Quotes of the Day:

“Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior, but nobody is equal either. People are simply unique, incomparable. You are you, I am I.” 

– Osho

“My prayer is that when I die, all hell rejoices that I am out of the fight.”

– C.S. Lewis

“Humility is the foundation of all virtues, for it allows us to approach every situation with an open mind and a willingness to learn from others.” 

– Marcus Aurelius 

1. In China, Jake Sullivan cements a triumph of quiet diplomacy

2. Putin arrives in Mongolia, a member of the ICC that issued an arrest warrant for him

3. China’s Defense Spending: The $700 Billion Distraction

4. US Navy’s Achilles Heel In Indo-Pacific Gives Edge To China; Pentagon Banks On Asian Allies To Boost Its Navy

5. Unqualified F-35 Pilot At the Controls During Utah National Guard Apache Crash, Investigation Reveals

6. Los Angeles-Class: This Might Be the Navy's Best Submarine Ever

7. 'AI gold mine': NGA aims to exploit archive of satellite images, expert analysis

8. Pacific policing deal a masterstroke of Australian diplomacy

9. Saudi game of thrones clearer with new royal order

10. Polish defense show lures global players amid record spending spree

11. Once neglected, Asian Americans now courted in knife-edge election

12. Two Ukrainian Top Guns Lobbied for F-16s. They Won’t Get to See If the Jets Help Fend Off Russia.

13. Beijing-Backed Trolls Target U.S. Voters as Election Nears

14. Why It’s So Hard for China to Fix Its Ailing Economy

15. Putin Begins Meetings in Mongolia in Defiance of I.C.C. Arrest Warrant

16. The Increasingly Front-Line Role of Ukrainian Women

17. Ukraine the Underdog Takes a Risk

18. Pentagon OKs 2-year tours with adult family members at US Army base in Poland

19. NSA’s China-focused ‘innovation pipeline’ targets economic imbalances

20. Inside Ukraine’s Secret Network: Partisans Thwart Occupying Forces

21. Seize the Advantage: Three Models to Improve Security Cooperation Planning

22. From World Champions to State Assets: The Outsized Impact of a Few Chinese Hackers

1. In China, Jake Sullivan cements a triumph of quiet diplomacy

This is one interpretation. I wonder about how China experts across the political spectrum assess this.

In China, Jake Sullivan cements a triumph of quiet diplomacy

• By Ann Scott Tyson Staff writer

Aug. 30, 2024, 1:56 p.m. ET

|

Seattle

The Christian Science Monitor · by The Christian Science Monitor · August 30, 2024

Jake Sullivan, who is President Biden’s national security adviser, wrapped up a three-day visit to China Thursday that appears to have put Washington’s relations with Beijing back on an even keel.

The trip capped a series of secret meetings in different parts of the world that Mr. Sullivan has held over the past 15 months with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. This week, he held unexpected talks with top Chinese leader Xi Jinping and landed a rare meeting with China’s most senior military officer.

President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, capped 15 months of secret diplomacy this week with a trip to Beijing that seems to have put China-U.S. relations back on an even keel.

Mr. Sullivan’s contacts with senior Chinese officials have led to the opening of communications channels in around 20 fields, from restoring military-to-military contacts to talks on artificial intelligence safeguards. A top priority has been to establish mechanisms to reduce the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation between the two nuclear powers.

Neither side believes that their dialogue has resolved fundamental differences between them. “They need first and foremost to find a good answer to the overarching question: Are China and the United States rivals or partners?” Mr. Xi said.

But the progress he made convinced Mr. Sullivan that, in his words, “intense diplomacy matters. We are going to keep at it.”

As Americans prepare to celebrate Labor Day, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has been working overtime to keep the United States’ most crucial diplomatic relationship on an even keel.

Mr. Sullivan’s efforts paid off this week, as he made the first visit by a United States national security adviser to China in eight years, held unexpected talks with top Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and landed a rare meeting with China’s most senior military officer, General Zhang Youxia.

The three-day visit paved the way for a phone call in coming weeks between President Joe Biden and Mr. Xi, and for a possible in-person meeting later this year.

President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, capped 15 months of secret diplomacy this week with a trip to Beijing that seems to have put China-U.S. relations back on an even keel.

“Intense diplomacy matters,” Mr. Sullivan told a Beijing press conference as he wrapped up his visit late Thursday. His Beijing trip capped a series of unpublicized meetings he had held over the past 15 months with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi.

During a U.S. campaign season in which many American politicians are hostile to China, this quiet diplomatic effort by Washington and Beijing has succeeded in reversing the past few years’ dangerous tailspin in relations between the world’s two superpowers, experts say.

Mr. Sullivan’s trip cements the idea that “talking to China … is not optional,” says Susan Thornton, a retired high-level U.S. diplomat and senior fellow at the Yale Law School Paul Tsai China Center. “It’s necessary for our national security,” she says. “It’s actually benefiting the United States” by fostering stability “in a world that’s looking more and more unpredictable,” she says.

Under-the-radar diplomacy works

In recent years, U.S.-China tensions have soared over Taiwan and the South China Sea as well as trade, technology, and China’s support for Moscow since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Meanwhile, face-to-face dialogues were hampered when China closed its borders to most foreign travelers for three years during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Messrs. Biden and Xi met in Bali, Indonesia, in November 2022 to try to put a floor under the collapsing relationship. They pledged to resume regular communications. But these efforts were disrupted by a new crisis in February 2023, when a Chinese surveillance balloon flew over the continental U.S., only to be shot down by the U.S. military.

In this context, Mr. Biden dispatched Mr. Sullivan to lead multiple rounds of low-visibility meetings with Foreign Minister Wang, starting in May 2023. The talks were “very detailed, painstaking” and “an all-hands-on-deck effort” by senior U.S. and Chinese officials, Mr. Sullivan told reporters.

This set the stage for a successful summit between Messrs. Biden and Xi in Woodside, California, in November 2023 and led to progress in critical areas – restoring military-to-military communications and launching talks on artificial intelligence safeguards, among other topics. In all, the two sides opened some 20 communications channels. More broadly, the diplomacy has reduced the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation between the two nuclear powers. “We’re going to keep at it,” Mr. Sullivan said.

“Talking has been restored, and relations have been stabilized to some extent,” says Ambassador Huang Ping, the Chinese consul general in New York. “We know we cannot afford confrontation or fighting, so we have to work together to manage differences,” he says.

Ng Han Guan/AP

Wang Yi (fourth from right), China's top diplomat, and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan (third from left) pose for photos before their talks in Beijing Aug. 27.

U.S. scores meeting with top Chinese general

One significant sign of headway in military-to-military ties was Mr. Sullivan’s unprecedented meeting Thursday with General Zhang, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, China’s top military body.

“There is no substitute for … being able to sit across the table” from General Zhang and his team “to hear … their perspective on critical issues … whether it’s cross-Strait relations or the South China Sea,” said Mr. Sullivan. They agreed on a phone call between U.S. and Chinese theater commanders, a significant step to help operational-level commanders to avert or deal with any conflict.

Such contacts are vital, given the proximity at which Chinese and U.S. warplanes and navy ships conduct patrols at flash points such as the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.

Vessels belonging to China and the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally, have clashed recently near disputed shoals in the South China Sea. In Beijing, Mr. Sullivan reiterated the U.S. “ironclad commitment” to honor its mutual defense treaty with the Philippines. But he also stressed that “nobody is looking for a crisis” and encouraged direct talks between Manila and Beijing.

“Zhang Youxia is … a top-level military person within Xi Jinping’s circle and [U.S. officials] haven’t met with him before, so it’s very significant to have that first meeting,” says Ms. Thornton.

Fundamental differences remain

Both U.S. and Chinese officials acknowledge that the ongoing dialogues have not solved fundamental differences between them. Indeed, Mr. Xi stressed to Mr. Sullivan that China and the U.S. do not view the relationship the same way.

“The number one issue is to develop a right strategic perception,” he said, according to a Chinese government summary of his remarks. When the U.S. and China engage, he said, “they need first and foremost to find a good answer to the overarching question: Are China and the United States rivals or partners?”

Yet by committing to talks, Washington and Beijing have made headway in managing the relationship – both by avoiding misunderstandings and by anticipating potential problems before they arise.

The two sides “have a track record of trying to get ahead of periods that may add tensions and frictions,” says Brian Hart, a fellow with the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. For example, he says, “they knew 2024 would be a tumultuous year given the [presidential] elections in Taiwan and the U.S.”

China’s leaders “recognize that elections are sensitive periods,” Mr. Sullivan says, and Vice President Kamala Harris supports high-level communications between Washington and Beijing as a way to responsibly manage the relationship.

The extent to which current dialogues would continue under a potential second Trump administration, though, is unclear, experts say. “They’re much more leery about dialogues and talking to the Chinese,” says Ms. Thornton. If Mr. Trump is elected, “I think you’ll see some pressure to cut back on who is involved in communicating with China,” she predicts.

One trend that is not likely to change is the revival of people-to-people exchanges between the U.S. and China. “The lack of face-to-face engagement really creates trouble,” says Ambassador Huang. “The deficit of mutual understanding has gone so far, so we need to bring people together.”

The Christian Science Monitor · by The Christian Science Monitor · August 30, 2024

2. Putin arrives in Mongolia, a member of the ICC that issued an arrest warrant for him

Putin arrives in Mongolia, a member of the ICC that issued an arrest warrant for him

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Updated 10:37 AM EDT, September 2, 2024

AP · September 2, 2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Tubten Shedrub Ling datsan in Kyzyl, Republic of Tyva, Russia, Monday, Sept. 2, 2024. (Kristina Kormilitsyna, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

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Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived Monday in Mongolia, a member of the international court that issued an arrest warrant for him.

The official visit, in which he is to meet Tuesday with Mongolian leader Ukhnaa Khurelsukh, is Putin’s first to a member country of the International Criminal Court since it issued a warrant for his arrest nearly 18 months ago on charges of war crimes in Ukraine.

Ukraine has called on Mongolia to arrest Putin and hand him over to the court in The Hague. A spokesperson for Putin said last week that the Kremlin isn’t worried about the visit.

Members of the international court are bound to detain suspects if an arrest warrant has been issued, but the court doesn’t have any enforcement mechanism.

Mongolia, a sparsely populated country between Russia and China, is heavily dependent on the former for fuel and electricity and on the latter for investment in its mining industry.

The ICC has accused Putin of being responsible for the abductions of children from Ukraine, where the fighting has raged for 2½ years.

Putin and the Mongolian leader on Tuesday are to attend a ceremony marking the 1939 victory of Soviet and Mongolian troops over the Japanese army that had taken control of Manchuria in northeastern China. Thousands of soldiers died in months of fighting in a dispute over where the border was between Manchuria and Mongolia.

Though Putin has faced international isolation over the invasion of Ukraine, he visited North Korea and Vietnam last month and has also visited China twice in the past year.

He joined a meeting in Johannesburg by video link last year after the South African government lobbied against him showing up for the BRICS summit, a group that also includes China and other emerging economies. South Africa is an ICC member.

AP · September 2, 2024

3. China’s Defense Spending: The $700 Billion Distraction

View the tables at the link: https://warontherocks.com/2024/09/chinas-defense-spending-the-700-billion-distraction/

Excerpts:

Accurate assessment of China’s defense spending matters for several reasons. First, it informs how the United States should spend its scarce resources to strengthen its position relative to China. For example, should the U.S. Air Force retire older airframes and spend the savings to rejuvenate the force? Or should it continue to maintain them to maximize current, rather than future, capability? Second, accurate assessment helps U.S. leaders balance competing priorities in the face of multiple global security challenges, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the war between Israel and its foes. Third, inaccurate assessments could lead to unwanted outcomes. For example, significantly overestimating China’s defense spending could create strong pressure for the United States to overreact, further exacerbating tensions between the two countries. Alternatively, overestimates might strengthen the hand of those who believe the risks and costs of maintaining U.S. regional alliances or the U.S. strategic position in Asia are too high. Finally, inaccurate assessments could undermine deterrence by creating uncertainty about the relative balance of power. Large gaps in spending, power, and capability remain, and it is better for policymakers in both the United States and China to know it.

Understanding military spending in China and the United States is only one piece of a set of analytic challenges that must be tackled in order to make better strategic and military policy. If policymakers and the media view budget analysis as an important metric, however, the analysis should be done thoughtfully and reasonably. Legislation on assessments of Chinese defense spending now under consideration in Congress should compare like-for-like spending categories, use market exchange rates to convert Chinese spending or, if purchasing power parity is used, apply balanced and appropriate exchange rates for each category of Chinese defense spending. Reporting on China’s overall defense spending should appear alongside assessment of the material capabilities China is acquiring.

China’s Defense Spending: The $700 Billion Distraction - War on the Rocks

M. Taylor Fravel, George Gilboy, and Eric Heginbotham

warontherocks.com · by M. Taylor Fravel · September 2, 2024

American political and military leaders are amplifying flawed estimates that China’s annual defense spending is much higher than it actually is. In these mistaken calculations, China’s defense spending has reached $700 billion, approaching the level of the U.S. defense budget. These exaggerated estimates have gained traction in Congress, the media, and defense circles.

However, as we show in our recent article in the Texas National Security Review (and as we also discussed on Horns of a Dilemma) these exaggerated estimates count spending categories for China without counting similar spending for the United States and apply purchasing power parity methods emphasizing low labor costs as a key military advantage. PPP exchange rate estimates address a problem familiar to many international travelers: a dollar spent in a poorer country will buy more of a domestic product like clothing, food, or housing than a dollar spent in a richer country. Higher overall price levels in richer countries are due to higher levels of technology investment, productivity, and wages. Purchasing power parity adjusts for different price levels to allow cost comparison for similar products.

Accounting for spending not included in official budgets and using new World Bank purchasing power parity data published in 2024, we estimate that China will spend the equivalent of $474 billion on defense in 2024, much more than its official 2024 defense budget of $232 billion at market exchange rates. When compared to similar U.S. spending categories, this represents 36 percent of 2024 U.S. defense-related spending of $1.3 trillion.

Our approach is based on two simple but frequently ignored principles. First, any comparison to U.S. defense spending should contain similar spending categories for China and for the United States. Second, the exchange rate employed for converting currencies should be appropriate to the military budget. If purchasing power parity adjustments are made for specific budget elements such as military wages, then they should, where possible, be based on actual cost data (not estimates). Where this is more difficult, appropriate sector-level purchasing power parity data should be applied to inputs such as personnel, operations and training, and equipment costs.

Why do such estimates matter, and why is it important to make them as accurately as possible? First, there is no excuse for getting an important national security–related estimate wrong when better data and methods are available. Second, defense spending estimates play a critical role in assessing the degree and nature of military challenges that China poses to the United States and its allies. All else equal, a larger defense budget suggests a more salient threat. Underestimating the threat can leave one unprepared, while overestimating it can fuel spirals of security competition. Third, a misplaced focus on aggregate spending levels can distract attention from the more important debate about what kinds of capabilities the United States should purchase in response to China’s ongoing military modernization.

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Creating a Military Purchasing Power Parity

There are a number of reasonable ways to compare U.S. and Chinese defense spending, but no analytically defensible approach would produce a number that shows China rapidly catching up to or on the cusp of surpassing U.S. total comparable defense spending, as the $700 billion estimate is purported to show. Among the problems with estimates that produce such high figures is the inclusion of spending categories beyond the official defense budget for China without including the same categories of defense-related spending for the United States, such as domestic security, benefits to veterans, defense-related research and development not in the official defense budget, and “civil-military fusion” (the fusing of commercial and defense-related spending on technologies such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence).

Additional errors come with the use of purchasing power parity exchange rates. Importantly, purchasing power estimates have limitations. For example, they were not developed to measure internationally tradable goods, services, and technologies. Instead, market exchange rates better reflect purchasing power for these goods.

Using the market exchange rate to convert Chinese defense spending to equivalent dollars may be the best choice because it more accurately reflects the cost of advanced weapons and equipment, and it is less prone to calculation error. However, market exchange rates can understate purchasing power for some types of defense spending in a country like China. In a developing economy, wages, clothing, food, and construction will be based on labor-intensive costs. If purchasing power parity is used, however, careful consideration must be given to how the adjustments relate to real-world inputs and outputs. Purchasing power adjustments in labor-intensive sectors will show a significant purchasing power advantage for China.

However, purchasing power parity exchange rates can also reflect lower relative purchasing power than market exchange rates for capital- and technology-intensive goods. World Bank figures show that China’s purchasing power for machinery and equipment technology is significantly less than the purchasing power implied by the market exchange rate. In other words, certain technologies are more costly for China to acquire than they would be for the United States to acquire. This can occur where there are trade barriers for such goods, or where the cost of barriers to entry or learning curves must be overcome. Any purchasing power parity exchange rate used should correspond — within reasonable bounds — to the spending category under consideration. The World Bank’s methodological guidelines and methods should be followed to ensure that the defense-related goods under consideration are comparable.

Some estimates of Chinese defense spending use a single economy-wide purchasing power parity exchange rate to inflate China’s entire defense budget or apply that general adjustment inappropriately to parts of the budget. This is misleading because any defense budget includes a mix of domestic labor-intensive components on one hand, and internationally traded or capital-intensive components on the other.

Many of the recent high estimates for Chinese defense spending commit a different error: They apply specialized purchasing power exchange rates for the cost of (less skilled) labor to broad components of China’s defense spending without applying the appropriate specialized exchange rates for other spending categories. This presents an inflated and unbalanced picture of China’s defense purchasing power. Compounding the error, some sources attempt to estimate defense sector wages through proxy variables. These estimates do not fully account for differences in productivity (effectiveness) between Chinese and American military personnel and defense sector labor. Moreover, the wage estimates themselves do not benchmark well to actual data for Chinese military personnel. Some Chinese military wage data indicate that recent econometric estimates of defense labor costs inflate China’s defense labor purchasing power by more than 100 percent.

The good news is that purchasing power data that corresponds to the various categories of defense spending is available. The World Bank produces purchasing power parity exchange rates that estimate price levels for the entire economy (gross domestic product), and also for specific sectors such as consumption, construction, and technology such as equipment and machinery. This data is collected in detailed field surveys of actual prices by the International Comparison Program. The data is not updated frequently. The most recent field survey was conducted in 2021 and published in June 2024. Previous surveys were conducted in 2005, 2011, and 2017. However, these data series have significant advantages: They are based on actual prices for products and services, have a consistent methodology and basis for comparison of products, and reveal some changes over time.

To create a balanced and accurate “military purchasing power parity,” we use World Bank data to account for defense spending categories including personnel, operations and training, and equipment. We use specific, appropriate purchasing power exchange rates for overall gross domestic product, wages, consumption, construction, and equipment for each respective category of defense spending.

In June 2024 (soon after our article in the Texas National Security Review was published), the World Bank released new data from field surveys conducted in 2021, and made minor revisions to its earlier 2017 data set. Table 1 shows our updated estimate for 2024 Chinese defense spending using the newest data. The new data results in a slight (0.6 percent) increase in our estimate of China’s 2024 defense spending, to the equivalent of $474 billion. There is more than one way to tackle the problem of creating a balanced and more accurate military purchasing power parity, so to encourage debate and improvements, we explain our approach in the online appendix.

