Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

– Marie Curie

“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”

– Stephen Hawking

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”

– Richard Feynman

I am traveling overseas for the next week so my daily traffic will be more irregular due to the time zone.

1. The Long Game: Understanding US and China’s Theories of Victory

2. The Restrained US Weapon Supply to Taiwan: A Troubling Signal Amid Escalating Tensions

3. The Decline of US Naval Power (and How It Can Make a Comeback)

4. India rules out joining world’s largest trade deal, accuses China of 'very opaque' trade practices

5. US Typhon missile system in Philippines has China facing ‘more tense security situation’

6. Electronic Warfare Spooks Airlines, Pilots and Air-Safety Officials

7. Exploding Pagers and the Tech Race With China

8. Biden Leaves His Successor a World of Disorder

9. Opinion | Former Trump Officials Are Whitewashing His Foreign Policy Record. It Won’t Work.

10. More than 700 current and former national security officials back Harris.

11. Our Own Worst Enemies: The Violent Style in American Politics

12. The Surprising Reality of Political Violence in America

13. Drone, Counterdrone, Counter-Counterdrone: Winning the Unmanned Platform Innovation Cycle

14. In War and Society, Large Language Models Are What We Make of Them

1. The Long Game: Understanding US and China’s Theories of Victory

Excerpts:

For the global order and smaller countries, this strategic competition has profound implications. The world is likely to see increased fragmentation in technology standards, trade networks, and even value systems. Smaller nations may find themselves under stronger pressure to align with either the United States or China in different domains, potentially leading to a new form of bloc politics. However, this also presents opportunities for astute middle powers to leverage the competition to their advantage, potentially by playing both sides or forming their own coalitions.

The intensifying rivalry could accelerate technological innovation but also raise the risks of conflict, particularly in flashpoints like Taiwan or the South China Sea. It may also complicate global cooperation on pressing issues such as climate change, pandemic preparedness, and nuclear non-proliferation.

Attempts at economic de-risking, even if not complete, may lead to the creation of parallel systems in finance, technology, and trade. This could increase resilience in some areas but also reduce overall global economic efficiency and potentially slow growth.

Ultimately, the outcome of this contest will shape the rules, norms, and power dynamics of the 21st century. As the theories of victory of both powers continue to play out, the world must navigate the challenges and opportunities presented by this new era of great power competition. The ability of other nations to defend their own autonomy and foster cooperation in critical areas may well determine whether this strategic competition leads to a more fragmented and conflict-prone world or to a new, stable international order that accommodates both established and rising powers.

The Long Game: Understanding US and China’s Theories of Victory

thediplomat.com

By examining how the U.S. and China perceive the nature of their contest and plot their paths to success, we can better anticipate the trajectory of this competition.

By Ngo Di Lan

September 21, 2024

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The strategic competition between the United States and China has become the defining geopolitical challenge of the current era. As tensions escalate across multiple domains – from trade and technology to military posturing – it is crucial to understand the underlying logic driving each nation’s approach.

At the core of this competition lie two distinct “theories of victory”: overarching visions of how each power aims to prevail in the long term. These theories fundamentally shape critical policy decisions, diplomatic maneuvers, and resource allocations. By examining how the U.S. and China perceive the nature of their contest and plot their paths to success, we can better anticipate the trajectory of this competition and its profound implications for the future global order.

Strategic Competition and Theory of Victory

Throughout history, major powers have engaged in sustained rivalries that fall short of outright war. The Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union is a classic example, but others include the 19th century “Great Game” between Britain and Russia in Central Asia, and the naval arms race between Britain and Germany before World War I.

In these extended contests, nations usually develop what strategists call a “theory of victory” to guide their actions. A theory of victory encompasses several key elements. It begins with a clear articulation of what constitutes “victory” in a given competition. This is coupled with a realistic assessment of the adversary’s strengths and weaknesses, and an understanding of one’s own comparative advantages and vulnerabilities. Ultimately, the theory of victory must tell a state how and why it could coordinate a number of key measures to prevail against a particular adversary.

Theories of victory differ from grand strategies in their specificity and adaptability. While a grand strategy outlines a nation’s broad, long-term goals, a theory of victory is tailored to prevail against a particular target within a specific competitive context. For instance, during the Cold War, the United States’ theory of victory centered on containment and outlasting the Soviet system, adapting over time from the Truman Doctrine to détente and finally to Reagan’s strategy of “peace through strength.”

Competing Visions: U.S. and China’s Theories of Victory

The United States’ theory of victory centers on comprehensively undermining China’s rise while preserving U.S. global preeminence. Ultimately, it seeks to force China to accept a subordinate role in the U.S.-led global order or risk economic stagnation and diplomatic isolation.

In the technological realm, the United States has implemented stringent measures to maintain its superiority. Strict export controls on advanced semiconductors and related technologies, initiated in October 2022 and expanded in 2023, aim to prevent China from achieving parity in critical tech sectors like artificial intelligence and quantum computing. The ban on federal agencies using equipment from Huawei and ZTE, coupled with investment restrictions in sensitive technologies, further exemplifies this strategy.

Economically, the U.S. is employing a multi-pronged approach to “de-risk” its economy while constraining China’s growth and its ability to fund military expansion. The strategy extends beyond the tech sector, encompassing trade policies, supply chain restructuring, and domestic investment. Significant tariffs on a wide range of Chinese goods, implemented under Section 301 of the Trade Act and maintained across administrations, aim to counteract perceived unfair trade practices. These tariffs cover industries from agriculture to manufacturing, putting pressure on China’s export-driven economic model.

Diplomatically, the United States is strengthening its position through a network of alliances and partnerships, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. The formation of minilateral groupings like the Quad and AUKUS aim to enhance regional defense capabilities and counter China’s growing assertiveness. Concurrently, the U.S. has been deepening and upgrading bilateral partnerships with key countries such as Japan, Indonesia, and Vietnam, while also engaging more actively with Pacific Island nations. These diplomatic efforts, complemented by initiatives like the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, are designed to create a robust counterweight to China’s influence, limit Beijing’s ability to reshape regional and global norms, and maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific aligned with U.S. interests.

In contrast, as the challenger, China’s theory of victory revolves around the concept of comprehensive national power and a more indirect approach to outgrowing the United States. This strategy aims to gradually shift the global balance of power in China’s favor and to draw countries away from the U.S. camp through various means. By offering alternatives in trade, investment, and development models, China seeks to erode U.S. global leadership without direct confrontation.

A cornerstone of China’s approach is achieving technological self-reliance. Programs like “Made in China 2025” and substantial investments in research and development across many sectors demonstrate China’s commitment to breaking free from U.S. technological dominance. By developing its own advanced technologies, such as Huawei’s 5G networks, China aims to set global standards and reduce vulnerability to U.S. pressure.

Economically, China is focused on expanding its global presence and influence, particularly through initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). By investing in infrastructure projects across Asia, Africa, and Europe, China is creating a network of countries economically tied to Beijing. This strategy aims to gradually erode U.S. global leadership by offering an alternative model of development and partnership.

Militarily, China is modernizing its conventional and nuclear forces with a focus on anti-access/area denial capabilities. The development of advanced missile systems, like the DF-21D “carrier killer,” and the expansion of its naval forces are designed to make U.S. intervention in what China perceives as its “sphere of influence,” particularly in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, prohibitively costly.

China believes that as more countries align with it economically and diplomatically, the United States will find itself increasingly isolated and unable to dictate global norms. The end goal is not necessarily a brand new world order with China at its center, but rather a significantly revised international system that is more accommodating to China’s interests and influence. This revised order would build on the current foundation of international institutions and norms, but with China playing a much more prominent role in shaping global governance.

China aims to achieve this not through direct confrontation but through steady, long-term growth in all aspects of national power, creating a multipolar world where it stands as an equal, if not superior, to the United States.

What This Means for the World

The contrasting theories of victory adopted by the United States and China reflect fundamentally different worldviews and strategic cultures. While the U.S. adopts a more direct containment approach, China pursues a more indirect, multifaceted strategy of accumulating comprehensive national power. This divergence largely stems from their respective positions – the U.S. as the incumbent superpower seeking to maintain its primacy, and China as the rising challenger aiming to reshape the international order in its favor.

The effectiveness of these strategies remains to be seen. The U.S. approach may succeed in slowing China’s technological advancement and limiting its global influence in the short term. However, it risks alienating allies and neutral countries who may be reluctant to choose sides. China’s more subtle approach could gradually erode U.S. influence, but it may struggle to overcome growing international skepticism about its intentions and methods, particularly as its economic growth slows and its demographic challenges intensify.

For the global order and smaller countries, this strategic competition has profound implications. The world is likely to see increased fragmentation in technology standards, trade networks, and even value systems. Smaller nations may find themselves under stronger pressure to align with either the United States or China in different domains, potentially leading to a new form of bloc politics. However, this also presents opportunities for astute middle powers to leverage the competition to their advantage, potentially by playing both sides or forming their own coalitions.

The intensifying rivalry could accelerate technological innovation but also raise the risks of conflict, particularly in flashpoints like Taiwan or the South China Sea. It may also complicate global cooperation on pressing issues such as climate change, pandemic preparedness, and nuclear non-proliferation.

Attempts at economic de-risking, even if not complete, may lead to the creation of parallel systems in finance, technology, and trade. This could increase resilience in some areas but also reduce overall global economic efficiency and potentially slow growth.

Ultimately, the outcome of this contest will shape the rules, norms, and power dynamics of the 21st century. As the theories of victory of both powers continue to play out, the world must navigate the challenges and opportunities presented by this new era of great power competition. The ability of other nations to defend their own autonomy and foster cooperation in critical areas may well determine whether this strategic competition leads to a more fragmented and conflict-prone world or to a new, stable international order that accommodates both established and rising powers.

Authors

Guest Author

Ngo Di Lan

Dr. Ngo Di Lan is a researcher at the Institute for Foreign Policy and Strategic Studies, Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam.

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thediplomat.com

2. The Restrained US Weapon Supply to Taiwan: A Troubling Signal Amid Escalating Tensions

Strategic reassurance? Strategic resolve? Observing our incremental and restrained support to Ukraine might influence Taiwanese thinking.

Excerpts:

The consequences of this restrained U.S. approach are stark. Taiwan finds itself in a security dilemma, relying on a defense partner whose commitment appears inconsistent, while facing a China that is more emboldened than ever. This imbalance heightens the risk of miscalculations and unintended confrontations in the Taiwan Strait, with potential implications that stretch far beyond the immediate region.

As the United States continues to navigate its broader geopolitical priorities, Taiwan remains caught in a perilous position, where the gaps in its defense capabilities are increasingly visible. The situation illustrates the broader challenges of managing great power competition in a multipolar world where the stakes are high and the margins for error are dangerously thin. The ongoing tensions are not just a test of military resolve but also of strategic stability in the Indo-Pacific, setting the stage for a potentially transformative period in regional security dynamics.

The Restrained US Weapon Supply to Taiwan: A Troubling Signal Amid Escalating Tensions

thediplomat.com

With arms sales dropping and recent deliveries fraught with problems, doubts continue to mount over the United States’ true commitment to Taiwan’s security.

By Hao Nan

September 21, 2024

An F-16V assigned to the 416th Flight Test Squadron flies into position over the Precision Impact Range Area on Edwards Air Force Base, California, Feb. 26, 2021.

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The China-U.S. tensions over Taiwan are not new, but recent events have cast a harsher light on the fragility of the situation. Despite attempts at dialogue, like National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s visit to Beijing in late August, the Chinese government’s reaction to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan has been swift and severe.

On September 18, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs imposed sanctions on nine U.S. defense companies over a $228 million arms sale, announced by the U.S. State Department on September 16, that involved the return, repair, and reshipment of spare parts for Taiwan. The announcement came just before a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon transited the Taiwan Strait on September 17.

In response, China’s Ministry of Defense doubled down on September 20, warning both Taiwan and the United States that U.S.-made weapons would not safeguard Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), but would instead directly lead to “self-destruction” – a stark reminder of the increasing hostility and rhetoric surrounding Taiwan’s defense.

The September 16 announcement marks the 16th arms sale to Taiwan under the Biden administration, yet doubts continue to mount over the United States’ true commitment to Taiwan’s security. The Biden administration’s sales have primarily consisted of munitions and sustainment packages delivered in small tranches, failing to address Taiwan’s need for a comprehensive modernization of its military, especially in comparison to China’s rapid space of military modernization.

According to Rupert Hammond-Chambers, the president of the US-Taiwan Business Council, the Biden administration appears to be avoiding more substantial military commitments to Taiwan, reminiscent of pre-Trump era policies that capped the value of arms sales to avoid provoking Beijing. In a press release, Hammond-Chambers warned that “U.S. support for Taiwan’s material force modernization has been waning since 2021. It now sits at its lowest point since 2001, bar the Obama Administration’s 4+ year arms sales freeze from 2011-2015, and it is continuing to fall.”

Recent arms deliveries have also been fraught with problems. A $345 million arms package delivered between November 2023 and March 2024 included unserviceable and expired equipment, some of which was found to be mildewed and water-damaged, according to a report published on September 11 by the Inspector General Office of the U.S. Department of Defense. These revelations undermine the credibility of U.S. commitments to Taiwan and raise serious questions about the effectiveness of these sales in enhancing Taiwan’s defense capabilities.

More advanced and lethal systems, such as F-16Vs, have faced significant delays, adding to a backlog of $20 billion in undelivered military hardware. U.S. officials have attributed these delays to the urgent demands of the war in Ukraine, suggesting that Washington’s priorities lie elsewhere, particularly in Europe, rather than in the Indo-Pacific region. This prioritization was further underscored by the urgent redeployment of the USS Lincoln from the West Pacific to the Arabian Sea in early August, leaving a significant gap in aircraft carrier presence in the region that remains unfilled.

The restrained and fragmented nature of U.S. arms supplies to Taiwan sends mixed signals at a time when Beijing’s military posture is increasingly aggressive. China’s Ministry of Defense has pledged that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will continue to intensify its military training and preparations, and will take decisive measures to thwart any attempts at “Taiwan independence” or external interference. China’s actions are not merely rhetorical; they underscore a clear strategy to pressure Taiwan and the United States by both escalating military readiness and undermining the credibility of U.S. security guarantees to Taiwan.

Meanwhile, China appears to be taking calculated steps to marginalize the Taiwan issue in its broader strategic relationship with the U.S., particularly during the sensitive U.S. presidential election cycle. With polls showing a close race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Beijing has publicly maintained a non-interventionist stance, framing the U.S. election as a domestic affair. However, behind the scenes, China is hedging its bets, preparing to navigate both potential outcomes. In the event of a Trump victory, Beijing appears ready to endure economic sacrifices in exchange for strategic leverage, anticipating a transactional approach from a second Trump administration regarding Taiwan.

