Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"The country is in the final chapter of the political dominance of the greatest generation and the baby boomers. BY the end of the decade their influence will give way to Millenials, Generation Z voters, and subsequent generations who will make up the majority of voters What is clear is that the generational changing of the guard and continued political reform will act as circuit breakers on the tribal politics that have dominated the last several election cycles. ... [When will things improve?] It's when the baby boomers die off. The largest population group in America now are the Millennials and the Gen Z's. and the emerging generations. ... you can see the current generation of politicians clinging to power, for every last opportunity to govern as they're well into their 80s, and the country will be a completely different place when the baby boomers who I think by the way, history will look back and say, drove America kind of off the road."

- Doug Sosnik

"I have learned that a woman can be a fighter, a freedom fighter, a political activist, and that she can fall in love, and be loved, she can be married, have children, be a mother... Revolution must mean life also; every aspect of life."

- Leila Khaled

“It is conventional wisdom that Steve Jobs put “a dent in the universe.” No, he didn’t. Steve Jobs, in my view, spat on the universe. People who get up every morning, get their kids dressed, get them to school, and have an irrational passion for their kids’ well-being, dent the universe. The world needs more homes with engaged parents, not a better fucking phone.”

- Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google

On this Day in History:

Mayflower's departure for America

On this date in 1620, English colonists aboard the Mayflower set sail for America, where they founded Plymouth, Massachusetts, after 41 men, including William Bradford and Myles Standish, signed the Mayflower Compact.

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 15, 2023

2. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, September 15, 2023

3. The Taiwanese Are Worried That the U.S. Will Abandon Ukraine By Seth G. Jones

4. 'Be careful what you wish for:' DoD official warns separate cyber force could pose new challenges

5. US at grave risk of China tech war retaliation

6. The Relentless Regularity of Irregular Warfare

7. Army recruiting: better than last year, still short of goal, officials say

8. Air Force to fall short of annual training goal by about 120 pilots

9. Pentagon to build space weapons, new strategy reveals

10. Putin’s Useful Priests

11. Opinion: Is CIA Director Bill Burns Helping or Blocking Ukraine to Win?

12. The US military just proved it can get satellites into space super fast

13. Ukraine Isn’t the Reason the U.S. Is Unprepared for War

14. US-Indonesia Security Relations Flourish in a Changing Indo-Pacific

15. The fine line between military innovation and empty promises

16. Hypersonic Missiles Are Game-Changers, and America Doesn’t Have Them

17. How the State Dept discovered that Chinese hackers were reading its emails

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 15, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-15-2023

Key Takeaways:

Ukrainian forces liberated Andriivka in the Bakhmut area on September 14 and continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 15.
Russian State Duma Deputy and former Deputy Commander of the Southern Military District (SMD) Lieutenant General Andrei Gurulev complained about lying within the Russian military and highlighted the effectiveness of Ukrainian air defenses against Russian helicopters.
Ukrainian forces conducted naval drone strikes on Russian ships in the Black Sea on September 14.
Russian forces conducted another series of Shahed-131/-136 drone strikes targeting Ukrainian rear areas on September 15.
Russian State Duma Defense Committee Chairman Andrei Kartapolov explicitly stated that mobilized personnel will only demobilize at the end of Russia’s “special military operation.”
The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) continues efforts to assume control over the Wagner Group’s operations in North Africa and may have assigned former commander of the Aerospace Forces (VKS) Sergei Surovikin to this task.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas on September 15.
Russian occupation authorities continue efforts to strengthen ground lines of communication (GLOCs) connecting occupied southern Ukraine to Russia and occupied Crimea.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

Sep 15, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 15, 2023

Christina Harward, Riley Bailey, Angelica Evans, Grace Mappes, and Mason Clark

September 15, 2023, 6:20pm ET

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 1:00pm ET on September 15. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the September 16 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukrainian forces liberated Andriivka in the Bakhmut area on September 14 and continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 15. The Ukrainian General Staff and other Ukrainian officials reported that Ukrainian forces liberated Andriivka on September 14 and achieved unspecified partial success near Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut) on September 15.[1] The Ukrainian 3rd Separate Assault Brigade reported that its personnel liberated Andriivka and “completely destroyed“ the Russian 72nd Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (3rd Army Corps) after encircling the settlement.[2] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast and are inflicting significant losses on Russian manpower and equipment near Verbove (18km southeast of Orikhiv).[3]

Russian State Duma Deputy and former Deputy Commander of the Southern Military District (SMD) Lieutenant General Andrei Gurulev complained about lying within the Russian military and highlighted the effectiveness of Ukrainian air defenses against Russian helicopters. Gurulev published a Telegram message on September 15 largely reiterating known Russian challenges, though with several notable points. Gurulev complained that the culture of lying in the Russian military is the main issue preventing a Russian victory in Ukraine and claimed that false reports are leading to poor decision-making at many levels within the Russian military.[4] Gurulev also stated that Ukrainian air defenses at the front are effective against Russian helicopters and are preventing Russian helicopters from using previously highly effective anti-tank missiles, and he reiterated common complaints about Ukraine’s ability to conduct drone strikes on Russian rear areas and insufficient Russian counterbattery capabilities.[5] Gurulev is notable for having previously leaked the audio message of former Commander of the 58th Combined Arms Army (SMD) Major General Ivan Popov’s grievances over the lack of support for Russian forces on July 12, and Gurulev‘s likely senior ties with the SMD lend weight to his complaints.[6]

Ukrainian forces conducted naval drone strikes on Russian ships in the Black Sea on September 14.[7] Ukrainian Strategic Command reported that Ukrainian forces caused unspecified damage to two Russian “Vasily Bykov” Project 22160-class patrol ships in the southwestern Black Sea on September 14.[8] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian Black Sea Fleet forces destroyed two Ukrainian naval drones in this area.[9] Ukrainian newspaper Ukrainskaya Pravda reported that sources in the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) stated that a Ukrainian naval drone significantly damaged a Russian Bora-class corvette near the entrance to Sevastopol Bay on September 14 but the Russian MoD claimed that Russian Black Sea Fleet forces destroyed a Ukrainian naval drone and repelled the attack.[10] A Russian source claimed that the corvette was not visibly damaged.[11]

Russian forces conducted another series of Shahed-131/-136 drone strikes targeting Ukrainian rear areas on September 15. Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces launched 17 drones from Krasnodar Krai in the direction of Khmelnytskyi Oblast and that Ukrainian air defenses shot down all 17 drones.[12] Ukrainian Air Force Spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat stated that the Russian strike targeted Ukrainian aircraft.[13]

Russian State Duma Defense Committee Chairman Andrei Kartapolov explicitly stated that mobilized personnel will only demobilize at the end of Russia’s “special military operation.”[14] Kartapolov added that Russian mobilized personnel will not receive rotations, but that they are entitled to leave every six months.[15] Kartapolov’s explicit commentary is likely meant to dissuade Russian legislators from considering a proposed amendment that would establish terms for demobilizing personnel mobilized in autumn 2022.[16] The Kremlin continues to resist formally rescinding the partial mobilization decree in order to legally justify the continued service of mobilized personnel for an indefinite period of time.[17]

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko reiterated standing claims about negotiations and perceived grievances against the West during a meeting in Sochi on September 15. Putin and Lukashenko reportedly also discussed economic issues, Kim Jong Un’s visit to Russia, and Russian force generation efforts.[18] Putin and Lukashenko reiterated boilerplate rhetoric accusing the West of manipulating Ukraine. Putin claimed that 300,000 people have signed military service contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) - presumably within the past six to seven months, updating a figure given by Putin on September 12.[19]

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) continues efforts to assume control over the Wagner Group’s operations in North Africa and may have assigned former commander of the Aerospace Forces (VKS) Sergei Surovikin to this task. Russian sources posted pictures of Army General Sergei Surovikin, the previously dismissed Wagner-affiliated former VKS commander, in Algeria on September 15.[20] Russian state news outlet Kommersant reported that a source close to Surovikin stated that the trip may be connected to Surovikin’s possible appointment to oversee unspecified operations in Africa.[21] Russian milbloggers claimed that Surovikin’s new formal position as Head of the Coordination Committee on Air Defense Issues under the Council of Defense Ministers of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is purely nominal and speculated that Surovikin may take over Wagner assets and operations in the region.[22] Surovikin may be involved in Russian efforts to subsume Wagner operations due to his affiliation with Wagner and his command experience, although it is unclear if the Russian MoD intends for Surovikin to assume direct command of these efforts. Russian Deputy Defense Minister Colonel-General Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and elements of the Main Directorate (GRU) of the General Staff have also been reportedly heavily involved in efforts to subsume Wagner’s operations in the Middle East and Africa.[23] The Wall Street Journal reported that Russian officials, including Yevkurov, met with Khalifa Haftar, commander of the Tobruk-based Libyan National Army, in recent weeks to request access to ports in Benghazi or Tobruk for Russian warships.[24] Yevkurov reportedly visited Libya several times in the past months to replace “private military companies” (PMCs) with Russian MoD-controlled formations.[25] The Kremlin may be attempting to revive a longstanding campaign to secure access to a Mediterranean port in Libya in parallel with the effort to subsume Wagner’s operations in Libya.

Key Takeaways:

Ukrainian forces liberated Andriivka in the Bakhmut area on September 14 and continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 15.
Russian State Duma Deputy and former Deputy Commander of the Southern Military District (SMD) Lieutenant General Andrei Gurulev complained about lying within the Russian military and highlighted the effectiveness of Ukrainian air defenses against Russian helicopters.
Ukrainian forces conducted naval drone strikes on Russian ships in the Black Sea on September 14.
Russian forces conducted another series of Shahed-131/-136 drone strikes targeting Ukrainian rear areas on September 15.
Russian State Duma Defense Committee Chairman Andrei Kartapolov explicitly stated that mobilized personnel will only demobilize at the end of Russia’s “special military operation.”
The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) continues efforts to assume control over the Wagner Group’s operations in North Africa and may have assigned former commander of the Aerospace Forces (VKS) Sergei Surovikin to this task.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas on September 15.
Russian occupation authorities continue efforts to strengthen ground lines of communication (GLOCs) connecting occupied southern Ukraine to Russia and occupied Crimea.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
Activities in Russian-occupied areas

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line and advanced on September 15. Geolocated footage published on September 15 indicates that Russian forces advanced west of Raihorodka (12km west of Svatove).[26] A Russian news aggregator claimed on September 14 that Russian forces advanced near Novoyehorivka (15km southwest of Svatove).[27] A Russian milblogger claimed on September 15 that elements of the Russian 138th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (6th Combined Arms Army, Western Military District) crossed the Oskil River near Novomlynsk (20km northeast of Kupyansk) along a front almost four kilometers wide and entered Ukrainian rear areas near Dvorichna (17km northeast of Kupyansk), but another Russian milblogger denied this claim and stated that the situation in this area has not changed significantly.[28] Russian sources claimed on September 14 and 15 that Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Masyutivka (13km northeast of Kupyansk), Synkivka (8km northeast of Kupyansk), Petropavlivka (7km east of Kupyansk), Berestove (20km northwest of Svatove), the Serebryanske forest area (10km southwest of Kreminna), and Bilohorivka (12km south of Kreminna).[29] The Ukrainian General Staff and Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces spokesperson Ilya Yevlash reported that Russian forces did not conduct offensive operations in the Kupyansk or Lyman direction on September 14 and 15.[30] Yevlash stated that elements of the Russian 25th Combined Arms Army (CAA) (reportedly under the Eastern Military District) are operating in the Kupyansk direction.[31] ISW has previously assessed that the newly formed 25th CAA is likely low quality or understrength.[32] A Russian source claimed on September 14 that elements of the Russian 123rd Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Luhansk People’s Republic Army Corps) are operating near Siversk (18km southwest of Kreminna).[33]

Russian military officials claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on September 15 but did not advance. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and Russian Center Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Alexander Savchuyk claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Torske (15km west of Kreminna).[34]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Ukrainian forces liberated Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut) and made further gains in the Bakhmut area on September 15. The Ukrainian General Staff and other Ukrainian officials reported that Ukrainian forces liberated Andriivka on September 14 and achieved unspecified partial success near Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut) on September 15.[35] The Ukrainian 3rd Separate Assault Brigade reported that its personnel liberated Andriivka and “completely destroyed” the Russian 72nd Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (3rd Army Corps) after encircling the settlement.[36] Elements of the 72nd Brigade previously suffered heavy losses during localized Ukrainian counterattacks in the Bakhmut area in May 2023 and are likely thoroughly degraded.[37] The Ukrainian 3rd Assault Brigade stated that the liberation of Andriivka presents opportunities for a breakthrough on Bakhmut’s southern flank and that fighting is ongoing in the area.[38] Many Russian sources either denied that Ukrainian forces liberated the settlement or argued that the complete destruction of the settlement during fighting makes the Ukranian control over the settlement tactically insignificant.[39] One Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces currently control heights east of Andriivka.[40] Other select Russian milbloggers acknowledged that Russian forces’ tactical situation south of Bakhmut is deteriorating and expressed concern that Ukrainian forces may be able to threaten the Russian grouping in Bakhmut.[41] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces pushed Russian forces out of Klishchiivka and are trying to gain a foothold in the settlement, although other Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces control the settlement.[42] One milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully tried to enter Bakhmut itself from the southwest.[43] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian assault near Mayorske (21km south of Bakhmut).[44]

Russian forces counterattacked around Bakhmut but did not make any confirmed gains on September 15. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued unsuccessful attempts to break through Ukrainian defenses near Bohdanivka (7km northwest of Bakhmut) and tried to restore lost positions near Yahidne (2km north of Bakhmut).[45] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces counterattacked near Andriivka and recaptured several unspecified lost positions.[46]

Russian forces continued limited offensive operations along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City front on September 15 but did not make any confirmed gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive actions near Lastochkyne (5km northwest of Avdiivka), Avdiivka, and Marinka (27km southwest of Avdiivka).[47] A Russian milblogger claimed that fighting is ongoing north of Opytne (4km south of Avdiivka) and Nevelske (14km southwest of Avdiivka) and near Krasnohorivka (22km southwest of Avdiivka).[48] The milblogger claimed that Russian forces continue offensive operations north and south of Marinka but have not achieved any significant progress.[49]

Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Ukrainian forces continued assaults in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on September 15 but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued to conduct assaults in the Shakhtarske direction in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area.[50] Russian sources, including the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), claimed that Ukranian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks near Pryyutne (15km southwest of Velyka Novosilka), Staromayorske (9km south of Velyka Novosilka), Urozhaine (9km south of Velyka Novosilka), Novomayorske (18km southeast of Velyka Novosilka), and Novodonetske (12km southeast of Velyka Novosilka).[51] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces have decreased the intensity of their attacks near Novomayorske.[52]

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 15 but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast) direction and are inflicting significant losses on Russian manpower and equipment near Verbove (18km southeast of Orikhiv).[53] Russian sources, including the Russian MoD, claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful assaults near Robotyne (12km south of Orikhiv) and Verbove.[54] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces still control Verbove and that Ukrainian forces are not close to the settlement.[55] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces do not control Robotyne and retreated from the outskirts of the settlement to nearby forest areas.[56] The milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces also attacked near Novoprokopivka (18km southeast of Orikhiv).[57] A Ukrainian sapper operating in the Zaporizhia direction stated that Russian forces have so densely mined areas it can take up to a day to clear a 50-square-meter plot of land in this direction.[58]

Russian forces reportedly continued ground attacks in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 12 but did not make any confirmed advances. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces attacked from Luhivske (18km southeast of Orikhiv) in an effort to flank Ukrainian forces.[59] Russian milbloggers amplified footage claiming to show elements of the Russian 247th Guards VDV Regiment (7th VDV Division) operating near Verbove.[60] Another Russian milblogger amplified footage claiming to show elements of the Russian “Osman” Spetsnaz force operating in the Orikhiv direction.[61]

Russian milbloggers continued to express concern about limited Ukrainian crossings of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast on September 14 and 15. Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces intensified their activity on unspecified Dnipro River delta islands near the Antonivsky Bridge in order to consolidate positions for a future attack on the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast.[62] Russian forces likely do not possess the manpower necessary to defend against a significant Ukrainian attack in this sector of the front, given that Russian command transferred several elements from Kherson Oblast to Zaporizhia Oblast.[63] One Russian milblogger acknowledged that Russian forces lack the capabilities to conduct their own significant river crossing operations in the area, particularly due to a lack of shells for artillery preparations.[64]

Ukrainian and Western military sources offered more details about recent high-profile Ukrainian strikes on Russian military assets near Sevastopol and Yevpatoria in occupied Crimea. Ukrainian Air Force Commander Lieutenant General Mykola Oleschuk confirmed on September 15 that Ukrainian forces struck the Russian Minsk Ropucha class landing ship and the Rostov-on-Don Kilo class submarine in Sevastopol with Storm Shadow and SCALP (the French variant of the Storm Shadow) cruise missiles on September 13.[65] The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (UK MoD) assessed that Ukrainian strikes against the Minsk functionally destroyed the vessel and strikes against the Rostov-on-Don inflicted catastrophic damage that will likely take years and several hundred million dollars to repair.[66] The UK MoD assessed that it will take Russian forces several months to remove the wreckage from the dry docks in Sevastopol, rendering them unusable for the time being and presenting a significant challenge to the maintenance of the Black Sea Fleet.[67] The Ukrainian Navy also confirmed reports that that Ukrainian Naval Forces destroyed a Russian S-400 “Triumf” air defense system on September 14, presumably near Yevpatoria.[68]

Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited multiple defense industrial base (DIB) enterprises on September 15 likely as part of the gradual mobilization of Russia’s DIB. Shoigu visited the “Zvezda” defense plant in Bolshoy Kamen, Primorsky Krai and “demanded” that the plant utilize its maximum production capacity to repair and modernize Russian Pacific Fleet submarines.[69] Shoigu also visited the “Progress” aircraft plant where he received a briefing on efforts to modernize the Ka-52M combat helicopter and ordered plant management to improve the Ka-52M's combat capabilities and pilot security.[70] Shoigu also held a meeting with Russian Pacific Fleet officials in Primorsky Krai and claimed that Russia has commissioned two new Pacific Fleet vessels thus far in 2023 and will commission 12 additional vessels by the end of the year.[71]

Ukrainian intelligence reported that North Korea has already provided artillery shells to Russia. Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Head Kyrylo Budanov stated on September 14 that North Korea began providing munitions, including 122mm and 152mm artillery ammunition, rockets for Grad MLRS, and tank rounds, for the past “month and a half.”[72] Budanov stated that the Kremlin seeks millions of rounds from North Korea.

