Quotes of the Day:

"Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin they think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives."

– Siegfried Sassoon

"The exercise of imagination to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary."

– Ursula K. LeGuin

"One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than 50 preaching it." 

– Knute Rockne

1. The U.S. Army Is In 'Crisis'

2. Hegseth Vows to Put U.S. Weapons Production on Wartime Footing

3. China’s chemical exports are behind a ‘tsunami’ of meth flooding Asia

4. Kremlin Shifts Focus to Information Warfare

5. The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands

6. China Suspends Some Export Controls on Critical Minerals but Retains Others

7. What I Learned From the ‘New Globalists’ of an Optimistic Nation

8. Alaska’s New Mining Rush Chases Something More Coveted Than Gold

9. Iraq’s Leader Seeks an Improbable Prize: Independence From the U.S. and Iran

10. The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

11. Army aims to produce 1 million drones in next 2-3 years

12. Arc Orbital Supply Capsule Aims To Put Military Supplies Anywhere On Earth Within An Hour

13. Pentagon Concedes Russian Threat as Trump-Era Policy Shop Faces Revolt in Senate Hearing

14. Carrier USS Ford Holding Off Of North Africa As Trump Reportedly Won't Strike Venezuela

15. Spanish Special Forces Liberate Greek Tanker After Pirate Attack

16. Unveiling acquisition overhaul, Hegseth tells industry to get with the program

17. ’Taiwan contingency’ could prompt Japanese armed reaction: Japan PM

18. Junta Creates Body to Fast-Track China’s BRI Projects in Myanmar

19. Why conflicts in the 21st century are becoming “hybrid”

20. The U.S. Marine Who Forced Nazi Officers to Toast FDR at Gunpoint — and Became the Most Decorated OSS Operative

1. The U.S. Army Is In 'Crisis'

Summary:

The U.S. Army faces a “classical crisis” but it is at a turning point, not collapse. Echoing past renewals after World War I, Korea, and Vietnam, today’s challenges in technology, doctrine, and recruitment signal transformation. Initiatives like SkyFoundry’s mass drone production show adaptation underway toward a smaller, networked, and more lethal force forged through friction and necessity.

Excerpts:

Two decades later, the 1970s brought another low. Post-Vietnam, morale collapsed, drug use spread, and recruitment dried up.

The equipment aged, and training lost its rigor. From the outside, the Army looked spent.

But the crisis once again became a catalyst.

Generals William DePuy and Donn Starry rewrote doctrine, introducing AirLand Battle and the idea of striking deep with speed and coordination.

The National Training Center restored realism to large-scale exercises, and new weapons systems—the Abrams, the Apache, the Bradley—embodied the new doctrine in steel and rotors. Within a decade, that same Army dominated in Desert Storm.

Comment: Yes the headline got my attention. And I was ready to counter it before I even read the article because I think the Army is working hard at this "turning point" and doing good work. I think the author describes the situation well and makes some important historical analogies. Of course the author should have included Brig Gen Huba Wass de Czege as one of the key contributors to the development of AirLand battle and more importantly to the restoration of the importance of intellectual capital in our Army which I believe was key to the success of AirLand battle (and not necessarily only the "Big 5" - which of courses were important as well). But somewhere in our Army today there are leaders quietly toiling away in the footsteps and spirit of DePuy, Starry, and Wass de Czege creating change in our Army. And I would add that it is the strategic thought, doctrine, and concepts that are more important than the equipment and technology (though they are critically important too). I recommend: How to Change an Army by Colonel Huba Wass de Czege, US Army, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/MR-75th-Anniversary/75th-Czege/

The U.S. Army Is In 'Crisis'

nationalsecurityjournal.org · Andrew Latham · November 7, 2025

Key Points and Summary – The U.S. Army is not in “terminal decline” but at a “classical crisis”—a decisive turning point.

-Critics see an “obsolete” force, but the author points to historical parallels (post-WWI, post-WWII, and the post-Vietnam “Hollow Army”) where the Army successfully renewed itself.

U.S. Army Soldiers assigned to 2nd Squadron, 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment, Task Force Reaper, conduct movement procedures with M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles during the Jade Cobra VI exercise in the U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility, Feb. 19, 2025. Jade Cobra VI strengthens military-to-military partnerships, increases readiness, and facilitates security cooperation between the United States and Jordan. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Hector Tinoco)

-Signs of this “metamorphosis,” like the SkyFoundry drone initiative (aiming for 10,000/month by 2026), show the Army is adapting, not collapsing, and will emerge smaller but more lethal.

The U.S. Army at an Inflection Point

Doubts about the U.S. Army’s future are everywhere.

Critics say old gear, obsolete doctrine, an ossified bureaucracy, AI, and near-peer competition weigh it down.

To some, that looks like a crisis—but only in the modern, sensational sense of the word, as a synonym for impending collapse or terminal decline.

In truth, the Army faces a crisis in the classical sense: a decisive turning point in a long struggle when the patient either recovers or dies. And this time, the signs point toward recovery.

The Army has stood at this threshold before, worn down yet ready to renew itself.

This is not a collapse.

It’s a turning point.

The Interwar Blueprint

After World War I, the Army entered its first great modern reckoning.

Budgets vanished, the nation turned inward, and many officers feared the institution’s slide into irrelevance.

An AH-64 “Apache” attack helicopter assigned to 1st Battalion, 211th Aviation Regiment, flies overhead during Training Exercise Hydra on Utah Test and Training Range, Utah, May 7, 2025. Exercise Hydra is a Utah National Guard-led, joint, multi-domain combat training exercise designed to simulate real-world operations across air, land, and cyber domains. The exercise brings together the 151st Wing (KC-135), 419th Fighter Wing (F-35), 19th Special Forces Group, 65th Field Artillery Brigade, and multiple Army and Air Force elements to test joint targeting, rapid insertion, battlefield communication, and dynamic problem-solving.

(Utah Army National Guard photo taken by Spc. Dustin B. Smith)

Yet within that austerity, innovation quietly stirred.

George C. Marshall reworked officer education; Adna Chaffee Jr. tested early mechanized formations; staff colleges cultivated thinkers who saw war as movement, coordination, and learning.

When the world again went to war, those officers supplied the doctrine and leadership that liberated Europe and defeated Japan.

Today’s uncertainty feels much the same.

The drawdown after Iraq and Afghanistan, the blurred sense of mission, and the struggle to match ends with means all echo that interwar drift. Beneath the noise, the same kind of creative ferment is returning—an Army trying to rediscover how to fight under new conditions.

The Early Cold War Reawakening

At the end of World War II, nuclear weapons had left many people with the impression that massive armies of the past were outdated.

Forces were reduced, funding for many programs decreased, and morale and interest waned as other topics drew the public eye. Korea ended that perception. Unprepared for prolonged combat, American forces had been staggered by early defeats in the conflict.

As a result, the Army underwent swift evolution: new professionalism, new mobility, and greater emphasis on firepower and readiness.

Engineers with the 116th Brigade Engineer Battalion conduct M2A3 Bradley fighting vehicle gunnery qualification on March 27, 2018, Orchard Combat Training Center, south of Boise, Idaho. Combat engineers with the 116th BEB trained through gunnery table XII, evaluating their ability to execute collective platoon-level tasks in a tactical live-fire environment; including integrating dismounted soldiers with their assigned BFV. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by 1LT Robert Barney)

By the mid-1950s, it had become a leaner, more mobile element of Cold War deterrence. The lesson would not age—technology can revolutionize warfare, but only soldiers can defend a position.

Lessons from the “Hollow Army”

Two decades later, the 1970s brought another low. Post-Vietnam, morale collapsed, drug use spread, and recruitment dried up.

The equipment aged, and training lost its rigor. From the outside, the Army looked spent.

But the crisis once again became a catalyst.

Generals William DePuy and Donn Starry rewrote doctrine, introducing AirLand Battle and the idea of striking deep with speed and coordination.

The National Training Center restored realism to large-scale exercises, and new weapons systems—the Abrams, the Apache, the Bradley—embodied the new doctrine in steel and rotors. Within a decade, that same Army dominated in Desert Storm.

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Alexander Trott, a paratrooper with 1st Squadron, 91st Cavalry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade, fires his MK22 Advanced Sniper Rifle during sniper training at the 7th Army Training Command’s Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, June 7, 2024. A 1-91 CAV sniper team will participate at the International Danish Sniper Competition later this month. The 173rd Airborne Brigade is the U.S. Army’s Contingency Response Force in Europe, providing rapidly deployable forces to the United States European, African, and Central Command areas of responsibility. Forward deployed across Italy and Germany, the brigade routinely trains alongside NATO allies and partners to build partnerships and strengthen the alliance. (U.S. Army photo by Markus Rauchenberger)

What outsiders mistook for decay was actually metamorphosis: painful, uneven, and effective.

Today’s Echo of the Past

Now, in 2025, the Army stands at another crossroads.

Critics point to tired platforms, slow procurement, recruiting gaps, and the disruptive arrival of technologies—from loitering munitions to autonomous drones—that are rewriting the grammar of battle.

Ukraine’s skies teem with cheap UAVs; China fields a digitalized force designed to fight at machine speed. To many, the U.S. Army looks ponderous, a creature of another era.

M10 Booker. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

History warns against that judgment. Every transformation has been mistaken for decline. The interwar stagnation gave birth to the thinkers of 1945.

The nuclear eclipse of the 1950s yielded the Army that steadied the Cold War. The post-Vietnam slump forged the force that rolled through Kuwait. The pattern holds: adaptation, never graceful but always honest.

If the Army is in crisis, it is only in the classical sense—a moment when an organism either recovers or dies. And here, recovery is already visible.

The service is trimming what it can—obsolete uniforms, redundant field gear—and testing unmanned and counter-drone systems.

The SkyFoundry initiative, aiming to produce roughly 10,000 small drones per month by 2026, marks a pivot toward speed and scale. Training environments now simulate drone-saturated, data-driven combat zones where survival demands agility. It’s not pretty work, but it’s progress.

Adaptation Under Pressure

Change has always been the Army’s way, even when delayed. It learns through friction, improvisation, and sheer necessity.

Counterinsurgency bred one set of instincts; great-power competition demands another. The task now is to integrate precision, sensors, and networks with the raw human will that still defines combat.

None of this will unfold neatly. Budgets are tight, politics noisy, and rivals observant. Yet the Army’s resilience has never relied on perfect planning.

It will depend on staying power—the long slog of training and adjusting until “ready” once more becomes second nature.

The Hour of Decision

If the past is prologue—and it always is—this crisis of ours will look like yet another turning point in the Army’s history.

Again, the service will find itself poised between two eras: the industrial age it once dominated and the algorithmic age now emerging to challenge it.

That growing tension is not a sign of defeat but of change itself. The Army that comes out of this process will not be an update of what went before. It will be an entirely new creation. Smaller, more connected, and—yes—far more lethal.

The path will be rocky. It always is. But the Army is at its best when the stakes are highest. Every moment when the institution has appeared to break in the past has turned out to be a point of rebirth.

The Army of 2025 is not in crisis, as the word is used in modern usage.

It is instead at that ancient, classical moment of crisis—a turning point in a long campaign when the patient either recovers or dies.

And this time, the vital signs are good. The tools may be different, but the story is the same: a force forged in turmoil, remade by necessity, and ready once more to shape the future on its own terms—and win.

About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham

Andrew Latham is a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities and a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. You can follow him on X: @aakatham. He writes a daily column for the National Security Journal.

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nationalsecurityjournal.org · Andrew Latham · November 7, 2025

2. Hegseth Vows to Put U.S. Weapons Production on Wartime Footing

Summary:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “Arsenal of Freedom” will put procurement on wartime footing: streamline program offices, cut testing delays, broaden suppliers, and favor commercial buys. Pentagon warns laggards may be sidelined; incentives will boost capacity and dual sourcing. Services reorganize (e.g., DAWG, Army portfolios), courting tech firms amid old-guard tensions.

Excerpts:

Military officials have tried before to loosen the military’s hidebound acquisition process, with mixed results. Some Silicon Valley-backed executives warned that the shake-up could slow their progress before new weapons production can pick up steam.

Andy Lowery, CEO of the air defense company Epirus, said the streamlined structure could complicate his company’s effort to secure a final contract for counterdrone technology after years of Army tests.

“I’ve seen things sit in a quagmire because nobody knows who’s in charge,” Lowery said. “It’s a risk to us.”

Comment: Change is hard. But it must be done. But what I will not change is the "Arsenal of Democracy." (bring on the negative comments).

Hegseth Vows to Put U.S. Weapons Production on Wartime Footing

WSJ

Bureaucracy puts military in danger of falling behind rivals, defense secretary says; contractors told to speed production

By Drew FitzGerald

Follow

Nov. 7, 2025 5:06 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/hegseth-vows-to-put-u-s-weapons-production-on-wartime-footing-fe1bcb55

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Andrew Harnik/Pool/Reuters

• The U.S. military plans to overhaul its weapons acquisition process to accelerate purchases and broaden its supplier base.
• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the new strategy, “Arsenal of Freedom,” will streamline program offices and encourage investments to shorten development timelines.
• The Pentagon seeks to bring in more technology companies, which has created tension with traditional defense contractors.

An artificial-intelligence tool created this summary, which was based on the text of the article and checked by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.

• The U.S. military plans to overhaul its weapons acquisition process to accelerate purchases and broaden its supplier base.

Pentagon leaders are putting their weapons suppliers in the crosshairs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday that the U.S. military will shake up the way it buys weaponry, equipment and software by making purchases more quickly, and from a broader range of potential suppliers. The plan would streamline Pentagon program offices, develop incentives for new investments and potentially box out suppliers that miss deadlines.

Hegseth said the overhaul was needed to break the cycle of decadelong weapons- development timelines, which he said have put the U.S. military at risk of falling behind geopolitical rivals such as China. He said he would clear testing requirements that can slow purchasing and empower military officials to order commercial products on the open market when custom-made military technology takes too long.

“We need to save the bureaucracy from itself,” Hegseth said Friday at an address to dozens of defense-industry executives in Washington.

The Trump administration aims to extend Pentagon efforts to bring into the fold more technology companies, many backed by Silicon Valley investors. The push has exposed tensions between the old-guard contractors such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin—which have for decades feasted on much of the military’s nearly trillion-dollar annual budget—and a new crop of politically connected tech companies.

The Pentagon’s acquisition regime dates to the Vietnam War era, according to Steve Blank, a national security expert at Stanford University. The system worked well enough against the Soviet Union, he said, but can no longer keep up with the competition.

“China implemented a system like Silicon Valley when we were still using a system that looked like Ford or General Motors,” Blank said. “At the turn of the century, China basically had a coast guard. Now they have a larger navy than we do.”

‘Wartime speed’

Some principles of the Pentagon’s new “Arsenal of Freedom” acquisition strategy date to the Biden administration or earlier. Other proposals share similarities with Republican-proposed legislation in Congress.

Two pieces of proposed legislation, the Senate’s FoRGED Act and House SPEED Act both would encourage the military to issue contracts more quickly by skirting many of the detailed requirements that have governed past programs.

“In the defense world, you build to the terms of the contract—no more, no less,” said Jerry McGinn, an industrial-base expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. As a result, he said, the U.S. military supply chain “is not currently performing at the level that it needs to.”

Hegseth that the military is already moving at “wartime speed” to develop its Golden Dome antimissile shield and strengthen the supply of critical munitions. Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg has overseen both efforts.

“Our contractors need to change and do better,” Feinberg said Friday. “Contractors who are willing to change with us will prosper and grow. Those who don’t and resist it will be gone.”

Some military departments already have begun to overhaul their bureaucracy. The Army has started dissolving roughly a dozen “program executive offices” and reorganized them into six portfolios under more powerful executives. Officials say the goal is to thin the number of officials needed to sign off on a new contract.

The Pentagon earlier this year reorganized an office set up to deploy thousands of low-cost drones, partly because of concerns that the effort wasn’t moving quickly enough. The move shifted work from the Replicator program to a new unit called the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, or DAWG.

Incentives and investment

Hegseth on Friday also promised new incentives to encourage companies to hit production targets and invest in new production capacity. In some cases, the U.S. has already invested directly in companies like MP Materials to guarantee a safe supply of important resources such as rare earths.

The defense industry is noticing the Pentagon’s growing preference for nontraditional contractors. Executives at several startups say that major defense contractors are pitching them on partnerships, thinking their chances are better with a new face at their side.

“We are committed to expanding the commercial business model within a streamlined and less bureaucratic acquisition framework,” said Chris Kubasik, chief executive of defense giant L3Harris, ahead of Hegseth’s speech. He cited partnerships with defense startups as a sign of L3Harris’s responsiveness to the Pentagon’s new effort.

Other Pentagon priorities could require more time to see through. Hegseth’s plan calls for the military to maintain at least two sources for critical components to promote competition and avoid supply-chain disasters. Diversifying the supply of linchpin parts has frustrated Pentagon officials for years. Weapons systems ranging from jet fighters to missiles often feature some parts made by a single U.S. manufacturer, according to supply-chain experts.

Military officials have tried before to loosen the military’s hidebound acquisition process, with mixed results. Some Silicon Valley-backed executives warned that the shake-up could slow their progress before new weapons production can pick up steam.

Andy Lowery, CEO of the air defense company Epirus, said the streamlined structure could complicate his company’s effort to secure a final contract for counterdrone technology after years of Army tests.

“I’ve seen things sit in a quagmire because nobody knows who’s in charge,” Lowery said. “It’s a risk to us.”

Write to Drew FitzGerald at andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com

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

Appeared in the November 8, 2025, print edition as 'Hegseth Vows Wartime Footing For U.S. Weapons Production'.

WSJ

3. China’s chemical exports are behind a ‘tsunami’ of meth flooding Asia

Summary:

Thai agents tracked a Chinese chemical shipment veering toward Myanmar’s Shan State, the region’s meth superhub protected by China-linked militias. A Washington Post probe finds Chinese firms openly selling precursor chemicals, logistics and customs evasion online, with limited penalties, fueling record meth output and plunging prices across Asia. Seizures show tons of solvents and reagents routed via Thailand and Laos; producers increasingly synthesize precursors from noncontrolled substances, outpacing regulations. UWSA-protected labs thrive amid Myanmar’s civil war. U.S.-China counternarcotics cooperation has frayed, even as some sanctioned fentanyl suppliers overlap with meth networks. Investigators warn fentanyl production could be next.

Comment: All part of Unrestricted Warfare to destabilize and subvert designated nations? I would also note that although not mentioned in the article, north Korea has played a large role in methamphetamine trafficking.

China’s chemical exports are behind a ‘tsunami’ of meth flooding Asia

Chinese manufacturers are shipping meth precursor chemicals to warlords in Myanmar, precipitating a drug crisis across the Asia-Pacific, a Post investigation finds.

Today at 5:00 a.m. EST

Washington Post · Rebecca Tan

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/11/08/china-chemical-exports-drugs-meth-crisis/

MAE SAI, Thailand — The shipment of chemicals from China was meant to stay near Bangkok. But a tracker, planted by Thai drug authorities based on a tip from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, showed it moving north toward the porous 1,500-mile-long border with Myanmar.

Thai anti-narcotics officers believed the chemicals would be used to synthesize methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant flooding countries across the Asia-Pacific region. And they knew that on the other side of the border, in jungled hills ruled by China-backed warlords, was what the United Nations considered the biggest meth production hub in the world.

The problem — which had paralyzed investigators repeatedly in the past, they recounted — was that their mandate was to interdict illegal drugs, not the ingredients that could make them.

The tracker eventually blinked at a warehouse minutes from the crossing to Myanmar. At the Office of the Narcotics Control Board headquarters in Bangkok, leaders issued a command to the personnel on the border: Raid the warehouse.

A Washington Post investigation has found that Chinese manufacturers are shipping rapidly increasing amounts of chemicals that can be used in the production of synthetic drugs to lawless parts of Southeast Asia, where warlords and criminal gangs have been producing and trafficking record levels of meth.

This trade, which underpins a surging drug crisis across the Asia-Pacific, has expanded in part because authorities in China are not meeting international standards to prevent such flows or heeding the appeals of other governments to rein in criminal elements embedded in its colossal chemicals industry, according to documents obtained by The Post.

“China supercharged this sector,” said John Coyne, a former Australian police official now serving as director of the national security program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Industrial production of meth out of Southeast Asia “would not have been possible” without Chinese industry and organized crime, he added.

The Post’s investigation draws on intelligence documents from governments in the Asia-Pacific region, law enforcement briefings, customs records and photographic evidence of chemical seizures, as well as interviews with more than 40 people involved in or monitoring drug flows. It found striking and largely unreported similarities between the situations in the Asia-Pacific and the Americas, where collaboration between Latin American cartels and their Chinese suppliers has been at the core of the fentanyl crisis.

Some of the Chinese companies indicted or put under sanctions by the United States in the selling of chemicals needed to make fentanyl are the same entities U.S. agencies have identified as suppliers of meth ingredients to Myanmar, said U.S. law enforcement officials in Southeast Asia, sharing information that has not been publicly reported before. “There is clear, concrete linkage to show that this really is one big global fight,” said one official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he had not been authorized to share details of ongoing investigations.

President Donald Trump cited China’s trade in these chemicals, known as drug precursors, as a rationale for his first rounds of tariffs this year, alleging in an executive order that the Chinese Communist Party has “subsidized and otherwise incentivized” their export, while providing “safe haven” to manufacturers and brokers involved in the industry.

At a summit with Trump in late October, Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed to crack down on illicit shipments of fentanyl precursors, although analysts are skeptical there will be meaningful change. Beijing has previously rejected claims that it bears responsibility for drug crises abroad and argued that authorities have already subjected drug precursors to tighter regulations. China’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

But investigators from U.S. law enforcement agencies, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and private intelligence and risk management firms have found mounting evidence to show that organized crime networks in Southeast Asia have been able to easily sidestep Chinese controls and continue sourcing base ingredients from partners in China.

Investigators say they have found dozens of licensed companies in China openly trading ingredients for meth precursors like ephedrine and pseudoephedrine on online marketplaces. These companies offer end-to-end logistics support, including evasion from customs regimes, and have faced limited, if any, penalties from Chinese authorities even when exposed as precursor suppliers, investigators say.

