces are operated. In case of terrorist organizations, it was difficult to locate the battlefields due to their remarkable movability of their strongholds. As swift maneuverability was key to victory, there was no need for large-scale military bases in the Middle East country over the long period.
But since the U.S. started to treat China as the main enemy, Pentagon must change the way it operates its military bases overseas. As the character — and identity — of the Chinese forces are clear, America must focus on the Asian theater.
China’s military strategy against the U.S. is primarily based on the so-called Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) strategy aimed at blocking the United States’ possible invasion through the East and South China Seas. Because America pursues a policy aimed at reinforcing its armed forces stationed overseas to cope with China’s rise, Washington will likely augment the U.S. Forces Korea in a sharp departure from the Nixon Doctrine over half a century ago.
3. The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online
In the US we believe in freedom for all of course. And that unfortunately includes the freedom to be stupid and the freedom of people like Mercola to profit from our stupidity. Which of course is one the contributing factors for the success of disinformation.
The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online
Researchers and regulators say Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic physician, creates and profits from misleading claims about Covid-19 vaccines.
Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic physician in Cape Coral, Fla., is a key figure in the “Disinformation Dozen” spreading anti-vaccine messaging, researchers said.Credit...Mercola
By
July 24, 2021
SAN FRANCISCO — The article that appeared online on Feb. 9 began with a seemingly innocuous question about the legal definition of vaccines. Then over its next 3,400 words, it declared coronavirus vaccines were “a medical fraud” and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity or stop transmission of the disease.
Instead, the article claimed, the shots “alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch.”
Its assertions were easily disprovable. No matter. Over the next few hours, the article was translated from English into Spanish and Polish. It appeared on dozens of blogs and was picked up by anti-vaccination activists, who repeated the false claims online. The article also made its way to Facebook, where it reached 400,000 people, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool.
The entire effort traced back to one person: Joseph Mercola.
Dr. Mercola, 67, an osteopathic physician in Cape Coral, Fla., has long been a subject of criticism and government regulatory actions for his promotion of unproven or unapproved treatments. But most recently, he has become the chief spreader of coronavirus misinformation online, according to researchers.
An internet-savvy entrepreneur who employs dozens, Dr. Mercola has published over 600 articles on Facebook that cast doubt on Covid-19 vaccines since the pandemic began, reaching a far larger audience than other vaccine skeptics, an analysis by The New York Times found. His claims have been widely echoed on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
The activity has earned Dr. Mercola, a natural health proponent with an Everyman demeanor, the dubious distinction of the top spot in the “Disinformation Dozen,” a list of 12 people responsible for sharing 65 percent of all anti-vaccine messaging on social media, said the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. Others on the list include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, and Erin Elizabeth, the founder of the website Health Nut News, who is also Dr. Mercola’s girlfriend.
“Mercola is the pioneer of the anti-vaccine movement,” said Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies online conspiracy theories. “He’s a master of capitalizing on periods of uncertainty, like the pandemic, to grow his movement.”
Some high-profile media figures have promoted skepticism of the vaccines, notably Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham of Fox News, though other Fox personalities have urged viewers to get the shots. Now, Dr. Mercola and others in the “Disinformation Dozen” are in the spotlight as vaccinations in the United States slow, just as the highly infectious Delta variant has fueled a resurgence in coronavirus cases. More than 97 percent of people hospitalized for Covid-19 are unvaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Over the last decade, Dr. Mercola has built a vast operation to push natural health cures, disseminate anti-vaccination content and profit from all of it, said researchers who have studied his network. In 2017, he filed an affidavit claiming his net worth was “in excess of $100 million.”
And rather than directly stating online that vaccines don’t work, Dr. Mercola’s posts often ask pointed questions about their safety and discuss studies that other doctors have refuted. Facebook and Twitter have allowed some of his posts to remain up with caution labels, and the companies have struggled to create rules to pull down posts that have nuance.
“He has been given new life by social media, which he exploits skillfully and ruthlessly to bring people into his thrall,” said Imran Ahmed, director of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which studies misinformation and hate speech. Its “Disinformation Dozen” report has been cited in congressional hearings and by the White House.
In an email, Dr. Mercola said it was “quite peculiar to me that I am named as the #1 superspreader of misinformation.” Some of his Facebook posts were only liked by hundreds of people, he said, so he didn’t understand “how the relatively small number of shares could possibly cause such calamity to Biden’s multibillion dollar vaccination campaign.”
The efforts against him are political, Dr. Mercola added, and he accused the White House of “illegal censorship by colluding with social media companies.”
He did not address whether his coronavirus claims were factual. “I am the lead author of a peer reviewed publication regarding vitamin D and the risk of Covid-19 and I have every right to inform the public by sharing my medical research,” he said. He did not identify the publication, and The Times was unable to verify his claim.
A native of Chicago, Dr. Mercola started a small private practice in 1985 in Schaumburg, Ill. In the 1990s, he began shifting to natural health medicine and opened his main website, Mercola.com, to share his treatments, cures and advice. The site urges people to “take control of your health.”
In 2003, he published a book, “The No-Grain Diet,” which became a New York Times best seller. He has since published books almost yearly. In 2015, he moved to Florida.
As his popularity grew, Dr. Mercola began a cycle. It starts with making unproven and sometimes far-fetched health claims, such as that spring mattresses amplify harmful radiation, and then selling products online — from vitamin supplements to organic yogurt — that he promotes as alternative treatments.
To buttress the operation, he set up companies like Mercola.com Health Resources and Mercola Consulting Services. These entities have offices in Florida and the Philippines with teams of employees. Using this infrastructure, Dr. Mercola has seized on news moments to rapidly publish blog posts, newsletters and videos in nearly a dozen languages to a network of websites and social media.
The Mercola headquarters in Cape Coral, Fla.Credit...Mercola
His audience is substantial. Dr. Mercola’s official English-language Facebook page has over 1.7 million followers, while his Spanish-language page has 1 million followers. The Times also found 17 other Facebook pages that appeared to be run by him or were closely connected to his businesses. On Twitter, he has nearly 300,000 followers, plus nearly 400,000 on YouTube.
Dr. Mercola has a keen understanding of what makes something go viral online, said two former employees, who declined to be identified because they had signed nondisclosure agreements. He routinely does A/B testing, they said, in which many versions of the same content are published to see what spreads fastest online.
Understand the State of Vaccine Mandates in the U.S.
In his email, Dr. Mercola said, “Translation and a variety of media positions are standard for most content oriented websites.”
