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Quotes of the Day:
"When you get to the end of all the light you know and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."
– Edward Teller
"Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and simple, however cruel; our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt."
– Graham Greene
"Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time,' is like saying, 'I don't want to.'"
– Lao Tzu
1. Think the American century is over? Think again. By Joseph S. Nye Jr.
2. Ukraine’s Kursk Offensive Has Revealed Russia's Military Weakness
3. Suspended 4-star general denies he pressured panels to promote officer
4. The US divide on foreign policy
5. A group of 20-somethings built a GPS-independent drone in 24 hours—and caught the eye of US special operations forces
6. The Big Five - 23 August edition By Mick Ryan
7. Former US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley calls for more international support for Taiwan
8. Japan must do much more for Taiwan
9. US Air Force eyes missile defense for dispersed bases in China fight
10. US to send $125 million in new military aid to Ukraine, officials say
11. Why China Is Starting a New Trade War
12. Russia opens case against CNN reporter who covered Kursk incursion
13. US military asking contractors to help haul boats used in troubled Gaza pier mission back to the US
14. China's AI strategy all about serving the state
15. Taiwan boosts defense spending in face of Chinese military prodding
16. There Are No Magic Beans: Easy Options to Deter China Militarily Do Not Exist
17. Want More Innovative US Military Leaders? Bring the Hacking for Defense Course to Service Academies
18. The Corrupting Influence of DEI on Military Education
19. America’s Greatest Asset Has Been Our Industrial Capacity; It’s Time to Rebuild It.
20. The Crumbling Foundations of American Strength
21. Europe’s America Problem
1. Think the American century is over? Think again. By Joseph S. Nye Jr.
Conclusion:
I am sometimes asked whether I am optimistic or pessimistic about the future of the United States. I reply, “Guardedly optimistic.” The United States has many problems—polarization, inequality, loss of trust, mass shootings, deaths of despair from drugs and suicide—just to name a few that make headlines. There is a case for pessimism. At the same time, we Americans have survived worse periods in the 1890s, 1930s, and 1960s. For all its flaws, the United States is an innovative and resilient society that, in the past, has been able to recreate and reinvent itself. Maybe Generation Z can do it again. I hope so.
Think the American century is over? Think again.
atlanticcouncil.org · by jcookson · August 20, 2024
Elections Politics & Diplomacy United States and Canada
New Atlanticist August 20, 2024
By Joseph S. Nye Jr.
In this contentious election year, one of the most significant questions is whether we are witnessing the end of an age in which the United States has been the dominant power. In my new memoir, A Life in the American Century, I make a case for optimism.
I have lived through eight decades of an American era that included World War II, Hiroshima, and wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The Cold War ended without the nuclear catastrophe that hung over our heads, but it was replaced by a period of hubris as the United States became the world’s sole superpower. That unipolar moment was soon replaced by fears of transnational terrorism and cyber wars. Analysts today speak about a new cold war with a rising China and fear of nuclear escalation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Our mental maps of the world have changed dramatically over my lifetime.
For those eight decades, we have lived in what TIME publisher Henry Luce, in March 1941, baptized “the American Century.” In the nineteenth century, the global balance of power was centered in Europe, which sent its imperial tentacles around the world. The United States was a bit player with a military not much larger than that of Chile. As the twentieth century began, the United States became the world’s largest industrial power, and accounted for nearly a quarter of the world economy (as it still does today).
When US President Woodrow Wilson decided to send two million troops to Europe in 1917, the United States tipped the balance in World War I. But afterwards, the United States “returned to normal” and, in the 1930s, became strongly isolationist. It is more accurate to date the American century to US President Franklin Roosevelt’s entry into World War II in 1941. It was in that context, to resist isolationism and urge participation in the war, that Luce coined his famous term. Some have referred to an American empire, but our power always had limits. It is more accurate to think of the American century as the period since World War II during which time, for better or for worse, the United States has been the preeminent power in global affairs.
There is a case for pessimism. At the same time, we Americans have survived worse periods in the 1890s, 1930s, and 1960s.
The United States remains the world’s strongest military power as well as the largest economy, but since the 2010s China has become a near-peer economic competitor, and large parts of our country have reacted negatively to the disruptions caused by globalization. As yet, this contemporary era has no fixed label.
So what sort of a world am I leaving to my grandchildren and their generation? I tried to examine part of it in my 2015 book Is the American Century Over? and concluded that the answer to that question was “no,” but that American primacy in this century will not look like the twentieth century. I argued that the greatest danger we Americans face is not that China will surpass us, but that the diffusion of power will produce entropy, or the inability to get anything done.
China is an impressive peer competitor with great strengths but also weaknesses. In assessing the overall balance of power, the United States has at least five long-term advantages. One is geography. The United States is surrounded by two oceans and two friendly neighbors, while China shares a border with fourteen other countries and is engaged in territorial disputes with several. The United States also has an energy advantage, whereas China depends on energy imports. Third, the United States derives power from its large transnational financial institutions and the international role of the dollar. A credible reserve currency depends on it being freely convertible, as well as on deep capital markets and the rule of law, which China lacks. The United States also has a relative demographic advantage as the only major developed country that is currently projected to hold its place (third) in the global population ranking. Seven of the world’s fifteen largest economies will have a shrinking workforce over the next decade, but the US workforce is expected to increase, while China’s peaked in 2014. Finally, the United States has been at the forefront in important new technologies (bio, nano, and information). China, of course, is investing heavily in research and development and scores well in the numbers of patents, but by its own measures its research universities still rank behind US ones.
All told, the United States holds a strong hand in this great-power competition. But if Americans succumb to hysteria about China’s rise or to complacency about its “peak,” they could play their cards poorly. Discarding high-value cards—including strong alliances and influence in international institutions—would be a serious mistake. China is not an existential threat to the United States unless US leaders make it one by blundering into a major war. The historical analogy that worries me is 1914, not 1941.
My greater concern, however, is about domestic change and what it could do to US “soft power” (a concept I invented in 1990 to describe the ability to get what one wants through attraction rather than coercion or payment) and the future of the American century. Even if its external power remains dominant, a country can lose its internal virtue and attractiveness to others. The Roman empire lasted long after it lost its republican form of government. As Benjamin Franklin remarked about the form of American government created by the founders: “A republic, if you can keep it.” Political polarization is a problem, and civic life is becoming more complex. Technology is creating an enormous range of opportunities and risks that my grandchildren will face as they cope with the internet of things, artificial intelligence, big data, machine learning, deep fakes, and generative bots—to name but a few. And even larger challenges are approaching from the realms of biotechnology, not to mention coping with climate change.
Some historians have compared the flux of ideas and connections today to the turmoil of the Renaissance and Reformation five centuries ago, but on a much larger scale. And those eras were followed by the Thirty Years’ War, which killed a third of the population of Germany. Today, the world is richer and riskier than ever before.
I am sometimes asked whether I am optimistic or pessimistic about the future of the United States. I reply, “Guardedly optimistic.” The United States has many problems—polarization, inequality, loss of trust, mass shootings, deaths of despair from drugs and suicide—just to name a few that make headlines. There is a case for pessimism. At the same time, we Americans have survived worse periods in the 1890s, 1930s, and 1960s. For all its flaws, the United States is an innovative and resilient society that, in the past, has been able to recreate and reinvent itself. Maybe Generation Z can do it again. I hope so.
Joseph S. Nye Jr. is the former dean of Harvard University’s Kennedy School and a member of the Atlantic Council’s Board of Directors. He is the author of a new memoir, A Life in the American Century, from which this article is adapted.
2. Ukraine’s Kursk Offensive Has Revealed Russia's Military Weakness
Conclusion:
Ukraine’s daring offensive, in other words, has laid bare a couple of critical truths. The first is that Russia is weak and constrained by the same sort of real-world limitations that afflict other powers. The second is that Ukraine, though embattled, can still find ways to break the stalemate and win this war.
Ukraine’s Kursk Offensive Has Revealed Russia's Military Weakness
The daring attack has shown that Russia is actually unwilling to escalate, contrary to conventional wisdom.
The National Interest · by Elliot Petroff · August 22, 2024
Over the past two weeks, Ukraine has taken its fight with the Kremlin onto Russian soil. Kyiv’s offensive consisted of a daring raid into Russia’s Kursk region designed to bring the fight to Russian forces and draw the Kremlin’s combat troops away from its own territory.
Aside from a few headlines, though, Ukraine’s bold strategic gamble has gone largely unnoticed. That’s a shame because Kyiv’s initiative—and Moscow’s response to it—has made clear that persistent Western fears of Russian brinkmanship are overblown.
Up until now, both U.S. and European policies have been defined by caution and fear of Russian risk-taking. While President Biden has pledged to back Kyiv’s fight for “as long as it takes,” in practice, his administration has been slow to provide Ukraine with the weaponry it needs to win the fight decisively. And even when it has, that aid has been accompanied by onerous restrictions that have had the effect of limiting Ukraine’s fighting potential. European nations, meanwhile, have taken their cues from Washington and settled in for a long campaign of incremental assistance to Ukraine. The result has been a situation that—at least until recently—had settled into a strategic stalemate and positional warfare.
That’s the equation Ukraine’s push into Russia is attempting to alter. In the process, however, it has also laid bare the hollowness of Moscow’s threats of strategic escalation in response to battlefield setbacks.
Ever since the current conflict broke out in February 2022, the West has been concerned that “poking the bear” could prompt Russia to use nuclear weapons and escalate the war into a full-blown showdown with NATO. But Ukraine’s push north, through which it has managed to seize over 480 square miles of Russia’s Kursk Oblast, hasn’t elicited much of a response from Russia. To be sure, the Kremlin has mobilized in response, declaring a federal emergency in the region and redeploying troops, tanks, and artillery from the Ukraine front to (so far unsuccessfully) beat back the invaders. However, what Russia has not done is retaliate against Ukraine or its partners with any significant escalatory measures.
President Vladimir Putin has not ramped up the conflict in conventional terms. Nor has he used nuclear weapons against Russia’s western neighbor, as Russian officials have threatened in the past. Indeed, even with Ukrainian troops now entrenched in Russian territory, the Kremlin hasn’t made any maneuvers that could threaten to escalate the conflict further.
Part of the reason for Russia’s restraint is no doubt practical. Simply put, Moscow is already using pretty much all the military resources at its disposal in its attempts to subjugate Ukraine. As such, Russia is unlikely to make moves so provocative that they might prompt the direct involvement of NATO. Indeed, there does not seem to be much that Russia might be able to do to turn the tables on Kyiv without risking the alliance entering the conflict.
The lesson is worth heeding. As dominant as Russia’s strongman wants to appear, his government is in a far more precarious position than the West originally believed. Putin’s bluff has always been that he would be more willing to turn up the heat if the war doesn’t go his way. But the reality is that he cannot. All of Russia’s tanks, artillery, aircraft, missiles, and ships are as committed as they can be without exposing Russia to other attacks. And because they are, there are real-world limits to what Russia can realistically do to punish the West.
Ukraine’s daring offensive, in other words, has laid bare a couple of critical truths. The first is that Russia is weak and constrained by the same sort of real-world limitations that afflict other powers. The second is that Ukraine, though embattled, can still find ways to break the stalemate and win this war.
About the Author:
Elliot Petroff is a researcher at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC.
Image: Shutterstock.com.
The National Interest · by Elliot Petroff · August 22, 2024
3. Suspended 4-star general denies he pressured panels to promote officer
The General's counter-accusations against the Army are troubling.
Suspended 4-star general denies he pressured panels to promote officer
Gen. Charles Hamilton wrote in a letter to Army leaders that he believes a selection process for field grade commanders disadvantages Black officers.
Jeff Schogol
Posted on Aug 22, 2024 1:42 PM EDT
8 minute read
taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol
A four-star general suspended by the Army earlier this year says the supposedly anonymous panels the Army uses to select field-grade commanders are inherently stacked against Black candidates, both before and during the formal selection process.
Gen. Charles Hamilton was suspended as the commander of Army Materiel Command on March 22 after accusations emerged that he used undue influence to help a Black female lieutenant colonel land on a promotion list.
Hamilton defended his conduct in that case in a letter addressed to the Secretary of the Army, obtained by Task & Purpose. Hamilton said his interests and actions in the Lt. Col.’s case were both proper and an effort to protect a subordinate from being “sabotaged” by the Army’s program for selecting battalion commanders, which he believes introduces built-in bias against Black candidates.
Wormuth suspended Hamilton after Military.com reported that the director of the Army’s selection process — known as the Command Assessment Program or CAP — accused Hamilton of pressuring Army officials to select a lieutenant colonel for command. Wormuth directed the matter to be reviewed by the Department of Defense Inspector General’s office, a report which Wormuth is expected to see soon.
In Hamilton’s letter, written last week, the four-star general asked to be reinstated as the head of Army Materiel Command, and he laid out his case in both the lieutenant colonel’s promotion and his view on the CAP process.
“Removing photographs from personnel files and providing unconscious bias training for panelists is not enough,” Hamilton wrote in an Aug. 16 letter to Wortmuth. “By the time a Minority officer sits before a Command Assessment Program panel, the bias and racism that exists in our Army culture is already cemented into evaluation reports, peer assessments, and opinions of decision makers.”
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Hamilton wrote that he was always open and transparent about advocating for the lieutenant colonel, whom Task & Purpose is not identifying because there is no evidence she violated any Army policies. He also denied using his rank and position to give the lieutenant colonel an unfair advantage over other officers. He noted that he has advocated in favor of many officers during his 43-year Army career, including white officers, but that this is the first time he has been accused of favoritism.
The tone of Hamilton’s letter suggests that he expects Wormuth to act against him after the IG report is finalized.
“I acknowledge you may nonetheless take adverse action against me even though my advocacy for Minority leaders like [the lieutenant colonel] has been completely transparent and above board,” Hamilton wrote. “Regardless of what decision you make regarding my fate, I implore you to investigate why the Command Assessment Program deems so few Minority officers as ready for command and what barriers exist that make qualified Black officers unwilling to subject themselves to that process”
When asked about Hamilton’s letter to Wormuth, Army spokeswoman Cynthia Smith provided Task & Purpose with a brief statement: “We are aware of the letter, but cannot comment due to the ongoing investigation.”
At issue is the integrity of the Army Command Assessment Program, or CAP, which evaluates sergeants major, lieutenant colonels, and full colonels for command assignments.
Hamilton allegedly took several actions to give a lieutenant colonel an unfair advantage when she appeared before the Battalion Command Assessment Program, Military.com reported, including asking for sensitive information about the officer’s subordinate and peer reviews, personally observing the first panel, criticizing remarks from a psychologist during the first panel as “too negative,” asking for the lieutenant colonel to appear before a second panel, discussing the lieutenant colonel with the panelists before the second panel convened, and repeatedly asking Army officials on the morning of the second panel how the interview with the lieutenant colonel was going.
Ultimately, both panels decided she was not ready for command, but the officer’s name was still placed on a selection list for battalion command. Her name was later removed after Military.com’s reporting.
In his letter to Wormuth, Hamilton acknowledged that he contacted general officers whom he believed were on command assessment programs about what they focus on when reviewing a candidate’s file, but insisted that he did not try to influence the results of the lieutenant colonel’s second panel.
FILE: Army Gen. Charles Hamilton shown as a three-star general addressing attendees of the Global Customer-Facing Summit at Fort Belvoir, Va., April 19-20, 2022. (Christopher Lynch/Defense Logistics Agency)
“It is true — I contacted general officers whom I believed were on Command Assessment Program panels,” Hamilton wrote. “However, I never pressured or even asked any of them to deem [the lieutenant colonel] ready for command.”
But beyond the single case of the Lt. Col., Hamilton’s letter lays out his belief that the CAP program disadvantages Black and other non-white candidates. He cited selection results from the panels that indicate that, on average, about 10% of officers selected each year for command are Black with a single yearly high of 15% since 2020. The pool of candidates, he said, was 22% Black.
Task & Purpose was able to confirm that the CAP selection rates Hamilton’s letter cite match his cited source, briefing slides on the CAP program presented to senior Army commanders. While Task & Purpose could not confirm the make-up of the CAP candidate pool, Black officers make up about 10% of all Army officer ranks below that of generals.
He also wrote that the Army’s vice chief of staff told general officers that 72% of eligible Black officers have opted out of the program.
Jokes and a plan to ‘light her up’
Hamilton argued that the CAP program’s problems with racism are evident in the lieutenant colonel’s case. He wrote that an officer whom he trusts told him about overhearing the lieutenant colonel’s peers talking about how they planned to use their CAP assessments to sabotage her opportunity to be selected for command.
“He said they intended to ‘light her up,’” Hamilton wrote. “Sadly, and as much as we senior leaders wish to believe this does not happen in our formations, it does, and often, directly at minority officers.”
Initially, Hamilton did not take any actions based on what the officer had told him, he wrote. Later, he received an invitation from Col. Robert O’Brien, CAP’s executive director, to observe the lieutenant colonel’s panel.
Task & Purpose has obtained an email from O’Brien to Hamilton and others inviting them to attend the CAP program on any day that fit their schedules between Sept. 29 and Nov. 11, 2023.
Prior to the lieutenant colonel’s interview, Hamilton was provided with her peer assessments, which confirmed what the officer had told him, he wrote.
“More shocking, I observed the psychologist unprofessionally joking and making unfair conclusions with the panel prior to her interview about what he read in [the lieutenant colonel’s] assessments,” Hamilton wrote. “Though [the lieutenant colonel] acquitted herself well, she could not overcome the weight of the unfair peer bias.”
At the end of the panel interview, Col. Townley Hedrick, CAP’s deputy executive director, asked Hamilton about how he felt the panel went and mentioned the possibility that she could appear before another panel, Hamilton wrote.
“I did not ask for this, nor did I intentionally give him the impression I wanted her to be repaneled,” Hamilton wrote. “I told him that I was unaware repaneling was an option the Army offered. I agreed with his recommendation that it would be appropriate. Colonel Hedrick asked for my cell number, which I provided so that he could keep me updated about [the lieutenant colonel’s] repanel. I thanked Colonel Hedrick for his help.”
Hamilton wrote that he later learned that at least 11 officers in the same cycle had also been repaneled.
After the lieutenant colonel was rejected for command the second time, Hamilton voiced his concerns about the selection process to Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt, director of the Army Staff. Piatt asked if Hamilton could write a memo about why the lieutenant colonel deserved to be selected as a battalion commander and to collect letters of recommendation for her, both of which he provided. He also met with Piatt and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George on the matter.
IG investigation
Hamilton also wrote that he was concerned about the motives of inspector general investigators.
“I would be remiss if I did not briefly address my own feelings of racism underlying this investigation,” Hamilton wrote. “I have heard from witnesses interviewed by the Inspector General investigator that they were asked about my associations with The ROCKS, Inc., a mentoring group, and Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, a community service organization. I am concerned as to why the investigator thought my associations with Black affinity groups was relevant to her investigation. I can only speculate it is because in the investigator’s mind whether an act is ‘mentorship’ or ‘interference’ depends on the senior officer’s race. I have faith you see things differently.”
Hamilton argued the CAP program does not take into account the systemic racism that Army officers face. He cited two instances of overt racial harassment leveled against officers he knew in different areas of the army as examples of wide-spread bias faced by Black and non-white soldiers — a bias he believes trickles into even the carefully controlled CAP system.