Conversely, Beijing is also exploring opportunities to proactively build diplomatic consensus with Harris, should she win, possibly through side discussions with President Joe Biden at the upcoming APEC and G-20 summits in South America this November. Given Harris’ inexperience on foreign policy, China will be aiming to influence her potential administration.

Meanwhile, Beijing is believed to continue strengthening military and political alignment with Russia, thereby complicating U.S. and allied presence in the Western Pacific, and bringing in a Russian factor into potential Taiwan contingency that has been repeatedly mentioned by the United States and Japan in particular. This strategic positioning serves China’s broader goal of diminishing U.S. influence in the region and enhancing its own sphere of control.

The consequences of this restrained U.S. approach are stark. Taiwan finds itself in a security dilemma, relying on a defense partner whose commitment appears inconsistent, while facing a China that is more emboldened than ever. This imbalance heightens the risk of miscalculations and unintended confrontations in the Taiwan Strait, with potential implications that stretch far beyond the immediate region.

As the United States continues to navigate its broader geopolitical priorities, Taiwan remains caught in a perilous position, where the gaps in its defense capabilities are increasingly visible. The situation illustrates the broader challenges of managing great power competition in a multipolar world where the stakes are high and the margins for error are dangerously thin. The ongoing tensions are not just a test of military resolve but also of strategic stability in the Indo-Pacific, setting the stage for a potentially transformative period in regional security dynamics.

Authors

Guest Author

Hao Nan

HAO Nan is a research fellow with the Charhar Institute. He previously served at East Asian intergovernmental organizations such as the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat (for China, Japan and Republic of Korea) in Seoul and the ASEAN-China Centre in Beijing.

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thediplomat.com

3. The Decline of US Naval Power (and How It Can Make a Comeback)

Excerpts:

The United States could look to its allies in the Western Pacific for answers. Both South Korea and Japan have immense shipbuilding capacity and are somewhat desperate for new customers as Chinese shipbuilders are beginning to eat up their market share in recent years. The United States could contract these shipbuilders to help maintain U.S. Navy ships to ease pressure on domestic shipyards and increase force readiness. After all, it is very illogical for ships from the U.S. 7th Fleet that are already based in Japan to go all the way across the Pacific to conduct some maintenance while Japan and nearby South Korea have the shipyard capacity and capability to perform such maintenance.

The U.S. Navy could even go one step further and order new warships from South Korean and Japanese shipyards, especially as the shipyards in both countries have already proven that they have the capability and experience needed to build new Aegis destroyers or frigates for the U.S. Navy based on their previous experience building Aegis destroyers for their respective navies. The Sejong the Great class for the Republic of Korea Navy and the Kongo, Atago, and Maya classes for the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Forces are based on the design of the Arleigh Burke guided missile destroyers, which currently form the backbone of the U.S. Navy’s surface fleet.

While certainly there will be some political considerations that need to be addressed if the U.S. Navy really were to order a new warship from South Korean or Japanese shipyards, Washington must realize that without any drastic action taken, the U.S. Navy will only grow ever smaller as older ships need to be decommissioned and new ships cannot be produced at a rate fast enough to replace them, let alone to expand the Navy’s fleet to fulfill the tasks assigned to them.

The Decline of US Naval Power (and How It Can Make a Comeback)

thediplomat.com

Decades of continuous sea blindness, increasingly isolationist tendencies, and post-Cold War budget cuts have left the U.S. Navy continuously shrinking year by year.

By Joseph Kristanto

September 21, 2024

The aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) is under construction at Huntington Ingalls Newport News Shipbuilding, Mar. 31, 2011.

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Since the end of World War II, the United States has used its massive seapower to dominate the world’s oceans, projecting its power and ensuring the freedom of the seas from other countries that oppose the idea of mare liberum first proposed by Hugo Grotius. Lincoln P. Paine perhaps summarized this preponderance of U.S. naval power the best: “As was true of Portugal in the sixteenth century, the U.S. fleet exists to project power and safeguard trade, not to fight fleets of comparable capabilities because there are none.”

This U.S. dominance on the high seas allowed the emergence of a new liberal world order based on international trade, which resulted in massive growth in the world’s economy never before seen in human history.

And yet, nearly 80 years later, the U.S. Navy is just a shell of its former self. Decades of continuous sea blindness, increasingly isolationist tendencies, and post-Cold War budget cuts have left the Navy continuously shrinking year by year. The U.S. Navy went from a massive fleet of 1,248 ships in 1946 down to just 275 ships in 2016. Even though the number of ships in the fleet has increased a little bit since then to 297 ships, and although this smaller fleet has much greater firepower at its disposal compared to the 1946 fleet, this massive downsizing of the U.S. Navy has meant that it no longer has enough ships to deploy and respond to crises all around the world, let alone to be engaged in combat in multiple theaters all around the world’s oceans.

These inadequacies in fleet numbers were very obvious when the ongoing conflict in Gaza forced the United States to deploy two Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs) to the 5th Fleet area of operation, resulting in the absence of any aircraft carrier in the Indo-Pacific region as the other carriers are either in maintenance, just returned from a deployment, or in workup exercises. The lack of U.S. aircraft carriers – a powerful symbol of power projection – deployed in the Indo-Pacific region comes just as China once again ratchets up pressure on U.S. allies in the region, such as the Philippines.

For U.S. allies, the dwindling U.S. presence in the region, symbolized by the lack of U.S. carrier groups present in the Indo-Pacific in the face of China’s aggressive actions, could signal a declining U.S. resolve and capability in guaranteeing its allies’ safety, which could force them to be more accommodating toward Beijing’s demands. In the opposite direction, the same lack of confidence in U.S. commitment to its allies and its extended deterrence could also force U.S. allies in the region to develop their own nuclear weapons program to reduce their dependence on the seemingly unreliable U.S. alliance commitment. Meanwhile, the United States’ inability to show its power in the region while China is pushing its neighbors around could also encourage Beijing to act aggressively against U.S. allies, further destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region.

The problem is that rectifying this ship shortage issue is not as simple as ordering more ships from the shipyards, mainly because there is not enough shipbuilding capacity left in the United States to begin with. The liberalization of the economy under the Reagan administration has shattered civilian shipbuilding capacity in the country, as U.S. civilian shipyards simply lost out to foreign competitors that still received subsidies from their governments to price U.S. shipyards out of the market.

Just 10 years later, it was the turn of the naval shipyards to suffer. Along with the euphoria emanating from the collapse of the Soviet Union came massive budget cuts in defense spending and the cancellation of many defense projects, forcing the various defense companies to merge and consolidate. While the resulting mergers helped save the U.S. defense industry from total collapse, they also resulted in a massive loss of industrial capacity.

In recent years, the shipbuilding industry has also suffered from losing many skilled workers to other industries that offer better pay. This situation further reduces shipbuilding capacity and prolongs the maintenance period of existing warships, since there are just not enough workers to work on them. This issue then cascaded as ships in maintenance occupied the docks that could be used to build new warships to complement or replace older ships whose maintenance demand can only go upwards as time goes on. As a result, fewer than 40 percent of U.S. Navy ships completed availability repairs on schedule, and almost all new shipbuilding programs faced one to three years of delays.

While currently, the Pentagon has put into place some programs to help attract talent into the shipbuilding industry and laid the foundation for the revival of U.S. shipbuilding, the effects of these efforts will only be felt in the long term. After all, it takes time to build a new dry dock and recruit and train new workers to replace aging workers and grow the industrial base. At the same time, the urgency of replacing older warships and maintaining the existing fleet still exists. To fulfill these requirements, the U.S. Navy must look at options other than the already stretched-out domestic shipbuilding industries.

The United States could look to its allies in the Western Pacific for answers. Both South Korea and Japan have immense shipbuilding capacity and are somewhat desperate for new customers as Chinese shipbuilders are beginning to eat up their market share in recent years. The United States could contract these shipbuilders to help maintain U.S. Navy ships to ease pressure on domestic shipyards and increase force readiness. After all, it is very illogical for ships from the U.S. 7th Fleet that are already based in Japan to go all the way across the Pacific to conduct some maintenance while Japan and nearby South Korea have the shipyard capacity and capability to perform such maintenance.

The U.S. Navy could even go one step further and order new warships from South Korean and Japanese shipyards, especially as the shipyards in both countries have already proven that they have the capability and experience needed to build new Aegis destroyers or frigates for the U.S. Navy based on their previous experience building Aegis destroyers for their respective navies. The Sejong the Great class for the Republic of Korea Navy and the Kongo, Atago, and Maya classes for the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Forces are based on the design of the Arleigh Burke guided missile destroyers, which currently form the backbone of the U.S. Navy’s surface fleet.

While certainly there will be some political considerations that need to be addressed if the U.S. Navy really were to order a new warship from South Korean or Japanese shipyards, Washington must realize that without any drastic action taken, the U.S. Navy will only grow ever smaller as older ships need to be decommissioned and new ships cannot be produced at a rate fast enough to replace them, let alone to expand the Navy’s fleet to fulfill the tasks assigned to them.

Authors

Guest Author

Joseph Kristanto

Joseph Kristanto is a Master's student majoring in Strategic Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at the Nanyang Technological University. His areas of interest include maritime security, naval warfare, and the geopolitical dynamics of the Indo-Pacific region.

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thediplomat.com

4. India rules out joining world’s largest trade deal, accuses China of 'very opaque' trade practices

Strategic competition?

Excerpts:

The world recognizes that excessive concentration in any one region is fraught with serious risks, Goyal added.

India's chip strategy has two main components: attracting foreign companies to establish operations and invest in the country, as well as forming partnerships with other major semiconductor nations, such as the U.S. In 2021, the government approved a $10 billion incentive program for the sector, which is also available to foreign companies.

As of 2024, Taiwan, the world's chipmaking powerhouse, is expected to hold around 44% of global market share, followed by China with 28% and South Korea with 12%, according to a report. The U.S. and Japan account for 6% and 2%, respectively.

The authors of the report, Taiwan consultancy Trendforce, said Taiwan's global capacity share in advanced manufacturing processes is expected to decrease to 40% by 2027, while South Korea's could see a 2% decline. In the same time period, China's is expected to increase by 3% to 31%.

India rules out joining world’s largest trade deal, accuses China of 'very opaque' trade practices

Key Points

India’s commerce and industry minister ruled out the idea of joining the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, maintaining that it is not in the country’s interest to be part of a free trade agreement with China.
“It was not in our farmers’ interest, RCEP did not reflect the aspirations of our small and micro medium industries and sector, and in some form, was nothing but a free trade agreement with China,” Piyush Goyal said.
The RCEP is the world’s largest free trade agreement by GDP of its members.

CNBC · by Lee Ying Shan · September 23, 2024

Indian flag and Chinese flag displayed on screen.

Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

India's commerce minister rejected the idea of joining the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the world's largest trade deal, maintaining that it is not in the country's interest to be part of a free trade agreement with China.

"India is not going to join the RCEP because neither did it reflect the guiding principles on which ASEAN was started, nor is it in the nation's interest to do a free trade agreement with China," India's Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal told CNBC's Tanvir Gill in an interview.

The RCEP deal was signed in 2020 by 15 Asia-Pacific countries — which makes up out 30% of global GDP — and came into force in January 2022. The countries are the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and five of their largest trading partners, China, South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Negotiations for the RCEP started in 2013 and initially included India, which some members viewed as a counterbalance to China. However, in 2019, India chose not to join RCEP, citing unresolved "core interest" issues. Back then, India did not expand on what some of those core unresolved interests were.

Goyal noted that at that time, India already had a free trade agreement with ASEAN, Japan and Korea, as well as a bilateral trade with New Zealand worth $300 million.

"It was not in our farmers' interest, RCEP did not reflect the aspirations of our small and micro medium industries and sector, and in some form, was nothing but a free trade agreement with China," he said.

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India rules out joining RCEP, accuses China of non-transparent trade practices

Squawk Box Asia

"When you see from the lens sitting outside the country, you don't realize how difficult it is to compete against a non-transparent economy," the minister continued, in reference to China.

"Certainly nobody back home would like to have an FTA with [a] non-transparent economy, very opaque in its economic practices, where both trading systems, political systems, the economy — the way it is managed — is completely different from what the democratic world wants."

Goyal also accused China of using the World Trade Organization's policies to its advantage, flooding various economies with goods at low prices which often do not meet quality standards.

From solar panels to cars to steel, China has recently been churning out more goods in an economy that has been slow to absorb, resulting in a surge of cheap exports to foreign markets.

Semiconductor ambitions

The minister also made a strong case for India to become a Taiwan "plus one" semiconductor country.

"China Plus One" is a phrase used to describe a supply chain strategy that sees companies diversifying manufacturing and sourcing, by continuing operations in the mainland while also expanding into other countries. This approach aims to reduce risks linked to complete reliance on a single country's market or supply chain.

Spinning off that idea, Goyal thinks India can become an alternative place in the region for companies that want to diversify outside of Taiwan for semiconductors.

"We are encouraging [the] semiconductor industry in a big way. We started building up the ecosystem, which is essential before we can see more and more foundries coming into the country for the actual chip making," Goyal said.

"We expect the demand for semiconductor products to be about $100 billion by 2030, and will grow exponentially thereafter," he said, adding that interest in India's semiconductor industry is expanding "by leaps and bounds."

India aims to establish itself as a major chips hub similar to the U.S., Taiwan, and South Korea, actively seeking foreign companies to set up their operations in the country.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated three semiconductor plants, bringing the total count of plants under development in India to four. One of those plants is a joint venture between Tata Electronics and Taiwan's Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. The plant, which is set up in Dholera, Gujarat state, is expected to deliver its first batch of semiconductors by late 2025 or early 2026.

Asked if India can be Taiwan's "plus one" in the semiconductor space, Goyal said that his country's size, democracy and rule of law means it is a "safe habor."

"It provides an alternative where you will always have a youthful population in life, huge demand, and you will have the rule of law to back it. I think that's a very compulsive case," he said.

The world recognizes that excessive concentration in any one region is fraught with serious risks, Goyal added.

CNBC · by Lee Ying Shan · September 23, 2024

5. US Typhon missile system in Philippines has China facing ‘more tense security situation’

Excerpts:

Shi said both China and the US clearly wanted to prevent any military conflict, but Beijing’s hopes that the [Typhon] missile systems would be withdrawn from the Philippines soon were “unrealistic”.

Zhou Bo, a senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, said while it was still uncertain how long the Typhon system would remain in the Philippines, China’s own mid-range missile systems could also offer deterrence.

The missile issue may be raised in the US-China military dialogues, but these might become more complicated as the US boosts its regional alliances, he said.

“There is a clear new factor in the military dialogues between China and the US compared to before, which is the third-party factor that the Biden administration has been pushing to strengthen alliances with other countries.”