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian occupation authorities continue efforts to strengthen ground lines of communication (GLOCs) connecting occupied southern Ukraine to Russia and occupied Crimea. Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin claimed on September 14 that Russian authorities have repaired and constructed over 100 kilometers of road connecting Mariupol and other coastline areas to Donetsk City and Russian areas. Pushilin claimed that authorities also restored four bridges in and near Mariupol.[73] Zaporizhia Oblast occupation head Yevgeny Balitsky claimed on September 15 that occupation authorities restored 30 kilometers of road between occupied Berdyansk and Prymorsk in southern Zarpozhia Oblast.[74]

Russian occupation authorities continue deporting Ukrainian children to Russia. The Kherson Oblast occupation administration stated on September 14 that the administration signed an agreement to send 20 children to the “Okean” children’s camp in Primorsky Krai for an unspecified period of time.[75]

Russian occupation authorities in Crimea are reportedly conducting extensive crackdowns against pro-Ukrainian sentiments. Russian opposition outlet Verstka reported on September 15 that Crimean occupation authorities have prosecuted 198 cases of alleged defamation of the Russian military in 2022 and 179 cases so far in 2023, the third highest prosecution rates for this law in all of Russia and occupied territories.[76] Verstka reported that Crimean occupation authorities prosecute people under this law for listening to or singing Ukrainian music, making private comments criticizing the war, or for wearing traditional Ukrainian dress.[77] Verstka reported that Crimean occupation authorities established various channels for residents of occupied Crimea to report violations of this law to authorities and reported on multiple cases of residents informing on their coworkers, neighbors, and friends to law enforcement.[78]

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

See topline text.

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to increase their control over Belarus and other Russian actions in Belarus.

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

2. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, September 15, 2023

Maps/graphics./citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/china-taiwan-weekly-update-september-15-2023

Key Takeaways

Kuomintang (KMT) leaders threatened party disciplinary action against party members supporting independent presidential candidate and former KMT member Terry Gou, which is unlikely to bolster KMT unity before the presidential election.
The CCP responded to the US-Canada-Japan Noble Stingray exercise last week with a naval “show of force” and may stage a similar reaction to the upcoming US-Canada-South Korea exercise in the Yellow Sea.
Chinese Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia expressed concerns about the quality of People’s Liberation Army equipment, which suggests that the PRC’s defense industrial base is not performing to the satisfaction of CCP leadership.

CHINA-TAIWAN WEEKLY UPDATE, SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

Sep 15, 2023 - ISW Press

China-Taiwan Weekly Update, September 15, 2023

Authors: Nils Peterson, Frank Hoffman, and Ian Jones of the Institute for the Study of War

Editors: Dan Blumenthal and Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute

Data Cutoff: September 12 at 5pm ET

The China–Taiwan Weekly Update focuses on the Chinese Communist Party’s paths to controlling Taiwan and relevant cross–Taiwan Strait developments.

Key Takeaways

Kuomintang (KMT) leaders threatened party disciplinary action against party members supporting independent presidential candidate and former KMT member Terry Gou, which is unlikely to bolster KMT unity before the presidential election.
The CCP responded to the US-Canada-Japan Noble Stingray exercise last week with a naval “show of force” and may stage a similar reaction to the upcoming US-Canada-South Korea exercise in the Yellow Sea.
Chinese Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia expressed concerns about the quality of People’s Liberation Army equipment, which suggests that the PRC’s defense industrial base is not performing to the satisfaction of CCP leadership.

Taiwan Developments

This section covers relevant developments pertaining to Taiwan, including its upcoming January 13, 2024 presidential and legislative elections.

Kuomintang (KMT) leaders threatened party disciplinary action against the party members supporting independent presidential candidate and former KMT member Terry Gou, which is unlikely to bolster the KMT’s unity before the presidential election. The KMT’s leaders have threatened “strict party discipline” against the pro-Gou members ranging from censure to party expulsion.[1] The KMT leaders also criticized Gou and his supporters for causing division in the party and giving an advantage to the governing Democratic Progress Party (DPP).[2] Prominent pro-Gou KMT members declined to renounce their support.[3] Gou stated that the KMT’s rhetoric towards his supporters was harsher than the party’s rhetoric towards the DPP.[4] The animus between the KMT and Gou indicates the hurdles to unifying the KMT’s support for a single candidate.

KMT Chair Eric Chu (Chu Li-lun) stated that “there is no room for ambiguity, party discipline will be strictly enforced” against publicly pro-Gou KMT members.[5] KMT Disciplinary Committee Chair Huang Yiteng also warned against supporting the election of non-party candidates.
[6] The KMT stripped party power from the Standing Committee of the Central Committee member Fan Chenglian for two years after he appeared with Gou at a campaign event.[7] The KMT stated that this was to promote party unity and support the KMT-nominated candidates.[8]
Several KMT legislators and party members publicly urged Gou to rethink his candidacy. KMT members stated that they would support Hou over Gou and framed Gou’s presidency as handing the election to the DPP.[9] The KMT leadership’s rhetoric is framed as uniting behind Hou as opposed to building bridges with Gou.[10]
Pro-Gou KMT members have stated that they are unafraid of party discipline. Pro-Gou members have quit the KMT and appeared at rallies with Gou.[11] Gou has criticized the KMT for criticizing his campaign more harshly than the DPP.[12]

The hostility between KMT leadership and Gou may prompt the KMT to reconsider cooperation with the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in the election. KMT Chairman Eric Chu previously considered cooperation with the TPP, even before Gou entered the race in late August, which KMT presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih opposed.[13] Chu repeated this call for KMT-TPP cooperation in mid-September, while Hou expressed openness to potential working with the TPP.[14] TTP presidential candidate Ko Wen-je has remained noncommittal to working with the KMT.[15] A KMT-TPP coalition would result in competitive races with the governing DPP candidates in the legislative and presidential elections.

Chu has implemented a joint-campaign headquarters to consolidate KMT leaning county and local officials behind Hou.[16] Chu stated on August 24 that he is willing to work with the TPP in the interest of defeating the DPP.[17] Chu caveated his calls for cooperation by stating the KMT will only cooperate with parties that have a consensus on cross-strait policies and constitutional reform issues.[18]
Hou’s campaign issued a statement that it is “happy to see the possibility of cooperation with opposition forces.”[19] Hou stated he is open to working with the TPP.[20]
Ko has repeatedly stated he is open to dialogue with other opposition leaders and that “anything is possible” when asked specifically about cooperation with Hou.[21] Ko’s and Chu’s offices are rumored to be in contact about electoral cooperation.[22] An unnamed Ko staffer allegedly stated that Ko is more likely to work with Hou than Gou because of the grassroots strength of the KMT.[23] Ko has explicitly denied that the TPP and KMT have come to any agreement about cooperation and denied reporting that he and Chu communicated.[24]

China Developments

This section covers relevant developments pertaining to China and the governing Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The CCP responded to the US-Canada-Japan Noble Stingray exercise last week with a naval “show of force” and may stage a similar reaction to the upcoming US-Canada-South Korea exercise in the Yellow Sea. The CCP dispatched the Shandong aircraft carrier and associated People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) ships east of Taiwan in response to the trilateral Noble Stingray exercise that involved a transit through the Taiwan Strait, which the CCP views as provocative.[25] The United States, Canada, and South Korea will conduct a trilateral exercise in the Yellow Sea from September 15-19, which will be the first “large scale” exercise in the vicinity of the PRC’s northern coast in a decade.[26] Exercises in the Yellow Sea are sensitive from the party’s view because of their relative proximity to Beijing. PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs has consistently framed American regional Asia-Pacific military engagement as interference necessitating a “resolute” retaliatory response.

The United States, Canada, and Japan conducted the trilateral naval exercise Noble Stingray in the waters of Okinawa on September 8. Two of the four ships that participated in the exercise, the guided-missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson and frigate HMCS Ottawa, transited through the Taiwan Strait on September 9.[27]
The PRC’s Shandong aircraft carrier group sailed in waters 60 nautical miles off the southernmost point of the Taiwanese home island on its way to the western Pacific on September 11.[28] The PRC state-media outlet Global Times framed the event as a “show of force” in response to the transit of the Ralph Johnson and Ottawa.[29] The Global Times claimed that a “large” PLAN task force transiting through the Miyoko Strait to the western Pacific would join the Shandong carrier group to conduct a coordinated exercise. [30][31]
The United States, Canada, and South Korea will conduct a trilateral naval exercise to commemorate the 1950 Battle of Incheon from September 15-19. The exercise will consist of over 20 ships, 10 aircraft, and 3,000 service members.[32] The China-based South China Morning Post noted that this will be the first large-scale US exercise” near China’s northern coast in approximately ten years.[33] The PRC Foreign Ministry officials have framed U.S.-South Korean exercises as adding to regional “tension and confrontation” and vowed that US “interference” in the region will be met with “vigilance and opposition.” [34][35]

Chinese Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia expressed concerns about the quality of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) equipment, which suggests that the PRC’s defense industrial base is not performing to the satisfaction of the CCP leadership. Zhang spoke at a PLA military equipment conference in Beijing in late August.[36] He said that the PLA needs “supplies that can meet our needs in any real battles and struggles.”[37] He also stated the necessity of mobilizing the civilian and military apparatus to enhance equipment quality.[38] Zhang’s emphasis on the need for supplies for battles suggests that the PRC’s defense industry is not performing to the party’s expectations. The lack of commonplace ideological references in official state media reporting on the event indicates that the equipment quality problems are deeply rooted.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing met to discuss enhancing Sino-Russian economic relations during the Eastern Economic Forum on September 12. Putin praised Sino-Russian trade volume in 2023 and claimed that the two countries will reach 200 billion USD by the end of 2023.[39] Zhang stated that China is ready to “deepen mutually beneficial cooperation” with Russia.[40] Zhang’s current purview is China‘s advanced manufacturing sector, which has played a key role in Xi Jinping‘s goal for manufacturing self-reliance since the 20th Party Congress in October 2022.[41] Zhang previously spent over twenty years at NORINCO, which is a leading Chinese state-owned defense manufacturing and sales company.[42] His professional background and current responsibilities suggest that increases in Sino-Russian trade volume will involve goods to support the Russian war effort in Ukraine. The CCP has provided Russia with military assistance such as rifles and smokeless powder at varying points in 2023.[43]

3. The Taiwanese Are Worried That the U.S. Will Abandon Ukraine By Seth G. Jones

The one major difference that arguably is not making a difference is that Japan, Australia, and Korea are treaty allies and Ukraine and Taiwan are not. The fundamental question is can the US sustain demonstrating strength and resolve to uphold our values and defend our interests around the world? For others the fundamental question is should the US do so?

The Taiwanese Are Worried That the U.S. Will Abandon Ukraine

Japan, Australia and South Korea also see the war with Russia as a test of American resolve.

By Seth G. Jones

Sept. 15, 2023 3:12 pm ET

A Chinese warship takes part in a military drill off the Chinese coast, April 11. PHOTO: THOMAS PETER/REUTERS

American allies in Asia are increasingly concerned about stalling aid to Ukraine. These worries are particularly acute in Taiwan, where leaders told me this month that a major decline in U.S. military assistance to Kyiv would embolden Beijing and weaken deterrence in Asia.

Opposition to supporting Ukraine is building among some members of Congress, who argue that America should concentrate exclusively on China and the defense of Taiwan. These officials contend that our resources are finite, that weapons exports to Ukraine come at Taiwan’s expense, and that sustained focus on war in Europe benefits China. Some even maintain that every dollar spent on Ukraine is a waste of taxpayer money that could be better used on domestic priorities, such as combating the spread of fentanyl.

These arguments are misguided and dangerous. As senior political and military leaders in Australia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have pointed out, a collapse of American support in Ukraine would have serious ripple effects across Asia.

The views in Taipei, the most likely flashpoint with China, are striking. Taiwan’s national-security leaders warn that reduced U.S. aid to Ukraine would heighten Taiwanese concerns about American resolve. A declining percentage of the island’s population believe the U.S. would send troops in case of a war. One poll, conducted by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, found that only 36% of Taiwanese believe America would do so.

Taiwan’s fears aren’t surprising. Though Mr. Biden has stated on several occasions that the U.S. would come to the island’s defense, his administration’s policies have failed to reassure Taiwan. In 2021, the U.S. withdrew its military forces from Afghanistan, leading to the quick collapse of the Afghan government and Taliban victory. A year later, Mr. Biden ruled out sending U.S. troops to Ukraine, raising anxieties in Taiwan.

Meantime, China’s Xi Jinping has explicitly warned that he “will never promise to give up the use of force ” and that he reserves “the option to take all necessary measures” to seize Taiwan. Over the past several months, Beijing’s military has ramped up pressure around Taiwan. China’s air force now routinely flies into Taiwan’s air defense zone and sends fighter aircraft across the Taiwan Strait’s median line, which had served as an unofficial barrier. China also routinely sends drones near or over Taiwan’s islands in the South China Sea, such as Kinmen and Matsu.

According to Taiwan officials, abandoning Ukraine would reinforce Mr. Xi’s view that the U.S. is a declining power. To exploit these sentiments, the Chinese Communist Party is already running aggressive disinformation operations on the island. In one campaign, analyzed by the U.S. cybersecurity company Mandiant, Chinese government-linked outlets published articles on more than 72 fake-news sites claiming that America would abandon Taiwan following a potential invasion.

It’s a false dichotomy to argue that the U.S. needs to choose between China and Russia. Both are authoritarian regimes cooperating on two major axes. Beijing and Moscow have deepened their military, economic and diplomatic ties since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In July the two regimes conducted joint naval exercises in the Sea of Japan, and a few months ago they conducted another naval operation off the coast of Alaska.

The U.S. can’t afford to dither. It should develop a two-front strategy that works with allies and partners—including Taiwan and Ukraine—to counter China and Russia. These fronts require different weapons packages, training programs and defense postures for very different wars. The Indo-Pacific is mostly an air-sea battle, while Europe is primarily an air-land conflict.

American allies and enemies alike see Ukraine as a test of Western resolve. A long-term commitment that weakens Russia and helps Ukraine stand up to tyranny will strengthen deterrence in Asia and reassure Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Australia that America is still a dominant world power and trusted partner.

Mr. Jones is senior vice president and director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as well as author most recently of “Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China, Iran and the Rise of Irregular Warfare.”

'Be careful what you wish for:' DoD official warns separate cyber force could pose new challenges - Breaking Defense

“A cyber service might have some benefits in ease of administrative management, but we have a variety of...military services in the Department of Defense who perform a variety of missions," Mieke Eoyang said.

By JASPREET GILL

breakingdefense.com · by Jaspreet Gill · September 15, 2023

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy Mieke Eoyang speaks during Cybercon, virtually, at the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., Nov. 10, 2021. (DoD photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Brittany A. Chase)

WASHINGTON — While the Pentagon studies the pros and cons of standing up a Space Force-like independent cyber military service, one official today warned that it could potentially pose new challenges for the department when it comes to understanding warfighting needs within the military services.

“I think the question is that for people who think the cyber service is the answer to our…current challenges in cyber personnel management: be careful what you wish for,” Mieke Eoyang, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, said today at a Defense Writers Group event. “A cyber service might have some benefits in ease of administrative management, but we have a variety of…military services in the Department of Defense who perform a variety of missions.”

Eoyang added that “those missions are enabled by technologies that are particular to those mission sets,” and that “having a cyber service that is divorced from those particular mission sets may pose some challenges in understanding the warfighting needs of the services to provide cyber to enable that fight.”

DoD is “going to study” the feasibility of creating an independent cyber force and its pros and cons, Eoyang added. She referred to section 1533 of the fiscal 2023 version of the National Defense Authorization Act [PDF] which required DoD to “study the prospect of a new force generation model” for US Cyber Command. As it currently stands, USCYBERCOM is responsible for employing personnel from each military service to combatant commands.

One provision directly related to the creation of a cyber force was included in the Senate Armed Services Committee’s (SASC) version of the FY24 National Defense Authorization Act requires the secretary of defense to work with the National Academy of Public Administration to evaluate the efficacy of a “separate Armed Force dedicated to operations in the cyber domain.”

“There are certainly challenges to managing a career field that spans multiple services, their challenges to jointness…the question is, which set of problems are we willing to live with and taking a look at all these things to understand that better, before we throw out what we have in favor of something else or decide, actually what we have needs to be fixed, or there’s something else completely?” Eoyang said. “I think that is a study that we are taking very seriously because it is important in the Department of Defense for us to get people right. And we are committed to doing that.”

Eoyang’s comments come days after the Pentagon released an unclassified summary of its new cyber strategy building off of lessons learned from the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The summary outlined actions DoD would take to develop new cyber capabilities and expand information sharing with allies and partners in order to stay ahead of any threats posed by adversaries.

