Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"The essence of evil is its refusal to think."

– Hanah Arendt

"Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know."

– Aldous Huxley

"A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot."

– Robert A. Heinlein

1. The Business of American Military Deterrence

2. China Ups Surveillance of Troubled People to Quell Rising Unrest

3. Putin and Modi hold hands at China’s anti-Nato summit

4. Hundreds Killed in 6.0-Magnitude Earthquake, Afghan Officials Say

5. We Have Met the Enemy and He Isn’t Us By Rahm Emanuel

6. Data Centers That Don’t Exist Yet Are Already Haunting the Grid

7. The Energy War Intensifies – Ukraine’s Campaign against Russia’s Oil Refineries by Sir Lawrence Freedman

8. Xi, Putin and Modi are grinning and smiling, but at whom?

9. Measuring the loss of VOA around the world

10. US Deploys Typhon Missiles to Japan, Putting China, Russia, and North Korea in Range

11. India Was the Economic Alternative to China. Trump Ended That.

12. AI and the Hydra Effect: Securing Outdated OT Before the Threat Swarm Arrives

13. Staff Processes in Large-Scale Combat Operations Part 1: The Rhythm of the Battle

14. Kari Lake’s accusations about VOA and China are bad for the country

15. The age of alliances is ending, with hedging the rule of order

16. How—and Why—U.S. Capitalism Is Unlike Any Other

17. Meet the world’s hottest upstart weapons dealers

18. Support AUKUS: It’s China’s Worst Nightmare

19. Tokyo’s Leadership Vacuum

20. Beijing's Dangerous Game in Tibet – How Controlling the Dalai Lama’s Succession Could Backfire

1. The Business of American Military Deterrence

We should all be single (and even maniacally) focused on preventing World War III. And "to deter a long war you need to be ready to fight one."

Excerpts:

Now I’m channeling the thoughts of Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar. In a meeting last week with Journal editors, he introduced himself with these words: “The maniacal focus of my work over the last 20 years and hopefully the next 40 years is how do we prevent World War III or win it and how do we ensure American greatness going forward.”

Mr. Sankar was the 13th employee of Palantir, a software company founded in 2003 by serial entrepreneur Peter Thiel. Its market capitalization, recently around $373 billion, is more than three times that of Lockheed Martin.

...

Mr. Sankar, 43, has youthful energy and an easy manner. Palantir has an occult reputation in some quarters, using sinister methods to predict the future for government police and spy agencies. Its real job, Mr. Sankar has said, is to make coders feel “as sexy as James Bond” while working on “data integration,” gathering and organizing information for use by decision makers.

Its commercial business grew nearly twice as fast last year as its government business. The two feed off each other. Mr. Sankar mentions a BP project that was later adapted to speed the Covid vaccine rollout for government.

At the Pentagon, though, Palantir discovered that the military’s program managers could behave more like competitors than customers. Palantir had to sue to get the Army to consider (and eventually adopt) an off-the-shelf combat intelligence-sharing software in place of one the Army hoped to develop itself.

...

In a 90-minute conversation, the word “deterrence” is recurring. America will change “the second we feel our existence is threatened,” Mr. Sankar predicts. “The question is, can we motivate ourselves to realize that it already is and get there ahead of conflict?” The U.S. has always met its soldiers (and their parents) halfway, trying to minimize U.S. casualties by burying its enemies in superior technology and firepower. What message do empty armories communicate at home and abroad? Not a good one. “If you can’t make the weapons, you might as well not have them,” Mr. Sankar says.

OK, an overstatement, but to deter a long war you need to be ready to fight one. If disturbers of the peace believe America is overstretched, they will be tempted to act accordingly. Mr. Sankar says: “I’m a reindustrialization maximalist.”

The Business of American Military Deterrence

The U.S. Army colonel, Palantir executive and ‘reindustralization maximalist’ Shyam Sankar on how to restore the U.S. edge and prevent World War III.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-business-of-american-military-deterrence-war-national-security-palantir-f2592cfe?st=nhWq5s&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Aug. 29, 2025 12:01 pm ET

Shyam Sankar. Illustration: Ken Fallin

You’ve heard the problems. A $2 million interceptor to shoot down a $2,000 drone. Ukraine consuming more artillery shells in two months than the U.S. produces in a year. U.S. antiship missiles expected to run out on day eight of any war over Taiwan. A single Chinese shipyard churns out more tonnage in a year than the U.S. has since World War II.

On the advice of Wall Street sharpie Bernard Baruch, who ran U.S. war production in 1917-18, President Franklin D. Roosevelt raided General Motors in late 1939 for its production genius. For nearly a year before Pearl Harbor, and before Germany’s subsequent declaration of war against the U.S., William Knudsen was already on the job, organizing U.S. defense production.

Hitler and Tojo knew to fear America’s slumbering industrial mass. The counterfactual is unresolvable. Had Washington acted sooner, who knows? World War II might have been avoided.

Today’s problems aren’t the same but are similar. If Ukraine teaches anything, it is that a stockpile of existing weapons is less important than a manufacturing base—the ability to produce lots more weapons fast, and to adapt them and innovate on the fly.

Now I’m channeling the thoughts of Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar. In a meeting last week with Journal editors, he introduced himself with these words: “The maniacal focus of my work over the last 20 years and hopefully the next 40 years is how do we prevent World War III or win it and how do we ensure American greatness going forward.”

Mr. Sankar was the 13th employee of Palantir, a software company founded in 2003 by serial entrepreneur Peter Thiel. Its market capitalization, recently around $373 billion, is more than three times that of Lockheed Martin.

This summer, Mr. Sankar became Lt. Col. Sankar, a reserve officer in the U.S. Army’s newly formed Executive Innovation Corps.

The good news: In the past three years, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, $120 billion of venture capital has flowed into the once-neglected defense sector. Silicon Valley has gotten over its woke resistance to the U.S. military. Anduril Industries is leading the way on autonomous warfare; Shield AI is delivering decision-making help to combat pilots and drones; Saronic Technologies is focused on naval warfare.

They’re fixing a problem that began during the Cold War, the estrangement of an ever-shrinking defense oligopoly from the fast-moving civilian economy. As recently as the 1980s, Mr. Sankar estimates, 6% of procurement dollars went to companies whose sole business was with the Pentagon. Now it’s 86%. Chrysler once built tanks and missiles. Ford built satellite equipment. General Mills—the cereal company—was in the artillery and guidance-system business.

Not anymore. The government became too difficult a customer—too many rules, too little opportunity to scale up. It stopped being open to the kind of innovation and learning that drives the rapidly evolving commercial marketplace.

Worse, “you lost the heretics, you lost the crazy engineers who were going to rage against the system,” Mr. Sankar says.

“Founders” and “founder types” don’t work well with the Pentagon bureaucracy. Such people can get a foothold anywhere if they’re tolerated. People like Kelly Johnson at Lockheed’s skunk works, who created the U2 spy plane. Like Adm. Hyman Rickover, who spent 30 years fighting his own service to bring the nuclear Navy into being—“our last remaining asymmetric advantage against the Chinese,” Mr. Sankar notes.

A renegade colonel and fighter pilot named John Boyd was the “founder” of the phenomenal F-16 fighter aircraft. In contrast, Mr. Sankar says, the F-35 “has no founder.” A $2 trillion program was spawned entirely inside the procurement bureaucracy. “We started in the mid-’90s, and it’s basically just working now. That’s a crazy lifespan,” efficient only in the narrowest Pentagon definition of the word.

How bad has it gotten? China’s defense industrial base gets only 27% of its revenue from the People’s Liberation Army, Mr. Sankar estimates. It has both the commercial scale and commercial incentive to innovate quickly and, as important, cheaply. “China is a peer adversary. We are the underdog right now.”

Mr. Sankar was born in India and spent his early years in Nigeria, where his father built a pharmaceutical factory until a shocking encounter with violent crime inspired him to relocate his family to the U.S. His father never again experienced great material success, but he plugged away at multiple entrepreneurial ventures and preached to his son that America was a place where anything was possible, even if not every dream comes true.

China Ups Surveillance of Troubled People to Quell Rising Unrest

Communist Party’s new ‘society work’ agency helps with emotional and economic setbacks while monitoring dissatisfied people

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-surveillance-troubled-people-public-order-6e734df4

A memorial at the site where a man rammed a car into a crowd, killing 35 and injuring others, in Zhuhai. Photo: Ng Han Guan/AP

By Chun Han Wong

and Shen Lu

Aug. 31, 2025 9:00 pm ET

A 68-year-old man in China’s Zhejiang province barged into a local government office last year and declared he couldn’t go on living. His neighbors were bullying him, he claimed, and he threatened to take revenge.

The man had previously served a prison term. He was financially strained, estranged from his family and had frequent conflicts with neighbors. He was what Chinese authorities call a “five-loss individual”: someone with life setbacks, investment failures, family disputes, mental disorders or “emotional imbalance.”

Authorities swung into action. A sprawling new Communist Party agency, the Central Society Work Department, arranged a support plan that delayed some of the man’s debt repayment deadlines and provided counseling and other benefits. Within weeks, the local society-work office declared on social media that the man’s life was “back on track,” without elaborating.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping uses “society work” as an umbrella term for the Communist Party’s expanding efforts to reach left-behind communities and social castoffs. While helpful to individuals, the program’s overarching goal is to ensure that the problems don’t turn into threats to public order.

In the process, officials are cranking up the machinery of state surveillance to monitor socially fragile or dissatisfied people.

Some top officials at the new society-work department were plucked from state security and the police. Many of its local offices are directly managed by law-enforcement chiefs or placed under their supervision.

The Central Society Work Department office in Beijing. Photo: Jonathan Cheng/WSJ

Authorities asked party secretaries of each community to screen for people who have suffered losses, run background checks on them and report their information to a higher-level agency twice a month, according to a screenshot that appeared to be an order in a work chat group that was posted in December by a Yunnan-based user on China’s Xiaohongshu social-networking platform.

Companies have been asked to monitor people deemed to have suffered life setbacks, according to online directives by local government and law enforcement.

Authorities are also making use of China’s “grid management” system, an approach dating back to the early 2000s that divides communities into sections of several hundred households, each overseen by a “grid manager” who visits residents regularly and gathers data on their lives, such as contact details, employment status and housing conditions. Among other things, they promote government policies, monitor social sentiment and look for possible security threats.

Some grid managers are being asked to track people who are distressed over personal losses, and report issues up the chain before they fester into bigger problems, according to local government and media reports.

The fundamental principle, Xi has said, is to ensure that “small problems don’t leave the village, big problems don’t leave the town, and contradictions don’t get handed to higher ups.”

China’s economy is struggling under the pressure of trade tensions, a busted property market and other challenges. A series of violent attacks, including mass stabbings against seemingly random targets and cars ramming into crowds, has gripped national attention and prompted authorities to scramble for ways to address problems.

Police vehicles at the Wuxi Vocational Institute of Arts and Technology after a stabbing attack in November. Photo: KYODO NEWS/AP

For Communist Party supporters, the efforts show how the government proactively responds to individuals’ needs, particularly when times are tough.

For critics of the party, it’s a reminder of its absolute need for social control, and its willingness to use state power to tamp down any signs of unrest.

“It’s not about rescuing the so-called ‘five losses’ at all, it’s about control,” said a man in Shanghai who went bankrupt last year and had his assets frozen after being caught in a legal battle with his former employer.

He said he fears getting labeled as a five-loss individual because it could lead to increased monitoring of his family. Such people “are seen as potential terrorists,” he said.

The Central Society Work Department and the local society-work office in Zhejiang province didn’t respond to requests for comment. The office removed the social-media post about the man it said it helped.

Spreading violence

China Dissent Monitor, a platform run by Washington-based rights advocacy group Freedom House, documented a marked increase in protests last year, mostly driven by economic grievances.

Police disclosures and local-media reports about the stabbings, car-ramming incidents and other attacks that occurred in the past year sometimes described the perpetrators as persons with financial problems, mental health issues or strained family relationships.

In November, 62-year-old Fan Weiqiu killed 35 people by driving a car into a crowd in Zhuhai in the southern province of Guangdong—an outburst that authorities said was spurred by Fan’s frustrations over his failed marriage and the financial settlement in his divorce.

People gathered near a sports center after the ramming attack in Zhuhai. Photo: Kyodo News/AP

In April, a woman drove a sedan into a crowd in Zhejiang province, killing 14. In May, one person was killed in an apparent shooting at a restaurant in the city of Wuhan—a rare case of gun violence in China.

The government needs to “focus on detecting risks, eliminating hidden dangers, and preventing incidents,” Guangdong society-work officials said days after the November ramming. Authorities sentenced Fan to death and executed him 10 weeks later.

Compared with the U.S. and Europe, China’s government provides less in terms of a social safety net, with limited financial support in cases of job losses or health emergencies.

For a while before Xi came to power, Beijing allowed civil society groups to advocate on and provide some solutions to social and environmental issues, said Holly Snape, a politics lecturer at the University of Glasgow who studies social governance in China. But Xi has clamped down on such groups, suspicious of any activism that is separate from the party.

“There’s a sense that that model failed, and so the party is stepping in,” Snape said, underpinned by a “a deep belief that only the party can organize society.”

Centralized support

Key to the Communist Party’s effort is the Central Society Work Department, created in 2023.

Currently headquartered in central Beijing, minutes from the Zhongnanhai leadership compound, the department helps organize and oversee the efforts of millions of party members, social workers and volunteers who are involved in government projects to engage with and provide support to underprivileged groups.

It runs social-media accounts and an official newspaper, China Society Work Daily, that tout the department’s outreach.

The department’s regional and local branches lead its engagement efforts. In some provinces, they deploy “society-work observers” to act as the party’s “nerve endings” in local communities, where they gather feedback, identify sources of discontent and help find solutions, according to government disclosures.

Officials in the southern city of Zhaoqing took steps to reduce traffic congestion near a village after an observer reported the problem. Another group helped resolve issues with waste removal and drainage.

A society work helper visiting an elderly resident who was living on his own in Guangdong. Photo: Guangdong Province Society Work Department

Sometimes, the job is simply to show residents a good time and remind them the party cares. A district in the eastern city of Hangzhou organized a concert in January ahead of the Lunar New Year to help residents “feel in their hearts the warmth and power that music brings.”

Society-work offices also step in to foster what the party calls “spiritual civilization,” an umbrella term for good morals, civic-mindedness and community spirit.

In the southern province of Guangdong, society-work officials have helped rural residents formulate village rules, including an agreement that mass dances and live broadcasts in public places shouldn’t generate sounds above 70 decibels. Another village agreed to reward good behavior, such as doing volunteer work and caring for the elderly, with cash and commendations, awarding titles like “Virtuous Family” and “Star-ranked Civilized Household.”

These efforts put the party more squarely in charge of matters once left to residents’ committees, which are meant to be semiautonomous groups that managed grassroots affairs with help from local governments.

There is also an increasingly overt state security element behind such efforts.

Local officials in the northwestern county of Weiyuan marked an International Volunteer Day by having volunteers go out to inspect fire-safety equipment and teach residents about recycling—as well as distribute pamphlets about China’s national security law, which sets expansive definitions on threats that include subversion, terrorism and cybercrime.

In the eastern city of Changzhou, society-work representatives teamed up with security officials one Saturday morning to run a “Political and Legal Affairs Milk Tea Stand,” enticing residents with free beverages and imbuing them with lessons on avoiding cults and drug use. “Residents could feel the care and warmth of the rule of law while enjoying a delicious drink,” a local society-work official said on social media.

Community volunteers in China’s northwestern county of Weiyuan last year taking an oath pledging to do their best to help local residents in need. Photo: Weiyuan County Society Work Department

Authorities have also tapped insights from China’s vast surveillance state, which under Xi has reached ever deeper into citizens’ lives through a sophisticated array of facial-recognition cameras, data-gathering algorithms and social-media monitoring systems meant to detect crime, political dissent and sources of social unrest.

In some cities, such as Beijing, society-work officials are making use of big-data analyses to assess residents’ needs and track social currents. The northwestern city of Lingwu plans to tap artificial intelligence to handle residents’ queries and monitor public sentiment, according to a government document inviting bids for the project.

The society-work department’s top official, Wu Hansheng, a career specialist in political training for party officials and personnel matters, wrote in a newspaper commentary that his agency is seeking new ways to mitigate tensions and maintain stability in a society undergoing rapid and profound change. The goal is to implement Xi’s vision of the “Fengqiao experience for the new era,” Wu said, referring to plans for modernizing a Mao-era approach to social control that relied on ordinary people monitoring each other.

The department’s first-ranked vice minister, Li Wenzhang, previously served as a provincial security czar and a senior official at China’s Ministry of State Security. Another vice minister in the department had been a provincial police chief.

The southwestern province of Sichuan appointed its security czar to lead the region’s society-work department. In the eastern city of Huainan, society-work officials have accompanied local police on “stability maintenance” inspections, visiting hospitals, schools and leisure areas to check on the robustness of their security arrangements.

Local authorities describe the department’s ties with China’s police and security apparatus as an advantage, allowing them to better serve communities. Society-work officials in the port city of Lianyungang touted their ability to deploy a mix of police officers, lawyers and volunteers to run seminars educating the public on the prevention of online scams, workers’ rights and women’s health.

‘Mobile probes’

A major focus of the department’s work has been China’s estimated 200 million gig workers, a group that Beijing sees as vulnerable to economic downturns and a source of growing labor unrest.

The workers typically earn low wages, enjoy little job security and are constantly on the move, making them harder for the party to monitor than factory workers or employees of state-owned companies. Their numbers have grown as more people drift out of other forms of employment.

Strengthening the party’s presence among such groups “is the top priority of society work,” Xi’s chief of staff, Cai Qi, said in November, telling officials to focus on “party building” in new and fast-growing labor communities.

Some local governments are setting up community spaces where gig workers can access conveniences including drinking water, child care and phone-charging points. Called “little bee courier stations” in some areas—a reference to a nickname for delivery drivers—the outposts are similar to “convenience” police stations in the western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang, which offer amenities such as wireless internet and first-aid kits while conducting surveillance and enabling a strong security presence.

In Beijing, home to an estimated 330,000 delivery riders and ride-hailing drivers, the municipal society-work department has set up dedicated offices to engage riders and drivers with party membership, providing them with free legal advice, health checks and screenings of “red movies,” which promote Communist Party ideology. Elsewhere, officials are expanding vocational training.

Food delivery riders ate a meal in Beijing. Photo: Andy Wong/AP

In return for such benefits, gig workers “are encouraged to become part-time grid management workers,” said a local society-work department in the northeastern province of Liaoning. This would “give full play to their role as ‘mobile probes’ in early warning of abnormal situations and collecting social conditions and public opinion.”

“I will take the important instructions of General Secretary Xi Jinping as a guide” and “continue to carry forward the ‘little bees’ of couriers who are dedicated to their jobs,” Yang Shuai, a delivery rider in Shaanxi province, told a state-run newspaper.

Similar programs in Shanghai have offered free haircuts and sewing services to gig workers, notes Zhang Yueting, a University of Tokyo researcher who studies Chinese grassroots governance.

“It is clear these are care projects designed for vulnerable groups,” Zhang said. “It can also be said that care is a form of social stability maintenance.”

A Beijing blogger who initially considered embracing the five-loss label, thinking the government might help him, became more skeptical after he learned authorities were surveilling such people and viewing them as sources of social instability. “This approach addresses the victims of problems rather than the problems themselves,” the blogger wrote.

A blogger in Guangdong province also criticized the monitoring. “The current governance logic doesn’t focus on what kind of help you need,” the blogger wrote on the WeChat social-media app. “Instead, it prioritizes ensuring that you do not harm society.”

Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com

3. Putin and Modi hold hands at China’s anti-Nato summit

Putin and Modi hold hands at China’s anti-Nato summit

Talks hosted by Xi Jinping bring together 24 world leaders in a challenge to the US

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/09/01/vladimir-putin-narendra-modi-summit-xi-jinping-hold-hands/?

Kieran Kelly

Hundreds Killed in 6.0-Magnitude Earthquake, Afghan Officials Say

Authorities say more than 800 people dead, many trapped under debris with mountainous terrain and landslides complicating rescue efforts

https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/afghanistan-struck-by-deadly-6-0-magnitude-earthquake-f2c5d84f

By Esmatullah Kohsar and Gareth Vipers

Updated Sept. 1, 2025 6:44 am ET

We Have Met the Enemy and He Isn’t Us

Can Americans stop fighting each other long enough to appreciate the threat from China?

