Quotes of the Day:
“Everything in life can be taken away from you and generally will be at some point. Your wealth vanishes, the latest gadgetry suddenly becomes passé, your allies desert you. But if your mind is armed with the art of war, there is no power that can take that away. In the middle of a crisis, your mind will find its way to the right solution. Having superior strategies at your fingertips will give your maneuvers irresistible force. As Sun-tzu says, “Being unconquerable lies with yourself.”
- Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies Of War
"The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime."
- Babe Ruth
"If we are to have heroes, statesmen, and philosophers, we should have learned women."
- Abigail Adams
1. National Security veterans warn Senate panel of CCP influence in U.S.
2. True lies: Feel like you’re hallucinating? It’s only ‘active measures’
3. Facebook Boots NYU Disinformation Researchers Off Its Platform And Critics Cry Foul
4. Myanmar Ambassador, Who Opposed Coup, Is Target of Assassination Plot
5. Is expeditionary foraging in the Corps’ future?
6. Making the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative Work
7. Huawei’s sales tumble as phone buyers flee the Chinese giant.
8. What do many terrorists have in common? They abuse women
9. Taiwan's medal haul spurs push to change Olympic name
10. Taiwan Will Fight China in a War For Its Freedom
11. The promise of open-source intelligence
12. The 'disinformation' deception
13. US Tech Products Enable Chinese Surveillance in Xinjiang, Researchers Find
14. Chased and jailed: No rest and much danger for Asia's young revolutionaries
15. The Murder of the U.S. Middle Class Began 40 Years Ago This Week
1. National Security veterans warn Senate panel of CCP influence in U.S.
It does not get any clearer than this assessment:
Bill Evanina, former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said the CCP has begun a “comprehensive, whole of government” effort to infiltrate and influence the U.S., through its United Front Work Department.
“The holistic and comprehensive threat to the United States, posed by the Communist Party of China is an existential threat. And it is the most complex, pernicious, aggressive, and strategic threat our nation has ever faced,” he told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
National Security veterans warn Senate panel of CCP influence in U.S.
Veteran national security officials warned a key Senate panel Wednesday that the Chinese Communist Party has gained alarming influence over the U.S. private sector.
Bill Evanina, former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said the CCP has begun a “comprehensive, whole of government” effort to infiltrate and influence the U.S., through its United Front Work Department.
“The holistic and comprehensive threat to the United States, posed by the Communist Party of China is an existential threat. And it is the most complex, pernicious, aggressive, and strategic threat our nation has ever faced,” he told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
“I proffer that the U.S private sector has become the geopolitical battlespace for China as a baseline for this comprehensive and nefarious behavior,” Mr. Evanina said.
The remarks came during a rare open hearing by the Senate intelligence panel, which was focused on CCP threats to national security. The meeting was as a bipartisan consensus is growing on opposing China’s growing influence.
In June, the Senate passed the United States Innovation and Competition Act aimed at bolstering the U.S.’s ability to compete with China. A similar measure passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee in July.
But Matt Pottinger, a former deputy national security advisor, warned that this consensus hasn’t fully grasped how China uses the U.S. private sector.
“But even with this new consensus, we fail to adequately appreciate one of the most threatening elements of Chinese strategy, and that is the way that it seeks to influence and coerce Americans, including political, business, and scientific leaders in the service of Beijing’s ambitions,” he said.
Mr. Pottinger said the CCP has succeeded in penetrating digital networks through 5G networks and other means, giving the party unprecedented access to information on private citizens around the world.
“So the Party now compiles dossiers on millions of foreign citizens around the world using the materials that it gathers to influence and target, intimidate, reward, blackmail, flatter and humiliate, and ultimately divide and conquer,” he said.
“Beijing has stolen sensitive data, sufficient enough to build dossiers on every single American adult and many of our children too, who are fair game under Beijing’s rules of political warfare,” he said.
Mr. Pottinger said the CCP’s influence has grown through the exploitation of social media, which he said they use to exacerbate social tension within the U.S.
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the panel’s ranking Republican, said committee members have “a very unique insight into this horror show that’s playing out before our eyes.”
“The title of this hearing is ‘The Long Arm of China.’ The long arm of China is not some futuristic threat. It’s already here,” he said.
2. True lies: Feel like you’re hallucinating? It’s only ‘active measures’
This short article is very much worth the read on active measures. Some of its history and what we are seeing today.
Conclusion:
In just over 18 months Western countries have been ravaged by a self-inflicted social, psychological and economic contagion that risks their national security as effectively as an outright military invasion. It’s war without firing a shot in a battle for reality. Beware of the new normal and reject the attempt to ‘reimagine’ our freedoms.
True lies
Feel like you’re hallucinating? It’s only ‘active measures’
The Spectator Australia
The best form of gossip is always laced with the truth. It’s the same with active measures (AM) used to shape the perceptions, beliefs, emotions and actions of an adversary to disorientate, disrupt and fuel internal dissent. It’s political and psychological warfare. AM includes propaganda, counterfeiting official documents, inserting false information into factual reports, as well as political repression through a bewildering mix of truth and lies. Leading academic on active measures, John Hopkins University Professor Thomas Rid, explains the key to AM is hooking into the emotions of the population where just enough truth amplifies those emotions. Once those few facts tap into our emotions and we connect with others who share those emotions, then the presentation of anything to the contrary has no result.
The campaign takes on a life of its own (that’s what makes the measures ‘active’) aided and abetted by elites, academics, mainstream media, politicians and community influencers. Opinionated elites are the best useful idiots for AM. Only when the system is on the brink of destabilisation can the ‘new normal’ be established. The political warfare of Covid-19 is one of the best case studies of active measures in the modern era. A perfect weapon against liberal democracies to undermine trust in each other and our political system.
During the last Cold War, the KGB’s Department X (then Service A) was responsible for running aktivnye meropriyatiya, or active measures. Retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin, described AM as ‘the heart and soul of Soviet intelligence’. According to KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov, the KGB spent 85 per cent of its time on AM with the aim of demoralising the adversary’s population and changing their perception of reality. One of the AM classics was Field Manual 10-1 outlining how the US would plan an invasion of Europe should the Cold War turn hot. The KGB obtained the plans and inserted one or two fake pages. One fake page showed which European cities the United States would hit with a nuclear bomb. In 1968 the KGB leaked the document to German soft porn magazine, Der Stern, as well as the more reputable Der Spiegel. Der Stern’s editors couldn’t believe their luck. Der Spiegel was more discerning, even suspecting it might be a KGB trick, but published it anyway. The Times in London had headlines declaring, ‘US to Hand out H-Bombs’. Despite acknowledging the document could be a forgery, mainstream media declared the story was just too good. Imagine what the real document must be like! It created US-EU diplomatic tensions for years.
Then there was Aids Made in America. Against the background of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the KGB launched one of the most infamous AM campaigns in history – Aids was an American biological weapon developed at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Department X (then Service A), recognised the fear of Aids spread faster than the virus. A seemingly unlikely source of the AM campaign began in an Indian newspaper, the Patriot. Third countries are often used to kick off AM campaigns. The article was 20 per cent forgery and 80 per cent fact. It stated Aids, the deadly mysterious disease, was likely the result of Pentagon experiments gone wrong.
A KGB memo from 7 September, 1985 provided instructions to Bulgarian intelligence to spread the Aids disinformation. The facts published in the Patriot became the blueprint. Newspaper articles started appearing in Peru, Sweden, Finland, the Middle East and the Netherlands. Then Jakob Segal, retired director of the Institute of General Biology at East Germany’s prestigious Humboldt University, and his wife (a biology professor), published a scientific journal article on the topic. The Segals were cultured, articulate and spoke several languages. They made the Aids AM campaign more believable by giving it a scientific founding. They were willing agents of influence. Their paper appeared in Africa, starting in Zimbabwe. The real kicker occurred when the Sunday Express in the UK published headlines in October 1986 declaring, ‘The Killer Aids virus was created in an American lab’.
Newspapers in thirty countries reprinted the story including the Australian. It was prime time TV news. CBS-News ran a segment on Dan Rather’s flagship current affairs program with 15 million viewers. The KGB was ecstatic. KGB defector Yevgeny Primakov confirmed the Aids story was designed to distract the world from the Red Army’s use of chemical weapons in Afghanistan.
Fortunately, most of us are not psychopaths. We never consider the lengths other people will go to defeat their enemies. Yet it’s also a flaw when planning for war against non-Western opponents. Many in the West continue to think we all hold the same values. Surely over twenty years fighting jihadists should have taught us that is complete nonsense.
Back to Covid. Some may recall the images distributed to the world by China when the virus emerged in early 2020. People collapsing in the street, lockdowns, residents welded into their apartments and slow-moving mobs of hazmat suits fumigating streets. One of the best was the photo in March 2020 of cyclists passing an elderly man allegedly lying dead on a Wuhan street. The Sun in the UK published the photo calling it ‘dawn of the dead’. We simply believed a communist dictatorship was honestly reporting events, data and scientific studies. All aimed at shaping the minds of Western media and the decisions of politicians.
Eighteen months on, still every waking moment is consumed with catastrophic messaging, saving lives and worse-case-scenario modelling. Now it has taken on a life of its own. No sooner are we released from a lockdown than the media switches to Covid in the sewage. Lockdowns, masks forever, being tracked and traced and a relentless message that freedom is to be feared. If it feels like you are hallucinating with the number of rules, you are not alone. Question a single edict and you become part of the active measures. It’s your fault. Now under Biden’s administration and its collusion with Big Tech corporations such as Google and Facebook, you may be labelled an anti-vaxxer, Trump-voting member of QAnon.
In just over 18 months Western countries have been ravaged by a self-inflicted social, psychological and economic contagion that risks their national security as effectively as an outright military invasion. It’s war without firing a shot in a battle for reality. Beware of the new normal and reject the attempt to ‘reimagine’ our freedoms.
3. Facebook Boots NYU Disinformation Researchers Off Its Platform And Critics Cry Foul
Excerpts:
Ramya Krishnan, a staff attorney at Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute, said Facebook's decision to cut off the NYU team illustrates how powerful the platform has become — and why lawmakers need to act.
"The company functions as a gatekeeper to journalism and research about how the company's platform works and the impact of its platform on society. And we think that that is untenable," she said. "The public urgently needs to know and needs to understand the implications of Facebook's platform for public discourse and democracy."
The Knight Institute, which is representing NYU's Edelson and McCoy, urged Facebook back in 2018 to create a "safe harbor" provision in its terms of service that would allow academics and journalists to research and collect data from its platform, while protecting users' privacy. But Krishnan said negotiations with the company ended in a stalemate.
Now, she said, the solution lies in Washington. She says Congress should "mandate transparency" on social media platforms and create a safe harbor law protecting research.
"We're not saying that Facebook doesn't have legitimate reasons for, in general, prohibiting scraping," she said. "But intentionally or not, those prohibitions are also impeding journalists' and researchers' ability to study, understand and report about the platform."
Facebook Boots NYU Disinformation Researchers Off Its Platform And Critics Cry Foul
NPR · by Shannon Bond · August 4, 2021
Facebook cut off access to NYU researchers studying political ads and COVID misinformation, saying their work violated its terms of service. Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images
Facebook has blocked a team of New York University researchers studying political ads and COVID misinformation from accessing its site, a move that critics say is meant to silence research that makes the company look bad.
The researchers at the NYU Ad Observatory launched a tool last year to collect data about the political ads people see on Facebook. Around 16,000 people have installed the browser extension. It enables them to share data on which ads they're shown and why those ads were targeted at them with the researchers.