Facebook said it has labeled many of Dr. Mercola’s posts as false, banned advertising on his main page and removed some of his pages after they violated its policies. Twitter said it has also taken down some of Dr. Mercola’s posts and labeled others. YouTube said Dr. Mercola was not part of a program from which he can make money from ads on his videos.
In 2012, Dr. Mercola began writing about the virtues of tanning beds. He argued that they reduced the chances of getting cancer, while also selling tanning beds with names like Vitality and D-lite for $1,200 to $4,000 each. Many of the articles were based on discredited studies.
The Federal Trade Commission brought false-advertising claims against Dr. Mercola in 2017 based on the health claims about tanning beds. He settled and sent $2.95 million in refunds to customers who bought the tanning beds.
The Food and Drug Administration has also issued warning letters to Dr. Mercola for selling unapproved health products in 2005, 2006 and 2011 and has fined him millions of dollars.
Many of Dr. Mercola’s claims have been amplified by other vaccine skeptics, including Ms. Elizabeth. She worked for Mercola.com from 2009 to 2011, according to her LinkedIn page.
But while Ms. Elizabeth and others are overtly anti-vaccine, Dr. Mercola has appeared more approachable because he takes less radical positions than his peers, Ms. Koltai said. “He takes away from the idea that an anti-vaccination activist is a fringe person,” she said.
In an email, Ms. Elizabeth said she was “shocked to have been targeted as one of the 12” in the “Disinformation Dozen” and called it a “witch hunt.”
When the coronavirus hit last year, Dr. Mercola jumped on the news, with posts questioning the origins of the disease. In December, he used a study that examined mask-wearing by doctors to argue that masks did not stop the spread of the virus.
He also began promoting vitamin supplements as a way to ward off the coronavirus. In a warning letter on Feb. 18, the F.D.A. said Dr. Mercola had “misleadingly represented” what were “unapproved and misbranded products” on Mercola.com as established Covid-19 treatments.
In May, Dr. Mercola took down many of his own Facebook posts to evade the social network’s crackdown on anti-vaccine content. Facebook also recently removed his Feb. 9 article.
But Dr. Mercola has continued to raise vaccine questions. In a Facebook post on Friday, he used another study to mull how useful the Pfizer vaccine was against Covid-19 variants. One headline in the post said the vaccine was only 39 percent effective, but it did not cite another statistic from the study that said the vaccine was 91 percent effective against serious illness.
“Is this possible? We were told 95 percent effectiveness,” he wrote.
Within a few hours, the post had been shared more than 220 times.
Davey Alba, Karen Weise, Erin Woo and Daisuke Wakabayashi contributed reporting. Ben Decker and Jacob Silver contributed research.
4. NPS launches Center on Combating Hybrid Threats to address hybrid warfare
Unfortunately I do not think this answers the mail for the proposal in the quote of the day above.
NPS launches Center on Combating Hybrid Threats to address hybrid warfare
NPS launches Center on Combating Hybrid Threats to address hybrid warfare
On November 25, 2018, a Russian commercial cargo ship suddenly parked itself across the narrow Kerch Strait on the Crimea, blocking three Ukrainian Navy vessels sailing in international waters from reaching the port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov. When they tried to turn back, the ships were rammed and fired on by Russian military forces, then boarded and seized. The event sparked international outrage at the time, but the deed was done: through obfuscation and brute force, Russia had asserted de facto dominance over the strategic passage into the Black Sea and beyond.
The incident has since been seen as a textbook example of a new generation of hybrid warfare, blurring the lines between military and unconventional conflict. Operating just below the threshold of war, state and non-state actors are increasingly employing hybrid methods to attain their objectives. Their intentional use of disinformation, prevarication, cyberattacks, economic pressure and the deployment of irregular armed groups presents a critical challenge to the world's democracies.
It's a challenge that the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is taking on directly.
The university's new Center on Combating Hybrid Threats (CCHT), officially formed in early 2021 to meet this growing threat, is part of an international effort to detect, deny, disrupt, degrade, defeat and ultimately deter the use of hybrid threats by our adversaries. Drawing on NPS' immense intellectual capital, the CCHT serves as a locus for interdisciplinary research, education programs and outreach for partners near and far.
"The CCHT is an opportunity for us to tackle the problem of hybrid threats from a comprehensive, 'whole-of-discipline' approach in order to better confront these challenges in the future," explained Larry Walzer, CCHT's deputy director. "We work both domestically and with allies and partner nations as a forum to exchange ideas to better confront these challenges together. Certainly, a more comprehensive approach is required if we're going to get to a position where we can actually deter our adversaries."
The center has already forged new partnerships to explore ways to identify and counter hybrid threats. In May, for example, the CCHT met with Argonne National Laboratory's Hybrid Threats Division to establish future collaboration in areas of mutual interest. In addition to addressing national level interagency coordination, they looked at holding mutually beneficial training events in the future.
The CCHT has similarly partnered with the DoD Information Strategy Research Center, the Institute for Security Governance, Defense Security Cooperation Agency and the Hybrid Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats in Helsinki, Finland.
Through NATO's Energy Security Centre of Excellence, they've also supported NATO Coherent Resilience (CORE), a series of tabletop exercises dedicated to bolstering energy systems resilience in partner nations. Through CORE, the CCHT will head to Ukraine and Lithuania this September to focus building energy sector resilience to Russian hybrid threats in these regions.
NPS, under the auspices of the Energy Academic Group, has supported CORE since 2017, but collaboration with partner nations in the realm of hybrid threats actually goes back further, according to Tahmina Karimova, CCHT's Business Development and Operations manager.
"Our international work started back in 2009 under the umbrella of the United States Partnership for Peace Training and Education Center (USPTC)," she said. "We worked across the [Combatant Commands], engaging partners on different topics, hybrid threats being one of them, but we lacked one cohesive center that would join all the faculty and students to continue the work through an interdisciplinary angle and serve as a force multiplier.
"Now we are better prepared to tackle this critical subject area through closer collaboration with expert faculty and students across several disciplines," Karimova added.
Such fusion potentially offers NPS students hands-on, practical participation with key stakeholders in this critical domain.
The CCHT is currently assessing several academic venues such as new certification, joint master's and executive education programs, and research sponsors have already proposed a number of fully-funded thesis topics, including Combating Malign Behavior at Sea, Kinetic and Non-Kinetic Hybrid Threats on Critical Infrastructure, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Manipulating Adversarial Posture in Combating Hybrid Threats, and several others.