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/we-have-met-the-enemy-and-he-isnt-us-b3faa55c

By Rahm Emanuel

Aug. 31, 2025 11:06 am ET

Illustration: Martin Kozlowski

The latest illustration of the division and dysfunction in our politics—images of the National Guard occupying our nation’s capital—has justifiably infuriated my fellow Democrats. But the military’s deployment in Washington shouldn’t be understood merely as the latest MAGA cut against American democracy. It reflects a new zeal among partisan activists for “occupying” adversarial domestic institutions—the “deep state” for some, Wall Street for others. Occupation wasn’t always so important to reformers—but now it’s close to an obsession. The question today: Can China be the external threat that restores internal cohesion to our politics?

Politics hasn’t always been like this. For most of the 20th century, America took strength from its diversity of character and thought. Nazism spurred a nation of immigrants to unite in erecting an “arsenal of democracy.” The “evil empire,” as Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union, compelled Americans of all stripes to defend the principle of freedom. Sept. 11 should have united Americans, but the years that followed saw a fraying of our common purpose. Our challenge today is to rediscover that purpose by leaning into our strengths.

Far be it from me to point fingers, but we shouldn’t fail to acknowledge how the George W. Bush years saw Americans steer into a series of self-inflicted disasters. The “war on terror” morphed into an Iraq quagmire so disastrous that even the GOP now disparages its legacy. The government responded to the 2008 financial crisis by bailing out banks and insurance companies while working families lost their homes. By the end of the decade, Americans on the left and right both blamed domestic institutions—the federal government or the big banks—for their lot in life. Absent a common foe, activists in both blue and red America believed the path to salvation ran through “occupying” their adversary’s temple.

That shift came at a grave cost. By 2011, the country was beset by two movements defined almost exclusively by anger and resentment. Occupy Wall Street’s antipathy to capitalism fixed the sentiment now driving Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for New York mayor. The tea party simultaneously metastasized into the MAGA movement and the riots of Jan. 6, 2021. With real violence in the offing, politics are worse than they have been in decades.

To be sure, protesting in a park is a far cry from vandalizing the seat of democracy and killing police officers. But while different in scope and scale, the underlying desire to “occupy” institutions controlled by domestic adversaries stems in each case from the same core fear. The American dream—the belief that working hard and playing by the rules offers everyone a clear path to a middle-class perch—has become a nightmare. Too many Americans struggle to keep their heads above water. They’re right to be angry—and they’re justified in wanting relief.

In some Shakespearean sense, China’s long shadow has appeared at exactly the right moment. But Xi Jinping is much more than a foil poised to unite Americans who would otherwise remain defined by their blue and red affinities. The China threat is both real and potent. The U.S. has never before been asked to face down a country that has three times our population, is fueled by an advanced economy, and is capable, as its leaders intend, of replacing us atop the global hierarchy. Failing a broad reorientation, the question won’t be “Who lost China?” but “Who lost to China?” Yet Washington has yet to mobilize in full against a real threat.

The problem is that, rather than leaning into America’s strengths—our top-flight research institutions, our ability to attract the most promising talent from around the world, the depth of our financial markets, the dynamism of our private sector, and our enduring respect for the rule of law—Trumponomics is seeking to shift our approach to a cheap, knock-off version of Beijing’s state-directed model. The evidence is everywhere. The administration intends to take a stake in Intel, to nationalize Lockheed Martin, to receive golden shares of Nippon Steel, to claim a piece of the action from Nvidia and AMD, and to claim royalties from research patents.

The voices who would typically speak up for what makes America unique and exceptional have been cowed and intimidated into silence. As a result, the mainstream discourse has been left to those who want to occupy the institutions inhabited by their political adversaries. Because our politics has taken the character of “The Hunger Games,” China has been able to race ahead without raising the appropriate alarms. In other words, by losing our perspective, we’ve fallen into a strategic trap.

To be fair, that’s not an accident. The Chinese have long believed that they could use this dynamic to defeat us. In the wake of 2008, Mr. Xi made three determinations. First, that Beijing should view America less as a strategic competitor than a strategic adversary. Second, that the shine had come off the American system after the financial crisis. Third, that American society was too divided to act with common purposes in the face of a geopolitical challenge. Today Mr. Xi understands that President Trump’s division and chaos is working to China’s advantage.

That should be our wake-up call. To prevail in the years and decades to come, we will need to avoid the temptation to mimic our adversaries—and we will need to protect and nurture the qualities that have long made us “the shining city on a hill.” As Bill Clinton frequently reminds audiences, it’s never smart to bet against the American people over the long run. The path to a second American century will flow through a rediscovered confidence in American exceptionalism.

Mr. Emanuel, a Democrat, served as a U.S. representative from Illinois (2003-09), White House chief of staff (2009-10), mayor of Chicago (2011-19) and ambassador to Japan (2022-25).

6. Data Centers That Don’t Exist Yet Are Already Haunting the Grid

Data and energy: The two most important commodities for economic and national security.

He who controls the data controls...everything.

Can our infrastructure sustain the US as we fight the war we do not know we are (i.e., the data war)? Surely China is fighting for data. Are we able to sustain and win this fight?

Data Centers That Don’t Exist Yet Are Already Haunting the Grid

Utilities see a massive opportunity in AI but realize that many proposed data-center projects will never be built

https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/data-centers-that-dont-exist-yet-are-already-haunting-the-grid-c5ec7620

By Jennifer Hiller

Sept. 1, 2025 5:30 am ET

In Texas, utility Oncor saw requests in its interconnection queue from large customers rise 30% by the end of June from the end of March. Photo: Shelby Tauber/Bloomberg

Quick Summary

U.S. utilities report a surge in data-center interconnection requests to power AI, in some cases exceeding current regional electricity demand.View more

Data centers are desperate to connect to the U.S. electric grid. What remains fuzzy is how many will ultimately be built and how much electricity they will require.

U.S. utilities are reporting a sharp upswing in interconnection requests from prospective data centers that will need an extraordinary amount of electricity to power America’s artificial-intelligence race. In some cases, the collective requests equal or surpass—by multiples—the existing electricity demand in a utility’s entire service region.

Take American Electric Power AEP -0.68%decrease; red down pointing triangle, a big utility that serves 11 states, and Sempra’s SRE 1.38%increase; green up pointing triangle Texas utility Oncor. Combined, they have received requests to connect projects, many of them data centers, to the grid requiring almost 400 gigawatts of electricity. That is an astronomical amount that represents more than half the peak electricity demand in the Lower 48 states on two hot days in July.

Part of the problem is the electricity needs of the same potential projects are being double, triple or quadruple counted by different utilities. Data-center developers and tech companies are peppering utilities around the country with requests for service while scouting locations where they can quickly construct massive data centers and connect to the grid.

“A lot of it is real, but how much?” asked Tom Falcone, president of the Large Public Power Council, a trade association for the nation’s largest not-for-profit electric utilities.

Utilities see a massive opportunity in AI but realize that many proposed projects will never be built—earning them the moniker “phantom data centers.”

Utilities don’t want to run the risk of building too many power plants or transmission lines. If the AI hype is overblown or the tech industry doesn’t ultimately need as much electricity as projected, other customers would get stuck with the infrastructure costs. Electricity prices across the country have increased 5.5% in the past year, outpacing inflation, according to Labor Department data.

U.S. electricity demand was flat for two decades until around 2020 but is now rising across the country, growing about 2% a year nationally, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The AI frenzy is largely responsible: A search on a generative AI platform like ChatGPT can use at least 10 times the amount of energy as a google search.

Utilities don’t want to run the risk of building too many power plants or transmission lines. Photo: Maddie McGarvey for WSJ

Demand is rising at an even faster pace in places like Northern Virginia and Texas with large data centers and factory growth.

In Texas, Oncor had 552 requests from large customers such as data centers or industrial facilities in its interconnection queue by the end of June, up 30% from the end of March.

Its current system peak, or the power consumption at the moment customers require the most electricity, is 31 gigawatts. The requests in the queue from data centers require about 186 gigawatts, while industrial firms have requested about 19 gigawatts.

The transmission-and-distribution utility serves a swath of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, a major market for data centers, and much of the West Texas oil field, where companies have been electrifying operations.

Historically, the average data-center interconnection request at Oncor required less than 100 megawatts of electricity. That is now closer to 700 megawatts, with some facilities requiring more, said Geoff Bailey, Oncor’s vice president of corporate strategy.

American Electric Power, meanwhile, has a 37-gigawatt system. Already, new customers requiring about 24 gigawatts of electricity have signed agreements to receive service by the end of the decade. That growth is equivalent to serving at least six million new homes. AEP executives have called it “transformational.”

But AEP has an additional 190 gigawatts of potential demand in line—roughly five times its current system size, and the equivalent power use of at least 48 million homes.

“We know not all of that is going to come online, but even a fraction of that is significant,” Trevor Mihalik, AEP’s chief financial officer, told analysts on the company’s recent earnings call.

CenterPoint Energy CNP 0.61%increase; green up pointing triangle, the utility serving the Houston area, has seen a huge spike in interest from data centers, despite criticism about its storm response.

Hurricane Beryl last year knocked out power to much of the area due to downed trees in neighborhoods, but CenterPoint’s high-voltage transmission system—the part of the grid of key interest to data center developers—was unscathed.

“What we saw with Hurricane Beryl was that we had no direct outages related to the transmission system and our substations, which is what feeds these data centers,” said Chief Executive Officer Jason Wells. “And so the data-center community, ironically, felt more comfortable pursuing investment here, and our interconnection timelines are some of the fastest in the country.”

CenterPoint Energy CEO Jason Wells says his company’s interconnection timelines ‘are some of the fastest in the country.’ Photo: Mark Felix/Bloomberg News

Electricity use on CenterPoint’s Houston-area system is currently a little more than 22 gigawatts, one of the highest for a U.S. metro area due to the combination of its industrial base, medical center and population.

It has interconnection requests for about 53 gigawatts of power, roughly 25 gigawatts of which are from data centers. A year ago, data centers were seeking just one gigawatt of power, said Wells, who estimates about 20% of the requested power will ultimately be delivered.

Utilities across the country are giving similar odds to data-center prospects.

The developers are typically considering several possible construction sites because grid connections can take years and they can run into unpredictable roadblocks with permits or zoning.

“These hyperscalers and data-center developers are themselves trying to figure out where they have a more streamlined path to market,” said Akshat Kasliwal, managing consultant at PA Consulting. “There’s just so much uncertainty around how long it will take for them to be able to energize and interconnect.”

Write to Jennifer Hiller at jennifer.hiller@wsj.com

7. The Energy War Intensifies – Ukraine’s Campaign against Russia’s Oil Refineries by Sir Lawrence Freedman

Graphics at the link.

Excerpts:

The Russians will work to mitigate the impact of Ukraine’s campaign but there are limits on what they can do if facilities keep on getting struck. Those that are badly damaged can take weeks and even months to repair. When many need repairing at once, that stretches the available technical expertise and supplies of replacement parts. The potential impact has to be viewed in the context of what is happening to the economy as well as the lack of anticipated victories at the front.

The economy is suffering from labour shortages, high interest rates and high inflation, which will not be helped by higher oil prices. On 27 August Putin was told that the Economy Ministry now saw growth of 1.5% this year instead of the 2.5% previously forecast. The IMF already considered this too optimistic - it has cut is forecast from 1.5% to 0.9%. It also faces a budget deficit: during the first seven months of 2025 it reached $61.1 billion, exceeding the full-year budget by a quarter. This was caused by a combination of the continued demands of the war and disappointing oil and gas revenues.

In July, before the latest attacks on the oil industry, revenues were $9.8 billion, 27% lower than a year ago. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has insisted that Russia's domestic fuel market is fully supplied and the situation is under control. It may be hard for ordinary Russians to be sure about the state of the war, but they will certainly know if the fuel market is out of control. If this campaign keeps going, at some point the authorities may struggle to dismiss it as a temporary inconvenience caused by a combination of heavy seasonal demand and bad luck from falling drone debris. By itself it will be not decisive but in combination with a weakening economy and Ukrainian forces holding back Russian advances it will add to the pressures on Putin.

The Energy War Intensifies

Ukraine’s Campaign against Russia’s Oil Refineries

https://samf.substack.com/p/the-energy-war-intensifies

Lawrence Freedman

Aug 31, 2025

∙ Paid

On the night of 27 to 28 August Russia launched 598 Shahed-type and decoy drones at Ukrainian cities, combined with two Kinzhal ballistic missiles, nine Iskander ballistic missiles, and 20 cruise missiles. Ukrainian air defences did well - 563 drones, one Kinzhal, seven Iskanders and 18 cruise missiles – were shot down. But not well enough, for those that got through hit 13 locations, with debris falling on another 26, leaving 21 civilians dead. Kyiv was the worst hit. A residential building in Kyiv was struck which left 12 people dead, including four children, and damage was inflicted on buildings used by the British Council and the EU delegation to Ukraine. The timing reflects Russia’s frustration that Putin’s Alaska summit with Trump was not followed through with pressure on Ukraine for more concessions, and anger at the deliberations among European leaders on security guarantees for Ukraine and another sanctions package.

The scope, intensity, and frequency of Russian attacks against Ukrainian civil society has been stepped up over this past year, making life difficult and wearisome for the Ukrainian people. However hard Ukraine works on its defences there are limits on what it can do other than look for innovative ways to improve them, move quickly to put out the fires, and then repair the damage. The country has shown its resilience. It has coped with three winters’ worth of attacks on its electricity system, despite suffering blackouts and lacking adequate heating. The attacks won’t stop. Russia shows no intention of letting up on its own assault on Ukrainian energy facilities. Twenty sites, including electrical substations, oil refineries and thermal power plants, have been damaged recently.

Ukraine’s capacity to strike targets deep into Russian territory at first developed slowly and their capabilities have had to be used more sparingly and efficiently. Although first the Biden and now the Trump administration have opposed Ukraine striking too deep into Russian territory, in the belief that somehow this might constitute a dangerous escalation, this has become less of a constraint now that Ukraine has its own home-made long-range drones. It has been evident for some time that the oil industry provides some of the most suitable targets. It is important to Russia’s economy as well as its war effort.

From September 2023 to February 2025 there were approximately 100 strikes on oil refineries and depots across Russia, with some facilities hit multiple times. Since late July this campaign has been revived with added momentum. Refineries have been struck multiple times. Up to 20% of Russia’s refining capacity has been taken out, at least temporarily. This loss of capacity comes at a time of peak demand because of summer tourism and the harvest. This has led to rationing, price rises and lengthening queues for petrol.

In his review of the Russian press on 25 August, BBC Correspondent Steve Rosenberg, reported growing alarm about the situation, with the government reluctant to acknowledge the impact of Ukrainian drone strikes, preferring to refer to ‘unscheduled’ repairs. The Russian authorities have promised the situation returning to normal in September, but Ukraine will persevere with this campaign, and it has the systems to enable it to do so.

This post looks at the history of attacks against the Russian oil industry and assesses their impact. Will it effect front-line forces? Weaken Putin’s political position because of the economic and social consequences of continuing shortages? Or turn out to be a temporary blip that the Russian authorities will be able to manage?

The First Campaign: January to March 2024

Because of the damage inflicted on its own energy infrastructure, the chance to hit back became a major priority for Ukraine as soon as it developed its own long-range drones in late 2023. Half of the 24 drone strikes on Russian territory in January 2024 were against the oil sector, including refineries, storage sites, and pipelines. By March of that year at least four of Russia’s 32 major refineries had been attacked.

A Ukrainian official was quoted in the Financial Times describing this campaign as ‘systematically implementing a detailed strategy . . . to deprive the enemy of resources and reduce the flow of oil money and fuel.’ The effect of these strikes, combined with sanctions, led to some 41.1 million tons — over 12% — of Russia’s total production capacity becoming inactive. Astonishingly the Biden administration objected to these attacks. In March 2024 it reportedly asked that these be stopped. In addition to their customary concerns about escalation, they were also worried that they might trigger an increase in world oil prices. For the rest of the year there was a steep decline in the number of attacks on the oil industry, although they were not wholly abandoned, especially as Russia was not showing any restraint. But concerns about Russian military advances made targets relevant to ongoing battles more of a priority.

At the end of 2024 the BBC did an assessment of the attacks on oil facilities. It counted some 81 strikes, of which at least 64 led to fires. Unsurprisingly, oil facilities in the southern regions of Russia were more likely to be hit, largely in those regions bordering Ukraine. The decline in production of gasoline and diesel led to corresponding rises in fuel prices. The sector became less profitable, not least because of the need to spend money on repairing damage with the added difficulties of parts not being available because of sanctions. The Ministry of Energy stopped publishing statistics on gasoline production ‘in order to ensure the information security of the oil products market.’ To deal with the situation Moscow imposed an embargo on the export of petroleum products This just left sufficient supply for the domestic market.

The Second Campaign Late 2024 to February 2025.

From late 2024 and into the first months of 2025 once again the oil sector became a high priority. More militarily related targets tended to be better protected, and even when struck the benefits were often only temporary and limited. By contrast oil facilities were comparatively ‘soft’, too large to be adequately protected, and full of flammable materials apt to amplify the damage from even small explosions. Their control systems represented high-value targets within the facilities if they could be attacked with precision. Their vulnerabilities reflected that they had not been designed with military security as a high priority. When struck there was a clear economic impact. Because they were normally in relatively isolated locations there was a reduced risk of causing civilian casualties.

A report in the Times in February 2025 underlined how much had changed since the first Ukrainian drone strikes in late 2022. Then no more than five long-range strikes per month could be managed. By the start of 2025 that was up to more than 500 per month. The launches were conducted at night using torches so as not to attract enemy attention. The commander of one drone unit explained how they needed:

‘to launch dozens, sometimes hundreds of drones simultaneously from different launching sites. And these drones fly a thousand kilometers away, so in order for the operation to be successful, we need to launch decoys too to get across the contact line, where the most intense air defence is. We launched decoys to make a corridor for ourselves.’

A refinery in Krasnodar region was attacked on 29 December, a fuel facility in Oryol on 9 January, and an oil depot in Bryansk on 19 January. A strike on a gas export terminal in St Petersburg caused a huge fire, resulting in the suspension of the work of the terminal. By the start of February twenty of Russia’s thirty largest facilities had been hit. On 3 February the Lukoil oil refinery in Volgograd, producing 4% of all gasoline and 7% of diesel fuel in Russia, was struck for the second time in a few days. Also on 3 February, the vast Astrakhan gas facility was hit. With a vital processing unit destroyed, the plant was left idle with repairs potentially taking up to six months,

Not all of the facilities targeted were hit and not all of those hit were damaged. Nonetheless, the strikes over the first weeks of 2025 affected approximately 17% of Russia’s oil refining capacity and 20% of its seaborne crude oil exports. The impact was reinforced on 10 January when the outgoing Biden administration imposed sanctions targeting 182 individual ships of Russia’s ‘shadow fleet,’ used to transport crude oil and circumvent Western restrictions. As exports had been boosted to compensate for the issues with refineries, the logic of these sanctions was to shift the incentives back towards refining more oil domestically and then increasing exports of petroleum products. But of course that became harder if the refineries were being targeted.

A thorough analysis of the effectiveness of the Ukrainian strikes during this second campaign was provided by a group called Frontelligence Insight (referred to in this piece by David Axe). Working with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) they compared those attacks conducted between September 2024 and mid-February 2025 on military targets and infrastructure with those on oil depots and refineries. Their conclusion was that more than half of the recorded strikes on military targets and infrastructure, including air bases and arms factories, caused no more than moderate to low damage. Some of those strikes were good for morale and may have inconvenienced Russia but the lasting effects were limited.

With the oil industry it was a different story as the targets were softer and easier to hit and damage. This was reflected in a shift in targeting priorities.

Within this larger shift there was also a change in focus from storage facilities to refineries.

These are very different targets. Oil depots are largely tanks for storage purposes while refineries are complex facilities with tanks (for crude, intermediate and finished products), but also process units (rectification columns, reactors, separators, cracking units) for chemical or physical refining of crude oil into more valuable products (gasoline, kerosene, diesel and jet fuel). They also have rail and road terminals where tankers load and unload, and other supporting infrastructure. The impact of attacks was enhanced if they were directed against the cracking units, which break down crude oil into products and are hard to replace under the sanctions regime.

Destroying oil tanks had a limited impact, not because they were easy to replace, but because Russian oil companies felt that they could cope without those that had been destroyed or damaged. They were expensive and time consuming to rebuild, with the risk that they might be struck again. Because of the attacks on refineries there was also less oil to store. Refined products could be put straight onto tankers for distribution.

Over time the loss of storage capacity could have an impact, but the more immediate effects come from the attacks on refineries. These were important to the overall functioning of the economy and the war effort, and they were more difficult and expensive to restore. It is not that they were put out of action forever but recovery took time.

