​Quotes of the Day:

"All propaganda directed against an opposing group has but one aim: to substitute diabolical abstractions for concrete persons. The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. By robbing them of their personality, he puts them outside the pale of moral obligation. Mere symbols can have no rights—particularly when that of which they are symbolical is, by definition, evil."

– Aldous Huxley

"If you are confronted with two evils, thus the argument runs, it is your duty to opt for the lesser one, whereas it is irresponsible to refuse to choose altogether. Those who denounce the moral fallacy of this argument are usually accused of a germ-proof moralism which is alien to political circumstances, of being unwilling to dirty their hands. The weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil."

~Hannah Arendt, "Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship" (1964 lecture, later published in Responsibility and Judgment) 

"Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says"I'll do as I please at everybody else's expense." An individual is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man – his won and those of others."

Ayn Rand

1. ‘Bodyguard of Lies’ exposes falsehoods related to the Afghanistan war: How to stream free

2. CSA's Article of the Year!

3. Trump Says Ukraine Can Take Back All Lost Territory

4. Trump’s U-Turn on Ukraine Was a Surprise, Zelensky Says

5. Gen Z’s New Symbol of Resistance: a Cartoon Jolly Roger

6. China to Stop Seeking Special WTO Treatment in Future Talks

7. Trump Unplugged at Turtle Bay

8. The Pentagon, the Press and the Fight to Control National Security Coverage

9.  Cyber-Warfare – Command-and-Control Analogue

10. Space and Ice: Envisioning Special Operations Forces’ Role in Future Operational Environments

11. House intelligence leader: Fired DIA chief mishandled Havana Syndrome cases

12. Washington’s Ironclad Commitments Are Rusting in the Indo-Pacific

13. China’s new missiles on parade: showpieces or showstoppers?

14. Army Secretary in ‘holy war’ with Congress over budget flexibility

15. Hegseth terminates women’s advisory group, slams ‘divisive agenda’

16. Cache of Devices Capable of Crashing Cell Network Is Found Near U.N.

17. U.S. Navy Wants to Open Subic Bay Storage Facility in the Philippines

18. Dutch radar firm Robin turns bird-spotting skills into drone defense

19. Plan for the Worst: Why the Marine Corps Stand-in Forces Concept Demands a Premortem

20. Applying the Alaska Territorial Guard Concept to Modern Indo-Pacific Irregular Warfare

21. India Doesn’t Want to Need China

22. National Security for Sale: How Profit Seeking Distorts American Policymaking

23. Trump Says Migration and Climate-Change Policies Are Destroying the West

24. Rutte holds back on Poland's drone shoot down plan

25. Trump brings American culture wars to the global stage at the UN

26. Massive Outrage in Manila Over Corruption

27. Censorship enables authoritarianism

28. Kari Lake said she learned of Trump dismantling VOA the day of his order

29. Medal of Honor: Emil Kapaun

1. ‘Bodyguard of Lies’ exposes falsehoods related to the Afghanistan war: How to stream free

​So I watched this documentary last evening. Before we embark on any military operation in the future all leaders must be required to watch this documentary along with the Pentagon Papers (and probably McNamara's Fog of War).

No administration or officials came out unscathed though I have to say my friend Ed Reeder gave tremendous testimony, especially the concluding story about his encounter with a Gold Star mother.

‘Bodyguard of Lies’ exposes falsehoods related to the Afghanistan war: How to stream free

• Updated: Sep. 22, 2025, 4:48 p.m.|Published: Sep. 22, 2025, 4:47 p.m.
• https://www.al.com/tv/2025/09/bodyguard-of-lies-exposes-falsehoods-related-to-the-afghanistan-war-how-to-stream-free.html

The new documentary "Bodyguard of Lies" releases on Paramount+ Tuesday, Sept. 23.Paramount+

By Breanna Manley | bmanley@al.com

The groundbreaking history documentary Bodyguard of Lies releases exclusively on Paramount+ Tuesday, Sept. 23.

Directed and produced by Dan Krauss, Bodyguard of Lies pulls back the curtain on the Afghanistan war and reveals the many falsehoods fed to Americans during the time.

How to watch Bodyguard of Lies

Those looking to catch Bodyguard of Lies can find the documentary available for streaming through Paramount+. Those who have yet to commit to a paid plan through the platform can enjoy a 7-day free trial after signing up.

More on Bodyguard of Lies

According to a Paramount+ press release, Bodyguard of Lies is the first “unvarnished documentary of the history of the Afghanistan war, exposing the falsehoods told to Americans and the secrets kept over four administrations.”

The documentary includes “damning testimonies from insiders, confidential documents, never-before-seen footage and private audio recordings of those at the highest levels of government.” Additionally, the film examines failed war policies and strategies and works to figure out why those hefty decisions were made, while revealing the cost of those plans.

More on Paramount+

Paramount+ is one of the most popular live streaming services on the market now. Through Paramount+, subscribers can access exclusive originals, movies and documentaries all in one place.

As of now, Paramount+ offers two plans to new subscribers, and both come with a week-long free trial. The base plan, Paramount+ Essential starts at just $7.99 a month and includes exclusive originals, the ability to stream on up to three devices concurrently, access to CBS News 24/7, and access to select Showtime series. This plan is also ad-supported.

The Paramount+ with Showtime plan starts at just $12.99 a month and includes everything that comes with the Essential plan plus 4K content, downloadable movies and shows, and all of Showtime’s content. Those hoping to ditch ads can do so through this plan.

2. CSA's Article of the Year!

​It is great to see the Chief's investment in the intellectual capital of our Army. One of the overlooked efforts of transforming in contact has been the revitalization of Army journals and branch publications as platforms to inform and educate the force as well as to debate and share knowledge and ideas.

Harding Project Substack

CSA's Article of the Year!

Why have articles of the month when you can have them for the whole year

https://www.hardingproject.com/p/csas-article-of-the-year?utm

Kyle Atwell

Sep 23, 2025

ICYMI, we are hiring! Please see our job posting for a new Director and Deputy Director for the Harding Project.

Applications are due no later than 3 October 2025.

I love writing and want to apply!

Today, we are pleased to announce the Chief of Staff of the Army’s 2025 Articles of the Year!

General George selected four Articles of the Year from among 427 Branch journal articles published through the Line of Departure website. These include articles from journals managed by Army Branches and Centers of Excellence, such as Infantry, NCO Journal, Special Warfare Journal, Pulse of Army Medicine, Army Sustainment, and others.

This selection rate averages out to .94% when including the additional 100s (1000s?) of articles published in other outstanding outlets to include the Modern War Institute, Military Review, War Room, War on the Rocks, From the Green Notebook, Irregular Warfare Initiative, and The Center for Junior Officers.

Effectively, these articles are not just the best pieces from Line of Departure, but they standout among a sea of fantastic publications across dozens of outlets.

Articles of the Year is a distilled version of the CSA’s Articles of the Month where General George selects 3-5 articles each month to highlight. This brings the 2025 total to 31 articles recognized for their excellence and contribution to the profession over the past year. Authors of Articles of the Month have included Soldiers ranging from the rank of Sergeant to Colonel alongside several civilians. If you follow our AoM, you will recognize these submissions!

Huge congratulations to the authors below whose exceptional contribution to the profession of arms has had an impact from the CSA and SMA down to individual units and Soldiers across the Army.

Strengthen the profession. Keep writing!

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Army Fires: Enabling Joint Convergence in a Maritime Environment.

Published in Military Review

By COL Jon Harvey, LTC Matthew Arrol, CW5 Steven Pressley

Striking a Balance: Leadership Versus Management in the Modern Army

Published in NCO Journal

By SSG Kevin Rasins

Tactical UAS: Three-Tiered UAS Manning for Increased Lethality and Situational Awareness

Published in Infantry

By CPT Charles O’Hagan, 1LT Parker Mitchell, 1LT Noah Paffenroth, and 1LT Adam Hendrick

A Data-Centric Approach to Increasing Crew Lethality: Proposing ‘Moneyball for Gunnery’

Published in U.S. Army

By LTC Jonathan Bate, 1LT Ethan Barangan, 1LT Nicholas Calhoon, and SSG Jacob Seitz

3. Trump Says Ukraine Can Take Back All Lost Territory

​Okay. Then let's make this happen and help Ukraine win.

Trump Says Ukraine Can Take Back All Lost Territory

President’s sudden shift is a big swipe at Russia and follows months of fruitless efforts to broker a cease-fire

​

https://www.wsj.com/world/trump-says-ukraine-can-take-back-all-lost-territory-6d8e7be7

By Robbie Gramer

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, Anat Peled

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 and James Marson

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Updated Sept. 23, 2025 5:49 pm ET

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Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Quick Summary

• President Trump stated Ukraine could regain all lost territory, a shift from previous suggestions of ceding land for peace.View more

President Trump said for the first time that Ukraine could win back all of its territory and encouraged allies to shoot down Russian aircraft if they entered North Atlantic Treaty Organization airspace, an extraordinary shift that raised pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin as world leaders gathered Tuesday at the United Nations.

After meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the U.N., Trump in a social-media post said Moscow’s conduct of the war was aimless.

“After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” he said.

“With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option. Why not? Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win. This is not distinguishing Russia. In fact, it is very much making them look like ‘a paper tiger.’”

Trump’s remarks offer the latest twist in his efforts to bring about an end to the war in Ukraine. Kyiv and NATO allies have fretted for months over his intentions and whether he will continue to embrace diplomacy with Putin or turn the screws on him.

On Aug. 11, Trump said Russia and Ukraine will engage in “land swapping” to bring about an end to the war, and that it would be “good” and “bad” for both sides.

His latest remarks included a commitment to continue to provide weapons to Europe’s NATO members, which are then sent to Ukraine for its forces to use against Russia. “We will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them. Good luck to all!” he said. 

The annual U.N. General Assembly, traditionally a menu of carefully-choreographed speeches and staid formal meetings, was thrown into a lurch with Trump’s diplomatic bombshell. 

Zelensky exuded optimism as he briefed reporters following Trump’s latest comments. He said Trump “clearly understands the situation and is well informed about all aspects of this war. We greatly value his decisiveness to help end this war.” He called Trump a “game changer.”

Zelensky said he had a good conversation with Trump, and that the U.S. president had shown a grasp of the battlefield situation. He said that Trump’s information is now closer to the picture held by Ukraine. After trusting Putin’s information for a long time, Trump was slowly seeing that some things Putin is saying are “far away from the truth,” Zelensky added.

“I’m happy with this and I’m thankful for him and maybe also for his people who briefed him,” Zelensky said. 

Trump’s position has often changed through the course of the three-year-old war between Russia and Ukraine. At times, he has voiced a desire to punish Russia by threatening additional sanctions, only to to reverse course and delay action.

Russia has been making incremental gains in Ukraine in recent months at a heavy cost of men and equipment but hasn’t made a breakthrough. Kyiv’s forces have held back the Russian army with the help of explosive drones, even as Ukrainian officers and soldiers complain of a shortage of front-line troops.

Moscow now controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory, but it has been unable to claim major cities in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk that have been targets for years, including the city of Pokrovsk.

Zelensky has long said that his ultimate aim was to restore Kyiv’s control over all of his country. But few in Ukraine think that objective can be achieved by military force in the near future.

The U.S. and European allies have provided Ukraine with the type and volume of equipment that has helped its forces hold off Russian attacks. But mounting a counteroffensive against hardened Russian defensive lines would require an influx of military equipment that the U.S. and allies have been unwilling to provide and tens of thousands of fresh troops that Ukraine would struggle to muster in addition to defensive needs.

As well as military aid, Ukraine wants the U.S. and EU to introduce tougher sanctions that could cause sufficient economic and, ultimately, political damage to Moscow to cause Putin to halt the war.

Russia wasn’t the only country to face Trump’s ire, however. The U.S. president also rebuked allies in Europe who militarily back Ukraine, for continuing to import Russian energy as the war drags on. “Think of it, they’re funding the war against themselves,” Trump said. “Who the hell ever heard of that one?”

It wasn’t clear from Trump’s post whether he thought Ukraine could also take back Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The latest signal from Trump comes after a wave of Russian drone incursions into NATO airspace that some alliance leaders said risks pushing Russia and Western allies closer to armed conflict. 

When asked if he thought NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft in their airspace, Trump said, “Yes I do.” 

Write to Robbie Gramer at robbie.gramer@wsj.com, Anat Peled at anat.peled@wsj.com and James Marson at james.marson@wsj.com

Appeared in the September 24, 2025, print edition as 'Kyiv Can Win Lost Ground, Trump Says'.

4. Trump’s U-Turn on Ukraine Was a Surprise, Zelensky Says

POTUS knows how to create controversy and headlines.

Trump’s U-Turn on Ukraine Was a Surprise, Zelensky Says

The Ukrainian leader said in an interview on Fox News that Russia’s unwillingness to take steps toward peace had impacted the American president.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/world/trump-ukraine-zelensky.html

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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Trump on Tuesday on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

By Pranav Baskar

Published Sept. 23, 2025

Updated Sept. 24, 2025, 2:18 a.m. ET

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said he was surprised by President Trump’s shift in position regarding Russia’s war with Ukraine and that he believed that he and Mr. Trump have a “better relation than before.”

His remarks came in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday evening, after Mr. Trump said in a social media post on Truth Social that he now believed that Ukraine could, with financial support from NATO and the European Union, regain all of the territory it has lost to Russia. It was a head-spinning comment considering that only a month ago the president backed a plan to have Ukraine give up land in return for peace.

Mr. Zelensky also said the seeming unwillingness by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to take steps toward peace had helped Mr. Zelensky’s relationship with the American president.

“The fact that Putin was lying to President Trump so many times also made a difference between us,” said Mr. Zelensky, speaking with Bret Baier of Fox News. In the interview, the Ukrainian leader presented a cautious optimism about Mr. Trump’s support of Kyiv’s position in the war.

In his post, Mr. Trump said he believes that with the support of the European Union and NATO, Ukraine “is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.”

Mr. Trump’s words were highlighted by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, during his speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday evening. Mr. Macron said he was happy to hear Mr. Trump say that Ukraine, in the war, would “not only hold on, but ensure its rights prevail,” he said.

In an answer to a question from Mr. Baier, Mr. Zelensky said he thought Mr. Trump’s shift on the role of land concessions could play a part in ending the war. “I think so, and God bless,” he said.

The relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky has been fraught. That tension was on full display in February when Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Mr. Zelensky during an Oval Office meeting.

But on Tuesday, when Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky met on the sidelines of the General Assembly, Mr. Trump praised the Ukranian leader as a “brave man.”

“We have great respect for the fight that Ukraine is putting up,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s pretty amazing, actually.”

Mr. Zelensky said later to Mr. Baier: “I think we didn’t have close relation because we didn’t have — maybe — time,” Mr. Zelensky said. “It’s good we have often phone calls and meetings,” he said referring to Mr. Trump.

While Mr. Zelensky was positive about Mr. Trump’s new supportive stance on the war, he reiterated in the interview that his country is in a “very difficult position.” Since May, Russia has captured between 170 and 215 square miles of territory each month, according to DeepState, a group mapping battlefield changes. Ukrainian commanders emphasize in interviews that they are constantly outmanned and outgunned by Russia.

Catherine Porter contributed reporting.

Pranav Baskar is an international reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.

5. Gen Z’s New Symbol of Resistance: a Cartoon Jolly Roger

​The latent or incipient phase. We should be paying attention to the young people around the world. As we are already seeing, these protests can evolve into significant political challenges.

Beware of "exaggerated grievance communicated well."

Gen Z’s New Symbol of Resistance: a Cartoon Jolly Roger

Protesters around the world hoist a flag from a hit Japanese pirate show to express disdain for authority

https://www.wsj.com/world/gen-zs-new-symbol-of-resistance-a-cartoon-jolly-roger-851e8587

The pirate standard associated with a Japanese pop-culture icon appeared at protests in Indonesia. Photo: Claudio Pramana/NurPhoto/Getty Images

By Jason Douglas

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 and Junko Fukutome

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Sept. 24, 2025 5:30 am ET

TOKYO—Monkey D. Luffy is a rubber-bodied pirate who battles tyrannical governments as he and his motley crew sail across the ocean. In recent months, young protesters in Asia, Europe and the U.S. have taken up his pirate flag as a protest symbol. 

Luffy is the protagonist of a long-running Japanese comic and animated television show called “One Piece,” which follows his adventures in pursuit of a fabled treasure.

Now, his distinctive pirate standard can be seen waving among the national flags, Free Palestine banners and homemade signs that dot the crowds in a run of recent protests from Indonesia and Nepal to France and the U.K. 

A grinning skull and crossbones with a distinctive twist—the skull wears a straw hat with a red band—Luffy’s flag is the latest pop-culture touchstone to inspire protesters across the globe, whatever their cause.

The “One Piece” comic has sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide. Photo: Riccardo Milani/Hans Lucas/AFP/Getty Images

Its growing presence shows the cultural heft among younger generations of Japan’s prodigious manga and anime output, a shared trove of stories read on phones and streamed online that are hugely popular around the world.

“I think it’s inevitable that protest movements that are led by young people are going to incorporate anime imagery,” said Matt Alt, author of “Pure Invention,” a book on modern Japanese culture and its global appeal. Populated by young protagonists struggling against adult authority figures, “anime is a lingua franca for young people all over the planet,” he said.

In Nepal, the Straw Hat Pirates’ Jolly Roger was hung from the ornate gates of burning government buildings in downtown Kathmandu, which was rocked this summer by protests against official nepotism and corruption. More than 20 people died in clashes with the police. 

The flag was hung near government buildings in Kathmandu, Nepal, during protests. Photo: Sunil Pradhan/Anadolu/Getty Images

In Indonesia, Luffy’s banner became so prominent during deadly protests sparked by $3,000-a-month housing allowances for lawmakers that officials warned that displaying it on the country’s Aug. 17 independence day could land people in jail. The government later withdrew the allowances.

The flag has also popped up in the U.K. during pro-Palestinian marches and at a protest against the recent state visit of President Trump. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. In France, people have taken Luffy’s flag to the streets in anger over public spending cuts and government dysfunction.

The symbol has been slower to catch on in the U.S., but was seen in social-media posts from protests in Los Angeles against Trump’s immigration crackdown. It was also visible on Saturday during a New York City protest at an Apple store, where protesters criticized the company for using cobalt mines in Africa.

Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The company in an April report said in a decade of audits it has found no evidence that refiners or smelters in its supply chain benefited armed groups in Congo or Rwanda.

The skull and crossbones was seen recently at a protest in Toulouse, France, at a demonstration against Trump in London, and outside an Apple store in New York.

Clockwise from top: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images; Niyi Fote/TheNEWS2/Zuma Press; Andrew Aitchison/In pictures/Getty Images

In his quest to locate the titular “One Piece” treasure and become king of the pirates, Luffy and his crew routinely drop anchor in places where people are struggling against what is depicted as a despotic ruler. His and other pirate crews are pursued across the ocean by a World Government determined to stamp them out.

The “One Piece” comic has sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide since Luffy first appeared more than a quarter of a century ago and the show has aired more than 1,000 episodes. Characters such as Luffy and his crew are mukokuseki, meaning they lack a defined ethnicity and so are relatable to readers and viewers throughout the world, said Roland Kelts, visiting professor at Waseda University in Tokyo and author of “Japanamerica,” a book about the popularity of Japanese culture in the U.S. Helped by the speed at which translations spread online and through streaming services, “the illustrated rubbery Luffy immediately becomes your Luffy, wherever you live and whatever your language,” Kelts said.

Shueisha, publisher of the “One Piece” manga series, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Toei Animation, which produces the animated series, didn’t immediately respond. Netflix, which is producing a live-action version of the show, didn’t immediately respond.

Write to Jason Douglas at jason.douglas@wsj.com

6. China to Stop Seeking Special WTO Treatment in Future Talks

​I know I have had it explained to me why this is (it is explained in the excerpt), but I still have a hard time understanding how the second largest economy in the world can still be considered a "developing country."

Excerpts:

The move drew praise from WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who wrote on X that “this is a culmination of many years of hard work” and applauded China’s leadership.

Still, Li framed the decision as coming from “a responsible major developing country,” underscoring that Beijing continues to claim the status of a developing nation, a position that has long frustrated Washington.

Developing-nation status is currently self-declared and grants benefits such as longer timelines for implementing agreements and higher allowable tariffs. While China’s economy is the world’s second-largest after the U.S., its per capita income remains closer to that of countries such as Thailand and Mexico, with wealthy metropolises offset by vast, poorer regions.

China to Stop Seeking Special WTO Treatment in Future Talks

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and U.S. President Trump agreed to meet in South Korea this fall

https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/china-to-stop-seeking-special-wto-treatment-in-future-talks-30c611f1

Updated Sept. 24, 2025 3:04 am ET

Chinese Premier Li Qiang framed the decision as coming from “a responsible major developing country,” underscoring that Beijing continues to claim the status of a developing nation. Photo: maxim shemetov/Reuters

Quick Summary

• China announced it will no longer seek new special treatment for developing countries in current and future World Trade Organization negotiations.View more

China said it would no longer seek new special treatment for developing countries in current and future World Trade Organization negotiations, signaling a possible effort to ease a longstanding friction point with the U.S. ahead of a planned summit.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang announced the shift on Tuesday at a meeting of China’s Global Development Initiative on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, according to state-run Xinhua News Agency.

The move drew praise from WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who wrote on X that “this is a culmination of many years of hard work” and applauded China’s leadership.

Still, Li framed the decision as coming from “a responsible major developing country,” underscoring that Beijing continues to claim the status of a developing nation, a position that has long frustrated Washington.

Developing-nation status is currently self-declared and grants benefits such as longer timelines for implementing agreements and higher allowable tariffs. While China’s economy is the world’s second-largest after the U.S., its per capita income remains closer to that of countries such as Thailand and Mexico, with wealthy metropolises offset by vast, poorer regions.

Henry Gao, a law professor at Singapore Management University, said on X that developing-country status brings China few benefits at the WTO. “It does not mean China is giving up its developing-country status,” he wrote, adding that Beijing wouldn’t be relinquishing its existing special and differential treatment rights, including those secured during its WTO accession.

Li’s remarks came just days after Chinese leader Xi Jinping and U.S. President Trump agreed to meet in South Korea this fall. Trump later said the two countries had approved a deal allowing TikTok to continue operating in the U.S. and that Xi would visit Washington next year following his own trip to China.

Analysts said recent gestures point to easing trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies. China’s vow to forgo further special treatment could also inject momentum for long-stalled WTO reforms.

China’s claim of developing-nation status has long been criticized by the U.S. Washington has argued that there could be no meaningful WTO reforms until large economies, including China, relinquish their claims to special status.

“The United States has never accepted China’s claim to developing-country status, and virtually every current economic indicator belies China’s claim,” Trump said in a 2019 memorandum on reforming developing-country status in WTO.

Write to Singapore Editors at singaporeeditors@dowjones.com

7. Trump Unplugged at Turtle Bay

I think the editorial board (or the headline editor) should have led with the subtitle.

Trump Unplugged at Turtle Bay

He tells the U.N. the truth about its growing irrelevance.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-united-nations-general-assembly-remarks-a2a3cdce

By The Editorial Board

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Sept. 23, 2025 5:48 pm ET

President Donald Trump Photo: Andrea Renault/Zuma Press

President Trump breaks political conventions almost daily, for better or worse. But sometimes his candor has the advantage of speaking truths that no one else dares to recognize. And so he did Tuesday in New York when he told the United Nations General Assembly that it is increasingly irrelevant.

