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Quotes of the Day:
"One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as most beautiful."
– Sigmund Freud
"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed."
– Herman Melville
"Leadership is not the power to command but the courage to serve."
– Plato
1. Why Green Berets want to join conventional combat discussion
2. Inside the Lobbying Push That Put Ukraine’s Missing Children on Trump’s Agenda
3. Trump’s Vendetta Campaign Targets John Bolton
4. Hegseth Fires Defense Intelligence Agency Chief After Iran Report
5. N.S.A.’s Acting Director Tried to Save Top Scientist From Purge
6. With the Dalai Lama’s Succession Looming, Xi Jinping Visits Tibet
7. Nvidia Readies New China Chip as Washington Debates A.I. Exports
8. RFA wins two National Murrow awards for Myanmar coverage
9. Frustrated, Trump signals pause in his Ukraine peace effort
10. Pentagon Has Quietly Blocked Ukraine’s Long-Range Missile Strikes on Russia
11. Beijing accuses US of holding Chinese students in ‘small, dark rooms’ for over 70 hours
12. Taiwan's drone surge aims to offset China's edge
13. NATO virtual meeting for Ukrainian security guarantees backfires
14. Trump, Venezuela and China's Latin America advance
15. Is the Trump Administration Building Up to a Military Confrontation With Venezuela?
16. Navy Reserve, Naval Special Warfare Leaders Removed from Command
17. Pentagon terminating JCIDS process as part of larger acquisition reform: Memo
18. The Sword and the Book
19. Army to develop new modular, interoperable EW kit amid Army Transformation Initiative
20. Army’s future autonomous launcher could fill Typhon's 'large' shoes
1. Why Green Berets want to join conventional combat discussion
I do not understand why FM 3-0 does not make any mention of unconventional warfare in northern Iraq in 2003. The 4th ID vignette about the inability to get permission to enter Iraq from Turkey is described but the effort by the 10th Special Forces Group advising and assisting some 50,000 Kurds in northern Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom is not mentioned at all. It is one of the best modern examples of unconventional warfare conducted in support of large scale combat operations (LSCO). Unconventional warfare is one of the most relevant and important missions that Special Forces/SOF can conduct in LSCO. Our failure to understand and recognize that is truly disappointing.
Deployment Friction: Task Force Ironhorse in OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM
In 2003, Task Force Ironhorse initially shipped its unit equipment sets to Turkey as called for in the initial invasion operations order. However, the equipment sets had to be rerouted through the Suez Canal and Kuwait after Turkey did not allow the use of its territory for the invasion of Iraq. The task force concept of operations called for tailored force packages that would allow rapid employment upon arrival in Turkey. However, tailoring the force packages precluded the ability of U.S. Transportation Command to maximize the available square footage of strategic sealift ships. This degraded the ability of the JFC to receive additional assets. Additionally, the refusal of Turkey forced the task force commander, Major General Odierno, to rapidly develop new courses of action for forces tailored for an operation that was no longer feasible. Though friction occurred due to the extreme change in conditions, the unit adapted. It did this while constantly interfacing with organizations at the strategic and theater strategic levels. Major General Odierno also ensured that all leaders of his task force were integrated into the plan as it changed. As a result of these efforts, Task Force Ironhorse had personnel staged in Kuwait, prepared for the new conditions facing them
when their equipment finally arrived in Kuwait.
2-66. During competition and crisis, conventional forces complement SOF by setting and maintaining the theater with forward-postured forces, which include providing sustainment support and training with allies and partners. SOF complement conventional forces through their forward presence, access to a global network of allies, partners, capabilities, and operational preparation of the environment. When directed by a combatant commander, SOF conduct counterterrorism or direct action for discreet periods of time in specific geographic areas against enemies, while the rest of the theater maintains a competition or crisis posture.
2-67. During large-scale armed conflict, conventional forces complement SOF by providing infrastructure, transportation, and other sustainment support. Conventional forces provide fires and air and missile defense capabilities to support special operations missions. Conventional forces are often attached to special operations forces teams for security, technical expertise, or to conduct tactical missions, such as outer cordons in support of SOF direction action. Conventional forces provide advisors and combat power to support large-scale security force assistance and counterinsurgency operations. SOF complement conventional forces with operations occurring within or outside a conventional force’s area of operations. SOF contributions during deep and extended deep operations are often critical to setting conditions for conventional close and rear operations. SOF intelligence can bridge conventional information collection gaps. Unconventional warfare and direct action led by SOF can set conditions for conventional operations. Civil Affairs and PSYOP elements are often critical for consolidating gains made by both SOF and conventional forces.
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/04/13/army-fm-3-0-march-2025/
Why Green Berets want to join conventional combat discussion
militarytimes.com · Michael Peck · August 22, 2025
A new U.S. Army special operations forces manual has a mission: to convince the regular Army that the Green Berets have value for conventional combat operations.
It’s a signal that the days of cowboy special operators are over. As the U.S. military switches from small-unit counterinsurgency to big-unit mechanized warfare, ARSOF wants to show that it can contribute to the joint fight.
The focus now is, “How do we show our value to the Army, and how do we help the Army show its value for the Joint Force?” Kimberly Jackson, a researcher at the RAND Corp. think tank, told Defense News.
“You have to prove your relevance,” said Jackson, a former Navy Reserve officer with a background in Naval Special Warfare. “You do that by showing your operational abilities. And that is something that has had to shift a little bit for the special operations community.”
The new FM 3-05: Army Special Operations manual makes clear that the Army’s special forces need to evolve for a world of high-tech, multidomain warfare.
“Our doctrine must describe how ARSOF contribute across the competition continuum — remaining threat informed, strategically driven, operationally focused, and tactically prepared,” wrote Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, commander of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, in the foreword to the manual.
Braga describes Army Special Forces as one of the legs of the “SOF-Space-Cyber Triad,” an irregular warfare concept modeled after the strategic nuclear triad. These very dissimilar forces would target enemy command and control, computing, communications, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting capabilities, or C5ISRT.
FM 3-05 describes what Army Special Forces can bring to conventional combat operations, such as when friendly forces bypass enemy cities and units, leaving stragglers and potential guerrillas behind.
“Army special operations forces operating in the rear area focus on identifying and defeating enemy bypassed units and other threats concealed within the bypassed population to consolidate gains,” the manual advises.
“I think this very much addresses how the Army is thinking about LSCO [large-scale combat operations], and not getting bogged down in an urban fight,” RAND researcher Nathan Prussian told Defense News.
Operating in enemy rear areas, special forces can “target enemy critical vulnerabilities, disrupt command and control, interdict long range fires, and degrade sustainment capabilities in support of the close fight and to shape the operational environment,” the manual explained. On the front lines, they can facilitate battlefield operations by disrupting enemy command and control, long-range fires, and maneuver forces.
U.S. Green Berets with 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) kneel in position while preparing for their next movement during a joint training exercise at Fort Carson, Colorado, on Aug. 13. (Sgt. Rhianna Ballenger/U.S. Army)
FM 3-05 will “better demonstrate USASOC’s alignment with the Army,” U.S. Army Special Operations Command told Defense News in a statement. Previous special forces doctrine spoke of “tempo, preemption, disruption, deception and disciplined initiative,” the command said. In line with the Army’s foundational FM 3-0 operations manual, ARSOF will emphasize “agility, convergence, endurance, and depth.”
Just how much has changed can be seen by comparing the June 2025 release of FM 3-05 with ADP 3-05: Army Special Operations, published in July 2019. For example, the 2019 manual mentions a special forces command element working alongside a corps-level headquarters to coordinate fires and ensure deconfliction between regular and special operations.
The 2025 manual is more explicit about making special forces a part of joint operations.
“A special operations command and control element is task organized for integration into corps or higher-echelon operations (though it can be attached to the highest military echelon conducting operations) and targeting planning cycles,” the manual states. “It also integrates special operations effects into joint force maneuver.”
The new special forces manual also seems to be an attempt to achieve unity of command and avoid the problems of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, where special operations units and regular forces ran separate campaigns.
“At the two-, three- and four-star level right now, you have a lot of leaders who look at how we conducted the War on Terror with the lack of integration of SOF into the local campaign of the coalition forces,” said Prussian, a retired Army colonel and former commander of 3rd Special Forces Group. “So you had parallel chains of command. And that seemed like a good idea at the time, but it didn’t play out very well.”
The joint mindset is already percolating down to the ARSOF community. Army Special Forces that once disdained training with regular troops now routinely participate in joint exercises in places like the National Training Center.
“Where in the past, we said, ‘We’re not going to do that. We’re too busy, or we don’t necessarily feel like we need to,’” Prussian recalled, “Now it’s, ‘Hey, we are going to do that because we know that it is the best thing to do for the fight that is coming.’”
Despite the nods to 21st-century warfare, the Green Berets will still continue their traditional missions dating back to their founding in 1961, such as organizing and training foreign armies. FM 3-05 points to how Army Special Forces — mainly from the 10th Special Forces Group — advised the Ukrainian military from 2014 to 2022.
“As a result of U.S. and NATO SOF and conventional military support Ukraine developed an assortment of resistance capabilities and networks by early 2022,” the manual states. “Ukrainian special operations forces mapped key infrastructure, identified targets, established relationships with local civilian networks, and developed protocols for rapid information sharing.”
Regardless, an organization that prided itself on independence and initiative — sometimes to the displeasure of the rest of the Army — will have to change its mindset.
“I think it’s inevitable that to maintain relevance, you have to show value for a joint fight,” Jackson said. “You can no longer operate as a monolith.”
2. Inside the Lobbying Push That Put Ukraine’s Missing Children on Trump’s Agenda
It is often the children who suffer the most in war.
Inside the Lobbying Push That Put Ukraine’s Missing Children on Trump’s Agenda
Children that Kyiv says were taken by Russia are at the heart of peace talks thanks to efforts by Western officials and evangelical Christian groups
https://www.wsj.com/world/inside-the-lobbying-push-that-put-ukraines-missing-children-on-trumps-agenda-732d8b56
Empty cribs at an orphanage in Kherson, a Ukrainian city where Russian forces allegedly took children. Photo: Joseph Sywenkyj for WSJ
By Matthew Luxmoore
Follow and Vera Bergengruen
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Aug. 22, 2025 11:00 pm ET
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived at his high-stakes meeting with President Trump armed with props to drive home the human toll of Russia’s war in Ukraine: a battlefield map, an oversize letter from his wife, and even a golf club gifted by a wounded Ukrainian soldier.
Behind closed doors with Trump and European leaders on Monday, more mundane documents seemed to strike a chord. Across a long wood table, Zelensky and the Ukrainian delegation showed Trump a photo and birth certificate of a Ukrainian toddler who was only a few months old when the war began in 2022 and was taken by Russian forces from a children’s home in Kherson, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Then they showed Trump a Russian birth certificate for the same child, with a new name, that listed her birthplace near Moscow after she was removed to Russia and adopted by a Kremlin-linked politician, the person said.
Ukrainian officials say the child was one of thousands that they say have been taken to Russia since the invasion, many with their names and identities rewritten. The Wall Street Journal couldn’t independently verify the allegations about the child.
Trump appeared to be moved by the child’s story, according to officials present. “It was emotionally significant for the American president to see a personal human fate…not only the facts and figures,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who was in the room, told reporters after the meeting.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky handed over a letter from his wife to President Trump’s wife during the men’s Oval Office meeting this week. Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
In front of the cameras that day, Zelensky also presented Trump with a letter from his wife, Olena Zelenska, to first lady Melania Trump, thanking her for pressing President Vladimir Putin to save the lives of thousands of children with “a stroke of the pen.”
The twin appeals were the culmination of a monthslong lobbying campaign by Ukrainian and European officials, joined by evangelical Christian organizations, to bring the plight of the missing children to the attention of senior American officials and make it a demand in peace negotiations.
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There are signs it has broken through. “The children are devastated,” Trump told Fox News the day after the meeting. “They’re taken away from their homes.” That evening, he posted on Truth Social, expressing hope to “bring them home to their families.” Trump allies in Congress have also vowed to take up the issue.
It remains to be seen whether it will have a lasting effect on Trump’s view of the war or prompt him to bring more pressure on Russia. While Trump has at times been swayed by powerful images or personal stories—as when photos of Syrian children killed in a 2017 chemical attack prompted U.S. missile strikes—his attention has just as often shifted as new priorities arise.
A White House spokeswoman said Trump has a “humanitarian heart” and is working to end the war because he wants the suffering to stop.
Ukraine says it has reports of 20,000 missing children, many of whom were taken from orphanages and schools in occupied Ukraine when Russia withdrew its forces from those areas. The United Nations says it hasn’t independently verified Ukraine’s figure.
Ukrainian officials say thousands of children have been taken to Russia since the invasion, many with their names and identities rewritten. Photo: Tetiana Dzhafarova/AFP/Getty Images
Under international law, the forcible transfer of children from one group to another can constitute genocide under certain conditions. Photo: Joseph Sywenkyj for WSJ
Russia has acknowledged transferring some children, saying it did so to remove them from harm’s way. Moscow has declared that occupied parts of Ukraine are Russian territory, and Putin has said Ukrainians and Russians are one people.
