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Quotes of the Day:
"...But the educated citizen knows how much more there is to know. He knows that "knowledge is power," more so today than ever before. He knows that only an educated and informed people will be a free people, that the ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all, and that if we can, as Jefferson put it, "enlighten the people generally ... tyranny and the oppressions of mind and body will vanish, like evil spirits at the dawn of day." And, therefore, the educated citizen has a special obligation to encourage the pursuit of learning, to promote exploration of the unknown, to preserve the freedom of inquiry, to support the advancement of research, and to assist at every level of government the improvement of education for all Americans, from grade school to graduate school..."
President John F. Kennedy, 1963 at Vanderbilt University
"The struggle for freedom is not about gaining power over others, but about creating a society of mutual respect and equality.
– Emma Goldman
"People who can't communicate think everything is an argument. People who lack accountability think everything is an attack."
– John Miller (also attributed to Shannon L. Alder)
1. NYT Article About the SEAL Team 6 Mission to North Korea (Background from the author)
2. Ukraine proves America’s secret weapon works — now we must double down on it
3. Ukraine Hits Russian Fuel and Military Infrastructure in Coordinated Overnight Assault
4. Blackwater founder and Maga disciple Erik Prince pitching services in Ukraine
5. Ukrainian Missile Fuel, Made in Denmark
6. For Americans in Ukraine, Opportunity and the Lure of Combat
7. Will AI Choke Off the Supply of Knowledge?
8. China targeting Musk’s Starlink with low-orbit satellite drive
9. The paradox behind China's military parade
10. ‘War Department’ Is a Good Start
11. The Deportation Economy Hits Georgia
12. China-Mongolia-Russia Agreement on Power of Siberia 2 Could Reroute Energy Trade
13. Think tank report exposes U.S. mind colonization
14. Transformation in Context: Transformation in Contact and the Aspects of Military Innovation
15. The Dragon’s Gallipoli and the Hong Kong Lesson
16. Balancing China In The West Philippine Sea: Does The Philippines Need A Gray Zone Deterrence Strategy? – Analysis
17. China Shows Unity With Russia and North Korea, but Divisions Linger
18. Is the U.K. a Canary in the Coal Mine for a Heavily Indebted World?
19. Russia’s New Fear Factor: How the War Is Driving a Wave of Purges and Suicides Among the Country’s Elites
20. Denial Won’t Do: Europe Needs a Punishment-Based Conventional Counterstrike Strategy
21. The limits of Xi and Putin’s ‘no-limits’ partnership
22. As Dictators’ Meet in Beijing We See Why Democracies Must Stop Appeasing Tyrants
23. The Forgotten Inventor of the Modern Right
1. NYT Article About the SEAL Team 6 Mission to North Korea (Background from the author)
NYT Article About the SEAL Team 6 Mission to North Korea
Sometimes, If you can't beat 'em...
https://matthewcole.substack.com/p/nyt-article-about-the-seal-team-6
Matthew Cole
Sep 05, 2025
∙ Paid
Today, I published a story with the New York Times about a previously secret mission to North Korea conducted by SEAL Team 6 in 2019.
(I am providing a gift link to the article here so that my readers can access it for free)
I want to briefly explain to my subscribers why the story appeared in the New York Times instead of Substack.
I learned about the mission to North Korea in 2023 from a trusted and vetted source. The circumstances of the disclosure—one of the most highly classified military missions in a generation—required that I do what is nearly impossible for me: sit on it. To protect my source, I needed to pretend I had never heard the story and wait months before I started making other calls.
Why?
Contacting other potential sources who knew about the mission—an extremely limited group of people—could expose the source who provided the tip. Perhaps because I have experienced the consequences of moving too aggressively on a story that deserves public disclosure, I erred on the side of discretion and patience.
I waited 8 months.
In mid-2024, I began making calls about the operation. Within a few weeks, I had enough confirmation to know that the story I'd first been told was accurate, or accurate enough to consider what to do with it.
By early 2025, I'd gotten far enough along in the reporting to know that SEAL Team 6 had teamed up with SDV-1 to enter North Korean waters to plant a listening device. I knew the mission went awry, that the SEALs killed at least one North Korean civilian and fled. Even for a reporter who has written a book about the secrets of SEAL Team 6, this was a remarkable scoop.
But I had two semi-related problems. First, this was potentially a massive international story—the U.S. military had violated the sovereignty of a nuclear-armed adversary with whom it had no diplomatic relations—and the risks surrounding disclosure were high.
Second, I didn't actually have the story yet. While I knew the mission occurred and that it failed, I really had no other information needed to publish. The original tip came as a way of explaining how the SEALs involved in the mission had avoided any accountability because of how secret the mission was. There had been multiple investigations into the operation, but because it was so classified, few knew the mission occurred, let alone that North Koreans had been killed. I had no firm date, location, or tangible details I could publish. Details such as: How did they get to North Korea? How many SEALs were on the mission? How many North Koreans were killed? Who were they?
I could land the story alone, but it might take another year, perhaps two. And while I had no doubts I could sell the story at that point, it seemed too urgent to wait.
And so I did what any sane reporter would do: I asked for help. I called a friend at the New York Times, a great colleague and peer who will remain unnamed, and asked if they wanted to work with me on the story. They said they couldn't, but that I should work with David Philipps. It was my great fortune that Philipps agreed.
Philipps is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who has covered the Navy SEALs and the U.S. military for the Times for over a decade. He agreed to make some calls and see if he could independently confirm the mission. I was unsurprised, but pleased, when he called me back a few days later to say he had. He brought the story, with me attached as an equal reporting partner to his editor, who agreed. We were off.
Philipps is a diligent, intelligent, and careful reporter with a disarming demeanor. He always treated me as an equal, and I can disclose here that he is an excellent human being. We worked together closely, and the story would not have been possible without his involvement.
A reporter can have a long career and never be involved in a scoop as significant as this one. I have been fortunate to have a few. From those previous stories, I learned that having editors, lawyers, and an institution with high professional integrity only makes journalism better.
The purpose of a story like this is public disclosure, not subscriptions. At its best, journalism is a values-based endeavor that serves the public and American democracy. These are trying times for the latter; in those times, more public information about how the government operates in secrecy should be part of the public's recourse, however modest.
2. Ukraine proves America’s secret weapon works — now we must double down on it
Hmmm... John Boyd is sitting up in his grave and not rolling over.
Excerpts:
Ukrainian commanders, he notes, have spun up alternative structures to pull resources from the traditional military to innovate rapidly. Meanwhile, Russia’s monolithic Air Force and Navy fumble with technologies that should be in their wheelhouse, like unmanned aerial vehicles and naval drones. The result? Ukraine’s loose system fosters flexibility, while Russia’s top-down control stifles it.
The blogger doesn't name it, but he's describing the essence of Col. John Boyd’s OODA Loop theory — Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. This cycle, in which speed in processing information and adapting trumps sheer firepower, has been America’s edge in warfare for decades.
...
The implications for modern warfare are profound, especially as drones and AI supercharge the battlefield. These technologies compress the OODA Loop to seconds, demanding not just superior hardware, but cultures that empower independent command.
...
Yet even the West isn’t immune to pitfalls. The communications revolution — satellites, real-time video feeds — has enabled the White House to micromanage commanders, slowing our loop. We saw this in Afghanistan and Iraq, where political second-guessing eroded battlefield agility. President Donald Trump is remedying this by slashing the bloated National Security Council staff, devolving power back to the field. It’s a smart move, restoring the decentralized ethos Boyd championed. Lawyers — both military and civilian — are a problem as well. Victory doesn’t emerge from a legal brief and the pace of deliberative law is ill-suited to the battlefield.
...
Drones and AI aren’t just tools — they’re force multipliers for the side that cycles fastest. Ukraine’s success against a larger foe proves it. Against China, we’ll need more than cash, ammunition and spare parts — we’ll need Boyd’s spirit. We must cut the red tape that hampers innovation.
The OODA Loop remains America and the West’s secret weapon. As Boyd warned, victory goes to the agile, not the arrogant. In an era of hypersonic threats and autonomous swarms, let’s ensure we’re the ones inside the enemy’s loop — before they get inside ours.
Ukraine proves America’s secret weapon works — now we must double down on it
The OODA Loop has been a key advantage for Ukraine
By Chuck DeVore Fox News
Published September 7, 2025 8:00am EDT
flip.it · Chuck DeVore Fox News
Video
Walking away from the Russia-Ukraine war would be a failure on President Trump's record, says Brit Hume
Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume explains why President Donald Trump should not remove himself from the peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine and more on 'Special Report.'
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, many experts predicted Kyiv’s quick fall. When Ukraine pushed back overextended Russian forces, the same experts confidently said that Russia’s mass — a population almost four times larger than Ukraine — would certainly grind Ukraine down. Triumph for Putin was inevitable. But, an odd thing happened on the way to Russia’s victory parade: Ukraine is outfighting Russia.
Why is that? A big factor comes out of the grinding trenches of Ukraine, where a Russian war blogger known as "Atomic Cherry" recently laid bare a stark truth about Moscow’s persistent military woes. As translated and analyzed by an OSINT enthusiast, the blogger laments how Ukraine’s forces have outmaneuvered Russia’s rigid, Soviet-style bureaucracy in the drone war.
Ukrainian commanders, he notes, have spun up alternative structures to pull resources from the traditional military to innovate rapidly. Meanwhile, Russia’s monolithic Air Force and Navy fumble with technologies that should be in their wheelhouse, like unmanned aerial vehicles and naval drones. The result? Ukraine’s loose system fosters flexibility, while Russia’s top-down control stifles it.
AFTER UKRAINE’S SURPRISE DRONE ASSAULT ON RUSSIA, NEW ATTENTION DRAWN TO SENSITIVE SITES STATESIDE
The blogger doesn't name it, but he's describing the essence of Col. John Boyd’s OODA Loop theory — Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. This cycle, in which speed in processing information and adapting trumps sheer firepower, has been America’s edge in warfare for decades.
Video
I know this firsthand. In 1987, as a 24-year-old Reagan appointee in the Pentagon, I received the full Boyd briefing, alongside two or three other men in a brownstone two blocks east of Union Station in Washington, D.C. Boyd, the maverick fighter pilot turned strategist, hammered home how out-cycling the enemy — getting inside their decision loop — wins battles. His ideas reshaped U.S. military doctrine, from the Gulf War to today.
In Ukraine, this plays out vividly. Russian forces can observe emerging threats, but they then orient slowly, bogged down by layers of approval. Ukrainians, however, decide and act swiftly, often outsourcing innovations to special ops or civilian-military hybrids. This adaptability has turned the tide in key domains — from the sea to the air. Ukrainian drone boats have humbled Russia’s Black Sea Fleet while long-range drones execute devastating deep strikes on Russian refineries and warehouses.
The implications for modern warfare are profound, especially as drones and AI supercharge the battlefield. These technologies compress the OODA Loop to seconds, demanding not just superior hardware, but cultures that empower independent command.
Here, Malcolm Gladwell’s insights in "Outliers" and "The Tipping Point" are instructive. Gladwell explores how cultural legacies shape behavior — high-power-distance societies like Russia or China prioritize hierarchy, discouraging junior officers from improvising. In contrast, low-power-distance Western cultures, rooted in individualism, encourage initiative. America’s all-volunteer force thrives on this, training NCOs and officers to seize opportunities without waiting for orders from afar.
Yet even the West isn’t immune to pitfalls. The communications revolution — satellites, real-time video feeds — has enabled the White House to micromanage commanders, slowing our loop. We saw this in Afghanistan and Iraq, where political second-guessing eroded battlefield agility. President Donald Trump is remedying this by slashing the bloated National Security Council staff, devolving power back to the field. It’s a smart move, restoring the decentralized ethos Boyd championed. Lawyers — both military and civilian — are a problem as well. Victory doesn’t emerge from a legal brief and the pace of deliberative law is ill-suited to the battlefield.
Video
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION
Now, pivot to the big threat: China. Beijing's People’s Liberation Army mirrors Russia’s rigidity, with Communist Party oversight ensuring loyalty over innovation. But don’t underestimate them. China leads in drone swarms and AI-driven warfare, pouring billions into hypersonics and unmanned systems. In a Taiwan scenario, their massed forces could overwhelm regional defenses. The U.S. must double down on OODA superiority. We must invest in AI that augments human decision-making, not replaces it; increase the pace of exercises emphasizing rapid adaptation and culturally reinforce independent thinking in our ranks.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Drones and AI aren’t just tools — they’re force multipliers for the side that cycles fastest. Ukraine’s success against a larger foe proves it. Against China, we’ll need more than cash, ammunition and spare parts — we’ll need Boyd’s spirit. We must cut the red tape that hampers innovation.
The OODA Loop remains America and the West’s secret weapon. As Boyd warned, victory goes to the agile, not the arrogant. In an era of hypersonic threats and autonomous swarms, let’s ensure we’re the ones inside the enemy’s loop — before they get inside ours.
Chuck DeVore is a vice president with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, was elected to the California legislature, is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, and the author of the new book, "Crisis of the House Never United."
flip.it · Chuck DeVore Fox News
3. Ukraine Hits Russian Fuel and Military Infrastructure in Coordinated Overnight Assault
Keep up the fire, Ukraine.
Ukraine Hits Russian Fuel and Military Infrastructure in Coordinated Overnight Assault
Ukraine carried out a major overnight assault on Russian fuel and military infrastructure, targeting the Ilsky oil refinery, the Druzhba pipeline, and Russian military depots in the Kursk Oblast.
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/59609?utm
by Alisa Orlova | Sept. 7, 2025, 11:04 am
The Ilski refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai set ablaze following Ukraine’s drone strike. Photo: ASTRA Telegram channel.
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Ukrainian forces carried out a coordinated series of overnight strikes on Russian fuel infrastructure and military sites, targeting key logistics points used to supply Moscow’s troops, the AFU General Staff reported Sunday, Sept. 7.
Missile, artillery, and drone units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, working alongside other components of the Defense Forces, struck the Ilsky oil refinery in Krasnodar Krai.
Drone debris hit one of the refinery’s processing units, triggering a fire that was quickly extinguished by emergency teams.
The Ilsky refinery is one of the largest in Russia’s Southern Federal District, processing crude oil and transporting finished products by rail and road.
Ukrainian drones also attacked the Druzhba oil pipeline at the “8-N” linear-production dispatch station in Naitopovychi, Bryansk Oblast. The station is part of a key route transporting petroleum products from Belarus, including from the Mozyr and Novopolotsk refineries, into Russia.
Its annual capacity is about 10.5 million tons of fuel. The strike was carried out jointly by Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces and Missile and Artillery Forces, according to Robert Brovdi, commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces.
Ukraine has repeatedly targeted Russia’s Druzhba oil pipeline, which carries crude to Slovakia and Hungary. The EU banned most Russian oil imports in 2022 but exempted Druzhba to give landlocked Central European states time to diversify
In addition to fuel targets, Ukrainian forces struck Russian military personnel locations and supply depots in the Kursk region. The General Staff said the attacks aim to “degrade the offensive potential of Russian troops” and disrupt fuel and ammunition supplies.
“The Defense Forces continue measures to weaken Russia’s offensive capabilities and compel the Russian Federation to end its armed aggression against Ukraine,” the report said.
The attack came the same night as Russia unleashed its biggest-ever aerial assault on Ukraine, killing four people and igniting a fire at the seat of the Ukrainian government in Kyiv. President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strike would only prolong the war.
The attack marked the first time Russia had targeted Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers, a vast government complex in central Kyiv. A Kyiv Post reporter, residing in the city center, saw flames tearing through the roof as thick smoke rose over the capital.
Emergency services said drone strikes also damaged several high-rise buildings across Kyiv.
Moscow, now in the fourth year of its full-scale invasion, has shown no sign of easing its assault. The Kremlin continues to press hardline conditions for ending the war, even as the United States pushes for a negotiated peace.
Alisa Orlova
Alisa is the Head of News and a correspondent at Kyiv Post, where she leads the newsroom’s coverage of breaking events and global developments. With over seven years of experience in TV journalism, Alisa has reported on international and Ukrainian politics, making complex stories easier to understand. Back in September 2022, Alisa joined the Kyiv Post team.
4. Blackwater founder and Maga disciple Erik Prince pitching services in Ukraine
Excerpts:
Indeed, Prince has long seen Ukraine, which recently signed a rare-earth minerals deal with the Trump administration, as a potential cash cow: In 2020 he pitched a multibillion-dollar plan to Zelenskyy, then then newly elected president, to help settle what was a frozen war in the eastern Donbas region, using his private army. The deal never materialized.
“Prince went to the wrong network. He backed, like, outgoing corrupt [leaders], so he burned his first pitch,” said an executive at a multinational drone company, about Prince’s first foray into Ukraine after the election of Zelenskyy. “Prince has a bad reputation generally in the industry. No clean person will hire him.”
The same person said Prince’s work founding a Chinese mercenary company, which hired ex-members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, soiled his reputation and made him an intelligence liability that is “universally untouchable by most people”.
A separate cache of business documents and proposals shared with the Guardian shows how the Pentagon and its special forces sections are interested in partnerships with US drone manufacturers that have a presence in Ukraine, all with the aim of understanding how the next major conflict will be fought and what their soldiers will need.
In a splashy announcement in July on the grounds of the Pentagon, the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, announced he was “Unleashing US Military Drone Dominance” in a memorandum calling for the mass production and adoption of all unmanned aerial vehicle platforms.
Blackwater founder and Maga disciple Erik Prince pitching services in Ukraine
Sources say Prince, whose firm’s contractors committed 2007 Iraq massacre, eager to get into valuable drone sector
The Guardian · Ben Makuch · September 7, 2025
Amid reports that Donald Trump’s administration is considering using US private military contractors in a postwar Ukraine, multiple sources tell the Guardian one high-profile and controversial American from the “war on terror” era is already circling for business.
In the streets of Kyiv, military hawks and defense privateers have described how Erik Prince, Maga disciple and founder of the now-defunct mercenary company Blackwater, has been aggressively pitching his services and looking to buy.
According to those same sources who spoke on background and on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive defense matters, Prince was pitching himself to the valuable Ukrainian drone sector and seeking meetings with leading industry players.
“Erik is going out there to buy drone companies,” said one of the sources, with another confirming Prince was in the hunt to acquire drone makers with a footprint in Ukraine.
“Whether they would sell them …” the source said. “For the Ukrainians these companies are now strategic assets.”
Prince’s latest gambit in Ukraine coincided with Trump’s attempts at brokering a peace deal between the Kremlin and the Ukrainian government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in August, which has yet to yield any diplomatic breakthroughs.
Since drones became the main killing tool of the conflict, accounting for an estimated 80% of Russian casualties, western investors and defense companies have flocked to get in on Ukraine’s coveted battlefield data and emergent drone technologies for their own wares.
Now Prince allegedly wants to do the same, which experts say is an unsurprising development for an opportunistic defense contractor who is cozy with the Trump administration and has a history of profit-seeking from foreign wars.
“I’m not surprised at all,” said a former American special forces soldier with experience in Ukraine and knowledge of the defense companies operating there. “Drones are now an integral part of the PMC [private military contractor] world. If you’re a PMC and you don’t have a drone or possibly an electronic warfare capability, you are antiquated.”
The days of “former gunslingers” as private military contractors “are over”, he said, referring to when Blackwater was at its height during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Back then, millions of dollars in contracts were doled out to Prince for the hiring of his cadres of former infantrymen and commandos as guards and operators for the CIA, state department and Pentagon. But a 2007 massacre in Baghdad at the hands of some of his contractors led to prison sentences, congressional inquiries and blacklistings of the firm.
Prince’s interest in Ukraine comes after he served as an adviser for a controversial drone assassination program in Haiti this year and also reportedly sending hundreds of fighters to the embattled country – home to western mining interest – under the banner of his new venture, Vectus Global.
Similarly, making what would be an unsuccessful sales pitch in another vulnerable country with natural resources wealth in 2018, Prince proposed financing a mercenary force to take over the war in Afghanistan by using local mining projects.
“He’s doing it in Haiti, so why not?” said Morgan Lerrette, a former Blackwater contractor in Iraq who later went on to become an author and critic of the wider private military contracting industry. “From a strategic look, [Prince] is going places where there are minerals and the US wants to create joint sovereign wealth funds.
“Ukraine fits that,” said Lerette.
Indeed, Prince has long seen Ukraine, which recently signed a rare-earth minerals deal with the Trump administration, as a potential cash cow: In 2020 he pitched a multibillion-dollar plan to Zelenskyy, then then newly elected president, to help settle what was a frozen war in the eastern Donbas region, using his private army. The deal never materialized.
“Prince went to the wrong network. He backed, like, outgoing corrupt [leaders], so he burned his first pitch,” said an executive at a multinational drone company, about Prince’s first foray into Ukraine after the election of Zelenskyy. “Prince has a bad reputation generally in the industry. No clean person will hire him.”
The same person said Prince’s work founding a Chinese mercenary company, which hired ex-members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, soiled his reputation and made him an intelligence liability that is “universally untouchable by most people”.
A separate cache of business documents and proposals shared with the Guardian shows how the Pentagon and its special forces sections are interested in partnerships with US drone manufacturers that have a presence in Ukraine, all with the aim of understanding how the next major conflict will be fought and what their soldiers will need.
In a splashy announcement in July on the grounds of the Pentagon, the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, announced he was “Unleashing US Military Drone Dominance” in a memorandum calling for the mass production and adoption of all unmanned aerial vehicle platforms.
“Drones are the biggest battlefield innovation in a generation, accounting for most of this year’s casualties in Ukraine,” he said. “Emergent technologies require new funding lines.”
Hegseth made clear the Pentagon would need corporate partners for the accelerated program and, so far, there is no shortage of takers. All future and current wars, with the nearly four-year full-scale invasion of Ukraine being no exception, attracts business interests and its requisite leaders.
The former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt openly touted that the war in Ukraine had turned him into an arms dealer, founding his venture White Stork, which is producing drones. Gen David Petraeus, the former director of the CIA and a chief warfighter for the Pentagon in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, has an eye on Ukraine and has advised the burgeoning American drone and security contractor Vector.
Prince, through Vectus Global and his encrypted cellphone company, Unplugged, did not reply to multiple requests for comment.
The Guardian · Ben Makuch · September 7, 2025
5. Ukrainian Missile Fuel, Made in Denmark
Win-win? Seems like a smart move for Ukraine and Europe.
Excerpt:
Ukrainian defense companies also can make some weapons more cheaply than their counterparts in the West, meaning more literal bang for the buck. They work closely with the soldiers at the front to ensure that they don’t fall behind Russia in the technological arms race.
Mr. Putin has mainly enjoyed a sanctuary at home since he invaded in 2022, because the U.S. and Europe have been reluctant to let Ukraine use Western weapons to hit Russian territory. The development of the Flamingo and other domestic arms could change that, and offering Ukraine a haven to make components is a move to even the balance.