Frontelligence calculated that over the period covered the loss to the Russian economy amounted to from 59.4 to 77.9 billion rubles or $658 to 836 million, depending on the length of the shutdown of the Astrakhan gas processing plant. This was not negligible but nor was it serious in terms of the overall size of the economy (Russia's total revenue from oil exports in 2024 was $189 billion.) The situation would only get serious for the economy if there were serious knock-on effects from the shortages in key products. This was estimated to come with a sustained loss of around 15% of total capacity.

Energy Truce

On 18 March 2025, at a time when Putin was trying to avoid responding to Trump’s demands for a ceasefire, he proposed a moratorium on attacks on energy facilities. Putin said he would refrain from strikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure for 30 days, although almost immediately his army struck power supplies in front-line Ukrainian cities. After speaking with Trump the next day, Zelensky agreed to a 30-day suspension of strikes on energy infrastructure. This energy truce was welcomed by the White House as a confidence-building measure, though both sides complained regularly that the other was not adhering to its terms. As it had not been properly negotiated it was never wholly clear what was required. In June Russia attacked a Ukrainian oil refinery in Kremenchuk, causing serious damage, as well as gas facilities. And that was the end of it.

The Third Campaign: July to August 2025.

The past weeks have seen a more intensive and sustained Ukrainian campaign. At least ten major oil facilities have been hit, some repeatedly, including n the Rostov, Samara, Saratov and Krasnodar regions. Some had only just recovered from previous attacks, including Lukoil's facility in Volgograd. Rosneft’s Ryazan Oil refinery had about half of its capacity shut down on 2 August. The Novokuibyshevsk Refinery remains out of operation.

The strikes coincided with peak vacation and harvesting seasons, when the demand for gasoline is highest. The Guardian cited an independent analyst, Boris Aronstein, who noted that while this is far from the first time these targets have been attacked, these strikes are different:

‘The attacks are massive, coordinated, and repeated; they come in waves, and the refineries simply do not have time to repair the damage caused by the previous attack before the next one occurs.’

Each raid might cost Ukraine as little as $1 million. The cumulative cost to Russia of the attacks this year has now been estimated (by the Ukrainians) to be $10 billion because of the wider economic effects. The Ukrainians gain satisfaction from the Russians coping with the sort of shortages that have become the norm for them.

There are varying estimates of how much oil processing capacity has been taken out. Reuters put it at 17%, but with attacks continuing, the amount may now be close to 20% of the total. The Kremlin has tried to protect the domestic economy by limiting exports and by imposing price ceilings. Shortages, long queues at fuel stations and even total absence of fuel have been reported in some regions, including occupied Crimea and far away Vladivostok. Exports remain restricted, and crude oil has been rerouted to refineries that remain operational.

How problematic is all this for Putin?

There is evident dissatisfaction from the Russian military blogger community that vital facilities cannot be better protected against such a slow-moving threat. There is irritation at claims that the damage is only cause by falling debris, when there is video evidence of direct strikes. this leads to pressure to divert more resources to defend these facilities, which at the very least would require using air defence capabilities that might otherwise be used elsewhere. Measures can be taken to reduce the visibility of the targets at night and get more fire-fighting units in position. Ukrainian drones already do not get a free pass to Russia’s refineries, but with increasing numbers and more sophisticated tactics, sufficient are more likely to get through to cause significant damage.

A mainstay of Ukraine’s campaign has been the ‘Liutyi’ drone, which came into service in late 2022, with a range of 1,000 to0 2,000 km, and a warhead of 50kg, which has been upgraded to as much as 75 kg. This has now been supplemented by the ‘Batyar’, a lightweight drone on which design work only began in late 2024. This carries an 18-kg warhead in its long-range configuration of up to 800 km. When used close to the front line it can combine a range of 100 km payload with a warhead of up to 26–30 kg. Keeping it lightweight means that it is much easier to use. The designers claim that it has ‘exceptional stability — even when damaged during steep dive attacks.’ It has an optical navigation system for accuracy and costs about $25,000 per unit, with a cheaper decoy version, costing around $3,500.

In addition Ukraine has announced the arrival of a home-made cruise missile known as the Flamingo, which has a claimed 3,000 km range, an accuracy of 14 meters and a 1,150-kg warhead. The aim is to move quickly to 200 missiles a month, which is certainly ambitious. Doubts have been expressed both about the design and scale of production. Nonetheless the Ukrainians have an impressive record of simple and innovative designs that can be manufactured in numbers and at speed. If it works as well as claimed and can get through Russian air defences, then most of European Russia would be in range.

There is no reason to suppose that in the coming months Ukraine will not be able to sustain its campaign, returning regularly to refineries even as attempts are made to repair then. New hits are being reported almost daily. Past campaigns concluded because of American concerns, as in 2024, or a hastily contrived ‘energy truce’, as earlier this year. The idea of a partial ceasefire that would cover air attacks has not completely gone away, but if Russia places a high priority on protecting its oil industry, Ukraine should demand the end of attacks on towns and cities.

I have seen it suggested that these attacks are not of immediate relevance for the front-line, either because forward movement is now on foot or motorbikes rather than trucks and tanks, and because the military use diesel and not petrol. But supplies have still to get to the front and that might be affected by fuel shortages. After attacks early on 28 August, the Ukrainian General Staff pointedly stressed the military relevance of the facilities hit. According to the Kyiv Independent:

In particular, the Afipsky oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region, which supplies fuel to the Russian army, was attacked. A massive fire broke out at the facility following the strike. The plant’s capacity reaches over 6 million tons of oil per year.

They quoted the general staff as describing the refinery as producing both gasoline and diesel fuel as ‘engaged in supplying the occupiers’ army.’ This was also the claimed function of the Kuibyshev oil refinery in Russia’s Samara region, with an annual processing capacity of about 7 million tons, also hit that night. ‘Explosions and fires were reported at the site.’ The supply lines can also be attacked. On the night of 21 August, a special forces operation struck rolling stock with fuel near Dzhankoi. On 29 August the 8-N Naitopovychi linear production dispatch station in the Bryansk region was struck. This pumps fuel through pipelines to the Russian military.

Another argument qualifying the impact of the attacks notes that if crude oil can’t be refined then at least it can be sold for export, which brings in more revenue to help pay for the war. That appears to be the Russian plan, with the aim of raising exports by 200,000 barrels per day. But they still need the pipelines and the ships to get it to market, and here they face disruption. Ukrainian drones attacked the Druzhba pipeline, and Novatek's Ust-Luga export terminal and fuel processing complex on the Baltic. The Druzhba pipelines is the main land route by which Russian crude oil reaches European markets. This infuriated Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who both rely on this for crude oil. They accused Ukraine of waging economic warfare against their countries. Both Fico and Orbán are the two most pro-Putin European leaders, and have never shown any inclination to support Ukraine in either the EU or NATO contexts. As Ukraine has noted, other European countries have taken the precaution of diversifying away from dependence on Russia. (The pipeline now appears to be open again).

The belief that Russia can readily increase oil exports assumes sufficient demand as well as ease of supply. One of the few measures that Trump has taken to hinder Russian oil exports has been to impose 50% tariffs on India to punish them for taking so much Russian crude. The favourable rates they have been given by the Russians has saved the Indian economy at least $17 billion. It now accounts for some 40% of their total oil purchases. Trump hasn’t done the same with China, whose purchases have moved from 13% of the total to 16% during the war. And while he has occasionally threatened to impose harsher sanctions on Russia that would impact their oil trade Trump has been unable to bring himself to do so. If he did the Russian situation would be much more serious. For now Russian oil exports to India are going up not down. Nonetheless, the American tariffs are an issue for India and so they may agree some compromise in negotiations, though they will not abandon Russian imports entirely. The Indians point out that if they had to buy so much oil elsewhere this could lead to a massive increase international oil prices.

The Russians will work to mitigate the impact of Ukraine’s campaign but there are limits on what they can do if facilities keep on getting struck. Those that are badly damaged can take weeks and even months to repair. When many need repairing at once, that stretches the available technical expertise and supplies of replacement parts. The potential impact has to be viewed in the context of what is happening to the economy as well as the lack of anticipated victories at the front.

The economy is suffering from labour shortages, high interest rates and high inflation, which will not be helped by higher oil prices. On 27 August Putin was told that the Economy Ministry now saw growth of 1.5% this year instead of the 2.5% previously forecast. The IMF already considered this too optimistic - it has cut is forecast from 1.5% to 0.9%. It also faces a budget deficit: during the first seven months of 2025 it reached $61.1 billion, exceeding the full-year budget by a quarter. This was caused by a combination of the continued demands of the war and disappointing oil and gas revenues.

In July, before the latest attacks on the oil industry, revenues were $9.8 billion, 27% lower than a year ago. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has insisted that Russia's domestic fuel market is fully supplied and the situation is under control. It may be hard for ordinary Russians to be sure about the state of the war, but they will certainly know if the fuel market is out of control. If this campaign keeps going, at some point the authorities may struggle to dismiss it as a temporary inconvenience caused by a combination of heavy seasonal demand and bad luck from falling drone debris. By itself it will be not decisive but in combination with a weakening economy and Ukrainian forces holding back Russian advances it will add to the pressures on Putin.

8. Xi, Putin and Modi are grinning and smiling, but at whom?

Excerpts:

China, which has accused Washington of multi-front containment, including an ongoing trade war, is a close partner of Russia, which remains under heavy US sanctions for the war in Ukraine. The steep tariffs on India imposed by the Trump administration have prompted worries in Washington that they will push India closer to China.

After their group photograph, Modi approached Putin and Xi once more. The three continued their conversation before proceeding into the summit venue.

Photos of Modi warmly embracing Putin and chatting with both Putin and Xi were posted to the Indian leader’s social media account during the summit.

“Always a delight to meet President Putin!” Modi wrote in one post.

“Interactions in Tianjin continue! Exchanging perspectives with President Putin and President Xi during the SCO Summit,” he wrote in another post, which included photos of him in talks with the other two leaders.

In his summit speech, Putin specifically mentioned China and India, stating that Russia valued the efforts and proposals of the two countries and other strategic partners aimed at helping to settle the Ukraine crisis. Neither the Indian nor Chinese leaders have condemned Russia for its attacks on Ukraine.

Modi and Putin continued to speak one-on-one after the summit ended on Monday morning, with further updates also promptly shared on Modi’s social media account. Modi also posted a photo of himself and Putin in the Russian leader’s armoured limousine travelling to a venue for their bilateral meeting.

On Sunday evening, Xi and Putin shared similar moments before a gala dinner.

Putin was the last to appear as Xi and China’s first lady, Peng Liyuan, greeted leaders and posed for photos before the welcome banquet.

Xi greeted Putin with a double-handed handshake, unlike the more formal handshakes he shared with the other leaders, and talked to the Russian leader nearly two minutes longer than the other leaders.

Xi, Putin and Modi are grinning and smiling, but at whom?

Narendra Modi sends message to Washington with warm embraces of Chinese, Russian leaders in Tianjin

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3323934/xi-putin-and-modi-are-grinning-and-smiling-whom?module=perpetual_scroll_0&pgtype=article

Yuanyue Dangin Tianjin

Published: 6:11pm, 1 Sep 2025Updated: 7:47pm, 1 Sep 2025

Three major world powers – China, India and Russia – all with various frictions with the United States, projected an image of solidarity on Monday in front of the international media during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin.

During his first visit to China in seven years, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the hands of his counterparts – Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping – and pulled them closer.

As the three leaders mingled, one interpreter translated Putin’s words, which began with “We three friends …”, before a broadcast signal provided by the summit press centre drowned out the rest of the translation.

Modi laughed several times during the conversation and clasped Putin’s hands a second time.

Narendra Modi embraces Russian President Vladimir Putin during the SCO summit in China on Monday. Photo: Handout

Earlier, Modi and Putin embraced on the red carpet and exchanged greetings before walking hand in hand towards a smiling Xi, who was waiting to greet them.

India’s relations with the US have deteriorated sharply following repeated claims by US President Donald Trump during the India-Pakistan conflict that he had brokered a ceasefire between the two nations.

Last week, Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, described India as “a massive refining hub and oil money laundromat for the Kremlin”, further upsetting Modi.

The moves have been seen as Trump’s “humiliation” of Modi, with whom he had previously enjoyed close ties.

India, which has been slapped with 50 per cent tariffs on goods exported to the US, is trying to mend ties with neighbouring China after a simmering border dispute turned deadly in 2020. Relations started to thaw at a summit in Kazan, Russia, last October and a partial patrol agreement was put in place with both sides pledging to maintain a “peaceful” border.

China, which has accused Washington of multi-front containment, including an ongoing trade war, is a close partner of Russia, which remains under heavy US sanctions for the war in Ukraine. The steep tariffs on India imposed by the Trump administration have prompted worries in Washington that they will push India closer to China.

After their group photograph, Modi approached Putin and Xi once more. The three continued their conversation before proceeding into the summit venue.

Photos of Modi warmly embracing Putin and chatting with both Putin and Xi were posted to the Indian leader’s social media account during the summit.

“Always a delight to meet President Putin!” Modi wrote in one post.

“Interactions in Tianjin continue! Exchanging perspectives with President Putin and President Xi during the SCO Summit,” he wrote in another post, which included photos of him in talks with the other two leaders.

In his summit speech, Putin specifically mentioned China and India, stating that Russia valued the efforts and proposals of the two countries and other strategic partners aimed at helping to settle the Ukraine crisis. Neither the Indian nor Chinese leaders have condemned Russia for its attacks on Ukraine.

Modi and Putin continued to speak one-on-one after the summit ended on Monday morning, with further updates also promptly shared on Modi’s social media account. Modi also posted a photo of himself and Putin in the Russian leader’s armoured limousine travelling to a venue for their bilateral meeting.

On Sunday evening, Xi and Putin shared similar moments before a gala dinner.

Putin was the last to appear as Xi and China’s first lady, Peng Liyuan, greeted leaders and posed for photos before the welcome banquet.

Xi greeted Putin with a double-handed handshake, unlike the more formal handshakes he shared with the other leaders, and talked to the Russian leader nearly two minutes longer than the other leaders.

Putin was accompanied by a “large and significant” delegation to China, Russian media reported, including three deputy prime ministers, more than 10 ministers and representatives from major companies.

Yuanyue Dang

Yuanyue joined the Post in 2022 after working as a feature writer for various Chinese media outlets. He graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong with a bachelor's degree in journalism and holds a master’s degree in anthropology from University College London.

9. Measuring the loss of VOA around the world

Some excellent data for those unfamiliar with the work and reach of VOA. Cutting off VOA is one of the biggest strategic mistakes we have made.

Please go to the link to view the interactive graphics and proper formatting. There is some very interesting and useful data.

https://savevoa.com/data/measuring-the-loss-of-voa-around-the-world.html

Measuring the loss of VOA around the world

A look at how VOA’s output has declined since the Trump administration shut down most of the organization

Measuring the loss of VOA around the world

savevoa.com

East and Southeast Asia

VOA’s programming to the East and Southeast Asia region includes some of its longest running. Seven of the region’s language services launched before or within the first few years of VOA’s official establishment in 1942 — Cantonese, Mandarin, Burmese, Indonesian, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese.

During its long run in the region, VOA has provoked the ire of authoritarian regimes by covering events that governments across Asia did not want their people to know about. After VOA was largely silenced in March, state run media as well as current and former government officials in countries from , and praised President Donald Trump for ending most of VOA’s programming.

In recent years, VOA has made its broadcasts to China a high priority, with more than 169 hours of content each week in Mandarin on satellite TV, radio and digital platforms.

However, since the March shutdown of most VOA operations, the Mandarin Service has stopped producing all radio and television programs, issuing only minimal web and social media content.

VOA reporters have covered demonstrations around the globe, including the 2019-2020 anti-government protests in Hong Kong.

“Generations of Chinese citizens risked their lives to listen to VOA just to access truthful information,” said prominent Chinese journalist Gao Yu in a court filing on behalf of VOA employees suing the Trump administration over the shutdown of VOA. She said that China is currently spending vast sums of money on its national media firewall, international propaganda and to infiltrate Western mainstream media. Gao argued that shutting down VOA, a media agency “the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] regime fears, is akin to cutting off one of America’s own arms or slitting its own throat.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar Derek Mitchell told the SaveVOA campaign, “The Chinese are filling the space that we’re leaving. So we’re allowing China to be [on] an information offensive during the information age.”

Russia is also poised to fill the space. The Sydney-based Lowy Institute found that Voice of America was the most sought-after radio broadcaster in Asia in 2024, in many countries by a considerable margin. But the next most popular radio broadcaster was Russia’s Sputnik.

Service Year started Weekly broadcast hours 2024* July 2025 weekly hours Burmese 1942 182.25 0 Cantonese 1939 61.67 0 English to Asia Programs 2010 6.55 0 Indonesian 1942 66.87 0 Khmer 1955 21.74 0 Korean 1942 51.88 0 Lao 1962 4.67 0 Mandarin 1941 169.00 0 Thai 1942 7.20 0 Tibetan 1991 204.00 0 Vietnamese 1943 6.00 0 Total 781.83 0

* Total fiscal year 2024 annualized average weekly broadcast hours including audio and video (PDF).

Eurasia

VOA, with its fact-based reporting, is widely credited with playing a significant role in helping to end the Cold War. “Among the forces that tore holes in the Iron Curtain was the steady bombardment by the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, and the BBC,” said Strobe Talbott, former U.S. deputy secretary of state during the Clinton administration.

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, VOA again played a large role in bringing truthful information to people across Eastern Europe. A third of Ukraine received its news from either Voice of America or one of its sister networks, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, in 2024, according to survey data. The Russian audience of those networks stood at 10.1 million that year. And around a third of the populations of Kosovo (32%), Albania (31%) and Armenia (29%), and about a sixth of the populations of Bosnia-Herzegovina (15%) and Montenegro (14%) got their news from Voice of America.

VOA journalists are responsible for explaining U.S. news and changes in government policies to a global audience.

Immediately following VOA’s closure in March, Russian state officials cheered. “Today is a celebration for my colleagues at RT [formally Russia Today], Sputnik, and other outlets, because [U.S. President Donald] Trump unexpectedly announced that he’s closing down Radio Liberty and Voice of America, and now they’re closed. This is an awesome decision,” said Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief. “We couldn’t shut them down, unfortunately, but America did so itself.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine that “Voice of America is the best way to counter the bad information that is coming out of Russia.”

Service Year started Weekly broadcast hours 2024* July 2025 weekly hours Albanian 1942 (paused 1945-1951) 3.80 0 Armenian 1951 1.75 0 Bosnian 1996 1.75 0 Georgian 1951 1.50 0 Macedonian 1991 1.00 0 Russian 1947 13.50 0 Serbian 1943 1.75 0 Ukrainian 1949 30.50 0 Total 55.55 0

South and Central Asia and the Middle East

VOA and its sister network Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reached huge audiences in Afghanistan, with two-thirds of the population using one or both outlets for news. VOA launched programming to the country in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion in 1979, increased it after 9/11 to include around-the-clock radio reports, and expanded it further in 2022, when the Taliban sought to ban VOA radio and television. VOA responded by launching a 24/7 direct-to-home satellite-delivered television channel for the country.

VOA’s history of honest reporting in Afghanistan, including in the aftermath of the U.S. military withdrawal from the country, had made VOA the most trusted news source in Afghanistan, according to VOA Director Michael Abramowitz in testimony he gave to Congress last year. However, since the March shutdown of most VOA operations, broadcasts to Afghanistan have dwindled to 15 minutes of weekday radio news in Dari and 15 minutes in Pashto.

Service Year started Weekly broadcast hours 2024* July 2025 weekly hours Dari 1980 53.38 1.25 Pashto 1982 64.38 1.25 VOA Radio Deewa (Pashto) 2006 75.33 0 Azerbaijani 1982 3.75 0 Bangla 1958 5.50 0 Kurdish 1992 68.10 0 Turkish 1942 (paused 1945-1948) 6.00 0 Urdu 1951 28.75 0 Uzbek 1972 2.50 0 Total 307.69 2.5

Another country in the region where VOA has garnered an audience share in the millions through its reporting is Iran: 12.2 million people were tuning in weekly to VOA or RFE/RL programs. VOA’s Persian Service, which debuted in 1942, was paused several times from the 1940s to the 1970s, and was renewed in 1979, two months after the Iranian Revolution overthrew the shah.

The Iranian government has frequently sought to jam satellite television services that carry VOA signals, fearful of its population receiving such news coverage, especially during times of national protests. Afsoon Najafi, whose sister Hadis Najafi was killed during the protest movement that swept Iran in late 2022, thanked VOA for its coverage of the demonstrations, which were sparked by the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly.

“[VOA] has been essential in amplifying my cry for justice,” she wrote in a court briefing to support VOA, adding that VOA has allowed Iranians “to see and hear about issues that were either censored or entirely ignored by state-controlled media under the Islamic Republic’s laws.”