Walzer noted, "We're also looking to establish some events in the near term, such as virtual seminar programs, that will help our students become better aware of both the inherent challenges of hybrid threats and of the center itself in order to interact with faculty that they may not be exposed to in their individual fields. We're certainly looking to bring our diverse disciplines and research areas together to increase the sharing of information and gain greater perspective and understanding."
The CCHT is an interdisciplinary group consisting of 21 faculty members, representing a broad spectrum of specialties, including operations research, electrical and computer engineering, defense analysis, information sciences, systems engineering, national security affairs and computer science. Additionally, the center works with several other interdisciplinary research centers and groups at NPS, including the Energy Academic Group, the Naval Warfare Studies Institute, the Cyber Academic Group, and the Center for Infrastructure Defense, among others.
"Certainly, we'll have an improved understanding of all the threats and potential avenues to further resilience," Walzer said. "We're building partnerships and the exercises enable specific improvement plans. So, through this, actual concrete changes are being made to improve effective responses, common defense, and deterrence in the future."
Collectively, they represent a potent effort in the fight against hybrid threats. If the goal of hybrid warfare is to confuse and divide, CCHT leaders say, then the center should be considered a force for unity and common purpose.
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For more information on the CCHT, visit https://nps.edu/web/ccht.
This story has been published on: 2021-07-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
5. New commander of 25th ID short on Pacific experience, long on warfighting basics
I mean no disrespect to the new commander and I am sure he will do great. He has the right attitude. And I know his predecessor did not have much Asia experience before his assignment as well. Common to both commanders is. special operations background. And at least the outgoing commander will stay in INDOPACOM to build on his experience and the relationships he has developed. But this could be an indication of how we failed to develop expertise in Asia over the past two decades as we have been distracted with Afghanistan (which is of course in Central Asia but not in INDOPACOM) and iraq. And I know regional expertise is not the primary factor for assignment of general officers but do we have a bench of field grade officers who will eventually be general officers with sufficient Asia expertise to meet the national security priorities of the US focus on Asia?
New commander of 25th ID short on Pacific experience, long on warfighting basics
Brig. Gen. Joseph Ryan took command of the 25th Infantry Division during a ceremony at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, Friday, July 23, 2021. (Wyatt Olson/Stars and Stripes)
SCHOFIELD BARRACKS, Hawaii — The newly minted commander of the Army’s 25th Infantry Division may not have spent much time in the Pacific during his long career, but he does not see that as an obstacle.
“I’d like to think that over the last 30 years, I've gotten a pretty well-grounded sense of warfighting, and our primary purpose – make no mistake – is to be prepared to deploy, fight and win,” Brig. Gen. Joseph Ryan told reporters Friday shortly after assuming command on Weyand Field at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.
“So I think over the last 30 years in a multitude of assignments, I'm pretty well grounded in those fundamentals, and I can help sustain and improve what this division does in that regard,” he said.
Jarrard described the “bittersweet” feeling of handing over command of the division during a farewell address to the audience.
“It’s a tough day as we stand here on Weyand Field,” he said, treading on the same Oahu plain where “warriors have trained for centuries.”
Soldiers of the 25th Infantry Division perform the Hui Ha’a Koa, a traditional Hawaiian warriors dance, during a change-of-command ceremony at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, Friday, July 23, 2021. (Wyatt Olson/Stars and Stripes)
“I realized this morning, as I was trying to figure out what I was going to say, that I'll never, ever have the opportunity to be a part of a tactical formation again,” Jarrard said. “In our Army, our tactical formations are the tip of the spear, and there's something special about walking among those who will shoulder the majority of risk should our nation ever call us to battle.”
The division’s roughly 12,000 soldiers are central to U.S. Army Pacific’s transition to a more mobile, expeditionary-style force in the Pacific, with units capable of sustaining themselves independently while deployed to contested islands.
“As we all push forward to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific, our partnerships and posture are more important now than ever,” Maj. Gen. Xavier Brunson, commander of I Corps, said during the ceremony.
Ryan, a 1991 West Point graduate, has never been stationed in Hawaii, joking with reporters that for “30 years I've been trying to get here and finally something went right!”
His career has included stints with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, 1st Armored Division at Baumholder, Germany, the 75th Ranger Regiment and the 101st Airborne Division.
I Corps Commander Maj. Gen. Xavier Brunson, right, congratulates Brig. Gen. Joseph Ryan for taking command of the 25th Infantry Division during a ceremony at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, Friday, July 23, 2021. (Wyatt Olson/Stars and Stripes)
It is a resume that leaves him much to learn about the Pacific.
“I'm not naive to that at all,” he said. “I've got a ton to learn about what it is we do, how we do it, who we do it with. And I'm all in on that.”
Ryan expressed unwavering conviction that the Army has an important role in the Pacific, a theater usually associated with the Marine Corps and Navy.
“I think the Army's gotta have a role,” he told reporters. “Where there's violence, there's people. Where there's people, there's land. And where there's land, there's armies. I mean, it's as simple as that.
“We're prepared to deploy, fight, win on land against our adversaries, and I think the Army can and needs to have a huge role,” he said.
Wyatt Olson
6. Success in the Shadows: Operation Enduring Freedom–Philippines and the Global War on Terror, 2002–2015
This is dated 2018. I did not realize CSI at Fort Leavenworth published this.
Success in the Shadows:
Operation Enduring Freedom–Philippines and the Global War on Terror, 2002–2015
Barry M. Stentiford
Introduction The Global War on Terror turned out to be, in one important aspect, what was originally predicted—a generational struggle, although one being waged by only a small percentage of the current generation of Americans. While Afghanistan and Iraq garnered most of the public attention in the war, other smaller theaters have been active and one in particular could provide a framework for future operations. Specifically the US effort in the southern Philippines was a complex generational effort that, viewed over the long term, was remarkably successful in achieving US strategic goals in the region. Operation Enduring Freedom–Philippines (OEF-P)—as the US involvement in the southern Philippines was dubbed—was quite different from its counterpart in Afghanistan. Rather than a dramatic battle against terrorists and the establishment of a new government, OEF-P became, for the Americans, a largely steady-state application of multiple US government resources to fundamentally alter the relationship between the Philippine government and security forces and the people of the southern Philippines in support of American and Philippine strategic goals. OEF-P changed the situation in the southern Philippines from one in which various terrorist groups openly conducted operations while Philippine government institutions behaved as a besieged force or occupying force, to one in which the Philippine security forces were accepted by the local population as a legitimate presence in the region. The terrorists, while still deadly, were reduced to a chronic law enforcement problem.