What’s in it for Europe? Deterring Mr. Putin, for one. But Europe is also playing catch-up to rebuild the military capacity that it let atrophy after the Cold War. Denmark is getting a chance to learn from Ukrainian innovators, especially if the Fire Point outpost is followed by drone makers and others, and maybe the site will turn into a defense manufacturing hub. That’s a partnership worth replicating elsewhere.
Ukrainian Missile Fuel, Made in Denmark
Letting Kyiv’s defense firms set up shop helps both them and Europe.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ukraine-denmark-fire-point-missiles-russia-abc6a273
By The Editorial Board
Follow
Sept. 7, 2025 4:33 pm ET
Workers inspect Flamingo cruise missiles at Fire Point's secret factory in Ukraine, Aug. 18. Photo: Efrem Lukatsky/Associated Press
Ukraine’s domestic military suppliers are under bombardment, while Russia’s mostly are free of attack, and that gives an advantage to Vladimir Putin’s industrial base. So note the announcement last week that a Ukrainian defense company is setting up shop in Denmark to produce rocket propellants for its new long-range missiles.
Copenhagen set aside some $78 million this year to help Ukrainian weapons firms establish facilities there, and give it credit for initiative. The inaugural project involves Fire Point, a Ukrainian company that said last month it had developed a new cruise missile, the Flamingo, that can go more than 1,800 miles with a 2,500-pound warhead. Ukraine reportedly used them recently to hit a Russian base in Crimea.
Beginning in December Fire Point plans to make solid rocket propellants near Denmark’s Skrydstrup Air Base, outside the southern town of Vojens, and that’s one way to keep the missiles coming. Ukraine’s defense industry is a priority target for Russia, and not all its domestic manufacturing can be done in relative safety in underground facilities. Some processes are energy-intensive, and Russia is always trying to knock out Ukraine’s infrastructure.
Ukrainian defense companies also can make some weapons more cheaply than their counterparts in the West, meaning more literal bang for the buck. They work closely with the soldiers at the front to ensure that they don’t fall behind Russia in the technological arms race.
Mr. Putin has mainly enjoyed a sanctuary at home since he invaded in 2022, because the U.S. and Europe have been reluctant to let Ukraine use Western weapons to hit Russian territory. The development of the Flamingo and other domestic arms could change that, and offering Ukraine a haven to make components is a move to even the balance.
What’s in it for Europe? Deterring Mr. Putin, for one. But Europe is also playing catch-up to rebuild the military capacity that it let atrophy after the Cold War. Denmark is getting a chance to learn from Ukrainian innovators, especially if the Fire Point outpost is followed by drone makers and others, and maybe the site will turn into a defense manufacturing hub. That’s a partnership worth replicating elsewhere.
WSJ Opinion: Russia-Ukraine War Drags on After White House Meetings
Play video: WSJ Opinion: Russia-Ukraine War Drags on After White House Meetings
Journal Editorial Report: Hopes of bringing Zelenskyy and Putin together appear to be fading.
6. For Americans in Ukraine, Opportunity and the Lure of Combat
Excerpts:
The flow of American volunteers like Private Miller serving in the Ukrainian military dwindled but never stopped after the initial wave that followed the Russian invasion in 2022. Independent estimates of the number of Americans volunteering since 2022 have varied widely, from more than 1,000 to several thousand. The Ukrainian military does not release figures.
But over time, the makeup of American volunteers has shifted, with higher proportions of people who have no military background, are older or are U.S. veterans seeking to restart military careers closed off to them at home because of age or injuries.
For Americans in Ukraine, Opportunity and the Lure of Combat
The profile of U.S. volunteers in the Ukrainian military has changed, shifting more toward people without military experience and those who saw few prospects for themselves at home.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/world/europe/ukraine-american-volunteers.html
By Andrew E. KramerVisuals by David Guttenfelder
Andrew E. Kramer and David Guttenfelder reported from the Kharkiv region of Ukraine. Both have covered the war in Ukraine for more than three years.
- Sept. 7, 2025
- Updated 11:53 a.m. ET
In the open bed of a pickup truck, half a dozen soldiers were bouncing along a country road in eastern Ukraine when one of them yelled, “Drone!” They all opened fire with their rifles, yet hitting the tiny, swerving speck carrying death was all but impossible.
Buzzing in fast, within seconds it was only about a yard away. In that moment, captured on a helmet camera on a crystalline spring day, the soldiers seemed doomed. In a desperate act of self-defense, one of them, an American, Pvt. Zachary Miller, hurled his empty rifle at the drone — and missed, he said in an interview.
They may never know why, but at the last moment, it veered away, sparing them. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” the soldiers shouted, in English, in the video, which was later posted online by the Ukraine military.
The flow of American volunteers like Private Miller serving in the Ukrainian military dwindled but never stopped after the initial wave that followed the Russian invasion in 2022. Independent estimates of the number of Americans volunteering since 2022 have varied widely, from more than 1,000 to several thousand. The Ukrainian military does not release figures.
But over time, the makeup of American volunteers has shifted, with higher proportions of people who have no military background, are older or are U.S. veterans seeking to restart military careers closed off to them at home because of age or injuries.
Interviews with American enlistees, aid workers who help them and their Ukrainian commanders reveal an array of motivations. Some come looking for purpose and possibilities they found lacking in dead-end jobs back home. Outrage at Russian aggression remains high on the list of reasons, while some soldiers are looking for a way to leave behind troubled lives. Still others want second chances at military careers and to test themselves in combat.
Image
U.S. and other foreign volunteer soldiers in a live-fire exercise in July. It is unclear how many Americans have signed up to fight. Ukraine’s military does not release this figure, and independent estimates vary widely.
Image
Training at a firing range. American volunteers for the war in Ukraine vary in age, previous military experience and motivations for joining.
Several said they intended to remain in Ukraine after having helped defend the country, expecting to find opportunities unavailable in the United States.
Whatever their reasons, enlistment in Ukraine has transformed this from a far-off conflict to a searing, defining experience for American volunteers. Many have experienced close calls as Private Miller did, grievous wounds, the deaths of comrades and drawn-out deployments in trenches and the ruins of cities.
Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.
For Private Miller, 38, Ukraine offered an opportunity to resume a military career that he said was cut short more than a decade ago by injuries from a roadside explosion in Iraq and a motorcycle accident that led to his discharge from the U.S. Army. “I never wanted to get out,” he said. “It’s the only thing I ever wanted to do.”
He arrived in February, leaving a job as a concrete contractor just as the Trump administration pivoted U.S. policy away from aiding Ukraine.
Another American soldier, still moving stiffly from wounds, settled his lanky frame into a booth at a coffee shop in eastern Ukraine. His disheveled, strawberry blond hair and scruffy beard partly covered scars and a jaw that seemed slightly off center, mementos of Russian shrapnel.
Weeks of lonely recovery in a Ukrainian hospital followed his injury, being cared for by doctors and nurses who spoke little English.
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The injured soldier asked that his name not be published to comply with security rules of the unit he is serving with. He uses the call sign Alabama, for his home state, where he worked as a welder before enlisting in late 2023. He has fought in urban and trench combat, and said he had served alongside American men and women who were mostly from small towns and saw little opportunity there, and with U.S. military veterans who regretted missing a chance to see combat in Iraq or Afghanistan.
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The scene in a forest in the Kharkiv region during training exercises for foreign volunteer fighters.CreditCredit...
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An American who goes by the call sign Alabama in the Kharkiv region in July.
He was motivated, he said, by a chance to fight for a just cause, and also by the Ukrainian government’s promise of four acres of free land to anyone, Ukrainian or foreign, who serves in the military and survives the war.
Ukraine does not have as many potential soldiers as Russia and has struggled with recruitment, so it welcomes foreign volunteers. They serve in regular army units or one of two international legions. The pay is the same as for Ukrainian soldiers, about $1,000 per month in base salary and combat bonuses that can add about $3,000 per month.
“Some people come to Ukraine with a motive to fight for freedom, for what is right,” said Senior Lt. Mykola Lavrenyuk, the Ukrainian commander of a platoon of international soldiers that includes Americans. “Others want to make money or are running from the law.”
He has seen some U.S. citizens turn up with poor dental care, including missing teeth, and with drug and legal problems. One American soldier, he said, was wanted at home for smuggling drugs over the Mexican border. Before this background was discovered and he was arrested, though, “he fought well,” Senior Lieutenant Lavrenyuk said.
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U.S. flags and portraits of fallen U.S. volunteer soldiers in a memorial in Kyiv in August.
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An exhibit on foreign combatants in the current war at the Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War.
U.S. veterans, he said, are prized because they are generally better trained than veterans of other countries’ militaries. “It’s awesome” to have them in the ranks, he said.
The Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War is displaying an exhibit on foreign combatants in the current war. A curator, Yurii Horpynych, said “several thousand” Americans were serving in the Ukrainian military. At least 92 Americans have been killed in combat in Ukraine, by the museum’s count.
The U.S. government, determined to avoid any suggestion of a direct clash of the nuclear-armed Russian and American militaries, provides almost no assistance to volunteer combatants. A U.S. nonprofit group, the R.T. Weatherman Foundation, helps Americans wounded while fighting in the Ukrainian army, returns remains of deceased soldiers to the United States and tracks cases of those missing in action.
Some American volunteers in Ukraine back out quickly after experiencing the front. “We have guys saying they really want combat,” Senior Lieutenant Lavrenyuk said. “They go to the combat zone and they say, ‘Sir, I want to go into logistics.’”
Video
A veteran of the U.S. Marines known as Mando working on a drone from a hideout in July near the frontline in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.CreditCredit...
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Mando and a fellow soldier flying a drone combat mission from an underground bunker.
Others find an opportunity to gain experience in modern drone warfare.
A 27-year-old veteran of the U.S. Marines who had been working as a mail carrier turned up in Ukraine in March, and by July was arming, launching and piloting exploding drones from a hide-out near the front. Going by the call sign Mando, he was working in mottled light filtered through a camouflage net, attaching batteries and explosives to drones to blow up Russian soldiers, bunkers or vehicles. He asked that his real name not be published because many people in his hometown oppose aiding Ukraine.
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Sgt. Glenna Manchego, 24, a paramedic from Tooele, Utah, treating a Ukrainian soldier in a frontline field hospital in the Kharkiv region in July.
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Sergeant Manchego assisting with the amputation of a Ukrainian soldier’s foot.
On a recent night, Junior Sgt. Glenna Manchego, 24, a paramedic from Tooele, Utah, and a U.S. Navy veteran, stood over a gurney in a field hospital, assisting with the amputation of a Ukrainian soldier’s foot. Back in United States, she said, “people forgot we are here.”
She volunteered in March 2022, motivated, she said, by news reports of Ukrainian cities being bombed and a knowledge that her medical skills could help, and has served continuously ever since. She was wounded in combat. She intends to remain in Ukraine after the war. Back home, she said, “if they think of Ukraine, it is only ‘When will it end?’ or ‘Have they given up yet?’”
She wears a patch with the words “Lost Generation” written in Ukrainian, a nod to the U.S. soldiers who remained in Europe after World War I. In Ukraine, she said, “I’ve sweated my sweat and shed my blood.”
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A U.S. volunteer walking on training grounds in July in Kharkiv.
Yurii Shyvala and Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting from Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Andrew E. Kramer is the Kyiv bureau chief for The Times, who has been covering the war in Ukraine since 2014.
David Guttenfelder is a Times visual journalist based in Minneapolis.
7. Will AI Choke Off the Supply of Knowledge?
Excerpts:
Internet search itself is at risk. Last year, District Court Judge Amit Mehta found Google, a unit of Alphabet, had an illegal monopoly in search. But the dramatic growth of AI prompted him to impose surprisingly light penalties last week. “For the first time in over a decade, there is a genuine prospect that a product could emerge that will present a meaningful challenge to Google’s market dominance,” Mehta wrote.
If LLM output comes to dominate the web, the web will become, well, dumber. Columbia’s Li said in an interview: “What happens when we train LLMs on other LLM outputs? The overall outcomes get worse. The models get worse. This is what they call model collapse.”
There is a parallel in what index funds and other passive strategies have done to the stock market. They don’t do research and price discovery (the process of negotiation that reveals an asset’s value). Instead, they free ride on the research and price discovery of active investors. In other words, they exploit market efficiency without contributing to it. In the process, they are squeezing out active investing, leaving a market increasingly dominated by algorithms trading against each other.
These are, I’ll admit, dystopian scenarios. I could tell a different story of how AI will help scholars discover connections between otherwise disparate bits of knowledge across the web. Joshua Gans, a University of Toronto economist who has written extensively on AI, thinks that so long as new knowledge has value, it will find a way to be created. He says when AI insights are incremental, humans will pivot to more truly novel research.
Will AI Choke Off the Supply of Knowledge?
More people turn to ChatGPT and other large language models for answers, but they don’t add to the stock of knowledge
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/will-ai-choke-off-the-supply-of-knowledge-8a71cbcd
By Greg Ip
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Sept. 7, 2025 5:30 am ET
Illustration: Rachel Mendelson/WSJ, iStock
In January, OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman and Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil hosted a demonstration of ChatGPT’s soon-to-be-released “deep research” application. A Beltway audience watched as Weil asked ChatGPT to prepare a memo briefing a fictional senator for the confirmation of Albert Einstein to be energy secretary.
ChatGPT soon produced a thorough profile of Einstein, listing his technical and engineering accomplishments, leadership style, strengths (“a globally respected scientist-statesman”) and weaknesses (“never managed a large organization”) plus questions the senator could ask (“You have been an outspoken voice on nuclear issues since WWII. As Energy Secretary, how will you ensure the safety of nuclear power plants and uphold U.S. commitments to nuclear nonproliferation?”).
The benefits of such impressive, and now routine, capabilities, were obvious: enormous savings of time and effort. Of course, there were potential costs: How many jobs could researchers, writers and other knowledge workers lose to artificial intelligence?
I wondered about a different cost: How much knowledge will be lost to AI? Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude excel at locating, synthesizing and connecting knowledge. They don’t add to the stock of knowledge.
By contrast, when humans answer questions, such as whether Einstein should be energy secretary, they often pursue novel avenues of inquiry, creating new knowledge and insight as they go. They do this for a variety of reasons: salary, wealth, fame, tenure, “likes,” clicks, curiosity.
If LLMs come to dominate the business of answering questions, those incentives shrivel. There is little reward to creating knowledge that then gets puréed in a large language blender.
Consider the fate of Stack Overflow, a website where software developers ask and answer questions, becoming both a wellspring and repository for knowledge.
But then developers started putting their questions to ChatGPT. Six months after its introduction in November 2022, the number of questions on Stack Overflow had fallen 25% relative to similar Chinese and Russian language sites where ChatGPT wasn’t an alternative, according to a study by Johannes Wachs of Corvinus University of Budapest and two co-authors.
The drop was the same regardless of quality, based on peer feedback, refuting predictions that AI would displace only low-value research.
As of this month, the number of questions is down more than 90%. Why should anyone other than Stack Overflow’s owners care? Because, as tech writer Nick Hodges explained in InfoWorld, “Stack Overflow provides much of the knowledge that is embedded in AI coding tools, but the more developers rely on AI coding tools the less likely they will participate in Stack Overflow, the site that produces that knowledge.”
Stack Overflow may be an extreme case. A different study found no similar decline on Reddit.
But there are signs of similar effects elsewhere. Many LLMs are trained on Wikipedia, a repository of knowledge compiled and curated by humans. Columbia University business professor Hannah Li and five co-authors found that between the year before and the year after ChatGPT’s launch, views fell for Wikipedia pages most similar to what ChatGPT could produce. Edits also dropped, a potential sign of less incentive to contribute, although the data were inconclusive.
Meanwhile, as Google has enabled users to answer queries through AI without clicking on links, web publishers large and small have seen referral traffic from search plummet.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai in May. Google AI is reducing search referral traffic to publishers’ websites. Photo: Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
Internet search itself is at risk. Last year, District Court Judge Amit Mehta found Google, a unit of Alphabet, had an illegal monopoly in search. But the dramatic growth of AI prompted him to impose surprisingly light penalties last week. “For the first time in over a decade, there is a genuine prospect that a product could emerge that will present a meaningful challenge to Google’s market dominance,” Mehta wrote.
If LLM output comes to dominate the web, the web will become, well, dumber. Columbia’s Li said in an interview: “What happens when we train LLMs on other LLM outputs? The overall outcomes get worse. The models get worse. This is what they call model collapse.”
There is a parallel in what index funds and other passive strategies have done to the stock market. They don’t do research and price discovery (the process of negotiation that reveals an asset’s value). Instead, they free ride on the research and price discovery of active investors. In other words, they exploit market efficiency without contributing to it. In the process, they are squeezing out active investing, leaving a market increasingly dominated by algorithms trading against each other.
These are, I’ll admit, dystopian scenarios. I could tell a different story of how AI will help scholars discover connections between otherwise disparate bits of knowledge across the web. Joshua Gans, a University of Toronto economist who has written extensively on AI, thinks that so long as new knowledge has value, it will find a way to be created. He says when AI insights are incremental, humans will pivot to more truly novel research.
Maybe. But instead of pivoting, what if humans lose interest in learning altogether? Reliance on AI can cause critical thinking to atrophy, just as reliance on GPS weakens spatial memory. A study by Nataliya Kosmyna at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and seven co-authors asked three groups of subjects to write essays, one using an LLM, one using internet search, and one just their brains. Scans later showed the LLM group had the least engagement across brain regions such as for memory recall and executive functioning; the brain-only group had the most.
Mental engagement, the authors argue, is enhanced by “novelty, encountering new or unexpected content.” That resonates. Dissatisfied with OpenAI’s demo, I searched the web for biographies and writings of Einstein.
I learned his father’s company made electrical equipment based on direct current, then went bust when alternating current triumphed; that he was outspoken in support for civil rights in the U.S. and against oppression of Jews in Germany, for which the Nazis put a price on his head; that during the McCarthyite fervor of the 1940s and 1950s he was called a foreign-born agitator spreading communism; that he wasn’t a communist but was a socialist. In a 1949 essay for a socialist journal, he answered a question I often ponder: how economics differs from the physical sciences, like astronomy: “economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately.”
I have no idea if any of that bore on his qualifications to be energy secretary. I could have spent the time on more productive work. But then, acquiring new knowledge has never felt like work.
Write to Greg Ip at greg.ip@wsj.com
8. China targeting Musk’s Starlink with low-orbit satellite drive
This seems to validate the importance of Starlink.
But note these costs.
Excerpts:
The 8A using YF-100 engines is emerging as a workhorse for China’s satellite rollout. As every mission remains single-use, China lags far behind SpaceX regarding cost and efficiency.
Launching satellites aboard a Falcon 9 costs roughly $2,700 to $3,000 per kilogram. If flown frequently, SpaceX projects that its next-generation Starship could push costs down to as little as $13 to $32 per kg. Such a dramatic reduction would extend SpaceX’s lead and raise the bar for would-be rivals.
Jiang Luye, chief technology officer at Xingsuo Technology, a maker of reusable liquid-fueled rockets, in an interview with Yicai.com described the launch of China’s low-orbit satellites as “very expensive.”
“In the aerospace supply chain, the launch is the most expensive procedure,” he said. “In some cases, the launch cost is more than the manufacturing cost of the satellite.”
Jiang added that the only way to bring those costs down is through the adoption of more efficient engines and reusable launch vehicles.
China targeting Musk’s Starlink with low-orbit satellite drive - Asia Times
China aggressively aiming at Starlink’s commercial satellite dominance but lack of reusable rockets is slowing the plan
asiatimes.com · Jeff Pao · September 4, 2025
China is pressing ahead with low-orbit satellite clusters as regulators lay out a framework to accelerate the technology’s commercialization.
The biggest hurdle facing Beijing’s ambitions remains the lack of reusable launch vehicles, a breakthrough that has enabled Elon Musk’s SpaceX to cut costs and expand Starlink at speed.
A new directive from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) underscores the government’s push to transform satellite communications from research into a scalable consumer service.
The guideline calls on telecom carriers to partner with satellite operators, co-build infrastructure and offer high-speed broadband for underserved areas on land, at sea and in the air. It prioritizes direct-to-device connectivity, envisioning mobile phones and other terminals linking seamlessly to satellites.
It also encourages commercial trials in satellite-based Internet of Things (IoT), with applications in shipping, aviation and disaster response.
“China will accelerate the construction and application of satellite internet systems to achieve high-quality development,” the MIIT said. “Commercial trials for low-orbit communications will be carried out at the right time to drive upstream and downstream innovation, to provide high-speed connectivity worldwide and expand diverse application scenarios.”
“Private enterprises are encouraged to lawfully use satellite resources through leasing, value-added services, and distribution partnerships,” the guideline added. “Such cooperation will activate existing assets, broaden service offerings and help build a more vibrant satellite communications market.”
The document also said China will integrate satellite communications with emerging technologies such as 5G, 6G and artificial intelligence (AI), accelerating advances in non-terrestrial networks.
China targets to have more than 10 million satellite communication users by 2030, placing the technology alongside fiber optics and 5G as strategic infrastructure.
Race for the skies
SpaceX has set the global benchmark in satellite broadband, rapidly building out the world’s largest low-Earth orbit (LEO) constellation. The company expects to complete the deployment of roughly 42,000 satellites by mid-2027. As of Monday (September 1), it had launched 6,640 Starlink satellites, with 5,378 still operating in orbit after accounting for natural attrition.
SpaceX’s mastery of reusable rockets is driving this rapid expansion. In October 2024, the firm successfully used a pair of mechanical “chopsticks” on its launch tower to catch a returning Super Heavy booster, a milestone that dramatically cut launch costs. The company now routinely reuses Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy vehicles, allowing it to launch dozens of Starlink batches each year with unmatched efficiency.
Yet low-Earth orbit can hold only about 60,000 to 100,000 satellites, making capacity a scarce resource. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) assigns orbital slots and frequency bands on a first-come, first-served basis, intensifying competition among nations.
China’s most ambitious project to date is the Qianfan, also known as Spacesail. It is operated by Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST) and manufactured by Shanghai Weixiao Satellite Engineering Center, a Chinese Academy of Sciences subsidiary. Qianfan targets regional coverage with 648 satellites by the end of 2025, global coverage with 1,296 in 2027 and a complete build-out of about 15,000 by 2030.
Roughly 90 satellites have already been launched, and the operator is in talks with more than 30 countries to secure international partnerships.
The second main initiative is the GuoWang, or “National Networks” project, led by Hebei-based state-owned China Satellite Network Group. GuoWang aims to launch 13,000 satellites to LEO, with a near-term target of 400 in orbit by 2027. As of mid-2025, the program had reportedly 72 operational satellites in orbit.
A third contender is Shanghai Lanjian Hongqing Technology, in which private rocket maker LandSpace holds a 48% stake. Its Honghu-3 plan envisions phased launches, starting with 1,296 satellites for regional coverage by 2027 before scaling to more than 15,000 by 2030. The company has not yet launched satellites into orbit.