Facebook said on Tuesday it had disabled the researchers' personal accounts, pages, apps and access to its platform.
"NYU's Ad Observatory project studied political ads using unauthorized means to access and collect data from Facebook, in violation of our terms of service," Mike Clark, Facebook's product management director, wrote in a blog post.
He said Facebook took action "to stop unauthorized scraping and protect people's privacy," to comply with an agreement it reached with the Federal Trade Commission in 2019, when it paid a $5 billion penalty stemming from the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal.
But on Wednesday, the researchers disputed Facebook's claim, saying they're not gathering private information about Facebook users.
"We really don't collect anything that isn't an ad, that isn't public, and we're pretty careful about how we do it," said Laura Edelson, a doctoral candidate at NYU who helps lead the research project and whose account Facebook disabled. She noted that the code for the browser extension is public and that it has been reviewed by outside experts.
Facebook says the browser extension violates its privacy rules because it collects information about advertisers, including their names, Facebook IDs and photos. The company says the data collected by the tool could also be used to identify information about other users who interacted with the ads but did not consent to share their information.
Damon McCoy, an associate professor at NYU who was also cut off from Facebook, said he believes the company is using privacy claims as a pretext because it's unhappy with the team's research.
"It feels like Facebook is trying to intimidate us, and not just us, but they're trying to send a message to other independent researchers that are trying to study their platform," he said. "We need transparency and accountability."
Research revealed Facebook's failure to block misleading ads ahead of 2020 election
"This is sort of a blind men and an elephant problem," Edelson said.
To gain a more complete picture of disinformation on Facebook, she said, "we really need to be able to put the pieces together, from the way ads that advertise a certain message are publicized to the way they're targeted" to messages that aren't ads but that are posted by people looking to spread false information in a coordinated way.
Facebook publishes its own library of political ads with information about who paid for an ad and when it ran, but not including details on how ads are targeted to specific subsets of users. It does make ad targeting data available to researchers who participate in a program it controls.
In the blog post, Facebook's Clark said the company offers researchers "privacy-protective methods to collect and analyze data" and that "we welcome research that holds us accountable, and doesn't compromise the security of our platform or the privacy of the people who use it."
The NYU researchers say their work is an important independent check on Facebook.
"We don't think Facebook should get to decide who gets to study it and who doesn't," Edelson said.
Facebook declined to comment further on Edelson and McCoy's claims.
Pressure mounts on Congress to require more transparency in online ads
On Wednesday, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) called Facebook's decision to disable the NYU team's access "deeply concerning."
"For several years now, I have called on social media platforms like Facebook to work with, and better empower, independent researchers, whose efforts consistently improve the integrity and safety of social media platforms by exposing harmful and exploitative activity," he said in a statement. "Instead, Facebook has seemingly done the opposite."
Warner also called on Congress "to act to bring greater transparency to the shadowy world of online advertising."
Fellow Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon also slammed the social network, writing in a Twitter post: "After years of abusing users' privacy, it's rich for Facebook to use it as an excuse to crack down on researchers exposing its problems."
Wyden said he had contacted the FTC to ask about Facebook's claim that it was concerned the NYU tool violated its privacy order, calling that excuse "bogus."
The FTC declined to comment.
Ramya Krishnan, a staff attorney at Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute, said Facebook's decision to cut off the NYU team illustrates how powerful the platform has become — and why lawmakers need to act.
"The company functions as a gatekeeper to journalism and research about how the company's platform works and the impact of its platform on society. And we think that that is untenable," she said. "The public urgently needs to know and needs to understand the implications of Facebook's platform for public discourse and democracy."
The Knight Institute, which is representing NYU's Edelson and McCoy, urged Facebook back in 2018 to create a "safe harbor" provision in its terms of service that would allow academics and journalists to research and collect data from its platform, while protecting users' privacy. But Krishnan said negotiations with the company ended in a stalemate.
Now, she said, the solution lies in Washington. She says Congress should "mandate transparency" on social media platforms and create a safe harbor law protecting research.
"We're not saying that Facebook doesn't have legitimate reasons for, in general, prohibiting scraping," she said. "But intentionally or not, those prohibitions are also impeding journalists' and researchers' ability to study, understand and report about the platform."
Editor's note: Facebook is among NPR's financial supporters.
NPR · by Shannon Bond · August 4, 2021
4. Myanmar Ambassador, Who Opposed Coup, Is Target of Assassination Plot
On US soil. Pretty bold.
Good work by the FBI.
It does not seem like the Ambassador will be able to return to Burma given his political views toward the coup. I wonder if he will ask for and be granted asylum when the Burmese junta tries to recall him.
Myanmar Ambassador, Who Opposed Coup, Is Target of Assassination Plot
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said two Myanmar citizens living in New York plotted over the past month to attack and potentially kill the country’s ambassador to the United Nations.
U Kyaw Moe Tun, Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations, told Reuters earlier this week that he had been made aware of a threat against him and had stepped up his personal security.Credit...Denis Balibouse/Reuters
By
Aug. 6, 2021, 7:16 p.m. ET
Two Myanmar citizens living in New York plotted over the past month to attack and potentially kill the country’s ambassador to the United Nations who resides in Westchester County, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said on Friday.
After being contacted by an arms dealer in Thailand, one of the men, Phyo Hein Htut, agreed to “hire attackers” to injure the ambassador, U Kyaw Moe Tun, in an effort to force him to step down, according to court documents. If the ambassador, whom Myanmar’s military has repeatedly tried to replace, refused to resign, the dealer proposed the attackers kill him, prosecutors said.
Mr. Htut, 28, and Ye Hein Zaw, 20, who prosecutors say served as intermediaries and made payments to fund the attack, each face a charge of conspiracy to assault and make a violent attack upon a foreign official. Neither entered pleas on Friday as they made initial court appearances in White Plains, N.Y., on their criminal complaints.
“Time was of the essence when we received information about a threat to Myanmar’s Ambassador to the United Nations,” Jacqueline Maguire, an acting assistant director at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said in a statement. “Our laws apply to everyone in our country, and these men will now face the consequences of allegedly breaking those laws.”
If convicted, Mr. Htut and Mr. Zaw could each serve up to five years in prison. Lawyers for the two men did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.
At the time, the ambassador, Mr. Kyaw Moe Tun, stood in open opposition to the ousting of the country’s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. In February, he delivered a defiant speech at a United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, calling for “the strongest possible action from the international community” to restore democracy.
The audience applauded, and during the meeting, Mr. Kyaw Moe Tun raised his hand in the three-finger salute of resistance from the “Hunger Games” films, which came to represent the country’s protest movement.
“I wanted to do something with maximum impact,” Mr. Kyaw Moe Tun later told The New York Times. “To show how shocked I am, that in the modern world for a military to have a coup like this is not acceptable.”
His speech and actions drew the ire of the country’s military leaders, who accused Mr. Kyaw Moe Tun of high treason and attempted to replace him as their ambassador. But Mr. Kyaw Moe Tun refused to go, the diplomat who military leaders had chosen to replace him quit, and the General Assembly, which accredits diplomats, did not recognize the military’s efforts.
But since July, the plot to force him to step down, and to kill him if he did not oblige, had been brewing, according to court documents. Mr. Kyaw Moe Tun told Reuters earlier this week that he had been made aware of a threat against him and had stepped up his personal security. The ambassador’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
The conspiracy began last month when the Thai arms dealer, who federal prosecutors said sells weapons to Myanmar’s military, contacted Mr. Htut, the court documents say.
According to the documents, Mr. Htut told F.B.I. investigators that the arms dealer said he had decided to reach out to him on Facebook and through FaceTime after he had seen a photo of Mr. Htut. The dealer, who is not identified by name, offered to give Mr. Htut money to hire people to hurt the ambassador and compel him to leave his post, and to kill him if he did not agree, court documents say.
The two also agreed that Mr. Htut would hire people to tamper with the tires of the ambassador’s car to cause a crash while driving, according to the documents.
Mr. Htut later told a volunteer security guard at the country’s U.N. mission about the plan “to hire a hitman” to hurt or kill Mr. Tut, according to an interview between investigators and the guard this week outlined in the documents.
Mr. Zaw, who was serving as an intermediary between the two men, sent Mr. Htut two money transfers of $4,000 over the payment app Zelle in late July, documents say. Prosecutors said Mr. Htut told investigators that he had agreed to receive the sum up front.
In a call between the two defendants earlier this week, Mr. Htut told Mr. Zaw that the people who were hired to lead the attack could “finish off” the ambassador if they received additional money beforehand. Mr. Zaw agreed to make another payment of $1,000, documents say.
Upon his arrest on Thursday, Mr. Zaw told investigators that he had made the money transfers, according to his criminal complaint, and said that he regularly interacted with the Thai arms dealer, sending payments on his behalf and recently booking travel to the U.S. for two other people at his request.
“We commend the tireless work of our law enforcement partners at all levels of government to ensure the safety of foreign diplomats and officials,” Audrey Strauss, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement on Friday.
5. Is expeditionary foraging in the Corps’ future?
Perhaps the Marines will go back to reading FMFRP 12-18 since that discusses living off the support of the local population. There may be lessons to be learned. :-)
https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Publications/FMFRP%2012-18%20%20Mao%20Tse-tung%20on%20Guerrilla%20Warfare.pdf
1. PURPOSE Fleet Marine Force Reference Publication (FMFRP) 12-18, Mao Tse-tung on Guerrilla Warfare, is published to ensure the retention and dissemination of useful information which is not intended to become doctrine or to be published in Fleet Marine Force manuals. FMFRPs in the 12 Series are a special category of publications: reprints of historical wOrks which were published commercially and are no longer in print.
2. SCOPE This reference publication is Mao Tse-tung's thoughts and philosophy of guerrilla warfare. It gives the reader a chance to learn about this type of warfare from one who lived and fought as a guerrilla for most of his adult life. It is important to understand his philosophy of guerrilla warfare because it is the basis of today's guerrilla forces. The book was translated and published with an introduction by Samuel B. Griffith, Brigadier General, USMC (Ret.), in 1961.
Is expeditionary foraging in the Corps’ future?
NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland ― The Corps is planning for a future fight that sees small units of Marines dispersed over a large area.
Marines will be armed to the teeth with sensors and potentially missiles capable of sinking enemy ships. That’s the vision of Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger that was formulated specifically to faceoff against China in the Pacific Ocean, but Marine leaders say can it be used in any other potential theater of war.
While the Corps is still fine-tuning certain aspects of dispersed operations, like training and equipment, one major questions remains.
How will the Marine Corps provide logistical support to dispersed Marines in a hostile environment?
Marine Lt. Gen. Eric Smith the current commander of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command and the deputy commandant for combat development and integration has one possible solution: Foraging.
The Marines with Combat Logistics Battalion 31 were tasked with maintaining logistics support to the MEU despite operating separated.
Philip Athey
January 21, 2020
“The first thing about being able to handle a logistics enterprise support you in a distributed environment is need less,” Smith said Tuesday at the 2021 Sea-Air-Space conference.
“Why would I move water to the South China Sea? That’s insane, why would I move food? It’s called expeditionary foraging,” he added.
In the future Marines may be tasked with getting their own food, processing their own water and potentially even buying replacement parts for their equipment while dispersed on small far-flung expeditionary advanced bases, the general said.
In December 2019, Marines with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit put some of those foraging concepts to the test while training on the island of Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands.
During the exercise Marines with Combat Logistics Battalion 31, were tasked with maintaining logistical support of the MEU using “21st century foraging,” Marine Corps Times previously reported.
Smith believes future Marines will deploy with small water purifiers, which can be carried by a single Marine, and wearable power generators.