“After being disrespected and discriminated against in favor of White peers, how likely is it that these minority officers feel they would receive a fair assessment at the Command Assessment Program, especially if their White peers were asked to write peer assessments for them?” Hamilton wrote. “I posit that situations such as this are why many Black officers opt out of even being considered for command opportunities.”
Correction, 8/22/24: A previous version of this story misstated the selection rates for Black officers under the CAP program. Across the program’s five-year history, an average of roughly 10% of officers approved by the CAP process each year are Black.
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Senior Pentagon Reporter
Jeff Schogol is a senior staff writer for Task & Purpose. He reports on both the Defense Department as a whole as well as individual services, covering a variety of topics that include personnel, policy, military justice, deployments, and technology. His apartment in Alexandria, Va., has served as the Task & Purpose Pentagon bureau since the pandemic first struck in March 2020. The dwelling is now known as Forward Operating Base Schogol.
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taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol
4. The US divide on foreign policy
Excerpts:
These diverging perspectives on America’s global role and the extent of its engagement in the rest of the world naturally result in stark differences over how the U.S. should approach the two major ongoing wars in Ukraine and Israel as well.
Today, a small majority (51 percent) of Republicans oppose sending further economic and military aid to Ukraine, with about one-third preferring to maintain the current level of overall support (37 percent) and a similar number (33 percent) supporting withdrawing it altogether. Democrats, meanwhile, remain much more supportive, with nearly three-quarters favoring economic assistance (72 percent) and sending additional military supplies (71 percent). Overall, that means more than eight-in-10 Democrats favor either maintaining current aid levels (56 percent) or intervening directly with allies in order to ensure a favorable outcome to the war (26 percent).
Then, there’s the Middle East, where it’s Republicans who are far more supportive of Israel and U.S. engagement than Democrats are. As part of our survey, we found that 53 percent of Republicans think Israel’s military actions are justified, whereas half of Democrats (51 percent) think the country’s gone too far. So, while nearly six-in-10 Democrats favor exerting diplomatic pressure (19 percent) or reducing military aid to Israel (38 percent), half of Republicans (49 percent) think the U.S. should let Israel pursue whatever policy it thinks is best.
This gap between Democrats and Republicans on foreign policy — and America’s role in the world — is one that’s been steadily evolving over the past decade. It’s a shift that reflects a fundamental change in the Republican Party, which has largely abandoned its Reaganite influence to return to its more isolationist pre-World War II roots. And the change is now apparent at the top of the Republican ticket, with both former U.S. President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance echoing the narrow nationalism of their predecessors from nearly a century ago.
However, now that the party’s voters have also bought into this perspective, the debate over the direction of U.S. foreign policy is bound to extend well beyond November.
The US divide on foreign policy
Politico · by Ivo Daalder · August 22, 2024
This gap between Democrats and Republicans on foreign policy — and America’s role in the world — is one that’s been steadily evolving over the past decade. And it’s a shift that reflects a fundamental change in the Republican Party.
This division concerns not only voter preferences for parties and their candidates but also major issues like foreign and security policy. | Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
From Across the Pond
August 22, 2024 4:00 am CET
By
Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is CEO of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.” He writes POLITICO’s Across the Pond column.
As Democrats gather in Chicago this week for their quadrennial convention, the mood is markedly different than it was just a month ago. At that time, the party’s presidential candidate was dropping in the polls after a disastrous debate performance and facing the prospect of defeat. Now, their candidate is riding a wave of enthusiasm, improving polling numbers and almost smelling victory in November.
However, though President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the race and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris has fundamentally altered the electoral contest, much remains the same. This is still a close election where a few thousand votes in a few battleground states will likely determine the outcome — and the country itself remains deeply divided and polarized.
This division concerns not only voter preferences for parties and their candidates but also major issues like foreign and security policy — long an area of much greater agreement across the political spectrum.
The change is especially apparent among Republican voters. The views of Reagan Republicans, who favor strong alliances, free markets and support democracy and freedom abroad, are now increasingly scarce among the party’s supporters. And the latest annual survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, conducted in late June, affirms this remarkable gap in how Republicans and Democrats see the world and America’s role in it.
The survey question most indicative of this division, whether “it will be better for the future of the country if we take an active part in world affairs or if we stay out of world affairs,” shows that a bare majority of Republicans (54 percent) currently favor an active role, as opposed to the two-thirds (68 percent) of Democrats who do. And though an improvement over last year, Republican support for an active U.S. role was the second lowest it’s been over the last 50 years — including 20 percent lower than in 2004 and 18 percent lower than in 1974.
Consistent with this change, only 13 percent of Republicans believe that as the strongest and richest country, the U.S. “has the responsibility to take a leading role in world affairs,” while 57 percent think “it needs to reduce its involvement in world affairs” because the country has limited resources and its own problems at home. By contrast, 65 percent of Democrats support the U.S. taking a leading role on the world stage while also taking care of problems at home.
On issue after issue, Republicans now favor less engagement in world affairs than Democrats do — which is a sharp shift from the Reagan era. For example, just one-in-five Republicans that took part in our survey think it’s very important to protect weaker nations against aggression, or promote and defend human rights in another country. And only one-in-seven think it’s very important to limit climate change.
By comparison, 44 percent of participating Democrats believe it’s very important to protect weaker nations, 47 percent support promoting human rights, 57 percent think strengthening the U.N. is very important and 74 percent see limiting climate change as a very important goal of U.S. foreign policy.
When it comes to alliances — long the centerpiece of American foreign policy — Republicans are increasingly souring on security commitments. Four-in-10 believe alliances “mostly benefit our allies,” mainly because allies don’t pay their fair share, whereas three-quarters of Democrats believe alliances either benefit the U.S. (16 percent) most, or benefit both the U.S. and its allies (56 percent).
Finally, while support for free trade has long been a moniker of Republicanism, today a majority (55 percent) actually favor reducing trade and seeking “greater self-sufficiency in all areas.” Just 20 percent of Republican respondents prefer pursuing free trade globally, and only 21 percent prefer creating a trading bloc with friends and partners. Interestingly, free trade currently has much stronger support among Democrats, with two-thirds favoring either global trade (43 percent) or a trade bloc with friends (24 percent).
These diverging perspectives on America’s global role and the extent of its engagement in the rest of the world naturally result in stark differences over how the U.S. should approach the two major ongoing wars in Ukraine and Israel as well.
Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the race and endorse Kamala Harris has altered the electoral contest. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Today, a small majority (51 percent) of Republicans oppose sending further economic and military aid to Ukraine, with about one-third preferring to maintain the current level of overall support (37 percent) and a similar number (33 percent) supporting withdrawing it altogether. Democrats, meanwhile, remain much more supportive, with nearly three-quarters favoring economic assistance (72 percent) and sending additional military supplies (71 percent). Overall, that means more than eight-in-10 Democrats favor either maintaining current aid levels (56 percent) or intervening directly with allies in order to ensure a favorable outcome to the war (26 percent).
Then, there’s the Middle East, where it’s Republicans who are far more supportive of Israel and U.S. engagement than Democrats are. As part of our survey, we found that 53 percent of Republicans think Israel’s military actions are justified, whereas half of Democrats (51 percent) think the country’s gone too far. So, while nearly six-in-10 Democrats favor exerting diplomatic pressure (19 percent) or reducing military aid to Israel (38 percent), half of Republicans (49 percent) think the U.S. should let Israel pursue whatever policy it thinks is best.
This gap between Democrats and Republicans on foreign policy — and America’s role in the world — is one that’s been steadily evolving over the past decade. It’s a shift that reflects a fundamental change in the Republican Party, which has largely abandoned its Reaganite influence to return to its more isolationist pre-World War II roots. And the change is now apparent at the top of the Republican ticket, with both former U.S. President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance echoing the narrow nationalism of their predecessors from nearly a century ago.
However, now that the party’s voters have also bought into this perspective, the debate over the direction of U.S. foreign policy is bound to extend well beyond November.
Politico · by Ivo Daalder · August 22, 2024
5. A group of 20-somethings built a GPS-independent drone in 24 hours—and caught the eye of US special operations forces
I am bullish on our young people. Perhaps we old people need to get out of the way.
Excerpts:
Y Combinator, perhaps the best-known startup accelerator in the world, used to be the place where young programmers went to launch consumer-facing companies like DoorDash, Instacart and Airbnb. This week, they announced the launch of a company called Ares Industries. The product? Low-cost cruise missiles.
But while startup culture is changing to become more Pentagon-friendly, the Pentagon still isn’t changing fast enough to give young defense companies the support they need to grow, says Michael Brown, a partner at Shield Capital and the former head of the Defense Innovation Unit.
“Unfortunately, procurement from venture-backed startups represents only 1% of the procurement dollars of DOD,” Brown told Defense One.
A group of 20-somethings built a GPS-independent drone in 24 hours—and caught the eye of US special operations forces
Here’s what that says about the new class of defense industry disruptors.
By Patrick Tucker
Science & Technology Editor, Defense One
August 22, 2024 08:32 PM ET
defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker
In February, 24-year-old Ian Lafferty decided to take a break from the project he was working on—an AI tool for email—and attend a hackathon in San Francisco. While there, he met a handful of Ukranians fresh from the front lines, looking for new tech they could bring to the cause.
Ukraine has gotten around shortages in artillery by relying on cheap drones. But those drones require GPS guidance, which can be jammed.
So over the course of a couple days, with very little sleep, Ian and his two partners figured out a new system to allow drones to locate where they were, without having to rely on a signal beamed down from a constellation of satellites. The trick: have the drone’s cameras take pictures of the and compare those to a database of Google image maps, using simple machine learning. Within 24 hours, the team had cobbled together a GPS-independent drone for less than $500 dollars.
“You can fit a lot of compressed maps on, like, a 256 gigabyte SD card if you compress them the right way… We can fit, you know, 10,000 plus-square kilometers,” Lafferty told Defense One. Uploading the maps onto the small computer that can be affixed to virtually any drone frame takes just a couple of hours.
Lafferty and his partners at tTheseus are now working with a U.S. Army Special Operations group, Defense One confirmed, to test the drone in exercises and experiments. There’s still plenty of work to do to make sure the system works across a wider array of altitudes and speeds, but those are solvable problems, he said.
There have been multiple conversations with representatives from the Ukrainian military after that initial meeting, Lafferty said. And they’ve designed the system to accommodate for the fact that ground truth doesn’t always fit the static picture.
“I mean, stuff gets blown up all the time. Like, houses just disappear.. If you're looking for a house and there's no house, what are you going to do?” Lafferty said.
Theseus’s story reveals a lot about the Pentagon’s changing relationship with non-traditional companies and innovators. For example: breakthroughs in the defense space are no longer the sole domain of a handful of established defense contractors. Advances in AI—coupled with decades-long trends in information technology—are lowering the bar to bringing important new capabilities online. Now, a group of smart young people with no experience in the military can create new battlefield-relevant capabilities from cheap, easily available components, and do so at a fraction of the time and cost of a traditional defense contractor.
It also shows that the culture of young Silicon Valley programmers and aspiring company founders is changing. The taboo of collaborating with the Defense Department is not what it was in 2018, when Google programers objected so strongly to the company’s work with the Pentagon that the company dropped the contract.
That change is fueled in part by the success of a new breed of defense-focused startups like Palantir and Anduril, who are winning contracts and showing that digital-first processes in design and manufacturing can deliver new capabilities much more quickly than in the past.
“Thanks to the Pentagon, the lords of Silicon Valley are having a moment,” Gizmodo declared this week.
Y Combinator, perhaps the best-known startup accelerator in the world, used to be the place where young programmers went to launch consumer-facing companies like DoorDash, Instacart and Airbnb. This week, they announced the launch of a company called Ares Industries. The product? Low-cost cruise missiles.
But while startup culture is changing to become more Pentagon-friendly, the Pentagon still isn’t changing fast enough to give young defense companies the support they need to grow, says Michael Brown, a partner at Shield Capital and the former head of the Defense Innovation Unit.
“Unfortunately, procurement from venture-backed startups represents only 1% of the procurement dollars of DOD,” Brown told Defense One.
At Shield, Brown has a great view of the changing Silicon Valley landscape. The new openness to defense is real, he said.
“Engineers continue to want to work on important problems, and as the world has become a more dangerous place given the aggressiveness of Russia, China, and Iran, national security problems are among the most challenging, but whose solutions can have the highest impact.”
There are still big structural obstacles to better collaboration. For one thing, if a company wants to make tech that could be relevant both to consumers and the Defense Department, working with the Pentagon means rejecting a lot of foreign funding. which could go to a competing company with less patriotic ambitions.
Young founders aren’t ready for the vetting and scrutiny that Defense Department money brings, he said: “How could they be? Navigating DOD is still one of the most challenging of any customers, given that it's literally hundreds of individual buying entities that must conform to thousands of pages of acquisition rules and guidance. We have a long way to go beyond successful efforts like the Defense Innovation Unit to make it easy to sell to DOD,” he said.
But there are small changes the Defense Department could make in the way it usually buys things, particularly from dual-use or consumer tech companies.
“When the Defense Department buys commercial items, which the law requires when they are available, there's no need to undertake the traditional process of writing what the DOD would like to have built. Instead, there should simply be validating a need and beginning a selection process for vendors” Brown said.
The good news is, “there's plenty of U.S.-based capital, given the current boom in defense tech, which has increased an order of magnitude in recent years and attracted specialist firms like Shield Capital as well as generalist firms like a16z and General Catalyst,” he said. “The obstacle for startups isn't a lack of U.S. capital, it is the Defense Department's lack of budget flexibility to rapidly shift appropriated funds to new technologies.”
defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker
6. The Big Five - 23 August edition By Mick Ryan
The Big Five
The Big Five - 23 August edition
My regular update on conflict and confrontation in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Pacific, accompanied by recommended readings on the character of modern war and planning for future conflict.
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-big-five-23-august-edition?utm
Mick Ryan
Aug 23, 2024
Source: @DefenceU on Twitter / X
Our operation in the Kursk region continues—further steps are being taken, and we are maintaining control over designated areas. I am especially grateful to our troops and all units for replenishing the “exchange fund.” President Zelenskyy, 22 August
Advances by Ukraine in Kursk, and Russia in the Donbas, continued this week. These dual offensives, which see the two sides in the Ukraine War executing major offensive and defensive campaigns concurrently, and their political and strategic objectives remain the main focus of many observers of the war.
In Kursk, the Ukrainians continue to expand their holdings of Russian territory. The Russian response, while gathering steam, is still lacking in effective coordination. Apparently, Putin has given his forces a date of 1 October to clear Ukrainian forces from Russia but will not shut down Donbas operations to do so. That said, the Russian forces have managed to stem the initial rapid advance through Kursk by the Ukrainian forces.
After dropping bridges on the Seim River, the Ukrainians how appear set to clear a large parcel of Russian territory that lies south of this river, to the west of the Ukrainian salient and which has the Ukrainian border on its southern and western extremities. Apparently there is a significant force of Russians trapped in this pocket, which can hopefully be captured and add to Ukraine’s PoW holdings for future prisoner swaps.
To the east, Ukraine appears to be stepping up its operations in Belgorod, which might extend the Ukrainian salient further east along the Russo-Ukraine border.
As the map below shows, the Ukrainians are showing no sign of withdrawing from Russia. Indeed, Zelenskyy’s recent statements about buffer zones indicate the Ukrainians will continue to widen the current salient along the Russo-Ukrainian border to establish a buffer zone some tens of kilometres deep. While this will be an operational liability and will consume combat as well as air defence, logistics, EW and other elements to defend it, it also ensures that Putin has an ongoing military problem on his soil, which is also a political problem for him.
The Pokrovsk and Kursk campaigns. Source: @War_Mapper at Twitter / X.
The retention of this buffer zone also provides an opportunity for the Ukrainians to attrit Russian forces on Russian soil and could potentially be used a leverage should Ukraine be forced into negotiations in the short term.
The Ukrainians have been supporting the offensive with a series of operational strikes. I have written about the evolving Ukrainian strike capability over the last couple of years, and they have demonstrated again their ability to conduct the ‘deep battle’ with strikes on airfields, bridges and troop convoys in order to assist their soldiers in the ‘close battle’ in Kursk.
At the same time, strategic strikes on Russia’s energy infrastructure continues. Large strikes at Port Kavkaz in the Kerch Strait area and on a large facility in Rostov are still burning as I write this.
But the Ukrainians also face a very significant challenge in the Donbas. The Russians have continued their advance on the Pokrovsk and other axes of advance. There is no finesse in the Russian operations; they are glide bomb and artillery barrages followed by continuous waves of meat soldiers. It is inelegant but it works for the Russians. And, the Russians show no inclination to draw forces from this advance, one of their major successes for some time, in order to reinforce their defensive operations in Kursk.
At some point in the coming weeks, one side will culminate. Neither can afford to conduct both offensive operations at scale, and defend against a significant offensive, over the medium term. As President Zelenskyy noted in a recent speech, Ukraine has now brought the war home to Russia. How dangerous this will be to Putin’s regime remains to be seen.
There have been some very good reports in recent weeks on the change in the status quo of the war. If you have a chance, check out Ollie Carroll’s reports in The Economist on the Donbas and Kursk. They are well worth a read.
In the Middle East, the Iranians are apparently still preparing for a strike on Israel. Hezbollah however has continued its daily rocket and drone attacks, which have become normal in the norther Israel border region since last year. The Alma Research and Education Centre recently published a map of Hezbollah attacks in northern Israel from October 2023 to July 2024, which you can see below.
Source: Alma Research and Education Centre
Israel and the United States are still working to deter a large-scale Iranian and Hezbollah attack. As a recent report from the Institute for the Study of War notes “The United States and foreign mediators seem to be attempting to delay or indefinitely postpone an Iranian and Hezbollah attack targeting Israel by both threatening Iran and presenting a potential ceasefire-hostage agreement as an off-ramp from further regional escalation.”
Finally, to the Pacific Theatre.
The Chinese Shandong carrier battlegroup completed its latest deployment and returned to its home base in Hainan. These deployments assist the PLA Navy to increase its knowledge and competency in carrier operations, while also providing for another mechanism to coerce and intimidate its neighbors.
This week also saw another collision between a Chinese and Philippine vessel at Sabine Shoal. Both sides blamed each other for the collision, and this is part of the continuing program of aggression on the high seas, and in the air, from the PLA and its coast guard. The trajectory of these incidents is not good, and eventually, it is possible that there will be deaths from such behavior.
Source: Mike Studeman on Twitter / X
Mike Studeman, a former U.S naval intelligence admiral, has a deep knowledge of Chinese strategy and coercion in the western Pacific. His regular updates on Twitter are well worth following. You can find him at @MikeStudeman on Twitter / X.
It has been yet another busy week for me.
On top of a short visit to Vietnam to speak at a conference of Australian companies on contemporary leadership, I published a piece here about the Kursk and Donbas Dilemma for Russia and Ukraine, as well as an article with The Lowy Institute on surprise in modern war and what Australia can learn from recent events in Kursk. I also had a chapter in a new report from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies on U.S.-Australia-Japan Trilateral Cooperation on Strategic Stability in the Taiwan Strait, which you can read here.
Finally, I did an interview with Kyiv Independent journalist, Francis Farrell, earlier this week which you can read about here, or watch at this link.