Officials close to Putin say Ukraine distorts the issue. “There are no children who were forcibly transferred or deported by us from Ukraine,” said senior Putin adviser Vladimir Medinsky. “There are only children saved under fire.” Some Russian officials have expressed pride about adopting children transferred from parts of Ukraine.
Under international law, the forcible transfer of children from one group to another constitutes genocide if conducted with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
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Ukraine has long pushed for this issue to be at the forefront of diplomatic efforts to end the war, but only in recent months has it managed to break through to the Trump administration and conservative figures close to the U.S. president.
A key moment came on March 11, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke publicly about Ukraine’s desire to get the children back after meeting with Ukrainian envoys in Saudi Arabia. The Ukrainians had pressed the Americans to include the issue on their list of demands with the Russians.
A few days later, it became public that funding for a U.S.-based program that tracked missing Ukrainian children had been halted as part of the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid. U.S. lawmakers pressed Rubio for answers, arguing the database was critical for returning the children to their homes.
Ukraine and its supporters in Congress tried to use the setback as an opportunity to lobby the administration on the issue. Evangelical groups, some of them with close ties to Trump allies, rallied to renew their efforts to lobby the White House on the issue, according to several organizers.
That same week, Trump first raised the issue with Zelensky in a call on March 19, promising to work closely with Ukraine to make sure the children were returned home.
“Once MAGA Republicans learn about Russia’s abduction of Ukrainian kids, support for Ukraine increases by more than 20 points,” said Melinda Haring of Razom, one of the nongovernment organizations involved in lobbying for Ukraine in Washington. “It’s a really potent issue.”
In April, a group of evangelical organizations sent a letter to Trump and Rubio urging them to make the issue a central demand in negotiations to end the war. Among them was the Family Research Council, a conservative group with strong ties to Trump’s inner circle that has hosted the president at its national summit several times.
Ukrainian families evacuated from the Dnipropetrovsk region during a Russian advance in June. Photo: Tetiana Dzhafarova/AFP/Getty Images
Children’s handprints decorate the wall of the culture center in the front-line village of Kalynove in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. Photo: Violeta Santos Moura/Reuters
Calling the transfer of Ukrainian children “a grave moral and legal atrocity” in violation of international law, they cited Bible verses while urging the U.S. president to make their return a key condition in any negotiations. A few days later, groups that signed the letter met with key members of the Trump administration’s staff on Ukraine.
“We’ve pushed for this to be front and center—not just something that would be ‘nice if it got done,’ but a condition in peace negotiations,” said Chelsea Sobolik of Christian nonprofit World Relief, who led the outreach to the White House.
The appeal seemed to gain traction. Two months later, Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, introduced a resolution in Congress calling for the return of abducted Ukrainian children before completing any peace agreement.
In a rare act of public appeal to a foreign leader, Melania Trump wrote her letter to Putin, appealing to him to protect the innocence of children. “Mr. Putin, you can single-handedly restore their melodic laughter,” she wrote in the letter, which was shared by Trump on Truth Social. “It is time.”
The first lady’s office declined to comment on what prompted her letter. Although she didn’t specifically mention Ukrainian children or the war, Ukrainians quickly seized on it as an opening, prompting Olena Zelenska’s response that was presented by Zelensky at the White House meeting.
In a Truth Social post, Trump later said that the missing children were “a big subject with my wife, Melania.”
Write to Matthew Luxmoore at matthew.luxmoore@wsj.com and Vera Bergengruen at vera.bergengruen@wsj.com
Appeared in the August 23, 2025, print edition as 'Lobbying Push Places Ukraine’s Missing Children on Trump’s Radar'.
3. Trump’s Vendetta Campaign Targets John Bolton
Criticism from the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
Trump’s Vendetta Campaign Targets John Bolton
This FBI raid makes clearer that second-term success for the President includes retribution.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/john-bolton-fbi-kash-patel-donald-trump-f44e7756
By The Editorial Board
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Aug. 22, 2025 5:34 pm ET
FBI members carry boxes outside the home of the former White House national security adviser John Bolton on Friday. Photo: tasos katopodis/Reuters
President Trump promised voters during his campaign for a second term that he had bigger things on his mind than retribution against opponents. But it is increasingly clear that vengeance is a large part, maybe the largest part, of how he will define success in his second term.
His revenge campaign took an ominous turn Friday as FBI agents raided the home and office of Mr. Trump’s first-term national security adviser John Bolton. They brought two broad warrants to search the “premises.” Agents showed up unannounced at his Bethesda, Md., home at 7 a.m. They confiscated his wife Gretchen’s phone because it was visible and not on her person. Mr. Bolton had already left for his office, which is where FBI agents greeted him.
Kash Patel, the FBI director, sent out a cryptic tweet at 7:03 Friday morning that “NO ONE is above the law . . . @FBI agents on mission.” He didn’t specify to whom he was referring, but the timing is unlikely to have been coincidental.
It’s hard to see the raid as anything other than vindictive. Mr. Bolton fell out of Mr. Trump’s favor in the first term and then wrote a book about his experience in the White House while Mr. Trump was still President. Mr. Trump tried and failed to block publication. The President then claimed Mr. Bolton had exposed classified information, though the book had gone through an extensive pre-publication scrub at the White House for classified material.
The book investigation faded away under President Biden, but now it looks as if Mr. Patel is reviving it. Whether Mr. Trump ordered the FBI probe or not doesn’t matter. Mr. Patel knows what the President thinks about Mr. Bolton, and the President’s minions in Trump II don’t serve as the check on his worst impulses the way grown-ups did in his first term. The presidential id is now unchained.
Mr. Trump made clear that he was out for blood against Mr. Bolton when he pulled the former adviser’s protective detail after his re-election. Mr. Bolton is widely known as a defense hawk, and in 2022 the Justice Department charged an Iranian national it said planned to murder him.
Iran has also targeted former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his main adviser on Iran, Brian Hook. Yet Mr. Trump pulled their security details too, confirming it publicly in a way that all but told the Iranians that the Americans were more vulnerable. “When you have protection, you can’t have it for the rest of your life,” Mr. Trump said at the time.
Mr. Bolton has had to pay for his own personal security, though he had served at the behest of the President. This is the kind of gratuitous viciousness that has increasingly defined Mr. Trump’s return to office.
It’s unlikely that Mr. Bolton broke any laws on national secrets, and he certainly didn’t share any with us over our long association with him. But perhaps Mr. Trump intends for the process itself to be the punishment even if there is ultimately no criminal charge. Mr. Bolton has to pay for legal counsel, and his family has to endure the anxiety of being under federal government siege.
Mr. Bolton has continued to speak candidly about Mr. Trump’s second-term decisions, pro and con, including in these pages this week. The President may also hope the FBI raid will cause Mr. Bolton to shut up, though knowing him we can’t imagine that working.
The real offender here is a President who seems to think he can use the powers of his office to run vendettas. We said this was one of the risks of a second Trump term, and it’s turning out to be worse than we imagined.
Appeared in the August 23, 2025, print edition as 'Trump’s Vendetta Campaign Targets Bolton'.
4. Hegseth Fires Defense Intelligence Agency Chief After Iran Report
What are the implications for objective intelligence analysis?
Hegseth Fires Defense Intelligence Agency Chief After Iran Report
Trump officials criticized an agency report that concluded days after U.S. strikes on Iran that the attack set back Tehran’s program only by months
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/hegseth-fires-defense-intelligence-agency-chief-after-iran-report-ee86c7f9
By Lara Seligman
Follow and Brett Forrest
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Aug. 22, 2025 5:03 pm ET
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in May 2024. Photo: Mark Schiefelbein/AP
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired the Defense Intelligence Agency director Friday, according to a senior defense official and another person familiar with the move, the latest in a slew of senior national-security officials dismissed by the Trump administration.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey A. Kruse was leading the Pentagon agency in June when it issued an evaluation of U.S. military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities that concluded the attack had set back Tehran’s nuclear program only by a few months. The assessment contradicted President Trump’s assertion that the bombings had obliterated the Iranian sites.
A senior Pentagon official confirmed the firing, saying that “Lt. Gen. Kruse will no longer serve as DIA director.” The official didn’t provide a reason for Kruse’s dismissal, which was reported earlier by the Washington Post. Kruse took over the agency early last year.
The agency’s deputy, Christine Bordine, assumed the role of acting director, a spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency said.
A career military-intelligence officer, Kruse was previously the military-affairs adviser for the director of national intelligence and was nominated to lead the DIA during the Biden administration.
Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.), the top Democrat on the Select Intelligence Committee, said that Kruse’s ouster underscored the administration’s “dangerous habit of treating intelligence as a loyalty test rather than a safeguard for our country.”
Warner said in a statement that the assessment of the Iran strikes was “exactly what we should want from our intelligence agencies, regardless of whether it flatters the White House narrative. When expertise is cast aside and intelligence is distorted or silenced, our adversaries gain the upper hand and America is left less safe.”
Hegseth noted in a June press conference after the strikes on Iran that the agency assessment was preliminary and considered to be of “low confidence.”
DIA develops intelligence about foreign military capabilities and intentions.
Since taking over the Pentagon, Hegseth has fired numerous other senior military officers, including six Air Force generals. In addition to Kruse, Hegseth relieved his senior military assistant, Lt. Gen. Jennifer Short; Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown; Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Slife; and Air Force Chief of Staff David Alvin. In April, the White House fired Air Force Gen. Tim Haugh, then the chief of the National Security Agency, along with the agency’s civilian deputy, Wendy Noble.
Hegseth also fired the Navy’s top ranking officer, Adm. Lisa Franchetti. Most were fired without public explanation.
In May, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard removed the acting chair and deputy of the National Intelligence Council, a board responsible for producing all source intelligence reports. The firings came after one of Gabbard’s deputies directed the council to rewrite an assessment that contradicted Trump’s assertion that the Venezuelan government was directing the Tren de Aragua criminal gang to invade the U.S.
Gabbard has frequently said that she is working to end politicization of the intelligence community.
The administration’s targeting of national-security personnel intensified this week. Gabbard cited a “failure to safeguard classified information” and the “politicization or weaponization of intelligence” as justifications for revoking the security clearances of 37 current and former government officials.
Corrections & Amplifications
Former Coast Guard Commandant Linda Fagan wasn’t among the senior military officers fired by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in recent months. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that she was. (Corrected on Aug. 22)
Write to Lara Seligman at lara.seligman@wsj.com and Brett Forrest at brett.forrest@wsj.com
Appeared in the August 23, 2025, print edition as 'Iran Report Spurs Defense Firing'.
5. N.S.A.’s Acting Director Tried to Save Top Scientist From Purge
The loss of a great American in our national security community.
Excerpts:
Mr. Nguyen, the son of a South Vietnamese general who fought alongside American forces in the Vietnam War, was recruited as a 17-year-old high school student to join the National Security Agency because of his math skills.
He rose through the ranks of the agency to become its chief data scientist. Friends and former colleagues of Mr. Nguyen said he had been in charge of developing artificial intelligence systems to improve the gathering of foreign communications. He has also been involved in the intelligence community’s work on quantum computing, which has the potential to break current encryption systems and revolutionize espionage.
...
Mr. Nguyen’s job became endangered after Ms. Gabbard released a series of statements from an intelligence analyst about Russia’s role in the 2016 election. The analyst had questioned whether Russian attempts to hack computer networks linked to voting systems were given too little attention in the Intelligence Community Assessment being prepared after that election, according to officials.
“After being directed to conduct analysis of Russian-attributed cyberactivity for the I.C.A., I had been abruptly directed to abandon further investigation,” the analyst wrote, referring to the Intelligence Community Assessment.
The analyst worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency but had been assigned to work on the cyber team in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
N.S.A.’s Acting Director Tried to Save Top Scientist From Purge
Vinh Nguyen, an expert in artificial intelligence and advanced mathematics, was among the current and former officials whose security clearances were revoked by the president.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/us/politics/security-clearances-scientist-fired.html
Lt. Gen. William J. Hartman, the acting N.S.A. director, asked to see evidence that the agency’s chief data scientist had done anything to merit the revocation of his security clearance.Credit...Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
By Julian E. Barnes
Reporting from Washington
Aug. 20, 2025
The acting director of the National Security Agency tried to protect one of his top scientists from losing his security clearance as Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, prepared to announce the move this week, according to officials briefed on the matter.
The effort failed. Ms. Gabbard, on orders from President Trump, fired the scientist, who was a leading government expert on artificial intelligence, cryptology and advanced mathematics.
The scientist, Vinh Nguyen, was one of 37 current and former national security officials whose security clearances were revoked on Tuesday. Many, though not all, had tangential connections to the intelligence agencies’ review of Russian efforts to influence and meddle in the 2016 election.
Ms. Gabbard has released documents about that intelligence inquiry and accused Obama administration officials of related crimes, an effort Mr. Trump has praised.
Lt. Gen. William J. Hartman, the acting N.S.A. director, called Ms. Gabbard in the days before the revocation and asked to see the evidence that Mr. Nguyen, the agency’s chief data scientist, had done anything that merited the revocation of his security clearance.