“The only thing I wish to move is lethality,” Smith said.
“Fuel, additives you don’t have to bring everything.”
6. Making the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative Work
Excerpt:
At the end of the day, the JCDC is set to provide the essential superstructure to tie together the JCE, the Integrated Cybersecurity Center, and the JCPO. Wrapping together the planning, defensive operations, and information fusing functions under one roof has the potential to significantly benefit the United States’ overall cybersecurity and resilience. As CISA moves forward with its plans, it should ensure that the visions for joint cyber planning, integrated operations, and public-private cyber threat analysis can be realized. The JCDC should take responsibility for ongoing lines of effort to provide leadership and direction and begin the work of bolstering the nation’s cyber defenses. Congress must also take action to ensure that CISA is authorized to perform this work and that appropriations support authorizations accordingly. The welcome step to establish the JCDC is only the beginning. The hard work of implementing the vision starts now.
Making the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative Work
By Jim Langevin, Mark Montgomery Friday, August 6, 2021, 11:49 AM
On Aug. 5, Jen Easterly, the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), announced the creation of the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC) to unify public and private national cyber defense efforts under one entity. This is welcome news—when discussing federal cybersecurity efforts, an emphasis on this kind of public-private collaboration is critical to embracing a “whole-of-nation” approach and strengthening overall U.S. cybersecurity.
Easterly, as the second person confirmed by the Senate to head CISA, chose an auspicious location for her first speech: Black Hat, one of the largest and most influential cybersecurity conferences in the world. Each year, Black Hat and its companion conference, DEF CON, attract tens of thousands of cybersecurity professionals to the Las Vegas desert. These are exactly the people that the JCDC will need to bring into the fold to be successful, and Easterly’s early roster of private-sector participants is impressive.
The JCDC represents a further evolution of the government’s drive to operationalize collaboration with the private sector, one of the six pillars of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission report we helped craft. The creation of this collaborative is also a crucial step in fulfilling the mandates in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (NDAA) for the creation of a Joint Cyber Planning Office (JCPO) and the design of an Integrated Cybersecurity Center.
However, we commend Easterly for going beyond the framework in the commission report and laying out a vision for integrating these elements within CISA. Strengthening CISA is vital to our strategic vision for securing the U.S. in cyberspace, and the JCDC announcement has the potential to be hugely consequential for CISA’s future. As we track the stand-up of the JCDC, there are three parts fundamental to its success: planning, operations and information fusion.
First, the JCDC should develop and maintain cyber planning and exercising capabilities. This must be an integral part of the collaborative—successfully defending the United States against malicious cyber incidents will require the federal government to be able to mount its own coordinated defensive campaigns that includes integration between the public and private sectors. Effective cyber planning and exercising ensures that the government can utilize the full range of tools it has available for cyber defensive purposes. Status quo measures have been more “reactive” to individual incidents, rather than being more “proactive” and forward looking. Section 1715 of the NDAA created the JCPO, which will develop plans for cyber defense operations between the public and private sectors. Per the statute, these plans should include coordination actions that would help the federal government protect against, detect, respond to, and recover from significant cybersecurity incidents. As part of a broader national strategic approach, the JCDC should house the JCPO to strengthen the United States’ capacity to conduct meaningful planning across government and between the public and private sectors.
Second, the JCDC should have the ability to integrate public- and private-sector cyber defense operations as well as operations within the federal government. Without effective, meaningful cooperation between federal government entities, defensive cybersecurity measures will continue to lag the threat and the federal government will fall short of being a mature operational partner for the private sector. CISA is currently a key component in coordinating cyber defense operations between the federal government and the private sector, but the ability to conduct fully integrated cybersecurity operations with federal and nonfederal partners remains immature. In particular, while there have been ad hoc working groups that have conducted public-private operations, these efforts have not been institutionalized.
Section 1731 of the NDAA requires the secretary of homeland security, in coordination with other key federal actors, to submit a plan to Congress to better improve the coordination of federal cybersecurity efforts within an integrated cybersecurity center. This report is due in January 2022. Based on Easterly’s vision, we believe the JCDC should serve as a venue for integrated operations within the federal government and as the lead federal cyber center for cybersecurity operations.
Finally, the federal government must improve its combined situational awareness of the cyber threats that are affecting the United States—particularly through sound analytics that encompass and fuse key threat information, insight, and other relevant data from the federal government and other critical public- and private-sector entities. The Cyberspace Solarium Commission’s report from March 2020 proposed the creation of a Joint Collaborative Environment (JCE)—an information-sharing environment with a common toolset that would integrate the federal government’s unclassified and classified cyber threat information, malware forensics, and data related to cybersecurity risks, and would enable real-time public-private collaborative analysis. The JCE will ensure that the most informed analysts in the public and private sectors can come together to look at common data streams, share notes and make life more difficult for U.S. adversaries.
The JCDC is the perfect venue to house the JCE and chair its governance board. If the collaborative is to be successful, it must emphasize the importance of having a steady stream of analytics to inform public and private actions to defend critical infrastructure.
The Path Forward for the JCDC
As the JCDC gets off the ground, CISA and Congress will need to take key steps to consolidate its functions and powers and work with ongoing initiatives within the federal government.
First, the JCDC should take responsibility, in coordination with CISA’s National Risk Management Center and the Office of the National Cyber Director, for the Continuity of Economy planning required by the NDAA. Section 9603 of the NDAA requires the president to develop and submit a plan to Congress in the next year and a half for ensuring the reliable functioning of key economic assets and sectors in the event of a significant incident that might debilitate the United States, including a cyber incident. The JCDC, in scoping its mission, should take on the task for planning (the National Risk Management Center should focus on risk assessment) and ensure that consistent and coherent leadership exists for this crucial national endeavor. The Office of the National Cyber Director will be a key partner for the JCDC in developing, socializing and implementing the plan.
Second, the JCDC should contribute to the report required by the NDAA on the need for an Integrated Cyber Center. The Department of Homeland Security—and potentially Congress—should then task the JCDC with fulfilling the function of an Integrated Cyber Center within CISA. Complementing this assessment, the force structure assessment of CISA (to include personnel, programs and infrastructure) required by the NDAA should be informed by the JCDC’s plans to support the efforts of other federal departments and agencies and the gaps that the collaborative can fill in national defense measures.
Third, Congress must work to establish the JCE in law, empowering it to serve a critical function fusing the cyber information picture. CISA can get a head start by helping to unify federal civilian government efforts to fuse cyber threat information both within the federal government and between the public and private sectors.
At the end of the day, the JCDC is set to provide the essential superstructure to tie together the JCE, the Integrated Cybersecurity Center, and the JCPO. Wrapping together the planning, defensive operations, and information fusing functions under one roof has the potential to significantly benefit the United States’ overall cybersecurity and resilience. As CISA moves forward with its plans, it should ensure that the visions for joint cyber planning, integrated operations, and public-private cyber threat analysis can be realized. The JCDC should take responsibility for ongoing lines of effort to provide leadership and direction and begin the work of bolstering the nation’s cyber defenses. Congress must also take action to ensure that CISA is authorized to perform this work and that appropriations support authorizations accordingly. The welcome step to establish the JCDC is only the beginning. The hard work of implementing the vision starts now.
7. Huawei’s sales tumble as phone buyers flee the Chinese giant.
Sanctions work.
Huawei’s sales tumble as phone buyers flee the Chinese giant.
Huawei phones on display in Hangzhou, China. For the first time in over seven years, Huawei was not one of China’s five best-selling phone brands, quarterly data showed.
By
- Aug. 6, 2021, 4:27 a.m. ET
Sales are falling fast at Huawei, the Chinese tech titan that American officials have deemed a national security threat and sought doggedly to undermine.
The company said on Friday that its shrinking smartphone business caused overall revenue for the first half of the year to slide by nearly 30 percent from last year, to about $50 billion. Its net profit margin, however, was 9.8 percent, up from 9.2 percent last year.
As a closely held company, Huawei is not legally obligated to report its earnings. It publishes only a small selection of financial results, and not on a quarterly basis.
“Our aim is to survive, and to do so sustainably,” Eric Xu, one of Huawei’s deputy chairmen, said in a statement on Friday.
Over the past few years, Huawei’s ability to work with the international computer chip industry has narrowed because of a series of rules that were imposed by the Trump administration. It has become extremely hard for the company to produce the cutting-edge phones that had made it a global Goliath not long ago. Huawei denies that its products threaten any nation’s security.
The U.S. sanctions also prevent Huawei devices from running Google’s most popular apps. That has been driving away customers outside of China for awhile.
But even within China, where many Google apps have long been blocked, Huawei’s handset business is sinking quickly. In the latest quarter, for the first time in over seven years, Huawei was not one of China’s five best-selling phone brands, according to the market research firm Canalys. The top five, in order, were Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi, Apple and Honor.
Honor had been a Huawei brand until it was spun out late last year to put it out of reach of the U.S. restrictions. That contributed to the drop in Huawei’s smartphone revenue, a company spokesman said.
8. What do many terrorists have in common? They abuse women
More evidence of the evil nature of terrorists.
What do many terrorists have in common? They abuse women | Joan Smith
Groundbreaking research shows that extremist attackers are often united in their violent misogyny, whatever their ideology
Five years ago, I began to notice that the perpetrators of some of the worst terrorist attacks had something in common. A high proportion shared a history of assaulting wives, girlfriends and other female relatives, sometimes involving a whole series of victims, long before they attacked total strangers.
In the summer of 2016, for example, when just two terrorist attacks in Florida and the south of France left 135 people dead and hundreds injured, both perpetrators claimed to be Islamists. But I was struck by the fact that each had a horrific record of domestic violence.
A year later, there were four fatal attacks in the UK and all six perpetrators turned out either to have abused women or, in one case, to have witnessed his father abusing his mother and sister. There were striking similarities between the histories of Darren Osborne, the rightwing extremist who drove a van into worshippers leaving a mosque in north London, and Khalid Masood, the Islamist who staged an attack on Westminster Bridge. Both men had criminal records for violent offences – and both had abused women.
I thought these cases challenged conventional wisdom about terrorism, which holds that it is all about ideology. Many fatal terrorist attacks actually appeared to be an escalation of violence that had been going on, sometimes for years, against members of the perpetrator’s family. I was convinced that the police and MI5 needed to change the way they assessed the risk posed by suspects, treating a history of domestic violence as a very significant red flag.
When I raised this with the authorities, however, I encountered scepticism and disbelief. So I decided to write a book, using published sources to piece together a woeful catalogue of men who had humiliated, beaten and sexually assaulted women long before they became notorious as terrorists. It was published in 2019 and this time senior figures at counter-terrorism policing and the Home Office listened.
They commissioned groundbreaking research using data on just over 3,000 referrals to the Prevent programme in England and Wales in 2019 – adults and children who had caused concern to teachers, social workers and family members because of a possible vulnerability to radicalisation (V2R). The results of what came to be called Project Starlight have not yet been published, but I have been given access to them – and they are stunning.
Almost 40% of adult referrals had a history of domestic abuse either as perpetrators, witnesses or victims – or a combination of all three. This is likely to be an underestimate, given that domestic violence is one of the most under-reported crimes, but it provides some idea of prevalence for the first time. The comparable figure for children is 30%, another likely underestimate because under-16s were not routinely questioned about domestic abuse in the home.
There were many more men than women among the sample and the research showed another significant difference between the sexes: male referrals were more likely to be perpetrators of domestic abuse, while the women were more likely to be victims. But what is really shocking is the extent and seriousness of the violence disclosed in family histories. “Incidents recorded ranged from children witnessing domestic abuse in their households to people being convicted of the attempted murder of their partner.”