The “tsunami of methamphetamine” inundating Asia is “directly fueled by precursor chemicals from Chinese companies,” said Brandon Yoder, former deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

Officials from the U.N. and other multilateral organizations have warned Southeast Asian governments that Chinese manufacturers are “the most important source by a wide margin” of precursor chemicals streaming into Myanmar — the region’s central engine for meth production — according to briefing documents. In Thailand, the primary transit country for these chemicals into Myanmar, counternarcotics agencies say the challenge is overwhelming.

The operation at the border, carried out in October 2024, was one of a dozen major chemical seizures in the past year. It is part of a new effort targeting precursor ingredients — one that was borne out of desperation, said Worranan Srilum, a police major in the Thai Justice Ministry’s Department of Special Investigation.

Among the 800 tons of chemicals captured in that seizure: toluene, which helps purify meth crystals; acetone, a solvent used in cleaning and preparation; and sodium hydroxide, essential for chemical reactions in the synthesis of meth.

Proving these compounds were being moved for drug production, however, has been tricky, Worranan said. A year into the investigation, charges have not yet been brought.

“We are having to play a new role,” Worranan said, “because there is a new problem.”

‘Mafia town’

A record 236 tons of meth was seized in Southeast and East Asia last year — up 24 percent from the year before, the UNODC reported. The “predominant” source, the U.N. says, is Myanmar’s eastern Shan state, a forbidding tract of mountainous jungle that borders China. It is ruled by a patchwork of ethnic rebels, the most powerful of them the United Wa State Army (UWSA), a reclusive group designated by the U.S. as a narcotics trafficker and regarded by Washington think tanks and researchers as a proxy of China.

Many commanders at the UWSA, which has its roots in the Communist Party of Burma, speak Chinese and possess both Myanmar and Chinese citizenship, according to State Department and U.S. Treasury reports. China denies that it arms the UWSA. But at a 2019 UWSA military parade showcasing Chinese equipment, senior Chinese officials — including China’s envoy for Southeast Asia — sat alongside the leader of the rebel group, Bao Youxiang, also known as Pao Yu Hsiang, who had already been indicted by the U.S. on heroin and methamphetamine trafficking charges.

At least eight of the militia’s commanders are wanted by the U.S. for drug crimes, although the UWSA officially denies involvement in narcotics.

Patrick Winn, a journalist who has spent years talking to individuals close to the group, including former troops and advisers, said the UWSA first entered the drug trade by providing land, security and logistical support to Chinese drug syndicates migrating from the mainland to evade the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Underpinning this arrangement was an “iron rule” that the finished drugs don’t flow back into China, Winn said. “That’s why we see it going outwards.”

A spokesperson for the UWSA, Nyi Rang, declined to answer inquiries on narcotics or the group’s ties to China.

In 2021, Myanmar’s military ousted a democratically elected government, plunging the country into civil war. Counternarcotics efforts diminished as the formal economy collapsed. For the UWSA and its Chinese partners, this was the start of a golden age.

In parts of the Asia-Pacific region, the retail price of crystal meth, or “ice,” has halved since 2021 even as purity has remained stable — a sign of a supply glut, according to the UNODC.

Meth use in Australia, which jumped 21 percent between 2023 and 2024, now verges on an epidemic, according to wastewater surveys. Australian police estimated in 2022 that about 70 percent of “ice” in the country originates in Shan state.

In South Korea, the Health Ministry estimated in 2024 that the total number of illicit drug users had risen by more than 60 percent in five years, to over 400,000. Traces of meth were detected at dozens of sewage plants across the country, suggesting widespread use.

Nowhere, however, have the effects of Shan state’s production boom been more harrowing than in Myanmar itself. Living amid conflict and spiraling unemployment, the country’s youths have become prime testing ground for new drug concoctions, from stronger meth pills to poly-drug cocktails known as “happy water,” according to civil society organizations.

Ground zero is Tachileik, a township of about 200,000 people and the gateway to Shan state.

Just across the border from the nondescript Thai outpost of Mae Sai, units of armed men can be seen patrolling casinos and karaoke bars in Tachileik, where, according to locals, drugs are sold openly. It’s routine to find the dead bodies of overdose victims tossed outside drug dens, residents say. Passing by a graveyard in Tachileik that has become a campsite for addicts, Post reporters saw teenagers staggering around in a zombielike state.

Pon Li, a human rights activist from Tachileik now living in Thailand, said her hometown has become a “mafia town.” The UWSA owns and controls the real estate but it’s Chinese business delegations that bring the money, materials and expertise, she said.

“Every local knows this,” Pon Li added. “There’s nothing we can do about it.”

In plain sight

In July 2020, a Lao customs agent flagged an unusual shipment to the UNODC’s regional office in Bangkok. Seventy-two tons of propionyl chloride — a precursor ingredient for synthetic drugs, including meth — was headed from western Laos to Myanmar’s Shan state.

The chemical had been manufactured by Goldlink Industries Co., a subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned enterprise, then transported through Thailand, according to customs documents. When the shipment was stopped in Laos, a broker representing Xinye Import and Export Development Corp. in Shan state sent a letter asking for its release.

“Our company wants to use this chemical propionyl chloride to be used as raw material for fertilizer production and mineral separation, therefore please your support,” the letter said. On the advice of the UNODC, Lao authorities blocked it. Neither Goldlink nor Xinye responded to requests for comment.

The interdiction was a “rare and important success,” said Jeremy Douglas, who served until last year as the UNODC head in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

But it was also chilling confirmation of what UNODC investigators had begun to suspect at the time, he said: Lurking under legal trade flows, there were sophisticated operations to move large amounts of meth precursors from China into Shan state. “Given the volume of trafficking out of Shan, it was clear many, many other shipments have gone through,” Douglas said.

In 2023, U.N. investigators in Asia identified another Chinese company, called Wingroup Pharmaceutical, that was advertising chemicals alongside tutorials showing how those chemicals could be synthesized into drug precursors, according to documents disseminated to law enforcement in Southeast Asia and reviewed by The Post.

Located in Wuhan, Wingroup was verified on the Chinese marketplace Alibaba, where it offered clients the add-on service of mislabeling chemicals in bottles of hand soap and beeswax canisters, according to screenshots of company posts that have since been removed. Wingroup listed cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as its preferred payment method and publicized instructions on how to exchange gift cards into crypto.

Messages to numbers and emails associated with the company were not answered. Alibaba said Wingroup is no longer a verified seller on its platform, adding that it has a “zero-tolerance policy regarding listings that could be used for illegal activities.”

U.N. investigators said Wingroup has sold fentanyl precursors directly to buyers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. In February, a U.S. court found two Chinese nationals, one of whom operated as a sales manager for Wingroup, guilty of conspiracy to import “ton quantities” of fentanyl and meth precursors from Wuhan into the U.S. Despite these actions, however, the company has remained operational and shows “red flags” in its extensive business dealings in Southeast Asia, according to U.S. law enforcement officials.

TRM Labs, a blockchain intelligence company headquartered in San Francisco, last year identified more than 120 similar Chinese chemical companies that it determined were precursor suppliers, nearly all of which accepted payment in cryptocurrency. It found that deposits into crypto wallets linked to these firms increased more than 600 percent from 2022 to 2023, then doubled in the first four months of 2024 compared with the same period the previous year. In 2023, the wallets collectively received over $26 million.

TRM also found that nearly two-thirds of vendors selling fentanyl precursors also advertised precursors for other drugs: Ecstasy for Western Europe. Mephedrone for Russia. Meth for Asia. The networks at the heart of the fentanyl trade were the “backbone” for virtually every other synthetic drug in the world, TRM said in a report.

“It became clear to us that this goes beyond fentanyl and beyond the U.S.,” said Alois Afilipoaie, a senior threat analyst at TRM. “China is the epicenter of the entire global crisis of illicit drugs.”

New concoctions

The sickly, sweet smell of vanilla wafted from the first floor of the Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) in downtown Bangkok. Under fluorescent lights, mask-wearing workers slashed open seized packets of flavored meth tablets branded with the number “999” — a trademark of labs in Shan state, according to the DEA.

There were about 10 million tablets delivered that morning from a raid in northern Thailand. This would have been a record haul five years ago. But now it was routine, according to Tassawan Korsetthaphong, the scientist overseeing the counting. Police stations across the country enter a queue to submit their bounties to the ONCB’s analysis division for testing, and as of September, she said, the queue was filled till the end of the year.

This mountain of work, however, isn’t what keeps her up at night.

In the early 2010s, when chemicals like ephedrine and pseudoephedrine began being diverted from cold medication to meth, Thailand banned them from being sold to the public. For a while, illicit trade of these chemicals surged, prompting seizures. But in recent years, there have been barely any interdictions of these chemicals even as the amount of meth from the region has soared.

The reason, Tassawan said, is that there are dozens of ways to engineer ephedrine and pseudoephedrine from noncontrolled substances. This, she said, is the agency’s most pressing issue.

Last year, a U.S. federal grand jury indicted four leaders of a Wuhan-based company — Hubei Aoks Bio-Tech Co. Ltd. — on charges of selling fentanyl precursors, after which they were arrested by Chinese authorities, according to the U.S. Justice Department. As recently as October, however, Hubei Aoks still had public pages on export business platforms listing Thailand as one of its main markets, and law enforcement officials in Thailand said they suspected that spin-offs of the company were still actively doing business in Southeast Asia.

Messages to numbers and emails associated with Hubei Aoks were not answered.

Shipments tracked by U.S. law enforcement show record volumes of chemicals such as sodium cyanide and benzyl chloride entering Thailand with no corresponding justification in the legal economy, U.S. officials said. The DEA now wants to focus new support for Thailand’s counternarcotics efforts on interdicting precursor ingredients, not finished drugs, officials said.

But the ONCB’s mandate does not include oversight of noncontrolled substances.

Prin Mekanandha, director of the agency’s Narcotics Law Enforcement Bureau, gave the final sign-off for the operation to raid the warehouse at the Myanmar border, where ONCB personnel found more than 4,000 plastic tanks filled with precursor chemicals. Following the seizure, however, the case was handed to the Justice Ministry’s Department of Special Investigation, which has more sweeping powers than the ONCB to investigate.

In truth, Prin said, he was relieved.

It’s extremely difficult to prove these chemicals were being transported to Myanmar for drug production. If companies in Myanmar say they needed these materials for legitimate reasons, Thailand has few options to push back, Prin said.

Was it possible to ask Chinese authorities to assist?

Prin paused.

The working relationship with Chinese authorities is robust, he began. The question, however, of whether Thailand could call on China to do more to regulate chemical exports was “difficult” to answer, Prin said. Thailand is a small country, “not like the U.S.,” and small countries, he said, don’t make demands of superpowers.

Limited restraints

Two years ago, in response to pressure from the U.N. and the International Narcotics Control Board, China tightened controls over drug precursors being transported from the southwest province of Yunnan — the Chinese province that borders Myanmar and Laos — to Shan state. As exports across this land boundary slowed, however, new routes through transit countries including Thailand and Laos expanded, U.N. investigators say.

During a closed-door discussion on chemical precursors in Shanghai last year, Ohn Khaing, a deputy police colonel in the Myanmar junta, explained the shifting routes to Chinese authorities in a presentation on chemical interdictions.

“The smuggling of precursors from the border areas to produce synthetic drugs has significantly increased,” the official said in documents reviewed by The Post. Photos showed seized barrels and sacks of precursor compounds in Myanmar stamped “Made in China.” They included:

7.5 tons of tartaric acid in September 2023.

2.75 tons of sodium acetate in November 2023.

14.9 tons of sodium cyanide in July 2024.

China’s Ministry of Public Security acknowledged in a report last year that “as chemical smuggling routes continued to diversify and methods evolved, chemical control faced greater challenges.” Professors at the police college in Yunnan have also warned that “the smuggling of non-listed precursor chemicals has become a serious security risk” that could “negatively impact” China’s image.

Still, according to analysts and law enforcement, the Chinese government’s regulation of precursors remains limited.

The trade in precursor ingredients occurs openly on Chinese marketplaces, researchers say, and restricting such activity relies almost entirely on the CCP, said Coyne, the former Australian police official. “Could the CCP, if it wanted, go after these chemical plants? Could it enforce compliance? Absolutely,” he said.

The U.N., Interpol and other agencies ask governments to use the global Pre-Export Notification system to seek more details from recipient countries on how potential drug precursors will be used. But China has “low use levels” relative to the scale of its chemical industry and the frequency with which its chemicals are diverted to drugs, according to briefing documents disseminated to law enforcement agencies across Southeast Asia and reviewed by The Post.

Although Chinese authorities say they are building a system to track noncontrolled chemicals, little has been shared on this system, the documents said.

In a recent report to Congress, the U.S. State Department said that even when Chinese authorities appear to take action against companies that have been indicted or sanctioned by the U.S., such as by rescinding licenses, illicit operations are often quickly funneled to other firms. As of September, “there have been no arrests or prosecutions on narcotics-related charges in China for those involved in globally trafficking precursors,” the report said.

Trump effect

During the Biden administration, China increased counternarcotics work with the U.S., including expanding its list of drug precursors subject to heightened monitoring. Much of this cooperation, however, has dried up under Trump, analysts and former U.S. officials say.

Trump’s trade disputes with China have derailed bilateral cooperation on drug flows, they say. His administration has also dismantled programs at the State Department and Justice Department that had been facilitating intelligence sharing, training, and collaboration with police and courts in other countries on narcotics, making it more difficult to bring cases against Chinese precursor suppliers, former officials said.

“In the Biden administration, there was an acknowledgment that if you wanted to eliminate the cartels, you had to think globally about the entire precursor supply chain,” said Samantha Sultoon, a former director for sanctions at the National Security Council now serving as a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank. “That strategy … doesn’t seem to be in play anymore.”

A Justice Department spokesperson, Natalie Baldassarre, denied that any programs targeting the flow of precursors had been cut. A State Department spokesperson said the Trump administration had eliminated programs and partnerships “with duplicative efforts” but that it continues to use “all necessary tools to deter and dismantle the flow of fentanyl.”

White House spokesperson Kush Desai said years of Washington’s “status quo policymaking” had failed to stem the drug crisis. “The administration is aggressively rectifying this failure, and will soon be setting up working groups with Chinese officials to cooperate on the fentanyl issue with objective measures to save even more American lives,” Desai said.

Drug traffickers, meanwhile, are expanding their reach. Latin American cartels are already encroaching into the edges of the Asia-Pacific region, showing signs of “trade and crossover” with drug syndicates here, said David Caunter, director of organized and emerging crime at Interpol.

In the Shan Hills, capable partners lie in wait.

Between the 1970s and the 1990s, Shan state was a major producer of heroin that made its way to the U.S. The UWSA and its partners shifted over the past decade from farming poppy plants to making meth.

But it would be easy for them to evolve again and start producing synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which is becoming profitable worldwide, said Andrew Sorrells, a former DEA special agent deployed to Bangkok. The Shan state drugmakers are already working with the Chinese suppliers producing the right ingredients.

“It’s the logical next step,” Sorrells said. “At some point, they’ll switch.”

About this story

Wilawan Watcharasakwej in Bangkok; Lyric Li in Seoul; a Shan reporter in Chiang Mai, Thailand; and Pei-Lin Wu in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, contributed to this report. Graphics by Álvaro Valiño. Editing by Anna Fifield, Natalia Jiménez, Luis Velarde and Adrián Blanco Ramos. Copy editing by Vanessa Larson.

Washington Post · Rebecca Tan

4. Kremlin Shifts Focus to Information Warfare

Summary:

Facing battlefield stagnation and equipment shortages, Moscow is shifting from military to information warfare. Russia’s 2026 budget cuts defense spending but boosts state media by 54%, funding propaganda to maintain domestic support, erode Western aid, and weaken Ukrainian morale. The Kremlin deploys AI-driven disinformation, fabricated narratives, and exaggerated weapons claims to sustain influence.

Comment: Leading with influence. Can we do the same? Do we need to place greater emphasis on our information warfare (IWar) capabilities? Can we effectively compete in the information domain? and it is not just Russia. It is the entire "Dark Quad" or CRInK.

Kremlin Shifts Focus to Information Warfare

jamestown.org · Yuri Lapaiev · November 6, 2025

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 22 Issue: 150

By: Yuri Lapaiev

November 6, 2025 02:39 PM Age: 2 days

https://jamestown.org/program/kremlin-shifts-focus-to-information-warfare/

Executive Summary:

• Russia’s draft 2026 budget cuts military spending by $2.4 billion compared to 2025 while boosting funding for state-run media by 54 percent, signaling a potential pivot toward intensified information warfare.
• The Kremlin’s informational tactics are tailored to domestic, Western, and Ukrainian audiences, seeking to sustain public support at home, undermine Western aid to Ukraine, and erode Ukrainian morale.
• Facing limited battlefield gains and economic strain, Moscow increasingly relies on propaganda to achieve its aims, exaggerating weapon tests, spreading false narratives, and combining disinformation with physical attacks to influence perceptions and sustain its war against Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin shows no sign of giving up on his war against Ukraine despite limited battlefield gains. As Russia begins to experience a shortage of certain types of military equipment, its propaganda machine continues unabated and may have even expanded. Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Andrii Sybiha, stated that Russia’s draft budget for 2026 would reduce military spending by approximately $2.4 billion compared to 2025, while increasing funding for state-run media by 54 percent, an additional $458 million. In Sybiha’s opinion, this draft budget realignment shows that the Kremlin is prioritizing informational warfare going forward (The New Voice of Ukraine, September 30; Telegram/@Ukraine_MFA, October 19). The target audience—including the population of the Russian Federation, citizens of Ukraine, and residents of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries and allies—dictates Moscow’s strategy.

The Kremlin’s domestic propaganda machine is designed to sustain public support for the regime and its war against Ukraine. It is designed to convince Russians that the so-called “special military operation (SVO)” has been successful and needs to continue (Lenta, October 26; President of Russia, October 29). Other narratives try to create a positive perception of the Russian economy and portray Western sanctions as ineffective (RIA Novosti, June 19, July 6; The Moscow Times, August 8). Domestic propaganda also downplays the scale and consequences of Ukrainian attacks inside Russia, for example, by falsely stating that the military shot down all Ukrainian strike drones and that only debris reached targets during a September attack (Regnum, September 12; Russian Ministry of Defense, November 1).

The Kremlin uses its information machine to deny war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law inside Ukraine. For instance, Moscow claimed that an October 14 attack on a UN humanitarian convoy in the Kherson oblast was a military engagement, despite the clear UN markings (DW, October 14; X/@KyleJGlen, October 15). State-run media also justified the indiscriminate shelling of a residential area in Kherson with multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) on October 24 as necessary to destroy a Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) unit (Telegram/@CenterCounteringDisinformation; The Insider, October 24). Russian officials regularly deny war crimes, such as the mass killing of civilians in the city of Bucha in 2022 (Telegram/@CenterCounteringDisinformation, October 30). Lastly, domestic propaganda valorizes the Russian military and recruits new members. Heavy casualties require a constant influx of new recruits to maintain the current level of assault operations (X/@Tatarigami_UA, October 3). Propaganda portrays the “SVO” as a “holy war,” simultaneously demonizing and dehumanizing the enemy (Russian Orthodox Church, March 27, 2024).

Kremlin-funded media aimed at Western audiences attempt to convince their targets that Russia is still a superpower on the world stage. Moscow demands that the West lift sanctions as part of this effort, claiming that they have no effect on the Russian economy and instead backfire on Western countries. When Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, visited the United States, he attempted to portray the Russian economy as more stable than that of Europe. He claimed that new gas sanctions have “absolutely no effect on Russia’s economy. They will simply lead to higher prices at gas stations in the United States” (Kommersant; CBS News, October 26). Dmitriev’s trip took place immediately after the October 22 announcement of U.S. sanctions against the Russian oil industry, underscoring the Kremlin’s sensitivity to energy sanctions. When asked about Dmitriev’s comments, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the Russian envoy as “propagandist” and explained that “it’s oil that funds the Russian war machine, and I think we can make a substantial dent in [Putin’s] profits” (CBS News, October 26).

Russian state media seeks to demonstrate Russia’s military power to the West alongside threats of nuclear weapons. Every time the battlefield or global political situation does not favor Moscow, Russian officials begin to declare an alleged “escalation” and threaten devastating consequences (see EDM, October 27, November 3 [1], [2]). The Kremlin demonstrated this pattern on the eve of the meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during which the leaders were expected to discuss the transfer of Tomahawk cruise missiles to Kyiv. Shortly before the meeting, a telephone conversation took place between Trump and Putin, after which the United States postponed its final decision.

The much-publicized “launches” of new Russian weapons in October—the nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile (SSC-X-9 Skyfall) and the Poseidon nuclear-capable torpedo—sought to project Russian military power domestically and to the West (Radio Svoboda, October 26; Telegram/@news_kremlin, October 29; see EDM, November 3). Norway’s military intelligence reported that Russia launched Burevestnik from the Arctic archipelago Novaya Zemlya in the Barents Sea on October 21 (Meduza, October 27; The Insider, October 29). News of the tests was accompanied by aggressive posturing from Russian state television hosts, bloggers, and experts. Among the narratives is that Moscow has an advantage in the global technology race and has significant scientific and industrial potential (RIA Novosti, October 26). There are also statements that Russia could pose a significant threat to Europe and the United States (Rossia 1, October 27; YouTube/@russianmediamonitor, October 30). Despite a series of loud statements from state-affiliated Russian media, however, there is no credible data about the success of the Burevestnik test.

The Kremlin’s Burevestnik and Poseidon tests did not make as large an impact as Putin intended. On October 28, during a press conference at the Minsk International Conference on Eurasian Security, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that he had not received any feedback on the tests through diplomatic channels (Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, October 28). Alexei Fenenko, professor at the Faculty of World Politics at Moscow State University, said that “judging by Washington’s reaction, the tests unfortunately did not make the desired impression” (Russia 1, October 27). Only Western politicians with pro-Kremlin views, such as Gunnar Lindemann, a member of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, responded to as Moscow intended, citing “the West’s anxiety and Russia’s high combat readiness” (Izvestia, October 27).

Kremlin-funded media seeks to convince the West to cancel or reduce military aid to Ukraine. The Kremlin attempts to create a negative image of Ukraine and Ukrainians and stir up conflicts between states through fakes, manipulations, or false-flag operations (Telegram/@CenterCounteringDisinformation, October 22, 23; NV, October 29).