Whether these projects can overcome the absence of reusable rockets remains the defining question as China seeks to close the gap with Starlink.
Some observers said Starlink’s aggressive deployment has already secured it a dominant position in the low-Earth orbit satellite market. They said Starlink, which offers broadband services across over 100 countries, is expanding so quickly that it has become the world’s default provider.
By contrast, Chinese firms have only secured partnerships in Brazil in November 2024 and Malaysia in February 2025. Beyond these limited agreements, their international footprint remains negligible.
According to Zhongjin Qixin International Consulting, the US holds a decisive first-mover advantage, with Starlink already operating thousands of satellites while Chinese systems are still in early phases.
The consultancy firm said China faces the burden of high launch costs. It said, without mature rideshare capabilities or reliable rocket reusability, deploying thousands of satellites risks becoming prohibitively expensive.
Struggling with reusability
Slow progress on reusable rockets remains the biggest obstacle for China’s rivalry with Starlink. Plans for a recoverable version of the Long March 8 have been delayed for what state media called “certain reasons.”
For now, Beijing is leaning on the Long March 8A, which is non-reusable. On August 25, the rocket lifted off from Hainan, its third flight, carrying satellites for the Guowang constellation.
Built by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the 8A features upgraded YF-75H hydrogen engines on its second stage and a wider 5.2-meter fairing to handle heavier payloads. Earlier missions also served Guowang, each delivering nine satellites to orbit.
The 8A using YF-100 engines is emerging as a workhorse for China’s satellite rollout. As every mission remains single-use, China lags far behind SpaceX regarding cost and efficiency.
Launching satellites aboard a Falcon 9 costs roughly $2,700 to $3,000 per kilogram. If flown frequently, SpaceX projects that its next-generation Starship could push costs down to as little as $13 to $32 per kg. Such a dramatic reduction would extend SpaceX’s lead and raise the bar for would-be rivals.
Jiang Luye, chief technology officer at Xingsuo Technology, a maker of reusable liquid-fueled rockets, in an interview with Yicai.com described the launch of China’s low-orbit satellites as “very expensive.”
“In the aerospace supply chain, the launch is the most expensive procedure,” he said. “In some cases, the launch cost is more than the manufacturing cost of the satellite.”
Jiang added that the only way to bring those costs down is through the adoption of more efficient engines and reusable launch vehicles.
Read: China vows to catch up with Elon Musk’s Starlink
asiatimes.com · Jeff Pao · September 4, 2025
9. The paradox behind China's military parade
Excerpts:
Beijing’s military parade showcased the achievements of its defense-industrial base and affirmed its continental dominance. Yet each show of strength risks pushing China’s Indo-Pacific neighbors further away, inadvertently reinforcing Washington’s indispensability and diminishing the geopolitical returns on Beijing’s vast military-industrial investments.
Most of all, the idea of a “world minus one” – floated by some analysts and leaders in response to recent moves by the Trump administration – must now be judged against China’s continental record, where dominance has proven costly for those drawn into asymmetric dependence.
Extending such a model to the maritime domain, where Indo-Pacific neighbors are likewise expected to acquiesce to Chinese primacy, would create a structural order that is ultimately untenable.
The paradox behind China's military parade - Asia Times
China’s show of military force and rising continental dominance ultimately plays to America’s diplomatic advantage
asiatimes.com · Marcus Loh · September 4, 2025
When Beijing staged its largest military parade in a decade on Wednesday to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the pageantry was carefully choreographed. DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles and J-20 stealth fighters in a flex of military confidence abroad and reassurance at home.
Once reliant on Soviet imports and fragmented production, China has consolidated its capabilities into vertically integrated conglomerates: AVIC in aviation, CASIC in missiles and space, CSSC in shipbuilding and CETC in electronics.
These state-owned enterprises now sustain a PLA Rocket Force with “survivable” ICBMs, a PLA Air Force with fifth-generation fighters and a PLA Navy boasting over 370 hulls, the largest by count worldwide.
This industrial base has powered cycles of modernization that closed historic gaps in land-based deterrence, as the parade clearly showcased. The question now is whether such an industrial scale can deliver a durable geopolitical advantage.
From vulnerability to primacy
Today, it has turned centuries of land-based insecurity into continental primacy.
Mongolia now sends a majority of its coal and mineral exports to China. The 2023 opening of the Tavan Tolgoi–Gashuunsukhait rail line – built to Chinese gauge standards – further deepened dependence by giving Beijing control over volumes and pricing.
Across Central Asia, Chinese-built infrastructure underpins transport and energy corridors. CNPC pipelines push hydrocarbons eastward, Digital Silk Road technologies embed surveillance into governance and Chinese finance sustains large shares of Kyrgyz and Tajik debt.
After clashes such as the 1969 Ussuri River conflict, Russia once held the upper hand, supplying weapons to a weaker China. That balance has since reversed. Since the 2001 Treaty of Good-Neighborliness – and especially after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 – Russia has leaned heavily on Chinese markets, capital and technology. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine entrenched this reliance, leaving Moscow bound to Beijing’s leverage.
Vietnam, once a battlefield adversary and still a claimant in the South China Sea, has become a “comprehensive strategic partner.” Bilateral trade reached a record US$200 billion in 2024, with imports from China rising by more than 30% and Vietnam’s deficit widening to $82.8 billion.
Even India, despite persistent border disputes, has found renewed pragmatic value in the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization, especially after the US imposed punitive 50% tariffs over New Delhi’s purchases of sanctioned Russian oil.
Indo-Pacific inverse dynamic
At sea, the current runs differently. Sebastian Strangio, in his “In the Dragon’s Shadow”, noted how ASEAN states, through long histories and cultural familiarity, have learned to live with China’s rise.
While the weight of power leans heavily against them, no Indo-Pacific nation would willingly accept unipolar dominance, least of all one that entrenches asymmetric dependence across the continent.
The natural response, therefore, is to reach outward for ballast. And for now, only the American-led security architecture – anchored by alliances, forward presence, and interoperability – offers a credible counterweight.
As a result, China’s show of military force and continental dominance has unintendedly produced the opposite effect. Four indicators highlight this paradox.
First, bilateral and minilateral arrangements expanded significantly in 2024. According to Australia’s Lowy Institute, the United States conducted more than 60 major exercises that year, from Balikatan in the Philippines to Talisman Sabre in Australia and Malabar with India and Japan.
Confidence also climbed. The ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute’s State of Southeast Asia 2025 survey found that 52.3% of ASEAN respondents preferred Washington when asked to choose sides.
Second, Chinese operational behavior sharpened regional anxiety. Taiwan recorded over 3,600 PLA sorties into its ADIZ in 2024, double the 1,727 logged in 2023 and nearly triple from 2019. Median-line crossings surged to 3,070 in 2024, compared to 1,703 two years earlier.
By early 2025, PLA aircraft were averaging 245 sorties per month, making near-daily violations routine. Philippine vessels documented 10 confrontations with the Chinese in 2024, including two near collisions.
Meanwhile, Beijing entrenched control over 27 artificial islands in the South China Sea, outfitting them with runways, radar, and missile batteries – moves broadly read as coercive attempts to change the status quo.
Third, regional defense responses accelerated. Japan approved a record $46 billion budget in 2024, funding counterstrike missiles, F-35s and Aegis air defense upgrades. Australia earmarked roughly $70 billion under AUKUS for nuclear-powered submarines and frigates.
The Philippines expanded American military access under the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement from two bases to nine, including sites near Taiwan and the South China Sea. Taiwan raised defense spending by 14% to nearly $19 billion, emphasizing drones, mines and mobile missile systems.
Fourth, even with record budgets, most littoral states remain wedded to non-Chinese military platforms, prioritizing interoperability within the US-led security architecture.
China is the world’s fourth-largest arms exporter, with about 6% of global sales, yet its market remains largely confined to Pakistan. Despite dominating global commercial shipbuilding – 55.7% of completions, 74.1% of new orders and 63.1% of the order book in 2024 – this production capacity has not translated into defense-related sales.
Taken together, these trends suggest that China’s defense industrial base remains constrained, unable to convert output into maritime influence or strategic leverage.
World minus one
Beijing’s military parade showcased the achievements of its defense-industrial base and affirmed its continental dominance. Yet each show of strength risks pushing China’s Indo-Pacific neighbors further away, inadvertently reinforcing Washington’s indispensability and diminishing the geopolitical returns on Beijing’s vast military-industrial investments.
Most of all, the idea of a “world minus one” – floated by some analysts and leaders in response to recent moves by the Trump administration – must now be judged against China’s continental record, where dominance has proven costly for those drawn into asymmetric dependence.
Extending such a model to the maritime domain, where Indo-Pacific neighbors are likewise expected to acquiesce to Chinese primacy, would create a structural order that is ultimately untenable.
Marcus Loh is chairman of the Public Affairs Group at the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) Asia Pacific. Loh also serves as a director of Temus, a Singapore-based digital services firm, and on the Executive Committee of SGTech’s Digital Transformation Chapter, contributing to national conversations on AI, data infrastructure and digital policy.
A former president of the Institute of Public Relations of Singapore, Loh has played a longstanding role in shaping the relevance of strategic communication and public affairs in an evolving policy, technology and geoeconomic landscapes. He is currently an MA candidate at the War Studies Department of King’s College London.
asiatimes.com · Marcus Loh · September 4, 2025
10. ‘War Department’ Is a Good Start
This reads like it could be script for Saturday NIght Live satire.
‘War Department’ Is a Good Start
Let’s avoid euphemism and give every agency of government an honest name.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/war-department-is-a-good-start-e8b7f360
By Andy Kessler
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Sept. 7, 2025 4:27 pm ET
Washington, D.C., June 8, 2017. Photo: joshua roberts/Reuters
President Trump signed an executive order on Friday to rebrand the Defense Department as the War Department, because, as he said earlier, “it just sounded better.” I’m OK with that. Like the lying Ministry of Truth of “1984,” our doublespeak naming conventions—Affordable Care Act, equity—often hide the real functions of government actions. But why stop with Defense? Tell the truth.
Some name changes are easy: the last administration’s Social Justice Department. The Federal Trade Constriction Commission. Let’s turn three-letter agencies into four-word agencies.
Start with the Commerce Department, better labeled as the Department of Corporate Extortion. Intel is giving up nearly 10% of its equity to Uncle Sam. Rare-earth extractor MP Materials sold the Pentagon a 15% stake. Nvidia and AMD must now pay a 15% export tax to sell advanced chips in China. U.S. Steel handed over a golden share.
In February, Apple announced $500 billion in U.S. investments, and then in April miraculously escaped reciprocal tariffs on iPhones. Apple added another $100 billion in U.S. investment in August. This smells like support-and-extort capitalism (I should trademark that!), with shares plus tariff gains potentially destined for a Sovereign Wealth Slush Fund. Where does it end?
“We have given tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars to universities for them to do research,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently said about patents. “If we give them the money, don’t you think it’s fair that the United States of America, and the taxpayers who funded it, get a piece of that?” Well, there is the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 that explicitly allows universities and others to own their federally funded inventions. Also, stop giving them money! There are other ways to pay for basic research. Preorder drugs or chips. Remember the aptly named Operation Warp Speed?
Treasury should become the Dollar Printing Like Confetti Department. In 1971 an ounce of gold cost $35—now it’s more than $3,600. Penny-postcard stamps cost 61 cents. That’s a lot of confetti. Complicit is the Federal Reserve, better named the Federal Preserve for Economic Ph.D.s. Now Mr. Trump wants to use them as the interest rate-slashing Federal Punch Bowl Filler. Watch your wallet. And given how many revisions we see on jobs data, let’s call the Bureau of Labor Statistics the Wild A— Guessing Gang.
No one really knows what the Agriculture Department does. I suggest a new name: the High-Fructose Corn Syrup Subsidizer. These sugars are jammed into cheap, ultraprocessed foods and distributed via electronic benefit transfers—sorry, food stamps—with the subsequent girth growth treated with Ozempic and Wegovy. Farmers and pharma win at the expense of eaters.
Health and Human Services might become the Class Action Setup Faction. Former personal-injury practitioner Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the head of HHS. After canceling $500 million in funding for vaccines to prevent bird flu and the like, he recently declared that “mRNA technology poses more risks than benefits for these respiratory viruses.” Class-action lawyers are salivating.
The Education Department, which apparently is still around, is better as the Remedial Instructor Full Employment group. English teachers might suggest probity and veracity in naming conventions. Or not. More than half of Americans have literacy below a sixth-grade level. There are 30 schools in Illinois with zero students reading at grade level. Alternatively, we could call it the Raise College Tuition Annually Department, done effectively by the federal guarantee of student loans.
Can you guess these? The Union Perpetuation Society. The Vice Squad. Green Boondoggles “R” Us. The Conflicts Keep Us Employed Department. The Progress Inhibiting Agency. (Labor Department; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Energy Department; State Department; Environmental Protection Agency.)
The Federal Bureau of Investigation could be known as the Presidential Election Manipulation Organization. And the Central Intelligence Agency is clearly the Streaming TV Plot Development writers room. Netflix needs them. We need to compete against the British shows about MI5 and MI6. America first! And please, please, rename Congress the Backbiting and Stagnation Club.
What about the Postal Service? Easy. The Slow Expensive Obsolete Monopoly. For those under 35, people used to drop handwritten things called letters into steel boxes, to be delivered by snappily dressed government employees. In a baffling move, the post office sponsored a Tour de France cycling team. Maybe the only honest part was aligning themselves with people who take three weeks to cross a region the size of Texas.
President Trump promised to cut government. A congressional rescission cut $9 billion—no more taxpayer funding for National Biased Radio. With a “pocket rescission,” President Trump hopes to cut another $4.9 billion in foreign aid. More like pocket change. If we honestly name government departments, maybe the public will get behind real cuts. I’d shrink or close most of them. That sounds better.
Write to kessler@wsj.com.
11. The Deportation Economy Hits Georgia
The Deportation Economy Hits Georgia
A sweeping raid shows every business is a potential ICE target.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-deportation-economy-hits-georgia-workers-jobs-businesses-ice-raid-cf94a34c
By The Editorial Board
Follow
Sept. 7, 2025 4:33 pm ET
An immigration raid at the Hyundai-LG vehicle assembly plant in Ellabell, Ga., Sept. 4 Photo: epa/shutterstock/Shutterstock
The sweeping ICE operation in Georgia Thursday that rounded up some 475 illegal workers at a showcase development project is intended as a warning to employers nationwide. It also illustrates the America First contradiction of demanding foreign investment in the U.S. while shrinking the available workforce.
The raid targeted an electric battery manufacturing plant under construction to serve the U.S. market. The plant is a project of Hyundai, which makes electric vehicles at a plant nearby, and LG Energy Solution, a U.S. branch of another South Korean giant.
Most of the arrested were Korean nationals, while some were Mexican. A Homeland Security spokesman told the press the migrants either crossed the border illegally, overstayed their visas, or arrived on visas that didn’t allow them to work.
That last point is important because it suggests some of the Koreans may have been here temporarily to supervise construction or to train Americans. Quality control is crucial to a successful manufacturing operation, and companies often bring in experienced employers from the home country to ensure it.
Both Korean companies said they follow immigration law and are cooperating with ICE. But some of the illegal migrants may have worked for contractors helping to build the battery plant. The construction industry can’t find enough American workers these days, so migrants with fake documentation often fill the gap. The eternity it takes to build anything in the U.S. would be worse without these workers.
Americans want the law enforced, but raiding legal workplaces isn’t going after criminal gangs or murderers. The Georgia raid shows the Trump Administration’s priority is deporting every illegal migrant no matter how long they have worked here. This makes every employer a potential target of an ICE raid if the agency suspects foreigners are working there.
This is already having a notable impact on the U.S. labor market, as recent monthly jobs reports suggest. It’s hard to know how much the foreign-born workforce is shrinking, and that will be clearer as seasonally adjusted data arrive. But If President Trump wants a smaller U.S. population, he is going to get a weaker labor market and economy for Americans.
How about asking Congress to create more legal ways to enter and work in the U.S.?
12. China-Mongolia-Russia Agreement on Power of Siberia 2 Could Reroute Energy Trade
Excerpts:
Mongolia’s Foreign Minister Battsetseg Batmunkh, commenting on Mongolia’s participation at the SCO and the trilateral summit between Mongolia, China, and Russia, concluded: “This meeting has brought significant progress in implementing Mongolia’s multipillar foreign policy and developing mutually beneficial and stable cooperation with neighboring countries.”
The China-Mongolia-Russia trilateral mechanism – including the gas pipeline – has deeper regional implications for Ulaanbaatar’s growing foreign policy. When the Power of Siberia 2 comes to fruition, the project could cement Beijing and Ulaanbaatar’s role as important economic elements for Russia’s energy exports.
A successful implementation of the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline could activate other moribund regional agreements as well. The warming of Russia-North Korea relations might open a path to restart the long-stalled North Korea-Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok pipeline.
China-Mongolia-Russia Agreement on Power of Siberia 2 Could Reroute Energy Trade
An agreement on the long-stalled pipeline was the major outcome of the latest China-Mongolia-Russia trilateral summit.
https://thediplomat.com/2025/09/china-mongolia-russia-agreement-on-power-of-siberia-2-could-reroute-energy-trade/
By Bolor Lkhaajav
September 06, 2025
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Mongolian President Khurelsukh Ukhnaa hold a trilateral summit at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, Sep. 2, 2025.
Credit: Office of the President of Mongolia
China recently hosted the 2025 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit in Tianjin, gathering heads-of-state and high-level representatives. Mongolian President Khurelsukh Ukhnaa participated in the summit, representing Mongolia as an observer state — a status that no longer exists as the SCO reformatted how it labels partners after the recent summit. On the sidelines of the SCO, China, Mongolia, and Russia signed a legally binding MOU on the trilateral construction of the Power of Siberia 2, a planned gas pipeline from Soyuz Vostok, which has potential to alter energy trade.
During his speech at the SCO Summit, Khurelsukh underscored Mongolia’s commitment to peace, multilateralism, and regional integration. Marking Ulaanbaatar’s active engagement in regional and global multilateral platforms, Khurelsukh emphasized Mongolia’s initiation to host the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in November 2026 and welcomed China and other partners to participate.
But, more importantly, Ulaanbaatar’s dealings with its two giant neighbors – Russia and China – happen at their trilateral summit, held on the sidelines of multilateral events like the SCO Summit.
On September 2, the day after the SCO Summit closed, Mongolia, China, and Russia convened their seventh trilateral leaders’ summit in China. As the host, China’s President Xi Jinping chaired the summit. He offered a three-point proposal on advancing China-Russia-Mongolia trilateral cooperation. First, Xi called for the three countries to cement political trust and thus the political will for trilateral cooperation. Second, he spoke of deepening mutually beneficial cooperation, particularly through infrastructure: “taking physical connectivity as a key direction, the three countries should actively promote their cross-border infrastructure and energy projects, and make such cooperation more substantive.”
During the summit, Khurelsukh attributed “particular importance to the joint projects in such areas as Economic Corridor infrastructure development, transport, logistics, energy and trade.”
Putin highlighted, “We believe it is important that successful bilateral cooperation be supplemented and acquire new facets through a trilateral format of interaction.”
One of the major outcomes of this year’s trilateral summit was the legally binding trilateral memorandum to start the long-delayed Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline, which will bring Russian LNG to China via Mongolia. The Office of the Mongolian President announced that the three parties “affirmed their commitment to implementing a project for the construction of a natural gas pipeline from Russia to China via Mongolian territory.”
Following the trilateral summit, Russia’s Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller announced that the Russian company and China’s CNPC had signed a “legally binding” memorandum to build the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline.
The mega-project has been a topic of ongoing conversation between the three parties since 2020. The Power of Siberia 2 is part of a much larger energy infrastructure overhaul necessitated by Russia’s pivot to Asia. Moscow is actively seeking new markets for its oil and gas, as European countries sharply curtailed purchases following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The proposed pipeline will be 962.9 kilometers long and could deliver up to 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from Soyuz Vostok in Russia’s Yamal Peninsula, most likely going through Buryat, Northwestern Mongolia, down to China’s northeast corner. The pipeline will supplement the existing Power of Siberia pipeline, which runs for 3,000 km (1,865 miles) through Siberia and into China’s northeastern Heilongjiang province.
Speaking of the Power of Siberia 2, former Foreign Minister of Mongolia Tsogtbaatar Damdin once stated, “It took 30 years for Mongolia to be at the negotiation table on this matter.” He noted that these efforts were the result of “high-level visits, talks, and negotiations at the presidential, prime ministerial, foreign ministerial level. In order to build trust with both Russia and China, these steps were necessary and crucial.”
In addition to signing the Power of Siberia 2 memorandum, Khurelsukh highlighted other key deliverables: the extension of the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor Program for another five years (until 2031) and the “Transit Mongolia” vision, which in practice will promote deeper connectivity with neighbors and partners by advancing railroads, energy cooperation, and gas pipeline projects. Xi also invited Mongolia and Russia to actively participate in innovation-related projects.
Mongolia’s Foreign Minister Battsetseg Batmunkh, commenting on Mongolia’s participation at the SCO and the trilateral summit between Mongolia, China, and Russia, concluded: “This meeting has brought significant progress in implementing Mongolia’s multipillar foreign policy and developing mutually beneficial and stable cooperation with neighboring countries.”
The China-Mongolia-Russia trilateral mechanism – including the gas pipeline – has deeper regional implications for Ulaanbaatar’s growing foreign policy. When the Power of Siberia 2 comes to fruition, the project could cement Beijing and Ulaanbaatar’s role as important economic elements for Russia’s energy exports.
A successful implementation of the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline could activate other moribund regional agreements as well. The warming of Russia-North Korea relations might open a path to restart the long-stalled North Korea-Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok pipeline.
Authors
Guest Author
Bolor Lkhaajav
Bolor Lkhaajav is a researcher specializing in Mongolia, China, Russia, Japan, East Asia, and the Americas. She holds an M.A. in Asia-Pacific Studies from the University of San Francisco.
13. Think tank report exposes U.S. mind colonization
I guess they are interpreting cognitive warfare and influence operations as "colonization of the mind."
And I suppose it is good to know what the Chinese (or at least one Chinese think tank) is thinking about us.
Should we laugh this off or is there a way to exploit this? Or should we assess that China is mirror imaging and projecting what they are thinking onto us?
Note that the presentation was at a Global South conference in Kunming. This is what they want the communities of the Global South to believe about the US.
The 36 page report in PDF can be downloaded here: https://english.news.cn/20250907/52998b0f27704866af2a66f5df6577dd/80c86fe8e8484a989451aa09d30dabdb.pdf But I would not download this on any government system and all should beware this is a Chinese web site.
This report adds an anecdote to inform my assessment of China's strategy: China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions directly and/or indirectly through proxies, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, while displacing democratic institutions through subversion. It takes a long term approach, employing unrestricted warfare and its three warfares to set conditions and achieve objectives, with the main objective being the unification of China (i.e., the recovery of Taiwan).