One part of the unclassified summary noted that DoD would prioritize allies and partners in order to build cyber resiliency through efforts like “augmenting partner capacity, expanding partners’ access to cybersecurity infrastructure and maturing their cyber workforce though combined training events and exercises.” Today, Eoyang said that DoD is working with industry to “identify particular bureaucratic barriers” they might be facing.

Congressional Cyber Interest

In February, Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wisc., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s cyber, innovative technologies and information systems subcommittee, told reporters following a hearing that the subcommittee was open to the idea of creating an independent cyber military service, although the idea needed to be studied further. One of his concerns was that it would create more bureaucracy.

“I think the hesitancy on our side would be — well, so soon after creating the Space Force, we don’t want to just create a bunch of bureaucracy. So we can find a way to do it that isn’t a massive increase in bureaucracy that in some ways is sort of consolidation efficiently of existing cyber warriors, then it could get compelling,” he said then. “I have yet to do my own homework on it.”

In July, Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh, then-nominee to head USCYBERCOM and the National Security Agency, was asked by the SASC [PDF] ahead of his nomination hearing whether DoD should continue to mature CYBERCOM following the US Special Operations Command model or create a separate cyber service.

“Congress and the Department have set the conditions for US Cyber Command to achieve this same success, leveraging expanded acquisition authorities and enhanced budget control to train and equip our cyberspace forces,” Haugh said then. “These tools are just now coming to a point that will allow the command to ensure prioritization, resource allocation, and efforts to deliver the necessary cyber systems and capabilities. We should continue this approach to allow adequate time to see the results of these authorities in improving the readiness and capabilities of our cyberspace forces.”

5. US at grave risk of China tech war retaliation

Graphics and charts at the link: https://asiatimes.com/2023/09/us-at-grave-risk-of-china-tech-war-retaliation/

Excerpts:

It’s true that China still depends on the West for a wide variety of chip-making equipment, while the US depends on China for a vast number of capital goods inputs. Both are capable of hurting each other badly.

The question is whether they will. Biden administration officials are keenly aware of American vulnerabilities, and reluctant to push the tech war against China to the point of Chinese retaliation.

Even with an all-out mobilization, it would take the US several years to build out sufficient flexible manufacturing capacity to replace critical Chinese components.

US at grave risk of China tech war retaliation

US dependence on Chinese components means defense industry and critical infrastructure could soon be in the line of fire

asiatimes.com · by David P. Goldman · September 16, 2023

NEW YORK – America doesn’t have the factories or skilled labor to replace Chinese imports that support defense contractors and basic infrastructure, leaving the US economy vulnerable to harm in the event of an all-out trade war with China, corporate and government officials told Asia Times.

That’s why Biden administration officials are unlikely to heed calls from China hawks to completely cut off China’s semiconductor sector from US technology.

A group of 10 prominent House Republicans wrote to the US Commerce Department on September 14 demanding a shutoff of US exports of chip technology to China, claiming that the export controls imposed in October 2022 were ineffective.

The Republicans’ letter cited “recent reports that Huawei Technologies Co. (Huawei) has developed a smartphone containing 7-nanometer (nm) chips, capable of supporting 5G, produced by the Chinese state-owned Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC).”

“We are extremely troubled and perplexed about the Bureau of Industry and Security’s (BIS) inability to effectively write and enforce export control rules against violators, especially China,” the letter added.

Semianalysis.com, a prominent chip industry website, declared, “US sanctions have failed. It called Huawei’s 7-nanometer chip “technically incredible,” and “a better designed chip than most in the West realize,” with capabilities similar to Nvidia’s and Qualcomm’s best AI processers. It noted the chip was produced with high yields, “with no access to cutting edge US intellectual property, and intentionally hampered.”

Huawei’s Mate60 Pro has a high-end chip. Photo: Sohu.com

Nothing short of a complete export ban on every category of semiconductor equipment would halt China’s progress, the website concluded. “Half measures will not work, but a full-scale assault will make it so the cost of replicating the semiconductor supply chain domestically is neigh on impossible. While we aren’t advocating for any of these specifically, it is clear the west can still stop China’s rise if decisive action is taken,” it wrote.

The US can’t stop China from making high-end chips like the new Kirin 9000 processor unless it shuts down all semiconductor fabrication in China. That would entail massive disruption not only of the semiconductor industry but of dozens of industries that depend on it, with grave economic consequences.

It is far from clear that the US would be able to enlist allies like Japan, South Korea, and the Netherlands. The Biden administration gave into Korean demands to maintain their existing chip fabs in China.

Holland’s ASML, the leading maker of chip-making lithography machines, won’t sell its most advanced equipment to China, but continues to sell the Deep Ultraviolet (DUV) devices that SMIC used to make the new Huawei chip.

Even if the US could persuade other countries to join in a total boycott of chip-making equipment to China, the US is not the only country that can wage economic war. The disruptive impact on the world economy would be incalculable and one possible upshot would be paralysis in US critical infrastructure.

Public discussion about possible Chinese retaliation against additional US export controls has focused on a possible ban on the use of Apple handsets by Chinese government officials. However, American vulnerability is evident in the form of thousands of critical components used in critical infrastructure and the US defense industry.

Graphic: Asia Times

The US imported US$33 billion in capital goods from China for electricity generation and distribution in 2022, items that are no longer manufactured in the US.

Substituting domestic production for these items would entail long lead times and exorbitant costs, industrial officials say. In the event of a full-scale trade war, a Chinese ban on critical components could cripple basic US infrastructure.

“The vulnerability of supply chains for critical infrastructure is acute and self-inflicted. The US and its allies have allowed themselves to become captive to Chinese cartels that control production of electronic components, high-powered magnets, printed circuit boards, computers, drones, rare earth metals, wind turbines, solar cells, cellular phones and lithium batteries… In fact, nearly every element of the technology-based digital smart grid is dependent on Chinese-made components,” Brien Sheahan, a former top US energy regulatory official, wrote in April.

US defense contractors also depend heavily on China. In a June 19 interview with the Financial Times, Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes said his company had “several thousand suppliers in China and decoupling is impossible. We can de-risk but not decouple,” adding that he believed this to be the case “for everybody” in US manufacturing.

Hayes added, “Think about the $500 billion of trade that goes from China to the US every year. More than 95% of rare earth materials or metals come from, or are processed in, China. There is no alternative. If we had to pull out of China, it would take us many, many years to re-establish that capability either domestically or in other friendly countries.”

Raytheon makes Tomahawk cruise missiles, Maverick air-to-surface missiles, Javelin anti-tank missiles and other mainstays of the American arsenal.

Meanwhile, American attempts at reducing dependence on foreign supply chains for critical goods have stalled. Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s top chip fabricator, accepted $15 billion in cash subsidies and tax credits from the Biden administration to build a fab in Arizona, but shortages of skilled labor have delayed the plant until 2025.

The same bottlenecks would hamper US efforts to replace Chinese components in critical infrastructure. The US faces an air pocket in skilled labor supply during the next two years.

“The fact is that 22% of existing skilled manufacturing workers will be retiring by the end of 2025. This could result in as many as 2 million to 3.5 million unfilled manufacturing jobs by 2025,” according to the consulting firm HBK.

America’s capital stock of manufacturing equipment has remained stagnant since 2000, according to Federal Reserve calculations.

Graphic: Asia Times

US orders for manufacturing equipment have been steady at between $1.5 billion and $2 billion a month, roughly half the level before the 2008 recession.

Graphic: Asia Times

As the growth rate of manufacturing capital stock collapsed, America’s trade deficit surged.

Graphic: Asia Times

It’s true that China still depends on the West for a wide variety of chip-making equipment, while the US depends on China for a vast number of capital goods inputs. Both are capable of hurting each other badly.

The question is whether they will. Biden administration officials are keenly aware of American vulnerabilities, and reluctant to push the tech war against China to the point of Chinese retaliation.

Even with an all-out mobilization, it would take the US several years to build out sufficient flexible manufacturing capacity to replace critical Chinese components.

Follow David P Goldman on X, formerly Twitter, at @davidpgoldman

asiatimes.com · by David P. Goldman · September 16, 2023

6. The Relentless Regularity of Irregular Warfare

Sigh....

Thank you Michael. But the irony is with some regularity most of us want to ignore irregular warfare as a lesser problem. (which may be okay if we are only concerned with existential threats to the US).

Here is the new definition of irregular warfare which is updated from the IW annex:

IW is a form of warfare where states and non-state actors campaign to assure or coerce states or other groups through indirect, non-attributable, or asymmetric activities, either as the primary approach or in concert with conventional warfare.

But I do believe that the comparison to the Chinese Unrestricted Warfare. I think the ongoing threat the US faces is consistent and sustained global political warfare conducted by multiple nations., non-state actors, and extremist organizations. The US must be able to conduct a superior form of political warfare to compete in the gray zone of strategic competition. Irregular warfare is the military contribution to a national level political warfare strategy. The key to success in strategic competition is not the military conducting irregular warfare but a national level political warfare strategy that incorporates IW in appropriate ways and means against appropriate targets andi in appropriate locations around the world.

All that said, we absolutely need the strongest possible military capability to fight and win wars requiring large scale combat operations. This serves as the best method to deter war but also makes it more imperative that we can conduct national level political warfare with the irregular warfare support of the military.

I have provided the excerpts from the new Joint Pub 1, Warfighting, with the descriptions of conventional and irregular warfare below the article.

Excerpts:

The irony of irregular warfare is its regularity. A recent paper by the Center for the Study of Intelligence and Nontraditional Warfare informs us that U.S. armed forces have been engaged in irregular warfare for 92 of the last 125 years, while in conventional warfare for only 17 of those years. In other words, irregular war is the norm rather than the exception. And there is every reason to believe this will continue to be the case. Just one look at the war in Ukraine reveals not only multiple aspects of irregular warfare but also foreshadows the horrors that would devastate large civilian populations, infrastructure, and economies in the case of major war between the great powers. Irregular warfare is less risky and much cheaper.

...

Irregular warfare differs from all the other warfares; it is neither a means nor an end, but a condition. It resembles the Chinese concept of unrestricted warfare which views conflict—including violent conflict—as a constant, rather than as an aberration. Recall the optimistic aspiration of the 1970s and 1980s—peaceful coexistence. It was not a tool, tactic, or technique, but rather an imagined steady state in which the United States and the Soviet Union would live indefinitely at peace despite their differences. Irregular warfare far more accurately characterizes the condition of states seeking dominance or at least autonomy in an environment with predatory competitors. As a condition of the human predicament, we should not assume that irregular warfare can ever be won or eliminated. It is something we must become attuned to, and for which we must develop innovative and effective tools, tactics, and techniques.

All conflict is ultimately a struggle over the terms of coexistence (either between states, political parties, or individuals), and who gets to make the rules for coexistence. For the indefinite future—and possibly forever—that struggle will take place in the gray zone of irregular warfare. Recognizing its ubiquity and permanence is the first step toward developing the tools, tactics, and techniques to prevail in the gray zone of irregular warfare and will definitely serve our purpose if we wish to set the terms and make the rules.

The Relentless Regularity of Irregular Warfare

By Michael Miklaucic

September 16, 2023

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/09/16/the_relentless_regularity_of_irregular_warfare_980030.html

Cadets conduct mission planning during West Point Irregular Warfare Group’s Unconventional Warfare Exercise

The U.S. Department of Defense has a rich taxonomy of the various kinds of war. There are conventional and unconventional wars, nuclear war, cyberwar, hybrid war, information war, guerilla war, proxy war, and many more. Some but not all these terms are carefully defined in military doctrine. One of them—irregular war—defies definition, or rather suffers from multiple definition syndrome. Ask ten experts the definition of irregular warfare and you will receive ten definitions. What many of those definitions have in common, however, is the characterization of irregular warfare as a suite of tools, tactics, and techniques for conflict below the threshold of military combat; a specified set of means short of military combat toward the end of prevailing in conflict. That is a problem.

The Pentagon definition is more nuanced than most; according to the Department of Defense’s Irregular Warfare Annex to the National Defense Strategy “Irregular warfare is a struggle among state and non-state actors to influence populations and affect legitimacy. IW favors indirect and asymmetric approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capabilities, in order to erode an adversary’s power, influence, and will.” This definition does not dwell on specific tactics, techniques, or tools. But ambiguity and ambivalence still reign.

The irony of irregular warfare is its regularity. A recent paper by the Center for the Study of Intelligence and Nontraditional Warfare informs us that U.S. armed forces have been engaged in irregular warfare for 92 of the last 125 years, while in conventional warfare for only 17 of those years. In other words, irregular war is the norm rather than the exception. And there is every reason to believe this will continue to be the case. Just one look at the war in Ukraine reveals not only multiple aspects of irregular warfare but also foreshadows the horrors that would devastate large civilian populations, infrastructure, and economies in the case of major war between the great powers. Irregular warfare is less risky and much cheaper.

It is not for these reasons alone that irregular warfare is a favorite fighting mode of our adversaries Russia and China. They do not share the binary paradigm of war and peace that the West embraces—a paradigm in which we are either at war or at peace. On the contrary both Russian and Chinese strategic thinking are strongly influenced by a belief in permanent and comprehensive struggle against any and all opposed to their own authoritarian world views. China’s Three Warfares include media war, psychological war, and legal warfare. Russia’s New Generation Warfare combines conventional, irregular, and cyber warfare across the full conflict spectrum. These doctrines show candidly and clearly how our adversaries marshal all the elements of their national power in a never-ending battle against what they perceive as the hegemonic, corrupt, and declining Western liberal, rules-based world order. All domains are within the battlespace, every resource is a weapon, and there is no distinction between civilian and military.

Through brutal enforcement sprinkled with authoritarian ideology the Chinese Communist Party and the Kremlin’s gangster regime have cultivated “whole of government” and even “whole of society” approaches to great power competition. This is an important aspect of irregular warfare, and while Western countries can’t emulate China’s or Russia’s forced alignment of all the elements of national strength, they can certainly more effectively deploy their diplomats and aid workers whose contributions can be significant. This is not a novel insight; indeed, it is a lesson we have learned and unlearned in fateful cycles, and one which, over well over a half century ago, George Kennan recognized in his writings on political warfare.

Even more significant than the Pentagon’s definition is the following statement found in the Irregular Warfare Annex: “IW is a persistent and enduring operational reality employed by non-state actors and increasingly by state actors in competition with the United States.” Understood as a ubiquitous condition of life in an adversarial environment irregular warfare describes much more than a set of tools, tactics, and techniques; it describes a continual, comprehensive environmental attribute, permeating interaction between adversaries. Irregular warfare here is characterized as the perpetual struggle for dominance between great powers. If we think of irregular warfare not as a suite of tools, tactics, and techniques, but as a structural attribute of coexistence, we might be more innovative in developing our own approaches, and more effective in competing with these determined and relentless adversaries.

Irregular warfare differs from all the other warfares; it is neither a means nor an end, but a condition. It resembles the Chinese concept of unrestricted warfare which views conflict—including violent conflict—as a constant, rather than as an aberration. Recall the optimistic aspiration of the 1970s and 1980s—peaceful coexistence. It was not a tool, tactic, or technique, but rather an imagined steady state in which the United States and the Soviet Union would live indefinitely at peace despite their differences. Irregular warfare far more accurately characterizes the condition of states seeking dominance or at least autonomy in an environment with predatory competitors. As a condition of the human predicament, we should not assume that irregular warfare can ever be won or eliminated. It is something we must become attuned to, and for which we must develop innovative and effective tools, tactics, and techniques.

All conflict is ultimately a struggle over the terms of coexistence (either between states, political parties, or individuals), and who gets to make the rules for coexistence. For the indefinite future—and possibly forever—that struggle will take place in the gray zone of irregular warfare. Recognizing its ubiquity and permanence is the first step toward developing the tools, tactics, and techniques to prevail in the gray zone of irregular warfare and will definitely serve our purpose if we wish to set the terms and make the rules.

Michael Miklaucic is a Senior Fellow at National Defense University and the Editor-in-Chief of the PRISM journal. The opinions expressed in this article are his and are not official statements of policy or opinion National Defense University or the Department of Defense.

From Joint Pub 1:

a. Forms of Warfare. The US military recognizes two general forms of warfare— conventional and irregular—which may escalate to include the employment of nuclear weapons. JFCs choose to conduct warfare not in terms of an either/or choice but in various combinations that suit the strategic and operational objectives and that are tailored to a specific OE. In some cases, adversary actions force the JFC to select specific ways and means. Warfare does not always fit neatly into one of these subjective categories but incorporates all aspects of conventional warfare and irregular warfare (IW) when in tandem or parallel. Military activity (or inactivity) may be communicative if observed and perceived by actors as affecting them. A nation-state’s purpose for waging war is to impose its will on an enemy and avoid imposition of the enemy’s will. Winning a war requires creative, dynamic, and synergistic combinations of all US capabilities. Achieving strategic objectives often depends on the population indigenous to the OA accepting the imposed, arbitrated, or negotiated result.

(1) Conventional Warfare. This form of warfare is a violent struggle between nation-states or coalitions, and alliances of nation-states, fought with conventional forces.

(a) In conventional warfare, nation-states fight each other to protect or advance their strategic interests. Campaigning as a part of conventional warfare normally focuses on an enemy’s armed forces, their capabilities, and seizing key terrain to influence their government. In conventional warfare, enemies engage in combat against each other and employ a variety of similar functions and capabilities throughout the OE. In today’s OE, enemies are challenging traditional views of warfare that blur warfare lines in their rhetoric and their doctrine, including operations that may integrate IW, conventional warfare, and nuclear operations.