To this week’s recommended readings….
My five picks these week cover subjects such as Ukraine’s decision to not inform the U.S. and other allies about its pending Kursk offensive, a new U.S. intelligence assessment of the war in Ukraine, an interesting piece on strategic thinking, and a new report on Japan-Australia-U.S. collaboration to support Taiwan.
As always, if you only have time to read one article or report, the first one is my pick of the week.
Happy reading!
1. Achieving Surprise in Kursk
This article from Vladislav Davidson is an interesting exploration of the Ukrainian decision to not inform the Americans or other supporters about the pending offensive into Kursk. As one Ukrainian official is quoted in the article, “Last summer we told everyone what we were going to do and we all know how that turned out. Everyone knew what we were going to do and in which location we intended to strike. There is definitely something to be learned from the Israeli example of acting first and only later explaining what you are doing.” It is a good piece, and can be read here.
2. Supporting Taiwan
A few months ago I had the opportunity to participate in a CSIS-led trilateral event that examined the current challenge posed by China in the western Pacific, and the threat to Taiwan in particular. The result of this event is a new report which contains policy recommendations aimed at strengthening this alliance, enhancing coordination, and ensuring a robust and unified approach to countering threats and preserving peace in the region. You can read the report here.
3. On Strategic Thinking
In this article, the author proposes that there is a decline in effective strategic thinking in the West. As the piece notes, ”the current war in Israel and the discussions surrounding the looming conflict with China over Taiwan should serve as warnings for what might occur if we completely extinguish the strategic imperative to think about the unthinkable.” The article proposes some solutions to this decline in strategic thinking and is available here.
4. A U.S. Special Assessment on Ukraine
This week, an assessment by the Special Inspector General in the U.S. was published on Ukraine. The assessment had some interesting findings, including that both Ukraine and Russia could not undertake large-scale offensive operations. Notwithstanding this assessment, the report does provide a useful summary of U.S. support to Ukraine so far and challenges with that assistance moving forward. You can read the report here.
5. Why We Write
I love to write. It is my yoga! In this article from Francis Gavin, he explores the importance of writing and in particular, “the value in making such writing more accessible, and the need to consider big questions that lack clear answers.” You can read the full article here.
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7. Former US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley calls for more international support for Taiwan
Former US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley calls for more international support for Taiwan
AP · by Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] · August 21, 2024
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, on Wednesday called for more international backing for Taiwan and a coordinated pushback against China’s claims over the self-ruled democracy.
“The United States should elevate Taiwan on the world stage. You should no longer be silenced in global affairs,” Haley told an audience at Ketagalan Forum, a Taipei conference focused on security issues in the Asia-Pacific.
She called for Taiwan to become a full member of the U.N. even though it’s being blocked by China from representation in international bodies. Beijing claims Taiwan as its own territory, to be brought under its control by force if necessary. China also prohibits countries it has international relations with from having formal ties with Taipei.
While the U.S. doesn’t formally recognize Taiwan, it is the island’s strongest backer and arms provider.
Haley, who served at the U.N. under former President Donald Trump’s administration, ran a yearlong presidential campaign as a tough-on-China candidate before dropping out of the race in March. She has endorsed Trump in the November elections.
At the Taipei forum, she called on the U.S. and its Western allies to rally around Taiwan and “relentlessly push” for the island’s global acceptance.
“If we take the necessary steps now, China will think twice before starting a war,” she said.
Yoshihiko Noda, Japan’s former prime minister who also addressed the forum, echoed Haley’s calls for greater representation for Taiwan in international organizations. He decried Taiwan’s exclusion from the World Health Organization and said he was determined to push for its participation as an observer, which China opposes.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te earlier accused China of economic coercion and military intimidation.
“China intends to change the rules-based international order,” Lai said in a speech opening the forum. “That is why democratic countries must come together and take concrete action. Only by working together can we inhibit the expansion of authoritarianism.”
Lai said China’s military exercises in the Taiwan Strait as well as joint sea and air drills with Russia in the South China Sea, Western Pacific and Sea of Japan were intended to intimidate its neighbors.
On Tuesday, Taiwan’s military launched surface-to-air missiles as part of live-fire drills in response to growing military pressure from China.
AP · by Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] · August 21, 2024
8. Japan must do much more for Taiwan
Maybe Japan does not want to defend Taiwan more than the Taiwanese.
Japan must do much more for Taiwan - Asia Times
Japan understands the huge risks of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and yet won’t do what’s necessary to bolster the self-governing island
asiatimes.com · by Grant Newsham · August 22, 2024
A bipartisan delegation of Japanese politicians visited Taiwan last week, marking the latest of several visits by Japanese Diet members over the years. While consistently irking China, these visits are significant only up to a point.
Japanese politicians, including Shigeru Ishiba, a possible future prime minister, visiting Taiwan implicitly demonstrate Tokyo’s concern over China’s threats to Taiwan and indicate a broad degree of support for a free Taiwan.
This latest visit took place despite the inevitable Chinese criticism that would follow. True to form, the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo promised Japan would “pay a heavy price” if it caused trouble over Taiwan.
There’s always the possibility, if not likelihood, of renewed Chinese government harassment of Japanese companies operating in China, or grabbing additional “hostages” from among the Japanese living and working in the PRC.
Another ever-present risk is stepped-up China Coast Guard and Maritime Militia encroachments around Japan’s Senkaku Islands or other parts of Japanese maritime territory.
So, going ahead with these visits despite the risks indicates a degree of Japanese commitment to Taiwan—even if sometimes there’s an element of kabuki as some politicians go along (as in the case of this most recent visit) to bolster their thin foreign policy bona fides or counter rumors they are too beholden to China.
However, one must ask what has the Japanese government actually done in concrete terms to provide overt (or even covert) support for Taiwan’s defense. The answer: very little, if anything.
The Japan Self Defense Force (JSDF) has effectively no relationship with Taiwan’s armed forces; Tokyo won’t even send an active-duty officer to serve as defense attaché or liaison. Instead, it relies on a few retired JSDF flag officers whose usefulness is not obvious.
Japan’s Coast Guard recently did a basic exercise with a Taiwan Coast Guard ship but that’s inconsequential in terms of what’s needed and possible.
At best one might suggest that Japan’s notable help to strengthen Philippine defenses by providing patrol boats, aircraft, radar systems and deepening defense exchanges indirectly supports Taiwan’s defense as well, given the Philippines’ strategic location a short distance south of Taiwan.
But in terms of direct Japanese support for Taiwan, there isn’t much to cite beyond these sorts of lawmaker visits and statements supporting the status quo and against the use of violence to solve Taiwan Strait issues.
This is despite frequent acknowledgment of Taiwan’s importance to Japan. For decades, some Japanese officials and many military officers have said that “Taiwan’s defense is Japan’s defense.”
That’s true. Just look at a map and it’s easy to see Taiwan sits astride sea lanes at the north end of the South China Sea through which a huge percentage of Japan’s trade and energy imports flow. If the PRC controls Taiwan it can choke off this vital lifeline for Japan.
Moreover, if the People’s Liberation Army were one day to operate out of a seized Taiwan, it would put China’s military in a position to isolate or even surround Japan – as well as expand military operations into the Pacific with much more ease than currently.
And Tokyo presumably knows that if Taiwan falls to China it will shake the foundation of the US military presence in the region and broader American influence – on which Japan is utterly dependent.
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Japan understands these risks and understands that the Chinese communists aim to strangle Taiwan and dominate the broader Pacific region. And yet Tokyo still won’t do what’s necessary to bolster Taiwan.
And don’t think the Taiwanese fail to notice. And don’t think Beijing fails to notice.
Maybe Japan will do what’s necessary in the future, but getting there may require waiting for a disaster, and then it will be too late. So while Japanese Diet members visiting Taiwan is useful, it’s not nearly as important as one might think.
What should Japan do? Look at what the Americans are doing for Taiwan and do some of that. Or even just look at what Japan is doing for the Philippines and do some of that for Taiwan. But do something. And soon.
Grant Newsham is a retired US Marine officer and former US diplomat. He was the first Marine liaison officer to the Japan Self Defense Force and is a fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the Yorktown Institute. He is the author of the book “When China Attacks: A Warning To America.”
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asiatimes.com · by Grant Newsham · August 22, 2024
9. US Air Force eyes missile defense for dispersed bases in China fight
I expected to see a discussion of what missile defense capabilities the Air Force intends to field but I could not find it. I think the US is one of the few if not only countries that relies on the Army for missile defense on land I do not see the Air Forces feilding Patriot or THAAD like systems to defend air bases. Of course the best defense is often offense so I think the Air Force's active missile defense is more about taking out the enemy's missile launching systems from storage to fueing sites to launch sites.
US Air Force eyes missile defense for dispersed bases in China fight
Defense News · by Stephen Losey · August 22, 2024
The Air Force is making progress on preparing a network of dispersed bases and airfields across the Pacific in case of a war against China, the service’s top general said Wednesday, but must do more to defend those bases against attack.
“I would feel more confident if we had a more robust active base defense” to safeguard those smaller operating locations that would be used under a concept called Agile Combat Employment, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said in a roundtable with reporters at the Pentagon. “If we’re going to need to operate from those [sites], having active defenses would certainly help against a threat of a large number of missile attacks.”
The Air Force fears that if a conflict breaks out in the Pacific, China could send barrages of missiles against the United States’ larger, more traditional regional air bases in Japan and Guam. Such attacks could seriously degrade or knock out the Air Force’s ability to launch aircraft in the Pacific.
To counter that, the Air Force has developed Agile Combat Employment, or ACE, which would spread out air operations to a variety of smaller operating locations in the region.
Some of those ACE locations could be local civilian airports, or austere bases set up in the field with rough air fields. And they would be run by smaller teams of “multi-capable airmen” trained to do several jobs — like fueling aircraft or providing security — instead of just one specialty.
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Allvin said the service is succeeding at fine-tuning how ACE will work in the field, and training airmen how to conduct such operations.
He pointed to the Bamboo Eagle exercise that took place at multiple sites in the Pacific and Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada earlier this month. Under that exercise, expeditionary units trained on ways to operate in a simulated contested battlespace, and practiced getting in and out of smaller bases set up in a “hub and spoke” style under ACE.
Bamboo Eagle also gave commanders of participating wings — including the 9th Reconnaissance Wing from Beale Air Force Base in California and the 23rd Wing from Moody Air Force Base in Georgia — practice exercising command and control over units spread out to those multiple field bases, without the subordinate group structure the Air Force typically uses, Allvin said.
“It was really fascinating, and I think it gave me some more encouragement that we are on the right path,” Allvin said. “We have a long way to go, but we’re exercising, we’re developing facilities and infrastructure to be able to support larger-scale mission readiness, [and] we are putting our wings together to be able to command and control and align for this type of readiness.”
U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin, left, and Maj. Gen. Christopher Niemi, the U.S. Air Force Warfare Center commander, walk on the flightline after a flight during the Bamboo Eagle exercise at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, Aug. 5, 2024. (Airman 1st Class Brianna Vetro/Air Force)
But while spreading bases out might make it harder for China to conduct massed missile strikes or other attacks, it would not eliminate such a threat. Allvin said the Air Force is working with the Army on ways to counter those attacks.
“They [the Army] are pursuing some things specifically with us to support Agile Combat Employment,” Allvin said.
Allvin declined to specify what countermeasures are in the works, but said he wanted capabilities that could defend against ballistic or cruise missiles.
Allvin acknowledged that, since ACE would entail large numbers of smaller bases, it may not be feasible for each base to have its own missile defense. So such defenses would need to be able to move around to where they are most needed at any given time, he said.
“If we can’t have them at every space, we want to be able to decide where to place them,” Allvin said. “Which means they need to be mobile [and] not to be fixed.”
He said he was less concerned about the threat from small, swarming drones, since they may not have the range to cross large swathes of the Pacific Ocean to reach their targets.
And tried-and-true strategies to confuse the enemy by planting fake targets in the field could still help defend ACE bases, Allvin said.
“The old-school things of camouflage, concealment and deception are still alive and well,” Allvin said. “We just need to upgrade them to a 21st century context. … They don’t know if that’s a real thing, or a fake thing. Should I spend a missile on it? Should I spend five missiles on it?”
As the Air Force makes those decoy plans, Allvin said, it needs to find the right balance between making them believable and making them affordable. The service could make a fake target so believable it’s essentially indistinguishable from the real thing, he said, but it might be so expensive it defeats the purpose of a decoy.
Passive defenses against cyber and electronic warfare attacks are also an important part of safeguarding ACE bases, Allvin said.
Dispersing operations through Agile Combat Employment also creates some command and control challenges the service needs to work through, Allvin said. In some cases during a conflict, an aircraft might have to land at a different base than it took off from.
“Knowing where that [alternate base] might be, having better access to the primary parts, to the munitions, to the fuel — all those sorts of things happen with a more robust command and control,” Allvin said.
Teaching airmen to be able to do multiple jobs on deployment will be a critical part of the ACE concept, Allvin said, and the service is adapting its training structures to do so. New recruits going through basic military training are already learning how to tackle multiple responsibilities, he said.
And for already-existing airmen, Allvin said, the Air Force is looking at fold training on multiple jobs into professional military education.
Allvin said that during his Bamboo Eagle observations, he saw airmen are already adapting to these new responsibilities.
“They are flat getting after it,” Allvin said of airmen working under the ACE concept. “They are quickly understanding the situation, they are innovating like nobody’s business. But I would like to be able to reduce the risk on them” by improving base defenses.
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.
10. US to send $125 million in new military aid to Ukraine, officials say
For those trying to keep score:
The latest package of aid brings the total amount of U.S. security assistance to Ukraine to more than $55.7 billion since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
US to send $125 million in new military aid to Ukraine, officials say
militarytimes.com · by Lolita C. Baldor and Matthew Lee, The Associated Press · August 22, 2024
The Biden administration will send about $125 million in new military aid to Ukraine, U.S. officials said Thursday, even as Washington works to get a better understanding of Kyiv’s incursion into Russia and how it advances the broader battlefield goals more than two years into the war.
U.S. officials said the latest package of aid includes air defense missiles, munitions for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), Javelins and an array of other antiarmor missiles, counter-drone and counter-electronic warfare systems and equipment, 155mm and 105mm artillery ammunition, vehicles and other equipment.
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The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid has not been publicly announced. The formal announcement could come as soon as Friday, which is the eve of Ukraine's Independence Day.
The weapons are being provided through presidential drawdown authority, which means they are taken from Pentagon stockpiles and can be delivered more quickly.
The aid comes as Ukrainian forces continue to broaden their surprise offensive into Russia, where officials say they have taken about 62 square miles of territory around Kursk. Russian troops, meanwhile, are making gains in the east, around the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, a critical logistics hub.
Pentagon officials have said repeatedly that the U.S. has been talking with Ukrainian leaders to get a better assessment of their longer-term goals for the Kursk operation, particularly as they see Russia advancing near Pokrovsk.
If Pokrovsk falls, the defeat would imperil Ukraine’s defenses and bring Russia closer to its stated aim of capturing the Donetsk region. Russian soldiers are now just 6.2 miles away.
Asked about the Kursk operation, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said Thursday that “we are still working with Ukraine on how that fits into their strategic objectives on the battlefield itself.”
The U.S., she said, understands that Ukraine wants to build a buffer zone along the border, but the administration still has more questions about how it furthers Ukraine's broader war effort.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made his first visit Thursday to the border area where his forces launched the offensive on Aug. 6. He said Kyiv’s military had taken control of another Russian village and captured more prisoners of war.
The latest package of aid brings the total amount of U.S. security assistance to Ukraine to more than $55.7 billion since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
11. Why China Is Starting a New Trade War
Why China Is Starting a New Trade War
Faced with stagnating growth, Xi Jinping decided to go all in on manufacturing—and much of that production is destined for export
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-trade-war-xi-manufacturing-49f81f68?mod=hp_lead_pos7
By Lingling WeiFollow
and Jason DouglasFollow
Aug. 22, 2024 9:00 pm ET
China is cranking up its massive export machine again, and this time there’s nowhere for competitors to hide.
A Massachusetts startup called CubicPV bet on silicon wafers, a high-tech component in solar panels. Buoyed by President Biden’s climate legislation enacted two years ago, with billions of dollars in tax credits and government loans, CubicPV announced plans in late 2022 for a $1.4 billion wafer plant in Texas.
Since then, China has nearly doubled its output of silicon wafers, way more than it needs. The extra wafers had to go somewhere—and they went overseas, pushing prices down by 70%. CubicPV had to halt its production plan early this year, putting engineers and other employees out of work, citing “a distorted market as a result of China’s overcapacity.”
Thousands of miles away, in Chile, iron ore miner and steelmaker CAP is grappling with Beijing’s continued commitment to low-end commodity manufacturing, as an onslaught of cheap Chinese metal hits its shores. The firm said this month that it would shutter its giant Huachipato steel mill in central Chile indefinitely, with the loss of some 2,200 jobs. The company said it can’t compete with low-price Chinese metal even after the government raised tariffs on steel bars and other imported products.
Beijing’s solution to a weak Chinese economy—putting the country’s factory sector on steroids—is squeezing businesses around the world and raising the specter of a new global trade war.
The European Union’s recent decision to impose tariffs on imported Chinese electric vehicles is only the latest sign of deepening tensions. The U.S. earlier this year hiked levies on Chinese steel, aluminum, EVs, solar cells and other products. Turkey has jacked up duties on Chinese EVs, while Pakistan raised tariffs on Chinese stationery and rubber.
Other countries have opened antidumping investigations to see whether Chinese goods are being sold below fair value. India is examining Chinese pigments and chemicals. Japan is looking at electrodes. The U.K. is investigating imports of excavators and biodiesel, while Argentina and Vietnam are probing Chinese microwave ovens and wind towers.
Behind it all is a bold but risky calculation by Beijing that investing more in manufacturing can restore the country’s economic vitality and build up its industrial resilience without triggering so much international pushback that it threatens China’s future.
Interviews with policy advisers in Beijing and people who have consulted with Chinese officials show that China’s leadership faced a pivotal crossroads last year, as the country’s real-estate bust brought the economy to one of its weakest points in decades.
Some advisers argued that China’s economy needed a fundamental rethink, graduating from its traditional heavy reliance on manufacturing and construction and instead prioritizing more domestic consumption—a shift that would make China more like the U.S., and potentially put it on a more stable growth path.
Instead, Chinese leader Xi Jinping ordered officials to double down on the country’s state-led manufacturing model, with billions of dollars in fresh subsidies and credit. He used a slogan to make sure officials got the message: “Establish the new before breaking the old,” or xian li hou po in Chinese.
Chinese electric-vehicle maker NIO unveils the Onvo L60 SUV, the first in a new lower-priced brand, in Shanghai. Photo: zoey zhang/Reuters
The “new” in Xi’s model doesn’t mean a pivot to a new growth model. Instead, it is the top leader’s way of refining his idea of what kind of manufacturing for the state to back. In essence, the phrase calls for building industries China wants to dominate for the future—such as EVs, semiconductors and green energy—while also maintaining the country’s traditional areas of strength in “old” sectors such as steel. Any overcapacity problems can be punted to the future.
The mantra appeared in an official account of a major government confab last December, when it mapped out its economic agenda for 2024. The readout acknowledged “overcapacity in some industries” and “insufficient effective demand,” yet Xi’s slogan still indicated an emphasis on expanding industrial production.