As I expected, the link is visible across ideologies, from Islamists and rightwing extremists to the fifth of the sample where no known ideology was identified. This confirms my theory that terrorism is at least as much about male violence as ideology, suggesting that angry young men are attracted to extremist ideas that appear to “justify” their grievances. The route from victim to perpetrator is not inevitable but it is well known, and the research reveals that almost 16% of adult V2R referrals had been victims of domestic abuse, nearly three times higher than the estimated national figure.
Take the tragic case of the Deghayes brothers from Brighton. After enduring years of violence at the hands of their father, 18-year-old Amer Deghayes fled to Syria where he joined a terrorist organisation, the al-Nusra Front, in 2013. Two younger brothers followed and were killed within months of their arrival. Another brother, who had remained in Brighton, was convicted of drugs offences and stabbed to death in 2019. The cost of violence in the home is unacceptably high.
Another reason why extremist organisations appeal to aggrieved men is, I’m afraid, their misogyny. When the Project Starlight researchers looked for a link between V2R referrals and hate crime, they did not find it – but they did find one with woman-hating. Indeed so-called incels – bitter young men who blame women for their inability to get sex – have carried out fatal attacks in the US and Canada.
A recent horrific case suggests that counter-terrorism officials need to be alert to the possibility that extreme misogyny is in itself a form of radicalisation. Last month a 19-year-old man was convicted of the murders of two sisters, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, in north London. At his trial, it emerged that Danyal Hussein had been referred to Prevent in 2017 after using school computers to access far-right material.
He appeared in front of a Channel panel, the statutory body that assesses the risk posed by individuals, but was discharged a few months later with no continuing concerns in relation to extremism or terrorism. Yet Hussein would later draw up a “contract” with a “demon” in which he promised to kill six women – and only women – in six months in return for winning the lottery. He refused to give detectives his passwords, so it is impossible to confirm a suspicion that he may have accessed incel sites on the web. But in a note that echoes the incel obsession with not feeling sufficiently attractive to women, he pledged to “offer some blood” in exchange for making a girl fall in love with him.
All this demands a revolution in how we think about terrorism, domestic violence and misogyny. The Project Starlight report rightly includes a raft of recommendations, calling for much wider awareness of the link between violent extremism and a history of domestic violence. “All counter-terrorism case officers should consider checking for potential links to a domestic abuse-related incident,” it says.
But this may not be straightforward when so few incidents lead to convictions. A recent report revealed that three-quarters of domestic abuse cases reported to the police in England were closed without the perpetrator being charged. Some organisations have come up with welcome innovations – Croydon in south London, for instance, has a specialist social worker sitting on Channel panels, leading to the disclosure of previously unsuspected domestic abuse in the history of V2R referrals.
But the Cinderella status of crimes against women can no longer be tolerated. The connection between private and public violence is now crystal clear – and the cost of continuing to ignore it is way too high.
9. Taiwan's medal haul spurs push to change Olympic name
I doubt the international community can get the Olympic committee to change this. It will be interesting to watch how China goes about working to prevent any change. Let's see how this plays out in the information environment.
Taiwan's medal haul spurs push to change Olympic name
Island has competed as 'Chinese Taipei' for 40 years, and can't use ROC flag
Lee Yang and Wang Chi-Lin of Taiwan pose with their gold medals after beating Chinese opponents in the final of the men's badminton doubles. © Reuters
ERIN HALE, Contributing writerAugust 5, 2021 14:00 JST | Taiwan
TAIPEI -- Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin became household names in Taiwan on Sunday when they won the island's first ever Olympic gold medal in badminton -- a victory made sweeter as the male duo's opponents were from China.
The historic victory was followed by another first when host Japan played the "national flag anthem" of the Republic of China, as Taiwan is formally known, as the duo stood atop the podium. Lee then took to Facebook to ecstatically post, "I am Lee Yang. I am a proud Kinmen (islander). I am a proud Taiwanese" alongside a photo of his moment of victory.
While this was a taboo statement for many Taiwanese athletes and celebrities who hope to get lucrative endorsements from Chinese companies, Yang was airing feelings of national pride shared by many of his generation who see themselves as a unique nationality.
Taiwanese athletes have been forced to compete without the ROC flag or an anthem at the Olympics for the past 40 years, and under the name of "Chinese Taipei."
"Internally, Taiwanese people are well aware of the difference between 'Chinese Taipei' (Zhonghua dui) and 'China' (Zhongguo dui), so I would not say the athletes think they are competing under another name," said Daniel Yu-Kuei Sun, a lecturer at Towson University whose research includes transnationalism in Taiwanese athletes.
Zhongguo typically refers to China, while Zhonghua is more ambiguous term that refers to the "Chinese nation," which exists as an ethnic identity beyond the borders of the People's Republic of China.
"That being said," Sun added. "It is true there is a growing sense of Taiwanese consciousness in recent years as more and more people prefer to identify themselves as Taiwanese instead of Chinese, or both, especially among the younger generation."
Kuo Hsing-Chun and Lu Yen-hsun of Taiwan hold the Chinese Taipei Olympic flag at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics on July 23. © Reuters
Taiwan's remarkable showing at the Tokyo Olympics, where it has so far doubled its previous record by landing 11 medals, as of Thursday, has brought the name compromise back into the limelight. Even Japanese broadcaster NHK referred to the island's Olympic team as simply "Taiwan" in its commentary for the opening ceremony.
Whether this will herald any long term changes for Taiwan, however, is still a big question mark, said Lev Nachman, a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard's Fairbanks Center. A national referendum on Taiwan's Olympic name narrowly failed in 2018, and if it were to win there are still questions as to whether Taiwan would rather be known as the Republic of China or simply "Taiwan."
That has not stopped legendary Taiwanese Olympian Chi Cheng to announce she would launch another referendum this week to change Taiwan's team name ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, according to local media.
The International Olympic Committee, however, has told Taiwan's Olympic Committee that it could face consequences if it were to change its name. Past disagreements over Taiwan's name led its team to boycott both the 1976 and 1980 Olympics before its then one-party state agreed on Chinese Taipei.
Taiwan would also have to contend with potential future pressure from China, whose government has been fairly restrained during the current Olympic Games and nods here and there to Taiwan's identity, said Tai Wei Lim, an adjunct research fellow at the National University of Singapore.
"China wants a smooth transition from the Japanese hosts of the summer games to the winter games," he said, which they will host in Beijing next year.
Beijing 2022 is already controversial as Western parliamentarians have called for a boycott due to China's human rights abuses in Xinjiang and its ongoing crackdown on human rights in Hong Kong. Stirring up the Tokyo Olympics, however, could push Japan into that camp as well.
"Beijing does not want to add Japan to the list of what it considered as anti-Winter Olympics Western bloc," he said. "[China] is the host next year and does not want to appear negative in legitimate sports achievements This is in the arena of soft cultural power projection. Any side that appears negative about legitimate sports achievement will lose out," Lim said.
Beijing, however, is unlikely to stay so restrained should Taiwan change its name for the 2022 or 2024 Games.
China Inc. and the country's netizens could also step in to take the place of the government, as well, to silence any support for Team Taiwan. During the Tokyo games, Taiwanese actress Dee Hsu has already lost four endorsement deals from Chinese companies for using the phrase "national athletes" to refer to the Chinese Taipei team in an Instagram post.
Suggesting that Taiwan is a nation or independent country is taboo for global celebrities, brands if they wish to remain in the Chinese market, as Beijing claims the 23-million-strong democracy as its own.
10. Taiwan Will Fight China in a War For Its Freedom
Excerpts:
Taiwan can hold out, given it has the both the political will and military means to fight for its freedom. Beijing likely suspects this, and should understand that the risks it would face in attacking Taiwan are too great, especially since failure would destabilize the Chinese government.
Washington could make the world a safer place by acknowledging this reality as well, and dispensing with the defeatist, pessimistic view of Taiwan. Furthermore, it is negligent that our two militaries do not drill together and have a unified military command, ideally with Japan involved as well. By taking these steps, Taiwan can be an even greater asset in our deterrence of China and struggle against CCP aggression.
Taiwan Will Fight China in a War For Its Freedom
Taiwan can hold out, given it has the both the political will and military means to fight for its freedom.
Yes, Taiwan will fight
Donald Trump was never pro-Taiwan. What I mean by that is that he never saw the nation as an asset in our struggle with China.
Some believe that Taiwan is a liability for America. They fear that China will inevitably swallow the democratic island of 24 million people by force, and that while the United States should try to deter such a calamity, there is no need to risk World War III by fighting the Chinese over an island in their backyard.
The pro-Taiwan camp differs. It holds that Taiwan puts the lie to the entire reason for existence of the Chinese Community Party (CCP). The CCP says the Chinese people need the iron fist of the Party to stave off the chaos and the humiliation at the hands of foreigners that marked China’s chaotic modern history. In Taiwan, ethnically Chinese people live in freedom, govern themselves democratically, and have the rule of law. They’re also better off economically: according to the Central Intelligence Agency, Taiwan has a per capita income of $24,502, compared to $16,117 for China.
To put it another way, the pro-Taiwan crowd sees the country as an invaluable political warfare tool in the Free World’s struggle with Beijing. Knowledge of Taiwan’s success is one of several factors eroding support for the CCP, and the CCP knows it.
But Trump didn’t. To his credit, he eventually had some political appointees beneath him who were very pro-Taiwan. This feature may have been unintentional, given Trump’s galactic incompetence with personnel—an eighth wonder of the world. But it worked out for Taiwan. Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, gave strong verbal support to Taiwan, approved several arms packages for the country, including new F-16 fighters, and sent his under secretary to visit the nation. He also dropped pointless and insulting curbs on diplomatic engagement with Taiwan that had often led U.S. and Taiwanese officials to meet in coffee shops. Pompeo was also tougher on China than any secretary of state since John Foster Dulles, if not ever. Pompeo heralded an end to “blind engagement” of Beijing and condemned China’s military aggression and human rights abuses.
But the rub for Trump was a belief that Taiwan wouldn’t fight in a war, at least not for long. An interesting feature of Washington’s feckless national security establishment has been a stark shift in views on China, from a belief that its threat to Taiwan was overblown to an assumption that it will eventually conquer the island. In part because of a lack of communication between top levels of both nations’ militaries (in contravention of law), and thanks to decades of pre-Trump neglect of getting adequate U.S.-made arms to Taiwan, there is a view that the country would fold rapidly in a conflict with China. If we wake up one Sunday to learn that China has plastered Taiwan with hundreds of conventional missiles, with paratroopers presumably on the way, and the Chinese navy dominating the Taiwan Strait, will the Taiwanese even hold out long enough for Washington to marshal its too-few ships and aircraft in the Pacific for a fight?
I think they will.
First, there is the political angle. While the Free World lost Hong Kong to the CCP, its people, who struggle on through more subdued means, did not lose their freedom in vain. Supposedly concerned only about money, the people of Hong Kong, through protest and resistance, showed that free ethnically Chinese people will not surrender their freedom without a fight. While this now seems obvious, it was in doubt before Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement in 2014 and much broader protests of 2019 and 2020. This sentiment was echoed on Taiwan, where the tough-on-Beijing ruling party and president achieved resounding success in 2020 elections and relegated to a fringe the old voices that still entertained union with China under the CCP.