Now, VOA’s once 24/7 news operation to Iran has been reduced to about one hour of video programming each weekday.

Service Year started Weekly broadcast hours 2024* July 2025 weekly hours Persian 1979 168.00 5

Africa

Since VOA began broadcasting in French in 1960 to 22 African countries, it has expanded to 17 languages across sub-Saharan Africa, with the latest — Fulani — added in 2024 to reach a nomadic population across West and Central Africa.

VOA’s total programming to sub-Saharan Africa had a measured reach of 93.6 million people in 2024, based on USAGM survey data. The largest audiences on the continent included Somalia, where 62% of the population received news from either VOA or one of its sister outlets, Middle East Broadcasting Networks, and Niger, where VOA had an audience of 46%. In terms of sheer numbers, Nigeria — Africa’s most populous nation — had the largest audience share in the region at 37.4 million people, or 33% of its population.

Since VOA stopped broadcasting to Africa in March, reporting shows that Russia and China are filling the void. China’s state news agencies, Xinhua and CGTN, had more than 37 bureaus in Africa as of April, and RT, formally Russia Today, signed contracts with more than 30 African TV stations since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to NeimanLab.

A bipartisan group of eight former VOA directors wrote to U.S. senators in March, saying that “gutting VOA [in Africa] would cede an entire continent to America’s adversaries and allow authoritarian regimes to control the narrative.”

Mohamed Abdirizak Mohamud, former Somali minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation, said in a court filing in support of a lawsuit against VOA’s shutdown that VOA “provides a critical counterbalance to unreliable narratives” in Somalia, where he said “misinformation exacerbates conflict.”

Nigerian Information Minister Mohammed Idris told The Wall Street Journal in July that the departure of VOA from Nigeria “created a perceptible void, especially in terms of trusted, independent international news content.”

Service Year started Weekly broadcast hours 2024* July 2025 weekly hours Bambara 2013 11.50 0 Central Africa (Kinyarwanda, Kirundi) 1996 40.39 0 English to Africa 1963 258.75 0 French to Africa and Trans Sahel 1960 181.75 0 Hausa (includes Fulani) 1979 16.75 0 Horn of Africa (Amharic, Tigrigna and Afaan Oromoo) 1982

1982

1996 36.25 0 Portuguese 1976 10.50 0 Somali 2007 33.58 0 Swahili 1962 18.70 0 Zimbabwe (Shona, Ndebele and English) 2003 5.00 0 Total 625.17 0

Latin America

Spanish was one of the first languages broadcast by the U.S. government, beginning in 1941, before VOA was officially established the following year. Total programming to Latin America by VOA was measured to have reached 100 million people last year.

VOA had grown a huge audience share in many Latin American countries. At least half of the population of Nicaragua (59%), Costa Rica (55%) and the Dominican Republic (51%) reported getting weekly news from the networks last year. Countries that had a near majority of the audience share included El Salvador (49%), Peru (49%) and Bolivia (47%).

As in Africa, experts warn that the void left by VOA programming in Latin America will be filled by U.S. adversaries, including Russia and China. Former U.S. diplomat William Hill told the SaveVOA campaign, “If we silence VOA, we leave the field open to these rivals, and we leave the field unchallenged to their efforts. Why would we voluntarily do this to ourselves?”

In Nicaragua, which is rated by Reporters Without Borders as the ninth-worst country in the world in terms of press freedoms, Nicaraguan American democracy campaigner Damaris Rostran says VOA “remains an essential lifeline, reminding us that the world is watching, and that the voice of truth will not be silenced.”

Service Year started Weekly broadcast hours 2024* July 2025 weekly hours Creole 1986 17.00 0 Spanish 1941 (paused

1945-1946,

1948-1953, 1956-1961) 46.99 0 Total 63.99 0

English programming

In addition to reaching people in their native languages, VOA also committed to carrying programs in America’s common tongue — English — cultivating an audience of around 80 million people each week.

The English division includes VOA’s main newsroom — the heart of news operations for the organization — with its long tradition of ensuring that “VOA will serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news,” the opening sentence of VOA’s charter.

The division includes dozens of U.S.-based reporters who cover all aspects of U.S. government policy as well as telling the stories of America’s varied residents to audiences across the globe.

VOA correspondents often travel with the press pool that covers high-level U.S. military officials in order to explain U.S. defense policy and international security issues to a global audience.

“Russia, China and Iran all invest heavily in English programming, which is filled with disinformation and lies about the United States. VOA English provided a trusted alternative before it was silenced,” said Barry Newhouse, acting director of VOA’s News Center.

VOA’s English programming has proved popular with audiences in Africa, a subset of political leaders and policymakers in non-English speaking countries, and with internet users in China. An online panel conducted by Gallup and a local partner found that 5.5% of Chinese internet users accessed VOA content in English each week.

In addition to the English website, programming for VOA’s English division also included hourly radio newscasts; a press freedom desk committed to covering the challenges journalists face around the world; “Learning English,” a popular, slow-paced broadcast to help millions to learn English while getting the news; and music shows, following the tradition of VOA’s iconic “Jazz Hour” radio show, hosted for four decades by Willis Conover.

Service Year started Weekly broadcast hours 2024* July 2025 weekly hours English 1942 415.53 0

savevoa.com

10. US Deploys Typhon Missiles to Japan, Putting China, Russia, and North Korea in Range

If only the Korean, Chinese and Russian people could hear about this. But alas we have no Voice of America to broadcast this news to the oppressed people who long for freedom. We have retired from the information warfare battlefield.

US Deploys Typhon Missiles to Japan, Putting China, Russia, and North Korea in Range

https://united24media.com/latest-news/us-deploys-typhon-missiles-to-japan-putting-china-russia-and-north-korea-in-range-11243

Aug 31, 2025 14:19

Updated Aug 31, 2025 14:24

2 min read

Authors

Ivan Khomenko

News Writer

USS Savannah Fires SM-6 Missile From Typhon’s Mk 70 Launcher, October 24, 2023. Illustrative photo. (Source: US Navy)

The United States has stationed its Typhon surface-to-surface missile system at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan, marking the system’s first permanent deployment on Japanese territory.

The move coincides with the start of Resolute Dragon 2025, a joint US-Japan military exercise scheduled from September 11 to 25, and is part of a broader strategy to enhance integrated strike capabilities across the Indo-Pacific region.

According to Army Recognition on August 30, the Typhon system—also known as the Strategic Mid-Range Fires system—is capable of launching SM-6 and Tomahawk cruise missiles. The SM-6 has a range exceeding 320 kilometers, while the Tomahawk offers strike capabilities up to 1,500 kilometers.

The system is road-mobile, containerized, and designed for survivability, allowing for rapid deployment and precision targeting in contested environments. Its dual-use design supports both maritime interdiction and land-attack missions.

Excertps:

If we do nothing, AI will amplify the Hydra, multiplying vulnerabilities faster than defenders can respond. Outdated OT will remain soft targets; terrorist networks will refine exploits faster than institutions can harden. The mimetic spread of successful attacks will normalize the weaponization of infrastructure.

But if we act now—reframing AI policy, investing in AI-enabled OT defense, elevating national skills, and redesigning for resilience—we can tilt the balance back toward stability.

Either we harden the forgotten systems that keep our world stable, or we accept they will become the very Hydra that unravels it.

AI and the Hydra Effect: Securing Outdated OT Before the Threat Swarm Arrives

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/09/01/ai-and-the-hydra-effect-securing-outdated-ot-before-the-threat-swarm-arrives/

by Kevin W. Nickel

09.01.2025 at 06:00am

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating the pace and scale of cyber-physical threats; outdated operational technology (OT) provides an exposed attack surface that terrorist and criminal networks can exploit faster than defenders can respond. Publicly documented vulnerabilities, coupled with AI-enabled reconnaissance and exploit generation, create a self-reinforcing Hydra of attackers and infection vectors. This article, part of an ongoing examination of AI’s dual-use implications, frames how legacy OT, adversarial innovation, and illicit marketplaces intersect; and outlines actionable steps in AI policy, infrastructure investment, workforce readiness, and systems design to prevent cascading failures in critical infrastructure.

Introduction – Past Systems Are Inadequate to Support a Safe Future

Civilization rests on systems that were designed to be invisible. Elevators, traffic lights, and water treatment plants quietly sustain daily life without fanfare. But they were built decades ago in an era when physical sabotage, not cyber exploitation, was the primary risk.

These systems are stable but brittle. They prioritize uptime over security; in many cases, applying a patch introduces more risk than leaving the vulnerability untouched. For years, this trade-off held because exploiting them required expertise, time, and physical access.

Artificial intelligence changes that balance. It allows bad actors to scale reconnaissance, tailor exploits, and replicate successful attacks faster than defenders can respond. Like the Hydra of mythology, where one severed head grows back as two, AI threatens to multiply both the vulnerabilities and the adversaries who exploit them.

This fragility rests on three compounding truths:

Antiquated technology underpins critical infrastructure. Legacy code and outdated hardware assumed ‘security through obscurity’; a philosophy that no longer holds.
The exploit map is already written. Once an OT vulnerability is demonstrated, whether in a single elevator or a piece of localized software, it becomes a template.
Bad actors will always adopt innovation faster than defenders. Terrorist networks and criminal groups have always leveraged emerging tools; AI now supercharges that adoption.

Together, these truths form the Hydra’s body; a creature that regenerates faster than you can cut it down.

WHAT – The Variables Driving the Next Wave of Exploitation

The threat is not abstract. It emerges from three converging variables: outdated operational technology; publicly available exploit logic; and the accelerating innovation curve of bad actors powered by AI.

1. Operational Technology (OT) Is Built for Stability, Not Security

Water treatment plants, power grids, traffic control systems, and elevator networks were engineered in an era when physical access was the primary threat vector. Updating them risks catastrophic downtime or hardware incompatibility; so many remain frozen in time, locked into old software because changing them is riskier than leaving them exposed.

2. The Exploit Map Is Already Written

The vulnerabilities in these systems are documented and, in some cases, commoditized.

At a cybersecurity conference, operational technology researcher Deviant Ollam walked through a series of physical, social engineering, and cyber strategies using elevators as his storyboard. Small lapses in operational awareness, convenience-driven shortcuts, and human error allow attackers to bypass even well-intentioned safeguards. Small lapses in operational awareness, convenience-driven shortcuts, and human error allow attackers to bypass even well-intentioned safeguards. Employees lose restricted keys that are never properly deactivated. Front desk staff can be socially engineered into granting unauthorized access. Widely available tools like the Flipper Zero, paired with a low-cost antenna, can unlock restricted panels without leaving obvious traces. Many of these legacy systems lack detailed logging, allowing breaches to go unnoticed until consequences cascade.

This is not about elevators specifically; it is a window into how consistent OT logic can be exploited anywhere.

On a much larger scale, the NotPetya attack in 2017 revealed the same principle. A single vulnerability in Ukrainian software cascaded into a global logistics incident, disrupting hospitals, shipping ports, and corporations far beyond its intended target.

Once an OT vulnerability is publicly understood, whether physical, social, or digital, it cannot be ‘unknown.’ It becomes part of an exploit map that any motivated actor can follow.

3. AI Accelerates the Cat-and-Mouse Game

Terrorist organizations and criminal networks have historically leveraged new technologies faster than defenders. AI collapses the skill barrier even further; automating reconnaissance, generating tailored exploits, and spreading successful attack strategies at machine speed.

What was once the domain of highly skilled nation-state operators is now accessible to decentralized, loosely coordinated cells. One success no longer creates isolated damage; it creates a Hydra of new threats, each head growing sharper and faster.

HOW – Exploitation Becomes Scalable, Replicable, and Rapid

This convergence does not just create more attacks; it changes their nature.

1. The Hydra Effect – Many Vectors, Many Attackers

AI creates two hydras. One grows from infection vectors; the other from the attackers themselves.

The Infection Vector Hydra – One Breach Becomes Many

NotPetya showed how one localized exploit unintentionally spread to hospitals and shipping hubs worldwide. AI would actively scan global OT networks, tailor payloads for specific environments, and deploy optimized variants in hours. One breach becomes a living exploit library.

The Bad Actor Hydra – One Attacker Becomes Many

In the past, a single skilled attacker might produce a handful of novel attacks over months. AI allows one bad actor to simulate dozens of attack scenarios, architect new exploit chains, and automate deployment in hours. One individual becomes a swarm of themselves, iterating faster than defenders can respond.

Together, these two hydras feed each other; each new exploit makes the next one easier to copy, while each AI-enhanced attacker becomes a rapid prototyping lab for future threats.

2. Terrorist and Criminal Networks as Digital Marketplaces

Modern terrorist organizations operate within global illicit economies, buying and selling stolen data, renting infrastructure, and laundering funds through fraud and cryptocurrency. These networks use low-risk scams as testbeds for refining tools and tactics.

Groups like the Russian-speaking cybercrime syndicate Evil Corp (responsible for the Dridex banking malware) and Conti-affiliated ransomware cells have been documented collaborating with extremist networks, selling ransomware kits, and laundering funds through crypto exchanges. According to a 2023 Europol threat assessment, “the criminal use of cryptocurrencies has become more evident in 2023, as has the number of requests for investigative support that Europol has received” (Europol, Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment, 2023).”

AI supercharges this shadow economy. Generative models craft multilingual phishing lures, write malware, automate social engineering, and even generate deepfake audio/video to bypass identity checks. What was once bespoke capability for state actors becomes off-the-shelf tooling for decentralized terrorist networks.

3. Mimetic Spread – Exploits as Behavioral Payloads

Every successful attack becomes a narrative template. Violent ideological movements have long mirrored tactics—hijackings in the 1970s, lone-wolf shootings in the 2000s—because if it worked once, it will work again.

Now AI makes that spread instant. Attackers can describe their goal in plain language—‘disable a city’s traffic signals during rush hour’—and receive actionable blueprints. One elevator exploit in New York inspires a transit system attack in Europe; which evolves into a power grid disruption in Asia. Each iteration inherits DNA from the last.

This is how an idea becomes a behavioral payload: spreading across encrypted channels and darknet forums, evolving with every replication.

WHAT IF / NEXT – Turning Recognition into Action

If we accept that AI is accelerating the attacker’s advantage, ignoring these vulnerabilities is a failure of governance. Four areas must adapt:

1. AI Policy Must Address Adversarial Use

AI policy cannot focus solely on economic growth. It must include adversarial risk frameworks; controlled release policies for high-risk capabilities; and mandated red teaming for models with OT exploitation potential.

2. AI + OT Hardening Requires Targeted Investment

Legacy OT cannot simply be patched overnight. We need AI-driven anomaly detection; segmented system design to contain breaches; and modernization roadmaps that balance stability with security. Public-private funding models and government-backed mandates are required.

3. National Skills and Learning Capacity Must Be Elevated

Security personnel, critical infrastructure operators, and local governments need AI-enabled threat training. The national polis must become AI-literate, capable of both defending against and understanding how AI changes the attack surface.

4. Systems Must Be Built for Resilience-by-Design

Future OT must prioritize graceful failure over brittle stability. Modular, adaptive designs with behavioral anomaly detection must replace monolithic legacy systems that assume attackers move slowly.

Closing Implication

If we do nothing, AI will amplify the Hydra, multiplying vulnerabilities faster than defenders can respond. Outdated OT will remain soft targets; terrorist networks will refine exploits faster than institutions can harden. The mimetic spread of successful attacks will normalize the weaponization of infrastructure.

But if we act now—reframing AI policy, investing in AI-enabled OT defense, elevating national skills, and redesigning for resilience—we can tilt the balance back toward stability.

Either we harden the forgotten systems that keep our world stable, or we accept they will become the very Hydra that unravels it.

Tags: AI Policy, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Operational Technology, Resilience-by-Design

About The Author

Kevin W. Nickel
Kevin W. Nickel is a technology strategist and founder of 28 Strategies, an advisory firm focused on the dual-use implications of emerging technologies in national security and critical infrastructure. With a background in AI-driven analytics, operational resilience, and complex stakeholder environments, he explores how adversarial innovation and outdated systems intersect to create systemic risk. Through 28 Strategies, he provides policy, strategy, and implementation guidance for organizations navigating the accelerating convergence of AI, cybersecurity, and geopolitical threats.

13. Staff Processes in Large-Scale Combat Operations Part 1: The Rhythm of the Battle

See the graphics at the link.

Excerpts:

The night shift battle major is not a commander, but typically, divisions leave that junior major at the helm all night during the division’s most active period of fighting. The deputy commanding general maneuver (DCG-M) should own the fight and run the COIC during high OPTEMPO periods of the day (typically during limited visibility hours) and may chair the AWG if it happens. Further, the DCG-M is authorized to make as many decisions as possible that the CG would make. The G-3 can also fill this role and would be offset from the DCG-M by shift. This allows the CG freedom to place people where and when that commander sees fit and keep a division key leader in the center of the hub of information around the clock. When the main command post is jumping, the tactical operations center has the fight. Who has the authority then? How do running estimates enable these leaders to make their decisions?

With the tactical decision-making addressed, now the division can look at decision making in the planning process. If the ToR, DAM, and tactical SOP align, the DCG-M and G-3 can effectively use running estimates to synchronize the commands, and the deputy commanding general-support (DCG-S) and chief of staff can effectively use running estimates to synchronize the entire staff enterprise. When a battle rhythm meeting takes place, it is chaired by a decision maker. When a unit is not holding meetings other than a BUB, CUA, and an OPSYNC for days at a time, these same decision makers are still responsible for making the same decisions but must rely on well-integrated, current, and accurate staff running estimates and less formal processes to make those decisions.

In short, to win in large-scale combat, divisions must adopt agile battle rhythms. When necessary, divisions feed fewer touchpoints they can execute with accurate, informative running estimates. Divisions empower leaders to seize and maintain the initiative.

Staff Processes in Large-Scale Combat Operations Part 1: The Rhythm of the Battle

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/09/01/staff-processes-in-large-scale-combat/

by John R. Harrell, by James Villanueva, by Peter Farese, by Joe Hammond

09.01.2025 at 06:00am

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the US Army’s Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL).

This article was published as CALL publication No. 24-852, Staff Processes in Large-Scale Combat Operations Part 1:The Rhythm of the Battle.

This article is republished at Small Wars Journal with permission from CALL.

You can find this and all of CALL’s other publications on their website.

Introduction

Imagine a scenario where a division executing a wet gap crossing has just lost 50 percent of its bridging assets. The division commander is with the division’s tactical command post and is trying to pull his brigade commanders and staff up on the net to discuss options. He needs information and a plan now. Glancing at the division battle rhythm, the next division course of action development working group is not for another three hours and the fragmentary order and other fighting products will not be published for another 14 hours. This timeline does not support the commander or the staff.

For the past two decades the operational environment afforded divisions the luxury of not having to move their command posts. An enduring mission allowed large numbers of staff officers and noncommissioned officers to conduct a multitude of meetings, working groups, and boards, along with the time and talent to execute these types of battle rhythms. As the Army continues to shift its focus and adapt to fight and win in multidomain, large-scale combat we must change our processes so that commanders are able to make informed decisions any time of day. A robust, rigid, and highly structured battle rhythm with many boards, bureaus, cells, centers and working groups (B2C2WGs) and other staff events may support staff processes in a static environment. However, operations in competition and large-scale combat demand a battle rhythm less reliant on a full suite of meetings on a rigid schedule. A robust battle rhythm may support staff processes, but a battle has a rhythm of its own that ebbs and flows between offensive and defensive operations, periods of high and low intensity, and a relentlessly changing situation across every domain. Even doctrine acknowledges that battle rhythms change during operations.

The battle rhythm changes during execution as operations progress. For example, early in the operation a commander may require a daily “plans” update briefing. As the situation changes, the commander may only require “plans” update every three days.

How do we enable division commanders to fight in synchronization with this “rhythm of the battle” and exercise the art of command while still allowing the staff to provide the analysis and science of control that the commander needs at any given time? To win in large-scale combat, divisions require agile battle rhythms that support informative and collaborative running estimates to empower decision-makers to make timely and risk-informed decisions that maximize the effects of all elements of combat power at the decisive place and time. This publication is the first in a series that will build on this discussion and explore related issues in detail. It will provide recommendations for commanders and staffs to manage information, talent, and authorities in a way that maximizes meetings and planning efforts when the situation permits but minimizes meetings when the situation is changing too rapidly for rigid meeting schedules to keep pace. Those recommendations are:

Adapt the battle rhythm to the operational tempo (OPTEMPO) and maximize meetings and boards during periods of low OPTEMPO (e.g., when the division is in assembly areas prior to crossing the line of departure or when the division has completed a series of offensive operations and is transitioning to the defense and will be relatively static to facilitate robust planning).
Develop running estimates that feed any possible information requirement so that when a meeting is not possible, people can still use the division’s running estimates as inputs to their processes in a less structured staff environment.
Empower decision makers to reduce the division’s dependency on one person’s ability to make decisions at any given time.