Xi repeated the slogan at an annual legislative session in March, just weeks before Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen traveled to Beijing to warn the leadership about the global consequences of China’s manufacturing overcapacity.
Two principles have guided Xi’s thinking, Chinese policy advisers say. The first is that China must build an all-encompassing industrial supply chain that can keep the domestic economy running in the event of severe sanctions by the U.S. and other Western countries. In the top leader’s views, advisers say, industrial security sits at the core of China’s stability as tensions with the developed world rise.
The second is a deep-rooted philosophical objection to U.S.-style consumption, which Xi sees as wasteful.
That leaves China with few options other than investing in exports to stabilize its weakened economy and create jobs to make up for losses in domestic construction.
The upshot: Rather than Chinese workers losing their jobs, steelworkers in Brazil, chemical engineers in Europe, and solar panel makers in the U.S. may lose theirs.
Chinese support kicks in
Official data show Xi’s priorities filtering through the economy.
Loans to industry, including manufacturing firms, have increased 63% since the end of 2021, while Chinese banks have pulled back sharply on lending to real-estate developers.
Government subsidies, though long central to China’s economic playbook, have also ramped up significantly. Companies listed on the Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges declared $33 billion in government subsidies in 2023, according to figures from data provider Wind—23% more than in 2019.
Chinese battery maker CATL received the equivalent of around $790 million, double the 2022 level. Other big recipients included PetroChina, China Mobile and Warren Buffett-backed carmaker BYD.
In all, 99% of publicly listed Chinese companies now disclose some form of subsidy, according to the Kiel Institute, a German think tank. China spends about 4.9% of its gross domestic product on nurturing industries—several times higher than the U.S., Germany and Japan, according to Scott Kennedy, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Craig Allen, president of the U.S.-China Business Council, a lobbying group for American companies in China, said Xi’s manufacturing fixation was on display when he met recently with the governor of one of China’s poorest farm provinces.
When Allen asked the governor about his economic priorities, the governor listed semiconductors, software, biotechnology, robotics, aerospace, batteries, and EVs.
In Suzhou, China, an intelligent robot can refuel cars. Photo: Cfoto/Zuma Press
“I would have thought that addressing the immediate needs of his overwhelmingly rural constituents, such as improving agricultural harvests, might be at the top of his economic priorities list,” Allen said.
The fire hose of financial support looks set to keep spraying. The People’s Bank of China in April said it set up a new facility with roughly $70 billion to help bank lending to tech firms. In May, a national fund aimed at financing semiconductor production raised $48 billion from state-owned banks and other government-linked investment vehicles.
More cars and chemicals
In a series of articles published by the People’s Daily in May, Beijing defended its ability to manufacture and export as a positive for the world rather than a problem, saying the U.S. and its allies are “hyping” China’s overcapacity to gain competitive advantages for themselves.
“China’s production of advanced electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries and photovoltaic products, first met our domestic demand, but also enrich global supply,” Chinese premier Li Qiang said in an address to the World Economic Forum’s June meeting in Dalian, China. The real source of China’s manufacturing edge isn’t government subsidies but its huge scale, which helps pin down costs, he added.
The impact, either way, is inescapable. Industrial production in the first quarter in China was 8% higher than it was when China’s real estate crunch got serious at the end of 2021, easily outstripping output growth in the U.S., Europe and Japan, according to data compiled by CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, a Dutch research institute.
China has added capacity to produce some 40 million vehicles a year, even though it sells only around 22 million at home. It’s on track to make around 750 gigawatts of solar cells this year, despite only needing 220 gigawatts domestically in 2023. And it is expected to account for 80% of the world’s new supply this year in basic chemicals such as ethylene and propylene, used to make garbage bags, toys and cosmetics—even though prices in China have been falling for 19 months, a sign of oversupply.
At the same time, output of steel, one of China’s “old” industries, increased last year despite waning domestic demand due to the continuing property crisis. Industry executives say Beijing has been prodding them to invest more in upgrading steel production through clean technologies and other means.
Workers at a Tiangong International factory in Zhenjiang, China. The company makes special steel-cutting tools. Photo: alex plavevski/Shutterstock
Overall Chinese export volumes, stripping out the effect of exchange-rate movements, are up 10% since the end of 2021, versus 1.5% for world exports in total. China’s steel exports jumped 36% last year from a year earlier.
By doubling down on manufacturing when it already produces close to a third of global factory output, China is effectively asking the rest of the world not to expand its share of production, but to reduce it, said Michael Pettis, a professor of finance at Peking University who has written extensively on imbalances in global trade.
“The rest of the world wants the opposite. The world cannot accommodate it,” he said.
Pain spreads
The U.S. is in some ways one of the least-affected countries, because it has high tariffs on many Chinese goods that help shield U.S. workers. But Washington’s goal of expanding U.S. manufacturing can’t be achieved if overproduction in China continues, and some industries—especially renewable energy—are feeling pressure.
Qcells, a global clean energy company owned by South Korean conglomerate Hanwha, which has a big presence in the U.S., recently said the company and its peers are losing millions of dollars a month.
The International Trade Commission, a federal agency that analyzes trade issues, in June gave its initial go-ahead to an antidumping petition backed by American solar manufacturers who allege solar cells and modules made by Chinese companies are sold in the U.S. for below market value and unfairly subsidized.
Other parts of the world are bearing more of the brunt. European automakers have axed more than 10,000 jobs as more Chinese EVs arrive. Antonello Ciotti, chairman of PET Europe, a trade association for European makers of chemicals used in polyester fibers for clothing and recyclable containers, said European PET producers shed hundreds of jobs as firms slashed costs and production to deal with Chinese imports. The EU late last year imposed antidumping duties on certain imports of Chinese PET.
The Hanwha Q Cells solar cell and module manufacturing facility in Dalton, Ga. Photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg News
The risk for Xi is that unlike the first “China Shock” in the early 2000s, when cheap Chinese manufacturing wiped out an estimated two million jobs in the U.S. but also benefited Western consumers, the latest push could trigger so many protectionist measures that China winds up with few sizable markets to sell to.
In the past, some countries didn’t mind China’s overcapacity as much, since many companies—such as Germany’s automakers—benefited from their access to cheap Chinese-made parts, notes Jacob Gunter, an analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin.
“But now, China is aiming its industrial policy right at the heart of the Western economy,” Gunter said.
Policy reversal
Xi’s “establish the new before breaking the old” strategy marks a shift from previous years when Beijing, at times led by Xi himself, tried hard to reduce overcapacity, not add to it.
China has suffered from persistent overcapacity in the past, at times raising ire from its trading partners for depressing global prices for steel and other goods.
In 2015, Xi entrusted his economic czar at the time, Liu He, to implement reforms that led to closures of many small and privately owned steel mills and other businesses. For a while, it seemed as if Xi and his economic team were ready to finally tackle overproduction.
But as tensions with the U.S. escalated in recent years, and China’s economy weakened, Xi’s views changed, Chinese policy advisers say. He grew more concerned about ensuring China could produce everything it needed in the event of a conflict with the U.S., and became less sympathetic to Western complaints.
Chinese officials are now out in force denying the country has overcapacity because Beijing doesn’t want to give Washington, Brussels and others justification for tariffs or other retaliatory actions, policy advisers and people who consulted with Chinese officials say.
Still, some of Xi’s closest lieutenants have raised worries internally that government support was leading to extreme overcapacity in sectors such as EVs and batteries, making those sectors less commercially viable.
“Everybody makes stuff in China,” said Joerg Wuttke, former president of the European Chamber of Commerce in China and now a partner at Washington consulting firm DGA Group. “But nobody makes money.”
A man welds in a Tiangong International factory in Zhenjiang. Photo: alex plavevski/Shutterstock
Phred Dvorak contributed to this article.
Write to Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com and Jason Douglas at jason.douglas@wsj.com
12. Russia opens case against CNN reporter who covered Kursk incursion
Hopefully he will not travel to Russia or any Russia friendly state. There is no need to test Russia on this given what has happened to other journalists.
Russia opens case against CNN reporter who covered Kursk incursion
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/08/22/russia-kursk-cnn-fsb-journalists/
The country’s security service said the journalist would be placed on Russia’s wanted list. Under Russian law, the maximum penalty for illegally crossing the border is five years in prison.
People walk in front of the headquarters of Russia's Federal Security Services (FSB) in central Moscow on March 16, 2022. (AFP/Getty Images)
By Robyn Dixon
Updated August 22, 2024 at 12:52 p.m. EDT|Published August 22, 2024 at 12:08 p.m. EDT
Russia’s security service, the FSB, launched criminal cases against several foreign journalists on Thursday, accusing them of illegally entering Russia to report on the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region.
In a statement Thursday, the service named Nick Paton Walsh, a British citizen and CNN’s chief international security correspondent, as well as two Ukrainian reporters with independent news outlet Hromadske, Olesya Borovik and Diana Butsko.
The FSB said they would be placed on Russia’s wanted list. Under Russian law, the maximum penalty for illegally crossing the border is five years in prison.
The CNN report, showing journalists traveling with a Ukrainian military convoy from Ukraine into a nearly deserted Sudzha with a few dozen residents remaining, aired Aug. 16.
CNN described the trip as important and justifiable and part of its mission.
“Throughout this conflict our team has delivered factual, impartial reporting covering both the Ukrainian and Russian perspectives on the war,” a CNN spokesperson told The Washington Post in a statement.
“Our team was invited by the Ukrainian government, along with other international journalists, and escorted by the Ukrainian military to view territory it had recently occupied. This is protected activity in accordance with the rights afforded to journalists under the Geneva Conventions and international law.”
Following World news
Following
In addition to CNN, The Post and several other news organizations have made reporting trips into Ukrainian-held territory in Kursk in recent days. The FSB statement referred only to CNN’s actions.
Earlier this week, Russia summoned U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Stephanie Holmes to protest the “provocative actions” of American media reporting from the Kursk region.
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow rejected Russian accusations, saying in a statement Wednesday that independent news organizations “make their own operational and personnel decisions.” “The U.S. government plays no role.”
The statement added that it “actively discourages” U.S. citizens from even traveling to Russia.
Last week, the FSB initiated similar cases against Italian TV network RAI journalists Simone Traini and Stefania Battistini, who published the first report from Sudzha as part of a military embed with Ukrainian forces.
RAI news agency CEO Roberto Sergio said in an earlier statement that the two reporters will return to Italy for safety reasons.
The Russian Foreign Ministry on Saturday summoned Cecilia Piccioni, Italy’s ambassador in Moscow, to protest the journalists “using their stay in the territory of our country to whitewash the propaganda support for the crimes of the Kyiv regime.”
RAI also stressed that its reporters “complied with the norms of international law” when covering the situation in Kursk oblast.
“Journalism is not a crime,” RAI union Usigrai and Italy’s national press union FNSI said in a joint statement. “Reporting is not done with prior authorizations … Journalists worldwide have always asked for guarantees of access to conflict zones, in Ukraine as in Gaza and in every war zone, where the need to know what is happening is urgent.”
A surprise Ukrainian operation in early August caught Russian soldiers manning the border, many of whom are young conscripts, off guard, allowing Ukrainian forces to capture dozens of settlements and take hundreds of prisoners.
According to Russian authorities, more than 120,000 civilians have been evacuated from the area. The incursion is unlikely to dent Russia’s overall advantage in numbers, but it served as a major morale boost for Ukrainian troops and a potential leverage for Kyiv in any future negotiations.
President Vladimir Putin held a second meeting Thursday to address what Russian officials refer to as “the situation in Kursk.”
Governors of two border regions neighboring Kursk asked the Russian leader for additional funding to supply units of territorial defense and pay them salaries. The governor of Belgorod, which has seen continuous hostilities throughout the war, said that the region has two territorial defense regiments totaling about 6,000 men.
Russia has so far downplayed the incursion into its territory, with state media covering it as a limited and contained operation, while actively juxtaposing it with Russian advances inside Ukraine.
Independent Russian-language outlet Meduza reported that the Kremlin aims to condition the Russian public to accept the presence of Ukrainian forces on its territory as the “new normal” in case Kyiv manages to hold its positions there for weeks to come, while prioritizing the drive to control all of Donetsk region in Ukraine. Russian forces are bearing down on the logistical hub of Pokrovsk.
“The Kremlin may be using this messaging campaign to afford itself time and space to respond to the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast after achieving its offensive objectives in eastern Ukraine,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said in recent analysis.
On Wednesday, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov sent a congratulatory note to units that seized the village of Zhelanne southeast of Pokrovsk.
13. US military asking contractors to help haul boats used in troubled Gaza pier mission back to the US
Army boats. I think people forget how much support the Army provides to all the services (and does things some people would think were done by other services).
US military asking contractors to help haul boats used in troubled Gaza pier mission back to the US | CNN Politics
By Haley Britzky, CNN
5 minute read
Updated 7:31 PM EDT, Thu August 22, 2024
CNN · by Haley Britzky · August 22, 2024
U.S. Army Vessel Matamoros, USAV Wilson Wharf, and USAV Monterrey deploy from Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, on March 12th, 2024.
Zulema Sotelo/U.S. Air Force
CNN —
Roughly seven months after setting sail for the US military’s troubled temporary pier mission off the Gaza coast, three US Army boats are expected to have to be hauled back to the US by contracted civilian vessels behind schedule, raising more concern about the state of the Army watercraft at the center of a major effort to bring humanitarian aid into war-torn Gaza.
“[C]oordination is underway for the [landing craft utility ships] to be transported back on contracted Float-On/Float-Off vessels with an expected ETA of late-October,” Col. Mary Ricks, the spokesperson for the Army’s 18th Airborne Corps, told CNN on Wednesday. The military has not yet locked in a contract for that job, she added.
Three boats deployed in March for the mission: the US Army Vessels Monterrey, Matamoros, and Wilson Wharf. The Pentagon had previously said that all personnel and equipment used with the temporary pier — called the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS — were scheduled to be home by mid-September.
It’s unclear how much the contract to bring the vessels back will cost the military. A spokesperson for Military Sealift Command told CNN the contract is “currently in the procurement phase, which means it is out for competitive bids.”
Retired Marine Corps Col. Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the CSIS International Security Program, estimated that the contract would go for $300,000 per float-on/float-off vessel, which would be used to transport the three boats. The contract description says it is for “multiple awards up to two vessels or until the Government’s needs are met,” meaning it could come out to roughly $600,000 total if two vessels are required.
The pier was announced by President Joe Biden in his State of the Union address in March.
Deputy Commander of US Central Command, Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, told reporters in July that the pier helped deliver 19.4 million pounds of aid to the desperate population in Gaza.
“A temporary pier would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day,” Biden said.
But in the end it was only operational for roughly 20 days at a cost of the $230 million and did little to alleviate the grave humanitarian situation in Gaza as the war between Hamas and Israel, which has claimed thousands of civilian lives, continues.
With the end of the pier mission, officials said humanitarian aid was expected to be delivered from Cyprus through Israel’s Ashdod port to Gaza. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said Thursday that a remaining six million pounds of humanitarian aid was moving towards Ashdod on the Motor Vessel Cape Trinity and was expected to start rolling off “within the next couple days.”
A retired warrant officer who served as a chief engineer on Army watercraft told CNN that the boats being brought home by contracted vessels indicates they likely need significant maintenance.
“The only things that would stop [7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary)] from sailing are mechanical problems or manning,” the retired engineer said. “Unless the whole unit is deploying somewhere, that means these boats are in rough shape.”
A defense official pushed back Thursday that transporting the boats back on the contracted vessels was because of maintenance issues and said it is “more cost effective and safer” during hurricane season. The official said the cost “is comparable” to the cost spent when they deployed in March with a Class A vessel escort, though the official declined to provide the specific costs.
A publicly available description of the contract says Military Sealift Command is looking for float-on/float-off vessels capable of carrying the boats from Rota, Spain, to Norfolk, Virginia, by November 5 at the latest. Public ship tracking data as of Wednesday showed that the boats were near Greece.
It’s not entirely uncommon for the US military to use float-on/float-off vessels to transport smaller ships across large distances, or if a US military vessel is badly damaged, Cancian said. He added it’s “very plausible” that the boats are not in a state to make the journey back after their work on the pier operation.
“They’d probably make it but, again, it’s a matter of risk,” he said. “They don’t want one to get halfway across and have the engines break down and have it floating around.”
Maintenance of the Army’s vessels was a concern throughout the mission of the temporary pier, which ended in July. A US official previously told CNN that the watercraft involved in the mission have not been maintained “to the level they need to be,” primarily because “they lack the funding to get the repair parts in a timely manner.”
The pier mission caught the attention of the Pentagon and USAID inspectors general, who launched coordinated reviews of the humanitarian mission to Gaza in June. The Pentagon’s inspector general announced a separate probe just earlier this month, separate from the coordinated review with USAID. In a memo dated August 5, the IG office said it would conduct a “comprehensive assessment” of the Pentagon’s “capabilities to effectively carry out” operations and exercises using JLOTS. The memo was first reported by Military.com.
It has presented further issue for one of the larger Army vessels expecting to set sail in the near future. The defense official said one of the logistics support vessels, the Charles P. Gross (LSV-5), has to undergo more maintenance before it can begin its journey home.
Another of the vessels, the USAV Frank S. Besson (LSV-1), is currently underway and is expected to arrive back in the US by the end of August, Ricks said. The USAV James A. Loux (LSV-6), is expected to be underway “soon” and to arrive in the US by late September.
The issues with the boats are just the latest in an operation that was plagued by logistical problems. After only roughly a week of going operational in May, the pier broke apart and four Army vessels were beached. The military detached it from the beach two more times out of concerns over weather conditions before ending the mission in July.
Since the mission ended, more than 350 soldiers from the unit assisting have since returned to Virginia, Ricks said. Pentagon spokesman Tom Crosson said last week that roughly 200 sailors on the mission had also since returned home. The retired engineer added that 350 soldiers coming home would not impact the unit’s ability to sail the boats back.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
CNN · by Haley Britzky · August 22, 2024
14. China's AI strategy all about serving the state
The subtitle says it all.
Excerpts:
China’s approach to AI is a calculated strategy of adaptation and application, rather than raw innovation. By mastering the use of existing technologies and aligning them with state objectives, China is not only bolstering its domestic control but also reshaping global power dynamics.
Whether through ideological indoctrination, economic control, strategic exports or military advancements, China’s AI playbook is a powerful reminder that in the realm of technology, how tools are used can be just as transformative as the tools themselves.
China's AI strategy all about serving the state - Asia Times
US innovation-first approach to AI research contrasts starkly with China’s emphasis on social control and economic planning
asiatimes.com · by Shaoyu Yuan · August 22, 2024
In the competitive arena of global technology, China’s ambitions in artificial intelligence stand out – not just for their scale but for their distinct strategic approach.
In 2017, the Chinese Communist Party declared its intent to surpass the United States to become the world leader in AI by 2030. This plan, however, is less about pioneering novel technologies and more about strategically adapting existing ones to serve state economic, political and social objectives.
While both China and the United States are actively pursuing AI technologies, their approaches differ significantly. The US has traditionally led in fundamental AI research and innovation, with institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford and tech giants such as Google and Microsoft driving breakthroughs in machine learning. This innovation-first approach contrasts with China’s focus on adaptation and application of existing technologies for specific state objectives.