Then there is the military angle. Under Trump, officials at the State Department, National Security Council, and Pentagon accelerated quick, simpler arms sales to Taipei, which in turn increased its defense spending. They set aside costly options like the F-35 fighter, and instead moved pragmatic aircraft and other weapons like tanks, drones, missiles, and missile-defense systems to the country—all paid for by Taiwan. Just this week, the Biden administration continued the trend by notifying Congress it intended to export M109 self-propelled howitzers to Taiwan. The country is developing its own electric submarine, which could help the U.S. Navy and Air Force sink a Chinese invasion force.
Taiwan can hold out, given it has the both the political will and military means to fight for its freedom. Beijing likely suspects this, and should understand that the risks it would face in attacking Taiwan are too great, especially since failure would destabilize the Chinese government.
Washington could make the world a safer place by acknowledging this reality as well, and dispensing with the defeatist, pessimistic view of Taiwan. Furthermore, it is negligent that our two militaries do not drill together and have a unified military command, ideally with Japan involved as well. By taking these steps, Taiwan can be an even greater asset in our deterrence of China and struggle against CCP aggression.
Image: Reuters.
11. The promise of open-source intelligence
Open source intelligence or simply the Fourth Estate doing its job?
Excerpts:
The likelihood that the truth will be uncovered raises the cost of wrongdoing for governments. Although OSINT might not prevent Russia from invading Ukraine or China from building its gulag, it exposes the flimsiness of their lies. Eliot Higgins, Bellingcat’s founder, is right when he describes his organisation as “an intelligence agency for the people”. No wonder that Russia’s spy chief railed against it, most recently just this month.
Liberal democracies will also be kept more honest. Citizens will no longer have to take their governments on trust. News outlets will have new ways of holding them to account. Today’s open sources and methods would have shone a brighter light on the Bush administration’s accusation in 2003 that Iraq was developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. That would have subjected America’s invasion of the country to greater scrutiny. It might even have prevented it.
The promise of open-source intelligence
It is a welcome threat to malefactors and governments with something to hide
Aug 7th 2021
THE GREAT hope of the 1990s and 2000s was that the internet would be a force for openness and freedom. As Stewart Brand, a pioneer of online communities, put it: “Information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time.” It was not to be. Bad information often drove out good. Authoritarian states co-opted the technologies that were supposed to loosen their grip. Information was wielded as a weapon of war. Amid this disappointment one development offers cause for fresh hope: the emerging era of open-source intelligence (OSINT).
New sensors, from humdrum dashboard cameras to satellites that can see across the electromagnetic spectrum, are examining the planet and its people as never before. The information they collect is becoming cheaper. Satellite images cost several thousand dollars 20 years ago, today they are often provided free and are of incomparably higher quality. A photograph of any spot on Earth, of a stricken tanker or the routes taken by joggers in a city is available with a few clicks. And online communities and collaborative tools, like Slack, enable hobbyists and experts to use this cornucopia of information to solve riddles and unearth misdeeds with astonishing speed.
Human Rights Watch has analysed satellite imagery to document ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Nanosatellites tag the automatic identification system of vessels that are fishing illegally. Amateur sleuths have helped Europol, the European Union’s policing agency, investigate child sexual exploitation by identifying geographical clues in the background of photographs. Even hedge funds routinely track the movements of company executives in private jets, monitored by a web of amateurs around the world, to predict mergers and acquisitions.
OSINT thus bolsters civil society, strengthens law enforcement and makes markets more efficient. It can also humble some of the world’s most powerful countries.
In the face of vehement denials from the Kremlin, Bellingcat, an investigative group, meticulously demonstrated Russia’s role in the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014, using little more than a handful of photographs, satellite images and elementary geometry. It went on to identify the Russian agents who attempted to assassinate Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, in England in 2018. Amateur analysts and journalists used OSINT to piece together the full extent of Uyghur internment camps in Xinjiang. In recent weeks researchers poring over satellite imagery have spotted China constructing hundreds of nuclear-missile silos in the desert.
Such an emancipation of information promises to have profound effects. The decentralised and egalitarian nature of OSINT erodes the power of traditional arbiters of truth and falsehood, in particular governments and their spies and soldiers. For those like this newspaper who believe that secrecy can too easily be abused by people in power, OSINT is welcome.
The likelihood that the truth will be uncovered raises the cost of wrongdoing for governments. Although OSINT might not prevent Russia from invading Ukraine or China from building its gulag, it exposes the flimsiness of their lies. Eliot Higgins, Bellingcat’s founder, is right when he describes his organisation as “an intelligence agency for the people”. No wonder that Russia’s spy chief railed against it, most recently just this month.
Liberal democracies will also be kept more honest. Citizens will no longer have to take their governments on trust. News outlets will have new ways of holding them to account. Today’s open sources and methods would have shone a brighter light on the Bush administration’s accusation in 2003 that Iraq was developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. That would have subjected America’s invasion of the country to greater scrutiny. It might even have prevented it.
Some will warn that OSINT threatens national security—as when, for example, researchers use data from fitness trackers to reveal remote CIA outposts and radar satellites to locate American missile-defence systems. But, if OSINT can tell the world about such things, a country’s enemies are already able to know them. Pretending otherwise does not make states any safer.
Others will point out that OSINT can be wrong. After the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 internet users scrutinised the crime scene and identified several suspects. All were innocent bystanders. Or OSINT could be used by bad actors to spread misinformation and conspiracy theories.
However, every source of information is fallible and the scrutiny of imagery and data is more empirical than most of them. Hence, when OSINT is mistaken or malign, competing OSINT is often the best way to put the record straight. And over time, researchers and investigators can build a reputation for honesty, sound analysis and good judgment, making it easier for people to distinguish trustworthy sources of intelligence from charlatans.
The greatest worry is that the explosion of data behind open-source investigations also threatens individual privacy. The data generated by phones and sold by brokers let Bellingcat identify the Russian spies who last year poisoned Alexei Navalny, an opposition leader. Similar data were exploited to pick out a senior Catholic priest in America, who resigned last month after his location was linked to his use of Grindr, a gay dating app.
A see-through world
The privacy of individuals in a digital age is fraught with trade-offs. At the level of states and organisations, however, OSINT promises to be a force for good. It is also unstoppable. Before the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, America’s government was able to buy up virtually all the relevant commercial satellite imagery. Today too much data are available for that to be possible.
A world where many American, European, Chinese and Russian satellite companies vie to sell images is one of mutually assured surveillance. This is a future that open societies would be wise to embrace. Tools and communities that can unearth missile silos and unveil spies will make the world less mysterious and a little less dangerous. Information still wants to be free—and OSINT is on a mission to liberate it. ■
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "The people’s panopticon"
12. The 'disinformation' deception
Unfortunately for those of us who believe absolutely in the First Amendment (and the rest of the nine) we will always be subject to misinformation. We can deal with misinformation. I would rather "fight through" it than have us subject to censorship and regulations that will be far worse in the long run.
Conclusion:
Indeed, there is no evidence that regulations, whether enforced by corporate stooges or government itself, make us safer or alter human nature or stop people from believing stupid things. All the laws regulating speech in Europe haven’t slowed hateful ideologies from gaining traction. And once we normalize the idea that corporations have an extrajudicial duty to stop “misinformation” at the direction of government officials, who work in the administration with former top officials of these tech companies, the spirit of the First Amendment is being corroded.
The 'disinformation' deception
by David Harsanyi, Columnist | | August 05, 2021 11:00 PM
"We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, almost matter-of-factly, in July. The same week, Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield insisted that social media companies “should be held accountable” for misinformation on their platforms, singling out “conservative news outlets who are creating irresponsible content.” Even President Joe Biden got in on the act, accusing Facebook of “killing people” by allowing misinformation, before walking it back.
While those considered guilty of spreading “misinformation” won’t find themselves under lock and key, the underlying inclination of those in power has a long and sordid history in America.
Protecting people from the scourge of “misinformation” has been the leading rationale for censorship since nearly the beginning of the republic. In the second year of his presidency, John Adams griped that there had been “more new error propagated by the press in the last ten years than in a hundred years before 1798.” Congress soon helped Adams tackle the purported flood of misinformation by passing the Sedition Act, making the dissemination of “any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government” illegal. And, as with most censorship efforts, the law was soon used as a cudgel by those in power. The first person who found himself jailed under the new law was the rambunctious Adams critic Rep. Matthew Lyon of Vermont.
When President Woodrow Wilson became concerned that antiwar protesters would undermine support for his entrance into World War I, his allies passed another Sedition Act, empowering the postmaster general to censor any letter, pamphlet, or book that conveyed “false reports or false statements.” Wilson enacted censorship policies in conjunction with not only Congress, but with powerful newspaper owners and business interests. Numerous dissenters found themselves in prison, including the prominent socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs. Hardly anyone complained.
These days, every alleged font of misinformation — “white supremacy,” “Russian interference,” partisan debate over the pandemic — is an existential threat against democracy. The establishment Left, by which I mean those in charge of most institutions in society today, continues to normalize the idea that it is moral to suppress ideas to shield citizens, as if they were children, from dangerous speech. Major outlets such as the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and many others run op-eds arguing, citing “experts,” that zealous adherence to First Amendment protections is hopelessly antiquated in a time of mass “disinformation.”
Setting aside First Amendment concerns, the state has no moral claim to dictate the veracity of speech. As we’ve learned during the coronavirus pandemic, health officials have trouble conveying truth. The oscillations, obfuscations, and confusing messaging of the CDC and other health officials have done more to corrode trust in science and government than any conspiracy theorist could ever hope to achieve spreading misinformation on a social media platform. We’re going to have to figure it out ourselves. One of the obvious problems with regulating “misinformation,” through state pressure or otherwise, is that a person would have to accept that most “facts” have already been adjudicated. But that is often not the case. During last year’s pandemic, for example, Facebook was pressured, and acquiesced, to ban posts that theorized that COVID-19 had been man-made and manufactured in China. The “misinformation” was prohibited over fears that such talk would fuel anti-Asian sentiment. Yet, the debate over the origins of the pandemic was not resolved. It is still not resolved. Only when a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report was leaked to newspapers did we learn that three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology got sick enough in November 2019 to be hospitalized, and Facebook lifted the ban. For nearly a year, it was impossible for millions of people to discuss a completely reasonable question.
You could argue, in fact, that regarding certain segments of the debate, you were only allowed to read “misinformation” on Facebook. Thus were we subject not to rigorous fact-checking but to the propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party, able through U.S. Democrats to crack down on American dissent from the Beijing line.
Sooner or later, every censor in history expands the definition of mis- or disinformation to try to undercut the rights of political opponents. One of the ways they do this is by conflating crackpottery — which, no doubt, exists in abundance — with legitimate speech and debate. The most infamous recent example of such censorship came after the New York Post broke details of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s shady overseas dealings with Ukraine and China in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. Virtually the entire journalistic establishment defamed the newspaper, asserting that the story was unprofessionally reported, and likely a conduit for Russian “disinformation.” Social media companies buried or banned the sharing of the story, which was never debunked and did not appear to violate any rules the speech police had been enforcing.
Since 2015, Democrats have treated all politically problematic stories as Putin disinformation. In the Hunter Biden case, more than 50 former intelligence officials signed a letter asserting as much — by all accounts wrongly. As it turned out, unlike countless pieces that had been reported by major media outlets regarding COVID, and “Russian collusion,” and Brett Kavanaugh’s history — to name a few news storms — not a single aspect of the Hunter Biden story has been disproved. Liberals had simply exploited hysterical fears over disinformation to try to kill a story, and powerful Democrats were able to strong-arm the private companies that largely control digital speech into censoring inconvenient reporting. As in the China/COVID case, politicians and their allies were importing authoritarian practices under the guise of protecting the public from bad thoughts.