Flexible Battle Rhythm Development

Field Manual (FM) 3-0, Operations, 1 October 2022; FM 5-0, Planning and Orders Production, 16 May 2022; and FM 6-0, Commander and Staff Organization and Operations, May 2022, emphasize that battle rhythms change as operations progress and include a cycle of activities to synchronize operations. However, observed trends indicate that units strictly interpret existing doctrine, especially doctrine specific to each warfighting function, and therefore believe a robust and rigid battle rhythm is necessary to allow for shared understanding, synchronization, and decision-making. FM 3-60, Army Targeting, 11 August 2023, FM 4-0 Sustainment, and Army Doctrine Publication (ADP) 3-37 Protection, 10 January 2024, are among the doctrinal publications advocating for working groups and boards to enable effective operations. This article is not arguing that such meetings in a synchronized battle rhythm are not effective in and of themselves, but it does advocate for a flexible and judicious execution of such meetings in accordance with the natural rhythm of the battle. Rigidly adhering to a set number of and times for meetings often does not facilitate timely decision-making in the fast pace of large-scale combat. A more flexible interpretation of existing warfighting function doctrine which emphasizes the timeliness of accurate information provided to the commander, not a rigid series of meetings to provide that information, will better serve units executing large-scale combat operations. For example, when a division is in a planning cycle during a period of relatively low activity, it can execute the full suite of meetings, working groups, and boards to plan, produce orders, rehearse, and prepare for operations. When the division transitions to the execution phase of an offensive operation, it may minimize meetings and function with just one or two scheduled commander touchpoints per day with the staff and the subordinate units (e.g., a battle update brief [BUB] and commander’s update assessment [CUA]). The division would prosecute the fight using the orders that have already been published and use those two primary touchpoints to assess and adjust as necessary. When the division transitions to the defense and begins to consolidate gains, it may be possible to return to a denser battle rhythm including more deliberate planning. Figure 1 illustrates a way that a division could expand and contract its processes based on the OPTEMPO and ability to conduct meetings.

Note: The division’s requirements to its higher headquarters and obligations to produce orders and products for its subordinate units do not change.

Figure 1: Meeting Density versus Operational Tempo

Running Estimates

Running estimates are the key to enabling timely commander decisions and staff understanding. A running estimate is an ongoing assessment of progress toward an end state. A Mission Command Training Program (MCTP) observation captures a common trend with running estimates across division staffs:

Many of the working groups and planning events occurred at times that rendered their outputs dated due to the rapidly changing battlefield situation. Consequently, decision boards and information meetings often had inaccurate information, requiring additional input and planning.

Staff practices for developing current running estimate frameworks have largely been cultivated over the last 20 years of executing counterinsurgency and stability operations. As such, they fail to communicate useful information and recommendations to the commander and other staff sections during dynamic large-scale combat. Instead, staffs need to determine what a running estimate looks like by first determining what the commander needs to know and codify that as commander’s critical information requirements (CCIRs). From there, staffs compare the current situation to the end state of each phase of an operation as defined in the commander’s intent and concept statement. The staff must then measure progress toward setting those conditions and communicate that in terms of CCIR, progress toward end state conditions, as well as associated opportunities, risks, and recommendations.

Figure 2: Conceptual Framework for Staff Running Estimates

When commanders need to solve an unforeseen problem or exploit an opportunity, such as in the event of exceptional information, they may not be able to wait for a battle rhythm meeting or a working group to seize or maintain the initiative. When a division commander pulls the staff and brigade commanders together to discuss a problem, the commander needs to see the staff and commanders along with the enemy, options and risk associated with them, and then make decisions. Often, the staff is unable to provide the commander the information needed and must go back to do more analysis. This is an example of a running estimate not serving its purpose. The staff must be able to communicate the necessary information right away and anticipate what the commander will need to know in the future.

Figure 3: The Operations Process and the Flow of Information

Figure 3 depicts a full cycle of a military decision-making process (MDMP) overlaid with functional inputs, outputs, and meetings or touchpoints. Note the lack of times associated with the sequence of events on the chart. This cycle could take place over a period of 24 hours, 96 hours, or just two hours. Further, at any given time the enemy or higher headquarters could be introduce CCIR into the daily schedule. For example, most division battle rhythms involve MDMP during the day and execution of operations during limited visibility hours. This rhythm is unable to rapidly adjust to enemy actions taking place during limited visibility, when most decision makers are in a rest cycle.

If the enemy unexpectedly counterattacks and the unit has no plan for this, what should it do? Does the staff wake up the commanding general (CG)? Does the unit allow a deputy commander to make an adjustment decision immediately? Does a key leader assemble the night shift staff for the rapid decision making and synchronization process and then decide what to do?

This all depends on how much time is available and when in the daily cycle this type of event occurs. Regardless, there must be a system (running estimates) in place to understand the situation, a decision maker with authority in the right place at that time, and the requisite talent available to process the developing situation into decision worthy information in the available time frame.

Products and Processes

Once a staff determines what information the commander needs and builds running estimates to communicate this information accordingly, the staff can start to develop the tools and vehicles (products and processes) to deliver that information. The legacy quad charts we have all seen are typically not useful in division staffs. What should a running estimate look like and what information should it maintain? If the product is the tool to maintain the information, then the process that uses the running estimate as an input or an output is the vehicle that delivers it to people who need the information. For the commander and the staff, a current operations integrating cell (COIC) synchronization is one vehicle for discussing running estimates, and an operations synchronization (OPSYNC) is a vehicle for doing the same with the brigades as well as the staff.

During fast-paced periods of battle, especially periods in which the commander is circulating and perhaps the main command post is jumping, it may not be possible for the entire staff to be planning or conducting meetings for many hours. In large-scale combat operations, these periods must center around fewer meetings. What those meetings must be and when they occur are a mission, enemy, terrain and weather, troops and support available, time available, and civil considerations (METT-TC) equation. This publication proposes that these periods of high intensity and low meeting density utilize two CG touchpoints per day: a BUB and a CUA. The division should supplement the BUBs and CUAs with as many OPSYNCs as needed per day to allow the commander to exercise distributed command and control of the division from his vehicle or the operations center or wherever the division’s communications architecture allows.

Again, the BUB, CUA, and OPSYNC should only occur as needed to enable integrated staff efforts and ultimately drive decisions. However, staff estimates, which are the key ingredient to every meeting, need to be current and accurate to enable timely decision making. The challenge here is to develop staff products that feed those minimum touchpoints, and more importantly, the unexpected ones. To do this effectively, the division’s knowledge management (KM) system is vital and every person on the staff has a responsibility to this system. Staffs need to be disciplined in updating and maintaining integrated running estimates constantly even if they are not briefing them in a battle rhythm event on a regular basis. An integrated running estimate clearly reflects the impacts each warfighting function has on the others and therefore accounts for all elements of the division’s combat power to update decisions.

Flexibility in battle rhythms also must extend to flexibility in planning horizons. While there are doctrinal planning horizons outlined in FM 6-0, the staff should be organized in a manner that is agile enough to compress or expand planning horizons in accordance with the rhythm of the battle. Planning for some operations may occur within what is traditionally viewed as the “current operations” window, and necessary battle rhythm events may need to occur under a compressed timeline to facilitate planning and decision making under such circumstances. Conversely, staffs should be capable of expanding their planning horizons out to give time for more thorough and deliberate planning and synchronization. The arrangement of the plans, future operations, and current operations cells (to include clearly defined roles and responsibilities with division chief of staff, G5, and G-3 oversight) is critical to enabling flexible planning horizons. Large-scale combat assures that planning horizons will collapse, but the division must be able to get those horizons back when the rhythm of the battle allows.

Finally, the current situation must update plans, and those plans must be refined as the current situation changes. Updated running estimates do not just feed current operations and staff battle tracking, they also update future operations and plans. Therefore, staffs must have a mechanism such as an OPSYNC to help inform planners of the current situation and provide planners with updated running estimates. This is especially true when the received exceptional intelligence leads to a decision that requires modification to the future plans.

Talent, Time, and Task Management

To effectively plan and synchronize operations in accordance with the rhythm of the battle, units must also consider how they array their personnel. Many unit command posts tend to have most personnel, including decision-makers, work during daylight hours. This results in:

Units are unable to make timely decisions in the middle of the
Running estimates become stale

These situations cause units to lose valuable planning time and often cause them to miss opportunities in the battle. Units regularly find themselves behind the enemy’s decision cycle because they spend several hours catching up with developments that occurred during periods of darkness.

EditOne MCTP observation statesThe group’s internal battle rhythm consisted of many meetings and planning groups during the day while leaving the night largely open. This led to challenges for planners and staff leads during the day as they were consistently engaged in meetings, losing time for needed analysis and internal planning. It also reduced the staff leads’ abilities to provide oversight and direction to their sections. This forced many of the staff planners to work beyond their ordinary shift to catch up, increasing fatigue over time. Further, this higher tempo in the day required a greater number of personnel, limiting the night shift’s personnel and overall effectiveness. This subsequently produced gaps in continuity between the shifts and placed a vast majority of the workload on the day shift.

However, a couple of simple TTPs allow divisions to operate at peak efficiency throughout a 24- hour day. First, clearly delineate or delegate authorities as the commander does not need to be the sole decision-maker. Units can use terms of reference (ToR) as a baseline document to codify the duties, responsibilities, and divisions of labor amongst the senior leaders across the warfighting functions, command posts, and battle rhythm events. Units must maintain a delegated authorities matrix (DAM) to enable subordinate leaders to make many decisions quickly, freeing senior leaders to insert themselves at other points of friction. The standing division ToR and DAM should be aligned with each other and the tactical SOP. These can be modified to meet the current operational environment and the authorities and capabilities allocated from the higher headquarters. The example DAM in Figure 4 is a useful tool for analyzing authority coverage around the clock as well as at the various locations on the battlefield.

Figure 4: Example Delegated Authorities Matrix

For example, if a division is unable to conduct a protection working group, the ToR and DAM can be used together to identify what decisions did not get made and therefore what decisions will still eventually have to be made while determining who can make those decisions.

To do this, decision makers need the products that update decisions. Without meetings to create such products, how does the staff produce them? As mentioned previously, a well codified KM system is critical, but talent and task-management are the next steps. Leaders must array their personnel in a manner that ensures competent, well-informed staff members are always available to inform decisions. This requires a whole-of-staff approach including developing and empowering even junior members of the staff. Individuals must have clear guidance for what products to update and maintain throughout periods of darkness. They must clearly understand what information is required for timely decisions. Lastly, they should use the various COIC synchronizations and OPSYNCs as processes to help keep running estimates current and accurate. Even if an AWG does not take place overnight, those who own the output products of the AWG can participate in COIC drills and use their own networks to collaborate in lieu of a meeting. Clear transitions of updated running estimates between individuals coming on and off duty will ensure that staffs will always have the most current running estimates on hand to drive effective decision-making.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Warfighter exercises represent the culminating exercise for division and higher commanders and staffs. Time and again, these exercises demonstrate that in large-scale combat while a corps or land component command headquarters can maintain rigid battle rhythms independent of the rhythm of the battle, divisions should not. During periods of low activity, a division can very effectively conduct the full suite of meetings and detailed planning, but it is not sustainable to do so during periods of high activity. The chief of staff will have to plan and direct the staff to conduct necessary meetings and to do without them when not needed. Units should plan and publish orders and products by phase. In execution or high-tempo periods, units conduct only necessary commander and staff touchpoints to maintain situational understanding and adjust or re-synchronize through OPSYNCs. In doing so, divisions will have to use published orders and exercise mission command to allow leaders at all echelons to make decisions with the published end state in mind. This decentralized decision-making system will move up and down within the rhythm of the battle. The commander may be able to provide detailed guidance at times and at other times must simply trust and empower others. What follows are some specific recommendations for consideration.

Managing an Agile Battle Rhythm

To achieve battle rhythm agility and outfight the enemy, think of battle rhythms on a red (high OPTEMPO), amber, and green (low OPTEMPO) scale. Use low-tempo periods to maximize meetings and planning. When the situation does not allow all those meetings, identify and conduct the essential meetings and fill gaps with shorter, more efficient synchronization meetings and commander-to-commander dialogue.

Draft SOPs for red, amber, and green battle rhythms provide a flexible start point from which to adjust the daily meeting schedule. The chief of staff is responsible for determining which meetings must take place each day and therefore which version of the battle rhythm to start from and communicate this with guidance to the staff daily. The division must train to plan by phase and produce all the necessary orders, annexes, and products needed for the next phase of the operation so that the division and brigades can fight from them with minimal meetings.

Running Estimates, Products, and Processes

Running estimates are not just a situational report. Running estimates are a measurement of progress toward an end state. How are we doing, what is next, and what adjustments can and should we make? What format does this require?

Divisions must redesign running estimates including the systems, products, and processes with which they are built so that running estimates do not rely solely on meetings to force updates. They must feed decisions and adjustments at any time and therefore must be accurate at all times. They must inform planners who are trying to build plans or resynchronize a changed event from a published order when meetings and working groups are not feasible.

To do this, start with the COIC synchronization. Build this synchronization format on command post computing environment (CPCE) and virtual joint operations center (VJOC) (and Joint Battle Command Platform for those who are mobile) so that the division common operational picture and running estimates (by warfighting function and unit) have a short information slide deck with CPCE layers or acetate flips that accompany each slide of information. Start each drill with a quick review of the synchronization to determine where the division is in relation to the end state of the next phase and then discuss the relevant information and recommendations. This drill is basically a boiled down assessment working group (AWG); therefore, the same deck and process can be used regardless of which version of the battle rhythm is in effect.

Once these products are built, the processes they feed develop two flavors:

The formal full-scale meeting flavor
The behind-the-scenes, somebody owns it even if there is no meetings flavor

In either case, the KM system is critical, and every person on the staff must know the KM standard operating procedure (SOP) and fulfill responsibility to it.

Time, Talent, and Authorities

The night shift battle major is not a commander, but typically, divisions leave that junior major at the helm all night during the division’s most active period of fighting. The deputy commanding general maneuver (DCG-M) should own the fight and run the COIC during high OPTEMPO periods of the day (typically during limited visibility hours) and may chair the AWG if it happens. Further, the DCG-M is authorized to make as many decisions as possible that the CG would make. The G-3 can also fill this role and would be offset from the DCG-M by shift. This allows the CG freedom to place people where and when that commander sees fit and keep a division key leader in the center of the hub of information around the clock. When the main command post is jumping, the tactical operations center has the fight. Who has the authority then? How do running estimates enable these leaders to make their decisions?

With the tactical decision-making addressed, now the division can look at decision making in the planning process. If the ToR, DAM, and tactical SOP align, the DCG-M and G-3 can effectively use running estimates to synchronize the commands, and the deputy commanding general-support (DCG-S) and chief of staff can effectively use running estimates to synchronize the entire staff enterprise. When a battle rhythm meeting takes place, it is chaired by a decision maker. When a unit is not holding meetings other than a BUB, CUA, and an OPSYNC for days at a time, these same decision makers are still responsible for making the same decisions but must rely on well-integrated, current, and accurate staff running estimates and less formal processes to make those decisions.

In short, to win in large-scale combat, divisions must adopt agile battle rhythms. When necessary, divisions feed fewer touchpoints they can execute with accurate, informative running estimates. Divisions empower leaders to seize and maintain the initiative.

Tags: Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL), field report, Lessons Learned, MCTP, Mission Command Training Program

About The Authors

John R. Harrell
Major John Harrell is a U.S. Army infantry officer assigned as a division command and control observer-coach/trainer with the Mission Command Training Program. Previously, he served as a division FUOPS planner in the 10th Mountain Division and a battalion S3/XO in 2d Battalion, 22d Infantry Regiment. He has developed academic curriculum for over 13 academic and warfighter exercises and has published articles on various related topics.
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James Villanueva
Major James Villanueva is a U.S. Army infantry officer assigned as a division command and control observer-coach/trainer with the Mission Command Training Program. Prior to his current assignment, he served as the G-35 for the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). He holds a PhD in history from Ohio State. James was also an assistant professor in the U.S. Military Academy Department of History and is the author of Awaiting MacArthur’s Return: World War II Guerrilla Resistance against the Japanese in the Philippines. He has an upcoming book assessing U.S. Army Regimental Combat Teams in the Pacific during World War II.
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Peter Farese
Major Peter Farese is a U.S. Army armor officer assigned as a division command and control observer-coach/trainer with the Mission Command Training Program. During his tenure he participated in, planned, or observed/controlled over 20 Warfighter Exercises supporting division and corps staffs around the globe. Prior to his current assignment, he served as the S3/XO of the reconnaissance squadron in the 3 d Cavalry Regiment and a planner for the III Armored Corps. He holds a masters of arts degree in military operations from the School of Advanced Military Studies.
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Joe Hammond
Joe Hammond is a Division Command and Control Analyst supporting Operations Group Bravo, Mission Command Training Program. He is former U.S. Army officer with three years of experience as an Observer-Coach/Trainer in MCTP and 4.5 years of time as a division staff officer with the 3rd Infantry and 1st Armored Divisions.

14. Kari Lake’s accusations about VOA and China are bad for the country

It appears we are giving up on the information instrument of power.

We seem only interested in hard power.

Opinion

Kari Lake’s accusations about VOA and China are bad for the country

Kari Lake says VOA cooperated with the Chinese Communist Party. In reality, VOA fights propaganda.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/02/voa-kari-lake-china-communist-party/?

August 31, 2025 at 7:30 a.m. EDTYesterday at 7:30 a.m. EDT

5 min

289

Voice of America's headquarters in downtown D.C. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

By Larry Diamond, Orville Schell and Robert Daly

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society. Robert Daly directed the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States from 2013 until April of this year.

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Kari Lake, senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media — parent of the Voice of America — has made serious and deeply troubling accusations about the VOA’s Mandarin Service. Testifying to the House Foreign Affairs Committee in June, she said she wanted to “root out the Russian, Chinese, Iranian propaganda … at VOA.” In July, she told the website Just the News that members of the Chinese Communist Party had been “meeting regularly with VOA management to tell them how they should be covering China.” And in late August, she posted on X: “The CCP has infiltrated VOA and YOU are paying for it.”

The VOA described by Lake is not the VOA we know and to which we have all contributed. Though we share her concerns for media outlets that yield to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party, the Voice of America is not one of them. On the contrary, since it was established in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda, the VOA has been one of our most effective bulwarks against Beijing’s influence-seeking abroad, and an effective means of promoting accurate information and critical analysis to the world. During the Cold War, millions beyond the Iron Curtain risked arrest by listening to VOA broadcasts. The need for such a global, objective, multilingual American news source is as great today as it was then.

Lake’s criticisms, and her work leading to the near-total shutdown of VOA, are misguided and bad for our country — for several reasons.

Following Opinions on the news

Following

First, some of Lake’s claims appear to be drawn from our 2019 report, published by the Hoover Institution, “China’s Influence and American Interests,” in which we cited interviews with several VOA staff members. One was Sasha Gong, who had been chief of VOA’s Mandarin Service until she was terminated in late 2018; she accused VOA of caving to pressure from Beijing to fire her after Gong broadcast an interview with a China critic, the exiled and notoriously unreliable billionaire Guo Wengui. After our research for the report was completed, however, multiple internal and external investigations concluded that VOA management had acted appropriately in terminating Gong and had upheld the editorial standards that informed the agency’s decision.

We regret that Gong’s false and outdated accusations are apparently being used by Lake to attack VOA, which has long served as a reliable and authoritative news source for people in China who might otherwise find themselves limited to the propaganda and censorship of the country’s state media.

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Second, VOA’s Mandarin Service in recent years has consistently delivered hard-hitting coverage of U.S.-China relations, exposed Chinese Communist Party disinformation and investigated Beijing’s malign influence around the world. In fact, it remains one of the few independent news outlets providing uncensored, fact-based reporting in both English and Mandarin to global Chinese audiences. It frequently features analyses by Americans whose critiques of the party would probably land them in prison if they went to China, including Miles Yu, who served as China affairs adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the first Trump administration. Our recent discussions on Chinese college campuses indicate that these programs are widely welcomed by Chinese students and intellectuals.