US Typhon missile system in Philippines has China facing ‘more tense security situation’

US ‘essentially provoking a new cold war in the Asia-Pacific’ with missile deployment and ‘minilateralism’, observer warns

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3279516/us-typhon-missile-system-philippines-has-china-facing-more-tense-security-situation

Sylvie Zhuangin Beijing

Published: 10:05pm, 22 Sep 2024Updated: 9:13am, 23 Sep 2024

Washington’s plans to retain its Typhon missile system in the Philippines while stepping up defence engagement with other Asia-Pacific allies pose heightened security risks for China, according to analysts.

The mid-range missile system has remained in the Philippines since it was brought in during a joint exercise with American forces in April, as tensions spiked in the South China Sea between rival claimants Beijing and Manila – a US treaty ally.

Why is the Philippines aligning itself with the US after years of close China ties under Duterte

Washington had no immediate plans to withdraw the system despite demands from Beijing, Reuters reported last week, adding that the US was testing the feasibility of using the system in a regional conflict.

Manila said in July that the system could be withdrawn as early as September, but a top Philippine security official said on Friday that there was no immediate timeline for this.

Zhu Feng, executive dean of Nanjing University’s School of International Studies, said the United States’ moves were reminiscent of the Cold War.

“[The US] is deploying missiles in the Philippines now, and it could possibly [deploy weapons] to [treaty allies] South Korea and Japan in the future, and it is essentially provoking a new cold war in the Asia-Pacific region,” he said.

The Typhon system, which is stationed on the northern Philippine island of Luzon, can be equipped with cruise missiles to strike targets in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. This is the first time that a mid-range missile system has been stationed in the Asia-Pacific since a 1987 US-Soviet treaty prohibited such deployments.

Beijing has repeatedly demanded the removal of the system. China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday that the deployment had severely threatened regional security, urging the US to honour its commitment and stop actions that provoke military confrontation.

Separately on Saturday, the US – along with Japan, India and Australia – pledged to expand joint Indian Ocean security operations and increase coastguard cooperation “to uphold a free and open Indo-Pacific”.

US and Philippines conduct annual Balikatan drills amid rising tensions with China

The joint statement came as leaders of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, met in the US state of Delaware for their fourth in-person summit.

Zhu at Nanjing University said it was important for China and the United States to step up military dialogue, resumed recently after prolonged tensions as the two powers try to manage crisis risks.

The Quad statement on Saturday raised concerns about the situation in the South China Sea and pledged increased coastguard cooperation to launch the first-ever “Quad-at-Sea Ship Observer Mission” next year, aiming to “improve interoperability and advance maritime safety”.

“The US has also been engaging in minilateralism to strengthen the isolation and containment of China. China is facing a more tense security situation in the region,” Zhu cautioned.

US President Joe Biden with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Wilmington, Delaware, on Saturday. Photo: AFP

Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Beijing’s Renmin University, also said China could face a serious threat with the Typhon system in place, given that its own missile defence systems still needed improvement.

He said the situation appeared to be more troubling for China, considering the rapid US military deployment in its western Pacific territory of Guam and Japan’s plans to deploy medium- to long-range land-based US weapon systems.

Shi said both China and the US clearly wanted to prevent any military conflict, but Beijing’s hopes that the [Typhon] missile systems would be withdrawn from the Philippines soon were “unrealistic”.

Zhou Bo, a senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, said while it was still uncertain how long the Typhon system would remain in the Philippines, China’s own mid-range missile systems could also offer deterrence.

The missile issue may be raised in the US-China military dialogues, but these might become more complicated as the US boosts its regional alliances, he said.

“There is a clear new factor in the military dialogues between China and the US compared to before, which is the third-party factor that the Biden administration has been pushing to strengthen alliances with other countries.”

Sylvie Zhuang

FOLLOW

Sylvie joined the Post as a reporter in 2023. She graduated from the University of Chicago and earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Illinois. Previously, she worked as a researcher for multilateral international organizations, including the World Bank and ADB.

6. Electronic Warfare Spooks Airlines, Pilots and Air-Safety Officials

Not something I wanted to read as I await to board my flight to Korea.

Graphics and proper formatting at the link.

Electronic Warfare Spooks Airlines, Pilots and Air-Safety Officials

Hundreds of daily flights around the world are running into GPS spoofing, a hazard that poses new risks for pilots and passengers

By Andrew TangelFollow and Drew FitzGeraldFollow | Graphics by Adrienne TongFollow and Carl ChurchillFollow

https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/electronic-warfare-spooks-airlines-pilots-and-air-safety-officials-60959bbd

Updated Sept. 23, 2024 12:02 am ET

American Airlines Capt. Dan Carey knew his cockpit equipment was lying to him when an alert began blaring “pull up!” as his Boeing 777 passed over Pakistan in March—at an altitude of 32,000 feet, far above any terrain.

The warning stemmed from a kind of electronic warfare that hundreds of civilian pilots encounter each day: GPS spoofing. The alert turned out to be false but illustrated how fake signals that militaries use to ward off drones and missiles are also permeating growing numbers of commercial aircraft, including U.S. airlines’ international flights.

“It was concerning, but it wasn’t startling, because we were at cruise altitude,” Carey said. Had an engine failure or other in-flight emergency struck at the same time, though, the situation “could be extremely dangerous.”

Pilots, aviation-industry officials and regulators said spoofed Global Positioning System signals are spreading beyond active conflict zones near Ukraine and the Middle East, confusing cockpit navigation and safety systems and taxing pilots’ attention in commercial jets carrying passengers and cargo.

The attacks started affecting a large number of commercial flights about a year ago, pilots and aviation experts said. The number of flights affected daily has surged from a few dozen in February to more than 1,100 in August, according to analyses from SkAI Data Services and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences.

Modern airliners’ heavy reliance on GPS means that fake data can cascade through cockpit systems, creating glitches that last for a few minutes or an entire flight. Pilots have reported clocks resetting to earlier times, false warnings and misdirected flight paths, according to anonymized reports shared with government and industry groups.

Aviation-safety officials said spoofing has disrupted some flights but hasn’t posed major safety risks. While pilots are trained on how to use non-GPS navigation systems as a backup, managing the bogus GPS signals and alerts risks dividing pilots’ attention if a more serious problem strikes.

“If we lose an airplane because of workload issues because of these problems we’re encountering, compounded with an emergency, that is going to be a horrendous event,” said Ken Alexander, the Federal Aviation Administration’s chief scientist for satellite navigation, during a pilot union forum this month in Washington, D.C.

Airlines are huddling with aircraft makers, suppliers and air-safety regulators to develop short-term workarounds and longer-term fixes. Equipment standards designed to harden civilian aircraft against spoofing won’t be issued until next year at the earliest, according to people familiar with the matter.

Pilots are meanwhile getting preflight briefings about how to identify potential spoofing and respond—which may at times include turning off certain features or ignoring false “pull up!” commands from a safety system heralded for sharply reducing crashes.

Pilots in some cases have pulled up unnecessarily, according to industry officials. Other aircraft systems, including pilot messaging services, have been thrown off when cockpits draw false time and position data from spoofed signals.

Researchers said the volume of faked GPS signals has surged over the past six months. Most spoofing attacks come from powerful electronic-warfare transmitters in Russia, Ukraine and Israel, said Todd Humphreys, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Hand-held devices can also spoof GPS signals in a smaller area.

Civilian flights apparently haven’t been targets, though that is little comfort to commercial pilots flying through some of the world’s busiest air corridors.

“These pilots are doing double duty in the cockpit,” Humphreys said, citing pilot reports. He said the industry and regulators should fast-track work to harden planes against spoofing before one has an accident. “This is embarrassing for the airline industry, for the carriers and for the FAA,” he said.

The variety of attacks across different locales have caused a range of problems, according to anonymized reports collected by OpsGroup, an aviation-safety organization that includes pilots, dispatchers and other airline staff.

A spoofed GPS signal in September 2023 nearly sent a private Embraer jet into Iran without clearance, a misdirection that could have led the plane into hostile airspace. The crew of an Airbus AIR 0.49%increase; green up pointing triangle A320 departing from Cyprus in July reported a “severe map shift” in the cockpit and the failure of a separate navigation system. A Boeing 787 the same month aborted two landings, one of them 50 feet above the ground, after the loss of a GPS signal kicked off a series of instrument problems.

The FAA said it knew of no spoofing events in the U.S., though industry and government officials said there have been sporadic reports in recent years of possible spoofing or other types of GPS interference that can cause similar disruptions.

In October 2022, GPS interference disrupted air traffic at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. Some planes went off course, and one got too close to another aircraft on final approach in a minor violation of federal rules that keep planes safely apart, according to a government official. Pilots had to rely on conventional navigation systems for their approaches for about two days.

The FAA earlier this year said it found no proof of intentional interference and was continuing to examine the cause.

GPS spoofing has disrupted operations in Europe but hasn’t endangered flights, said Florian Guillermet, executive director of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. Pilots have had to divert to airports they weren’t intending to land at, and earlier this year an airline temporarily halted operations to an Estonian airport that wasn’t equipped with ground-based navigation as a backup for GPS.

“The risk is growing in terms of the number of occurrences,” Guillermet said in June.

Industry and government officials are weighing how to address the immediate risks.

Carriers including United Airlines and American Airlines have been discussing new procedures that would allow pilots to reset cockpit circuit breakers when confronted with false GPS data.

How Spoofing Can Interfere With Planes

Pilots can see signs of GPS spoofing on various instruments in many aircraft.

Enhanced ground proximity warning systems might issue false alarms, telling pilots to pull up unnecessarily.

Spoofed time and position data can throw off clocks and other systems.

Navigation screens can show faulty information, including wrong locations.

Messages on pilot

communication systems can be rejected due to false timestamps.

Source: Getty Images (photo), OpsGroup, pilots

Airlines and regulators are generally reluctant to let pilots reset systems using circuit breakers, a step that could require them to stand up or introduce other risks such as electrical issues. Boeing hasn’t endorsed the procedure on its 777 aircraft, people familiar with the matter said. The FAA declined to comment on the procedures.

Boeing said manufacturers, carriers and regulators globally are contributing GPS expertise for solutions to ensure safety. Boeing and Airbus are working with airlines to help develop procedures to assist pilots, the companies said.

United and American said their pilots are equipped with several ways to navigate with precision, even with GPS interference. American said it hasn’t experienced disruptions or significant safety concerns from GPS interference.

Industry officials are urging pilots to stick to manufacturers’ and regulators’ procedures, given the absence of uniform guidance. “We don’t want a do-it-yourself approach,” said Andy Uribe, an aviation-security expert with the Air Line Pilots Association union, during a panel discussion last week.

Christopher Behnam, who retired in August as a Boeing 777 captain at United, said he frequently encountered GPS interference flying into the Middle East.

“We are trained for these things, so you stay calm and you just follow the procedure,” Behnam said. Still, he said, when pilots rely on GPS to land in low-visibility conditions, spoofing “could get very, very, very alarming.”

Write to Andrew Tangel at andrew.tangel@wsj.com, Drew FitzGerald at andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com, Adrienne Tong at adrienne.tong@wsj.com and Carl Churchill at carl.churchill@wsj.com

7. Exploding Pagers and the Tech Race With China

Excerpts:

Congressional Republicans have pushed to loosen ITAR, which a Rand report calls “an impediment to defense innovation and integration with allies.” Doing so, and transferring implementation from the overcautious State Department to the Pentagon, would serve as a down payment on the policy America needs to win the technology stack competition.

America and our allies have the tools to build a shared software-defined manufacturing ecosystem backed by a free-world technology stack. This is the cornerstone of a safer and more prosperous U.S.-led coalition, one that geopolitical swing states will want to join. If we fail, China’s totalitarian technology stack will flourish, ushering in a more fractured and hostile world. In that case, Americans may view their iPhones and car batteries the way Hezbollah operatives now see their pagers.

Exploding Pagers and the Tech Race With China

Israel’s attack against Hezbollah points to the risks and opportunities of an interconnected world.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/exploding-pagers-and-the-tech-race-with-china-5e9b7a6e?mod=latest_headlines

By Mike Gallagher

Sept. 22, 2024 4:10 pm ET

Illustration: James Steinberg

Let’s call it Operation Chutzpah. If, as is widely believed, the Mossad detonated pagers and walkie-talkies used by Lebanese Hezbollah terrorists, killing dozens and wounding thousands, it will go down as an intelligence operation for the history books. This strike is the latest in a string of daring operations from the tunnels beneath Gaza to the heart of Tehran. It also demonstrates how software has ushered in a new phase of warfare.

Remember that Russian soldiers stole $5 million in John Deere equipment in 2022 from occupied Ukraine, only to discover that the internet-connected tractors could be remotely turned into scrap. Months later, Tesla drivers at the Chinese resort of Beidaihe found their cars banned from the town during a Chinese Communist Party conclave.

The party has since blocked Tesla at other sites, worried that the connected cars’ cameras pose a security risk. In January the FBIannounced that Volt Typhoon, a Chinese state-sponsored group, had embedded malware inside America’s critical infrastructure such as “communications, energy, transportation, and water sectors.” This malware could destroy the systems that keep our homes, businesses and hospitals running.

Look at the damage done by exploding pagers. Then imagine the chaos caused by haywire power grids, or the economic consequences of frozen ports. The Biden administration recently warned that Chinese-made port cranes could be “controlled . . . from remote locations.” European companies found that Chinese groups may have gained access to the systems that control cargo ships. Billions of endpoints connect to the internet, including sensors and devices that physically interact with critical infrastructure. Anyone with control over a portion of the technology stack such as semiconductors, cellular modules, or hardware devices, can use it to snoop, incapacitate or kill.

The weaponization of commercial hardware and software will drive a bifurcation in the technology stack between the free world and our totalitarian rivals. In June, CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping declared that “the high-tech field has become the front line and main battlefield of international competition.” Accordingly, the Communist Party has required that technologies from social-media apps to AI models reflect the party’s socialist values. China has even used “smart city” systems—networks that govern traffic management and trash collection—as “a digital backbone that facilitates the consistent enforcement of social control programs.”

Mr. Xi is working to remove American technology—iPhones, Intel chips and Microsoft software—from the party’s totalitarian technology stack. He seeks a future where he could turn off the lights in Green Bay or Geneva knowing we could not do the same in Guangzhou.

To prevent such a disaster, we should first recognize that the Chinese Communist Party isn’t interested in cooperating on AI risks and safety. This delusion underlies the Biden administration’s diplomatic approach to Beijing. Despite little to show from engagement on climate change and fentanyl, President Biden seems to believe we can persuade China to use AI for humanity’s benefit.

But what does “AI safety” look like to a regime using facial recognition to ethnically profile Uighurs as part of their genocide in Xinjiang? The main AI risk the party wants to mitigate is having the U.S. dominate this critical technology. We should focus on mitigating the main risk to our way of life, by building a free world technology stack, with trusted allied vendors from chips to servers to software.