Table 1. China’s Estimated 2024 Defense Spending, using new purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates published in June 2024

Nuclear weapons, space, and intelligence programs not included

Common Sense Test for Purchasing Power Parity Conversion

Recent analyses of Chinese defense spending that employ economy-wide purchasing power parity multipliers or specialized labor cost estimates fail the common-sense test. The most lethal modern military capabilities are based on technology-intensive weapons and systems, where sector-level price data indicate that China has lower — not higher— purchasing power than the market exchange rate. The labor-intensive factors such as low personnel or basic materiel costs where China enjoys purchasing power advantages are among the least lethal military capabilities, such as light infantry.

Assessments that inflate the least lethal capabilities the most turn the logic of modern military power on its head. They argue that China’s relatively lower wage and price levels — due to its relatively lower level of economic and technological development — are a military advantage rather than a disadvantage. However, any future conflict between China and the United States is more likely to be determined by the relative strength of advanced air, sea, and space capabilities (and the ability of operators to employ those capabilities effectively and flexibly), rather than the number of infantry soldiers. Chinese military systems meant to compete with American capabilities, such as fifth-generation fighter aircraft, cutting-edge submarines, or precision-guided weapons, will be based at least in part on globally sourced technology that is costly to acquire, or on costly indigenous development and substitution for globally sourced technologies — costs that low wages cannot offset.

Although purchasing power adjustments can help with insights on the overall size of an economy and relative domestic living standards across countries, using them to adjust specific government budgets or spending items is complex. Methodological errors and biases can heavily affect final outcomes.

A purchasing power parity adjustment for wages simply shows that China has a relative advantage in labor costs for military personnel. But China only derives benefits from cheaper wages relative to the capabilities those wages can purchase. Benefits from labor are only proportional to costs if — and only if — one assumes that U.S. and Chinese ground forces, naval, air, space and other highly specialized military personnel are functional equivalents. Yet there are many reasons to believe that U.S. and Chinese military personnel are not functionally equivalent based on differences in education, training, and service experience. Reflecting such differences, U.S. labor productivity is roughly seven times higher than China’s at market exchange rates, and about four times higher when adjusted for purchasing power parity.

Although we may not expect a gap that large in military productivity or effectiveness, assuming that a Chinese officer or noncommissioned officer fulfills the same functions at the same level of effectiveness as a U.S. counterpart is questionable. The difference at the junior enlisted level is equally large because junior enlisted in the U.S. system are volunteers typically being cultivated as the next generation of enlisted leaders or for promotion to the officer corps, whereas Chinese junior enlisted personnel are typically conscripts who serve shorter terms and receive lower quality training. Moreover, even if one assumes that China possesses a proportional advantage in labor-intensive sectors, this means only that China has a purchasing power advantage for labor-intensive goods. These are the least lethal capabilities. China does not have a purchasing power advantage for high-technology goods, which underpin the most lethal capabilities. China’s military reforms have progressively shifted the People’s Liberation Army toward an emphasis on high technology and away from labor-intensive forces, i.e., away from those areas that receive the largest benefit from inflationary purchasing power parity adjustments.

What Do the New Figures Tell Us?

The new data indicate that China’s overall purchasing power relative to the market exchange rate did not change much since 2017. At the highest level and compared to same-year market exchange rates, China’s economy-wide purchasing power was 1.6 times that implied by the market exchange rate in 2021, down slightly from 2017 (table 3). Sector-level data show that China’s relative purchasing power increased in areas such as housing, health care, construction, transportation, and communications. However, since 2017, China’s relative purchasing power eroded in sectors such as total consumption, education, and the technology embodied in machinery and equipment.

For example, the most recent World Bank data show that China’s purchasing power exchange rate for machinery and equipment is 9.9 yuan per dollar. Unlike the overall gross domestic product purchasing power parity of 3.99 yuan per dollar, this implies China’s purchasing power for some capital-intensive goods is less than indicated by the 2021 market exchange rate of 6.45 yuan per dollar. In other words, in some equipment sectors, China needs to spend more than the market exchange rate suggests to purchase an equivalent product. These adjustments reflect a relative purchasing power disadvantage for China in these technology sectors, not an advantage. This has been a consistent result in all World Bank price surveys of China since their inception in 2005 (table 2).

Table 2. China Market Exchange Rates and PPP Exchange Rates

Table 3. China’s Indicative “Purchasing Power” Relative to the Market Exchange Rate

Since 2012, Beijing’s reversal of economic reforms, the recentralization of economic decision-making, and the resurgence of state intervention in the economy have added to China’s persistent problems with technological innovation and dependence on imported technology and components. The new purchasing power parity data indicate that in some equipment and technology sectors, China’s domestic costs are higher than the market exchange rate implies, and this disadvantage worsened between 2017 and 2021. Competition for higher technology military, naval, and aerospace power able to compete with that of the United States and its allies such as Japan will remain tough and costly for China. At a minimum, China enjoys no purchasing power advantage in military technology and equipment. Even in military areas where China has invested heavily in research and development, it still depends on imported technology, which can only be purchased at market exchange rates (and access can be interrupted or made even more costly by sanctions).

Military Balance and U.S Choices

Accurate assessment of China’s defense spending matters for several reasons. First, it informs how the United States should spend its scarce resources to strengthen its position relative to China. For example, should the U.S. Air Force retire older airframes and spend the savings to rejuvenate the force? Or should it continue to maintain them to maximize current, rather than future, capability? Second, accurate assessment helps U.S. leaders balance competing priorities in the face of multiple global security challenges, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the war between Israel and its foes. Third, inaccurate assessments could lead to unwanted outcomes. For example, significantly overestimating China’s defense spending could create strong pressure for the United States to overreact, further exacerbating tensions between the two countries. Alternatively, overestimates might strengthen the hand of those who believe the risks and costs of maintaining U.S. regional alliances or the U.S. strategic position in Asia are too high. Finally, inaccurate assessments could undermine deterrence by creating uncertainty about the relative balance of power. Large gaps in spending, power, and capability remain, and it is better for policymakers in both the United States and China to know it.

Understanding military spending in China and the United States is only one piece of a set of analytic challenges that must be tackled in order to make better strategic and military policy. If policymakers and the media view budget analysis as an important metric, however, the analysis should be done thoughtfully and reasonably. Legislation on assessments of Chinese defense spending now under consideration in Congress should compare like-for-like spending categories, use market exchange rates to convert Chinese spending or, if purchasing power parity is used, apply balanced and appropriate exchange rates for each category of Chinese defense spending. Reporting on China’s overall defense spending should appear alongside assessment of the material capabilities China is acquiring.

Become a Member

Taylor Fravel is the Arthur and Ruth Sloan professor of political science and director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

George J. Gilboy is an executive at a global energy firm and a research affiliate at the MIT Center for International Studies.

Eric Heginbotham is a principal research scientist at the MIT Center for International Studies and is co-director of the wargaming lab at the MIT Security Studies Program.

Image: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff via Wikimedia Commons

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by M. Taylor Fravel · September 2, 2024

4. US Navy’s Achilles Heel In Indo-Pacific Gives Edge To China; Pentagon Banks On Asian Allies To Boost Its Navy

US Navy’s Achilles Heel In Indo-Pacific Gives Edge To China; Pentagon Banks On Asian Allies To Boost Its Navy

eurasiantimes.com · by Ritu Sharma · September 1, 2024

In the coming decade, the US Navy will be stretched thin to counter the burgeoning numerical strength of the Chinese PLA Navy in the Indo-Pacific. The US Navy that will deliver the wrath of the US beyond its border has an Achilles Heel—not the lack of warships but trained crew to man those warships.

The shortage of qualified mariners is forcing the US to sideline 17 support ships, impacting the logistics backbone of the force.

A plan drafted by the Military Sealift Command suggests that to resolve the shortage of qualified mariners, the US Navy will dock the vessels for extended maintenance periods as its crew is redistributed.

The “force generation reset” would involve 12 spearhead-class Expeditionary Fast Transports (EPF), 2 Lewis and Clark-class replenishment ships, 2 forward-deployed Navy Expeditionary Sea bases, and 1 fleet oiler.

The proposed plan awaits a nod from Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti. This would help cut the demand for 600-700 billets. Reports suggest that roughly 4,500 billets are needed for mariners across various US support ships, with a ratio of about 1.27 mariners per billet.

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The smaller number of crew members means that mariners often have to stay in for extended periods without enough breaks. These ships are at sea for a complete year, and two crews are required to rotate the crew of these ships.

The great reset aims to increase the mariner-to-billet ratio to around 1.5. It also aims to improve crew management to support the deployment of newer vessels like the John Lewis-class fleet oiler.

Presently, the US Merchant Marines are 5,500-person civilians who are strong and overseen by the US Navy. The mariners work on numerous support vessels that resupply carriers, destroyers, cruisers, and submarines around the world. They also man vital transport vessels.

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The US controls about 750 bases in at least 80 countries worldwide and spends more on its military than the following 10 countries combined. The actual number may be even higher as not all data is published by the Pentagon. With 120 active bases, Japan has the highest number of US bases globally, followed by Germany with 119 and South Korea with 73.

For navies of all sizes, auxiliary ships are vital because, without them, the main fleet boats would be left unsupported. And for the US Navy’s extensive reach, it needs a sizable fleet of auxiliary ships.

Photo by Seaman Apprentice Aaron Haro Gonzalez USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71)

Shortage Of Manpower

The US military has been struggling to recruit people in its rank and file. After the US Army failed to meet its recruiting targets for two consecutive fiscal years, its strength fell from an original level of 485,000 in late 2021 to around 452,000 active-duty soldiers in 2023.

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It is the lowest full-time force size since 1940, before the US entered World War II.

These long-distance deployments take a toll on the family life, tarnishing the sheen of military jobs. During the pandemic, gangway-up measures prevented mariners from leaving their vessels, increasing the difficulties on the job. Many mariners resigned to strike a better work-life balance.

According to reports, in fiscal 2023, only the Marine Corps and the Space Force among the five service branches met their recruiting goals. The Army fell short by about 10,000 of its goal to bring on 65,000 active-duty enlisted soldiers; the Air Force recruited only 24,100 of the 26,877 it wanted; and the Navy recruited 30,236 active-duty enlisted sailors, well short of its goal of 37,000.

The shortfall understates the challenges facing the US military, as the service also had to lower its end-strength goals in recent years to ease the recruitment shortage. The recruitment crisis has been deemed one of the biggest challenges faced by the all-volunteer force since its inception. In 1973, then-President Richard Nixon ended the draft.

Image for Representation: China’s Destroyer Type 055

Challenging The Dragon With Fewer Vessels

The US Navy told Congress in 2022 that it needs 381 warships as well as up to 150 unmanned vessels to meet its national defense obligations. But even if all its efforts remain on track, the US Navy will be able to meet its goal in around 20 years.

This will make it difficult for the US to keep pace with the growing flotilla of the Chinese Navy. According to the 2022 Pentagon report, China is building more modern surface vessels, aircraft carriers, and support ships to help its naval influence grow. By 2025, the People’s Liberation Army Navy is expected to grow to 400 hulls, up from its fleet of 340.

F-16s “Sitting Ducks” For Russian MiG-31 Fighters? Putin Warns Of Consequences Over Fighting Falcons

In contrast, the US Navy has admitted that all of its key shipbuilding programs—from the new Columbia-class submarine to the new Constellation-class frigate—are facing years-long delays.

“I’m concerned that the Navy is falling behind — it is behind,” Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, said Wednesday. “The Navy continues to retire ships faster than it builds them, and I’m troubled by the Navy’s request to decommission 10 ships before the end of their service life and build only six.”

The labor shortage is further resulting in a backlog of ship production and maintenance at a time when the Navy faces global threats. The US has put the US behind China in the number of ships at its disposal, and the gap is widening.

Navy shipbuilding is currently in “a terrible state” — the worst in a quarter century, says Eric Labs, a long-time naval analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. “I feel alarmed,” he said. “I don’t see a fast, easy way to get out of this problem. It’s taken us a long time to get into it.”

The fact that one of its new amphibious assault ships’ deployment was delayed by months shows how this is impacting the US Navy’s readiness in the Indo-Pacific region.

“The Navy’s Pacific Fleet was less ready and less capable because of USS Boxer’s shortfalls,” the admiral who commissioned one of the reports noted in his letter accepting the results. The Navy’s top officer, Admiral Franchetti, has told reporters that the Boxer’s sister ship, the USS Wasp, may also be delayed.

This explains why the US is keen on making countries like South Korea, Japan, and India the maintenance hub for its support ships.

• Ritu Sharma has written on defense and foreign affairs for over a decade. She holds a Master’s Degree in Conflict Studies and Management of Peace from the University of Erfurt, Germany. Her areas of interest include Asia-Pacific, the South China Sea, and Aviation history.
• She can be reached at ritu.sharma (at) mail.com

eurasiantimes.com · by Ritu Sharma · September 1, 2024e

5. Unqualified F-35 Pilot At the Controls During Utah National Guard Apache Crash, Investigation Reveals

This does not appear to be satire (which was my first thought).

I have always heard that it is more difficult and takes more skill to fly a helicopter than a fixed wing aircraft but not being an aviator I am in no position to judge. But common sense says this Colonel had no business trying to fly an Apache.

Unqualified F-35 Pilot At the Controls During Utah National Guard Apache Crash, Investigation Reveals

The Aviationist · by David Cenciotti · September 2, 2024

The Utah National Guard AH-64D (screenshot from the FOX 13 video)

An F-35 pilot with only 35 minutes of experience in an Apache simulator was flying the Utah National Guard Apache that crashed earlier this year.

On Feb. 12, 2024, a Utah National Guard AH-64D Apache helicopter crashed during an “orientation flight”. The helicopter was piloted by a colonel in the Air Force Reserve who was not qualified to fly the aircraft. The colonel, an F-35 fighter jet pilot, had only 35 minutes of experience in an Apache simulator before taking control of the real helicopter for a 90-minute flight. According to an investigative report obtained by FOX 13 News, the crash occurred when the colonel, unfamiliar with helicopter controls, attempted to hover and land the Apache at West Jordan airport.

Investigators revealed that during the return to the airport, the colonel struggled to manage the helicopter, necessitating intervention by the accompanying chief warrant officer on three separate occasions. On the fourth attempt, the colonel panicked and reverted to his fixed-wing training, applying downward pressure inappropriate for a rotor-wing aircraft. The Apache rotated and dropped approximately ten feet to the ground before the chief warrant officer could regain control.

The chief warrant officer sustained minor injuries, while the colonel suffered more serious but non-life-threatening injuries that required surgical intervention and rehabilitation.

Fault Found in Leadership and Flight Management

The investigation highlighted not only the colonel’s lack of qualifications but also the chief warrant officer’s overconfidence and inadequate flight control management, which contributed to the crash. Furthermore, the report criticized the Utah National Guard’s chain of command for failing to adequately enforce standard operating procedures, citing similar leadership failures in a 2022 incident involving two Utah National Guard helicopters that crashed at Snowbird Resort.

The investigation’s findings underscore broader implications for military aviation protocols. Investigators recommended that the National Guard Bureau, an office within the Pentagon, reassess the use of orientation flights in Apache units across the nation to prevent future incidents involving unqualified personnel at the controls.

Implications and Response

Orientation flights are routine within military aviation and are typically used to familiarize personnel with different types of aircraft. However, the report suggests a need for stricter adherence to qualification standards to avoid putting unqualified individuals in control of complex and highly technical machinery like the Apache helicopter. The incident has raised questions about the adequacy of current safety measures and leadership oversight within the Utah National Guard.

As of now, the Utah National Guard has not responded to requests for comment regarding the findings of the investigation. The report’s recommendations may prompt changes not only within the Utah National Guard but also across other National Guard units nationwide, highlighting the critical need for strict enforcement of qualification standards in military aviation.

The crash and its subsequent investigation serve as a stark reminder of the importance of proper training and adherence to established procedures in maintaining the safety and integrity of military operations.

Flying the F-35 is probably much simpler

As often explained here at The Aviationist, the F-35 is a 5th generation stealth jet: one of the most complex aircraft ever built but also one of the easiest to fly. In fact, compared to previous generation aircraft, the effort a pilot puts in flying an F-35 is much less than in older aircraft due to its advanced fly-by-wire system, integrated sensors, and highly automated systems. These features significantly reduce the pilot’s workload, allowing them to focus more on mission management rather than basic flight control tasks. The pilot’s effort in a 5th generation aircraft is more on managing the onboard sensors than handling or landing the jet.

This stands in stark contrast to flying a combat helicopter like the AH-64D Apache, which requires continuous manual control inputs to manage the rotor system, maintain stability, and handle complex maneuvers at low altitudes. Helicopters demand constant attention to multiple axes of movement, making them inherently more challenging to pilot compared to the highly automated and stability-focused design of modern jets like the F-35.

1st Attack Reconnaissance Battalion, 211th Aviation Regiment, Utah Army National

The AH-64D Apache helicopters of the Utah National Guard are operated by the 1st Attack Reconnaissance Battalion, 211th Aviation Regiment, based out of West Jordan, Utah, that has performed the Attack and Scout mission for over 40 years and during three recent deployments: Operation Desert Spring (2001-02) in Kuwait, and OEF V (2004-05) and OEF XII (2012-13) in Afghanistan.

The AH-64D Apache Longbow is a twin-engine attack helicopter renowned for its advanced combat capabilities and versatility on the battlefield. It is equipped with a powerful 30mm M230 chain gun, Hellfire missiles, and Hydra 70 rocket pods, allowing it to engage armored vehicles, troops, and other ground targets effectively. The AH-64D features an advanced Longbow radar system, providing target acquisition and tracking even in adverse weather and low-visibility conditions. Its enhanced avionics, night vision systems, and survivability features make it a critical asset for reconnaissance, close air support, and anti-armor missions.

According to the U.S. Army website, the 1st Battalion, 211th Aviation Regiment, known as the 1-211th Attack Reconnaissance Battalion (ARB), plays a crucial role in the Utah National Guard. Its mission is to destroy enemy armored and mechanized forces using aerial firepower, mobility, and shock effect, as well as to conduct aerial reconnaissance and screening operations in support of a Combat Aviation Brigade. The battalion, led by Major Jon Richardson and Command Sergeant Major Shawn Earl, is also prepared to support nationwide aviation operations, emergency situations, and homeland defense missions.

The battalion’s recent training highlights include field exercises, live-fire aerial gunnery, and support for special operations forces. It has participated in high-level training such as the Naval Fighter Weapons School (TOPGUN) and two rotations at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California, showcasing its capability to provide effective air support and rapid deployment in both combat and domestic missions.

The 1-211th ARB is structured into several companies, including Headquarters Company and A through E Companies, each contributing to the unit’s overall mission readiness and operational excellence.

About David Cenciotti

WebsiteFacebookTwitterLinkedIn instagram

David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.

The Aviationist · by David Cenciotti · September 2, 2024

6. Los Angeles-Class: This Might Be the Navy's Best Submarine Ever

I will leave it to submariners and naval experts to comment.

Los Angeles-Class: This Might Be the Navy's Best Submarine Ever

The National Interest · by Maya Carlin · September 1, 2024

Summary and Key Points: The U.S. Navy's Los Angeles-class fast attack submarines were developed in response to the advancing Soviet submarine technology during the Cold War. Designed as successors to the Sturgeon-class, these submarines were larger, faster, and featured enhanced stealth capabilities.

-Equipped with advanced sensors, sonar, and a vertical launch missile system, the Los Angeles-class could engage in surface warfare, undersea warfare, and support carrier battle groups.

-Since their introduction in 1976, 62 of these submarines have been constructed, proving to be a highly successful platform for the U.S. Navy in various operational roles.