The United States’ AI development is primarily driven by a decentralized network of academic institutions, private companies and government agencies, often with competing interests and a focus on commercial applications. In contrast, China’s AI strategy is more centralized and state-directed, with a clear focus on supporting government initiatives such as social control and economic planning.
AI for ideological control
At the heart of China’s AI strategy lies its effort to embed the technology in the machinery of the government’s ideological control. A prime example is the Xue Xi chatbot developed by researchers at China’s top-ranked university, Tsinghua University.
Unlike Western AI models designed to foster open-ended dialogue, Xue Xi was trained in part on “Xi Jinping Thought” to indoctrinate users – likely initially to be party members in government – with Communist Party ideology. China’s large language model chatbots are a step ahead of the likes of ChatGPT in one respect: political censorship.
This isn’t just a singular initiative but part of a broader trend. AI-driven surveillance systems, like the facial recognition technology deployed across the Xinjiang region of China, enable the government to maintain tight control over the area’s minority Muslim Uyghur population.
Photo: Finn Mayer-Kuckuk / X Screengrab
These technologies are not groundbreaking. They build on existing innovations but are finely tuned to serve the Communist Party’s efforts to maintain social order and prevent dissent. China’s AI prowess comes not by creating the newest technology but by mastering and deploying AI in ways that align with its ideological imperatives.
AI for economic control
China’s AI strategy is also deeply intertwined with its economic ambitions. Faced with slowing growth, the Communist Party views technology as the essential tool for pulling the country out of its economic slowdown.
This is particularly evident in sectors such as manufacturing and logistics, where AI is used to drive efficiencies and maintain China’s competitive edge in global supply chains. For example, companies such as online retail giant Alibaba have developed AI-driven logistics platforms that optimize delivery routes and manage warehouse operations, ensuring that China remains the factory of the world.
Additionally, China’s social credit system, which rates citizens on their civic and financial behavior, represents a significant strategic initiative where AI plays an increasingly crucial role.
China’s system is designed to monitor and influence citizen behavior on a massive scale. Although AI is not yet fully implemented across the entire social credit system, it is being integrated to track and analyze vast amounts of data, such as financial transactions, online interactions and social relationships in real time.
This data are then used to assign scores that can affect various aspects of life, from loan approvals to travel permissions. As AI becomes increasingly embedded in the system, it is likely, I believe, to further reinforce state control and ensure societal compliance, prioritizing government oversight over personal autonomy.
Strategic exports
On the international stage, China is exporting its AI technologies to expand its influence, particularly in developing nations.
Through the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese tech giants such as Huawei and ZTE are providing AI-driven surveillance systems to governments in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. These systems, often framed as tools for improving public safety, are part of a larger strategy to export China’s governance model.
For instance, in Zimbabwe, Chinese firms have helped implement a nationwide facial recognition system under the guise of combating crime. Political activists in Zimbabwe fear that technology is being used to monitor political opponents and activists, mirroring its use in China.
By exporting AI technologies that are tightly integrated with state control, China is not only expanding its market share but also promoting its authoritarian model as a viable alternative to Western democracy.
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AI for strategic military advantage
China’s military ambitions are also tightly linked to its AI strategy. The People’s Liberation Army, China’s military, is investing heavily in AI-driven autonomous systems, including drones and robotic platforms. These technologies are not necessarily the most advanced in the world, but China is adapting them to fit its strategic needs.
China is developing AI systems to support its naval operations in the South China Sea, a region of significant geopolitical tension. China is deploying autonomous submarines and surveillance drones to monitor and potentially disrupt foreign military activities in the region.
This strategic use of AI in military applications highlights China’s focus on using existing technologies to achieve specific geopolitical objectives, rather than seeking innovation for its own sake. China and the U.S. are racing to develop – and deploy – AI-powered military drones.
Calculated strategy
China’s approach to AI is a calculated strategy of adaptation and application, rather than raw innovation. By mastering the use of existing technologies and aligning them with state objectives, China is not only bolstering its domestic control but also reshaping global power dynamics.
Whether through ideological indoctrination, economic control, strategic exports or military advancements, China’s AI playbook is a powerful reminder that in the realm of technology, how tools are used can be just as transformative as the tools themselves.
Shaoyu Yuan is a dean’s fellow at the Division of Global Affairs, Rutgers University – Newark.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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asiatimes.com · by Shaoyu Yuan · August 22, 2024
15. Taiwan boosts defense spending in face of Chinese military prodding
Okay. I will have to keep a check on my comments about defense spending.
Excerpts:
“We’re determined to boost self-defense and deepen cooperation with democratic partners in a bid to ensure peace and prosperity,” Lai said.
According to Hammond-Chambers, Taiwan is making “good progress” in key areas of domestic weapons production, like missiles, drones and shipbuilding.
“Overall, the mix of platforms and systems between foreign-procured and domestically developed is healthy, and receives strong support from the Lai and Biden governments,” he said, referring to U.S. President Joe Biden.
“The time it takes to deliver weapons from American factories remains a challenge,” he noted. “That said, the weapons presently queued for delivery should be delivered to Taiwan in the next 18-24 months, and we’ll see a substantial drop in the amount and value of the equipment presently undelivered. This should open up Taiwan’s defense budget for a new phase of procurement.”
Taiwan boosts defense spending in face of Chinese military prodding
Defense News · by Gordon Arthur · August 23, 2024
CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — Taiwan’s Cabinet, the Executive Yuan, this week ratified a record defense budget of NT$647 billion, or US$20.2 billion, meant to help defend Taiwan against the prospect of a Chinese invasion.
The spending decision comes as Chinese forces continue their prodding of the island, which Beijing views as a rogue province. As of Aug. 22, People’s Liberation Army intrusions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone – 1,739 incidents in 2024 – had already reached an annual record.
Taiwan’s defense expenditures in 2025 will represent a 7.7% increase if lawmakers approve the proposal later this month. The country’s Central News Agency said the allocation represent 2.45% of GDP, almost identical to this year’s.
President Lai Ching-te’s election campaign promised that defense spending would reach 3% of GDP. Lt Gen. Hsieh Chi-hsien, head of the Ministry of National Defense’s Comptroller Bureau, told a press conference that increasing spending to that level remained a goal.
“However, we must still compile the defense budget based on weapons needed to shore up our defenses. We also need to take into account the nation’s financial situation,” he said.
Asked whether the envisioned 2025 spending would be sufficient, Rupert Hammond-Chambers, President of the US-Taiwan Business Council, told Defense News: “Answering this question is highly subjective. Should Taiwan be commended for increasing its defense budget by 7.7%? Absolutely. It’s real growth with new resources to address the threat from China.”
At the same time, Hammond-Chambers said more will be needed. “Taiwan needs to continue to grow its defense budget in real terms, surpassing 3% of GDP and higher in the near term.”
According to Hsieh, the coming defense budget comprises NT$181.5 billion for personnel expenses, and NT$148.7 billion for equipment maintenance. Procurements are set to increase by 16% to NT$145.8 billion in 2025, with payments due for American equipment.
Some NT$90.4 billion is earmarked as part of a five-year, special budget worth NT$240 billion that was announced in 2021 to purchase items like F-16V fighters and missiles.
“We’re determined to boost self-defense and deepen cooperation with democratic partners in a bid to ensure peace and prosperity,” Lai said.
According to Hammond-Chambers, Taiwan is making “good progress” in key areas of domestic weapons production, like missiles, drones and shipbuilding.
“Overall, the mix of platforms and systems between foreign-procured and domestically developed is healthy, and receives strong support from the Lai and Biden governments,” he said, referring to U.S. President Joe Biden.
“The time it takes to deliver weapons from American factories remains a challenge,” he noted. “That said, the weapons presently queued for delivery should be delivered to Taiwan in the next 18-24 months, and we’ll see a substantial drop in the amount and value of the equipment presently undelivered. This should open up Taiwan’s defense budget for a new phase of procurement.”
About Gordon Arthur
Gordon Arthur is an Asia correspondent for Defense News. After a 20-year stint working in Hong Kong, he now resides in New Zealand. He has attended military exercises and defense exhibitions in about 20 countries around the Asia-Pacific region.
16. There Are No Magic Beans: Easy Options to Deter China Militarily Do Not Exist
Excerpt:
Conclusion
In the end, while methods like those discussed above certainly constitute measures that should be considered in the event of a conflict with China, U.S. and allied defense thinkers should not assume that they provide an assured, low-cost alternative to deter Chinese military aggression. Neither these nor other so-far-theoretical capabilities provide a dependable alternative to the hard, costly measures that are urgently needed and not being sufficiently resourced thus far. U.S. defense spending is much lower as a percentage of gross domestic product than it was during the last Cold War, and China’s is likely far larger than its official numbers. Given China’s apparent plans for attacking by surprise, disrupting command and control networks, and imposing an air and naval blockade prior to an assault, the only assured way to deter an attack on Taiwan is to have sufficient survivable forces and munitions properly postured before a Chinese attack. These forces should be ready to employ proven concepts of operation, have clear rules of engagement (including against erstwhile civilian platforms), not be dependent on anything more than episodic communication, and not depend on vulnerable fixed facilities within range of China’s precision strike forces. Relying on anything else constitutes wishful thinking and a false sense of economy, potentially resulting in far more costly and devastating consequences in the event of a failure of deterrence.
There Are No Magic Beans: Easy Options to Deter China Militarily Do Not Exist - War on the Rocks
warontherocks.com · by Thomas Shugart · August 23, 2024
Since 1979, it has been the policy of the United States, as codified in the Taiwan Relations Act, to maintain the capacity to resist the use of force or other forms of coercion by China against Taiwan. Until recently it could be taken for granted that the United States was able to directly thwart a Chinese attack on Taiwan. But dramatic increases in China’s military capability over recent decades have called that into question, particularly with the military balance trending ever further in China’s direction for at least the near future.
With General Secretary Xi Jinping having reportedly directed his military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, the United States and its allies are working on options to deter China, with a focus on denying the success of Chinese military aggression. However, given limited resources and self-imposed congressional budgetary limits, there is likely to be a strong temptation to look for less expensive solutions to deter such action. One line of thinking among some observers has been to deter China by threatening its sea lines of communication. According to this approach, in the event of a conflict, the United States could, for example, just “cut off their oil,” starving the Chinese military and economy.
Unfortunately, this is magical thinking. China’s leaders identified their “Malacca dilemma” more than 20 years ago and have been taking action since to become a maritime great power and mitigate such a risk. If Washington seeks comfort in easy but unrealistic solutions, it risks undercutting support for resources that will be necessary to actually deter China militarily.
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The Temptation of Trade Denial
One such theoretical “low-cost option” is a “trade denial” strategy that appeared in a recent article in the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings. The article’s author, Rear Admiral Monty Khanna, Indian Navy (ret.), does not advocate a blockade per se, considering it infeasible due to the internationalized nature of modern shipping, the risk of environmental disaster due to ship sinkings, and the likelihood that China could survive several months of attempted economic strangulation. On these points, Admiral Khanna is likely correct: consider the case of the Ever Given, the container ship that ran aground in the Suez Canal — Japanese-built and -owned, Panamanian-flagged, officered by Indians, and chartered by a Taiwanese company to take goods from China to Europe. Is such a ship “Chinese shipping,” to be sunk or boarded on the high seas?
Rather than strangulation, the goal of such an option would be to inflict an economic shock on China via the seizure of Chinese-flagged vessels in U.S. and allied ports. While such a cost imposition measure might be sensible to take in the event of a major U.S.-Chinese conflict, there are good reasons to doubt its effectiveness as a deterrence measure, making this a risky option on which to depend. In the absence of sufficiently robust military capabilities to actually defeat Chinese military aggression against Taiwan, its failure to deter could result in both an otherwise preventable war and a military defeat for the United States and Taiwan, in addition to the escalation risks that can accompany cost imposition measures.
A Problem of Scale
To properly assess such a strategy, one must first appreciate the sheer scale of China’s maritime sector. In 2023, China passed Greece to become the world’s largest shipowner, with over 249 million gross tons of shipping, and it owns more than 11,000 merchant ships with Hong Kong included. In terms of actual Chinese- and Hong Kong–flagged ships, China is in third place, but is only surpassed by flags of convenience Liberia and Panama — states with little to no geostrategic heft.
One might think ownership versus a ship’s flag state to be a distinction without a difference. But Admiral Khanna himself points out there is one, as additional measures would be needed to ensnare more ships on the basis of ownership as opposed to their flags. One would also be wise to consider how difficult ownership might be to establish in some cases, as China is well practiced in using shell companies and similar measures to avoid sanctions during conflict.
To properly consider seizures of Chinese-flagged vessels, you have to understand where they are likely to be operating: looking at automatic identification system data for such ships, it quickly becomes apparent that the vast majority of them stay fairly close to China. While there is a sprinkling of Chinese-flagged ships around the world, most Chinese ships are engaged in coastal trade within the First Island Chain, and as such are unlikely to be in a position to be seized at the start of a conflict. Hong Kong–flagged ships are a bit more evenly distributed around the globe, but there may be enough fuzziness regarding Hong Kong’s national status to convince nervous allies not to seize them. In any case, many could be transferred to flags of convenience in anticipation of a conflict, for which China will presumably set the timing. That factor — that China, as the aggressor, will likely determine the timing of a conflict — could matter a great deal. Put simply, if a plan to deter China relies in a significant way upon seizing its ships at the outset of a conflict, China could mitigate the plan’s effectiveness by simply minimizing the number of ships in harm’s way at such a time.
There is also, again, the problem of scale — and the resources available to implement a trade denial strategy. Admiral Khanna states, correctly, that any ship could be monitored by the U.S. Navy, which could choose to interdict it in a manner of its choice. But while on any given day, any ship could be dealt with, that is far from saying that most Chinese ships could be at any given time. There are more than 12,000 Chinese- and Hong Kong–flagged seagoing merchant ships, while the U.S. Navy has fewer than 300 warships of all kinds, with little growth in those numbers imminent. What’s more, of the limited number of U.S. Navy warships, many will be engaged in trying to save Taiwan, or dealing with fires likely to break out elsewhere around the world. And too many are also likely to be in maintenance. With probably at best one-quarter in long-term maintenance, and perhaps half engaged in combat in the Pacific, that would leave roughly one-quarter of the fleet to deal with everything else. Were all of those remaining warships assigned to trade denial, there would be more than 150 Chinese merchants for each one.
It is in part due to this sort of math that Fiona Cunningham concluded in a detailed article that the United States “would not be able to use a distant blockade to manage escalation risks in a conflict over Taiwan … if it deployed forces … as part of the primary campaign and those forces needed to be protected by suppressing Chinese area-denial capabilities.” Also, while Admiral Khanna advocates requisitioning or chartering vessels to supplement U.S. and allied naval assets, there is good reason to doubt that such an effort could be set up at the scale and speed required to prevent a Chinese fait accompli over Taiwan. And in any case, the United States will be challenged to get enough vessels to supply its own logistical needs before adding any further missions.
If one were instead to count on an actual blockade to strangle China, as opposed to Admiral Khanna’s trade denial option, there would be other challenges. First, such a blockade is likely to be militarily contested by China: a review of Chinese open-source literature indicates that one of the primary missions for China’s small but growing number of overseas bases would be to support securing its sea lines of communication in the event of a conflict. On top of that, most ships going to and from China are most likely not Chinese-flagged or -owned. As such, with the internationalization of most shipping (see Ever Given), and many options to reroute goods and oil cargoes after passing through a U.S. and allied distant blockade, the only sure way to block China’s trade is to actually prevent access to its ports. With manifold threats from China’s legion anti-ship and anti-air capabilities covering the approaches to those ports, that would likely mean a campaign focused on a limited number of U.S. and allied submarines and long-range antiship missiles — platforms and munitions that would be needed for doing things like attempting to stop an invasion of Taiwan.
Conclusion
In the end, while methods like those discussed above certainly constitute measures that should be considered in the event of a conflict with China, U.S. and allied defense thinkers should not assume that they provide an assured, low-cost alternative to deter Chinese military aggression. Neither these nor other so-far-theoretical capabilities provide a dependable alternative to the hard, costly measures that are urgently needed and not being sufficiently resourced thus far. U.S. defense spending is much lower as a percentage of gross domestic product than it was during the last Cold War, and China’s is likely far larger than its official numbers. Given China’s apparent plans for attacking by surprise, disrupting command and control networks, and imposing an air and naval blockade prior to an assault, the only assured way to deter an attack on Taiwan is to have sufficient survivable forces and munitions properly postured before a Chinese attack. These forces should be ready to employ proven concepts of operation, have clear rules of engagement (including against erstwhile civilian platforms), not be dependent on anything more than episodic communication, and not depend on vulnerable fixed facilities within range of China’s precision strike forces. Relying on anything else constitutes wishful thinking and a false sense of economy, potentially resulting in far more costly and devastating consequences in the event of a failure of deterrence.
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Retired Capt. Thomas Shugart, U.S. Navy, is a former submarine warfare officer, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and the founder of Archer Strategic Consulting.
Commentary
warontherocks.com · by Thomas Shugart · August 23, 2024
17. Want More Innovative US Military Leaders? Bring the Hacking for Defense Course to Service Academies
Wow. This seems like a no brainer. I am surprised we have not done this yet.
I watched Chris Taylor bring Hacking 4 Defense to the Security Studies Program at Georgetown. It was (and is) a brilliant initiative started by some of our good friends at Stanford (one being our SF brother, Joe Felter).
Want More Innovative US Military Leaders? Bring the Hacking for Defense Course to Service Academies - Modern War Institute
mwi.westpoint.edu · by Justin Fanelli, Tip Myers, Caleb Stenholm · August 23, 2024
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After three decades of uncontested overmatch, America finds herself in a new age of strategic competition against a rival who drives military innovation using a whole-of-society approach. To outpace China technologically in an era rife with emerging offset strategies, the traditional, plodding ways that the US military has engaged with emerging technology will not work. Leaders must integrate radically new technologies, equipment, and operational structures from all of society through rapid iteration and design thinking. With the private sector spending nine times as much on research and development as the government, military leaders must understand and be able to work with both traditional and nontraditional contractors. To win, the US military cannot lean on figure-it-out adaptability, collateral billets, a blizzard of innovation buzzwords or new organizations stood up without mandate, funding, or specialized education. Instead, the services must systemically educate leaders to understand how to rapidly iterate with using new technology at every echelon and must do so as early in officers’ careers as possible. Offering a full-semester Hacking for Defense course at the service academies would teach leadership, improve DoD’s ability to integrate the latest technology into the fighting force, and be easier to implement than defenders of the status quo might believe.
What is H4D?
Hacking for Defense (H4D) is a thirteen-year-old course taught at some of our nation’s top universities designed to teach students how to approach complex challenges faced by Department of Defense and intelligence community organizations, It is based on the Lean Launchpad methodology, which has spawned hundreds of technology companies in the past decade. Instructors pair student teams with a DoD or intelligence community “problem sponsor” facing complex issues. These problems can range widely, from managing food waste at an on-base dining facility to tracking space-based junk to mitigating risk in subterranean complex clearing operations. Student teams learn to rapidly develop and test assumptions by interviewing dozens of experts and stakeholders each week across the government, the services, and industry. In many courses, students develop minimum viable products (MVP) about midway through the course and begin iteration based on user feedback. The class culminates with student teams presenting their MVPs to their government sponsors, who choose whether and how to implement it.