Second, we need to wield the free-world technology stack more effectively. In World War II, America equipped its allies to be the “Arsenal of Democracy.” Today, nations looking to us for weapons might call us the “DMV of Democracy”—we provide what we promised only after an agonizing wait. As Rahm Emanuel, our ambassador to Japan, recently noted, “our military industrial base is ferkakte . . . it’s screwed up . . . the weakest link in our national security.” Technology can help. America has the tools to build a software-defined manufacturing ecosystem, where we can find and fix bottlenecks. A digital twin of the entire defense supply chain would allow us to analyze, allocate, and accelerate production from the factory floor to the front line.

Third, a revitalized American technological industrial base should catalyze an interoperable free-world technological industrial base. To outcompete China, we must make it easy for allies and geopolitical swing states to adopt, contribute to, and innovate on top of our software. In Mr. Xi’s “main battlefield of international competition,” we must make the free world’s technology stack more attractive than the totalitarian alternative, drawing more countries to our side of the emerging Silicon Curtain.

Pillar Two of the AUKUS arrangement with Australia and the United Kingdom presents a massive opportunity to do this, by enhancing joint capabilities in critical areas alongside two allies. We haven’t made the most of this opportunity. The State Department recently proposed, at last, exemptions to burdensome International Traffic in Arms Regulations weapons-export restrictions for Australia and the U.K. Even then, the exemptions don’t apply to hypersonic missiles, undersea vehicles, and electronic warfare—core elements of Pillar Two. The exemptions also don’t apply to other Indo-Pacific allies, notably Japan.

Congressional Republicans have pushed to loosen ITAR, which a Rand report calls “an impediment to defense innovation and integration with allies.” Doing so, and transferring implementation from the overcautious State Department to the Pentagon, would serve as a down payment on the policy America needs to win the technology stack competition.

America and our allies have the tools to build a shared software-defined manufacturing ecosystem backed by a free-world technology stack. This is the cornerstone of a safer and more prosperous U.S.-led coalition, one that geopolitical swing states will want to join. If we fail, China’s totalitarian technology stack will flourish, ushering in a more fractured and hostile world. In that case, Americans may view their iPhones and car batteries the way Hezbollah operatives now see their pagers.

Mr. Gallagher, a Journal contributor, is head of defense for Palantir Technologies and a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute. He represented Wisconsin’s Eighth Congressional District (2017-24) and was chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

Biden Leaves His Successor a World of Disorder

His policies have encouraged the advance of U.S. adversaries across the globe.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-freedom-has-faded-on-bidens-watch-russia-middle-east-war-0f627381?utm_medium=social

By The Editorial Board

Updated Sept. 23, 2024 8:21 am ET

President Joe Biden Photo: Yuri Gripas/Bloomberg News

President Biden will address the United Nations on Tuesday, in what is likely to be his last big moment on the world stage. A President’s foreign-policy legacy typically outlasts his term, so it’s worth taking a step back and considering the world Mr. Biden will leave his successor.

It is a far more dangerous world than Mr. Biden inherited, and far less congenial for U.S. interests, human freedom and democracy. The latter is tragically ironic since the President has made the global contest between democracy and authoritarians an abiding theme. Authoritarians have advanced on his watch in every part of the world—Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, and even the Americas.

***

• Mr. Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan was his single most damaging decision, and it has led to cascading trouble. The Taliban control the country and are reimposing feudal Islamist rule. His withdrawal has done more harm to more women than anything in decades, while jihadists have revived their terror sanctuary.

• More damaging is the message his withdrawal sent to adversaries about American will and retreat. The credibility of U.S. deterrence collapsed. Mr. Biden tried to appease Vladimir Putin by blessing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and refusing to arm Ukraine. Mr. Putin concluded he could invade Ukraine at limited cost, especially after Mr. Biden blurted out that a “minor incursion” might not elicit the same Western opposition.

After Kyiv bravely resisted, Mr. Biden sent weapons, but too little and too delayed at every stage of the war. Even now, after 31 months and 100,000 or more dead, Mr. Biden dithers over letting Ukraine use long-range ATACMS against targets inside Russia.

• His record in the Middle East is worse. Rather than build on the Abraham Accords he inherited, he tried to ostracize Saudi Arabia and he banned offensive weapons to fight the Houthis. From the start he courted the mullahs in Iran to renew the 2015 nuclear accord that had enriched Iran before Donald Trump withdrew. He refused to enforce oil sanctions, even as Iran spread mayhem through its proxy militias.

The U.S. was caught flat-footed when Hamas, aided by Iran, invaded Israel and massacred 1,200 innocents. His national-security adviser, Jake Sullivan, had to edit an online version of a Foreign Affairs essay already published boasting that “the region is quieter than it has been for decades.”

Here’s how quiet: Our foremost regional ally is now at war on multiple fronts. Israel’s defensive campaign in Gaza isn’t finished and a new and perhaps bloodier fight is unfolding with Hezbollah. The Houthis have all but shut down Western commercial shipping around the Red Sea, while Mr. Biden makes U.S. naval commanders play whack-a-missile.

Meanwhile, Iran marches undeterred to becoming a nuclear power. The Biden Administration mouths pieties that this is unacceptable, but its every action suggests it believes a nuclear Iran is inevitable and trying to stop it is too risky. When Iran goes nuclear, the security calculus in the world will turn upside down.

• Mr. Biden’s record in the Asia-Pacific is marginally better, at least diplomatically. He has strengthened U.S. alliances against China, especially with Australia, Japan and the Philippines. The Aukus defense deal is important, as is Japan’s move toward closer military integration with the U.S.

Yet diplomacy hasn’t been matched by hard power. The U.S. isn’t building enough submarines to meet its Aukus commitment and U.S. needs. American bases lack adequate air defenses and long-range missiles to defeat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. State Department foot-stomping hasn’t stopped Chinese harassment of Philippine ships.

• Closer to home, Venezuela’s dictator has predictably stolen another election, exposing the Biden Administration’s deal to ease oil sanctions as naive. Mexico is tilting in an authoritarian direction without U.S. protest. Cuba continues to spread revolution wherever it can. The resulting human suffering reaches America in the flood of migrants that now burden our cities, from Manhattan to Springfield, Ohio.

• Most ominous is the collaboration of these menacing regional powers into a new anti-Western axis. Iran supplies missiles and drones to Moscow, which may be supplying nuclear know-how to Tehran. China is aiding Moscow, which now joins Beijing in naval maneuvers. North Korea also arms Moscow while being protected by China from United Nations sanctions it once voted for.

***

All of this and more adds up to the worst decline in world order, and the largest decline in U.S. influence, since the 1930s. Yet Mr. Biden continues to speak and act as if he’s presided over an era of spreading peace and prosperity. He has proposed a cut in real defense spending each year of his Presidency, which may be his greatest abdication.

Addressing this gathering storm will be difficult and dangerous. The first task will be restoring U.S. deterrence, which will require more hard power and political will. Whoever wins the White House will have to abandon the failed policies of the Biden years, lest we end up careening into a global conflict with catastrophic consequences.

WSJ Opinion: Assassination Attempt No. 2

Opinion | Former Trump Officials Are Whitewashing His Foreign Policy Record. It Won’t Work.

Politico

In this consequential election year, it’s important to remember the actual results of Trump’s actual decisions.

Donald Trump's presidency did real damage to America’s international economic, diplomatic and security interests, writes P. Michael McKinley. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Opinion by P. Michael McKinley

09/23/2024 05:00 AM EDT

P. Michael McKinley served for 37 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, including four stints as ambassador in Peru, Colombia, Afghanistan and Brazil and as a senior adviser to former Secretary of State Michael Pompeo.

Former officials of the Trump presidency appear to be on a campaign to whitewash his administration’s foreign policy record.

In recent weeks and months, there’s been a flood of articles and interviews from them that present versions of the same argument: Donald Trump’s foreign policy legacy is better than you think. The most prominent are by Robert O’Brien, Trump’s last national security adviser, and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, but there have been others including by former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby and former national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

The common purpose appears to be twofold: reassure a broader audience that a second Trump presidency would be more mainstream than many fear, and, by extension, to present his first administration as one of successes which restored American leadership on the international stage.

Having served almost three years in the Trump administration as ambassador and senior adviser to the secretary of State, I can say that both contentions are wrong.

The promise is that a now-experienced “Trump the Realist” will be even better for America. O’Brien, using Orwellian doublespeak, suggests we could see “a Trumpian restoration of peace through strength” and seeks to recast in glowing terms a dark period for American foreign policy that did lasting damage to global stability and America’s leadership in it. McMaster, while somewhat more critical than the others, praises Trump’s “long-overdue correctives to a number of unwise policies,” which was hard to argue at the time and even less so now.

O’Brien and the others are having a good run in mainstream outlets. Commentators like Eliot A. Cohen, Stephen Walt, and Matt Kroenig have also argued that concerns about a possible second Trump administration’s foreign policy are exaggerated. Outreach to the former president by international leaders, from Viktor Orbán to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the strong diplomatic presence on the Republican National Convention floor, conveys the impression that a second Trump term could be relatively conventional.

But it’s important to remember the reality of what Trump’s foreign policy actually was and actually did. And to recognize that nothing in the interim has changed for the better in his worldview. In a vastly more complex global landscape than when he was first president, a second Trump term could do real harm to America’s international economic, diplomatic and security interests.

At least initially, the Trump administration’s approach to foreign policy wasn’t just the product of an unorthodox president, it was also a response to an unsettled period of American history. As I have written elsewhere, by the time he was elected in 2016, the U.S. had spent 15 years consumed by the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the country was also undergoing significant political, economic and social polarization exacerbated by the lingering effects of the 2008 recession. Globally, U.S. dominance was being challenged by emerging middle powers as well as Russia and China.

Trump did have some successes on a number of fronts: burden-sharing improved in alliances, our involvement in the conflicts of the Middle East was significantly reduced, and the Doha agreement with the Taliban provided an exit strategy for the U.S. from Afghanistan. His policies on China had bipartisan support and the agreement between the U.S. and Mexico slowed migration flows into the United States. Trade agreements with Mexico, Canada, and South Korea were updated to reflect the transformation of the global economy. The diplomatic breakthrough of the Abraham Accords, between Israel and Arab states, lowered tensions in the Middle East, and the ISIS Caliphate was eliminated.

On the other side of the ledger, however, there were the serious negative consequences of the policies the Trump administration pursued.

On the economic front, the decision to drop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, which was the strategic counterweight to China’s expansion in the Asia-Pacific region, shook the confidence of our East Asian allies and reduced our influence in the region; the TPP’s successor excludes the United States as does the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which includes East Asia, Australia — and China. It is not surprising that Chinese exports to the region have soared. Trade frictions with some of our closest partners arose over the arbitrary imposition of tariffs. Negotiations on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union came to an end as concerns about protectionist America deepened, concerns which are very much alive about a second Trump presidency.

Trump administration policies also undermined our strategic rationale for working inside broader security collectives. This weakened commitments to the alliances that had kept the United States secure. Trump’s transactional approach to NATO and open questioning of the alliance’s Article 5 commitment to mutual defense lessened faith in America’s steadfastness. In East Asia, Trump’s insistence on greater burden-sharing with South Korea and Japan pushed the bilateral relationships near the breaking point. Allied concerns have been resurrected by the prospect of a second Trump administration.

The list goes on. A complex relationship with Mexico was reduced to one issue: immigration. Trump’s exploitation of Ukraine for domestic political gain in the U.S., and pulling out of arms control agreements with Russia, may have helped give Putin the impression that there would be no consequences for an invasion of Ukraine — which he subsequently launched. Abandoning the nuclear agreement with Iran in 2018 corroded any leverage the U.S. might have in Tehran: Iran is now considerably closer to building a bomb and has meddled with ever-greater intensity in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. In Afghanistan, Trump’s order to accelerate the complete withdrawal of all U.S. forces after he lost the 2020 election was not implemented by his military commanders. But it surprised allies, and almost certainly emboldened the Taliban as they prepared to take Kabul in 2021. And while the Abraham Accords were a game changer for Israel’s diplomatic ties in the broader Middle East, they did not directly address the plight of Palestinians, raising concerns about the future of the two-state solution, the cornerstone of U.S. policy on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Key allies in Europe and East Asia began to re-think whether close ties with the U.S. could be sustained and, with the possibility of Trump’s reelection, are adopting a wait-and-see approach. African and Latin American nations increasingly realized they factored even less in American foreign policy calculations than they had in prior administrations. The withdrawals from multilateral institutions diminished U.S. influence on climate change, human rights, nuclear proliferation, trade, and in mobilizing a response to Covid-19. Jan. 6 cast doubts on America’s status as the standard-bearer for world democracy.

At the end of his four years in office, Trump had frayed both America’s alliances and the international rules-based order that was still largely in place when he took office. Rather than look to the U.S. as the ultimate arbiter of a fairer global order, Washington was now seen by many countries as another great power to be balanced against its rivals. And, critically, America’s strategic adversaries saw opportunities they could now exploit.

In this context, to speak of Trump in the same vein as George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, as O’Brien does, seems absurd. O’Brien tries to argue that Russia did not invade Ukraine because of Trump; that Iran did not attack Israel because of Trump; that North Korea did not test nuclear weapons because of Trump. O’Brien suggests that China, Russia, Iran, and Mexican cartels only became serious concerns and a threat because of Biden’s weaknesses. To pretend these were not challenges before and during the Trump years seems a fanciful interpretation of what actually happened. For his part, McMaster offers a vigorous defense of Trump’s policy acumen. It doesn’t land.

Pompeo takes a different approach, stating, like O’Brien, that Trump “could reestablish peace through strength.” His suggestions for a second Trump administration, however, are largely already in place under Biden. He proposes to “rebuild ties with Saudi Arabia and work together against Iran” — efforts that are already well underway. He advocates imposing “real sanctions on Russia” — which is already subject to the broadest set ever levied on a major economy. He wants to “revitalize NATO” — which the less said about the better, given the undermining of the alliance under Trump. Pompeo also advances “a $500 billion lend-lease program for Ukraine” — when Trump’s vice presidential pick and surrogates like retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg have argued against assistance for Kyiv.

On the economy, Lighthizer proposes to build on Trump’s first administration by weakening the dollar and imposing a 10 percent tariff on all imports into the United States, which could have serious ramifications for both the American and global economies. On China, Trump’s advocates, including O’Brien and former State Department special representative Dan Negrea, pocket Biden’s already robust policies on China, and propose, among other things, cutting off all commercial ties with China, preparing for war in the Taiwan Strait, pursuing regime change in China and resuming nuclear tests.

Given the record of his first term, there is no need for a crystal ball to discern what a reelected President Trump’s priorities would be. He would return to the destructive, nationalist, inward-looking, transactional policy of his first administration — except he is far readier now to pursue it. A second Trump administration would also seek to completely politicize the security and foreign affairs agencies and departments, a process that was well underway in the time I served as senior adviser to Pompeo.

