Can Imran Khan Really Reform Pakistan?

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By Steve Coll

In 2011 and 2012, when Imran Khan, the former international cricket star and London night-club Lothario, first emerged from Pakistan’s political wilderness, he rode an Arab Spring-inspired wave of urban middle-class hopes for cleaner politics and better government. If Khan, a celebrity with his own income, came to power, the thinking went, then he might sweep away the family-based nepotism and corruption that had so curtailed Pakistan’s progress since independence, in 1947, and perhaps also loosen the Army’s grip on the country. Hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic, educated young people attended his rallies in cities such as Lahore, the country’s cultural capital. Khan fired them up by talking about a coming revolution in Pakistani politics, one that would modernize governance, attack inequality, and level the economic playing field through the impartial rule of law.

Here's how green is India?

By G Seetharaman

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Conserving and expanding India’s urban green cover is one of the objectives of the draft National Forest Policy released earlier this year. The National Green Tribunal recently stayed the felling of reportedly 16,000 trees in South Delhi for a Central government housing redevelopment project. The issue has pitted activists and residents against the government in a metropolis that often tops the list of the world’s most polluted cities. Conserving and expanding India’s urban green cover is one of the objectives of the draft National Forest Policy released earlier this year.

Key Highlights From Srikrishna Committee Report on Data Protection

SUSHOVAN SIRCARVAKASHA SACHDEV

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The Justice BN Srikrishna committee has submitted its report on data protection to IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. Titled, “A Free and Fair Digital Economy – Protecting Privacy, Empowering Indians”, the report was submitted during a press event at the IT Ministry, along with a draft Data Protection Bill. After months of speculation about its release and a string of delays, the report will now be reviewed by Prasad and forwarded to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Highlights From the Report and Bill The ten-member committee was tasked with studying and identifying key data protection issues and recommend methods for addressing them. Here are the some of the highlights from the report and Bill:

Imran Khan's Victory in Pakistan: An Outcome Foretold

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By Harsh V. Pant

In the end, there was no proverbial twist in the tale. Imran Khan’s victory in Pakistan’s recent general elections was being predicted by most and it turned out to be true. The Pakistani military, which had shaped the electoral battlefield in Khan’s favor, was, of course, the real winner as it managed to make it clear to the civilians that anyone who would dare to cross swords with it would end up languishing in jail like former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. For now, Khan has won the electoral battle, but he still will have to seek out allies to form a coalition government. This is a remarkable turnaround from the previous parliamentary elections in May 2013, when his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf, or PTI, had come in third.

With Imran Khan as New Leader, Pakistan Could Reshape Its Image

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By Jeffrey Gettleman

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — For a nation often in the news for all the wrong reasons — suicide bombings, horrific school massacres — Pakistan has reached a turning point that could possibly alter its dysfunctional trajectory.

Imran Khan, the cricket star and A-list celebrity whose political party won this past week’s elections, could use his fame and charisma to reset Pakistan’s troubled relations with the West.

Mr. Khan also may move Pakistan much closer to the expanding sphere of China, a neighbor he has praised conspicuously as a role model.

Newest U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan Mirrors Past Plans for Retreat

By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Helene Cooper

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WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is urging American-backed Afghan troops to retreat from sparsely populated areas of the country, officials said, all but ensuring the Taliban will remain in control of vast stretches of the country. The approach is outlined in a previously undisclosed part of the war strategy that President Trump announced last year, according to three officials who described the documents to The New York Times on the condition of anonymity. It is meant to protect military forces from attacks at isolated and vulnerable outposts, and focuses on protecting cities such as Kabul, the capital, and other population centers.

Did Pakistan’s Imran Khan win a “dirty” election or a real mandate?

Madiha Afzal

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Pakistan’s general election this week was set to be historic: It was only the second time in Pakistan’s 71-year history that an election was held after a civilian government completed its full five-year term. The scale was huge, with 106 million registered voters, 47 million of whom were women. 370,000 troops were deployed to ensure safety. Dozens of parties and independent candidates were vying for 272 seats in the National Assembly, or lower house of parliament. But a cloud hung over the election going into polling day. The two main parties vying for power were the incumbent Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N), and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice, or PTI), headed by the former cricket star Imran Khan.