Excerpts:
The colonization of the mind, it said, constitutes mental domination predicated on inequality and aimed at perpetuating inequality, mainly manifested in the forms of compulsory transformation, malicious manipulation, covert infiltration and long-term erosion.
U.S. hegemonic dominance on the world's political, economic and military scenes serves as the "hard prerequisites" for its ideological colonization, then the enabling conditions in language and culture, discourse narratives, mass media and academic research constitute its "soft foundation," the report noted.
It added that U.S. activities to colonize the mind have a profound practical foundation and clear strategic planning, having gradually developed a comprehensive supporting system, covering strategic system, organizational system, value system, propaganda system, content system, and technological system.
With the development and upgrading of new technologies like artificial intelligence, the U.S. attempts to colonize the mind operate more covertly and have more extensive targets, thus the greater need for attention and vigilance of all peace-loving people, the report warned.
Think tank report exposes U.S. mind colonization
Source: Xinhua
Editor: huaxia
2025-09-07 21:08:30
english.news.cn
https://english.news.cn/20250907/52998b0f27704866af2a66f5df6577dd/c.html
This undated photo shows copies of the think tank report "Colonization of the Mind -- The Means, Roots, and Global Perils of U.S. Cognitive Warfare." The Xinhua Institute, a think tank affiliated with Xinhua News Agency, has released a report titled "Colonization of the Mind -- The Means, Roots, and Global Perils of U.S. Cognitive Warfare," providing an in-depth analysis of the historical facts, the complex operational system, and far-reaching global perils of the U.S. mental colonization. The report, released during the Global South Media and Think Tank Forum 2025 on Sunday, called on all countries, especially those in the Global South, to break off the shackles of mind, regain cultural confidence, and draw a diverse map of civilizations. (Xinhua/Chen Yehua)
KUNMING, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) -- The Xinhua Institute, a think tank affiliated with Xinhua News Agency, has released a report titled "Colonization of the Mind -- The Means, Roots, and Global Perils of U.S. Cognitive Warfare," providing an in-depth analysis of the historical facts, the complex operational system, and far-reaching global perils of the U.S. mental colonization.
The report, released during the Global South Media and Think Tank Forum 2025 on Sunday, called on all countries, especially those in the Global South, to break off the shackles of mind, regain cultural confidence, and draw a diverse map of civilizations.
The colonization of the mind, it said, constitutes mental domination predicated on inequality and aimed at perpetuating inequality, mainly manifested in the forms of compulsory transformation, malicious manipulation, covert infiltration and long-term erosion.
U.S. hegemonic dominance on the world's political, economic and military scenes serves as the "hard prerequisites" for its ideological colonization, then the enabling conditions in language and culture, discourse narratives, mass media and academic research constitute its "soft foundation," the report noted.
It added that U.S. activities to colonize the mind have a profound practical foundation and clear strategic planning, having gradually developed a comprehensive supporting system, covering strategic system, organizational system, value system, propaganda system, content system, and technological system.
With the development and upgrading of new technologies like artificial intelligence, the U.S. attempts to colonize the mind operate more covertly and have more extensive targets, thus the greater need for attention and vigilance of all peace-loving people, the report warned.
The report, from political, economic and cultural perspectives, reveals the grave harm that U.S. colonization of the mind has brought to world peace and development.
It calls on countries to bust the myths of value, free themselves from dependence of the mind, and embark on a path of independent and autonomous development.
"The clash of civilizations should be replaced by their integration; the ice of confrontations should be melted away by exchanges and mutual understanding," the report said.
The Xinhua Institute, with policy research as its primary focus, has conducted forward-looking, strategic, and preparatory research on major domestic and global issues in recent years, producing numerous influential research outcomes.
Under the theme "Empowering Global South, Navigating Global Changes," the Global South Media and Think Tank Forum 2025 gathers approximately 500 representatives from over 260 media outlets, think tanks and government agencies from 110 countries and regions, as well as international and regional organizations. ■
Full Text: Colonization of the Mind —The Means, Roots, and Global Perils of U.S. Cognitive Warfare
This undated photo shows a copy of the think tank report "Colonization of the Mind -- The Means, Roots, and Global Perils of U.S. Cognitive Warfare." (Xinhua/Chen Yehua)
This undated photo shows copies of the think tank report "Colonization of the Mind -- The Means, Roots, and Global Perils of U.S. Cognitive Warfare." (Xinhua/Chen Yehua)
A guest reads a copy of the think tank report "Colonization of the Mind -- The Means, Roots, and Global Perils of U.S. Cognitive Warfare" during the 2025 Global South Media and Think Tank Forum in Kunming, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Sept. 7, 2025. The Xinhua Institute, a think tank affiliated with Xinhua News Agency, has released a report titled "Colonization of the Mind -- The Means, Roots, and Global Perils of U.S. Cognitive Warfare," providing an in-depth analysis of the historical facts, the complex operational system, and far-reaching global perils of the U.S. mental colonization.
The report, released during the Global South Media and Think Tank Forum 2025 on Sunday, called on all countries, especially those in the Global South, to break off the shackles of mind, regain cultural confidence, and draw a diverse map of civilizations. (Xinhua/Gao Yongwei)
Guests attend the Global South Media and Think Tank Forum 2025 in Kunming, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Sept. 7, 2025. (Xinhua/Gao Yongwei)
A guest reads a copy of the think tank report "Colonization of the Mind -- The Means, Roots, and Global Perils of U.S. Cognitive Warfare" during the Global South Media and Think Tank Forum 2025 in Kunming, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Sept. 7, 2025. (Xinhua/Gao Yongwei)
Guests attend the Global South Media and Think Tank Forum 2025 in Kunming, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Sept. 7, 2025. (Xinhua/Gao Yongwei)
english.news.cn
14. Transformation in Context: Transformation in Contact and the Aspects of Military Innovation
Conclusion:
In the latter half of the 2020s, innovation remains a critical aspect upon which militaries focus. When preparing for the future, there is a never-ending quest to create new solutions to achieve an advantage. The Army’s current model to innovate in the near term – Transformation in Contact – shows promise when viewed as the application of the key aspects of innovation (technology, doctrine, and organizational flexibility). The Army seeks to combine emerging technologies and new organizational frameworks.
Yet, without a clear, coherent doctrinal concept at the Brigade and below level, the overall efficacy of TIC will be blunted. Ultimately, the full utility of TIC will not be understood for years. As the effort continues, its practitioners must continue to converge new technologies, foster adaptive organizations, and write clear doctrine for employment in order to ensure its success.
Transformation in Context: Transformation in Contact and the Aspects of Military Innovation
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/09/08/transformation-in-contact/
by Christopher Jordan
|
09.08.2025 at 06:00am
A soldier from the 101st Airborne's Multifunctional Reconnaissance Company operates the Bal Chatri drone detector during an exercise at the Joint Readiness Training Center (Defense One / Sam Skove)
America is “competing with determined adversaries during a period of unprecedented technological change. To guarantee our security, we must recognize change and adapt faster than any army in the world.” In order to fight and win the next war, the Army began a comprehensive plan to modernize and transform the force.
Simultaneous to ongoing, long-term developments, the Army is focused on what it calls “Transformation in Contact” or TIC: rapid developments and changes to existing formations in the near term. Transformation in contact is a new term for an old idea: rapid military innovation. Like previous attempts at innovation, TIC’s success or failure will depend on how the Army integrates key aspects of military innovation and how it understands the effects of the current international system.
There are many components that influence military innovation, but three key aspects drive effective innovation. These elements are technological advancements, new doctrinal applications of technology, and an adaptable organization that accepts the changes provided by the former two aspects. These elements converge and “cluster together to produce a major change in the way people live – or, in the case of the military, the way they die.” Whether the U.S. is at war or peace as well as the international balance of power further shape innovation. Peace and the balance of power alter the dynamics of innovation, shifting both the drivers of innovation, the focus of a nation’s efforts, and the nation’s cost-benefit analysis.
Keys Aspects to Military Innovation
The first key element of military innovation is the most obvious: technology. Technology acts as a catalyst, creating the opportunity for novel solutions to the challenges of a battlefield. As we develop new technologies, existing constraints no longer apply. For example, the development of the steam engine and advancements such as the telegraph enabled effective power projection, invalidating previous planning assumptions based on wind and extended delays in information dissemination. The new technology enabled new possibilities.
The advent of atomic weapons provides another example of technology as a key element of innovation. The technology of atomic weaponry enabled the United States to change the traditional calculus of mass. Planners could focus on bombs and planes rather than divisions and corps to create a strategy of deterrence. With the new tools provided by technology, innovation could occur. But technology in a vacuum does not create innovation; technology must be applied.
The second key aspect of military innovation is the incorporation of technology into a doctrinal framework. Technology is a tool for the innovator. Like all tools, technology is only as useful as the method through which it is wielded. Doctrine is key to innovation because it applies technology into a coherent way. If technology gives an innovator new means, the innovator uses doctrine to create new ways.
The development of the New Look demonstrates why doctrine is a key element of innovation. The New Look sought to deter the Soviets through Strategic Air Command and the threat of nuclear weapons instead of conventional military power. Atomic weapons and long-range bombers created an opportunity for a paradigm shift when comparing combat power. However, there was no major shift in the first seven years of the atomic age. The New Look provided a new architecture, a “strategy of asymmetry: Future Koreas might be met, not with a conventional defense… but with an atomic strike.” The technology of atomic weapons provided the tools, but doctrine was the key to innovation by providing the way.
The development and adoption of tanks in the late interwar period between WWI and WWII provides another clear example of why doctrine is a key aspect of innovation. Tanks were a development of World War I, specifically to solve the dilemma of trench warfare and return mobility to the battlefield. However, without an effective doctrine, technology could not be employed properly: innovation was only partially complete. The Germans integrated the technology into a doctrine – colloquially called Blitzkrieg – which prioritized flexibility and movement to seek battles of annihilation.
With a focus on doctrine, the Germans leveraged technology to create effective innovation. The decisive defeat of Poland in 1939 proved the efficacy of their doctrinal concepts. Conversely, the Soviets leveraged technology, but did not produce a coherent doctrinal concept. Instead, the Soviets vacillated between parceling out smaller units of tanks or concentrating their tanks to better effect attacks towards the enemy’s rear. Without a consistent doctrinal framework, the Soviets struggled to achieve unity of effort. The effects of their innovation were blunted compared to the innovations of the Germans.
Exploiting Change: The Need for Adaptable Organizations
Technology is a key aspect because it provides an opportunity. Doctrine provides a pathway to use the new technology. However, without an adaptable organization, no real change is possible. Military bureaucracies are notoriously difficult to shift. If an institution is built to resist change, then it will stifle innovation. The British Army’s failure to adopt large-scale, mechanized doctrine in the interwar years between WWI and WWII demonstrates why an adaptable organization is key to innovation.
The British not only invented the tank, but a British officer was also the first to truly advocate for combined-arms mechanized warfare. Twenty years before German Panzers would invade Poland, J.F.C. Fuller discussed how the tank could serve as part of a combined arms team. Moreover, he even advocated the creation of a “New Model Army.” The New Model Army was to combine the new ability of tanks with infantry, cavalry, artillery and others into a fast-moving, powerful force capable of defeating many times its number of purely infantry divisions. Yet, the British organization proved inflexible. Despite the combination of new technology paired with a cohesive doctrine, no meaningful change is possible without organizational support.
In contrast to the ground forces, the Royal Air Force provides an example of how an adaptable organization ensures innovation can occur. Considering the danger posed by advanced bombers, the RAF transitioned from a bomber focus to create an air defense network. In doing so, they shifted focus from bombers to fighters, while incorporating technologies like radar with new doctrine to coordinate multiple systems and elements into a cohesive whole. The willingness of the RAF to adapt to changing circumstances enabled successful innovation in a way that the army’s inflexibility prevented.
State of War or Peace
Whether a nation is at war or peace determines the impetus for innovation. When a state is at war, the major driver of innovation is the battlefield. During war, the need to achieve battlefield success drives innovation. Organizations either innovate, or people die needlessly. Organizations adopt more flexible approaches and innovation focuses on shorter-term solutions.
During peace, the impetus for innovation is different. Entrenched bureaucracies exert more influence. Furthermore, the end state of innovation can be less clear. False assumptions can stifle innovation. Because of the ambiguity of peace, cooperation between civilian and military leadership is necessary to drive innovation. Civilians protect the careers of innovative officers, while the officers drive innovation by shaping the doctrine and organizational flexibility. Without this alliance and the clarity of combat, innovation is more difficult to implement.
Balance of International Power
The balance of power in the international system is the final variable affecting innovation. Balance of power acts as a focal lens, narrowing or broadening the perceived challenges that a state must innovate to overcome. In a bipolar system, such as the Cold War, each major power has a clear enemy. Thus, the innovator can narrowly tailor innovation to defeat the major opponent. The New Look was a product of a bipolar system, a tailored solution to the only major enemy. After the New Look, the US-Soviet rivalry spurred large-scale innovation because the bipolar system had a clearer challenge: the defense or assault of Western Europe from the East. Similarly, the United States spent tremendous time and resources to develop near-real time satellite capabilities specifically to better counter the Soviet Union. The bipolar system let the Cold War warrior orient on one threat, focusing innovation efforts against a narrower problem-set.
Transforming in Contact: Succeeding at Innovation
Over a year has passed since the beginning of the Army’s effort to transform in contact. The effects of this transformation have been complicated by a changing world. The current international environment and state of the nation do not clarify the direction of innovations. The world is increasingly multipolar with “several major state actors [that] present proximate and enduring threats to the United States and its interests in the world.” Due to an increasingly multipolar system, the Army cannot focus on countering only one potential adversary’s Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs), nor focus on only one Area of Responsibility (AOR).
The world is not in a period of relative peace, further obfuscating the direction innovation should focus. Instead, potential adversaries are “challenging U.S. interests in the world by attacking or threatening others in their regions, with both asymmetric and conventional hard power tactics.”
Without the benefit of a clear threat to overcome, and with an ever more dangerous world, the application of the key aspects of innovation are critical to the success of the Army’s transformation. Technologically, the Army is identifying and adapting new systems to better enable maneuver. Drones are becoming more integrated into the force. Short, medium, and long-range systems, as well as one-way precision capabilities provide increased capabilities relative to previous legacy systems. Active units are testing more radical technological advancements, such as Human-Machine Integration (HMI) and the inclusion of robots, further refining future needs.
Organizationally, the Army has already undergone large changes to its formations. New formations have been created. Simultaneously, capabilities in intelligence and fires are consolidating at the division level. Meanwhile, some traditional organizations, such as the Cavalry Squadrons in the Infantry and Stryker Brigade Combat Teams have been inactivated completely. Internally, organizations are adapting. For example, at the Brigade Combat Team Level the Multifunctional Reconnaissance Company is attempting to bridge the gap created by the loss of the Cavalry Squadron using emerging technologies.
TIC as a concept has the Army embracing new technologies in adaptable organizations. However, TIC is not yet producing coherent doctrinal innovation. At echelons above the Brigade Combat Team (BCT), Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) provides the blueprint for how to converge emerging capabilities into a cohesive plan.
At the BCT level and below the situation is less clear. The current model relies on small units to create TTPs and then work to scale upwards. The lack of a clear doctrine for employment creates gaps at the tactical level. For example, the Multi-Functional Reconnaissance Company (MFRC) has no doctrine from which to build yet. Yet the MFRC is expected to provide the same capability formerly provided by a squadron. How it will accomplish that mission remains unclear. Similarly, robots are being fielded within an HMI framework while the concepts to employ robots remains vague.
Conclusion
In the latter half of the 2020s, innovation remains a critical aspect upon which militaries focus. When preparing for the future, there is a never-ending quest to create new solutions to achieve an advantage. The Army’s current model to innovate in the near term – Transformation in Contact – shows promise when viewed as the application of the key aspects of innovation (technology, doctrine, and organizational flexibility). The Army seeks to combine emerging technologies and new organizational frameworks.
Yet, without a clear, coherent doctrinal concept at the Brigade and below level, the overall efficacy of TIC will be blunted. Ultimately, the full utility of TIC will not be understood for years. As the effort continues, its practitioners must continue to converge new technologies, foster adaptive organizations, and write clear doctrine for employment in order to ensure its success.
Tags: Army Doctrine, Army Transformation Initiative (ATI), innovation, military technology, transformation in contact
About The Author
- Christopher Jordan
- Christopher Jordan is an armor officer currently serving as an instructor for the Cavalry Leader Course. He is pursuing a Master of Arts in Strategic Studies from the University of Missouri.
15. The Dragon’s Gallipoli and the Hong Kong Lesson
Excerpts:
China intends to assimilate Taiwan into its nation-state, like Hong Kong. However, this threat is defined by both Chinese intentions and capabilities. For now, the PLA lacks the logistical capability to seize it, but this is changing. It is growing its navy, expanding its missile stockpiles, and conducting annual amphibious drills. Taiwan has the advantages of distance and time to repel a Chinese advance. But only with critical investments in doctrine and weapons. As Gallipoli exposes, an empire’s grand plan can unravel when logistics, terrain, and resistance all work against it. The PLA is preparing. But with the right tools, Taiwan can break what China sees as an invasion of destiny into a grinding, strategic disaster.
Gallipoli reminds us that China can fail; Hong Kong reveals why Taiwan must not. Survival is not given freely. It is secured with weapons and the will to use them. For Taiwan to survive, its supporters must act to prevent war by preparing it to win one.
The Dragon’s Gallipoli and the Hong Kong Lesson
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/09/08/the-dragons-gallipoli-and-the-hong-kong-lesson/
by John Lamberger
|
09.08.2025 at 06:00am
Photo: Ministry of National Defense (Taiwan)
Introduction
During WWI, the British Empire launched a bold amphibious assault against the weaker Ottoman Empire: the Gallipoli Campaign. Expecting swift victory, the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (MEF) became marooned in an eight-month grinding stalemate. Trapped by rough seas, minefields, and entrenched defenders, British forces saw their supply lines stretched and casualties mount, until they were forced to retreat into the sea.
Today, the People’s Republic of China assumes a similar swift conquest over Taiwan, carrying these same operational risks.
But, if adequately prepared, Taiwan can turn Chinese ambitions into a costly and unsustainable failure – the Dragon’s Gallipoli.
The Hong Kong Lesson
If Gallipoli demonstrates how empires can be broken by determined defenders, then Hong Kong reveals the cost of failing to resist. Beijing’s hold over Hong Kong indicates that physical control will lead to assimilation. Taiwan must place this lesson at the center of unyielding resistance.
“One Country, Two Systems” was first proposed in 1979 to reunify with a breakaway province: Taiwan. China’s leader, Deng Xiaoping, promised that the province could keep its economic, social, and government systems in exchange for reunification. Deng reused this model for Hong Kong under a 50-year treaty, which unraveled in just 22 years. In 2019, mass protests broke out in opposition to legislation that would allow the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to extradite Hong Kongers under PRC laws. To prevent a post-pandemic resurgence, President Xi enacted national security laws that supersede Hong Kong’s separate system: effectively making the PRC and Hong Kong one country under one system.
Across the strait, Taiwan was a witness to Hong Kong’s suppression. The lesson: Beijing’s political control begins as soon as physical control is achieved. But for Taiwan’s ability to resist, China cannot yet sustain power over the ocean.
Beijing’s Dreams of Empire
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) proclaims Taiwan as a Chinese province that must be reintegrated into a greater Chinese nation-state. Reunification is central to rectifying the “century of humiliation” – a period marred by internal conflict and exploitation. To avoid repeating the past, President Xi Jinping has recommitted China to national unity and technological supremacy. In addition, taking Taiwan would complete nation-building, while also diminishing US influence in Asia, seizing a semiconductor hub, and projecting power into the Indo-Pacific.
To achieve this, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) must attempt the largest seaborne invasion in 80 years against one of the world’s most defensible islands. It is imperative for the CCP to succeed where the British at Gallipoli failed, establishing and sustaining a beachhead.
Why China Hasn’t Invaded the Sandy Beaches – Yet
The threat to Taiwan rests on two pillars: intention and capability. Transforming political intent into concrete military victory requires more than public rhetoric; it demands overcoming constraints of geography, climate, and logistics. For now, Beijing has not attempted an invasion because it lacks the combat logistics to land, sustain, and reinforce a beachhead within its strategic timeframe. To succeed, China must close these gaps and reorient its capabilities for the cross-strait assault.
The beach landings in Taiwan are the hinge of this operation. It is here that the PLA is weakest, and Taiwan is strongest. Whether the PLA can annex Taiwan will be decided on these shores.
By sabotaging its own ports, Taiwan could funnel the invasion onto its few pre-targeted beaches. These landings are shallow mudflats that require complex mobile piers to unload heavier, armored vehicles.
The initial PLA wave, limited to 20,000 troops and smaller amphibious vehicles, would quickly become pinned down. Too small to advance off the beaches, they must wait for reinforcements to build the momentum to push inland.
Waiting for them will be a layered Taiwanese defense: 89,000 active-duty ground forces, anti-ship, anti-armor, and anti-personnel weapon systems stretching out 40 km, and a mobilizing force of 219,000 reservists. To succeed, the PLA’s initial landings need support from the mainland, but instead, they will likely be abandoned and trapped inside an elaborate kill zone.
No Simple Strait Shot
Chinese logistical burdens aside, the very environment of waging this war will complicate operations.
To reinforce the landings, China must continuously transport troops and supplies across the 90-mile Taiwan Strait, a shallow, storm-prone body of water limited by weather patterns. Winter monsoons bring 27 mph winds and 9 ft waves, disrupting movement. Even under ideal conditions, fog and wind pose risks, and predictable embarkation windows enable Taiwan to raise alertness.
After deploying the initial landing, China’s 70 amphibious ships must return to reload troops and supplies, taking eight hours to cross and leaving them exposed to Taiwanese anti-ship missiles. If China cannot maintain operational tempo, the beachhead could collapse before the momentum to push to Taipei can take hold.
Inbound Logistics Failure
Even upon achieving successful initial landings, China is not prepared to logistically sustain its forces.
A sustained invasion requires the constant reconstitution of troops and supplies beyond what China can currently orchestrate. The PLA has six amphibious brigades, each with 5,000 soldiers and 1,340 vehicles, but can only move 19,080 troops and 666 amphibious ZTD-05s per trip. Ships must return across the strait to reload, taking about eight hours– a slow, exposed process. The PLA claims it can reload a brigade in four hours, but that estimate is unrealistic. Sustained victory would require 30 million metric tons of supplies and 5.6 million tons of oil, with each brigade consuming over 600,000 kg per day.
Even optimistic PLA wargaming demonstrates it would take five days for China to amass the 3:1 force ratio for the push inland. The PLA’s heavy attrition would increase the reinforcement demands, as incoming troops would be needed not only to break out, but also to replace the estimated 9% losses across forces.
To compensate, China might deploy old Type-271 landing craft or 63 civilian Roll-on/Roll-off (RORO) ships. However, ROROs are untested in combat, poorly integrated, and useless on Taiwan’s shallow, muddy beaches.