Why H4D?
H4D courses have produced some of the most innovative new companies tackling DoD problem sets. Yet the purpose of the service academies, of course, is to graduate leaders prepared for service, not to produce startups—so why teach H4D there? The number of successful companies that have emerged from H4D notwithstanding, the core benefit of the course actually lies in talent development. H4D exposes our nation’s future leaders to deep technology development and commercialization while providing a unique perspective into the friction between services, agencies, and industry. This kind of hands-on experience replaces blind idealism or cynicism in a junior officer with effective curiosity and a structured methodology for solving complex problems. Providing young leaders with experiences and tools for use in their service is the raison d’être for the academies, and H4D is proven to do so.
Why the Service Academies?
H4D is relatively easy to implement at the institutional level, as it involves adding one course that relies primarily on adjunct faculty, but execution will be critical to achieving value. Thankfully, the service academies are ideally positioned with a semester teaching system, requisite human capital and facilities, and a laser focus on leadership.
The academies’ semester teaching system provides H4D student teams with the time necessary to interview stakeholders, develop MVPs, and navigate their inevitable pivots. Teams conduct a steady stream of interviews while iterating on their MVPs and providing weekly presentations on their progress. Doing this effectively takes time—historical attempts to do H4D over 3–4 weeks in an intensive summer session undermined the curriculum. The course requires a great deal of time and energy and should be reserved for students in their final year with a light schedule. Many seniors take relatively light course loads in their final semester as they prepare to transition to the active force. H4D would be a perfect course to allow seniors to integrate the skills of a diverse team together into building a product for a DoD customer.
The academies also have an ideal mix of faculty and other features optimized for H4D. At West Point, for instance, around 50 percent of faculty have recent experience in active military units and could easily connect student teams with existing stakeholders. Some faculty even took H4D prior to coming to West Point. The other 50 percent of West Point faculty have PhDs in their respective fields. The academies have robust alumni networks which could further advise teams on the development and commercialization process. There will be no shortage of motivated, capable volunteers for industry adjuncts in the defense venture capital community who can provide a level of support beyond that available from course mentors. All cadets and midshipmen receive secret clearances by their junior year and could candidly interact with problem sponsors—eliminating a huge barrier to innovation in existing H4D courses. Finally, once a student team develops an MVP in one of the many makerspaces available on campus, the students can simply walk outside and test it using their issued military equipment, their knowledge of small-unit tactics, and the robust military training infrastructure already in place. The requisite physical and human capital that already resides at the academies make them ideal locations for implementing H4D.
The academies’ focus on building broadly skilled leaders who display initiative aligns perfectly with H4D. The course is by nature interdisciplinary, and while it is often housed in engineering departments the best iterations of this course are available to students of all departments. Students form interdisciplinary teams and interview with faculty to take the course. The best teams combine their disparate skill sets and data gathered from interviews to rapidly iterate on an MVP that satisfies a customer need. West Point already employs the flipped classroom method that defines H4D and West Point’s new innovation hub could serve as the ideal place to host the course.
Finally, the course should be an elective and very selective. The academy could incentivize competitiveness by offering an entrepreneurial scholarship. Students on a team that builds a successful MVP could receive a one-year scholarship to continue working on their idea prior to being sent into the force, similar to the existing Rhodes and Marshall scholarship programs. A junior officer building a product to help deter and win the next conflict using private capital is a huge win for DoD, the taxpayer, and our nation’s innovation economy.
H4D delivers a huge benefit in leader development and technological adoption, which is directly aligned with our academies’ missions and our national security needs. The H4D classes at our nation’s top universities are routinely oversubscribed. Faculty have to turn away students at places like Stanford, Columbia, and the University of Chicago because the course is so popular and delivers so much value. As students and instructors, we have seen diverse groups meld into cohesive teams to deliver products that solve national security problems again and again. We’ve watched many of these teams go on to receive follow-on funding and start companies that are still solving national security problems. Good solutions don’t get put on a shelf—they’re delivered to service members as products that help deter or win wars.
But Where Do We Find the Time?
While the benefits are huge, the biggest cost to implementing H4D is student time. Life at the academies is a nonstop grind with wake-up time at 6:30 a.m. and classes throughout the day (cadets average around eighteen credit hours per semester). Activity, club, and sports participation adds even more of a claim on students’ time—athletes, for example, end practice around 7 pm every night. At West Point, faculty can deliver instruction across thirty seventy-five minutes lessons over an eighteen-week semester. In H4D, in-class presentations act as a valuable forcing function for students to synthesize their findings, refine their hypotheses, and receive feedback from their peers and mentors. However, most H4D learning occurs outside the classroom during stakeholder meetings and team discussions. For an H4D course, faculty can create time for cadets by reserving half of those thirty classes for work done outside the classroom— offering what are known as “drops” to provide time in cadets’ busy schedules to work on projects. While students at service academies’ have many claims on their time, the existing class schedule can also be leveraged to largely defray the large time cost of H4D participation.
Some would argue that existing clubs or project-based learning can meet this need, but clubs lack the rigor or accountability of H4D and project-based learning is far too prescriptive. Clubs provide a valuable outlet for exploratory learning but are often focused on creating for the sake of creating—not customer-driven design thinking. Project-based learning often has a set of defined lesson objectives with an implied correct answer. In H4D, no one knows the correct answer (definitely not the instructors). Students must get outside the building and figure it out by collecting data from customers in a methodical process. Clubs and project-based learning, while important, are extremely unlikely to consistently deliver the design-based thinking outcomes our junior officers need.
Moreover, H4D does not need to be an entirely new additional requirement, but can be integrated into academic activities already in place. Talented seniors from multiple disciplines could take the course as part of the exiting capstone process and present their prototypes on Projects Day. H4D relies on rapid prototyping and iterative improvement based on customer feedback to build a minimum viable product—a small step above the Projects Day requirement. Students will spend much of their time translating customer needs into their prototypes. H4D Projects Day presentations will likely have multiple prototypes as well as an explanation of each team’s learning journey.
A Simple First Step Forward
By implementing H4D at its academy, the services can prepare future leaders to adopt and innovate technology at the speed of competition and provide them a set of leadership tools broadly usable across their careers. The gold standard for H4D is Stanford’s course, which was the initial pilot course and can provide the best example of the course executed to maximize learning. The Stanford H4D instructors and the teams at the National Security Innovation Network and Common Mission Project have already agreed to provide context and support wherever helpful. We should leverage the service academies to drive meaningful cultural change across the services and help DoD regain its’ technological edge.
Justin Fanelli is the acting chief technical officer of the United States Navy and the technical director of the Department of the Navy’s PEO Digital. He is an adjunct professor for the Hacking for Defense course at Georgetown University.
Tip Myers is a partner at Marque Ventures, a national security–focused early-stage venture capital firm, and a former Marine infantry officer. He is a student team mentor for the Hacking for Defense course at Georgetown University.
Major Caleb Stenholm is an instructor of economics at the United States Military Academy and an intelligence officer in the United States Army. He took the Hacking for Defense course at Stanford University while a student at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Brandon OConnor, United States Military Academy at West Point
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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Justin Fanelli, Tip Myers, Caleb Stenholm · August 23, 2024
18. The Corrupting Influence of DEI on Military Education
I do not mean this as a partisan comment, just an objective evaluation (I watched both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions)
I watched one of the greatest psychological operations ever conducted in the US this week: The Democratic National Convention. The Democrats recaptured the flag, patriotism, and freedom for their own.
What does that have to do with this article?
There were five things that were never mentioned once during the entire Democratic convention (unless I missed them): progressive, liberal, socialism, woke, and DEI.
Back to the article below.
Excerpts:
To remedy these ills, Congress, the Pentagon, and the individual services urgently need to purge DEI from the American military. This will take the force of law, time, and courage. In the interim, by returning to traditional civics education, America’s armed forces will ensure personnel are educated in line with their oaths and duty. Military education should, therefore, “aim at enhancing servicemembers’ understanding of foundational American philosophy and values, the basics of American politics and government, the Constitution, and their oath to support and defend the Constitution,” as CAI’s report advocates.
Once this occurs, our service members will be better focused on deterring the nation’s foes and, if needed, waging war with overwhelming lethality instead of risking the dysfunction and disunity DEI has created elsewhere. CAI’s report argues for a return to the fundamentals of civics education, which reinforces the virtues of our republic and our nation’s Constitution. Military personnel volunteer to serve their nation for a variety of reasons, many of which are inextricably linked to the ideals enshrined in the Constitution. DEI, at best, distracts from this and, at worst, creates a hostile atmosphere contrary to our nation’s shared history and belief in liberty, individual rights, and equality of opportunity.
The Corrupting Influence of DEI on Military Education — The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal
A new report from Arizona State University’s Center for American Institutions provides a stark warning.
https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2024/08/the-corrupting-influence-of-dei-on-military-education/?mc_cid=8abf849c1a&mc_eid=70bf478f36
jamesgmartin.center · by J.A. Cauthen · August 21, 2024
By now, the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) industry’s capture of academia, business, and government is obvious to most Americans. From former Harvard president Claudine Gay’s televised equivocations before Congress to the unhinged, violent student and faculty occupations in support of Hamas at some of America’s most elite universities, many are no doubt wondering if DEI is producing something counter to its placid-sounding words.
That this shameful behavior is occurring at civilian institutions of higher learning is probably no surprise to most observers. Unfortunately, DEI has metastasized beyond the confines of the civilian world and found a willing host in America’s armed forces. Left unchecked, DEI-focused military education and training will lead to the same nihilistic abyss as their civilian counterparts. If current trends are allowed to persist, the military and its service members risk succumbing to the same divisiveness and politicization that are roiling academia, but with arguably far direr and deadlier consequences.
Left unchecked, DEI-focused military education and training will lead to the same nihilistic abyss as their civilian counterparts.The growing evidence coming from entrenched civilian DEI bureaucracies, in higher learning in particular, demonstrates both a pernicious trend and DEI’s true nature. Reviewing how DEI has corrupted civilian institutions offers a useful proxy to examine how it has and will continue to influence the attitudes and behaviors of our nation’s military personnel, especially the officer corps, to the detriment of national security. Military DEI programs, just as in academia, will likely result in similar outcomes, where identity-based discrimination and forced “equity” are elevated and prioritized over color-blindness and equality of opportunity.
In recent years, prominent authors and organizations have detailed how DEI corrupts institutions and civil society. John Sailer has convincingly written about how DEI supplants merit with discrimination in faculty-hiring practices. Chris Rufo has described how DEI co-opts universities, transforming them into institutions of political activism. The Heritage Foundation has examined how DEI is used by universities to cull “problematic” thinking and behavior among the faculty, with the intent of shaming, isolating, or purging non-conformists.
A Claremont Institute report on the University of Alabama System analyzes how DEI initiatives “undermine the advancement of knowledge, the diversity of ideas, meritocracy, societal and campus unity, and the achievement of the common good.” The DEI apparatus is comprehensive and seeks to fundamentally transform education and civil society. If these are DEI’s objectives, one wonders why America’s military leadership, and the armed forces’ educational institutions and training programs, have so enthusiastically embraced it.
Arizona State University’s Center for American Institutions (CAI) recently released a report called “Civic Education in the Military.” This document questions the value of DEI in military education and training, highlighting the pervasiveness of DEI’s infiltration into the armed forces and the service academies, as well as how DEI negatively impacts military readiness. The overall assessment is bleak.
Rather than decreasing as Americans wake up to DEI’s dangers, Department of Defense “spending on DEI programming is increasing. The DOD’s allocation for DEI projects jumped from $68 million in fiscal year 2022 to $86.5 million in fiscal year 2023. The Pentagon is requesting $114.7 million for fiscal year 2024,” according to CAI’s report. These increasing budgets for DEI programs are designed to bolster and promote DEI in the services to address alleged demographic disparities that do not, in fact, exist.
Rather than decreasing as Americans wake up to DEI’s dangers, Department of Defense spending on DEI programming is increasing.As CAI’s report notes, the scope of DEI in the Department of Defense stretches from the highest echelons of command down to the unit level through a “vast DEI bureaucracy.” The report asserts, “DEI carries inherently negative messages about Western civilization generally, and about the United States and its people specifically.” These teachings are at odds with the oath all service members take to support and defend the Constitution.
America’s military should instead be focusing on educating service members in the fundamentals of U.S. history and civics, critical thinking, the art and science of war, strategy, etc. Yet the U.S. Naval War College organizes an annual “Women, Peace, and Security” symposium that has devolved into an identity-centric confab divorced from military imperatives. It also recently hosted a transgender active-duty Space Force officer who leads the branch’s “LGBTQ+ Initiatives Team” and spoke of how DEI (allegedly) advances retention.
America’s premier military undergraduate institutions have also fully committed to DEI. All have published DEI strategic plans, administered by well-staffed and funded DEI offices, to ensure institutional implementation. The U.S. Military Academy has a dedicated diversity and inclusion minor, as does the U.S. Air Force Academy. The U.S. Naval Academy offers faculty resources on how to craft a diversity statement and develop an “anti-racist” classroom and pedagogy. Moreover, CAI’s report highlights how the Naval Academy uses so-called Diversity Search Advocates (DSA) to screen candidates for civilian tenure-track positions based on identity-centric traits such as race and gender.
Each service academy offers various courses, seminars, and programs centered on DEI indoctrination. West Point, according to CAI’s report, has a mandatory seminar that “covers the structures of white power and [the] extent of white rage” and offers a 15-credit-hour DEI minor. The Naval Academy’s English department offers a course on interpreting literature through the lens of “1970s-style feminism through current preoccupations with Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory.” The Air Force Academy also offers courses centered on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality that are designed to “help cadets mature into D&I (Diversity and Inclusion) professionals for the Air Force.”
As CAI’s report notes, these DEI initiatives reflect “the trends in the civilian academy toward a postmodern focus on race and gender, often with inattention to standard history and literature.” This turn from teaching our military’s future leaders about our nation’s complex history—and instead replacing it with politically motivated content such as the 1619 Project—will necessarily erode the confidence and motivation of the men and women who selflessly serve in a volunteer armed forces.
To remain an effective, lethal fighting force, the military must remain an apolitical and professional institution.CAI’s report closes by asserting that a “professionalized military requires imbued shared values of military and service history, national heritage, and service pride. Current DEI training with its emphasis on Critical Race Theory imparts division and subverts a system of advancement based on merit and professional expertise.” To remain an effective, lethal fighting force tasked with deterring, and if necessary defeating, our nation’s enemies, the military must remain an apolitical and professional institution centered on fealty to the Constitution and not a corrosive ideology at odds with our nation’s founding. The military’s DEI “bureaucracy exists not to defend the nation or produce the military leaders of the future,” CAI’s report contends. “Instead, it produces training materials that parrot dubious, even dangerous, theories that sow the seeds of division and resentment within the ranks of the military.”
Cohesion, unity of purpose, and duty to a higher cause are foundational to American military superiority. DEI seeks to undermine these crucial traits through the binary of oppressed and oppressor. If this becomes the underlying organizing principle of the military through DEI-centric education and training, then our enemies will have gained a valuable advantage over our armed forces in a future conflict.
To remedy these ills, Congress, the Pentagon, and the individual services urgently need to purge DEI from the American military. This will take the force of law, time, and courage. In the interim, by returning to traditional civics education, America’s armed forces will ensure personnel are educated in line with their oaths and duty. Military education should, therefore, “aim at enhancing servicemembers’ understanding of foundational American philosophy and values, the basics of American politics and government, the Constitution, and their oath to support and defend the Constitution,” as CAI’s report advocates.
Once this occurs, our service members will be better focused on deterring the nation’s foes and, if needed, waging war with overwhelming lethality instead of risking the dysfunction and disunity DEI has created elsewhere. CAI’s report argues for a return to the fundamentals of civics education, which reinforces the virtues of our republic and our nation’s Constitution. Military personnel volunteer to serve their nation for a variety of reasons, many of which are inextricably linked to the ideals enshrined in the Constitution. DEI, at best, distracts from this and, at worst, creates a hostile atmosphere contrary to our nation’s shared history and belief in liberty, individual rights, and equality of opportunity.
J.A. Cauthen, a retired naval officer, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 2002 and taught in the history department from 2007 to 2010. He is a commission member for the Arizona State University Center for American Institutions’ report on civic education in the military.
jamesgmartin.center · by J.A. Cauthen · August 21, 2024
19. America’s Greatest Asset Has Been Our Industrial Capacity; It’s Time to Rebuild It.
No kidding.
America’s Greatest Asset Has Been Our Industrial Capacity; It’s Time to Rebuild It.
America’s strength has always come from our ability to outproduce the world. Our industrial might is what sustains our military superiority, economic might, and technological prowess. This country has all the ingredients, from its people to its bountiful natural resources, to get back on top of manufacturing. To do so, the United States must reindustrialize decisively and with dispatch.
The National Interest · by Robert C. O’Brien · August 22, 2024
For over seventy-five years, American leadership has brought an unprecedented era of peace, prosperity, and stability across the globe. When looking back on these decades, many point to our military strength, our great economic dynamism, and our technological innovations as the sources of America’s national power. These observations are true, but they miss what underpins these pillars.
Military, economic, and technological prowess are not generated out of nothing. They come from something deeper, something that we are at risk of losing: our industrial capacity. U.S. industrialization in the twentieth century is what enabled such a colossal rise in the military, economic, and technological spheres. Just after World War II, the United States made up half of the global GDP, and over a quarter of the U.S. GDP was from the manufacturing sector at the time.
Much has changed since our post-war industrial boom. China has surpassed the United States as the world’s manufacturing superpower, accounting for almost 29 percent of global manufacturing output, while the United States lags at just under 17 percent. America’s manufacturing decline is a consequence of decades of outsourcing our capacity. We naively believed that if we ceded our industrial capabilities to China, that nation would democratize and become more like us. American politicians from both parties were wrong to assume this outcome.
China’s manufacturing rise is not just about cheap toys and clothing and clothing to fill our big-box stores. It includes critical technologies that impact our economic, national, and personal security, like electric vehicles (EVs), robotics, artificial intelligence, solar technology, pharmaceuticals, drones, batteries, and ships.
In some of these industries, such as EVs and shipbuilding, China has not only surpassed America’s industrial capacity but has also left us behind.
China is the largest producer of EVs, making up 57 percent of the world’s production. China is the world’s largest shipbuilder, with a capacity that exceeds that of the United States by over 230 times. Allowing these situations to occur was a strategic blunder that will degrade America’s national power over time.
A robust manufacturing industry fit for the twenty-first century requires more than forging and engineering. Our industries need critical components, like engines, computers, microchips, complex alloys, and countless other critical technologies with fragile supply chains. China has, in fact, managed to insert itself into dominant positions in many of these supply chains. For example, in the steel sector, China now produces about half the world’s output, with a commanding position in the global market. China’s supply chain dominance renders our economic security more vulnerable in the event of a conflict between our nations.
A U.S. manufacturing revival requires an environment that supports thousands of small and medium enterprises as the backbone of the industry. This is critical to prevent over-consolidation of smaller businesses—which are important drivers of innovation and employment. We need a strategy that integrates all of our capacity from big factories to small machine shops into a rebuilt industrial base.