Ms. Gabbard rebuffed the request, the officials said. The list of people losing their clearance began to circulate Tuesday morning and was made public in the afternoon.
The N.S.A. referred all questions to Ms. Gabbard’s office, which did not return a request for comment.
Former officials have criticized the revocation of the 37 security clearances and the wider purge of national security officials. In an article in The Atlantic published on Wednesday, William J. Burns, the former C.I.A. director and a longtime diplomat, said the removal of public servants was part of a campaign of retribution.
“It is about breaking people and breaking institutions by sowing fear and mistrust throughout our government,” Mr. Burns wrote. “It is about paralyzing public servants — making them apprehensive about what they say, how it might be interpreted, and who might report on them. It is about deterring anyone from daring to speak truth to power.”
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Mr. Nguyen, the son of a South Vietnamese general who fought alongside American forces in the Vietnam War, was recruited as a 17-year-old high school student to join the National Security Agency because of his math skills.
He rose through the ranks of the agency to become its chief data scientist. Friends and former colleagues of Mr. Nguyen said he had been in charge of developing artificial intelligence systems to improve the gathering of foreign communications. He has also been involved in the intelligence community’s work on quantum computing, which has the potential to break current encryption systems and revolutionize espionage.
In the days before Mr. Nguyen was dismissed, N.S.A. officials were concerned that his job was at risk, as conservative publications began to look at his work as the national intelligence officer in charge of cyber in 2016.
Reports in conservative publications had led to the ouster of the N.S.A.’s top lawyer, April Falcon Doss, in July. And the previous director of the agency, Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, was fired in the spring after Laura Loomer, the far-right conspiracy theorist, accused him of having ties to Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Former officials had expected General Hartman, who replaced General Haugh, to be nominated for the job permanently. But neither the Pentagon nor the White House has formally made that move.
There is no evidence Mr. Nguyen mishandled classified data, made poor analytic judgments or politicized his work. However, his role in the analysis of Russian election meddling in 2016 has been a focus of conservative news media, which under Ms. Gabbard has been enough to cost N.S.A. officials their jobs.
Mr. Nguyen’s job became endangered after Ms. Gabbard released a series of statements from an intelligence analyst about Russia’s role in the 2016 election. The analyst had questioned whether Russian attempts to hack computer networks linked to voting systems were given too little attention in the Intelligence Community Assessment being prepared after that election, according to officials.
“After being directed to conduct analysis of Russian-attributed cyberactivity for the I.C.A., I had been abruptly directed to abandon further investigation,” the analyst wrote, referring to the Intelligence Community Assessment.
The analyst worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency but had been assigned to work on the cyber team in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
In an article published on Aug. 8, Real Clear Investigations identified Mr. Nguyen as the analyst’s supervisor. The report suggested that Mr. Nguyen was likely to be the supervisor who had told the analyst that other Russian influence activities — not the hacking of voting systems — were a critical part of its campaign to meddle in the 2016 election.
Ms. Gabbard has charged that after the election, intelligence officials changed their view of Russian efforts to interfere. But in reality, officials did not change their views; they shifted their focus to Russia’s influence efforts.
During the campaign, intelligence analysts were most concerned about the potential for Russia to hack into election systems and change votes.
But after the election, analysts determined that Russia had largely abandoned its efforts to use cyber to directly hack the election infrastructure. Instead, intelligence officials began more closely examining Moscow’s efforts to influence the election through social media campaigns and, most critically, by releasing emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee.
Neither Mr. Nguyen nor his other intelligence officers were directly involved in producing the Intelligence Community Assessment, according to former officials.
The effort to draft the assessment was rushed, with President Barack Obama wanting the work completed before he left office.
Mr. Nguyen had no involvement in the judgment that Republicans have taken issue with: that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia favored Mr. Trump’s election.
In any case, most of the analytic work was done at the C.I.A., not at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, where Mr. Nguyen worked, according to former officials.
Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 21, 2025, Section A, Page 16 of the New York edition with the headline: Top N.S.A. Official Tried to Save Scientist From Purge. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
6. With the Dalai Lama’s Succession Looming, Xi Jinping Visits Tibet
Keep in mind that one of the Dalai Lama's prized possessions is the Philippe Patek watched gifted to him through OSS personnel in WWII from President Roosevelt. Just saying.
Excerpts:
“The succession of the Dalai Lama is a symbolic battleground and symbolic opportunity for the party” to make a fundamental claim about who rules Tibet, said Robert Barnett, a scholar of Tibet at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
But the succession alone does not reflect an “existential threat” to Chinese power, Mr. Barnett said, and was most likely just one of the many Chinese ambitions at play in Mr. Xi’s visit. He said the trip reflected a broader campaign by Beijing to exert control in Tibet.
The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 after a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule and built an exile government in the Indian Himalayas. In the following decades, the Chinese Communist Party tightened its grip on Tibet, but Buddhist monasteries and Tibetan communities often remained resistant to party control, and defiance sometimes flared into protest and rebellion. In 2008, rioting and protests against Chinese traders and residents erupted in Lhasa, and the unrest spread to other Tibetan areas.
Since Mr. Xi came to power in 2012, his officials have tightened restrictions on Tibetan monks and nuns, and expanded policing and surveillance, trying to stamp out any possibility of renewed mass protests.
With the Dalai Lama’s Succession Looming, Xi Jinping Visits Tibet
A power struggle is taking shape over choosing a successor to the 90-year-old Buddhist leader. In a trip to Tibet’s capital, China’s leader emphasized maintaining Beijing’s control.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/world/asia/xi-tibet-dalai-lama.html
Taking photos in front of a portrait of President Xi Jinping in Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Region, China, in March.Credit...Go Nakamura/Reuters
By Pranav Baskar and Chris Buckley
Aug. 20, 2025
阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, made a rare visit to the capital of Tibet on Wednesday, highlighting his resolve to keep a firm grip over Tibet’s Buddhist believers, push more of them to speak standard Chinese and ensure that the once-rebellious region stays firmly under Beijing’s rule.
Mr. Xi emphasized the Communist Party’s vision for the region in a speech to China’s regional government in Tibet, marking 60 years since the founding of the Tibet Autonomous Region. His published comments did not mention the Dalai Lama, the exiled Buddhist leader who is revered by many Tibetans but reviled by the Chinese government.
But Mr. Xi’s tightly choreographed trip, his first since 2021 to Lhasa, the capital, reflected the Chinese leadership’s concern with redoubling control ahead of a potential succession fight after the eventual death of the current and 14th Dalai Lama, who is 90.
“To govern Tibet and make it stable and prosperous, the priority must be maintaining Tibet’s political order, social stability, ethnic unity and religious harmony,” Mr. Xi said, according to an official summary of his speech. He called for stronger regulation of “religious affairs" and to “guide Tibetan Buddhism to adapt to socialist society.”
Tibetan Buddhists believe that the Dalai Lama is reincarnated in his successor, who is identified after a search, in the form of a young boy. Last month, the Dalai Lama announced that this tradition would prevail after his death, free from Chinese or external influence. China’s leaders claim that only the governing Communist Party, an avowedly atheist organization, has the power to oversee choosing the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama.
Image
Potala Palace, traditional home of the Dalai Lama, overlooks Lhasa. People walked through the palace square during a government-organized tour in March.Credit...Go Nakamura/Reuters
“The succession of the Dalai Lama is a symbolic battleground and symbolic opportunity for the party” to make a fundamental claim about who rules Tibet, said Robert Barnett, a scholar of Tibet at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
But the succession alone does not reflect an “existential threat” to Chinese power, Mr. Barnett said, and was most likely just one of the many Chinese ambitions at play in Mr. Xi’s visit. He said the trip reflected a broader campaign by Beijing to exert control in Tibet.
The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 after a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule and built an exile government in the Indian Himalayas. In the following decades, the Chinese Communist Party tightened its grip on Tibet, but Buddhist monasteries and Tibetan communities often remained resistant to party control, and defiance sometimes flared into protest and rebellion. In 2008, rioting and protests against Chinese traders and residents erupted in Lhasa, and the unrest spread to other Tibetan areas.
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Since Mr. Xi came to power in 2012, his officials have tightened restrictions on Tibetan monks and nuns, and expanded policing and surveillance, trying to stamp out any possibility of renewed mass protests.
In Lhasa, Mr. Xi praised the Tibetan regional government for “engaging in a thoroughgoing struggle against separatism,” and cited his long-term policies aimed at absorbing Tibetans into Chinese mainstream language, culture and official values. Those policies have included a drive to send Tibetan children to boarding schools that teach almost exclusively in Chinese.
Mr. Xi’s rare appearance in Tibet was, to officials of the leadership in exile, an indication of how China had yet to win over the hearts and minds of local residents.
“The Chinese have found themselves on the back foot,” said Tseten Samdup Chhoekyapa, an official of the Dalai Lama’s office in northern India. He added that Mr. Xi’s visit was another attempt by China to “legitimize its occupation of Tibet,” especially in the wake of the Dalai Lama’s insistence that his post will have a successor chosen in the traditional way.
Image
Buddhist monks in Jokhang Temple, during a government-organized tour, in Lhasa, in March.Credit...Go Nakamura/Reuters
“I am really struck by the decision for Xi himself to go,” said Mr. Barnett. The decision, he said, reflects the “remaining existential anxiety in the party about religion and nationality despite years of control.”
Rights groups in support of Tibetan autonomy described the visit as an attempt to paper over Mr. Xi’s rights record in the region.
“For Tibetans, the anniversary of the People’s Republic of China’s creation of the Tibet Autonomous Region is no cause of celebration, but a painful reminder of China’s colonial occupation,” said Dorjee Tseten, the Asia Program Manager at the Tibet Action Institute and a member of Tibet’s exiled Parliament.
“Tibet remains one of China’s greatest challenges, and Tibetans will never accept Beijing’s imposed succession plan for the Dalai Lama.”
Pranav Baskar is an international reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
Chris Buckley, the chief China correspondent for The Times, reports on China and Taiwan from Taipei, focused on politics, social change and security and military issues.
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 21, 2025, Section A, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: Xi Visits Tibet As Questions On Its Leader Are Mounting . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
7. Nvidia Readies New China Chip as Washington Debates A.I. Exports
Is AI one of today's most important national security issues? Is AI a national security game changer?
Nvidia Readies New China Chip as Washington Debates A.I. Exports
Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, said he plans to ask the Trump administration’s permission to sell a more powerful chip to Chinese companies.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/business/jensen-huang-nvidia-china.html
Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, said he had “worked quite hard” to secure export licenses from the Trump administration to ship A.I. chips to China.Credit...Andy Wong/Associated Press
By Tripp Mickle and Lily Kuo
Tripp Mickle reported from San Francisco, and Lily Kuo from Taipei, Taiwan.
Aug. 22, 2025
Weeks after Nvidia struck a deal with the Trump administration to pay for clearance to ship semiconductors to China, the company has started winding down production of a chip designed for Chinese companies and begun work on its more powerful successor.
Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, said on Friday in Taipei, Taiwan, that the company was offering a “new product for A.I. data centers,” which would be a version of its most cutting-edge chips that would be modified to reduce some of its performance, as required by the United States. He said he was seeking the Trump administration’s approval to sell the chip.
“It’s up to, of course, the United States government,” Mr. Huang said. “And we’re in dialogue with them, but it’s too soon to know.”
Mr. Huang’s comments came as Nvidia asked suppliers to wind down production of its current chip designed for China, the H20, said two people familiar with the company’s strategy. Beijing has discouraged Chinese companies from buying the H20 chips, with administrators warning that the chips could have “backdoor security risks.”
“We constantly manage our supply chain to address market conditions,” said Mylene Mangalindan, an Nvidia spokeswoman.
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The Information previously reported on Nvidia’s winding down production of its H20 chip.
Nvidia’s plans for China have divided Washington, where the Trump administration and some congressional leaders are at odds over global A.I. chip sales. Because the chips are used to build artificial intelligence systems, the U.S. government has weighed whether to limit sales so that U.S. companies can stay ahead of China in the A.I. race, preventing the Chinese military from using them to coordinate attacks or develop weapons.
In April, Mr. Trump blocked sales of the H20 to China, but reversed that decision in July and later struck a deal to take a 15 percent cut of sales of the chips. Last week, Mr. Trump said he was open to cutting a deal to permit Nvidia to sell a successor to the H20, provided it was “somewhat enhanced — in a negative way.”
“In other words, take 30 percent to 50 percent off of it,” Mr. Trump said.
A chip that is 50 percent less powerful than the company’s Blackwell B300 chip would still have better performance than the chips that companies like OpenAI used to train chatbots as recently as last year, according to Lennart Heim, an information scientist at RAND, the think tank. It would exceed the performance thresholds set by the Biden administration for chips sold to China.
Some congressional leaders have criticized the Trump administration’s policy change and expressed alarm that Mr. Trump would approve selling a more powerful chip than the H20.
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On Friday, Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois on the House Select Committee for China, introduced a bill to require presidential and congressional approval of A.I. chips for China. Senator Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, has also questioned Mr. Huang’s push to sell chips to China.