Powerful Dragon v Raptor: how China’s J-20 stealth fighters compare with America’s F-22s

Liu Zhen

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In mid July the PLA Airforce released a video of a nighttime training exercise involving the stealth fighter as a demonstration of its combat readiness. The Chinese warplane was developed by the Chengdu Aerospace corporation, which began testing them in 2011 before the first planes entered service in March 2017. So far a few dozen J-20s have been produced for the PLA although the manufacturer is continuing to build more.

When the World Opened the Gates of China Was it a mistake for the U.S. to allow China to join the World Trade Organization? Assessments of the 2001 deal often determine positions in today’s bitter trade debate.

By Bob Davis

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With a congressional vote looming in the spring of 2000, President Bill Clinton mustered his best arguments for why lawmakers should approve his proposed deal for China to join the World Trade Organization. Adding China would link Beijing to Western economies and reduce the government’s ability to control its vast population, he said in a speech that March at Johns Hopkins’s School of Advanced International Studies. “By joining the WTO, China is not simply agreeing to import more of our products, it is agreeing to import one of democracy’s most cherished values, economic freedom,” Mr. Clinton said. “When individuals have the power not just to dream, but to realize their dreams, they will demand a greater say.”

China's AI focus will leave US in the dust, says top university professor

WATARU SUZUKI

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TOKYO -- China is leading the global race for supremacy in artificial intelligence and financial technologies, a professor at one of the country's top universities said, as the private and public sectors join forces to capture the next big waves of innovation and pump vast resources into the industry. "Research institutes, universities, private companies and the government all working together in a broad area ... I haven't seen anything like it," Steven White, an associate professor at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management, said during a recent interview in Tokyo. "China is committed to becoming leader in AI, and the U.S. will lose because they don't have the resources." 

China’s attitudes toward missile defense and its limitation

By Li Bin

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If there were to be a new international agreement to limit certain aspects of missile defense, it could reduce suspicion and competition among the United States, Russia, China, and other relevant parties. But the types of missile defense limitations that might be of interest to China – including agreements on numbers of missile interceptors, on the non-weaponization of space, and on elimination of ground-based midcourse defenses – involve policy changes that the United States has opposed in recent years.

Why are Taiwan’s friends vanishing?

by S.D.

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IF THE inauguration of a Paraguayan president next month draws international attention it will be because of one of its attendees: Tsai Ing-wen, the president of Taiwan. Paraguay is one of just 17 countries (plus the Vatican) that have diplomatic relations with Taiwan. In doing so they disqualify themselves from having formal relations with China, which considers the island nation a renegade province. They also subject themselves to intense pressure from the Chinese government to abandon Taiwan, in the form of both carrots (large investments) and sticks (tourism restrictions). So why do countries hold on, and how long can they last? 

China’s belt-and-road plans are to be welcomed—and worried about

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SHUNNING all false modesty, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, calls his idea the “project of the century”. The country’s fawning media hail it as a gift of “Chinese wisdom” to the world’s development. As for the real meaning of the clumsy metaphor to describe it—the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—debate rages. The term itself is confusing. The “road” refers mostly to a sea route; the “belt” is on land. Countries eager for China’s financing welcome it as a source of investment in infrastructure between China and Europe via the Middle East and Africa. Those who fear China see it instead as a sinister project to create a new world order in which China is the pre-eminent power.

All roads lead to Beijing

Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 Plan Is Too Big to Fail -- Or Succeed

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Since 2016, Saudi Arabia has been urgent in pursuing its aggressive economic reform efforts, but since oil prices have risen, these efforts have shifted and slowed. Riyadh hopes to grow its foreign investment and private sector activity, but it will struggle as its regulatory environment is continually shifting. Everything in the kingdom, from social practices to regulations, is still tightly controlled by the state, which will continue to invite wariness from investors and Saudi citizens. Though Riyadh may be tapping the breaks on some of its initiatives, this is not a sign that the troubles Vision 2030 is facing are fatal — or even entirely unexpected; rather, they are part of a familiar cycle.