Unlike Hong Kong, Taiwan cannot be seized through police or legal procedures. Beijing’s takeover of Hong Kong depended on preexisting legal frameworks and embedded political infrastructure. Assimilating Taiwan, by contrast, requires a full-scale amphibious military conquest. The PLA, a similar tool for political projection, simply cannot march to Taipei. This cross-strait operation demands a level of logistical coordination and sustainment that remains beyond China’s current capabilities.
Untested Embarkation
From embarkation to resupply, China’s entire logistics chain is riddled with weak links. Recent modernization efforts have reoriented the PLA for a cross-strait invasion, but the combat logistical capability remains untested.
The Taiwan invasion is part of a wider national project to project long-distance military operations such as those for Belt and Road security, UN peacekeeping missions, and its support base in Djibouti. In 2016, President Xi reorganized and integrated PLA and civilian logistical systems by establishing the Joint Logistic Support Force (JLSF). These reforms seek to reduce logistical friction by innovating inventory control systems, streamlining command organization, and incorporating civilian infrastructure.
The JLSF remains unprepared to accomplish high-intensity operations. The reformed command organization is highly centralized, with a cultural avoidance of delegating tasks. Battalions typically have only one Logistical Staff Officer, and Brigades are heavily burdened with numerous duties. Embarkation at mainland transportation facilities is limited by poor civilian integration, bad roads, outdated railway stations, and civilian ports lacking RORO terminals- all of which may be unsuited for modern military usage and vulnerable to Taiwanese strikes.
Concepts of a PLAN
Yet despite these limitations, PLA Navy planners are convinced that victory will arrive with a swift operational win where “the first engagement as the final engagement”– a fait accompli.
Wargame modelling with a best-case scenario for the PLA is founded on the premise of complete strategic surprise, seizing the port of Taipei, “a few days” of urban combat, and a decapitated Taiwanese government on day 46. Anytime longer than 46 days risks developing a protracted struggle, significant international backlash from a global anti-China coalition, and domestic instability.
The sheer size of the invasion would alarm and trigger Taiwan’s mobilization. Any enormous surge of troops, vehicles, and ships would be visible from satellite and radar, signaling conflict. The scale of invasion would be unmistakable, with thousands of ships, vehicles, and aircraft converging.
Even if beachheads are secured, PLA sustainment and momentum are still bottlenecked by a logistics-heavy operation. To increase sustainment capacity, a solution to enable ROROs via artificial piers is possible. However, these can only be used after the initial landings, as they can’t unload onto shallow beaches.
Experts propose that Taiwan should develop their defense to withstand a 30-day amphibious assault as a means to stress the PLA’s combat logistics capabilities and starve its beach landings. Taiwan does not need a quick battlefield victory; it only needs a Chinese political defeat by outside intervention and internal crisis.
From Porcupine to Gallipoli
The Ottoman defense of Gallipoli was only a success because defenders took advantage of their strengths. Taiwan must follow its Overall Defense Concept (ODC), the asymmetric strategy designed for a smaller force to break a larger invasion at its weakest point, on the beach.
To ensure China’s Gallipoli, Taiwan must expand its coastal denial systems, including more coastal, longer-range anti-ship missiles, sea mines, and launchers. Expanding Taiwan’s inventory of Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) would enable it to strike Chinese logistics networks and embarkation points supporting the beach landings.
The United States and its Pacific Allies should support Taiwan’s drone buildup. To contest the Black Sea, Ukraine employed similar coastal defense systems, but its most asymmetric system was the use of unmanned surface vessels (USVs). USV doctrine in the Black Sea disrupted Russian naval operations and could do the same in the Taiwan Strait.
This capability has inspired Taiwan to follow suit, with President Lai Ching-te aiming to make Taiwan the center for Asian drone production and plans on building 200 to support littoral defense. Taiwan’s USV is the 28-foot-long Endeavor Manta. It can be trucked, launched from any beach, hunt mines, loiter in the strait, carry additional drones, fire torpedoes, and detonate on contact. Saturating its coast with USVs, Taiwan can push its defense into the Taiwan Strait, limiting China’s naval movement.
Vigilant Forewarnings
The PLA attempts to shorten Taiwan’s warning time by normalizing annual military exercises and increasing incursions into the ADIZ, blurring signals that invasion is imminent. A narrower timeline could delay Taiwan’s full mobilization and prevent it from repelling the PLA.
However, the United States has the intent and capability to accurately warn of impending invasion. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 authorizes the executive branch to provide “Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities or support” in countering any threat to “the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan”.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense states that it is actively expanding intelligence sharing with international partners. While not overtly stated, modern US intelligence has the potential to prepare Taiwan for an invasion. Before Russia invaded Ukraine, the US had a six-month advanced assessment with satellite and human intelligence. The immense scale of preparation for a cross-strait invasion of thousands of troops, vehicles, trains, planes, and ships would be a difficult abnormality to disguise.
Taiwan is well within range of the missile bombardment of its centers of command, logistics, and military assets. But the objective to disrupt and disable Taiwan’s ability to respond is not guaranteed to succeed. Taiwan’s ODC is designed to decentralize control, harden assets, and maintain continuity under these pre-invasion attacks.
China may also attempt to divide, distract, and overstretch Taiwan’s allies by escalating simultaneous crises via North Korea. But this may inadvertently initiate greater unity of coordination among US allies suspicious of China’s intent.
While this existential crisis confronts Taiwan, it still has allies, opportunities, and a clear choice.
Taiwan’s Choice: Gallipoli or Hong Kong
China intends to assimilate Taiwan into its nation-state, like Hong Kong. However, this threat is defined by both Chinese intentions and capabilities. For now, the PLA lacks the logistical capability to seize it, but this is changing. It is growing its navy, expanding its missile stockpiles, and conducting annual amphibious drills. Taiwan has the advantages of distance and time to repel a Chinese advance. But only with critical investments in doctrine and weapons. As Gallipoli exposes, an empire’s grand plan can unravel when logistics, terrain, and resistance all work against it. The PLA is preparing. But with the right tools, Taiwan can break what China sees as an invasion of destiny into a grinding, strategic disaster.
Gallipoli reminds us that China can fail; Hong Kong reveals why Taiwan must not. Survival is not given freely. It is secured with weapons and the will to use them. For Taiwan to survive, its supporters must act to prevent war by preparing it to win one.
Tags: Amphibious operations, CCP, China, China-Taiwan, Gallipoli, Hong Kong, invasion of Taiwan, logistics, PLA, Taiwan
About The Author
- John Lamberger
- John Lamberger is a US Marine Corps veteran and a graduate student at the Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs. He has a background in amphibious combat logistics and focuses on international security.
16. Balancing China In The West Philippine Sea: Does The Philippines Need A Gray Zone Deterrence Strategy? – Analysis
Excerpts:
This approach would require the following actions from the Philippines. First, it is necessary for the Philippines to develop intermediate force capabilities (IFCs) for a proportional response to China’s use of non-lethal force (e.g. ramming and water cannons) against PCG vessels and their crew.
The use of IFCs for counter-gray zone operations can enable the user to ascertain the intention behind the adversary unit’s tactical action, slow down and immobilize the adversary’s vessel, and incapacitate the adversary’s weapon system or personnel. Applicable IFCs for maritime encounters include non-lethal weapons such as active denial systems, long-range acoustic devices, and cyberwarfare capabilities, among others. Using IFCs in the WPS can enable PN and PCG units to resist PLAN, CCG, and PAFMM interference in the execution of their missions. As a proportional response, the use of IFCs can also shift the burden of conflict escalation from the Philippines to China, thereby disrupting Beijing’s decision-making loop while maintaining the legitimacy of Philippine operations due to the exercise of restraint through the use of non-lethal weapons.
While the PN and PCG should both develop IFCs, PCG assets must lead in operations employing such capabilities. Hence, the U.S. and Australia must be encouraged to follow Japan’s lead in financing the construction of PCG patrol vessels for the improvement of Philippine maritime patrol capabilities. Japan’s initiative should be expanded with the help of the U.S. and Australia to integrate IFCs in the capabilities of the PN and PCG and significantly widen their range of options for responding to various maritime incidents and managing conflict escalation in the WPS.
Second, it is also necessary for the Philippines to develop with the U.S. and its strategic partners the rules of engagement (ROEs) that will govern operations to counter China’s gray zone. In particular, there is a need to determine the applicable tactics, techniques, and procedures, as well as the assets, capabilities, and weapon systems that the allies and security partners would agree upon to manage various contingencies in the WPS based on the legally allowable use of force. This will ensure the balanced use of IFCs in support of identified objectives and guarantee that actions that could potentially escalate conflict will only be undertaken in self-defense and as a matter of last resort.
ROEs that maintain and reinforce interoperability during joint operations between and among the armed forces and coast guard units of the Philippines and its security partners must also be set in place. Relatedly, such ROEs must also set unambiguous but reasonable expectations from the U.S., Japan, and Australia on the type of assistance that they can provide in various scenarios. More importantly, the red lines or trip wires that can trigger escalation along the competition continuum must be specified by the allies and security partners. The Philippines must communicate to the U.S. and its strategic partners its non-negotiables in the WPS for which it will be willing to apply force, including lethal force, so that the allies may assess their options in providing political/diplomatic, informational, military, or economic support.
Through these actions, the Philippines will be in a better position to deter China’s actions in the WPS and will be able to maximize the advantages of extended deterrence, even in non-armed conflict scenarios such as in gray zone maritime coercion.
Balancing China In The West Philippine Sea: Does The Philippines Need A Gray Zone Deterrence Strategy? – Analysis
https://www.eurasiareview.com/07092025-balancing-china-in-the-west-philippine-sea-does-the-philippines-need-a-gray-zone-deterrence-strategy-analysis/
September 7, 2025 0 Comments
By Christian Vicedo
As China Coast Guard (CCG) and maritime militia vessels swarm Second Thomas Shoal, in which the grounded Philippine warship Sierra Madre serves as a military outpost, Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. expressed the need for deterring China and giving a strong message that its unilateral actions in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) “will not be tolerated by the international community.”
In recent months, the Philippines has sought to enhance its defense posture by deepening cooperation with its treaty ally and strategic partners. These actions range from facilitating the deployment of U.S. missile systems within Philippine territory, participating in defense ministerial meetings with U.S., Japan, and Australia, signing a reciprocal access agreement with Japan, and conducting joint military exercises.
If defending Philippine territorial integrity and sovereignty from China is one of the Ferdinand Marcos Jr. administration’s political objectives, then it is clear that deterring China’s actions through external balancing is among the strategic concepts of this administration.
Given China’s unyielding position, it is worth examining how Beijing sustains its gray zone activities amidst the efforts of the Philippines to strengthen extended deterrence through deeper defense cooperation with the U.S., Japan, and Australia to assert its sovereignty in the WPS and the rules-based international order.
Extended Deterrence in the WPS
Under President Marcos Jr., the Philippines reinforced its alliance with the U.S. by issuing the bilateral defense guidelines, which has recognized the threat of gray zone coercion in the WPS and sought to improve coordination in planning, capability development, and intelligence-sharing between the allies. However, joint exercises such as the Sama-Sama Maritime Training Activity and Kamandag and Balikatan Exercises have continued to focus on conventional warfare capabilities such as coastal defense, joint naval operations, and anti-ship strike capability training, consistent with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP)’s comprehensive archipelagic defense concept. These exercises also included the deployment of the Typhon missile, HMARS artillery rocket, and NMESIS anti-ship missile systems in Western and Northern Philippines, facing maritime areas in which there is increased Chinese naval, coast guard, and maritime militia presence.
The Philippines has also sought to deepen defense cooperation with its strategic partners. The reciprocal access agreement with Japan is expected to improve interoperability with Japanese, American, and Australian forces as it would enable Tokyo’s active participation in Balikatan exercises and other military exercises. Additionally, Japan’s interest in transferring six Abukuma-class destroyer escorts to the Philippine Navy (PN) could help address military capability gaps and create opportunities for more complex exercises among the allies and partners.
Meanwhile, since elevating its comprehensive partnership with Australia into a strategic partnership, the Philippines has regularly conducted joint exercise ALON with Australia to promote interoperability with Canberra. This defense cooperation will be further elevated and operationalized with a planned defense cooperation agreement that will enable Australia to build and use military infrastructures at agreed locations within Philippine territory.
These initiatives illustrate the alignment of strategic interests among the Philippines and its strategic partners and the enhancement of linkages within the U.S.-led system of alliances and security partnerships to deter threats against freedom of navigation and overflight, secure sea lines of communication, and preserve a maritime order based on international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the 2016 Arbitral Award in the Philippine case versus China.
To complement external balancing, the Philippines has also leveraged its political capital and informational resources through its transparency initiative in the WPS. This maintains the political high ground by deploying the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) and other civilian public vessels that maneuver against China’s interference and intimidation activities during maritime patrol and resupply missions. The approach involves the documentation and publication of provocative and dangerous tactics of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), CCG, and People’s Armed Force Maritime Militia (PAFMM) as part of strategic communications to raise the awareness of the international community and elicit international support for the Philippine position anchored on UNCLOS and the 2016 Arbitral Award.
In response to the Philippines’ external balancing efforts, China has conducted sea-air combat readiness patrols in the WPS. In 2024, China even conducted combat patrols while the U.S., Australia, and Philippines are conducting military exercises. In addition, Beijing’s Defense Ministry has seized the opportunity to support its narrative by arguing that it is the Philippines “causes trouble” by courting “influence from other powers to make waves” in the South China Sea (SSCS).
Meanwhile, in response to the Philippine transparency initiative, China has intensified its information warfare by manipulating facts in several ways. One way is arguing that the PCG causes “provocations and hype” by operating in a “dangerous and unsafe manner.” Another way is relabeling China’s harassment and intimidation activities in the WPS as “professional, standardized, legitimate, and legal operations” to drive away PCG assets. Furthermore, the CCG has extended the geographical scope of its assertiveness with incursions near Palawan and Manila Bay, as if to test the Philippines’ resolve in defending its territory from incursions.
China’s gray zone coercion slips through extended deterrence
China’s gray zone coercion in the WPS involves the use of force below the threshold of war through the combination of military and non-military instruments such as the PLAN, CCG, and PAFMM. From a military perspective, the objective is force projection and sea control through the creation of forward deployment bases within controlled and target maritime features (e.g., Second Thomas Shoal and Scarborough Shoal). From a geopolitical perspective, the goals include the operation of a blue water navy to break away from a perceived U.S. containment strategy and shift the regional balance of power away from Washington.
China’s gray zone coercion takes advantage of two ambiguities. The first is ambiguity in the official linkage between the PLA and PAFMM. While they behave in coordination with the PLAN and CCG, and despite existing research explaining linkages based on sources of training, funding, equipment, and logistics, China has made no pronouncement on the use of the maritime militia as part of its SCS policy, which gives plausible deniability in terms of accountability amid the complexity of legally proving state responsibility.
There is also ambiguity in the applicability of self-defense provision under Articles 51 of the United Nations Charter and Articles IV and V of the 1951 Philippines-U.S. MDT. Given that what constitutes an armed attack is not specified under these legal instruments, triggering rights and obligations under their relevant provisions will be a matter of political judgment. Such judgment, however, is difficult to make given the CG’s and PAFMM’s purported civilian nature and use of non-lethal force such as ramming and water cannons as well as the PLAN’s use of non-lethal weapons such as high-intensity lasers and flares.
In the absence of a counter gray zone strategy that can govern the missions of Philippine military and coast guard units as well as their joint operations with their counterparts from the U.S., Japan, and Australia, there is a risk that the Philippine response to critical incidents in the WPS might be reactionary or insufficient. Consequently, U.S.-Philippines extended deterrence against China might not be able to prevent Beijing’s fait accompli actions such as the forcible ejection of BRP Sierra Madre from Second Thomas Shoal or incremental actions such as island-building in Scarborough Shoal. It must be noted that it is by combining fait accompli actions and incrementalism that China was able to solidify its control over the Mischief Reef in 1995, prevent the Philippines from exercising sovereign rights over Scarborough Shoal, and intensify its island-building and military facility development in occupied features in the Spratlys.
Gray Zone Deterrence in the WPS
A Philippine strategy to counter China’s gray zone coercion must go beyond the concept of classical extended deterrence, which relies on communicating a credible threat of punishment or military costs to be incurred by an adversary should it cross a specified red line. The Philippine strategy must recognize that, unlike in classical deterrence, the use of armed force and lethal weapons carries greater risk in gray zone deterrence since the goal is to prevent an adversary from performing a particular action without conflict escalation and losing legitimacy. In this regard, the Philippine counter gray zone strategy must be a form of deterrence by denial, which relies on denying an adversary’s confidence in its mission by making the achievement of its objectives unfeasible. Such counter gray zone strategy should therefore strengthen the capabilities of PN and PCG to resist military and non-military pressure from China and constrain the decision-making calculus of PLAN, CCG, and PAFMM units within the theater of operations, thereby reducing their flexibility and mobility in executing their gray zone tactics.
This approach would require the following actions from the Philippines. First, it is necessary for the Philippines to develop intermediate force capabilities (IFCs) for a proportional response to China’s use of non-lethal force (e.g. ramming and water cannons) against PCG vessels and their crew.
The use of IFCs for counter-gray zone operations can enable the user to ascertain the intention behind the adversary unit’s tactical action, slow down and immobilize the adversary’s vessel, and incapacitate the adversary’s weapon system or personnel. Applicable IFCs for maritime encounters include non-lethal weapons such as active denial systems, long-range acoustic devices, and cyberwarfare capabilities, among others. Using IFCs in the WPS can enable PN and PCG units to resist PLAN, CCG, and PAFMM interference in the execution of their missions. As a proportional response, the use of IFCs can also shift the burden of conflict escalation from the Philippines to China, thereby disrupting Beijing’s decision-making loop while maintaining the legitimacy of Philippine operations due to the exercise of restraint through the use of non-lethal weapons.
While the PN and PCG should both develop IFCs, PCG assets must lead in operations employing such capabilities. Hence, the U.S. and Australia must be encouraged to follow Japan’s lead in financing the construction of PCG patrol vessels for the improvement of Philippine maritime patrol capabilities. Japan’s initiative should be expanded with the help of the U.S. and Australia to integrate IFCs in the capabilities of the PN and PCG and significantly widen their range of options for responding to various maritime incidents and managing conflict escalation in the WPS.
Second, it is also necessary for the Philippines to develop with the U.S. and its strategic partners the rules of engagement (ROEs) that will govern operations to counter China’s gray zone. In particular, there is a need to determine the applicable tactics, techniques, and procedures, as well as the assets, capabilities, and weapon systems that the allies and security partners would agree upon to manage various contingencies in the WPS based on the legally allowable use of force. This will ensure the balanced use of IFCs in support of identified objectives and guarantee that actions that could potentially escalate conflict will only be undertaken in self-defense and as a matter of last resort.
ROEs that maintain and reinforce interoperability during joint operations between and among the armed forces and coast guard units of the Philippines and its security partners must also be set in place. Relatedly, such ROEs must also set unambiguous but reasonable expectations from the U.S., Japan, and Australia on the type of assistance that they can provide in various scenarios. More importantly, the red lines or trip wires that can trigger escalation along the competition continuum must be specified by the allies and security partners. The Philippines must communicate to the U.S. and its strategic partners its non-negotiables in the WPS for which it will be willing to apply force, including lethal force, so that the allies may assess their options in providing political/diplomatic, informational, military, or economic support.
Through these actions, the Philippines will be in a better position to deter China’s actions in the WPS and will be able to maximize the advantages of extended deterrence, even in non-armed conflict scenarios such as in gray zone maritime coercion.
Christian Vicedo
Christian Vicedo is a security analyst based in Manila. His writings have appeared in Pacific Forum PacNet, East Asia Forum, Geopolitical Monitor, and The Diplomat.
17. China Shows Unity With Russia and North Korea, but Divisions Linger
And hopefully we will be able to exploit those divisions because the CRInK is built on fear, weakness, desperation, and envy.
China Shows Unity With Russia and North Korea, but Divisions Linger
Xi’s embrace of Putin and Kim sent a powerful message, but those relationships remain, for now, far short of a military or political alliance
https://www.wsj.com/world/china-shows-unity-with-russia-and-north-korea-but-divisions-linger-d37be3a2
By Yaroslav Trofimov
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Sept. 7, 2025 9:00 pm ET
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un applauded a military parade in Beijing on Wednesday. Photo: Rao Aimin/Xinhua/AP
BEIJING—The pageantry of China’s Xi Jinping, flanked by leaders of fellow nuclear powers Russia and North Korea as intercontinental ballistic missiles rolled through flag-waving crowds on Tiananmen Square, marked a new phase in the redrawing of the international order.
No longer circumspect about supporting his two rogue neighbors, Xi flaunted Beijing’s growing links with Moscow and Pyongyang—both of them subjected to Western sanctions, both of them engaged in a bloody war against Ukraine and both of them potentially useful to China in a possible conflict with the U.S.
Despite becoming tighter, those relationships remain—for now at least—far short of an actual military or political alliance that could impose its will on the Eurasian landmass, the world’s wealthiest and most populous region.
“China is very cautious about working with these two countries. Unlike what is depicted in the West as them being allies, China is not in the same camp. Its view of warfare and security issues is very different from theirs,” said Tang Xiaoyang, chair of the department of international relations at Tsinghua University, pointing out that Beijing hasn’t fought a war for more than four decades. “What China wants is stability on its borders.”
The gap between Beijing’s aspirations and those of its junior partners, however, is clearly narrowing, Western diplomats and China watchers say. How fast and to what extent those contradictions could be bridged will determine the shape of the international system that is emerging after President Trump upended Washington’s network of alliances in Asia and Europe.
“China is becoming less discreet about being seen as part of the so-called axis of upheaval. Prompted by intensifying China-U.S. competition, China wants to show that, contrary to America’s alienation of allies, it is better capable of uniting friends around itself,” said Tong Zhao, a senior fellow with the Carnegie China think tank. “China sees an opportunity to assert its own leadership when the U.S. is undermining its international credibility.”
Wednesday’s parade in Beijing, which showcased China’s expanding military might and its increasing confidence in being able to win a conventional war against the U.S., followed a regional summit in the city of Tianjin that was also attended by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Xi used that summit to propose a vague but ambitious plan for a new “global governance initiative” that would create a more “just and equitable” international order—an order that is no longer dominated by the U.S.
The solidifying view among many in Beijing is that the current disarray in Washington and the rifts among the world’s leading democracies have handed China a unique chance—making it less necessary for Beijing to worry about the diplomatic fallout of getting too close to pariahs such as Russia and North Korea.
“China and Russia have a very strong shared understanding of how the new international order should work. We think that the American hegemony is ending—that’s an objective reality, it’s happening whether you recognize it or not,” said Wang Dong, a professor at the School of International Studies of Peking University in Beijing. “Both sides—Russia and China—see their relationship as one of strategic importance, and not only because of an increase in animosity coming from Washington.”