The US military made the first tentative steps toward returning to the Philippines in March 2001—six months prior to the 9/11 attacks—to address a very specific strategic problem. Much of southern Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago had effectively become what political scientists call “ungoverned space.”1 The Philippine government in Manila was internationally recognized as having sovereignty over the region but, in practice, that sovereignty was tenuous. The local civilians, especially the Muslims who demographically dominate parts of the region, saw the Philippine soldiers, marines, and National Police as a foreign and illegitimate occupying force. The Philippine military units in the region in turn conducted themselves as an occupying or even as a besieged force in a foreign land. Philippine Marine Major General Juancho Sabban, who spent decades fighting terrorists, described how the military had favored aggressive commanders who could claim large body counts, but the burning of schools, razing of houses, destruction of crops, and unintended civilian casualties only led to more people joining the groups fighting the government.2 A different approach was needed.
What became Operation Enduring Freedom–Philippines began following 9/11 in 2002, when the United States sought to open a second front in the larger war against Islamic terrorist networks by engaging al Qaeda-linked organizations such as the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) and Jemaah Islamiya (JI), organizations that were taking advantage of the relatively ungoverned space in southern Mindanao and in the Sulu Archipelago.3 In this sovereignty vacuum, violent terrorist groups such as JI and the ASG were able to operate with impunity. One catalyst for US forces to enter the region was the kidnapping of an American missionary couple who were taken, along with others, from the Philippine island of Palawan on 27 May 2001 and brought to the region. Initially employing Task Force 510, and later Joint Special Operations Task Force–Philippines (JSOTF-P), the United States worked to increase the capability of the Philippine security forces (including both the armed forces and later the Philippine National Police) to defeat ASG and JI. Concurrently, JSOTF-P conducted Civil Military Operations (CMO) and Information Operations (IO) throughout the region to help Philippine government institutions enhance their legitimacy in the region. In all these endeavors, the long-term goal was to build the capacity of the Philippine security forces, strengthen the legitimacy of the Philippine government throughout the southern Philippines, and end the power vacuum in which the ASG and JI had flourished.4
7. How Taiwan is trying to defend against a cyber 'World War III'
It is the new battlefield but it also needs to be considered an extension of the human domain. Yes there is so much technical stuff in cyber, infrastructure attack, espionage and data theft, theft for funds, denial, or service, etc, but we also have to consider how cyber is the conduit for influencing human behavior (e.g., the importance of social media for information and influence activities.)
How Taiwan is trying to defend against a cyber 'World War III'
CNN · by Eric Cheung, Will Ripley and Gladys Tsai, CNN Business
Taipei, Taiwan (CNN Business)As China steps up military pressure on Taiwan, the self-governing island is preparing for the next big frontier of warfare: crippling cyberattacks.
Taiwan's head of cybersecurity told CNN Business this month that it is using dramatic measures to guard against technological vulnerabilities — including employing roughly two dozen computer experts to deliberately attack the government's systems and help it defend against what Taiwanese authorities estimate are some 20 million to 40 million cyberattacks every month.
Taiwan says it has been able to defend against the overwhelming majority of attacks. Successful breaches number in the hundreds, while only a handful are what the government classifies as "serious."
But the enormous number — and where Taiwan thinks they're coming from — has compelled the government to take the issue seriously, according to Chien Hung-wei, head of Taiwan's Department of Cyber Security.
"Based on the attackers' actions and methodology, we have a rather high degree of confidence that many attacks originated from our neighbor," he told CNN Business, referring to mainland China.
Read More
"The operation of our government highly relies on the internet," Chien said. "Our critical infrastructure, such as gas, water and electricity are highly digitized, so we can easily fall victim if our network security is not robust enough."
The coordinated announcement has illustrated the Biden administration's priorities in defending cybersecurity, after serious vulnerabilities had been reported in major American sectors, such as energy and food production.
Chien said Taiwan suspects that state-backed hackers were behind at least one major malware attack on the island last year. In May 2020, CPC Corporation — a government-owned refiner in Taiwan — was hacked and left unable to process electronic payments from customers. The Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau accused a hacker group linked to China of carrying out the attack.
China has repeatedly denied launching cyberattacks against Taiwan and others. In a statement to CNN Business, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the island's accusations "groundless and purely malicious." China's Taiwan Affairs Office also criticized Taiwanese authorities for using cyberattacks to smear the mainland as a "habitual trick," and to shift the public's focus away from the island's recent Covid-19 outbreak.
And after China was accused by the West earlier this week of launching a massive, global hacking campaign, the country blasted the claims as "groundless."
"We strongly urge the United States and its allies to stop pouring dirty water on China on cybersecurity issues," Zhao Lijian, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman, said on Tuesday. "China firmly opposes and cracks down on cyberattacks of any kind, let alone encourages, supports or indulges them."
Tensions with China
Taiwan and mainland China have been governed separately since the end of the Chinese Civil War more than 70 years ago. While the Chinese Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan, Beijing considers the island to be an "inseparable part" of its territory and has repeatedly threatened to use force if necessary to prevent the island from formally declaring independence.
In recent years, China has stepped up its military pressure on Taiwan. In June, the country sent over two dozen warplanes near the island, prompting Taiwan to alert its air defenses. That was the largest number of warplanes sent to that zone since Taiwan began keeping records of such incursions last year. Beijing has also released military propaganda warning Taipei to "prepare for war" as it establishes stronger ties with the United States. (Analysts say the flights likely serve several purposes for China, including as a demonstration of the strength of the country's military and as a way to gain intelligence it needs for any potential conflict involving Taiwan.)
Experts have voiced concerns not just about the prospect of military warfare, but cyber warfare, too.
Earlier this month, US-based cybersecurity company Recorded Future alleged that a Chinese state-sponsored group has been targeting the Industrial Technology Research Institute, a Taiwanese hi-tech research institution.
Recorded Future said it found that Chinese groups have been targeting organizations across Taiwan's semiconductor industry to obtain source codes, software development kits and chip designs. It based its claims on evidence it compiled using a method called network traffic analysis, which examines such traffic to detect security threats.
China's Taiwan Affairs Office did not respond to questions about that analysis, but accused Taiwanese authorities of inciting anti-China hatred and increasing cross-strait conflicts.
Preparing for risks
In April, the US Department of Justice declared 2020 the "worst year ever" for extortion-related cyberattacks. And the first half of 2021 saw a 102% increase in ransomware attacks compared to the same time period last year, according to cybersecurity firm Check Point Software.