Third, we think the most telling evidence that VOA challenges Chinese Communist Party propaganda is the Beijing authorities’ decades-long efforts to jam its broadcasts, as well as the glee with which the party greeted the Trump administration’s near-shutdown of the agency in March. China’s international propaganda arm, the Global Times, hailed the move in an editorial: “The so-called beacon of freedom, VOA, has now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag.” The editorial denounced VOA for “stirring up conflicts” and “inciting social divisions”— boilerplate party language used to justify the repression of dissidents and truth-tellers within China. The Global Times also railed against VOA’s coverage of China’s human rights violations in Xinjiang, aggression in the South China Sea and unfair trade practices, as well as the broadcaster’s support for popular efforts to maintain democracy in Taiwan and achieve it in Hong Kong. If the Beijing authorities had co-opted VOA’s coverage of China, as Lake alleged, they would not have conducted a frenzied assault on the VOA as a “lie factory.”

It is important to remember that, in her assault on VOA, Lake has been wrong about procedure as well as facts. On Thursday, a federal judge found that Lake’s attempt to fire Michael Abramowitz, the VOA director, was illegal. (On Friday, she issued termination notices to more than 500 employees of VOA and its parent agency.)

As specialists in Chinese politics and democracy-building, we firmly believe that the VOA has long played — and should be allowed to continue playing — its essential role in countering Beijing’s malign narratives and combating its richly resourced, nakedly authoritarian propaganda worldwide. As of now, VOA’s Mandarin Service is one of four language services that (by statute) continue to operate, but it does so at a greatly reduced rate — and VOA asserts that all of its operations are legally protected from the administration’s efforts to eliminate it.

The Voice of America remains a vital instrument serving the U.S. national interest by combating authoritarian narratives and disseminating accurate news and information that our adversaries don’t want their people to hear or see. If Washington takes competition with China seriously, VOA must continue to be supported and even strengthened, with the Mandarin Service at the forefront of its work.

15. The age of alliances is ending, with hedging the rule of order

I am not ready to count out alliances yet. But perhaps Machiavelli does rule.

Is India a useful example? It has never really been anyone's ally. Perhaps it is the ultimate hedger and always has been.

Will the Philippines kowtow to China? But I can see the hedging.

And we must ask why the hedging (rhetorical question that I think we all know the answer to).

Excerpts:

After years of tension with Beijing following the deadly border clash in 2020, New Delhi has recently reopened high-level engagement, with flights resuming and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi preparing to travel to China to meet President Xi Jinping.

Machiavelli warned that “it is much safer to be feared than loved” in a world where human beings are “ungrateful, fickle, liars and deceivers”.

At the same time, India remains firmly anchored in security cooperation with Washington, most recently testing its Agni-V missile, capable of reaching Chinese targets. The dual track may seem contradictory, but it reflects what External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has often described as a foreign policy of “multi-alignment”, working with competing powers simultaneously to maximise national advantage.

Critics see opportunism. India sees necessity. US trade threats and pressure over Russian oil have pushed New Delhi to broaden its options rather than narrow them.

In Machiavelli’s terms, India is adapting to “the times”, focusing less on ideals and more on “effectual truth”, what works to preserve national strength.

The Philippines offers a parallel case.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has anchored Manila’s defence posture to the United States, Japan, and Australia, even holding joint naval drills with India. Yet Marcos actively courts Chinese investment and stresses openness to dialogue with Beijing. Manila is, in Machiavelli’s words, both “fox” and “lion” – relying on Washington’s deterrence while keeping Beijing close enough to avoid outright enmity.

This is not hypocrisy. It is hedging, a textbook strategy for smaller states living under the shadow of rival powers.

The age of alliances is ending, with hedging the rule of order | Lowy Institute

In times of war and transition, necessity overwhelms virtue. And was ever thus.

lowyinstitute.org · Shameek Godara

At a time when India’s alignment with the West seemed firm, developments this month underscore a more complex reality. Amid deepening military and economic ties with the United States and its Quad partners, New Delhi also moved to revive links with Beijing.

This contradictory posture is by design: hedging is now the operative logic of statecraft.

What is striking today is not that these behaviours exist – they never disappeared – but that they are more visible and decisive than ever. In an era of great-power competition, fractured supply chains, and technological disruption, states are prioritising flexibility over loyalty. The politics of convenience, long a feature of international life, has become the dominant lens through which middle powers navigate uncertainty.

India illustrates this well.

After years of tension with Beijing following the deadly border clash in 2020, New Delhi has recently reopened high-level engagement, with flights resuming and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi preparing to travel to China to meet President Xi Jinping.

Machiavelli warned that “it is much safer to be feared than loved” in a world where human beings are “ungrateful, fickle, liars and deceivers”.

At the same time, India remains firmly anchored in security cooperation with Washington, most recently testing its Agni-V missile, capable of reaching Chinese targets. The dual track may seem contradictory, but it reflects what External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has often described as a foreign policy of “multi-alignment”, working with competing powers simultaneously to maximise national advantage.

Critics see opportunism. India sees necessity. US trade threats and pressure over Russian oil have pushed New Delhi to broaden its options rather than narrow them.

In Machiavelli’s terms, India is adapting to “the times”, focusing less on ideals and more on “effectual truth”, what works to preserve national strength.

The Philippines offers a parallel case.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has anchored Manila’s defence posture to the United States, Japan, and Australia, even holding joint naval drills with India. Yet Marcos actively courts Chinese investment and stresses openness to dialogue with Beijing. Manila is, in Machiavelli’s words, both “fox” and “lion” – relying on Washington’s deterrence while keeping Beijing close enough to avoid outright enmity.

This is not hypocrisy. It is hedging, a textbook strategy for smaller states living under the shadow of rival powers.

Title page from Il Principe by Niccolò Machiavelli, displayed during a 500th anniversary celebration of his works in 2013 (Embassy of Italy in the United States)

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations as a whole embodies this logic, seeking unity while avoiding binding commitments that might close off future options. The Gulf states show the same pragmatism. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are deepening long-term energy deals with China, ensuring secure demand for their oil. At the same time, both remain critical military partners of the United States and, in the UAE’s case, maintain growing trade with Russia despite Western sanctions.

Here too, appearances matter. Machiavelli’s observation that “everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are” captures the balancing act of Gulf leaders. They are cultivating an image of reliability to all sides while pursuing their own security and economic interests.

Even Europe, often portrayed as the bastion of values-based foreign policy, has been forced into politics of convenience. While loudly reducing dependence on Russian pipelines after the Ukraine invasion, Europe’s imports of Russian liquefied natural gas have quietly risen. Energy security eclipses consistency. The uncomfortable reality is that in times of war and transition, necessity overwhelms virtue.

Taken together, these examples reveal a broader shift. The age of exclusive alliances and rigid blocs is giving way to an age of flexible alignments. Middle powers, especially, are learning to hedge, balance and manoeuvre, rather than bind themselves too tightly to one camp. What looks inconsistent is, in fact, coolly rational.

Machiavelli’s lessons resonate strongly here. He separated politics from ethics, reminding rulers that survival often requires acting against conventional morality while appearing virtuous. He warned that “it is much safer to be feared than loved” in a world where human beings are “ungrateful, fickle, liars and deceivers”. States today, like princes in Renaissance Italy, are operating under the same logic: secure survival first, manage appearances second. The politics of convenience may not inspire lofty rhetoric, but it reflects the reality of an uncertain world. For middle powers caught between Washington and Beijing, Moscow and Brussels, survival depends on flexibility, not loyalty.

The question is what this trend means for global order. Does the rise of convenience-driven statecraft stabilise competition, giving middle powers more room to manoeuvre? Or does it accelerate fragmentation, by weakening trust and solidarity among allies?

In truth, Machiavellian politics never disappeared. States have always hedged, balanced, and pursued advantage where they could. What is different today is not the existence of this behaviour, but the degree to which strategic rivalry, economic disruption, and technological shifts have brought it into sharper focus. The logic of flexibility and opportunism has always been part of international politics. The current moment simply makes it more visible and more decisive.

Either way, the lesson is clear. In 2025, the most relevant strategist may still be Machiavelli, not because leaders are cynical, but because they are adapting to the world as it is, not as they wish it to be.

lowyinstitute.org · Shameek Godara

16. How—and Why—U.S. Capitalism Is Unlike Any Other

I think Mr. Lowenstein is channelling his inner de Tocqueville.

Maybe it is time for a Volume III to Democracy in America?

How—and Why—U.S. Capitalism Is Unlike Any Other

The main difference between America’s brand of capitalism and elsewhere: a focus on the individual and an incentive to take risks

https://www.wsj.com/economy/us-capitalism-differences-eaecd208

Illustration: Brian Stauffer

By Roger Lowenstein

Sept. 1, 2025 5:30 am ET

Quick Summary

American capitalism fosters competition and incentivizes individuals, distinguishing itself from rival versions through Jeffersonian ideals.View more

American capitalism was created by American democracy, wrote Gordon Wood, the Depression-born historian. One can go further: The unique strength of our capitalist system mirrors that of our political ideal. By offering opportunity to all, it fosters vigorous competition. By permitting merit to trump entrenched elites, it motivates individuals with the plum of fortune.

While adherence to these adages has waxed and waned (women were essentially excluded from business, as from the ballot, until the 20th century), they are present throughout, and distinguish U.S. capitalism from rival versions. In particular, the Jeffersonian origins of our economic system make it uniquely geared toward the individual. Europe has a broad safety net and high-speed rail; America has highways and startups.

USA250

“The Story of the World’s Greatest Economy” is a yearlong WSJ series examining America’s first 250 years. Read more about it from Editor in Chief Emma Tucker.

Nowhere else is risk-taking so encouraged—and not coincidentally, nowhere else has innovation thrived as it has here. Both law and culture helped to shape our capitalism in ways that reflect the spirit of the American Revolution. “No taxation” was famously a cry of the colonials in Boston; less well-remembered is that the Declaration of Independence charged George III with obstructing immigration—newcomers being then as now a sparkplug of American enterprise.

To state the most basic fact of political democracy, it permits the popular will to override the establishment, merely another name for what the business professors call “creative destruction.” Thus did the automobile replace the horse; thus were punch cards voted out by mainframes; and so with minicomputers, desktops, search engines and (until the next smart fellow decamps) artificial intelligence. All of these upheavals occurred in the U.S. Term limits indeed.

Live by the market…

Let us clear the air and stipulate that American capitalism also has the manifest flaws of democracy. It is intensely market-centric. Markets are changeable, creatures of popular will. Their verdicts are often dubious; at present, three bitcoins trade for the approximate price of the median American home. American politics have always coughed up a veritable “laundry ticket,” as Fiorello La Guardia used to say, of empty suits and frauds along with the occasional statesman. Capitalism has answered with a gallery of patent-medicine salesmen, hustlers, dreamers, meme stocks and con men. Leave it to future generations to distinguish which speculations are useful. Ambition is a summons to effort. As my corporate-lawyer father used to say, “No speculation, no railroads.”

Because it is market-centric, American capitalism is highly transactional, besotted by the short-term. Countless derivatives were invented by people who in less market-driven societies might have been the next Marie Curie. The Spectator of London reported from New York in 1884, “Millionaires in America make ‘corners’ as if they had nothing to lose, or their sons amuse themselves with ‘financing’ as if it were only an expensive game.” Whereas an Englishman “fears poverty excessively, and a Frenchman shoots himself to avoid it; an American with a million will speculate to win ten.”

Americans eagerly plunge into market risks. Visitors looking over the NYSE trading floor in 1970. Photo: NYSE Group

This trait has a long pedigree. President Lincoln was outraged by gold speculators who drove down the value of the Union currency. Émile Boutmy, a French political scientist in the 19th century, hazarded that America was not so much a “nation” as “a huge commercial company for the discovery, cultivation, and capitalization of its enormous territory.”

Many societies regard risk-takers with skepticism or censure. The U.S. resolved this tension in its cradle. Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury secretary, proposed in 1790 that the war debts incurred by individual states and by the Continental Congress be redeemed at par by the new federal government. Thomas Jefferson, then secretary of state, and James Madison were opposed, in particular to redeeming paper held by speculators. In the Virginians’ opinion, the speculators (having purchased at great discounts and poised to make a fortune) were unworthy compared with original investors, many of whom were war veterans.

Hamilton, who won the day in Congress, rejected the Jeffersonian notion that speculation was necessarily unproductive. He replied, “If that Capital is well employed in a young country, like this, it must be considerably increased so as to yield a greater revenue than the interest of the money.… A considerable part will be invested in new speculations, in lands canals roads manufacturers commerce.”

One cannot imagine the America we know had the debate gone otherwise. The right to “unproductive” speculation vanishes—but given the difficulty of distinguishing, useful speculation vanishes as well.

Wealth pours into every pocket

Lubricated by Hamilton’s plan, the early American economy was close to the Jeffersonian egalitarian ideal. The overwhelming economic fact was abundance of land. Immigrants improved their station merely by migrating (not that the trip was easy). Unlike in Europe, they could put down a stake or enter a trade without interference by a dominant caste or entitled elite.

The result was profoundly democratic. Americans were yeoman farmers, small manufacturers, fur traders, saltpeter men, canal builders, tavern keeps, craftsmen and merchants. Jefferson himself said with respect to the small gap between rich and poor (among white Americans), “Can any condition of society be more desirable than this?”

Parson Weems, the cloying first biographer of Washington, scorned the “sordid monopolizing aristocracy” of Europe. In America, he claimed, every citizen might easily get property; “wealth pours into every pocket.” Weems had articulated the American dream.

America racing ahead: Early movie of a trolley in New York City passing streetcars. VIDEO: Getty Images

The singularly American fact that people could rise above their birth inspired a new literature: tales of self-improvement. Equality wasn’t guaranteed, but opportunity was. If Philadelphia or Boston became too stratified, the bottomless reserve of land shifted the opportunity westward—albeit this slowly decimated indigenous civilizations. Perhaps as Americans like to imagine, those who migrated here were more ambitious. In any case, those who were here nurtured a culture that was uniquely individualistic. Daniel Webster said, “Our system begins with the individual man.”

The social malleability of America unnerved the graying founders, who had envisioned a classical republic rather than a freewheeling bazaar. Endless waves of newcomers fostered chaos and checked the staying power of elites. The lawyer David Dudley Field observed in 1844 that his profession was “crowded with bustling and restless men.” It was as if “a new race has sprung up and supplanted the old.”

The emerging commercial culture was fortified by legislation. At first, corporate charters were granted by the state. Even divorce was a matter of legislative fiat. But in 1811 New York enacted a law establishing general incorporation for manufacturing. Other states followed. New York doubled down in 1838 with a “free banking” law—again, replacing a system of legislative charter. Pause for a moment on the social implications: Capitalistic startups, formerly granted from above, now arose from the individual. Any who satisfied basic statutory requirements could incorporate a business under the protective shelter—crucial to raising capital—of limited liability.

Early corporations were hardly models of transparency, but the quintessential openness of American society saw later expression in the American invention of corporate disclosure. Congress abolished debtors’ prisons in 1833. Liberal bankruptcy laws removed a shackle from would-be borrowers. As the freedom to fail is also the freedom to succeed, capital flowed more copiously than in other countries. Today, our legal system’s highly developed protections of the sanctity of contracts is a uniquely American asset.

Legislatures also advanced a social agenda for public education, necessary if opportunity were to be more than a slogan. To be sure, there was pushback against incurring taxes for other people’s children. Thaddeus Stevens, a Pennsylvania legislator, groused that it was “easier to pass a bill to improve the breed of hogs than that of men.” Nonetheless, from the 1850s on literacy in America was significantly higher than elsewhere.

Slavery and inequality

The shameful exception to capitalist opportunity was slavery. A revisionist historical school posits that slavery was the template for American capitalism, the irreducible fount of American prosperity. It oddly mirrors the propaganda of Southern planters who overstated the dependence of the Northern states and Europe on slave-grown cotton.

South Carolina Sen. James Hammond held that “no power on earth” dared to make war on the South because “cotton is king.” He was wrong. The South was in fact the antithesis of American capitalism. The planters more resembled Saudi oil sheikhs (at least until the latter began to diversify). They resisted development—lagged behind in manufacturing, railroads and agricultural innovation.

Compared to the North, planter society was stratified. The dirty secret of the South was the miserable condition of poor whites. Rather than encourage opportunity, the slave masters frowned on education as a provocation to subversive social leveling. In 1671, William Berkeley, governor of Virginia, proclaimed, “I thank God there are no free schools nor printing” in Virginia. The revisionist school, which asserts the centrality of slavery, cannot answer why other slave societies never approached the prosperity of the United States—nor why this country enjoyed a fabulous period of growth after slavery had ended.

The recurring weakness of American capitalism is inequality. During the first century of constitutional government, the disparities were muted. Cheap land offered an escape from poverty and imports exerted downward pressure on basic goods—iron, textiles and others. High tariffs after the Civil War created a protective umbrella for monopolies (known as trusts) just as railroads connected the country and the frontier escape valve disappeared. Factory workers were shunted into urban slums.

The robber barons, America’s first class of superrich, stained the popular image of American business to this day. In television’s engaging but stereotyping “The Gilded Age,” just about every striving mogul is greedy, unethical or both. Search the great books from Theodore Dreiser’s “The Financier” to Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” and American capitalism would seem constituted purely of rogues.

Oil baron John D. Rockefeller (center, looking at camera), circa 1908. Photo: Bain News Service/Library of Congress

The American system rewards success—sometimes to a fault. Elon Musk in 2022 at the Tesla ‘Cyber Rodeo.’ Photo: suzanne cordeiro/AFP/Getty Images

That first bout of inequality was cured by antitrust prosecutions, reformist legislation, the Great War and the Great Depression. (Cures for inequality are sometimes worse than the affliction.)

Inequality 2.0 is alive and well. American capitalism remains fiercely competitive, remarkably productive, resilient in the face of a thousand doomsayers—and the author of a persistent wealth gap. Inequality significantly increased in the 1980s and ’90s and it remains well above previous levels. In 1979, the top 1% of earners took home 10% of the pie; today it is higher than 20%. Taxes and social transfers level it but only a bit; in 2022, the affluent 1% collected 22% of total income and 19% after taxes. Clearly, the market for talent is more skewed than before.

Europe is more equal but it is also poorer. Per capita income in Arkansas, one of the poorest states, is greater than in Germany. Overall, per capita income in the U.S. is an astonishing 84% higher than in Europe. The gap shrinks if one adjusts for purchasing power, but by any measure more Americans are employed, they have bigger houses and more washing machines, air conditioners and computers—and they eat out more. And the differences are significant.

One caveat. American capitalism doesn’t produce for those at the bottom. An American at the 10th percentile earns only $19,000 a year. In Europe, at least, poverty is mitigated by a richer array of social goods. For example, not only is life expectancy greater, but the poor experience less of a gap in life expectancy than the poor in America.

The U.S. remains, as Webster observed, centered on the individual. American capitalism is especially pitched toward getting capital to entrepreneurs. Last year, the U.S. registered a record 5.5 million applications for new businesses—one for every 24 households.

“It is interesting to ask why 95% of internet innovation happened in this country,” notes a wealthy investor. The American system rewards success. In a virtuous circle, talent is attracted from around the world to universities that seed the next generation. The system is also warped by risible overkill at the top. Elon Musk, whose one-eighth ownership of Tesla would seem to provide him some incentive, was awarded a $23 billion bonus to stay on the job two more years.

American capitalism often fails those at the bottom. Detroit in 2014, with GM headquarters in background. Photo: Rebecca Cook/Reuters

Rival nations lack the defining American assumption that business is, firstly, a vehicle for individual capital. Europe has a thicket of regulation, a prevailing assumption that business serves a social purpose. Individual success is met with significant taxation. In most of Europe stock trading itself is taxed. Regulation tends to protect workers in existing (read: entrenched) industries. Innovative disruptions come less easily.

During the U.S. financial crisis in 2008-09, government purchases of bank stocks were regarded as exceptional. Overseas they are not. In Germany, where labor unions hold clout on corporate boards, it is expected that government will rescue troubled firms. In France, a government agency owns stakes in 81 companies ranging from media to manufacturing. In China the central and local governments wield vast control over industry. All these represent nonmarket checks on the tiller of business.

No guarantees

American exceptionalism is plausibly not forever, nor is it change-proof, as the Trump administration has demonstrated. The government’s plan to take a 10% stake in Intel, a flailing chipmaker once synonymous with American entrepreneurship, twists the American model into something closer to French or Russian statism. Trump’s threats to do more such deals present a serious challenge to the American model. More broadly, there is considerable nostalgia on the Trumpian right as well as on the left for American capitalism as it was practiced after World War II, when the government exercised a more-visible hand and when the economy grew at an impressive clip and with less inequality.

Some aspects of that period aren’t retrievable. Rival industrial powers had been devastated by the war, and manufacturers in Asia had yet to emerge. America had the field to itself. Capital and labor were insulated by double-digit tariffs and a dearth of immigration. Even assuming we could build a fortress, we couldn’t reimpose the Bretton Woods agreement, which controlled foreign-exchange rates, and the associated national and international controls on capital flows, interest rates and so forth. Bretton Woods was a reaction to the economic chaos of the prewar years—an effort to freeze economies in place. When Europe and Japan rebuilt, it collapsed.