A Russian attack on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv in December. Chinese officials stress that Beijing doesn’t recognize Russian claims on Ukrainian territory. Photo: Serhii Korovayny for WSJ
Clear limits to that bond remain, added Xinbo Wu, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. “Neither Russia nor China want to be involved in a major conflict where the other one is involved. If we had a major conflict with the U.S. over the Taiwan issue, I don’t think Russia will come to our assistance,” he said. “We’re good friends, good partners, but that’s it. We will never become allies.”
Chinese officials stress that Beijing isn’t sending actual weapons to Russia, doesn’t recognize Russian claims on Ukrainian territory and doesn’t approve of North Korean participation in the conflict.
Yet, the images of Xi in his Mao-style tunic, leaning toward North Korean leader Kim Jong Un or Russian President Vladimir Putin with explanations as some of the world’s deadliest weapons rolled by, undermine those assurances.
“The presence of Kim sent a message that China really stands by Putin and Russia’s war in Ukraine. It means that the fact of Kim sending troops to fight Ukraine did not cause China any serious discomfort,” said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London. “Inviting Kim was like a middle finger to the democratic West, saying that what you define as unacceptable is not something that we need to give a damn about.”
Xi Jinping, at right, with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Tianjin, China. Photo: ALEXANDER KAZAKOV/KREMLIN/EPA/Shutterstock
China’s military is learning from the Russian experience against Western weapons systems in Ukraine, and some Western officials say that China has given tacit approval for North Korean participation in the war so that Pyongyang could modernize and upgrade its own arsenal—a potential boon to Beijing in case of a multifront war against the West.
While China’s economic ties with North Korea are negligible, Russia and China had a bilateral trade of $245 billion last year, a volume that shrank by 8% during the first seven months of this year after several years of rapid growth. Virtually the entirety of Russian exports is made up of oil, gas and raw materials, while China provides Russia with its industrial output—including indispensable components for the Russian military industries.
“Being the two biggest powers of Eurasia, we cannot ignore current challenges and threats, be it on the scale of our common continent, or of the entire world,” Putin said in an interview with China’s Xinhua state news agency ahead of his visit to China. China said it was abolishing visa requirements for Russian citizens during Putin’s visit, a liberalization already in force for most European and many Asian nations, aiming to bolster trade and tourism. Putin said Russia will reciprocate.
In Beijing’s Ritan shopping center, once buzzing with Russian shoppers, halls are deserted nowadays. “We used to have a lot of business before the war, but now the Russians stopped coming because they don’t have any money, and when they do, they have a hard time taking it out because of the sanctions,” said Zhang Dun, who sells leather jackets and coats. A store selling Chinese tea, retail and wholesale, saw its business halve since the start of the war in Ukraine, echoed attendant Zhong Lili: “How can the Russians be coming here, visiting and spending money, if there is war in their country?”
In another Beijing mall, an empty store stocked Russian food—from salt to chocolates—for Chinese clients. A poster showed Putin eating ice cream atop a freezer with brands such as Stars of the Kremlin. “Most of the customers come here to ask for Putin’s favorite ice-cream flavor,” said attendant Li Na. “But there aren’t many now.”
A Russian promotional event at a Beijing shopping mall. Photo: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
Beijing’s bond with Moscow isn’t cost-free: China’s relationship with most European nations, a much more important source of technology and trade, has suffered as a result of Beijing propping up the Russian war effort. “It’s very unfortunate that China-Europe relations are being kept as a hostage of this war,” said Da Wei, director of the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University. “This is a price that China has paid for the war, which is not wanted by China and not supported by China.”
While debate on most political issues isn’t permitted in the tightly controlled Chinese society, a variety of views remains tolerated on Russia and the war in Ukraine, with some prominent scholars publicly voicing support for Kyiv’s resistance.
One of China’s leading strategists, Shi Yinhong, a distinguished professor at Renmin University, said that both Russia and North Korea, because of their adventurous behavior on the world stage, are creating risks for Beijing, especially as China faces economic headwinds.
“One major liability now comes from the guy who is still waging his war in Europe, and a second liability comes from the guy who has for many years escalated his development of nuclear missiles, against all U.N. Security Council resolutions, and now also sent massive troops to Europe to help Russia fight that war,” Shi said.
Xi, center, has flaunted Beijing’s growing links with Moscow and Pyongyang. Photo: Sergei Bobylev/Zuma Press
China’s leadership believes that it would be against Beijing’s interest for Putin to lose the war in Ukraine, a belief that Foreign Minister Wang Yi recently expressed to his European interlocutors. But it isn’t clear at all that China would find it beneficial for Russia to win, achieving Putin’s war aims of turning Ukraine into a vassal state and possibly asserting a European sphere of influence beyond Ukraine.
“If Russia were to win, it would become more troublesome to China than now, when it is at war. It would have much less dependence on China’s economy and, if the Republican Party remains in the White House after Trump, Russia would have a bigger chance for a rapprochement with Washington, and China would worry about that,” Shi said.
Trump’s current attempts to split Russia away from China don’t elicit much angst in Beijing because of calculations that Putin wouldn’t put much faith into promises by a White House that is so erratic and unpredictable—a view shared by many Russia analysts.
Much of Xi’s foreign policy over the past decade has been guided by a plan for “national rejuvenation” that would overcome the legacy of the “century of humiliation,” when China was torn apart by predatory colonial powers. Reclaiming the Chinese state’s control over Taiwan is a central part of that idea. Yet, the one remaining major legacy of past colonialism is the annexation of large parts of China by Russia, areas that make up the sparsely populated Russian Far East region.
That history still colors Chinese perceptions of the relationship with Moscow. “Russia took the largest piece of land from China, during the Qing dynasty. In modern history, during the era of humiliation, China suffered mostly from two countries—one is Russia and the other is Japan. People still have vivid memories of the past, and it’s very difficult to forget,” said Wu of Fudan University.
Yet the message from China’s leadership isn’t to dwell on that history, at least not now. “We know what happened in the past, but we want to focus on the future,” said Victor Gao, vice president of the Center for China and Globalization think tank in Beijing. “The whole country is very much geared toward Russia-China cooperation.”
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
18. Is the U.K. a Canary in the Coal Mine for a Heavily Indebted World?
Is this the precursor to a global depression? This borrowing and living in debt surely cannot go on forever. Will there be a great reset through war like the last global depression? Is that the only way out?
Please go to the link to view the graphs/charts.
Is the U.K. a Canary in the Coal Mine for a Heavily Indebted World?
Borrowing costs are surging for many industrialized countries, causing talk of a possible crisis
https://www.wsj.com/world/uk/is-the-u-k-a-canary-in-the-coal-mine-for-a-heavily-indebted-world-a1d904f0?st=eZv6cr&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
By Max Colchester
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and Ed Ballard
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Sept. 7, 2025 10:00 pm ET
The U.K. is expected to increase taxes again, partly to offset rising borrowing costs. Photo: Niklas Halle’n/AFP/Getty Images
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U.K. borrowing costs have hit a multidecade high.View more
LONDON—This past week, U.K. long-term borrowing costs hit their highest level in decades, causing Treasury chief Rachel Reeves to shoot down suggestions that the heavily indebted country is heading for a fiscal crisis.
Most economists agree with her—for now. But in a world where industrialized nations have taken on record amounts of debt and are paying ever more to finance the borrowing, the U.K. could become the financial markets’ equivalent of the proverbial canary in the coal mine—a leading indicator of trouble for other debtors like the U.S. and France, economists say.
“The U.K. isn’t alone in all of this,” said Ruth Gregory, deputy chief U.K. economist at Capital Economics. “There is a common theme across many G-7 countries that the conditions do seem to be in place for a potential fiscal crisis, although that doesn’t mean a crisis is imminent or inevitable.”
Last year, the British Labour government announced the biggest tax hike in a generation, billed as a one-off effort to plug a widening shortfall in public finances and reassure investors that the U.K. was a country serious about balancing its books. But now, Reeves is expected to return in November to ask British taxpayers for billions more in taxes.
The reason: The U.K.’s borrowing costs keep rising, its economy isn’t growing as fast as hoped, and the government, despite having a healthy majority in Parliament, has struggled to cut ballooning welfare spending. Economists worry the pattern could keep repeating.
Over the past two decades, governments went on a debt binge, fueled by low interest rates. Now that rates have risen, investors worry that Western governments aren’t willing to make politically difficult decisions to curb public spending, leaving politicians caught on a hamster wheel of ever higher taxes. France’s government is expected to fall in the coming week amid political opposition to proposed spending cuts and the elimination of two public holidays—a move to raise tax revenues from two more working days.
The amount of debt as a percentage of annual economic output in advanced economies has doubled since 2007 to around 80%, according to the International Monetary Fund. The IMF says public debt could rise close to 100% of the global economy by the end of the decade, in part because of rising interest costs.
In the last year, net interest payments on government debt across the globe rose 11.2% to $2.72 trillion, partly driven by stubbornly high inflation that keeps interest rates high.
The U.K. isn’t the most indebted Western country, nor is it the slowest growing. Unlike the U.S., however, it doesn’t have a major reserve currency. And unlike its European neighbors, it isn’t part of a currency club with a big central bank that helped engineer bailouts of debt-laden countries. It also has a recent history of market turmoil, when the pound crashed in 2022 after then Prime Minister Liz Truss signed off on unfunded tax cuts combined with big borrowing. (Truss was ejected from Downing Street within weeks.)
Investors now demand a slight premium to lend to the U.K., whose borrowing costs have risen sharply in recent years, partly as a result of persistently high inflation. Yields on 30-year government bonds, or gilts, this past week hit levels last since in the late 1990s, rising higher than those of France, which has a bigger debt load. The yield on U.K. 10-year debt is now the highest in the Group of Seven nations, eclipsing the U.S.
“There are countries that have got higher debt levels or higher deficits, but when you look at what you’re having to spend in terms of borrowing costs that’s where it becomes problematic,” said Mark Dowding, chief investment officer for fixed income at RBC BlueBay Asset Management.
Next year, the U.K.’s interest payments are expected to hit £111.2 billion, or roughly $150 billion, twice what the country spends on defense. U.K. government debt, currently below 100% of gross domestic product, is projected to hit 270% of GDP by the early 2070s, pushed up by an aging population and spending on healthcare and pensions, according to the country’s fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility.
This combination has turned the U.K. into a potential tinderbox, where a market crisis, either at home or abroad, could trigger yields to jump up further, said Gregory of Capital Economics.
Some argue that precisely because the Bank of England is independent and unlikely to bail out the government, the country will be a “first mover” in facing up to the reality of its borrowing glut since the pandemic. “It’s going to be a mess, it’s going to be painful, but the U.K. will at least confront the problem,” said Robin Brooks, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Others might not until there is a crisis.
As things stand, an immediate repeat of the Truss market meltdown is unlikely, said Francis Diamond, head of European Rates Strategy at JPMorgan. The pound has risen against the dollar over the past year, a far cry from the steep falls seen under Truss or when the country was bailed out by the IMF in the 1970s.
But the overall trend isn’t positive. The Labour government, elected last year, vowed to be fiscally responsible. But its first efforts this year to trim the growth in welfare spending were knocked back by its own lawmakers in Parliament. In July, Reeves appeared tearful in Parliament after plans to make a modest welfare cut were abandoned as Labour’s own lawmakers threatened a rebellion. A plan to cut a fuel subsidy to the elderly also had to be shelved.
That, say economists, leaves Reeves with a very difficult balancing act when she presents spending plans this fall: finding a way to raise taxes but not crush growth.
Write to Max Colchester at Max.Colchester@wsj.com and Ed Ballard at ed.ballard@wsj.com
19. Russia’s New Fear Factor: How the War Is Driving a Wave of Purges and Suicides Among the Country’s Elites
Is this the possible path to Putin's end? If so, should we invoke Bonaparte and "never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake?" Will the puges have the opposite reaction than what Putin desires?
Excerpt:
But those hoping to follow in Zhoga’s footsteps will need to remember that it is a game without rules. In any case, the existing elites can no longer rest easy. Having reconciled themselves to the regime’s radicalism, they may have now sealed their own doom. Many members of Putin’s aristocracy continue to hold out hope that after the end of hostilities, everything will become, if not different, then at least milder. They are counting on the repeal of the laws on “foreign agents” and “undesirable organizations” and an end to the encroaching nationalization of the private sector, among other things. But the larger lesson of the recent purges is quite different: Putin lacks a reverse gear.
Russia’s New Fear Factor
Foreign Affairs · More by Andrei Kolesnikov · September 8, 2025
How the War Is Driving a Wave of Purges and Suicides Among the Country’s Elites
September 8, 2025
Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting in the Kremlin, Moscow, August 2025 Vyacheslav Prokofyev / Reuters
ANDREI KOLESNIKOV is a columnist for The New Times and Novaya Gazeta.
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In the 1920s, the Bolshevik economic theorist and Communist Party darling Nikolai Bukharin was one of Stalin’s closest allies. But as Stalin became entrenched in power, Bukharin found that he was no less vulnerable to the dictator’s wrath than anyone else. Accused of conspiracy in 1937, Bukharin was executed the following year. Bukharin is credited with a grim joke: “We may have two parties—one in power, the other in prison.” He might have added, “or dead.” By the time of Bukharin’s arrest, Stalin was systematically replacing the people who had secured his ascent to power with a new generation of young and ambitious politicians and officials for whom total loyalty to the leader would be everything.
Among elites in Russia today, something like Bukharin’s story is happening once again. On July 7, Roman Starovoit, the minister of transport, killed himself with a firearm a few hours after being sacked by Russian President Vladimir Putin. A few days earlier, Andrei Badalov, the vice president of the oil transportation company Transneft, fell from the window of an apartment building. Badalov was only the latest of a series of top officials in the oil and gas sector who have been purged or died mysteriously since Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine began in 2022. According to Novaya Gazeta, the independent Russian newspaper, there have been 56 deaths of successful businesspeople and officials under strange circumstances since February 2022. Many of them have fallen out of windows. More and more, people who have loyally served Putin’s system are being persecuted, mainly on the grounds of corruption.
In 2024, the Ministry of Defense was hit with a sweeping corruption crackdown. In May of that year, Sergei Shoigu, the longtime defense minister known for his proximity to Putin, was sacked, and appointed to the primarily ceremonial position of chair of the Security Council. Shoigu’s deputy Timur Ivanov was less fortunate: he was arrested on large-scale corruption charges and, in July, sentenced to 13 years in prison—one of the longest sentences for any current or former high-ranking Russian official since the end of the Cold War. Since then, there have been many more arrests—especially of regional functionaries at various levels. As the Putin regime turns on its own people, it, too, has begun to replace them with a new breed of loyalists, people whose primary qualifications are their apparent fealty to the leader, and sometimes their participation in the war. Still, Putin prefers experienced and talented technocrats for the most responsible positions, such as governors and ministers.
After more than three and a half years of war and mounting economic challenges, Putin’s aim is not to fight corruption. His goal is to avoid internal threats. And to do that, he needs to turn the elites into a frightened and therefore controllable class. With the demise of Starovoit, a trusted Putin official, a feeling has emerged among Russian elites that no one is protected and that loyalty alone is not always enough to survive in the system. As in the Stalin era, it is not clear who might be next.
SKY FALL
Even for experienced members of Russia’s political class, the meaning of Starovoit’s suicide was difficult to interpret. On the one hand, he had not yet been charged with anything, but on the other, it was clear that he had chosen death over prison. Nonetheless, several important figures, including St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov, attended Starovoit’s funeral; earlier, a number of members of the government and deputy prime ministers appeared at a memorial ceremony for Starovoit in Moscow. State news agencies reported that Putin was supposed to send a wreath to one of these events. But later, they were forced to retract those reports.
All this may have caused a feeling of awkwardness and fear among those who attended: Had they done the right thing to pay last respects to a man who had lost the president’s trust? In fact, it appeared that Starovoit had become ensnared in a campaign against large-scale corruption in the Kursk region bordering Ukraine, where he had served as governor until the spring of 2024. Starting in December of that year, a number of Starovoit’s former colleagues and subordinates were implicated in embezzlement of military funds—including 19 billion rubles (around $250 million) that had been allocated for defenses along the Ukrainian border. These are the kinds of things that Putin does not forgive.
But Starovoit’s death was hardly an isolated case. In January, the deputy head of the Vladivostok administration fell from a hotel window in Thailand. The following month, the head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service in the Republic of Karelia fell from a window in his office. Later in the spring, a high-ranking police officer and a prison system employee died from apparently self-inflicted gunshot wounds. And shortly before Starovoit’s suicide, the vice governor of the Leningrad region was found dead with a gunshot wound in a country house. Meanwhile, according to Novaya Gazeta, some 140 officials and administrators of medium and high rank were arrested in June and July alone, mostly on corruption-related charges.
Until now, corruption has rarely attracted much attention in Putin’s system. There are no poor officials, and no one is ashamed of their wealth, no matter how it was obtained. But the siphoning of state funds connected to the war has become too sensitive for Putin. This has been confirmed not only by the purges of defense ministry officials and Starovoit’s death but also by the arrest of officials in Belgorod and Bryansk, two other regions bordering Ukraine. Ivanov, the fabulously wealthy former deputy defense minister who was responsible for military construction projects, among other things, received his harsh prison sentence for allegedly embezzling more than four billion rubles ($52 million) through foreign bank transfers. But the recent arrests are not only related to military graft; some appear to be part of a broader purge of regional officials with connections at the federal level.
MALICE TOWARD MANY
Fear does not play a determining role in the lives of ordinary Russians. Most of the public have adapted to current circumstances and continue to either support Putin’s regime, or, to avoid problems, pretend that they do. (According to August polling by the independent Levada Center, a large majority—69 percent—of respondents agree that “the country is moving in the right direction”—this is despite the fact that for several months now, similar majorities—some two-thirds of respondents—have said that it is necessary to move towards peace talks rather than continue military action, the highest such figures since the start of the war.) Many Russians are convinced that the silencing of Putin’s opponents, and now the widening arrests of officials, are bells tolling for someone else; they do not concern them. People know they need to behave cautiously, but their conformist behavior is shaped more by learned indifference and anticipatory obedience to everything they cannot influence. Any unpleasant government decision—such as the August order blocking voice calls on WhatsApp and Telegram, on the pretext of preventing scams and terrorist activity—tends to be perceived mostly with passive discontent and immediate adaptation with the search for alternative practical solutions.
For the political bosses, oligarchs, bureaucrats, and business executives who constitute Russia’s elites, however, it is an altogether different story. For them, fear has become a highly effective means of control. The problem is for them is that they own their wealth only as long as the state allows them to do so. After more than three and a half years of war, the Kremlin is in dire need of additional funds—informal income streams from big business and “patriotic” investments in industries that are important for the state. Lately, the government seems determined to nationalize any privately owned asset or company it can easily get its hands on. The most significant case so far was the seizure, in June 2025, of Moscow’s huge Domodedovo airport on the grounds that its owners held foreign passports or dual citizenship. Such blatant grabs by the state send a clear signal to those who are tempted to think that the perquisites of Russian elite status—money and businesses—belong exclusively to them.
In Putin’s system, it turns out that joining or maintaining a place in the establishment —whether close or more distant to the regime—is dangerous. Up until the war, there were various patronage networks, and mini-patrons could regulate relations and protect their own vassals from the biggest patron: the president. Much of this system is still in place, but it no longer works properly. For example, it was widely understood that Starovoit was under the protection of the Rotenberg brothers, Boris and Arkady, billionaires who have been close to Putin since their youth. But in the end, it didn’t help him. Mini-patrons, it appears, are no longer able or willing to protect their vassals. Take Vadim Moshkovich, the billionaire founder of Russia’s largest agro-industrial business and former member of the upper house of parliament, who was arrested in March 2025 and charged with embezzling 30 billion rubles ($357 million). Moshkovich has denied the charges and no one seems to know who among his detractors was behind his detention. Yet no one from the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs—the so-called trade union of oligarchs that represents major businesses—publicly stood up for him.
Sometimes the attacks have been more overtly political. On August 20, a court in Yekaterinburg fined the deputy director of the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center, Lyudmila Telen, for reposting an old Facebook post that “discredited the Russian Armed Forces”—signaling a new front against the remaining liberal elements of Russian society. In previous years, Russian authorities largely avoided attacking Yeltsin, who died in 2007 and who as the country’s first president after the Cold War was the man who picked Putin to succeed him. In 2015, the Yeltsin Foundation opened the Yeltsin Center, a prominent independent museum and research institution in Yeltsin’s hometown of Yekaterinburg, and the foundation has also run a smaller branch of the Yeltsin Center in Moscow.
But influential conservative forces close to the Kremlin have long sought to tarnish his liberal legacy, and “patriotic” influencers and quasi-public organizations have been allowed to discredit and interfere with the work of the Yeltsin Center. Now, the legal case against Telen, a former liberal journalist, signals that this campaign is transitioning to a more formal legal and administrative level. What Telen reposted on Facebook was an antiwar message written more than three years ago by Yeltsin’s daughter, Tatyana Yumasheva. The state knows that it cannot prosecute the daughter of the first Russian president, so it has set out instead to stymie the Yeltsin Center and the allegedly pro-Western liberals who run it. Along with the ruling against Telen, the center’s activities have largely been ground to a halt. It doesn’t seem to matter that the head of the center’s board of trustees is also the head of the presidential administration of the Russian Federation Anton Vaino. As in the case of Starovoit, no one in the system today is going to stand up for anyone. Everyone is afraid.
SALAMI TACTICS
For Russian elites, there is another important lesson in Starovoit’s demise. In pursuing first the transport minister’s former subordinates and then the man himself, Putin was deploying a strategy that has also been seen elsewhere, including at the defense ministry. In this approach, ever higher levels of the military, federal, and regional elites are gradually implicated, layer by layer, like slices of salami. There is no question that the government is now slicing off layers with much greater speed—suggesting how suspicious the top leadership and, possibly, the top leader himself, has become since the start of the “special military operation”: whoever dares to steal while others are fighting for him, or whoever is not sincere in support for the government and the war, but simply biding their time, must be punished. Or perhaps it is a self-developing process: the system has begun to devour itself as it did in the Stalin era. And many officials now know they could well end up as the next slice.
But this doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities for others. During the purges of the late 1930s, a new generation of young and ambitious politicians and officials quickly arrived to take the places of Stalin’s purged comrades. Officials were dismissed in waves even from the very source of repression—the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs—as new commissars arrived to replace them. The scale of what is happening today is of course incomparable to the mass purges of those times. But the point is the principle: Putin has now indicated that he trusts, at least for the moment, those who “protect” Russia, and that means new career prospects for these people—including special retraining programs, incentives to adapt to civilian life, and preferential access to education and employment. For instance, the state pays for the education of “participants in the special military operation” and their children, and universities are required to allocate at least ten percent of their places for them. As of mid-August, 28,000 people were enrolled in Russian universities in 2025 under the preferential quota for special military operation participants and members of their families—a nearly 75 percent increase over the previous year.