Allen Own, CEO of Taiwanese cybersecurity company Devcore, said hackers can often be categorized into two groups: those who are working for profit, and those who are stealing information of national importance.
He said many countries — including the United States, China, Russia and North Korea — have assembled formidable "cyber armies" to either obtain intelligence or infiltrate another country's infrastructure, or defend against attackers that might do the same to them. That kind of power highlights the need for Taiwan to boost its own capabilities.
"In information security, many people say that World War III will happen over the internet," he said.
Taiwan says, meanwhile, that it has been attuned to these types of risks for years.
In 2016, the Executive Yuan — Taiwan's highest administrative organ — set up the Department of Cyber Security to mitigate security risks.
President Tsai Ing-wen at the time declared cybersecurity a matter of national security. This May, she announced the creation of a new digital development ministry, which will supervise the information and communication sector with a focus of protecting critical infrastructure, according to Taiwan's official Central News Agency.
In an exclusive interview with CNN last month, Taiwan's Foreign Minister Joseph Wu accused China of using military intimidation, disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks to undermine the Taiwanese population's trust in their own government.
"They want to shape Taiwanese people's cognition that Taiwan is very dangerous, and Taiwan cannot do without China," he said. "[But] Taiwan has some very good capability in dealing with cyberattacks. And that is because of our long experience dealing with the cyber activities initiated by the Chinese side."
Chien, the Taiwanese cybersecurity department leader, said the self-governing island has been subject to tens of millions of attacks monthly, a trend the government has recorded for at least the last few years.
But he said Taiwan has been able to defend against most attempts and serious breaches resulting in stolen data or paralyzed services numbered about 10 over the last year.
Chien declined to go into specific details about those attacks, and was willing only to cite successful hacks of Taiwan's education system, which resulted in student data being stolen.
Tsai Sung-ting, CEO of Taiwanese cybersecurity solution provider Team T5.
Even if a cyber intrusion is resolved, such attacks can have long-term consequences because of the kind of information that attackers can gain access to, according to Tsai Sung-ting, CEO of Team T5, a Taiwanese cybersecurity solution provider.
"We frequently observe that after they compromise an organization, the first thing is to steal the emails and documents," he said. "So even after you clean the infection this time, they may come back next month or a few months later. So I will say the threat is persistent."
-- CNN's Beijing bureau contributed to this report.
CNN · by Eric Cheung, Will Ripley and Gladys Tsai, CNN Business
8. Investors Are Buying American
Confidence? Seems like good news.
Excerpts:
Recently, however, it has paid to be invested in U.S. stocks. An MSCI index of global stocks has returned over 10% to investors annualized from 2009 to 2019, but around 5% when excluding U.S. equities.
This year, the MSCI World Index has gained more than 14%, but that falls to about 8% without the U.S.
Such attractive returns could still draw more money to the U.S., analysts said. Optimism toward U.S. stocks rose in July among global fund managers surveyed by Bank of America, while bullish sentiment about eurozone and emerging-market equities waned.
“There is so much money on the sidelines,” said Rajay Bagaria, chief investment officer at hedge fund Wasserstein Debt Opportunities. “Investment companies have received tremendous amounts of inflows, and as a result, any dip right now is being used as an opportunity to deploy capital.”
Investors Are Buying American
Money managers world-wide put more than $900 billion into U.S. funds in the first half, a record amount
WSJ · by Sebastian Pellejero
The inflows underpin a rally that has carried U.S. stocks to records, ahead of major indexes in Europe or Asia. The S&P 500 has climbed over 17% in 2021 to fresh all-time highs, while Germany’s DAX has risen 14%, the Shanghai Composite has added 2.2% and Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average remains little changed.
Monetary and fiscal stimulus policies have powered a savings surge, and many say the U.S. remains the best place to park the cash when it comes to stocks, bonds and other assets. Foreign investors are expected to put another $200 billion of U.S. equities into their portfolios this year, according to Goldman Sachs, in addition to the $712 billion added in 2020. Foreign holdings of U.S. government bonds in May rose to their highest level since February 2020’s pandemic-fueled rally, according to recent Treasury Department data.
“The U.S. economy has a head start coming out of this pandemic,” said Jack Janasiewicz, portfolio manager and strategist at global asset manager Natixis Investment Managers. “There’s plenty of optimism from our standpoint as to why the market can continue to walk up.”
Behind investors’ enthusiasm: the scattershot nature of the global recovery. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal are forecasting the U.S. economy will grow 6.9% in 2021. That is higher than International Monetary Fund projections for most advanced and emerging-market economies, including the euro area, Japan and the United Kingdom.
That would continue an imbalance that has made U.S. bonds relatively attractive globally since the financial crisis, when the country’s slow, steady growth still outpaced the recovery elsewhere. Nearly $16 trillion of global debt tracked by Bloomberg Barclays had a negative yield as of July 22, meaning investors are locking in a loss by holding it to maturity. That is below December’s $18 trillion peak, but up from $11 trillion at the end of 2019. Around 70% of the value of positive-yielding bonds among Group of 10 countries came from the U.S., according to Citigroup.
A decline in the dollar has also brought down the cost of protecting foreign holdings of U.S. debt from swings in currencies, analysts said, making returns more attractive when compared with local securities. Foreign bond funds have increased their U.S. holdings to around 25% of assets under management, as of June 30, according to EPFR. That is up from 23% at the end of last year and around 10% at the end of 2019.
“There’s this massive hunger for positive yield, particularly [U.S.] dollar-denominated debt,” said Daniela Mardarovici, co-head of U.S. multisector fixed income at Macquarie Asset Management.
Analysts caution that fund flows can often chase recent market winners and that bets on U.S. growth may underwhelm investors’ optimistic expectations. Companies in the S&P 500 traded recently at around 28 times their last 12 months of earnings, according to FactSet. That is near the highest level since 2000.
Matt Dmytryszyn, director of investments at Telemus Capital, said U.S. stocks have proven resilient, but his funds are taking some profits and considering an increase in holdings in Europe.
“We’ve seen that ‘buy the dip’ mentality because of the amount of excess savings out there,” he said. “With [U.S.] earnings now back around where they were pre-Covid, we are starting to think there could be more upside abroad.”