“What is the purpose of the United Nations?” Mr. Trump asked. “I’ve always said [the U.N.] has such tremendous, tremendous potential, but it’s not even coming close to living up to that potential.” Right.

Peacekeepers? “Not only is the U.N. not solving the problems it should, too often it is actually creating new problems for us to solve,” Mr. Trump said. Right again.

Mr. Trump didn’t say this but we will. Ukraine war? The U.N. has been hapless. Gaza? It’s mostly emboldened Hamas to refuse to compromise. China’s expansions in the South China Sea? Useless.

Mr. Trump also dared to violate the holiest of U.N. holies by casting doubt on its preoccupation with climate change. The “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” Mr. Trump said. That arguably goes too far, since global temperatures have climbed. But he’s surely right if he means that the trillions of dollars spent to stop the rise in temperature have accomplished nothing other than encourage political rent-seeking.

Mr. Trump also focused on his signature issue of controlling migration. He said the U.N. is “funding an assault on Western countries” by encouraging cross-border migration. In 2024, he said, the U.N. budgeted $372 million to help more than 600,000 migrants illegally coming into the U.S. “The U.N. is supposed to stop invasions, not create them and not finance them,” he said. We think the U.S. needs more foreign talent to stay prosperous, but European leaders in particular would be better off had they heeded their voters’ anxiety about mass migration.

Mr. Trump isn’t so much rejecting the U.N. as noting the way it has become an obstacle to the peace, prosperity and universal human rights it claims to promote.

In 2017 the U.N. delegates laughed at Mr. Trump’s General Assembly remarks, but not this time. If they were honest with themselves, at least some of them would admit that he has the place nailed.

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Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy has shaken up international relations with his focus on bargaining and engaging adversaries. But will he succeed against China, Russia and Iran? Paul Gigot speaks with Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Russell Mead about how the U.S. can work alongside allies like Israel and what led to the collapse of the old world order.

Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the September 24, 2025, print edition as 'Trump Unplugged at Turtle Bay'.

8. The Pentagon, the Press and the Fight to Control National Security Coverage

Yes, the press and the government must have an adversarial relationship. But the government has to uphold its constitutional responsibilities.​ That is how we protect our democracy.

We should know that censorship never works and information, like the bomber, will always get through.

Washington Memo

The Pentagon, the Press and the Fight to Control National Security Coverage

Journalists have long shaped history through scrutiny of the military. Now the Defense Department plans to cut off access for reporters who publish even unclassified information without official approval.

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By David E. Sanger

David E. Sanger has covered national security issues for more than three decades. He reported from Washington.

• Sept. 24, 2025

Imagine for a moment that the Defense Department’s new demand for a “pledge” from Pentagon reporters — a commitment not to publish even unclassified but sensitive information, except what press officers approve, under threat of losing their press passes — had existed during the botched evacuation of American personnel from Afghanistan four years ago.

Reporters would have been under pressure to cover that withdrawal, which President Trump regularly describes as the most disastrous moment in American military history, as the Pentagon would have wanted it depicted: a heroic airlift, amid chaos. The reporters who revealed the disastrous drone strike during the evacuation that killed 10 civilians, contradicting the Biden administration's initial insistence that it was a “righteous strike,” could have been in danger of losing their military press credentials.

Had they been in place at the time, the new rules, which were announced on Friday and are scheduled to come into effect over the next two weeks, might have also impeded reporting during the run-up to the Iraq war. The few dissents inside the U.S. government, questioning President George W. Bush’s confident assertion that Saddam Hussein was still seeking weapons of mass destruction, were certainly sensitive — and in some cases highly classified.

And in Vietnam, the reporters who leaped on and off helicopters, recording the day-to-day reality in a conflict that today seems hopelessly misbegotten, might have risked losing their access to the battlefield for reporting the obvious: What was happening on the ground didn’t remotely match with what optimistic American military leadership was describing at briefings known as the “Five O’Clock Follies.”

Image

Journalists attending a briefing by military officers in Saigon in 1963. The government and the press have tangled over the publication of secret information for decades.Credit...Associated Press

The key to American national security reporting, back to the days when Jefferson sent the Navy to fight the Barbary pirates, has been to compare the government’s official account with evidence, documents and on-the-ground reporting. That was how journalists described to Americans the flubbed Bay of Pigs operation early in the Kennedy administration and the secret war in Cambodia.

In publishing the Pentagon Papers in 1971, The New York Times exposed how an official but unreleased account of the Vietnam War documented a systematic effort by the Johnson administration to mislead the public about the course of the conflict. The history was marked “Top Secret — Sensitive.” Its revelation helped change public perceptions of the war.

These days, in covering traditional conflicts like the one in Ukraine, or the new battlefields of space and cyberspace, or the “shadow war” of sabotage, journalists find it almost impossible to report without running into a wall of sensitivity, secrecy and classification. That even includes attacks that strike at ordinary Americans, such as the Chinese “Salt Typhoon” campaign that pierced deep into American telecommunications systems.

Getting to an approximation of the truth means dealing with a messy mix of unclassified, sensitive and, at times, classified data — some stamped “Top Secret” because national security is truly at stake, some because its revelation would be embarrassing.

The government and the press have tangled over the publication of secret information for decades, of course, most famously in the publication of the Pentagon Papers, which led to a landmark court fight that reaffirmed press freedoms.

But the rules set out by the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seek to establish new constraints on journalists that news organizations consider unconstitutional and at odds with democratic norms.

To obtain or renew a Pentagon pass, a memo circulated on Friday declared, reporters must sign a commitment to publish only information “approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.”

Violators would lose their access to the Pentagon and all U.S. military facilities. Mr. Hegseth, writing on social media, said the move established that “the ‘press’ does not run the Pentagon — the people do.”

Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement that the rules were “basic, common-sense guidelines to protect sensitive information.”

Reporters have begun receiving notifications that they must sign a form agreeing to the new rules, and that if they refuse, their passes could be revoked in less than two weeks. That would constrain their access to civilian and military officials in the building and at bases around the country and the world.

Mr. Hegseth, who discussed a planned military strike this year on a text chain with a group to which a journalist had accidentally been added, is hardly the first senior national security official to vow to bring the press under control. During the Civil War, two famed Union commanders, Philip Sheridan and William T. Sherman, detained reporters and court-martialed one for espionage. President Barack Obama opened more leak investigations than all of his modern predecessors, combined.

Coming amid a broader push by the administration to clamp down on criticism of Mr. Trump, the scope of Mr. Hegseth’s effort stunned news organizations, which are considering how best to keep the policy from coming into effect, including potential legal challenges.

Even a few Republicans in Congress have expressed reservations. Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, a former brigadier general in the Air Force, wrote on social media: “This is so dumb that I have a hard time believing it is true. We don’t want a bunch of Pravda newspapers only touting the Government’s official position.”

It is also reflective of an outdated view of how national security news gets reported in Washington.

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The scope of Mr. Hegseth’s effort stunned news organizations, which are considering how best to keep the policy from coming into effect.Credit...Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

While the Pentagon remains a critical source of information about the use of American power, it is hardly the only source. Commercial satellites offer remarkably detailed imagery of nuclear sites in Iran, and international inspectors collect critical intelligence on that country, much of it “sensitive” in the eyes of the U.S. government.

Intelligence agencies from many nations collect and exchange data on Ukraine. From the beginning of the conflict, the British have published significantly more detailed daily assessments of the action than the Pentagon has made public. Drone, cellphone and security camera imagery gives reporters a look at action on the front lines.

In its oversight role, Congress receives — and sometimes releases — information the Trump administration would like to keep secret. Senators complain that they, too, are being frozen out of information that was once routinely shared. They still have not received a full accounting of the evidence that the U.S. military is using to justify sinking boats coming out of Venezuela, even amid questions about whether some are not carrying drugs, as the administration asserts they are.

Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a veteran and the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he thought the effort was aimed at making journalists “mere stenographers for the party in power or the Pentagon itself.”

The State Department and the White House have so far not sought to impose similar restrictions, though the White House banned The Associated Press earlier this year from participating in the press pools that get close-up access to the president because the news organization declined to switch to using “Gulf of America,” rather than “Gulf of Mexico.”

Even Mr. Trump has appeared dubious about the effectiveness of the Defense Department’s new policy, though he has done nothing to roll it back. A reporter asked him over the weekend, “Should the Pentagon be in charge of deciding what reporters can report on?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Mr. Trump said. “Listen, nothing stops reporters. You know that.”

David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.

9.  Cyber-Warfare – Command-and-Control Analogue

Quite the list of the author's disclaimers.

Excerpts:

Conclusion

After a major cybersecurity incident, our reflex has been to label it as “new.” This has led to fragmented language across policy settings.

This is exemplified by the SolarWinds Platform Breach malicious SUNBURST code being called novel hacking techniques, while news agencies called the tradecraft phenomenal. In reality, it was just the exploitation of existing vulnerabilities (whether it was zero-day or not).

Dick Cheney made the same point, when discussing the victory of Operation Desert Storm, as it was the successful exploitation of flaws within Saddam’s command-and-control Structure.

While the 2007 Estonian DDoS attack did not have the same weaknesses, it was to test cyber capabilities, and as a byproduct to sow confusion and discord to achieve a political objective, even if the actor wasn’t directly attributed to it.

By treating these incidents as disconnected from established war-fighting concepts, we risk producing strategies that cannot reliably distinguish between criminal acts and acts of war.

Viewing digital incidents through the lens of C2W—as the exploitation of a vulnerability to achieve a benefiting effect in pursuit of political advantage—gives policymakers a tested framework for detection, deterrence, and response.

We do not need to invent new terminology to describe what is, fundamentally, an established form of warfare.

Cyber-Warfare – Command-and-Control Analogue

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/09/24/cyber-warfare-command-and-control-analogue/

by Samantha O'Driscoll

|

09.24.2025 at 06:00am

Introduction

Many news agencies have debated whether the breach on the SolarWinds platform was a new way of a state-actors attacking systems. Yet, it was instead the exploitation of existing vulnerabilities. Indeed, Coalition forces in Operation Desert Storm achieved the same effect of disrupting Saddam’s command-and-control structure through a vulnerability in the way they directed the war-fighting effort in Kuwait. In the aftermath of the 2007 Estonian Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS), NATO analysts concluded “it was highly likely that a key objective of the attack was to test and demonstrate cyber capabilities, with the outcome of sowing confusion and uncertainty.” This conclusion, and many other examples like it, led policy makers to focus on the question of whether cyber-warfare/digital warfare is a new warfighting domain – however, with that question came a challenge to define what that meant. Their framing was:

Cyberspace is contested at all times as malign actors increasingly seek to destabilise the Alliance by employing malicious cyber activities and campaigns. Potential adversaries seek to degrade our critical infrastructure, interfere with our government services, extract intelligence, steal intellectual property and impede our military activities. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has highlighted the extent to which cyber activities are a feature of modern conflict.

Although NATO framed an inconsistent connection between existing methods of warfare, such as command-and-control (C2W), it makes it harder for policy makers to determine if an incident is a criminal act or an act of war.

Even by NATO’s own admission it recognizes that cyber-attacks are going to be “a major component of conventional warfare”:

In the summer of 2008, the conflict between Russia and Georgia demonstrated that cyber-attacks have the potential to become a major component of conventional warfare.

Indeed, during the COVID Pandemic under the threat of increased cyber-attacks the Australian 2020 Cyber Security Strategy adopted similar language which begins to describe an adversarial benefiting effect:

Nation states and state-sponsored actors seek to compromise networks to obtain economic, policy, legal, defence and security information for their advantage. Nation states and state-sponsored actors may also seek to achieve disruptive or destructive effects against their targets during peacetime or in a conflict setting.

The subsequent Cyber Security Strategy 2023-2030, continues the theme of describing benefitting effects as “malign cyber operations” describing state-actors as using “cyber-operations” to steal information and challenge [Australian] sovereignty. Matching how the U.S Army defines warfare in Field-Manual – 3-0 – Operations:

The object of war is to impose a nation(s) or group(s) will on its enemy in pursuit of policy objectives.

As the language aligns in both the Australian strategy and FM-3-0 with the conceptual understanding of what warfare is, the conclusion is inescapable. Digital warfare is conventional warfare—the benefiting effect being the achievement of an adversarial political objective.

Australian Policy Responses

In response and aligned with these strategies, Australian legislators passed the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act in 2018 (and subsequent amendments to include cyber-security) to manage the national security risks of espionage, sabotage, and coercion. Over time, this piece of legislation became the capstone, where risks to Australian critical infrastructure are managed through a “Critical Infrastructure Risk Management Plan” (CIRMP) through the lens of an “all-hazards” approach.

“All-hazards” is the identification of risks associated with organizational assets across governance, information, cyber, personnel and physical domains; for example: Would a trusted individual have an opportunity to undertake malicious activities without being identified?

In practice, the act recognizes organizations across 11 Sectors: communications, financial services, data storage or processing, defense industry, higher education, energy, food and grocery, healthcare and medical, space technology, transport, and water and sewage. All are thus required to identify hazards that may affect the confidentiality and availability of their critical infrastructure assets.

It appears that a key intention of Australian policymakers was to support organizations in identifying and managing both natural hazards and adversarial impacts. However, the challenge of clearly distinguishing between the effects of natural events, criminal activity, and warfare can make it difficult for policymakers to develop guidance that is practical and actionable for business leaders. However, the inability to make the distinction between the effects of natural hazards, criminal acts, or warfare inhibits policymakers developing guidance which is actionable by business leaders.

While the SOCI Act framework manages risk, expanding it to recognize that “digital warfare” is essentially C2W — both seeking to “disrupt and dominate” the flow of information—provides policymakers with operationally grounded methods to distinguish between a criminal act and an act of war.

However, the fact remains that we do not have a consistent way to connect “digital warfare” with C2W in doctrinal terms; to do so, we need to understand what warfare is comprised of, and who the threat is through the frame of existing doctrine. This gap can only be closed if we accept that “digital warfare” is C2W in disguise, given the mutually beneficial effects of both are inseparable.

Warfighting Conceptually

Given they are inseparable, having a clear understanding of what “mutually beneficial effects” are is required. To do so, a conceptual understanding of warfare is required to establish how different forms of warfare appear along with the threats they impose.

FM-3-0 Operations establishes that the object of war is to impose a competing nation’s will on another through either Conventional or Irregular Warfare:

• Conventional warfare is a violent struggle for domination between nation-states or coalitions of nation-states (ADP 3-0). Conventional warfare is generally carried out by two or more military forces through armed conflict.
• Irregular warfare is the overt, clandestine, and covert employment of military and non-military capabilities by state and non-state actors to achieve policy objectives other than military domination of an enemy, either as the primary approach or in concert with conventional warfare.
• In practice, a threat in conventional and irregular warfare may involve nation-state adversaries and/or non-state state actors using a mixture of regular, irregular, terrorist, or criminal elements all unified to achieve a mutually beneficial effect.

“Mutually beneficial effects” can be described as being either the destruction, domination, or disruption of an enemy’s ability to communicate with their forces; thereby achieving the political objective.

Operation Desert Storm

Operation Desert Storm (hereafter, ODS) is a prime example of achieving a mutually beneficial effect, given as it was supported by clear and actionable political and military objectives, which led to the disruption of Iraqi command and control infrastructure.

The political objectives being:

• Immediate, complete, and unconditional withdrawal of all Iraqi forces from Kuwait;
• Restoration of Kuwait’s legitimate government;
• Security and stability of Saudi Arabia; and
• Safety and protection of American citizens abroad.

The political objectives being directly linked to key military objectives:

• Neutralization of the Iraqi national command authority’s ability to direct military operations;
• Ejection of Iraqi forces from Kuwait and the destruction of Iraq’s offensive threat to the region, including the Republican Guard in the Kuwait Theater of Operations;

None of these political or military objectives could have been possible without the existence of a vulnerability in Saddam’s top-down command style. The then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney described Saddam’s Centers of Gravity (COGs) as being: “the heart of what allowed Iraq to maintain its occupation of Kuwait.” This referred to Iraqi leadership command facilities, electrical production infrastructure powering military and industrial systems, and core command, control, and communication systems.

It was the vulnerability in Saddam’s chain of command which enabled the success of the military objectives and by extension the political objectives. This is the lens by which policymakers can adopt to determine if a cyber-attack is either a criminal act or an act of war.

SolarWinds Platform

In revisiting the SolarWinds Platform through the lens of C2W it becomes clear that the adversarial intent was to achieve the benefiting effect of gaining access to other environments to achieve a political goal. This assessment is supported by the findings of the UKs National Cyber Security Centre in partnership with other U.S. Agencies (the NSA, CISA, and the FBI), which concluded it was very likely the threat actor was state-sponsored.

During proceedings the SEC contended the SolarWinds organization deliberately misled investors by concealing the company’s poor cybersecurity practices, risks, and vulnerabilities, which only came to light after the SUNBURST attack. One of the vulnerabilities was a flaw in the way SolarWinds restricted access to the Virtual Private Network (VPN), which was exploited by the state-actor.

Conceptually, this is the same as the vulnerability which appeared in Saddam’s command and control style. Putting it simply, if a vulnerability did not exist, the opportunity for exploitation would not have been possible.

However, it was not just the one vulnerability which led to the attack. It was the combination of the flaw in the VPN access control, and the lack of rigorous testing and verification of code which led to the deployment of malicious code to other environments.

Without a clear conceptual understanding of the motivations of the actor, the political test of C2W is impossible. However, given the way in which the SolarWinds platform was leveraged to distribute malicious code, it is possible to infer that the intent was to achieve a “mutually beneficial effect.”

2007 Estonian Hacks

On the other hand, the 2007 Estonian DDoS campaign had all the hallmarks of a political campaign designed to achieve strategic humiliation of Estonian nationalistic pride. NATO analysts believed the motivations of the attack stemmed from an ideological divide over the movement of a Soviet-Era statue in Tallinn. For the Estonians, it represented the memories of being a part of the Soviet Union; for the Russians, it represented a desecration of a hero.

The NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence analyzed the technical elements of the DDoS Campaign and identified the traffic contained overt political, and derogatory phrases referring to then Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip as a fascist for his government approving the relocation of the statue.

While the traffic wasn’t directly attributable to a state-actor, it originated from a group of individuals with the help message being displayed in the Russian language, matching the intent of actor(s) to pursue a political objective.

NATO analysts concluded that in addition to the physical effects of the disruption, there was a component of testing cyber capabilities and the psychological element of sowing confusion.

Conclusion

After a major cybersecurity incident, our reflex has been to label it as “new.” This has led to fragmented language across policy settings.

This is exemplified by the SolarWinds Platform Breach malicious SUNBURST code being called novel hacking techniques, while news agencies called the tradecraft phenomenal. In reality, it was just the exploitation of existing vulnerabilities (whether it was zero-day or not).

Dick Cheney made the same point, when discussing the victory of Operation Desert Storm, as it was the successful exploitation of flaws within Saddam’s command-and-control Structure.

While the 2007 Estonian DDoS attack did not have the same weaknesses, it was to test cyber capabilities, and as a byproduct to sow confusion and discord to achieve a political objective, even if the actor wasn’t directly attributed to it.

By treating these incidents as disconnected from established war-fighting concepts, we risk producing strategies that cannot reliably distinguish between criminal acts and acts of war.

Viewing digital incidents through the lens of C2W—as the exploitation of a vulnerability to achieve a benefiting effect in pursuit of political advantage—gives policymakers a tested framework for detection, deterrence, and response.

We do not need to invent new terminology to describe what is, fundamentally, an established form of warfare.

Disclaimer

• Any direct attribution of a state-actor has been drawn from existing official, or academic publications, any discussion of such is purely interpretive using existing doctrine and does not equate to an official stance.
• The opinions expressed do not reflect any of the institutions I have been employed with or will work for in the future. Nor does it represent the views of any other official institution.
• The use of the Interim Congressional Report “Conduct of the Persian Gulf Conflict” does not equate to the author agreeing to the politics of Dick Cheney’s later actions as Vice President of the United States.
• The use of the SEC filings for the SolarWinds attack is to ensure any discussion regarding the events is drawn from an official source and does not equate to a stance on the case.
• As of 2025 SEC reached a preliminary settlement with SolarWinds.
• The author is not knowingly or willingly endorsing any derogatory remarks which were made about the then Estonian Prime Minister.

Tags: Army Doctrine, Command and Control, Cyber warfare, Estonia 2007, Operation Desert Storm, Solarwinds Platform

About The Author

• 
  
• Samantha O'Driscoll
• Samantha is currently working in Critical Infrastructure, where she designs and implements Cyber Security Governance Programs focused on All-Domain hazards—recognising the impact of a turbulent geopolitical environment. She is also, currently enrolled at the Australian National University’s National Security College, studying a Graduate Diploma in National Security Policymaking. Her background includes roles which spanned multiple sectors of Australian Critical Infrastructure.

10. Space and Ice: Envisioning Special Operations Forces’ Role in Future Operational Environments

​If something is worth reading once, it is worth reading a second time. The Irregular Warfare initiative – Small Wars Journal collaboration allows us to highlight and read important essays a second time.

Excerpts:

Special operations forces are in a transformative period requiring new force structures, roles, and missions to support combined multi-domain warfighting. This article posits two points: the need to develop a U.S. Space Force-directed SJTAC function to increase Triad lethality and bolster allied SOF with space-based capabilities, and emphasis on select SOF Arctic allies to provide “reverse” SFA to ensure incoming allied reinforcements possess the polar capabilities to operate effectively in the High North. Such refinements are necessary to overcome organizational inertia and bureaucracy which could jeopardize SOF’s ability to achieve national, alliance, and coalition objectives.

Space and Ice: Envisioning Special Operations Forces’ Role in Future Operational Environments

by Kevin D. Stringer, by Marius Kristiansen

|

09.24.2025 at 06:00am

Editor’s Note: this article is being republished with the permission of the Irregular Warfare Initiative as part of a republishing arrangement between IWI and SWJ. The original article was published on 24 July 2025 and is available here. 

New frontiers of strategic competition beckon for immediate special operations forces (SOF) transformation to prevail in the space domain and the polar regions. Aligned with Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict Colby Jenkins’ call to think differently and work together, this article proposes two enhanced roles for combined SOF in the competition sphere—a Space Joint Terminal Attack Controller (SJTAC) function and an emphasis on “reverse” security force assistance (SFA) for selected NATO Arctic allies who rely on the principle of “collective defense” for national security. While numerous efforts across the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command and U.S. Space Force aim to meet the “all-domain fires” demand, and Allied Arctic-focused training and exercises have been in place for decades, this essay offers refined proposals in both areas for SOF. While seemingly distinct, both converge in the Arctic, where NATO SOF will require on-call space-based capabilities coupled with SFA essential for High North survivability and success.

SOF as a Space Enabler

First, an SJTAC function would bring significant value to U.S. SOF implementing its role within the “space-cyber-SOF triad,” while providing access to space capabilities in combined operations for allies and partners who lack them organically. This step would particularly align with European military interests to share and pool space assets for enhanced defense and greater burden sharing. In recent years, the United States has pioneered the Triad concept, which combines elements of space, cyber, and special operations to compete with China and Russia across warfighting domains.