Overregulation is stifling our manufacturing companies. Government mandates must be utilized surgically to foster economic growth, not hamstring the economy unnecessarily. High corporate taxes are closely connected to overregulation and will, with certainty, drive our best entrepreneurs to seek less burdensome taxation abroad.
Public-private partnerships that combine the resources and capital of the government and private sector can also, in targeted settings, help facilitate our industrial transition and let us catch up in industries essential to our future. The CHIPS Act needs some retooling but may prove to be a useful precedent in this area.
New factories will need skilled blue-collar workers to weld, install HVAC systems, fit pipes, and fulfill scores of high-paying jobs in the trades. The federal government has been far too silent on the importance of strengthening the industrial manufacturing workforce as well as expanding vocational schools and apprentice programs. We need young people who want to work on factory floors. Young foreign scientists and engineers who graduate from our universities and who share our values should be allowed to stay rather than be pushed out to apply their U.S. education to the benefit of our competitors.
We must also harden America’s industrial infrastructure and our power grids to make them more resilient in the face of increased cyberattacks. The thousands of daily cyber intrusions, hacks, and probes we see now are but a mere foreshadowing of what we can expect from thousands of Chinese hackers if war ever comes.
Private sector R&D investment ensures that America remains at the cutting edge of technological advancements. It is our companies that will keep us ahead in the tech race with China in the key areas of AI and Quantum computing. The government must stop beating up our tech companies with outdated anti-trust lawsuits and consumer investigations and allowing our allies, especially the EU, to do the same.
The United States holds a key position in the manufacturing sector, which no other industrial country, especially China, has—abundant North American energy. Factories require energy, and the high-tech plants of the future will require lots of it. The United States already produces over 12 million barrels of oil a day. That number could go millions of barrels a day higher with more energy-friendly policies. Finishing the last few miles of the Keystone XL pipeline would bring an additional 900,000 barrels of Canadian crude to our refineries in Texas. Oil and gas are just the start.
An “all of the above” energy policy that would entice manufacturers to make long-term bets on America will also focus on alternative sources. Wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, and hydropower all have their places in diverse regions of this country. America should regain its leadership in these green energy fields from China. The energy sources of the future—nuclear (ready today) and fusion—will also play significant roles in powering industry.
America’s strength has always come from our ability to outproduce the world. Our industrial might is what sustains our military superiority, economic might, and technological prowess. This country has all the ingredients, from its people to its bountiful natural resources, to get back on top of manufacturing. To do so, the United States must reindustrialize decisively and with dispatch. Maintaining our peace and prosperity depends on such action.
About the Authors:
Robert C. O’Brien (ret.) is Chairman of American Global Strategies. He served as the twenty-seventh United States National Security Advisor from 2019–2021.
Henrietta Fore is Chairman of Holsman International. She served as the fifteenth Administrator of USAID from 2007–2009. O’Brien and Fore are Carnegie Distinguished Fellows at Columbia University’s Institute of Global Politics.
Image Credit: Creative Commons and/or Shutterstock.
The National Interest · by Robert C. O’Brien · August 22, 2024
20. The Crumbling Foundations of American Strength
Excerpts:
Enhancing U.S. knowledge power is not just about developing new capabilities. Washington also needs to fix problems in the country’s immigration system and defense budgeting. Congress must pass immigration reforms to allow more of the world’s best and brightest students to stay and work in the United States after they graduate from American universities, provided measures are in place to protect U.S. intellectual property and guard against espionage risks. The secretary of defense should make reform of the Pentagon’s weapons acquisition process a top priority, putting real funding behind long-standing promises to embrace affordability and innovation and making clear to Congress and the American people that budget dysfunction makes the country less safe.
If U.S. research universities are to remain engines of future innovation, the federal government must also reverse years of chronic underinvestment in basic research. Some private-sector leaders are trying to fill gaps through philanthropic programs such as Schmidt Sciences’ AI2050, which is committing $125 million over five years to fund bold academic research in AI. But this is a drop in the bucket. Only the U.S. government—which spends $125 million on a single F-35 fighter jet—can invest on the scale that is necessary. A bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by Senators Martin Heinrich, Mike Rounds, Chuck Schumer, and Todd Young, has renewed calls to fulfill the original promise of the CHIPS and Science Act by ramping up current government funding for nondefense AI research and development tenfold, to $32 billion. Yet the road between this proposal and passing a bill is long; the idea has been floating around Congress since 2021. That’s a lifetime ago in AI development. Given the pace and stakes of technological change, it is not enough for funding to increase. It also needs to be delivered faster.
Finally, the United States needs to fix K–12 education. Warnings that educational decline threatens the country’s future prosperity, security, and global leadership are nothing new, but education reform has not been treated as the urgent national security priority that it is. Today, in most of the country’s 13,500 public school districts, teacher compensation is based on years of experience and graduate education, which means that physics and physical education teachers receive the same pay. So do the best and worst teachers. Some cities are already piloting better approaches. In Dallas, Houston, and Washington, D.C., education officials have been experimenting with incentive funds to evaluate teachers and reward the most effective ones. In some places, districts can receive even more discretionary funding if they deploy the best teachers to the worst schools. These practices are already producing promising results, and they should be studied and scaled.
None of these changes will be easy, but without them, the United States’ knowledge capacity will continue to erode and U.S. power will grow weaker in the years ahead. Washington has been clinging to the idea that restrictions on China’s access to U.S. technology through export controls and outbound investment limits can preserve the country’s technological advantage. But simply thwarting China will do nothing to spur the long-term innovation the United States needs to ensure its future security and prosperity. Now more than ever, Washington must understand that knowledge is power—and that it must be cultivated at home.
The Crumbling Foundations of American Strength
Knowledge Is Power—and the United States Is Losing It
September/October 2024
Published on August 20, 2024
Foreign Affairs · by Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence · August 20, 2024
When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appeared imminent in early 2022, U.S. intelligence officials were so confident that Russian tanks would roll quickly to victory that staff evacuated the U.S. embassy in Kyiv. Based on traditional measures of power, the intelligence assessment made sense. In 2021, Russia ranked fifth in the world in defense spending, whereas Ukraine was a distant 36th, behind Thailand and Belgium. Yet more than two years later, Russia and Ukraine are still fighting their brutal war to a standstill.
Ukraine’s resilience is a telling indicator that power is not what it used to be. The country’s surprise showing is in no small part a result of its highly educated population and a technology innovation ecosystem that has produced vast quantities of drones and other homemade weapons on the fly. Ukraine has even managed to wage naval warfare without a navy, using homemade drones and other devices to destroy nearly two dozen Russian ships and deny Russia control of the Black Sea.
For centuries, a nation’s power stemmed from tangible resources that its government could see, measure, and generally control, such as populations that could be conscripted, territory that could be conquered, navies that could be deployed, and goods that could be released or restricted, such as oil. Spain in the sixteenth century had armies, colonies, and precious metals. The United Kingdom in the nineteenth century had the world’s strongest navy and the economic benefits that emerged from the Industrial Revolution. The United States and the Soviet Union in the twentieth century had massive nuclear arsenals.
Today, countries increasingly derive power from intangible resources—the knowledge and technologies such as AI that are super-charging economic growth, scientific discovery, and military potential. These assets are difficult for governments to control once they are “in the wild” because of their intangible nature and the ease with which they spread across sectors and countries. U.S. officials, for example, cannot insist that an adversary return an algorithm to the United States the way the George W. Bush administration demanded the return of a U.S. spy plane that crash-landed on Hainan Island after a Chinese pilot collided with it in 2001. Nor can they ask a Chinese bioengineer to give back the knowledge gained from postdoctoral research in the United States. Knowledge is the ultimate portable weapon.
The fact that these resources typically originate in the private sector and academia makes the job of government even more challenging. Foreign policy has always been a two-level game; U.S. officials have to wrangle both domestic actors and foreign adversaries. But more and more, the decisions of private companies are shaping geopolitical outcomes, and the interests of the U.S. private sector are not always aligned with national objectives. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is determining what constitutes truth for the three billion people worldwide that use its platforms. In the past year, American CEOs with vested Chinese business interests have met face-to-face with Chinese leader Xi Jinping about as often as Secretary of State Antony Blinken has. And when war erupted in Ukraine, the tycoon billionaire Elon Musk singlehandedly decided whether, where, and when the Ukrainian military could communicate using the Starlink satellite network he owns.
At the same time, many of the U.S. government’s capabilities are deteriorating. Its traditional foreign policy tools have withered: confirming presidential appointments has become so fraught that at least a quarter of key foreign policy positions sat vacant halfway through the first terms of the last three U.S. presidents. Thanks to spiraling federal debt, this year, for the first time ever, the U.S. will spend more on interest payments than on defense. Because Congress often cannot pass an annual budget, the Pentagon increasingly runs on stopgap budget measures that fund only existing programs, not new ones, preventing new research and development initiatives or weapons programs from getting off the ground. This broken system disproportionately hinders new, small, and innovative companies. As a result, big, expensive weapons systems persist while new, cheap solutions wither on the vine. If China were to design a budget process with the intent to stifle invention, send weapons costs through the roof, and weaken American defense, it would look like this. Meanwhile, and critically, the health of the United States’ K–12 education and research universities—the sources of the country’s long-term innovative potential—are in decline.
In today’s knowledge- and technology-driven world, U.S. policymakers need to think in new ways about what constitutes U.S. power, how to develop it, and how to deploy it. Future prosperity and security will depend less on preventing adversaries from acquiring U.S. technologies and more on strengthening the country’s educational and research capacity and mobilizing emerging technologies to serve the national interest.
INNOVATE AND ANTICIPATE
For decades, U.S. policymakers have employed hard- and soft-power tools to influence foreign adversaries and allies. To advance U.S. interests with hard power, they built military might and used it to protect friends and threaten or defeat enemies. With soft power, they shared U.S. values and attracted others to their cause. Both hard and soft power still matter, but because they do not determine a country’s success the way they once did, the United States must work to expand its knowledge power—advancing national interests by boosting the country’s capacity to generate transformational technology.
Knowledge power has two essential elements: the ability to innovate and the ability to anticipate. The first relates to a country’s capacity to produce and harness technological breakthroughs. The second has to do with intelligence. Part of this work fits into the traditional mission of U.S. spy agencies, which are tasked with discovering the intentions and capabilities of foreign adversaries to threaten U.S. interests. As the boundaries between domestic industry and foreign policy blur, however, intelligence agencies also need to help the government understand the implications of technologies developed at home.
Innovation and anticipation are not merely ingredients that strengthen the United States’ military and its powers of attraction. They may do both, but the primary function of knowledge power lies closer to home. Whereas traditional foreign policy tools aim outward—using threats, force, and values to affect the behavior of foreign actors—building and using knowledge power requires Washington to look inward. It involves marshaling ideas, talent, and technology to help the United States and its partners thrive no matter what China or any other adversary does.
Education and innovation are key to the United States’ ability to project power.
The components of knowledge power can be hard to see and quantify. But a good place to start is national educational proficiency levels. Overwhelming evidence shows that a well-educated workforce drives long-term economic growth. In 1960, East Asia nearly tied sub-Saharan Africa for the lowest GDP per capita in the world. Over the next 30 years, however, East Asia vaulted ahead, spurred in large measure by educational improvements.
The geographic concentration of technological talent is another useful indicator of knowledge power, suggesting which countries are poised to leap ahead in critical areas. There is a reason leading scientists and engineers congregate in labs and recruit superstar teams instead of isolating themselves in their offices, designing experiments alone and reading research papers online. Physical proximity matters; the world’s top minds working closely together is a recipe for technological breakthroughs.
Gauging a nation’s long-term power prospects also requires measuring the health of its research universities. Companies play an essential role in technological innovation, but the innovation supply chain really begins earlier, in campus labs and classrooms. Whereas companies must concentrate their resources on developing technologies with near-term commercial prospects, research universities do not face the same financial or temporal demands. Basic research, the lifeblood of universities, examines questions on the frontiers of knowledge that may take generations to answer and may never have any commercial application. But without it, many commercial breakthroughs would not have been possible, including radar, GPS, and the Internet.
More recently, what looked from the outside like the overnight success of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines was in fact the result of more than 50 years of basic research in universities. Before pharmaceutical companies advanced vaccine development, academic researchers had discovered that mRNA could activate and block protein cells, and they had figured out how to deliver it to human cells to provoke an immune response. Similarly, the cryptographic algorithms protecting data on the Internet today stemmed from decades of academic research in pure math. And many new advances in AI, from ChatGPT to image recognition, build on the pioneering work developed at the University of Toronto, the University of Montreal, Stanford University, and elsewhere.
BRAIN DRAIN
If education and innovation are key to the United States’ ability to project power, then the country’s prospects are on shaky ground. American K–12 education is in crisis. Students today are scoring worse on proficiency tests than they have in decades and falling behind their peers abroad. U.S. universities are struggling, too, as they face greater global competition for talent and chronic federal underinvestment in the basic research that is vital for long-term innovation.
In 2023, math and reading scores among American 13-year-olds were the lowest in decades, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Half of U.S. students could not meet their state’s proficiency requirements. And scores on the ACT, the popular college admissions test, declined for the sixth year in a row, with 70 percent of high school seniors not meeting college readiness benchmarks in math and 43 percent not meeting college readiness benchmarks in anything. Notably, these trends began before the COVID-19 pandemic.
While students in the United States fall behind, students in other countries are surging ahead. According to the Program for International Student Assessment, which tests 15-year-olds worldwide, in 2022 the United States ranked 34th in average math proficiency, behind Slovenia and Vietnam. (Reading and science rankings were higher but barely cracked the top ten and top 20, respectively.) More than a third of U.S. students scored below the baseline math proficiency level, which means they cannot compare distances between two routes or convert prices into a different currency. At the top end, only seven percent of American teens scored at the highest level of math proficiency, compared with 12 percent of test takers in Canada and 23 percent in South Korea. Even pockets of excellence inside the United States don’t fare well internationally. Massachusetts was the top-scoring U.S. state in math in 2022 but would rank just 16th in the world if it were a country. Most U.S. states rank near the global median. And the lowest-scoring state, New Mexico, is on par with Kazakhstan.
Part of this story is the rise of the rest; the global population has become vastly more educated in the past several decades, redrawing the knowledge power map in the process. Since 1950, average years of schooling have risen dramatically and the number of college graduates worldwide has increased 30-fold. As the educational playing field levels, U.S. universities and companies increasingly rely on foreign talent to remain world-class. In 1980, 78 percent of doctorates in computer science and electrical engineering awarded by American universities went to U.S. citizens or permanent residents. In 2022, it was 32 percent. About one million international students now study in the United States each year. The largest share comes from China, at 27 percent.
The United States’ record of attracting talent from around the world is an enormous asset. Nearly 45 percent of all Fortune 500 companies in 2020, including Alphabet, SpaceX, and the chip giant NVIDIA, were founded by first- or second-generation immigrants. About 40 percent of Americans awarded Nobel Prizes in scientific fields since 2000 have been foreign-born. Yet here, too, the country is forfeiting its short-term advantage and creating long-term vulnerabilities. Outdated immigration policies have created a self-sabotaging talent system that educates exceptional foreign students and then requires many of them to leave the United States, taking everything they learned with them.
What’s more, this talent supply chain works only as long as foreign students want to study in the United States and their governments allow it. Foreign universities have improved substantially in recent years, offering more alternatives for the best and brightest. Already, polls show that the share of Chinese students who prefer to study in Asia or Europe instead of the United States is rising. If the Chinese government were ever to restrict the flow of top students to the United States, many university labs and companies would be in serious trouble.
The innovation advantage that U.S. universities have over their foreign counterparts is eroding, too. A decade ago, the United States produced by far the most highly cited scientific papers in the world. Today, China does. In 2022, for the first time, China’s contributions surpassed those of the United States in the closely watched Nature Index, which tracks 82 premier science journals.
The pull of the private sector is draining the sources of future innovation.
Funding trends are also headed in the wrong direction. Only the U.S. government can make the large, long-term, risky investments necessary for the basic research that universities conduct. Yet overall federal research funding as a share of GDP has declined since its peak of 1.9 percent in 1964 to just 0.7 percent in 2020. (By comparison, China spent 1.3 percent of GDP on research in 2017.) The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act was supposed to reverse this downward slide by investing billions of dollars in science and engineering research, but these provisions were later scrapped in budget negotiations.
Basic research has been particularly hard hit. Until 2014, the National Institutes of Health allocated the majority of its budget to basic university research about disease and human health. Now, it spends more on clinical trials and other applied research. The CHIPS and Science Act was supposed to double the budget of the National Science Foundation, the premier government sponsor of basic research in nonmedical science, technology, engineering, and math, this year. Instead, the agency’s budget was cut by eight percent.The NSF awards smaller, shorter grants than it did a decade ago, which forces scientists and engineers to spend more time chasing funds and less time conducting research. “We are fast approaching the point where standard NSF grants aren’t minimally viable,” said one senior administrator at a large research university, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing relations with the NSF. “For some of our faculty, it’s just not worth it for them to apply.” Although the United States still funds more basic research than China does, China’s investment in research rose more than 200 percent between 2012 and 2021, compared with a 35 percent rise in U.S. investment. If current trends continue, China’s basic research spending will overtake U.S. spending within ten years.
The gravitational pull of the private sector is bolstering short-term innovation and economic benefits, but it is also draining the sources of future innovation. In AI, for example, the talent exodus from academia to industry is fueling extraordinary commercial advancements. It is also diverting talent and attention away from basic research on which future innovation depends and depleting the ranks of faculty who teach the next generation. The problem is acute at the very top. In one top-ranked U.S. computer science department, nearly a third of the senior AI faculty a decade ago have left academia. At another top-ranked department, an AI scholar, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, has estimated that half the AI faculty have gone part-time. Doctoral students and faculty at an AI lab at another leading university do not have the ability to discuss their research freely, which is vital for collaboration, because some are working at OpenAI and have signed nondisclosure agreements. Last year, more than 70 percent of newly minted AI Ph.D.’s in the United States went directly to industry, including a disproportionate share of the top students. As a U.S. government commission on AI put it, “Talent follows talent.”
A generation from now, policymakers will lament, “How could we not have seen this talent crisis coming?” But all they need to do is look.
A NEW POWER BASE
U.S. policymakers need a new playbook that will help them assess, enhance, and use the country’s knowledge power.The first step is developing intelligence capabilities to gauge where the United States is ahead in emerging technologies and where it is behind, and to determine which gaps matter and which do not. The Pentagon has legions of analysts comparing U.S. and foreign military capabilities, but no office in the U.S. government does the same for emerging technologies. This needs to change. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has already begun building stronger relationships with companies and universities to gain insight into U.S. technological developments. These efforts must be institutionalized, with channels to share expertise faster and more frequently. To spur progress, Congress should hold annual technology net assessment hearings with intelligence officials and academic and industry leaders. And universities must step up by sharing the details and implications of their latest lab discoveries. For instance, my institution, Stanford University, launched a new initiative last year called the Stanford Emerging Technology Review to provide more accessible and regular information to policymakers about ten key emerging technologies—including AI, bioengineering, space technologies, materials science, and energy—from leading experts in those fields. It is now essential to broaden and deepen these efforts, building trusted expert networks and increasing information sharing between universities and the U.S. government, state and local officials, and international partners.