(b) Nuclear war is an existential threat, and strategic nuclear deterrence requires a no-fail approach. Strategic deterrence is foundational to the success of all other missions and is the joint force’s priority mission for which it maintains the highest state of readiness. Therefore, the United States manages the risk of an escalation to nuclear war. This type of deterrence requires close coordination across all CCMDs to control escalation.

Additionally, the joint force supports counterproliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear materials of concern.

For more information on nuclear operations, see JP 3-72, Joint Nuclear Operations.

(a) Military victory typically results from defeating an enemy’s will, destroying or defeating an enemy’s warfighting capability, destroying the enemy’s war- sustaining capacity (e.g., defense industrial base), removing a hostile regime, or the seizure and holding of territory. Both conventional warfare and IW may consist of a tailored mix of capabilities, including cyberspace and space capabilities.

(b) Conventional warfare may also encompass state-like entities that adopt conventional military capabilities and methods to achieve military victory.

(c) The near-term outcomes of conventional warfare are often obvious, with the conflict ending in military victory for one side and military defeat for the other or resulting in stalemate. When considering forcible action, policymakers and senior military leaders must consider the operational continuity of effort, like preparedness for initiating offensive operations, consolidation, and the return to competition. These actions can ultimately determine whether military victory translates into enduring strategic objectives.

(2) IW. IW is a form of warfare where states and non-state actors campaign to assure or coerce states or other groups through indirect, non-attributable, or asymmetric activities, either as the primary approach or in concert with conventional warfare. The term “irregular” highlights the character of this form of warfare, which seeks to create dilemmas and increase risk and costs to adversaries to achieve a position of advantage. IW may employ the threat or use of organized armed violence for purposes other than physical domination over an adversary. States and non-state actors may conduct IW when they cannot achieve their strategic objectives by nonmilitary activities or conventional warfare.

(a) States and Non-State Actors. IW occurs between nations, states, or other groups. Other groups include organizations with no state involvement but that have capacity to threaten or use violence. States or other groups conduct IW to impose their will, with complementary methods contributing to the military defeat of an adversary.

(b) Campaign. JFCs plan, conduct, and assess IW within military campaigns as part of a broader, long-term USG effort across relevant instruments of national power to protect and advance US national interests.

1. Integrating military and nonmilitary means is essential to plan and conduct IW, as the military alone is often insufficient to achieve desired strategic objectives. The joint force plans and conducts IW in collaboration with relevant instruments of national power and with allies and partners.

2. The intent of IW is to erode an adversary’s legitimacy and influence over a population and to exhaust its political will—not necessarily to defeat its armed forces—while supporting the legitimacy, influence, and will of friendly political authorities engaged in the struggle against the adversary.

3. JFCs may conduct IW proactively to deny access or create dilemmas for an opponent’s government, economy, or civil society.

4. In armed conflict, JFCs can conduct activities to support IW as an inherent aspect of joint operations.

5. JFCs may conduct IW proactively to undermine an emerging threat and prevent them from becoming an enemy.

(c) Assure or Coerce. IW can assure or coerce within the paradigm of strategic uses of military force. JFCs can assure allies and partners by demonstrating US commitment to their strategic interests. JFCs can employ IW in attempting to coerce opponents, such as deterring their future behavior and compelling them to modify their current behavior. IW operations and activities may have the following effects:

1. Affecting the legitimacy and influence of the principal actors and their partners and opponents.

2. Deterring, delaying, disrupting, or degrading opponents.

3. Countering the coercive and subversive activities of opponents.

4. Diverting, coercing, attriting, or exhausting opponents.

(d) IW Variables. IW employs either indirect, non-attributable, or asymmetric military activities to achieve strategic objectives. Not all IW is indirect, non- attributable, and asymmetric, but IW includes one of these essential characteristics.

1. Indirect activities target an adversary or support an ally or partner through one or more intermediaries (e.g., allies, partners, proxies, surrogates).

2. Non-attributable activities target an opponent or support an ally or partner in ways that conceal the source of the activities or their sponsorship.

3. Asymmetric activities target an opponent or support an ally or partner when a gross disparity in relative comprehensive power causes the weaker party to resort to irregular methodologies (e.g., disinformation, terrorism, insurgency, resistance to occupation) to erode or exhaust their opponent’s power, influence, and will. However, a stronger party may target opponents asymmetrically when the risks and cost associated with a direct, symmetric approach are unacceptable.

(e) Joint Force Conduct of IW. IW is a joint force activity not limited to special operations forces activity. Most joint capabilities can be employed in an irregular context. All IW operations and activities require conventional force lead, facilitation, or participation.

7. Army recruiting: better than last year, still short of goal, officials say

Army recruiting: better than last year, still short of goal, officials say

The service inducted around 9,000 more new soldiers this year than in 2022, commander says.

BY SAM SKOVE

STAFF WRITER

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023 06:47 PM ET

defenseone.com · by Sam Skove

LONDON—U.S. Army recruiting is adding about 20 percent more new soldiers than last year, the commander of the Army’s Recruiting Command said Friday, although it is still likely to fall short of its goal for the fiscal year.

The Army is “doing a lot better,” said Maj. Gen. Johnny Davis at the DSEI arms trade show here.

The service brought on fewer than 45,000 new soldiers in fiscal 2022, missing its goal of 60,000 by more than one-quarter. In fiscal 2023, which wraps up at month’s end, the Army is on track to add about 54,000 recruits, Davis said. He hailed strong recruitment in a number of states, including California and Texas.

But the Army will fall short of its 2023 goal of 65,000 troops. That’s no surprise; Army leaders have said since May that they anticipated improvement but not to reach the mark. In July, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth described the target as a “stretch goal,” and said the Army expects it to take years to more consistently hit recruiting goals.

Davis, like other Army leaders, noted barriers to service such as the strong U.S. economy attracting potential soldiers to the private sector, COVID preventing recruiters from working in schools, and eligibility restrictions related to weight and other factors.

Even once applicants express a desire to join the military, there can be problems getting them on board.

For around every ten applicants, only one typically enters boot camp, Davis said. More accurate medical screening may also be reducing the number of recruits who ultimately become soldiers, but Davis said the changes keep applicants safe.

The Army re-launched its 1980s-era “Be All You Can Be” in March as part of a multi-pronged media effort to boost recruitment. The campaign has so far been successful, notching a 78 percent increase in brand recall, Acting Chief of Army Enterprise Marketing Ignatios Mavridis told Defense One.

One thing the Army is unlikely to do in the near future is turn to Chinese social media platform TikTok, an app wildly popular with Gen-Z but banned from official Army devices since 2019. Some recruiters still use it to great effect, with at least one Army recruiter in 2021 saying it accounted for 45 percent of her recruits. “We’re already behind,” said Sgt. Georgia Varoucha, a recruiter with the New Jersey Army National Guard to Defense One in 2021. “To me, we’re already ten years behind.”

Britain’s Army, meanwhile, is forging ahead with TikTok to good results. The British Army recently overcame government skepticism and received approval to advertise on the appas part of its recent video-game style recruiting campaign, titled “You Belong Here.”

Since then, the Army has seen a 30 percent rise in applications, Maj. Gen. Tom Bewick, commander of British Army Recruiting and Initial Training Command, said at DSEI.

Bewick also said some national news events had helped recruiting, such as the UK’s training of Ukrainian troops, which the British military has allowed the media to extensively cover.

defenseone.com · by Sam Skove

8. Air Force to fall short of annual training goal by about 120 pilots

So does this mean it is not about a shortage of volunteers for pilot training but actually a problem with our industrial base? We cannot maintain the training aircraft due to a shortage of spare parts?

Excerpts:

Slower-than-expected repairs to the engines used on the T-38 Talon jets have limited the number of aircraft for more than a year that can be used for daily training missions. T-38s are the Air Force’s sole intermediate aircraft for teaching airmen to fly fighters and bombers.

“It has not gotten worse, but it has also not gotten better. It’s pretty much stagnated where it is,” said Maj. Gen. Clark Quinn, commander of the Nineteenth Air Force at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas. “The government is looking at perhaps doing some in-house … parts production to try and help facilitate getting them back healthy.”

Air Force to fall short of annual training goal by about 120 pilots

Stars and Stripes · by Matthew Adams · September 15, 2023

An Air Force T-38 Talon trainer jet in 2019 at Travis Air Force Base, Calif. (Heide Couch/Air Force)

WASHINGTON – The Air Force will miss its fiscal 2023 training goal by about 120 pilots, the service said.

The service will pin new wings on 1,350 airmen instead of its goal of 1,470. The Air Force’s goal for fiscal 2024 is 1,500, Air Force spokesman Benjamin Faske wrote in an email.

He said the Air Force in the last decade has produced on average about 1,300 pilots yearly, but various factors contribute to pilot training numbers.

“FY22 pilot training production was 1,276, down from 1,381 in FY21 due to continued challenges with civilian simulator instructor manning levels, T-6 supply shortfalls and T-38 engine overhaul delays,” Faske said.

Slower-than-expected repairs to the engines used on the T-38 Talon jets have limited the number of aircraft for more than a year that can be used for daily training missions. T-38s are the Air Force’s sole intermediate aircraft for teaching airmen to fly fighters and bombers.

“It has not gotten worse, but it has also not gotten better. It’s pretty much stagnated where it is,” said Maj. Gen. Clark Quinn, commander of the Nineteenth Air Force at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas. “The government is looking at perhaps doing some in-house … parts production to try and help facilitate getting them back healthy.”

In July, a thunderstorm further setback pilot training when it damaged nearly 20 T-6 Texan II turboprop aircraft at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma.

“Those spare parts are just not sitting on a shelf where you can pull them out and fix it the next day,” Quinn said.

The service also is still struggling to fill civilian instructor jobs to teach the academics and run the simulators, with openings at some locations as high as 60% to 70%. Quinn said the Air Force is testing the possibility of hiring teachers to control a simulator or run a class remotely.

These shortfalls have created a bottleneck in the training pipeline as hundreds of airmen wait for spots at flight schools to open.

More than 900 airmen were waiting to begin pilot training as of the end of August, Faske said. The pool of pilot recruits typically spikes in late spring and early summer as candidates graduate from college but wanes as they enter the training pipeline throughout the year.

“Due to factors adversely affecting USAF pilot production over the past few years, the previous year’s pool has not always been exhausted and the annual college graduation spike had driven the number to nearly 1,000 at its peak,” Faske said.

About 25% of pilot candidates wait less than three months for undergraduate pilot training, half ranging from three to nine months and the remaining 25% wait more than nine months.

“The Air Force is always hiring but currently much of our youth population are ineligible to serve without a waiver, mix that with historically low unemployment and the challenges persist,” Faske said.

Matthew Adams

Matthew Adams covers the Defense Department at the Pentagon. His past reporting experience includes covering politics for The Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle and The News and Observer. He is based in Washington, D.C.

Stars and Stripes · by Matthew Adams · September 15, 2023

9. Pentagon to build space weapons, new strategy reveals

Pentagon to build space weapons, new strategy reveals

Space arms deployed by China, Russia pose major threats to orbiting systems

washingtontimes.com

By Bill Gertz - The Washington Times - Friday, September 15, 2023

Vehicles carrying DF-17 ballistic missiles roll during a parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of Communist China in Beijing, Oct. 1, 2019. China said Friday, April 14, 2023, that it carried out a successful ground-based mid-course missile … Vehicles carrying DF-17 ballistic missiles roll … more >

By Bill Gertz - The Washington Times - Friday, September 15, 2023

The Pentagon will develop and deploy new space weapons to battle Chinese and Russian space forces in a future conflict, according to a new strategy report.

The unclassified version of the strategy, made public on Thursday, provides no details on the types of weapons being developed.

The strategy also places a major emphasis on passive measures, such as building replacement satellites that can be used after orbiting systems are blown up or incinerated during a conflict with an adversary such as China or Russia.

Other passive measures are described in the report as “resiliency” and include hardening existing satellites against attack with defensive measures, or through maneuvering capabilities.

The Biden administration also is arms control in space through the establishment of norms of behavior in space. The administration imposed a unilateral moratorium on testing space weapons that cause debris as it pursues space diplomacy.

China and Russia both in the past have conducted space weapons tests that produced thousands of high-speed orbiting debris pieces; neither has signed on to the U.S. testing moratorium.

The Pentagon budget for fiscal 2024 includes $33.3 billion, the largest budget for space operations ever and an increase of 13% over last year, the report said.

On U.S. space arms, the report said the United States needs “integrated space fires” for deterrence and for combat, acknowledging that resilience measures for space systems are insufficient to deter attacks.

The Pentagon “requires joint military space capabilities to protect and defend the U.S., and as directed, allied, partner, and commercial space assets and to protect the joint force, allies, and partners from adversary hostile uses of space,” the report said.

Greater electronic warfare capabilities, battlespace awareness and cyber defenses also are central to the new strategy.

Tracking the rhetoric of top Pentagon officials, the report says China today poses the most significant danger to American military and civilian space systems.

“In addition to developing counterspace weapons to threaten U.S. use of space, China is developing and rapidly growing its ability to leverage space to enhance its own combat power to fight and win a modern military conflict,” states the report that was required under recent congressional legislation.

The U.S. military currently lags both Beijing and Moscow in space weaponry. China and Russia have tested and deployed several types of ground-based anti-satellite missiles, as well as directed-energy weapons that can burn the electronics of targeted satellites. Both nations also have maneuvering robot satellites equipped with mechanical arms that can grab and crush orbiting systems.

The sole known weapon fielded to date by the new U.S. military Space Force is an electronic jammer capable of disrupting signals between ground stations and satellites. Other U.S. space weapons are said to be under development but remain hidden from public view under a strict veil of secrecy.

Secrecy and security

The report said the Pentagon is reviewing its space secrecy policies to “overcome barriers” that have made cooperation with allies difficult, as well as to better share information between the various U.S. military services.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said that the review is needed.

“The problem is that sometimes we classified things so early in the life cycle. … We’ve protected very conservatively early on. Procedurally, then, we kind of carry that classification through to operational systems, he said Tuesday during an annual Air and Space Force Association conference.

It’s a problem, he added, “that we can fix.”

The new U.S. space strategy report said China regards its space weapons as a way to deter and counter outside intervention in a regional conflict, such as during a war over Taiwan.

The Chinese military created a separate service in 2015 called the Strategic Support Force to “approach space as a warfighting domain more effectively,” the report said, noting that half of the world’s space-based intelligence and surveillance satellite are owned by the Chinese.

The satellite systems increase Beijing’s ability to “to conduct long-range strikes against U.S. and allied forces.”

“The PLA is developing, testing, and fielding capabilities intended to target U.S. and allied satellites, including electronic warfare to suppress or deceive enemy equipment; ground-based laser systems that can disrupt, degrade, and damage satellite sensors; offensive cyberwarfare capabilities; and direct-ascent anti-satellite (DA-ASAT) missiles that can target satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO),” the report said.

Chinese experimental satellites designed to repair satellites and clean debris are viewed in the report as part of Beijing’s space warfare arsenal.

“The PRC continues to seek new methods to hold U.S. satellites at risk, probably intending to pursue [direct ascent anti-satellite] weapons capable of destroying satellites up to [geosynchronous orbit]” – 22,000 miles above earth, the report stated.

Along with its space weapons, China and Russia are promoting “false claims that [they] will not place weapons in space” and are seeking a legally binding and unverifiable treaty at the United Nations to ban weapons in space, the report said.

Russian challenge

Russian space forces also have been built up since 2015 and are viewed by Moscow’s military planners as decisive in reaching the “supremacy in space” needed for winning wars, the report said.

Moscow’s space arms include weapons that can produce both temporary and permanent damage to U.S. satellites during a conflict.

“These systems include jamming and cyberspace capabilities, directed energy weapons, on-orbit capabilities, and ground-based DA-ASAT missile capabilities,” the report said.

A November 2021 test of a Russian anti-satellite missile produced more than 1,500 piece of space debris that U.S. officials said threaten all craft in low Earth orbit, including astronauts in the International Space Station and China’s Tiangong space station.

The report said military forces need multiple options to deter aggression and if deterrence fails to win conflicts as the rivalries in space intensify.

“As the complexity of the domain grows, [the Defense Department] must provide the president and [secretary of defense] with options to deliver operational and strategic effects to achieve national objectives,” the report said, while seeking to balance weapons development with the need for a stable space environment.

Michael J. Listner, a space policy expert, said because the congressionally-mandated report provides few insights into U.S. strategy.

“The report doesn’t articulate a new strategy or a new approach to facing these counter space threats but rather it says this is where we are now based on our current strategies and policies,” said Mr. Listner, founder and principal of Space Law and Policy Solutions.

“Substantially, that policy is all about resilience and how the U.S. intends to survive an attack and, by extension, theoretically deterring an attack to begin with.”

• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.

washingtontimes.com

10. Putin’s Useful Priests

Excerpts:

When Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, church leaders saw an opportunity to turn the country into a full-fledged fundamentalist regime in which Russian Orthodoxy would return to its historical role as an anchor for the Russian state. The embrace of this approach suggests that there will be ever-closer cooperation among the church, the military, and the intelligence services, with the result that the church will significantly enhance the Russian government’s disinformation campaigns abroad and efforts to infiltrate the West, particularly through its relations with the Russian émigré community.

Given the current constraints on Russian espionage, it seems likely that the person identified by the FBI is not the only church official working side by side with Russian intelligence. With so many Russian diplomats expelled from Europe, traditional options for Russian spies, who have often operated under diplomatic cover, are rapidly shrinking. For the Kremlin, the church, with its broad network of parishes, can provide a palatable alternative. In turn, Putin’s backing—and the war in Ukraine—has given the Russian Orthodox Church a crucial new mission after decades of stagnation and decline.