Moscow is trying to convince citizens of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union that they need to spend public funds on domestic problems instead of supplying weapons to Ukraine. The Kremlin pursues this through support for radical political parties in the European Union and by increasing provocations toward the West, including allowing Russian drones over critical and military infrastructure in Europe, sabotage, and cyberattacks (Vox Ukraine, March 28; Slawa.TV, July 9; see EDM, September 15, 16, 25, October 9). According to Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, chief of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, Russia’s goal is to stir up opposition to aid for Ukraine in European countries (see EDM, May 29, June 9, July 22, August 1; Il Foglio, October 25).

The Kremlin continues its campaign to discredit Ukraine’s top military and political leadership. In 2022 and 2024, Moscow primarily targeted this campaign at Zelenskyy and the then Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), General Valerii Zaluzhnyi. Now, a narrative is being promoted in Russian sources about an alleged conflict between Zelenskyy and General Oleksandr Syrskyi, as well as between Syrskyi and General Mykhailo Drapatyi, Commander of the Joint Forces of AFU (Telegram/@khersonnewsru, October 31).

On October 30, Putin invited international journalists to visit Pokrovsk, Myrnohrad, and Kupiansk to “prove” the Kremlin’s claims that Ukrainian forces are encircled there, promising to halt hostilities for five to six hours for the event. Heorhii Tykhyi, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, warned against participating in this event, which Ukraine views as a propaganda tool and potential threat to journalists’ safety (Liga.net, October 30; X/@JulianRoepcke, October 31). The Kremlin may also use the ceasefire to transfer reserves, as during the Easter truce (see EDM, May 5; Telegram/@spravdi, October 31). Ukrainian monitoring organizations have found that Russia has committed more than 836 crimes against journalists in Ukraine and killed more than 135 Ukrainian media representatives since February 2022 (Institute of Massive Information, May 23; President of Ukraine, October 23).

Russian propaganda seeks to undermine Ukrainians’ support for the war, with a particular focus on mobilization (Telegram/@landforcesofukraine, August 31). Among those who have already joined the army, Kremlin propagandists are spreading calls to surrender or flee. They often use fake videos allegedly filmed by real Ukrainian soldiers, mostly generated using neural networks or artificial intelligence (AI) (Telegram/@frontline_pvt, October 12). The Kremlin is increasingly utilizing AI to produce media for influence operations, as it reduces the time and resources required, enabling content to be generated on an industrial scale.

The Kremlin also creates graphics and videos mimicking pro-Ukrainian sources in large numbers, primarily on TikTok, to attract Ukrainian subscribers. After building their base, these accounts begin to spread information about allegedly catastrophic losses in the AFU (Telegram/@spravdi, October 23, 25).

To influence AFU soldiers and generate positive news for the Russian target audience, the Russian army uses a “flagpole tactic.” Russian soldiers enter Ukrainian territories, sometimes changing into civilian clothes, to raise the Russian flag and take a photo as proof of “complete control.” In most cases, such groups of “flag bearers” are immediately destroyed by Ukrainian fire (Freedom, October 29). A recent example is in Pokrovsk, where such a flag lasted less than an hour (X/@Maks_NAFO_FELLA, October 29; Zerkalo Nedeli, October 30).

Even more telling is the case of the Russians’ announced mass landing of troops in the Ostrov district of the city of Kherson, particularly on Karantinnyi Island, on October 15 (Suspilne.Kherson, October 15). The news about the landing was disseminated by Russian media, including at the federal level. The fake was quickly refuted—the Ukrainian military filmed a video in the area in question, showing the absence of the enemy. Due to the publicity surrounding the refutation of the fake, Russian media simply “canceled” the news (TASS, October 22).

The resumption of a series of Russian airstrikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has once again, as expected, raised the issue of the influence on the civilian population (see EDM, August 1, 2024). As in previous years, the Kremlin is actively promoting the idea of an impending collapse of the energy sector and total blackouts, the inability of the authorities and the military to protect the population, and the need for immediate evacuation. According to Pavlo Lakiychuk, Head of the Security Programs of Centre for Global Studies “Strategy XXI,” the goal of the strikes is not only to paralyze the country’s logistics routes and energy system, but also to force the population to surrender (TSN, October 30).

The use of informational warfare to enhance the effect of kinetic strikes is becoming standard operating procedure in modern combat. The Russian propaganda and disinformation system is likely to increase its intensity to compensate for economic difficulties, the lack of significant results in the war against Ukraine, and problems on the global stage.

jamestown.org · Yuri Lapaiev · November 6, 2025

5. The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands

Summary:

After President Trump ordered a halt to all foreign aid, U.S.A.I.D. was dismantled and programs stopped, staff purged, and funds frozen. Lifesaving efforts against HIV, malnutrition, and disease collapsed worldwide. Experts estimate over 600,000 deaths, mostly children. The shutdown reversed decades of progress, creating what Atul Gawande calls “public man-made death.”

Comment: A film. What are the plans to replace USAID capabilities? Of course the first question is: do the American people want a USAID or similar organization? What do they want and think such an organization should do for America? Can those of us who advocate for a USAID articulate sufficient rationale and justification to gain the support of the American people? 

The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands

The New Yorker · Film by Thomas Jennings · November 5, 2025

The short documentary “Rovina’s Choice” tells the story of what goes when aid goes.

Film by Thomas Jennings and Annie Wong

Text by 

November 5, 2025

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary/the-shutdown-of-usaid-has-already-killed-hundreds-of-thousands

Watch “Rovina’s Choice.”

It was January, my final week in the outgoing Administration. In a few days, Donald Trump would be inaugurated as President. I had come to the United States Agency for International Development in early 2022, leaving my surgery practice and public-health research in Boston to lead the agency’s global-health efforts. Now I’d be returning to my previous life.

I spent my last days at U.S.A.I.D. in meetings with our civil- and foreign-service leaders, thanking them. Their work with partner countries had helped to contain twenty-one outbreaks of deadly disease, sustain Ukraine’s health system after Russia’s invasion, combat H.I.V., tuberculosis, and polio, and reduce maternal and child deaths worldwide. On a budget of just twenty-four dollars per American—out of the fifteen thousand dollars in taxes paid per person last year—they had saved lives at an almost unimaginable scale. An independent, peer-reviewed analysis in The Lancet estimated that U.S.A.I.D. assistance had saved ninety-two million lives over two decades.

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Many of the leaders voiced trepidation about what the incoming Administration might bring, but I struck a sanguine note. U.S.A.I.D., I pointed out, had more than sixty years of solid bipartisan backing. Trump had advanced significant parts of the agency’s work in his first term. He had personally pledged to end H.I.V. as a public-health threat by 2030. The incoming Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, had been a vocal supporter of the bureau. There would be isolated partisan skirmishes—over diversity initiatives, abortion-related policies, and the like—but more than ninety-five per cent of our bureau’s work had never been under contention.

Clearly, I lacked imagination. Within hours of being sworn in, President Trump signed an executive order for a “pause” to all foreign assistance. Secretary Rubio sent a cable suspending every program outright. No program staff could be paid. No services could be delivered. Medicines and food already on the shelves could not be used. No warning had been given to the governments that relied on them. It was immediately obvious that hundreds of thousands of people would die in the first year alone. But the Administration did not reconsider; it escalated. Elon Musk exulted in swinging his chainsaw. Within weeks and in defiance of legal mandates, he and Rubio purged U.S.A.I.D.’s staff, terminated more than four-fifths of its contracts, impounded its funds, and dismantled the agency. Neither Congress nor the Supreme Court did anything to stop it.

We are now witnessing what the historian Richard Rhodes termed “public man-made death,” which, he observed, has been perhaps the most overlooked cause of mortality in the last century. Brooke Nichols, the Boston University epidemiologist and mathematical modeller, has maintained a respected tracker of current impact. The model is conservative, assuming, for example, that the State Department will fully sustain the programs that remain. As of November 5th, it estimated that U.S.A.I.D.’s dismantling has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children.

The toll is appalling and will continue to grow. But these losses will be harder to see than those of war. For one, they unfold slowly. When H.I.V. or tuberculosis goes untested, unprevented, or inadequately treated, months or years can pass before a person dies. The same is true for deaths from vaccine-preventable illnesses. Another difficulty is that the deaths are scattered. Suppose the sudden withdrawal of aid raises a country’s under-five death rate from three per cent to four per cent. That would be a one-third increase in deaths, but hard to appreciate simply by looking around.

The Administration, for its part, has denied causing widespread harm, even as it has made the scale of the damage harder to measure—halting data monitoring and dismissing the inspectors general who might have documented it. This is common in cases of public man-made death. During Mao Zedong’s disastrous Great Leap Forward, from 1958 to 1961, the Chinese government released no accurate mortality data. Observers abroad understood that a hunger crisis was under way when China began importing grain, but the scale of the catastrophe was not known until the mid-nineteen-eighties, when the first reliable census allowed historians to calculate that between twenty-three and thirty million people had died.

A fuller accounting of the fallout from U.S.A.I.D.’s shutdown will probably have to await analysis of the United Nations’ 2025 mortality statistics, which likely won’t appear until 2027. But there are other ways to glimpse the scale of the harm. With a documentary team that includes both American and local journalists, I have been following what has happened in Kenyan communities where U.S.A.I.D. had been active—in an advanced-H.I.V. ward in Nairobi, in primary health-care centers that had sharply reduced malaria, in a refugee camp, and elsewhere.

We chose Kenya because I’d done a lot of work there during my tenure, and because it’s on a familiar path of development. Like India, South Korea, and many Latin American countries that the U.S. assisted to advance from low-income recipients of aid to higher-income trade partners, Kenya had reached the lower rung of middle-income status. The country had made dramatic leaps in health-system capacity and life expectancy with the help of a mixture of projects. U.S.A.I.D. supplied medicine, food, and staffing for some of the most desperate and vulnerable, while providing technical assistance and investment to accelerate the country’s expertise in needs ranging from H.I.V. control to primary care.

I was especially worried about what would happen to the programs for childhood malnutrition, which, during the past two decades, had made extraordinary progress around the world. In place of a system that waited for emaciated children to reach distant hospital wards, often hours away, we had helped countries bring the front line to where they lived. A community health worker, carrying a tape measure and a scale, could detect danger early at home. A packet of peanut-paste therapeutic food could reverse starvation for the vast majority of severely malnourished children. Hospitals became a backstop for complications and for the frailest cases, while communities worked to strengthen local food sources. The method was simple, frequent, and close at hand: measure the upper arm, check for swelling, provide supplemental nutrition, watch for infection or decline, return the next week.

The results were dramatic. Mortality rates for severe malnutrition, once twenty per cent or higher, fell below five per cent. In Kenya, communities we worked with, including refugee camps, saw death rates drop to under one per cent. The United States had played a central role in developing and manufacturing the formula for therapeutic supplements. U.S.A.I.D. then had helped UNICEF, the World Food Programme, local health systems, and other actors scale up the approach worldwide. Globally, under-five child mortality fell by more than half since 2000, in major part owing to the advances in malnutrition treatment, which saved more than a million lives in 2023 alone. Still, most of the world’s malnourished children lack access to these programs. But, instead of trying to close that gap, we are washing our hands of it and reversing the gains.

In Kakuma, a vast refugee camp near the South Sudan border, starting in spring, our documentary team followed clinicians and families inside the stabilization unit at Clinic 7, where the sickest children come. Because of the termination of U.S. support, the World Food Programme’s supplies had been reduced to forty per cent of minimum needs, and cases of acute malnutrition had surged. Two-thirds of the clinic’s community health workers were laid off, hobbling the early-detection system that once saved most children before they needed acute care. Clinic 7 is where we met Rovina Naboi, who had fled South Sudan with her family. In our short film, she reveals what it was like trying to keep her desperately ill daughter, Jane Sunday, alive in a system that has broken down.

There are valid criticisms of U.S.A.I.D. It sometimes fostered dependency. It could be inefficient. Too much of its funding went to international institutions, rather than to local ones. And its history includes episodes in which aid was bent to American military and political aims—in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Yet no other agency of the U.S. government has saved more lives per dollar. It helped move billions of people out of poverty. And it showed how to deliver results for all of humanity, including Americans, through coöperation, rather than coercion.

The destruction of U.S.A.I.D. does nothing to improve this work. Instead, we have public man-made death. And the cruelty and lethality will only grow as the Administration expands its rollback of public-health advances to the homeland. We cannot let the people affected—health workers like those of Clinic 7, families like Rovina Naboi’s—go unseen. And we cannot let the consequences go unaccounted for.

6. China Suspends Some Export Controls on Critical Minerals but Retains Others

Summary:

China suspended for one year several new export controls on rare earth and battery equipment after the Trump-Xi summit but kept earlier restrictions on key minerals and magnets. The move partially meets U.S. demands but leaves global supply chains strained, especially for military and electric-vehicle industries dependent on Chinese processing.

China Suspends Some Export Controls on Critical Minerals but Retains Others

NY Times · Keith Bradsher · November 7, 2025

The Chinese government followed through on promises it made publicly after a recent summit, but has not yet taken other actions sought by the White House.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/business/china-rare-earth-export-controls.html

President Trump met with Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, in South Korea, last week for trade talks. Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

By

Reporting from Beijing

Nov. 7, 2025

China’s Ministry of Commerce announced on Friday that it had suspended for a year a wide range of export controls that it issued last month, but did not address other actions that the White House described as Chinese commitments after a recent summit.

The ministry said that it was suspending six sets of export control regulations that it had issued on Oct. 9. Those rules, which were going to take effect in stages through Dec. 1, barred the transfer out of China of rare earth processing equipment, battery manufacturing equipment and certain super-hard materials needed to make semiconductors, solar panels and armor-piercing ammunition.

The suspension of these rules is set to last until Nov. 10 next year.

Rare earths are metals mainly used in the manufacture of cars, semiconductors, robots, drones and many other advanced manufactured products. They are also needed in smaller quantities for the production of fighter jets, missiles, tanks and other military equipment.

After Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, met President Trump on Oct. 30 in Busan, South Korea, the Chinese government said that it would suspend the Oct. 9 rules. The White House went further, saying that China would also issue general licenses for the export of rare earths and four other materials — gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite — for which China has also imposed restrictions over the past two years.

“The general license means the de facto removal of controls China imposed since 2023,” according to a White House statement on Nov. 1 that described the American perspective on what the two leaders had agreed.

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China’s Ministry of Commerce has said that it would issue general licenses for the export of critical minerals. But the ministry has not provided any information on how long those licenses might last nor how much information would need to be provided by companies applying for the licenses.

The ministry has not replied to requests on Monday and again on Friday for comment about the general licenses.

Scott Bessent, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, had described the Oct. 9 export controls as “a bazooka at the supply chains and the industrial base of the entire free world.” The rules did not just cover the export from China of a wide range of products that include rare earths and other critical minerals. They would have also covered the manufacture outside of China of many products that used even small amounts of Chinese rare earths.

The ministry made no mention on Friday of changing the stringent export controls that it imposed on April 4 on exports of seven kinds of rare earths and powerful magnets made from them.

Under those April rules, China has required that overseas companies provide an enormous amount of technical information about their products in order to obtain six-month licenses for the export from China of small quantities of restricted rare earths. China processes practically the entire world’s supply of these rare earth elements. Many factories in the United States and Europe remain critically short of magnets needed for the electric motors that run systems like the brake motors and seats in cars.

Since April, China has also barred any export of these rare earths for military applications. This has begun to slow the production of military equipment in the West and is making it harder for Europe in particular to supply Ukraine with arms to defend itself against Russia’s invasion.

China has tilted strongly toward Russia during the war in Ukraine, keeping the Russian economy afloat with extensive purchases of Russian raw materials and selling a wide range of industrial equipment to Russia.

Even with the one-year suspension of the October regulations, companies outside China may still have trouble obtaining needed supplies. For months, mines and refineries outside of China have complained that Chinese suppliers were no longer willing to sell vital equipment to them. Many companies involved in critical minerals in China are partly or entirely owned by the Chinese government.

China’s General Administration of Customs announced separately on Friday that it was reinstating the right of three American companies to ship soybeans to China, and would also allow U.S. exports of logs to China to resume.

Xinyun Wu contributed research.

Keith Bradsher is the Beijing bureau chief for The Times. He previously served as bureau chief in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Detroit and as a Washington correspondent. He lived and reported in mainland China through the pandemic.

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 8, 2025, Section B, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Beijing Suspends Some Restrictions on Critical Minerals, but Not All

See more on: Donald Trump, Xi Jinping

NY Times · Keith Bradsher · November 7, 2025

7. What I Learned From the ‘New Globalists’ of an Optimistic Nation

Summary:

Vietnam remains a rare champion of globalization, blending nationalism with openness. Decades of economic reform, education investment, and cultural syncretism have fueled optimism and growth. Embracing trade, diversity, and innovation, Vietnam views global integration as a path to shared prosperity—trusting that engaging the world strengthens, rather than dilutes, its national identity.

Comment: Is Vietnam a bellwether? What can we learn from Vietnam?

What I Learned From the ‘New Globalists’ of an Optimistic Nation

NY Times · Damien Cave · November 8, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/world/asia/what-i-learned-from-the-new-globalists-of-an-optimistic-nation.html

Vietnam Dispatch

Few countries are excited about globalization anymore, but Vietnam is still into it — wholeheartedly. Do the reasons go beyond economic growth?

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in October.

Vietnam Dispatch

Few countries are excited about globalization anymore, but Vietnam is still into it — wholeheartedly. Do the reasons go beyond economic growth?

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in October.Credit...

Listen to this article · 11:30 min Learn more

By

Visuals by Linh Pham

Damien Cave covers global affairs from a new bureau in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

• Nov. 8, 2025

The singer from Indonesia wailed, “Where do we go now,” his ocean-blue sarong swinging toward a crowd that hailed from a few continents, under a sign with golden lights that declared, “In God we trust.”

It was just another night in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: Guns N’ Roses covers in an American-ish bar, after dinner at an Italian-Japanese place, in a week that included conversations with a Vietnamese Belgian investor and an Australian and his Vietnamese wife, who told me what she had really loved was studying Spanish in Salamanca.

How, I wondered, in an era of trade wars and nationalism, did Vietnam end up here, with globalism still so feverishly embraced?

In April, Vietnam’s top leader, To Lam, made “international integration” a national priority. In August, Vietnam eased visa rules to make it easier for foreigners to work there. In September, the government announced plans to add more English and other languages to schools, and to channel more tax dollars into developing “world class” universities.

Officials still suppress dissent, fiercely preserving one-party rule and preventing anything like the youth rebellion that recently rocked Nepal. But 50 years after a brutal war with the United States, this country of 100 million is humming with extroverted energy.

Globalization of business and trade has lifted Vietnam out of poverty and produced a surge of globalism — a belief that the world is better off with a freer flow of people, goods, tastes and expertise.

Performers playing at Acoustic Bar in Ho Chi Minh City. Fifty years after a brutal war with the United States, this country of 100 million is humming with extroverted energy.

Dining in an Italian-Japanese restaurant in the city, formerly known as Saigon.

The exuberance that springs from that is hard to miss, and if you come from a place where it feels like globalization took more than it gave — including the New England factory towns where I grew up — Vietnam’s energy can be jarring. From formal events to casual drinks, I often feel like I’m surrounded by DJs trying to keep a party going after most guests have left.

Ted Osius, a former U.S. ambassador to Vietnam who recently moved from Washington to Ho Chi Minh City with the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council, cited the 24/7 construction of Long Thanh International Airport as his prime example. The mega project on the outskirts of the city is set to become Vietnam’s new international gateway next year, and though its roads and railway connections are behind schedule, Mr. Osius told me it reminds him of Singapore building its Changi Airport into a frictionless hub for global travel.

“Walk around this city,” he said, “and the interest in things outside of Vietnam is palpable. And it doesn’t take away from their patriotism, either.”

It does make the country something of an anomaly.

Across the globe, recent polls show a fracturing of support for globalization, with a strong lean inward toward protectionism for trade, migration and culture.

Vietnam is intriguing because it’s pushing in the opposite direction. It’s a midsize country evangelizing the idea that nationalism and internationalism are still complementary, that cultural mixing is more fun than threatening. Many Vietnamese even believe that — as President Bill Clinton said in the ’90s — “this time, a rising tide truly does lift all boats.”

A lion dragon performance marking the reopening last month of the first McDonald’s in Vietnam, in Ho Chi Minh City.

People hanging out at a rooftop DJ party at a craft beer bar.

Why does Vietnam still look outward, long after globalism’s sell-by date appears to have passed? Partly because that is the approach it knows best.

Vietnam’s story of national formation includes 1,000 years of integrating the ideas and tastes of larger powers while resisting domination. Multiethnic migration has shaped the nation since at least the second century, while a societal earnestness, seeking whatever works from almost anywhere, has long been a feature of Vietnamese life.

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To cite just one example, Cao Dai, the religion founded in southern Vietnam in 1926, puts Buddha and Christ alongside figures like Confucius and Victor Hugo on its altars. Its hierarchical structure borrows from Catholicism — and its adherents number in the millions.

“The point isn’t numbers but disposition,” said Mai Huyen Chi, a filmmaker and keen observer of Vietnamese culture. “A pragmatic syncretism that says, in effect, what’s good is good; bring it in.’”

That syncretism, or amalgamation of cultures, is quite apparent in Ho Chi Minh City, or what was once Saigon. Along with hundreds of thousands of foreigners who call the place home, the descendants of the Vietnam War’s refugees have come back to the city’s shaded alleyways and mirrored glass towers in large enough numbers to shape business and culture.

“A pragmatic syncretism that says, in effect, what’s good is good; bring it in,” said Mai Huyen Chi, a filmmaker and keen observer of Vietnamese culture.

A painting depicting the signing of a treaty at a Cao Dai temple in Ho Chi Minh City. The religion, founded in southern Vietnam in 1926, puts Buddha and Christ alongside figures like Confucius and Victor Hugo on its altars.

These overseas Vietnamese are investors in start-ups. They are selling vintage T-shirts, working as podcast hosts, chefs and as successful artists. Increasingly, they join forces with the swelling ranks of young Vietnamese who went to college or graduate school overseas and then returned.