Washington also needs to invest in the national infrastructure necessary for technological innovation. In the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower developed the Interstate Highway System to bolster U.S. economic growth and to make it easier to evacuate civilians and move troops in the event of a Soviet attack. After the 1973 oil crisis, President Gerald Ford established the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the largest stockpile of emergency crude oil in the world, so that a foreign oil embargo or other disruption would never again cripple the U.S. economy. The missing national security infrastructure today is computational power. Progress in nearly every field relies on artificial intelligence, which in turn requires advanced computational power to operate. For example, the computational power required to train the ChatGPT-3 AI model is so huge that the task would take 9,000 years on a typical laptop. Today, only large companies such as Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft can afford to buy the massive clusters of advanced chips required for developing frontier AI models. Everyone else struggles to afford the bare minimum. This year, Princeton University announced that it would dip into its endowment to purchase 300 advanced NVIDIA chips to use for research (at a cost of at least $9 million), while Meta announced plans to have 350,000 of the same chips by year’s end, spending an estimated $10 billion.
A national strategic computational reserve would provide free or low-cost advanced computing to researchers through competitive grants that lease time on existing cloud-based services or supercomputing systems at national labs. The reserve could also build and operate smaller-scale computing clusters of its own. This infrastructure would be accessible to researchers outside large tech companies and well-endowed research universities.It would facilitate cutting-edge AI research for public benefit, not just private profit. And it would help stem the flow of top computer scientists from academia to industry by offering them resources to do pioneering work while remaining in their university positions. Improvements are already underway. In January, the National Science Foundation launched a pilot program called the National AI Research Resource, awarding access to computational power, data, and other resources to 35 projects out of more than 150 proposals. A bipartisan group of legislators has introduced a bill to make the NAIRR permanent.
At an elementary school in Artesia, California, January 2024
Mike Blake / Reuters
Enhancing U.S. knowledge power is not just about developing new capabilities. Washington also needs to fix problems in the country’s immigration system and defense budgeting. Congress must pass immigration reforms to allow more of the world’s best and brightest students to stay and work in the United States after they graduate from American universities, provided measures are in place to protect U.S. intellectual property and guard against espionage risks. The secretary of defense should make reform of the Pentagon’s weapons acquisition process a top priority, putting real funding behind long-standing promises to embrace affordability and innovation and making clear to Congress and the American people that budget dysfunction makes the country less safe.
If U.S. research universities are to remain engines of future innovation, the federal government must also reverse years of chronic underinvestment in basic research. Some private-sector leaders are trying to fill gaps through philanthropic programs such as Schmidt Sciences’ AI2050, which is committing $125 million over five years to fund bold academic research in AI. But this is a drop in the bucket. Only the U.S. government—which spends $125 million on a single F-35 fighter jet—can invest on the scale that is necessary. A bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by Senators Martin Heinrich, Mike Rounds, Chuck Schumer, and Todd Young, has renewed calls to fulfill the original promise of the CHIPS and Science Act by ramping up current government funding for nondefense AI research and development tenfold, to $32 billion. Yet the road between this proposal and passing a bill is long; the idea has been floating around Congress since 2021. That’s a lifetime ago in AI development. Given the pace and stakes of technological change, it is not enough for funding to increase. It also needs to be delivered faster.
Finally, the United States needs to fix K–12 education. Warnings that educational decline threatens the country’s future prosperity, security, and global leadership are nothing new, but education reform has not been treated as the urgent national security priority that it is. Today, in most of the country’s 13,500 public school districts, teacher compensation is based on years of experience and graduate education, which means that physics and physical education teachers receive the same pay. So do the best and worst teachers. Some cities are already piloting better approaches. In Dallas, Houston, and Washington, D.C., education officials have been experimenting with incentive funds to evaluate teachers and reward the most effective ones. In some places, districts can receive even more discretionary funding if they deploy the best teachers to the worst schools. These practices are already producing promising results, and they should be studied and scaled.
None of these changes will be easy, but without them, the United States’ knowledge capacity will continue to erode and U.S. power will grow weaker in the years ahead. Washington has been clinging to the idea that restrictions on China’s access to U.S. technology through export controls and outbound investment limits can preserve the country’s technological advantage. But simply thwarting China will do nothing to spur the long-term innovation the United States needs to ensure its future security and prosperity. Now more than ever, Washington must understand that knowledge is power—and that it must be cultivated at home.
Foreign Affairs · by Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence · August 20, 2024
21. Europe’s America Problem
A view from France.
Conclusion:
The rules-based order will be stronger, and the world will be safer and more prosperous, if European countries can resist bilateral and transactional relationships with the United States and instead engage with Washington as a unified bloc. European countries may struggle to balance and reconcile their individual and collective interests as the transatlantic relationship changes. But they must succeed so that Europe can anticipate challenges and take independent, constructive action rather than be forced to play defense or to improvise. As Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, said on taking office in 2019, it is high time that Europe “learn to speak the language of power,” including when dealing with its most valuable and important ally. Regardless of who occupies the Oval Office next year, a clearly articulated definition of Europe’s interests and expectations of the United States will contribute to a healthier relationship for both sides.
Europe’s America Problem
Whether Trump Wins or Loses, the Continent Needs a New Strategy Toward the United States
August 23, 2024
Foreign Affairs · by Giovanna De Maio and Célia Belin · August 23, 2024
In a speech in Munich in February, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris affirmed that Washington’s commitment to its NATO allies is “ironclad.” Now the Democratic presidential nominee, Harris is largely expected to maintain President Joe Biden’s support for Ukraine and close ties with European partners if she succeeds him in the top job. Her Republican rival, Donald Trump, meanwhile, declared in February that Russia could do “whatever the hell they wanted” to NATO members that do not spend enough on defense, reminding Europeans that he values neither NATO nor U.S. alliances.
After November’s election, one of two very different views of the United States’ obligations in Europe will hold sway in Washington. Across the Atlantic, Europeans are frantically considering the implications of each outcome, hoping to find a magic formula for success with either.
But preparing for specific contingencies depending on who wins the election is the wrong approach. Europeans must come up with a collective plan to engage the United States after this year. If they don’t present a united front, they are likely to compete for the role of the United States’ best friend or push forward individual initiatives to keep the United States engaged in Europe, even if those efforts come at the expense of other European countries.
Regardless of who is in the White House in January 2025, Europe needs a strategy that considers recent transformations in global politics, in the United States, and in the transatlantic relationship itself. The rest of the world’s appetite for the United States to take on global responsibilities is diminishing, and a chaotic multipolarity is on the rise. Americans, meanwhile, increasingly favor retrenchment and protectionism, and U.S. politicians appear more concerned with China than with Russia.
The prospect of a second Trump term has heightened concerns that have been growing in Europe since 2016, when the twin shocks of Brexit and the election of Trump planted doubts about the strength of the European project and the reliability of its main ally. Over the past few years, the European Union has taken some steps to respond to this uncertainty, building policy frameworks for its relationship with China and its objectives in the Indo-Pacific region, bolstering its economic and cyber security, and assessing its strategic and defense environment.
It is high time that the EU similarly reassess its relationship with the United States. No matter what happens in November, Europe will need to define its collective interests in the transatlantic partnership, deciding what it wants to protect and what it expects from the United States. With a strategy designed around a few key priorities—including working with the United States to deter Russia and stabilize the Middle East, defending European prosperity and freedom of action amid the U.S.-Chinese rivalry, and engaging with Washington to address global challenges—Europe can project a strong, coherent, and unified voice on matters involving the United States. Agreeing on a set of interests to promote and defend, including on how best to share responsibilities with the United States, is the only way Europeans can avoid playing one EU country against the other and navigate the uncertainties of American politics.
ROUGH WATERS AHEAD
A second Trump administration would be an especially disruptive outcome for the transatlantic relationship. Trump does not believe that the United States and Europe share core security interests. Instead, he believes that Europe is exploiting the United States to subsidize its security, a view that makes him unlikely to sustain the Biden administration’s strong support for the defense of Ukraine. Trump has repeatedly said that he will try to strike a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war Putin launched in Ukraine “within 24 hours,” most likely sacrificing Ukraine’s security interests and territorial integrity to do so. Trump’s running mate, the Ohio Senator JD Vance, has repeatedly argued against sending additional U.S. aid to Ukraine and advocated for turning U.S. resources and attention to East Asia. European leaders are thus concerned that Trump’s possible return would irreparably compromise U.S. engagement in Europe and invite further destabilizing action by Russia beyond Ukraine.
But this is not just about Trump. Enthusiasm for supporting the Ukrainian war effort is waning in Washington, and declining U.S. weapons stockpiles led Congress to stall deliveries to Ukraine earlier this year, which resulted in battlefield losses. There is public pressure to break the U.S. habit of fighting endless wars, which has already led to a chaotic and poorly coordinated withdrawal from Afghanistan and could lead to a similarly rushed decision to cut support to Ukraine. According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in July, 50 percent of Americans are “very concerned” or “extremely concerned” that the war in Ukraine could last several more years, and 42 percent think that it could lead to a U.S. war with Russia. Even if Harris is elected in November, additional aid to Ukraine will still require approval in the Senate, where a likely Republican majority will face pressure to deny such aid from the party’s “America first” wing.
Although the Biden administration’s rock-solid commitment to NATO has played a vital role in rallying Europeans to take action against Russia and fostered transatlantic unity, Washington’s top priority remains China. The Biden administration has maintained a rough balance between senior officials working on Europe and those focused on Asia, but the size of the latter group has increased compared with previous administrations. U.S. policymakers increasingly view trade, technology, and alliances through the prism of competition with China. Moreover, Biden’s policies suggest that the goal of outcompeting Beijing takes precedence in Washington over transatlantic and transpacific economic relations or abiding by World Trade Organization rules. The current administration has actually hardened Trump’s approach to China through landmark industrial and export control policies, including the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act. This legislation offers major investment advantages to green technology companies that manufacture their products in the United States, encouraging European manufacturers to relocate their factories and undermining Europe’s efforts to expand its own green industries.
UNITY MATTERS
As European capitals brace for November, the tension is palpable. Countries such as the Czech Republic are buying U.S. weapons systems and signing bilateral security deals with the United States as insurance against the possibility of a disinterested Washington redirecting its resources to Asia. Although other countries such as Lithuania have only a limited presence in the Indo-Pacific, they have nonetheless drafted regional strategies to show Washington that they will help contain China—and in the hope that the United States, in turn, will not dismiss their security concerns about Russia. Some German commentators have argued in favor of lowering EU restrictions for U.S. companies to invest in Europe, tightening the United States’ ties to the continent, because they think this kind of transactional arrangement may appeal to a potential Trump administration.
European diplomats are flocking to Washington to talk with staff at the Heritage Foundation, the think tank that claims to be doing the ideological groundwork and talent scouting for a new Trump term. Their main message is to reassure potential future policymakers who are skeptical of the value of the United States’ European alliances; NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, for example, gave a speech in January stressing that other NATO members together have provided more aid to Ukraine than Washington has. But these representatives also want to find out what could and could not be negotiated with a potential second Trump administration. They want to know what could keep the United States engaged in Europe and at what cost. What they fail to appreciate, however, is that a transactional approach can only ever make temporary gains. Durable cooperation requires a shared understanding of strategic interests. And if individual European countries seek bilateral relationships with Washington, the United States will always have the upper hand.
The temptation to bypass Brussels and pursue bilateral ties will remain as long as Europe lacks a clear, unified assessment of its core interests in relations with its key partner. If European countries work together rather than individually, Washington will have to take them seriously and recognize the benefits of partnership with Europe as a collective. New initiatives under the Biden administration have created room for discussion, but they must now be expanded and strengthened. The EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council, a forum for discussing technology challenges and coordinating approaches on global trade, proved helpful in supporting transatlantic sanctions on Russia, while U.S.-EU summits provided opportunities to take stronger, more unified stands toward both Russia and China.
If it is to make better use of these forums, however, Europe needs to reach a consensus on a United States strategy. This will give European interlocutors a clearer and more forceful voice in their dealings with Washington and, ultimately, will make Europe a more reliable partner for the United States. By negotiating this strategy at the EU level, European policymakers will ensure that it will be supported with regulation and concrete action through EU institutions. The strategy will also give individual countries a frame of reference as they navigate their individual relationships with the United States. Poland, the next country to rotate into the six-month EU presidency, at the start of 2025, can begin this process. Even if a formal strategy binds only EU member states, the conversation should include the United Kingdom and other non-EU countries, such as Ukraine and Moldova, that play an important part in European security and prosperity.
SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY
As European countries begin to discuss an EU-wide United States strategy, a clear set of aims should guide their thinking. The first and most important is preventing Russia from winning its war in Ukraine and deterring it from further aggression. Europe’s security is contingent on the accomplishment of both goals, and it must prioritize these interests in its dealings with Washington. No matter the outcome of the American elections in November, European countries will continue providing financial and military aid to Ukraine—and they should make clear to the United States that they expect it to do the same. If the right conditions for a diplomatic solution to the war emerge, Europe must seek assurances that Washington will not ignore Europe’s security interests—which include supporting Ukraine’s aspirations to join the EU and NATO. Both Ukraine and Europe, represented either by the EU or by a select group of European countries, must be at the negotiating table.
To demonstrate their commitment to their American ally, European countries must take steps now to support the long-term defense and economic recovery of Ukraine and help it progress toward EU membership. They must also remind Washington that the strength of the Atlantic alliance has kept the peace in Europe and helped stabilize the international order for decades—and warn that failing to quell Russian revanchism in Ukraine and deter further aggression would undermine those gains and embolden U.S. rivals across the world.
European countries must also reinforce the European pillar of NATO by stepping up and shouldering more of the burden. Doing so will better equip the alliance to weather political changes in the United States, as well as strengthen Europe’s voice vis-à-vis its senior American partner. Now that two more EU countries, Finland and Sweden, have joined the alliance, the overlap between EU defense and NATO defense is greater than ever before. The EU should use this opportunity to increase its cooperation with NATO, and EU member states should make sure their own defense projects are compatible with NATO standards and planning. Whether or not the United States disengages from NATO under a new administration, Europeans need to expand their role in the alliance’s logistics and command chains, as well as simplify and standardize procedures to move military personnel and equipment across borders. They can begin this process by arranging staff exchanges between the EU and NATO and by improving information sharing across the two institutions.
European countries must make targeted defense investments to fill gaps in their capabilities, which will reduce their dependence on the United States—for example, in drones, air and missile defense systems, air-to-air refueling, and any other areas in which European militaries rely on U.S. capabilities. EU member states can engage with other NATO allies and partners, including the United Kingdom and Canada, to develop this capacity. And within EU institutions, the next EU commissioner whose purview includes the defense industry could identify the regulatory changes necessary to make this expansion possible. European leaders should also make the case to their American counterparts that supporting Europe’s defense industry is in the United States’ long-term interest. A Europe that can provide security on the continent and beyond is a geopolitical advantage for the United States.
THE LANGUAGE OF POWER
Europe should also stay engaged with the United States on China. A joint transatlantic effort should address China’s predatory trade practices and regional aggression, as well as prevent Beijing from escaping its responsibilities vis-à-vis global challenges. European countries play a role in the stability and security of the Indo-Pacific region, from pursuing economic, environmental, and infrastructure cooperation with Asian partners to joining freedom of navigation exercises and promoting multilateral collaboration on climate issues and ocean governance. In many of these areas, European and U.S. priorities overlap. But the EU must be free to determine its own approach to China, including decisions about how to protect strategic sectors, such as green technologies, and when to seek cooperation with Beijing. Although transatlantic coordination is essential, Europeans may not align on every point with the United States, and Washington should not treat Europe’s China strategy as a test of loyalty. Europe can also serve as a bridge for dialogue and academic exchange amid U.S.-Chinese hostility, keeping channels open with both U.S. and Chinese experts and civil society, as well as with those countries who worry about having to make a choice between the United States and China. To avoid transatlantic discord on this issue, Europe should request that the United States keep its efforts to contain and outcompete China separate from its trade and security policy toward Europe.
Cooperation with the United States on Middle East policy must also feature in Europe’s strategy. Europe has too many economic and security interests at stake in the region to rely on Washington alone to address issues that arise there. And if the EU stands by instead of standing up for human rights and the rule of law, that will damage the international credibility it has built as a promoter of these values. In the short run, the EU and the United States should increase their diplomatic efforts to bring the war in Gaza to an end and prevent a regional war. Europe and Washington should jointly push to restore a political process for a just and sustainable peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. And in the longer term, Europe should stop outsourcing Middle East policy to the United States. It should take a more proactive role in de-escalating tensions created by Chinese, Iranian, and Russian meddling in the region, as well as cooperate with Washington and regional partners on counterextremism and nuclear nonproliferation efforts.
On the economic front, Europe must ensure that U.S. competitiveness does not come at the expense of European prosperity. European governments and institutions should seek mutually beneficial partnerships with U.S. companies and work with Washington to foster inclusive growth in the West and beyond, enhancing economic security and avoiding global fragmentation. But Europe should not enter into an explicitly transactional relationship that trades the continent’s security for economic advantages. If the United States imposes universal tariffs, secondary export controls, or unfair competition practices, Europe should use the trade tools at its disposal to secure its interests. The EU must also assess its vulnerabilities with respect to the United States and take action to protect strategic sectors and create a healthy ecosystem for European tech champions. This may include placing export controls on specific technologies and providing significant funding for research and innovation to attract foreign investment. If U.S. policies put economic pressure on any individual European state, the rest of the EU must be prepared to issue a collective response.
A unified strategy toward the United States will give European interlocutors a clearer and more forceful voice in their dealings with Washington.
No matter how the next U.S. administration approaches the transatlantic relationship, Europe should continue to seek U.S. support and engagement to tackle global challenges. One key issue with which Europe will need Washington’s help is in reforming the international financial architecture, including the IMF and the World Bank, to better equip these bodies to mitigate the adverse effects of industrial competition and provide affordable financing to low-income countries to support their green transition and strengthen their resilience to climate change.
Pursuing sustainable development and meeting climate goals are high priorities for Europe. In dealings with Washington, European countries must emphasize that they expect the United States to be an unwavering partner in building a net-zero world, by cooperating on and financing a green industrial transition. Europe should work with U.S. state governments and the private sector to enforce high climate standards, building channels of cooperation that would remain open even if a Trump administration were to deprioritize climate action at the federal level.
The rules-based order will be stronger, and the world will be safer and more prosperous, if European countries can resist bilateral and transactional relationships with the United States and instead engage with Washington as a unified bloc. European countries may struggle to balance and reconcile their individual and collective interests as the transatlantic relationship changes. But they must succeed so that Europe can anticipate challenges and take independent, constructive action rather than be forced to play defense or to improvise. As Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, said on taking office in 2019, it is high time that Europe “learn to speak the language of power,” including when dealing with its most valuable and important ally. Regardless of who occupies the Oval Office next year, a clearly articulated definition of Europe’s interests and expectations of the United States will contribute to a healthier relationship for both sides.
- GIOVANNA DE MAIO is a Policy Adviser on U.S. and Transatlantic Relations at the Policy Planning Unit of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The views expressed here are her own.
- CÉLIA BELIN is a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and the head of its Paris office.
Foreign Affairs · by Giovanna De Maio and Célia Belin · August 23, 2024
22.
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
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