Special operations forces play a crucial role in supporting the Triad by securing access and placement to enhance conventional force effectiveness, attaining greater precision in cyber targeting, integrating joint functions across warfighting domains, and leveraging different effects for maximal informational and psychological impact on the opposing force. As U.S. Special Operations Commander General Bryan Fenton noted: “the nexus of USSOCOM, U.S. Cyber Command, U.S. Space Command, and U.S. Strategic Command creates synergy which enhances kill webs—the integration of sensors from seabed to space and the options to eliminate targets—with SOF providing the physical access to targets to deliver effects for cyberspace and space operations within the Joint Force targeting context.” Put another way, special operators serve as the essential node linking a suite of sophisticated technical capabilities that enable the Joint Force to disrupt, degrade, and destroy an adversary via cyber, space, or kinetic means.

Beyond SOF’s main value proposition for the Triad to provide proximate, physical access to sensitive and strategic targets, SOF are exceptionally well-equipped for operating in politically sensitive conditions and denied areas, where their mobility, adaptability, and low visibility enable them to perform strategic tasks like securing critical infrastructure, gathering intelligence, and conducting targeted strikes. Combined with space and cyber capabilities, SOF can access satellite communications, space-based reconnaissance, and cyber tools to disrupt enemy activities while maintaining a low signature. This blend enhances the effectiveness of multi-domain operations, providing strategic and tactical advantages against competitors in contested regions worldwide. A missing element to this concept is a capability, such as a joint terminal attack controller, to execute such operations.

The increased importance of cyber and space calls for a similarly capable joint terminal attack controller to integrate cross-domain capabilities, much like the traditional joint terminal attack controller demonstrates how SOF links the air and land domains. A JTAC is “a qualified (certified) Service member who, from a forward position, directs the action of combat aircraft engaged in close air support and other offensive air operations”—the link between ground forces and air support. The JTAC designation derives from a certification, available to service members from all branches, granted through the five-week Army-run Special Operations Terminal Attack Control Course (SOTACC). JTAC-certified personnel work at the lowest SOF level—within a Special Forces operational detachment, an Army Ranger platoon, a Naval SEAL platoon, or a Marine Corps Special Operations team. In a related fashion, the space JTAC would connect tactical, on-the-ground SOF units with space assets for targeting adversary military airbases, critical infrastructure, and more complex targets, such as Russian floating nuclear power plants.

This element would differ from space personnel already assigned at the theater special operations command (TSOC) level in that it would embed within the SOF tactical unit of action. This space connection would enable the assessment of vulnerabilities, ensuring precision in any potential attack, as well as monitoring target activities, tracking movements, and providing real-time situational awareness for preemptive strikes or future sabotage missions. Furthermore, as space capabilities develop from science fiction to reality, the SJTAC could access future space weaponry ranging from lasers, electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons, to the currently theoretical “Rods from God” kinetic bombardment concept.

Given that not all NATO countries have space assets, and the planning assumption is that NATO SOF formations will operate in a combined fashion, a space JTAC becomes a critical linkage for allied interoperability. This expertise would be beyond current multi-domain SOF capabilities, but would be essential for SOF formations, especially those from smaller states, to access allied space assets from remote and austere locations, and coordinate fires or maneuver among their conventional forces. This development could also serve as an integral element of the emerging, but controversial concept of a U.S. Space Force special operations component command.Space Force, as an independent service, would provide its own SOF component command to SOCOM just like the Army does with U.S. Army Special Operations Command. The SJTACs, individuals and units, would be assets provided by this component

Critics may argue that an “SJTAC” capability could be more effective and fiscally realistic by expanding the SOTACC qualification to integrate the space domain—or, alternatively, placing it within existing Air Force specialties, such as the Combat Controller (CCT). Indeed, the U.S. Air Force has already transformed its legacy Special Operations Weather career field into the new all-domain Special Reconnaissance Airman. But detractors of the SJTAC approach overlook the fact that with space defined as a separate warfighting domain from the air, and with the creation of U.S. Space Force as a separate service, organizational logic and the development of deep space expertise necessitate a division of labor that would place the SJTAC function firmly within the Space Force sphere of responsibility. This placement would also avoid the inefficiency of having SOF from each service—Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines—develop their own SJTAC capabilities. This proposal is amplified by the assessment that space capabilities will rapidly evolve and emerge in the coming years, requiring a deeper knowledge and applicatory understanding of space-to-ground integration for special operations.

Similarly, just as SOF through the SJATC can serve a natural bridging function for the SOF-space-cyber triad, so also can selected allied SOF enable greater effectiveness in the austere Arctic operating environment through “reverse” security force assistance provision—connecting local, niche polar expertise with that of incoming and reinforcing allied SOF formations.

“Reverse” Security Force Assistance Provider

The overarching concept of “collective defense” among allies rests on several layers of liberal world-order principles, and it aims to generate a wide range of effects for the different actors involved. The most obvious differences are easiest to point out by comparing a great, or global power—like the U.S., and a smaller state—like Norway. Simply stated, when Norway commits to collective defense on behalf of allies, it does so as an insurance, for a “seat at the table,” for burden-sharing, as an escalatory control measure, and to generate regional deterrence. In contrast, the U.S. supports collective defense for regional access and placement, strategic communication, regional and global deterrence, and for re-assuring trust among other allies around the globe.

These different perspectives generate two distinctive requirements—the ability to generate a contextual situational understanding of the operating environment, and the capability to operate effectively within that environment. Logically, the Norwegians are better equipped, trained, and organized for operating in the High North, and possess a greater appreciation for regional considerations, compared to most other allies – including Americans, British, Canadians, and the French. The latter, however, need an adequate capability standard for successful operations. This dynamic means the local forces possess subject matter expertise and niche capabilities which surpass those of other allies. If these resources are utilized correctly, the allies can benefit from both the indigenous expertise and the niche capabilities.

The SOF of smaller allies, such as the Nordic countries—including Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden—could take on a reverse SFA provider function, which would facilitate the reception, staging, onwards movement and integration (RSOI) of NATO SOF reinforcements in the High North in event of conflict with Russia, particularly from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and France. This reverse SFA function would also help bolster allies’ effectiveness with all-domain operations in the unforgiving Arctic climate and landscape.

The Arctic and its unique environment create an unusual situation for the classical SFA relationship between Allied providers and Arctic partners, especially in the European High North. The polar regions in Europe and North America are characterized by eight months of winter with continuous darkness, summers with continuous daylight, and temperatures dropping as far as -40 °C (-40 °F) and unlikely to rise above 10 °C (50 °F). With storms and inclement weather present in all seasons, the harsh environment and its volatile weather patterns present unique challenges for planning and sustaining all-domain military operations in the High North. These conditions require specialized expertise, including Arctic-trained and equipped formations to help Allied forces survive and maximize their combat effectiveness.

Defense requirements of the European NATO Arctic states rely heavily on Allied reinforcements and support to be realistic and effective. However, those reinforcements are unlikely to possess all the necessary skills and expertise to thrive in the harsh Arctic climate on their own. Close cooperation and integration within the NATO framework are essential for success, and forces not originating from the European High North will likely require specific training to be effective within this Arctic operational environment. European High North SOF, then, are naturally suited to serve the role of providing “reverse” SFA.

To illustrate the point, a British, Dutch or French SOF formation deploying to the European High North must have specific training from its SOF hosts if the detachments are to be effective and survive outdoors. The same prerequisite applies for U.S. and Canadian SOF elements, even though both originate from Arctic states. This seemingly odd situation arises from the fact that the environmental, climatic, and weather conditions in the North American Arctic differ significantly from those in the European High North. More importantly, the SOF from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden have deep, lifelong Arctic experience that equivalent units in U.S. SOF and Canadian SOF lack. This markedly different situation often results in SOF Allies arriving to the European High North unfit and incorrectly equipped, and therefore only partially interoperable and with limited operational effectiveness. A few RSOI experiences in Norway at the NATO exercises Trident Juncture 2018, Cold Response 2020, Cold Response 2022 and Nordic Response 2024 confirm this latter point, however, there still remains no institutional solution to address this challenge.

Equally important for SOF Arctic employment is Admiral (retired) William McRaven’s assessment that what represents a special operation differs from one NATO nation to another, even though all operate in accordance with NATO SOF doctrine. American and Canadian SOF formations might not be specialized in the tasks these units will face when they rush to their “European brothers in arms” to provide essential allied support in the polar region.

A relevant specific example is the U.S. SOF deployment into the European High North in support of NORSOF. U.S. SOF possess the generic hardware, software, niche capabilities, and personnel needed to augment Norwegian defense in the polar regions. Nevertheless, both U.S. conventional forces and SOF do not possess true all-season Arctic capability. As Barrett, Tovo and Kirkwood noted:

[The U.S.] military’s recent execution of training and operations—such as Arctic Edge, Vigilant Shield, and Arctic Warrior—might best be classified as Arctic tourism. Military units deploy for a few weeks to train but do not really build true Arctic capabilities… military Arctic tourism does little to build the capabilities needed for military forces to survive, thrive, and effectively operate in the harsh Arctic environment, especially for prolonged durations.

Partners like Norway are not engaged in Arctic tourism. They are comprised of personnel raised in Arctic or subarctic environments and have units explicitly designed for Arctic warfare. NATO SOF organizations like Norwegian Special Operations Command (NORSOCOM) should be prepared to conduct a “reverse” SFA mission to re-train, adapt tactics, techniques and procedures, and innovate on behalf of the incoming SFA provider to make the allied SFA effective when it arrives in the Arctic. This situation can be expected to occur also in Sweden, Finland, Canada, and Greenland (Denmark).

Thoughts on the Future

Special operations forces are in a transformative period requiring new force structures, roles, and missions to support combined multi-domain warfighting. This article posits two points: the need to develop a U.S. Space Force-directed SJTAC function to increase Triad lethality and bolster allied SOF with space-based capabilities, and emphasis on select SOF Arctic allies to provide “reverse” SFA to ensure incoming allied reinforcements possess the polar capabilities to operate effectively in the High North. Such refinements are necessary to overcome organizational inertia and bureaucracy which could jeopardize SOF’s ability to achieve national, alliance, and coalition objectives.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official position of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, the Modern War Institute at West Point, or the United States Government.

Tags: Arctic, irregular warfare, IW, IWI Republish, Security Force Assistance, SFA

About The Authors

• 
  
• Kevin D. Stringer
• Kevin D. Stringer, Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired), is a Lecturer at the University of Northwestern Switzerland and Visiting Associate Professor at the Military Academy of Lithuania. Stringer earned a PhD from the University of Zurich, an MA from Boston University, an MSS from the U.S. Army War College, and a BSc from the U.S. Military Academy.
• View all posts
• 
  
• Marius Kristiansen
• Marius Kristiansen is an active-duty Norwegian army officer. Kristiansen holds a PhD in Political Science and Strategy, an MSc in Defence Analysis—Irregular Warfare, a BA in Land Warfare and Military Leadership and an Advanced Certificate in Terrorism Studies. Earlier he was a non-resident fellow with the Irregular Warfare Initiative and the Joint Special Operations University.
• 
  

11. House intelligence leader: Fired DIA chief mishandled Havana Syndrome cases

​The Russians or Chinese (or whoever is behind the Havana Syndrome) must be pleased that they can do more than just physical damage to their targets, they can also impact personnel decisions regarding key senior officials.

Will the Havana syndrome be the gift that keeps on giving?

As an aside, does anyone recognize a pattern by our government when these cases come up that harm US military and government officials? From Agent Orange to Gulf War Syndrome to burn pits to Havana Syndrome the US government spends a lot of time and effort to disprove the facts about these cases. Why is our government's default position to deny that Americans are being harmed? Just think about the operating space that provides our adversaries. And then when the facts can no longer be denied and the government has to admit the truth, the legitimacy of and the confidence in the US government declines. That is of course another win for our adversaries and provides rationale for continued such operations. There is no downside for our enemies.

House intelligence leader: Fired DIA chief mishandled Havana Syndrome cases

Dismissal falsely linked to faulty assessment of U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear sites

washingtontimes.com · Bill Gertz

By - The Washington Times - Tuesday, September 23, 2025

The Pentagon’s most senior intelligence official was dismissed last month for his handling of cases involving victims of the mysterious brain disorder known as Havana syndrome, said the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Rep. Rick Crawford, Arkansas Republican, disclosed during a markup hearing on the fiscal 2026 intelligence authorization bill that Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was dismissed for cause over his handling of cases involving DIA officials who suffered from what the government calls “anomalous health incidents.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired Gen. Kruse on Aug. 22 for what the Pentagon said was an unspecified “loss of confidence.”

Until Mr. Crawford’s disclosure, it was widely reported that the three-star general was removed after a leaked DIA analysis of the June bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities said the strikes caused limited damage and had set back the Iranian nuclear program by only a few months.

The Pentagon and other agencies later said the bombing raids had destroyed major parts of Iran’s nuclear program that would take years to reconstitute.

Havana syndrome, so called after U.S. diplomats posted in Cuba experienced a mysterious brain-related illness, has affected hundreds of American diplomatic, intelligence and military personnel.

The cause has not been clearly identified. Incidents have occurred in China, Austria, Colombia, Georgia, Germany, India, Poland, Russia and Vietnam.

Victims experience debilitating symptoms including headaches, impaired concentration, memory loss and vertigo. Many analysts say the symptoms result from microwave or sonic directed energy exposure.

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U.S. intelligence agencies initially concluded that a foreign adversary was unlikely behind the incidents, angering many who said they were attacked.

In January, an updated intelligence assessment said two agencies believe the chance that a foreign actor was causing the problems was “roughly even.”

Mr. Crawford made public the information about Gen. Kruse’s role in the handling of the cases during committee debate on Sept. 10.

The panel was preparing to vote on a proposed Democratic-sponsored amendment that would have required the federal government to inform Congress of any firings of intelligence agency leaders.

Gen. Timothy Haugh, National Security Agency director, was fired in April. Democrats say the firings amount to politicization of intelligence.

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The amendment’s sponsor, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Democrat, said a lack of transparency regarding Gen. Kruse’s firing was one reason for the measure.

Mr. Crawford explained in opposing the amendment that he had worked closely with Gen. Kruse. He said that, as a result of a committee investigation into anomalous health incidents during the last Congress, “I recommended then and I recommended to this president that he be removed for cause.”

The chairman said Gen. Kruse’s “treatment of AHI victims, to me, was sufficient cause to have him removed from that position.”

Committee Democrats were apparently unaware of problems related to the handling of anomalous health incidents.

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Sen. Mark R. Warner, Virginia Democrat and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, also appeared to be unaware of a link to anomalous health incidents in Gen. Kruse’s dismissal.

Mr. Warner said in August that the dismissal of Gen. Kruse was evidence of a “dangerous habit of treating intelligence as a loyalty test rather than a safeguard for our country.” He linked the firing to the now-discredited DIA assessment of bomb damage on Iranian nuclear sites.

The House intelligence committee voted down the amendment to require the firing notifications.

When asked for details about the handling of anomalous health incidents, Mr. Crawford said in a statement that the details remain classified.

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“The HPSCI investigation into Anomalous Health Incidents (AHI), also known as Havana Syndrome, unearthed information that demonstrates Lt. Gen. Kruse’s actions as director were unacceptable for any leader in uniform,” Mr. Crawford told The Washington Times.

“In particular, his actions as they pertain to one particular AHI survivor were utterly unacceptable and genuinely shocked me.” The details of that case are secret, but “re-victimizing those sacrificing so much for our country does not amount to honorable service,” he said.

In December, Mr. Crawford issued an intelligence committee report stating that it was increasingly likely that a foreign adversary was behind some anomalous health incidents. The report criticized the CIA for faulty analysis of anomalous health incidents and for blocking the committee’s investigation into the malady.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Gen. Kruse’s firing.

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A senior Pentagon official, however, said: “Lt. Gen. Kruse will no longer serve as DIA director.”

Retired Army Lt. Col. Greg Edgreen, who headed a DIA investigation into anomalous health incidents, testified to the House in 2023 that he suspects Russia was behind the attacks using novel, non-kinetic weapons.

“America has a long history of not taking care of those who were wounded when fighting for their country, and Havana syndrome is no different,” he said.

In examining cases of Pentagon victims, Col. Edgreen testified that those targeted were key operators.

“This wasn’t happening to our worst or our middle-range officers,” he said. “This was happening to our top 5%, 10% performing officers across the Defense Intelligence Agency. And consistently, there was a Russia nexus.”

Col. Edgreen said those attacked reported debilitating migraines, perceived sounds, dizziness, vertigo, fatigue, nausea, anxiety, cognitive difficulties and memory loss.

“Some started to develop rare cancers, tumors and heart conditions despite no preexisting or genetic conditions over time,” he said.

“In some cases, diplomats and intelligence officers were forced to leave active service due to complications from their conditions. Early reports were dismissed as psychosomatic or cases of mass hysteria.”

Mr. Parnell announced in July that the Pentagon had begun reviewing applications for payment requests from personnel under the 2021 Helping American Victims Afflicted by Neurological Attacks Act, known as the Havana Act.

“Under the Havana Act, DoD employees and their covered dependents who suffered qualifying brain injuries on or after January 1, 2016, in connection with certain Anomalous Health Incidents (AHI), are eligible for a one-time payment. The department is committed to helping DoD personnel affected by AHIs,” he stated.

Gen. Kruse, an Air Force officer appointed DIA director during the Biden administration in February 2024, could not be reached for comment. It is unclear whether his firing resulted in retirement or reassignment within the Air Force.

Before taking over at DIA, Gen. Kruse was the military adviser to the director of national intelligence, mainly under DNI Avril Haines in the Biden administration.

A DIA spokesman said the agency remains committed to three core tenets regarding anomalous health incidents: identifying causes, finding out who is behind the incidents, and “taking care of our officers who have been affected by AHIs.”

“DIA is dedicated to ensuring proper care and treatment are provided to all agency-affiliated, affected individuals,” the spokesman said.

DIA is the Pentagon’s intelligence-gathering agency. It analyzes foreign militaries and engages in clandestine operations. Its products are shared with the military’s combatant commands and planners at the Pentagon.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe said during his nomination hearing before the Senate in January that he promised to aggressively review CIA analysis on anomalous health incidents to determine whether they are caused by enemy-directed energy weapons.

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

Copyright © 2025 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

washingtontimes.com · Bill Gertz

12. Washington’s Ironclad Commitments Are Rusting in the Indo-Pacific

​Think: "America First, Allies Always."

Excerpts:

A Defense Posture, If You Can Keep It

Although overshadowed by his memorable warning of an “Iron Curtain” falling across Europe, the purpose of Winston Churchill’s 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri was not to warn of the darkness infecting Europe, but to call for the creation of a “fraternal association” of militaries capable of ensuring peace. Churchill advised that for this association to succeed, it required not only friendship, but also building the mechanisms of routine security cooperation that would be needed in the face of dedicated adversaries. By investing in these mechanisms, the United States deterred Soviet aggression and ensured American security throughout the Cold War. Alas, these same sinews are now withering in the Indo-Pacific. By touting America’s commitments while neglecting the undergirding that gives them substance, the Trump administration is creating an ironclad illusion that could court disaster for both Washington and its allies.

Yet this fate is not inevitable. Through alternative defense mechanisms like the State Partnership Program and exercising Congress’s latent foreign policy prerogatives, it is possible to not only preserve the alliance system but cultivate a robust and resilient defense posture that is less dependent on the White House.

Washington’s Ironclad Commitments Are Rusting in the Indo-Pacific

Gregory H. Winger, Miguel Alberto Gomez, and Lauren Sukin

September 24, 2025

warontherocks.com · September 24, 2025

The recent wave of meetings between U.S. officials and allies in the Indo-Pacific have been studies in the duality of American diplomacy under President Donald Trump. Although headlines have focused on mounting American calls for allies to spend more on defense to counter China, the drama of intra-alliance affairs has been offset by an undercurrent of relief. Unlike the vitriol directed at NATO allies, Washington’s pressure for Pacific partners to do more underscores their centrality in U.S. security thinking and has helped assuage regional apprehensions of abandonment.

While the Trump administration’s affirmations of Washington’s defense commitments are welcomed, the relative relief felt by Indo-Pacific partners is premature. Just as houses can be felled by termites as well as sledgehammers, the U.S. alliances in Asia are being undercut from within and risk ruin from rot rather than rancor. Amid the overhaul of U.S. government institutions, many of the key offices, mechanisms, and especially personnel integral to the health of the U.S. alliance system have been diminished or dismissed. Whereas the crisis in trans-Atlantic affairs is apparent to all, the comparative placidity of Indo-Pacific alliances has created a false sense of continuity that is neither real nor actionable. Arresting this degradation requires moving beyond the optics of the current moment. Attempting to fortify the alliances through momentary appeals to the Oval Office compounds the key source of instability in U.S. foreign policy. It detracts from the long-term, systemic investments needed to sustain progress in the alliance system. Moreover, confining the character of American commitments to the White House neglects alternative government avenues to strengthen international partnership.

By exercising its constitutional authorities and innovative uses of its budgetary powers, Congress can revive its underutilized role in foreign relations and take meaningful actions to advance the credibility and capabilities of America’s Indo-Pacific alliance network. Likewise, while not a replacement for federal initiatives, individual U.S. states can leverage points of global engagement like the state-partnership program to buttress American partnerships abroad.

BECOME A MEMBER

Platitudes vs. Process

At the Shangri-La Dialogue, U.S. Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth painted a stark picture of a looming conflict with China. While the content of the remarks was jarring for many, regional commentators saw the secretary’s mere presence at the Indo-Pacific security gathering as offering “some comfort to governments seeking signals of continuity in U.S. policy.” This routine and its reactions have followed an increasingly common pattern in the Indo-Pacific. Amid the upheaval in American foreign relations, Indo-Pacific allies have been bracing for the furor directed at so many other U.S. partners. Yet, rather than recriminations, Trump administration officials have championed America’s regional responsibilities by reaffirming its “ironclad” commitments to the Philippines and embraced the U.S. role as an Indo-Pacific power through increased military activities in places like Palau. Even amid mounting American pressure to increase defense spending, allies at home and abroad have been reassured by this rhetoric and expressed hopes that the long-awaited American “pivot” to the Indo-Pacific may finally be afoot.

Yet, it is a mistake to assess the health of America’s Indo-Pacific alliance network on the flinty statements of political elites alone. Although pronouncements like Hegseth’s affirmation of U.S. commitments can reassure allies and bolster the deterrent value of security pacts, alliances cannot survive on rhetorical power alone. Defense cooperation is a process that requires a sustained program of collaboration to ensure functionality amid shifting political and strategic conditions. It is in these substantive areas, beneath the optics, where the rot in the Indo-Pacific is beginning to take root.

The high-level visits like secretary Hegseth’s trip to Japan and the Philippines and military exercises like the trilateral air and naval drills held with South Korea and Japan that have punctuated Washington’s Pacific posture do not occur on a whim. They rely on months and sometimes years of planning to organize. Through decades of regularized cooperation, the United States has cultivated the close institutional and interpersonal ties that make such coordination possible in peacetime and essential in a conflict. However, these advantages have been eroded amid the culling of U.S. foreign policy institutions. Just over six months into the second Trump presidency, many key ambassadorships and administrative positions remain vacant. These absences have been compounded by personnel cuts at the State Department, the Agency for International Development, and the Department of Defense. Such efforts may save money, but they have removed many of the people and offices responsible for working with partners and have stymied the careers of key personnel with experience and networks in the Indo-Pacific. Moreover, even where institutions remain in place, new regulations pose barriers. For example, rules aimed at preventing defense personnel from engaging with think tanks will curtail valuable exchanges between Washington and its allies.