The new globalists are people like Quyen Le (Cindy) Vuu, 45, who studied engineering at the University of Toronto before guiding her family’s Ho Chi Minh City footwear business, Bitis, toward workplace mindfulness. She was inspired by a mix of corporate data showing that happy workers are more productive and by Dr. Ha Vinh Tho, a Vietnamese expat in Switzerland who helped Bhutan develop a holistic approach to development that integrates well-being as a priority.

When we met at her office, where a corkboard tracked success in health and community vitality with yarn and pushpins, she told me that Vietnam’s war trauma required a mix of East, West and local to find healing and excellence.

“You integrate with the world, but you still have your own identity,” she said, smiling through braces and rubber bands. “The more we exchange, the more we build trust.”

People hang out on a pier along the Saigon River. Along with hundreds of thousands of foreigners who call the place home, the descendants of the Vietnam War’s refugees have come back to help shape business and culture.

“You integrate with the world, but you still have your own identity,” said Quyen Le (Cindy) Vuu, the chief executive of a footwear business called Biti’s.

Vietnam has signed 17 free trade agreements and still wants more, to match or surpass Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. These are the comparisons Vietnam wants, and in all three, support for globalization is stronger than it is in Europe, the United States or Latin America.

Partly that’s because the so-called Asian Tigers have benefited from the movement of capital and manufacturing. But economists argue that what they did with their wealth also matters: They found creative ways to share.

Singapore pioneered middle-class public housing in the 1960s. South Korea actively suppressed private fortunes during its developmental boost from the ’70s to the ’90s. Taiwan added universities, going from only 28 in 1985 to 158 in 2015, and created national health insurance and pension programs.

America’s approach favored the top of the wealth pyramid. Between the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 and Mr. Trump’s presidential run in 2016, the U.S. economy more than doubled in size and the ranks of American billionaires quintupled, to 540. But by 1999, growth at the national level had stopped translating to growth in middle-class incomes.

Economists still debate whether blame falls more heavily on automation or the offshoring of manufacturing jobs to countries like China and Mexico. Many scholars agree that Washington supercharged the divide with policies that privileged the wealthy and multinational corporations over workers as college tuition soared, far outpacing wages and inflation.

Tourists visiting Ben Thanh Market in the city center.

A skateboarder on a city sidewalk.

China over the past three decades has built its own form of globalization, which resembles the spiked, one-way exit at a car rental agency: The system eases the flow of Chinese products leaving, and makes it painful for anything going in, with policy and politics that protect its huge market from strong foreign competition.

Vietnam’s path was different. It tried Communist self-sufficiency after the war, and that led to mass starvation.

The government then began championing openness as an alternative, kicking off economic reforms in the 1980s with agriculture, which led to a boom in food production and exports. From the start, globalization was a hit because it helped feed the masses.

When manufacturing expanded in the 2000s, the government pushed deeper into education. When I visited northern Vietnam in 2007, schools in remote villages looked new and freshly painted. Per capita income was less than $2,000, compared with nearly $5,000 now. World Bank figures showed that Vietnam was spending about 20 percent of its budget on education — more than double the average of public spending among the wealthier countries in the O.E.C.D., or Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

“In the early phase of reform, which was very broad-based, most of the Vietnamese people benefited,” said Vu Thanh Tu Anh, an economist at the Fulbright School of Public Policy and Management in Ho Chi Minh City.

Richard Streitmatter-Tran, right, a Vietnamese American who returned to Vietnam in 2003 to work as an artist and art educator, speaking to students in his studio.

Graduating students posing for photographs at a college. When manufacturing expanded in the 2000s, the government pushed deeper into education.

Vietnam’s economy became more unequal after the financial crisis in 2008, with banking, construction (and corruption) creating enormous wealth. But inequality in Vietnam has remained far below America’s and neighbors like Malaysia, where support for globalization is weaker. Generally, people gaining from globalization support it. But when the benefits are not evenly distributed, in a poor country or in a rich one, those who feel they are losing out are more likely to oppose it.

What do people get back? That’s what shapes views of global interdependence, said Tara Zahra, a historian at the University of Chicago and the author of “Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars.”

“Looking at your Vietnamese example,” she told me, “why do people feel like they have a stake in it?”

It’s a good question that seems to have a simple answer: Vietnam’s economic growth surpassed 8 percent last quarter. But as always, it’s not just the macroeconomics that matter.

One afternoon, I stopped by a music store in Ho Chi Minh City to buy a guitar cable. Within minutes, I met the shop’s young owners. They were eager to practice English, encouraging me to come back for a band they were hosting in a tiny space where the only seating was an old leather couch.

When I left, I noticed there was no Starbucks on the corner. Chain stores like Muji and H&M are here, but the cultural homogenization that turned many off to globalization remains limited, preserving what Ms. Zahra called “a time when globalization was about access to things that were new and different.”

A customer trying out a guitar at a music store in Ho Chi Minh City.

People working out of a coffee shop belonging to an international chain. Globalism thrives in Vietnam because people trust that they and their country will benefit from singing along rather than singing alone.

Maybe the novel — and new opportunities and an attractive local-global balance — are what Vietnam gets back from its current phase of integration with the world.

“Much of what looks like globalization here is the state’s choreography: visas, investment incentives, airports, spectacle,” said Ms. Chi, the filmmaker. “Lived globalization belongs to the people: mastering skills, taking over executive roles once held by foreigners, building networks abroad, remixing culture.”

Ultimately, Vietnam suggests that to maintain public support, globalization requires what the Harvard economist Dani Rodrik calls a “leaner” version: Less free flow of everything, more attention to entry points for shared prosperity and purpose.

Globalism thrives in Vietnam because it does not overwhelm, because people still trust that they and their country will benefit from singing along rather than singing alone.

Just recently, at a branch of Fahasa, a Vietnamese bookstore chain, I met Tinh Nguyen, a middle-aged English teacher. He was skimming Dale Carnegie’s “The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking” between blond wooden shelves of books in English with titles like “Solve for Happy.”

“I’m just curious,” he said, after I asked what he was hoping to find. “I’m always looking for ideas.”

Ho Chi Minh City at night.

Damien Cave leads The Times’s new bureau in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, covering shifts in power across Asia and the wider world.

NY Times · Damien Cave · November 8, 2025

8. Alaska’s New Mining Rush Chases Something More Coveted Than Gold

Summary:

China’s antimony export curbs sparked a U.S. scramble to revive domestic supply. Companies are reopening Alaska/Idaho sites; DoD is funding mining and stockpile contracts. Prices surged, supplies remain tight despite a trade “truce.” Projects face local pushback over trails, light pollution, and tourism impacts, testing America’s ability to rebuild critical-mineral supply chains.

Alaska’s New Mining Rush Chases Something More Coveted Than Gold

WSJ

By Jon Emont

Follow | Photography by Angela Owens

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Nov. 8, 2025 5:30 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/alaskas-new-mining-rush-chases-something-more-coveted-than-gold-f3992f3c

• China’s export restrictions on antimony, including a ban to the U.S. in December, have contributed to scarcity.
• Companies are reactivating antimony mining sites in Alaska and Idaho, with the Defense Department providing grants to support domestic production.
• Local residents and businesses in Alaska express concerns about mining operations affecting dog-sledding trails and Northern Lights viewing.

An artificial-intelligence tool created this summary, which was based on the text of the article and checked by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.

• China’s export restrictions on antimony, including a ban to the U.S. in December, have contributed to scarcity.

ESTER, Alaska—At a mining site here, Rod Blakestad cracked open a shiny rock with his pick. He found quartz, a sign that the rock may contain gold.

But Blakestad, a veteran gold hunter, tossed the rock aside. He and his team of geologists were searching for something even more sought-after: antimony, an obscure element widely used in the defense industry that is now at the center of the bitter U.S.-China trade fight.

“If we were looking for gold, we’d be high-fiving,” he said.

Until recently, antimony, which is often found in gold mines, was treated as detritus by gold miners.

But that began changing last year, when China put in place heavy restrictions on antimony exports, including banning all shipments to the U.S. in December, in retaliation for restrictions Washington put on the export of American technology products to China.

That is squeezing defense companies, which use antimony to harden bullets and strengthen armor-penetrating projectiles. Antimony prices have quadrupled from two years ago and supplies are now scarce, just as defense companies need to replenish stockpiles of armaments exhausted by the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.

A piece of stibnite, a mineral that is smelted to produce antimony, at a site near Fairbanks.

Last month, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and President Trump hammered out a truce in a trade war that has seen the two sides trade blows. In particular, China has choked off the supply of many critical minerals—some of which are used to make products such as cars, drones and jet engines—in retaliation for U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports and U.S. restrictions on certain exports to China.

Around 60% of the world’s antimony is mined in China, with most of the rest coming from Russia, Tajikistan and Myanmar.

Under the truce, the White House said antimony shipments will resume, though Beijing hasn’t confirmed that. Industry experts haven’t seen signs of renewed antimony shipments from China and don’t expect flows to return to previous levels soon, especially for military uses. Global antimony prices have remained elevated.

Now, antimony is emerging as an important test case of whether the U.S. can restore supply chains devastated by decades of Chinese dominance.

The U.S. hasn’t been a significant miner of antimony for many years. Now, companies are dusting off sites in Alaska and Idaho that last produced antimony during the 20th century. The Defense Department is pouring money into jump-starting projects. In September, it announced $43 million in funding to accelerate production at an Alaska antimony project.

Blakestad’s employer, United States Antimony, operates an antimony smelter in the U.S. In September, the government granted it a $245 million contract to supply antimony ingots to the national defense stockpile.

But first, U.S. Antimony needs to get hold of the ore. Earlier this year, Chinese authorities intercepted one of the company’s antimony shipments while it was transiting through a Chinese port on the way from Australia, holding it for months before releasing it.

Chinese buyers, who are searching for ore after production dwindled at a giant mine in China, have been scooping up antimony around the world. Meanwhile, last year, U.S. Antimony stopped mining the material at its Mexico holdings, in part because cartels made operating there too dangerous.

Blakestad, a veteran gold hunter, is leading U.S. Antimony’s exploration efforts in Alaska.

Alaska calling

Now, U.S. Antimony is making a big push to mine domestically, and it is turning to the vast potential of Alaska.

The company acquired mineral leases around Fairbanks, guided by old geological bulletins indicating the presence of antimony at gold mines.

Blakestad, who has hunted for gold as far as Mali and Ghana—and is famed for his role in the discovery of one of the U.S.’s largest gold mines—is leading the company’s Alaska exploration efforts.

At the Mohawk mine, a disused site that still features a crumbling wooden gold-processing mill, Blakestad’s team follow century-old collapsed mining tunnels that snake through the soil—signs that, decades ago, miners found seams of gold that might contain antimony. They look for hardy alder trees, which indicate an area that had been dug up for mining years ago. When they find a promising area, they dig new trenches and collect samples.

“We’re looking for what they left behind,” said Blakestad.

Down in Montana, U.S. Antimony is expanding its smelter and is restarting mining operations that it shut it down in the 1980s because it couldn’t compete with rock-bottom Chinese prices.

“We know we can fix this problem,” said Chief Executive Gary Evans, who says the recent U.S.-China trade truce hasn’t changed the company’s plans to forge ahead with the Alaska project.

Other companies are also digging. At its site, called Treasure Creek, near Fairbanks, Australian company Felix Gold has found high-grade surface deposits of antimony that gleam in the sunlight. The company says it is ready to start mining later this year if the permits come through. Felix Gold is also drilling hundreds of feet underground to map out the area’s antimony deposits and may seek to dig a deeper mine.

Lights and equipment at a site operated by Felix Gold.

“The U.S. is going to have to secure its own supply chains,” said Joe Webb, the company’s executive director. “We’re treasure hunters so we always hope to find this good stuff.”

Fairbanks’s antimony projects benefit from the fact that they aren’t in remote areas. However, the proximity to one of Alaska’s largest cities means dealing with residents unhappy with the proposed mines.

Local dog-sled racers, known as mushers, complain that Felix Gold obstructed access to the White Mountains, where they train for the annual 1,000-mile Iditarod race. There was no other way to access the park without going through private property, say Jeff and KattiJo Deeter, competitive racers who run a sledding company that offers tourists a chance to get pulled by a team of sled dogs.

In October, Felix Gold built a parallel trail for recreational users, restoring access. KattiJo said she appreciated the new path, but worried other problems would crop up as mining activity increases. “We’re just a little bit concerned that this is a conversation that we’ll continue to have…every year,” she said.

KattiJo and Jeff Deeter and some of their sled dogs in Fairbanks.

Near the Treasure Creek project are yurts from which tourists view the Northern Lights. However, a bright light that illuminates Felix Gold’s site now sometimes pierces the otherwise starlit night sky.

“People from all over the world travel here to see the Northern Lights,” said Josh Hube, manager of 1st Alaska Tours, which brings visitors to the yurts. “Guests don’t want to see light pollution.”

Fearing that the situation will worsen as the project expands, Hube is preparing to set up a more distant site for Northern Lights viewings, which he estimates will cost around $200,000. “It’s going to take four to five years to recoup what we put into it, to get back in the black,” he said.

At a recent meeting of Save Our Domes, a local environmental group, a member described the proposed mines as “equivalent to a huge festering boil on the face of a family member.” Some residents say the strategic nature of the antimony rush makes the projects harder to fight than gold.

Felix Gold says it is seeking to minimize disruption from the project, which is why the company built an alternative path for dog sledders to White Mountain. The company said it is open to adjusting when it turns on its drill light at night.

Evans, U.S. Antimony’s CEO, says the company is committed to being a good neighbor, citing cleanup work it has done around the area where old cars had been dumped.

Write to Jon Emont at jonathan.emont@wsj.com

WSJ

9. Iraq’s Leader Seeks an Improbable Prize: Independence From the U.S. and Iran

Summary:

Iraqi PM Mohammed Shia al-Sudani seeks re-election on a promise of autonomy from both Washington and Tehran. He touts U.S. troop withdrawal, neutrality in Israel-Iran war, and construction-fueled stability. Yet Iran-aligned militias and rivals like Nouri al-Maliki constrain him, while U.S. leverage and sanctions risks persist, complicating genuine independence efforts.

Comment: Which is the bigger and persistent threat to Iraq? The US or Iran? (rhetorical question with an obvious answer).

Iraq’s Leader Seeks an Improbable Prize: Independence From the U.S. and Iran

WSJ

By Michael Amon

Follow and Saleh al-Batati

Nov. 7, 2025 10:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iraqs-leader-seeks-an-improbable-prize-independence-from-the-u-s-and-iran-4fb404a0

Mohammed Shia al-Sudani is running for re-election Tuesday after managing to keep his country out of the region’s recent conflicts

By

Michael Amon

and Saleh al-Batati

Nov. 7, 2025 10:00 pm ET

‘There is now security, stability and societal harmony,’ Sudani told The Wall Street Journal. Thaier Al-sudani/Reuters

• Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani is seeking a second term, aiming for independence from both the U.S. and Iran.
• Sudani’s accomplishments include negotiating the U.S. troop withdrawal, keeping Iraq out of the Israel-Iran war and funding a construction boom.
• Analysts suggest Sudani faces challenges from Iran-backed militias and internal political rivals like Nouri al-Maliki.

An artificial-intelligence tool created this summary, which was based on the text of the article and checked by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.

• Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani is seeking a second term, aiming for independence from both the U.S. and Iran.

Few Iraqis welcomed both the 2003 U.S. invasion and the subsequent rise of Iranian influence in Baghdad as much as Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.

He was 10 years old when his father was executed by Saddam Hussein’s regime for membership in an Iran-aligned political party. He still praises the U.S. intervention that toppled Hussein, even as he owes his premiership to the Iran-aligned Shia Muslim political parties that rule Iraq’s democracy.

Today, Sudani, 55, is running for a second term as prime minister in national elections Tuesday, touting his efforts to regain a degree of independence from both Washington and Tehran without sacrificing Baghdad’s ties to either of its powerful patrons. Many see it as an impossible goal, and in a bitterly divided Iraq, it might not be a winning platform.

In his three years in office, Sudani has overseen three major political accomplishments. He negotiated the final withdrawal of U.S. combat troops last year; he kept Iraq out of the Israel-Iran war; and he used high oil prices from early in his term to fund a construction boom that has boosted employment and put a check on the country’s cycle of civil unrest.

“There is now security, stability and societal harmony,” Sudani said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, a stark change for a country that for two decades has been an arena of conflict with outside powers and conflicting internal forces.

A campaign rally in Duhok, Iraq, ahead of Tuesday’s elections. Ismael Adnan/Zuma Press

The questions now are whether Iran—bloodied and weakened from its war with Israel—is losing its grip on Iraq, its last major ally in the region, and whether the Trump administration is too distracted by conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and Venezuela to exert its long-held influence over Iraq.

Iran, Sudani said, is “a neighboring country with which we have friendly ties. But certainly, this friendship will not be at the expense of our national decisions and the interests of Iraq and Iraqis.”

With the U.S., Sudani said, he wants “the nature of the relationship not to be a security one, but rather an economic and commercial one that benefits both countries.”

“We are keen on a relationship based on mutual respect, respect for Iraqi sovereignty and shared interests,” he said.

Political analysts say Sudani has an uphill battle.

Washington remains Baghdad’s closest security partner and top weapons supplier. The Trump administration has significant leverage over Iraq with potential financial sanctions in connection with armed militia groups aligned with Iran. The U.S. has already designated several of the groups as terrorist organizations.

Iran remains a powerful force in Iraq. Tehran-backed militias are the backbone of Iran’s presence there, and the dominant political force is Nouri al-Maliki, an Iran-aligned politician who was Iraq’s first elected prime minister in 2006.

“As long as Iran-backed armed groups retain their operational autonomy, no government can genuinely break away from Iran’s influence,” said Tamer Badawi, an associate fellow with RUSI, a U.K. defense think tank.

U.S. officials were modestly optimistic when Sudani emerged from obscurity to be prime minister in October 2022. He made waves in a January 2023 interview with the Journal, when he said he believed U.S. troops were needed in the country to defeat Islamic State—a position that contradicted the Iran-aligned political allies who installed him in power.

Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a call with Sudani and reiterated the demand that Iraq’s militias disarm. In the interview, Sudani said the militias are now “an official security institution” subject to orders from the government.

President Trump met with Sudani last month in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. evan vucci/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

“It is a security apparatus that executes orders,” Sudani said. “It has no involvement in any political stance.”

The militias mostly stayed on the sidelines during Iran’s 12-day war with Israel.

“We protected our country from being dragged into this war,” Sudani said. “Today, Iraq is not an arena for conflict, but rather a hub for dialogue.”

But Iraqi analysts said Sudani has largely failed to rein in the militias. “Those armed groups retain political and economic influence, and the state has yet to demonstrate full capacity or will to enforce broad disarmament,” said Hayder Al-Shakeri, a research fellow with the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, a London think tank.

Badawi, the RUSI analyst, said Sudani, with Iran’s backing, persuaded the militias to stop attacking U.S. and other Western forces by cutting them into government contracts. “Sudani made short-term gains but allowed the groups to become more entrenched in the economy,” Badawi said.

An aide to Sudani said there is no evidence of such arrangements with the militias.

A clear break from Iran came when Sudani flew to the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheikh to attend President Trump’s signing ceremony for the recent cease-fire and hostage deal in Gaza. The trip drew criticism from the powerful Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a nationalist who accused Sudani of legitimizing Israel.

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Tuesday’s election won’t settle the matter of Iraq’s next leader. Elections, which involve dozens of political parties, kick off intense backroom negotiations over who will get the premiership, which always goes to a member of a Shia political party in Iraq’s power-sharing system. Washington and Iran are always part of the conversation.

“Iran will never let a powerful leader rise in Iraq,” said Lawk Ghafuri, an Iraqi political analyst. “Changing the PM every four years is a must for Tehran to make sure no individual will have a fan base or become popular.”

Sudani has launched his own political party but faces an unusual situation in that his party is still part of Maliki’s larger umbrella political group. Maliki is working to undermine him, political analysts said.

Sudani needs to win enough seats in Parliament to show that he can’t be shunted aside, analysts said, a tall order.

“It is a large national alliance,” Sudani said. “We have a great opportunity by virtue of what we have achieved.”

Write to Michael Amon at michael.amon@wsj.com

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

Appeared in the November 8, 2025, print edition as 'Iraq Leader Aims to Ease Ties to U.S., Iran'.

WSJ

10. The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

Summary:

James Somers argues large language models increasingly exhibit a form of “understanding.” Trained via next-token prediction, they compress experience into high-dimensional representations that resemble neural cognition. Practitioners find real gains in coding and troubleshooting, while neuroscientists note convergences and emergent planning-like circuits. Limits persist: hallucinations, poor sample efficiency, weak embodiment/common sense, plateauing scale. The moral critique (power, labor, energy) may outweigh technical skepticism. Like genomics, hype obscures hard science ahead. Hofstadter, once a deflationist, concedes mindlike behaviors yet fears demystifying human creativity—and the risks if we truly decode thinking.

Excerpt:

With A.I., we once again find ourselves in a moment of bluster and confidence. Sam Altman talks about raising half a trillion dollars to build Stargate, a new cluster of A.I. data centers, in the U.S. People discuss the race for superintelligence with a gravitas and an urgency that can seem ungrounded, even silly. But I suspect the reason that the Amodeis and Altmans of the world are making messianic pronouncements is that they believe that the basic picture of intelligence has been worked out; the rest is just details.

Comment: AI – good or bad? Is it thinking? Is it thinking for us? Can the AI genie be put back in the bottle? Unlikely, so how do we live with it and benefit from it while defending ourselves against the negative or dangerous effects?

The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

The New Yorker · James Somers · November 3, 2025

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/11/10/the-case-that-ai-is-thinking

Annals of Artificial Intelligence

ChatGPT does not have an inner life. Yet it seems to know what it’s talking about.