How the Los Angeles-Class Submarines Became a Cold War Powerhouse

The U.S. Navy’s Los Angeles-class fast attack submarines were a product of the intensifying Cold War arms race between America and the USSR.

During the 1960’s, the Soviets quickly developed more advanced submarine technology that threatened U.S. carrier battle groups.

Brand new Soviet fast attack vessels could penetrate a carrier’s destroyer screens.

At the same time, planners grew concerned that missile submarines could get close enough to launch a barrage large enough to overwhelm the battle group’s defenses.

To rectify this, U.S. engineers got to work to construct a new cutting-edge fast-attack submarine class.

The History of the Los Angeles-class

Designed as a successor to the Sturgeon-class submarines, the Los Angeles-class ships incorporated many of the same weapons and sensors when first introduced. However, the new class of submarines were roughly 50% larger than its predecessors with enhanced stealth and speed. The class’ capabilities include surface warfare, undersea warfare, mining operations, reconnaissance, special forces delivery, intelligence and carrier battle group support.

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, the Los Angeles-class ships could travel at speeds in excess of 25 knots. Some analysts predict the top speed of these vessels is actually much higher, however, this remains classified. All Los Angeles submarines are powered by the General Electric S6G pressurized water reactor. An emergency propulsion motor is also incorporated on the vessels.

Specs & capabilities:

The submarines in this class built after 1982 are fitted with a vertical launch missile system with 12 tubes. Each ship is equipped with a Raytheon CCS Mark 2 combat data system, which was replaced down the line with the Raytheon AN/BYG-1 Combat Control System. The Los Angeles submarines are also designed to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles and Harpoon missiles. The Gould Mark 48 torpedoes combat both high-performance surface ships and fast deep-diving submarines. As detailed by Naval Technology, “The torpedo is capable of operating with or without wire guidance and uses either or both active and passive homing. It is equipped with multiple re-attack modes which operate if the target ship is missed. The torpedo carries out programmed target search, acquisition and attack procedures.”

In terms of sonar, the Los Angeles ships were more advanced than earlier submarines when introduced to service. Each vessel is equipped with an array of sensors and sonars, including the AN/BQQ-5 sensor suite which gives the ships sonar capability. The AN-BBQ-5 was derived from the AN-BQQ-2 sonar system.

A total of 62 Los Angeles-class submarines have been constructed over the years, the majority being Flight I variants.

In 1976, the lead ship of the class USS Los Angeles was constructed, followed by Baton Rouge, Philadelphia, Memphis, Omaha, Cincinnati, Groton, Birmingham, New York City, Indianapolis, Bremerton, Jacksonville, Dallas, La Jolla, Phoenix, Boston, Baltimore, Corpus Christi, Alburquerque, Portsmouth, Minneapolis, Hyman G. Rickover, Augusta, San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston, Norfolk, Buffalo, Salt Lake City, Olympia and Honolulu.

Overall, the Los Angeles-class fast attack submarines have remained a highly successful platform for the U.S. Navy.

About the Author: Maya Carlin

Maya Carlin, National Security Writer with The National Interest, is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin.

Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The National Interest · by Maya Carlin · September 1, 2024

7. 'AI gold mine': NGA aims to exploit archive of satellite images, expert analysis

Excerpts:

The stakes are high to get it right, Munsell emphasized, saying an expert human should always be doublechecking the AI, especially if a report might be used for targeting a military strike.

“The visual is the ultimate positive identification for our customers,” he said. “In many cases they’re making, they’re acting upon that positive identification, they’re acting upon the visual identity and the geolocation of what we’re providing. And when artificial intelligence provides that, you have to take those extra steps to make…that thing is 100% correct.”

At NGA, he said, “literally for us, seeing is believing.”

'AI gold mine': NGA aims to exploit archive of satellite images, expert analysis - Breaking Defense

“We're sitting on two big sets of data,” said NGA’s Mark Munsell, referring to an unequalled archive of satellite imagery and all the intelligence analysts’ reports on that imagery – and they’re cross-referenced so an AI can correlate them easily.

breakingdefense.com · by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. · August 28, 2024

Overview of Kwan-li-so No. 18, September 9, 2023 (Copyright © 2024 by Airbus, via Google Earth, via NGA’s Tearline)

WASHINGTON — The director of data and digital innovation at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency said the NGA has started training artificial intelligence algorithms on its unique trove of visual and textual data.

This data is “an AI gold mine,” said Mark Munsell. That’s not just because it consists of large amounts of well-labeled, well-organized, and carefully vetted data, accumulated over decades by the intelligence agency tasked with compiling and analyzing geospatial data for policymakers from the president on down. It’s also because this data is what experts call multi-modal, combining images with text descriptions.

Contrast that to how GenAI companies are feverishly scraping everything from Reddit posts to YouTube captions in their desperate quest for training data — and that’s all pure text, without any ability to cross-reference other kinds of sources.

“We’re in the early days of some really cool experiments,” Munsell told the annual INSA Intelligence & National Security Summit on Tuesday. “Those experiments involve taking the visual record of the Earth that we have from space … and merging it with millions and millions of finely curated humans’ reports about what they see on those images.”

“We’re sitting on two big sets of data, a gold mine of data, where we have images that nobody else in the world has, and … experts that have described what’s on those images in expert language and text,” Munsell continued. “We’re really looking forward to this multi-modal experiment, where we bring those two things together.”

Large Language Models like ChatGPT erupted into public view last year and have fired fierce debate over AI ever since. Skeptics point to their tendency to “hallucinate” convincing falsehoods and misinformation. Enthusiasts argue that — properly safeguarded — they can revolutionize knowledge-based tasks that once required tedious clerical work. Some well-credentialed commentators even claim that LLMs are on the verge of superhuman “artificial general inteligence.”

Unlike humans, however, LLMs operate purely on text: They train on text, take input in text, and output answers as text. Other forms of generative artifcial intelligence can correlate text and imagery well enough to turn users’ written prompts into pictures or even video.

But many in industry have already been working on the next frontier: multi-modal AI. The crucial capability is to cross-reference different types of information on the same thing, like an image or video with the associated caption describing it in words, much the way a human brain can associate an idea or memory with information from all the senses.

Multi-modal AI can even work with senses that human beings don’t have, like infra-red imagery, radio and radar signals, or sonar. “That enables a lot of avenues that would have been closed to us,” said DARPA program manager William Corvey, speaking at the same INSA panel as NGA’s Munsell. “[Imagine] cross-modal systems that can reconcile visual and linguistic information and other kinds of modalities of sensors that might be available to a robot but aren’t to a human being.”

Modern AI algorithms have proven perfectly capable of working with images, video, and all sorts of sensor data, not just text, because they can abstract any and all of them into the same mathematical representations.

“You can start to knit together reality in these new ways and induce these alignments across what were previously completely different systems,” Corvell continued, “and that’s all because these models for all of their expensive training turn out to be really parsimonious representations of reality. They just take sort of everything and squish it into a panini press, and then you can insert that sandwich that you have, basically, into any number of different meals.”

The hard part, it turns out, is getting the data cleaned, curated, and correlated enough for the AI to ingest it in the first place. Many popular “AI” systems actually rely on large numbers of of humans working long hours for low wages to click checkboxes on images and videos. Sometimes giving the humans involved even develop PTSD as they try to moderate hateful and violent content.

“We use hundreds, maybe even thousands, of humans to train these models… and then we have hundreds or thousands of humans that are giving feedback to the models,” Munsell told the INSA audience. “You gotta ask yourself at some point, what are we doing here?”

So it’s a tremendous advantage when an organization has access to a large amount of data that highly trained humans have already spent decades analyzing, verifying, cataloging, and commenting on. But archives like NGA’s are far too huge for any one human mind to remember everything. AI opens up the possibility of training algorithms on the data and then being able to ask them to spot patterns, resemblances, and anomalies.

“We’ll be able to ask questions, historic questions,” Munsell said. “‘Hey, AI? Have you ever seen this particular activity, this kind of object, in this part of the world?’”

“What a cool thing that will be for for our country,” he enthused.

Munsell’s ultimate boss, NGA chief Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth, said at another panel today that the agency is already using AI to “triage” some of the workload of imagery analysis, but will continually need an AI “edge” to keep up as more and more data comes in from space-based sensors.

The stakes are high to get it right, Munsell emphasized, saying an expert human should always be doublechecking the AI, especially if a report might be used for targeting a military strike.

“The visual is the ultimate positive identification for our customers,” he said. “In many cases they’re making, they’re acting upon that positive identification, they’re acting upon the visual identity and the geolocation of what we’re providing. And when artificial intelligence provides that, you have to take those extra steps to make…that thing is 100% correct.”

At NGA, he said, “literally for us, seeing is believing.”

Lee Ferran contributed to this story.

breakingdefense.com · by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. · August 28, 2024

8. Pacific policing deal a masterstroke of Australian diplomacy

Seems like a smart effort by Australia. The US cannot nor should not try to do everything.

Pacific policing deal a masterstroke of Australian diplomacy - Asia Times

Helping island state cops take on transnational crime aligns with crowding out Chinese influence in strategic area

asiatimes.com · by Michael OKeefe · September 2, 2024

A new regional policing agreement represents a significant diplomatic victory for Australia, as well as a security win for the Pacific.

The geopolitical rivalry between China on the one hand and Australia, the United States and their allies on the other has been encroaching on all aspects of regional diplomacy, and Pacific leaders last week came into a meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum wanting to refocus the agenda.

And one of the most important issues to the Pacific is transnational crime. With drug cartels from Latin America using Fiji and other Pacific nations as a transit point for drugs entering Australia and New Zealand, transnational crime now sits alongside climate change as the top two regional priorities.

In January, three tons of methamphetamine were seized in Fiji. If delivered to markets in Australia and New Zealand, it could have been valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.

Asian crime syndicates and outlaw motorcycle gangs from Australia and New Zealand are also present in some countries, bringing other crimes, such as human trafficking, prostitution and scamming operations.

In June, Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka told Pacific leaders:

We know that crime and criminal groups do not respect borders. Rather, they manipulate borders with their business model. Cybercriminals ignore borders altogether.

What the new policing agreement will do

This is why this week’s headline announcement of a A$400 million (US$270.6 million) Australian-funded Pacific Policing Initiative is so vital. It’s a comprehensive program designed by Pacific police to meet the increasing threat of transnational crime.

There are three main pillars to the agreement, which will establish:

• four new policing centers providing specialist training across the region,
• a Pacific policing support group able to deploy trained officers to countries for major events or to respond to crises and
• a Pacific policing coordination hub in Brisbane that will have access to Australian Federal Police facilities for training.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been keen to emphasize the idea was developed as a collaborative effort by Pacific police chiefs.

Unlike previous bilateral efforts involving Australia, this initiative will be truly regional. And despite some apprehension about the geopolitical impact of the deal, the consensus among Pacific leaders is that the initiative will be highly beneficial.

Papua New Guinea’s prime minister, James Marape, described it as “a concept that is born from within.” He added:

The entire Pacific is the biggest unpoliced space in planet earth.…It is really important that we come together in this manner.

Spiraling drug use and HIV infections

The threats from transnational criminals are framed as a problem thrust on the region from outside. These organized crime groups are only interested in the strategic value of the Pacific as a waypoint in their distribution networks.

These criminals are also taking advantage of gaps in the Pacific policing capacity and the vulnerability of regional police to corruption.

Unfortunately, the side effect of being a transshipment hub is rising drug use in many Pacific nations themselves, with associated social and health problems such as sex work and HIV infections.

The number of new HIV cases in Fiji, in particular, is surging at an alarming rate. As one UN official said:

It’s a serious concern, we are seeing young people, teenagers, dying of HIV today and that’s shocking. We are seeing 10-year-olds, 12-year-olds coming into clinics testing positive because of drug use.

The geopolitics behind the deal

Responding so comprehensively to this need will also ensure that Australia is viewed as the “partner of choice” for at least a generation of Pacific police.

Many Pacific leaders feel Australia has struggled over the years to deliver a satisfactory response to their concerns over climate change. The policing initiative, however, is an example of Australia delivering on a promise. This will likely give Canberra a boost in its ongoing battle with China for influence.

The deal builds on Australia’s successful military diplomacy in the Pacific in recent years. Canberra has funded key defense infrastructure, such as the Lombrum and Blackrock bases in PNG and Fiji, respectively, and delivered military equipment, such as patrol boats and bushmaster vehicles.

These are practical examples of Canberra using the tools of statecraft at its disposal to achieve its national interests – namely crowding out Chinese influence in this strategic area.

The policing agreement stands in sharp contrast to China’s failure to negotiate a regional security agreement of its own in 2022.

Of course, there is some wariness over the deal. Vanuatu Prime Minister Charlot Salwai said he wanted to ensure the policing initiative is “framed to fit our purposes and not developed to suit the geostrategic interests and geostrategic denial security postures of our big partners.”

Under the agreement, each Pacific government can decide how it chooses to participate in the initiative. The response from the Solomon Islands, which signed a controversial police deal with China, will now be watched closely in Canberra.

In short, the Pacific Policing Initiative is good public policy and diplomacy. It will certainly improve the fight against transnational crime by providing regional police with the resources and expertise they need.

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Success on policing shouldn’t breed complacency, however. Australia has a long way to go to meet Pacific expectations on climate change. No doubt China will be searching to gain an advantage in this area.

Michael O’Keefe is director of the master of international relations program in the Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy, La Trobe University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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asiatimes.com · by Michael OKeefe · September 2, 2024

9. Saudi game of thrones clearer with new royal order

​I had the opportunity to get to know Prince Khalid bin Salman (former US trained F-15 pilot) when he was a student at the Security Studies Program at Georgetown. Unfortunately he could not complete his studies because he was appointed the Saudi Ambassador to the US. He was a good student, very personable and engaged. I had to give him an English exam and attest to his English ability (written and oral) because he had no chance to take the TOEFL.e did well on the timed essay questions I gave him on Middle East security issues.

Excerpts:

So the real candidates are the five remaining young royals who hold critical portfolios within the government. Except for the defense minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman (who is one of King Salman’s youngest sons), none of these cabinet members have directly or indirectly inherited their respective ministries from their fathers.

The power hierarchy within the royal family has changed. The personal relationship and proximity between a specific person and the king and the crown prince now increasingly dictate their place within the kingdom’s pecking order.

Saudi game of thrones clearer with new royal order - Asia Times

King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman finally hint at who may be third in line kingdom’s pecking order

asiatimes.com · by Umer Karim · August 30, 2024

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman issued a royal order on August 8 allowing the cabinet to be convened in the absence of both him and his prime minister and crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Such a meeting will be headed by the most senior cabinet member from among the descendants of King Abdul Aziz Al Saud, the founding father of the Saudi state as we know it today.

This royal order is a politically significant development. Since Mohammed bin Salman was elevated to the post of crown prince in 2017, and then to prime minister five years later, the administratively and politically critical positions of deputy crown prince and deputy prime minister have remained vacant.

The vacancies have made it difficult to ascertain the third most powerful person within the Saudi decision-making structure or to speculate about the possible candidates.

King Abdul Aziz with Prince Faisal (left) and Prince Saud (right) in the early 1950s. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The decision-making dynamics within the Saudi Kingdom have long been a complex affair. King Saud, the eldest son of and successor to Abdul Aziz, was forced to abdicate in 1964 following a mutual accord between Saudi royalty and the religious elite.

His attempts to centralize power among his own sons, fickle spending habits and risky foreign policy ventures compelled Saud’s half-brother and crown prince, Faisal, to assemble a family coalition to confront and depose him.

Faisal became the king after Saud’s removal and enacted a new system of governance in which power was distributed among the different sons of Abdul Aziz who partnered in his coup. The intention was to avoid power being concentrated in one sub-section of the family.

This horizontal distribution of power led to the emergence of an institutional fiefdom culture. Each prince in charge of a government department or organization treated it as his personal fief and used it to increase his political influence by cultivating networks of patronage.

This gradually established a power hierarchy within the Saudi royal family. A group of more than 30 half-brothers below the king and crown prince emerged who were considered as future contenders to the Saudi throne based on their seniority, maternal descent and the political importance of the institutional fiefdoms they controlled.

Against this backdrop, the appointment of Prince Fahd as the second deputy prime minister (the crown prince is ordinarily the first deputy) of the Kingdom in 1967 was a significant development. At that time, there was no official position of a deputy crown prince and thus no formal entry into the line of succession.

But Fahd’s stature as interior minister, as well as being the eldest among the seven sons Abdul Aziz had with Hussa Bint Ahmed Al Sudairi, cemented his path to the throne. Fahd became king in 1982 after the death of his elder half-brother and reigning king, Khalid.

This dynamic dictated the appointment of successive second deputy prime ministers. They were either part of a strong band of brothers, as was the case with the Sudairi seven, or were supported by the reigning king, influential family groups, or held a key portfolio.

Prince Abdullah, who was appointed second deputy prime minister in 1975, is a case in point. Abdullah, who had been one of Faisal’s allies in the coup against Saud, had led the Saudi Arabian National Guard since 1962. He also had maternal links to the powerful Shammar tribe that had, in the past, been a political foe of the Saudi royal family.

Abdullah became king in 2005 after Fahd’s death and nine years later appointed another half-brother, Prince Muqrin, as the deputy crown prince, thus initiating a new formal position in the royal line of succession. Like those before him, Muqrin had held an influential position as intelligence chief – though his appointment was primarily due to his proximity to the king.

But when Abdullah died in 2015, this by now decades-old dynamic whereby political positions became an avenue of competition between half-brothers and their respective allies, was completely altered. Salman came to the throne and, within two years, he had removed two successive crown princes and promoted his own son, Mohammed, to the position.

In the intervening years, Salman and his son have managed to erase the political influence of powerful princes and royal factions through administrative changes and an anti-corruption campaign.

All the king’s men

In this new system, power has become purely the prerogative of the king and his son. This has transformed the position of the Saudi king from being the first among equals (primus inter pares) to the ultimate sovereign (ultimum imperium).

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However, the recent decision to allow the eldest descendants of Abdul Aziz to preside over cabinet sessions gives us a glimpse into the current royal hierarchy of power below the king and crown prince.

The two eldest royal members of the cabinet, Prince Mansour bin Miteb and Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman (another of King Salman’s sons), are much older than the crown prince himself. This means they are unlikely to be future candidates for the deputy crown prince role.

Prince Khalid bin Salman during a state visit to the US in 2019. Photo: Shawn Thew / EPA via The Conversation

So the real candidates are the five remaining young royals who hold critical portfolios within the government. Except for the defense minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman (who is one of King Salman’s youngest sons), none of these cabinet members have directly or indirectly inherited their respective ministries from their fathers.

The power hierarchy within the royal family has changed. The personal relationship and proximity between a specific person and the king and the crown prince now increasingly dictate their place within the kingdom’s pecking order.

Umer Karim is PhD candidate, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Birmingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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asiatimes.com · by Umer Karim · August 30, 2024

10. Polish defense show lures global players amid record spending spree

Polish defense show lures global players amid record spending spree

Defense News · by Jaroslaw Adamowski · September 2, 2024

WARSAW, Poland — Last October’s general election triggered a change in government in Poland, but it has not dented Warsaw’s appetite for new weapons. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to drive Poland’s military modernization efforts, domestic and foreign defense companies are gearing to promote their products at the upcoming MSPO show in Kielce.