Updated Aug. 22, 2025, 11:13 p.m. ETAug. 22, 2025
Nvidia faces separate challenges in Beijing. In July, China’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, said it had summoned Nvidia to explain “backdoor” functions that would allow the chips to be tracked or shut down remotely. The regulator cited information “revealed by U.S. artificial intelligence experts.”
China has stepped up its pressure on Nvidia as Chinese media has reported that Huawei, the country’s tech giant, has improved the capabilities of its own chips. On Thursday, South China Morning Post reported that DeepSeek, China’s leading A.I. company, said the country would soon have a next-generation A.I. chip.
Mr. Huang’s travel schedule testifies to the geopolitical tightrope his company is walking. He is scheduled to travel from Asia, where he is visiting suppliers this week, to Washington, where he has meetings on Monday.
On Friday in Taipei, Mr. Huang said he was in talks with Chinese officials to ease their concerns about security risks. He said he had made “very clear” to Chinese officials that Nvidia’s A.I. chips had no security back doors.
“There are no such things,” he said. “There never has been. And so hopefully, the response that we’ve given to the Chinese government will be sufficient.”
Mr. Huang added that he was “surprised” by the questions, given Beijing’s eagerness to acquire the chips for advanced A.I systems.
“As you know, they requested and urged us to secure licenses for the H20 for some time, and I worked quite hard to help them secure the licenses,” he said. “Hopefully this will be resolved.”
Nvidia is set to report quarterly earnings on Wednesday, which traders expect to be a major market-moving event. Last month, Nvidia became the first public company to reach $4 trillion in market value.
Xinyun Wu contributed reporting.
A correction was made on Aug. 22, 2025: An earlier version of this article misstated Nvidia’s successor to the chip it has been selling to the Chinese. It is the Blackwell B300, not the H20.
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more
Tripp Mickle reports on Apple and Silicon Valley for The Times and is based in San Francisco. His focus on Apple includes product launches, manufacturing issues and political challenges. He also writes about trends across the tech industry, including layoffs, generative A.I. and robot taxis.
Lily Kuo is a China correspondent for The Times, reporting from Taipei.
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 23, 2025, Section B, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Nvidia Readies New Chip for China As Washington Debates A.I. Exports. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
8. RFA wins two National Murrow awards for Myanmar coverage
The brave work of Radio Free Asia journalists.
This is one important capability we are giving up with the closure of RFA and Voice of America.
Until March, RFA was one of the only international outlets to have a sustained in-country presence since the 2021 military coup. (RFA)
RFA wins two National Murrow awards for Myanmar coverage
https://www.rfa.org/english/about/releases/2025/08/21/rfa-wins-two-national-murrow-awards-for-myanmar-coverage/
2025.08.21
Recognition comes as military junta and China dominate Burmese information space
WASHINGTON – Radio Free Asia (RFA) has won two National Edward R. Murrow awards for chronicling the struggles facing young people from post-coup Myanmar. The recognition for this coverage comes as RFA was forced to suspend much of its news-gathering operations due to the U.S. Agency for Global Media’s illegal cancellation of its grant and RFA’s uncertain future.
“It is hard to believe that right now, Myanmar’s media is dominated by its military junta and China,” said Bay Fang, RFA President and CEO. “Challenging those narratives through hard-hitting, fact-based reporting has been RFA’s mandated mission by the U.S. Congress.
“These awards serve as a stark reminder of RFA’s critical role in the Asia-Pacific region even as many of our language services, including RFA Burmese, have gone silent.”
The multimedia feature Myanmar’s Gen-Z fighting for a nation’s future, produced last November, includes videos, images and text profiling the challenges and resilience of the generation coming of age after the February 2021 military takeover. An RFA team based outside the country returned to Myanmar to speak to people on the front lines in one eastern region to learn about their stories – and their hopes for the revival of their blood-stained country. More than three years of fighting has displaced more than 3 million people inside the country, and refugees continue to spill across borders to the west, south and east. While the military maintains control of the country’s largest cities, anti-junta forces have made unprecedented territorial gains.
A 2023 survey of Myanmar found more than 5.1 million Myanmar adults accessed RFA content regularly either online or through shortwave broadcasts.
The awards will be presented by the Radio Television and Digital News Association in New York on the evening of October 13.
State of play at RFA: Until March, RFA was one of the only international outlets to have a sustained in-country presence since the 2021 military coup. RFA’s Burmese Service was forced to stop operations after the USAGM in March 2025 illegally cancelled the grant that funds Radio Free Asia. At present, 90 percent of RFA’s staff has been either put on unpaid leave or has resigned. RFA continues to fight the illegal termination of its grant funds. The matter is currently being litigated in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, with a hearing scheduled for late September.
9. Frustrated, Trump signals pause in his Ukraine peace effort
Excerpts:
For all the diplomatic pageantry, however, there’s been little sign of progress, with Moscow resisting any proposals to cease its attacks on Ukraine or accept anything short of its maximum goals for the war. Outside analysts have suggested the White House misunderstood Putin’s aims and may have been influenced by wishful thinking.
For now, Trump said, he would give Putin time to decide whether he would meet with Zelensky, as the president had requested.
The White House said this week that Trump had secured a commitment from Putin to attend such a meeting. Kremlin officials, however, consistently have downplayed the likelihood that the Russian president would do so. Meeting directly with Zelensky would imply Putin’s recognition of the Ukrainian as the legitimate leader of an independent nation, something the Kremlin has refused to do.
If no meeting takes place, “I’ll see whose fault it is,” Trump said, repeatedly saying that there are two actors involved when asked about Russia’s sustained attacks on Ukraine this week.
He left open the possibility that he could pursue economic penalties against Russia or leave Ukraine to go it alone.
“It’s going to be a very important decision,” Trump said. “And that’s whether or not it’s massive sanctions or massive tariffs or both, or do we do nothing and say ‘It’s your fight,'?” Trump said.
Frustrated, Trump signals pause in his Ukraine peace effort
President says he’ll decide later “whose fault it is” that Moscow and Kyiv have not moved closer to end the war
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/08/23/trump-ukraine-frustration/
UpdatedAugust 23, 2025 at 12:05 p.m. EDTtoday at 12:05 p.m. EDT
President Donald Trump holds a photo of himself with Russian President Vladimir Putin as he speaks to members of the news media at the White House on Friday. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
By Cat Zakrzewski
President Donald Trump is signaling that he would step back for now from efforts to reach a Ukraine peace deal, expressing frustration over rising casualties and the failure of the two sides to come closer to a peace agreement.
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“I’m not happy about anything about that war. Nothing. Not happy at all,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.
He added that he would make an important decision about the future of the conflict in “two weeks,” a phrase that he often uses not to specify a precise time frame, but to indicate that he wants to put off a decision for a while. After that time, he said, “We’ll know which way I’m going, because I’m going to go one way or the other.”
The comments amounted to a significant shift from a president who had projected great confidence over the past several weeks in his ability to obtain security guarantees for Ukraine and a swift meeting between the warring leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
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During the course of this week, Trump has gone from boasting that he could bring a quick end to the war to expressing skepticism that he would be able even to bring the leaders together for a face-to-face conversation.
Trump has invested significant time and energy in efforts to bring about a quick end to the war, including a summit in Alaska with Putin just over a week ago, followed by meetings with Zelensky and European leaders at the White House on Monday.
For all the diplomatic pageantry, however, there’s been little sign of progress, with Moscow resisting any proposals to cease its attacks on Ukraine or accept anything short of its maximum goals for the war. Outside analysts have suggested the White House misunderstood Putin’s aims and may have been influenced by wishful thinking.
For now, Trump said, he would give Putin time to decide whether he would meet with Zelensky, as the president had requested.
The White House said this week that Trump had secured a commitment from Putin to attend such a meeting. Kremlin officials, however, consistently have downplayed the likelihood that the Russian president would do so. Meeting directly with Zelensky would imply Putin’s recognition of the Ukrainian as the legitimate leader of an independent nation, something the Kremlin has refused to do.
If no meeting takes place, “I’ll see whose fault it is,” Trump said, repeatedly saying that there are two actors involved when asked about Russia’s sustained attacks on Ukraine this week.
He left open the possibility that he could pursue economic penalties against Russia or leave Ukraine to go it alone.
“It’s going to be a very important decision,” Trump said. “And that’s whether or not it’s massive sanctions or massive tariffs or both, or do we do nothing and say ‘It’s your fight,'?” Trump said.
Trump had threatened to levy large secondary sanctions on countries that buy oil from Russia as well as new sanctions on Moscow if Putin did not agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine. But he abandoned both the deadline and the ceasefire demand in the run-up to the Alaska summit. He has imposed tariffs on India over its purchases of Russian oil.
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Trump’s frustration over the lack of quick progress comes as military commanders and top diplomats from European nations have been diving into the painstaking work of trying to translate what their leaders have agreed on — security guarantees for Ukraine — into practical commitments of troops and equipment.
Russian officials have rejected the possibility of troops from NATO countries on the ground in Ukraine — a guarantee Trump proposed after his Monday meeting with European leaders. European officials, however, have continued to meet among themselves and with their Ukrainian counterparts to work on what such guarantees might include.
As part of that effort, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte met with Zelensky and other Ukrainian leaders Friday in Kyiv.
Trump displayed mixed sentiments Friday about Putin, whom he has long sought to cultivate as an ally. He held up a photo of himself standing beside the Russian president in Anchorage, which he said Putin had mailed him. He suggested it was possible that Putin, whom the International Criminal Court has charged with war crimes, may attend the World Cup, which the United States will host in 2026. The U.S. does not recognize the international court’s jurisdiction.
“I thought it was a nice picture of him, okay of me,” Trump said, picking up the photo from the Resolute Desk. “So that was very nice that it was sent to me.”
But he also said that he told Putin that he’s “not happy about” a Russian strike on Ukraine that hit an American factory. The attack involved almost 600 drones and 40 missiles, and Zelensky said it demonstrated that Russia was not interested in peace.
“We’ll see what happens. I say, over the next two weeks, we’re going to find out which way it’s going to go. And, I better be very happy.”
Trump also refrained from showing support for Zelensky, saying that it “takes two to tango.”
Trump expressed frustration that Ukraine has proven more difficult than other conflicts to solve. This week, he began taking credit for solving seven global conflicts, up from six he claimed last week. On Friday, he increased the count to 10 — adding three unidentified “pre-wars.”
“I thought this would be in the middle of the pack in terms of difficulty,” he lamented.
Michael Birnbaum contributed to this report.
10. Pentagon Has Quietly Blocked Ukraine’s Long-Range Missile Strikes on Russia
I hope this is a case of "the first report is always wrong."
I wonder how our allies look at this? Will the Pentagon restrict or block certain activities of our allies in a war? What are the second and third order effects of this? And long term implications?
Of course it is not like we have not imposed restrictions on our allies. In 2021, President Biden and President Moon announced the complete termination of the U.S.–South Korea missile guidelines that restricted range and warheads.
https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2021/05/25/us-lifts-missile-restrictions-on-south-korea-ending-range-and-warhead-limits/?utm
Pentagon Has Quietly Blocked Ukraine’s Long-Range Missile Strikes on Russia
The Defense Department has withheld approval for attacks as the White House has sought to entice Moscow to open peace talks
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-has-quietly-blocked-ukraines-long-range-missile-strikes-on-russia-432a12e1?st=RcUBZ6&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
By Alexander Ward,
FollowMichael R. Gordon
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Aug. 23, 2025 4:53 pm ET
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Trump shake hands in the Oval Office earlier this month. Photo: mandel ngan/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
WASHINGTON—The Pentagon has for months been blocking Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles to strike inside Russia, U.S. officials said, limiting Kyiv from employing a powerful weapon in its fight against Moscow’s invasion.
A high-level Defense Department approval procedure, which hasn’t been announced, has prevented Ukraine from firing any U.S.-made long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, or Atacms, against targets in Russia since late spring, the officials said. On at least one occasion, Ukraine sought to use Atacms against a target on Russian territory but was rejected, two officials said.
The U.S. veto of long-range strikes has restricted Ukraine’s military operations as the White House has sought to woo the Kremlin into beginning peace talks.
Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy, developed the “review mechanism” to decide on Kyiv’s requests to fire long-range U.S.-made weapons as well as those provided to Ukraine by European allies that rely on American intelligence and components.
The review gives Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth final say over whether Ukraine can employ the Atacms, which have a range of nearly 190 miles, to strike Russia.
“President Trump has been very clear that the war in Ukraine needs to end. There has been no change in military posture in Russia-Ukraine at this time,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “Secretary Hegseth is working in lockstep with President Trump.”
The Pentagon and Ukrainian officials didn’t return requests for comment.
Ukrainian infantry men in June were part of an attempt to stabilize the frontline amid a Russian offensive. Photo: Serhii Korovayny for Wall Street
The Pentagon’s approval requirement has effectively reversed a decision by former President Joe Biden in his final year in office to permit Ukraine to strike inside Russia with Atacms.
In a social-media post Thursday, Trump said that Ukraine couldn’t defeat Russia unless it could “play offense” in the war, which has lasted longer than three years following Moscow’s invasion.
“It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking” the invading country, he wrote Thursday on social media. “There is no chance of winning!”