This loss of experience and curbing of engagements will hinder collaborative endeavors and unravel the personal connections needed to navigate complex inter-governmental relationships. This can be particularly significant in the Indo-Pacific, where informal institutions and personal relationships can play an important role in regional security affairs. Existing initiatives like the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness may be able to endure for a while through inertia. But American absenteeism at routine levels of engagement will sap future undertakings and hamstring the ability to respond to emerging threats like cybersecurity, AI, and drones.

Furthermore, even as orders for military kit swell, there are increasing concerns among industry observers over America’s manufacturing capabilities that could leave its allies exposed to gaps in their own military defenses. Aid to Israel and Ukraine, as well as ordnance-heavy campaigns in Yemen and Iran, have depleted key sectors of the U.S. arsenal. Not only do these reduce U.S. stockpiles, but they also mean that many of the orders for American arms submitted by allies will go unfulfilled.

The AUKUS trilateral security agreement is emblematic of this dilemma. The pact is floundering amid growing doubts over America’s inability to deliver the nuclear-powered submarines that are the centerpiece of the agreement. Nor is Australia alone in suffering from Washington’s overstretched capabilities. During June’s conflict with Iran, U.S. missile defense teams were redeployed from South Korea to the Persian Gulf. The move did not go unnoticed in Seoul and fed questions about the value of the American alliance even as Washington pressed South Korea to do more. Although not as prominent as delays to the AUKUS submarine program, the redeployment of the missile defense teams highlighted the constraints on U.S. capabilities and its inability to simultaneously defend its partners in Asia and the Persian Gulf.

Alliances Beyond the Oval Office

Since Trump’s return to office, the debate over America’s alliances has centered on trying to navigate the caprice of a cantankerous administration. While the administration has been supportive of U.S. Indo-Pacific partners in rhetoric, but neglectful of the personnel and mechanisms that sustain alliances, alternative actions outside of the White House can help give this rhetoric substance and make the Indo-Pacific posture an effective tool for countering Chinese actions.

In the United States, the credibility of American commitments can be strengthened by Congress reasserting its role in foreign policy. U.S. defense treaties are approved by the Senate and Congress can play a key role in the stewardship of American alliances. Concern over China’s assertiveness and support for U.S. Indo-Pacific allies and partners remains a rare point of bipartisan action in Congress. Visits to the region by bipartisan congressional delegations to reaffirm U.S. commitments are important symbols of the broader support that allies continue to enjoy in Washington. This form of outreach should not only continue but be joined by bipartisan efforts at home to strengthen popular understanding of the alliance system and the important role that partners play in the American defense architecture. Congressional leaders cannot be deaf to the groundswell of isolationism within the general population and how this trend may color public reactions to a future Chinese attack on an Indo-Pacific ally or partner. Senators and representatives should be as resolute in championing the importance of allies in their home states and districts as they are when visiting Tokyo or Taipei.

Congress can also take several specific actions to strengthen the credibility of American defense treaties. In 2023, Tim Kaine and Marco Rubio led for the inclusion of a bipartisan provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that prevents the president from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO without congressional support. This measure should be extended to the Indo-Pacific and U.S. treaties with South Korea, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines. Affirming that defense treaties approved by Congress cannot simply be voided by a presidential statement or executive order would bolster the integrity of American commitments and reflect the binding nature of treaty obligations. For Republicans in Congress, such an action would not only address the current moment but also provide a check against the potential abandonment of allies by a future Democratic administration as happened to Taiwan under President Jimmy Carter. Such a measure would reflect the robust support for Indo-Pacific allies that the White House has voiced and establish a broader U.S. commitment to the region that will last beyond the Trump administration.

Moreover, Congress can also apply additional measures through the National Defense Authorization Act to redress key points of uncertainty stemming from the White House. For example, in 2019, a provision was included to prevent the withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea. This measure can be reintroduced to forestall a future drawdown and reflect the deterrence role that physical presence plays.

Effective use of Congress’s budgetary powers can also advance alliance capabilities. Even as the Trump administration urges allies to spend more, this push has been paired with a call to buy kit that is “made in America.” While reflecting the administration’s economic priorities, U.S. military systems are not always affordable nor the best fit for the needs of partners. Instead of momentary splurges on American kit intended to win the president’s fleeting favor, allied defense investments should be strategic undertakings dedicated to building sustained enhancements in their national defense. Congress can help address this issue by not only expanding aid or funding existing commitments, like Pillar II of the AUKUS agreement, but also by allowing greater flexibility in how U.S. funds are used. By either directly purchasing foreign-made weapons systems and transferring their ownership to allies or permitting allies to use U.S. funds to purchase equipment from other international partners, Congress can best advance allied capacity by allowing the purchase of equipment that best fits their needs and budgets. Such steps have been employed as workarounds to support Ukraine, and could be systematized and integrated into a more adaptive approach to military assistance. Ultimately, while allied systems may not be “made in America,” the ability of partners to deploy unique and indigenous capabilities that complement rather than replicate the U.S. military, will lessen the burden on American forces and increase overall alliance effectiveness.

Furthermore, as the United States looks to expand the defense-industrial base to meet the needs of great-power competition, allies can play a key role in this process. By allowing Indo-Pacific allies with enhanced industrial capacity to produce in-demand weapons systems like missile interceptors under a license, Washington can help defuse the current bottleneck in production while building a trans-alliance supply chain in critical systems that is both secure and resilient. Existing initiatives like American backing for the Luzon Economic Corridor, which has been endorsed by the Trump administration, are ripe for such endeavors and Congress can spearhead this push through legislation like Sen. Andy Kim’s Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience Authorization Act.

Lastly, while individual U.S. states cannot fill the role of the federal government in supporting allies or partners, they can play an important part in maintaining these relationships and their functionality. The National Guard’s State Partnership Program has grown into a global endeavor that pairs the national guard from U.S. states with individual U.S. partners. The Philippines is the only U.S. treaty ally in the Indo-Pacific to participate in the program, but other regional partners like Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia participate as well. Expanding the range and frequency of these engagements through the State Partnership Program can sustain the relationship building process while cultivating the bilateral links needed to make security cooperation effective.

Likewise, joint economic initiatives, like Taiwan’s partnership with Arizona to build a $100 billion chip plant, illustrate the wider benefits of American partners and facilitate cooperation in important areas like emerging technologies. Incidents like the immigration raid at the Hyundai plant in Georgia show that such initiatives are still beholden to administration priorities. However, joint economic and technology projects are nevertheless key mechanisms for building the political substance of alliance relationships beyond treaty commitments.

A Defense Posture, If You Can Keep It

Although overshadowed by his memorable warning of an “Iron Curtain” falling across Europe, the purpose of Winston Churchill’s 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri was not to warn of the darkness infecting Europe, but to call for the creation of a “fraternal association” of militaries capable of ensuring peace. Churchill advised that for this association to succeed, it required not only friendship, but also building the mechanisms of routine security cooperation that would be needed in the face of dedicated adversaries. By investing in these mechanisms, the United States deterred Soviet aggression and ensured American security throughout the Cold War. Alas, these same sinews are now withering in the Indo-Pacific. By touting America’s commitments while neglecting the undergirding that gives them substance, the Trump administration is creating an ironclad illusion that could court disaster for both Washington and its allies.

Yet this fate is not inevitable. Through alternative defense mechanisms like the State Partnership Program and exercising Congress’s latent foreign policy prerogatives, it is possible to not only preserve the alliance system but cultivate a robust and resilient defense posture that is less dependent on the White House.

BECOME A MEMBER

Gregory H. Winger is an associate professor in the political science department at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Miguel Alberto Gomez is a senior research fellow in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

Lauren Sukin is the John G. Winant associate professor in U.S. foreign policy at the Department of Politics and International Relations and Nuffield College at the University of Oxford.

Image: Petty Officer 2nd Class Alexandria Esteban via DVIDS

warontherocks.com · September 24, 2025

13. China’s new missiles on parade: showpieces or showstoppers?

​Conclusion:

China clearly intended its Sept. 3 parade to convey its growing military strength and technological ambition, and it succeeded. The new and not-so-new missiles clearly show the PLA’s growing ability to project power and Beijing’s intention to fundamentally alter the region’s military balance.

China’s new missiles on parade: showpieces or showstoppers?

The Sept. 3 parade was clearly meant to convey China's growing military strength and technological ambition.

By John S. Van Oudenaren and Peter W. Singer

September 24, 2025 02:35 AM ET

defenseone.com · John S. Van Oudenaren

For China’s People’s Liberation Army, massive parades like the recent celebration of the 80th anniversary of victory in World War II are more than propaganda set pieces. Military leaders use them to show their Party superiors that the force is progressing towards its modernization goals, including being ready to fight jointly and to defeat any potential adversary—particularly “the strong adversary,” i.e., the United States. And as PLA texts attest, parades are opportunities to unveil new systems intended to deepen nuclear and conventional deterrence.

The hours-long showcase on Sept. 3 offered glimpses of new weapons—especially missiles—and hints about about China’s progress on key military technologies. These are valuable because the PLA operates in an opaque manner, and because its equipment and weapons, with some notable exceptions, have seldom been tested on the battlefield. But analysts must proceed cautiously: the parade was at heart a carefully calibrated influence operation. As one U.S. military analyst recently noted, the military equipment that the PLA displayed “was exactly what they wanted the world and the U.S. military to see.”

So what should we make of five PLA missile systems that made their public debut on Sept. 3? Are they mere showpieces—“old wine in a new bottle,” as the Chinese idiom goes—or are they showstoppers that should give U.S. military planners pause?

DF-61 ICBM: Showpiece (mostly). Little is known about this massive, road-mobile, solid-fueled ballistic missile beyond its reported range of over 12,000 kilometers and alleged payload of up to ten multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles. But several analysts suspect it may be an incrementally updated version of the DF-41 road-mobile ICBM that appeared in the 2019 parade and is now operated by the PLA Rocket Force. The missiles are similar in design and use the same transporter-erector-launcher. Both systems are made by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, an enormous state-owned aerospace enterprise that is the country’s sole ICBM manufacturer.

In the parade, the DF-61 rolled among other strategic weapons, which further suggests that it is simply a better version of the nuclear DF-41. And yet: the possibility exists that its placement was deception. It is conceivable that the weapon is a new conventional ICBM—and a significant boost to the PLA’s long-range tactical striking power.

DF-5C ICBM: Showpiece. Bringing up the rear of the parade’s missile column was the DF-5C, an upgraded variant of the four-decade-old DF-5, the PLA’s oldest active ICBM. The arrival of the C variant adds range and warheads to China’s array of liquid-fueled, silo-based missiles. But its technology is not new, having been first tested in 2017; and its predecessor DF-5B could also carry MIRVs to any target in the United States.

In the parade, the DF-5B followed the DF-31BJ, an improved version of the DF-31AG solid-fueled ICBM that first appeared in 2017. The prominence of these two silo-based missiles at the end of the line is a reminder that even as the PLA adds road-mobile ICBMs and works to consolidate a nuclear triad with better sea- and air-launched nuclear missiles, its expanding network of ICBM silos remains another key element of deterrence.

CJ-1000 long-range hypersonic cruise missile: Showstopper. The parade’s “cruise missile column” saw the debut of several advanced air, sea, and ground-launched cruise missiles. None is a bigger gamechanger than the Changjian-1000, which ups the PLARF’s precision-strike capabilities with engines that U.S. missiles still lack.

Unlike the PLARF’s current DF-17 hypersonic missile, which uses a boost glide system, the CJ-1000 and the YJ-19 missile (see below) are propelled by airbreathing scramjet engines, which makes the PLA just the second military, after Russia’s, to deploy scramjet hypersonic weapons. The U.S. Air Force’s effort to develop a hypersonic cruise missile, meanwhile, is delayed and over budget.

The U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command reports that the CJ-1000 can launch quickly and penetrate deeply against high-value land or sea targets. And although U.S. missile defense systems such as THAAD have received upgrades to better track and intercept hypersonic attacks, they will be challenged by the high maneuverability and long range of the CJ-1000, which can purportedly launch from Fujian in eastern China and hit Guam in 38 minutes. Xinhua agrees: the speedy, nimble, long-ranged CJ-1000 is a potential gamechanger that threatens U.S. bases in the western Pacific.

YJ-19 hypersonic anti-ship missile: Showstopper. The parade’s anti-ship missile formation introduced four new types—three of which are likely hypersonic. Perhaps the most notable is the YJ-19, whose scramjet is reportedly capable of flying faster than Mach 10 out to around 1,440 kilometers. Its waverider configuration harnesses its own shockwaves to improve lift-drag ratio.

If the capabilities are as advertised, the YJ-19 will greatly improve the ability of the PLA Navy’s surface ships and attack submarines to strike enemy warships within the first and even second island chains. Like the CJ-1000, it provides a capability that the U.S. does not currently have and raises the level of risk to U.S. forces responding to a contingency in our around Taiwan, the South China Sea, or the East China Sea.

HQ-29 anti-ballistic missile and anti-satellite weapon: Showstopper. Among the several HQ-series surface-to-air missiles debuted in the parade’s air defense column, the standout was the Hongqi-29—and not just because it was the largest.

The HQ-29 is a follow-on to the HQ-19 high-altitude interceptor, which employs kinetic-kill technology akin to the U.S. THAAD system. It is road-mobile, unlike other long-range interceptors that are silo-based, allowing for more flexible deployments and optimization of launch position. The HQ-29 also provides the PLA with an interceptor that can hit incoming ICBMs in midcourse—or even low-earth orbit satellites. If and when it is fielded, it will improve China’s regional ballistic missile defense and anti-satellite warfare capabilities.

China clearly intended its Sept. 3 parade to convey its growing military strength and technological ambition, and it succeeded. The new and not-so-new missiles clearly show the PLA’s growing ability to project power and Beijing’s intention to fundamentally alter the region’s military balance.

defenseone.com · John S. Van Oudenaren

​14. Army Secretary in ‘holy war’ with Congress over budget flexibility

​Come on, Congress. If you do not allow flexibility you should forfeit your right to criticize.  As they say, be part of the solution not the problem.

Yes, we all must be good stewards of our taxpayers money, but the ultimate price of military equipment is not what we pay to industry, it is paid on the battlefield with our troops' blood. (Hyperbole? Perhaps, but ask a soldier what are the costs that they must pay.)

Army Secretary in ‘holy war’ with Congress over budget flexibility

Defense News · Jen Judson · September 23, 2025

Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll says he is locked in a “holy war” on Capitol Hill as he works to convince lawmakers to grant the service more flexible funding authority for electronic warfare, unmanned aerial systems and counter-drone efforts.

The resistance Driscoll has encountered in his first eight months in the job is part of a longstanding tension between the Pentagon and Congress over the trust and oversight of taxpayer dollars.

Unstable leadership cycles and inconsistent funding have pushed contractors into cost-plus arrangements, Driscoll explained, while congressional skepticism has only grown in the wake of failed modernization programs.

“We have 1,400 [to] 1,500 line items of make and model of things we need to buy,” he told a group of reporters last week. “Specifically we have asked to consolidate down in electronic warfare, drone and counter-drone. … This is 1% of our budget and we are in like a holy war over whether we’re going to have the authority for 1% of our budget to have the flexibility to buy different makes and models.”

RELATED

Trial by fire: How the Army banks on frontline units to test new gear

Army leaders take another stab at familiar objectives — culture change and acquisition reform.

The Army first announced it wanted flexible funding in these areas in 2024 during the previous administration in order to keep pace with technology developments that are moving so quickly the service’s traditional acquisition paths would continuously lead to the delivery of outdated equipment.

New electronic warfare capability seen on the battlefield in Ukraine outpaces old technology in a matter of weeks rather than years, for example.

Driscoll acknowledged that the Army has frequently under-delivered or not delivered when it comes to using taxpayer dollars and said he understands Congress wanting extra oversight.

Even so, “the problem is we are requesting more trust from them and more ability move on our own and I think that they are cautious and hesitant to give us that until we start to deliver wins at scale, but we can’t deliver wins at scale until we get this flexibility. So it’s a little bit of a chicken and the egg setup,” Driscoll told Defense News.

“I’m cautiously optimistic that the more people that hear about this, the more people that weight the actual risk of a drone with a munition showing up at a stadium, our border, at a port in our own nation, the more that that starts to outweigh all the other things,” Driscoll said.”I think we’re empowering our decision makers to do what they, deep down, know what’s right.”

The stakes are high, Driscoll said, as the National Defense Authorization Act debate heats up. “We just cannot get after the EW, counter-UAS and UAS threats without this flexibility. We must have it. And so we have made this a hill that we are willing to die on.”

About Jen Judson

Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.

​15. Hegseth terminates women’s advisory group, slams ‘divisive agenda’

Hegseth terminates women’s advisory group, slams ‘divisive agenda’

militarytimes.com · Hope Hodge Seck · September 23, 2025

The Pentagon has announced plans to terminate a 75-year-old advisory committee serving female service members, citing a “divisive” and harmful agenda — days after a previous memo established plans for reactivating it.

A Sept. 17 memo signed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and reviewed by Military Times directs the “formal disestablishment” of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.

“After further review, I have determined that the reinstatement of the Defense Advisory Committee for Women in the Services (DACOWITS) should not proceed,” Hegseth wrote in the memo, addressed to the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness and the director of administration and management. “The Department’s Advisory Committee Management Officer will terminate the DACOWITS in accordance with the requirements of [the Federal Advisory Committee Act]. In addition, the DACOWITS Sponsor will take appropriate action to realign resources associated with the DACOWITS, such as the reassignment of personnel, conclusion of contracts, and the archiving of DACOWITS’ records.”

A Sept. 8 memo also signed by Hegseth and reviewed by Military Times had directed the phased return to service of DACOWITS and 39 other advisory groups placed on hiatus, including the women’s advisory committee that an internal email had previously recommended for closure.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment about the move to keep the committee. But on Tuesday, officials provided a statement about Hegseth’s termination decision that called DACOWITS “divisive” and criticized its “agenda.”

“After further review, Secretary Hegseth has decided to terminate the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services,” Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson said in the statement. “The Committee is focused on advancing a divisive feminist agenda that hurts combat readiness, while Secretary Hegseth has focused on advancing uniform, sex-neutral standards across the Department.”

A senior staff member with the office of Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Penn., a former Air Force officer who has advocated for DACOWITS and service-level groups supporting efforts to develop policies and equipment that account for women, said the office had submitted numerous questions to the Pentagon about the termination memo.

The agenda of the most recent public DACOWITS meeting, held in December 2024 before quarterly meetings were paused, addressed recruiting and service propensity statistics; flexibility and permeability for transfers between services; the integration status of women serving on submarines; data on eating disorders and physical fitness, issues regarding menopause, perimenopause and hormonal imbalances; and the reintegration to service of troops who’d given birth.

A 70-year report on the committee’s work, published in 2020, highlighted how more than 1,000 DACOWITS recommendations made since 1967 had informed Defense Department policy, with a 97% full or partial adoption rate as of 2019. Major themes since the 2010s, according to a data analysis, have been prevention of sexual assault and harassment, gender equality and integration, career progression and women’s health and wellbeing.

16. Cache of Devices Capable of Crashing Cell Network Is Found Near U.N.

​Unrestricted warfare?

Just as a reminder, I asked my research assistant (AI) to extract relevant quotes from unrestricted warfare that might illustrate why this incident might be connected to the concept/strategy. Note number 9.

Here are ten quotes from Unrestricted Warfare (1999) by PLA Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. 

1. Stock-market crashes, viruses, rumors as “new weapons”

The authors argue that modern conflict no longer requires tanks or bombs; even a stock-market crash triggered deliberately, a malicious computer virus, or a single damaging rumor can function as a weapon. They categorize these as part of a new arsenal where the boundaries between war and peace are blurred. The idea is to undermine confidence in financial markets and social stability without firing a shot.

2. Financial warfare and the example of George Soros

They describe financial warfare as one of the most powerful non-military weapons. In their view, figures like George Soros demonstrate how speculative attacks against currencies can destabilize entire nations, weaken governments, and shake public faith in institutions. This form of warfare can “bleed a nation white” economically while avoiding open military confrontation.

3. Credit rating agencies as manipulative actors

The text notes that organizations such as Moody’s and other credit-rating firms can influence or even manipulate national economies by adjusting credit ratings. This power, the authors suggest, means that financial instruments and institutions can become tools of war — creating crises of confidence in a country’s ability to protect its businesses, banks, or consumers.

4. No domain off-limits — financial, information, trade warfare

The authors insist that any field can become a battlefield: from information systems to trade disputes, from financial speculation to public opinion. They argue that there are no longer limits to what can be weaponized — implying that economic sanctions, trade blockades, or information campaigns against businesses are as much “warfare” as traditional battles.

5. Characteristics of financial war

Financial warfare, they emphasize, is easy to manipulate, hard to detect, and devastating in its consequences. Because it can be carried out covertly, with deniability, it becomes attractive to weaker actors who want to hurt stronger powers. This method undermines not just a government but also confidence in the business environment and market system that supports it.

6. Extreme methods to defend financial security

In a provocative section, the authors even ask rhetorically: if national financial security is at stake, could assassination be considered an appropriate tool against hostile financial actors like international speculators? While not prescribing this, the suggestion illustrates how far they are willing to push the idea of war beyond the battlefield.

7. Media ownership as warfare

They note that one could buy or manipulate media companies — by purchasing shares or exerting influence — and then use those outlets to wage media warfare. This could involve shaping consumer perceptions, damaging the reputation of national businesses, or amplifying crises that undermine public trust in government protection.

8. A catalog of “non-military” wars

The book lists a wide array of modern conflict forms: financial warfare, trade warfare, resources warfare, smuggling warfare, psychological warfare, and media warfare, among others. Each of these, they argue, can destabilize a nation’s economy and society just as effectively as traditional combat.

9. Paralyzing communications to cause panic

They warn that attacks on communications and mass-media networks could create social panic and political crises, even without destroying infrastructure. For example, if consumers believe supply chains or financial systems are collapsing, the loss of trust itself becomes the weapon.

10. New weapons tied to daily life

Finally, the authors emphasize that the new concept of weapons are those intimately connected to everyday life. Ordinary consumer goods, financial systems, and information platforms can all be turned into tools of coercion and disruption — meaning warfare now invades the daily experience of civilians, not just soldiers.

Taken together, these passages show how Unrestricted Warfare frames subversion of supply chains, financial institutions, media, and consumer confidence as deliberate tools of national strategy.

Cache of Devices Capable of Crashing Cell Network Is Found Near U.N.

NY Times · Eileen Sullivan · September 23, 2025

The Secret Service discovered more than 100,000 SIM cards and 300 servers, which could disable cellular towers or be used to conduct surveillance.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/us/politics/secret-service-sim-cards-servers-un.html

Listen to this article · 4:25 min Learn more

Investigators said there was no specific evidence that the operation threatened the U.N. General Assembly meeting this week.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times

By

Reporting from Washington

Sept. 23, 2025, 7:00 a.m. ET

The Secret Service found and seized an illicit network of sophisticated equipment in the New York region that was capable of shutting down the cellular network as foreign leaders prepared to gather nearby for the annual U.N. General Assembly, the agency announced on Tuesday.

Officials said the anonymous communications network, which included more than 100,000 SIM cards and 300 servers, could interfere with emergency response services and could be used to conduct encrypted communication. One official said the network was capable of sending 30 million text messages per minute, anonymously. The official said the agency had never before seen such an extensive operation.

There is no specific information that the network, now dismantled, posed a threat to the conference itself, Secret Service officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. The agency leads the security for the U.N. meetings this week.