In fascist Italy, this kind of patronage of the warrior class was known as trincerocrazia, the “trenchocracy,” based on Mussolini’s idea that veterans from the trenches had a natural right to rule the country. In Russia’s case, Putin cannot help all of Russia’s veterans, given how many there are. But he will be able to promote a few, positioning them for leadership roles in the distant future. (Putin has no intention of going anywhere any time soon.) The rise of these trenchocrats has created another layer of anxiety for Russia’s existing elites. The system has already signaled to members of its upper echelons to watch their financial transactions carefully; now, they will need to be more Putinist than Putin himself.
THE LAST TECHNOCRATS
Over time, the replacement of Russia’s elite with a new generation of military heroes can degrade the quality of the regional and federal bureaucracy. In certain crucial areas, it could more directly threaten the functioning of the state. Consider the country’s financial managers. An enduring mystery to many Western observers is how Russia has been able to remain relatively solvent despite the extraordinary pressures of three and half years of war. One answer is the Kremlin’s highly skilled financial and economic officials, and the leaders of Russia’s central bank. These institutions are still led by former liberals such as Anton Siluanov, the finance minister, and Elvira Nabiullina, the governor of the central bank. Putin’s system would have collapsed long ago if it weren’t for the remnants of the market economy, including adaptive small- and medium-sized businesses, as well as competent monetary and budget policy.
Since the “special operation” began, Nabiullina has managed to keep the financial system relatively stable despite extraordinary levels of military spending, in part by keeping interests rates very high. (In July they were lowered to 18 percent, after reaching a peak of 21 percent last year.) In doing so, she has put a break on inflation (which is nevertheless nearly approaching a double-digit figure on an annual basis). She has also signaled in a somewhat veiled way that only by reducing the extravagant levels of spending now required for the “special military operation” will the government set the conditions for her to bring rates down. So far, Russia’s financial technocrats have not been fired because Putin seems to recognize that he needs them. But if the system continues to deteriorate, perhaps they will become scapegoats, as well, and he will replace them with voodoo economists. If that happens, the country will almost certainly face an economic crisis, including a runaway budget deficit, unabated inflation, and recession. (Economists are already now arguing whether the Russian economy has entered a period of technical recession, implying a decline in GDP for two consecutive quarters.)
This scenario may seem far-fetched, but the effects of degrading expertise have already been shown in other domains, even as the problems that Russia must deal with are far more complex than before: shortages of doctors, teachers, and public-transport drivers; collapsing city and regional budgets; slowdowns in factory production; and demographic decline. For now, members of the new military elite are being assigned insignificant positions such as deputy mayor for youth affairs and patriotic education. But the picture could look different if they begin to fill more important administrative posts.
Thus far, the most notable example of a trenchocrat attaining a high federal position is Artem Zhoga, who built his career in the ranks of anti-Ukrainian military units in the Donbas region. In 2022, his son was killed fighting in the Sparta Battalion, an anti-Ukrainian militia in the Donetsk Republic, and shortly afterward, Putin met with Zhoga to award his son a posthumous Hero of the Russian Federation medal. Then, in December 2023, Zhoga played a major part in an orchestrated public event with Putin in which Zhoga asked the president to run for reelection as head of state. Putin accepted Zhoga’s staged proposal, and following the meeting, Zhoga—who had no experience in government or administration—became the president’s plenipotentiary representative in the Ural district. Under Zhoga’s leadership, the region’s somewhat liberal governor, Yevgeny Kuyvashev, was forced to resign. Putin then appointed Zhoga to serve as a nonpermanent member of Russia’s National Security Council. Although the position is largely ceremonial, this meteoric rise has set a precedent—showing that it is possible to make a career in Putin’s system by performing one’s fealty.
But those hoping to follow in Zhoga’s footsteps will need to remember that it is a game without rules. In any case, the existing elites can no longer rest easy. Having reconciled themselves to the regime’s radicalism, they may have now sealed their own doom. Many members of Putin’s aristocracy continue to hold out hope that after the end of hostilities, everything will become, if not different, then at least milder. They are counting on the repeal of the laws on “foreign agents” and “undesirable organizations” and an end to the encroaching nationalization of the private sector, among other things. But the larger lesson of the recent purges is quite different: Putin lacks a reverse gear.
Foreign Affairs · More by Andrei Kolesnikov · September 8, 2025
20. Denial Won’t Do: Europe Needs a Punishment-Based Conventional Counterstrike Strategy
Excerpts:
To avoid misinterpretation, European NATO states will need to clearly link their conventional missile acquisitions with signaling and rhetoric, stressing that while NATO has no interest in fighting a war with Russia or using this arsenal preemptively, it will be fully prepared to respond to limited or large-scale Russian missile use with overwhelming conventional force to negate any potential gains. Discriminating between European conventional and nuclear missiles should also remain straightforward, since most missile systems would likely be acquired by Europe’s non-nuclear powers like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, , Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Poland, and Romania as well as others. The buildup would also not necessarily coincide with an increase in nuclear warhead production, and even if it did, integrating these warheads into new delivery vehicles is not straightforward and, for some types of missiles like mini cruise missiles or long-range drones, unsuitable. Even so, the deployment of substantial missile arsenals may not necessarily appear stabilizing. This is arguably a broader consequence of the conventional missile age we are entering, in which the wide proliferation of conventional long-range strike weapons undermines crisis stability.
In the end, there are also no real alternatives. As outlined above, a denial-based strategy is bound to fail in the short to medium term. And while a missile arms control agreement, in which European NATO states and Russia limit their conventional arsenals, may appear an option in theory, Russia’s record of non-compliance and refusal to acknowledge its blatant breach of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty makes a follow-on treaty unlikely to succeed from the outset. Unless the broader security environment changes alongside domestic shifts within Russia, arms control with Moscow is not a feasible path.
If deterrence is the only realistic alternative, a punishment rather than denial posture in the missile domain appears the best among suboptimal options. While associated with its own risks and challenges, it can help convince Russia that aggression against NATO is not worth the costs. If war nonetheless breaks out, it plays a key role in deterring Russian horizontal escalation against European civilian infrastructure and population centers to prevent the atrocities we are currently witnessing in Ukraine.
Denial Won’t Do: Europe Needs a Punishment-Based Conventional Counterstrike Strategy
Fabian Hoffmann
September 8, 2025
warontherocks.com · September 8, 2025
Explosions over Kyiv and other Ukrainian population centers are daily reminders that Russia’s missiles can reach deep and strike hard. Beyond the immediate implications for the war in Ukraine, these barrages raise a sharper question for Europe: how to respond to a Russia that wields conventional long-range strike power as a tool of coercion and war.
There is now broad agreement among policymakers and analysts that Russia’s missile buildup cannot go unanswered. In response, European states have embarked on a major expansion of their missile defenses, covering short-, medium-, and long-range systems designed to counter everything from low-flying drones and cruise missiles to high-altitude short and medium-range ballistic missiles. But Europe’s current emphasis on missile defense is a losing strategy.
Despite increased missile defense production in Europe and among allies, they are not keeping up with Russian missile output. While Russia produces roughly one-and-a-half to two times as many ballistic and cruise missiles as Europe produces interceptors, it is far outpacing Europe in long-range drone production. Moreover, the reliance on expensive current-generation interceptors renders Europe’s missile defense strategy inherently cost-inefficient and unsustainable in the long run.
Given the size of Russia’s missile arsenal and the absence of effective means to defend against it, a denial-based missile defense strategy is therefore no longer viable. Europe should instead adopt a punishment-based conventional counterstrike strategy that deters Russia by demonstrating the ability to respond in kind to coercive or large-scale missile use. While such a strategy entails risks and challenges both in implementation and in managing Russian reactions, it remains the best option among a set of limited choices.
BECOME A MEMBER
Russian Missile Buildup
Russia spent the two decades prior to the war in Ukraine modernizing and expanding its conventional missile arsenal. By the time the war began, it deployed a formidable array of air- and surface-launched cruise missiles, complemented by a growing inventory of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.
Qualitatively, Russian missiles do not match the technological sophistication of some Western systems. This became apparent early in the conflict, when Russian missiles exhibited relatively high systemic error rates as well as a lack of accuracy. But Russia enjoyed one decisive advantage: established production lines that could be scaled rapidly. Before the war, Russia was estimated to produce around 72 9M723 short-range ballistic missiles annually. By June 2025, this figure had risen to at least 720. Similarly, pre-war production of Kh-101 cruise missiles stood at about 56 per year, a number that has now grown to over 700.
In total, Russia now likely produces up to 2,000 cruise missiles annually, optimized or adapted for land-attack purposes, including other types such as the 3M-14 Kalibr, Kh-59, and P-800 Oniks. In addition, Russia produces around 800 to 1,000 9M723 and Kh-47M2 Kinzhal short- and medium-range ballistic missiles each year.
Another major success of Russia’s industrial ramp-up has been long-range one-way attack drone production. Today, Russia is estimated to produce over 30,000 Geran-2 drones annually (with plans to grow production by an additional 40 percent), along with a growing number of Gerbera decoy drones designed specifically to saturate and overwhelm enemy air and missile defenses.
While Russian missiles and long-range drones have not succeeded in breaking Ukraine’s warfighting capacity or its spirit, they have posed a major obstacle to Ukraine’s defense. Russia’s constant drone and missile attacks force Ukraine to disperse scarce air and missile defense assets away from the frontline, leaving troops and equipment exposed to Russian glide bombs and short-range ballistic missiles. Russia has also used its missile arsenal fairly effectively to suppress Ukraine’s arms industry, at times causing major shutdowns and disruptions. In addition, Russian conventional long-range strikes against critical and civilian infrastructure have placed a heavy psychological burden on Ukraine’s population.
Today, Ukraine’s missile defense is in a precarious position. While not yet on the verge of arsenal depletion, Ukraine is forced to contend with the constant need to resupply scarce missile defense interceptors while at the same time expanding the overall number of missile defense systems deployed to increase the defendable footprint across its vast territory.
Europe’s Response
To respond to the growing Russian missile threat, Europe has almost exclusively focused on acquiring large numbers of missile defense systems. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, Germany and Poland have placed significant orders for Patriot fire units. Seven European countries have acquired infrared imaging system tail/thrust vector-controlled surface-to-air medium-range launched fire units, and four have procured National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System air and missile defense systems. France and Italy bought additional surface-to-air medium-range/land-based fire units, while several other European countries — Finland, Germany, and Slovakia — opted for Israeli systems to strengthen their medium- and long-range missile defense capabilities.
Unfortunately for Europe, its ambitious missile defense acquisitions do little to comprehensively mitigate the threat. There are three reasons for this.
First, Europe faces a shortage of interceptors, particularly for ballistic missile defense. Lockheed Martin and Raytheon currently produce around 850 to 900 interceptors annually, but only 400 to 500 of these reach Europe, with the rest remaining in the United States or going to other export customers. Even when combined with European production of ballistic missile interceptors, notably the Aster 30B1 and Aster 30B1NT used in SAMP/T, annual availability in Europe stands at no more than 600–700. Given that operators would likely need to allocate at least two interceptors per incoming ballistic missile to achieve high intercept probabilities, annual availability falls far short of Russia’s output of 800–1,000 short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. In addition, since ballistic missile defense interceptors are several times more expensive than the ballistic missiles Russia produces, this strategy is inherently cost-ineffective. Similar issues exist for cruise missile defense, though the production and cost discrepancies are less severe.
Second, even if the interceptor shortage were resolved, Europe would still face a shortage of fire and launcher units, which limits the overall defendable footprint. Germany, for example, plans to deploy up to 17 Patriot fire units and likely more than a dozen IRIS-T SLM fire units by the end of the 2020s, yet this will be far from sufficient to cover its entire territory. In fact, while available missile defense assets in Europe will allow effective point or limited area defense of critical military and civilian targets, they will not provide comprehensive coverage. This means that some attack vectors and targets will necessarily stay unprotected.
Third, existing and planned European missile defense capabilities appear unable to address the severe threat posed by Russian long-range drones. Similar to Ukraine, Europe in a war with Russia would likely face the choice of expending scarce and expensive interceptors against cheap Shahed-type drones or letting them slip through. While European states have begun developing and acquiring specialized systems to counter the long-range drone threat more cost-effectively, these solutions are not yet produced and procured at the necessary scale. Overall, this means that Europe’s denial-based missile defense-centric strategy cannot cope with the threat posed by Russia’s missile arsenal.
Shooting the Archer?
As the scale of Russia’s missile ramp-up became clear, along with Ukraine’s struggles to sustain its missile defenses and the enormous costs of Europe’s own missile defense plans, European focus shifted toward complementing missile defense assets with a preemptive strike capability — at least rhetorically — following the motto “shoot the archer, not the arrow”.
For example, the website of the German armed forces recently cited the need to destroy “launchers of long-range missiles” as an important reason for acquiring a deep-strike capability. Suppressing enemy long-range fires is reportedly also a key mission of the Dark Eagle hypersonic missile system scheduled for deployment to Germany from 2026 onward. Analysts have further pointed out that a long-range strike capability is needed to “cut through Russia’s … ground and sea-launched missiles”. Others emphasize that a central task of medium-range missiles in Europe is to target mobile launchers to demonstrate that NATO can “massively constrain Russia’s ability to continue hostilities”. But is this a realistic proposition?
Likely not. The war in Ukraine demonstrates the continued difficulty of targeting mobile assets. In roughly three-and-a-half years of war and extensive Russian use of mobile launcher systems, Ukraine has achieved only one visually confirmed kill of such a system. Even semi-mobile targets have proven elusive. For instance, since Patriot systems were first deployed to Ukraine in April 2023, Russia has only scored two confirmed kills of M902/M903 launcher units. Similarly, Russia has only managed to achieve two confirmed kills against TRML-4D mobile air and missile defense radars (part of IRIS-T SLM fire units or operating independently), even though they are unquestionably high-priority targets.
What this indicates is that in modern warfare, closing the kill chain against mobile targets remains a major challenge, particularly at stand-off ranges of hundreds of kilometers. The same would likely hold true for European states, which neither possess a robust intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance infrastructure nor the necessary types and numbers of high-velocity and retargetable missile systems to perform this task effectively, especially given the large number of Russian surface- and air-based launchers that would require continuous suppression.
In fact, the only plausible way to achieve this objective would be by establishing air superiority, enabling fighter jets to penetrate deep into Russian airspace and hunt mobile launchers with direct attack munitions, similar to how Israeli operators eliminated a large number of Iranian launchers during the 12-Day War. Whether European NATO states possess the suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses and supporting capabilities to conduct such an air interdiction campaign effectively, particularly in a scenario without U.S. support, is doubtful.
Moreover, there is a serious question whether achieving this level of air dominance over Russian territory, even if possible, might trigger Russian non-strategic or strategic nuclear use. Considerations over Russian nuclear use should, of course, not automatically rule out the option for European states, but they are important to weigh when evaluating alternatives. Overall, a denial posture aimed at preemptively interdicting Russian missile launchers appears equally non-credible or suboptimal.
Toward a Conventional Counterstrike Posture
What then is Europe’s best alternative to deter Russia’s growing industrial-scale missile threat? Since a deterrence posture aimed at denying Russia the benefits of its missile arsenal — either by intercepting long-range strike weapons midair or interdicting their launchers — is not credible, Europe should change course and move towards a punishment-based conventional counterstrike strategy.
In essence, this posture centers on signaling that the benefits of coercive or large-scale Russian missile use are outweighed by the costs, since it would be met with punishment in kind, if not several times over. Rather than relying on missile defense or a preemptive strike capability that cannot protect Europe’s critical and civilian infrastructure effectively, Europe would deter by threatening retaliatory strikes against Russian high-value targets. Europe’s targeting strategy would not mirror Russia’s one-to-one, and certain categories of targets, most notably population centers, would remain off limits even if Russia threatened or struck them. Europe’s deterrence posture should focus on threatening value, not lives. At the same time, however, Europe would make clear that Russia’s war-sustaining industries — both those directly supporting its armed forces and those contributing to its state budget, most notably its oil and gas infrastructure — are not off limits and would be targeted in response to Russian coercive or large-scale missile use against Europe.
This type of punishment-based strategy is not without challenges and risks. Just as Europe cannot magically fill its arsenals with missile defense interceptors, it cannot simply conjure the missile arsenals required to operationalize such a conventional counterstrike posture. Europe would need to complement existing stocks with hundreds, if not thousands, of long- and deep-strike weapons, while also investing in the necessary storage facilities and logistics. Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance would be less of an issue, given that virtually all realistic targets are stationary and well-mapped in advance. This will take time and require resources.
But there are reasons to be optimistic. Europe’s missile industry remains under-mobilized in the offensive missile segment. In addition, recent years have seen the development and rapid production scaling of several types of low-cost missiles, including mini-cruise missiles and long-range drones. While lower cost comes at the expense of capability — such as stealth features, velocity, or payload capacity — Ukraine is currently demonstrating that Russia’s ability to counter these systems is limited, especially when they arrive in sufficient mass. As such, a mass acquisition strategy for conventional long- and deep-strike weapons appears more feasible and goal-oriented than an approach focused almost exclusively on expensive, hard-to-manufacture interceptors. It is also a more effective deterrence strategy than relying on overwhelming punishment from Europe’s nuclear arsenal, whose use lacks credibility except in the most extreme scenarios.
To avoid misinterpretation, European NATO states will need to clearly link their conventional missile acquisitions with signaling and rhetoric, stressing that while NATO has no interest in fighting a war with Russia or using this arsenal preemptively, it will be fully prepared to respond to limited or large-scale Russian missile use with overwhelming conventional force to negate any potential gains. Discriminating between European conventional and nuclear missiles should also remain straightforward, since most missile systems would likely be acquired by Europe’s non-nuclear powers like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, , Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Poland, and Romania as well as others. The buildup would also not necessarily coincide with an increase in nuclear warhead production, and even if it did, integrating these warheads into new delivery vehicles is not straightforward and, for some types of missiles like mini cruise missiles or long-range drones, unsuitable. Even so, the deployment of substantial missile arsenals may not necessarily appear stabilizing. This is arguably a broader consequence of the conventional missile age we are entering, in which the wide proliferation of conventional long-range strike weapons undermines crisis stability.
In the end, there are also no real alternatives. As outlined above, a denial-based strategy is bound to fail in the short to medium term. And while a missile arms control agreement, in which European NATO states and Russia limit their conventional arsenals, may appear an option in theory, Russia’s record of non-compliance and refusal to acknowledge its blatant breach of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty makes a follow-on treaty unlikely to succeed from the outset. Unless the broader security environment changes alongside domestic shifts within Russia, arms control with Moscow is not a feasible path.
If deterrence is the only realistic alternative, a punishment rather than denial posture in the missile domain appears the best among suboptimal options. While associated with its own risks and challenges, it can help convince Russia that aggression against NATO is not worth the costs. If war nonetheless breaks out, it plays a key role in deterring Russian horizontal escalation against European civilian infrastructure and population centers to prevent the atrocities we are currently witnessing in Ukraine.
BECOME A MEMBER
Fabian Hoffmann is a doctoral research fellow at the Oslo Nuclear Project of the University of Oslo and a non-resident fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington D.C. His research focuses on missile technology, nuclear strategy, and European deterrence. He has published widely on these topics, including in academic journals, scientific reports, and magazines. He is also the author of Missile Matters, a professional blog providing timely analysis of missile technology and nuclear-related events in Ukraine, Europe, and beyond.
Image: Lance Cpl. Eric Dmochowski via Wikimedia Commons
warontherocks.com · September 8, 2025
21. The limits of Xi and Putin’s ‘no-limits’ partnership
Again: fear, weakness, desperation, and envy provide the foundation of their relationship.
Excerpts:
These realities, not hand-on-heart declarations of “no-limits” partnership, offer the best gauge of bilateral ties. China-Russia relations are by no means on the verge of collapse, but their evolution would reflect political, historical and geographical constraints, not trade volumes.
China still harbors a deep-seated fear of instability along its borders, informed in part by Russia’s own history of territorial aggression. That is why neighboring North Korea, not Ukraine, has more potential to serve as a wedge between the two. It is also why China views the fall of Putin’s regime, and the chaos that could ensue along its border, as an intolerable outcome.
For Russia, the same mindset that drove the invasion of Ukraine also shapes its view of China. The Kremlin is struggling to reconcile growing economic dependency with its self-image as an enduring great power. The nationalist right argues that Western sanctions have forced Russia to become more self-reliant and that this hard-won “autonomy” must not be surrendered. The idea that Russia’s future could be dictated on Chinese terms is anathema to the country’s political elite as well.
That makes Russia’s own vision of the future unpalatable to China, which wants to cement itself as a technological powerhouse and lynchpin of the global economy, not join an alliance of isolated, willfully destabilizing rogue actors.
Ten years after Xi and Putin’s previous Tiananmen meet-up, the images depicting unity cannot hide their countries’ historical mistrust and diverging long-term interests.
Sun, Sep 07, 2025 page7
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2025/09/07/2003843353
The limits of Xi and Putin’s ‘no-limits’ partnership
Russia is a junior partner of China, but neither wants to acknowledge that
- By Ruby Osman and Dan Sleat
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- Much has changed since Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin last stood together atop Tiananmen Square in 2015. When they did so again this week, it was supposedly as equal partners. Of course, the reality is far more complex.
- The conventional wisdom is that China has cemented its position as the dominant partner, especially since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. After all, it is now Russia’s biggest trading partner, accounting for more than half of Russian imports in 2023, whereas Russia does not even make China’s top five. While Russia relies on China to buy roughly half of its crude oil exports, these purchases account for only 17.5 percent of China’s total oil imports. Simply put, Russia needs China to keep its own economy going.
- Yet for all this dependence, China is not dictating outcomes, and the Kremlin is not acting like a junior partner. Consider the war in Ukraine. While it has some significant upsides for China — not least by diverting US resources from the Pacific theater — there is no doubt that Putin is calling the shots on the timing, scope and endgame.
- Illustration: Kevin Sheu
- On paper, China might have the leverage to influence Russia’s policy, but it is hard to imagine a scenario in which Ukraine could compel China to use it. Doing so would not only jeopardize China’s relations with a key partner, but also contravene its own core foreign-policy principle of “non-interference.” Putin knows that better than anyone.
- Although China has consistently pitched itself as a “peacemaker,” that role has been filled by other countries, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia; and now, US President Donald Trump and Putin have proved capable of engaging each other without a broker.
- The limits of Chinese influence are even more striking around its own borders, where Russia’s deepening partnership with North Korea is raising alarms. China might welcome Russian meddling in Europe, but potentially destabilizing the Korean Peninsula is quite another matter.
- If China is unwilling to influence outcomes in Ukraine and unable to deter potential instability in its own neighborhood, that suggests there is more to China-Russia relations than a simple junior-senior partnership. Although the economic relationship might have changed, the politics have yet to catch up.