Investors can miss out on returns by not thinking globally. U.S. stocks returned 8.5% annualized to investors from December 1969 to February 1989, underperforming a 15.5% return from international developed-market stocks, according to data compiled by Richard Bernstein Advisors. From January 1999 to October 2010, emerging-market stocks returned 14.7% to investors, beating a 0.3% gain on U.S. equities.
Recently, however, it has paid to be invested in U.S. stocks. An MSCI index of global stocks has returned over 10% to investors annualized from 2009 to 2019, but around 5% when excluding U.S. equities.
This year, the MSCI World Index has gained more than 14%, but that falls to about 8% without the U.S.
Such attractive returns could still draw more money to the U.S., analysts said. Optimism toward U.S. stocks rose in July among global fund managers surveyed by Bank of America, while bullish sentiment about eurozone and emerging-market equities waned.
“There is so much money on the sidelines,” said Rajay Bagaria, chief investment officer at hedge fund Wasserstein Debt Opportunities. “Investment companies have received tremendous amounts of inflows, and as a result, any dip right now is being used as an opportunity to deploy capital.”
WSJ · by Sebastian Pellejero
9. Review | Faith that the truth can still defeat misinformation
Two different descriptions of the academy. I remain optimistic the first is going to hold and the second will be overpowered by it (though the second will always make the news).
He also offers pointed criticism of the “cancel culture” that has destroyed lives and careers, recounting gruesome specific anecdotes, including how some students and professors have been hounded and abandoned by colleagues and friends.
But then Rauch made me uncomfortable. After powerful pages that seemed ominous and alarming, after acknowledging widespread discrimination on American campuses against conservative students and professors, he finds comfort in polling numbers and interviews that show broad support for tolerance and diversity among professors, students and ordinary citizens, too. “Most Americans, including left-leaning Americans, do not want to see debate chilled and speech policed,” he writes, as though that should somehow be reassuring.
A few pages later, the tune changes. “Well-publicized incidents of campus intolerance and one-sidedness have convinced a lot of people that universities are in the indoctrination business,” writes Rauch, clearly torn. “For academia, time is running out to take viewpoint diversity seriously — meaning just as seriously as other kinds of diversity.”
Rauch told us earlier how important academic institutions are to preserving and promoting the constitution of knowledge that he believes can still carry the day against the disinformers polluting our political discourse. His confidence would be easier to share if those institutions were as concerned with evenhandedness as Rauch is.
Review | Faith that the truth can still defeat misinformation
The truth could use more friends in 21st-century America, where a great many citizens have embraced large quantities of hooey — palpable nonsense, especially of the kind promoted by our recently departed president. The spectacle of Donald Trump’s chronic fabricating — more than 30,500 whoppers in a single term in office, according to The Washington Post’s fact-checkers — is unique in American history. All those lies and inventions debased our public life. They made everyday lying normal for a great many public figures.
Into this depressing reality comes Jonathan Rauch, who has turned himself into a kind of philosopher-journalist as a writer for the Atlantic and a fellow at the Brookings Institution. He sees clearly what a mess we have on our hands, but he also sees something much more hopeful: a centuries-old tradition of embracing the scientific method that has enabled what Rauch calls the “reality-based community” to win broad support for true and accurate judgments about all sorts of subjects that once were hopelessly controversial or unimaginable.
So, over time — a lot of time — human beings came to accept, for example, that their Earth actually made an annual journey around the sun, and was just one planet of one sun in a universe that was full of countless suns and planets. Although some believers in the supernatural dissented, evangelical Christians for example, the biblical view of the age of Earth (roughly 6,000 years, according to Christian calculations based on biblical references) has been displaced by modern science’s conclusion that our planet is more than 4 billion years old.
Over centuries, scientists found too much evidence of Earth’s old age for the biblical interpretation to survive. So, in Rauch’s judgment, the good guys won this argument, even if evangelicals have refused to cry uncle. You don’t need unanimity to settle such disputes. Over time, by a complex process of debate, investigation and experimentation, society settles on conclusions that end up being widely, if never universally, shared. This is how humankind shows respect for what Rauch calls “The Constitution of Knowledge” — also the title of his new book.
This process is supported by the fact that, as Rauch puts it, “losing touch with reality never works out well.” He’s right. The two most successful political movements of the 20th century that were built on deliberately distorted understandings of reality — Adolf Hitler’s National Socialism in Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Marxism-Leninism in the Soviet Union — did quite well in their early years, then crumbled under pressure within a generation (Nazism) or two (Soviet communism). Stalin and Hitler were both brilliant propagandists who did their best to defy the constitution of knowledge; both ultimately failed, though at enormous cost to their countries and to mankind.
Trump is the villain in Rauch’s book, and Rauch takes him with dead seriousness. “With skills he had honed for decades by manipulating journalists, deploying what he called ‘truthful hyperbole,’ and starring on reality TV, he was easily the most artful practitioner of disinformation since the 1930s,” Rauch writes. “Anyone who did doubt his mastery ought to have been convinced when, after four years of softening up the public with one lie after another, Trump executed his coup de grâce, an astonishingly comprehensive, brazen, and effective campaign to convince the public that he had won the 2020 presidential election, or at least that the outcome was in doubt.” According to polls, most Republicans today say they still question the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election victory.
Rauch’s respect for Trump’s skills may surprise liberal readers, but it certainly seems deserved. He credits Trump’s original ideologist, Steve Bannon, with a clear understanding of how the communications techniques of the digital age can be used to confuse and disorient. He quotes Bannon: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with s---.” Rauch continues: “Although the formulation is crude, there could be no more concise and accurate summation of what modern information warfare is all about.” Trump’s reliance on lies in his public discourse indicates that he has taken Bannon’s insight to heart.
To make matters worse, Bannon and Trump operate in a culture of historical, economic and political ignorance. Too many Americans know so little about those subjects that a forceful assertion from an admired source can persuade many of them, or at least utterly confuse them.
Rauch is determined to be an optimist about his one large idea: that an established scientific method reliant on discernible facts and describable methodology can still produce consensus among opinion-shapers and elites on fundamental issues. This is how the reality-based community survives and good ideas prevail over bad ones. It’s why scientists and most educated lay people generally accept that our Earth really is billions of years old, no matter what the Bible says.
Rauch insists that we can cope with the modern technologies that make it easier than ever to flood the zone with crap, to “cancel” nonconformists and troublemakers, to spread utterly false but appealing assertions disguised as information. “I am not an alarmist,” he writes after introducing such perils of the computer age. He insists that he wrote this book “in a spirit of hope and guarded optimism.”