The conference draws more than 100 foreign leaders and their staffs and has been described as the Super Bowl of spy games. The scale of the equipment discovered suggests the network could be part of a nation’s surveillance operation, experts said.

Initial analysis of the data on some of the SIM cards has identified ties to at least one foreign nation, as well as links to criminals already known to U.S. law enforcement officials, including cartel members, Secret Service officials told reporters on Monday in a call previewing Tuesday’s announcement.

“We will continue working toward identifying those responsible and their intent, including whether their plan was to disrupt the U.N. General Assembly and communications of government and emergency personnel during the official visit of world leaders in and around New York City,” Matt McCool, the top agent at the Secret Service’s New York field office, said in a video statement recorded by the agency ahead of the announcement.

Investigators found the SIM cards and servers in August at several locations within a 35-mile radius of the United Nations headquarters. The discovery followed a monthslong investigation into what the agency described as anonymous “telephonic threats” made to three high-level U.S. government officials this spring — one official in the Secret Service and two who work at the White House, one of the officials said.

The agency did not provide details about the threats made to the three officials, but Mr. McCool described some as “fraudulent calls.”

“This network had the potential to disable cellphone towers and essentially shut down the cellular network,” Mr. McCool said.

A handout photograph provided by the Secret Service showing racks of dismantled communications devices that were part of an anonymous network in the New York region.Credit...Secret Service

Investigators have been going through the data on SIM cards that were part of the network, including calls, texts and browser history. Mr. McCool said they expected to find that other senior government officials had also been targeted in the operation.

The agency shared crime scene photos of servers with antennas and SIM cards. In some cases, the servers holding the SIM cards were on floor-to-ceiling shelves.

Anthony J. Ferrante, the global head of the cybersecurity practice at FTI, an international consulting firm, said the operation appeared to be sophisticated and costly.

“My instinct is this is espionage,” said Mr. Ferrante, who previously served in top cybersecurity positions at the White House and the F.B.I.

In addition to jamming the cellular network, he said, such a large amount of equipment near the United Nations could be used for eavesdropping.

James A. Lewis, a cybersecurity researcher at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, said that only a handful of countries could pull off such an operation, including Russia, China and Israel.

In addition to the Secret Service, the New York Police Department, the Justice Department, Homeland Security Investigations and the office of the director of national intelligence are investigating.

“This is an ongoing investigation, but there’s absolutely no reason to believe we won’t find more of these devices in other cities,” Mr. McCool said.

One official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said agents also found 80 grams of cocaine, illegal firearms, computers and cellphones when they discovered the network.

Eileen Sullivan is a Times reporter covering the changes to the federal work force under the Trump administration.

See more on: U.S. Politics, U.S. Secret Service, United Nations

NY Times · Eileen Sullivan · September 23, 2025

17. U.S. Navy Wants to Open Subic Bay Storage Facility in the Philippines

Hardened?

U.S. Navy Wants to Open Subic Bay Storage Facility in the Philippines - USNI News

news.usni.org · Aaron-Matthew Lariosa · September 23, 2025

U.S. Army Soldiers of the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, participated in port operations by moving equipment and aircraft, such as AH-46 Apache and CH-47 Chinook helicopters, in support of Salaknib 25 at Subic Bay, Philippines, April 1, 2025. US Army photo

Washington is looking to set up a military storage facility in the Philippines at the former U.S. naval base at Subic Bay by the summer of 2026, according to new documents.

A request for lease proposal identified the need for a 25,000-square-meter climate-controlled warehouse and maintenance shop to be used by the U.S. Navy within the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority Freeport area. The request follows an April solicitation that sought information for storage facilities within Subic Bay and near the former U.S. Air Force base at Clark.

Compared to the previous solicitation, the requirements set forth by the Navy have reduced the leasing period from a decade to five years. The location of the storage facility is slated to be within 10 miles of the Marine Corps’ prepositioning program site, which is situated in a 57,000-square-foot warehouse at the former Subic Bay Naval Supply Depot.

The Navy anticipates beginning operations by next September, according to the documents.

No munitions will be stored at the facility, according to requirements outlined in the documents, which state “the space shall primarily be used for storage and maintenance of vehicles and vehicle equipment.” The anticipated storage area should be able to support up to five dozen personnel and include a maintenance shop, reads the documents.

The request for lease marks one of the most significant developments from Washington in the Southeast Asian nation since the closure of its bases in the 1990s. During the Cold War, Subic Bay and Clark hosted large contingents of American forces and supported operations throughout the Pacific.

However, activities have been ramping up at the strategically located bay amid tensions in the South China Sea and the Luzon Strait. Subic Bay has once again become the focal point of Washington’s logistics efforts to support its increased defense cooperation, which is set to include up to 500 activities in 2026.

U.S.-Philippine defense cooperation has focused on military exercises, the development of infrastructure at select bases from the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement and the forward deployment of missile and unmanned assets.

American aircraft and vessels annually deposit scores of vehicles, aircraft and troops at Subic Bay’s port and airfield. Washington’s economic investments – in tandem with Seoul’s maritime investment efforts – have revitalized a dormant shipyard across from the former American naval base.

While the site of the envisioned leased storage facility is unclear, the Subic Bay Freeport Zone is home to numerous warehouses and former base facilities. A network of Cold War-era munition bunkers, long since converted to store shipping containers and other goods, remain in operation to the south of the bay.

Manila’s military modernization efforts are playing a role in revitalizing Subic Bay. The Philippine Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard are working towards bringing facilities and bases to the area.

The strategic importance of Subic has also seen Philippine law enforcement arresting Chinese nationals on espionage charges. Several of these suspected spies were caught photographing American and Philippine warships with drones in March.

Related

news.usni.org · Aaron-Matthew Lariosa · September 23, 2025

18. Dutch radar firm Robin turns bird-spotting skills into drone defense

​Who would have thought that bird watching is a national security capability?

Dutch radar firm Robin turns bird-spotting skills into drone defense

Defense News · Rudy Ruitenberg · September 24, 2025

PARIS — Robin Radar got into drone detection in the early 2010s, when the company needed predictable targets to validate its bird-spotting radars, founder and CEO Siete Hamminga recalls.

The Dutch startup considered partnering with a pigeon club to release homing pigeons, the executive told Defense News in an interview at the DSEI UK defense show in London earlier this month.

In the end, the company turned to drones, their controlled flight allowing to validate detection – a practical move that would prove to be fortuitous. Today, drone detection accounts for a majority of Robin Radar’s revenue, with defense applications dominant, Hamminga said.

As small drones and swarms becoming a staple of modern war, “you need to be able to detect a large number of targets simultaneously,” Hamming said. “Since we came from the bird-radar world, in which there are always huge amount of birds in the air, that was no challenge for us.”

Robin Radar was Europe’s second-fastest growing company in aerospace and defense behind Finland’s ICEYE, according a Financial Times ranking published in March, with revenue jumping to €43 million ($51 million) in 2023 from €5.5 million in 2020.

Hamminga expects to scale up production capacity to at least six radars per week by the end of 2025, after the company increased the pace to four radars per week last year. Robin was producing around 20 radars annually about five years ago, the CEO said.

A radar system by Dutch company Robin is seen during the International military anti drone exercise Baltic Trust 25 (BATT25) at the Selonia (Selija) military training ground near Viesite, Latvia, on Aug. 27, 2025. (Gints Ivuskans/AFP via Getty Images)

The Dutch Ministry of Defence in 2023 bought 51 of the company’s IRIS drone-detection radars to donate to Ukraine, then the biggest contract in Robin Radar history. The ministry ordered the same number of systems for Ukraine in 2024, with the newer radars equipped to be used on the move, and doubled that this year, according to Hamminga.

Roughly the size of a fat beer keg, the IRIS radar weighs 29 kilograms and can be mounted on a vehicle or a tripod. The radar costs less than $1 million per unit, Hamminga said.

The CEO says more than 200 of the company’s radars are now deployed in Ukraine to help detect Russian drones. He said Robin reached out to the Dutch MoD after seeing what drones were doing in the embattled country.

“Like other countries, the Netherlands asked Ukraine, `how can we help?’ and a lot of answers were in the direction of air defense, counter-drone systems,” Hamminga said.

As for many Western defense firms, the war in Ukraine has been a test bed for Robin. Feedback from the frontline prompted the development of a mobile version of IRIS, and the company this month rolled out a software update to extend the radar’s detection range to 12 kilometers from 5 kilometers, based on direct input from Ukrainian operators.

The company says the latest upgrade makes IRIS one of the first off-the-shelf radars proven to detect and classify Shahed loitering munitions and other fixed-wing drones at long distances, with every kilometer of extra detection providing defenders with “more precious seconds” to react.

The money from defense orders has allowed Robin Radar to scale up its business and hire talent, including “fantastic engineers” who wouldn’t have joined the company 10 years ago, according to the CEO. He expects to end the year with around 225 employees, from around 25 in 2020.

Within defense, the company is now seeing a shift from Ukraine to NATO countries investing in their own capabilities, as Western military leaders consider how to deal with a mass drone threat similar to the one on the Ukrainian battlefield.

Hamminga said Robin doesn’t compete with defense primes but fills a gap for short-range, cost-efficient drone radars, having distribution agreements with Thales, Saab and other radar suppliers.

It’s a niche also being pursued by the likes of Echodyne in the United States and Blighter in the United Kingdom, though neither shares Robin Radar’s background in bird science.

Robin Radar was among the first to commercialize a technology called micro-Doppler for drone detection, looking into the details of a radar echo to measure the Doppler effect caused by moving parts such as rotors.

A plan to identify bird species on radar through a database of wing beats didn’t work out in part due to the “ridiculously large” number of species, but was the key to distinguishing birds from drones, the executive said. Robin Radar is now combining micro-Doppler signatures with machine learning to grow the classification database for drones.

Work on the underlying technology started at Dutch research institute TNO in 1980 as a project to prevent bird strikes for the Royal Netherlands Air Force, called Radar Observation of Bird Intensity. Hamminga, a tech entrepreneur working with TNO, spun out the company from the institute in June 2010.

The CEO said Robin couldn’t build something like the Thales Smart-L long-range radar, and “we don’t have that ambition,” but the French company used Robin Radar systems to help protect the Olympic Games in Paris.

As the defense business grows, Robin Radar remains committed to civilian markets, the CEO said, calling the radar maker typical of a new breed of company not focused solely on defense. He said both airports and wind farms are growth markets for bird radar.

“I think you will see in the next five years that the most successful companies and successful scale-ups will have that characteristic, dual use, civil and military,” Hamminga said.

The company’s 2030 plan envisages Robin Radar entering the market for unmanned traffic management as drones integrate in commercial airspace, with the radar maker “moving from protecting against drones to also facilitating commercial drone cases,” Hamminga said.

Robin Radar won its first major order in 2012 from Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, its launch customer, and the civil business these days is roughly split between bird-detection radars for aviation and wind farms, according to Hamminga.

The company in 2014 received a Dutch government grant to pursue a feasibility study into solutions for detecting and eliminating drones.

Dutch investment firm Parcom became a majority owner in 2024, as Hamminga sought a new shareholder able to “bring Robin Radar to the next level.”

“This is a private equity who will fund almost any good idea if it makes sense, so it gives me flexibility to grow,” the CEO said. “Of course, I feel the pressure – I can be very satisfied about the growth we had, but for them that’s point zero, and now we need to go times three.”

About Rudy Ruitenberg

Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.

19. Plan for the Worst: Why the Marine Corps Stand-in Forces Concept Demands a Premortem

​I think the concept of a pre-mortem is very useful and should be rigorously applied.

Excerpts:

The premortem exercise should occur after observing stand-in forces during an extended, intense, full-mission rehearsal. The exercise outcomes and end point must remain fluid, allowing stand-in forces to display sound judgment in the face of incomplete information. The pace and tempo of operations should simulate adversary forces and conditions, including a lack of food, a shortage of water, degraded communication, and elevated stress. The Marine Corps should also open the exercise to outside expertise by allowing psychologists and exercise physiologists to gather data on the stresses and responses the stand-in forces confront. At the end of the exercise, all participants, regardless of rank, should present their observations.

The United States’ renewed emphasis on deterring and responding to Chinese aggression places the stand-in forces at center stage. Proximity to the front lines and partners allows these forces to integrate with and accentuate joint capabilities. The stand-in forces’ organic sensors and shooters comprise a credible combat force but also stitch together links in the joint kill chain. Their positioning, capabilities, and understanding accelerate joint capabilities and processes. Although stand-in forces will be trained, manned, and equipped as other Marine units, their work enables partners and the joint force. The pivot from battlespace owner to joint enabler extends the stakeholder network.

The stand-in forces concept offers the joint force a potent, purpose-built unit inside the enemy’s weapons engagement zone. However, only a rigorous examination of stand-in forces’ worst day can determine its prospects for survival and success. A clear understanding of stand-in forces’ capabilities and capacity ensures its proper employment. By imagining and examining the worst-case scenario, the joint force can gain a better understanding of stand-in forces’ capabilities and dependencies. Each day, China’s military readiness grows alongside its willingness to fight. As a result, among its other requirements, the joint force and partners must deepen their understanding of stand-in forces and their requirements. The time to test the concept is now, before it’s too late.

Plan for the Worst: Why the Marine Corps Stand-in Forces Concept Demands a Premortem - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · Benjamin Van Horrick · September 24, 2025

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1800 JST, 15 April 2027, on a piece of maritime terrain

“Dig.”

The staff sergeant never thought he would be issuing an order to dig graves for his fallen Marines. However, forty-eight hours after the Marines’ deaths, their remains threatened to infect the rest of his platoon. An hour earlier, the MV-22 slated to transport the remains to Okinawa had waved off again. A hasty interment outside First Platoon’s new patrol base was the only way to protect the rest of the platoon. Ten days of movement to evade detection, degraded communication that limited interaction with the staff sergeant’s command, and now the stress of burying Marines—all of it was testing the platoon beyond its limits.

For the Marine Corps, imagining the unimaginable is not a morbid academic exercise; it is a sacred duty. The Stoic practice of premeditatio malorum teaches individuals to envision the worst outcomes. Effectively, it is a premortem, and it prepares the mind for adversity. This ancient practice must inform institutions as they prepare for modern combat. The stand-in forces concept provides the joint force and regional partners with credible combat capabilities inside the enemy’s weapons engagement zone. Unlike the post-9/11 wars, in which the Corps served primarily as a unilateral battlespace owner, stand-in forces will integrate and accentuate joint and partner capabilities. Marine Corps leadership has not clearly articulated the demands stand-in forces will face and the joint dependencies they will generate. To prepare for war in the Pacific, leadership must anticipate and define these forces’ worst day. Through this necessary—yet sobering—visualization, the Corps can identify and train for the challenges they will face when (not if) crisis strikes in the Pacific.

As the Corps trains, mans, and equips the stand-in forces, its contribution to deterring aggression and ability to secure key maritime terrain will be dependent on how well it articulates the extraordinary mental, moral, and physical demands its Marines will face. Yet, as the Marine littoral regiments move toward full operational capability and the Davidson Window approaches, the Corps must also confront the risks that stand-in forces encounter. And because the stand-in forces’ design integrates joint capabilities, making the premortem a joint concern.

Marine Corps leaders clearly recognize that, in the event of a conflict, stand-in forces would serve as “the forward edge of the Joint Force” and that their role would be integrated into joint kill chains, for which new equipment would be key. And yet as a service, we have failed so far to adequately articulate the demands stand-in forces would likely face, the traits that would lead to victory, or the steps necessary to prepare forces for the fight in the Pacific. Why? Because we have not yet stress-tested the concept.

Imagine a squad from the 12th Littoral Combat Team on key maritime terrain, tasked with partnering with host-nation forces and feeding targeting data to the joint strike complex. For days, the squad marches to avoid detection by the enemy. In the contested communication environment, radio silence and a lack of feedback from up the chain of command creates ambiguity for the squad. The Marines wonder: Did higher get the request? Will help arrive? Accustomed to the feedback loop of command and control, the squad does its best to executes missions it judges to be in keeping with the commander’s intent. With medical supplies exhausted, the corpsman manages pain without medication. Stress robs the Marines of sleep, while their bodies bow and bend under the weight of uncertainty and their combat load.

Ben Connable’s War on the Rocks series of articles on the future of the Corps poses grave questions about stand-in forces’ sustainment and survivability. The sober premortem directly confronts Connable’s concerns and the joint force’s greatest fears.

The placement of stand-in forces on key maritime terrain creates opportunities for the joint force. These Marines will use joint sensors, which feed targeting cycles. They will also partner with the militaries of host nations. However, stand-in forces’ capabilities generate numerous joint dependencies that the joint force has yet to fully understand. The joint force faces risk due to a dual reliance on the nascent concept and a concurrent failure to appreciate the associated demands.

The premortem is a joint concern but remains a service responsibility. The Corps must pivot from keeping the joint force at arm’s length to embracing other services. The Marine Corps’s role as a battlespace owner in Iraq’s Anbar province and, later, Afghanistan’s Helmand province colors the joint force’s relationship with the service. As it shifts this relationship, the Marine Corps must demonstrate and articulate how the stand-in forces concept will integrate joint capabilities and indicate the external support necessary to prevent stand-in forces from culminating. Armed with this information, the stand-in forces can become a fully functional part of joint kill webs and enable external partners to orchestrate fires.

The premortem should identify the human factors these forces will encounter and inform the material solutions the Corps will implement. By working backward from these human factors, the service can better scrutinize the equipment stand-in forces currently possesses, will receive, and still requires. The imperative to enhance procurement timeliness and material effectiveness requires the service to soberly evaluate the items in the stand-in forces’ rucksacks and at their disposal. However, a meaningful assessment of equipment begins with an evaluation of the humans who will use it. With contested supply lines stand-in forces must ensure every ounce they carry counts.

This assessment must identify risks, clarify the necessary preparation, and align efforts to enhance stand-in forces’ readiness. However, the premortem cannot be a service-centric activity; it must be a joint undertaking. The Corps now advertises stand-in forces as the “JTAC [joint terminal air controller of the Joint Force.” In this way, it links the joint force to the success and survivability of the stand-in forces. The stand-in forces concept’s utility, therefore, lies in integrating with other services’ capabilities—a substantial pivot from the Marine Corps’s role as a battlespace owner.

Where a premortem to stress-test the stand-in forces concepts departs from premeditatio malorum is that while the Stoic practice involves mentally rehearsing worst-case scenarios, for the Marine Corps, such a rehearsal must take place outside of the mind and in the real world. The premortem should consist of a ten- to fourteen-day intensive field exercise in the first island chain. In recent exercises, including Keen Edge, Pacific Sentry, Iron Fist, and Resolute Dragon, Marine stand-in forces were a supporting character, not the lead. Placing them at the center of the premortem exercise is vital—there is no other way of validating the concept. Joint and partner representatives should collaborate on exercise design, rather than serving as observers. The exercise objectives should focus on integrating and fulfilling joint requirements while helping external partners understand the stand-in forces’ considerable capabilities and support needs. For the Marine Corps, the gathered data and observations will inform the stand-in forces certification and provide a clearer understanding of joint and partner needs. This inclusive approach mirrors the joint, partnered environment in which Marine stand-in forces will operate in war.

To prepare Marines and, by extension, the joint force, the premortem exercise should be a clinical examination of the stand-in forces’ worst day. Reliance on past combat experience and the ill-defined warrior ethos does little to prepare Marines and even less to assure the joint force. Training must prepare units for the demands of combat by replicating the strain the stand-in forces will face. The Corps still has time to envision those fateful days and prepare for them.

Distributed operations entrust small-unit leaders with immense responsibility and minimal oversight. The decisions these leaders make under stress will determine commands’ level of trust in the stand-in forces. A premortem exercise must replicate the dilemmas units confront in combat. For instance, will a distressed unit manage its signature, or will it revert to sloppy practices, risking detection by the enemy? When resupply and evacuation missions arise, how will leaders prioritize and account for the needs of all units, rather than just one? Will a unit under stress maintain trust with partners, relationships with whom are essential to the stand-in forces concept, or revert to a parochialism that erodes operational effectiveness? The answers to these questions will only become apparent if we subject the concept to a real test.

The demands imposed on stand-in forces extend to intense cognitive pressure. As teams integrate new equipment and lose familiar feedback loops, the minds of Marines will determine mission outcomes. Communications-degraded environments force Marines into ambiguity. The premortem, therefore, must include unit and individual problem-solving scenarios, uncovering not only what the stand-in forces decide but also why they make those decisions. For instance, leaders must troubleshoot a piece of equipment under a time constraint, communicate the update, and assess the cascading effects. Physical fatigue injects a level of realism into the scenario. Small-unit leaders must demonstrate problem-solving skills as they fuse systems to orchestrate the opening and closing of kill chains.

Despite the scope and complexity of the stand-in forces’ mission, the Marine Corps’s fitness screening and standards for stand-in forces leaders remain stagnant. The Corps is not formally testing its Marines under a combat load over multiple days. Thus, it is not mirroring the conditions stand-in forces will face.

An extended premortem exercise will quantify the physical toll the unit will endure. Biometric tracking data and bloodwork—from before, during, and after the exercise—can reveal the physiological stress Marines experience. With data in hand, the Marine Corps can adjust physical preparation, and the joint force can better understand the physical stress stand-in forces will face. Conducting the exercise in the first island chain, rather than in the familiar environs of Twentynine Palms, will boost the assessment’s realism and credibility. This meaningful measure gauges the work capacity of stand-in forces, enabling a recalibration of operational endurance and support requirements.

The examination of stand-in forces’ worst day must include the joint force and regional partners, such as the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, and representatives from Taiwan. Each has a vested interest in the stand-in forces concept’s success.

The premortem exercise should occur after observing stand-in forces during an extended, intense, full-mission rehearsal. The exercise outcomes and end point must remain fluid, allowing stand-in forces to display sound judgment in the face of incomplete information. The pace and tempo of operations should simulate adversary forces and conditions, including a lack of food, a shortage of water, degraded communication, and elevated stress. The Marine Corps should also open the exercise to outside expertise by allowing psychologists and exercise physiologists to gather data on the stresses and responses the stand-in forces confront. At the end of the exercise, all participants, regardless of rank, should present their observations.

The United States’ renewed emphasis on deterring and responding to Chinese aggression places the stand-in forces at center stage. Proximity to the front lines and partners allows these forces to integrate with and accentuate joint capabilities. The stand-in forces’ organic sensors and shooters comprise a credible combat force but also stitch together links in the joint kill chain. Their positioning, capabilities, and understanding accelerate joint capabilities and processes. Although stand-in forces will be trained, manned, and equipped as other Marine units, their work enables partners and the joint force. The pivot from battlespace owner to joint enabler extends the stakeholder network.

The stand-in forces concept offers the joint force a potent, purpose-built unit inside the enemy’s weapons engagement zone. However, only a rigorous examination of stand-in forces’ worst day can determine its prospects for survival and success. A clear understanding of stand-in forces’ capabilities and capacity ensures its proper employment. By imagining and examining the worst-case scenario, the joint force can gain a better understanding of stand-in forces’ capabilities and dependencies. Each day, China’s military readiness grows alongside its willingness to fight. As a result, among its other requirements, the joint force and partners must deepen their understanding of stand-in forces and their requirements. The time to test the concept is now, before it’s too late.

Major Benjamin Van Horrick is currently serving at the Department of Defense Inspector General.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, the Departments of the Army or Navy, the US Marine Corps, or the Department of Defense.