November 3, 2025

How convincing does the illusion of understanding have to be before you stop calling it an illusion?Animations by Zach Lieberman

Dario Amodei, the C.E.O. of the artificial-intelligence company Anthropic, has been predicting that an A.I. “smarter than a Nobel Prize winner” in such fields as biology, math, engineering, and writing might come online by 2027. He envisions millions of copies of a model whirring away, each conducting its own research: a “country of geniuses in a datacenter.” In June, Sam Altman, of OpenAI, wrote that the industry was on the cusp of building “digital superintelligence.” “The 2030s are likely going to be wildly different from any time that has come before,” he asserted. Meanwhile, the A.I. tools that most people currently interact with on a day-to-day basis are reminiscent of Clippy, the onetime Microsoft Office “assistant” that was actually more of a gadfly. A Zoom A.I. tool suggests that you ask it “What are some meeting icebreakers?” or instruct it to “Write a short message to share gratitude.” Siri is good at setting reminders but not much else. A friend of mine saw a button in Gmail that said “Thank and tell anecdote.” When he clicked it, Google’s A.I. invented a funny story about a trip to Turkey that he never took.

The rushed and uneven rollout of A.I. has created a fog in which it is tempting to conclude that there is nothing to see here—that it’s all hype. There is, to be sure, plenty of hype: Amodei’s timeline is science-fictional. (A.I. models aren’t improving that fast.) But it is another kind of wishful thinking to suppose that large language models are just shuffling words around. I used to be sympathetic to that view. I sought comfort in the idea that A.I. had little to do with real intelligence or understanding. I even celebrated its shortcomings—rooting for the home team. Then I began using A.I. in my work as a programmer, fearing that if I didn’t I would fall behind. (My employer, a trading firm, has several investments in and partnerships with A.I. companies, including Anthropic.) Writing code is, by many accounts, the thing that A.I. is best at; code has more structure than prose does, and it’s often possible to automatically validate that a given program works. My conversion was swift. At first, I consulted A.I. models in lieu of looking something up. Then I gave them small, self-contained problems. Eventually, I gave them real work—the kind I’d trained my whole career to do. I saw these models digest, in seconds, the intricate details of thousands of lines of code. They could spot subtle bugs and orchestrate complex new features. Finally, I was transferred to a fast-growing team that aims to make better use of A.I. tools, and to create our own.

The science-fiction author William Gibson is said to have observed that the future is already here, just not evenly distributed—which might explain why A.I. seems to have minted two cultures, one dismissive and the other enthralled. In our daily lives, A.I. “agents” that can book vacations or file taxes are a flop, but I have colleagues who compose much of their code using A.I. and sometimes run multiple coding agents at a time. Models sometimes make amateur mistakes or get caught in inane loops, but, as I’ve learned to use them effectively, they have allowed me to accomplish in an evening what used to take a month. Not too long ago, I made two iOS apps without knowing how to make an iOS app.

I once had a boss who said that a job interview should probe for strengths, not for the absence of weaknesses. Large language models have many weaknesses: they famously hallucinate reasonable-sounding falsehoods; they can be servile even when you’re wrong; they are fooled by simple puzzles. But I remember a time when the obvious strengths of today’s A.I. models—fluency, fluidity, an ability to “get” what someone is talking about—were considered holy grails. When you experience these strengths firsthand, you wonder: How convincing does the illusion of understanding have to be before you stop calling it an illusion?

On a brutally hot day this summer, my friend Max met up with his family at a playground. For some reason, a sprinkler for kids was switched off, and Max’s wife had promised everyone that her husband would fix it. Confronted by red-faced six- and seven-year-olds, Max entered a utility shed hoping to find a big, fat “On” switch. Instead, he found a maze of ancient pipes and valves. He was about to give up when, on a whim, he pulled out his phone and fed a photo into ChatGPT-4o, along with a description of his problem. The A.I. thought for a second, or maybe didn’t think, but all the same it said that he was looking at a backflow-preventer system typical of irrigation setups. Did he see that yellow ball valve toward the bottom? That probably controlled the flow. Max went for it, and cheers rang out across the playground as the water turned on.

Was ChatGPT mindlessly stringing words together, or did it understand the problem? The answer could teach us something important about understanding itself. “Neuroscientists have to confront this humbling truth,” Doris Tsao, a neuroscience professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told me. “The advances in machine learning have taught us more about the essence of intelligence than anything that neuroscience has discovered in the past hundred years.” Tsao is best known for decoding how macaque monkeys perceive faces. Her team learned to predict which neurons would fire when a monkey saw a specific face; even more strikingly, given a pattern of neurons firing, Tsao’s team could render the face. Their work built on research into how faces are represented inside A.I. models. These days, her favorite question to ask people is “What is the deepest insight you have gained from ChatGPT?” “My own answer,” she said, “is that I think it radically demystifies thinking.”

The most basic account of how we got here goes something like this. In the nineteen-eighties, a small team of cognitive psychologists and computer scientists tried to simulate thinking in a machine. Among the more famous of them were David Rumelhart, Geoffrey Hinton, and James McClelland, who went on to form a research group at U.C. San Diego. They saw the brain as a vast network in which neurons fire in patterns, causing other sets of neurons to fire, and so on; this dance of patterns is thinking. The brain learns by changing the strength of the connections between neurons. Crucially, the scientists mimicked this process by creating an artificial neural network, and by applying a simple algorithm called gradient descent to increase the accuracy of its predictions. (The algorithm could be compared to a hiker navigating from a mountaintop to a valley; a simple strategy for eventually finding one’s way is to insure that every step moves downhill.) The use of such algorithms in large networks is known as deep learning.

Other people in A.I. were skeptical that neural networks were sophisticated enough for real-world tasks, but, as the networks got bigger, they began to solve previously unsolvable problems. People would devote entire dissertations to developing techniques for distinguishing handwritten digits or for recognizing faces in images; then a deep-learning algorithm would digest the underlying data, discover the subtleties of the problem, and make those projects seem obsolete. Deep learning soon conquered speech recognition, translation, image captioning, board games, and even the problem of predicting how proteins will fold.

Today’s leading A.I. models are trained on a large portion of the internet, using a technique called next-token prediction. A model learns by making guesses about what it will read next, then comparing those guesses to whatever actually appears. Wrong guesses inspire changes in the connection strength between the neurons; this is gradient descent. Eventually, the model becomes so good at predicting text that it appears to know things and make sense. So that is something to think about. A group of people sought the secret of how the brain works. As their model grew toward a brain-like size, it started doing things that were thought to require brain-like intelligence. Is it possible that they found what they were looking for?

There is understandable resistance to such a simplistic and triumphant account of A.I. The case against it was well argued by Ted Chiang, who wrote an article for this magazine in early 2023 titled “ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web.” He meant it in a more or less deflationary way: that’s all ChatGPT is. You feed the whole internet to a program and it regurgitates it back to you imperfectly, like a copy of a copy of a photograph—but with just enough facility to fool you into believing that the program is intelligent. This spring, a similar argument was made in a book, “The AI Con,” by Emily M. Bender, a linguist, and Alex Hanna, a sociologist. Bender is perhaps best known for describing L.L.M.s as “stochastic parrots.” “Large language models do not, cannot, and will not ‘understand’ anything at all,” the writer Tyler Austin Harper declared in a book review in The Atlantic. Models “produce writing not by thinking but by making statistically informed guesses about which lexical item is likely to follow another.” Harper buttressed these technical arguments with moral ones. A.I. enriches the powerful, consumes enough energy to accelerate climate change, and marginalizes workers. He concluded that “the foundation of the AI industry is a scam.”

A leading neuroscientist argues that ChatGPT “radically demystifies thinking.”

But the moral case against A.I. may ultimately be stronger than the technical one. “The ‘stochastic parrot’ thing has to be dead at some point,” Samuel J. Gershman, a Harvard cognitive scientist who is no A.I. hype man, told me. “Only the most hardcore skeptics can deny these systems are doing things many of us didn’t think were going to be achieved.” Jonathan Cohen, a cognitive neuroscientist at Princeton, emphasized the limitations of A.I., but argued that, in some cases, L.L.M.s seem to mirror one of the largest and most important parts of the human brain. “To a first approximation, your neocortex is your deep-learning mechanism,” Cohen said. Humans have a much larger neocortex than other animals, relative to body size, and the species with the largest neocortices—elephants, dolphins, gorillas, chimpanzees, dogs—are among the most intelligent.

In 2003, the machine-learning researcher Eric B. Baum published a book called “What Is Thought?” (I stumbled upon it in my college’s library stacks, drawn by the title.) The gist of Baum’s argument is that understanding is compression, and compression is understanding. In statistics, when you want to make sense of points on a graph, you can use a technique called linear regression to draw a “line of best fit” through them. If there’s an underlying regularity in the data—maybe you’re plotting shoe size against height—the line of best fit will efficiently express it, predicting where new points could fall. The neocortex can be understood as distilling a sea of raw experience—sounds, sights, and other sensations—into “lines of best fit,” which it can use to make predictions. A baby exploring the world tries to guess how a toy will taste or where food will go when it hits the floor. When a prediction is wrong, the connections between neurons are adjusted. Over time, those connections begin to capture regularities in the data. They form a compressed model of the world.

Artificial neural networks compress experience just like real neural networks do. One of the best open-source A.I. models, DeepSeek, is capable of writing novels, suggesting medical diagnoses, and sounding like a native speaker in dozens of languages. It was trained using next-token prediction on many terabytes of data. But when you download the model it is one six-hundredth of that. A distillation of the internet, compressed to fit on your laptop. Ted Chiang was right to call an early version of ChatGPT a blurry JPEG of the web—but, in my view, this is the very reason these models have become increasingly intelligent. Chiang noted in his piece that, to compress a text file filled with millions of examples of arithmetic, you wouldn’t create a zip file. You’d write a calculator program. “The greatest degree of compression can be achieved by understanding the text,” he wrote. Perhaps L.L.M.s are starting to do that.

It can seem unnatural, even repulsive, to imagine that a computer program actually understands, actually thinks. We usually conceptualize thinking as something conscious, like a Joycean inner monologue or the flow of sense memories in a Proustian daydream. Or we might mean reasoning: working through a problem step by step. In our conversations about A.I., we often conflate these different kinds of thinking, and it makes our judgments pat. ChatGPT is obviously not thinking, goes one argument, because it is obviously not having a Proustian reverie; ChatGPT clearly is thinking, goes another, because it can work through logic puzzles better than you can.

Something more subtle is going on. I do not believe that ChatGPT has an inner life, and yet it seems to know what it’s talking about. Understanding—having a grasp of what’s going on—is an underappreciated kind of thinking, because it’s mostly unconscious. Douglas Hofstadter, a professor of cognitive science and comparative literature at Indiana University, likes to say that cognition is recognition. Hofstadter became famous for a book about the mind and consciousness called “Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid,” which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1980. Hofstadter’s theory, developed through decades of research, is that “seeing as” is the essence of thinking. You see one patch of color as a car and another as a key chain; you recognize the letter “A” no matter what font it is written in or how bad the handwriting might be. Hofstadter argued that the same process underlies more abstract kinds of perception. When a grand master examines a chess board, years of practice are channelled into a way of seeing: white’s bishop is weak; that endgame is probably a draw. You see an eddy in a river as a sign that it’s dangerous to cross. You see a meeting you’re in as an emperor-has-no-clothes situation. My nearly two-year-old son recognizes that late-morning stroller walks might be an opportunity for a croissant and makes demands accordingly. For Hofstadter, that’s intelligence in a nutshell.

Hofstadter was one of the original A.I. deflationists, and my own skepticism was rooted in his. He wrote that most A.I. research had little to do with real thinking, and when I was in college, in the two-thousands, I agreed with him. There were exceptions. He found the U.C.S.D. group interesting. And he admired the work of a lesser-known Finnish American cognitive scientist, Pentti Kanerva, who noticed some unusual properties in the mathematics of high-dimensional spaces. In a high-dimensional space, any two random points may be extremely far apart. But, counterintuitively, each point also has a large cloud of neighbors around it, so you can easily find your way to it if you get “close enough.” That reminded Kanerva of the way that memory works. In a 1988 book called “Sparse Distributed Memory,” Kanerva argued that thoughts, sensations, and recollections could be represented as coördinates in high-dimensional space. The brain seemed like the perfect piece of hardware for storing such things. Every memory has a sort of address, defined by the neurons that are active when you recall it. New experiences cause new sets of neurons to fire, representing new addresses. Two addresses can be different in many ways but similar in others; one perception or memory triggers other memories nearby. The scent of hay recalls a memory of summer camp. The first three notes of Beethoven’s Fifth beget the fourth. A chess position that you’ve never seen reminds you of old games—not all of them, just the ones in the right neighborhood.

Hofstadter realized that Kanerva was describing something like a “seeing as” machine. “Pentti Kanerva’s memory model was a revelation for me,” he wrote in a foreword to Kanerva’s book. “It was the very first piece of research I had ever run across that made me feel I could glimpse the distant goal of understanding how the brain works as a whole.” Every kind of thinking—whether Joycean, Proustian, or logical—depends on the relevant thing coming to mind at the right time. It’s how we figure out what situation we’re in.

Kanerva’s book receded from view, and Hofstadter’s own star faded—except when he occasionally poked up his head to criticize a new A.I. system. In 2018, he wrote of Google Translate and similar technologies: “There is still something deeply lacking in the approach, which is conveyed by a single word: understanding.” But GPT-4, which was released in 2023, produced Hofstadter’s conversion moment. “I’m mind-boggled by some of the things that the systems do,” he told me recently. “It would have been inconceivable even only ten years ago.” The staunchest deflationist could deflate no longer. Here was a program that could translate as well as an expert, make analogies, extemporize, generalize. Who were we to say that it didn’t understand? “They do things that are very much like thinking,” he said. “You could say they are thinking, just in a somewhat alien way.”

L.L.M.s appear to have a “seeing as” machine at their core. They represent each word with a series of numbers denoting its coördinates—its vector—in a high-dimensional space. In GPT-4, a word vector has thousands of dimensions, which describe its shades of similarity to and difference from every other word. During training, a large language model tweaks a word’s coördinates whenever it makes a prediction error; words that appear in texts together are nudged closer in space. This produces an incredibly dense representation of usages and meanings, in which analogy becomes a matter of geometry. In a classic example, if you take the word vector for “Paris,” subtract “France,” and then add “Italy,” the nearest other vector will be “Rome.” L.L.M.s can “vectorize” an image by encoding what’s in it, its mood, even the expressions on people’s faces, with enough detail to redraw it in a particular style or to write a paragraph about it. When Max asked ChatGPT to help him out with the sprinkler at the park, the model wasn’t just spewing text. The photograph of the plumbing was compressed, along with Max’s prompt, into a vector that captured its most important features. That vector served as an address for calling up nearby words and concepts. Those ideas, in turn, called up others as the model built up a sense of the situation. It composed its response with those ideas “in mind.”

A few months ago, I was reading an interview with an Anthropic researcher, Trenton Bricken, who has worked with colleagues to probe the insides of Claude, the company’s series of A.I. models. (Their research has not been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal.) His team has identified ensembles of artificial neurons, or “features,” that activate when Claude is about to say one thing or another. Features turn out to be like volume knobs for concepts; turn them up and the model will talk about little else. (In a sort of thought-control experiment, the feature representing the Golden Gate Bridge was turned up; when one user asked Claude for a chocolate-cake recipe, its suggested ingredients included “1/4 cup dry fog” and “1 cup warm seawater.”) In the interview, Bricken mentioned Google’s Transformer architecture, a recipe for constructing neural networks that underlies leading A.I. models. (The “T” in ChatGPT stands for “Transformer.”) He argued that the mathematics at the heart of the Transformer architecture closely approximated a model proposed decades earlier—by Pentti Kanerva, in “Sparse Distributed Memory.”

Should we be surprised by the correspondence between A.I. and our own brains? L.L.M.s are, after all, artificial neural networks that psychologists and neuroscientists helped develop. What’s more surprising is that when models practiced something rote—predicting words—they began to behave in such a brain-like way. These days, the fields of neuroscience and artificial intelligence are becoming entangled; brain experts are using A.I. as a kind of model organism. Evelina Fedorenko, a neuroscientist at M.I.T., has used L.L.M.s to study how brains process language. “I never thought I would be able to think about these kinds of things in my lifetime,” she told me. “I never thought we’d have models that are good enough.”

It has become commonplace to say that A.I. is a black box, but the opposite is arguably true: a scientist can probe the activity of individual artificial neurons and even alter them. “Having a working system that instantiates a theory of human intelligence—it’s the dream of cognitive neuroscience,” Kenneth Norman, a Princeton neuroscientist, told me. Norman has created computer models of the hippocampus, the brain region where episodic memories are stored, but in the past they were so simple that he could only feed them crude approximations of what might enter a human mind. “Now you can give memory models the exact stimuli you give to a person,” he said.

The Wright brothers studied birds during their early efforts to build an airplane. They noted that birds take off into the wind, even though a reasonable person might have assumed they’d want the wind at their backs, and that they warp the tips of their wings for balance. These findings influenced their rudimentary glider designs. Then they built a six-foot-long wind tunnel, which allowed them to test a set of artificial wings under precisely controlled conditions. Their next round of glider flights was far more successful. Strangely, it was only well after they’d made a working flying machine that it became possible to understand exactly how the birds do it.

A.I. enables scientists to place thinking itself in a wind tunnel. For a paper provocatively titled “On the Biology of a Large Language Model,” Anthropic researchers observed Claude responding to queries and described “circuits”—cascades of features that, together, perform complex computations. (Calling up the right memories is one step toward thinking; combining and manipulating them in circuits is arguably another.) One longstanding criticism of L.L.M.s has been that, because they must generate one token of their response at a time, they can’t plan or reason. But, when you ask Claude to finish a rhyming couplet in a poem, a circuit begins considering the last word of the new line, to insure that it will rhyme. It then works backward to compose the line as a whole. Anthropic researchers counted this as evidence that their models do engage in planning. Squint a little and you might feel, for the first time, that the inner workings of a mind are in view.

You really do have to squint, though. “The worry I have is that people flipped the bit from ‘I’m really skeptical of this’ to totally dropping their shields,” Norman, the Princeton neuroscientist, told me. “Many things still have to get figured out.” I’m one of the people that Norman is talking about. (Perhaps I am too easily moved by the seeming convergence of “Sparse Distributed Memory” and an Anthropic model.) In the past year or two, I started to believe what Geoffrey Hinton, who recently won a Nobel Prize for his A.I. research, told the journalist Karen Hao in 2020: “Deep learning is going to be able to do everything.” But we have also seen that larger models aren’t always better models. Curves plotting model performance against size have begun flattening out. It’s becoming difficult to find high-quality data that the models haven’t already digested, and computing power is increasingly expensive. When GPT-5 came out, in August, it was a merely incremental improvement—and so profound a disappointment that it threatened to pop the A.I. investment bubble. The moment demands a middle kind of skepticism: one that takes today’s A.I. models seriously without believing that there are no hard problems left.

Perhaps the most consequential of these problems is how to design a model that learns as efficiently as humans do. It is estimated that GPT-4 was exposed to trillions of words in training; children need only a few million to become fluent. Cognitive scientists tell us that a newborn’s brain has certain “inductive biases” that accelerate learning. (Of course, the brain is the result of millions of years of evolution—itself a sort of training data.) For instance, human babies have the expectation that the world is made of objects, and that other beings have beliefs and intentions. When Mama says “banana,” an infant connects that word to the entire yellow object she’s looking at—not just its tip or its peel. Infants perform little experiments: Can I eat this? How far can I throw that? They are motivated by emotions such as desire, curiosity, and frustration. Children are always trying to do something just beyond their ability. Their learning is efficient because it’s embodied, adaptive, deliberate, and continuous. Maybe truly understanding the world requires participating in it.

An A.I.’s experience, in comparison, is so impoverished that it can’t really be called “experience.” Large language models are trained on data that is already extraordinarily refined. “I think the reason they work is that they’re piggybacking on language,” Tsao, the U.C. Berkeley neuroscientist, told me. Language is like experience pre-chewed; other kinds of data are less dense with meaning. “Why is it that we haven’t had a comparable revolution in terms of reasoning about video data?” Gershman, the Harvard cognitive scientist, asked. “The kinds of vision models that we have still struggle with common-sense reasoning about physics.” A recent model from DeepMind can generate videos in which paints are mixed correctly and mazes are solved—but they also depict a glass bouncing, instead of shattering, and ropes defying physics by being smooshed into a knot. Ida Momennejad, a cognitive neuroscientist who now works for Microsoft Research, has done experiments in which an L.L.M. is given a virtual walk-through of a building and then asked questions about routes and shortcuts—spatial inferences that come easily to humans. With all but the most basic setups, the A.I.s tend to fail or hallucinate nonexistent paths. “Do they really do planning?” she said. “Not really.”

In my conversations with neuroscientists, I sensed a concern that the A.I. industry is racing ahead somewhat thoughtlessly. If the goal is to make artificial minds as capable as human minds are, then “we’re not training the systems in the right way,” Brenden M. Lake, a cognitive scientist at Princeton, told me. When an A.I. is done training, the neural network’s “brain” is frozen. If you tell the model some facts about yourself, it doesn’t rewire its neurons. Instead, it uses a crude substitute: it writes down a bit of text—“The user has a toddler and is studying French”—and considers that before other instructions you give. The human brain updates itself continuously, and there’s a beautiful theory about one of its ways of doing so: when you sleep, selected snapshots from your episodic memory are replayed for your neocortex in order to train it. Your high-dimensional thought space gets dimpled by the replayed memories; you wake up with a slightly new way of seeing.

The A.I. community has become so addicted to—and so financially invested in—breakneck progress that it sometimes pretends that advancement is inevitable and there’s no science left to do. Science has the inconvenient property of sometimes stalling out. Silicon Valley may call A.I. companies “labs,” and some employees there “researchers,” but fundamentally it has an engineering culture that does whatever works. “It’s just so remarkable how little the machine-learning community bothers looking at, let alone respects, the history and cognitive science that precedes it,” Cohen said.

Today’s A.I. models owe their success to decades-old discoveries about the brain, but they are still deeply unlike brains. Which differences are incidental and which are fundamental? Every group of neuroscientists has its pet theory. These theories can be put to the test in a way that wasn’t possible before. Still, no one expects easy answers. The problems that continue to plague A.I. models “are solved by carefully identifying ways in which the models don’t behave as intelligently as we want them to and then addressing them,” Norman said. “That is still a human-scientist-in-the-loop process.”