The Russian government’s growing focus on traditional values, empire, and militarism has provided a dramatic boost to the Russian Orthodox Church and its affiliates abroad. This religious resurgence not only enhances the legitimacy and durability of the Putin regime; it also poses a growing security threat with which the West will have to contend.

Putin’s Useful Priests

The Russian Orthodox Church and the Kremlin’s Hidden Influence Campaign in the West

By Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan

September 14, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan · September 14, 2023

On July 23, one of Ukraine’s largest churches, the Orthodox cathedral in Odessa, was seriously damaged by a Russian missile strike. The strike highlighted one of the lingering enigmas of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine: Moscow has been waging war not only on a neighboring population but also on one that, like its own, is overwhelmingly made up of Orthodox Christians. In effect, the Russian government has been forced to target its own religion in its campaign to subdue Ukraine. Yet despite this, members of Russia’s Orthodox clergy have been among the most vocal supporters of the war, and criticism from Orthodox leaders in other countries has been comparatively muted.

In some ways, this should not come as a surprise, owing to the well-known ties between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Putin regime. Since the early years of Putin’s tenure in power, the church has gained growing influence in Russian society and has enjoyed a strengthening of its historical links to the Russian state and the Russian military. In the year and a half since the invasion began, the church has also played a crucial part in supporting the war, with Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, becoming a prominent mouthpiece for the Kremlin’s military aims.

But alongside this domestic support has been another, less noted phenomenon: the strong backing Putin receives from Orthodox communities abroad. Beyond Russia’s borders, the Russian Orthodox Church maintains 38,649 parishes, 474 monasteries for men, and 498 monasteries for women. Many of these are in the West: in the United States, the Russian Orthodox Church has 2,380 parishes, along with 41 male and 38 female monasteries. Although overall church membership remains small—in the United States, according to one recent estimate, there are 25,000 members—the large number of parishes gives the church a broad geographic presence, including in many major Western cities.

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, an Orthodox leader in North America called on believers around the world to support it; in Europe, one of the West’s most prominent Orthodox bishops condemned the Ukrainian authorities, not the Russian army, for the atrocities that have been committed against Christians during the war. Even more striking has been an ambitious campaign to win Russian Orthodox hearts and minds—including in the United States and other Western countries—that has been led by an arm of the church with links to Russian intelligence and the Russian government.

Such is the current extent of these efforts that they have caught the attention of the U.S. government. Earlier this year, the FBI privately warned members of the Orthodox community in the United States that Russia was likely using the church to help recruit intelligence sources in the West. Members of the community gave us copies of FBI documents that had been shared among Russian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox parishes. The documents identify and highlight the activities of a senior member of the Russian Orthodox Church’s foreign relations department whom the FBI suspects of having ties to Russian intelligence. The FBI’s warning suggests that the church may be even more closely linked to the Putin regime than many observers assume, with potentially significant implications for the Kremlin’s overseas influence. Given the church’s well-established presence in Western countries, these links could also complicate efforts to build an effective Russian opposition abroad.

RUSSIA’S BULWARK, PUTIN’S OPPORTUNITY

In itself, it is unsurprising that the church could play an important part in furthering Russia’s strategic interests. For centuries, the church has been closely connected with the Russian state, a relationship that has spanned the eras of the Russian Empire to the Soviet Union to Putin’s Russia. From the eighteenth century until the Russian Revolution, the Russian tsar was the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, which in turn gave legitimacy to Russia’s imperial rule; Russia’s brand of orthodoxy is based on the concept that Moscow is “the Third Rome”—the successor to the Christian empires of ancient Rome and Byzantine Constantinople. The church’s influence also buttressed (and was bolstered by) a national-imperial ideology of Russian exceptionalism, which held that the church’s mission was to serve the tsar and defend the sacred motherland.

Ironically, communist rule didn’t change this orientation much, despite the Soviets’ systematic persecution of church leaders, the confiscation of church property, and the general dismantling of the church’s influence after the Bolshevik Revolution. During World War II, when the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin asked the church to help rally the population to the defense of the Soviet Union, church leaders responded to his call—not out of opportunism but because they recognized that the country’s ideology was rapidly moving from a vision of proletarian rule and universal communism to a renewed nationalist ideology that drew on the Russian Empire’s glorious past. Stalin understood that nationalism was more inspirational to soldiers who were risking their lives in a devastating war with Nazi Germany, and the church readily embraced that view.

In the later decades of the Cold War, despite the official atheistic rhetoric of the Soviet government, the church kept close to the state. One of us (Soldatov) had a grandfather who was a high-placed Moscow military official in the early 1980s and was proud to be invited to the Orthodox Easter service at Yelokhovo Cathedral in Moscow. Back then, it was the country’s main church, and the invitation was a symbol of elite status. The KGB closely monitored the church but not merely for surveillance purposes: operatives also keenly assessed clergy and laypeople as potential agents and sources.

From the beginning, Putin wanted to bring the Russian diaspora under his control.

In part, this was because the KGB and the church shared a belief that the country was under constant threat from the West and was surrounded by numerous enemies who sought to undermine Moscow. What is more, going back to the thirteenth century, the Russian Orthodox Church had been suspicious of the eastward expansion of Catholicism, which it viewed as the West’s attempt to impose its own religion on Slavic civilization. For the KGB, the Russian church’s historical preoccupation with the threat of outside influence meant that it could be co-opted in Soviet efforts to create an ideological bulwark against the West.

The tight relationship between the church and the security apparatus did not end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The democratic changes of the 1990s touched many areas of Russian society, but they left two institutions almost completely intact: the KGB, which continued to operate much as before even though it was split into several parts, and the church. Although democratic reformers and liberal priests called for a sweeping reform of the Russian Orthodox Church, their efforts came to nothing. Instead, under Putin, the church found a new supporter and protector.

In the first years of Putin’s administration, the FSB, the successor to the KGB, took actions to protect the Orthodox sphere of influence. In 2002, five Catholic priests were expelled from Russia by the FSB on the pretext of espionage charges. In return, the church gave the FSB its blessing: later that year, the Cathedral of Saint Sophia the Holy Wisdom of God was reopened just off Lubyanka Square, a block away from the FSB’s Moscow headquarters. Patriarch Alexy II himself blessed the opening of the cathedral in a ceremony attended by Nikolai Patrushev, then the FSB chief, who today serves as the head of Putin’s security council.

The Russian Orthodox Church may be even more closely linked to the Putin regime than many observers assume.

Putin’s patronage came with a price: he expected the church to contribute to the stability of his regime through activities in Russia and abroad. From the very beginning, he wanted to bring the Russian diaspora in the West under his control. To achieve this, he made it his personal project to subjugate the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.

Formed by the remnants of the White Army in the countries where the Russian exiles settled in the 1920s, that church became known as the White Church (whereas the exiles referred to its counterpart in Soviet Russia as the Red Church, because it was assumed to be penetrated by the KGB). Since 1951, the White Church has had its headquarters in New York City, at the corner of Park Avenue and East 93rd Street, and throughout the Cold War, it remained completely independent from the church in Moscow. Its rival, the Red Church, also had a presence in New York at St. Nicholas Church on East 97th Street.

After Putin came to power, he resolved to bring the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad under the Moscow patriarchate. Putin personally supervised a years-long courtship of White Church priests, at one point sending a gift to the head of the White Church—an enormous icon of the last Russian empress, Alexandra, who was executed together with Tsar Nicholas II and the rest of the imperial family in 1918 by Bolshevik revolutionaries. In sending the icon, Putin appeared to be signaling that it was time to rehabilitate the memory of the imperial order. In May 2007, the two churches signed an accord, known as the Act of Canonical Communion, in an elaborate ceremony at Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow.

Ever since, the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad has supported the foreign policy of the Kremlin and played a role in its propaganda campaigns. For instance, in 2014, the Immortal Regiment, a Kremlin-sponsored initiative in which Russians march on Victory Day holding photos of their relatives who fought in World War II, was introduced in the United States with the support of St. Nicholas Church in New York. But the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad also began to serve Russian intelligence in other ways, creating a network of pro-Kremlin support across the West. In the years before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, these efforts began to attract the attention of Western law enforcement, including the FBI.

THE PATRIARCH’S PLAN

In the spring of 2023, the FBI distributed a six-page notification within the Orthodox community in the United States titled “Russian Intelligence Services Victimize Russian Orthodox Church and other Eastern Orthodox Churches.” The warning, which bears the seal of the FBI, names and shows a photograph of a senior official in Russia’s Department for External Church Relations—the foreign service of the Russian Orthodox Church—and states that there are reasons to suspect that the man is a “Russian Intelligence Officer operating under non-official cover.” His objective in the United States, according to the warning, was to recruit the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church and other Orthodox churches. The FBI’s national press office declined to comment on the notification and the information it contains, but noted that the bureau “regularly meets and interacts with members of the community . . . to enlist the cooperation of the public to fight criminal activity” and encourages “members of the public who observe threatening or suspicious activity to report it.”

According to publicly available information, the Russian national in question was trained in Moscow and worked for the Department for External Church Relations for more than two decades. This work frequently took him abroad, including to the United States. According to the FBI notification, in May 2021, when he arrived on a visit to the United States, the church official was briefly stopped and searched by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers. Although the official does not appear to have been detained or formally charged, a subsequent FBI review of materials found during the search revealed that he had been carrying what the FBI notification describes as “intelligence documents,” including documents concerning both Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, and its military intelligence agency, the GRU.

The Holy Transfiguration Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Hollywood, California, August 2014

Lucy Nicholson / Reuters

Among the documents was a memorandum marked “confidential” that outlined the establishment of a “system of cooperation” between the church and several Russian spy agencies, including the SVR, the GRU, and the FSB. In a list of “areas of interaction” between the church and the spy agencies, the memorandum calls for the “preparation of the staff” of both the church and the SVR and suggests that church staff be brought into the “operational activities” of the SVR, stipulating that this would happen “exclusively at the direct approval from the Patriarch.” It also states that the GRU is “ready to expand the cooperation” with the church, which could “very gradually” come to include “real field activity.” For the FSB, the church is deemed of interest on such counterintelligence matters as “opposition to sects, and development of parity actions toward foreign organizations.” (A full copy of the memorandum was appended to the FBI warning.)

According to the FBI notification, the Russian national was also carrying “files regarding the source/agent recruitment process” as well as dossiers on church employees, including detailed biographical information about them and members of their families—information that the warning suggests could be used to blackmail employees of the church into participating in spy operations. These files were not included in the warning, and the claims could not be independently verified. But members of the Orthodox community confirmed that the Russian official had many meetings with church officials in the United States and had been traveling to the country since the 1990s.

Attempts to reach the Russian national were unsuccessful. The Russian embassy in Washington and the Department for External Church Relations in Moscow did not reply to requests for comment about the FBI’s findings and the activities of the official in the United States. But in an email, a spokesman for the department wrote that the person was “no longer an employee of the Department for External Church Relations” and that he had been “fired” in June 2023.

Of special significance may be the date of the memorandum outlining the new relationship between the church and Russian intelligence. Russian sources who are close to the patriarchate in Moscow and who have seen the document date it to the spring or summer of 2009, shortly after Patriarch Kirill took office in February. This would match the FBI’s metadata analysis, which dates its creation to late March 2009. The Russian sources also suggest that the document was likely drafted by the church administration at the direct request of Patriarch Kirill. If that is correct, it would provide further evidence that Kirill almost immediately set out to establish a new level of cooperation between the church and Russia’s security services, a relationship that appears to have grown in the decade leading up to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

MOSCOW’S HOLY WAR

In the years after 2009, as Kirill consolidated his leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church, the church’s growing presence in Russia’s state administration expanded to include the military. By 2010, the Russian Orthodox Church had taken on a new role inside the Russian army with the introduction of military priests, or chaplains. And in 2020, Putin and his defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, joined Patriarch Kirill to inaugurate the Cathedral of the Armed Forces, a vast new military-themed complex near Moscow that is designed to symbolize the church’s central place in Russia’s military history. The 2022 invasion brought this involvement to a new level.

Since the war began, images of religious icons have flooded Russian social media, along with prayers for the victory of the Russian army and calls to pray for soldiers on the battlefield. Kirill has become a leading voice for the “special military operation,” as it is officially known. Following the announcement of Putin’s partial mobilization in September 2022, for example, Kirill declared that “sacrifice in the course of carrying out your military duty washes away all sins.” He also attacked the West, claiming that unidentified forces were trying to turn the Ukrainians from being “part of the holy united Rus into a state hostile to this Rus, hostile to Russia.”

The church has also deployed firebrand clerics to drum up support for the war, such as Andrei Tkachev, a Ukrainian-born priest and TV personality who left Ukraine in 2014 and has become one of the most aggressive pro-war voices in the church. Since the start of the invasion, his videos on YouTube have been widely shared among Russian special forces. Meanwhile, Russia’s most professional military units, including the special forces, have embraced religious symbols in an appeal for divine protection. And Russian battalions are being named after Russian saints such as Alexander Nevsky, a thirteenth-century Russian prince who was canonized for his military victories over Swedish and German crusaders.

Since the war began, Orthodox communities abroad have largely remained loyal to Moscow.

Even more striking, however, may be the church’s effort to stir support for the war outside Russia, including in the West. Despite the reality that Russia is at war with another Orthodox country, the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad has largely remained loyal to Moscow. In an interview in August 2022 with a website close to the Moscow patriarchate, for example, Archbishop Gabriel of Montreal and Canada justified the invasion in language that closely follows official Russian propaganda. “Russia was forced to take steps to protect itself from the neo-Nazis who were shelling civilians in Donbas for eight years, and continue to this day,” he said.

In London in March 2023, Bishop Irenei, the head of the Diocese of Great Britain and Western Europe and the most influential bishop in the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, went further, issuing an “Open Letter on the Persecution of Christians in Ukraine” in which he cited “the tragedy of the most extraordinary and heartless persecution of Christians taking place in many parts of the country.” The letter puts the blame for this persecution on Ukrainian authorities, not the Russian army: Bishop Irenei was referring to Ukrainian charges against clerics of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine who have supported the Kremlin.

Significantly, these two prominent Orthodox officials were born and raised in the West. They are not commissars sent from Moscow, and their adoption of the Kremlin’s framing of the war does not appear to be enforced by the Russian government. Rather, it largely reflects the orientation of Russian Orthodox communities overseas: although many Ukrainians have defected from the Moscow patriarchate since the invasion, many churches and parishioners in other countries have chosen to stay within the Russian Orthodox Church. “When the war started, some priests in Russia took an antiwar stand and were subjected to punishments, both by the Church and the state. But most priests, including those abroad, suppressed any discussion of the war out of fear of losing their flock, which by and large supported the war,” one member of the Russian Orthodox community in New York told us.

The reasons for these pro-Russian views are ideological: many descendants of the first wave of Russian exiles to the West—people who left in the 1920s after the Bolshevik Revolution and even those who left in the 1940s after World War II—remain stuck in the memories of the glorious imperial past. This part of the Russian diaspora is naturally drawn to the nineteenth-century nationalist ideologies that Putin has embraced. “For them, Ukraine has never been a country,” our contact said.

THE KREMLIN’S TRUE BELIEVERS

When Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, church leaders saw an opportunity to turn the country into a full-fledged fundamentalist regime in which Russian Orthodoxy would return to its historical role as an anchor for the Russian state. The embrace of this approach suggests that there will be ever-closer cooperation among the church, the military, and the intelligence services, with the result that the church will significantly enhance the Russian government’s disinformation campaigns abroad and efforts to infiltrate the West, particularly through its relations with the Russian émigré community.

Given the current constraints on Russian espionage, it seems likely that the person identified by the FBI is not the only church official working side by side with Russian intelligence. With so many Russian diplomats expelled from Europe, traditional options for Russian spies, who have often operated under diplomatic cover, are rapidly shrinking. For the Kremlin, the church, with its broad network of parishes, can provide a palatable alternative. In turn, Putin’s backing—and the war in Ukraine—has given the Russian Orthodox Church a crucial new mission after decades of stagnation and decline.

The Russian government’s growing focus on traditional values, empire, and militarism has provided a dramatic boost to the Russian Orthodox Church and its affiliates abroad. This religious resurgence not only enhances the legitimacy and durability of the Putin regime; it also poses a growing security threat with which the West will have to contend.

ANDREI SOLDATOV is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and Co-Founder and Editor of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of the Russian secret services’ activities.
IRINA BOROGAN is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and Co-Founder and Deputy Editor of Agentura.ru.
They are the co-authors of The Compatriots: The Russian Exiles Who Fought Against the Kremlin.
MORE BY ANDREI SOLDATOV MORE BY IRINA BOROGAN

Foreign Affairs · by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan · September 14, 2023

11. Opinion: Is CIA Director Bill Burns Helping or Blocking Ukraine to Win?

Excerpts:

The bipartisan pro-Ukrainian majority in the post-vacation Congress would do well to organize hearings to which they should invite Blinken, Burns, Arkin and those sources in the CIA whom he cites in his article. They should also invite National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who has been singing in the same key as Burns.

The hearings should seek answers to the following questions:

1. Does there exist an agreement between the governments of the US and the Russian Federation about “rules of the road” of the Russo-Ukrainian war?

2. If so, why were Congress and the American people unaware of them until now?

3. If not, then on what basis is Burns imposing these “road rules” on Ukraine?

4. Should Congress even regard Burns’ actions as treasonous?

Burns and Sullivan live in a world where the great powers set the rules and small countries must humbly obey. So does Putin.

We do not have to live in such a world and accept the rules they seek to impose on us.