Over the past years, the event, scheduled to run between Sept. 3 and 6, has established itself as a leading trade show in the region. Since February 2022, when the Russian military launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, allies along NATO’s eastern flank have replied by boosting their defense budgets. Poland has led the way, aiming to spend about PLN 160 billion (US$41.5 billion), or some 4.2 percent of the country’s GDP, on its armed forces this year.

Speaking on Aug. 15 at a military parade in Warsaw, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said his centrist government’s goal is to develop “one of the largest European militaries.”

“We must promise today to our compatriots, but also to the soldiers of the Polish Armed Forces, that we will build a most modern military … because today, innovation is power,” Tusk said during the event.

The nation’s record-high 2024 military expenditure is to be financed from the ministry’s budget, but also from the Armed Forces Support Fund, a financial instrument designed to fund purchases of new weapons and gear.

In 2025, Poland could further expand its defense budget which, if Warsaw spends the earmarked funds this year, could place Poland this year above all other NATO member states in terms of spending as a share of GDP.

In a July 4 statement, which made a thinly veiled reference to an increasingly belligerent Russia, the Polish Ministry of Defence said: “Next year, we plan to increase the budget for the military by 10 percent, which is an element of a long-term national security strategy, aiming to strengthen our armed forces in the face of the current geopolitical challenges.”

Tomasz Smura, the program director and management board member at the Warsaw-based Casimir Pulaski Foundation, told Defense News the government is continuing a number of programs launched by the previous administration, buying gear from U.S. and South Korean companies. However, there is also a noticeable intensification in activities by European groups who hope the change in power could pave the way for more contracts, he said.

“Since the change in government, Poland’s relations with Germany and France have noticeably improved, so it is natural that defense companies from these countries are demonstrating an increased interest in cooperating with Poland’s defense industry on joint projects,” Smura said. “Warsaw is planning to buy new submarines, fighter jets, but also various vehicles for the Polish land forces. This brings a number of opportunities for foreign manufacturers.”

The ministry is preparing to launch a number of acquisitions for the country’s air, naval, and land forces. Some of the potential purchases include:

• A further 32 fighter jets for the Air Force, with officials in Warsaw mulling plans to acquire more fifth-generation jets on top of the already ordered 32 F-35s. Also in the running is the Eurofighter Typhoon and Boeing’s F-15EX, according to local observers;
• New training helicopters and ship-based helos to replace the Polish Armed Forces’ outdated SW-4 Puszczyk and Kaman SH-2G Seasprite aircraft, respectively;
• More combat and surveillance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the military’s dedicated Drone Force, a new group within the armed forces;
• Three to four new submarines for the country’s Navy to boost its operational capacities in the Baltic Sea. Last year, the Polish ministry’s Armament Agency announced that 11 entities supplied their initial bids as part of a market consultation process. These included companies from Germany, France, Italy, Spain, South Korea, and the U.K.

Tusk’s government, which came to power in December 2023, has inked a number of major deals to buy weapons from the United States and South Korea, but also from Polish defense industry players.

Most of the large contracts this year went to U.S. manufacturers. These include the $10 billion contract to buy 96 Boeing AH-64E Apache attack helicopters from July, the $2.5 billion deal from February to acquire Northrop Grumman’s Integrated Battle Command System, or IBCS, to synchronize Poland’s air- and missile-defense weapons under development, and the $1 billion deal from May to purchase four aerostat-based early warning radar systems from the United States.

Last May, the ministry also inked an executive deal to buy 72 K239 Chunmoo multi-barreled missile launchers from South Korea’s Hanwha Aerospace for some $1.6 billion. The latter deal was widely treated as a sign that Tusk’s cabinet will keep buying weapons under the framework contracts inherited from the previous government, covering FA-50 light attack aircraft, K9 howitzers, K2 Black Panther tanks, and Chunmoo launchers.

About Jaroslaw Adamowski

Jaroslaw Adamowski is the Poland correspondent for Defense News.

11. Once neglected, Asian Americans now courted in knife-edge election

Please go to the link to view the charts.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Asia-Insight/Once-neglected-Asian-Americans-now-courted-in-knife-edge-election?utm

Asia Insight

Once neglected, Asian Americans now courted in knife-edge election

Tiny margins in battleground states spotlight voters like Wisconsin's Hmong community

PAK YIU and EMMA OCKERMAN, Nikkei staff writers

September 3, 2024 06:00 JST

NEW YORK -- On July 27, Doug Emhoff walked onto a stage in a small Wisconsin city 1,200 kilometers northwest of Washington. He spoke on behalf of his wife, Kamala Harris, just six days after the vice president of the U.S. launched her bid to win the presidency for the Democratic Party this November.

The event wasn't a union rally, a civil liberties gathering or a climate change conference. It was the Hmong festival in Wausau, the city with the most Hmong per capita in the entire U.S.

"This community right here could decide the election in this state, which could decide the entire election," Emhoff told festival-goers. "You have the power, right here in this Hmong community. You have more power than you realize."

While Harris has an edge over Republican Party nominee Donald Trump in some polls, swing and battleground states like Wisconsin broadly remain too close to call. The Hmong community, previously largely overlooked, could be crucial in Wisconsin, a state that President Joe Biden won by a wafer-thin margin of about 20,000 votes in 2020. There are close to 60,000 eligible Hmong voters in Wisconsin, according to data from APIAVote, a nonprofit dedicated to voter engagement among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

The skinny 2020 winning margins in traditional swing states like Wisconsin, Georgia (fewer than 12,000 votes) and Nevada (under 34,000) have thrust Asian American voters, a small minority in many states, into the spotlight of U.S. politics in a way that hasn't been seen before.

Since becoming the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, Harris, who could become the first Indian American and Black woman president, has sought to energize the South Asian community, prompting groups like South Asian Men for Harris and South Asian Women for Harris to quickly raise money.

Asian American voters are the fastest-growing group of voters in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank focused on demographics and social issues.

In the audience at the Wausau festival was Yee Leng Xiong, 29, a Democrat running to represent Wisconsin's 85th District, which includes Wausau and nearby Weston, as the first Hmong American in the Wisconsin Assembly.

Xiong's refugee parents fled Laos and came to the U.S. at great personal sacrifice after the Vietnam War, a story shared by many Hmong families in central Wisconsin, he said.

"Wisconsin is a very, very purple state where candidates win by 1%," Xiong said. "Purple" refers to swing states that may vote either Democratic, typically associated with blue, or red Republican. "We know the Southeast Asian community in the state of Wisconsin here is the margin of victory."

Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, arrive at a campaign rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on July 27.  © AP

To have Emhoff at the Hmong Wausau Festival, chaired by Xiong, previously the executive director of the local nonprofit Hmong American Center, underscored that importance. "I spoke with several of the (community) elders," Xiong said, "and they said they have typically local elected officials -- statewide officials -- but never really individuals of that stature."

In his remarks onstage, Emhoff confirmed he had never been to the festival before, and set out his own family history of ancestors fleeing persecution in Europe.

Xiong recognized that in the past, Asian Americans rarely engaged with politics and instead focused on daily economic struggles.

"It's hard for them to really grasp the impact of policies on their day-to-day life," he noted.

"[We're] going out there, knocking on doors, talking with them and communicating with them and providing them with the information that they need ... on when, how and where to vote ... so that they can truly get their voices heard." 

Harris participated in a presidential town hall organized by Asian Americans in July. Trump did not appear or send a representative. But last month he visited Eden Center, a Vietnamese commercial center in Virginia, to court the Vietnamese American vote.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff addresses the Hmong Wausau Festival in Wausau, Wisconsin, on July 27. (Screenshot from Hmong Community YouTube page)

The Trump campaign did not respond to multiple Nikkei Asia requests for comment.

The Harris-Walz spokesperson for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, Andrew Peng, said Harris has been a champion for Asian American communities.

"That's why Team Harris is making significant investments in staffing and paid media, crafting in-language materials to combat disinformation in Asian American communities and organizing culturally specific direct voter contact activities and events to reach Asian American voters where they are, across every battleground state," he said.

Political parties, Asian community leaders say, have in the past overlooked the voting bloc and engaged little.

"While that has actually improved over time, the level of engagement is still quite low," said Terry Ao Minnis, the vice president of Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

While the numbers are still small -- 15 million out of 246 million eligible voters, or 6.1%, compared to the 34.45 million Black voters -- Asian Americans, many of whom were first-time voters in the last presidential election, play an increasingly important role in the U.S. electoral system.

In Georgia, 2.5% more Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders turned out in the 2022 midterm election than in 2018, the biggest jump of all voter groups by race and ethnicity. Black and Hispanic turnouts fell, while white participation rose 0.4%.

"Demographics in Georgia have changed so much that now people know that in order to really win the state, you have to be able to talk to voters of color," said Aisha Yaqoob Mahmood, the executive director of the Asian American Advocacy Fund. "You have to be able to mobilize this base, in particular with Asian American voters.

"Our voters will often be part of this multiracial democracy, multiracial voting bloc that will help to win elections, as we've seen over the last couple of years."

But when it comes to understanding what Asian American voters prioritize, political parties face hurdles. For a start, there is limited survey data available on these voters, despite their being the fastest-growing group. Campaigns conduct their own polling but there is little public polling done, leaving Asian Americans with limited visibility throughout the election campaign season.

AAPI Data, a research organization that focuses on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, publishes monthly public opinion research on them.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and running mate Vance arrive a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on July 20. © AP

The most-cited data comes from the Asian American Voter Survey, jointly conducted every two years by Asian Americans Advancing Justice, APIAVote, AAPI Data and AARP. The multilingual questionnaire began in 2012 and provides political parties, the media and the public an insight into the political views and attitudes of Asian Americans. 

The latest survey was released on July 10, before the assassination attempt on Trump and the end of Biden's reelection bid. Another survey will now be released in September to reflect those unprecedented events.

"We keep hearing the excuse, that it's still quite expensive to be able to oversample Asian Americans, especially when it comes to languages," said Christine Chen, APIAVote's executive director. "It just boils down to whether it's a priority. If it's really a priority, then they should be including that."

But it is also crucial to understand the nuances among Asian Americans, who come from as many as 20 countries, speak numerous languages and have varied cultures and religions. Polls conducted in English alone are not accurate, community leaders say.

The economy, education, inflation and immigration are high on the list of issues important to Asian Americans this cycle, according to the Asian American Voter Survey, but vary widely between people from East Asia and those from South Asia.

The Asian American Advocacy Fund's Maqoob noted that East Asian communities place more emphasis on issues such as xenophobia and anti-Asian hate, while inflation and cost of living are slightly more important to Indian Americans. The war in Gaza is a top issue for Muslim communities from Asia, she added.

With 90% of Asian Americans planning to vote in this November's election, according to the Asian American Voter Survey, engagement by the two main political parties has improved over the past several election campaigns, APIAVote's Chen said, but continues to fall short. Half of the survey's respondents had not been contacted by the Democratic Party, and 57% said the same of Republicans.

"They need to go ahead and engage the Asian American voters, because we are actually bringing in a larger number of first-time voters, and so that's a clear example in terms of how we are actually seen as a margin of victory," she said.

One challenge, though, is the language barrier.

Most Asian American voters are naturalized citizens, the Pew Research Center has found, with English being their second language. The Michigan city of Hamtramck began providing Bengali-language ballots and other assistance for Bangladeshi American voters in July 2021 after a lawsuit filed by a resident, Rahima Begum, who had limited English proficiency. Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act requires bilingual voting materials in communities with significant language minorities.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Harris attend a reception celebrating Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in the Rose Garden of the White House on May 13. © Reuters

"I'm excited to vote, and I am lucky to have the resources to understand the election and the issues both parties stand for, but without that I would feel helpless," said 37-year-old Milwaukee resident Li Daren, who is voting for the first time since becoming an American citizen after moving from China.

While Asian Americans typically lean Democratic -- 72% of English-speaking Asian voters said they voted for Biden in 2020, and analysts point to the Democratic Party being more racially and religiously inclusive than the Republicans -- they tend not to align themselves with a political party, making them a prime target for political candidates, said Minnis of Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

"If somebody isn't declaring, hard stop, 'I am a Democrat' or 'I am a Republican,' there seems to be that opportunity to engage them and gain their vote," she said. "But we haven't necessarily been seeing that level of engagement and election outreach by the parties."

Those untapped votes have been noticed by both main parties. But candidates like Republican Anna Cheng Kramer lament the high costs of translating ballot materials.

"There are many people that still require a ballot language that's in their native tongue," said Kramer, who is running for the U.S. House seat representing California's 15th District. Kramer said a translation of a candidate statement -- not mandatory, but crucial for engaging with voters -- costs almost $10,000 for Chinese, Tagalog, Spanish and other languages.

Democratic Party candidate Yee Leng Xiong talks to voters as part of his campaign to become the first Hmong American to serve in the Wisconsin Assembly. (Yee for WI)

At the presidential level, Harris most recently pledged $90 million in spending on campaign ads that target Asian American voters and formed a team to engage with the Asian American community nationally and in key swing states. The Democrat's campaign said it works closely with local Asian community groups to distribute fact sheets translated into different languages.

The Republican Party has also increased its South Asian representation since the last presidential election, notably with vice presidential nominee JD Vance's wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, and presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy.

Back in Wausau, candidate Xiong hopes to become the kind of elected official that Asian Americans can recognize as a reflection of their own heritage.

"I think it's important to note that many of the AAPI community don't see individuals that look like them," Xiong said. "And they don't have governments or representatives that look like them, so it's hard for them to understand the impact of our government."

12. Two Ukrainian Top Guns Lobbied for F-16s. They Won’t Get to See If the Jets Help Fend Off Russia.

Fighter pilot culture is similar everywhere: Call signs, "Juice" and "Moonfish."

Excerpts:

The pilots, Andriy Pilshchykov and Oleksiy Mes, former classmates best known by their call signs Juice and Moonfish, persevered. Both are now dead. Juice died in a training accident last August at the age of 30. Moonfish was killed last week at age 30 piloting one of the planes he campaigned so hard for Ukraine to receive. 

The pilots’ deaths highlight the stakes in the debate over how the West should arm Ukraine. By the time the country had possession of the F-16s, many of Ukraine’s best pilots, like Juice, were already dead. 

Now, another experienced pilot, Moonfish, has perished after months of arduous training to make the leap from operating Ukraine’s old aircraft to the tech-loaded F-16. In one of the first missions in which Ukraine deployed the new weapon, it has already lost one of the six jets in the first delivery from U.S. allies, and one of its only pilots trained to fly it. The circumstances of the crash are still unclear.

Two Ukrainian Top Guns Lobbied for F-16s. They Won’t Get to See If the Jets Help Fend Off Russia.

The death of a pilot and loss of a critical jet last week highlight the stakes in Ukraine’s campaign for Western weaponry

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/ukraine-pilots-f-16-crash-21fa4d6a?mod=hp_lead_pos7

By Isabel ColesFollow

, Lara SeligmanFollow

, Jane Lytvynenko and Ievgeniia Sivorka

Sept. 2, 2024 9:00 pm ET

In a meeting with U.S. senators in June 2022, two of Ukraine’s most prominent military pilots were making a pitch for F-16 jet fighters when one of the senators spoke up to temper their hopes.

“I told them it’d be a hard sell,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said later. But he was impressed with the two pilots’ passion and charisma, and pledged to help persuade the Biden administration to green light the jets.

The pilots, Andriy Pilshchykov and Oleksiy Mes, former classmates best known by their call signs Juice and Moonfish, persevered. Both are now dead. Juice died in a training accident last August at the age of 30. Moonfish was killed last week at age 30 piloting one of the planes he campaigned so hard for Ukraine to receive. 

The pilots’ deaths highlight the stakes in the debate over how the West should arm Ukraine. By the time the country had possession of the F-16s, many of Ukraine’s best pilots, like Juice, were already dead. 

Now, another experienced pilot, Moonfish, has perished after months of arduous training to make the leap from operating Ukraine’s old aircraft to the tech-loaded F-16. In one of the first missions in which Ukraine deployed the new weapon, it has already lost one of the six jets in the first delivery from U.S. allies, and one of its only pilots trained to fly it. The circumstances of the crash are still unclear.

Kyiv’s partners, led by the U.S., have provided increasingly sophisticated weapons to Ukraine in ever larger volumes. But the equipment has often come after months of debate, with Western allies initially resisting appeals for more advanced equipment only to agree months later. The fitful flow has given Ukraine’s military less time to integrate the complex and powerful weapons—leaving an air force already operating at its limits grappling with a small number of high-tech machines thrown straight into a full-fledged war.

U.S. officials say the incremental approach is calibrated to equip Ukraine with the weapons it needs without triggering escalation with Russia. Critics say it has cost Ukraine opportunities to deal large blows to Russia’s military, and given Russia time to pre-empt and counteract Ukraine’s next moves. 

Meanwhile, Ukraine has lost many of its best and brightest, the first to take up weapons against Russian invaders. These include Ukraine’s Top Guns, a generation of pilots who grew up in a country independent of Moscow and were ready to fight for it with whatever equipment they had.

Yuliya Mes kisses the grave of Moonfish, her late husband, at Mis’ke Cemetary in Shepetivka, four days after he died during an F-16 flight over Ukraine. Photo: Svet Jacqueline for WSJ

Ghosts of Kyiv

 Juice and Moonfish’s determination to fly warplanes was taking off just as Ukraine’s ability to put them in the skies was plummeting after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

From a young age, Moonfish, born in the small western town of Shepetivka, wanted to follow his father into the military. Studious and eager, he won a student competition to visit Kyiv and meet Leonid Kadeniuk, the first cosmonaut to visit space from independent Ukraine. The prize cemented his dream of flying.

Juice, born in the eastern city of Kharkiv, made model aircraft and later told friends he had wanted to be a pilot since the age of five. In his teens, he became an avid plane spotter, loitering around Kharkiv’s airfields with a camera.

Juice enrolled at Kharkiv Air Force University, which is named for Soviet World War II ace Ivan Kozhedub, a native of Ukraine. His classmates—aspiring pilots from across the country—often came over to the apartment nearby where he lived with his mom. Among them was Moonfish, a quiet and serious boy, recalled Juice’s mom, Liliia Averianova. While the others clowned around, cosplaying pilot movies, Moonfish usually kept to himself, she said.

The two became inseparable, often hatching plans about how to improve the air force.

Ukrainian soldiers point to their childhood school photos at School No. 2 in Shepetivka, Moonfish’s hometown. Photo: Svet Jacqueline for WSJ

There was plenty to do. The air force they joined after graduating in 2016 had been hollowed out by the corruption and poverty that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. When Ukraine gained independence it had hundreds of warplanes, from fighters to strategic bombers. The bombers were scrapped as part of an American-funded program to disarm ex-Soviet countries, while years of chronic underinvestment led much of the rest of Ukraine’s inventory to fall into disrepair. On the eve of the war, Ukraine would have only several dozen warplanes barely upgraded since Soviet times.

Russia’s covert invasion of Ukraine in 2014 gave the pilots a chance to learn from the U.S. and its allies. As concerns about Moscow’s intentions grew, Western nations boosted cooperation with Ukraine, conducting joint air exercises and sharing advice.

Both pilots worked hard to improve their English. Juice helped plan an exercise in Ukraine with the California Air National Guard in 2018, where he earned his call sign for always ordering juice instead of alcoholic drinks at their hangar parties. (The origins of Moonfish’s call sign remain obscure.) Juice started styling himself after the American pilots he saw in the movies, studying their hairstyles and clothing.

Juice and Moonfish stood out for their talent when they rode in F-15 jet fighters for the first time the following year during an exchange program in California, said now-retired Col. Robert Swertfager, a fighter pilot with the California Air National Guard. During their rides the U.S. pilots gave the controls to their Ukrainian friends, letting Juice and Moonfish fly the American jets from the back seat. 