To be fair, O’Brien and company may genuinely believe the former president they served achieved great things — but we can’t let them fool the rest of us in this most consequential of presidential election years.

Politico

10. More than 700 current and former national security officials back Harris.

The 700 or so names and a letter addressed to the American people are at this link. https://www.nsl4a.org/nsl4a-announcements/nsl4a-endorsement-harris

It is quite a who's who.

The question is what will the American's in "flyover country" think of this? What will Americans who are not concerned with national security afraid think of these 700+ names? And then what will the partisan politicos on both sides do with these names?

More than 700 current and former national security officials back Harris.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/22/us/trump-harris-election?cbgrp=p&ngrp=mnp&pvid=F08B8E00-B635-4AA4-882B-7E504CD52819&referringSource=articleShare&smid=

Image

Vice President Kamala Harris received the endorsement of current and former national security officials on Sunday.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

More than 700 current and former national security leaders, as well as former military officials, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in a letter released on Sunday, arguing that only she had the temperament and values needed to serve as commander in chief.

The signatories of the letter, which was organized by the group National Security Leaders for America, included former secretaries of state and secretaries of defense, former ambassadors and retired generals. They argued that former President Donald J. Trump posed a threat to both national security and the United States’ democratic system.

Among the most prominent names were the former defense secretaries Chuck Hagel, a Republican who served under President Barack Obama; William Cohen, a Republican who served under President Bill Clinton; and William J. Perry, a Democrat who served under Mr. Clinton.

The former secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, and the former defense secretary Leon Panetta, also signed the letter, though their support for Ms. Harris was already clear.

The retired military leaders who signed included Rear Adm. Michael E. Smith, the president of the organization that released the letter, and Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who led the C.I.A. under President George W. Bush.

“This election is a choice between serious leadership and vengeful impulsiveness,” the letter said. “It is a choice between democracy and authoritarianism. Vice President Harris defends America’s democratic ideals, while former President Donald Trump endangers them.”

It continued: “We do not make such an assessment lightly. We are trained to make sober, rational decisions,” and added: “We know effective leadership requires in-depth knowledge, careful deliberation, understanding of your adversaries and empathy for those you lead. It requires listening to those with expertise and not firing them when they disagree with you.”

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said the signatories were “the same people who got our country into endless foreign wars and profited off of them while the American people suffered.”

11. Our Own Worst Enemies: The Violent Style in American Politics

Anyone who thinks political violence is justified cannot claim to be supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States. You cannot take part in an insurrection and claim to be supporting and defending the Constitution.

Our Own Worst Enemies

The Violent Style in American Politics

By Robert A. Pape

September 23, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Robert A. Pape · September 23, 2024

In under a decade, violence has become a shockingly regular feature of American political life. In 2017, a left-wing extremist shot and nearly killed Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and four other people. In 2021, a mass of right-wing insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to stop the Democratic president-elect, Joe Biden, from taking office. And in this year’s presidential campaign, there have, as of this writing, been two thwarted assassination attempts against Republican nominee Donald Trump, along with a torrent of threats directed at political figures of all stripes. Indeed, the election in November could well be not only the most consequential in modern U.S. history but also the most dangerous.

But for all the warranted dismay, the mounting frequency of such events should not have come as a surprise, for Americans or for observers around the world. As analysts have pointed out, there are many possible reasons for the surge in violence. Some experts have cited the steady weakening of critical democratic institutions and, relatedly, the antidemocratic tendencies of destitute and isolated white conservatives. Others have pointed to the radicalizing effects of partisan gerrymandering and polarization. Still more have highlighted social media and militias. Many analysts have blamed Trump.

Each of these factors is indeed helping foster contentious U.S. politics. But all this commentary overlooks the predominant structural dynamic driving the new era of violence. The principal danger to the United States is not any out-of-control technology or fringe militia group. It is not economic grievances run amok. It is not even Trump, who is as much a symptom of what ails the United States as he is a cause. Instead, the greatest source of danger comes from a cultural clash over the nature of the United States’ identity—one with profound implications for who gets to be a citizen. Its key actors are not isolated radicals but large numbers of ordinary Americans. According to new research carried out by my team at the University of Chicago, tens of millions of Democrats, Republicans, and independents believe that political violence is acceptable. Many of them hail from the middle and upper class, with nice homes and college educations.

The country’s fight over its national identity has multiple dimensions. But the most serious is demographic change. In 1990, 76 percent of the U.S. population identified as white. In 2023, the U.S. Census Bureau put that figure at a little over 58 percent. By 2035, the share is set to fall to 54 percent; a decade later, it will dip below 50 percent. These changes have led to rising anger among conservatives, many of whom see increased ethnic diversity as an existential threat to their way of life. These voters have embraced Trump and his nationalist movement, which promise to stop such change in its tracks. Trump’s exclusionary policies and rhetoric have, in turn, prompted a ferocious backlash from liberals, who embrace demographic change—or who at least fear that conservative success will cost Americans hard-won freedoms.

The anger on both sides is in keeping with historical precedents. Scholars have long understood that social change and demographic shifts are a potent catalyst for violence. And as elsewhere, the turn toward force in the United States is fundamentally populist in nature. The millions of Americans who support political violence have concluded that their country’s elites are so thoroughly corrupt and that their democracy is so completely broken that riots, political assassinations, and coercive attacks are acceptable and even necessary to bring about the supposedly genuine democracy that people deserve. This kind of thinking is endemic to all kinds of populist movements, in which people angrily latch on to a political leader, party, or movement to overcome the so-called establishment.

Unfortunately, violent populism is likely to grow more pronounced in the years ahead. Throughout history, societies in which large numbers of people support political violence are much more likely to experience unrest. There is no way to stop the United States’ demographic shift, and even if there were, doing so would be a mistake: the country’s diversity makes it stronger. The United States may not be on the precipice of a full-scale civil war, as some have predicted. But the country is entering an era of intense deadly conflict—one replete with politically motivated riots, attacks against minorities, and even assassinations.

DANGER ZONE

Throughout U.S. history, Americans have experienced several waves of violent populism. In the early 1920s, following a massive wave of Catholic immigration to the United States, millions of people signed up to join the nativist and white supremacist Ku Klux Klan. The KKK and its allies then carried out repeated attacks against Black people, Jews, and Catholics. During the 1960s and 1970s, the United States had to contend with major political assassinations and large urban riots, many of them conducted by right-wing extremists and left-wing terrorist groups such as the Weather Underground. The violence of this era was also spurred on by social issues, including the fight to offer Black Americans equal rights, and by growing dissatisfaction with the war in Vietnam.

Still, these eras were exceptions, not the rule. For most of the country’s history, political violence has been relegated to the fringes of society. During the 1980s, the 1990s, and the first decade of this century, the country experienced a smattering of domestic terrorist incidents—most famously the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City. People affiliated with the far-left Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front also hit farms and car dealerships. But strikes were few and far between. Aside from the Oklahoma City attack, they rarely dealt substantial damage. The real threat was foreign terrorism, as September 11 made painfully clear.

Today, however, domestic political violence is much more frequent. Statistics collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security show that domestic terrorism incidents increased by 357 percent between 2013 and 2021. According to a study by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, which I direct, more than 250 people have been prosecuted for threatening nearly 200 of the country’s 1,633 federal legislative, executive, and judicial officials from 2001 to 2023. The average number of these threats increased by 400 percent from 2017 to 2023, from four threats a year to just over 20 threats a year.

Domestic terrorism has occurred on both the left and the right. Although antigovernment and white supremacist extremists conducted 49 percent of all attacks and plots in 2021, anarchists, antifascists, and all kinds of left-wing extremists carried out 40 percent of FBI-registered incidents that year (up from 23 percent in 2020). Democratic and Republican members of Congress have been attacked almost equally since 2017.

Public support for political violence is not limited to the fringe.

Violent populism’s bipartisan nature is even more apparent when one examines instances of collective political violence. After the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in 2020, over 15 million people took to the streets to protest racism and police brutality. Between seven and ten percent of these protests devolved into large-scale riots against police and businesses in the downtown areas of Chicago, Minneapolis, New York City, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, and over 100 other American cities—the most protracted series of political riots since the 1960s. Six months later came the January 6 ransacking of the Capitol. As part of it, pro-Trump supporters brought a noose to the surrounding grounds and chanted “Hang Mike Pence” (then vice president) and hunted for U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And in late 2023 through June 2024, protesters bent on ending Israel’s war in Gaza stormed and seized campus buildings and physically assaulted students. The country also witnessed over 1,000 separate incidents of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in just nine months.

These numbers are, by themselves, alarming. But what is even more concerning is the broad backing violent actors appear to have. According to a January 2024 survey conducted by my team along with NORC, a prominent polling organization at the University of Chicago, over 15 percent of Americans—12 percent of Democrats, 15 percent of independents, and 19 percent of Republicans—agree that the “use of force is justified to ensure members of Congress and other government officials do the right thing.” In our more recent June survey, ten percent of respondents (a number that extrapolates to 26 million American adults) agreed that “the use of force is justified to prevent Donald Trump from being president.” Over 30 percent of these people own guns. Twenty percent think that when police are violently attacked, it is because they deserve it. Meanwhile, seven percent of respondents (equating to 18 million American adults) support the use of force to restore Trump to the presidency. This group has even more dangerous capabilities: 50 percent own guns, 40 percent think “people who stormed the U.S. Capitol are patriots,” and 25 percent either belong to a militia or know a militia member.

These numbers alone make it clear that public support for political violence is not limited to the fringe. But to test just how mainstream support for violence runs, my team collected data on respondents’ backgrounds. It found that over 80 percent of the people who back using force to either prevent or facilitate Trump’s election live in metropolitan areas. Thirty-nine percent have had at least some kind of college education. Even on the political right, over 80 percent live in metropolitan areas and 38 percent have at least some college experience. In other words, they are broadly representative of the U.S. population. They cannot be derided as a bunch of yokels.

FEAR AND LOATHING

It is, of course, one thing for people to support political violence and quite another for them to carry out an attack. But they do not need to become violent themselves in order to foster strife. As scholars have long known, public support for political violence encourages volatile people—those who may actually use force—to act on their worst impulses. The political climate may prompt such people to think their attacks are serving some greater good, or even that they will be glorified as warriors.

In fact, popular support for violence is one of the best predictors of bloodshed. Before The Troubles, in the second half of the twentieth century, Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland both grew much more supportive of using force to change the region’s political arrangement. In Spain, support for violence went up before the Basque nationalist Euskadi Ta Askatasuna movement began an assassination campaign against the country’s authoritarian government during the same era. And West Germans were increasingly supportive of attacks before the Baader-Meinhof Gang (also known as the Red Army Faction) conducted a series of bombings and assassinations in the 1970s.

Unfortunately, the U.S. population may well become even more tolerant of political violence in the years ahead. According to our June survey, the Americans most opposed to violent populism are those over the age of 59. They are three times less likely to support violence to restore Trump to the presidency than those between the ages of 30 and 59. Their pacifying effect will therefore wane with time, especially if the next generations of young people remain as supportive of violence as their predecessors are. Although it is possible that today’s youth will grow more opposed to violence as they age, it is far from guaranteed. Time does not inherently deradicalize. About ten percent of those who assaulted the Capitol, after all, were 60 years old or older.

But perhaps the main reason to expect more political violence has to do with a different type of demography: race. The United States is set to transition from a white-majority to white-minority society by 2045. That transition will take place in all 50 states, and it will be especially pronounced in the younger portion of the population. It will also be visible in politics. Indeed, it already is. Today, a quarter of House and Senate members identify as nonwhite, making them the most diverse group of representatives in American history.

A demonstration in the aftermath the death George Floyd, Seattle, Washington, June 2020

Lindsey Wasson / Reuters

The United States’ historic transition from a white-majority to a genuinely multiracial democracy is producing social changes with profound political implications. This power shift in politics, media, and major business and community organizations is the taproot of rising cultural backlash among conservatives—epitomized by Trump and his movement. The shift is, therefore, also the basis for counterreactions among liberals both hopeful for change and fearful that conservative success will obstruct progress, reverse economic and social gains, and establish a political system that does not represent everyone. Both sides’ fears do not have to accord with reality to fuel attacks. Among conservatives and liberals alike, the consequences of political change need only exist in peoples’ minds.

The fact that abstract demographic shifts can lead to panic may be jarring, but it should not come as a surprise. Throughout history, social and demographic change have produced grievances (real and imagined), tensions, and political unrest. As the comparative political scientist Donald Horowitz wrote, when “majorities within a country become minorities . . . anxiety flows from a diffuse danger of exaggerated dimensions.” People begin to fear they will come under siege in their own homes and be dominated by strangers. Such concerns drove violence in Brazil, Lebanon, the Balkans, and parts of the former Soviet Union, among numerous other states.

Americans, particularly liberal ones, may fancy themselves as tolerant enough to avoid acting on ethnic biases. But this pattern of thinking afflicts them just as much as it does their peers elsewhere. In separate experimental studies among Americans and Canadians, the psychologists Robert Outten, Jennifer Richeson, and Maureen Craig reported that exposure to information about white demographic decline increased white sympathy for other whites and increased feelings of fear and anger toward minorities. These sentiments were most pronounced among white conservatives, yet they were evident to a small degree among whites who identify as liberal, as well. Research has also shown that the United States’ demographic shift accounts for the rapid rise of Trump in 2015 and 2016. (During the 2016 presidential campaign, both Trump and the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, clashed over issues tied to race, gender, and cultural identity far more than did previous presidential candidates.) Similarly, studies have illustrated that nationalist and multicultural media such as Fox News, Newsmax, and MSNBC have become far more popular as U.S. demographics change. And according to multiple scholars, white American racial prejudice and solidarity have gone up as the share of Americans who are white has gone down.

My team’s research shows that anger about diversity also directly predicts support for violence. According to the January 2024 study, Americans who believe that “the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World”—the so-called great replacement theory—are six times more likely to support using force to restore Trump to the presidency. Americans who believe in the great replacement are also five times more likely to think that “people who stormed the Capitol on January 6 were patriots.” They are three times more likely to either belong to a right-wing militia or know someone who does.

There is no perfect parallel to the great replacement on the left. But the January study did ask respondents whether they believe “America is a systemically racist country against nonwhite people and has always been.” People who answered in the affirmative were roughly two times more likely to support using force to stop Trump than were those who did not. These respondents were also four times more likely to believe that “when the police are attacked, it is because they deserve it.” They were one and a half times more likely to think “the use of force is justified to restore the federal right to abortion.”