U.S. Steel’s South Works mill in Chicago in the 1950s, when steelmakers faced price-setting allegations. Photo: Chicago History Museum/Getty Images

A distant observer of that supposedly halcyon era is struck by how un-Jeffersonian it was. Wood said of the bustling enterprise of early America, “No one was in charge.” The phrase is redolent with the democratic spirit. Postwar America was regimented by (as it was known) Big Business, Big Labor and Big Government. It was productive but remarkably static. The biggest corporations in 1955 (ranked by revenue) were General Motors, Exxon, U.S. Steel and General Electric. Fifteen years later they had scarcely changed (GM, Exxon, Ford Motor, GE).

America had superb scientists but they toiled for giant industrial labs rather than startups. Corporate managers took comfort in tariffs that sheltered domestic cartels (notably in automobiles and steel).

Unlike today, chief executives were faceless, managerial bureaucrats. They were suckled by boards that were all but assembled at their country club. Facing no threat, they were unresponsive to markets. Every telephone was black. Department stores charged fat markups. That version of American capitalism lost its way. Stocks suffered a 17-year losing streak. American manufacturing, the object now of syrupy remembrance, was exposed as deficient when the first Toyotas rolled onto American wharves. Innovation had to be rekindled by college dropouts.

Present-day American capitalism doesn’t satisfy the needs of the indigent or the need for improved public education, two of the many vital purposes of government. What it has achieved is to rediscover its distinguishing strength: opportunity.

An Intel artificial-intelligence processor. The government’s moves to take stakes in companies like Intel seem to threaten the American model. Photo: Annabelle Chih/Bloomberg News

Roger Lowenstein is a writer in Cambridge, Mass., and the author of “Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War” and other books. He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.

17. Meet the world’s hottest upstart weapons dealers

Please go to the link to view the data/graphs.

It looks like as of March 2025, South Korea is second only to the US in arms sales and appears to be the largest exporter of artillery.

I know some tire of me saying this, but South Korea is partner in the arsenal of democracies.

Excerpts:

Largest of all is the deal South Korea signed with Poland in 2022, now worth $22bn, to sell a range of weapons systems partly built in Poland. That includes 180 K2 Black Panther tanks, 672 howitzers, 48 FA-50 fighters and 288 K239 rocket launchers. Poland wants to deter Russia, and quickly. For South Korea it is a bold signal that it is ready to join the front rank of arms exporters, opening the door to other lucrative deals in Europe.

South Korea can rapidly churn out NATO-standard gear at good prices. Seven giant firms work with the government to land orders and co-ordinate research and development. Maintaining capacity has been a priority, in part, because the country is technically still at war with its northern neighbour, says Chung Min Lee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank. In shipbuilding, Korean firms have a big advantage. They may win a $17bn contract to build 12 KSS-III submarines for Canada, and the lack of shipbuilding capacity in America could see it scoop up orders from the US Navy.

Its most ambitious programme is the KF-21 fighter, which is expected to enter service late next year, and has won interest in eastern Europe, the Gulf and South Asia. Currently a 4.5-generation aircraft, it is hoped that its next update will make it a full fifth-generation stealth fighter equipped with indigenously manufactured engines. It will test whether South Korea can compete with the most advanced American platforms, such as the F-35, says Kyung-joo Jeon of the Korean Institute for Defence Analysis. Not even Japan and Israel have managed that.

Chart: The Economist

Meet the world’s hottest upstart weapons dealers

A ferocious global arms race is big business

https://www.economist.com/international/2025/08/31/meet-the-worlds-hottest-upstart-weapons-dealers

Photograph: Getty Images

Aug 31st 2025

6 min read

he Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing will be anything but peaceful on September 3rd, when Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin and others gather to celebrate the end of the second world war. Chinese troops will march in a parade designed to boost national pride and flex military muscles. Perhaps most importantly the parade will showcase China’s newest warfighting equipment to potential buyers and potential adversaries.

The world’s military planners are spending big on new weapons. The war in Ukraine, threats of abandonment by America and worries that China might invade Taiwan have countries scrambling to fill stockpiles, harden supply chains and secure flows of munitions. There is a voracious appetite for tanks, artillery, fighter jets and drones. On August 31st Britain announced a $10bn ($13.5bn) deal to supply Norway with five anti-submarine frigates. Yet not all of this is rewarding traditional exporters in America, Europe and Russia. Instead, two ambitious middle powers, South Korea and Turkey, are capitalising on the boom.

The arms race reflects a larger realignment. Europe’s arms companies need time to restore capacity lost after the end of the cold war and to rebuild inventories depleted by donations to Ukraine. Russia, usually the second-biggest arms exporter after America, is prioritising its own army after years of equipment losses in Ukraine. Western sanctions stop its firms from getting components critical to building advanced platforms, like fighter jets. Last year, Russian exports were down by nearly 50% from 2022 and its order books were subdued. Clients such as India, Vietnam and Egypt are looking elsewhere.

Chart: The Economist

Many are turning to South Korea (see chart one). While America is the biggest exporter of arms to European NATO members, South Korea and France are tied in second place. Worldwide in some categories of weapons, such as tanks and artillery, South Korea is outselling America. It is third behind America and France for combat aircraft. Last year, South Korea sold $3.2bn worth of Cheongung–II surface-to-air missile systems to Saudi Arabia, warships to Peru worth $460m and $1bn of self-propelled howitzers to Romania.

Largest of all is the deal South Korea signed with Poland in 2022, now worth $22bn, to sell a range of weapons systems partly built in Poland. That includes 180 K2 Black Panther tanks, 672 howitzers, 48 FA-50 fighters and 288 K239 rocket launchers. Poland wants to deter Russia, and quickly. For South Korea it is a bold signal that it is ready to join the front rank of arms exporters, opening the door to other lucrative deals in Europe.

South Korea can rapidly churn out NATO-standard gear at good prices. Seven giant firms work with the government to land orders and co-ordinate research and development. Maintaining capacity has been a priority, in part, because the country is technically still at war with its northern neighbour, says Chung Min Lee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank. In shipbuilding, Korean firms have a big advantage. They may win a $17bn contract to build 12 KSS-III submarines for Canada, and the lack of shipbuilding capacity in America could see it scoop up orders from the US Navy.

Its most ambitious programme is the KF-21 fighter, which is expected to enter service late next year, and has won interest in eastern Europe, the Gulf and South Asia. Currently a 4.5-generation aircraft, it is hoped that its next update will make it a full fifth-generation stealth fighter equipped with indigenously manufactured engines. It will test whether South Korea can compete with the most advanced American platforms, such as the F-35, says Kyung-joo Jeon of the Korean Institute for Defence Analysis. Not even Japan and Israel have managed that.

Chart: The Economist

Another up-and-comer is Turkey. Over the past five years, its arms exports have shot up, from nearly $2bn to over $7bn last year (see chart two). That is a result of efforts to achieve strategic autonomy, pushed in part by a civilian-run Defence Industry Agency, says Arda Mevlutoglu, a defence expert. Drones made by Baykar outcompete Chinese models. More than 500 of its TB2 fixed-wing models have been sold to over 30 countries. Saudi Arabia has a $3bn deal to co-produce a more advanced drone called Acinki. Baykar has a joint venture with Italy’s Leonardo, which is eyeing the stealthy Kizilelma fighter drone as a “loyal wingman” to fly alongside the planned sixth-generation GCAP future fighter jets.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, likes the diplomatic influence that comes with arms sales to Africa and the Middle East. But Turkish firms are looking to European countries with their big budgets. Serhat Guvenc, of Kadir Has University, says that Europeans’ longstanding concerns over human rights in Turkey are a luxury they can no longer afford.

Turkish weapons are battle-proven through its conflict with the Kurds and its interventions in Syria and Libya. They are built to NATO standards and affordable, and have a no-strings-attached sales policy. The breadth of Turkey’s offering is striking, including armoured vehicles such as the K2-based Altay tank, artillery, missiles, air-defence systems, radars, warships such as the MILGEM family of frigates and destroyers, the Hurjet light attack/trainer aircraft, the ATAK helicopter, armed drones and electronic warfare systems.

Earlier this year, Turkey and Spain agreed to a $1.6bn co-production deal for up to 30 Hurjets. Turkey is selling 1,059 Otokar Cobra II armoured vehicles to Romania in a deal worth approximately $930m, and last December Portugal signed a $134m contract for naval-replenishment ships. Last year Turkey, which has developed missiles, was invited by Germany to join the European Sky Shield Initiative. There is every chance that Turkey can go from about 11th in the league table of arms exporters to fifth, says Mr Mevlutoglu. Like South Korea, it has a fifth-generation fighter programme, the TAI Kaan. As well as replacing Turkish Air Force F-16s, it will be competing for export orders as a low-cost F-35 alternative with potential interest from Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

Soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the then president of South Korea boasted that by 2027 his country would become the fourth-largest arms exporter in the world, with a 5% share of the market. That looks like a stretch. In 2022 its sales nudged $17.3bn; this year it expects exports of around $23bn. Competition is set to get more intense. There are early signs of a “brain drain” of skilled Korean and Turkish engineers to Western firms with better pay. Cash-strapped governments may run out of money: Mr Lee reckons that South Korea must raise the share of R&D in the defence budget from 17-18% to 20-23% to remain competitive. And access to advanced technologies is limited: production of Korean-made fighter jets on order from Poland has stalled because America has yet to authorise exports of some components. Turkey is still excluded from major Western joint projects, such as the F-35. Even Russia may get back in the game. Still, for the new contenders in the escalating global arms race it makes sense to aim high. ■

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include the announcement of Britain’s deal with Norway

18. Support AUKUS: It’s China’s Worst Nightmare

A view from a Connecticut Congressman. His district includes Electric Boat which of course builds nuclear submarines.

Support AUKUS: It’s China’s Worst Nightmare

The National Interest · Joe Courtney

Topic: Security

Region: Asia

August 30, 2025

By: Joe Courtney

The Department of Defense should continue to embrace AUKUS as a bulwark of Indo-Pacific security.

On June 11, 2025, the news broke that US Under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby would lead a Pentagon review of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States security agreement (AUKUS). The Department of Defense has since articulated that this effort will be “an empirical and clear-eyed assessment of the initiative.” If that standard is applied, the assessment must conclude, as a similar 2025 review in London did, that AUKUS is the strongest, most effective plan for the United States to deter China’s malign behavior in the Indo-Pacific.

China certainly knows that AUKUS’ promise to accelerate the deployment of advanced defense technology by the three participating nations, including the sale of conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, will counter the growing strength of its PLA Navy and missile forces in the Indo-Pacific.

China has repeatedly complained about AUKUS in public and in private diplomatic channels, which should speak volumes about its value to Under Secretary Colby as he conducts his investigation. AUKUS, in a nutshell, will blunt China’s regional advantage that threatens the 80-year success of the free and open Pacific.

Much of the AUKUS skepticism in the United States is premised on the misguided notion that the technology being shared and sold among the three allies will create an unacceptable drain on the US military. Since AUKUS is not a binding treaty that commits Australia and the UK to every imaginable conflict in which the United States could be engaged, skeptics argue that the cost and risks of sharing too much are unacceptable.

Under Secretary Colby himself publicly questioned the planned sale of three Virginia-class submarines to Australia last year, before re-entering the Pentagon in 2024, citing concerns that the US Navy cannot afford it. This part of the plan, developed in 2022–23 by the leadership of all three countries as part of the AUKUS “Optimal Pathway,” is essential.

Australia operates an aging fleet of diesel submarines, which will need to be phased out in the 2030s, before its own domestic industrial base is able to replace them with new submarines. The US defense industrial base, despite criticism, is expected to have delivered 28 Virginia-class submarines by the end of 2026, since the nuclear-powered attack submarine was first commissioned in 2004. Ten additional Virginia-class boats are also under construction. Those 28 submarines are in addition to 23 Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarines and three Seawolf-class fast-attack submarines currently in the US Navy fleet. For comparison, the Chinese Navy currently operates six nuclear-powered fast-attack submarines, while the British Royal Navy operates five.

Looking past the 2025 submarine tally, Under Secretary Colby’s review should focus on the evolving capacity of the US industrial base when Australia actually purchases its submarines in the 2030s. A key part of this equation is the massive investment by Congress in the US submarine industrial base over the last seven years, which is now coming to fruition.

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Starting in 2018, Congress has invested over $10 billion in expanding the workforce, supply chains, and production facilities across the country. In addition to hiring sprees in Virginia and southern New England shipyards in the last four years, more yards in Mobile, AL, Philadelphia, PA, Tampa, FL, and Goose Creek, SC, are coming online to add 6 million new man-hours per year to boost submarine production through large-scale steel fabrication.

Congress has slated this infusion of funding to continue in future years’ Navy budgets, recognizing that this overdue expansion of shipbuilding is a long game. The Australian Government is also playing its part in this investment, as outlined in the Optimal Pathway, having already delivered $1 billion of its committed $3 billion to the US submarine sector.

This is not to say that the race to uplift submarine production is complete. In the United States, the Office of US Naval Reactors, the Navy’s Maritime Industrial Base office, and the Secretary of the Navy John Phelan have assessments underway, scrubbing the factory floors and waterfront dry docks to make industry work faster and more productively. Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg also elevated oversight of this enterprise to the top of the Pentagon’s priorities through a Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager, or DRPM, which will hopefully continue this whole-of-government approach to maximizing US submarine output.

In the midst of all the speculation about the sale of submarines since June, the short-term benefits of AUKUS to the United States have been overlooked. Starting in 2023, more frequent rotations of Virginia-class submarines have been arriving and departing from the Australian naval base HMAS Stirling, located outside Perth. These rotations are a precursor to the 2027 establishment of Submarine Rotational Force-West that will maintain permanent rotational US and UK nuclear-powered submarines for years to come.

The head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Paparo, testified before Congress in April, arguing that this forward deployment of allied fleets drastically shortens existing transit times into the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Consequently, China’s nonstop and often illegal efforts to control the sea and airspace will be hindered. This forward deployment will include access to in-theater submarine repairs, eliminating the need for lengthy voyages back to US facilities. This invaluable element of AUKUS provides the United States with a response and readiness advantage that cannot be overstated.

Also overlooked is the Pillar 2 component of AUKUS, which will synergize innovation among the three nations in the development of hypersonics, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and unmanned vehicles. The Optimal Pathway correctly recognized that the three allies have their own unique expertise to share in the Pillar 2 arena.

Since AUKUS’ original announcement on September 15, 2021, its strategic and diplomatic status has survived changes of government in the UK and Australia. In the United States, congressional support is deep and bipartisan, as demonstrated by the 2023 enactment of the AUKUS legal authorities for the sale of Virginia-class submarines, with votes of 310-118 in the House and 87-13 in the Senate. This support was resoundingly reaffirmed in bipartisan Congressional letters and public endorsements of AUKUS following the news of the Pentagon’s review.

In the coming weeks, the Pentagon review will signal to our closest allies whether all the effort and investment made to execute this extraordinary collaboration will continue. A report that endorses AUKUS, with a blueprint to strengthen its execution, will be a powerful signal to the Indo-Pacific region that our country is serious about defending the sovereignty of the region’s nation-states and the international rule of law. A report recommending the truncation or cancellation of AUKUS will have the opposite effect and be met with great rejoicing in Beijing. It is obvious that a “clear-eyed” assessment should emphatically join our closest allies and firmly endorse AUKUS.

About the Author: Joe Courtney

Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT) represents the Second Congressional District of Connecticut in the House of Representatives. He serves on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

19. Tokyo’s Leadership Vacuum

Excerpts:

Tokyo’s leadership crisis is of great consequence not only to Japan but also to the world. Macroeconomic management might become less sound as the LDP is forced to compromise with a greater number of parties on taxes and budgets. An inward-looking Japan would fail to attract global talent and fix labor shortages, dimming economic prospects. And without a strong political center, Japan will be less able to resist Chinese domination of Asia or sustain international cooperation on free economic exchange.

Japan’s contributions to a stable international order are more valuable than ever as the United States becomes increasingly protectionist and mercurial. To fix Japan’s leadership vacuum, mainstream parties must restore voters’ trust through meaningful political reform, articulate a compelling strategy to address the shift from a deflationary to an inflationary economy, bridge generational divides in the electorate, and avoid pandering to the far-right as it peddles the dubious benefits of a closed Japan. Only by getting its own house in order can Japan sustain its essential role as a global force for stability.

Tokyo’s Leadership Vacuum

Foreign Affairs · More by Mireya Solís · September 1, 2025

What a Divided Japan Means for Asia and the World

Mireya Solís

September 1, 2025

Sanseito party leader Sohei Kamiya in Tokyo, July 2025 Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters

MIREYA SOLÍS is Director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies and Senior Fellow and Philip Knight Chair in Japan Studies at the Brookings Institution. She is the author of Japan’s Quiet Leadership: Reshaping the Indo-Pacific.

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Over the past decade, as much of the world has become more chaotic and succumbed to nationalism, protectionism, and illiberalism, Japan has been a force for maintaining the stability of the international order. Tokyo has shored up its rules-based economic partnerships; intensified security cooperation with like-minded countries, such as Australia, India, and the Philippines; and “de-risked” from China while maintaining its commitment to global trade. Japan has been able to play this stabilizing role because it has enjoyed internal social and political cohesion and benefited from strong leadership, most notably during Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s second term, which lasted from 2012 to 2020.

Japan’s political center, however, seems to be weakening. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has governed Japan for nearly seven uninterrupted decades, suffered bruising losses in the most recent elections for both chambers of the national legislature—the Lower House last fall and the Upper House this summer—as did its coalition partner, Komeito. For the first time, Japan’s ruling coalition is clinging to minority positions in both chambers. And a populist far-right party, Sanseito, won 14 seats in the Upper House elections—up from one in 2022—on an anti-foreigner platform.

The retreat of the political establishment and surging support for an antiglobalist party are symptoms of an even more pressing domestic problem in Japan: the failure of mainstream parties to generate strong leaders. Power is fragmented because the LDP is internally divided, its coalition partner is losing ground, and the opposition is too disjointed to mount an effective challenge. This lack of leadership is making it harder for Japan to respond to the tectonic geopolitical realignments it faces, none more pressing than the United States’ extractive approach to the global economy and its alliances.

TROUBLE ADJUSTING

Japan’s ruling parties are in a crisis because they’ve failed to adapt to long-term structural changes in the country. The LDP has struggled with declining populations in its key constituencies and the proliferation of independent voters. The party has also had a hard time eliminating corruption. The LDP, for example, suffered a major setback in 2023, when it was revealed that some of its factions—informal groups of parliamentarians under the wing of a senior party figure—failed to report revenue from fundraisers, instead kicking back the money to largely unmonitored slush funds. The LDP adopted some internal transparency and accountability measures to address public outrage, but these did not restore faith in the party. Crucially, the slush fund scandal led the LDP to dismantle its factional system, long considered the root of undue influence of money on politics but which for decades had structured intraparty competition over funds and appointments. Ultimately, the party failed to cleanse its image and gave up its primary means of sorting internal conflicts and maintaining party cohesion. Thus, the party lost public trust and found itself more divided.

Komeito, the LDP’s coalition partner and the political arm of Soka Gakkai, a Buddhist religious organization, has also declined. Komeito hasn’t been able to win as many votes as it used to because Soka Gakkai’s membership has stagnated, its charismatic leader died, and as the scholar Levi McLaughlin points out, its younger cohorts have become less interested in political campaigning. In this summer’s Upper House election, Komeito won 5.2 million votes, almost one million fewer than it did in 2022.

The confluence of new political pressures in post-pandemic Japan, namely inflation, a surge in immigration, and the rise of new forms of media, has shaken politics. After decades of deflation, the cost of living has steeply increased, becoming the number one issue for most voters, whose real wages are being eaten away by a depreciating yen and a 3.7 percent inflation rate. Inflation has also brought out zero-sum thinking. Consumers and producers now view their interests as more directly in conflict. The government’s initiative to lower rice prices to court support from urban voters on the eve of the 2025 Upper House election, for example, caused farmers to feel betrayed. As a result, the LDP lost heavily in rice-producing regions.

The party especially suffered because of its stance on the consumption tax. Whereas opposition parties favored cutting or abolishing it, the ruling coalition of the LDP and Komeito—concerned that such a move would spook financial markets—instead offered one-time cash payments of roughly $140 per person to defray the cost of living. To many Japanese people, such a meager handout in the face of higher prices for most everyday goods suggested that the LDP was out of touch.

ADD ME ON SOCIALS

Moreover, established parties are struggling to compete with upstart ones that can take advantage of social media. According to an exit poll by Jiji Press, a news agency, 47 percent of respondents used social media to guide their vote in the 2025 election. Internet-savvy parties, such as the Democratic Party for the People and Sanseito, outperformed the rest online.