Opinion: Is CIA Director Bill Burns Helping or Blocking Ukraine to Win?

kyivpost.com · by Andrei Piontkovsky

By Andrei Piontkovsky

By Frederick Starr

September 16, 2023, 9:19 am | Comments (4)

There have been worrying signs of collusion between some very senior US officials and the Kremlin on handling Ukraine and an investigation may be warranted.

September 16, 2023, 9:19 am |

CIA Director William Burns at the White House in Washington, DC, on June 22, 2023. Stefani Reynolds / AFP

Almost 600 days of Russia’s war in Ukraine have given rise to almost 600 days of confrontation between pro-Ukrainian and Kremlin-appeasing groups within the US administration.

The good news is that friends of Ukraine have largely succeeded in overcoming the artificial and self-destructive taboo against supporting Ukraine that the UShas imposed on itself. The bad news is that – each time– Kyiv’s American sceptics seem to succeed in significantly slowing down US support.

Unacknowledged in large parts of official Washington is the reality that thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have had to pay for this procrastination with their lives. Had there been a hundred or more F-16 fighter jetsin the Ukrainian skies a year ago, this cursed war would now be history.

Meanwhile, the US’s puzzling taboo has deliberately tied the hands of the victims of criminal aggression. The USpress has reported in detail on how Russia invaded Ukraine, is destroying its cities and villages, and is daily murdering civilians with rockets launched from Russian territory. Yet Washington has effectively prohibitedUkraine from delivering answering strikes on the sources of Russia’s bombings.

Take Risks, Save Lives

Too many humanitarian organizations spend more time and effort bolstering their disingenuously “neutral” stance than actually helping victims. In Ukraine, this must change.

Not one US official has publicly admitted that this line has been adopted. Worse, some act as if it doesn’t exist. While his colleagues in the White House have dragged their feet on providing Ukraine with military aircraft, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has unambiguously asserted Ukraine’s right to utilize any weapon at its disposal to expel the occupiers, including strikes on the territory of the aggressor.

An illuminating article published earlier this summer in Newsweek – “Exclusive: The CIA’s Blind Spot about Ukraine War” by William Arkin, revealed the origins and inner workings of the confused US approach.

At Biden’s behest, CIA Director William Joseph Burns established direct communication with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow as early as in November 2021, that is three months before Russia launched its full-scale attack on Ukraine.

"In some ironic ways…the meeting was highly successful," a senior US intelligence official told Newsweek. “The United States would not fight directly nor seek regime change, the Biden administration pledged. Russia would limit its assault to Ukraine and act in accordance with unstated but well-understood guidelines for secret operations.”

But, according to Newsweek, “Once Russian forces poured into Ukraine, the United States had to quickly shift gears. The CIA, like the rest of the U.S. intelligence community, had misread Russia's military capacity and Ukraine's resilience as Russia failed to take Kyiv and withdrew from the north.”

Nevertheless, certain clandestine rules of the road apparently agreed to by Burns and Putin were adhered to by the US side. Washington would prohibit Ukraine from carrying out strikes on Russian territory. And, in return, speaking as if for all NATO, Burns sought and gained a promise from the dictator not to attack NATO member countries.

Burns met with his following Russian foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin in Ankara in November 2022 and then is believed to have briefed Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky about his “non-agreement” with the Russians.

Far from criticizing Burns, Arkin emoted on the CIA’s difficulties in keeping an eye on the increasingly unruly Ukrainians, who repeatedly attempted to deliver strikes on targets both in Russian occupied Crimea and Russia itself.

Naryshkin revealed that he and Burns discussed "thought about and deliberated on what should be done about Ukraine" in a lengthy phone call on 30 June initiated by the US side.

Over the 560+ days of Russia’s so-called “special military operation,” and tens of thousands of documented warcrimes, instances of torture, shootings and rape, Burns and the CIA have remained silent on Russia, while apparently issuing threats to Ukraine. On July 5, a CIA spokesperson warned that if Kyiv continued acts of sabotage within Russia it could have “disastrous consequences.”

What other catastrophic consequences are the people in Burn’s office expecting will occur through the fault of the Ukrainians?

All thinkable and unthinkable catastrophes have already happened as a result of the covert Burns-Putin deal. Yet Newsweek was beside itself with pride at Burns’ diplomatic success and expressed anger at the Ukrainians for trying to defend their country by violatingthe “ground rules” that Burns was seeking to impose on them without their consent.

With Russia’s war against Ukraine dragging on and on, and the Ukrainian eager to break through with the proper support of their supporters, should this cruel state of affairs be allowed to continue?

The bipartisan pro-Ukrainian majority in the post-vacation Congress would do well to organize hearings to which they should invite Blinken, Burns, Arkin and those sources in the CIA whom he cites in his article. They should also invite National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who has been singing in the same key as Burns.

The hearings should seek answers to the following questions:

1. Does there exist an agreement between the governments of the US and the Russian Federation about “rules of the road” of the Russo-Ukrainian war?

2. If so, why were Congress and the American people unaware of them until now?

3. If not, then on what basis is Burns imposing these “road rules” on Ukraine?

4. Should Congress even regard Burns’ actions as treasonous?

Burns and Sullivan live in a world where the great powers set the rules and small countries must humbly obey. So does Putin.

We do not have to live in such a world and accept the rules they seek to impose on us.

Dr. Frederick Starr, a co-founder (with George Kennan and James Billington) of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, is chairperson of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, and has written two dozen books on Russia and the USSR.

The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.

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Andrei Piontkovsky

Dr. Andrei Piontkovsky is a Russian scientist, political writer and analyst, member of International PEN Club who was forced to leave Russia in 2016. For many years he has been a regular political commentator for the BBC World Service, Radio Liberty, Voice of America. Piontkovsky is the author of several books on the Putin presidency, including Another Look into Putin's Soul and Russian Identity (published by Hudson Institute). In 2017, Piontkovsky was awarded the Andrei Sakharov Prize for “Courage in Journalism.” In 2019, he was recognized by the Algemeiner publication as one of the Top-100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life. Dr. Andrei Pointkovsky, Wikipedia

Frederick Starr

Dr. Frederick Starr, a co-founder (with George Kennan and James Billington) of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, is chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, and has written two dozen books on Russia and the USSR.

12. The US military just proved it can get satellites into space super fast

Resilience in space.

The US military just proved it can get satellites into space super fast

Alpha becomes the first of the US 1-ton rockets to reach its target orbit.

ERIC BERGER - 9/15/2023, 9:27 AM

Ars Technica · by Eric Berger · September 15, 2023

Enlarge / Firefly's Alpha rocket launches on Thursday evening from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

Firefly

As part of its efforts to be more nimble in space, the US military has been pushing satellite and launch companies to become more "responsive" in their ability to put spacecraft into space.

Essentially, the military is concerned about other nations damaging or destroying its assets in orbit during a conflict. Military officials believe one way to guard against this would be to have the capability to rapidly replace those satellites—whether they're for spying, communications, or other purposes.

The US Space Force took a step toward this goal two years ago with a mission called Tactically Responsive Launch-2, or TacRL-2. This small satellite was built in less than a year by taking existing components and putting them together to create a space domain awareness satellite. The mission was then launched within 21 days, on June 13, 2021, by a solid-fueled Pegasus rocket built by Northrop Grumman.

Victus Nox takes flight

With its latest attempt at tactically responsive launch, the Space Force took a big step further. It contracted with the US launch company Firefly to put a spacecraft called "Victus Nox" into orbit within 24 hours of receiving the go command from the military.

At the end of August, this Victus Nox mission entered what was called the "hot standby phase," placing satellite-maker Millennium Space Systems and launch provider Firefly Aerospace into a six-month period during which they were to wait for a launch command.

On Wednesday, the US Space Force told the companies to go. After this point, Firefly encapsulated the Millennium satellite into a payload fairing, mated it to Firefly’s Alpha launch vehicle, and completed all final launch preparations. The small launch rocket then successfully lifted off at 7:28 pm local time (02:28 UTC Friday) from Space Launch Complex 2 West at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The two companies came close to the goal. The total time from receiving the go command to liftoff was 27 hours, far eclipsing the previous record set by the first tactically responsive launch two years ago. Military officials were quite pleased, regardless.

“The success of Victus Nox marks a culture shift in our nation’s ability to deter adversary aggression and, when required, respond with the operational speed necessary to deliver decisive capabilities to our warfighters,” said Lt. Gen. Michael Guetlein, commander of Space Systems Command, in a statement released early Friday morning. "This exercise is part of an end-to-end Tactically Responsive Space demonstration which proves the United States Space Force can rapidly integrate capabilities and will respond to aggression when called to do so on tactically relevant timelines."

Millennium and the US Space Force will now seek to activate the spacecraft within 48 hours of reaching orbit.

Firefly lighting up

This launch represents a significant achievement for Firefly, a Texas-based company that attempted the first launch of its Alpha rocket in September 2021. That rocket was lost after two and a half minutes into flight due to the failure of one of its four main engines. The Alpha rocket then suffered a partial failure during its second attempt in October 2022, when its second stage deposited seven small satellites into a lower-than-intended orbit. Most of the satellites reentered Earth orbit within days of launch.

The Victus Nox mission was just the third flight of the Alpha rocket, and according to both the company and Space Force, the Victus Nox satellite was indeed placed into its target orbit.

"Today was an incredible success for the Space Force, the Firefly team, and our nation after nailing this complex responsive space mission," said Bill Weber, chief executive of Firefly Aerospace, in a statement. "Our combined commercial and government team executed the mission with record speed, agility, and flexibility, adding a critical capability to address national security needs."

With this success, Firefly now intends to ramp up production of the Alpha rocket—which is capable of delivering about 1 metric ton to low-Earth orbit—for a more operational cadence of missions. Likely up next is the launch of several cubesats for NASA. That mission could take place later this year or early in 2024.

First of the 1 tons

Alpha has become the first successful, commercially developed US rocket capable of lifting about 1 ton to orbit. Over the last five years or so, it has been competing in a lane with Relativity Space's Terran 1 rocket and ABL Space's RS 1 vehicle.

The RS1 vehicle made its debut in January 2023 but failed shortly after liftoff. A second demonstration flight is possible late this year or early in 2024 from Alaska.

Relativity Space flew its Terran 1 rocket for the first and only time in March. During this flight from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first stage performed as expected, with a nominal stage separation. However, at 2 minutes and 48 seconds into flight—two seconds after ignition of the second-stage Aeon engine—the engine did not achieve full thrust. Afterward, Relativity Space announced it was pivoting to a much larger launch vehicle, Terran R.

Ars Technica · by Eric Berger · September 15, 2023

13. Ukraine Isn’t the Reason the U.S. Is Unprepared for War

Again, can we build and protect the iron mountain(s) we need for sustained large scale combat operations? This is a strategic question we must be able to answer (correctly).

Conclusion:

The Defense Department needs to ask—loudly—for what it needs and complain when the White House or Congress impedes the mission of quickly building the stockpiles that fighting China, shoring up allies, and supporting Ukraine would require. The U.S. government does an incredible disservice to its men and women in uniform by not ensuring that they have the supplies of weapons and ammunition to match their commitment. Without those supplies, the United States may lose its next war.

Ukraine Isn’t the Reason the U.S. Is Unprepared for War

A lack of defense production has created an alarming gap between America’s strategy and its capabilities.

By Kori Schake

The Atlantic · by Kori Schake · September 16, 2023

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the United States has provided Kyiv with more than $43 billion worth of security assistance. Opponents of aid to Ukraine have argued that the United States is drawing down inventories of systems and ammunition that are already in short supply for its own forces, and which would be needed in any high-intensity conflict.

Our country could very well lose a large-scale war for lack of weapons and ammunition—but not because of aid to Ukraine. In a major conflict, the U.S. would run out of munitions in a few weeks, and in less than a week for some crucial categories. The quantity of weapons we are providing Ukraine is marginal compared with necessary weapons that we have not stocked. As Mackenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute has argued, “Over the past nine fiscal years, budget after budget has traded away combat power, truncated needed weapons early, and permanently closed production lines.”

From the June 2023 issue: The counteroffensive

Nor can we rely on our allies to supply themselves or engineer a lend-lease program to send us weapons if we should be fighting but they are not. For instance, even before it began sending weapons to Ukraine, the British military was so poorly stocked that in a major war, it would have run out of ammunition in a week.

Cutting off Ukraine won’t solve our under-capacity problem. We need to dramatically ramp up our spending and accelerate our defense production.

The adversary capable of forcing a high-intensity war on the United States is, of course, China. And China is giving worrisome indications of interest in doing so. The U.S. intelligence community assesses that China spends roughly $700 billion a year on defense, approaching U.S. levels of spending. It is on course to triple its nuclear arsenal by 2035. U.S. intelligence assesses that China aims to be able to conquer Taiwan by 2027. President Joe Biden himself has said the United States will send troops to defend Taiwan if it is attacked. And yet the president has cut the budget for troops, ships, and aircraft until 2035. Congress added $29 billion to Biden’s first defense budget and $45 billion to his second. It also allocated supplemental funding to replace for U.S. forces what’s being provided to Ukraine. But these sums are not enough to get U.S. forces where we need them to be.

More than one dollar in eight from the 2023 budget goes toward things that have little to do with fighting and winning wars. The current defense budget contains $109 billion in spending for nondefense items that belong more properly in the budgets of other parts of the government, such as the Department of Education. Administrations tend to put such items in the defense budget because it’s the only appropriations bill guaranteed to pass, and politicians like to claim that they are increasing defense spending. But the United States is not focusing its spending on essential weapons and ammunition.

Congress is also to blame for the deficiencies in funding. Debt-ceiling standoffs, sequestrations, and a failure to pass spending bills on time wreak havoc on DOD. As part of the debt-ceiling agreement, unless spending bills are passed by the end of the calendar year, Elaine McCusker and John Ferrari of the American Enterprise Institute calculate that sequestration spending caps will effectively cut defense spending by 8.6 percent.

In 1942, Admiral Chester Nimitz fought on the Midway Islands with only three aircraft carriers at his disposal. Less than three years later, he commenced operations against the Marianas with 15 new, larger, and faster carriers to feed into the fight. China has built a defense industry capable of such rapid production—but today, the United States couldn’t pull it off. The U.S. defense industry is sized for peacetime production. Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that at current production rates, just replacing the 155 mm artillery ammunition and the Javelin and Stinger missiles provided to Ukraine will take more than five years—and those pre-Ukraine inventories were themselves wholly inadequate.

In 1990, the United States had 54 companies that produced major defense articles; now it has just five. America reaped a peace dividend after the Cold War, then continued to take one even as the world grew more dangerous. The lack of defense production has created an alarming gap between what the United States says it can do in its strategy and what it’s actually capable of.

Nor are the shortfalls just in production. The United States has natural resources in abundance, but it mostly does not mine or process essential minerals, preferring to outsource that inefficient, messy, environmentally unpleasant work to other countries. “Rare earths” aren’t actually rare; they just exist in small quantities amid other soils. They need to be separated and chemically processed for use.

To genuinely redress the domestic shortfalls in weapons and ammunition that the intensity of combat in Ukraine has revealed, the United States needs to increase funding, rebuild its defense industry, and relax restrictions on allied cooperation in defense production. The fixes aren’t hard to identify—but as the great theorist of war Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult.”

Start with funding: In 2017, the Trump administration adopted a National Defense Strategy, which Congress reviewed. Both branches of government concluded that enacting the strategy would require defense allocations to increase by 3 to 5 percent above inflation every year. The Biden administration’s defense strategy follows the same outlines as its predecessor’s, except in the areas where it is even more ambitious. But the 3 to 5 percent increase in spending hasn’t materialized; this year’s budget actually loses ground because of inflation. Filling the gap will cost at least $40 billion more than Biden’s $842 billion budget asks for. Unless Washington increases spending, it will have to choose between the size of its military force and the adequacy of that force’s weapons and munitions.

Read: Biden is more fearful than Ukrainians are

The single most important contribution Congress can make to the nation’s defense is to return to the regular order of passing budget bills on time. When Congress delays, the Defense Department has to rely on temporary spending bills, which do not allow it to sign long-term contracts, begin construction on military bases, and speedily invest in munitions production. The cost of these delays to the department is about $5 billion to $6 billion every month in purchasing power. And the lags are now routine: Last year, the defense budget was passed 75 days after the start of the fiscal year, robbing the DOD and taxpayers of about $15 billion in purchasing power.

The lack of funding and predictability has made the defense industry understandably skittish. If Washington were instead to deliver—on time—a budget that fully funds the country’s defense strategy, manufacturers might have the confidence to build the plants and hire and train the workers needed to replenish U.S. military stockpiles. The industry will want multiyear contracts, because it has been burned repeatedly by starting production only to have funding zeroed out by either Congress or DOD the following year. Congress has given DOD limited authority for multiyear contracts, but it should extend this authority and push DOD to make fuller use of it.

The United States has hampered its defense industry with regulations that don’t allow it to access economies of scale. Factories operated by allies abroad could help the United States build munitions much faster, and domestic businesses, especially those specializing in artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies, could help build them much better. But the International Traffic in Arms Regulations have erected barriers that deter partners both at home and abroad. The Biden administration urgently needs to reform those regulations.

The Defense Department needs to ask—loudly—for what it needs and complain when the White House or Congress impedes the mission of quickly building the stockpiles that fighting China, shoring up allies, and supporting Ukraine would require. The U.S. government does an incredible disservice to its men and women in uniform by not ensuring that they have the supplies of weapons and ammunition to match their commitment. Without those supplies, the United States may lose its next war.