It isn’t surprising that the definition of “misinformation” has been rapidly evolving. NPR recently lamented the ability of popular conservative pundit Ben Shapiro’s site the Daily Wire to garner more Facebook engagement than establishment outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. The piece’s conceit is that the Daily Wire spreads “misinformation” because its writers “tend to not provide very much context for the information” they publish. “Context,” as anyone who’s paid attention to “fact-checkers” over the past few years can tell you, means framing facts within a liberal worldview. “If you’ve stripped enough context away,” Jaime Settle, director of the Social Networks and Political Psychology Lab at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, told NPR, “any piece of truth can become a piece of misinformation.”
What happens when anything conflicting with progressive “truth” can be labeled misinformation? Misinformation becomes “violence,” tantamount to “killing people,” as the president might say. Not long ago, the American Booksellers Association was forced to apologize profusely for including Abigail Shrier’s compelling book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters in a promotional email, preposterously referring to it as a “serious, violent incident.” (Italics mine.) Equating speech with imminent harm — in this case, a book written by an author with degrees from Columbia, Oxford, and Yale Law School laying out potential harm against children — is another way of limiting discourse.
A Canadian man was recently arrested after violating a court order banning him from speaking publicly about his child’s gender transition. Not only doesn’t this father have a right to stop his underage child from abusing puberty-blocking pharmaceuticals, but he’s also punished for using unapproved pronouns. How long before such ideas are normalized here?
To make matters worse, few organizations exist that defend free expression on neutral grounds. The American Civil Liberties Union, once so rigidly principled that it famously defended the right of a neo-Nazi group to march through the Jewish-heavy Chicago suburb of Skokie, now argues that free speech should be curbed so as not to offend “marginalized” groups. “Speech that denigrates such groups can inflict serious harms and is intended to and often will impede progress toward equality,” the ACLU declares in its guidelines governing case selection, “Conflicts Between Competing Values or Priorities.”
Tech companies and media organizations certainly no longer feel any civic responsibility to uphold liberal values or open debate, systemically impinging on the ability of people to engage with each other. More perniciously, the technocracy wields power for political ends. Twitter permanently banned a president and many of his supporters for spreading “disinformation” regarding the results of the 2020 election that sounds curiously similar to the rhetoric Democrats used about the 2016 election. And when millions of Donald Trump fans left Twitter and tried to start another social media platform, Parler, hosting companies such as Apple, Google, and Amazon effectively shut that site down as well.
Perhaps we could take Twitter’s claims to upholding the sanctity of truth and decency more seriously if it didn’t host Chinese Communists who rely on slave labor or Iranian officials who use eliminationist rhetoric against the Jews. Are these people any better than numbskulls who believe in chemtrails or that nanotechnological robots are in our vaccines? Let them have their say. That’s the price of living in a free nation. We’re adults. We’ll figure out what we want to believe.
Whenever some right-winger proposes regulating fairness on social media, liberals will earnestly point out that private companies are free to make their own decisions — perhaps the only time the Left takes this idealistic position on property rights. If it really believed in free association, the Left would be utterly outraged by state-pressured speech codes that are in place. Big Tech, which controls a huge swath of our interactions and information flow, does what the state tells it to do. Companies spend millions every year lobbying and rent-seeking. Mark Zuckerberg wants the government to regulate misinformation so he doesn’t have to do it. This not only frees him from negative public attention on “Russian interference” and COVID, but forces his competition to deal with expensive regulatory regimes they may not be able to afford.
It is true that Section 230 gives Big Tech immunity from liability, restraining the kind of litigiousness that generates risk aversion and undermines a free and open internet. But CEOs and cultural elites collude with the government sometimes explicitly, but most often implicitly, to dictate what people can see and talk about, ostensibly to rid us of misinformation, functionally speaking, in the censorship business. And as the Washington Examiner's Katherine Doyle has reported in great detail, the Biden transition team and administration has included former board members, lobbyists, and policy directors from these Silicon Valley firms.
Indeed, there is no evidence that regulations, whether enforced by corporate stooges or government itself, make us safer or alter human nature or stop people from believing stupid things. All the laws regulating speech in Europe haven’t slowed hateful ideologies from gaining traction. And once we normalize the idea that corporations have an extrajudicial duty to stop “misinformation” at the direction of government officials, who work in the administration with former top officials of these tech companies, the spirit of the First Amendment is being corroded.
David Harsanyi is a senior writer at National Review.
13. US Tech Products Enable Chinese Surveillance in Xinjiang, Researchers Find
The 50 page report, China's Surveillance State: A Global Project, can be downloaded HERE.
US Tech Products Enable Chinese Surveillance in Xinjiang, Researchers Find
UPDATED at 10:15 A.M. ET on 2021-08-06
U.S. technology companies are still supplying China’s surveillance state with equipment and software for monitoring populations and censoring information, including in the Xinjiang region, despite damning revelations that have led to genocide accusations against Beijing, according to researchers.
At least seven U.S. companies whose technology helped build a Chinese digital surveillance program known as the Golden Shield Project (GSP) are continuing to advance it by selling their products to China, say academic researchers Valentin Weber and Vasilis Ververis.
Their report, “China’s Surveillance State: A Global Project,” published Tuesday, comes as U.S. companies are facing heightened scrutiny over their ties to the Chinese government’s extensive and intrusive use of surveillance technology to monitor and control the populations of Xinjiang Tibet, and Hong Kong.
Launched in 1998, the Golden Shield Project (GSP) is China’s nationwide network-security project, featuring powerful surveillance and censorship technologies deployed by authorities to track political dissidents, activists, ethnic minorities and others seen as threats to the regime or to stability.
“This assistance continues until the present day. As our report shows, Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle still supply vital equipment to Chinese police departments across the country,” write Weber and Ververis.
Their report also says that Intel core processors are “likely being used for surveillance purposes” in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) — helping police monitoring at the Urumqi Diwopu International Airport in the regional capital Urumqi (in Chinese, Wulumuqi), one of the few international gateways into and out of Xinjiang.
Chinese policies in the XUAR have come in for particular criticism with the U.S. government and some European legislatures have declared that persecution of the Uyghurs — including a network of internment camps believed to have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other minorities since 2017 — amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity. China angrily denies the allegations.
“As this report demonstrates, entities based in democracies simply ignore that the Chinese companies they collaborate with also provide technology to the Chinese police and military,” says the report, whose findings are based on publicly available government bidding documents for technology products and services.
Troubling Chinese partners
The U.S. companies that sell into the U.S. $260 billion technology market in the world’s second-biggest economy may not be aware of compromising entanglements, the report says. Many of the exports and collaboration done by third parties and subsidiaries complicates due diligence evaluations.
Among the Chinese companies that use U.S. technology to provide surveillance and censorship services are several that have deployed systems in the XUAR, even as Washington has stepped up scrutiny of corporate supply chains to stop American firms from abetting forced labor and other repressive practices.
Beijing Zhongke Fuxing Information Technology Co. Ltd., for example, has a “disturbing involvement in Xinjiang,” where it has completed several digital surveillance-related projects and equipped detention centers, the report says.
The company lists U.S. tech concerns Microsoft, IBM, Intel, HP, Oracle, CISCO and Dell EMC’s Greenplum as its commercial partners.
Another Chinese company, Xiamen Dragon Information Technology Co. Ltd., provides public security intelligence platforms, including face capture equipment that uses the Intel XEON dual 6-core processor to identify mobile devices and information from instant-messaging software from smartphones.
The firm, whose international partners include Microsoft, Oracle, Dell, HP, IBM and Cisco, also provides a system that allows police to apply ethnic tags such as Uyghur, Tibetan, and Han Chinese to a subject to help it discover groups of people.
Xiamen Dragon signed an agreement with the Tibet Autonomous Region’s Public Security Department in 2017 to build a big data and cloud computing product to foster a “safe Tibet” and a “stable social atmosphere,” the report says.
China’s Neusoft Corp., whose Golden Shield role included helping the Ministry of Public Security build its National Basic Population Information Resource Database project in the early 2000s, also helps XUAR authorities process data collected from the household registration system, fingerprint collection, and facial recognition. It has subsidiaries in the U.S., Japan, and Europe, and cooperates with Intel on network technology, the researchers say.
Uyghurs line up for a security checkpoint to enter a bazaar under a screen showing Chinese President Xi Jinping in the city of Hotan in northwestern China's Xinjiang region, Nov. 3, 2017. Credit: Associated Press
‘Due diligence is ineffective’
“Our findings show that U.S. technology companies’ due diligence is ineffective,” Weber said in an email to RFA. “A change in behavior will unlikely come from companies themselves, since they’re profit driven.”
“If the U.S. government is really concerned about what is happening in Xinjiang…then it needs to make clear to U.S. companies that if they continue to be complicit in China’s surveillance state this may come at a financial cost for them at home,” he said. “This may induce a change in behavior abroad.”
RFA contacted the U.S. companies mentioned in the report for comment and received responses from Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp. and IBM Corp.
“While we do not always know nor can we control what products our customers create or the applications end-users may develop, Intel does not support or tolerate our products being used to violate human rights,” said Nancy Sanchez from Intel’s corporate communications office in an email.
“Where we become aware of a concern that Intel products are being used by a business partner in connection with abuses of human rights, we will restrict or cease business with the third party until and unless we have high confidence that Intel’s products are not being used to violate human rights,” she said.
Microsoft has put in place “a robust set of policies intended to safeguard against the misuse of our technology, including refusing to deploy technologies like facial recognition in ways that may put people’s safety or human rights at risk,” said a spokesperson said the Redmond, Washington-based company.
“We require our partners to abide by these policies, and we investigate and enforce violations up to ending the relationship,” the spokesperson said in an email. “We regularly review our operations and engage policymakers, academia, industry, and advocacy organizations to continually improve our policies.”
IBM opposes and does not condone the use of technology for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms, or any purpose that conflicts with the company's values and principles, said Chris Mumma from IBM's external relations office in an email.
“We enforce rigorous processes across our global operations to protect against direct or third-party business engagements that may run counter to these commitments,” he said. “As a company focused on operating responsibly, IBM continually reviews and strengthens our screening processes based on global best practices and evolving circumstances worldwide.”
Weber and Ververis recommend that companies that do business with Chinese tech firms increase due diligence, and they urge governments to review Chinese-owned firms that operate or own subsidiaries in their territories to determine whether the companies supply Chinese public security bureaus and the military.
Their report also recommends that U.S. companies check third-party contractors that buy their products in China to ensure that tech exports are not used in systems deployed by public security bureaus.
‘Absolutely reprehensible’
Uyghur rights groups criticized the U.S. companies for abetting surveillance and other abusive policies toward the 12 million Uyghurs in the XUAR.
“It is absolutely reprehensible that U.S. companies are powering the Chinese state and putting billions of innocent people at risk globally, as well as being complicit in the Uyghur genocide,” said Rushan Abbas, executive director of Washington-based Campaign for Uyghurs, in an email to RFA.
“In particular, as this police state and tools of oppression have been perfected in carrying out the Uyghur genocide, our government must recognize that swift action is needed to halt the sale of American equipment to a genocidal regime,” she said.
Companies providing technology to China despite the genocide accusations, increasing U.S. sanctions of senior Chinese officials, and blacklists of Chinese companies for using Uyghur forced labor, “will be held accountable in the future for their shameful role,” said Dolkun Isa, president of the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress.
“The material and technical support continuously provided by some American and Western high-tech companies to China means they’re actively aiding and abetting China’s genocide of Uyghurs,” he wrote in an email to RFA.