Sanseito was born on YouTube in 2020 with a message trafficking in vaccine conspiracies. The party has gone on to develop an alternative information ecosystem that can yield committed volunteers and a crop of potential candidates, according to the political scientists Robert Fahey and Romeo Marcantuoni. Sanseito’s leader, Sohei Kamiya, sees U.S. President Donald Trump as a role model and advocates putting “Japanese first.” Sanseito, and the smaller Conservative Party, blame foreigners for what ails the nation: wage suppression (from an influx of foreign workers), rampant tourism, rising land prices (as rich foreigners snatch properties), crime, and loss of a national identity.

Sanseito has capitalized on the growing pains stemming from a surge in Japan’s foreign population. Of the 3.7 million foreign residents in Japan today, roughly one million moved to the country in the past three years. In 2021, when the country imposed strict border controls during the COVID-19 pandemic, Japan received just 250,000 visitors, compared with nearly 37 million in 2024. Sanseito has also taken advantage of the political vacuum left by the tragic assassination of Abe in 2022 to attract young conservative voters. And its message has resonated with the so-called ice-age generation, a cohort of people in their 40s and 50s who joined the workforce after the burst of the bubble economy in the early 1990s and feel left behind economically.

Many upstart parties have challenged LDP rule only to peter out soon after.

But as the party has risen to national prominence, it has also made costly mistakes. On the eve of the Upper House election, a Sanseito candidate gave an interview to Russian state media, putting the spotlight on Kamiya’s sympathy for Moscow. Kamiya doubled down by saying the United States drove Russia to invade Ukraine, causing a media firestorm that prompted some Japanese politicians to urge an investigation into potential election interference by Russia.

The trends epitomized by this summer’s Upper House election—disaffected voters rallying around antiglobalism, far-right parties clawing their way up the political system, and social media changing campaign dynamics and raising the specter of misinformation—could become normal in Japan, as they have in many Western countries. But it is just as likely that the current moment represents the peak of Sanseito’s influence. After all, over the decades many upstart parties have challenged LDP rule only to peter out soon after. And the sudden surge in Sanseito’s popularity suggests that its support came more from protest votes than permanent realignment among voters. Moreover, much of what the party advocates for, including rejecting gender equality, paring down individual freedoms in the constitution, reverting to the prewar educational system, and adhering to outright historical revisionism, has not gone mainstream.

A HOUSE DIVIDED

The biggest challenge to governance in Japan is not far-right populism but power dispersion and the gridlock that comes with it. The LDP, still the largest party in both the Upper and Lower Houses of the legislature, is deeply divided. The chances are low that the party can find a strong, unifying leader who can rescue the LDP brand. Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru, of the LDP, has defied calls to step down after his coalition received a shellacking in three consecutive elections under his watch. The rift over whether Ishiba should stay or go has prevented the party from agreeing on a strategy to rebuild itself.

Because the ruling coalition now lacks a majority in both chambers, it is vulnerable to a vote of no confidence and has to rely on other parties to pass legislation. Meanwhile, opposition parties remain too fragmented to form an alternative coalition and, therefore, cannot name a new prime minister. Without a clear power center in the Japanese legislature, it will be harder to reform taxes and social security, overhaul political funding rules, and relieve the pain of inflation and U.S. tariffs. In the near future, no party or coalition seems able to produce a strong leader.

Without strong leadership, Japan is ill equipped to meet the singular domestic and international challenges of the current moment. Key among these is Tokyo’s need to redefine its relationship with the United States as Trump upends the global trading system, urges allies to take on a greater role in their own defense, and contemplates changes to the footprint of U.S. troops in Asia.

In July, for example, the United States and Japan signed a trade deal that placed 15 percent tariffs on Japanese goods, which is lower than the rate Japan was already paying on car exports and lower than the rate Trump had threatened to use. It also expanded market access for U.S. rice and committed Japan to purchasing liquefied natural gas and agricultural products from the United States.

The proposed trade deal includes numerous areas where the two sides seem to differ in interpretation, which will likely lead to more political friction and shows that Japan’s government must still scramble to tariff-proof its economy. As part of the deal, Japan agreed to invest $550 billion into the United States for projects related to economic security. According to the White House, Japan will transfer the money into investment funds that will be allocated by Trump, with the United States retaining 90 percent of the profits. Tokyo, however, has said that the vast majority of the money would come from loans and loan guarantees, and that the nine-to-one profit ratio holds for only a sliver of the total amount. Neither does the promised relief on auto tariffs appear guaranteed: the White House fact sheet on the deal makes no mention of a lower 15 percent tariff for cars. With weak leadership, Japan will struggle to navigate the uncertainty emanating from Washington.

TOKYO ADRIFT

Tokyo’s leadership crisis is of great consequence not only to Japan but also to the world. Macroeconomic management might become less sound as the LDP is forced to compromise with a greater number of parties on taxes and budgets. An inward-looking Japan would fail to attract global talent and fix labor shortages, dimming economic prospects. And without a strong political center, Japan will be less able to resist Chinese domination of Asia or sustain international cooperation on free economic exchange.

Japan’s contributions to a stable international order are more valuable than ever as the United States becomes increasingly protectionist and mercurial. To fix Japan’s leadership vacuum, mainstream parties must restore voters’ trust through meaningful political reform, articulate a compelling strategy to address the shift from a deflationary to an inflationary economy, bridge generational divides in the electorate, and avoid pandering to the far-right as it peddles the dubious benefits of a closed Japan. Only by getting its own house in order can Japan sustain its essential role as a global force for stability.

Foreign Affairs · More by Mireya Solís · September 1, 2025

20. Beijing's Dangerous Game in Tibet – How Controlling the Dalai Lama’s Succession Could Backfire

Excerpts:

Beijing’s approach to Tibet parallels its efforts to control minority populations in other restive regions of China. In the northwestern province of Xinjiang, for instance, Beijing has refused to engage moderate voices and has relied on direct repression, including sending a large swath of the population to internment camps, to erase local culture and silence dissent among Uyghurs. In both Tibet and Xinjiang, China’s heavy hand has quelled mass protests in the short term—but the overwhelming use of force is just as likely to radicalize the population as it is to promote deference to the CCP.

Unlike other minorities, however, Tibetans have advantages that can offset the power of Beijing’s coercive apparatus. Tibetans have a leadership structure and spiritual center that lies beyond China’s borders. Both Tibetans living under Chinese rule and in the global diaspora view the government in exile as their true representatives. Even if Beijing attempts to install its own Dalai Lama, the global diaspora of Tibetans—and the millions of others who see the Dalai Lama as inspiration and spiritual guide—will continue to look to Dharamsala as the legitimate seat of Tibetan Buddhism and the 15th Dalai Lama.

It is no surprise that Beijing fears Tibetans led by the Dalai Lama: there are few groups more threatening to an authoritarian regime than national movements for self-determination that the regime cannot control and that are supported by a diaspora it cannot silence. If Beijing continues to insist on a hard-line approach to the Dalai Lama’s succession, global leaders can support Tibetan resistance efforts by amplifying the international consequences to China through economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and public support for pushing back against further cultural and religious erasure. Such actions may not change Beijing’s attitude in the near term, but they will keep alive the legacy of the Dalai Lama and bolster Tibetans’ ongoing struggle for self-determination.

Beijing's Dangerous Game in Tibet

Foreign Affairs · More by Tenzin Dorjee · September 1, 2025

How Controlling the Dalai Lama’s Succession Could Backfire

September 1, 2025

The 14th Dalai Lama at his 90th birthday celebration in Dharamshala, India, July 2025 Anushree Fadnavis / Reuters

TENZIN DORJEE is Senior Researcher and Strategist at Tibet Action Institute and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in Columbia University’s Political Science Department.

GYAL LO is a Tibet Specialist at Tibet Action Institute and the author of Social Structuration in Tibetan Society: Education, Society, and Spirituality. From 2017 to 2020, he was a Professor of Educational Sociology at Yunnan Normal University.

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In early July, thousands of Tibetans, Buddhists, and other well-wishers gathered in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government in exile, to mark the 90th birthday of Tenzin Gyatso—better known as the 14th Dalai Lama. The de facto pope of Tibetan Buddhism announced that, when he passes away, Tibetan Buddhists will start the traditional process of finding and anointing a reincarnated successor, ensuring that the centuries-old institution of the Dalai Lama will continue. Just months earlier, in a new memoir, the Dalai Lama made clear that any search for a successor must take place in the “free world”—that is, outside of China.

These landmark statements made Beijing bristle. The Chinese Communist Party opposes Tibetans choosing their own Dalai Lama and considers the matter an affront to the sovereignty of Beijing, which has ruled Tibet since 1950. Since 2011, the last time the Dalai Lama issued a major statement on the question of succession and reaffirmed his authority to determine whether he will be reincarnated, Beijing has repeatedly publicized its intentions to install a rival Dalai Lama when the current one dies. Before his July birthday announcement, Beijing’s interference had even prompted speculation that the Dalai Lama might consider terminating his lineage to prevent China from hijacking the institution and making it bow to the CCP’s will.

Devotees of the current Dalai Lama celebrated his recent decision. Chinese leaders, as expected, rejected the announcement and insisted that Beijing holds the power to choose and approve who will be Tibet’s next spiritual leader. The CCP assumes that the Dalai Lama’s passing will end the Tibetan resistance—or that “the Tibet issue,” as Chinese leaders often phrase it, will be forever resolved in Beijing’s favor. The government’s logic is simple. For more than six decades, the Dalai Lama—a charismatic and widely revered Nobel laureate—has unified the Tibetan exile community and boosted the Tibetan cause around the world. It is unlikely that future Tibetan leaders will be able to bring the same level of global credibility and internal cohesiveness.

But Beijing’s strategy ignores a crucial fact about the Dalai Lama’s role in the Tibetan freedom struggle. He has been the single most powerful force restraining violence and radicalization within Tibet for the past 50 years. He has advocated for Sino-Tibetan reconciliation, not greater hostility. Once he leaves the scene, the chances of conflict in and around Tibet are likely to rise. Beijing’s attempt to control the Dalai Lama’s succession may backfire, destabilizing China’s western frontier and provoking the very instability that Chinese leaders hope to avoid.

A DELICATE MOMENT

Historically, the interregnum between two Dalai Lamas was a period of vulnerability for Tibet. When a Dalai Lama dies, a designated group of senior monks begins searching for a reincarnated successor by consulting oracles, interpreting visions, and testing candidates on their intelligence and spiritual connection to the prior Dalai Lama. Once the true reincarnation is identified––usually a boy no older than six or seven––it can take more than a decade to groom him for leadership. The power vacuum that ensues during this transition process has made the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, susceptible to foreign invasions and internal turmoil. For instance, a sustained power struggle between monks and reformers after the 13th Dalai Lama’s death in 1933 weakened the Tibetan state, leaving it ill prepared to resist the arrival of the People’s Liberation Army in 1950.

Tibet’s vulnerability will be especially pronounced during the next transition period because of the immense global popularity of the current Dalai Lama. Tibetan refugee communities in the Indian subcontinent, in particular, rely on financial assistance from India, the United States, and Europe to sustain their educational institutions, medical services, and cultural establishments. Much of this foreign aid rests on goodwill that the Dalai Lama has personally cultivated in capitals around the world. Beijing is betting that future Tibetan leaders will struggle to replicate the political access and diplomatic successes the current Dalai Lama has achieved.

The Dalai Lama’s unique moral authority and charismatic leadership have helped him foster and sustain a pan-Tibetan national identity that supersedes regional and sectarian attachments. The Tibetan diaspora encompasses people from three historical regions and five major schools of Tibetan Buddhism, each of which has its own subcultures, dialects, and histories. The Dalai Lama’s nonsectarian vision and unifying presence has helped Tibetans in exile avoid the fate of many diaspora communities that fall apart from internal strife, tribal loyalties, and turf wars.

Because of his outsized presence, China’s approach to the Sino-Tibetan conflict has been to wait until the Dalai Lama passes away rather than engage in serious negotiations while he is still alive. Beijing rejected the Dalai Lama’s “Five Point Peace Plan” in 1987, which called for turning Tibet into a demilitarized “peace zone,” an end to policies encouraging the mass migration of Chinese citizens of the majority Han ethnicity to Tibet, and stronger protections for Tibetan culture, language, and religious practice. Communist Party leaders dismissed the Tibetan leader’s Strasbourg proposal in 1988, in which the Dalai Lama relinquished the demand for full independence and instead proposed genuine autonomy for Tibet under Chinese sovereignty. The CCP also ignored the Dalai Lama’s Memorandum on Genuine Autonomy in 2008, which outlined specific constitutional mechanisms to ensure that Tibetans could manage their own internal affairs without challenging China’s territorial integrity. Beijing has refused to work with the Dalai Lama because it assumes his death will obviate the need for compromise and permanently resolve the Tibet problem in Beijing’s favor.

THE MIDDLE WAY

The insistence on waiting for the Dalai Lama’s death, however, may turn out to be a monumental miscalculation by Beijing. Chinese leaders’ animus toward the Tibetan leader, whom they have persistently demonized as “a wolf in monk’s clothing,” blinds them to the stabilizing role he plays in Sino-Tibetan relations. Although the Dalai Lama has used his influence to mobilize support for Tibetan freedom around the globe, he has often deployed his power to de-escalate conflicts in Tibet at critical moments. While Beijing blames the exiled leader for all unrest in Tibet, the historical evidence shows that the Dalai Lama’s personal commitment to nonviolence and dialogue has contained tactical escalation and political radicalization among Tibetans.

The Dalai Lama has been the key figure quelling violence when grassroots dissatisfaction has escalated into episodic uprisings in Tibet. In 1987–88, after protests in Lhasa spiraled into street violence, the Dalai Lama issued a stern warning to his fellow Tibetans to remain peaceful. Then, in 2008, when protests in Lhasa spread nationwide and escalated into vandalism targeting Chinese establishments, the Dalai Lama again intervened. He publicly threatened to resign his position as the leader of the Tibetan government in exile if the violence worsened. In both cases, Tibetans immediately backed off.

The Dalai Lama has also restrained the scope of the Sino-Tibetan conflict by opting to pursue regional autonomy within the People’s Republic of China instead of full independence for Tibet. He transformed what was once a maximalist struggle for national liberation into a diplomatic campaign for cultural accommodation. This conciliatory stance, motivated by the search for a middle ground between secession and surrender, came to be known as “the middle way.”

Without the Dalai Lama’s stabilizing presence, there is a possibility of more radical protest in Tibet.

But the middle way is not the only potential approach that Tibetans have considered in their long struggle for self-determination. Pro-independence activists have frequently accused Dharamsala of muzzling their voices to reassure Beijing that the Dalai Lama’s calls for autonomy are genuine and not a stepping stone to independence. Critics argue that the Dalai Lama’s middle way, which prioritizes dialogue and reconciliation while de-emphasizing mass mobilization, has kept the movement from reaching its full potential and leveraging its explosive strength in the struggle against Beijing. They call for a return to the goal of rangzen—full independence—backed by more aggressive movements built on civil disobedience and boycott campaigns to undermine the Chinese regime domestically and isolate it internationally.

Without the Dalai Lama’s stabilizing presence, there is a possibility of more radical protest and violence in Tibet. Since 2009, more than 160 Tibetans have set themselves on fire in public places to protest Chinese rule. One notable example was Gudrup, a 43-year-old Tibetan writer who set himself on fire in 2012 after posting a message online calling for Tibetan independence. The willingness to self-immolate, often in isolation, under heavy surveillance, and with no expectation of immediate results, foreshadows how far Tibetans may be prepared to go to challenge Chinese rule. And without the pacifying force of the Dalai Lama, there will be fewer guardrails to prevent Sino-Tibetan disputes from sliding into intractable ethnic conflict.

BEYOND BEIJING’S REACH

Beijing’s waiting game also overlooks the sources of resilience within the Tibetan exile community. The Dalai Lama, aware of his people’s overreliance on his personal leadership, began democratizing his government in the 1960s. Tibetans, initially resistant to the transfer of the community’s political mandate from pontiff to public, slowly but steadily embraced this experiment in democratic self-governance.

Today, the Tibetan government in exile is a vibrant democracy that will outlive this Dalai Lama. Every five years Tibetans around the world go to the polls to elect a new president and parliament in exile. These elections draw high participation rates—77 percent of voters turned out for the 2021 elections—and they are deemed free and fair by independent monitoring networks. The elections are also a source of excitement for Tibetans in Tibet, who covertly follow them via broadcasts on the U.S.-sponsored Radio Free Asia and Voice of America. Unfortunately, and in a boost to Beijing, both stations have been gutted in the first six months of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term.

To be sure, the Tibetan diaspora democracy has its flaws. The parliament is sometimes ensnarled in legislative deadlock, and political candidates sling mud at their opponents during campaigns. But this transnational polity of 150,000 members across five continents has remained stable even as democracy has retreated elsewhere around the globe. The spirit and structure of democracy has laid the basis for cohesion that extends beyond the Dalai Lama’s personal presence.

Ultimately, the greatest source of unity and cohesion among Tibetans is the freedom struggle to liberate their homeland from CCP rule. Tibetans see Beijing’s refusal to allow a freely chosen successor to the Dalai Lama as an assault on Tibetan Buddhism and a denial of the right to self-determination. No policy wounds Tibetan dignity more profoundly than attempts to co-opt its spiritual and institutional heart. The more that the Chinese government insists on installing a quisling Dalai Lama in Beijing, the more that Tibetans are likely to unite in opposition.

In his memoir released in March, the Dalai Lama reaffirmed the power of the Tibetan exile community that exists beyond Beijing’s reach. Tibetan Buddhists outside of China can continue to push for the Tibetan cause even as Beijing increases pressure on Tibet. The Dalai Lama wrote: “Given my age, understandably many Tibetans are concerned about what will happen when I am no more. On the political front of our campaign for the freedom of the Tibetan people, we now have a substantial population of Tibetans outside in the free world, so our struggle will go on, no matter what.”

FIGHTING FOR EXISTENCE

Any blatant move by Beijing to try to control the process of selecting the next Dalai Lama may backfire by driving Tibetan resentment into rage. Whereas China views the Dalai Lama’s succession question through the cold lens of realpolitik and statecraft, Tibetans see it through the cosmic prism of devotion and spiritual meaning. For the Chinese, the issue is strategic; for Tibetans, it is existential.

Beijing’s belief that force always trumps faith is a blind spot underpinning its failed strategies to win Tibetan hearts and minds. Without a civilizational understanding of Tibetans’ relation to the Dalai Lama and his central place in Tibetan Buddhism, Beijing’s only tool is coercion. So Beijing has relied on a sophisticated cocktail of repressive policies to suppress potential dissent in Tibet, including placing three out of every four Tibetan students in colonial-style boarding schools and installing mass surveillance systems in schools and places of worship.

For the Chinese, the Dalai Lama’s succession is strategic; for Tibetans, it is existential.

Beijing’s approach to Tibet parallels its efforts to control minority populations in other restive regions of China. In the northwestern province of Xinjiang, for instance, Beijing has refused to engage moderate voices and has relied on direct repression, including sending a large swath of the population to internment camps, to erase local culture and silence dissent among Uyghurs. In both Tibet and Xinjiang, China’s heavy hand has quelled mass protests in the short term—but the overwhelming use of force is just as likely to radicalize the population as it is to promote deference to the CCP.

Unlike other minorities, however, Tibetans have advantages that can offset the power of Beijing’s coercive apparatus. Tibetans have a leadership structure and spiritual center that lies beyond China’s borders. Both Tibetans living under Chinese rule and in the global diaspora view the government in exile as their true representatives. Even if Beijing attempts to install its own Dalai Lama, the global diaspora of Tibetans—and the millions of others who see the Dalai Lama as inspiration and spiritual guide—will continue to look to Dharamsala as the legitimate seat of Tibetan Buddhism and the 15th Dalai Lama.

It is no surprise that Beijing fears Tibetans led by the Dalai Lama: there are few groups more threatening to an authoritarian regime than national movements for self-determination that the regime cannot control and that are supported by a diaspora it cannot silence. If Beijing continues to insist on a hard-line approach to the Dalai Lama’s succession, global leaders can support Tibetan resistance efforts by amplifying the international consequences to China through economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and public support for pushing back against further cultural and religious erasure. Such actions may not change Beijing’s attitude in the near term, but they will keep alive the legacy of the Dalai Lama and bolster Tibetans’ ongoing struggle for self-determination.

Foreign Affairs · More by Tenzin Dorjee · September 1, 2025

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

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TROUBLE ADJUSTING

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How Controlling the Dalai Lama’s Succession Could Backfire

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