In the nineties, billions of dollars poured into the Human Genome Project on the assumption that sequencing DNA might solve medicine’s most vexing problems: cancer, hereditary conditions, even aging. It was a time of bluster and confidence—the era of Dolly the cloned sheep and “Jurassic Park”—when biotech was ascendant and the commentariat reckoned with whether humans should be playing God. Biologists soon found that the reality was more complicated. We didn’t cure cancer or discover the causes of Alzheimer’s or autism. We learned that DNA tells just one part of the story of life. In fact, one could argue that biology got swept up in a kind of gene fever, fixating on DNA because we had the means to study and understand it.

Still, nobody would claim that Francis Crick was wrong when, on the day in 1953 that he helped confirm the structure of DNA, he walked into a Cambridge pub talking about having discovered the secret of life. He and his colleagues did more to demystify life than almost anyone, ever. The decades following their discovery were among the most productive and exciting in the history of science. DNA became a household term; every high schooler learns about the double helix.

With A.I., we once again find ourselves in a moment of bluster and confidence. Sam Altman talks about raising half a trillion dollars to build Stargate, a new cluster of A.I. data centers, in the U.S. People discuss the race for superintelligence with a gravitas and an urgency that can seem ungrounded, even silly. But I suspect the reason that the Amodeis and Altmans of the world are making messianic pronouncements is that they believe that the basic picture of intelligence has been worked out; the rest is just details.

Even some neuroscientists believe that a crucial threshold has been crossed. “I really think it could be the right model for cognition,” Uri Hasson, a colleague of Cohen’s, Norman’s, and Lake’s at Princeton, said of neural networks. This upsets him as much as it excites him. “I have the opposite worry of most people,” he said. “My worry is not that these models are similar to us. It’s that we are similar to these models.” If simple training techniques can enable a program to behave like a human, maybe humans aren’t as special as we thought. Could it also mean that A.I. will surpass us not only in knowledge but also in judgment, ingenuity, cunning—and, as a result, power? To my surprise, Hasson told me that he is “worried these days that we might succeed in understanding how the brain works. Pursuing this question may have been a colossal mistake for humanity.” He likened A.I. researchers to nuclear scientists in the nineteen-thirties: “This is the most interesting time in the life of these people. And, at the same time, they know that what they are working on has grave implications for humanity. But they cannot stop because of the curiosity to learn.”

One of my favorite books by Hofstadter is a nerdy volume called “Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.” When I was in college, it electrified me. The premise was that a question such as “What is thinking?” was not merely philosophical but, rather, had a real answer. In 1995, when the book was published, Hofstadter and his research group could only gesture at what the answer might be. Thinking back on the book, I wondered whether Hofstadter would feel excited that A.I. researchers may have attained what he had yearned for: a mechanical account of the rudiments of thinking. When we spoke, however, he sounded profoundly disappointed—and frightened. Current A.I. research “confirms a lot of my ideas, but it also takes away from the beauty of what humanity is,” he told me. “When I was younger, much younger, I wanted to know what underlay creativity, the mechanisms of creativity. That was a holy grail for me. But now I want it to remain a mystery.” Perhaps the secrets of thinking are simpler than anyone expected—the kind of thing that a high schooler, or even a machine, could understand.

Published in the print edition of the November 10, 2025, issue, with the headline “Open Mind.”

11. Army aims to produce 1 million drones in next 2-3 years

Summary:

The U.S. Army’s new SkyFoundry program aims to produce one million drones within two to three years through public-private partnerships and expanded in-house manufacturing. Backed by the SkyFoundry Act, the effort seeks to rebuild America’s drone industrial base, reduce dependence on China, and equip troops with mass, low-cost battlefield drones.

Army aims to produce 1 million drones in next 2-3 years

Defense News · Zita Fletcher · November 7, 2025

https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2025/11/07/army-aims-to-produce-1-million-drones-in-next-2-3-years/

The U.S. Army plans to increase partnerships with private industry and boost its own manufacturing capacity to field at least one million drones within the next two to three years, an Army spokesperson told Military Times.

On Friday, U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll first detailed the Army’s hopes to speed up drone production to Reuters during a visit to Picatinny Arsenal. An Army spokesperson has since provided more detailed clarification to Military Times.

Driscoll was referring to the Army’s new pilot program called SkyFoundry, which would see the service forge partnerships with private industry and also kickstart in-house Army manufacturing to churn out drones rapidly for battlefield use.

“SkyFoundry is the Army’s concept for a public-private partnership to help reinvigorate the American industrial base,” an Army spokesperson told Military Times in a statement. “This concept will stimulate the U.S. drone industry, support American manufacturing, increase access to rare earth materials, produce low-cost components and ultimately deliver drones for immediate needs to the Army.

“Everyone benefits: American industry becomes healthier, the country is safer and the Army has the system required to produce and procure millions of drones in the next 2-3 years.”

The spokesperson clarified that the Army is not trying to outdo private industry but to make drone technology more widely accessible to service members, as drone use will certainly dominate future battlefields.

“Some drones will be expendable as if they’re munitions, others will be durable, but not meant to last forever,” the spokesperson said. “Everyone will need to be well-versed in using drones and in counter drone response.”

The SkyFoundry Act was introduced by Congressman Pat Harrigan, R-NC., on Sept. 4 shortly before the government shutdown took effect.

“More than 80% of casualties in modern war now come from drones, yet we still have no capacity to build them at scale. That failure is reckless, and it leaves our troops exposed,” Harrigan said in a statement.

“This bill creates the capacity to design, test and build a million drones a year right here in America. It cuts China out of our supply chains, it arms our troops with what they need to dominate, and it makes clear we will never again let our enemies outproduce us in the weapons that decide wars.”

About Zita Ballinger Fletcher

Zita Ballinger Fletcher previously served as editor of Military History Quarterly and Vietnam magazines and as the historian of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. She holds an M.A. with distinction in military history.

12. Arc Orbital Supply Capsule Aims To Put Military Supplies Anywhere On Earth Within An Hour

Summary:

California startup Inversion unveiled the Arc orbital supply capsule, a reusable spacecraft designed to deliver up to 500 pounds of cargo anywhere on Earth within an hour. Using precision-guided parachutes, Arc can reenter from orbit to resupply troops or disaster zones. Focused on defense logistics, its first mission could launch next year.

Comment: Wow.  The logistic support base is in orbit. Now if we will just have to incorporate marge bundle codes (IYKYK) to have the right equipment/ammo/supplies dropped to us.

Arc Orbital Supply Capsule Aims To Put Military Supplies Anywhere On Earth Within An Hour

Deorbiting small cargo-laden spacecraft on demand to troops in need is the vision of Inversion Space and its Arc spacecraft.

Thomas Newdick, Tyler Rogoway

Published Nov 6, 2025 1:14 PM EST

https://www.twz.com/space/arc-orbital-supply-capsule-aims-to-put-military-supplies-anywhere-on-earth-within-an-hour

twz.com

The TWZ Newsletter

Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.

A special operations team is pinned down in a valley deep inside contested territory. Ammo is running low, and close air support is nonexistent. Extraction forces are still hours out. The operatives have kept the enemy at bay, but their ability to do so is dwindling with every round they fire. Their stocks of 40mm grenades have long been exhausted; now their rifles will soon run dry too. The sky cracks with a sonic boom, which echoes across the valley, and fighting pauses for a split second as fighters on both sides look up. Soon after, the shooting resumes, but out of the blinding sun comes a capsule stuffed with ammunition hanging on a parachute and flying right toward the special operations team.

Help has arrived… From orbit.

The above is a scene that sounds like it’s ripped right out of a Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare video game, but one company is working to make it a reality.

California-based space startup Inversion has unveiled its design for a fully reusable, lifting-body spacecraft named Arc. The spacecraft is intended to deliver critical cargo from space to any point on Earth within an hour, landing on water, snow or soil with a precision of around 50 feet, the company says. The concept, aimed squarely at the defense sector, reflects longstanding U.S. military interest in using space-based systems to rapidly move cargo around the globe to meet commanders’ urgent needs.

Arc is a new kind of spacecraft.

Not quite a capsule, not quite a spaceplane. It’s based off of a lifting body design – ideal for its mission to deliver cargo from orbit to anywhere on Earth in under an hour. pic.twitter.com/KHD6v5Kcs4

— Inversion (@InversionSpace) November 5, 2025

The mission concept involves the Arc spacecraft being launched into low Earth orbit atop a rocket. Arc then remains in orbit until its cargo is required to be delivered. At that point, the spacecraft uses a deorbit engine to re-enter the atmosphere, moving at very high speed. Arc uses small thrusters and large trailing-edge maneuvering flaps to adjust its position and speed during its fiery reentry, through the atmosphere, until it approaches the ‘drop zone.’

Once it has reached a lower altitude, Arc slows down and lands using its actively controlled parachute system. This is also able to fine-tune the spacecraft’s path back to Earth. The parachute ensures a soft landing, meaning that Arc can then be reused. The entire mission is uncrewed, with the Arc being commanded by autonomous control systems.

Arc depicted reentering the atmosphere. (Inversion)

Interestingly, Inversion’s plan to field a spacecraft that’s able to put a cargo at any place on Earth within an hour has parallels with an ambition laid out by U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM), back in 2020. TRANSCOM provides transportation services and solutions to all branches of the armed forces, as well as various other defense and governmental organizations.

Concept artwork shows the Arc spacecraft in orbit. Inversion

Speaking back then, U.S. Army Gen. Stephen R. Lyons, TRANSCOM’s commander, said: “Think about moving the equivalent of a C-17 payload anywhere on the globe in less than an hour. Think about that speed associated with the movement of transportation of cargo… There is a lot of potential here…”

At that point, TRANSCOM had begun a partnership with both SpaceX and Exploration Architecture Corporation (XArc) to pursue space-based rapid delivery concepts. SpaceX has since been working with the Air Force and Space Force on the ‘Rocket Cargo’ program, which seeks to quickly deliver cargo anywhere on Earth that can support a vertical landing.

Part of the Arc vehicle’s thermal protection system. Inversion

It should be noted, however, that the sizes of payloads that Arc will be able to deliver are much smaller than those outlined by Lyons. The spacecraft itself will measure only around eight feet by four feet.

The C-17 has a maximum payload of around 82 tons, although normal payloads are around 60 tons or less. Arc is reportedly planned to have a cargo of just 500 pounds. Still, small cargoes often require very big logistics. As we have noted in a prior piece:

“Even the Navy has said in the past that when ships encounter problems as a result of logistics-related issues that leave them partially mission capable or non-mission capable, 90 percent of the time this can be resolved by the delivery of a component weighing 50 pounds or less.“

Nevertheless, Inversion clearly sees a niche for the very high-speed delivery of what it describes as “mission-enabling cargo.”

A test of the parachute-recovery system for Arc. Inversion

Inversion doesn’t provide any specific examples of the kinds of cargoes that might be delivered by Arc, beyond “equipment, food, or other mission cargo.” Conceivably, key cargo could comprise time-sensitive equipment and ammunition needed at forward operating locations. Since these spacecraft would be pre-launched, they would likely be filled with a range of generic cargoes that are generally time-sensitive. Then, they would be deorbited on demand.

Today, other small autonomous resupply systems have been used in combat, like the paragliding Snow Goose, and others are in development or limited use now. But these systems fly exclusively within the atmosphere and are much slower, more vulnerable, and require regional basing or an aerial delivery platform to launch them from relatively nearby.

Snow Goose resupply vehicle in use in Iraq. (DoD)

Bearing in mind the considerable cost of a space launch, these cargoes would presumably only be delivered in the most critical scenarios, the kinds where only a high-cost rapid transport would suffice.

Arc depicted in orbit. (Inversion) Inversion

Such a capability would appear to have particular relevance in the context of future contingencies in the Indo-Pacific theater. With a growing expectation that this region will see a future high-end conflict involving the U.S. military, the ability to call upon space-based systems, like Arc, to quickly bring critical supplies to the area could be of high value — provided, once again, that the technology can be mastered.

Since Arc is reusable, that would go some way to making it more cost-efficient, when the vehicle can be recovered. Inversion also proposes putting several Arc vehicles into orbit at the same time (it’s unclear if these would be transported by the same or different rockets). The result has been described as something like a series of “constellations” with a variety of contingency cargoes that could be tailored to different customers and operational theaters.

Each Arc vehicle is reportedly able to remain in orbit for up to five years.

The structure of the Arc spacecraft makes extensive use of composite materials. Inversion

Another advantage compared to other space-based cargo-delivery concepts is the fact that Arc uses a parachute landing system.

Arc can, in theory, deliver cargo to any place on the planet, including remote regions, disaster zones, or hard-to-access theaters of war. Other orbital delivery concepts, such as suborbital VTOL rockets, have needed at least some kind of infrastructure to support the cargo-recovery part of the mission, but Arc should do away with that requirement, at least for small cargoes.

U.S. Air Force concept artwork shows how a cargo rocket might be used to enable rapid delivery of aircraft-size payloads for agile global logistics — in this example, for urgent humanitarian assistance and disaster response. U.S. Air Force illustration/Randy Palmer

Last month, Inversion conducted precision drop-testing to prove the actively controlled parachute system that ensures that Arc will be able to put its cargoes where they are needed.

The company now says it wants to conduct a first mission with Arc as early as next year, which seems highly ambitious.

On the other hand, the startup does have some valuable experience from its Ray spacecraft, Inversion’s first, which was launched in January of this year as part of SpaceX’s Transporter-12 mission. This test mission helped prove technologies, including solar panels, propulsion, and separation systems, which will be incorporated into Arc.

Another view of the parachute recovery system that Arc will use to return to Earth. Inversion

For the time being, Inversion is focused solely on Arc’s military potential, although there would clearly be specific commercial applications as well. There is also the question of the possibility of adapting Arc as a reusable and recoverable satellite or even orbital supply vehicle. Meanwhile, the company has spoken confidently of producing hundreds of examples of the spacecraft every year.

Before that happens, and presuming military customers are forthcoming, Inversion will need to prove that its concept of space-based cargo deliveries can be cost-effective. There will also be various other regulatory issues to overcome, bearing in mind that this is an altogether new kind of transportation system.

Concept artwork shows the Arc spacecraft below its parachute. Inversion

Despite multiple dead ends and abortive programs, the idea of using some kind of space-based solution for rapid transport across the globe is one that won’t go away. Potentially, with its much smaller cargo loads, reusable spacecraft, and parachute-landing system, Inversion’s de-orbit on-demand cargo concept could be the one that finally breaks the mold.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

Thomas Newdick

Staff Writer

Thomas is a defense writer and editor with over 20 years of experience covering military aerospace topics and conflicts. He’s written a number of books, edited many more, and has contributed to many of the world’s leading aviation publications. Before joining The War Zone in 2020, he was the editor of AirForces Monthly.

Tyler Rogoway

Editor-in-Chief

Tyler’s passion is the study of military technology, strategy, and foreign policy and he has fostered a dominant voice on those topics in the defense media space. He was the creator of the hugely popular defense site Foxtrot Alpha before developing The War Zone.

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13. Pentagon Concedes Russian Threat as Trump-Era Policy Shop Faces Revolt in Senate Hearing

Summary:

At a tense Senate hearing, Pentagon nominee Austin Dahmer admitted Russia remains a U.S. security threat, breaking from Trump administration messaging. Lawmakers from both parties blasted policy chief Elbridge Colby’s “chaotic” office, Ukraine aid pauses, and troop withdrawals from Romania, citing disarray, poor oversight, and waning NATO confidence in U.S. resolve.

Comment: A lot of reporting on the issues in the USD(P). Cna the ship be righted there?

Pentagon Concedes Russian Threat as Trump-Era Policy Shop Faces Revolt in Senate Hearing

kyivpost.com · Alex Raufoglu · November 5, 2025

US Senators lash out after quiet decisions to pause military aid to Kyiv and pull a US brigade from Romania baffle lawmakers and allies on NATO’s eastern flank.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/63644?utm

WASHINGTON DC – Austin Dahmer, President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Pentagon’s top strategy post, broke with the administration’s usual script Tuesday, conceding under oath what officials have long avoided: that Russia poses a security threat to the US.

For months, Trump’s second administration has oscillated between gestures of rapprochement toward Moscow and bursts of hard-line rhetoric.

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Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.

Dahmer’s admission came as the Pentagon faces bipartisan fury over a series of opaque decisions – from quietly pausing aid to Ukraine to withdrawing a US brigade from Romania, a move that startled allies along NATO’s eastern flank.

What began as a routine confirmation hearing for a mid-level Pentagon role quickly morphed into a broader airing of grievances against a defense bureaucracy senators say has become both politicized and adrift.

“Pigpen” policy shop

For over two hours, members of the Senate Committee from both parties unloaded on what they described as a chaotic and uncommunicative Pentagon policy operation led by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby – a onetime strategist turned lightning rod.

“Man, I can’t even get a response,” fumed Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), adding, “And we’re on your team!”

Sullivan, who has built a reputation as a defense hawk closely aligned with Trump on deterring China and supporting allies, said Colby’s shop had become “the hardest to reach in the entire administration.”

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EU candidate countries Albania, Montenegro, Moldova, and Ukraine have all made significant progress on key reforms that the EU considers essential for joining the bloc.

Others went further: Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) derided the office as “a Pigpen-like mess,” while Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the committee’s top Democrat, accused Dahmer of “cloaking testimony in a veil of ignorance.”

The frustration reflects a deeper breakdown between the Pentagon’s political appointees and their constitutionally mandated overseers.

Since Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth imposed new restrictions on staff communication with Congress – requiring all interactions to run through the department’s legislative affairs office – lawmakers say even basic oversight has ground to a halt.

Ukraine, Romania, and a fraying front line

The sharpest flashpoints involve Europe, where several senators accused Colby’s office of acting at cross-purposes with both the White House and NATO.

At the top of the list: a Pentagon decision last week to pull a rotational Army brigade from Romania – first reported by Kyiv Post on Oct. 28. The move blindsided lawmakers – and, reportedly, Romanian officials – just weeks after Trump had publicly pledged to maintain US troop levels on the continent.

“This decision did not appear to reflect the policy mandate of President Trump,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the Committee’s chair, said.

“Just two weeks ago, the [US] president had said troops would not be withdrawn from Europe. It’s unclear to me how this fits with the commander-in-chief’s direction,” he emphasized.

Dahmer, who has been serving as the deputy assistant secretary for strategy and force development, insisted that Romania and NATO “were notified,” though he could not name which officials were briefed or when. That admission drew audible scoffs in the room.

Behind the Romania episode looms a broader anxiety: the administration’s wavering commitment to Ukraine.

In recent months, the Pentagon has twice paused weapons deliveries to Kyiv – decisions Trump later reversed after public backlash and quiet pressure from European capitals.

“We’ve seen the policy office differ from the president’s policy… Is that good for us?” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) asked, echoing concerns that such mixed signals erode US credibility abroad.

For Eastern European allies, the signals are already clear. In Bucharest, where US forces have served as a key deterrent since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the withdrawal is seen as a crack in NATO’s front line.

Romanian officials privately warn that any perception of American retrenchment emboldens Moscow – especially as Russian forces push deeper into southern Ukraine and expand cyber and influence operations across the Black Sea region.

Russia’s shadow and the Trump doctrine

That context made Dahmer’s acknowledgment of Russia as a continuing threat all the more striking. Within Trump’s national security circle, views on Moscow remain fractured.

The president himself has alternated between boasting of “great relations” with Vladimir Putin and privately urging aides to “get tougher” on Russian aggression.

Inside the Pentagon, officials say the internal confusion is acute. The reorganization of the Department’s policy office – described by defense officials as a “cosmetic” name change –has, in practice, shifted key portfolios away from the strategy shop Dahmer is set to lead.

Among the changes: oversight of the AUKUS security pact with Australia and the UK has been moved out of his lane entirely, sparking questions about who actually sets the Pentagon’s global strategy.

For Congress, the rebrand looks less like streamlining and more like obfuscation.

“Reviewing roles isn’t unusual,” Reed said. “But when the department conducts such a reorganization, it normally sends us a summary before we proceed with the nomination. That did not happen.”

The Trump administration insists the shakeup better aligns the Pentagon with “the president’s priorities.” But the result, according to several lawmakers and former officials, is a strategic drift that leaves the US struggling to project coherence abroad.

Clash over oversight

Lawmakers’ broader grievance is procedural – and constitutional. Since January, the Pentagon’s legislative affairs staff has acted as gatekeeper for all communications with Capitol Hill.

Senators say the result is paralysis. “We see no sense of urgency to connect with Congress,” said Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) “We’re the Article I branch, and yet we’re being treated like a nuisance,” she added.

Even some Republicans sympathetic to Trump say the dysfunction undermines US defense posture at a time of escalating threats – from Russia’s deepening partnership with Iran to China’s stepped-up naval exercises near Taiwan.

Europe watches – and waits

For European allies, especially those along NATO’s eastern flank, the Washington drama is more than Beltway theater. Romania, Poland, and the Baltic states see the Pentagon’s mixed signals as potential warning signs of American retrenchment.

“Every time Washington hesitates, Moscow tests the line,” said one European diplomat, speaking anonymously to discuss sensitive internal assessments. “If the US pulls back even slightly, Russia fills the space immediately.”

Trump administration officials insist the US remains committed to NATO deterrence, even as they push allies to “do more.” But the pattern of reversals – first pausing, then restoring Ukraine aid; announcing, then walking back troop movements – has shaken confidence in Washington’s staying power.

The bigger picture

The Dahmer confirmation hearing revealed more than bureaucratic missteps. It exposed the uneasy intersection of Trump’s America First rhetoric, congressional oversight fatigue, and a Pentagon struggling to define strategy in real time.

Beneath the sparring lies a more fundamental question: What does American deterrence look like in a world where Russia is again labeled a threat – but the machinery of government seems unable to act on that premise with consistency or clarity?

For now, Congress remains unconvinced.

“Mr. Dahmer,” Reed said bluntly, “you’ve indicated to us that you won’t cooperate. That does not bode well for your future role in the Department of Defense.”

In the halls outside, aides huddled over briefing papers that had arrived too late to change the hearing’s tone. Inside NATO capitals, diplomats watched the feed with growing unease.

The US may still call Russia a threat. But as one European official put it: “A threat means little if Washington can’t get its own story straight.”

kyivpost.com · Alex Raufoglu · November 5, 2025

14. Carrier USS Ford Holding Off Of North Africa As Trump Reportedly Won't Strike Venezuela

Summary:

The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford remains off Morocco instead of sailing to the Caribbean, as reports indicate President Trump has paused plans for strikes on Venezuela amid legal concerns. The U.S. maintains a large regional force while the Senate narrowly defeated a bipartisan resolution restricting military action against Venezuela.