U.S. officials said Trump’s statement didn’t signal a policy change that would dispense with the Pentagon’s review mechanism or encourage Ukraine’s use of Atacms and other long-range Western systems. But a senior White House official said Trump could change his mind about facilitating expanded offensive operations against Russia.
As president-elect, Trump said it was “stupid” of Biden to allow Ukraine to attack inside Russia. “We’re just escalating this war and making it worse,” he said in a December interview with Time.
U.S. Atacms and other long-range weapons, such as Britain’s Storm Shadow cruise missile, haven’t been game-changers for Ukraine. But they have enabled it to threaten Russian command and control headquarters and airfields far from the front lines, as it presses its advantages in manpower, weaponry and resources.
The Pentagon review procedure also applies to Ukraine’s use of the Storm Shadow as it relies on U.S. targeting data, according to two U.S. officials and a British official. The British government declined to comment.
Trump has threatened to increase sanctions on the Kremlin and tariffs on its major trading partners unless Moscow agreed to a cease-fire. But a decision on that has been deferred following his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which the Kremlin chief convinced Trump he was serious about making peace.
Trump vowed in July to provide Kyiv with new weapons as long as Europe agreed to pay for them, a decision that came after a brief pause in U.S. arms shipments while the Pentagon examined whether there were shortfalls in its own stockpiles. Trump told reporters that month that “we’re not looking” to provide longer-range weapons to target Moscow.
While the U.S. hasn’t announced any plans to provide more of the missiles, other types of weapons that European governments are buying from the U.S. could help Ukraine within its own borders. They include air-defense systems and the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, which has a 90-mile range.
The administration this week approved the sale of 3,350 Extended Range Attack Munition air-launched missiles, or ERAMs, which are set to arrive in Ukraine in about six weeks, two U.S. officials said. The $850 million arms package, mostly funded by European nations and which includes other items, was delayed until after Trump’s summits with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Several U.S. officials said use of the ERAM, with a range between 150-280 miles, would require Ukraine to seek approval from the Pentagon. The State Department didn’t return a request for comment.
George Barros of the Institute for the Study of War, which closely monitors the Ukraine conflict, said Russian officials complained publicly about Atacms strikes against their territory since then, though they regularly did when attacks occurred in the past.
The Biden administration provided hundreds of Atacms to Ukraine starting in 2023. The restrictions on Atacms attacks inside Russia initially imposed under Biden were removed in the fall of 2024 after North Korean troops entered the war with Russia.
The last of the Atacms authorized to be sent to Ukraine by the Biden administration arrived during the spring, according to U.S. officials.
Ukraine has developed some of its own long-range weapons to strike targets inside Russia, specifically drones that it has used to strike Russian oil refineries and aircraft.
Zelensky said last week that his country was developing a new cruise missile—the Flamingo—that could be produced in significant quantities by the end of this year or early next year.
“Drones are great for certain things, but they have their own vulnerabilities too,” said James Townsend, who served as the top Pentagon official for NATO issues during the Obama administration, about the restrictions on use of Atacms. “You don’t want to limit the Ukrainian ability to put pressure on the Russians.”
In addition to requiring approval for missile attacks, Colby, the Pentagon’s third ranking official who has long been concerned about husbanding Pentagon resources to deter China, tightened control over additional munitions for Ukraine. In a June memo he established three categories—green, yellow and red—for assessing whether U.S. stockpiles of weapons were adequate to allow some to be shared with Kyiv.
The green category consisted of systems that the U.S. had in abundance and that could readily be provided to Ukraine, while yellow and red systems are in shorter supply. It gave Hegseth authority to reclaim weapon systems earmarked for Ukraine that fell in the yellow and red categories.
Write to Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com, Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com and Lara Seligman at lara.seligman@wsj.com
11. Beijing accuses US of holding Chinese students in ‘small, dark rooms’ for over 70 hours
Who is winning the information war today? What information efforts are taking place to counter this narrative? (Rhetorical question that we all know the answer to).
And of course actions speak louder than words. What actions are really taking place? (they are whatever China says they are since there is no one to say otherwise).
US-China relations
ChinaDiplomacy
Beijing accuses US of holding Chinese students in ‘small, dark rooms’ for over 70 hours
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3322866/beijing-accuses-us-holding-chinese-students-small-dark-rooms-over-70-hours
Foreign ministry hits out at ‘discriminatory and politically motivated’ treatment of Chinese nationals arriving at the border
Fan Chen
Published: 10:00pm, 22 Aug 2025Updated: 11:02pm, 22 Aug 2025
Beijing has lashed out at the United States for questioning Chinese students at the border, accusing it of discrimination and of taking them into “small, dark rooms” for over 70 hours.
Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for the foreign ministry, said on Friday that these actions “seriously infringed upon the legitimate and legal rights and interests of Chinese citizens, severely obstructed normal personnel exchanges between the two countries, and seriously undermined the atmosphere for people-to-people and cultural exchanges”.
She told a scheduled press conference: “Recently, the US has frequently engaged in discriminatory, politically motivated and selective law enforcement against Chinese students travelling to the US.
“These students are subjected to unfair treatment, including being taken into small, dark rooms for repeated and prolonged interrogations,” she said, speaking colloquially about the interrogation facilities.
“Some have been detained for over 70 hours and questioned about topics completely unrelated to their purpose for travelling to the US. In some cases, their visas are cancelled and they are denied entry, citing so-called national security concerns.”
Mao said China had lodged immediate representations after each incident and urged Washington to “thoroughly investigate and correct its mistakes”.
“We urge the US to face this issue directly, take China’s concerns seriously and implement the statements made by US leaders welcoming Chinese students to study in the US,” she added.
Absurd, anxious, concerned: Students react to US revoking Chinese student visas
Beijing has repeatedly expressed strong dissatisfaction about the treatment of Chinese students.
In January last year, the foreign ministry accused the US of “politicising and weaponising academic research, and abusing the concept of national security to heavily suppress and persecute Chinese students” despite its claims to champion academic freedom.
More than 5,000 Chinese students and scholars were denied visas or deported by the US between 2021 and March 2024, according to an estimate by state-run China News Service.
In 2021 alone, the US denied visas to at least 2,000 Chinese students studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the foreign ministry said two years ago.
Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term in office, Chinese students in the US have faced further uncertainty.
In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed to “enhance scrutiny” of applications from mainland China and Hong Kong.
“Under President [Donald] Trump’s leadership, the US State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” he said.
This week the State Department said that more than 6,000 foreign students had had their visas revoked since Trump took office.
It also announced it was vetting more than 55 million US visa holders for deportable offences, including overstays, criminal activity and engagement in any form of “terrorist activity”.
Trump’s first term also saw Chinese students being hit with visa restrictions. In 2018, Chinese nationals involved in hi-tech fields such as robotics and aviation were told they would only be issued one-year visas rather than the standard five-year version.
Fan Chen
Fan Chen joined the Post in 2024. She has reported in Cambodia, Nepal, and the Czech Republic. Her work appears in Reuters, Newsweek, and Southern People Weekly. She holds two journalism degrees from Columbia Journalism School and New York University.
12. Taiwan's drone surge aims to offset China's edge
Taiwan's drone surge aims to offset China's edge - Asia Times
Whether plans to mass produce drones yields deterrence or disappointment hinges on overcoming deep structural gaps
asiatimes.com · Gabriel Honrada · August 21, 2025
Taiwan’s plan to procure tens of thousands of domestically built drones signals a deliberate bid for asymmetric leverage vis-à-vis China. However, production delays and training deficiencies raise questions about the effectiveness of stockpiling more drones to shift the strategic balance across the Taiwan Strait.
This month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense plans to acquire nearly 50,000 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) between 2026 and 2027, aiming to strengthen asymmetric capabilities amid increasing military pressure from Beijing.
According to a government tender notice, the Armaments Bureau will purchase drones across five categories, from short-endurance multi-rotor platforms to long-range fixed-wing systems with payloads between 2.5 and 10 kilograms, all manufactured domestically and excluding mainland Chinese parts.
The initiative aligns with Taiwan’s new doctrine to treat drones as expendable munitions, similar to recent US military practice. The announcement followed televised demonstrations of indigenous drone models, including first-person view (FPV) strike drones, bomb-dropping platforms, and reconnaissance systems with electro-optic/infrared sensors.
Analysts say the specifications match existing prototypes, indicating synchronized development and procurement. However, experts warn that Taiwan’s limited training infrastructure and logistical base may reduce operational effectiveness. A government audit revealed gaps in operator qualifications and night-flight readiness, and strategic scholars have called for tiered licensing and maintenance systems to support deployment.
This push occurs as Beijing intensifies military activity around Taiwan, which it considers a renegade province. Washington, though not recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign state, remains legally obliged to supply defensive arms.
Taiwan’s push for “precision mass” highlights the ongoing imbalance, with production gaps risking turning ambition into symbolism rather than deterrence.
The concept of precision mass underpins Taipei’s UAV program. Aaron Barlow and others argue in a January 2025 War Quants article that precision mass marks a shift in modern warfare, where low-cost, “good-enough” munitions such as FPV drones and loitering munitions are deployed in overwhelming numbers to achieve effects once reserved for high-end systems.
Barlow and others note that, unlike surgical strikes, precision mass favors brute volume over exquisite targeting to saturate defenses and degrade adversary capabilities.
Ukraine has used FPV drones and loitering munitions to make up for its disadvantage in conventional artillery firepower against Russia, but they could not fully substitute for artillery. Bill Murray stresses in a May 2025 Small Wars Journal (SWJ) article that drones remain hampered by weather, limited payloads, and susceptibility to electronic warfare.
In contrast, Murray points out that artillery delivers massed, all-weather firepower with decisive range and destructive effect, making reliance on drones more a reflection of constrained resources than a doctrinal breakthrough.
Heavy artillery and saturation missile strikes retain a destructive power that drones cannot match. Drones excel at improving targeting and hitting exposed assets, but their yield is limited and their effects are localized.
By contrast, massed artillery can pulverize hardened defenses and blanket large areas with firepower—capabilities Taiwan may need to slow a beach landing or disrupt troop concentrations.
Nevertheless, Aadil Brar notes in a report this month for the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) that Taiwan’s drone program aims to develop asymmetric capabilities to disrupt the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) during an invasion rather than match platforms one-to-one.
Brar mentions that Taipei aims for an annual production capacity of 180,000 drones by 2030, but doubts remain about whether it can reach that target in just three years.
Even so, he points out that Taiwan has sought to expand output by incentivizing local manufacturers and partnering with foreign players, including the US and Germany, to upgrade systems and secure supply chains.
The structural challenges are still significant. According to Hong-Lun Tiunn and others in their June 2025 DSET report, Taiwan’s drone manufacturing faces hurdles such as high costs due to dependence on non-China parts, limited procurement opportunities beyond a key Ministry of National Defense contract, and a lack of foreign government orders.
Tiunn and others also highlight certification barriers and fragmented interagency planning. They add that more than 4,300 restricted flight zones further hinder testing and market access.
They point out that critical technologies—flight-control, positioning, and communications chips, as well as gimbal and thermal cameras—still depend on US imports. In addition, they say supply chains remain exposed to US export controls and, paradoxically, China-sourced battery materials and rare-earth magnets.
Harun Ayanoglu notes in a January 2025 Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEAS) article that Taiwan’s inability to export weapons, including combat drones, deprives it of operational testing and battlefield feedback. These weaknesses blunt Taipei’s bid for self-reliance.
Despite skepticism, Brar adds that these efforts have already drawn limited responses from Beijing, with the PLA intensifying counter-drone training—electronic warfare drills, swarm-jamming exercises, and targeting UAV command centers—while China has also imposed sanctions on US drone firms involved in Taiwan’s ecosystem.
These reactions show that even Taiwan’s modest efforts carry strategic weight, but they also underscore Beijing’s capacity to adapt—raising doubts over how long Taipei can stay ahead in the counter-drone contest.
Strategic debates highlight a more profound dilemma. Tommy Jamison cites Lee Hsi-ming in a February 2024 War on the Rocks article, who argues that while Taiwan should be thankful for US support, it must also build the ability to resist China alone.
Lee criticizes what he calls Taiwan’s “America Complex,” whereby leaders procure high-end, high-visibility assets such as fighter jets, frigates, and amphibious assault ships that have little utility under current conditions.
During the Cold War, Taiwan and the US enjoyed a technological edge over the PLA, with the Kuomintang even entertaining plans to retake the mainland. That notion was always infeasible, and the balance has since tilted heavily in Beijing’s favor.
Drawing from Afghanistan and Ukraine, Lee argues that Taiwan should focus instead on developing capabilities—such as precision mass—that would allow it to defend itself without US support. Lee says Taiwan’s task is to frustrate Beijing’s political ambitions at forced reunification through credible deterrence.
Taiwan’s UAV efforts aren’t just about the quantity of drones bought, but whether they can be effectively integrated and used in combat situations. Training, resilient supply chains, and wartime production will be crucial in proving their real strategic value.
The PLA’s expanding counter-drone capabilities mean Taiwan’s UAVs will encounter serious obstacles in actual conflict. However, as seen in Ukraine, even limited effectiveness can impose costs on a stronger opponent, buying time and complicating plans.