But their experiences made them increasingly disillusioned with the state of their own air force: like the wider Ukrainian military, it was bloated and dysfunctional.

When Juice’s contract expired in 2021, he quit. In an open letter, he complained about bureaucracy, poor work conditions and the lack of a policy to integrate NATO standards. Pay was the equivalent of just $800 a month.

Months later—on Feb. 24, 2022—Russia invaded. Juice immediately returned to the air force, but wasn’t allowed to fly at first because his training had lapsed. As Russian forces advanced on Kyiv, he helped organize the defense of airfields.

Moonfish, who was living in Kyiv with his wife and infant daughter, quickly took to the skies to defend the country.

Juice soon joined him. On March 12, he posted a picture on Instagram of clouds beneath the wing of a plane. “Back in business,” read the caption.

Russia’s combat aircraft vastly outnumbered Ukraine’s and were superior in almost every regard. Flying inferior, older Russian-designed MiG-29s, Ukrainian pilots fought against the odds to keep enemy aircraft at bay.

Videos of jet fighters began circulating on social media and rumors spread about a pilot who had single-handedly taken out several Russian jets. The myth of the Ghost of Kyiv was born. In reality, there were many Ghosts, among them Moonfish and Juice. 

Top guns

Even as they denied Russia total mastery of the skies, the Ukrainian pilots realized it wouldn’t be enough. Juice and Moonfish had long advocated for upgrading Ukraine’s Soviet fleet. Now it was a matter of survival. One of their classmates, Capt. Oleksandr Korpan, had been killed in a combat mission less than a week into the war.

In the chaos of war, there was an opportunity to push for changes that had been blocked before. Averianova told her son Juice: “If you want to do something extraordinary, now is the time.” 

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Ukraine’s unprecedented invasion of Russia was a gamble for Kyiv. But as Moscow intensifies its push on the strategic eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, strategies on both sides are starting to emerge. Photo: Louisa Naks

The two pilots placed their first hope for help in the American public. “With this baby I am not efficient. I am not effective against Russian jet fighters,” said Juice in an interview with CNN, standing beside a plane and wearing a respirator to conceal his identity. He called for new missiles and radars.

Moonfish, by then a squadron commander, said in one interview that Ukraine had more trained pilots than planes to fly. In another, he likened upgrading to the F-16 with switching from a basic cellphone to an iPhone.

Adam Makos, an American author and military historian who made contact with Juice in the early days of the invasion, proposed the pilots visit the U.S. to plead their case in person. “We have to show the American people that you’re just like us,” he told Juice.

They arrived in Washington in June 2022 for meetings with U.S. lawmakers and media interviews. It took time for them to get used to the work of political messaging, as they were more used to geeking out on technical details.

Before their first TV interview, they joked that they would rather sit in a jet fighter and fly to the Russian border, recalled Tetyana Shevchuk, a Ukrainian activist who accompanied them on the visit. Actor Sean Penn accompanied the pilots to an interview with CNN, endorsing their campaign for technology to match the Russians’.

After their meeting with the pilots, the six senators wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, urging them to provide Ukraine air-defense systems, rocket launchers, helicopters and armored vehicles. “Our assistance must be decisive, not incremental,” it read.

While they were in DC, one of their classmates, an Su-25 jet pilot named Oleksandr Kukurba, had asked them to request Zuni rockets to arm his aircraft. Kukurba was shot down weeks later. The U.S. would eventually approve sending the missiles.

Waiting game

Nearly a year passed after their visit to the U.S. and the F-16s still hadn’t arrived. President Biden was concerned Russia would see any decision to send them as an escalation. Senior U.S. military officials worried it would take too long to train Ukrainian pilots and maintainers on the jets, and that they would be of limited use on the battlefield. 

The F-16s wouldn’t be a silver bullet, Juice conceded in an interview in May 2023. But they would add an extra layer to the country’s air defenses. “Every mission can be the last,” he said in the interview with blogger Melania Podolyak on one of the biggest Ukrainian-speaking channels on YouTube. 

Juice and Podolyak began dating, though they kept their relationship secret. As they waited for a decision on the aircraft, losses were mounting. One of Juice’s best friends, the pilot Vladyslav Savieliev, was shot down by a Russian antiaircraft missile during a combat mission in June.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks in front of Ukraine’s Air Force’s F-16 jet fighters on Aug. 4. Photo: Efrem Lukatsky/Associated Press

When the Biden administration finally gave a green light for allies to transfer to Kyiv jets bought from the U.S., the sense of victory was muted, Podolyak said. “In reality the price is so high, and the time is so long, that at the end of the day you’re just: ‘OK, great, let’s get on with it,’” she said. “It was still a long way from getting approval to actually sitting in one on Ukrainian soil.” 

 The goal moved closer with the announcement in August 2023 that Denmark and the Netherlands would give the warplanes to Ukraine. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky marked the milestone by clambering into the cockpit of an F-16 in Denmark on Aug. 20.

Makos congratulated Juice in a text. “No one there knows it…but we did it,” he wrote.

“Hell yeah!” Juice replied. He was one of only eight Ukrainian pilots deemed to meet the language requirements to begin training immediately. 

Five days later, Juice took off in a Czech made L-39 combat training plane in the Zhytomyr region—far from the front line with Russia. While performing a maneuver, his aircraft collided with another jet, killing him and two other pilots.

A piano daubed with Juice’s call sign was set alight at a ceremony on the runway of an airfield in the tradition of American pilots. 

Moonfish didn’t have time to absorb the loss, said Swertfager. “He turned Juice’s loss into a responsibility to carry Juice’s torch with him.” 

Andriy Pilshchykov, known as Juice, is mourned by Melania Podolyak; his mother, Liliia Averianova; and Ukrainian pilot Lt. Col. Oleg Klymov at his funeral on Aug. 29, 2023 in Kyiv. Photo: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

A memorial to Juice in Kyiv. Photo: Svet Jacqueline for WSJ

Training on the F-16s was soon under way in Denmark and in Arizona. “In the cockpit, you feel as if you are putting on a glove and growing with this plane,” Moonfish said in an interview with a Ukrainian TV channel in September last year. 

Mastering the new computers, sensors and avionics was a challenge, he admitted. “Because we all [in Ukraine] use technologies from the last millennium, and here the plane is significantly modernized.”

Even so, Moonfish was confident the pilots would get up to speed within six to eight months. Unlike newly minted American F-16 pilots, the Ukrainian airmen wouldn’t spend additional time flying in-country with their unit after training. They would have to hone their skills in combat.

On the battlefield, Ukraine’s fortunes were ebbing. A counteroffensive in the south of the country had failed, and Russia began gaining ground against exhausted Ukrainian troops. In the U.S., political deadlock in Congress held up much needed supplies of ammunition. Russia’s offensives were aided by massive glide bombs dropped from planes that stayed beyond the range of Ukraine’s inferior craft.

The arrival of the first of 80 promised F-16s this summer boosted morale. “You understand, this can be my life’s work,” Mes told his wife. 

Moonfish was one of the few six Ukrainian pilots ready to fly the six aircraft. After returning from Denmark, he spent several days at home, but was restless.

“He told me he couldn’t sit still because everyone is waiting for them to fly out, and he’s sitting here and doing nothing,” said his wife. 

Moonfish wrote to Juice’s mother on the anniversary of his death. He said he missed his friend. “I hope we are not letting him down,” he wrote.

The following morning, Aug. 26, he took to the skies in an F-16 as Russia unleashed what Kyiv later described as the biggest barrage of the war.

In an Aug. 27 news conference, Zelensky said for the first time that F-16s had helped intercept the missiles and drones. 

Moonfish’s burial in Shepetivka on Aug. 29. Photo: Libkos/Getty Images

Two days later, The Wall Street Journal reported that one of Ukraine’s new F-16s had crashed during the assault. The air force soon confirmed that one jet had crashed, killing the pilot: Moonfish.

Ukraine is investigating the circumstances of the crash. Days later, Zelensky fired Ukraine’s air force commander, although the defense minister said it wasn’t related to the crash.

Moonfish was buried in Shepetivka, his grave overflowing with flowers and wreaths among rows of other soldiers who died in the war. 

In the U.S., there were tributes from senators, including Graham, who exchanged occasional messages with the pilots after their visit to D.C. and met them again during one of his trips to Ukraine. Now one of the most fervent advocates for sending more weapons to Ukraine, Graham has been working to expand the F-16 pilot training pipeline, and has even called for allowing retired U.S. and NATO F-16 pilots to fight in Ukraine. 

“The best thing we can do to remember these guys that have fallen is just double down and make sure that they didn’t die in vain,” he said.

Mourners for Moonfish gather in Shepetivka. Photo: Libkos/Getty Images

Write to Isabel Coles at isabel.coles@wsj.com and Lara Seligman at lara.seligman@wsj.com

13. Beijing-Backed Trolls Target U.S. Voters as Election Nears

Time for my usual public service announcement from the 2017 NSS. China may be more subtle than Russia but it is just as dangerous in attacking our federal democratic republic. We all need to be informed and educated citizens wary of foreign influence and meddling.

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

Access NSS HERE

Beijing-Backed Trolls Target U.S. Voters as Election Nears

An account posing as a U.S. conservative news source attracted millions of views on TikTok

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/beijing-backed-trolls-target-u-s-voters-as-election-nears-4f22430c?mod=latest_headlines

By Dustin VolzFollow

Sept. 3, 2024 6:00 am ET

WASHINGTON—Chinese government-backed trolls are targeting U.S. voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election, assuming fake identities of politically engaged voters on social media to promote divisive narratives around issues including gun control, racial inequality and the Israel-Hamas war, according to new research. 

The propaganda push, which researchers attributed to a prolific influence network known as Spamouflage that has been previously linked to the Chinese government, has sought to undermine confidence in U.S. elections, a new report said. The push has been somewhat agnostic on the candidates themselves, targeting former President Donald Trump and both Democratic presidential nominees, Vice President Kamala Harris and President Biden before he exited the race.

“One of the world’s largest covert online influence operations, an operation run by Chinese state-linked actors, has become more aggressive in its efforts to infiltrate and sway U.S. political conversations ahead of the election,” said Jack Stubbs, chief intelligence officer at the research firm Graphika, which published the report Tuesday on Spamouflage’s alleged activities. 

On one account on TikTok, a persona assuming the identity of a conservative U.S. news outlet called the Harlan Report published videos that collectively accrued millions of views and generally attacked Democrats. While most videos earned only thousands or tens of thousands of plays, others achieved minor liftoff. 

A screenshot, with some information redacted by Graphika, shows a selection of pinned videos on the Harlan Report’s now-deactivated TikTok account, including a video mischaracterizing President Biden’s remarks at a recent NATO summit.

The most popular one was posted on July 10, had 1.5 million views and shows a Fox News clip of Biden speaking at a recent NATO summit in Washington. It mischaracterizes his remarks to make him look incoherent. Text overlaying the video reads, “Biden: ‘I realized I was *** your wife’?” In the clip, Biden says he realized he was “talking to your wife,” but the text implies a naughtier quip.

Reached for comment on TikTok, the account declined to identify itself and said its YouTube and Instagram pages were blocked for supporting Trump. 

“In your world, I am a clown,” the account said, using sometimes broken English. “Sorry, You cannot know my identity, nobody ensure my safety.”

TikTok banned Harlan Report after The Wall Street Journal asked about it, and a spokeswoman said the account violated its community guidelines. The Chinese-owned app has policies against covert inauthentic accounts on its platform that mislead audiences.

“We relentlessly pursue and publicly report on the covert influence operations we remove on an ongoing basis,” the TikTok spokeswoman said, adding, “We will continue to remove deceptive accounts and harmful misinformation as we protect the integrity of our platform during the U.S. elections.”

The new findings come amid heightened concerns about foreign influence in the U.S. presidential election. Last month, the Trump campaign disclosed it had been compromised by hackers the U.S. intelligence community concluded were working for Iran, the latest of several signs that Tehran has a deep interest in interfering in the vote.

The new campaign appeared to be most successful on TikTok, although modestly so, and it failed to achieve much traction on X—where Graphika identified 15 active accounts in the Spamouflage network—or on Instagram or YouTube, both of which have suspended accounts tied to it. 

A screenshot, with some information redacted by Graphika, shows an example of a Spamouflage account on X.

A recent Journal investigation found TikTok pushing thousands of videos with political lies and hyperbole to its users. One network of anti-Trump videos, generated with the help of artificial intelligence, was traced back to a complex web of overseas accounts appearing to operate in China, Nigeria, Iran and Vietnam.

Harlan Report was active until this week on X, which also suspended it after the Journal sought comment from the company about the account. On X, Harlan Report appeared to be posing as a 31-year-old conservative and had attracted around 11,000 followers. “31, Republicans, Broken English, Brilliant brain, I love Trump. #Patriotsunited，#MAGA，#Trump2024,” its account summary read. X didn’t respond to requests for comment.

U.S. spy agencies shared earlier this summer their assessment that China wasn’t attempting to alter or change the outcome of the presidential race—in contrast to Russia, which they said is again seeking to undermine Democrats, and Iran, which is striving to keep Trump from re-entering the White House. China, Russia and Iran have all denied U.S. accusations that they are targeting American voters with covert online propaganda campaigns.

A screenshot made by The Wall Street Journal shows a Harlan Report account on X that was active until this week.

Graphika said it had high confidence the network it identified was connected to Chinese-linked actors. Among other data points, it observed the accounts it tracked on X posting at times in Chinese, which researchers said was likely accidental as the posts were later deleted. Graphika linked the X accounts together based on shared indicators, including that many of them joined the same community spaces on the platform. 

In another example, the Harlan Report account deleted a series of old posts that it made under a previous identity, before it assumed the persona of a conservative news source. The deleted posts included one from last year that included a cartoon criticizing a Chinese virologist who has claimed the Covid-19 virus was created in a Chinese lab. The virologist has been a frequent past target of Spamouflage operations.

Spamouflage has been tracked by Western cyber-threat researchers since at least 2019. Meta Platforms took down thousands of accounts last year linked to Spamouflage—which it said was associated with Chinese law enforcement—in what it said at the time was the largest known online covert influence operation in the world, though largely ineffective. TikTok also removed hundreds of accounts at the same time tied to the group.

Georgia Wells contributed to this article.

Write to Dustin Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com

14. Why It’s So Hard for China to Fix Its Ailing Economy

Why It’s So Hard for China to Fix Its Ailing Economy

A real estate collapse has made consumers cautious and businesses wary, as China confronts a crisis unlike any other since it opened its economy to the world.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/03/business/china-economy-consumption.html

A surge in exports is helping fuel China’s growth but undermining the profitability of key industries and drawing a backlash from trading partners.Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Times

By Daisuke Wakabayashi and Claire Fu

Sept. 3, 2024

Updated 1:59 a.m. ET

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

In 2004, as China’s economy was emerging as a global force, a group of researchers started conducting nationwide surveys asking Chinese people if they were better off financially than they were five years earlier.

The percentage who felt wealthier climbed when surveyed five years later and again in 2014, when it reached a high of 77 percent.

Last year, when respondents were asked the same question, that figure dropped to 39 percent.

The results of that survey, titled “Getting Ahead in Today’s China: From Optimism to Pessimism,” speak to a new reality. China’s economy is confronting a crisis unlike any it has experienced since it opened its economy to the world more than four decades ago. The post-Covid rebound that was supposed to bring the economy roaring back to life was more like a whimper.

A few years ago, Beijing resolved to wean its economy from its dependence on an overheated real estate market, a sector that had underpinned the savings of families as well as China’s banking sector and local government finances. Now, the property sector is in crisis. Developers collapsed, leaving behind huge debts, a trail of failed investments, unsold apartments and lost jobs.

Chinese consumers, already prone to saving heavily, have become even more frugal. Businesses that endured the crippling impact of draconian Covid measures have cut salaries and scaled back hiring. Millions of college graduates joining the job market are facing long odds and poor prospects. And China’s population has shrunk two years in a row. In a country where the majority of people had only known the economy to grow rapidly and living conditions to improve, confidence is eroding.

Image

For years, borrowing by local governments for building projects created jobs and demand in the construction sector.Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Times

Sherry Yang opened her business in 2006 making store signs, billboards and posters in Sichuan Province in southwestern China. Within a few years, local firms were placing so many orders that Ms. Yang had 16 employees and her printing machines were running around the clock.

But the business has never fully recovered after Covid, she said. This summer, already sluggish demand worsened; sales in July fell 70 percent from a year earlier. Ms. Yang said it felt like every industry was struggling and no one was spending.

Ms. Yang is down to six employees, many of whom spend the day scrolling their phones because there isn’t enough work.

“This has been the most difficult year since our opening,” she said.

Consumer spending, which Chinese authorities have identified as an important driver of growth, remains weak across the economy.

Alibaba, China’s biggest e-commerce firm, said sales in its domestic online shopping business fell 1 percent in the spring. China’s summer movie box office sales have dropped by almost half over last year, according to Maoyan, an entertainment data provider. The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast in August that Chinese consumers would cut back on buying pork and shift to cheaper beef, because of economic pressures.

A number of foreign firms that once rushed into China to catch a rising tide are now retrenching. Last month, the beauty retailer Sephora, an arm of the French luxury group LVMH, announced that it was cutting jobs because of “the challenging market.” IBM is shutting its two research and development centers in China.

Image

Diminished consumer confidence is evident throughout the economy.Credit...Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

And policymakers trying to respond are hindered because they cannot rely on a principal fix that worked in the past. For years, local governments borrowed money for splashy development projects that kept people working and the construction sector booming — even if there wasn’t an actual need for that much infrastructure.

But the debt from that borrowing, often funneled through opaque funding channels, has ballooned to more than $7 trillion. With investors already jittery about China’s financial system, the days of lavish borrowing for vanity infrastructure are unlikely to return anytime soon.

The Chinese government has signaled its alarm by restricting access to data about the markets and economy. Last year, it suspended releasing youth unemployment figures when the number reached record highs. It started distributing the information again this year, with a new methodology that lowered the figures.

To quell discussion of a major economic crisis, officials have warned some economists not to draw public comparisons between China’s problems and the collapse of Japan’s debt-fueled property bubble in the 1980s, which weighed on its economy for decades.

China’s debt is difficult to ignore, however.

While the housing sector’s collapse has caused much collateral damage, the risk of insolvency is minimized by China’s tightly controlled financial system. The danger is that the government could have fewer fiscal resources to deploy to keep things from unraveling.

“The consequences for this fiscal crisis is less growth,” said Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for the Asia-Pacific region at the investment bank Natixis.

Image

The expected post-Covid rebound was more of a whimper than a roar.Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Times

The economic uncertainty has left Chinese savers and foreign investors alike scrambling for safe places to park their money. Real estate prices continue to plunge, and Chinese stocks are underperforming compared with those in just about every other major country, including the United States, Japan and India.

Foreign funds have turned into net sellers of Chinese equities in 2024, which would be the first annual outflow since the data became available a decade earlier. Shares of around 180 Chinese companies have been removed from a critical stock market index since the start of the year, reducing the presence of Chinese firms in global benchmarks.

Investors have retreated to the safety of China’s bond market, driving up prices and pushing down yields. But even that comes with a potential risk. Yields collapsed so drastically that the country’s central bank is now concerned that it might leave banks vulnerable if interest rates rise in the future.