Comment: What is the plan? What are the objectives? What will we do in Venezuela?

Carrier USS Ford Holding Off Of North Africa As Trump Reportedly Won't Strike Venezuela

twz.com

The supercarrier, ordered to the Caribbean by Trump, has not moved significantly toward that area for two days.

Howard Altman

Updated Nov 6, 2025 5:24 PM EST

621

https://www.twz.com/sea/uss-ford-holding-off-north-africa-as-reports-emerge-trump-wont-strike-venezuela-for-now

The TWZ Newsletter

Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.

Two days after passing through the Strait of Gibraltar en route to the Caribbean, the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford has not moved significantly from a position just west of Morocco in North Africa, the Navy confirmed to us Thursday. The flattop and elements of its strike group were ordered by President Donald Trump to join the ongoing enhanced counter-narcotics mission in the region, but it is unclear if plans have changed.

The relatively static position of the Ford and at least two of its escorts comes as reports are emerging that the Trump administration has decided, for now, not to carry out land strikes against Venezuela. It is unknown at the moment if there is a correlation, and the possibility remains that the carrier could still soon sail westward. We have reached out to the White House for clarification.

#USNavy F/A-18E Super Hornet

Código de llamada: R106

Matrícula: 166836

Hex: #ae1b61

Desde el USS Gerald R. Ford CVN78 al sureste de Madeira

lo que ubica ya al barco en esa zona.. pic.twitter.com/867LRRtFZk

— FlightWatcher (@Flightwatcher1) November 6, 2025

The USS Gerald R. Ford remains holding off the coast of Morocco. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jacob Mattingly)

The Trump administration on Wednesday told Congress it is holding off for now on strikes inside Venezuela out of concern over the legal authority to do so, CNN reported on Thursday. The briefing was conducted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and an official from the White House’s Office of Legal Counsel, the network reported, citing sources familiar with the events.

Lawmakers were told that the authority given to suspected drug boats did not apply to land strikes, the network noted. So far, nearly 70 people have been killed in at least 16 publicly known attacks on vessels allegedly smuggling drugs in the Caribbean and Pacific. The most recent acknowledged strike took place on Tuesday. The strikes have garnered heavy criticism for being extrajudicial and carried out without Congressional authorization.

Today, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War carried out a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO).

Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, transiting along a known… pic.twitter.com/OsQuHrYLMp

— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) November 5, 2025

Asked if the administration is indeed opting against land attacks on Venezuela, at least for now, the White House gave us the following response:

“President Trump was elected with a resounding mandate to take on the cartels and stop the scourge of narcoterrorism from killing Americans,” a White House official told us. “The President continues to take actions consistent with his responsibility to protect Americans and pursuant to his constitutional authority. All actions comply fully with the law of armed conflict.”

CNN’s reporting came after a Wall Street Journal story on Wednesday stating that President Donald Trump “recently expressed reservations to top aides about launching military action to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.”

Trump feared that strikes might not force Maduro to step down, the newspaper noted. Though ostensibly begun as an effort to stem the flow of drugs, it has grown into a massive show of military force aimed partially at Maduro.

The administration is considering three main options for dealing with Maduro, The New York Times reported earlier this week. They include stepping up economic pressure on Venezuela, supporting that nation’s opposition while boosting the U.S. military presence to add pressure on the Venezuelan leader, and initiating airstrikes or covert operations aimed at government and military facilities and personnel.

However, the goal is in flux, administration officials acknowledge, according to the Journal. Meanwhile, Trump has also delivered mixed messages, saying he doubts there will be an attack but that Maduro must go.

See President Donald J. Trump's FULL interview on @60Minutes — all 73+ minutes, without the network's edits and cuts.

WATCH IN FULL: pic.twitter.com/i95cQ3Gqei

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) November 3, 2025

What is clear is that there is a massive U.S. military presence in the Caribbean, which includes at least eight surface warships, a special operations mothership, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, F-35B stealth fighters, AC-130 gunships, airlifters, MQ-9 Reaper drones and more than 10,000 troops.

The Ford was supposed to join that force, but if the administration is content for now to hit boats suspected of carrying drugs, it might not make sense to move the carrier and escort ships more than 3,600 miles west, especially as there is high demand elsewhere for American naval presence, including in Europe, where the supercarrier just came from.

The issue of wear and tear on the force is something that the Pentagon will have to evaluate as it decides which assets to keep and which to pull from the Caribbean. Navy vessels began arriving in the region in late August and at some point, they will need relief. That could mean bringing in ships, possibly from other regions. The same can be said for aircraft units and personnel deployed around the region for the operation. Those forces can only remain spun-up for so long, or the operation needs to be adapted for a long-term enhanced presence. This could very well be underway already, although we have not confirmed this as being the case. However, being so close to the U.S. mainland reduces some of those concerns, especially for rotating units in and out.

Regardless of Trump’s intentions, the U.S. military presence continues to endure in the region. Thursday afternoon, two more B-52H strategic bombers flew near the coast of Venezuela, according to online flight trackers. These bomber flights have become something of a routine at this point. In addition, the San Antonio class amphibious transport dock ship USS Fort Lauderdale is once again back in the Caribbean after a pitstop in Florida for routine maintenance.

Just in: A pair of B-52 bombers are 80 miles off the coast of Venezuela and rapidly closing pic.twitter.com/E8QV7lxXW7

— The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) November 6, 2025

At 5 p.m., the U.S. Senate is scheduled to hold a floor vote on a bipartisan war powers resolution that would block the use of the U.S. Armed Forces to engage in hostilities within or against Venezuela, unless that action has been authorized by Congress. A similar measure failed several weeks ago and it remains to be seen if news that the administration is holding off on striking Venezuela will move the needle on that resolution.

Meanwhile, we will continue to monitor the progress of the Ford and the U.S. military presence arrayed against Maduro and provide updates when warranted.

Update: 6:07 PM Eastern –

The Senate bipartisan war powers resolution was voted down by a vote of 51 to 49.

Contact the author: howard@theewarzone.com

Howard Altman

Senior Staff Writer

Howard is a Senior Staff Writer for The War Zone, and a former Senior Managing Editor for Military Times. Prior to this, he covered military affairs for the Tampa Bay Times as a Senior Writer. Howard's work has appeared in various publications including Yahoo News, RealClearDefense, and Air Force Times.

15. Spanish Special Forces Liberate Greek Tanker After Pirate Attack

Summary:

Spanish special forces from the frigate ESPS Victoria freed the Greek tanker Hellas Aphrodite after pirates attacked it off Somalia. The 24-member crew stayed safe in the citadel during the assault. The joint EU-Atalanta operation used helicopters, drones, and coordination with Somali and regional forces, amid rising Somali piracy concerns.

Spanish Special Forces Liberate Greek Tanker After Pirate Attack

maritime-executive.com · The Maritime Executive

https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/spanish-special-forces-liberate-greek-tanker-after-pirate-attack

The Greek-owned tanker Hellas Aphrodite was liberated on the afternoon of November 7, more than 24 hours after the vessel was boarded by pirates off the coast of Somalia. EUNAVFOR Atalanta reports that the 24 crewmembers are safe, having been able to remain in the vessel’s citadel, and that the Spanish frigate ESPS Victoria was standing by the tanker as it prepared to get back underway.

The vessel was boarded yesterday, November 6, while approximately 560 nautical miles southeast of Eyl, Somalia. The master reported small arms fire and that the pirates had launched RPGs toward the tanker, which is loaded with gasoline, before boarding. The crew, which is reported to consist of a master from Montenegro, Greeks, and Filipinos, was able to secure itself in the citadel, where they remained.

The EU forces monitoring the region reported that the Spanish frigate ESPS Victoria (3,160 tons displacement, commissioned in 1987) was on patrol in the area. It was dispatched to the scene.

“After an early show of force, the Pirate Action Group abandoned the merchant tanker,” reports Atalanta. The Victoria was engaging its helicopter, uncrewed aerial vehicle, reconnaissance aircraft, and its Special Operations team.

Atalanta coordinated a combined effort that involved the authorities in the Putland region in Somalia, where the pirates are likely from, as well as a Japanese P3C aircraft, a Seychelles maritime reconnaissance patrol aircraft, and the Spanish Joint Operations Command. Atalanta reports that it remained in contact with the crew during the incident and was in contact with the vessel’s flag state and owner as the incident unfolded.

Hellas Aphrodite was further out to sea off Somalia when it was boarded by pirates using a mothership (EUNAVFOR Atalanta)

Both EUNAVFOR Atalanta and UK Maritime Trade Operations, as well as security consultants, however, are warning that the danger remains high in the region. Martin Kelly, Head of Advisory at EOS Risk Group, highlights that the incident with the Hellas Aphrodite was the third incident suspected to involve the same group of pirates.

While the liberation was taking place, another skiff with three pirates approached an LNG tanker that was 120 nautical miles north of the Hellas Aphrodite. Kelly identifies the vessel as the Marshall Island-flagged Al Thumama (113,749 dwt), which had departed Qatar bound for Poland. UKMTO reports the LNG carrier was able to outrun the small craft.

Atalanta highlights that a coordinated joint operation is ongoing to intercept the dhow that is being used as the mothership for the attacks. It is believed to be an Iranian vessel named Issamohamadi 2, which was taken around the beginning of the month. The team at the Hellas Aphrodite is gathering information that could be used in a prosecution of the pirates. Atalanta says an intensive search is continuing in the region for pirate groups.

The same group is suspected of the approach of the Seychelles-flagged commercial fishing vessel Intertuna Tres on November 2. That vessel’s security team fired warning shots, and the pirate group withdrew. That same day, the Norwegian-flagged bulker Spar Apus also reported a skiff traveling at 15 knots that was approaching. The bulker increased speed and changed course to avoid the suspicious vessel.

On November 3, the product tanker Stolt Sagaland also reported an approach. The pirates reportedly shot at the vessel, and the security team returned fire. The small boat abandoned the attempt and returned to the mothership.

EUNAVFOR Atalanta issued a Threat Bulletin that advises vessels to avoid the region if possible. UKMTO reports it has been briefing vessels in Dubai and shipping companies. Vessels entering the region are being advised to register with the security operations and increase their protection against the pirate groups.

Analysts note that it has been 18 months since the Somali pirate groups have targeted large commercial vessels. Groups have attacked smaller commercial fishing vessels and dhows, sometimes as robbery targets, but did hold a Chinese fishing vessel in December 2024, which was reportedly released the following month. The level of activity this month is raising concerns of a potential resurgence in the piracy efforts.

maritime-executive.com · The Maritime Executive

16. Unveiling acquisition overhaul, Hegseth tells industry to get with the program

Summary:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unveiled sweeping reforms replacing the Pentagon’s outdated acquisition system with a faster, competitive “Warfighting Acquisition System.” He warned contractors to invest private capital or lose business, pushed fixed-price contracts, and vowed to streamline foreign military sales to arm allies faster, signaling a wartime industrial mobilization shift.

Comment: I bet the Secretary of War had some good comments about giving a speech at the National War College. I wondered if he enjoyed being in the 'red bedroom." On a serious note, if the primes are opposed to his reforms perhaps he is on the right track. The most important legacy he could leave would be a reformed acquisition system

Unveiling acquisition overhaul, Hegseth tells industry to get with the program

One expert said the reforms would sweep away Cold War processes—and draw backlash from established primes.

defenseone.com · Lauren C. Williams

https://www.defenseone.com/business/2025/11/unveiling-acquisition-overhaul-hegseth-tells-industry-get-program/409419/

FORT MCNAIR—Move faster and invest more, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told hundreds of defense-industry executives on Friday—or we just might make you.

Hegseth, who spoke for more than an hour to a packed auditorium at the National War College, formally unveiled a slew of policy changes intended to replace his department’s Cold War-era acquisition processes with ones that value speed over rigid requirements. The secretary described the gathering as an opportunity to look executives “in the eye.”

“We commit to doing our part, but industry also needs to be willing to invest their own dollars to meet the long-term demand signals provided to them. Industry must use capital expenditures to upgrade facilities, upskill their workforce, and expand capacity. If they don't, we are prepared to fully employ and leverage the many authorities provided to the president which ensure that the department can secure from industry anything and everything that is required to fight and win our nation's wars,” Hegseth said.

In the wake of the speech, Hegseth’s office released a trio of memos: one to order the renaming and transformation of the Defense Acquisition System into the Warfighting Acquisition System; another ordering an overhaul of the joint requirements process; and a third focused on streamlining foreign military sales.

The Pentagon chief told defense companies to put more of their own money into developing military technology—or take their business elsewhere.

“You must invest in yourselves rather than saddling taxpayers with every cost. For those who come along with us, this will be a great growth opportunity, and you will benefit. To industry not willing to assume risk in order to work with the military, we may have to wish you well in your future endeavors—which would probably be outside the Pentagon,” he said. “We're going to make defense contracting competitive again.”

Steve Blank, a professor and co-founder of Stanford University's Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, called the speech a death knell for the Pentagon’s existing acquisition system—”the Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed.” And he expects major defense contractors to push back against it.

“Their first response is going to be hiring a whole ton of K Street people to lobby Congress to point out the problems with this process, which is, we're going to take a lot more risk and a lot more things will fail,” Blank told Defense One after the speech. “So this really forces primes, if they don't want to hire lobbyists, to change their business model. And the problem is their business model is predicated on a system that's no longer sustainable.”

Blank said Hegseth’s emphasis on speed and commercial technology will see traditional defense prime contractors pushed more than ever to compete with “startups banging on your door. Boy, the direction to me sounded pretty clear: that we're going to people who have stuff that could be delivered cheaply and quickly.”

The shift could also mean the Pentagon shifts to more fixed-price contracts, where work has to get done at a certain price, opposed to cost-plus contracts, which allow for increases as a result of delays or unforeseen expenses.

In his speech, Hegseth called out cost-plus contracts as one of the symptoms that ail the Pentagon’s acquisition system.

“These changes will move us from the current prime contractor-dominated system defined by limited competition, vendor lock, cost-plus contracts, stressed budgets, and frustrating protests, to a future powered by a dynamic vendor space that accelerates production by combining investment at a commercial pace with the uniquely American ability to scale quickly,” he said.

But fixed-price contracts can bring their own woes. Boeing says they are partially to blame for delays to new presidential jets. Northrop Grumman’s CEO has said they don’t make sense in development work.

In introductory remarks before Hegseth’s speech, Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg said the Pentagon and “our contractors need to change and do better” but “those who don’t and resist it will be done.”

Hegseth’s speech seemed well received among defense tech founders, executives, and investors. One attendee told Defense One after the speech that prime contractors should take Pentagon leaders at their word.

“It is a vindication of our thesis that America needs an acquisition system focused on meritocracy and transparency,” the expert said.

The directive to buy commercial first doesn’t just mean off-the-shelf, it means changing the contracting process to value metrics and speed, which could mean more fixed-price contracts with milestones for production, they said.

Arms exports

Beyond buying and producing weapons systems faster, Hegseth spent a chunk of his speech talking about improving the foreign military sales process.

“Believe me, I hear about this on every foreign trip. And every conversation I have with every president, prime minister, and minister of defense is, ‘What is wrong with your foreign military sales? We ordered it in 2014; it's 2025 and it's scheduled to deliver in 2032.’ And I sit there going, ‘I don't know, what the hell?’ We didn't break it, but we're going to fix it,” he said.

“Not only are foreign military sales and defense commercial sales important to our American industrial base, but they're also critical to our strategic vision on the global landscape…and to accomplish this, our allies and partners must be armed with the best and most interoperable weapons systems in the world. Foreign military sales allow our warfighters to stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies.”

One of the Nov. 7 memos orders the organizations that handle foreign military sales—the Defense Security Cooperation Agency and Defense Technology Security Administration—to be moved from the Pentagon’s policy shop to its acquisition shop.

The new focus on “burden sharing” and being a better customer to allies and partners is “refreshing,” said Jerry McGinn, who leads the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ industrial base division.

“The strong endorsement of the importance of allies and partners, it allows more overall industrial capacity. And so I think that's a good thing,” McGinn said, noting that Denmark had recently canceled its order of U.S. Patriot missiles.

“They weren't going to be able to get Patriots for at least five years because of the backlog in production. So, doing better on that will be better overall because you'll have allies buying stuff that's compatible with ours—and it's good for overall capacity, good for the industrial base,” he said.

Implementing all this will take money and people, he said.

“I've been calling to have our industrial base on more of a ‘war footing’ for some time. And these are the kind of measures that you would have to take to do that. So follow through is going to be the key,” McGinn said. “And then the question is resourcing. Because some of this is…is going to require a lot of attention and some additional resources.”

defenseone.com · Lauren C. Williams

17. ’Taiwan contingency’ could prompt Japanese armed reaction: Japan PM

Summary:

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said any Chinese armed action against Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, enabling military mobilization under its security laws. While not all disruptions qualify, she warned Japan must prepare for worst-case scenarios, reaffirming Tokyo’s collective self-defense stance and alignment with Abe-era Taiwan policy.

Comment: Are the Japanese people going to be receptive to Japan dealing with a Taiwan contingency? Is Taiwan going to be the condition or situation that moves Japan beyond it "pacifist constitutional defense posture?" 

Sat, Nov 08, 2025 page1

’Taiwan contingency’ could prompt Japanese armed reaction: Japan PM

• Staff writer, with CNA
• https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2025/11/08/2003846844
• 
  
• Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said yesterday that China using armed force against Taiwan could constitute a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan, allowing the country to mobilize the Japanese armed forces under its security laws.
• Takaichi made the remarks during a parliamentary session yesterday while responding to a question about whether a "Taiwan contingency" involving a Chinese naval blockade would qualify as a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan, according to a report by Japan’s Asahi Shimbun.
• "If warships are used and other armed actions are involved, I believe this could constitute a survival- threatening situation," Takaichi was quoted as saying in the report.
• 
  

Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is pictured at the House of Representatives of the National Diet in Tokyo on Tuesday.

• Photo: AFP
• Under Japan’s security legislation, such a situation allows the country to exercise "collective self-defense" if an attack on an ally -- such as the United States -- or a country closely related to Japan is deemed to threaten Japan’s survival, even without a direct attack on Japan.
• "The situation regarding Taiwan has become serious. We must assume the worst-case scenario," Takaichi was quoted by Kyodo News as saying during yesterday’s parliamentary session.
• However, she noted that not all disruptions in the Taiwan Strait would meet the threshold, saying that civilian vessels forming a line to block passage would not qualify.
• Her statement echoed that of former Japanese prime minister and fellow Liberal Democratic Party member Taro Aso, who has said on multiple occasions that Japan would likely consider a conflict across the Taiwan Strait as a survival-threatening situation.
• In 2021, former prime minister Shinzo Abe warned Beijing against invading Taiwan, saying in a speech on Taiwan-Japan relations: "A Taiwan contingency is a contingency for Japan."
• "In other words, it is also a contingency for the Japan- U.S. alliance," Abe added, urging China’s leadership not to misjudge the situation.
• Takaichi, who was elected Japan’s 104th prime minister last month, is widely regarded as "Taiwan-friendly" and aligned with the policy direction of the late Abe.

18. Junta Creates Body to Fast-Track China’s BRI Projects in Myanmar

Summary:

Myanmar’s junta, led by Min Aung Hlaing, has created a BRI implementation committee to fast-track China’s Belt and Road projects, including the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor and Kyaukphyu Deep-Sea Port. Backed by Beijing, the move follows Chinese pressure amid Myanmar’s civil war and aims to secure key trade routes and energy corridors.

Comment: Seems like China is exploiting the opportunity in a conflict zone.

Junta Creates Body to Fast-Track China’s BRI Projects in Myanmar

irrawaddy.com · Maung Kavi · November 7, 2025

https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/myanmar-china-watch/junta-creates-body-to-fast-track-chinas-bri-projects-in-myanmar.html

The Myanmar junta has formed a committee to expedite implementation of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure projects in the country, according to the regime’s latest gazette published in late October.

Established on Aug. 15 and led by junta chief Min Aung Hlaing himself, the Leading Committee for Implementation of the BRI includes Union ministers, deputy ministers, heads of Union-level agencies, and chief ministers of states and regions. It is tasked with coordinating and implementing BRI-related projects across national and regional levels, particularly those forming part of the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) and China-Myanmar Border Economic Cooperation Zones.

The BRI, China’s global trade and infrastructure strategy, seeks to connect Asia and Europe through networks of roads, railways and sea routes. Myanmar is among more than 70 participating countries and hosts several major projects under the initiative, including the CMEC.

CMEC projects include the Kyaukphyu Deep-Sea Port in Rakhine State and planned railway links between Rakhine and China’s Yunnan Province.

The Kyaukphyu project is central to China’s strategic ambition to secure stable access to the Indian Ocean while spurring development in its southwestern provinces. Oil and gas pipelines already run from Kyaukphyu through central Myanmar to Yunnan, serving as a key artery for Beijing’s energy imports.

But Myanmar’s ongoing civil war has disrupted trade routes and slowed the Chinese projects, prompting repeated demands from Beijing that the junta prioritize implementation and safeguard its personnel and investments.

Following Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to Naypyitaw last year, Beijing stepped up financial and technical assistance to the junta and increased pressure on ethnic armed organizations that are active along the trade routes and in BRI project areas. At the time, the Myanmar military was coming under heavy attack from resistance forces, especially during the highly successful anti-regime Operation 1027 in northern Shan State.

The BRI committee’s launch coincides with recent battlefield gains by the junta. In April, under Chinese pressure, Kokang forces returned control of the northern Shan State capital Lashio, which is on a key China-Myanmar border trade route, to the regime. Since then, the junta has recaptured Nawnghkio, Kyaukme and Hsipaw towns from the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) in northern Shan. The military now has its sights on retaking the ruby town of Mogoke in Mandalay Region.

During a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping while visiting China in August and September, Min Aung Hlaing pledged to accelerate cooperation under the BRI and CMEC frameworks. He also thanked China for pressuring ethnic armed groups to stop fighting the junta in northern Myanmar.

China has also expressed its support for the junta’s election scheduled for December and January—a move analysts say could pave the way for deeper implementation of BRI projects once a new government is installed.