Ultimately, Taiwan’s program will be judged less on procurement numbers than on whether its drones can operate as true force multipliers under fire—a verdict that will decide if the UAV surge delivers deterrence or merely symbolism.
asiatimes.com · Gabriel Honrada · August 21, 2025
13. NATO virtual meeting for Ukrainian security guarantees backfires
NATO virtual meeting for Ukrainian security guarantees backfires - Asia Times
The Russians reject European-NATO participation to guarantee Ukraine’s security
asiatimes.com · Stephen Bryen · August 22, 2025
The Trump administration made a massive political blunder on August 20th in its pursuit of a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. The blunder centered on a “virtual” meeting led by NATO.
Prior to that meeting, Trump had promised the Russians that any deal would rule out Ukraine’s NATO membership. Apparently the Russians read Trump’s assurance to include no NATO peacekeepers. That was a mistake.
The administration did not consult with the Russians ahead of the NATO parlay.
The NATO-led meeting was intended to lay out military options to meet Ukraine’s request for security guarantees. The discussion apparently considered different views on what a security guarantee would actually look like: Would it, for example, include troops. If so, how many? Where would they be based in Ukraine? And what role would they perform?
Stories are around that some countries – the British and French in one version, the British, Germans and Poles in another (unlikely option) – would actually put boots on the ground in Ukraine, although British sources insist that its troops would not be on the front line but “far back” from the action.
President Donald Trump says that the US won’t send any troops, but will support a security guarantee for Ukraine with US aircraft, presumably mainly spy aircraft (which, anyway, the US is regularly doing). But Trump has also touted US air superiority against Russia, suggesting that the US air patrols might well include fighter aircraft such as the F-35. Would these aircraft operate from Ukrainian soil or from bases in Poland and Romania, for example?
The virtual meeting included the defense chiefs from all 32 NATO member countries. The meeting was overseen by Italian Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, the chair of NATO’s Military Committee.
Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone
The new Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) and leader of the US European Command, US General Alexus Grynkewich, delivered his first briefing to the virtual meeting. Also attending was General Dan Caine, who is chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Russia’s reaction came quickly and rejected foreign participation in security guarantees for Ukraine. Speaking about the possibility of foreign troops being deployed on Ukrainian territory, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow has always viewed this as unacceptable. “And I hope they understand that this would be absolutely unacceptable for Russia and for all sensible political forces in Europe,” Lavrov said.” He went on to say that such proposals are a “road to nowhere.”
It is hard to be sure what led the Trump administration to believe that the Russians would accept NATO states providing security for Ukraine. The very high level of US participation under the NATO banner creates a significant roadblock to a deal on Ukraine.
There also is emerging pushback on any peace deal that involves Ukraine surrendering all or part of Donbas. In a story on August 21st, the conservative Washington Times in a front-page story (print edition) suggested any deal was dangerous. “The ugly truth behind any deal that would cede a chunk of Ukraine’s Donbas region to Moscow is that it could immediately strengthen the Russian military, providing a major win for one of America’s leading adversaries in an era of great power competition.
“In such a scenario, Ukraine would lose some of its most heavily fortified defensive positions. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s generals would seek to deepen their substantial footprint in the strategically vital theater with new military bases. The Russian navy could gain even greater control over the Black Sea. The Russian government and its armed forces could take de facto ownership of the significant mineral deposits underground in eastern Ukraine.”
The Washington Times story goes on to quote a number of think tanks including the Institute for the Study of War, which has been strongly pro-Ukraine for some time.
While the diplomatic process continues, problems are mounting for Trump’s peace initiative for Ukraine.
Stephen Bryen is a special correspondent to Asia Times and former US deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. This article, which originally appeared in his Substack newsletter Weapons and Strategy, is republished with permission.
asiatimes.com · Stephen Bryen · August 22, 2025
14. Trump, Venezuela and China's Latin America advance
Strategic competition.
Trump, Venezuela and China's Latin America advance - Asia Times
China has positioned itself as US-sanctioned Venezuela’s lifeline, deepening its economic and strategic foothold in America’s backyard
asiatimes.com · Leon Hadar · August 23, 2025
The Trump administration’s approach to Venezuela presents a textbook case of how ideological posturing can undermine strategic interests, particularly when it comes to the larger geopolitical competition with China.
While Washington has spent the better part of a decade applying maximum pressure on the Maduro regime—through sanctions, diplomatic isolation and threats of military intervention—Beijing has quietly positioned itself as Venezuela’s lifeline, deepening its economic and strategic foothold in America’s backyard.
The Trump administration’s Venezuela policy, inherited and largely continued by the Biden administration, reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of both Venezuelan domestic dynamics and regional geopolitics.
The assumption that economic pressure alone would precipitate regime change has proven not only wrong but counterproductive. Rather than weakening President Maduro’s grip on power, sanctions have created a dependency relationship that has driven Caracas deeper into Beijing’s orbit.
This outcome was entirely predictable. When you corner a regime and cut off its traditional economic lifelines, it will inevitably seek alternative partners. China, with its policy of non-interference in domestic affairs and its appetite for energy resources, presented itself as the obvious alternative. The result has been a strategic windfall for Beijing at Washington’s expense.
While American policymakers engaged in theatrical denunciations of the Maduro government, China pursued a more sophisticated long-term strategy. Beijing’s approach has been characterized by what we might call “authoritarian pragmatism”—providing economic support, investment, and diplomatic cover without demanding political reforms or regime change.
This has allowed China to secure access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves through loan-for-oil agreements; to establish a significant economic presence in the Western Hemisphere; to demonstrate to other Latin American nations that China offers an alternative to US hegemony; and to create a strategic asset that could potentially complicate US military planning in a broader conflict.
The Chinese have essentially turned American sanctions into a competitive advantage, offering themselves as the indispensable partner that Venezuela cannot afford to alienate.
The Venezuela case illuminates a broader problem with American foreign policy: the tendency to prioritize moral satisfaction over strategic calculation. By making Venezuela policy primarily about promoting democracy and human rights, rather than managing great power competition, Washington has handed Beijing a strategic victory in what should be America’s sphere of influence.
This approach reflects a dangerous disconnect between means and ends. If the ultimate goal is to contain Chinese influence in the Western Hemisphere, then the current policy has not merely been unsuccessful but actively counterproductive.
A more realistic US approach would recognize that regime change is not a viable policy tool in the current international environment, particularly when alternative great powers are willing to provide support to targeted regimes.
In fact, economic interdependence matters more than ideology in determining long-term strategic relationships. The bottom line is that China’s willingness to engage economically with Venezuela has proven more valuable than American moral condemnation.
In a way, regional stability serves American interests better than ideological purity, particularly when instability creates opportunities for strategic competitors. A more strategic US approach to Venezuela would prioritize American interests over ideological preferences.
This might involve selective engagement with the Maduro government on issues of mutual concern, particularly counternarcotics and regional stability; economic competition with China rather than wholesale sanctions that cede the field to Beijing; and multilateral coordination with regional partners who share American concerns about Chinese influence, even if they don’t share American views on Venezuelan governance.
Such an approach would require acknowledging uncomfortable realities about both Venezuelan politics and American leverage. But it would also position the United States to compete more effectively with China for influence in Latin America, rather than allowing Beijing to position itself as the defender of sovereignty against American imperialism.
The lesson of Venezuela is clear: In an era of great power competition, ideological foreign policy is a luxury America can no longer afford. The choice is not between supporting democracy and accommodating authoritarianism, but between strategic thinking and strategic abdication.
So far, the US has chosen the latter, and China has been the beneficiary.
Leon Hadar is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and contributing editor at The American Conservative. He is the author of “Quagmire: America in the Middle East” and “Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East.”
asiatimes.com · Leon Hadar · August 23, 2025
15. Is the Trump Administration Building Up to a Military Confrontation With Venezuela?
Is the Trump Administration Building Up to a Military Confrontation With Venezuela?
A major increase in U.S. naval forces in the south Caribbean Sea has been underway since President Trump signed a directive targeting some cartels.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/us/politics/trump-venezuela-drug-war.html
President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela at a military event in January. The Trump administration has labeled him a terrorist-cartel leader.Credit...The New York Times
By Charlie SavageHelene Cooper and Eric Schmitt
Reporting from Washington
Aug. 22, 2025
Leer en español
The Trump administration is aggressively stoking tensions with Venezuela and its president, Nicolás Maduro, and appears to be creating conditions that could lead to a military confrontation.
A major buildup of U.S. naval forces is underway outside Venezuela’s waters as the administration has stepped up belligerent rhetoric about fighting drug cartels and labeled Mr. Maduro a terrorist-cartel leader. All that raises the question of whether the end goal is just to counter drug-smuggling boats, or a potential regime-change war.
President Trump signed a still-secret directive last month instructing the Pentagon to use military force against some Latin American drug cartels that his administration has labeled “terrorist” organizations. Around the same time, the administration declared that a Venezuelan criminal group was a terrorist organization and that Mr. Maduro was its leader, while calling his government illegitimate.
Since then, the Pentagon has been moving U.S. Navy assets, including warships, into the southern Caribbean Sea. In response, Mr. Maduro announced on Monday that he was deploying 4.5 million militiamen around his country and vowed to “defend our seas, our skies and our lands” from any incursions.
The administration has said little about its intentions. On Tuesday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, was asked about the movements and whether the administration was considering putting forces on the ground in Venezuela. She responded by calling Mr. Maduro illegitimate and invoking his indictment, late in the first Trump administration, on U.S. drug trafficking charges.
Mr. Trump, she said, is “prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice. The Maduro regime is not the legitimate government of Venezuela. It is a narco-terror cartel.”
The Pentagon declined to comment publicly about the specifics of the deployment. But Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said that cartels “have engaged in historic violence and terror throughout our hemisphere — and around the globe — that has destabilized economies and internal security of countries but also flooded the United States with deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs.”
He added that the Defense Department would “undoubtedly play an important role towards meeting the president’s objective to eliminate the ability of these cartels to threaten the territory, safety, and security of the United States and its people.”
U.S. officials said that up to three guided-missile destroyers would soon arrive in the region. The naval warships will target boats operated by drug cartels transporting fentanyl to the United States, the officials said, but have not said how they will do so.
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Also headed to the region is the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group — including the U.S.S. San Antonio, the U.S.S. Iwo Jima and the U.S.S. Fort Lauderdale, carrying 4,500 sailors — and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, with 2,200 Marines, Defense Department officials said.
Those ships and the Marines departed Norfolk, Va., earlier this week but had to turn around to avoid Hurricane Erin. They are expected to head back out soon and are likely to arrive in the next several days. Several P-8 surveillance planes and a submarine are also deploying to the region, officials said.
Image
This photo released by the U.S. military shows the U.S.S. Gravely, a guided-missile destroyer, in the Red Sea last year. It is now heading toward a zone near Venezuelan territorial waters.Credit...U.S. Department of Defense
The destroyers heading toward a zone outside Venezuelan territorial waters are the U.S.S. Jason Dunham and the U.S.S. Gravely — both warships that recently featured in the campaign against the Houthi militia in the Red Sea. A third destroyer, the U.S.S. Sampson, now in the eastern Pacific, may soon join, one official said.
These warships are Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, equipped with more than 90 missiles, including surface-to-air missiles. They can conduct antiaircraft and anti-submarine warfare, and shoot down ballistic missiles.
Deploying them against drug cartels would be like “bringing a howitzer to a knife fight,” one defense official said on Thursday.
The U.S. Navy has long intercepted and boarded ships suspected of smuggling drugs in international waters, typically with a Coast Guard officer temporarily in charge to invoke law enforcement authority. But the scale of the forces the Pentagon is moving into place, coupled with Mr. Trump’s order, suggests that the administration is contemplating actions that go significantly beyond law-enforcement-style maritime interdictions.
“By sending three Arleigh Burke destroyers off the coast of Venezuela, President Trump is bringing serious land attack capability via Tomahawk missiles,” said Adm. James Stavridis, a former head of U.S. Southern Command, now retired. “Also sophisticated intelligence gathering, six advanced helicopters, a thousand sailors and sophisticated command control to run counter narcotic operations at sea.”
The administration’s specific operational intentions are being unusually closely held, even inside the executive branch, according to several officials. It remains unclear what criteria or rules of engagement the administration is considering for any operations using armed force.
But the recent developments invite comparisons to the provocative conditions that preceded two important American military episodes in the second half of the 20th century.
The first was the Gulf of Tonkin incident, where aggressive U.S. naval activity off the coast of North Vietnam led to a confrontation that President Lyndon B. Johnson cited to get a congressional resolution he used to expand direct U.S. engagement in the Vietnam War. (The government cited two supposed engagements, on Aug. 2 and 4, 1964; years later, it came to light that most likely the latter attack never happened.)
In the second incident, in December 1989, the administration of President George H.W. Bush sent more than 20,000 American troops to invade Panama and arrest its strongman leader, Manuel Noriega, who had been indicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges. He was convicted in 1992 and died in Panama City in 2017.
Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer and a specialist in the laws of war, said the administration should go to Congress for authorization if it wants to use military force against Venezuela. While there are plenty of examples of countries that have looked for incidents to use as a pretext to start wars, he said, “if the U.S. goes out of its way to pick the fight, that’s not self-defense.”