Image credit: Cpl. Angelina Sara, US Marine Corps

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mwi.westpoint.edu · Benjamin Van Horrick · September 24, 2025

20. Applying the Alaska Territorial Guard Concept to Modern Indo-Pacific Irregular Warfare

Conclusion:

The time for preparing irregular warfare groups is before the onset of hostilities, not after. Major Marston knew that and was able to develop the Alaska Territorial Guard into a formidable force, which helped prevent the spread of Japanese forces beyond the initial incursion. These irregulars were able to leverage their knowledge of the operational environment to conduct extremely effective guerilla operations. That is the model the U.S. should emulate today. Irregular warfare development teams, traveling in conjunction with Pacific Pathways, would mitigate this gap in readiness and prepare U.S. allies to have the best chance of survival in the event of an armed conflict.

Applying the Alaska Territorial Guard Concept to Modern Indo-Pacific Irregular Warfare

irregularwarfare.org · Patrick Latham

Editor’s Note: This article earned second place in the Irregular Warfare Initiative’s 2025 Writing Contest, “Irregular Allies: Strengthening Regional Partnerships through Unconventional Means.” Authors were asked to explore how the United States and its partners can use irregular warfare to strengthen security cooperation, build trust, and enhance resilience among Indo-Pacific nations, particularly those with limited conventional military capacity.

Patrick Latham’s piece stood out for its compelling combination of historical insight and forward-looking analysis. By drawing lessons from the Alaska Territorial Guard, the article demonstrates how local knowledge, unconventional partnerships, and preemptive preparation can form the backbone of effective irregular warfare strategies. We have lightly edited the piece after its selection.

For the other winning articles in our contest, look back to our winners’ announcement here.

They were coming. After months of buildup, the Japanese Imperial Army again struck the United States, this time attacking the Alaskan Island of Attu. Charles Foster Jones, one of only 47 residents of Attu, sprinted to his house, where he had stashed a shortwave radio. He sent one simple message: “THE JAPS ARE HERE.” The message was received by the U.S. Navy garrison at Dutch Harbor, who immediately began preparations for additional Japanese incursions. For months, Alaska Defense Command had braced for the moment when warning would become reality; military intelligence had predicted the Japanese would make a move on Alaska. The problem, however, was there were simply too many possible landing areas to guard them all. Anticipating this challenge, Major Marvin “Muktuk” Marston had already begun preparing local defenses, enlisting and training Alaska Natives to defend their land, a solution that would prove crucial when the attack finally came.

The Birth of the Alaska Territorial Guard

Major Marston had traveled extensively across Alaska, frequently visiting the local tribes as he inspected defensive preparations across the state. He saw the need for localized irregular units during a mission to Gambell, Alaska in 1941, and wrote in his memoir:

“I said to myself, ‘These fellows know everything.’ They had to know everything to have lived for generations under the most rugged conditions man has known. Suddenly, like the sun breaking through storm clouds, there came to me an idea for their defense and ours as well.”

In the following years, Marston traveled across the state of Alaska by plane, boat, and dog sled, arming and training as many Alaska Natives as he could, honing them into a highly effective irregular force. They patrolled the coastline in their sealskin canoes, using radios to report Japanese naval patrols. They guarded platinum mines, critical to the manufacture of airplane parts. They built hidden bunkers in the mountains containing caches of weapons, food, and shortwave radios. These native warriors formed the fledgling Alaska Territorial Guard, which would help retake the Aleutian islands of Attu and Kiska a year later.

Lessons in Irregular Warfare

Major Marston knew that Alaska simply did not have the resources or personnel to fight the Japanese conventionally. He decided that if they were to succeed, they would have to fight irregularly and leverage the skills of the locals to their advantage.

It is a reasonable assumption that in the event of a modern conflict in the Pacific, few nations would be able to withstand an invasion using strictly conventional means. According to the Lowy Institute’s Asia Power Index, the majority of U.S.-Allied nations in the Indo-Pacific pale in comparison to China and Russia in conventional power. Rather than planning to fight a conventional fight on such unequal terms, U.S. allies should establish networks in the Indo-Pacific similar to the Alaska Territorial Guard, leveraging local knowledge and skills to collect intelligence and conduct irregular attacks, bleeding and delaying invading forces long enough for larger forces from the United States and other allies to consolidate and conduct a counterattack.

This can be accomplished through simple modifications of an already existing, heavily resourced, multinational exercise. Pacific Pathways is an annual military exercise involving nearly every U.S. ally and partner in the Pacific. This exercise presents the perfect opportunity for the Army to create irregular warfare development teams, drawing on experience from the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center, Special Operations Command – Pacific, and 5th Security Forces Assistance Brigade. These teams would travel throughout the Pacific, training guerilla detachments under the auspices of the training exercises that are already underway. Just as with the Alaska Territorial Guard, these guerilla units would begin establishing caches of supplies in preparation for conducting irregular warfare, as well as preparing escape and evasion plans to aid downed aviators or other displaced allied personnel in escaping capture and returning to friendly lines. Special Operations forces throughout the Indo-Pacific could be aligned to support the irregular units they help develop, providing continuity and a level of mission command, enabling them to be even more effective. Through this method, U.S. allies would have a prepared, combat effective irregular warfare contingency plan in the event of an escalation from competition to crisis or armed conflict.

Preparing Before Hostilities: A Call to Action

The time for preparing irregular warfare groups is before the onset of hostilities, not after. Major Marston knew that and was able to develop the Alaska Territorial Guard into a formidable force, which helped prevent the spread of Japanese forces beyond the initial incursion. These irregulars were able to leverage their knowledge of the operational environment to conduct extremely effective guerilla operations. That is the model the U.S. should emulate today. Irregular warfare development teams, traveling in conjunction with Pacific Pathways, would mitigate this gap in readiness and prepare U.S. allies to have the best chance of survival in the event of an armed conflict.

Patrick Latham is an Active-Duty U.S. Army Intelligence Analyst, currently serving as an Instructor at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence. His previous assignments include extensive support to military operations in the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East with the 11th Airborne Division (Arctic), the 25th Infantry Division, and the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). He holds an A.A.S. from Cochise College in Intelligence Operations and is currently studying for a B.S. in Government with a focus in Intelligence at Liberty University.

Main Image: USCG guard in Alaska in WW2. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, the Modern War Institute at West Point, or the United States Government.

If you value reading the Irregular Warfare Initiative, please consider supporting our work. And for the best gear, check out the IWI store for mugs, coasters, apparel, and other items.

21. India Doesn’t Want to Need China

​Excerpts:

And if that perception holds—and policies follow from it—it will be a problem for the United States. Persisting tensions with the United States will affect India’s strategic, economic, and technology choices. Figures both within and outside the Indian government will urge leaders to do less with an unreliable United States and to find alternative security partners and markets, as well as sources of capital, defense equipment, technology, commodities, and know-how. This will make India a less friendly environment for American businesses and technology firms and a less willing partner for the U.S. government, particularly in the defense, economic security, and technology domains, where India had started cooperating with the United States in ways it had not before.

In their recent piece for Foreign Affairs, Kurt Campbell and Jake Sullivan made the case that American investment in India was not based on altruism but on interests, including the U.S. ability to compete with and deter China. Were India aligned with the United States, it would complicate China’s calculations. Were India and the United States at odds with each other, though, both countries would have a weaker hand to play, especially when it comes to China.

New Delhi realizes that it will have less leverage with Beijing and a tougher time securing itself, growing economically, innovating, and ensuring an Asia not dominated by China if U.S.-Indian ties remain fraught. This is why it continues to seek an agreement with the Trump administration. If Washington does not reciprocate and instead persists in pressuring India, however, New Delhi over time will find a different balance in its foreign policy, and that new balance will invariably be less favorable to the United States.

India Doesn’t Want to Need China

Foreign Affairs · More by Tanvi Madan · September 24, 2025

But U.S. Policy Is Forcing New Delhi to Turn to Its Rival

Tanvi Madan

September 24, 2025

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arriving to a summit in Tianjin, China, August 2025 India’s Press Information Bureau / Reuters

TANVI MADAN is a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution and the author of Fateful Triangle: How China Shaped U.S.-India Relations During the Cold War.

In August, five years after a fatal military clash between China and India, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi traveled to Tianjin to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit. The visit marked Modi’s first trip to China since relations between the Asian neighbors soured in 2020. Western analysts were struck by images of Modi holding hands and laughing with Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Several observers feared that U.S. President Donald Trump’s tirades and tariffs—he imposed a 50 percent tariff rate on India over the summer—had pushed New Delhi into Beijing’s arms.

That assertion gets both cause and effect wrong. Modi’s meeting with Xi was neither a sudden response to Trump’s bullying nor a hurried reset of India’s relationship with China. And New Delhi is certainly not in Beijing’s arms, nor is it striving alongside Beijing and Moscow to establish a new anti-Western order. India has indeed been working with China for nearly a year to return some measure of stability to bilateral relations. Those efforts, however, don’t obviate the fact that the rivalry between the two Asian giants persists.

But Trump’s pressure on India and his seeming desire to arrive at some kind of grand bargain with China will invariably affect the calculus of Indian policymakers. With concern, they will see Washington’s coercive approach toward New Delhi and the contrasting gentler posture toward Beijing as a break from recent U.S. policy, which stressed the imperative of deterring China and helped drive the United States and India closer. Indian officials will not want to be left at such a disadvantage, and that alarm could increase the extent of India’s reengagement with China. That, in turn, will have implications for American interests in the region. If Trump continues to target India, it could lead to a situation in which India opts to cooperate less with and buy less from the United States and to potentially do more with China and others—the opposite of the Trump administration’s stated desire to strengthen ties with New Delhi.

COURTING A RIVAL

The thaw in what had been an icy Chinese-Indian relationship was first evident in October 2024 at the convening of the non-Western grouping known as BRICS, when Modi and Xi had a bilateral meeting for the first time since 2019. The two sides announced that they had completed troop disengagement at the border, a key step on the path to normalizing relations. Both Beijing and New Delhi were ready to change the temperature. China had been facing strategic and economic headwinds, including flagging growth, pressure from the United States, and concern in Europe about Chinese support for Russia. India, for its part, did not want to fret about the prospect of further clashes along the border and instead wanted to focus on boosting its economic growth and bolstering Indian capabilities for the larger competition with China. And at the time, neither side knew who would next occupy the White House and how it might affect U.S. policy toward China.

Since then, the frost between China and India has melted further. The countries revived border talks among their special representatives in December 2024, with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi traveling to New Delhi this August. On the multilateral front, despite Xi skipping the G-20 summit in India in 2023, India sent several senior officials, including its defense minister, external affairs minister, and national security adviser, to China for various meetings this year in support of Beijing’s presidency of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

These consultations have opened the door to additional conciliatory steps, including the revival of civil society exchanges, an agreement to restart direct flights between the two countries, India once again issuing visas for Chinese tourists, and China restoring access for Indians to the pilgrimage to Kailash Mansarovar, a sacred Hindu site in Chinese-held Tibet.

Perhaps more significant is the possibility of selective economic reengagement. In 2020, concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic and that year’s border clashes led New Delhi to impose restrictions on Chinese economic and technology-related activities in India. These included additional scrutiny of investments from China, the exclusion of Chinese companies from India’s 5G network, and the banning of Chinese apps such as TikTok. In the last couple of years, Indian firms, including some of the country’s largest conglomerates, have been calling for these restrictions to be eased. With the current thaw, the Indian government seems more receptive to this demand—and Trump’s tariffs could tip the scale in favor of those seeking to do more business with China.

If the situation along the border remains stable, New Delhi could ease some restrictions in nonsensitive areas. It would likely prioritize sectors where Chinese companies, industrial inputs, and expertise could help India grow or, ironically, help reduce its dependence on imports from China over the long term by building domestic capacity. Policymakers could permit Chinese involvement in areas where it could help create jobs, improve India’s manufacturing and technological capabilities, better integrate India into global supply chains, and boost Indian exports. New Delhi could condition this market access by requiring those Chinese companies seeking to do business in India to form a joint venture with a local company or provide technical assistance or to transfer technology to their Indian counterparts (much as Beijing has required of foreign firms seeking to do business in China). To be sure, India will likely continue to exclude Chinese entities from sensitive sectors, including critical physical and digital infrastructure such as telecommunications, strategic technologies such as space and nuclear energy, and those that would allow China to own or transfer vast quantities of data relating to Indian citizens.

There is a dilemma here for both countries. For New Delhi, repairing economic ties with China could contribute to economic growth but also lead to greater vulnerability and dependence. Beijing, for its part, wants access to the largest market in the global South as it seeks to diversify away from Western markets. But in the process, it could end up strengthening a strategic and economic competitor.

AT ARM’S LENGTH

This dilemma reflects the fact that, whatever they might say at summits, the two countries still see each other as rivals. And their differences persist. The Indian chief of defense staff recently reiterated that the unresolved border dispute with China remains India’s primary security challenge. Chinese and Indian troops have not gone back to their pre-2020 deployments. Beijing still wants to keep the border issue separate from the broader relationship, whereas New Delhi sees a stable border as the necessary basis for normal ties.

Other bilateral and regional problems also bedevil the relationship. India’s trade deficit with China has only increased in the last few years. And Beijing has demonstrated that it is willing to weaponize New Delhi’s dependence and to try to stymie India’s manufacturing and infrastructure ambitions: China restricted the export to India of rare-earth magnets and fertilizers in 2024 and 2025, the supply to India of tunnel-boring machines produced by a German company in a Chinese manufacturing facility, and the travel of technical experts from China to Apple’s partner factories in India. It has also announced a massive dam project on the Yarlung Tsangpo (which India calls the Brahmaputra River) that could adversely affect India and Bangladesh, which are downstream.

This year, in May, China also played a significant, albeit behind-the-scenes, role in major clashes between India and Pakistan. Beijing backed Islamabad with real-time intelligence and information operations; one former Indian ambassador to Beijing labeled China’s support “battlefield collusion.” China also continues to be Pakistan’s most consequential supplier of military equipment, including, most recently, another submarine.

Whatever they might say at summits, China and India still see each other as rivals.

Thanks to these developments and to India’s long-simmering mistrust of China, New Delhi has not been as warm or as willing to accommodate China as Chinese officials might have hoped. Ahead of the Modi-Xi meeting, India declined to confirm China’s claim that Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar affirmed to Wang Yi during their August meeting that “Taiwan is part of China.” Instead, Indian officials insisted that they would maintain economic, technological, and cultural ties with Taiwan. An upset Beijing then declared this an attempt to “undermine China’s sovereignty on the Taiwan question and impede the improvement of China-India relations.” During the visit of Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr., in early August and Modi’s subsequent trip to Tokyo in late August, India also did not hold back in reiterating its position on the South China Sea and East China Sea, where Chinese maritime claims and military maneuvers have rankled neighboring states. Both of those diplomatic exchanges—and the first joint sail in the South China Sea by the Indian and Philippine navies—also indicate that India continues to seek to balance China by strengthening ties with other states in East Asia and Southeast Asia.

India has also been reluctant to support or join Chinese efforts to build an anti-Western bloc. Modi’s attendance at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit received considerable attention, but what he did not do drew less attention. He pointedly did not revive his trilateral meetings with the leaders of China and Russia, which were held regularly before 2019, despite Beijing and Moscow’s desire to do so. He did not attend Xi’s victory parade in Beijing. And he did not, unlike Xi and Putin, participate in Brazil’s emergency virtual BRICS summit to discuss U.S. tariffs, leaving that task to Jaishankar.

THE TRUMP EFFECT

India has little desire to cede ground or make substantial concessions to China. Two elements of Trump’s approach, however, are shaping the debate in India about the right balance in the country’s foreign relations—and could very well shape India’s choices. First, Trump is bluntly using the very partnership that previous administrations—including his own—have built as coercive leverage to pressure India to change both foreign and economic policy. Second, he has taken a more accommodating stance toward Xi and caused a great deal of uncertainty in India about the direction of U.S.-Chinese relations.

India moved to stabilize ties with China in 2024 in part because it did not know in which direction the next U.S. president would take the country’s China policy. The Trump administration’s tariffs against India—and the prospect of a Trump-Xi summit—only increased that impetus and the urgency as Modi headed into talks with Xi in Tianjin. But with Washington pressuring New Delhi and holding back on countering China, Modi found himself in a weaker position than he was in last year, when the Biden administration maintained a clear interest in partnering with India, in part to compete with China.

Trump is weakening the hands of those in India who advocate for closer ties to the United States.

A U.S.-Chinese détente, even if temporary, would not only change the balance of leverage between India and China in negotiations but also complicate India’s strategic environment. If the current chill in India’s relations with the United States persists, India will face a scenario it has not experienced for a while: a fractious relationship with the United States while Washington pulls back from full-on strategic competition with Beijing and draws closer to Islamabad. Even though India is much stronger today than it was in the past, it fears that in such a scenario China would be tempted to press India harder—for instance, by attempting further incursions at the border. To avert that, there will be calls in India to hedge further with China even if it’s on suboptimal terms, such as by making certain economic concessions, holding back on cooperation with other partners that China might find threatening, or not standing up to instances of Chinese assertiveness along the border.

This is not just a hypothetical future concern. Trump’s approaches to China and India have already strengthened the hands of those in India making the case for greater openness to China. India’s largest corporations, for instance, are exploring joint ventures with Chinese companies and seeking more imports from China. Beyond the medium-to-long-term impact on who does business with India, such activity could eventually expand the constituencies in India that want greater accommodation with China.

At the same time, Trump is weakening the hands of those in India who advocate for closer ties to the United States. New Delhi’s and Washington’s shared interests in countering Beijing deepened their partnership. It incentivized both countries to overcome historical baggage, manage differences, and cooperate in unprecedented ways in terms of defense, economic security, and technology.

But today, critics of that cooperation in India are arguing that Trump does not seem interested in competition with China. Moreover, those critics argue, a United States that is weaponizing interdependence and trying to coerce India is behaving, well, just like China. Even supporters of the relationship, such as Jaishankar, note that India needs to guard against not just overdependence on sources of supply (notably, China) but also against sources of demand (notably, the United States). This reflects a shift: instead of being understood as part of the solution to India’s China problem, the United States is fast becoming perceived as a problem in its own right.

A LOSE-LOSE SITUATION

And if that perception holds—and policies follow from it—it will be a problem for the United States. Persisting tensions with the United States will affect India’s strategic, economic, and technology choices. Figures both within and outside the Indian government will urge leaders to do less with an unreliable United States and to find alternative security partners and markets, as well as sources of capital, defense equipment, technology, commodities, and know-how. This will make India a less friendly environment for American businesses and technology firms and a less willing partner for the U.S. government, particularly in the defense, economic security, and technology domains, where India had started cooperating with the United States in ways it had not before.

In their recent piece for Foreign Affairs, Kurt Campbell and Jake Sullivan made the case that American investment in India was not based on altruism but on interests, including the U.S. ability to compete with and deter China. Were India aligned with the United States, it would complicate China’s calculations. Were India and the United States at odds with each other, though, both countries would have a weaker hand to play, especially when it comes to China.

New Delhi realizes that it will have less leverage with Beijing and a tougher time securing itself, growing economically, innovating, and ensuring an Asia not dominated by China if U.S.-Indian ties remain fraught. This is why it continues to seek an agreement with the Trump administration. If Washington does not reciprocate and instead persists in pressuring India, however, New Delhi over time will find a different balance in its foreign policy, and that new balance will invariably be less favorable to the United States.

Foreign Affairs · More by Tanvi Madan · September 24, 2025

22. National Security for Sale: How Profit Seeking Distorts American Policymaking

​Excerpts:

Successful economic security policies also appreciate balance-of-power politics. The United States does not exist in a unipolar world, controlling supply chains and economic chokepoints. The more it acts as if it does, such as through coercive tariffs, the more other countries will balance against it. Frustrations with U.S. tariff policies have already breathed new life into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an economic and security body that encompasses more than 40 percent of the world’s population and aspires to be a strategic counterweight to the United States’ presence in Asia. More balancing may follow suit.

A smarter approach would engage partners. This is not just about doing good; it is strategic. Building trusted supply chains, protecting data, and executing export controls, for instance, all rely on coordination with international partners and, perhaps more important, with industry. Without coordination, rules are weaker, evasion is easier, and law enforcement is harder. True cooperation is not a slipshod, made-for-TV deal. It is accomplished through regular, deliberative bureaucratic conversations and adherence to process. By genuinely seeking input from its partners, the United States can avoid the kind of harmful backlash to its policies that ultimately undermines U.S. influence.

Finally, policymakers must recognize that economic security is a long game. Economic tools such as export promotion to build trusted supply chains tend to take years to work. Yet many national security professionals mistakenly assume that they will see the same immediate results as decisive military action. This rarely happens; it is always easier to destroy than it is to build. Economic policy has the most to offer over the long term, in its potential to transform societies. This is what makes development aid—which the Trump administration has slashed as a supposed cost-saving measure—so valuable. Development, of course, cannot happen overnight. And it is not always clear what problem—or malign actor—the aid is warding off. But helping to build a healthier and more prosperous world reduces the chances of many bad outcomes.

The United States’ security challenges are becoming only more complex, and policymakers are still figuring out how best to address them using the economic tools at their disposal. Yet one guiding principle is clear: a democratic government does not exist to enrich itself.National security policy, therefore, should not seek profits or involve opportunistic bonus payments. The U.S. government’s national security responsibility is to ensure national security. That is it.

National Security for Sale

Foreign Affairs · More by Don Graves, Jr. · September 24, 2025

How Profit Seeking Distorts American Policymaking

September 24, 2025

A U.S. flag and an Intel chip, August 2025 Dado Ruvic / Reuters

DON GRAVES, JR., served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce from 2021 to 2025.

AROOP MUKHARJI served as Senior Adviser for Economic and National Security to the Deputy Secretary at the U.S. Department of Commerce from 2022 to 2024. The views expressed here are his own.

• More by Aroop Mukharji

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Until recently, few policy tools united Democrats and Republicans like export controls. Restrictions on the spread of dual-use U.S. technology such as semiconductors became the policy of choice in the tech race against China and as a means of punishing Russia for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In the wrong hands, semiconductors and certain other U.S. technologies can present national security risks. Politicians might have debated the details, but there was broad bipartisan agreement that the U.S. government should regulate the movement of these technologies.

The Trump administration has also embraced the use of export controls—but it has added a twist. In August, the administration brokered a revenue-sharing deal with Nvidia, a U.S. company that designs semiconductor chips used to power artificial intelligence. In exchange for export control licenses to sell its H20 chip to China, the company will now give 15 percent of its revenue from those sales to the U.S. government. Previously, the U.S. government reviewed license applications to ensure transactions did not present unacceptable risks. This time, the administration replaced that process with a price tag, prioritizing side payments to the government over security interests.

Although Beijing banned Chinese companies from buying Nvidia’s chips last week, after accusing the company of violating antimonopoly laws, the Trump administration’s deal is part of a worrying trend: the monetization of national security. Instead of treating security as an indivisible, priceless ideal—similar to free and fair elections, free speech, or freedom of religion—the administration is treating U.S. national security as if it were a portfolio of divisible, priceable assets. What once was security is now securities. Worse, the prices appear to be negotiable: the president revealed in a press conference that the administration had sought a 20 percent cut of Nvidia’s sales but settled for 15.