Meanwhile, the Myanmar public continues to endure the regime’s rights abuses, repression, arbitrary arrests and economic mismanagement, and suffer from the disruption and destruction caused by the war. Many blame the anti-regime resistance movement’s recent setbacks on China’s ongoing material and political support for the military regime.

Your Thoughts …

irrawaddy.com · Maung Kavi · November 7, 2025

19. Why conflicts in the 21st century are becoming “hybrid”

Summary:

Modern wars are increasingly hybrid, blending military, cyber, economic, informational, and diplomatic tools. Globalization, technology, and the high costs of conventional warfare drive this shift. Hybrid tactics exploit ambiguity, weaken societies from within, and blur peace-war boundaries, demanding comprehensive defense, resilience, and international cooperation beyond traditional military preparedness.

Comment: Good to see credit to Frank Hoffman who was the earliest adoptor of hybrid warfare/ hybrid conflict. But what is in a name? Is the name important? I would add that one of the most important things that Dr. Hoffman was doing in 2007 was trying to understand the changing character of conflict and I would argue the description (and the intellectual foundation) is more important than the name. My pushback on names is that while they provide a helpful shorthand for communication and perhaps (hopefully) a common frame of reference, when we adopt the name we too often forget all the intellectual rigor behind it and sometimes lose our ability to understand which I think Dr. Hoffman would argue is the most important skill in strategy. As an aside the article includes many hyperlinks to useful references (though it does seem AI generated). 

Why conflicts in the 21st century are becoming “hybrid” | News.az

news.az

https://news.az/news/why-conflicts-in-the-21st-century-are-becoming-hybrid

In recent decades, the nature and character of armed and non-armed confrontations have undergone significant transformation. The traditional model of warfare — clearly defined belligerents, armed forces engaging in open pitched battles, declared war and peace — is no longer dominant. Instead, what we increasingly observe is what is called hybrid warfare: conflicts that blend military, informational, economic, cyber and diplomatic tools. Why has the 21st century ushered in this shift to hybrid methods — and which factors underpin its rise? In this article I analyse the nature, causes, features and implications of this change.

Definition and features of hybrid conflict

The term “hybrid warfare” was first popularised by Frank G. Hoffman in 2007 to describe a situation in which an adversary simultaneously employs conventional forces and methods, as well as irregular, asymmetric, informational and cyber tools. Википедия+2marshallcenter.org+2

According to NATO the phenomenon refers to the “interplay or fusion of conventional and unconventional instruments of power and tools of subversion.” nato.int+1

Key characteristics include:

• A combination of different forms of force or influence (conventional military, irregular warfare, cyber and information operations) in a blended fashion. smallwarsjournal.com+1
• Employment of non-military or semi-military means: informational campaigns, disinformation, economic pressure, legal and diplomatic tools (so-called lawfare). cepa.org+1
• Blurred boundaries between war and peace, between combat operations and political/informational pressure. nato.int+1
• Difficulty of attribution: identifying who is the aggressor, which instruments are used, and whether the situation constitutes war. nato.int+1

Why the 21st century is fertile for hybrid conflicts

Several inter-linked factors have made hybrid forms of conflict increasingly attractive and effective:

• Globalisation and interdependence. The modern world is highly interconnected — economically, technologically and informationally. This means that pressure can be exerted not only via front-line battles but through supply-chains, financial flows, cyber networks and the media. globalsecurityreview.com+1
• Advancement of information and communication technologies. Digital networks, social media, cyberattacks, drones and other tech innovations enable states (and non-state actors) to act more covertly, quickly, with lower cost and potentially large impact. cepa.org+1
• Lowering the entry barrier for non-traditional actors. States, but also non-state actors, can operate through proxies, cyber-hackers, irregular formations, which makes classical full-scale war less the only option. marshallcenter.org+1
• Rising cost and risk of traditional warfare. Open military operations are increasingly costly — politically, economically and in human lives. Hybrid measures allow achieving objectives with fewer costs and more plausible deniability. globalsecurityreview.com
• Changing nature of objectives. Goals are less often simply territorial conquest or regime change, and more often the sub-version of stability, influence over society, manipulation of opinion, disruption of infrastructure — objectives more suitable to hybrid methods. csis.org+1

Forms and tools of hybrid conflict

Let us examine how hybrid methods manifest in practice:

• Informational and psychological warfare: Disinformation campaigns, fake news, manipulation of public opinion, influencing via social media. These undermine trust in institutions and deepen internal divisions. cepa.org
• Cyber-attacks and cyber-espionage: Attacks on government networks, infrastructure, banking systems, communication channels — enabling interference without visible “boots on the ground”. nato.int+1
• Economic, financial and legal pressure: Sanctions, trade embargoes, controlling access to resources, debt-leverage, legal mechanisms used for strategic influence. cepa.org+1
• Irregular and proxy formations: Use of armed groups, mercenaries, “volunteers”, covert detachments often backed externally, but not officially declared. smallwarsjournal.com
• Infrastructure sabotage and “grey zone” operations: Disruption of energy networks, transport, logistics, communications systems — operations that do not look like conventional war, but have large impact. globalsecurityreview.com

What hybrid approaches offer to an aggressor

Why do states increasingly turn to hybrid methods? Key motivations include:

• Reduced risk and cost. Full-scale war involves high political risk, large casualties, domestic dissension, economic blowback. Hybrid actions allow pursuing objectives at lower cost and often with plausible deniability.
• Exploiting the “grey zone” between war and peace. An aggressor can act where the opponent is uncertain whether an act constitutes war — making response harder. nato.int+1
• Difficulty of response and attribution. If the attacking state’s role is obscured (via proxies, cyber-tools, plausible deniability) then retaliation becomes politically and legally more complex. nato.int
• High effect for lower investment. For example, an information operation or cyber-attack can yield an outsized effect without large troop deployments.
• Undermining opponent from within. Instead of fighting across the frontline, hybrid tactics aim to destabilise the opponent internally — eroding the will, legitimacy and cohesion.

The special difficulties for defence and international law

Hybrid conflicts pose distinct challenges:

• Unclear legal frameworks. Wars traditionally declared, with known belligerents and clear rules; hybrid actions often operate below the threshold of recognised war, complicating legal and normative response.
• Blurred responsibility. Which actor is the aggressor? When proxies or non-state actors are used, attribution becomes difficult — international law struggles to keep up.
• Comprehensive defence required. Traditional armies alone cannot defend against cyber-attacks, disinformation, economic coercion. Defence spans multiple domains: military, cyber, information, economic, legal. csis.org
• Societal resilience (“resilience” is key). Hybrid conflict targets not only armies, but societies: critical infrastructure, media, civic trust. Building resilience in these domains becomes critical. nato.int+1

Illustrations and trends

Recent conflicts show that hybrid approaches are no longer marginal but increasingly normative. For example, the 2014 events in Crimea and Ukraine – combining military presence, “little green men”, information operations, energy pressure – are a textbook hybrid form. marshallcenter.org+1

Analysts also note that hybrid methods are now being used globally, not just regionally. For example, influence operations by major powers, economic coercion, cyber campaigns. csis.org

What this means for states and the international order

• States must re-think their security strategies: the emphasis shifts from purely military preparedness to an integrated approach including cyber defence, information operations, economic resilience.
• In the international environment, competition intensifies, as hybrid methods allow “weaker” actors to influence “stronger” ones by non-military means.
• Trust between states, and trust between citizens and institutions, becomes a frontline. Disinformation campaigns, cyber-breaches and economic coercion degrade that trust, weakening resilience.
• International cooperation must evolve: sharing information, joint responses, establishing norms for new domains (cyber, information, economic coercion).

Conclusion

Hybrid conflicts have become characteristic of the 21st century because they reflect the realities of a globalised, technologically advanced, inter-dependent world. The use of diverse tools — from cyber-attacks and disinformation to economic pressure and irregular warfare — allows an actor to operate efficiently, flexibly and often covertly. This changes not just “how we fight” but also “what we fight for”: it is less about seizing territory in the classic sense, more about subverting the opponent’s stability, resilience, legitimacy and will.

For states, the bottom line is clear: adapt or become vulnerable. In the era of hybrid warfare, victory is no longer measured solely by tanks and missiles, but by the robustness of systems, reliability of institutions, awareness of populations and agility in multiple domains.

News.Az

news.az

20. The U.S. Marine Who Forced Nazi Officers to Toast FDR at Gunpoint — and Became the Most Decorated OSS Operative

Comment. A great story about a great American. If someone tried to sell this story as fiction publishers would reject it as too far-fetched and sensational.  

As an aside I had the honor of working for his son, Marine Lt. Col. Peter J. Ortiz Jr, in Korea for two years. He joined us at the OSS Society to present the first Ortiz Award a few years ago.

The U.S. Marine Who Forced Nazi Officers to Toast FDR at Gunpoint — and Became the Most Decorated OSS Operative | Military.com

military.com · Allen Frazier · November 6, 2025

https://www.military.com/daily-news/investigations-and-features/2025/11/05/us-marine-who-forced-nazi-officers-toast-fdr-gunpoint-and-became-most-decorated-oss-operative.html

Most Marines had never seen combat when Peter Ortiz joined the Corps in June 1942. However, he had already survived five years in the French Foreign Legion and fought in Africa, faced the Nazis in France, spent 15 months as a prisoner of war, and escaped occupied Europe to get back into the fight.

Before the war ended, the New York-born Legionnaire would become the most decorated member of the Office of Strategic Services and one of the most decorated Marines of World War II.

From New York City to the French Foreign Legion

Born July 5, 1913, Ortiz was raised in affluence as the son of Philippe Ortiz, a French-Spanish art dealer, and his mother Marie Louise. His parents separated when he was young, and he lived with his socially connected mother. After being educated at the University of Grenoble in France, where he became fluent in ten languages including French, German, Arabic, Italian and Portuguese, he made a choice at 19 that shocked his wealthy family.

In February 1932, Ortiz joined the French Foreign Legion. He was sent first to the Legion's brutal training camp at Sidi Bel-Abbes in Algeria, training designed to break recruits physically and mentally. Ortiz didn't just survive it—he excelled. After this, he was assigned to Morocco with the 3rd Machine Gun Company of the 2nd REI.

He fought against Rif rebels in Morocco, earning two Croix de Guerre for his actions in combat. After meeting Ortiz, British journalist George Ward Price would write: “This distinguished-looking young American would have made an officer of whom any army in the world would have been proud.”

Ortiz rose quickly through the ranks—corporal in 1933, sergeant in 1935. He became the youngest sergeant in Legion history at the time and was offered both a commission and French citizenship. He declined both. When his five-year enlistment ended in 1937, he returned to California, where he worked as a technical adviser on war films.

Peter Ortiz during his service with the French Foreign Legion in Algeria in the 1930s, where he became the youngest sergeant in Legion history. (Marine Corps History Division)

Wounded, Captured and His Escape Behind Enemy Lines

When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Ortiz re-enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. In May 1940, during the Battle of France, he received a battlefield commission to lieutenant. Weeks later, he was shot in the hip while blowing up a German fuel depot. Wounded and attempting to escape on a stolen motorcycle, the Germans captured him.

For the next 15 months, Ortiz moved between POW camps in Germany, Austria and Poland. He attempted to escape five times before finally succeeding in October 1941. His fluency in multiple European languages helped—he stayed with his father in Paris before slipping across the border into neutral Spain. He then made his way to Portugal, then sailed back to the United States.

Just before his ship made it to New York, he learned of the Japanese Bombing of Pearl Harbor. The U.S. Army Air Corps promised him a commission but the paperwork moved too slowly for his liking. On June 22, 1942, he enlisted in the Marine Corps as a private. His military file immediately stood out from other recruits.

One senior Marine officer wrote that “the rather unique experiences and qualifications of Lieutenant Ortiz indicate that he would be of exceptional value to American units operating in North Africa.”

After just 40 days of service—much of it spent as an assistant training officer at Parris Island—Private Ortiz became Second Lt. Ortiz. By December, he had been promoted to captain, skipping first lieutenant entirely. He was assigned to the 23rd Marines at Camp Lejeune before receiving orders for Morocco.

Peter Ortiz in his Marine Corps uniform after the war. The former French Foreign Legionnaire earned two Navy Crosses for his covert operations behind German lines in occupied France. (Marine Corps History Division)

Behind Enemy Lines in North Africa

On Dec. 21, 1942, Capt. Ortiz flew to North Africa, officially as an assistant naval attaché and Marine Corps observer stationed in Algiers. As part of the OSS, he was actually tasked with organizing local resistance to conduct reconnaissance and gather intelligence behind Axis lines.

In January 1943, during a nighttime reconnaissance patrol in Tunisia, Ortiz and his men ran into a German patrol. In what was described as a “fierce firefight,” Ortiz was severely wounded in the right hand. Despite the injury, he continued throwing grenades, forcing the Germans to withdraw. Ortiz was evacuated to a hospital in Algiers, then flown home to the U.S. to recover.

Gen. William Donovan, director of the OSS, received a message from Algiers stating: “Peter Ortiz, U.S.M.C.R. was severely wounded in the right hand while engaged in a personal encounter with a German patrol. He dispersed the patrol with grenades.”

Donovan read Ortiz's after-action report and wrote over it: “Very interesting, please re-employ this man as soon as possible.”

Maj. Peter Ortiz with French Maquis resistance fighters during Operation Union in occupied France, where he organized guerrilla operations against German forces ahead of D-Day. (Marine Corps History Division)

Operation Union: Parachuting Into Occupied France

After recovering in Washington in early May 1943, Ortiz was reassigned to the OSS Naval Command. He became one of only 80 Marine Corps officers to serve with the OSS during WWII. Transferred to London in July, he received orders for his most dangerous assignment yet.

On the night of Jan. 6, 1944, Ortiz parachuted from a Royal Air Force bomber into the Haute-Savoie region of German-occupied France. He jumped as part of Operation Union, a three-man team that included British Col. H.H.A. Thackwaite from the Special Operations Executive and French radio operator Andre “Monnier” Foucault. Their mission was to assess the military capabilities of Maquis resistance units in the region and organize them prior to D-Day.

The team jumped in civilian clothes—aware they could be executed as spies if captured—but carried their uniforms with them. After linking up with resistance fighters, they changed into uniform to demonstrate this was an official military operation. Ortiz posed as a Parisian fashion designer to avoid suspicion when moving in civilian clothes.

Still being a Marine though, he chose to constantly wear his duty uniform, complete with ribbons and medals. Thackthwaite later wrote, “Ortiz, who knew not fear, did not hesitate to wear his U.S. Marine captain’s uniform in town and country alike; this cheered the French but alerted the Germans, and the mission was constantly on the move.”

For five months, the team worked to unify the resistance groups, arranged airdrops of weapons and ammunition, and led raids against German positions. Ortiz proved his value repeatedly, even going as far as organizing hospitals and safe-houses for the resistance, procuring supplies from the Allies, and even securing stipends for the families of fallen resistance members.

He even earned the Order of the British Empire by breaking into a Gestapo garage, stealing a vehicle and a Gestapo pass, despite the Germans actively hunting him. He then drove four downed Royal Air Force pilots through Vichy France to the Spanish border, then returned to continue his mission.

Operation Union ended on May 20, 1944, when the team was airlifted back to England. Ortiz was promoted to major and received his first Navy Cross for his extraordinary heroism behind enemy lines.

Maj. Peter Ortiz in his Marine Corps uniform with French Maquis fighters in the Haute-Savoie region. Ortiz openly wore his uniform during operations to boost morale among resistance forces and French civilians. (Marine Corps History Division)

Toasting Roosevelt at Gunpoint

It was during Operation Union that one of Ortiz’s most famous incidents occurred. German officers from the 157th Division—who were actively hunting the Marine and his resistance contacts—were drinking in a club. They allegedly began loudly cursing the “tall American Marine,” President Franklin Roosevelt and even the U.S. Marine Corps.

Ortiz, sitting nearby in civilian clothes, did not take that lightly. He left the bar, returned to his safe house, and put on his Marine Corps service uniform—complete with all his American and French decorations. He threw a raincoat over the uniform, holstered two Colt Model 1911 .45-caliber pistols, and walked back to the club.

He approached the German officers and ordered drinks for them. Then he removed his raincoat to reveal his Marine Corps uniform and drew his pistols on the stunned Nazi officers.

“A toast to the president of the United States,” he allegedly said.

The Germans raised their glasses and drank. Ortiz ordered another round.

“A toast, to the Marine Corps.”

The officers drank again. Some accounts claim Ortiz then shot and killed the officers. Ortiz later claimed he escaped without killing anyone—he wanted them to live and spread the story.

While the story has been debated, multiple accounts confirm Ortiz carried his Marine uniform during his missions in France. Maquis leader Raymond Bertand even photographed Ortiz in his service uniform during this time.

Peter Ortiz at a dinner after World War II. The most decorated member of the OSS earned two Navy Crosses, five Croix de Guerre and decorations from three countries for his covert operations in occupied France. (Marine Corps History Division)

Operation Union II: Surrendering to Save a Village

On Aug. 1, 1944, Maj. Ortiz returned to France for Operation Union II. This time he commanded his own team: five Marine noncommissioned officers—Gunnery Sgt. Robert LaSalle, and Sgts. Charles Perry, John Bodnar, Fred Brunner and Jack Risler—along with Army Air Force Capt. Francis L. Coolidge and Joseph Arcelin, a Free French officer carrying papers identifying him as a Marine.

During the parachute insertion into the French Alps, Sgt. Perry died when his parachute failed to open properly. Another Marine was severely injured on landing and had to be evacuated. Despite these losses, Ortiz pushed forward with his remaining men.

For two weeks, the team conducted sabotage operations and direct action raids against German forces retreating from southern France toward Germany. To boost morale among French civilians, the team moved openly in their Marine uniforms.

On Aug. 16, 1944, while passing through the village of Centron, the team was ambushed by a German convoy. A firefight erupted, but the Americans were surrounded. German Maj. Kolb believed he faced a company-sized unit—at least 100 men.

Ortiz knew the Germans had liquidated entire towns for harboring resistance fighters. French civilians begged the Americans to surrender to prevent reprisals. Ortiz made a drastic decision. He approached the German lines under a flag of truce and negotiated directly with Maj. Kolb.

Ortiz offered to surrender his “entire garrison” if Kolb gave his word the villagers would not be harmed. Kolb agreed.

When only Ortiz, Sgt. Bodnar and Sgt. Risler walked out of the village, the Germans were shocked. Kolb was furious when he realized only three Marines had held off a German battalion. But Kolb kept his word. The people of Centron lived.

His second Navy Cross citation noted that despite being imprisoned and subjected to numerous interrogations, Ortiz divulged nothing. It also stated that “the story of this intrepid Marine Major and his team became a brilliant legend in that section of France where acts of bravery were considered commonplace.”

Maj. Peter Ortiz with his Operation Union II team the day after parachuting into occupied France on Aug. 1, 1944. The mission ended two weeks later when Ortiz surrendered to save the village of Centron from German reprisals. (Marine Corps History Division)

End of the War and Final Captivity

Ortiz spent the remainder of the war as a prisoner. He was shuttled between POW camps in northern Germany, where German officers treated him as a regular prisoner rather than a commando—possibly because Maj. Kolb had shielded him from the SS.

Ortiz made multiple escape attempts while imprisoned. On Dec. 18, 1944, he and Navy Lt. Hiram Harris cut through wire fences at a POW camp near Bremen and reached the woods. The men were captured; Ortiz was beaten and placed in solitary confinement.

In April 1945, with the Allies closing in, Ortiz and his fellow prisoners were moved to another camp. During the march, RAF Spitfires attacked the column. In the chaos, Ortiz escaped with two Americans and one British prisoner. They hid in the woods for ten days, hoping to be rescued by Allied troops. Starving, they were forced to return to the camp they'd been held in, looking for food.

When they entered the camp, they discovered the prisoners had taken control. On April 29, 1945, the British 7th Guards Armored Division liberated them. Ortiz was reunited with the Marines from his OSS team.

Col. Peter Ortiz is congratulated by Lt. Col. Beal in the 1950s following one of his film appearances. The decorated OSS Marine appeared in multiple Hollywood films after the war, including two based on his wartime exploits. (Marine Corps History Division)

Hollywood, Arlington and Legend

Ortiz was discharged from active duty in 1946 but remained in the Marine Corps Reserve, finally retiring on March 1, 1955, with promotion to colonel on the retired list. He even volunteered to return to the Corps to serve as an advisor in Indochina, but this was denied.

He returned to Hollywood and resumed his film career, forming a friendship with director John Ford, who had also served with the OSS. Ortiz appeared in several Ford films, including Rio Grande in 1950 and The Wings of Eagles in 1957, both starring John Wayne.

Peter Ortiz (right) with director John Ford on a movie set. Both men served in the OSS during World War II and became close friends, with Ford casting Ortiz in several films including Rio Grande and The Wings of Eagles. (Marine Corps History Division)

Two films were based on his wartime exploits: 13 Rue Madeleine in 1947 starring James Cagney, and Operation Secret in 1952. Ortiz served as technical adviser on both but had little input on the scripts. He later told columnist Bob Thomas: “They had stipulated that I was to help in the screenplay but never consulted me.”

His son, Marine Lt. Col. Peter J. Ortiz Jr., summed up his father's acting career simply: “My father was an awful actor but he had great fun appearing in movies.”

Ortiz married his sweetheart, Jean Morlan, in 1948. They eventually settled in Arizona, where Ortiz pursued interests in art, history, religion and filmmaking while raising their son.

Peter Ortiz died of cancer on May 16, 1988, at the Veterans Medical Center in Prescott, Arizona. He was 74 years old. He was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Representatives from the British and French governments attended the ceremony, alongside his former comrades Bodnar and Risler.

His decorations from three countries included two Navy Crosses, a Legion of Merit with Valor device, an Order of the British Empire, two Purple Hearts, five Croix de Guerre, and numerous other American and French awards.

In August 1994, the village of Centron held a ceremony to rename the town center Place Peter Ortiz. His widow Jean, his son Pete Jr., and Sgts. Bodnar and Risler attended. A plaque now hangs in the mayor's office commemorating the Marine who surrendered to save their town.

He was the most decorated OSS agent of WWII. Marine historian Benis Frank later wrote: “Peter Julien Ortiz was a man among men. It is doubtful that his kind has been seen since his time.”

military.com · Allen Frazier · November 6, 2025

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com