He marvels that “the idea that obnoxious, misguided, seditious, blasphemous, and bigoted expressions deserve not only to be tolerated but, of all things, protected is the single most counterintuitive social principle in all of human history. Every human instinct cries out against it, and every generation discovers fresh reasons to oppose it. It is saved from the scrapheap of self-evident absurdity only by the fact that it is also the single most successful social principle in all of human history.” Those who embrace it have, up to now, prevailed over those who refused to.
Rauch is a very smart fellow who has done a huge amount of reading, and he is an elegant writer, a combination that makes him persuasive. Reading this book is a rewarding challenge. I thought I deserved at least three college credits for getting to the end, though the trip itself was more fun than most college courses.
But I also found myself worrying that Rauch is too indulgent of the ugliest phenomena he writes about and too optimistic about the damage they do to the reality-based community. Not that he avoids the issues raised by radical activists who have transformed some university campuses into battlefields by turning against free speech for those with whom they disagree. He disapproves sharply of those who justify silencing opinions that make some people uncomfortable for the sake of some ill-defined “emotional safety.”
Members of the reality-based world should realize, Rauch writes, that “the Constitution of Knowledge does not allow . . . treating criticism, offense or emotional impact as equivalent to physical violence or protection from emotionally hurtful expression as a right. If subjectively hurtful expressions are violence, then criticism is violence, and then science is a human rights violation.”
But then Rauch acknowledges that in recent years, “the vocabulary of emotional safetyism [what a phrase!] had become ubiquitous. People who objected to ideas they deemed hurtful found themselves armed with a powerful rhetorical weapon and limitless potential targets.”
And such things did not happen only on campuses. Rauch rightly criticizes employees of the New York Times who pressured their bosses to fire the editor responsible for publication of an op-ed piece by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) that called for deploying federal troops in cities convulsed by street demonstrations and rioting after the killing of George Floyd. (The editor eventually resigned.)
Numerous Times reporters and editors sent out tweets that said, “Running this [Cotton op-ed] puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.” Rauch notes that journalists, especially, had no grounds for seeking “safety from unwelcome viewpoints” that made them uncomfortable: “Entering hostile emotional and intellectual territory is in the [journalist’s] job description.”
He also offers pointed criticism of the “cancel culture” that has destroyed lives and careers, recounting gruesome specific anecdotes, including how some students and professors have been hounded and abandoned by colleagues and friends.
But then Rauch made me uncomfortable. After powerful pages that seemed ominous and alarming, after acknowledging widespread discrimination on American campuses against conservative students and professors, he finds comfort in polling numbers and interviews that show broad support for tolerance and diversity among professors, students and ordinary citizens, too. “Most Americans, including left-leaning Americans, do not want to see debate chilled and speech policed,” he writes, as though that should somehow be reassuring.
A few pages later, the tune changes. “Well-publicized incidents of campus intolerance and one-sidedness have convinced a lot of people that universities are in the indoctrination business,” writes Rauch, clearly torn. “For academia, time is running out to take viewpoint diversity seriously — meaning just as seriously as other kinds of diversity.”
Rauch told us earlier how important academic institutions are to preserving and promoting the constitution of knowledge that he believes can still carry the day against the disinformers polluting our political discourse. His confidence would be easier to share if those institutions were as concerned with evenhandedness as Rauch is.
The Constitution of Knowledge
A Defense of Truth
By Jonathan Rauch
Brookings. 305 pp. $27.99
10. How Science Lost the Public’s Trust
Excerpts:
The World Health Organization is a particular offender: “We had a dozen Western scientists go to China in February and team up with a dozen Chinese scientists under the auspices of the WHO.” At a subsequent press conference they pronounced the lab-leak theory “extremely unlikely.” The organization also ignored Taiwanese cries for help with Covid-19 in January 2020. “The Taiwanese said, ‘We’re picking up signs that this is a human-to-human transmission that threatens a major epidemic. Please, will you investigate?’ And the WHO basically said, ‘You’re from Taiwan. We’re not allowed to talk to you.’ ”
He notes that WHO’s primary task is forestalling pandemics. Yet in 2015 it “put out a statement saying that the greatest threat to human health in the 21st century is climate change. Now that, to me, suggests an organization not focused on the day job.”
In Mr. Ridley’s view, the scientific establishment has always had a tendency “to turn into a church, enforcing obedience to the latest dogma and expelling heretics and blasphemers.” This tendency was previously kept in check by the fragmented nature of the scientific enterprise: Prof. A at one university built his career by saying that Prof. B’s ideas somewhere else were wrong. In the age of social media, however, “the space for heterodoxy is evaporating.” So those who believe in science as philosophy are increasingly estranged from science as an institution. It’s sure to be a costly divorce.
How Science Lost the Public’s Trust
From climate to Covid, politics and hubris have disconnected scientific institutions from the philosophy and method that ought to guide them.
WSJ · by Tunku Varadarajan
Mr. Ridley, 63, describes himself as a “science critic, which is a profession that doesn’t really exist.” He likens his vocation to that of an art critic and dismisses most other science writers as “cheerleaders.” That somewhat lofty attitude seems fitting for a hereditary English peer. As the fifth Viscount Ridley, he’s a member of Britain’s House of Lords, and he Zooms with me from his ancestral seat in Northumberland, just south of Scotland, in between sessions of Parliament (which he also attends by Zoom).
At Oxford nearly 40 years ago, Mr. Ridley studied the mating patterns of pheasants. His fieldwork involved much crouching in long country grass to figure out why these “jolly interesting” birds are polygamous—unlike most other avians. With the Canadian molecular biologist Alina Chan, he’s finishing a book called “Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19,” to be published in November.
It will likely make its authors unwelcome in China. As Mr. Ridley worked on the book, he says, it became “horribly clear” that Chinese scientists are “not free to explain and reveal everything they’ve been doing with bat viruses.” That information has to be “dug out” by outsiders like him and Ms. Chan. The Chinese authorities, he says, ordered all scientists to send their results relevant to the virus for approval by the government before other scientists or international agencies could vet them: “That is shocking in the aftermath of a lethal pandemic that has killed millions and devastated the world.”
Mr. Ridley notes that the question of Covid’s origin has “mostly been tackled by people outside the mainstream scientific establishment.” People inside not only have been “disappointingly incurious” but have tried to shut down the inquiry “to protect the reputation of science as an institution.” The most obvious reason for this resistance: If Covid leaked from a lab, and especially if it developed there, “science finds itself in the dock.”