Chinese investors have also piled into gold, helping drive prices to record highs.

China has forecast that its economy will grow about 5 percent this year, a faster rate than most major economies, although that may now be in doubt. A record-setting surge in exports, flooding the world with electric vehicles, batteries and household appliances, is fueling China’s economic growth. But the resulting glut of supply is also undermining the profitability of the high-tech manufacturing industries that China had hoped would soften the blow of its painful shift from real-estate-led growth, while drawing a backlash from a growing number of major trading partners.

For its part, China has downplayed economic concerns. In an April opinion article in state media, Jin Ruiting, director of the Institute of International Economics at the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research, said Western media and politicians continued to “make a fuss about China’s short-term economic fluctuations,” while “unilaterally exaggerating the problems and challenges of the Chinese economy.”

But fundamental problems remain.

Image

Millions of new college graduates face bleak job prospects.Credit...Tingshu Wang/Reuters

For a vast number of young people, there are not enough jobs. In July, China’s unemployment rate among 16- to 24-year-olds jumped above 17 percent, from 13 percent in June.

Winnie Chen graduated this summer with an auditing degree in Nanchang, a southeastern Chinese city. She took the civil service exam in March but didn’t land a job, competing against hundreds of applicants for every available position.

She started looking for private-sector jobs. Ms. Chen messaged 1,229 companies on a job-seeking app and applied for 119 jobs in accounting, e-commerce, social media and other industries. After dozens of interviews, she said, she scored a few job offers — but all came with “absurd” conditions.

One job had a starting salary of $380 a month, which she considered too low to live on. Another company offered her a position, but said she would have to work on public holidays and not get any days off in return. She was offered a position she was told was for a makeup artist, but declined after learning she would actually have to work in a nightclub.

“It feels like there are too many college graduates now, too many people but too few jobs,” Ms. Chen said, noting that many of her classmates were jobless. “The economy is in a bad state.”

Daisuke Wakabayashi is an Asia business correspondent for The Times based in Seoul, covering economic, corporate and geopolitical stories from the region. More about Daisuke Wakabayashi

Claire Fu covers China with a focus on business and social issues in the country. She is based in Seoul. More about Claire Fu

15. Putin Begins Meetings in Mongolia in Defiance of I.C.C. Arrest Warrant

I fear the blowback on Mongolia which is trying to be a go between and a convener of meetings to bring people together to solve problems. We should not forget that Mongolia has only two neighbors: Russia and China. And it is an example of a country that successfully transitioned from communism to democracy.

Putin Begins Meetings in Mongolia in Defiance of I.C.C. Arrest Warrant

The Russian president is making a state visit to a country that is heavily dependent on Moscow for oil.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/02/world/europe/putin-mongolia.html

President Vladimir Putin of Russia, right, with President Ukhnaa Khurelsukh of Mongolia, at an official welcoming ceremony in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, on Tuesday.Credit...Byambasuren Byamba-Ochir/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Valerie Hopkins and David Pierson

Valerie Hopkins reported from Berlin, and David Pierson reported from Hong Kong.

Published Sept. 2, 2024

Updated Sept. 3, 2024, 4:25 a.m. ET

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Mongolia and Russia? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia began meetings with the leader of Mongolia on Tuesday in his first state visit to a member of the International Criminal Court since it issued a warrant for his arrest in March 2023.

In advance of Mr. Putin’s trip, the I.C.C. stated that Mongolia was obligated to arrest Mr. Putin, but Mongolia is heavily dependent on Russia for fuel, and an arrest was considered extremely unlikely.

Far from being arrested, Mr. Putin was given a red-carpet welcome in the central square of the Mongolian capital, Ulaanbaatar.

Ahead of the trip, the Kremlin had shrugged off the possibility of an arrest.

“There are no worries, we have a great dialogue with our friends from Mongolia,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told reporters on Friday, noting that “all aspects of the visit have been thoroughly prepared.”

Mr. Putin was greeted when he arrived Monday night by what appeared to be a Mongolian military guard at the airport and spent the night in the capital, a sign that he is comfortable being in the country.

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A demonstrator holds a Ukrainian flag outside the Government Palace in Ulaanbaatar to protest the visit by President Putin to Mongolia.Credit...Rentsendorj Bazarsukh/Reuters

Mr. Putin’s visit on Tuesday, at the invitation of Mongolia’s president, Ukhnaa Khurelsukh, and in defiance of the I.C.C. arrest warrant, serves as a reminder that Russia still commands strategic sway over its southern neighbor despite efforts to hedge.

With the visit, “Putin gets a symbolic win for sure,” said Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. For Mongolia, he said, the visit shows that the need to maintain the relationship with Moscow outweighs the country’s pledge in 2002 when it signed the Rome Statute ratifying its membership in the I.C.C.

He added that Russia’s adversaries would have to “think twice” about the narrative that “Putin is pariah, he’s ostracized and whenever there is an I.C.C. warrant for a country that’s ratified the Rome Statute, that he will be arrested.”

The international court, based in The Hague in the Netherlands, issued a warrant for Mr. Putin’s arrest last year, accusing him of committing war crimes with the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children. The court also issued a warrant for Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova.

The I.C.C. has no enforcement mechanism. Countries that have signed on to the court are supposed to detain those who are subject to its arrest warrants. Russia is not a signatory to the court and has consistently rejected its authority.

Mongolia, a landlocked democracy wedged between Russia and China, treads a careful political line in balancing between its two far more powerful neighbors. That has included taking a neutral stance on the war in Ukraine.

Image

Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for the Kremlin, described Russia’s “great dialogue” with Mongolia.Credit...Yuri Kochetkov/Reuters

While it has looked to the West to ease some of its geopolitical pressure, hosting high-level guests like President Emmanuel Macron of France, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, and the British foreign secretary, David Cameron, it is also economically reliant on its far larger neighbors.

Mongolia shares a 2,100-mile border with Russia and relies on the giant gas-producing neighbor for 95 percent of its fuel. It tries to maintain steady ties with Moscow to help balance relations with Beijing, which also holds considerable influence over Ulaanbaatar by purchasing virtually all Mongolia’s commodity-driven exports.

“The Mongolian political establishment thinks it is easier to manage secure and predictable relations with Moscow” by hosting Mr. Putin, said Munkhnaran Bayarlkhagva, an independent geopolitical analyst who used to work at the National Security Council of Mongolia.

“Ulaanbaatar is choosing to have predictable relations with Moscow and do the damage control later,” Mr. Bayarlkhagva said. “After all, geography cannot be changed.”

Mr. Bayarlkhagva said Mongolia likely determined that there would be little blowback for Mr. Putin’s visit given that there is precedent for members of the International Criminal Court defying the Rome Statute. In 2015, South Africa refused to arrest Sudan’s then president, Omar al-Bashir, during his visit to Johannesburg despite the fact that he was wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged genocide and war crimes in Darfur. Last year, Johannesburg asked the I.C.C. for an exemption from arresting Mr. Putin so he could attend the BRICS summit of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. When it was not granted, Mr. Putin chose to skip the summit instead.

Still, Mongolia’s decision to invite Mr. Putin was condemned by human rights watchdogs.

“Welcoming Putin, an I.C.C. fugitive, would not only be an affront to the many victims of Russian forces’ crimes, but also undermine the crucial principle that no one, no matter how powerful, is above the law,” Maria Elena Vignoli, international justice senior counsel at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement ahead of the visit.

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Thousands of kids’ teddy bears and toys are installed at Schuman Roundabout to highlight the reported abduction of thousands of Ukrainian children by Russia in February 2022 in Brussels.Credit...Olivier Matthys/Associated Press

There are strong connections between the ruling Mongolian People’s Party and Russia, a relationship that dates back more than a century to when the People’s Party helped establish Mongolia’s socialist republic with the backing of the Soviet Red Army. Even after Mongolia’s democratic revolution in 1990, ties between the Mongolian People’s Party and Russia remained as a source of its political legitimacy.

The stated reason for Mr. Putin’s visit — to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the defeat of Japanese forces at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol by the Soviet and Mongolian armies — provides an “ideological boost” for the Mongolian People’s Party, Mr. Bayarlkhagva said.

Mr. Putin sought to underscore his country’s role as a protector of Mongolia in a written interview for the country’s biggest daily newspaper Unuudur, noting, “More than ten thousand soldiers and commanders of the Red Army gave their lives in the battle for the freedom and independence of Mongolia.”

No announcements are expected to be made about the proposed Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline, which would help redirect Russian gas supplies that had gone to Europe through Mongolia to reach China instead. In August, Mongolia’s parliament voted not to include the pipeline in its budget for the next four years, in what observers said was indication that it had low expectations that it would be built.

A Western diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter said the Mongolian government summoned Western envoys to explain their reasoning behind Mr. Putin’s visit. Among them was the need to secure more supplies of fuel and electricity from Russia to prevent a repeat of the shortages the country faced last winter.

The diplomat said Mongolian officials were asked not to give Mr. Putin a platform to propagandize the war in Ukraine.

Khaliun Bayartsogt contributed reporting.

Valerie Hopkins covers the war in Ukraine and how the conflict is changing Russia, Ukraine, Europe and the United States. She is based in Moscow. More about Valerie Hopkins

David Pierson covers Chinese foreign policy and China’s economic and cultural engagement with the world. He has been a journalist for more than two decades. More about David Pierson

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 3, 2024, Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Mongolia Hosts Putin, Defying International Warrant for His Arrest. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

16. The Increasingly Front-Line Role of Ukrainian Women

Excerpts:

Manzevyta is one of the many women whose new job has turned her family dynamics on their head. She has handed over her previous life, running a small online beauty retail site, to her husband, who—though he gripes—stays at home while she is out demining.

“Life is completely different now,” she said, giggling. “I had to teach him how to use the washing machine, which settings to use, everything around the house because I’m mostly absent now.”

More seriously, Manzevyta said that the war has likely changed many women’s career trajectories.

“I can’t imagine people who have done work like this going back and working as florists once the war is over,” she laughed.

The Increasingly Front-Line Role of Ukrainian Women

How war has—and hasn’t—transformed the country’s gender dynamics.

By Abbie Cheeseman, a Stern-Bryan Fellow at the Washington Post.

Foreign Policy · by Abbie Cheeseman

• Ukraine

September 2, 2024, 10:09 AM

MYKOLAIV, UKRAINE—Kateryna Nahorna is getting ready to find trouble.

Part of an all-female team of dog handlers, the 22-year-old is training Ukraine’s technical survey dogs—Belgian Malinois that have learned to sniff out explosives.

The job is huge. Ukraine is now estimated to be the most heavily mined country on Earth. Deminers must survey every area that saw sustained fighting for unexploded mines, missiles, artillery shells, bombs, and a host of other ordnance—almost 25 percent of the country, according to government estimates.

The dogs can cover 1,500 square meters a day. In contrast, human deminers cover 10 square meters a day on average—by quickly narrowing down the areas that manual deminers will need to tackle, the dogs save valuable time.

“This job allows me to be a warrior for my country … but without having to kill anyone,” said Nahorna. “Our men protect us at war, and we do this to protect them at home.”

A highly practical reason drove the women’s recruitment. The specialized dog training was done in Cambodia, by the nonprofit Apopo, and military-aged men are currently not allowed to leave Ukraine.

War has shaken up gender dynamics in the Ukrainian economy, with women taking up jobs traditionally held by men, such as driving trucks or welding. Now, as mobilization ramps up once more, women are becoming increasingly important in roles that are critical for national security.

In Mykolaiv, in the industrial east, Nahorna and her dogs will soon take on one of the biggest targets of Russia’s military strategy when they start to demine the country’s energy infrastructure. Here, women have been stepping in to work in large numbers in steel mills, factories, and railways serving the front line.

It’s a big shift for Ukraine. Before the war, only 48 percent of women over age 15 took part in the workforce — one of the lowest rates in Europe. War has made collecting data on the gender composition of the workforce impossible, but today, 50,000 women serve in the Ukrainian army, compared to 30,000 before the war.

The catalyst came in 2017, years before the current war began. As conflict escalated with Russia in Crimea, the Ukrainian government overturned a Soviet-era law that had previously banned women from 450 occupations.

But obstacles still remain; for example, women are not allowed jobs the government deems too physically demanding. These barriers continue to be chipped away—most recently, women have been cleared to work in underground mines, something they were prevented from doing before.

Viktoriia Avramchuk never thought she would follow her father and husband into the coal mines for DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company.

Her lifelong fear of elevators was a big factor—but there was also the fact that it was illegal for women to work underground.

Her previous job working as a nanny in a local kindergarten disappeared overnight when schools were forced to close at the beginning of the war. After a year of being unemployed, she found that she had few other options.

“I would never have taken the job if I could have afforded not to,” Avramchuk said from her home in Pokrovsk. “But I also wanted to do something to help secure victory, and this was needed.”

The demining work that Nahorna does is urgent in part because more than 55 percent of the country is farmed.

Often called “the breadbasket of Europe,” Ukraine is one of the world’s top exporters of grain. The U.K.-based Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, which has been advising the Ukrainian government on demining technology, estimates that landmines have resulted in annual GDP losses of $11 billion.

“Farmers feel the pressure to plow, which is dangerous,” said Jon Cunliffe, the Ukraine country director of Mines Advisory Group (MAG), a British nonprofit. “So we need to do as much surveying as possible to reduce the size of the possible contamination.”

The dogs can quickly clear an area of heavy vegetation, which greatly speeds up the process of releasing noncontaminated lands back to farmers. If the area is found to be unsafe, human deminers step in to clear the field manually.

“I’m not brave enough to be on the front line,” 29-year-old Iryna Manzevyta said as she slowly and diligently hovered a metal detector over a patch of farmland. “But I had to do something to help, and this seemed like a good alternative to make a difference.”

Groups like MAG are increasingly targeting women. With skilled male deminers regularly being picked up by military recruiters, recruiting women reduces the chances that expensive and time-consuming training will be invested in people who could be drafted to the front line at a moment’s notice. The demining work is expected to take decades, and women, unlike men, cannot be conscripted in Ukraine.

This urgency to recruit women is accelerating a gender shift already underway in the demining sector. Organizations like MAG have looked to recruit women as a way to empower them in local communities. Demining was once a heavily male-dominated sector, but women now make up 30 percent of workers in Vietnam and Colombia, around 40 percent in Cambodia, and more than 50 percent in Myanmar.

In Ukraine, the idea is to make demining an enterprise with “very little expat footprint,” and Cunliffe said that will only be possible by recruiting more women.

“We should not be here in 10 years. Not like in Iraq or South Sudan, where we have been for 30 years, or Vietnam, or Laos,” Cunliffe said. “It’s common sense that we bring in as many women as we can to do that. In five to 10 years, a lot of these women are going to end up being technical field managers, the jobs that are currently being done by old former British military guys, and it will change the face of demining worldwide because they can take those skills across the world.”

Manzevyta is one of the many women whose new job has turned her family dynamics on their head. She has handed over her previous life, running a small online beauty retail site, to her husband, who—though he gripes—stays at home while she is out demining.

“Life is completely different now,” she said, giggling. “I had to teach him how to use the washing machine, which settings to use, everything around the house because I’m mostly absent now.”

More seriously, Manzevyta said that the war has likely changed many women’s career trajectories.

“I can’t imagine people who have done work like this going back and working as florists once the war is over,” she laughed.

Foreign Policy · by Abbie Cheeseman

17. Ukraine the Underdog Takes a Risk

​Excerpts:

Kyiv hopes the offensive will raise Ukrainian morale, reduce fears of Russia in the West, pressure Mr. Putin to shift his forces, and, in a best-case scenario, weaken support for the war in Russia.

Whether Kyiv’s tactical success in Kursk can be converted into a strategic success that changes the direction of the war likely depends on Ukraine’s ability to launch more cross-border attacks. Russia so far has left most of the long frontier between the countries lightly defended, allowing Mr. Putin to concentrate his forces on his offensive of the moment. If Kyiv can force Mr. Putin to shift forces not just to Kursk but to the entire border region, Russia’s manpower advantage and its ability to sustain offensive operations will be significantly reduced.

Military logic suggests that Kyiv is preparing reserves for new attacks if and when opportunities can be found.

The lame-duck Biden administration is poorly positioned to affect events. Ukraine rejects its advice, and Russia holds it in contempt. The next American president will have to craft a new policy for an increasingly dangerous war that President Biden first failed to deter and then failed to shape.

Ukraine the Underdog Takes a Risk

Its incursion into Russia defies one of the great taboos of the atomic age.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ukraine-the-underdog-takes-a-risk-incursion-into-russia-defies-atomic-age-taboos-fd604e1b?utm

By Walter Russell Mead

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Sept. 2, 2024 4:57 pm ET

President Volodymyr Zelensky and Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi at Ukraine’s army command post in Kupiansk, Ukraine, Nov. 30, 2023. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Image

Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine was already the largest European conflict since 1945. It is expanding into new territory, escalating as both sides intensify their airstrikes, and deepening the fissures in the Western coalition that backs Ukraine. It is also getting more complicated. With Ukraine’s offensive in the north expanding even as Russia tightens its death grip around Pokrovsk in the east, it is hard for casual observers to follow this tragic and unnecessary conflict.

The most recent development is Ukraine’s successful attack on the Russian border region of Kursk. Geographically speaking, the chunk of Russian territory seized by Ukraine in its current offensive isn’t large. At about 500 square miles, it is roughly the size of Los Angeles. It is only about 1% of the more than 40,000 square miles of Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia and 0.0076%, or less than 1/10,000th, of the 6.6 million square miles in the Russian Federation.

In Ukrainian-occupied Russia, there are no important cities or transit routes. No mines, important factories or power plants. From a purely military perspective, the area is insignificant. The loss of it doesn’t keep Mr. Putin from waging war, nor does its occupation afford Ukraine resources or a strategic position that will help it win.

Even so, it matters.

It matters in part because Ukraine has successfully defied one of the great taboos of the atomic age. This is the first time that a nonnuclear country has invaded and occupied the territory of a nuclear power. Deterrence theoreticians have long believed that one of the benefits of having nuclear weapons is that no one would dare invade a nuclear-weapons state. Russia’s failure to launch nuclear weapons against invading forces now leaves scholars and policymakers scratching their heads.

What are the new rules, and where are Mr. Putin’s red lines? What would happen if Ukraine doubled the area of Russian territory under its control? What if Ukrainian armies, like Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner forces, broke through Russian lines and headed for Moscow? Will Team Biden and Ukraine’s other Western allies try to stop Ukraine from pursuing a course that could lead to nuclear war? Or, believing that Mr. Putin is deterred from using nukes against Ukraine, will the U.S. step up support for Ukraine’s land and air attacks on Russian territory?

Ukraine’s surge in Kursk also matters because of what it shows about Ukraine’s new war strategy. The Kursk offensive—its preparations concealed from Ukraine’s allies in Washington as well as from Moscow—was a risky move. Both President Volodymyr Zelensky and his top commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, have been criticized at home for diverting forces from the hard-pressed eastern front for their northern offensive. That criticism will only intensify when, as seems likely, the city of Pokrovsk falls to advancing Russian forces.

Mr. Zelensky and Gen. Syrskyi have adopted this new strategy because they believe that Ukraine is the underdog in an existential war. While Ukraine’s Western partners in theory have the ability to give Ukraine the upper hand, Kyiv seems now to believe that they won’t. Team Biden is too intimidated by Russian threats, the European Union is as usual divided and ineffective, and the West generally still labors under the illusion that Mr. Putin is willing to negotiate a peace that leaves Ukraine free to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union.