- Historically, China was long its northern neighbor’s junior partner — and sometimes its victim. Czarist Russia was among the imperial powers that carved up Chinese territory in the 19th century, seizing roughly 1.5 million square kilometers in China’s northeast — an area roughly one-sixth of China’s current territory. Later, in 1969, disputes over the same border sparked a seven-month conflict with the Soviet Union.
- Thus, the view in Beijing is that the last 30-odd years of strong relations are an exception, not the norm. Chinese leaders remain reluctant to redefine the relationship, especially when the current posture brings valuable benefits such as cheap energy. Given this potent combination of economic gain and political anxiety, they are unlikely to put meaningful pressure on the Kremlin.
- Russia, for its part, is struggling to accept the idea of Chinese dominance. It is still holding out in negotiations over the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, refusing China’s demands that it sell gas at its heavily subsidized domestic price level. Russia has also imposed significant “recycling fees” — which function similarly to tariffs — to counter the sevenfold surge in imported Chinese autos that followed Western carmakers leaving the country.
- Meanwhile, the Russian right has been increasingly vocal in urging the Kremlin to resist dependence on China. Noting that Russia’s sparsely populated Far East sits uneasily beside China’s vast population, nationalist commentators warn that the Chinese have not forgotten their “lost territories,” and surely covet Russia’s endowments of cheap energy and raw materials. Their arguments draw on history and identity, not just economics, to bolster a politics that rejects the role of supplicant.
- Russia also appears to be keeping China at arm’s length in the Arctic, where China aspires to assert itself as a “near-arctic state.” In North Korea, the more that Russia provides fuel, food and technical assistance, the less leverage that China would have over North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
- Still, there are some areas where China is growing bolder. It is increasingly stepping into Russia’s traditional sphere of influence in Central Asia, pledging more than US$25 billion in investment in the region just in the first half of this year. Xi also recently attended the second China-Central Asia Summit in Astana — a clear signal of Chinese priorities, given that he had been limiting his international engagements.
- These realities, not hand-on-heart declarations of “no-limits” partnership, offer the best gauge of bilateral ties. China-Russia relations are by no means on the verge of collapse, but their evolution would reflect political, historical and geographical constraints, not trade volumes.
- China still harbors a deep-seated fear of instability along its borders, informed in part by Russia’s own history of territorial aggression. That is why neighboring North Korea, not Ukraine, has more potential to serve as a wedge between the two. It is also why China views the fall of Putin’s regime, and the chaos that could ensue along its border, as an intolerable outcome.
- For Russia, the same mindset that drove the invasion of Ukraine also shapes its view of China. The Kremlin is struggling to reconcile growing economic dependency with its self-image as an enduring great power. The nationalist right argues that Western sanctions have forced Russia to become more self-reliant and that this hard-won “autonomy” must not be surrendered. The idea that Russia’s future could be dictated on Chinese terms is anathema to the country’s political elite as well.
- That makes Russia’s own vision of the future unpalatable to China, which wants to cement itself as a technological powerhouse and lynchpin of the global economy, not join an alliance of isolated, willfully destabilizing rogue actors.
- Ten years after Xi and Putin’s previous Tiananmen meet-up, the images depicting unity cannot hide their countries’ historical mistrust and diverging long-term interests.
- Ruby Osman is senior policy adviser on China at the Tony Blair Institute. Dan Sleat is senior policy adviser on Russia and Ukraine at the Tony Blair Institute.
- Copyright: Project Syndicate
22. As Dictators’ Meet in Beijing We See Why Democracies Must Stop Appeasing Tyrants
by Alyson Chadwick 1789 https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/6/2342186/-As-Dictators-Meet-in-Beijing-We-See-Why-Democracies-Must-Stop-Appeasing-Tyrants
Saturday, September 06, 2025 at 6:18:56p EDT
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/6/2342186/-As-Dictators-Meet-in-Beijing-We-See-Why-Democracies-Must-Stop-Appeasing-Tyrantshttps://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/6/2342186/-As-Dictators-Meet-in-Beijing-We-See-Why-Democracies-Must-Stop-Appeasing-Tyrants
Earlier this week, Beijing played host to a grotesque spectacle: a dictator convention masquerading as a military parade.
Xi Jinping rolled out the red carpet for some of the world’s worst tyrants, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, Myanmar’s General Min Aung Hlaing, and the rulers of Iran, Belarus, and Vietnam, among others. In total, more than twenty authoritarian regimes joined in what was billed as a commemoration of the end of World War II. But in reality, it was a show of force meant to galvanize an axis of authoritarianism against the world’s democracies.
This was no celebration of peace. This was a declaration of war on the rest of the planet.
Democracies Giving Legitimacy to Dictators
What made the scene even more disturbing was the presence of some democratically elected leaders, including Indonesia’s president, Prabowo Subianto, and Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim. While India’s Narendra Modi deserves credit for skipping the parade, the fact that Australian and New Zealand political figures chose to attend this anti-democracy jamboree was especially galling. Their presence only served to lend legitimacy to men with blood on their hands.
Xi’s Threat to the World
The parade was designed to send a chilling message. Xi declared that the world is faced with a “choice of peace or war,” while showing off nuclear missiles capable of striking the U.S., AI-powered fighter drones, and even robot dogs. Troops goose-stepped across Tiananmen Square, a place synonymous with China’s 1989 massacre of pro-democracy protesters, in a carefully staged reminder of Beijing’s willingness to use force against Taiwan, and anyone else who dares resist its authoritarian vision.
Seeing Xi cozy up to Putin is also scary given Xi’s statements on Taiwan. He is looking closely at how the United States deals with Unkraine and is taking notes. How we support (or don’t) Ukraine shows him what our reaction to an invasion of Taiwan.
Crimes Against Humanity on Display
The grotesquery did not stop at military might. Xi and Putin were overheard casually discussing living to 150 years through organ transplants, a chilling conversation in light of overwhelming evidence that the Chinese regime engages in forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience. An independent tribunal in 2020, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice KC (who once prosecuted Slobodan Milosevic), concluded that this practice is systematic, widespread, and amounts to crimes against humanity.
Meanwhile, China continues to carry out a genocide against Uyghurs, crushes Tibetan and Hong Kong freedoms, and props up fellow dictatorships across the globe.
Dictators Strengthening Their Axis
Three other elements of the Beijing summit underline the danger of this growing authoritarian alliance:
- Kim Jong-un brought his 12-year-old daughter, Kim Ju-ae, signaling that she may be groomed to continue North Korea’s dynastic tyranny.
- Putin openly thanked Kim for backing his illegal invasion of Ukraine, where North Korea has reportedly sent thousands of soldiers and long-range weapons to aid Russia’s war crimes.
- Myanmar’s junta leader Min Aung Hlaing was given the red-carpet treatment, despite his regime’s ongoing genocide against the Rohingya and aerial massacres of civilians in Kachin and Karenni states.
These are not isolated strongmen. They are increasingly coordinated, emboldened, and intent on reshaping the global order to suit authoritarianism.
The Choice for Democracies
The question is: what will the world’s democracies do in response?
This “axis of autocrats” may appear bold, but their alliance is ultimately a marriage of convenience. Xi, Putin, Kim, and Min Aung Hlaing don’t trust each other; they only share a common enemy — democracy. That means there’s still room for democratic nations to push back.
The U.S., EU, Australia, Canada, the U.K., Japan, and South Korea must strengthen support for Taiwan and make clear that any invasion would be catastrophic for Beijing. Democracies must invest in their defenses, stand firmly by human rights, and refuse to legitimize tyrants with photo ops or summits.
These men should not have been standing in Tiananmen Square basking in military pomp. They should be standing in The Hague, on trial for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
And if the free world can find its courage, maybe one day they will be.
There are some things we all can do to stand up to these dictators:
Speak out for the Uyghurs:
While Xi traipses around the region showing off his military might, he is committing genocide against the Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang. This must stop. There are several bills before Congress.
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Support the Uyghur Policy Act of 2025 (S.1542) Since 2017, over one million Uyghurs and other minorities in China have been arbitrarily detained, surveilled, and forced into labor. The Uyghur Policy Act would coordinate U.S. efforts to defend Uyghur rights, hold the Chinese government accountable, and protect the Uyghur diaspora from transnational repression. As our colleague, Julie Millsap, writes in The Hill, with the current chaos at the State Department, it is critical that Congress help steer U.S. policy by passing the Uyghur Policy Act. Click this link to tell your Members of Congress to co-sponsor the Uyghur Policy Act.
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The Southern Mongolian Human Rights Policy Act (S.288) The Southern Mongolian Human Rights Policy Act (S.288) addresses China’s escalating repression of Southern Mongolians in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Chinese authorities are eliminating Mongolian-language instruction and forcibly assimilating Mongolian children. Peaceful protests have been met with surveillance, arrests, intimidation, and herders land is being seized and/or destroyed. Click this link to tell your U.S. senators to co-sponsor the The Southern Mongolian Human Rights Policy Act (S.288)
Hilton needs to leave Xinjiang
Hilton has a clear policy on human rights. According to the company’s own documents on this policy:
Using forced or slave labor, including prison, bonded, or debt labor. This prohibition includes transporting, receiving, trafficking, harboring, recruiting or transferring, of persons by means of threat, force, coercion, abduction, or fraud.
Given that policy it is beyond ridiculous that they have hotels in the Uyghur region of China. Moreover, they built one hotel on the site of a demolished mosque. The genocide of the Uyghurs has been well documented. Two U.S. administrations have made the determination that what the Chinese government is perpetrating against the Uyghurs constitutes genocide. Moreover, about 1.8 million Uyghurs currently sit in camps set up by the Chinese government where they are subjected to torture, organ harvesting, and forced labor.
Clearly, having a presence in Xinjiang violates the company’s stated policy on slave labor. We need to let Hilton know that it is not acceptable to put profits before people.
Please click here to sign this petition to Hilton
We can help restore democracy to Myanmar (Burma) and end the Rohingya genocide:
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Pass the Burma Genocide, Accountability, and Protection Act (H.R.4140). The Burma Genocide Accountability and Protection Act (or Burma GAP Act) addresses the ongoing crisis facing the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities in Burma. The bill calls for a comprehensive U.S. strategy that includes humanitarian aid, support for refugee protection and repatriation, transitional justice efforts, and holding the military junta accountable for its atrocity crimes. Click here to tell your U.S. representative to co-sponsor the Burma GAP Act (H.R.4140)
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Pass the BRAVE Burma Act (H.R. 3190). Since the 2021 military coup, the people of Burma have faced escalating violence, political imprisonment, and airstrikes against civilians. The BRAVE Burma Act strengthens support for the pro-democracy movement and imposes sanctions on the junta and its enablers. Click here to tell your U.S. representative to co-sponsor the BRAVE Burma Act (H.R.3190).
META needs to be held accountable. Meta (then Facebook) contributed to this violence and discrimination by allowing the Myanmar military to spread and amplify anti-Rohingya content through its platform. A group of Rohingya youth have filed a human rights complaint against Meta for its role in the abuses committed against their community. They have demanded a $1 million investment for educational projects in their refugee camps.
Click here to sign this petition to Meta (Facebook) demanding the company pay reparations to the Rohingya.
The United States may be run by a meglomaniac with no conscience or understanding of anything beyond his own needs and his band of sycophants but that is no reason for us to lose hope or give up.
We are more powerful than they are and we must speak up.
23. The Forgotten Inventor of the Modern Right
A fascinating read.
The Forgotten Inventor of the Modern Right
Frank Meyer, an eccentric former communist, helped build the physical infrastructure and philosophical foundations of conservatism. A new book reminds us of his towering influence.
By Matthew Continetti
09.05.25 —
U.S. Politics
Matthew Continetti is the director of domestic policy studies and the inaugural Patrick and Charlene Neal Chair in American Prosperity at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also a columnist and podcaster for Commentary magazine, a contributing editor to National Review, and the founding editor of The Washington Free Beacon. His most recent book is The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism (Basic Books, 2022). His articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Time magazine. He graduated from Columbia University with a degree in history in 2003.
https://www.thefp.com/p/the-forgotten-inventor-of-the-modern-right-frank-meyer
Today’s American right is a sprawling zoo. In one part of the park you have red-hatted nationalist populists clapping enthusiastically for lib-owning social media stars like Charlie Kirk. In another, you see the endangered old-guard Republicans—free enterprising, interventionist, Nikki Haley types. Massive statues of Donald Trump adorn the bridge between the two wings.
MAGA and the former establishment comprise the largest exhibits. But other, smaller habitats feature more exotic breeds. A workshop houses techno-futurists building reactors and robots. In the cathedral, Catholic Integralists chant devotionals to state religion. The weight-lifting room is reserved for denizens of the manosphere. The Libertarian playground has no rules. A warning sign hangs above the gate to the hunting grounds, where conspiracists and antisemites stalk vulnerable prey.
The exotic fauna isn’t new. There always have been different types of conservatives, reactionaries, and counterrevolutionaries. Internal disagreement is a hallmark of modern American conservatism. Factional arguments are loud. Intellectuals are nasty. But conservatives have cohered behind opposition to progressivism at home and abroad.
Not everyone joins this consensus, of course. Long has the irascible, irreconcilable fringe—such as the John Birch Society, whose founder was convinced that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist agent—been more concerned with flailing at the right than defeating the left. Yet, when you look back at the right over the past century, the sniping and squabbling give way to a conservative mainstream.
This mainstream conservatism defends America’s political institutions, economic system, and traditional culture. Its leaders, emphases, and character may change over time. What doesn’t change is its frequent return to the wellsprings of American greatness.
A new biography of an unjustly neglected thinker reminds us of the American right’s proliferating variety—and identifies the enduring core of its philosophy. In The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer, historian Daniel J. Flynn tells the remarkable story of the onetime Communist student organizer who defined the contours of Ronald Reagan’s GOP.
“He was small, grey-white crew-cut hair, baggy clothes, smoke-stained teeth, that cigarette in hand, whisky voice, solemn mien, a pacer, an athletic gait, though I doubt that in his lifetime he exerted a muscle more vigorously than necessary to move a pawn on the chessboard,” wrote fellow conservative William F. Buckley Jr. Brilliant, argumentative, and eccentric, Frank Meyer brought activist energy, personal mentorship, and intellectual heft to an embryonic conservative movement. His life and thought contain lessons that are relevant now, when social media clamor threatens to drown out the exceptional chords of American conservatism.
Meyer was born on May 9, 1909, in Newark, New Jersey. His prosperous family belonged to a Reform synagogue and sent Meyer to prep school. When he was a teenager, a mutual acquaintance introduced Meyer to Eugene O’Neill Jr., son of the famous playwright. They became best friends. “Gene was a natural actor who sunned the theater in flight from the ghosts of his father and grandfather,” recalled historian Garry Wills. “He and Frank divided up all the parts of a Shakespeare play and declaimed them at each other through the night.”
Read
Amy Coney Barrett: There’s No Constitutional Crisis in America
Meyer enrolled in Princeton University in 1926, on his second attempt. He didn’t like it. He got entangled in love affairs. His academics suffered, and he felt out of place. Two years later, he dropped out.
In 1930 Meyer entered Balliol College, Oxford. The Great Depression was on. And Meyer had a new passion: communism. He debated, instructed, cajoled, and ridiculed authority in service of the revolution. When he received his Bachelor of Arts from Oxford in 1932, he took up graduate study at the London School of Economics.
Scholarship was cover for party business. Meyer spent more time in union halls than in libraries and classrooms. In 1933 he was elected president of the LSE Student Union on a Communist platform. His professors were furious. British officials began paying attention to his subversive activities. In 1934 they kicked him out of the LSE—and the country.
The Communist Party sent Meyer to the Midwest. He attempted to rally students at the University of Chicago, with disappointing results. For years he taught adult education courses in Communist doctrine at a party-run night school.
In 1940, one of his students was a Radcliffe graduate whose married name was Elsie Philbrick. “I thought this guy was absolutely fascinating,” she later recalled. “Unfortunately, he would never notice me at all.” Eventually, he did. Elsie and Frank fell in love. She divorced her husband and married him that October. The two were inseparable.
After Pearl Harbor, Meyer wanted to enlist in the Army. His Communist bosses were reluctant to see him go. This was the beginning of his disillusionment with the left. He reported for service in October 1942. What he saw shocked him. “His first key experience,” said his son John, “was finding out that ordinary Americans in the military were not the proletariat they were cut out to be in Communist theory.”
Medical issues prevented Meyer from completing Officer Candidate School. Discharged from the military, the Party sent him to New York City, where he resumed schooling Communist converts. He began urging party leaders to adopt a revisionist Marxism that drew inspiration from the American Revolution. But the apparat in Moscow rejected such patriotic attitudes. This Soviet chauvinism estranged Meyer from the party. In 1944 he read The Road to Serfdom and was persuaded by Friedrich Hayek’s argument against central planning. He even gave the book a respectful review in the socialist New Masses.
A new biography of an unjustly neglected thinker reminds us of the American right’s proliferating variety—and identifies the enduring core of its philosophy.
Later, Richard Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences, an eloquent attack on moral relativism and radical egalitarianism published in 1948, would influence Meyer as well. By then, however, he and Elsie had left the Party. An esoteric doctrinal dispute severed the bond. The Meyers lost contacts, jobs, friends. They moved into a ramshackle old home atop a hillside in rural Woodstock, New York. They reconnected with Gene O’Neill—who tragically died by suicide in 1950.
Meyer cast a long shadow from his mountain redoubt. He brought to conservatism all the skills he’d acquired evangelizing communism—dialectical cleverness, bristling polemics, networking, organization building, and an apocalyptic vision of a world on the brink. He became a sworn opponent of the revolution he once advocated.
He penned articles, gave speeches, and testified before Congress on the Communist menace. “Meyer’s testimony helped imprison and deport people and discredit and shutter institutions,” writes biographer Flynn. “He also helped exonerate others and declined to name people he did not know to be Communists who were, in fact, Communists.”
Meyer was not just a player in the conservative movement. He created the movement. He joined Buckley’s National Review, conservatism’s flagship periodical, upon its launch in 1955. He attended the first meeting of Young Americans for Freedom, a group of conservative students who penned the Sharon Statement, a declaration of principles synthesizing freedom and tradition, in 1960.
Two years later, Meyer helped form the Conservative Party of New York State, the future campaign vehicle for Senator James Buckley (elected 1970). Then, in the aftermath of Senator Barry Goldwater’s landslide defeat in 1964, he collaborated in founding the Philadelphia Society, an intellectual salon, as well as the American Conservative Union, home of CPAC.
Meyer nurtured a generation of literary talent. As editor of National Review’s books and arts section, he promoted young writers more interested in belles lettres than ballots. One of the highlights of The Man Who Invented Conservatism is learning details of Meyer’s friendships with nonfiction legends such as Garry Wills and Arlene Croce.
Politically correct literary historians have denied Meyer the legacy he richly deserves. Daniel J. Flynn sets the record straight. For instance, Meyer was an early champion of a young woman from Sacramento whose prose was exact, cool, and biting. “Frank,” wrote essayist Noel Parmentel, “deserves the lion’s share of the credit for the discovery, encouragement, and development of Joan Didion.”
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That alone would count as a lifetime achievement for most editors.
But Meyer accomplished much more. Through observation and analysis, he described the shared ideas binding conservatives together. He articulated the American right’s fundamental beliefs. They include the following: an objective moral order with clear distinctions between right and wrong. A primary emphasis on the individual person. An anti-utopian mindset. Support for limited government and the U.S. Constitution. And defense of the West and the United States.
In a series of polemical clashes, Meyer argued that American conservatism is neither fully libertarian nor fully traditionalist. Rather, it is a delicate balancing act between personal liberty and social order, grounded in the philosophical framework of the American founding.
For Meyer, libertarians go too far when they base their views solely on rationalism, and when they forget that the state is necessary to protect individuals from violence. At the same time, traditionalists forget the genius of the American founding when they call on government to enforce sectarian concepts of virtue. “Virtue in freedom—this is the goal of our endeavor,” Meyer wrote.
The source of conservatism, Meyer explained, is “a fused position” that “recognizes at one and the same time the transcendent goal of human existence and the primacy of the freedom of the person in the political order.”
Consequently, Meyer’s conservative mainstream is known as “fusionism.”
Fusionism works more easily in practice than in theory. Most American conservatives, in their day-to-day lives, believe in both God and personal freedom. They behave according to the idea, even if they do not spend too much time contemplating it, that while freedom is the primary end of politics, it is only a means to the more comprehensive end of human flourishing. Most people don’t feel the need to go all-in on either freedom or virtue. Intellectuals often do.
Meyer avoided this trap. His career as a conservative journalist was spent fleshing out the implications and meaning of fusionism, while applying its principles to the real world of elections and public policy. He faced many antagonists, but never abandoned his conviction that American conservatism was an exceptional blend of liberty and tradition.
Frank Meyer’s story is not just about a man rejecting radicalism for the passionate defense of Western civilization. It’s also a philosophical exploration of conservatism’s meaning in a constitutional republic.
The careful balance between freedom and order can shift. A lot depends on circumstances. While Meyer leaned toward the libertarian position on most questions, Daniel Flynn observes that in the 1960s he supported crackdowns on student radicals, urban rioters, and other forces of disorder. He loathed the counterculture. He opposed legalizing marijuana. “No society can exist in a state of endemic disorder,” Meyer wrote in 1968, in words that echo through the years. “Specifically, a representative republic cannot function if its magistrates and its representative assemblies are subject to blackmail by mob violence.”
Meyer was a true individualist. He slept most of the day. He woke up in the afternoons and worked and entertained until the early mornings. He spent hours upon hours on the telephone. He was a drinker and chain-smoker.
It caught up with him. Meyer was diagnosed with cancer in 1971, months after joining other conservatives in denouncing Richard Nixon’s recognition of Red China. He was 62 years old when he died on April 1, 1972. A Catholic priest performed the last rites. Meyer’s younger son, Gene, gave Buckley the news over the phone. “I told him the truth, that his father was a great man,” Buckley wrote, “and hung up.” In a painful coda, a distraught Elsie took her own life three years later.
Daniel Flynn’s rich biography arrives at an important moment. The inhabitants of the conservative zoo have been slowly retreating from Frank Meyer’s consensus. To be sure, most conservatives still look to the Constitution for direction. But few seem interested in building coalitions. Traditionalists and libertarians are at odds, as usual. The Very Online Right turns to conspiracies and dogmas that reject the American founding and the dignity of the individual human being. In place of principle, the personality of a single man holds things together. What will happen when he’s gone?
The way to shape the future is through recovery of the past. Frank Meyer’s story is not just about a man rejecting radicalism for the passionate defense of Western civilization. It’s also a philosophical exploration of conservatism’s meaning in a constitutional republic. Today’s right needs intellectual clarification. The life of Frank Meyer provides it.
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Matthew Continetti
Matthew Continetti is the director of domestic policy studies and the inaugural Patrick and Charlene Neal Chair in American Prosperity at the American Enterprise Institute. His most recent book is The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism (Basic Books, 2022).
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