Reducing national security to dollars and cents does not just distort the term’s meaning; it also makes the United States less secure. Replacing licenses with revenue-sharing deals, making certain types of direct investments, and squeezing U.S. allies and partners may all help fill U.S. government coffers. But policies designed to maximize short-term gain can create new security problems and leave the old ones unsolved. They will enable U.S. technology to more easily reach American adversaries, cost the U.S. government oversight over taxpayer money, and sacrifice Washington’s ability to shape the world around it.

Avoiding these dangers and reducing the U.S. economy’s exposure to risk requires a careful, farsighted strategy that recognizes the reality of the United States’ place in today’s world. True economic security will remain out of reach as long as the government is run as a business, its policy levers and relationships priced, bundled, and repriced, available to be bought and sold.

GETTING TO AGREEMENT

Economic concerns were fundamental to national security when the term was first introduced in national debate, about a century ago. As the historians Peter Roady and Andrew Preston have recently documented, during his 1932 election campaign and following presidential term, Franklin Roosevelt deliberately defined the phrase to capture risks to domestic economic well-being. In his second fireside chat in 1933, Roosevelt argued that economic struggle led to “incalculable” social harm and a “loss of that sense of security.” A new domestic economic program was “imperative to our national security,” he declared, later summarizing, “Freedom from fear is eternally linked with freedom from want.”

Roosevelt’s original interpretation of national security later gave way to a more militarized, more expansive conception, reinforced by the interests of a growing arms industry and the rise of the modern military-industrial complex. It came to encompass every corner of the world. This focus on military and ideological competition reigned supreme into the early years of the twenty-first century, even as Washington began paying greater attention to the financial tools it could use to contain threats from terrorist groups and rogue states after the 9/11 attacks.

In the 2010s and early 2020s, Roosevelt’s vision of the economic and domestic dimensions of national security made a bipartisan comeback. The second line of the Obama administration’s 2015 National Security Strategy affirmed that “America’s growing economic strength is the foundation of our national security.” In his first term, Trump championed the same idea. “For the first time,” he remarked on releasing his 2017 National Security Strategy, “American strategy recognizes that economic security is national security.”

Reducing national security to dollars and cents makes the United States less secure.

Four years later, President Joe Biden’s 2021 interim national security guidance repeated the same mantra: “Economic security is national security.” Biden’s Department of Commerce played a greater role in national security policy than anyone in government could remember, not just with export controls but also in work on supply chains, cybersecurity, information and communication technology, climate change, investment security, law enforcement, commercial diplomacy, standards development, patents, domestic investment, and even commercial space policy. There was substantial bipartisan alignment on many of these issues. Republicans were especially supportive of the department’s export control policies, and in late 2023, Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis proposed establishing a federal office of economic security and competition—with a mandate similar to that of new offices the Biden administration had created earlier that year, including the Commerce Department’s Supply Chain Center and the Office of Economic Security and Emerging Technology, part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

It is not simply that economic, technology, and trade policy became more appealing arrows in the national security quiver. That did happen. But more significantly, on a philosophical level, leading Democrats and Republicans agreed that security itself meant much more than an absence of physical attack. It also meant reducing economic struggle and risk. They saw economic security as a domestic issue as much as an international one. The erosion of strategic U.S. industries and the loss of technological leadership, for instance, could leave the United States vulnerable to foreign actors who might weaponize trade dependencies. The supply chain disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic showed just how easily the country could lose access to critical goods. The first Trump administration’s relentless focus on manufacturing domestically to rely less on others and its concern that Huawei and TikTok could give the Chinese government access to American data, furthermore, continued into the Biden administration. With notable exceptions, such as export controls, Democratic and Republican policy solutions were not always the same, but everyone largely agreed on what the problem was.

EVERYTHING HAS A PRICE

The second Trump administration is challenging this consensus. Traditionally, national security has been about reducing threats; now, the administration seeks to profit from them, ostensibly in the eventual hope of cutting taxes for the public benefit. The H20 chip deal with Nvidia is one way it has done this, by allowing a company whose business with China presents a national security threat to buy off that risk. Trump has said that H20 chips are “obsolete” products that China “already has,” suggesting that selling them presents no risk to the United States. The point is moot in this case if Beijing keeps a ban on Nvidia’s chips in place. But in principle, a riskless export control license is an oxymoron; licenses are required only when the government has identified a risk. It did so for the H20 chip just a few months ago, in April. This is the reason paying for export control licenses is prohibited under U.S. law (Title 50 of the U.S. Code), to prevent a situation in which financial gain takes precedence over national security concerns. When export controls are about money rather than security standards, U.S. technology will easily reach malign actors.

Possible legal complications, however, have not stopped the Trump administration from pursuing this kind of arrangement. It has already reached a deal with another technology company, AMD, to give the U.S. government 15 percent of its revenue from selling its MI308 processors in China—something Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (whose department does not oversee dual-use export controls) called a “beta test.”

The administration could continue to replicate this model, and not just in export control cases. It could, for example, try to generate cash for the federal government by accepting payment in exchange for the approval of foreign direct investment in U.S. companies, wiping away potential national security concerns for the right price. If an investment presents any kind of concern, such as data security, however, pretending the problem does not exist because someone has agreed to pay the government is not a real solution. And left unresolved, a national security problem will only fester.

The monetization of national security has not been limited to revenue-sharing deals. The administration is also exploring direct investment in U.S. companies. Most notably, the government announced in August that it was purchasing a ten percent stake (roughly $8.9 billion) in Intel, the United States’ largest semiconductor manufacturer. Unlike revenue-sharing deals, direct investment is unusual but not unprecedented. There can be legitimate reasons for the government to invest in a company that is critical to national security and needs help. For instance, a struggling company that faces closure or a foreign takeover might need both cash and strategic guidance. Or a startup that is not yet generating revenue may need public investment when private capital is not an option. But making money should not be the primary goal—a single company’s payouts to the government should not be prioritized above nationwide security interests.

An action to resolve one risk should not create an even greater risk.

The Intel deal illustrates this risk. Federal money was already promised to Intel through grants from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act; this money came with protections attached to ensure it was used to advance the public interest. The largest grant supported manufacturing projects in Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio, and Oregon, and the company was obligated to report on project milestones and follow national security guardrails that, among other things, limited its activities with foreign countries of concern. Also embedded in the grant program was a provision to return money to taxpayers in the case of unanticipated profits, called “upside sharing.”

But instead of continuing to disburse grant money and keeping these protections in place, the U.S. government opted for equity. This meant more cash up front for Intel and potentially more future revenue for the federal government but—critically—a significant loss of oversight of taxpayer dollars. Intel may decide to use those dollars in ways that support national security interests. Or it may not.

Finally, the administration has monetized national security through its approach to U.S. military support and foreign aid, helping others if it brings a financial return. “Taiwan should pay us for defense,” the then candidate Trump said in 2024. “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company.” Shortly after Trump’s election, Taiwan pledged to increase its spending on U.S. weapons; in the early months of his presidency, Trump’s frequent complaints about allied free-riding pressured others to do the same. The administration followed a similar mercenary logic in pursuing a critical minerals deal with Ukraine in exchange for Washington’s continued support for Kyiv’s war effort and in canceling U.S. foreign aid across the globe. To replace a “charity-based model” of development assistance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in July, the administration would instead seek investment opportunities that produce “a multiplier effect” that benefits the private sector.

Yet likening aid to an insurance policy or a market venture misses the greatest strategic value of supporting others. Take development aid. Aside from the compelling morality of alleviating human suffering, this aid can provide a bulwark against foreign manipulation, the emergence of terrorist havens, the growth of black markets, and other security threats that arise from chronic underdevelopment and economic struggle. Those interests, like so many others—nuclear nonproliferation, maintaining robust alliances, supporting democracy—have little to do with immediate financial returns.

To call the Trump administration’s approach to national security transactionalism misses the bigger point. Transactionalism assumes an exchange, tit for tat. But the administration instead is trading an intangible for a tangible: security interests for cold, hard cash. In doing so, it betrays a fundamentally different view of what national security is—one that suggests security can be priced at all.

FIRST PRINCIPLES

At best, the administration’s pursuit of profit distracts Washington from solving national security concerns; at worst, it deepens those threats. Monetization can even create new vulnerabilities and sources of insecurity by incentivizing affluent players to join the game. Take, for instance, Qatar’s gift of a gleaming $400 million airplane to transport the U.S. president. In the administration’s eagerness to accept a golden egg, it has created a golden espionage opportunity by inviting foreign surveillance.

The core problem with monetizing national security interests is that it contradicts the basic principles of economic security. This subset of national security includes protecting the U.S. economy, critical infrastructure, and American well-being; building national resilience to disruptions; and generally ensuring the safe and stable flourishing of American society. Truly advancing economic security requires that policymakers navigate tradeoffs, recognize that other countries hold leverage, engage partners, and play the long game.

Maintaining a bird’s-eye view of tradeoffs and tensions in economic security policy is essential to making wise decisions. Economic actions taken on behalf of national security, such as export controls, could have the unintended effect of limiting economic growth and innovation. Likewise, some actions taken in the pursuit of economic growth and innovation, such as export promotion and scientific collaboration, may undermine national security if those exports and research products are used to threaten Americans. The pitfall to avoid is creating new sources of insecurity or areas of misunderstanding. An action to resolve one risk should not create an even greater risk. For instance, the Trump administration’s early approach to tariffs—massive, punitive, and blunt—roiled the market and created economic uncertainty that even the president could not stomach. More narrowly targeted trade arrangements would help minimize adverse effects on American consumers, producers, and investors. They would also ensure the clarity, transparency, and predictability that CEOs and U.S. allies and partners crave.

A democratic government does not exist to enrich itself.

Successful economic security policies also appreciate balance-of-power politics. The United States does not exist in a unipolar world, controlling supply chains and economic chokepoints. The more it acts as if it does, such as through coercive tariffs, the more other countries will balance against it. Frustrations with U.S. tariff policies have already breathed new life into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an economic and security body that encompasses more than 40 percent of the world’s population and aspires to be a strategic counterweight to the United States’ presence in Asia. More balancing may follow suit.

A smarter approach would engage partners. This is not just about doing good; it is strategic. Building trusted supply chains, protecting data, and executing export controls, for instance, all rely on coordination with international partners and, perhaps more important, with industry. Without coordination, rules are weaker, evasion is easier, and law enforcement is harder. True cooperation is not a slipshod, made-for-TV deal. It is accomplished through regular, deliberative bureaucratic conversations and adherence to process. By genuinely seeking input from its partners, the United States can avoid the kind of harmful backlash to its policies that ultimately undermines U.S. influence.

Finally, policymakers must recognize that economic security is a long game. Economic tools such as export promotion to build trusted supply chains tend to take years to work. Yet many national security professionals mistakenly assume that they will see the same immediate results as decisive military action. This rarely happens; it is always easier to destroy than it is to build. Economic policy has the most to offer over the long term, in its potential to transform societies. This is what makes development aid—which the Trump administration has slashed as a supposed cost-saving measure—so valuable. Development, of course, cannot happen overnight. And it is not always clear what problem—or malign actor—the aid is warding off. But helping to build a healthier and more prosperous world reduces the chances of many bad outcomes.

The United States’ security challenges are becoming only more complex, and policymakers are still figuring out how best to address them using the economic tools at their disposal. Yet one guiding principle is clear: a democratic government does not exist to enrich itself.National security policy, therefore, should not seek profits or involve opportunistic bonus payments. The U.S. government’s national security responsibility is to ensure national security. That is it.

Foreign Affairs · More by Don Graves, Jr. · September 24, 2025

23.  Trump Says Migration and Climate-Change Policies Are Destroying the West

Trump Says Migration and Climate-Change Policies Are Destroying the West

In president’s first speech to U.N. General Assembly for six years, he accuses the global body of doing nothing to solve world’s problems

https://www.wsj.com/politics/trump-says-migration-and-climate-change-policies-are-destroying-western-nations-e7047e00?pos=1&page=1

By Alexander Ward

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, Robbie Gramer

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Updated Sept. 23, 2025 3:35 pm ET

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In the first U.N. General Assembly address of his second term, President Trump attacked the global body for not stopping wars and for focusing on addressing climate change and migration. Photo: Sarah Yenesel/EPA/Shutterstock

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• President Trump criticized global immigration and climate-change efforts at the United Nations, labeling them threats to Western civilization.View more

President Trump attacked global immigration and efforts to fight climate change during an address to the United Nations, claiming they were among the world’s top threats to Western civilization.

In an hour-long speech filled with grievances about ongoing wars, windmills and malfunctioning escalators, it was Trump’s attacks against what he called a “double-tailed monster” that rang loudest in the ornate General Assembly room.

“Immigration and the high cost of so-called green, renewable energy is destroying a large part of the free world and a large part of our planet,” he said. “Countries that cherish freedom are fading fast because of their policies on these two subjects. Both immigration and their suicidal energy ideas will be the death of Western Europe.”

Immigration in particular was ruining other nations, Trump insisted: “Your countries are going to hell.”

Trump showed his most nationalist side, proudly boasting of his detention and deportation record as well as policies designed to boost fossil fuels at the expense of renewable energy sources. The decision to deliver such an address at the U.N., which champions global cooperation and human rights, was meant as a direct attack on multilateralism and what is known as the “globalist agenda”—a message crafted to resonate with his MAGA base.

“You need strong borders and traditional energy sources if you are going to be great again,” Trump proclaimed. “We have to solve the problems, and we have to solve it in their countries, not create new problems in our countries.”

In many ways, Trump’s remarks mirrored his campaign rallies in the U.S., in which he shifted from subject to subject and often made unsubstantiated or contradictory claims. But one large theme remained consistent: Trump’s deep disdain for policies he associates with “woke” or “politically correct” leadership.

Trump’s address kicked off his one-day romp at the U.N.’s headquarters on the east side of Manhattan, where the annual meeting brings world leaders together for a series of key discussions on global issues. 

He was due to spend the rest of the day in discussions with some of his fellow leaders, meeting U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres after his address to the main hall.

Sessions with European Union Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and a grouping of Middle Eastern leaders, were scheduled. Trump said he would be participating in around 30 meetings. 

Top of mind in each meeting was how the U.S. could broker peace deals, primarily between Russia and Ukraine as well as Israel and Hamas. “We have great respect for the fight that Ukraine is putting up,” Trump told Zelensky ahead of their meeting. “We will speak of how to finish the war and security guarantees,” Zelensky said, thanking Trump for the meeting and for his “personal efforts to stop this war.”

After the meeting, Trump indicated that he believed Ukraine could win the war. “After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” he said in a post on Truth Social. 

“With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option. Why not? Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win. This is not distinguishing Russia. In fact, it is very much making them look like ‘a paper tiger’.”

Earlier when asked if he thought NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft that enter their airspace, Trump replied, “Yes I do.”

In his speech, he also sought support for an initiative to protect against biological weapons development partly “by pioneering an AI verification system that everyone can trust.” Trump provided no concrete details on what that could look like, but he invited the U.N. to play a role in its construction and usage.

In his speech, Trump took direct aim at the U.N., questioning its purpose as a peace-building organization as the U.S. endeavors to end wars. Trump said the U.N. has done little while his administration engaged in multiple diplomatic negotiations.

“It’s too bad that I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them. And sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help,” Trump said. The U.N. merely sends “strongly worded letters” without actually resolving crises, he said. “It’s empty words, and empty words don’t solve war.”

“Not only is the U.N. not solving the problems it should, too often, it’s actually creating new problems for us to solve,” Trump said.

But Trump softened his criticism ahead of his meeting with Guterres, saying “our country is behind the United Nations 100 percent.” 

Trump’s U.N. broadsides were the culmination of a decadelong assault on the institution and the concept of multilateralism itself.

From the first days of his second term, Trump slashed American aid and signaled an intention to withdraw again from the World Health Organization and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In his first-term, Trump moved to pull out of the U.N. Human Rights Council, the Paris Agreement on climate change as well as the WHO and Unesco.

In a February, Trump said many U.N. agencies had drifted from their founding principles to promote international peace and security and prevent conflicts to attacking U.S. allies–mainly Israel–and promoting anti-Semitism.

The U.S. is throttling the U.N.’s finances. Between regular budget assessments and peacekeeping, the U.S. owed the U.N. around $3 billion at the end of April, the biggest uncollected amounts owed by a member state, according to a report from the group earlier this year. And it could get worse as the White House rescinds previous allocations to the world body.

The president didn’t directly address his financing cuts to the world body, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier Tuesday rejected any suggestion the administration policies have caused damage around the world. 

“No one has died because the U.S. has cut aid, no,” Rubio told ABC News, blaming problems with aid distribution and lack of support from other nations. He said the U.S. would distribute aid in a responsible way and less wastefully.

Opening the assembly on Sept. 9, Guterres appeared to take a swipe at Trump’s America First agenda, saying the U.N. system “requires countries looking beyond their national interests and rebuilding trust and faith in one another.” 

Former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who is serving as president of the 80th general assembly, said: “Even the biggest economies can’t handle everything by themselves.”

Write to Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com, Robbie Gramer at robbie.gramer@wsj.com and James T. Areddy at James.Areddy@wsj.com

Appeared in the September 24, 2025, print edition as 'President Raps Migration, Green Energy at U.N.'.

24. Rutte holds back on Poland's drone shoot down plan

​Putin invoking Lenin.

“You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw”

― Vladimir Ilich Lenin

Rutte holds back on Poland's drone shoot down plan - Breaking Defense

breakingdefense.com · Tim Martin · September 23, 2025

BELFAST — NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte insisted today that the alliance and Poland are aligned on how to counter drone incursions over allied territory amid Warsaw vowing to unilaterally shoot down “objects” that enter its airspace without permission.

“We all agree that when there is an incursion, when that takes place, we have to act decisively and quickly, exactly as we have done in the Polish case, in the Estonian case and every other case,” Rutte told reporters following a meeting of the North Atlantic Council, called under Article 4 at the request of Estonia. The clause can be invoked if the “territorial integrity, political independence or security” of a member is at risk.

NATO fighter jets shot down Russian drones over Polish airspace earlier this month, an incident that prompted the alliance to launch its Eastern Sentry operation, aimed at bolstering defenses along the Eastern flank — primarily through the deployment of British, Danish, French and German “assets.”

Last week, three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets violated Estonia’s airspace, though Rutte said that an alliance assessment determined that the aircraft posed “no immediate threat” and a decision was consequently made to escort them away from the Baltic nation’s airspace.

The North Atlantic Council in a statement today said Russia’s series of drone incursions across Europe in recent weeks were “escalatory” and “must stop.”

Senior Polish officials have signaled that they will take more assertive action in future incursions over its airspace. Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk said, “We will make a decision to shoot down flying objects without discussion when they violate our territory and fly over Poland,” according to the Guardian newspaper.

Rutte said he had listened to Tusk’s remarks. “I think what [Tusk] he said is that, if necessary, yes, we will shoot down a plane,” but refused to comment further when asked if Warsaw could act alone or is bound by a common set of rules of engagement that apply to all 32 NATO members.

“You can be assured we will do what is necessary to defend our cities, our people, our infrastructure, but it doesn’t mean that we will always immediately shoot down a plane,” said Rutte, appearing at odds with Poland’s position.

Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, told an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in New York on Monday, “If another missile or aircraft enters our space without permission, deliberately or by mistake, and gets shot down and the wreckage falls on NATO territory, please don’t come here to whine about it.”

Additionally, Lithuania’s parliament approved a plan today for the country’s armed forces to shootdown drones that violate its airspace, reported Reuters.

Meanwhile, Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she could not rule out possible Russian involvement related to a drone incursion that led to the closure of Copenhagen airport for several hours on Monday.

Rutte said that he had been in contact with Frederiksen but because Danish officials are still making an assessment of the incident, it is “too early” to say if there is a link to it and the other drone incursions carried out by Russia.

Posting on X today, Former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called for the establishment of a European drone wall immediately. “Russian drones enter our skies. We complain. They return. We delay. They escalate. We hesitate. Enough,” he added. [I]f we don’t stop Moscow’s tests, one day they won’t be tests.”

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breakingdefense.com · Tim Martin · September 23, 2025

25. Trump brings American culture wars to the global stage at the UN

​Excerpts:

Throughout his second term, the U.S. leader has demonstrated a preference for bilateral relations and big-power politics. And from security and trade to immigration, much of the international community has accommodated and flattered him as the best way to stay on the United States’ good side.

“The speech leaves very big question marks about how Trump and his administration view the U.N. and multilateralism more broadly and how they intend to approach them,” says Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, a foreign policy think tank in Washington.

“The president seemed to blame the U.N. for many of the world’s problems even while underscoring what he said should be its usefulness in what this administration acknowledges is no longer a unipolar world,” says Dr. Parsi, co-author of a recent report promoting a rejuvenated global security order based on international law and multilateralism.

“The question now,” he adds, “is whether the U.N. can retain and even enhance that usefulness while maintaining” its role as a “useful instrument of management of relations among the great powers.”

Trump brings American culture wars to the global stage at the UN

By Howard LaFranchi Staff writer

The Christian Science Monitor · The Christian Science Monitor · September 23, 2025

In his speech to the General Assembly Tuesday, President Donald Trump had a clarion message for the world: Do what I have done for America in just eight months – particularly in stopping immigration and ending green energy policies – and you, too, can turn your “failing” countries into enviable successes.

In a rambling discourse that was at times jocular and tediously political (with repeated attacks on the “disaster” of the Biden administration), Mr. Trump chose to home in on global mass migration and “the global warming hoax” as the two key threats of the era to international peace, security, and prosperity.

“The high cost of immigration and the so-called green energy is destroying much of our world,” the president declared in closing, highlighting in particular the impact of those dual threats to “the Europe I love.”

Why We Wrote This

As the United Nations General Assembly opened in New York, President Donald Trump told member states that immigration and green hoaxes are the key threats to international peace and prosperity.

Earlier, he had advised the delegates of the United Nations’ 193 member states, “If you don’t get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail.”

The speech underscored how perhaps more than ever before, a U.S. president has brought to the international stage the culture wars dividing Americans at home, some international political analysts say.

“What we heard repeatedly were the contrasts between Term 2 Trump and one-term Biden, and an American president citing at the U.N. two issues at the heart of American political polarization in a way it hadn’t been done before,” says Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a Washington research institute focused on international security and foreign policy.

“Taking this to the U.N.,” he adds, “demonstrates the intensifying politicization of international security issues.”

America’s “golden age”

Mr. Trump, who is known for loving all things gilt, told his audience it was witnessing “the golden age of America.” Repeating a line he has often used in his second term, he said that in “just eight months ... we are the hottest country anywhere in the world; no other country is even close.”

Yuki Iwamura/AP

President Donald Trump addresses the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Sept. 23, 2025, at U.N. headquarters.

He drew laughter – unlike eight years ago, it was laughter with him, not at him – when he chided the U.N. for giving him a faulty teleprompter and an escalator that stopped when he was halfway up.

And he repeated his claim that he has already stopped seven wars in his second term – conflicts that he said the U.N. had failed to resolve after sometimes decades of fighting and violence.

“In just eight months I ended seven unendable wars,” he said. “No American president has done anything close to that.”

He cited this year’s brief war between Israel and Iran, fighting between Cambodia and Thailand, and the long-simmering dispute between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, among others.

Many international security experts dispute whether several of those conflicts have indeed been resolved. But that did not stop Mr. Trump from asserting that many believe – actually he said “everyone” believes – he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

Sources close to the president have said Mr. Trump does indeed crave the international recognition the Nobel would bring. He is said to resent that former President Barack Obama was awarded the prize, even though in Mr. Trump’s view he did nothing to deserve it.