Underdogs have to take risks, and while Ukraine needs Western support, Mr. Zelensky and Gen. Syrskyi believe that Kyiv must reject the West’s timid strategic advice if it hopes to survive. They are probably right. Fighting an endless, losing positional war in the east while Ukraine’s weak-kneed Western supporters dither and debate ensures Ukraine’s ultimate defeat.

Kyiv hopes the offensive will raise Ukrainian morale, reduce fears of Russia in the West, pressure Mr. Putin to shift his forces, and, in a best-case scenario, weaken support for the war in Russia.

Whether Kyiv’s tactical success in Kursk can be converted into a strategic success that changes the direction of the war likely depends on Ukraine’s ability to launch more cross-border attacks. Russia so far has left most of the long frontier between the countries lightly defended, allowing Mr. Putin to concentrate his forces on his offensive of the moment. If Kyiv can force Mr. Putin to shift forces not just to Kursk but to the entire border region, Russia’s manpower advantage and its ability to sustain offensive operations will be significantly reduced.

Military logic suggests that Kyiv is preparing reserves for new attacks if and when opportunities can be found.

The lame-duck Biden administration is poorly positioned to affect events. Ukraine rejects its advice, and Russia holds it in contempt. The next American president will have to craft a new policy for an increasingly dangerous war that President Biden first failed to deter and then failed to shape.

WSJ Opinion: The Replicator Drone Initiative and the Department of Defense

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WSJ Opinion: The Replicator Drone Initiative and the Department of Defense

Play video: WSJ Opinion: The Replicator Drone Initiative and the Department of Defense

Replicator’s goals of drone deployment and business development process change are both worthy objectives. But given the Pentagon's antiquated culture, is two years enough time to procure more hard power faster? Photo: Dept. of Defense

Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the September 3, 2024, print edition as 'Ukraine the Underdog Takes a Risk'.

18. Pentagon OKs 2-year tours with adult family members at US Army base in Poland

Looks like we are making a commitment. But I would imagine these would be either very young married couples without children or senior NCOs and Officers are now empty nesters.

Pentagon OKs 2-year tours with adult family members at US Army base in Poland

Stars and Stripes · by Jennifer H. Svan · August 30, 2024

U.S. Army Col. Jesse Chace stands in front of his formation during the change of command ceremony at Camp Kosciuszko in Poznan, Poland, June 28, 2024. The Pentagon has approved accompanied, 24-month tours for service members assigned to the base in western Poland. The dependents must be 18 years and older to join service members there. (Devin Klecan/U.S. Army)

U.S. military spouses may soon be searching for apartments and the best place for pierogis in Poznan, home of the first permanent American base in Poland.

The Pentagon has now approved accompanied, 24-month tours for service members assigned to Camp Kosciuszko. The new travel regulation allows military dependents 18 years and older to join service members with orders to the base in west-central Poland.

“When you walk out our main gate, you’re in the heart of a 500,000-person city,” said Marcus Fichtl, a spokesman for U.S. Army Garrison Poland.

Soldiers on solo permanent orders will continue to serve one-year tours. Civilians on two-year assignments at Poznan were authorized in December to bring adult dependents. The first family members arrived in the spring, Fichtl said.

The two-year tour policy went into effect Aug. 19, Fichtl said Friday. It doesn’t affect units based in the United States that arrive on nine-month rotational deployments, the Army said.

“Bringing permanently stationed soldiers with their families to Poland is a significant milestone as we continue to build our Army home on NATO’s eastern flank,” Col. Jesse Chace, U.S. Army Garrison Poland commander, said in a statement Thursday.

Spouses and adult children accompanying soldiers can expect to live in the city. Housing for personnel on permanent orders is off base and the military housing allowance is “more than adequate for top-quality housing in the city,” Fichtl said.

U.S. military personnel on permanent orders and civilians at the garrison’s posts in Powidz and Swietoszow will continue to serve unaccompanied tours of 12 and 24 months, respectively, since those installations lack the infrastructure to support family members, according to the Pentagon.

The Army designated Camp Kosciuszko as permanent in March 2023, a move reflecting Poland’s emergence in recent years as the center of gravity for Army operations aimed at deterring potential Russian aggression from the east.

The camp is the headquarters for V Corps’ forward element, which was reestablished in 2021 to manage operations from the Baltic Sea in the north down to the Black Sea region.

Though the Army is looking to put down roots in the former Warsaw Pact country, most troops in Poland are on nine-month rotational assignments for now.

In the 15 months since the garrison staked out an enduring presence, it’s grown its headquarters staff from a handful of soldiers and civilians to more than 100 personnel supporting 7,500 troops in the V Corps area of responsibility, according to the Army.

Whether school-age dependents will eventually be authorized for accompanied tours remains to be seen. The biggest hurdle is the lack of Defense Department schools in the country.

Establishing education facilities for U.S. service members and their families is something the garrison plans to work toward, Fichtl said, adding that an assignment to Poznan is attractive even in the current conditions.

“It’s the gem of Europe to live in right now,” he said. “You’re in a cool city but also in an organization that’s growing and thriving. It’s something brand new.”

Jennifer H. Svan

Jennifer H. Svan

Jennifer reports on the U.S. military from Kaiserslautern, Germany, where she writes about the Air Force, Army and DODEA schools. She’s had previous assignments for Stars and Stripes in Japan, reporting from Yokota and Misawa air bases. Before Stripes, she worked for daily newspapers in Wyoming and Colorado. She’s a graduate of the College of William and Mary in Virginia.

Stars and Stripes · by Jennifer H. Svan · August 30, 2024

19. NSA’s China-focused ‘innovation pipeline’ targets economic imbalances

NSA’s China-focused ‘innovation pipeline’ targets economic imbalances

A new pilot program crowdsources ideas from analysts to scope out U.S. vulnerabilities.

defenseone.com · by Lauren C. Williams

Beata Zawrzel / NurPhoto via Getty Images|

August 30, 2024

• China
• Technology

By Lauren C. Williams

Senior Editor

August 30, 2024

• China
• Technology

The National Security Agency has been slowly creating an “innovation pipeline” to pinpoint and fix U.S. vulnerabilities to China, and it’s starting with a new pilot program focused on economic security and emerging technologies, a senior intelligence official said.

“‘Red Ventures’ is meant to provide a single list, essentially, of challenge problems for our China mission, for a whole bunch of different innovation communities,” Dave Frederick, the NSA’s assistant deputy director for China, told reporters. “We've run a pilot…focused on the economic security topic because we knew that was going to be a shift for us.”

Frederick teased the program last year before the agency completed its classified China-focused strategy. The goal was to unify disparate initiatives that connect industry to the intelligence community. But things have not moved as quickly as they had hoped.

“A big part of the delay was just lining all this stuff up in time, and then how do we then crowdsource based on these problem sets, and then start to innovate?” he said.

To address the “different pockets within the agency highlighting different innovation needs,” Frederick said the agency has been mapping the technology gaps between the United States and China, based on the classified China strategy. The pilot crowdsourced ideas from NSA employees on how to address economic vulnerabilities and technologies that could affect strategic advantage.

“We've gotten through phase one of that. So we've curated a set of problems. We're now moving into phase two, where we're going to work with all the different solution organizations,” like In-Q-Tel, Frederick said.

The goal is to expand the effort to address everything in the agency’s China strategy.

“We're still piloting it, so we're running slower, but definitely think it's going to be very useful tradecraft for us to use in terms of prioritizing,” he said.

20. Inside Ukraine’s Secret Network: Partisans Thwart Occupying Forces

Partisans can play a key contributing role across the spectrum of conflict from the gray zone to large scale combat operations (if properly advised, assisted, and employed).

As we pursue all the new high technological capability and concepts we must not forget the fundamentals of the human domain.

Inside Ukraine’s Secret Network: Partisans Thwart Occupying Forces

kyivpost.com · by Kyiv Post · September 3, 2024

In Ukraine's occupied territories, hundreds of residents are working hard to undermine the enemy’s operations through sabotage and punishment of traitors, reveals HUR officer “Olster.”

by Kyiv Post | September 3, 2024, 8:19 am

HUR officer “Olster.”Screenshot from video

An officer of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine (HUR) codenamed "Olster" revealed that contact has been established with Ukrainians in temporarily occupied territories who continue to resist the Russian occupiers.

According to Olster, who coordinates the underground resistance in these territories, hundreds of residents have been carrying out sabotage operations and punishing traitors as they await liberation

As part of an interview with Jenny Klochko, Olster recounted the story of a resistance fighter with the alias "Honta," who has military experience and has done a great deal for Ukraine under occupation.

“A man or woman with military experience is always highly valuable because they can teach others how to make explosives, establish proper communication with Kyiv, and plan operations against the enemy on our territories. So, when we made contact with Honta, it was truly a gift,” Olster explained.

He added that Honta is safe and continues to serve Ukraine, just like hundreds of others in the occupied territories. Loyal to their country, they await liberation and work to accelerate it.

“We're talking about people who lead normal lives. They have jobs [and] families, but even their families don’t know that, at night, their father lives a different life. Our operations are not about advancing towards Russian positions, destroying all occupiers with artillery, and seizing trophy equipment,” said the intelligence officer.

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Instead, he emphasized that it’s about human intelligence and building a network capable of effectively countering the Russian FSB – carrying out explosions on railways, eliminating traitors in cities, and more.

Partisan groups began forming as early as the start of Russian aggression in Ukraine in 2014 and significantly intensified from 2022, when the full-scale invasion began. Partisans are routinely conducting armed resistance in territories occupied by Russian forces.

A year ago, Kyiv Post interviewed Ostap, a spokesperson from the Center for National Resistance (CNR). The CNR is a relatively new branch of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, created in February 2022.

“The primary goal was to gather and organize civilian resistance forces to repel the enemy,” Ostap explained via video call from an undisclosed location.

Around 20% of Ukraine's territory to the east and south, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, are occupied by Russia, with millions of Ukrainians living under Moscow's yoke.

Most are simply trying to survive, but some are determined to actively resist. This is where the CNR comes in.

“We're specifically seeking information,” Ostap said. “We communicate with our people in temporarily occupied territories to obtain this information and then verify it.

“Afterwards, we use it to help the defense forces effectively target enemy assets.”

kyivpost.com · by Kyiv Post · September 3, 2024

21. Seize the Advantage: Three Models to Improve Security Cooperation Planning

Conclusion:

Statistician George Box wrote, “All models are broken, some are useful.” The three proposed models above emphasize the need for clearly defined objectives, an understanding of the operating environment that revolves around the partner, and a planned campaign of unified actions. These models are by no means a silver bullet for effective security cooperation. What the proposed models offer instead is a way to ensure that security cooperation supports and achieves political objectives, maximizes limited resources, and accounts for wide-ranging second and third-order effects. The days of discrete security cooperation are gone. The United States is facing a decisive decade, as outlined in the current National Security Strategy. Our network of allies and partners, built over eighty years, must be operationalized, optimized, and maintained. Or, as Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz simply stated during the Second World War, “If we can’t use our Allies, we’re God damn fools.”

Seize the Advantage: Three Models to Improve Security Cooperation Planning - Irregular Warfare Initiative 

irregularwarfare.org · by James P. Micciche · September 3, 2024

Winston Churchill famously quipped, “There is only one thing worse than fighting with Allies, and that is fighting without them.” Nearly eighty years later, the Department of Defense echoed Churchill’s logic by declaring Allies and partners as the 2022 National Defense Strategy’s (NDS’) center of gravity and America’s greatest advantage.

While fighting without allies and partners is undesirable, equally unfavorable is building a strategy around them without a comprehensive plan for their integration. Assistant Secretary of Defense Dr. Mara Karlin emphasized this point when speaking to Congress, saying, “This advantage [allies and partners] is not a given. It requires active involvement by the entire U.S. Government.” The DOD must, therefore, rely on security cooperation to operationalize the capabilities and contributions of America’s greatest asymmetric advantage- its allies and partners. This article proposes three models to improve the planning and execution of security cooperation as a tool of statecraft and security policy.

Security cooperation is complex. The Joint Force definition for security cooperation describes a diverse and wide-ranging enterprise that crosses services, components, and sections of the United States Code requiring regular intergovernmental coordination. However, this article proposes three models that can aid planners in operationalizing allies and partners. The first model accepts that security cooperation, like war, is a political act requiring clearly defined objectives. The second model focuses on enhancing the understanding of the operating environment with a focus on the partner. The final model seeks to develop a campaign of integrated, coordinated, and sequenced efforts to avoid the tendency for security cooperation activities to become singular events. Integrating these three models into security cooperation planning can give the United States an advantage during strategic competition and help combatant and service component commands as well as embassies across the world achieve the goals of the 2022 NDS.

Seize the Advantage: Three Models to Improve Security Cooperation Planning – Insider: Short of War

Clearly Defined Objectives: A Three-Axis Political Act

Carl von Clausewitz famously defined war’s aim as forcing one’s will onto adversaries to achieve a political objective. Just as war is policy by other means and a political act, so is security cooperation, and therefore it must be tied to tangible objectives. To reduce the complexity inherent to security cooperation, planners should focus analysis and efforts on understanding how it supports or affects three distinct but interrelated elements: the United States’ policy objectives, effects on recipient nations, and impacts on the international system. Understanding the interdependency between those elements improves the ability to define objectives for security cooperation, understand second and third-order effects, and integrate other elements of national power. Regardless of the model used, security cooperation efforts will not maximize their effectiveness without clear objectives tied to policy.

Objective is one of the nine traditional principles of war and is defined by Joint Doctrine as a mechanism to “direct every military operation toward a clearly defined, decisive, and achievable goal.” Combatant commands can use security cooperation to shape operational environments, enhance coalition interoperability, modernize partner militaries, and gain or maintain access and influence over key terrain. While security cooperation objectives are often associated with DOD activities, they can also enable interagency efforts beyond the military instrument of national power, especially during strategic competition.

The military will often be in a supporting role during strategic competition and can use security cooperation to empower diplomacy, amplify influence, or promote economic interests. The multifaceted nature of competition creates the added challenge of synchronizing and coordinating with other government agencies to integrate efforts across all elements of national power. The need to drive unity of effort also exists within a combatant command, as security cooperation should be joint. Just as the post-Goldwater-Nichols military emphasizes the Joint fight, combatant commands should clearly define capacity-building objectives each service can contribute to maximize effects.

Security cooperation effects expand horizontally beyond participating nations as other actors perceive, interpret, and react to them differently. The Army’s 2013 manual for Security Cooperation specifically highlights how security cooperation can, “send compelling regional and often global strategic communication message(s).” Compelling, deterring, inducing, assuring, and persuading other states to change or maintain their actions based on the interest of the United States can even be the objective of security cooperation. For instance, the United States extensively uses its partners to deter aggression by third parties. Horizontal impacts can also be negative, unintentionally escalating tensions or degrading bilateral relations due to external and internal factors.

Security cooperation within recipient nations impacts all strata of societies. A 2023 United States Institute for Peace report highlights that autocratic elites tend to capture security cooperation activities, allowing the ruling class to create militaries that protect their power and suppress opposition. This outcome not only leads to internal instability but creates a security force unable to support state-centric combat. Internal impacts are regime agnostic as security cooperation has the potential to disrupt domestic supply chains, create microeconomies, enable adversarial disinformation campaigns, or disrupt societal and cultural norms. Domestic, or vertical, effects require planners to develop a complex understanding of a nation before executing security cooperation and continually assess activities as major divergences between U.S. and partner interests can require adjustment to the desired end state.

A visualization of the Three-Axis Model applied to the Decisive Action Training Environment (DATE) Caucasus scenario where the United States has committed to defend Pirtuni, a neutral democratic state, against increasing Donovian aggression. To enable this policy goal, the Combatant Command that assesses Pirtuni must hold key terrain for 60 days to allow the United States to generate combat power. The command begins using security cooperation to overcome this gap by addressing deficiencies in the Pirtinuian Armed Forces. This leads to an aggressive Donovian response across the DIME. Security cooperation generates interconnected effects within Pirtuni and throughout the region affecting overall U.S. objectives that must be regularly assessed, understood, and accounted for. (Author’s Work)

Defining the Operational Environment

Planners must first develop a comprehensive understanding of the operational environment they seek to modify to successfully achieve an objective that changes or preserves the geopolitical status quo. Security cooperation is no different. It requires an understanding of its primary output, how to improve capacity, and what the capabilities are of partner forces and supporting institutions. Specifically, planners must identify how a partner enables or can enable, U.S. objectives as well as how partner nations’ defense institutions and society field, maintain, and employ military power. Failing to understand these factors leads to unsustainable or Faberge Egg security forces, political instability, and obfuscation of underlying objectives.

The foundational step to developing an understanding of a partner force is to define the U.S.-related interests of a partner. A parsimonious concept to define this requirement is dividing forces into a with, through, or transitional categorical relationships with the Joint Force.

With-partners are those the United States expects to fight side-by-side in coalition warfare. With-partners are normally professional militaries from developed nations with established governance structures. They include NATO militaries and Indo-Pacific treaty allies. Security cooperation efforts for with-partners emphasize building procedural, technical, and human interoperability and improving situational awareness. Inversely, through-partners are those that the United States projects power through to achieve objectives in areas where the deployment of U.S. forces might not be feasible due to political or force management restrictions.

Through-partner security cooperation centers around advising and capacity building to improve a partner’s ability to conduct internal and external security functions. An example of through-partners is U.S. support to developing Djiboutian Rapid Intervention Battalions to promote internal and regional security.

The final grouping within this model are the transitional partners. These partners are those that the United States wants to convert from a “through” to a “with partner.” For example, the United States may assist a country executing a NATO membership action plan as a transitional partner.

THROUGH and WITH Forces (Author’s Work)

The second aspect of understanding the security cooperation environment is assessing a partner nation’s security institutions beyond just the operating force. At the strategic level, the Joint Staff divides a nation’s defense institution into four mutually supporting functions: governance, executive, generating, and operating (GEGO). GEGO can be imagined as an iceberg. The operating forces are the easily identifiable and visible structures above the waterline. Directly at and below the waterline are generating functions, such as training and doctrine. These support the operating force and are partially visible to external observers. Further below the waterline are the deep structures of executive and governance functions. These exist at ministries and legislatures that fund, equip, organize, and authorize militaries to conduct a certain set of missions.

The GEGO Construct (Author’s Work)

As Renanah Miles Joyce noted, U.S. security cooperation has a historical preponderance of focusing on operational forces while ignoring supporting institutional capabilities which results in short-term gains at the cost of long-term impacts. The Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans and Capabilities Dr. Mara Karlin deemed this “short-term-itis.” While it is easy to focus U.S. security cooperation at visible structures within operating functions, sustainable change requires efforts across all four functions regardless of partner type and must include deep structures.

Elements that constitute deep structure include organizational interests, bureaucratic systems, palace politics, and military culture, which can lead to friction and potentially require the United States to adopt a coercive and transactional approach to security cooperation, as outlined by Rachel Tecott Metz. Executive or ministerial-level capacity building is overseen by a military agency rather than combatant commands, and the Department of State is the lead agency on most governance-level programs. Therefore, there is an even greater requirement for coordination and synchronization across elements of national power to successfully influence, shape, and change while avoiding competing or redundant efforts. When security cooperation overly focuses on tactical operational forces, the United States creates unsustainable forces with no foundation.