Other factors have been at play as well. Scientists are as sensitive as other elites to charges of racism, which the Communist Party used to evade questions about specifically Chinese practices “such as the trade in wildlife for food or lab experiments on bat coronaviruses in the city of Wuhan.”
Scientists are a global guild, and the Western scientific community has “come to have a close relationship with, and even a reliance on, China.” Scientific journals derive considerable “income and input” from China, and Western universities rely on Chinese students and researchers for tuition revenue and manpower. All that, Mr. Ridley says, “may have to change in the wake of the pandemic.”
In the U.K., he has also noted “a tendency to admire authoritarian China among scientists that surprised some people.” It didn’t surprise Mr. Ridley. “I’ve noticed for years,” he says, “that scientists take a somewhat top-down view of the political world, which is odd if you think about how beautifully bottom-up the evolutionary view of the natural world is.”
He asks: “If you think biological complexity can come about through unplanned emergence and not need an intelligent designer, then why would you think human society needs an ‘intelligent government’?” Science as an institution has “a naive belief that if only scientists were in charge, they would run the world well.” Perhaps that’s what politicians mean when they declare that they “believe in science.” As we’ve seen during the pandemic, science can be a source of power.
But there’s a “tension between scientists wanting to present a unified and authoritative voice,” on the one hand, and science-as-philosophy, which is obligated to “remain open-minded and be prepared to change its mind.” Mr. Ridley fears “that the pandemic has, for the first time, seriously politicized epidemiology.” It’s partly “the fault of outside commentators” who hustle scientists in political directions. “I think it’s also the fault of epidemiologists themselves, deliberately publishing things that fit with their political prejudices or ignoring things that don’t.”
Epidemiologists are divided between those who want more lockdowns and those who think that approach wasn’t effective and might have been counterproductive. Mr. Ridley sides with the latter camp, and he’s dismissive of the alarmist modeling that led to lockdowns in the first place. “The modeling of where the pandemic might go,” he says, “presents itself as an entirely apolitical project. But there have been too many cases of epidemiologists presenting models based on rather extreme assumption.”
One motivation: Pessimism sells. “You don’t get blamed for being too pessimistic, but you do get attention. It’s like climate science. Modeled forecasts of a future that is scary is much more likely to get you on television.” Mr. Ridley invokes Michael Crichton, the late science-fiction novelist, who hated the tendency to describe the outcomes of models in words that imply they are the “results” of an experiment. That frames speculation as if it were proof.
Climate science is already far down the road to politicization. “Twenty or 30 years ago,” Mr. Ridley says, “you could study how the ice ages happened and discuss competing theories without being at all political about it.” Now it’s very hard to have a conversation on the subject “without people trying to interpret it through a political lens.”
Mr. Ridley describes himself as “lukewarm” on climate change. He accepts that humans have made the climate warmer, but doesn’t subscribe to any of the catastrophist views that call for radical changes in human behavior and consumption. His nuanced position hasn’t protected him from attack, of course, and the British left is prone to vilify him as a “denier.”
Climate science has also been “infected by cultural relativism and postmodernism,” Mr. Ridley says. He cites a paper that was critical of glaciology—the study of glaciers—“because it wasn’t sufficiently feminist.” I wonder if he’s kidding, but Google confirms he isn’t. In 2016 Progress in Human Geography published “Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research.”
The politicization of science leads to a loss of confidence in science as an institution. The distrust may be justified but leaves a vacuum, often filled by a “much more superstitious approach to knowledge.” To such superstition Mr. Ridley attributes public resistance to technologies such as genetically modified food, nuclear power—and vaccines.
If you spurn Covid-19 vaccination, Mr. Ridley says he would “fervently argue” that it is “the lesser of two risks, at least for adults.” We have “ample data to show that—for this vaccine, and for others, going back centuries.” He calls vaccination “probably the most massive and incredible benefit of scientific knowledge.” Yet it’s “counterintuitive and difficult to understand,” which may explain why its advocates have been vilified through the centuries.
He cites the example of Mary Wortley Montagu, a British aristocrat, who pushed for smallpox inoculation in Britain after witnessing its administration in Ottoman Turkey in the early 18th century. She was viciously pilloried, he says, as was Zabdiel Boylston, a celebrated Boston doctor who inoculated residents against smallpox during a smallpox outbreak in 1721.
Vaccines have been central to the question of “misinformation” and the White House’s pressure campaign against social media to censor it. Mr. Ridley worries about the opposite problem: that social media “is complicit in enforcing conformity.” It does this “through ‘fact checking,’ mob pile-ons, and direct censorship, now explicitly at the behest of the Biden administration.” He points out that Facebook and Wikipedia long banned any mention of the possibility that the virus leaked from a Wuhan laboratory.
“Conformity,” Mr. Ridley says, “is the enemy of scientific progress, which depends on disagreement and challenge. Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts, as [the physicist Richard] Feynman put it.” Mr. Ridley reserves his bluntest criticism for “science as a profession,” which he says has become “rather off-puttingly arrogant and political, permeated by motivated reasoning and confirmation bias.” Increasing numbers of scientists “seem to fall prey to groupthink, and the process of peer-reviewing and publishing allows dogmatic gate-keeping to get in the way of new ideas and open-minded challenge.”
The World Health Organization is a particular offender: “We had a dozen Western scientists go to China in February and team up with a dozen Chinese scientists under the auspices of the WHO.” At a subsequent press conference they pronounced the lab-leak theory “extremely unlikely.” The organization also ignored Taiwanese cries for help with Covid-19 in January 2020. “The Taiwanese said, ‘We’re picking up signs that this is a human-to-human transmission that threatens a major epidemic. Please, will you investigate?’ And the WHO basically said, ‘You’re from Taiwan. We’re not allowed to talk to you.’ ”
He notes that WHO’s primary task is forestalling pandemics. Yet in 2015 it “put out a statement saying that the greatest threat to human health in the 21st century is climate change. Now that, to me, suggests an organization not focused on the day job.”
In Mr. Ridley’s view, the scientific establishment has always had a tendency “to turn into a church, enforcing obedience to the latest dogma and expelling heretics and blasphemers.” This tendency was previously kept in check by the fragmented nature of the scientific enterprise: Prof. A at one university built his career by saying that Prof. B’s ideas somewhere else were wrong. In the age of social media, however, “the space for heterodoxy is evaporating.” So those who believe in science as philosophy are increasingly estranged from science as an institution. It’s sure to be a costly divorce.
Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at New York University’s Classical Liberal Institute.
WSJ · by Tunku Varadarajan
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