But Mr. Finucane also said the situation was difficult to read because the Trump administration has contradictory goals with Venezuela. Its desires to use militarized force against drug cartels and to get Mr. Maduro out of power conflict with its desire to persuade Mr. Maduro to cooperate in taking back more deported Venezuelan migrants, he said. Mr. Finucane added that the military buildup could turn out to be part of a pressure campaign to achieve the latter goal.
During the period when Mr. Trump was out of power, a wave of Venezuelans, most fleeing the political and economic chaos under Mr. Maduro, flooded toward the United States. Some members of Venezuelan criminal gangs, including one called Tren de Aragua, were apparently among them.
Image
A member of El Salvador’s national civil police keeping watch over prisoners at the Terrorism Confinement Center, also known as CECOT, in March. President Trump signed an order in March declaring that he could deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang there, but subsequent court rulings have since paused such transfers.Credit...Fred Ramos for The New York Times
In March, Mr. Trump signed an order declaring that he could use the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th century wartime deportation law that had not been invoked since World War II, to send suspected members of Tren de Aragua to a notorious Salvadoran prison without due process hearings. Court rulings have since paused such transfers.
In invoking the law, Mr. Trump declared that Tren de Aragua was effectively an arm of the Venezuelan government and was committing crimes in the United States on Mr. Maduro’s instructions. But U.S. intelligence agencies do not believe that the Venezuelan government directs and controls the gang, according to officials familiar with the matter and a memo declassified in May.
It is not clear how the administration is interpreting domestic and international law regarding the scope and limits of its ability to use force against suspected cartel members.
One question is whether it wants the military to use wartime rules even though Congress has not authorized any armed conflict, or just to add more muscle to operations that still fall under law enforcement rules. Troops on a battlefield may kill enemy combatants even if they pose no threat in the moment. But police instead arrest criminals who pose no threat; it would be homicide to summarily kill them.
Airstrikes targeting suspected Qaeda-linked terrorists away from conventional battlefields have raised additional complex questions about what standards would be used to determine whether a person has sufficient connections to a cartel and how confident operators must be that the person in the gun sights is who they think he is and that no civilian bystanders will be hurt or killed.
Such thorny legal problems were underscored by remarks earlier this month by Marco Rubio, Mr. Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser. He claimed that designating the cartels as “terrorist” groups allows the United States “to use other elements of American power, intelligence agencies, the Department of Defense, whatever, to target these groups.”
As a matter of law, that is inaccurate. While Congress has authorized the use of force against Al Qaeda, it has not granted permission to wage war against unrelated groups even if the executive branch also calls them “terrorists.” U.S. law allows the government to impose sanctions, like blocking assets, against groups it labels that way, but that does not provide authority for wartime-style operations targeting them.
The administration has also been expanding tools of criminal law and national-security surveillance. For one, the administration made public this week that a national security court in April had approved an expansion of a high-profile National Security Agency warrantless surveillance program, known as Section 702.
The government previously had court approval to use the program to hunt for intelligence related to foreign governments, counterterrorism or weapons of mass destruction. It can now also use it to hunt for intelligence relevant to efforts to counter the international production, distribution or financing of illicit drugs.
And earlier this month, the administration announced that the government was doubling a reward, to $50 million, for information leading to Mr. Maduro’s capture and prosecution.
Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.
Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent for The Times. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent.
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 23, 2025, Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Buildup of U.S. Forces Is Menacing Venezuela. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
16. Navy Reserve, Naval Special Warfare Leaders Removed from Command
Navy Reserve, Naval Special Warfare Leaders Removed from Command - USNI News
news.usni.org · Sam LaGrone · August 22, 2025
Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore, Rear Adm. Jamie Sands
This post will be updated with additional information as it becomes available
The commanders of the Navy Reserve and Naval Special Warfare were removed from their leadership positions on Friday, USNI News has learned.
Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore, the newly confirmed head of the Navy Reserve, and Rear Adm. Jamie Sands, commander of the Navy’s SEALs and Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen units, were both removed from their positions on Friday, a Navy official confirmed to USNI News.
“Effective immediately, Rear Adm. Milton ‘Jamie’ Sands III will no longer serve as commander, Naval Special Warfare Command,” the official told USNI News. “Effective immediately, Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore will no longer serve as the chief of Navy Reserve.”
Lacore took charge of the Navy Reserve on Aug. 23, 2024. Sands had led Naval Special Warfare since Aug. 2, 2024.
The official provided no additional information beyond confirming the pair’s removal of command. The news of LaCore and Sands follows the relief of the commander of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse earlier on Friday and reports of the early retirement of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin earlier this week.
Lacore is a career helicopter pilot who graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 1990 who was designated a naval aviator in 1993, according to her bio. Sands is a 1992 Naval Academy graduate who served as a surface warfare officer before joining the SEALs, according to his bio.
Related
news.usni.org · Sam LaGrone · August 22, 2025
17. Pentagon terminating JCIDS process as part of larger acquisition reform: Memo
Rice bowls breaking?
Pentagon terminating JCIDS process as part of larger acquisition reform: Memo - Breaking Defense
“So, the way I read the memo is great, we can go a lot faster now but the big question that remains is, ‘Are we moving faster in the right direction?’” a service official said.
breakingdefense.com · Ashley Roque · August 22, 2025
WASHINGTON — As part of Pentagon leaders’ quest to rapidly field new weapons, they are revamping how requirements are validated and bidding adieu to the controversial Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) process.
In an Aug. 20 memo titled “Reforming the Joint Requirements Process to Accelerate Fielding of Warfighting Capabilities,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his deputy, Steve Feinberg, lay out a roadmap aimed at fielding “new technology and capabilities faster.”
The objective, they note, is threefold: to streamline and accelerate the joint force needs, work with industry earlier in the process, and better integrate requirements determination and resource prioritization to make better budgeting decisions.
While the memo lays out multiple changes, a key provision is the “disestablishment” of JCIDS — a joint staff process for pinpointing gaps in military capabilities, and identifying and validating joint requirements. In turn, the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC), which oversees that process, will stop validating component-level requirement documents.
The JROC comprises the vice chiefs of each military service, and is chaired by the vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The memo, first published [PDF] by NewSpace Nexus earlier this week and confirmed to Breaking Defense by a senior service official, also sets up a Requirements and Resourcing Alignment Board (RRAB) that will be co-chaired by the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the deputy defense secretary.
“Each budget cycle, the RRAB shall select topics from the top-ranked KOP [key operational problems] and nominations from the co-chairs to perform analysis, issue programming guidance, and recommend allocation of funding from the Joint Acceleration Reserve (JAR),” the memo said. “By exception, the RRAB may identify a Component-specific requirement or activity for modification or termination.”
Then for each program and budget review cycle, the board will present recommendations on the highest ranked KOPs and any additional topics the co-chairs want to separately nominate and approve. That could include new program starts, realignments, terminations, and other program changes.
Air Warfare
Michigan’s defense ecosystem and expertise makes it a special asset for production.
Meanwhile, DoD is also getting a Mission Engineering and Integration Activity (MEIA) within 120 days. The idea here is for the JROC to prioritize KOPS, then the MEIA will reach out to industry, conduct mission engineering analysis to help refine requirements, and conduct rapid integration of new capabilities while also creating experimentation campaigns.
“These activities will create opportunities to integrate industry contributions and innovations as well as Military Service capabilities and to support the development of new operational concepts and non-materiel solution elements,” the memo adds.
Spokespeople for the Pentagon did not respond to Breaking Defense’s request for further information about the memo.
JCIDS Under Fire
By and large, feedback from former officials and experts on the requirements overhaul has been positive. Reform of the JROC and the JCIDS process has been recognized for years as much needed, but up to now making changes had eluded Pentagon policy-makers and military brass.
William Greenwalt, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial policy, said that by shutting down the JCIDS, individual services again have validation authority over their bigger-ticket programs. Greenwalt, who criticized JCIDS in February, said the move could ultimately cut through red tape and endless stacks of joint validated memos that wither on the shelf.
Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Breaking Defense he “generally” agrees with the changes since he said the JROC and JCIDS process has “provided a lot of bureaucracy with very little added value.”
“They never met a military service requirement they didn’t like,” he wrote in an email today. “I also applaud the emphasis on mission engineering and integrated capabilities.”
Eric Felt, former director of architecture and integration in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, said the move gets at one of the key problems bedeviling acquisition reform for decades.
“There are three processes that are broken: acquisition, requirements, and budgeting. All three must be fixed if we want to move faster and deter China. This memo takes a sledgehammer to the second problem, the requirements bureaucracy that had become the pacing process for many new programs,” he said.
“The most successful recent programs have all been ‘JCIDS exempt’ for one reason or another; that should tell us something about whether JCIDS was value added,” Felt added.
Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed — calling the memo a “major change” for a process that “took time” but sought to make the program joint.
“The last few years, acquisition has moved in the opposite direction, towards giving the military departments the initiative. So, this is consistent with recent reforms,” he wrote in a statement to Breaking Defense on Thursday.
But Questions Of ‘Rigor’
However, there are questions, and as the senior service official said, it’s still early days and not yet 100 percent clear how those changes will play out.
“We can confidently say that the memo will help us accelerate some requirements — meaning it’s one less gate that we have to work through,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “However, that gate was an important one for rigor. … The joint force needed some visibility with the services we’re building and delivering, and the JROC provided that visibility.”
For example, the Army is moving full steam ahead with procuring drones, but if it’s buying smaller ones with the Indo-Pacific theater in mind, that’s simply not what combatant commanders there will need to operate across vast distances.
“The JROC was supposed to make sure that the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines were not building something exclusive for their service that wasn’t necessarily compatible with or helpful in the rest of the joint force,” the service official added. “So, the way I read the memo is great, we can go a lot faster now but the big question that remains is, ‘Are we moving faster in the right direction?’”
Greenwalt raised a similar concern, noting it’s not clear how the MEIA will factor in combatant commanders’ needs, but their feedback will be key to getting the right new tech to troops in the field on an expedited timetable.
Lawmakers have also been weighing in on the JCIDS process as of late, with the House and Senate Armed Services Committees offering their own suggestions for reforming the requirements process. Both committees included language affecting the JROC in their versions of the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.
HASC proposed taking the JROC and turning it into the Joint Requirements Council (JRC), which would no longer validate “highly specific capability documents” and instead focus on evaluating evolving threats and future force design needs, as well as developing joint capability requirement statements.
The JRC would submit its recommendations to a new organization called Requirements, Acquisition, and Programming Integration Directorate (RAPID), which would evaluate technological options and their costs and provide its own recommendations to the deputy defense secretary, which would decide whether to press forward. The hope, congressional officials have said, is to cut the requirements timeline from 800 days to about five months.
Meanwhile, SASC would remove the JROC’s authorities to validate and approve requirements, instead limiting its responsibilities to providing input on global trends and threats, as well as on capability gaps and emerging technologies. Newly designated “Portfolio Acquisition Executives” among each of the services would in turn have broader latitude to manage requirements for a portfolio of similar technologies.
Neither the House nor Senate have passed a defense policy bill, and HASC and SASC leaders will eventually have to settle on one approach for reforming the requirements process — or, to back away and simply adopt the Defense Department’s new version of the process — when the NDAA is reconciled into a single bill later this year.
breakingdefense.com · Ashley Roque · August 22, 2025
18. The Sword and the Book
We must not only out fight our enemies, we must out think them as well. I can vouch for the National War College and its contributions to National Security (Recall that it hosted Eisenhower's Solarium Project which led to us outthinking the Soviet Union).
Excerpts:
Over many decades, from the 1950s on, a who’s who of American military historians, national-security-oriented political scientists, and international lawyers passed through the faculty in Newport. They carried what they learned by teaching there into the wider academic world, to colleagues and civilian students. Some of us took those lessons into senior government service as well. And from Newport and its sister institutions—the other service-war colleges as well as National War College in Washington—have emerged generations of thoughtful military professionals, who understand the responsibilities and the challenges inherent in the use of force in infinitely better ways than those who think it all comes down to “lethality.” It was not merely a wonderful experience, but some of the most rewarding and substantive public service one could imagine.
Which is why preserving and protecting these institutions from the anti-intellectual spasms of the current secretary of defense and those who think like him is important. “The book and the sword descended intertwined from Heaven,” the ancient rabbis declared. Together they do not guarantee success, but to sever one from the other, as some in this administration seem to want to do, is to guarantee calamity.
The Sword and the Book
Pete Hegseth is wrong to think that civilians have little role to play in military education.
By Eliot A. Cohen
The Atlantic · Eliot A. Cohen · August 19, 2025
If Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has some notions about strategy, he has been reticent in sharing them. But he does trumpet his commitment to restoring Confederate names to bases and their statues to national military cemeteries, which is absurd and vile. And we know that he thinks civilian academics have little if any place in military education, which is wrong and even more damaging.
Forty years ago, I turned down promotion from assistant to associate professor at Harvard to join the strategy department of the U.S. Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island. My academic mentors were baffled and dismayed by such a self-willed fall from grace, but in retrospect it was one of the best professional decisions of my life.