The Atlantic · by Kori Schake · September 16, 2023

14. US-Indonesia Security Relations Flourish in a Changing Indo-Pacific

Excerpts:

Looking ahead, figures on both the U.S. and Indonesian side expect security relations to continue to deepen. However, the ultimate trajectory will be shaped by the broader course of the Sino-American rivalry. As one Indonesian officer now serving as a lecturer at the Indonesian Defense University noted, “The relationship could elevate to a higher level if any open conflict takes place in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly in the South China Sea.”

Yet, there is also the risk that the U.S. relies on the security relationship as a crutch to compensate for its limited offerings in other spheres. When it comes to security ties the U.S. has a distinct edge over China. In the past two decades, it has trained thousands of Indonesian officers and performed nearly a hundred joint exercises with the country. China has trained a bare handful and no joint exercises have been held since 2015 due to the territorial dispute.

Nonetheless, China remains a key Indonesian partner due to its economic importance to Indonesia – both as a source of investment and as a destination for exports. If the U.S. cannot broaden its relationship and what it offers to Indonesia it may find that in the diplomatic sphere, security ties will take it only so far.

US-Indonesia Security Relations Flourish in a Changing Indo-Pacific

Defense cooperation between Washington and Jakarta is on an upswing, but on the Indonesian side clear limits remain.

thediplomat.com · by Joseph Rachman · September 14, 2023

Imagine this scenario: an Indonesian company is drilling for oil within its exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea, when the platform is suddenly swarmed by Chinese navy and coast guard vessels. Not far away, there is a U.S. Navy ship, perhaps on a routine patrol through contested waters. What does the Indonesian government decide to do next?

This and similar scenarios have been the subject of tabletop exercises conducted in recent years by Indonesian and U.S. think tanks, says Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a Research Professor at the National Research and Innovation Agency in Jakarta.

She says that for Indonesian officials and policymakers, the answer is always the same. “All Indonesians, whether civilians or military, said we want the information from the U.S., if we need assistance maybe some technology,” she says, “but we do not want the U.S. ship to come over.”

Despite this ambivalence, the U.S.-Indonesian security relationship is intensifying. The most obvious symbol of this is the Super Garuda Shield, which just wrapped up. The U.S.-Indonesian military exercise held since 2007 has increased sharply in scale and complexity over the past two years. Roughly 2,100 U.S. and 1,900 Indonesian service members from across multiple military branches participated.

The context of America’s growing push to contain China in the Indo-Pacific by strengthening its security partnerships with regional powers is hard to miss. Close U.S. allies and partners including Japan, Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and France joined the exercises as participants, and 12 countries sent observers. Notably, Australia will be deploying battle tanks abroad for the first time since the Vietnam War – transporting some itself and others transported by the U.S. Army.

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Yet on the Indonesian side, clear limits remain. China’s ongoing claims to parts of the North Natuna Sea, the name that Jakarta uses for the portions of its exclusive economic zone near the Natuna Islands, incentivizes Indonesia to strengthen its relationship with the United States. However, Indonesia remains wedded to its long tradition of non-alignment and is wary of becoming over-reliant on the U.S. for security provisions.

U.S.-Indonesian security ties have a long history, reaching their high point in the de facto, though firmly not de jure, alliance during the Suharto period. However, relations declined when the end of the Cold War allowed the U.S. to develop scruples about supporting dictators generally and Indonesia’s bloody occupation of East Timor in particular. In 1992, the U.S. ceased providing training under the International Military Education and Training program, in 1998 stopped training Indonesia’s elite special forces Kopassus, and in 1999 imposed an arms embargo against Indonesia.

From 2005 on, however, the relationship started to be repaired. The arms embargo ended and IMET was restored. The Garuda Shield exercises were established two years later, and in 2019 restrictions on training with Kopassus were finally brought to an end. That same year, the U.S. also dropped a ban on Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto entering the United States. Put in place due to Prabowo’s human rights record when he served as a general under Suharto, his assumption of office in 2019 forced a change in U.S. policy.

Now the relationship seems to be advancing once more. Indonesia attempted to modernize its military since the presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. In the process, the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI) has shifted its focus from internal threats to external ones, and from the TNI’s land forces to the navy and air force. The U.S. is working to support this, most recently authorizing significant sales of military equipment to Indonesia including F-15 fighter jets and Black Hawk helicopters.

The U.S. has also provided quiet help to other forces such as Bakamala, the Indonesian Maritime Security Agency. In 2021, the U.S. began constructing a maritime training center for Bakamala on the strategically located island of Batam.

Most visibly, both countries have also ramped up the Garuda Shield exercise, reflected in the “Super” that was affixed to its name last year. For the second year running the exercise ended with a CALFEX – a combined arms live fire exercise – a challenging exercise that tests the interoperability of the various participating forces.

“The scope and scale of that live fire was something we could have done two years ago. And it’s even bigger than last year’s because it includes more partners and allies, and it includes more live fire assets,” said Maj. Jeff Tolbert, deputy public affairs officer for the 25th Infantry Division. “It’s just that next level up.”

The balance between a U.S. desire to build security relations with Indonesia for their own sake and as part of the broader Indo-Pacific strategy facing China remains ambiguous. Col. David Zinn of the 25th Infantry Division firmly denied any link between the exercises and Washington’s China containment policy. However, when asked about the importance and strategic context of the partnership with Indonesia, Zinn did refer to Operation Pathways, an annual operation and the U.S. Pacific Army’s game plan to deploy forces throughout the Pacific to secure interior lines in the event of a conflict.

The Super Garuda Shield exercise doesn’t only let the U.S. flex its muscles in front of China, says Fitri Bintang Timur, a visiting fellow at the International Institute of Strategic Studies. It also lets America test its interoperability with allies in a key theater, and how fast it can deploy in the region.

On the Indonesian side, security cooperation with the U.S. does benefit its efforts to push back against China’s maritime claims. “ASEAN is in the business of creating norms and values. But, when you have to deal with real issues you don’t go to ASEAN,” says Dewi. Cooperation on a bilateral or minilateral level is much more common, and effective, she suggests.

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Indonesia did recently propose a joint ASEAN naval exercise, but its fate remains uncertain. Internal divisions over the South China Sea, and the possible concerns of some member states about Indonesia becoming too influential could stymie the idea.

However, the Indonesian government is also wary of becoming overly dependent on the United States. While there are few outward signs that Defense Minister Prabowo or other officers resent the U.S. policies of disassociating itself from the Indonesian military in the 1990s and 2000s, the memory remains.

When it comes to military purchases Indonesia has made substantial orders of military equipment from not just America but also from France, Japan, Italy, Qatar, and Turkey. The past U.S. arms embargo played a role in pushing Indonesia to seek out diverse suppliers of military equipment, Dewi suggests.

Indonesia is even more averse to anything that might imply a broader geopolitical alignment with the U.S., let alone an alignment against China. As with Vietnam or even Singapore, security relations with the U.S. allow Indonesia to hedge against increasing Chinese power and assertiveness in the region. But, this is balanced against a historical commitment to non-alignment – Indonesia’s preference for a foreign policy that is bebas dan aktif (free and active) – and strong relations with China, not least in the economic sphere.

Indeed, if anything, Indonesia tends to view American actions as overly confrontational. When the Trump administration launched its Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy, Indonesia recoiled at the confrontational tenor of the policy and responded by spearheading the formulation of the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific, as former U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Scot Marciel wrote in his recent book. AUKUS was even more unwelcome, with Indonesia now pushing the International Energy Agency to implement tighter controls on the transfer of fissile materials. As tensions flared over Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022, Indonesia called on all sides to de-escalate the situation.

The difficulties Indonesia can face calibrating its relationship with the U.S. were on display last month when Prabowo visited Washington, D.C. A purported joint statement by him and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, issued by the Pentagon, not only expressed support for Indonesia’s military modernization but also condemned China’s claims in the South China Sea as “inconsistent with international law.”

China protested indignantly. And, according to a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, received assurances from the Indonesian government that the statement was not true. “Indonesia is on the record saying that the South China Sea issue should be resolved through international law,” Marciel told The Diplomat. “That’s not really new, but it wouldn’t really surprise me that they don’t necessarily want to be seen at the Pentagon standing next to the U.S. shouting it.”

Looking ahead, figures on both the U.S. and Indonesian side expect security relations to continue to deepen. However, the ultimate trajectory will be shaped by the broader course of the Sino-American rivalry. As one Indonesian officer now serving as a lecturer at the Indonesian Defense University noted, “The relationship could elevate to a higher level if any open conflict takes place in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly in the South China Sea.”

Yet, there is also the risk that the U.S. relies on the security relationship as a crutch to compensate for its limited offerings in other spheres. When it comes to security ties the U.S. has a distinct edge over China. In the past two decades, it has trained thousands of Indonesian officers and performed nearly a hundred joint exercises with the country. China has trained a bare handful and no joint exercises have been held since 2015 due to the territorial dispute.

Nonetheless, China remains a key Indonesian partner due to its economic importance to Indonesia – both as a source of investment and as a destination for exports. If the U.S. cannot broaden its relationship and what it offers to Indonesia it may find that in the diplomatic sphere, security ties will take it only so far.

GUEST AUTHOR

Joseph Rachman

Joseph Rachman is a journalist covering Indonesian and Southeast Asian news.

thediplomat.com · by Joseph Rachman · September 14, 2023

15. The fine line between military innovation and empty promises

Excerpts:

One of the Pentomic era’s biggest blunders was its attachment to the fantasy of “limited” or “tactical” atomic war. The concept supposedly restricted the use of nuclear weapons to the battlefield and kept the fight “over there.” Like modern efforts, this pleasant fiction gave future conflicts a scientific veneer enshrouded in commercial progress that isolated society from war’s ugliness.

The myth of cheap spectator wars, however, makes it easier to enter one than it is to exit one on favorable terms. For much of the last century, U.S. officials and defense contractors have toiled to exploit modern science, but in the process made promises they cannot keep related to decisive conflicts in which new weapons reduce the “butcher’s bill” dramatically.

Since 2022, the Ukrainian Army has indeed benefited from small, expendable unmanned systems in its fight against Russia. But tens of thousands of Ukrainians have lost their lives in less than two years, and Kyiv had to mobilize much of its society to make those gains possible. Innovation is crucial, but it cannot be tied to fashionable theories that transform war into a kabuki of euphemisms.

British historian Sir Michael Howard believed that the Allies made a critical mistake before World War I by fixating on short conflicts because they “could not afford” to imagine otherwise. The Pentomic illusion followed this trend, depicting nuclear war as a military affair because the alternative was so awful to a world still reeling from 1945.

Today, leaders in Washington can avoid falling into similar traps by ensuring innovation helps the military win ugly wars as much as it aims to avoid them, and by clearly communicating the societal and industrial toll of a large-scale clash in East Asia. Such candor would increase the likelihood that promises made in peace can be kept while at war.

The fine line between military innovation and empty promises

BY MICHAEL P. FERGUSON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 09/15/23 1:30 PM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4204851-the-fine-line-between-military-innovation-and-empty-promises/?utm_source=pocket_saves

On August 28, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks announced a bold initiative called “Replicator” that entails using thousands of drones in “multiple domains” to compensate for America’s relative lack of military mass compared with China. The ambitious policy is designed to reduce U.S. casualties in a potential confrontation with the Chinese military by doing what Hicks claims America does best: “master the future character of warfare.” Replicator’s impact on military training, education and doctrine remains to be seen. But, despite its outward novelty, the spirit of this announcement has a history.

In 1955, as the Soviet threat grew more apparent, President Dwight Eisenhower drafted policies assuming future conflicts would involve the use of atomic weapons. The following year, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor declared that his service was “burning its military textbooks to clear away the old and make room for the new.” According to historian Brian McAllister Linn, atomic hysteria ushered in a “siege mentality” to adapt or die, spawning desperate attempts to “embrace change for its own sake.”

Linn observes that the novelty of nuclear arms consumed military thought, and the Army scrambled to “obtain the greatest combat effectiveness using the minimum of men, money, and materiel.” Thus began a vast transformation of America’s ground forces into leaner outfits designed for limited nuclear war against the Soviet Union. This became known as “The Pentomic Army,” based around the idea of “five subordinate battle groups of five companies each.”

Not unlike Replicator, this reformation was propelled by a technological revolution, the fear of “falling behind” in an emerging bipolar security environment, and the studies of numerous prestigious institutions. Yet, within several years, the Pentagon scrapped the program, ramped up its presence in Vietnam and took many of these assumptions into the jungle where they disappeared. Realizing it had overreached, the Army retired the Pentomic design, but the pull toward faster and more dramatic reforms endured.

In 2023, the artificial intelligence revolution has tech enthusiasts pushing an orthodoxy of technological determinism with all the confidence of Maxwell Taylor. The Replicator initiative has much promise, but there are several lessons from the Pentomic era worth considering as America speeds down this innovation highway in its “decisive decade.”

First, the complexity of turning ideas into effects means overly ambitious projects can outpace the nature of war and the military’s ability to absorb change at scale. In the worst cases, this leads to a reliance on unproven capabilities between wars that prove irrelevant or nonexistent during them. Pentomic initiatives, the airborne-capable Sheridan tank, and the Future Combat Systems program are three past examples of faith placed in technology to alter war’s character.

The aspirational nature of innovation can generate promises in peace that are hard to keep at war — a lesson learned and already forgotten this century. Despite entering Iraq and Afghanistan with a coalition touting weapons described by Gen. Tommy Franks as “science fiction,” the Pentagon ended up having to enact multiple troop surges, 24-month-long deployments, mobilization of National Guard and Reserve units, and even the controversial Stop Loss program.

Military families shouldered the weight of these policies, but they also shocked an American public that had been led to believe that U.S. technological supremacy deemed such conventional demands obsolete. Yet mass proved necessary even in a fight against several thousand poorly equipped extremists, not a two million-strong combined arms force with heavy bombers and a blue-water navy. This confusion could be attributed to America’s swift victory in the Gulf War, which was and in some circles still is misinterpreted as the rule and not an exception. Anticipating a Gulf War redux in the Indo-Pacific is idealistic at best.

One of the Pentomic era’s biggest blunders was its attachment to the fantasy of “limited” or “tactical” atomic war. The concept supposedly restricted the use of nuclear weapons to the battlefield and kept the fight “over there.” Like modern efforts, this pleasant fiction gave future conflicts a scientific veneer enshrouded in commercial progress that isolated society from war’s ugliness.

The myth of cheap spectator wars, however, makes it easier to enter one than it is to exit one on favorable terms. For much of the last century, U.S. officials and defense contractors have toiled to exploit modern science, but in the process made promises they cannot keep related to decisive conflicts in which new weapons reduce the “butcher’s bill” dramatically.

Since 2022, the Ukrainian Army has indeed benefited from small, expendable unmanned systems in its fight against Russia. But tens of thousands of Ukrainians have lost their lives in less than two years, and Kyiv had to mobilize much of its society to make those gains possible. Innovation is crucial, but it cannot be tied to fashionable theories that transform war into a kabuki of euphemisms.

British historian Sir Michael Howard believed that the Allies made a critical mistake before World War I by fixating on short conflicts because they “could not afford” to imagine otherwise. The Pentomic illusion followed this trend, depicting nuclear war as a military affair because the alternative was so awful to a world still reeling from 1945.

Today, leaders in Washington can avoid falling into similar traps by ensuring innovation helps the military win ugly wars as much as it aims to avoid them, and by clearly communicating the societal and industrial toll of a large-scale clash in East Asia. Such candor would increase the likelihood that promises made in peace can be kept while at war.

Capt. Michael P. Ferguson, U.S. Army, is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is coauthor of “The Military Legacy of Alexander the Great: Lessons for the Information Age.” The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policies or positions of the U.S. Army, Department of Defense or U.S. government.

16. Hypersonic Missiles Are Game-Changers, and America Doesn’t Have Them

Graphics and photos at the link: https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/hypersonic-missiles-america-military-behind-936a3128?utm

Hypersonic Missiles Are Game-Changers, and America Doesn’t Have Them

The U.S. military is pouring resources into the superfast weapons but has struggled to develop them. China and Russia are far ahead.

By Sharon WeinbergerFollow

Sept. 15, 2023 12:01 am ET

The weapon Beijing launched over the South China Sea traveled at speeds of more than 15,000 miles an hour as it circled the globe.

Flying at least 20 times the speed of sound, it could reach anywhere on earth in less than an hour.

The summer 2021 test flight ended with the missile striking near a target in China, but it sent shock waves through Washington. National security officials concluded Beijing had launched a hypersonic weapon—a projectile capable of traveling at least five times the speed of sound.

The weapons can attack with extreme speed, be launched from great distances and evade most air defenses. They can carry conventional explosives or nuclear warheads. China and Russia have them ready to use. The U.S. doesn’t.

For more than 60 years, the U.S. has invested billions of dollars in dozens of programs to develop its own version of the technology. Those efforts have either ended in failure or been canceled before having a chance to succeed.

Washington, having spent recent decades focusing on fights with terrorists and insurgencies, is once again pouring resources into hypersonics. The Pentagon’s 2023 budget includes more than $5 billion for the weapons. The U.S. is also tapping the private sector—including Silicon Valley venture capitalists—to help develop them to a degree rarely attempted in the past.

A display of military vehicles carrying a DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile and a DF-17 hypersonic missile at an exhibition in Beijing in October. PHOTO: FLORENCE LO/REUTERS

The spending is part of America’s struggle to re-establish dominance in key military technologies as it enters a new era of great-power competition. The U.S. is straining to keep up with China in an array of military technologies, ranging from artificial intelligence to biotechnology.

Moscow’s work on hypersonics is also a concern for the Pentagon, even if Russia’s weapons are mostly based on Cold War research and not as sophisticated as those China is now developing. Moscow has developed weapons that can threaten NATO forces in Europe, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has touted Avangard, a hypersonic weapon that can reach the U.S.