ROUGH RIDE

These findings do not mean the United States is headed for a classic ethnic conflict, as happened in Northern Ireland and Bosnia. After all, many white people believe the United States suffers from systemic racism and want to end it. There are Asian, Black, and Hispanic Trump supporters. American political violence is unlikely to manifest in the form of civil war, at least understood as two rival armies standing toe to toe on battlefields or as hundreds of thousands of armed insurgents roaming the country. Such wars are more likely when a state’s political, social, economic, and geographic cleavages generally converge so that political parties, economic classes, and geographic areas all broadly align. And although the overlap between them is increasing, the United States’ racial, economic, social, and geographic factors remain largely divergent. There are Democrats and Republicans in pockets throughout the country, in different economic classes, and in different ethnic groups.

To see why convergence matters, compare the circumstances in the United States today with those in Bosnia in the 1990s. The collapse and fragmentation of the Yugoslav state coincided with growing social, economic, and ultimately political cleavages between Albanians, Croats, and Serbs, as well as with major economic problems. Together, these forces led to a surge in nationalist tensions that produced warfare and mass ethnic violence against civilians. The United States, by contrast, is not on the verge of government collapse. Its economy remains strong.

Although the most fantastical forms of violence may not come to pass, Americans must be prepared for an extraordinary period of unrest. Their country will probably experience years of serious political assassination attempts, political riots, and other instances of collective, group, and individual violence. There could be new militia groups, violence over numerous issues in cities and on college campuses, and outbursts related to elections. Such attacks could even break elements of the American political system, or at least yield institutional changes. Political violence, for example, may lead to serious delays in counting and certifying votes in future elections. It could push U.S. politics in an increasingly autocratic direction as Americans become less confident that elections truly reflect the will of the people and become more open to strongman alternatives. It could also pressure Washington to grant states more autonomy over social and cultural matters. The Supreme Court has already devolved questions of abortion rights to states.

The main point of contestation will, naturally, be who gets to be an American and what rights U.S. citizenship confers. The 2024 election has been a stark illustration of this fact—a battle between the strongly nativist Trump and the Democrat Kamala Harris, a progressive, biracial woman. It has featured radical, determined minorities who support violence to get Trump into office and those who support violence to stop it.

Unlike Trump, Democratic Party leaders have shown little willingness to mobilize progressives to embrace violence in response to electoral losses. But the left is still capable of responding virulently to outcomes it dislikes. If Washington undertakes a high-profile effort to arrest, detain, and deport massive numbers of illegal immigrants, radicals could rally to their defense, including by staging mass protests that may turn violent, and then not back down. They may be especially likely to act if the government sends federal or federally deputized armed agents into so-called sanctuary cities—cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration officers. After the Department of Homeland Security sent agents to arrest, detain, and prosecute protesters in Portland, Oregon, in July 2020, demonstrators confronted agents with wooden shields and other objects, breaking through barricades and assaulting police stations.

OUT OF MANY

To avert an era of politically motivated riots and attacks, Americans will need to find some common ground on race and immigration. This will be extremely difficult. Race and ethnicity are social constructs, so activists and leaders can try to help immigrants quickly integrate into U.S. society and to persuade white Americans that they have much in common with their nonwhite counterparts. But this process is unlikely to work fast enough to avoid an era of violent populism. Group boundaries and social identities may not be set in stone, but they are hardly putty. It typically requires generations for new immigrant groups to integrate and for white people to see them as no different from themselves. It took more than a century after Irish immigrants began flooding the United States for the country to elect its first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy.

Perhaps the United States can paper over these divisions with strong economic growth. Americans, after all, routinely rank the economy as the most important issue. But if history is any guide, expanding gross national product is also unlikely to be a panacea. The 1920s—when the Ku Klux Klan exploded in membership—is also known as the Roaring Twenties, as the United States economy grew at an average of over four percent each year. Total wealth in the United States more than doubled from 1920 to 1929. Similarly, the violence and instability of the 1960s occurred when U.S. economic growth averaged five percent annually. In both eras, the violence did not stop until questions of identity were decisively resolved. In the 1920s, that meant victory for the nationalists: Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924, which effectively closed the United States’ borders. Even then, anti-Black violence continued. That did not plummet until federal legislation in the 1960s put a stop to legal segregation and discrimination, handing victory to progressives. The government also repressed organized violent groups, which lost much of their popular support and crumbled rather than resurged. Unrest still proceeded, on and off, until the United States stopped conscripting men to fight in Vietnam.

Today, a hard end to immigration would not resolve America’s challenges. Even closing the U.S. borders entirely would merely slow the process of whites becoming a minority by roughly a decade. Such a solution would also be unacceptable: liberals are right that a truly multiracial democracy would be good for the country. It will most obviously be good for minority groups, who deserve equal treatment. But white Americans have as much to gain as others from a future in which everyone is judged by their character and not their skin color. There is plenty to celebrate about the country becoming a more perfect union.

Americans must be prepared for an extraordinary period of unrest.

Still, less draconian immigration policies could reduce tensions. Policymakers should find bipartisan ways to decrease illegal immigration, aiming to at least return to the levels under the Obama administration. That means dedicating considerable resources to enforcing current laws and keeping the nation’s borders secure. It also means maintaining sensible pathways to citizenship for the vast majority of immigrants. Adopting such policies would put the White House and Congress on better footing by showing that it is possible to effectively balance the country’s economic needs, social responsibilities, safety, and political concerns. Better immigration rules would also build good faith and illustrate that politicians can pursue long-term solutions to the United States’ problems.

Ultimately, Americans should stay hopeful. Most of them, after all, continue to abhor political violence—even if a significant minority now support it. According to the June survey, 70 percent of Republicans oppose political violence and want leaders to condemn its use. So do over 80 percent of Democrats. Elected officials at all levels of government should listen to their constituents and curtail incendiary rhetoric. Trump, of course, shows few signs of doing so. But the broad condemnation of political violence by both Democrats and Republicans in the aftermath of the attempts on his life has set an important precedent that all other leaders can and should emulate.

There are other reasons to believe that the Republican Party’s leaders might, eventually, embrace a less hostile line. The nature of the U.S. political system can sometimes encourage candidates in primaries to take radical positions in order to appeal to the base, but because the United States has just two viable parties, their candidates perform best in general elections when they reach out to multiple groups. In recent years, the Republican Party has been able to win some elections without moderating. Its candidates would surely have more success, however, if they decided to be more inclusive—a lesson that, eventually, its leaders could accept. Ultimately, the two-party system is one of the United States’ great shock absorbers for social change. It may lead to a soft landing as the country transitions to a multiracial democracy.

Yet for now, the country’s fever is unlikely to break. Support for political violence has gone mainstream. The chief reason—demographic change—is not going away. And there is no easy or just way to reconcile conservatives’ and liberals’ visions. Political trends do not move in straight lines, and predicting the future can be a fool’s errand. But it is safe to say that the United States has a rough road ahead.

ROBERT A. PAPE is Professor of Political Science and Director of the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats.

Foreign Affairs · by Robert A. Pape · September 23, 2024

12. The Surprising Reality of Political Violence in America

I was surprised to read in the NY Times that support for political violence may not be on the rise.

But I will state my strong belief again that anyone who thinks political violence is justified is not supporting and defending our Constitution.

Excerpts:

But some common assumptions about political violence in America are not reinforced by recent data, according to several new studies.

Instances of extremist violence have actually declined in recent years by some key measures. Although some Americans continue to say they approve of political violence, support for the most serious types of violence has not increased amid election-related tensions this year.

And neither apocalyptic political rhetoric nor extraordinary events over the past few years have produced eruptions of political violence of the sort that many feared would become more commonplace after the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In short, even amid an explosive political climate and some high-profile incidents, politics may not be becoming broadly more violent.

The Surprising Reality of Political Violence in America

After two apparent assassination attempts against Donald J. Trump, it’s easy to think our politics are becoming more violent. The research is not so clear.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/22/us/politics/political-violence.html?cbgrp=p&ngrp=mnp&pvid=310953E3-C904-4DD9-9CDE-9E35F5924A2A&referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm

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The site of former President Donald J. Trump’s rally in Butler, Pa., in July, where a gunman attempted to assassinate him. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

By Charles Homans

Sept. 22, 2024

When Donald J. Trump was nearly assassinated in Pennsylvania in July, a Dartmouth political scientist named Sean Westwood happened to be in the middle of a research project asking Americans about political violence.

At the time, many feared that the shooting would lead to a growing appetite for more violence.

But Mr. Westwood and his colleagues found the opposite. In the weeks after the attack, Americans’ support for partisan violence, and murder specifically, diminished — and fell most sharply among Republicans who identify with Mr. Trump.

Americans are still exceptionally hostile about people who disagree with them on politics, but “an assassination attempt did not inflame the tensions,” the authors write in a forthcoming paper in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Two unsuccessful attempts on Mr. Trump’s life, a daily barrage of violent threats against public officials of all stripes and finger-pointing from both parties have fueled the impression that the country’s politics are spinning out of control.

But some common assumptions about political violence in America are not reinforced by recent data, according to several new studies.

Instances of extremist violence have actually declined in recent years by some key measures. Although some Americans continue to say they approve of political violence, support for the most serious types of violence has not increased amid election-related tensions this year.

And neither apocalyptic political rhetoric nor extraordinary events over the past few years have produced eruptions of political violence of the sort that many feared would become more commonplace after the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In short, even amid an explosive political climate and some high-profile incidents, politics may not be becoming broadly more violent.

“We should be worried about incidents of political violence, but so far we haven’t seen evidence that it’s leading to a broader trend,” Mr. Westwood said.

Such findings come with many caveats. Political violence in the United States remains rare, leaving relatively few data points to study. Trend lines can vary widely depending on the how you define violence and what questions you try to answer.

And often the most high-profile incidents don’t match the broad trends. A Reuters investigation this year found that a substantial increase in threats against federal judges has followed Mr. Trump’s public criticism of the judiciary since 2020. But some of the most serious known threats against Supreme Court justices in recent years have targeted members of the court’s conservative majority.

In the United States as in other countries, recorded acts of right-wing political violence have been deadlier than left-wing violence. But Mr. Trump, not President Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, has been the target of two apparent assassination attempts this summer.

Those attempts are also a stark reminder that such nation-transforming tragedies do not require many people — or even more than one.

A tiny percentage of Americans report in surveys that they would be willing to commit acts of political violence themselves. But in a country with permissive gun laws, that still means that “on any given day, there are thousands of people walking the streets who are openly armed and support committing political violence,” said Garen Wintemute, an emergency physician who leads the Violence Prevention Research Program at University of California, Davis.

“That’s part of the fabric of the country at this moment,” he said.

‘A Lot of Latent Risk’

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A U.S. Secret Service agent before Mr. Trump’s news conference at the Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., last week.Credit...Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times

From the first days of his 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump’s politics have been laced with references to violence, and political violence became more prevalent during his candidacy and his presidency than it had been for decades in the United States. Armed militant organizations and street-fighting groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys aligned themselves with a mainstream politician, Mr. Trump, and a major party, the G.O.P., in a way they hadn’t before — a trend that reached an explosive climax at the Jan. 6 riot.

Nearly four years later, the language of violence and national catastrophe has in many ways only intensified. In his campaign speeches, Mr. Trump has described his political enemies as “vermin,” promising “retribution” on behalf of his supporters. He has summoned images of a country in the middle of a violent overthrow by Democrats, criminals and undocumented immigrants and failed by treasonous leaders.

2024 Election: Live Updates

Updated Sept. 23, 2024, 8:04 a.m. ET2 hours ago

This, and Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, led Mr. Biden to declare the former president and Mr. Trump and his political movement to be “semi-fascism” and an “assault on democracy, statements Mr. Trump claimed inspired the attempts on his life.

But instances of political violence involving extremists have declined steadily since 2020, and have grown increasingly removed from partisan conflicts, according to an analysis published this week by Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a data-mapping project that tracks political violence and protests around the world.

The violent activity that persists is increasingly attributed to white supremacist organizations rather than more Trump-aligned groups like the Proud Boys, who have been diminished following the prosecution of their leaders for Jan. 6.

“Despite the tumultuous, volatile nature of what’s been going on politically this year,” Kieran Doyle, the North American research manager for ACLED, said, “we don’t see a corresponding wave of activity from those kinds of groups.”

Other trends are not as promising.Threats against local officials for reasons that are often at least broadly political have declined only slightly since 2022, according to data gathered earlier this year for the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs.

Such threats — which 16 percent of local officials surveyed recently reported having received — suggest that some of the energy previously directed into organized public violence may be taking new, less visible and less easily prosecutable forms.

“There is still just a lot of latent risk out there,” Shannon Hiller, the initiative’s executive director, said. “If you have a leader like the former president who has shown himself willing to activate some of that risk, that’s part of what’s so concerning about this moment.”

A Drop in Public Support

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Supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., last week.Credit...Emily Elconin for The New York Times

A growing share of Americans say they view rival partisans as a threat to the country or even as inhuman. But a bitterly contested election has not led to an increase in support for the most serious forms of political violence this year, as happened in 2022, according to new results released this week from an ongoing study by Dr. Wintemute’s program.

“I would have bet money that there would have been more support for political violence in principle in this election year,” Dr. Wintemute said. “And there’s nothing.”

Dr. Wintemute suggested the ebbing support could reflect the shadow of the Jan. 6 prosecutions. “The threat of consequences for criminal actions can be a deterrent,” he said, “and those prosecutions made clear it’s not just a theoretical threat.”

The attack and its aftermath, he said, also “brought us up close to how ugly it gets when violence is involved. We aspire to a politics with something more than ugliness.”

Mr. Westwood and his colleagues found the first assassination attempt had a similar effect. After the shooting, in a national survey Republicans’ support for murder of political opponents fell from 2 percent to 0.3 percent.

The change was more dramatic still among people who identify as “MAGA Republicans,” whose support fell from 3.5 percent to 0.5 percent. There was a slight but statistically insignificant decline among Democrats, 1.5 percent of whom say they support partisan murder.

Assassins as Outliers

The two assassination attempts targeting Mr. Trump since July complicate the picture. People who try to assassinate a president are notoriously difficult to fit into prevailing trends in political violence. They are few in number and often idiosyncratic in their motives, have a history of mental illness, or both.

“There is something ideological there — there’s a kernel of something,” said Jon Lewis, a research fellow in the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. “But there’s also clearly a very deranged, twisted, incoherent worldview.”

The first Trump gunman, Thomas Crooks, left behind little indication of a particular animus toward the former president and had evidently researched the possibility of assassinating Mr. Biden, too. The man accused in an apparent second attempt, Ryan W. Routh, appears to have been far more politically engaged: a one-time supporter of Mr. Trump who later turned against him, describing the former president as an “idiot” in a self-published e-book and calling the Jan. 6 attack a “catastrophe.” On his since-removed X account, he wrote in April: “DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose.” The phrase echoed language that Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris and other Democrats have used in recent years.

But Mr. Routh’s book is mostly preoccupied with foreign policy and is critical of both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden on that score. Its sole direct mention of assassinating Mr. Trump argues that doing so would be justified by his reversal of the Iran nuclear deal, an issue that has been brought up by Mr. Trump more often than by Democrats during the campaign.