Mr. Trump did acknowledge that he has been unable to stop two of the biggest wars, those in Gaza and in Ukraine. But he said Hamas alone was responsible for the destruction and loss of life in Gaza – earning the only applause to interrupt his speech when he said to Hamas, “Release the hostages now!”

And he blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for his inability to end the war in Ukraine, saying the war “is not making Russia look good; it’s making Russia look bad.”

Saying only “action” stops wars, he repeated his willingness to impose debilitating sanctions on Russia – but only if Europe, which he said is financing Russia’s war machine through energy purchases, agrees to do the same.

Later, after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Mr. Trump announced on social media that he now believes that with Europe’s help, Ukraine could take back all territory occupied by Russia.

Cooperating internationally

Mr. Trump cast doubt on the usefulness of the U.N. – claiming at times that the international body often makes matters worse, as it had by implementing policies that encourage mass migration.

Throughout his second term, the U.S. leader has demonstrated a preference for bilateral relations and big-power politics. And from security and trade to immigration, much of the international community has accommodated and flattered him as the best way to stay on the United States’ good side.

“The speech leaves very big question marks about how Trump and his administration view the U.N. and multilateralism more broadly and how they intend to approach them,” says Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, a foreign policy think tank in Washington.

“The president seemed to blame the U.N. for many of the world’s problems even while underscoring what he said should be its usefulness in what this administration acknowledges is no longer a unipolar world,” says Dr. Parsi, co-author of a recent report promoting a rejuvenated global security order based on international law and multilateralism.

“The question now,” he adds, “is whether the U.N. can retain and even enhance that usefulness while maintaining” its role as a “useful instrument of management of relations among the great powers.”

The Christian Science Monitor · The Christian Science Monitor · September 23, 2025

26. Massive Outrage in Manila Over Corruption

​Another article recently assessed the Philippines as a powder keg. Will it go the way of Nepal and Indonesia and others?

Will we see another people power movement?

Politics

Massive Outrage in Manila Over Corruption

Marcos remains uneasily in front of the wave, calling for reform

https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/massive-outrage-manila-over-corruption?utm

Sep 24, 2025

By: Tita Valderama

For Asia

The massive turnout of angry Filipinos in last Sunday’s anti-corruption protests, which brought a many as 100,000 protesters to the streets of Metro Manila and other urban centers, has sent shivers down the spine of some who experienced martial law under the regime of the late Ferdinand Marcos Sr., father and namesake of the incumbent president.

The rallies appear unlikely to stop any time soon. The growing outrage leaves the 67-year-old President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who came to power in 2022 vowing to redeem his father’s name, uneasily riding in front of the protest and doing his best not to be consumed by it as he calls for a cleanup. He was forced to skip the opening of the United Nations General Assembly in New York as he “focuses on local issues,” according to his office.

“The president has to do something drastic because he ran for office to redeem the honor of the Marcos family, and because of this, the corruption now is worse than during his father, so he has to take immediate drastic actions to bring those responsible to justice,” Antonio Carpio, retired associate justice of the Supreme Court, told a broadcaster at the main protest venue on EDSA.

The fury was ignited by pictures of massive piles of cash amassed by government officials along with corporate jets, helicopters and European supercars shown during televised hearings into widespread corruption in government infrastructure projects, including reports of the shameless display of spending by politicians, public officials, private contractors and their relatives while millions of Filipinos continue to suffer from flooding due to substandard and non-existent flood control projects.

House of Representatives photo

Elizaldy “Zaldy” Co, chairman of the powerful House appropriations committee, has fled the country, ostensibly to seek medical care in the United States, amid reports that up to PHP1 billion (US$17.4 million) had been delivered in cash to his penthouse in Manila.

“What could trigger another big protest…is the results of the ongoing probe: whether high-ranking officials involved in these anomalies will be prosecuted, and what reforms will be made to prevent these anomalies,” said a report by Pacific Strategic Associates, a Manila-based country risk firm. 

So far, the scandal has claimed the heads of Senate President Francis Escudero and House Speaker Martin Romualdez, Marcos’s first cousin, dashing Romualdez’s aspirations to succeed Marcos as president in 2028. Escudero and Romualdez were perceived to have masterminded the insertion of more than half a billion pesos in the 2025 budget of the national government for public works projects, from which legislators who proposed specific projects for funding supposedly pocketed as much as 30 percent of project costs.

Rarely do Filipinos see such a gathering of nuns and priests, students, businessmen, workers, celebrities, activists, and others from all walks of life, chanting and holding placards aimed at the corrupt in government. Marcos wasn’t spared. He has been called to account for having approved the budget for the anomalous government projects and for tolerating the corruption in the first half of his six-year term.

The reverberating message was spoken on stage by a popular celebrity named Vice Ganda:

“The era of the good and the resilient is over. The good [people] are being persecuted, the resilient are being driven crazy,” he said to the delight of the protesters, most of them wearing white shirts.

“We challenge you, President Bongbong Marcos, if you want your name to have a good legacy, put all the thieves in jail. We are looking at you, President Bongbong Marcos, and we expect from you not because you are our idol, but because we are paying you and we expect you to fulfill what we, your employers, tell you to do,” he went on.

Organizers of the protest actions, which coincided with the commemoration of the 53rd anniversary of the declaration of martial law by the elder Marcos, who died in exile in 1989, made it clear that the simultaneous rallies were not against his son. But the president was still taken to task for the severity of corrupt acts and their wide-ranging, damaging effects on the people and the country under his administration.

Investigations by congressional committees and independent media agencies have shown the sorry state of numerous infrastructure projects in several areas where legislators and officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways were in cahoots with private contractors, taking a substantial part of the funding for projects, leaving zero to 60 percent of the budget for construction.

Newly appointed DPWH Secretary Vince Dizon and Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla have initiated the process of confiscating the luxury cars and private jets, and freezing of bank accounts and other identified assets of those involved. On Wednesday, he ordered several officials to justify their lavish lifestyles.

 Dizon vowed a top-to-bottom cleansing of the DPWH, which implements thousands of infrastructure projects every year, and a thorough review of the systems and processes in getting the projects done, from identification to allocation of funding to completion.

“If these officials think I am not serious, I hope this is proof that we are serious, that the president is serious about this. And we will spare nobody, top to bottom,” he said in a press conference.

 But many are not convinced, watching with eagle eyes how the Marcos administration will hold accountable all those involved, including his relatives such as the former House speaker.

Before the scandal was exposed in July, contractors of government projects, DPWH officials, and legislators allegedly involved in the corruption-riddled flood control projects flaunted their extravagant lifestyle, including ownership of luxury vehicles.

“Let’s not focus on the politics of it. Let’s focus on simple pesos and centavos of it,” Marcos said in a recent press conference when he announced the creation of an independent commission tasked to investigate anomalies in infrastructure projects, from budget preparation to project implementation.

A few days before the Sept. 21 anti-corruption rallies, Marcos said he was in support of the people’s expression of their frustration and anger. “Since this has all been exposed… well, actually it is known to many people — but is now exposed to the general public, do you blame them for going out on the streets?”

“If I weren’t president, I might be out on the streets with them,” said Marcos, whose father was booted out of office in 1986 in a people power revolution over issues of corruption and human rights abuses that drew a million protesters to the streets of Manila.

Protesters booed angrily when Rep. Leila de Lima mentioned it as she spoke on a makeshift stage at Rizal Park in Manila. “We are not president but we are here because we are fed up with people who are becoming crocodiles and demons,” she said.

Newly installed Senate President Vicente Sotto III, who ran under Marcos’ senatorial slate in the May midterm elections, has been actively pursuing the Senate investigation of the anomalous projects while House Speaker Faustino Dy III, a party ally of the president, said House probers would probably stop their inquiry and turn over what it has so far gathered from its initial public hearings, noting that the public has raised questions on their credibility and impartiality, given the alleged involvement of legislators in the anomalous projects.

The DPWH secretary and an undersecretary have resigned while several others have either been dismissed or suspended from the service. At least 20 are facing criminal complaints for graft and tampering with documents.

The three-person Independent Commission for Infrastructure has begun inspecting projects, interviewing, and gathering documents.

Lawyer Howard Calleja, spokesperson of the Church Leaders Council for National Transformation, said the successful September 21 rally is only the beginning, adding that the group will continue monitoring the investigations into the alleged irregularities in various government projects and see to it that the corrupt are held accountable. Church Leaders Council for National Transformation, one of the Sept. 21 rally organizers, is an alliance of church leaders advocating good governance and national renewal.

“The people are fed up with corruption. We’ve had too many scams but we’ve not seen the masterminds in high office going to jail. It’s about time to make corruption painful for them. Let’s make the conviction of corrupt individuals certain so they can’t get away, then engage again in corruption and be voted into office again. accountability should really be the name of the game,” Calleja said in an interview on television.

27. Censorship enables authoritarianism

Yes, we should think: "freedom of information."

​Excerpts:

In 1944, the head of the Associated Press argued for the need to ensure “freedom of information” across borders after the war. “Every war of aggression in modern times has been preceded by distrust, then fear, and finally hatred, all created by a systematic poisoning of the news by the aggressor state.” With international freedom of information, he added, “there can never be another Goebbels.”

Information freedom was, even then, broader than the press. In December 1944, the nominee to be the State Department’s first assistant secretary of public affairs in charge of domestic and foreign information activities and the interchange of people and ideas, stated that, “It would not be too much to say that the foreign relations of a modern state are conducted quite as much through the instruments of public international communication as through diplomatic representation” abroad.

In precisely the same spirit, the State Department pushed for the words of UK Prime Minister Attlee to open the UNESCO Charter: “Wars begin in the minds of men, and it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” The value and vulnerability of an organization like UNESCO, intended at its founding to be a bulwark against authoritarianism, are remarkably similar to today’s information environment, with its variety of trusted (or merely digested) sources. This concern is reflected in the comment by the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs in 1946 that UNESCO could become a “hotbed of politics” because “Men will struggle to control it, for ideas are weapons.”⁠

Censorship enables authoritarianism

The US government once believed that a free flow of news and information across borders was essential to international peace and freedom

https://mountainrunner.substack.com/p/censorship-enables-authoritarianism

Matt Armstrong

Sep 23, 2025

Before the end of World War II, the US government believed that the free flow of news and information within and across borders was essential for maintaining peace, promoting freedom, and upholding democratic principles.

The key lesson from a dozen years of Nazi propaganda was not that the malign information existed. No, the key lesson at the time was that the willful disinformation and exploitation of misinformation and information gaps were enabled by the elimination of alternative voices by the National Socialists, as well as those who curried their favor. Newspapers, radio stations, academics, politicians, business owners, and the general public who spoke out against the party line to expose the lies, corruption, hypocrisy, failings, and inconsistencies of the regime were either bought out, threatened, or removed from the public discourse, either voluntarily or otherwise.

Such suppression or elimination of voices that told truth to power, that threatened a regime’s hold on people’s awareness and knowledge, was seen as a threat to US national security because it meant those regimes were not accountable to their people and could, and were likely to, threaten international relations.

The US response to this lesson was essentially threefold. I’ve described these lines of effort over the past two decades through writing on this Substack, as well as on my blog at mountainerunner.us, in published articles, lectures, conference presentations, and academic papers. The three were: technical, scientific, and educational exchanges to build mutual understanding, socio-economic capabilities, and state capacity; international organizations, from Bretton Woods to the UN, especially UNESCO; and informational programs, of which radio was a small part.

Regarding the information programs, with the Smith-Mundt Act in the news due to outright illogical, nonsensical, and demonstrably false claims, it is essential to understand a few key points. First, any person claiming the original legislation purposefully or intended to prevent the government from “propagandizing” the American public is flat wrong. They are projecting Sen. Fulbright’s attacks on USIA and VOA in 1972, reinforced by Sen. Zorinsky’s 1985 amendment to close a “loophole” of Fulbright’s amendment to the Smith-Mundt Act, backward in time, conveniently ignoring inconvenient facts and setting aside logic, the wording of the law, and how laws work. The postwar international information programs, beginning in September 1945, and subsequently authorized by the Smith-Mundt Act, were not “propaganda” in the modern use of the word, and whoever uses that word to describe these programs and their output, notably academics, without clarification, is guilty of misinformation, at the very least, as they reveal their ignorance of the domestic and foreign environment in which these efforts operated.

Second, the same illogical, nonsensical, and demonstrably false claims on the origin of the Smith-Mundt Act are applied to the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012. A narrative established through poor scholarship and officials asserting the false “firewall” was something it wasn’t, for bureaucratic reasons, including not to take action abroad, led to an accepted narrative that journalists and pundits found hard to resist. Add in Citizens United and the 1996 Telecommunications Act, and you have snake oil salesmen and disinformation entrepreneurs, somehow—again, based on illogically, nonsensically, and demonstrably false claims—asserting the rise of disinformation within the US is partly, if not mostly, the result of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012.

In 1944, the head of the Associated Press argued for the need to ensure “freedom of information” across borders after the war. “Every war of aggression in modern times has been preceded by distrust, then fear, and finally hatred, all created by a systematic poisoning of the news by the aggressor state.” With international freedom of information, he added, “there can never be another Goebbels.”

Information freedom was, even then, broader than the press. In December 1944, the nominee to be the State Department’s first assistant secretary of public affairs in charge of domestic and foreign information activities and the interchange of people and ideas, stated that, “It would not be too much to say that the foreign relations of a modern state are conducted quite as much through the instruments of public international communication as through diplomatic representation” abroad.

In precisely the same spirit, the State Department pushed for the words of UK Prime Minister Attlee to open the UNESCO Charter: “Wars begin in the minds of men, and it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” The value and vulnerability of an organization like UNESCO, intended at its founding to be a bulwark against authoritarianism, are remarkably similar to today’s information environment, with its variety of trusted (or merely digested) sources. This concern is reflected in the comment by the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs in 1946 that UNESCO could become a “hotbed of politics” because “Men will struggle to control it, for ideas are weapons.”⁠

More later.

Image for the post header comes from a November 24, 1946, transcript in my collection:

Recommend Arming for the War We're In to your readers

Discussing the past and present of political warfare and public diplomacy

28. Kari Lake said she learned of Trump dismantling VOA the day of his order

​Sigh...

I have not seen any new Korean programming but I will be looking hard for it today.

But we are missing the central point of this. This is not about VOA programing. It is simply about the fight over Article II authorities to support the unitary executive theory of government.

Excerpts:

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, has threatened to hold Lake in contempt of court if she can’t adequately explain how USAGM is following the International Broadcasting Act and congressional appropriations that govern the federal agency that oversees VOA.

In the deposition, Lake criticized Lamberth, saying he shows a “lack of respect” for the president’s powers under Article II of the Constitution and has made “very radical” decisions. But she said she does not “harbor hate” in her heart for him.

Lake, who remarked that she thinks all government-funded media is inherently “propaganda” during her testimony, said that when the agency ceased airing VOA programming in March, she was primarily concerned with what to substitute over the airwaves. She eventually had “a graphic made with music that had the VOA charter written on it so that that could play on a loop.” VOA later resumed some programming in Dari, Farsi, Mandarin and Pashto — and, more recently, Korean and Russian.

Kari Lake said she learned of Trump dismantling VOA the day of his order

The Trump official spent eight hours answering questions under oath as part of the contentious legal proceedings between Voice of America staffers and the government.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/09/23/kari-lake-deposition-voa/

September 23, 2025 at 2:06 p.m. EDTYesterday at 2:06 p.m. EDT

Kari Lake testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in June. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Shutterstock)

By Scott Nover

Kari Lake, the Trump official running America’s international broadcasting agency, said during a deposition earlier this month that she wasn’t aware of President Donald Trump’s March 14 executive order shrinking the agency until the day it was issued.

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“I didn’t know about this executive order until the 14th, but I had seen that there were a lot of executive orders coming down,” Lake said. “I heard rumblings that there may be an executive order, but we didn’t know if our agency or what agency could be on it.”

The next day, Lake worked to carry out the president’s wishes, placing nearly all full-time and contract staffers at Voice of America and its parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), on paid administrative leave — many of whom are still collecting paychecks without working six months later. (Through a reduction in force, Lake plans to lay off most of the remaining full-time employees on Sept. 30.)

Lake later signed a June reduction-in-force order herself because then-acting CEO Victor Morales, whom she later placed on administrative leave, “refused to do his job” and sign it himself. (The RIF was rescinded because of a slew of errors and reissued in late August.) Lake is now USAGM’s acting CEO.

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Lake also claimed she was not aware that an Aug. 28 executive order from Trump canceling collective-bargaining agreements with various agencies on national security grounds would include USAGM until it came out.

Lake said she did not have prior knowledge of President Donald Trump's executive order dismantling the agency before the day it was announced. (Washington Post illustration; Transcripts obtained by The Post)

“I think I heard like 24 hours in advance, and I figured we wouldn’t be on it. We weren’t on the previous one,” Lake said. “And then it came out and we were on it.” Later in the deposition, she appeared to correct herself and said she had “a little bit of knowledge in advance” about that order because either the White House or the Office of Personnel Management notified her the day before it came out.

Unions representing agency employees have since sued the government over the order, alleging it is illegal.

Lake made those remarks on Sept. 9, after lawyers representing Voice of America journalists and its director, former Washington Post reporter Michael Abramowitz, got permission to depose her in a last-ditch effort to force an explanation of whether and how the agency is complying with federal law and a preliminary injunction from a federal judge in Washington.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, has threatened to hold Lake in contempt of court if she can’t adequately explain how USAGM is following the International Broadcasting Act and congressional appropriations that govern the federal agency that oversees VOA.

In the deposition, Lake criticized Lamberth, saying he shows a “lack of respect” for the president’s powers under Article II of the Constitution and has made “very radical” decisions. But she said she does not “harbor hate” in her heart for him.

Lake, who remarked that she thinks all government-funded media is inherently “propaganda” during her testimony, said that when the agency ceased airing VOA programming in March, she was primarily concerned with what to substitute over the airwaves. She eventually had “a graphic made with music that had the VOA charter written on it so that that could play on a loop.” VOA later resumed some programming in Dari, Farsi, Mandarin and Pashto — and, more recently, Korean and Russian.

Lake also targeted several media outlets, including The Washington Post and CNN. Lawyers asked Lake about a Washington Post op-ed that criticized her unsupported claims of Chinese infiltration at the agency.

Lake complained about stories in The Washington Post during an eight-hour deposition in a lawsuit brought by employees of Voice of America. (Washington Post illustration; Transcripts obtained by The Post)

“The Washington Post is the biggest piece of garbage in journalism in this country,” she said, “and so I know that whenever something happens in this — in this agency, immediately somebody — and I’m not sure who — runs out and reports to The Washington Post.” (The Washington Post’s newsroom and opinion pages are separated by a strict fire wall.)

As for CNN, she called the network “garbage, trash, the worst of the worst,” while saying the right-wing One America News — with which USAGM struck a deal to license in May but has not used — has a “common sense, pro-America perspective.”

In addition, Lake was asked by lawyers about her opinions on global media availability around the world. She could only identify China as lacking full press freedom in Asia and said that she had no opinion on whether there was press freedom in Mali, Sudan, Nicaragua and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She also said she didn’t have a view as to whether Africa is a “significant region of the world.”

“You may think it is. I may think it’s not. I’m not saying I don’t,” she said about Africa, where VOA ceased broadcasting in March. “I haven’t put out an opinion on that. I haven’t given it a lot of thought.”

When Lake was tapped by Trump to lead USAGM, she billed herself as a reformer. That changed with Trump’s March executive order to whittle the agency down to the “minimum presence and function required by law.” Lake then placed hundreds of VOA staffers on paid administrative leave, including Abramowitz and White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara, both of whom sued Lake in federal court.

Lamberth has sharply criticized Lake for months and recently blocked her from firing Abramowitz after he refused a job running a broadcasting station in North Carolina. But the judge hasn’t been able to restore the agency to its full form. In May, a federal appeals court overturned part of his April injunction that would have sent VOA staffers back to work. A new three-judge panel reviewed Lamberth’s injunction in court on Monday but has yet to weigh in.

Lake also addressed her unsuccessful campaigns for Arizona governor in 2022 and U.S. Senate in 2024. When asked what the result of the elections were, Lake, who has made false claims of election fraud, said: “Well, I think the results were questionable, but the result is that I’m sitting here running U.S. Agency for Global Media.”

View 3 more stories

By Scott Nover

Scott Nover is a media reporter for The Washington Post.follow on X@ScottNover

​29. Medal of Honor: Emil Kapaun

Emil Kapaun is a great American and an inspiration to us all.​

I am not a fan of graphic novels. But I am a fan of history. I commend AUSA for presenting history in a form that appeals to a large audience and especially younger ones.

To read Medal of Honor: Emil Kapaun online or download a free copy, please visit www.ausa.org/kapaun. 

Mr. Maxwell-

On Tuesday, September 23, the Association of the United States Army is proud to announce its latest entry in the Medal of Honor graphic novel series: Medal of Honor: Emil Kapaun.

I invite you to share this complimentary digital graphic novel with your readership. Those interested can view the work or download a free copy at www.ausa.org/kapaun or www.ausa.org/moh.

Volume 7, Issue 4: Medal of Honor: Emil Kapaun

Emil Kapaun is the most decorated chaplain in Army history. Known for his courage as much as his spiritual guidance, Kapaun stayed to treat the wounded when Chinese forces overwhelmed his unit during the Korean War. He was sent to a prisoner of war camp, where he gave his rations to fellow soldiers and defied his captors to lead prayer meetings. Kapaun was awarded the Medal of Honor in 2013 and is under consideration for sainthood in the Catholic Church.

Medal of Honor: Emil Kapaun was created by a team of professional comic book veterans:

Script: Chuck Dixon (Batman, The Punisher, The ’Nam) 

Artwork, Cover: Andrew Paquette (Avengers, Daredevil, Hellraiser)

Lettering: Troy Peteri (Spider-Man, Iron Man, X-Men)

***

American soldiers have always displayed heroism on the battlefield. But only a select few are recognized with the nation's highest military decoration: the Medal of Honor.

The Association of the United States Army celebrates their valor with the Medal of Honor graphic novel series. These full-color digital books are created by a talented team of professionals drawn from the comic book industry, and the details are vetted by professional historians. Each eight-page issue profiles a true American hero, bringing to life the daring deeds that distinguished themselves by gallantry in action “above and beyond the call of duty.”

The series started in October 2018 with the release of Medal of Honor: Alvin York to commemorate the centennial of York’s heroic actions in World War I. To date, 28 issues have been published, commemorating such heroes as Audie Murphy, Mary Walker, Daniel Inouye, Henry Johnson, and Roy Benavidez.

AUSA has produced four new issues in 2025, and will print a paperback collection for the AUSA Annual Meeting:

Medal of Honor: William Carney – for the soldier in the 54^th Massachusetts who saved the flag at Fort Wagner

Medal of Honor: Clint Romesha – to celebrate the soldier who rallied his comrades to keep Combat Outpost Keating out of Taliban hands

Medal of Honor: Van T. Barfoot – to recognize the WWII soldier who advanced through a minefield to take out enemy machine gun positions and a tank

Medal of Honor: Emil Kapaun – for the chaplain in the Korean War known for his courage as much as his spiritual guidance

Information and links to all of the graphic novels are available on AUSA’s Medal of Honor series page at www.ausa.org/moh.

To read Medal of Honor: Emil Kapaun online or download a free copy, please visit www.ausa.org/kapaun. 

***

Please feel free to share this material; I do ask that you let me know about any posts or reviews.

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