The Pentagon’s problems with developing hypersonics run up and down the decision chain, from failed flight tests and inadequate testing infrastructure to the lack of a clear, overarching plan for fielding the weapons. The situation is raising alarms among some former officials.

“My concern about the lack of progress on hypersonics is only increasing,” said John Hyten, who was vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Chinese test flight. Now retired, Hyten said: “We need to move faster in multiple directions.”

U.S. defense at risk

Hypersonics, in the hands of powers such as China or Russia, have the potential to alter the strategic balance that has long undergirded U.S. defense policy. While the U.S. military may still be the most powerful in the world, hypersonic missiles could help an adversary challenge that superiority by evading U.S. early warning systems designed to detect attacks on North America, or striking U.S. naval assets, including aircraft carriers, as well as key bases abroad.

Even the most advanced U.S. warship in the South China Sea could be defenseless against a hypersonic attack.

Ballistic missiles can travel at hypersonic speeds, but they follow a predictable flight path, making them easier to intercept before hitting a target. Cruise missiles, like the U.S. Tomahawk, can maneuver, but most travel more slowly, under the speed of sound.

Hypersonic missiles combine speed with the ability to fly at low altitude and maneuver in flight, making them more difficult to spot by radar or satellite. That makes them almost impossible to intercept with current systems.

In a battle in the South China Sea, Beijing could use hypersonic missiles to more than double its reach, leaving U.S. ships in the region nearly defenseless, and even strike Guam, home to thousands of U.S. troops and key military installations.

The U.S. has begun investing in missile defense systems that are designed to take out hypersonic missiles, including a new effort that will be developed jointly with Japan. Such systems are still nascent, however, and aren’t expected to enter service for at least another 10 years.

Over the past decade, China has conducted hundreds of flight tests of this new generation of weapons. Beijing already has hypersonic weapons ready to deploy in its arsenal, as does Moscow, which has used them against Ukraine.

Pentagon and intelligence officials haven’t released estimates of how many they think China and Russia have. The U.S., which has conducted just a fraction of the number of China’s flight tests, has yet to deploy any actual hypersonic missiles.

American engineers were for years at the forefront of research on hypersonics, working on missiles and aircraft.

Research in the field dates back to the late 1950s, when the U.S. military flew the X-15, a manned hypersonic test aircraft. The program, though successful, was canceled in 1968 as the U.S. got involved in the Vietnam War. Hypersonic aircraft didn’t seem relevant to fighting insurgents in the jungle.

President Ronald Reagan reignited interest in hypersonics in the 1980s when he announced plans for a hypersonic aircraft that could fly from Washington to Tokyo in two hours. The U.S. spent at least $1.7 billion on developing a prototype of the aircraft, which never flew and was canceled after the end of the Cold War.

Neil Armstrong next to the X-15 aircraft after a research flight in the early 1960s. PHOTO: NASA

Wreckage of an X-15 after pilot Jack McKay made an emergency landing during a test in 1962. The pilot was injured. PHOTO: NASA

No country today flies a manned hypersonic aircraft. U.S. and other militaries operate supersonic jets, meaning they can fly greater than the speed of sound, or Mach 1, but none can reach Mach 5.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. attention was diverted to a different type of warfare. For the next two decades, Washington funded technologies such as armed drones, bomb detection and sensors that could track terrorists and insurgents. Though some argued the usefulness of a superfast missile in striking a terrorist leader, others said hypersonic weapons offered little advantage in these fights.

“Our nation has chosen not to create an operational capability, and a lot of people ask why,” said L. Neil Thurgood, a retired lieutenant general who previously headed the Army’s hypersonics work. “One of the reasons is for the last 20 years, we’ve been spending our national treasure of blood and resources on the global war on terror.”

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China, meanwhile, accelerated its efforts to develop hypersonic weapons with frequent flight tests, and Russia, which had long invested in the field, also moved ahead. Beijing often used American research on hypersonics—published openly in scientific journals—that the U.S. government funded for decades. Among other things, American researchers published on computational fluid dynamics, which helps model hypersonic flight, only to see China develop codes that clearly used those developed in the U.S.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said the U.S. had preceded Beijing in hypersonics work and accused Washington of spreading hypersonic technology. “We will never be engaged in an arms race with any country,” he wrote in a statement.

In the meantime, Russia, which also followed American developments closely, restarted work on hypersonic programs it pursued during the Cold War.

“We basically trained the world in hypersonics,” said Richard Hallion, an aerospace analyst who has followed hypersonics closely for more than 50 years.

An exposition showing the Avangard hypersonic missile system in Moscow last month. PHOTO: REUTERS

Ramped up testing

In 2016, a high-level panel of the National Academies, an independent scientific group that provides advice to the federal government, warned that foreign adversaries, including China, were readying a new generation of hypersonic weapons. While the details of the study are classified, its conclusions set off alarm bells inside the Defense Department.

“My joke was, if I briefed it to any more people in the Pentagon, I would’ve been briefing the janitors down on the mezzanine level,” said Mark Lewis, a former senior Pentagon official who was involved in managing the military’s hypersonic portfolio and who participated in the 2016 study. “Everyone and their brother wanted to see it.”

Concerned by the growing threat, the Pentagon ramped up testing and development. The Army, Navy and Air Force are developing hypersonic weapons, sometimes in cooperation, as is the Pentagon’s research agency Darpa. “We are in a race,” said Lewis, who is now president and chief executive officer of the Purdue Applied Research Institute.

Pentagon officials are now debating how best to respond to this buildup. Some argue the U.S. should focus more on defensive systems, rather than missiles. Others say that even if U.S. adversaries have more hypersonic missiles, the state of American hypersonic weaponry—even if not yet deployed—will ultimately be more advanced. And not everyone agrees that a hypersonics arms race comes down to numbers of missiles. “If you have 10, should I have 11?” asked Heidi Shyu, the Pentagon top technologist.

Last year, the Air Force awarded

Raytheon Technologies, now known as RTX, a nearly billion-dollar contract to develop a hypersonic cruise missile that would be launched from an aircraft and is designed to strike enemy ships. The Army hoped to have ready this year the U.S. military’s first hypersonic weapon—missiles that would be launched from trucks. The U.S. is testing a variety of hypersonic missile systems, which face technological challenges. Development of the HACM is ongoing, but the Air Force discontinued the ARRW program after test failures.

HYPERSONIC CRUISE

Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM)

What it is: Low-flying,

scramjet-powered missile

Average speed (mach): 7

Range, in miles: <310

HYPERSONIC BOOST-GLIDE

Air-Launched Rapid Response

Weapon (ARRW) (program discontinued)

What it is: A missile detaches

from a rocket booster in air

and glides to its target.

Average speed (mach): 7

Range, in miles: 621

Note: Speed and range given for named models.

Source: Congressional Budget Office

Jemal R. Brinson/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Progress has been halting, in part, because hypersonic weapons are notoriously difficult to develop. Traveling at faster than a mile a second generates heat exceeding 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, beyond the limit of most materials. “The biggest challenge with hypersonics has always been the thermal management,” said Wes Kremer, the president of Raytheon.

Cost is also an issue. Hypersonic missiles, which are complex to develop and require specialized materials, are pricier than conventional missiles—about one-third more than ballistic missiles with comparable capabilities, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Kremer said that hypersonic missiles would be a “niche capability” to go after moving targets, where speed is essential. “Obviously you don’t need it to go against the bridge, the bridge isn’t moving,” he said.

The bigger challenge may be for the Pentagon to decide, after so many years and so much money spent, what sort of hypersonic capabilities it wants in its arsenal. The U.S. military is currently pursuing two different types of hypersonic weapons: cruise missiles that use an air-breathing jet engine known as a scramjet, and glide vehicles that are launched from the air, and then glide to their targets at high speeds.

The Pentagon is funding about a half dozen different hypersonic weapons—though the exact number is secret—and some former officials suggest there is no clear plan for deciding which of these to field and how. “There wasn’t a strategy during my time at the Pentagon,” said William Roper, the former head of Air Force acquisition. “And from what I can see from the outside, there doesn’t appear to be one now.”

One of the biggest stumbling blocks is a lack of infrastructure needed for testing. Developing the weapons requires testing in wind tunnels that can replicate the unique aerodynamic pressures of hypersonic flight.

Lockheed Martin, after several test failures. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told lawmakers the service would instead concentrate on Raytheon’s hypersonic cruise missile, a prototype of which isn’t expected to be ready until at least 2027.Use by China and Russia

Beijing in late February flew its DF-27 missile, a hypersonic glide vehicle, for 12 minutes across more than 1,300 miles, according to a highly classified U.S. intelligence document leaked on the Discord platform. The missile is designed to reach the so-called Second Island Chain, which includes Guam.

The document said the missile likely would have penetrated U.S. defense systems, and that China had ready a small number of DF-27 missiles last year.

Moscow has touted its powerful Kinzhal hypersonic missile, which has been used to strike targets in Ukraine. Because the Kinzhal is an air-launched ballistic missile, critics have questioned whether it is a true hypersonic weapon and say it is vulnerable to interception. Russia also claims to have ready the Avangard missile, a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle that can travel at up to 27 times the speed of sound.

Roper, the former Air Force acquisition head, said developing missiles just to keep up with an adversary is misdirected. “When you’re behind an opponent and you’ve made a big deal about it, it creates a blinders effect in the government where your entire focus is just pouring effort to catch up,” he said.

He argues that the U.S. should develop hypersonic aircraft rather than missiles. Roper now sits on the board of Hermeus, a Silicon Valley-backed startup that has raised more than $100 million in private funding to build hypersonic aircraft. A hypersonic strike aircraft, like the one Hermeus is hoping to build, could hit potential Chinese targets in the South China Sea, which would be more effective than expensive, single-use hypersonic missiles, he said.

Remnants of a Russian Kh-47 Kinzhal hypersonic missile warhead, shot down by Ukraine’s military. PHOTO: VALENTYN OGIRENKO/REUTERS

Last year, the Air Force Research Laboratory awarded a contract worth $334 million to Leidos, a major defense contractor, to work on technology for a hypersonic aircraft project dubbed Mayhem. Lockheed Martin has also over the years worked on a hypersonic successor to the iconic SR-71 Blackbird, a now-retired spy plane that traveled at more than three times the speed of sound. The status of that effort is unknown.

Shyu, the Pentagon’s top technologist, declined to speak about any Pentagon effort to develop a hypersonic aircraft, saying it was classified.

Diagrams are approximate and may not be to scale. Some details have been simplified.

Design by Andrew Levinson. Graphics by Peter Champelli. Development by Juanje Gómez.

Write to Sharon Weinberger at sharon.weinberger@wsj.com

17. How the State Dept discovered that Chinese hackers were reading its emails

How the State Dept discovered that Chinese hackers were reading its emails

By JOHN SAKELLARIADIS and MAGGIE MILLER

09/15/2023 05:00 AM EDT

Politico

All thanks to ‘Big Yellow Taxi’: How State discovered Chinese hackers reading its emails

The State Department relied on a clever alert system to uncover and unravel an advanced Chinese spying campaign that involved breaches of officials’ emails.

A disclosure from the State Department underscores both how federal agencies are adapting to beat back increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. | Daniel Slim/AFP/Getty Images

09/15/2023 05:00 AM EDT

A recent Chinese-linked hack of U.S. government emails detected in June may have gone unnoticed for much longer were it not for an enterprising government IT analyst.

A State Department cybersecurity expert spearheaded an effort to implant a custom warning mechanism into the agency’s network more than two years ago in anticipation of future hacks, the officials said, shedding new light on how they spotted the breach, top State Department officials told POLITICO.

The tripwire-like alert went off almost immediately when Chinese spies targeted the agency’s Microsoft email systems in mid-June, enabling the agency to tip off Microsoft and the rest of the U.S. government to the sophisticated spying campaign. The hack, which Microsoft disclosed in July, still compromised the unclassified emails of top officials at the State and Commerce Departments, including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China.

The disclosure from the State Department underscores both how federal agencies are adapting to beat back increasingly sophisticated cyber threats — and how easily the Chinese hackers might have gotten away with the spying caper.

Christopher Painter, the former cybersecurity coordinator for the State Department under both the Obama and Trump administrations, said that while it was “great” the analyst spotted the potential issue, “these discoveries sometimes come down to luck.”

“In an odd way, despite all the advances we’ve had in cybersecurity … it sometimes comes down to one person seeing something that’s anomalous,” Painter said.

The State Department was the first to report the activity to the U.S. government and to Microsoft. The firm has said the hackers used a powerful digital key they stole via a cascade of internal security mishaps to breach more than two dozen organizations globally, and at least 10 within the U.S. — none of which spotted the intrusion until the State Department did.

The analyst who built this, whom the State Department officials would not name, did “hero work,” said Kelly Fletcher, the agency’s chief information officer and head of the bureau of information resource management.

The State Department’s actions likely prevented Beijing from gaining more extensive access to the private communications of key U.S. officials amid an intense period of diplomacy between the world’s two largest economies.

Since the State Department caught the hack, Raimondo, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and U.S. climate envoy John Kerry have all traveled to China.

As far as the State Department is concerned, the hack “began in June, and ended in June,” said Fletcher.

The incident also highlights the importance of in-house cybersecurity expertise, even as a growing number of U.S. federal agencies and private companies transition to external cloud computing services, like those provided by Microsoft.

The State Department has recently undertaken a multi-year effort to beef up its cybersecurity work, and agency officials said they would not have been able to catch the hack just a few years ago.

The U.S. government has not officially blamed Beijing for the hack, and Fletcher and other State Department IT officials would not comment on what the hackers were after or who they were. But Microsoft confirmed in July that it was Chinese hackers, and after returning from an official visit to China earlier this month, Raimondo also pointed the finger at Beijing.

“They did hack me, which was unappreciated, to say the least,” Raimondo said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“I brought it up, clearly. Put it right on the table.” Chinese officials have not directly denied the hack, but have accused the U.S. of carrying out similar operations.

State Department personnel first built the alert — known internally as “Big Yellow Taxi” — roughly two years ago out of an abundance of caution, according to Gharun Lacy, deputy assistant secretary and assistant director of the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service for Cyber and Technology Security. That’s when an agency analyst spotted a potential security gap involving an unidentified application that was connected to cloud email inboxes.

Fearful that the problem could be exploited in the future, the analyst flagged the problem to his advisers, prompting the department to work with Microsoft on building the digital equivalent of a tripwire.

Lacy said the alert went off a handful of times during the two ensuing years, and that each time analysts determined the alerts were false positives. But when it went off again in mid-June, State Department analysts quickly sensed something serious was afoot.

They saw the alert “fire in a cluster, a volume; that’s unusual, not quite what we’d normally see,” Lacy said.

While Fletcher and Donna Bennett, the department’s chief information security officer, flagged the issue to State’s leadership, Lacy said his team worked “24/7” over the Juneteenth holiday weekend with Microsoft to determine what was wrong.

The team eventually determined that it merited a “significant cyber incident response plan,” which once activated involves creating a task force to focus on the disruption. Lacy said in this case, it included sending a diplomatic courier overseas to “gather critical evidence,” bringing in law enforcement personnel, and using artificial intelligence to analyze the data from the incident. Officials from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency also worked to assess the attack’s full scope.

The State Department stood up the task force before the end of June, and Lacy said it remained active for a month afterward.

“All of that work over the course of several days led to us … the interagency, State, CISA, everyone pulling together that information that Microsoft needed to resolve this in their environment,” Lacy said.

Other federal agencies were also closely following the incident. Bennett said the CIO Council, a group of federal agency IT leaders, had “multiple meetings” each day after discovering the breach.

Microsoft issued a software fix for the flaw that had been exploited, but neither the company nor State were confident it would work.

“What you don’t want to do is push a patch and then begin to drink champagne,” said Fletcher. For a period, she said, “I was holding my breath.”

Ultimately, Microsoft determined the software fix had done its job, and it went public with the incident in July. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment on the company’s response.

The hack has generated significant criticism of Microsoft from lawmakers, government cybersecurity officials and security industry brass because only customers who had purchased an enhanced security license, known as E5, had access to the type of forensic trail necessary to determine whether a hack had taken place.

Under pressure from CISA, Microsoft later agreed to bundle a slate of basic security features into its core licensing packages, theoretically giving more users the ability to spot a similar campaign in the future. But the fact that State’s alert system was custom-built explains why other victims with E5 licenses did not spot the activity earlier.

When it comes to new types of data some companies now have access to, what matters is “how you use it,” said Fletcher.

Eric Goldstein, the executive assistant director of CISA, said in an emailed statement that cloud security providers have an obligation to provide strong security to their users, and that those users should hold their providers to account.

“At the same time,” he wrote, “it is essential for cloud computing customers to maintain responsibility for their enterprise cybersecurity” and invest in their own defenses, so that they can better analyze the data cloud providers share with them.

That is precisely what the State Department says it’s doing.

At the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Cybersecurity Center in Maryland, dozens of professionals sort through the daily threats reported by the diplomatic community, sent in at a rate of more than 1,500 incidents a month. According to a State Department cybersecurity official, granted anonymity to discuss details of the center, the building houses around 100 servers that pull in between 17 and 20 terabytes of security event information per day — a dramatic rise from the less than 10 terabytes of data pulled in daily five years ago.

Bryan Ware, a former assistant director for Cybersecurity at CISA during the Trump administration, said State’s tripwire was a great example of a new security approach government is pushing — known as “zero trust” — which involves recognizing that hackers are bound to slip through an organization’s cyberdefenses at some point.

“No, don’t trust that your firewall prevented everything,” Ware said. “freaking analyze your data, always be asking questions, and hunt for adversaries. That’s what State did, and it was awesome.”

POLITICO

Politico

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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