“These companies should immediately stop aiding and abetting China’s genocide of Uyghurs by cutting any material and technical support they provide to a totalitarian regime that not only commits genocide against Uyghurs but also poses the biggest national security threat to the U.S.-led Western democracies,” he said.
The Weber and Ververis report was supported by a grant from UK-based Top10VPN.com, a website that reviews virtual private network services and publishes news and investigations on digital privacy and internet security.
Reported by Roseanne Gerin and Alim Seytoff for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Translated by Alim Seytoff. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
14. Chased and jailed: No rest and much danger for Asia's young revolutionaries
It is very useful to study the tactics, techniques, and procedures, as well as the plans and strategies these revolutionaries are employing. And of course if we could get priority for continued funding, the project would continue to study the current revolutionary activity. Unfortunately, this project is one of the casualties of budget cuts along with others that focus on the human domain such as the Asymmetric Warfare Group, the Army, Red Team Leaders program, the University of Foriegn and cultural Studies at Fort Leavenworth.
Chased and jailed: No rest and much danger for Asia's young revolutionaries
SINGAPORE —
Benja Apan hoped to study engineering in the United States and get a job with Elon Musk. She’s now facing six decades in prison for insulting the king of Thailand.
Ei Thinzar Maung had dreams of winning a seat in Myanmar’s parliament and championing the rights of women and ethnic minorities. She was beaten and arrested four years ago, and is now hiding in the jungle from a military junta that’s killed and imprisoned thousands of her peers.
Ivan Choi was studying chemistry in Hong Kong when he joined a protest movement calling for more freedom from China. He’s since fled to Taiwan where he lives in exile and is not likely to ever see his family or home again.
The three activists — all in their 20s — once seemed destined for promising lives. But they dared to challenge some of the most entrenched powers in Asia, becoming fugitives with shattered career ambitions and persistent traumas. Their stories reflect the seismic changes sweeping Asia, where voices for democracy have been suppressed by corruption, growing inequality and the widening influence of the so-called China model and its blend of repression and prosperity.
Much of Asia’s youth is coming of age at a time when civil liberties are in retreat. Many are jailed, tortured, killed and disappeared. In Hong Kong, Thailand and Myanmar, opposition parties are no longer tolerated, open dissent has been outlawed and protests violently put down. Cambodia’s long-standing dictator Hun Sen abolished his political rivals, Laos remains a one-party communist state and Vietnam, despite all its economic advancements, has stifled freedoms.
The World They Inherit
This is the third in a series of occasional stories about the challenges young people face in an increasingly perilous world. Reporting was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center.
“Everything is going backward,” said Ei Thinzar Maung, 27, who spoke over video from an undisclosed location in a bare room with plain white walls. “I just want to live a normal life, but I can’t. For our future — for our independence — we have to fight.”
Even the region’s democracies are under threat. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has incited ethno-nationalistic fervor. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has assailed independent media and presided over thousands of extrajudicial killings. Malaysia has degenerated into a political morass after a landmark election in 2018 raised hopes of a progressive future. Singapore constrains opposition parties. And Indonesia, the world’s third-largest democracy, has failed to rein in endemic corruption and religious polarization.
Benja Apan, 22, a pro-democracy activist poses for a portrait on the campus of Thammasat University, where she studies, in Bangkok, Thailand.
(Adam Dean/For the Times)
It is a bleak, and some say, futile outlook for a generation of idealistic and liberal-minded young people living in the shadow of an authoritarian China with an assertive regional reach. Yet hope persists. Armed with technology and the warp-speed language of pop culture, the protest generation has galvanized support across borders with indelible gestures like the defiant three-finger salute borrowed from the dystopian “Hunger Games” films.
They’ve coalesced online through the Milk Tea Alliance, a grass-roots social media campaign that brings together a shared love for the pan-Asian beverage and an enmity for autocratic regimes. The campaign — with its own Twitter emoji — is a mostly symbolic reincarnation of global youth movements including those that arose around the Arab Spring. But it has united and mobilized the young in ways that would have been impossible for their parents and grandparents in capitals stretching from Bangkok to Manila.
Unlike older generations, many of today’s young people have experienced free elections, upward mobility and access to the internet and the outside world. Preserving and advancing freedoms will become a lifelong battle on a continent that’s home to 60% of the world’s population and is poised to shape global affairs — wars, climate change, economies — for decades to come.
“Democracy is in decline across the region, but the young generation provides a silver lining for democratic renewal,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political science professor at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. “Young people fundamentally need a more open environment for the lifestyle they intend to lead. That’s why, 10 years from now or 20 years from now, we may see a democratic resurgence. It’s taking a beating now, but it’s not out.”
::
Benja Apan was 15 when the commander of the Thai army, Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, appeared on television and declared the nation under military control.
The 2014 takeover marked the 13th coup in Thailand since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932, yet it barely registered in Benja’s home in Nakhon Ratchasima, a rural city 130 miles from Bangkok surrounded by sugar and tapioca fields.
Benja Apan in her room near the campus of Thammasat University on July 27, 2021.
(Adam Dean / For The Times)
Despite hailing from a hotbed of political opposition, Benja’s family members were royalists. They viewed the military as guardians of the sacred monarchy. Benja never imagined thinking differently. She was a diligent student focused on earning an engineering degree. Nothing interested her more than space exploration. She admired Musk and often stayed awake in the middle of the night to watch the latest launch of his SpaceX rockets.
It wasn’t until Benja moved to Bangkok for her studies and befriended student activists that she began questioning why Thailand had no aerospace industry of its own or why it was trapped in a cycle of political instability.
She learned about disappeared human rights workers and was stunned when King Maha Vajiralongkorn ascended to the throne in 2016 and enriched himself overnight by seizing control of the Crown Property Bureau, a state fund that’s conservatively valued at $70 billion.
Her political awakening accelerated in 2019 when Prayuth, who had already grabbed power in a coup, extended his role as prime minister after the general election. The military had amended the constitution to ensure his victory. The following year, a court dissolved a new opposition party called Future Forward that had energized Benja and the country’s young people by advocating an end to the dominance of the monarchy, the military and the business elite.
Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha arrives at his office in Bangkok on June 6, 2019.
(Sakchai Lalit / Associated Press)
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Benja and thousands of other students swarmed the streets of the nation’s capital demanding a new constitution and parliament. Then the unthinkable happened: the protesters aimed their scorn at the king, an eccentric figure who seemingly spent more time at his redoubt in the Bavarian Alps than his home country.
Benja attended a rally where demonstrators wore crop tops to poke fun at the sexagenarian monarch, who was famously photographed once baring his midriff in a skimpy shirt while roaming a German mall. Others began dressing as Harry Potter characters, likening the king, protected by a lese-majeste law that imposes a 15-year prison term on anyone who disparages him, to Lord Voldemort.
The three-finger salute swept Bangkok. Benja felt emboldened enough to hold a rally last October outside the German Embassy calling for an investigation of the king. She gained more attention in January when a security guard slapped her as she livestreamed a protest at an upscale mall.
Anti-government protesters flash the three-finger salute outside the Criminal Court during a protest in Bangkok, Thailand, on March 6, 2021.
(Sakchai Lalit / Associated Press)
“Thailand is not a healthy country,” said Benja, 22, speaking from her dormitory at Thammasat University, a school remembered for a student massacre in 1976 that still haunts the pro-democracy movement.
“They launched the coup to seize power,” said Benja, who speaks with an impish grin and wears oversized glasses and a childish fringe that belie a ferocious determination. “They changed the constitution to make the rules benefit them and make [Prayuth] prime minister.”
The demonstrations, the most spirited Thailand has seen in decades, eventually went silent with the spread of COVID-19, the fracturing of protest groups and the arrest of organizers. Benja says she has no regrets. Her generation challenged the king in a way that can’t be undone.
“Young people cannot tolerate this same old society,” said Benja. “In the past, we were not taught to have critical thinking. We have been blocked from information.... The world has changed now and younger people start to question things more. Sooner or later, they will grow up. And the country has to move forward.”
But that passion has come at a price.
“I think I have to face jail for a maximum of 60 years,” she said, counting off on her fingers the lese-majeste, sedition and unlawful assembly charges mounted against her. She remains in school and is fighting the charges with the help of a human rights lawyer. “If I confess, it could go down to 30 years.”
::
During the early months of the Thailand protests, Benja and other students poured over online video of demonstrations in Hong Kong. They were inspired by the ability of protesters there to scatter at the sight of police and then emerge somewhere else unscathed — a tactic defined by the creed to “be like water.”
Police officers in riot gear pin down young female protesters as other officers use tear gas, batons and shields to control the crowd and make arrests in Hong Kong on Sept. 29, 2019.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Ivan Choi, 22, was part of that water. He was in his second year at Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University studying chemistry when the protests erupted in spring 2019 over a proposed extradition bill that many feared would give mainland China another way to impose its authority over the semiautonomous city and its democratic ambitions.
(Choi previously spoke to The Times for a podcast using the pseudonym Daniel to avoid drawing attention from authorities in Hong Kong. He says he no longer fears reprisals.)
Choi had designs of entering the middle class, improving on his upbringing as the son of a single mother who worked her way up from housecleaner to hotel manager. But the more China tried to impose its will on Hong Kong, the less Choi believed he had a future in the city of 7 million.
Ivan Choi, a Hong Kong protester who fled to Taiwan.
(Ivan Choi)
The cost of living was soaring, propelled in part by the steady arrival of new residents from the mainland. Affordable housing was scarce and the Cantonese culture he grew up with was being overshadowed by calls to be more patriotic and loyal to Beijing. A way of life was unraveling.
By summer 2019, Hong Kong’s demonstrations grew more violent as police began deploying tear gas. Middle-aged professionals began to fade from the rallies, replaced by high school and college students clad in black wearing hard hats, goggles and gas masks. They were called “front-liners” and Choi fit right in.
A woman runs through tear gas used by the Hong Kong police to disperse demonstrators on Sept. 29, 2019.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
On the night of July 1, his life would change forever. Choi was among dozens of frustrated front-line demonstrators who felt peaceful protest had failed. The group stormed Hong Kong’s Legislative Council and ransacked the building, smashing portraits of pro-Beijing politicians and spray-painting slogans on the walls like “Hong Kong is not China.”
Police drove them out, and in the chaos, Choi’s leg was injured by a bean bag projectile. He was dragged away. His appearance in news reports meant police would be able to identify him. With an arrest imminent, his friends urged him to pack his bags and flee.
Within days Choi had booked a flight to Taiwan, a self-governing island at odds with China that was granting refuge to protesters. His mom saw him off at the airport, but he never told her the real reason he was leaving, just that he was going for his studies. Choi looked out the window of the plane as it took off. He told himself it was probably the last time he would see Hong Kong.
“All I remember is crying from my home to the airport. As long as the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] exists, I can’t go back,” said Choi, who learned police had come to his home in search of him weeks after he left the city.
Those early months in Taiwan were the hardest. He was racked with guilt watching livestreams of protesters clashing with riot police. The trauma from weeks on the front line triggered recurring nightmares of his friends being corralled and beaten by officers. After a while, it was easier to just stay awake. He developed insomnia and his health deteriorated.
His condition has improved with the help of medication. But Hong Kong has become unrecognizable. The national security law imposed by Beijing last year has all but extinguished dissent in the Asian financial center. Journalists have been silenced, critics jailed and peaceful demonstrations — including the annual June 4 vigil — effectively banned. More than 10,000 people have been arrested in connection with the unrest.
Choi has embraced his new home, an island 100 miles off the coast of China where the former Chinese Nationalist government fled in 1949 after being defeated by the communists. He’s studying the territory’s history and earning a degree in political science so he can advocate for democracy in the region. Taiwan’s pro-rights activists form an instrumental part of the Milk Tea Alliance — not the least because the island is the origin of boba milk tea.