Mr. Doyle noted that one of the most important aspects of the assassination attempts was what did not happen in their wake. In 2020, political violence compounded over the course of anti-lockdown protests, police clashes and arson during racial justice protests, vigilante shootings and street brawls before reaching its climax at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

The same has not happened over the last two years, despite an abundance of potential flash points: the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling, Mr. Trump’s indictments and his felony conviction, months of protests over the war in Gaza and, most recently, the assassination attempts.

“I think a lot of people last year, if they heard Trump was going to be convicted on felony charges, would have predicted a wave of response, both in terms of popular demonstrations and participation of extremist groups,” he said. “It’s interesting that hasn’t been what we’ve seen, despite there being many moments that seem like they fit the bill for such an opportunity.”

One explanation, Mr. Doyle suggested, was the obvious one: 2024 has lacked the very particular conditions, like the pandemic and an ongoing Trump presidency, that made 2020 what it was. “The situation this year is different,” he said.

Still, this intense political moment is far from over. The violence researchers warned that there are more potential triggers ahead, with the final weeks of campaigning, Election Day and the inauguration of a new president.

“It’s not wise to encourage anything but vigilance,” Mr. Doyle said.

Charles Homans is a reporter for The Times and The Times Magazine, covering national politics. More about Charles Homans

13. Drone, Counterdrone, Counter-Counterdrone: Winning the Unmanned Platform Innovation Cycle

Conclusion:

Drone innovation—like all military innovation—has been, is, and will be a continuous iteration between offensive and defensive innovation. The balance between US drones and adversary countermeasures will influence how future conflicts play out and US decision-makers must be sure US drones can complete their missions in nonpermissive environments. The United States must break the drone shield, and ensure it stays broken.

Drone, Counterdrone, Counter-Counterdrone: Winning the Unmanned Platform Innovation Cycle - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Zachary Kallenborn, Marcel Plichta · September 23, 2024

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Shooting down drones is now an international pastime. In Ukraine, Russia, Sudan, Myanmar, and the Red Sea, militaries are scrambling to get their hands on counterdrone systems. In June, the US Navy issued a call for immediate kinetic counterdrone solutions and the UK is racing to have a high-energy laser operational as soon as possible. Market analysis estimates the global counterdrone market could reach $10.56 billion by 2030.

Global militaries, manufacturers, and pilots are not standing idly by.

Drone counter-countermeasures are a critical part of the competition between drone offense and defense. Today’s drones can defeat countermeasures through a broad range of technologies and tactics. Drones might fly nap-of-the-earth to avoid detection, adopt greater autonomy to reduce the effects of jamming, fly in mass to overwhelm defenses, incorporate onboard defenses like antiradiation missiles, and more. Our new Joint Force Quarterly article, “Breaking the Drone Shield,” describes and analyzes eleven such counter-countermeasures.

Drone warfare is best understood as a call-and-response innovation cycle, with each side responding to the other’s innovation. Whether drone offense or defense dominates will vary based on advancements in technology, the degree to which adversaries adopt those technologies, as well as supporting doctrine, organization, training, leadership, personnel, and facilities. In the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, drones gave Azerbaijan a significant military advantage because Armenia had limited defenses. Meanwhile, US forces in the Middle East are continually bombarded with low-cost drones from various terrorist and insurgent groups. Attackers are improving their drones too—Iran’s new jet-powered Shahed-238, for instance, boasts increased speed, albeit with a higher cost—and doing so more and more quickly. This accelerating cycle of innovation may also manifest differently across domains as drones are increasingly used on land, at sea, and beneath the waves.

While much focus has been given to drones and drone countermeasures, little analysis has looked at the tactical and strategic implications of counter-countermeasures. US policymakers must correct this oversight to ensure US forces are equipped with the tools they need in an increasingly drone-saturated global operational environment. Counter-countermeasures should be based on a detailed understanding of adversary countermeasures because to break drone defenses, you first must know what defenses you’re breaking.

Innovation and Counterinnovation

There are more ways than ever to defeat a drone—from radiofrequency and navigation system jamming to surface-to-air missiles, air defense guns, and plain old shotguns. RUSI estimated in 2023 that Ukraine was losing ten thousand drones per month, and this drone expenditure is likely matched on the Russian side of the ledger. For all the methods of downing drones, none is perfect. Drone countermeasures come with limitations and vulnerabilities that drone manufacturers can exploit. Even though the survivability of drones will define their utility in conflict, the subject receives scant attention from commentators.

Ukraine and Russia have used traditional air defenses to counter drones throughout the conflict. These have the advantage of already being fielded and understood by most militaries. Even supposedly obsolete air defense systems are finding a second life in a counterdrone role, such as the Gepard antiaircraft guns, whose production ended in 1980. The drawback is that many traditional air defense systems are not economical to use against small drones, particularly at range. Medium- and long-range air defense systems, like the Patriot, NASAMS, or S-400, are an order of magnitude more expensive to operate and resupply than all but the most expensive drones. Newer kinetic systems, like the L3 VAMPIRE, are less expensive but lack range, meaning militaries would have to procure and operate many of them to cover the same area as more advanced platforms. Attackers can turn these weaknesses to advantage. Russia’s continual bombardment of Ukraine’s infrastructure using mass drone attacks forces Ukrainian defenders to expend expensive magazines on low-value drones and keeps air defenses away from the front line to protect the rear. Even when Ukraine shoots down large percentages of incoming drones, civilians still feel the impact.

Naturally, both sides have sought more affordable, sustainable options like directed energy. Drones usually operate with either a wireless link to the operator and a link to a global navigation satellite system. Jamming or spoofing impedes the drone’s mission. These systems have the advantage of being low-cost, requiring little more than the power necessary to supply the jamming electromagnetic waves. Both sides in the war kicked off by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are slapping jammers on everything they can, including Russia’s infamous “turtle tank.”

The defensive emphasis on jamming resulted in an offensive emphasis on technologies and the techniques and tactics to counter them. Both Ukraine and Russia have been and are working to incorporate artificial intelligence, autonomy, and electronic defense. Basic countermeasures like frequency hopping on drone control systems have become commonplace. Both sides of the war in Ukraine began incorporating terminal guidance systems, in which drone pilots identify a target, and the drone matches the images or video it sees with the operator-selected target to make sure the drone is on target even if the connection is lost. Increasingly, Ukraine and Russia are also focusing on navigation systems to accommodate temporary losses in satellite navigation signal, such as inertial navigation units and terrain mapping.

Of course, it is not necessary to wait until drones are in the air to counter them. Militaries are also pursuing offensive antiair operations. Large numbers of drones are stored or placed on airfields and often require numerous operators and support staff. Striking the drones or their operators on the ground reduces the pressure on counterdrone operations by eliminating threats before they emerge. In April Ukraine used a light aircraft converted into a drone to strike a facility where Russia was manufacturing a variant of the Shahed-136 for use against Ukraine’s cities. A few months earlier in January, the United States struck twenty-eight locations in Yemen affiliated with the Houthi rebels’ missile and drone program, including munitions depots, launching systems, and production facilities. Striking drones on the ground or the factories that produce them will prove to be a key part of counterdrone operations as militaries grow dependent on steady flows of drones to the front lines. Of course, this may create unexpected escalation risks if those facilities are located near population centers or other critical assets.

The Future Drone Fight

The back-and-forth between innovation and counterinnovation in drone warfare can be expected to evolve in new ways. Currently, focus is on two technological developments: directed-energy weapons and autonomy. Neither is immune to counterinnovation. New drone defenses like high-energy weapons will incentivize the creation of new measures to minimize their impact or target those systems. Autonomy will also force defenders to consider what systems to use and how to exploit autonomous systems for their own ends. Each will be discussed in turn.

The Department of Defense is quite interested in directed-energy weapons like high-energy lasers and high-powered microwaves as the future of drone defense. In April, the Army announced it had sent two such laser systems abroad to protect US troops. Lasers and microwaves promise to down drones at very low per-shot cost and reduce the risk of collateral damage by not intercepting the drones kinetically. Microwaves have the added advantage of a large area of effect that can knock down several drones at once, which will be useful as the scale of drone attacks increases and actors field drone swarms.

However, directed energy is no panacea. Lasers and microwaves come with trade-offs that create opportunities for adaptive tactics, techniques, and procedures. A significant weakness with both kinds of systems is that the effective range is generally short. Although the shorter range might be fine for point defense of strategic targets, the value may be limited for area defense. In addition, lasers typically require several seconds on target to create harm, and particulates in the air like rain or smoke can disrupt that. For example, American forces that tested a laser mounted on a Stryker found that the system struggled to function on a moving vehicle in tough conditions. To exploit these weaknesses, attackers might deploy drones during rainy or foggy weather, relying on the higher environmental hardiness of their drones. Although bad weather might also inhibit visual-based navigation and targeting systems on the drone, that may not matter much for static targets with known locations. The Office of Naval Research has several lines of research aimed at countering directed-energy weapons, including material hardening. Likewise, future antiradiation missiles may have seekers able to target directed-energy systems. That could be a big challenge. Although lasers and microwaves have low cost per shot, they often have high cost per system: the US Army contracted Epirus for four prototype microwaves for $66.1 million, or approximately $16.5 million per unit. If an adversary can affordably target and destroy those systems, the low-cost advantage may turn into a high-cost risk. Plus, directed energy often requires significant power, which may be disrupted or depleted. An attacker might use cheap decoys of plywood and foam plastic to burn through the system’s stored power, before launching a larger attack.

On the other hand, autonomy presents its own set of challenges and opportunities. The Department of Defense is investing heavily in building autonomous drones, and Ukraine is reportedly working on machine-vision and terrain-mapping solutions to defeat Russia’s extensive array of jammers. As autonomous drones become more ubiquitous and reliable, counterdrone methods like jamming might have less utility. Autonomy also opens new avenues for hackers or other actors to manipulate drones for nefarious ends. For instance, several years ago Chinese researchers tricked a Tesla autopilot into steering the car into the oncoming traffic lane. The case raises the possibility that hackers could defeat or confuse autonomous systems into crashing, not recognizing a target, or even redirecting against its operators. As militaries adopt true drone swarms capable of autonomous communication the risk of interference will grow. The communication and collaboration necessary to create a true drone swarm may also create an opportunity for defenders to trick the whole swarm in such a way that errors propagate to every individual drone. More autonomous drones means more potential opportunities for failure as defenders learn to find and exploit the weakest link.

For defenders, autonomy might create dilemmas around incentives to shift to kinetic solutions, especially for homeland defense and security. Law enforcement and homeland security officials often rely on various jamming systems, including questionably effective handheld jammers. However, if drones rely on autonomous navigation, command, and control systems, then defenders will likely be forced to use physical effectors to shoot down or capture them. Although physical effectors vary in their risks from nets to surface-to-air missiles, the potential risk to bystanders can be expected to increase. If a major political leader were giving a speech and a potentially hostile drone showed up, would the Secret Service shoot it down over a crowd? Of course, the nuance is that even autonomous drones may differ in their immunity to jamming, as certain modern drones have automatic, difficult-to-disrupt return-to-home functions if the drone loses connection to its controller. But older, future, and do-it-yourself models may not have the same restrictions.

The Way Forward

Policymakers need to adapt to the back-and-forth evolution between drone offense and defense. In some contexts, drone offense might have the advantage while countermeasures are being developed, while in others effective countermeasures may blunt the impact of drones. That balance will vary in different locations, because actors will naturally differ in their access to various drone and counterdrone technologies and support capabilities. How domestic law enforcement protects airports and sporting events from drones will differ from how the military protects overseas bases.

To respond to—and get ahead of—the drone and counterdrone innovation cycle, American policymakers should consider three broad recommendations:

First, understand the adversary. Intelligence and defense officials study adversary drones intently, but they should give equal scrutiny to the US ability to down drones, and how quickly both sides of the equation are evolving. Close attention should also be given to nonstate actors, as insurgents, terrorists, and organized crime groups are also seeking to reduce the impact of drones on their operations. Simple jammers are often not difficult to make with off-the-shelf components, and are available commercially in some regions. Examining how adversaries conduct counterdrone operations should inform American drone development. That means investing in and expanding enabling capabilities like drone exploitation and forensics to quickly and effectively collect relevant information from downed adversary drones. Intelligence officials will need to work closely with acquisition officials to set appropriate requirements for industry. At the same time, balancing survivability with cost is key: hardening a drone against lasers may have little value against an adversary employing mostly kinetic defenses.

Second, increase the pace at which the United States can develop and deploy counter-countermeasures. The Ukrainian military claims a three-month innovation cycle to bring improvements to the battlefield in its war against Russia. That demonstrates that drone makers need to continuously develop solutions and modify drones to keep them survivable. The American development and procurement system is not optimized for such a rapid pace of evolution. The United States is in the middle of an agonizingly slow pivot from using drones in the permissive environments of the post-9/11 wars and counterterrorism operations to using them against adversaries with countermeasures. The slow pace has already cost the United States millions of dollars’ worth of drones. For instance, the United States has reportedly lost multiple drones over Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen. The issue led officials to look at a few modular solutions, like the MQ-9’s self-protection pod. Not every drone needs a full suite of expensive countermeasures, especially drones designed to be attritable, but drones will need to evolve faster than adversary countermeasures to consistently complete their missions.

As the United States and its allies ponder what would be needed for future confrontations with Russia, China, and Iran, focus should be on investment in research and development that can rapidly identify and target drone countermeasures, such as home-on-jam seekers and antiradiation missiles that operate on the microwave spectrum. In addition, the Department of Defense and each service should proactively investigate and experiment with tactics, techniques, and procedures. The White Sands Missile Range, Red Sands Integrated Experimentation Center, the UAE-based X-Range, and other test ranges already test and evaluate counterdrone systems. If they are not already doing so, the test ranges should incorporate and expand threats to counterdrone systems, and how American forces might attempt to defeat current and future adversary drone defenses. These results should inform virtual modeling and simulations to understand how changes to the probability of detecting or killing drones affect larger tactical and operational environments.

Third, understand the trade-offs of counter-countermeasures. Developing, manufacturing, and deploying counter-countermeasures could be expensive and raise unit costs. Hardening drones against every countermeasure can quickly lead to endlessly trying to keep pace with every new kind of drone defense. A main benefit of drones is affordable mass, so integrating expensive counter-countermeasures may diminish their core value to global militaries. Plus, counter-countermeasures may consume power, payload, compute, and other limited resources. So, the Department of Defense needs to carefully account for and consider these trade-offs in making acquisition decisions, organizing war games and exercises, and deploying and employing drones. In addition, the Department of Defense should support modular designs, and consider the appropriate drone fleet composition to account for regional and adversarial differences in drone defenses. Since different adversaries field different types of air defenses, acquisition officials should look for and incentivize modular solutions that can be added or removed for different kinds of missions. Effective solutions are likely to be technologically innovative with relatively low system complexity, so the Department of Defense would likely benefit from opening funding lines in the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs around specific counter-countermeasures of interest. Likewise, since American allies and partners are likely to face the same problem against similar adversaries, opportunities might exist for international development work, especially with states who already own American-made drones.