Aligning the Tools: Operational Art

The DOD’s security cooperation success revolves around organizing and synchronizing capabilities, authorities, and funding sources to achieve a defined effect in support of the objective. Security cooperation planners should look to operational art to develop both country-specific and regional security cooperation plans in which efforts are arranged, executed, and assessed as part of a campaign. The Joint Force uses operational art to, “develop strategies, campaigns, and operations to organize and employ military forces by integrating ends, ways, means, and risks.”

Within security cooperation, the DOD has various means ranging from globally deployed Security Force Assistance Brigades to CONUS-based Naval Special Warfare training facilities. Combatant command executes security cooperation through statutory authorities. From authorizing and funding mil-to-mil exchanges (T10 Ch. 16 § 311/312) to long-term partner capacity building, efforts requiring Secretary of State concurrence and congressional appropriations (T10 Ch.16 §333) commands have a diverse set of methods available to plan and execute security cooperation. To achieve enduring effects toward the objective, planners must sequence and organize both authorities and units logically to achieve the desired end state.

Authorities must learn to weave a complex tapestry of security cooperation operations, activities, and investments due to their complexly different approval processes and funding timelines. Security cooperation activities must be a part of larger campaigns towards an objective, never singular events. Furthermore, security cooperation authorities are not limited to Title 10 nor are security cooperation implementers limited to the DOD. Using all available authorities and resources in a campaign increases the effectiveness of security cooperation but requires additional work in coordination and synchronization. Operational art facilitates organizing security cooperation activities to generate effects in support of theater strategic objectives, thereby linking the tactical to the operational and strategic levels of warfare. planners simply must start with the objective and work backward.

The sequencing of Title 10 and 22 authorities with periodic State Partnership Program (SPP) events allows the United States to incrementally increase coalition interoperability and improve a partner force’s capacity to deter a competitor nation. (Author’s Work)

Closing

Statistician George Box wrote, “All models are broken, some are useful.” The three proposed models above emphasize the need for clearly defined objectives, an understanding of the operating environment that revolves around the partner, and a planned campaign of unified actions. These models are by no means a silver bullet for effective security cooperation. What the proposed models offer instead is a way to ensure that security cooperation supports and achieves political objectives, maximizes limited resources, and accounts for wide-ranging second and third-order effects. The days of discrete security cooperation are gone. The United States is facing a decisive decade, as outlined in the current National Security Strategy. Our network of allies and partners, built over eighty years, must be operationalized, optimized, and maintained. Or, as Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz simply stated during the Second World War, “If we can’t use our Allies, we’re God damn fools.”

James P. Micciche is a U.S. Army Strategist (FA59) currently assigned to XVIII Airborne Corps. He holds degrees from The Fletcher School at Tufts University and Troy University. He can be found on Twitter @james_micciche and LinkedIn

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.

Main Image: A U.S. Army advisor assigned to 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade participates in a formation run with Colombian Army counterparts, April 27, in Colombia. U.S. Army advisors are employed in the region building interoperability with security force counterparts. Photo courtesy of 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade.

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​22. From World Champions to State Assets: The Outsized Impact of a Few Chinese Hackers

Excerpts:

Conclusion

The analysis of Apple, Android (Google), and Microsoft’s bug bounty data from 2017 to the end of 2023 has revealed a significant number of submissions by Chinese researchers. This examination highlights that a significant portion of Chinese contributions to these platforms originated from a small number of individuals within specialized research teams, where fluctuations in team performance often stem from individual transitions between companies. The vulnerabilities discovered in Western products by Chinese civilian researchers are likely shared with government agencies: Chinese law mandates that researchers report vulnerabilities, and the companies they are affiliated with are required to submit a specified minimum number of vulnerabilities annually to the Ministry of State Security-run China National Vulnerability Database to maintain their status.

This approach offers a distinct advantage over traditional zero-day acquisitions and has contributed to state-affiliated Chinese groups exploiting more zero-days than any other country. Nonetheless, despite its effectiveness, unanswered questions persist: Western vendors consistently receive extensive information on zero-day vulnerabilities, yet the Chinese system remains effective in exploiting U.S. products. This prompts inquiries: Are these unique individual zero-days or part of zero-day chains? Is it an issue with patching? Or does Chinese effectiveness stem from inadequate security practices among targeted victims?

Despite its efficacy, other countries, particularly democracies, should not be misled into viewing China’s as a favorable model, as it poses ethical dilemmas incompatible with core democratic values of trust and transparency. The European Union’s Cyber Resilience Act has sparked controversy in this regard. Under Article 11, software publishers would be required to promptly report any unresolved security vulnerabilities to the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity within 24 hours of discovery. Senior figures from over 50 organizations, including Google, Trend Micro, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have voiced concerns in an open letter that with this procedure “dozens of government agencies would have access to a real-time database of software with unmitigated vulnerabilities, without the ability to leverage them to protect the online environment.” Leading experts in bug bounty programs, such as Katie Moussouris, caution against implementing comparable approaches. She has expressed concerns that such practices “could erode the cybersecurity of the entire Internet.” Crucially, they risk alienating the talented vulnerability researchers on which the entire cyber security ecosystem rests.

From World Champions to State Assets: The Outsized Impact of a Few Chinese Hackers - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Eugenio Benincasa · September 3, 2024

“China already has a bigger hacking program than every other major nation combined.” So warned FBI Director Chris Wray last year. He continued: “If each one of the FBI’s cyber agents and intelligence analysts focused on China exclusively, Chinese hackers would still outnumber our cyber personnel by at least 50 to 1.”

But this rather striking statement of the scale of the challenge obscures one of China’s key characteristics when it comes to offensive cyber operations. As I discuss in a recent report for the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich, within its vast cyber-espionage ecosystem, China relies on a relatively small pool of elite civilian hackers to uncover critical American weaknesses. These weaknesses, generally referred to as vulnerabilities, enable hackers to secretly access targeted software and hardware systems, often without detection, for espionage or offensive purposes. Some vulnerabilities, known as “zero-days,” are particularly dangerous because they are newly discovered and have no known patch or fix available. This makes them highly attractive for malicious actors seeking to exploit them before defenses can be put in place.

China’s elite vulnerability researchers have gained global recognition through their participation in prestigious hacking competitions and bug bounty programs, primarily targeting Western products. These initiatives offer financial rewards for discovering and responsibly reporting zero-days to vendors for remediation. Within China’s offensive cyber ecosystem, these elite researchers form one of two main hacker groups. The second group consists of government-contracted hackers who operate behind the scenes, steering clear of high-profile public competitions and bug bounty programs. In this ecosystem, elite researchers identify zero-days, which are gathered by government security agencies and disseminated to contracted hackers, who then conduct cyber operations against foreign targets.

This setup allows China to effectively harness the expertise of top researchers while keeping them insulated from direct state-sponsored activities. This approach has proved highly effective: Chinese state actors have exploited more zero-days in absolute numbers than any other country, as revealed by Google Mandiant’s 2023 analysis. The most targeted products: those of Microsoft, Google, and Apple.

With the cyber intelligence-civilian divide blurred, I have analyzed publicly available data from submissions made by China’s civilian hackers to the bug bounty programs of Apple, Android (Google), and Microsoft to identify the primary actors targeting these critical products. Through my analysis, a pattern emerges: A small cadre of Chinese researchers stands out as major contributors, and even minor shifts within hacking communities can lead to disproportionately large effects within China’s cyber ecosystem. Crucially, these researchers are affiliated with companies that channel the highest number of vulnerabilities to China’s premier intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security.

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China’s Elite Hackers

Since the early 2010s, Chinese hackers have risen to the very top of Pwn2Own, an annual hacking contest held in Vancouver, Canada, often considered the “World Cup” of hackers. Participants have to find zero-days in fully updated — mostly Western — software and hardware products and systems, in exchange for substantial cash prizes. Between 2014 and 2017, the prize pool ranged from $460,000 to $850,000. In 2014, a single Chinese team claimed 13 percent of the total prize money. In 2017, multiple teams from Chinese tech giants Qihoo 360 and Tencent collectively claimed nearly 80 percent of the prize pool. This international success was short-lived. By 2018, the Chinese government had barred vulnerability researchers from competing in international hacking events such as Pwn2Own. As a result, a domestic counterpart, the Tianfu Cup, was inaugurated in Chengdu in November 2018. Scholar J. D. Work observed that, in Chengdu, “the Chinese teams continued to demonstrate their continued ability to hold key Western systems and networks at risk.” In 2022, threat analyst Winnona DeSombre detailed how, during the 2021 Tianfu Cup, participants demonstrated 30 successful exploits in critical U.S. software products — 40 percent more compared to Pwn2Own’s exploits showcased that same year.

Annual hacking contests offer valuable insights into the capabilities and research priorities of participants, but they provide limited data for assessing their long-term focus and impact. To delve deeper into this, I analyzed the submissions of Chinese teams to the bug bounty programs of Apple, Android (Google), and Microsoft. Bug bounty programs, like hacking competitions, reward individuals for identifying and reporting software and hardware vulnerabilities. However, unlike hacking competitions, they are online crowdsourcing initiatives. Researchers submit detailed reports to help companies replicate and address these issues promptly, facilitating the development of patches. Between 2017 and 2023, Chinese researchers contributed 27 percent of all vulnerabilities reported to Apple, Android (Google), and Microsoft globally.

Between 2017 and 2020, the lion’s share of submissions to each of the three platforms came from teams associated with a single cyber security powerhouse, Qihoo 360, followed by Tencent. Collectively, the Qihoo 360 teams reported almost 70 percent of all the vulnerabilities reported by Chinese researchers to Android (Google), 60 percent to Microsoft, and 31 percent to Apple. While Qihoo 360 boasts no fewer than 19 research teams of varying size and expertise, only a handful truly stood out for their bug bounty contributions. These include 360 Vulcan, 360 SRC, and 360 Nirvan. Between 2021 and 2023, the landscape shifted as other entities rose to prominence. Research teams affiliated with Cyber Kunlun, OPPO, and Ant Group surpassed Qihoo 360 and Tencent as top contributors to Microsoft, Android (Google), and Apple respectively.

Within these teams and companies, a handful of researchers have emerged as significant bug bounty contributors. Among them, Yuki Chen and Zinuo Han have set exceptionally high standards. As 360 Vulcan team’s core member, Chen has led the team through their success at Pwn2Own from 2015 to 2017, where they exploited critical vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Adobe Flash. After Chinese researchers were barred from attending international hacking competitions in 2018, 360 Vulcan developed a strong focus on vulnerability research within Microsoft products. By 2020, the team had become by far the largest Chinese bug bounty contributor to Microsoft. Chen accounted for nearly 70 percent of the team’s submissions. In 2020, Chen left Qihoo along with other 360 Vulcan members to establish their own cyber security venture, Cyber Kunlun. It’s unsurprising that, following Chen’s departure, submissions from Qihoo 360 to Microsoft dropped dramatically, coinciding with a steady rise from Cyber Kunlun. Today, Cyber Kunlun stands as the top Chinese team contributing to Microsoft’s bug bounty program. It was responsible for over 40 percent of Chinese submissions to Microsoft between 2021 and 2023, with Chen accounting for over 60 percent of the total. For the past three years, his submissions have consistently placed him first in Microsoft’s global ranking of “Most Valuable Security Researchers.“

Chinese submissions to Android (Google) between 2017 and 2020 were led by the 360 SRC team, with nearly all submissions originating from two researchers: Zinuo Han and Chong Wang. Han accounted for over 50 percent of the duo’s contributions. In addition to his numerous submissions, he has spoken at prestigious security conferences, including Zer0Con, Pacsec, and Black Hat. In 2019, Han left his position at Qihoo 360 for a short stint at Alibaba Cloud’s Security Team before moving to consumer electronics manufacturer OPPO in 2021. Similar to Chen, his departure from Qihoo 360 had an immediate downward impact on the company’s bug bounty contributions to Android. Starting in 2022, OPPO experienced a surge in Android bug bounty submissions, largely due to Han’s contributions. By the end of 2023, OPPO became by far the largest single contributing Chinese team to Android (Google). In 2022 and 2023, Han received “a special shoutout” from the Google Security Blog for being one of its top bug bounty contributors, alongside just one to three other researchers.

Chen and Han belong to a relatively small yet influential cohort of superstar Chinese hackers whose research enormously benefits the security of critical U.S. products. At the same time, it’s also likely that their findings are scrutinized by China’s intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security, potentially for offensive or espionage objectives.

Intelligence Linkages and Implications

To harness the talent of its superstar hackers, the Chinese government implemented the Regulations on the Management of Network Product Security Vulnerabilities in September 2021, mandating Chinese researchers to directly hand over any zero-days to state authorities within 48 hours. From this constant influx of vulnerability reports, Chinese government agencies can pick and choose which vulnerabilities to publicly disclose, and which to potentially use in future cyber operations.

The first robust enforcement of these regulations occurred two months later, in the backdrop of the discovery of one of the most significant vulnerabilities in recent memory. In November 2021, security engineer Chen Zhaojun from the Alibaba Cloud Security Team discovered Log4Shell, a critical vulnerability in Apache Log4j, a Java-based logging library used by millions globally. Zhaojun reported Log4Shell directly to Apache, which disclosed it a few weeks later with a patch available. Upon disclosure, Mandiant described it as “one of the most pervasive security vulnerabilities that organizations have had to deal with over the past decade.” Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, labeled it “one of the most serious [vulnerabilities] that I’ve seen in my entire career, if not the most serious.” While countries grappled with mitigating the impacts of Log4Shell, China’s reaction to the Log4Shell discovery went largely unnoticed. A few weeks after disclosure, Alibaba Cloud faced penalties for its failure to report Log4Shell to state authorities. Alibaba was fined, and its collaboration on information-sharing with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology was suspended.

If the Log4j episode aimed to set clear boundaries against violations of the regulations, another case cast doubt on their enforcement criteria. In 2021, significant controversy ensued when Qidan He was dismissed from his role as cyber security head at Pinduoduo, a major online retailer in China, for refusing to carry out “hacking attacks” for the company. He is among China’s most popular hacker prodigies. He enrolled at Zhejiang University at the age of 15 and gained international fame for his outstanding performances at Pwn2Own. Following his dismissal, prominent Chinese hackers voiced their support for He and expressed outrage at Pinduoduo. These included the former director of Alibaba’s Security Lab and the founder of a prominent Tencent security lab, the Keen Lab. In April 2023, information emerged revealing that Pinduoduo had assembled a team of approximately 100 engineers and product managers to search for vulnerabilities in Android phones for the purpose of spying on users, aiming to boost sales by monitoring customers and competitors. The team was eventually disbanded, but Pinduoduo faced no regulatory repercussions despite violating article 4 of the regulations by actively seeking and exploiting vulnerabilities for illicit ends.

Through this double standard in enforcement, the Chinese government demonstrates its intent to penalize researchers who report critical vulnerabilities, while turning a blind eye to private companies engaging in illicit economic information gathering that can benefit the companies financially or have strategic importance to the government. This approach increases the legal pressure on Chinese researchers to disclose vulnerabilities directly to the government.

Nevertheless, while it serves as China’s primary framework for acquiring zero-days, the Regulations on the Management of Network Product Security Vulnerabilities are not the sole avenue through which government agencies access vulnerabilities identified by private researchers. In 2023, cyber security analysts Dakota Cary and Kristin Del Rosso uncovered an alternative, more subtle process involving the China National Vulnerability Database, overseen by the Ministry of State Security. This framework operates on a voluntary basis, where private companies collaborate with said database to disclose vulnerabilities. These partnerships are divided into three tiers based on annual vulnerability submissions, with Tier 1 requiring the highest number of reports. Already in 2017, U.S. threat intelligence company Recorded Future demonstrated that vulnerabilities reported to the China National Vulnerability Database are assessed by the Ministry of State Security for their utility in intelligence operations. Currently, only 29 companies are classified as Tier 1, including Qihoo 360, Cyber Kunlun, Sangfor, Tencent, and Ant Group — companies known for hosting leading bug bounty contributors to Apple, Android (Google), and Microsoft.

China’s vulnerability pipeline provides its government agencies with a significant advantage over their Western counterparts. Discovering zero-days is a costly and time-consuming process. For governments to do this independently poses significant resource and logistical challenges. Alternatively, as argued by researcher Max Smeets, purchasing exploits from zero-day markets is expensive and fraught with information asymmetries between sellers and buyers, making it difficult to discern reliable products. By strategically positioning itself as the final recipient in the vulnerability disclosure processes of civilian researchers, the Chinese government effectively leverages some of the world’s top vulnerability researchers on a large scale and at no cost.

In some cases, Tier 1 companies’ engagement with Chinese government agencies extends well beyond vulnerability research. Qihoo 360 exemplifies such close ties, leading the Cyberspace Security Military-Civil Fusion Innovation Center, which may develop “cyber militia and teams.” Recent reports indicated that Qihoo 360 sold personal data from its antivirus customers to i-SOON, a government-contracted company, potentially enabling the tracking of individuals’ online activities. Cyber Kunlun, founded by Qihoo 360’s former chief technology officer, Wenbin Zheng, closely collaborates with Qihoo 360 and partners with Qi An Xin’s Pangu Lab on vulnerability mining. Qi An Xin, spun off from Qihoo 360 in 2019, has strong links with Chinese intelligence and military services and operates its own Cybersecurity Military-Civil Fusion Innovation Center.

Conclusion

The analysis of Apple, Android (Google), and Microsoft’s bug bounty data from 2017 to the end of 2023 has revealed a significant number of submissions by Chinese researchers. This examination highlights that a significant portion of Chinese contributions to these platforms originated from a small number of individuals within specialized research teams, where fluctuations in team performance often stem from individual transitions between companies. The vulnerabilities discovered in Western products by Chinese civilian researchers are likely shared with government agencies: Chinese law mandates that researchers report vulnerabilities, and the companies they are affiliated with are required to submit a specified minimum number of vulnerabilities annually to the Ministry of State Security-run China National Vulnerability Database to maintain their status.

This approach offers a distinct advantage over traditional zero-day acquisitions and has contributed to state-affiliated Chinese groups exploiting more zero-days than any other country. Nonetheless, despite its effectiveness, unanswered questions persist: Western vendors consistently receive extensive information on zero-day vulnerabilities, yet the Chinese system remains effective in exploiting U.S. products. This prompts inquiries: Are these unique individual zero-days or part of zero-day chains? Is it an issue with patching? Or does Chinese effectiveness stem from inadequate security practices among targeted victims?

Despite its efficacy, other countries, particularly democracies, should not be misled into viewing China’s as a favorable model, as it poses ethical dilemmas incompatible with core democratic values of trust and transparency. The European Union’s Cyber Resilience Act has sparked controversy in this regard. Under Article 11, software publishers would be required to promptly report any unresolved security vulnerabilities to the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity within 24 hours of discovery. Senior figures from over 50 organizations, including Google, Trend Micro, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have voiced concerns in an open letter that with this procedure “dozens of government agencies would have access to a real-time database of software with unmitigated vulnerabilities, without the ability to leverage them to protect the online environment.” Leading experts in bug bounty programs, such as Katie Moussouris, caution against implementing comparable approaches. She has expressed concerns that such practices “could erode the cybersecurity of the entire Internet.” Crucially, they risk alienating the talented vulnerability researchers on which the entire cyber security ecosystem rests.

Become a Member

Eugenio Benincasa is a senior cyber defense researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich. Prior to joining the center, he worked as a threat analyst at the Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers in Rome, as a research fellow at the think tank Pacific Forum in Honolulu, and as a crime analyst at the New York City Police Department.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Eugenio Benincasa · September 3, 2024

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com