The Naval War College, not to be confused with the Naval Academy, was established in 1884 to prepare senior officers for the higher-level problems of warfare. For a service that, like the Royal Navy, believed in learning on the job rather than in classrooms, creating such a school was a remarkable thing to do. The War College immediately brought in as faculty members not only Alfred Thayer Mahan, a Navy captain who became the most prominent naval historian and naval publicist of his time, but a U.S. Army colonel, Tasker Bliss, to provide instruction beyond the maritime realm.
That same mission of higher-level professional education continues today. When I was in Newport, roughly half of the students were naval officers at the rank of commander or captain, the other half a mix from various services at equivalent ranks (lieutenant colonel or colonel) and foreign naval officers, many of whom would eventually go on to be the chief of their country’s navy. They were at a watershed in their career. Many of the aviators, for example, were at the point where they had to stop flying regularly and instead move into staff and command positions, a painful transition. All of the officers, focused heretofore on tactics—how to maneuver ships, airplanes, or units on the ground in close combat—would be more likely after a year in Newport to participate in the handling of much larger formations at what the military calls the operational level of war. Some of them would now help make strategy, the alignment of military means to political ends, the fundamental purpose for which navies and armies exist.
Eliot A. Cohen: Hegseth’s headlong pursuit of academic mediocrity
That is where the strategy department, to which I belonged, came in. It was half civilian, half military, led by Alvin Bernstein, a former Cornell professor who had started life as a historian of the ancient world but had then given up tenure to come to the War College. There, depending on his sense of the classroom, he would turn on either his Yale and Oxford education, or his Brooklyn accent and street smarts, and equally effectively. He would talk elegantly about the glories of Periclean Athens and, with a twinkle in his eye, say, “Ya know, some of you, particularly da Marines, think da Spahtans were da good guys because they did lots of push-ups. Dey weren’t, and I’m gonna tell you why.” Amid the guffaws, the point sank home.
Bernstein assembled a spectacular group of military historians, some from Britain and Canada, and a few renegade political scientists such as myself. Twice a week the civilian professors would spend the mornings lecturing to the entire class, uncomfortably noting the reaction of their colleagues who would sit in the back row and offer unsparing critiques during coffee breaks. One afternoon a week, we would tackle the issues raised in the readings and lectures with about a dozen students and our teaching partner, a senior officer.
The curriculum was tough. The students had plenty of free time, but they needed it to tackle considerably more than 500 pages of reading a week, plus the frequent short papers we assigned. The course had a heavy dose of theory but was mainly a study of strategy from the Peloponnesian War to the present. No one, civilian or military, had enough background to master all of those conflicts, so faculty and students alike scrambled. Complaining, however, was not on. One of my colleagues—a diminutive, grizzled, and grumpy former Army draftee who was an expert on the Napoleonic Wars, and was known inevitably as “the Frog of War”—once encountered a student asking how much of the reading he should actually do. “All of it. You’re not humping a rucksack, you’re not sleeping in the mud, and no one’s shooting at you. Don’t whine.”
We taught strategy as a discipline of thought, viewed through the prism of individual cases. What were the political objectives in these wars? How did they change and why? When and how were the military means chosen congruent with those purposes? When civilian and military leaders (inevitably) disagreed, how were the tensions resolved? In seminars of a dozen students and twice-weekly morning lectures in the dank, cold, stony auditorium (the Navy economized on upkeep of shore installations, including this one), we all wrestled with it. I found it exhilarating.
A minority of the students hated it. They had been taken from a world of concrete realities and tasks and thrown into a world of politics, where everything was gray and shifting, susceptible to multiple interpretations, and where no amount of training or rule following could guarantee success. Not to mention those strange Greek names in Thucydides. A majority, I would say, were interested, absorbed what they could, and got ready for the next stage of their career. A minority (larger than that of the dissidents) positively reveled in it. Many of those were the ones who went on to flag- or general-officer rank.
Read: Trump addresses a military he’s remaking in his image
For a young civilian academic, it was marvelous. I was engaging with officers on their own turf—not as the polite visiting fellows in business attire at Harvard, where they were the unusual ones. Here, my colleagues and I were the unusual ones, in some cases younger than the officers (in my case by a good 15 years), and profoundly ignorant of the practical problems of military life, leadership, and hardship. The teaching could be perilous: The officers responded quickly, and savagely, if they thought they were being patronized or mocked. But if you showed that you respected their expertise, they respected yours, because theirs was a world in which professionalism of any kind was highly valued.
To teach in Newport was to become familiar with the upper-middle-level leadership of the armed forces: highly intelligent, experienced, serious, and patriotic, but not yet suffering from the diseases of the ego that can accompany the placement of stars on one’s shoulders. You could help the students prepare for the rest of their military career, and that was profoundly satisfying. In turn, by osmosis a young professor could pick up an enormous amount of knowledge about leadership, character, and all the ways in which the complex realities of military operations can confound the axioms of political-science theories or the deceptive clarity of retrospective certainty.
Over many decades, from the 1950s on, a who’s who of American military historians, national-security-oriented political scientists, and international lawyers passed through the faculty in Newport. They carried what they learned by teaching there into the wider academic world, to colleagues and civilian students. Some of us took those lessons into senior government service as well. And from Newport and its sister institutions—the other service-war colleges as well as National War College in Washington—have emerged generations of thoughtful military professionals, who understand the responsibilities and the challenges inherent in the use of force in infinitely better ways than those who think it all comes down to “lethality.” It was not merely a wonderful experience, but some of the most rewarding and substantive public service one could imagine.
Which is why preserving and protecting these institutions from the anti-intellectual spasms of the current secretary of defense and those who think like him is important. “The book and the sword descended intertwined from Heaven,” the ancient rabbis declared. Together they do not guarantee success, but to sever one from the other, as some in this administration seem to want to do, is to guarantee calamity.
The Atlantic · Eliot A. Cohen · August 19, 2025
19. Army to develop new modular, interoperable EW kit amid Army Transformation Initiative
Army to develop new modular, interoperable EW kit amid Army Transformation Initiative - Breaking Defense
Those in charge of outfitting EW capabilities are on the hook for finding a modular solution with little to no details about what it may be placed on.
breakingdefense.com · Carley Welch · August 22, 2025
TECHNET AUGUSTA 2025 — The Army is planning to tinker with prototypes of a new electronic warfare kit in the next fiscal year that, if all goes well, eventually will be interoperable with just about any platform across the service, officials said this week.
The idea behind the Modular Mission Payload is that as the Army pursues a dramatic shake-up in the weapons, platforms and software it buys as part of the wider Army Transformation Initiative, the service could use a single capability that can plug-and-play with just about anything.
Col. Scott Shaffer, project manager for EW and cyber within the Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, told Breaking Defense that it is still in the early days of development.
“I probably don’t have a lot of information on the production quantities and demand, because part of the prototyping process, which we’re going to dig really deep into next fiscal year, is understanding, how many do we need? And then where do they fit in the formations?” he said during an interview earlier this week.
The Army is expanding the number of soldiers devoted to EW operations, after deciding to establish 18 EW companies across the service’s divisions, said David May, the senior cyber intelligence advisor at the Army’s Cyber Center of Excellence. That could change the calculous on how many EW kits the Army eventually needs.
But one aspect about the MMP that is known, according to Shaffer, is that it needs to be a commercial off the shelf (COTS) or government off the shelf (GOTS) product.
“A heavy lift going into next year is more COTS- or GOTS-based systems, where the challenge is really built into the integration thereof,” Shaffer said. “If we’re only hitting 60 percent of the requirements, that’s okay because we’re at least, we’re getting something out there and and it can be fielded very soon.
“Another thing really good about COTs and GOTS is some of those systems, as long as they conform to some kind of standard in that system, we can easily swap them out with a better and new kit in the future,” he added.
Despite some similarities, the officials said that the MMP will differ from the Army’s C5ISR/EW Modular Open Suite of Standards (CMOSS) architecture, which uses a “plug-and-play” model with software cards that are swapped out between platforms depending on the threat environment. Even though the plug-and-play aspect of CMOSS is in line with MMP’s goal, CMOSS isn’t modular enough for this particular program, Gorman said. It’s also just too large for what the Army is looking to do, she added.
“CMOSS has been that primary chassis and [size, weight and power] consideration, [but] we recognize that CMOSS may be too heavy for your lighter weight UAS. It may be too cumbersome, or the power requirements on that AFV [armored fighting vehicle] may be too cumbersome for that CMOSS chassis to be able to integrate,” Gorman said during a panel discussion. “With the modular EW systems, we’re looking at lighter weight chassis, in some cases, dual-use EW sensors. You can do a lot with SDRs [software defined radios], and then what can we modify on software on some of these sensors and effectors on the battlefield to get that modularity that can be integrated in multiple fighting platforms.”
Though the ATI served as somewhat of a catalyst for creating the MMP, Gorman said that the service had already been thinking of ways to stray away from vehicles devoted to EW due to their clunky nature.
“I think we’re past that point of where you’re going to have a dedicated EW vehicle trying to move across a battlefield, antennas looking like a porcupine,” Gorman said. “We’re really trying to get to a more mission modular payload, because we recognize that electromagnetic warfare is a critical enabler across all warfighting functions.”
breakingdefense.com · Carley Welch · August 22, 2025
20. Army’s future autonomous launcher could fill Typhon's 'large' shoes
Army’s future autonomous launcher could fill Typhon's 'large' shoes - Breaking Defense
“The long-term desire would be if we could figure out how to get everything down on the CAML launchers,” said Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch.
breakingdefense.com · Ashley Roque · August 22, 2025
WASHINGTON — After discovering that Typhon — the US Army’s new Mid-Range Capability long-range launcher — is a bit too large to operate on the battlefield, the service is looking at alternative options to fill the gap, including the future Common Autonomous Multi-Domain Launcher (CAML), according to a pair of three-star generals.
“[Typhon is] rather large [and] long, because it has to go to a vertical setup to fire the missile system,” Lt. Gen. Joel Vowell, the deputy commanding general for Army Pacific, told reporters on a Defense Writers Group call last month.
“We’ve got an eye with the Army on a future form factor that’s a little smaller, maybe semi-autonomous,” he later added.
One option on the table would be to use the CAML in the role once envisioned for Typhon, according to Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch, the head of the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO).
RCCTO first developed the Typhon prototype as a way to strike targets between the Precision Strike Missile’s (PrSM’s) planned 500-kilometer range and the 2,776-kilometer reach of the future Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW). The weapon uses a Mark 41 vertical launching system mounted to a 40-foot ISO container to fire Raytheon’s existing SM-6 missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Like Vowell, Rasch called the Typhon design effective, but “very big” since the service was working to quickly spin out a prototype based on available components. It’s now working though how to “shrink” down that design or, possibly, have CAML fill in.
Right now, RCCTO is still in the early stages of deciding how to proceed with CAML but it is envisioning two sizes — a medium and heavy. For CAML-M, the service will likely use a Family of Medium Tactical Vehicle (FMTV) as the base for launching Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) Family of Munitions, or the new Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC) launcher with AIM-9X interceptors.
Then for the larger CAML-H, the service wants to use a M1075 Palletized Loading System tactical vehicle — or similar 15-ton class chassis — to integrate on a launcher that can fire Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles or the Patriot Advanced Capabilities Three (PAC-3) Missile Segment Enhancement interceptors.
“Well, we don’t have all the requirements yet for all the [CAML] missiles, and the SM-6 and Tomahawk are different animals,” Rasch told Breaking Defense during an Aug. 7 interview. And while CAML increment 1 doesn’t have an SM-6 requirement, future iterations may, and the ultimate desire is to use CAML for that Typhon mission.
“The long-term desire would be if we could figure out how to get everything down on the CAML launchers,” Rasch added.
Evolving Plans
So far, the service has issued a CAML “request for solutions brief,” and Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have separately said they are planning to compete.
While the service has not publicly released a competition timetable, Rasch and his team are looking to move out quickly and meet Army Chief Gen. Randy George’s goal of having working prototypes within 18 months.
“We’re integrating things that we already [have] and I think that’s primarily the reason why the Chief said, ‘Hey, we need to do this quickly. I’m not making you develop a new missile. I’m not making you develop a new fire control. We are packaging it differently, and let’s get it out to the soldiers, and then let’s figure out how to employ it,’” Rasch said.
But one “challenge,” according to Rasch, is designing a single platform that can fire both offensive and defensive weapons, which will give soldiers the flexibility to reconfigure it in combat.
“Maybe it uses the defensive fires initially before going on the offensive,” he added. “We may need to maybe go from a 2/3 to 1/3 mix of defense-to-offense to the other way around.”
If the service is able to get CAML off the ground and prototypes into soldiers hands, they will also have to look at ways to best use the weapons. The heavy variant, for example, will likely need to be transported in the air via a C-5 or C-17. Once on the ground, the service will need to figure out a host of issues including resupply.
“If they’re autonomous, are we going to be able to have them shoot and then autonomously move back to a resupply area where they get resupplied with munitions and come back forward?” Rasch asked. “Or are we going to bring [munitions] forward and do it at that location?”
breakingdefense.com · Ashley Roque · August 22, 2025
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
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