Protesters demonstrating in solidarity with Myanmar’s anti-coup movement carry Milk Tea Alliance placards on Feb. 28, 2021, in Bangkok, Thailand.
(Sirachai Arunrugstichai / Getty Images)
But Taiwan’s future is fraught. Chinese President Xi Jinping has vowed to take the island, by force if necessary, risking a conflict that could draw in the U.S. If that happens, Choi says he can’t bear running again.
“I escaped once,” he said. “I went away from my war and I won’t go away for the second time. So if that moment comes, I will stand up and fight.”
::
Students at Ei Thinzar Maung’s high school in Mandalay called her “rebel” when she first arrived from Kachin state, a border region where war between Myanmar’s army and ethnic insurgents has raged for years.
She had no intention of living up to her nickname. Ei Thinzar Maung felt fortunate to be growing up at a time of unprecedented change in Myanmar. A military dictatorship was loosening its grip on power for the first time in 50 years. Political prisoners like the Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi were being released. Internet censorship was relaxed. There were suddenly freedoms she had never known.
Ei Thinzar Maung, the first in her family to graduate from university, decided to seize the opportunity by standing up for Myanmar’s marginalized ethnic minorities. She led a 400-mile march from Mandalay to Yangon in 2015 to protest a national education law that excluded ethnic languages and restricted student unions. When it ended, she was beaten by police and thrown in jail for more than a year.
It was a hint of what was to come. Myanmar’s brutal military, known as the Tatmadaw, had agreed to share power, but it had never truly surrendered control. It commanded the nation’s security apparatus and could block changes to Myanmar’s constitution.
Anti-coup protesters retreat from the front lines after police fired rubber bullets in Yangon, Myanmar, on March 11, 2021.
(Associated Press)
When the Tatmadaw began claiming fraud this year after another humiliating defeat in the general election, Ei Thinzar Maung sensed the generals would lash out. Her fears were realized in the predawn hours of Feb. 1. Soldiers fanned out across the country arresting members of the civilian government led by Suu Kyi. The Tatmadaw upended 10 years of fragile democratic reforms and restored military rule.
Ei Thinzar Maung still feels the collective fury that rang out each night in towns and cities across Myanmar as citizens banged pots and pans to protest the coup.
Thousands of young people, unburdened by the traumas of crushed uprisings in 1988 and 2007, took to the streets. They held flash mobs blocking traffic. They marched with signs in English designed to go viral, including one that read: “I want a relationship not a dictatorship.” They took cues from Thailand by flashing the three-finger salute and they adopted Hong Kong’s leaderless protest strategy to ensure the army couldn’t blunt their momentum with key arrests. Attention was sustained overseas with the help of the Milk Tea Alliance hashtag.
Slowly at first, and then with horrifying speed, the Tatmadaw showed how little it had changed. Young protesters were gunned down indiscriminately. Detainees were raped, tortured and beaten to death. By early August, more than 7,000 civilians had been arrested and more than 940 killed, according to the Myanmar-based Assistance Assn. for Political Prisoners.
A warrant was issued for Ei Thinzar Maung’s arrest. She had led a massive protest of female garment workers in Yangon and urged civil servants to go on strike. Like other wanted activists, she fled for the Thai border to seek refuge in rebel-held territory.
“They’d kill me if I were ever captured,” said Ei Thinzar Maung, whose life of activism began when she was named the first female president of her high school student union.
As the child of merchants, Ei Thinzar Maung says she grew up comfortably in Mogaung, a northern city near the border of China key for its rail link. Yet she’s always been troubled by injustice. Her father’s pursuit of a university degree was upended by a crackdown on students in 1988. She saw how her childhood friends had no career prospects and fell into drugs because they were shunned as ethnic minorities.
That worldview has led Ei Thinzar Maung to take unpopular stands. She’s one of the few activists in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma, to speak out against Suu Kyi and her government’s complicity in the Tatmadaw’s slaughter and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Muslim minority Rohingya starting in 2015.
Her life is now a blur of mountain hide-outs and grizzled rebel soldiers — at least until peace is restored. That could be years away, if ever. Fighting between the Tatmadaw and ethnic insurgents and militias is flaring. Thousands have been displaced. Western sanctions have had little effect. China’s tacit recognition of the junta has proved to matter more.
If Myanmar gets another chance at democracy, Ei Thinzar Maung says she’s prepared. She belongs to a new civilian government formed in exile in April that seeks to break the country of 54 million people out of its cycle of violence and despair. Her generation will never accept the junta, she said, because of their brief, if flawed, taste of freedom.
“Our generation grew up under democracy and this is our strength,” Ei Thinzar Maung said. “We have felt freedom. We were able to communicate with the outside world. We had so many hopes and dreams. We don’t want to go back to a military dictatorship.”
She moves from place to place, an unrepentant fugitive, a young woman with a future unknown.
More from The World They Inherit
(This is the third in a series of occasional stories about the challenges the young face in an increasingly perilous world. Reporting for the series was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.)
15. The Murder of the U.S. Middle Class Began 40 Years Ago This Week
Now this is an interesting thesis. I am not sure if it can be proven. Perhaps labor "collapsed" because of its own "business model" and how it does (or does not) advocate for the worker.
The direct causal relationship between the firing of the air traffic controllers and the crushing of labor is widely noted and celebrated on the right. In a 2003 speech at the Reagan Library in California, then-Chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan spoke glowingly of the “flexibility” of U.S. labor markets, by which he meant “the freedom to fire.” Greenspan said that “perhaps the most important” contribution to these flexible markets “was the firing of the air traffic controllers in August 1981. … [Reagan’s] action gave weight to the legal right of private employers, previously not fully exercised, to use their own discretion to both hire and discharge workers.”
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The question today is whether the U.S. will ever go back to being the middle-class society it once was. Many Americans have long believed and hoped that that was the norm, and we will naturally return to it without much effort on our part. But as the past 40 years have gone by, it appears more and more that Gilded Age brutality is the U.S. norm, and the years of an American middle class were a brief exception. That means recreating it will require the same titanic struggle needed to create it in the first place.
The Murder of the U.S. Middle Class Began 40 Years Ago This Week
Reagan’s firing of striking air traffic controllers was the first huge offensive in corporate America’s war on everyone else.
Members of PATCO, the air traffic controllers union. All strikers were fired on the order of President Ronald Reagan on Aug. 5, 1981.
Photo: Bettmann Archive
Forty years ago, on August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired 11,345 striking air traffic controllers and barred them from ever working again for the federal government. By October of that year, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or PATCO, the union that had called the strike, had been decertified and lay in ruins. The careers of most of the individual strikers were similarly dead: While Bill Clinton lifted Reagan’s ban on strikers in 1993, fewer than 10 percent were ever rehired by the Federal Aviation Administration.
PATCO was dominated by Vietnam War-era veterans who’d learned air traffic control in the military and were one of a vanishingly small number of unions to endorse Reagan in 1980, thereby scoring one of the greatest own goals in political history. It’s easy to imagine strikers expressing the same sentiments as a Trump voter who famously lamented, “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”
The PATCO saga began in February 1981, when negotiations began between the union and the FAA on a new contract. PATCO proposed changes including a 32-hour workweek and a big increase in pay. The FAA came back with counterproposals the union deemed insufficient, and on August 3, with bargaining at an impasse, most of the air traffic controllers walked out.
It was unquestionably illegal for PATCO, as a union of government workers, to strike. However, which laws are enforced is always and everywhere a political decision: Wall Street firms broke countless laws in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, yet almost no executives suffered any consequences. Reagan & Co. wanted to send a message that mere workers could expect no such forbearance. Just two days after the strike began, the air traffic controllers were gone.
The significance of Reagan’s actions is rarely discussed today in the mainstream, and for understandable reasons: It was the first huge offensive in a war that corporate America has been waging on this country’s middle class ever since. As Warren Buffett — current estimated net worth $101 billion — has said, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
The stunning victory of the wealthy over everyone else can been measured in several straightforward ways. During a speech last May at a community college in Cleveland, Joe Biden explained one of them:
From 1948 after the war to 1979, productivity in America grew by 100 percent. We made more things with productivity. You know what the workers’ pay grew? By 100 percent. Since 1979, all of that changed. Productivity has grown four times faster than pay has grown. The basic bargain in this country has been broken.
Productivity is a simple but extremely important economic concept. Over time, as technology advances and society learns how to use it, each worker can produce more. One person with a bulldozer can move a lot more dirt than one person with a shovel. One person with the latest version of Microsoft Excel can do a lot more math than one person with Napier’s bones.
The meaning of Biden’s statistics is that for decades after World War II, America got much richer overall, and average worker pay went up at the same rate. Then the link between productivity and pay was severed: The U.S. overall continued to get much richer, but most of the increased wealth went to the top, not to normal people. Corporate CEOs, partners at corporate law firms, orthopedic surgeons — they make three, five, 10 times what they did in 1981. Nurses, firefighters, janitors, almost anyone without a college degree — their pay has barely budged.
The situation is especially egregious at the bottom of the pay scale. Until 1968, Congress increased the federal minimum wage in line with productivity. That year, it reached its highest level: Adjusted for inflation, it was the equivalent of $12 per hour today. It has since fallen to $7.25. Yet the whole story is far worse. Even as low-wage workers have battled fruitlessly to get the federal minimum wage raised to $15, no one realizes that if it had continued increasing along with productivity since 1968, it would now be over $24 per hour. At that level, a couple working full-time minimum wage jobs would take home $96,000 a year. This seems incredible, yet there are no economic reasons it couldn’t happen; we have simply made a political decision that it should not.
Another way to understand this is to look at the other end of American society. In 1995, Bill Gates had a net worth of $10 billion, worth about $18 billion in today’s dollars. That was enough to make him the richest person in America. If that were all Gates had today, there would be 25 or so billionaires ahead of him in line. Jeff Bezos, currently in first place, possesses 10 times Gates’s 1995 net worth.
Then there’s the number of significant strikes in the U.S. each year. A confident, powerful labor movement will generate large numbers of strikes; one terrorized and cowed into submission will not. According to the Labor Department, there were generally 200-400 large-scale strikes each year from 1947 to 1979. There were 187 in 1980. Then after the PATCO firing, the numbers fell off a cliff. In 1988, the last full year of Reagan’s second term, there were just 40 strikes. By 2017, there were seven.
The direct causal relationship between the firing of the air traffic controllers and the crushing of labor is widely noted and celebrated on the right. In a 2003 speech at the Reagan Library in California, then-Chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan spoke glowingly of the “flexibility” of U.S. labor markets, by which he meant “the freedom to fire.” Greenspan said that “perhaps the most important” contribution to these flexible markets “was the firing of the air traffic controllers in August 1981. … [Reagan’s] action gave weight to the legal right of private employers, previously not fully exercised, to use their own discretion to both hire and discharge workers.”
Donald Devine, the head of Reagan’s Office of Personnel Management at the time, later wrote, “American business leaders were given a lesson in managerial leadership [by Reagan] that they could not and did not ignore. Many private sector executives have told me that they were able to cut the fat from their organizations and adopt more competitive work practices because of what the government did in those days.”
The question today is whether the U.S. will ever go back to being the middle-class society it once was. Many Americans have long believed and hoped that that was the norm, and we will naturally return to it without much effort on our part. But as the past 40 years have gone by, it appears more and more that Gilded Age brutality is the U.S. norm, and the years of an American middle class were a brief exception. That means recreating it will require the same titanic struggle needed to create it in the first place.