Drone innovation—like all military innovation—has been, is, and will be a continuous iteration between offensive and defensive innovation. The balance between US drones and adversary countermeasures will influence how future conflicts play out and US decision-makers must be sure US drones can complete their missions in nonpermissive environments. The United States must break the drone shield, and ensure it stays broken.

Zachary Kallenborn is an MPhil/PhD student in King’s College London’s Department of War Studies. He is also affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Schar School of Policy and Government, the National Institute for Deterrence Studies, and, until recently, the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. Zachary appeared in Netflix’s Unknown: Killer Robots, is an officially proclaimed US Army “Mad Scientist,” and is on the board of advisors of Synthetic Decision Group, Inc. and the Michael J. Morell Center for Intelligence and Security Studies at the University of Akron.

Marcel Plichta is a PhD candidate in the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews and lead instructor at the Grey Dynamics Intelligence School. He previously worked as an analyst for the US Department of Defense.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Sgt. Haden Tolbert, Oklahoma National Guard

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Zachary Kallenborn, Marcel Plichta · September 23, 2024

14. In War and Society, Large Language Models Are What We Make of Them

Excerpt:

Finally, large language models are not geniuses; they mimic us, and their maximum benefits can be achieved only if these models are integrated into systems using a modular approach. A series of wargaming and tabletop exercises with these models showed that they can be useful but only if their use cases are clearly defined in a narrow fashion and if their role in the workflow is clearly delineated. These models cannot strategically reason, but they can navigate vast amounts of information quickly. This capability can be highly useful during military training. In wargames, they can increase efficiency and provide valuable insights with perception testing, recreating historical cases, and summarizing vast amounts of information and data. Again, these models are what you make of them. In other words, they should not be relied upon without significant experimentation, and they must be customized for specific use cases to maximize their contributions. Ethical considerations and the risks of biases and unintended consequences must also be continually addressed. Human oversight remains essential, as AI systems should augment rather than replace decision-making.

In War and Society, Large Language Models Are What We Make of Them - War on the Rocks

Benjamin Jensen, Yasir Atalan, and Ian Reynolds

September 23, 2024

warontherocks.com · by Benjamin Jensen · September 23, 2024

Editor’s Note: Benjamin Jensen, one of the authors of this article, is the host of the new War on the Rocks members-only show, Not the AI You’re Looking For. If you are a member, you can access the show directly. If you are not yet a member, change that today!

Behind every machine, I see a face — indeed, many faces: the engineer, the worker, the businessman or businesswoman, and, sometimes, the general and admiral. Furthermore, the function of the technology is its use by human beings — and sometimes, alas, its abuse and misuse.

-Melvin Kranzberg’s Sixth Law of Technology (1985)

Prophecy and alarmism about AI are both overblown. No technology is a panacea or poses a risk independent of the people and institutions surrounding its use. Adapting algorithms to support strategic analysis requires studying the people, culture, and bureaucracy as much as it does model performance.

War on the Rocks has been at the center of emerging debates about the roles, missions, and even ethics and morality of the growing integration of AI into the military. Every day, articles emerge highlighting either the game-changing possibilities of generative AI models or the perils associated with them. This trend is particularly acute with respect to large language models that synthesize large volumes of data to generate prompt-based responses that every reader has probably already played with, if not used in a professional setting.

On one side, advocates point to how the ability to synthesize massive information flows will allow militaries to gain a generational relative advantage over adversaries. Knowledge will become the new firepower and algorithms the new decisive points. For example, Alex Karp, the chief executive officer of Palantir, referred to its new Artificial Intelligence Platform as “a weapon that will allow you to win.”

On the other side, some critics highlight the possible “catastrophic risks” of frontier AI models, particularly if increasingly “intelligent” models become unaligned with human goals. Of course, in the context of critical foreign policy and security use cases, the notion of AI models pursuing goals that are distinct from the desires of policymakers calls to mind the possibilities for inadvertent military escalation or unintentional war. For instance, a recent study on a crisis simulation using diplomatic large language model agents showed risks of inadvertent escalation.

However, a purely risk-based reading of these tools tends to miss the social context in which they are developed and deployed and how such contexts can shape model outputs. Moreover, it could lead to conclusions that model outputs are stagnant and fixed rather than fluid and integrated within broader social and organizational structures.

The debate around security integration deserves a more nuanced discussion, as the stakes in security and foreign policy contexts are undeniably high. Yet, the truth about AI lies somewhere between the critics and enthusiasts. The result is that extreme positions tend to miss a key point: Large language models are — to use a famous constructivist phrase — what we make of them. The models are products of the training data that infuses discourses and biases into their application and the people interpreting these outputs. Large language models do not exist in isolation, nor are they tools with concrete, predetermined outcomes. However, the current debate often treats them as such. The social, cultural, and institutional contexts in which these models are developed and deployed should be at the forefront of this discussion. A more useful approach will require studying model outputs and how that will shape any future national security applications with an eye toward the people and bureaucracy surrounding their use.

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AI Models and Meaning-Making

Alexander Wendt famously noted that “anarchy is what states make of it.” His basic point was that the “self-help” international system that was commonly assumed to be a timeless feature of relations between states was not simply a natural outcome. It, instead, evolved and stabilized as the result of unfolding social processes that generated broader social structures and identities that shape the conduct of international politics. Neither war nor great power rivalry are constant. Rather, they are constructed and have a different cause and character depending on the context in which leaders opt to use violence in pursuit of politics.

At a basic sociological level, technological developments share aspects of this insight. Technologies do not simply appear from the anti-social void. They are products of human development and, consequently, are embedded within social relations. Such a conceptualization of the relationship between technology and social factors has direct applications for how we assess AI in national security environments. For example, an important research program has already begun to investigate the implications of AI for decision-making, focusing on the importance of contextual factors. Moreover, others have begun to tease out how AI will interact with military organizations. While not directly associated with a social constructionist approach to international affairs or technology, such studies point to the important social and contextual factors that will shape the relationship between AI and questions of security.

When OpenAI released ChatGPT, it marked the beginning of an era due to its ability to produce meaningful text applicable to various use cases, from email writing to poetry, and script writing to generating programming language. This versatility is rooted in the development processes of Generative AI models. These models are first trained on vast corpuses of data to excel in next-word prediction. Second, a large amount of high-quality human-annotated data is used to instruct the models as part of the fine-tuning process. This later phase is what makes these models generate text that is meaningful and context-dependent. Importantly, while relying on sophisticated algorithms and immense amounts of computing power, these training processes that drive AI outputs are the result of social inputs — both at the level of data scraped from internet sources and in terms of more targeted, human-directed, fine-tuning processes. Ask a model a question about nuclear escalation and it will give you an answer primed for brinkmanship, reflecting both the character of Cold War discussions and the nature of the question.

Despite their capabilities, generative models are not without flaws. Large language models can generate toxic biases and harmful content. This includes, for example, hate speech, abuse, inaccurate information, and stereotypes. The models are just a mirror of the content they are trained on and the question they are asked. They don’t possess inherent values unless they are coded in, and even then, context matters.

Consequently, companies and researchers are finding ways to guardrail models to prevent them from producing undesired or harmful content. One way of doing this is using human-annotated data or prompting to align the models to act in the way that is desired. Additionally, a significant portion of research focuses on finding ways to limit the “biases” of these models. All of these efforts put humans at the center enacting judgment and helping to align model-generated insights with larger questions about politics, morality, and ethics. There is no such thing as non-human strategy, just algorithms eager to answer the questions we ask. This fact puts a premium on knowledge curation and deciding what data counts and how best to weigh different datasets. You don’t want your military decision-making AI trained on Call of Duty chats or romanticized “man on horseback” portrayals of military genius, especially when the subjects are morally repugnant Confederate generals and Nazi leaders.

Guardrails have been somewhat successful to date. This is why we see quite pacifist answers when asked about security-related topics and why users are frequently confronted with limitations when generating images of real people. This caution is necessary, as these models can be harmful. However, some research has shown that models can fail these safety measures. With low-cost adversarial tuning, models can easily generate harmful content. Moreover, these guardrails are based on user prompts and do not consider context. For example, questions about narcotics may be acceptable if the user were a professional in drug enforcement. This is why evaluating a model’s “marginal risks” in use case scenarios is an emerging best practice in model evaluation — or in other words, the difference in risk between whether someone trying to create a bomb leveraged a large language model or simply conducted a standard internet search.

Furthermore, there will be military situations in which commercial guardrails are unwarranted or even dangerous. If an order is lawful and unethical, a strike team doesn’t need to hear why a course of action is inappropriate based on guardrails developed for the general public. Again, context and the human ability to understand and adapt algorithmic reasoning to new situations will prove essential in future war.

Despite the clear issues stemming from model biases, from an epistemological point of view, an “unbiased” or “perfect” model is not possible given that these models are based on training data produced by fallible — and biased — humans who operate within larger sets of norms and social structures. The result is that technological products themselves are infused with certain values that reflect social phenomenon. In practical terms, this means there can only be an “acceptable” level of bias given a model’s use case and context. Moreover, safeguards will need to be adaptable since social norms do not stay fixed and can be contested. Not only that, for each society with their own cultural backgrounds, there will be efforts to guide models to align with certain cultures and prevailing discourses. The future is going to get weird as a mix of politics, culture, and economics skews both guardrail parameters and available training data as seen in the challenges OpenAI experienced due to internet restrictions in China.

In the military context, these factors must be more carefully managed. This involves ensuring the model’s outputs are factually correct and predictable within use case parameters. Yet, a recent study showed that these models can show escalatory behavior inadvertently. This is obviously not a desirable outcome. These concerns should not be overly worrisome as the parameters of training data determine model outputs. For example, when a model shows escalatory behavior in a crisis scenario, it means that the models’ data inputs were more escalatory than expected or desired. Conversely, if you instruct the model to act in a de-escalatory way, it will try to find ways to de-escalate the given scenario. Just because some models show dangerous and escalatory tendencies, it does not mean all models are like this; some can be more de-escalatory based on factors embedded into the model output parameters. Therefore, any model integrated into certain systems should be carefully instructed and tested to have the “right” output parameters for that specific use case.

As a result, we are not able to integrate these models into systems in a monolithic and transformative way due to their subjective nature. These models are not reliable enough to act on their own and they lack strategic reasoning. In fact, it is not universally accepted that the ultimate “end goal” is for these models to function autonomously. Yet, with specified, detailed, and goal-oriented training processes for specific use cases, national security enterprises can make them useful for their organizations.

AI Is Not a Destabilizing Factor … Necessarily

Hype and alarmism are not new; there have always been cautionary tales against emerging technologies alongside promises of revolutionary potential. Particularly, discussions on AI integration into military systems often center on the following question: “Are AI systems inherently dangerous or escalatory?” This question, however, is rather broad and difficult to answer. Rapid conclusions about the inherently escalatory nature of these AI capabilities are misleading. We argue that AI is not necessarily a destabilizing factor. A recent study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies attempted to understand how the intelligence gap on AI capabilities between two nuclear rival countries shapes crisis management and deterrence through a wargame exercise. The goal of the study was to make inferences about players’ risk perceptions by leveraging the variation in information about adversaries’ AI capabilities. Despite valid concerns about AI and machine learning and nuclear escalation, the study found no statistically significant differences between the treatments regarding how players assessed the risk of escalation.

The study showed that when AI entered as a factor in the decision-making process, a lot of countering thought processes were in play throughout the game. At times, national security experts who took part in the wargame considered that adversaries’ AI capabilities could skew the information, leading them to evaluate the team’s behavior as escalation. For example, at one point decision-makers increased intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance deployments in adversary regions to offset the information gap. However, in the same phase, fearing misinterpretation by adversaries’ unknown AI capabilities, they took a strong de-escalatory approach in diplomacy to communicate their peaceful intentions. In other words, decision-makers found alternative ways to manage the crisis without escalating, despite the uncertainty about AI’s capabilities. In short, we humans adapt.

The Importance of Social Context

AI and large language model application in foreign policy and security contexts has promise, but they are not magic and must be wisely integrated with an eye toward the social context in which it is developed and deployed. A practical step forward would be substantively educating national security professionals about the properties of models discussed here. Foremost, they are the result of socio-technical processes that will shape model outputs. If humans endeavor to build models to escalate, they likely will. If we build models to show restraint, AI-enabled decision processes could push toward de-escalation. Here, social factors will matter just as much as technological ones. This includes how organizational pressures in security- and foreign policy–related bureaucracies will shape the training parameters of models and — if the time comes — how this technology will be integrated into the everyday practices of organizations. Importantly, the answers to these sorts of questions will determine the boundaries for how AI will shape war and conflict. Moreover, it will be critical to instruct the national security and foreign policy communities on model failure modes and encourage them to find productive ways to combine expert judgment with AI-enabled data processing capabilities.

Second, the tendency to conflate AI and machine learning with autonomy is misguiding the policy debate considering these systems. We are not talking about fully autonomous systems, which increase the risk profile dramatically. Current capabilities still necessitate human centrality in the decision-making process within the military domain. The national security community needs to avoid worrying about Skynet, alongside other technology-related threat inflation, and start building applications that help people navigate the massive volume of information that is already overwhelming staff and decision-makers during a crisis.

Finally, large language models are not geniuses; they mimic us, and their maximum benefits can be achieved only if these models are integrated into systems using a modular approach. A series of wargaming and tabletop exercises with these models showed that they can be useful but only if their use cases are clearly defined in a narrow fashion and if their role in the workflow is clearly delineated. These models cannot strategically reason, but they can navigate vast amounts of information quickly. This capability can be highly useful during military training. In wargames, they can increase efficiency and provide valuable insights with perception testing, recreating historical cases, and summarizing vast amounts of information and data. Again, these models are what you make of them. In other words, they should not be relied upon without significant experimentation, and they must be customized for specific use cases to maximize their contributions. Ethical considerations and the risks of biases and unintended consequences must also be continually addressed. Human oversight remains essential, as AI systems should augment rather than replace decision-making.

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Benjamin Jensen, PhD is the Petersen Chair of Emerging Technology at the Marine Corps University and a professor in the School of Advanced Warfighting as well as a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is the host of the new War on the Rocks podcast, Not the AI You Are Looking For.

Yasir Atalan and Ian Reynolds, PhD, are researchers in the CSIS Futures Lab where they lead a project building baseline large language models on international relations and strategy using Scale AI’s Donovan platform.

The views expressed in this article do not represent those of the Marine Corps, the Defense Department, or any part of the U.S. government.

Image: Markus Spiske via Wikimedia Commons

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Benjamin Jensen · September 23, 2024

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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