George Soros Just Spent More on Lobbying Than He Ever Has Before

By Chris Agee

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A left-wing lobbying organization tied to influential Hungarian-American investor George Soros spent its highest quarterly amount ever in the period ending on June 30, according to recent financial statements. As The Washington Free Beacon reported, the Open Society Policy Center shelled out more than $10 million during the second quarter of this year in pursuit of various policy and legislative goals around the world. The organization took on several new causes during this period in addition to its generally elevated lobbying levels in recent years, particularly since President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Trump’s Populism Is as Lethal as Liberalism

Atul Bhardwaj (atul.beret@gmail.com) is a former naval officer and adjunct fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi.

The recently concluded Helsinki summit between Russia and the United States on 16 July 2018 is reminiscent of the Cold War the in strategy of theUS to create a wedge between China and Russia. The great power politics unleashed by Donald Trump from European soil is also aimed at facilitating populism to replace liberalism as the dominant political ideology in Europe. The United States (US) is under a deluge of delusion. Some see Donald Trump riding a white stallion destroying Russian nukes and ushering in an era of peace and prosperity, while others see the Statue of Liberty genuflecting in front of “dictator” Vladimir Putin. Both are hallucinating because Trump is neither a peacenik, nor is he selling American interests. He is simply a grandmaster making his moves on the great power chessboard to reap domestic and international gains for the global populist movement and American capital.

Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

By Jacob Mikanowski

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On 16 May, a lawyer named Aaron Schlossberg was in a New York cafe when he heard several members of staff speaking Spanish. He reacted with immediate fury, threatening to call US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and telling one employee: “Your staff is speaking Spanish to customers when they should be speaking English … This is America.” A video of the incident quickly went viral, drawing widespread scorn. The Yelp page for his law firm was flooded with one-star reviews, and Schlossberg was soon confronted with a “fiesta” protest in front of his Manhattan apartment building, which included a crowd-funded taco truck and mariachi band to serenade him on the way to work.

With hacking of U.S. utilities, Russia could move toward cyberwar

Frank J. Cilluffo and Sharon L. Cardash, George Washington University 

July 27 (UPI) – Even before the revelation on Monday that Russian government hackers had penetrated the computer systems of U.S. electric utilities and could have caused blackouts, government agencies and electricity industry leaders were working to protect U.S. customers and society as a whole. These developments, alarming as they might seem, are not new. But they highlight an important distinction of conflict in cyberspace: between probing and attacking. Various adversaries – including Russia, but also China, North Korea and Iran – have been testing and mapping U.S. industrial systems for years. Yet to date there has been no public acknowledgment of physical damage from a foreign cyberattack on U.S. soil on the scale of Russia shutting off electricity in the Ukrainian capitalor Iran attacking a Saudi Arabian government-owned oil company, destroying tens of thousands of computers and allegedly attempting to cause an explosion.

America’s Adversaries Are Weaponizing Information, NSA Director Warns

Bill Gertz

Foreign adversaries have stepped up the use of information warfare to control populations since 2011 and the operations are one of the new threats in the digital age, according to the director of the National Security Agency. Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, who heads both NSA and Cyber Command, said in remarks last week that both the military and the nation as a whole are taking steps to counter foreign information warfare and to use information operations against adversaries. The Arab Spring uprisings that began in April 2011 were fueled by social media and the internet and led to the unseating of several governments throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Where Water Wars Are an Imagined Threat—and Where They Are a Real Danger

Although alarmist headlines often announce imminent water wars over scarce resources, the truth is that cooperation over shared waterways, particularly rivers, is historically more common than conflict. In fact, even among bitter enemies, the historical record shows that water conflicts around the world do get resolved, even to the point that international cooperation often increases during droughts. However, common causes of water conflicts remain a concern. Unilateral actions to construct a dam or river diversion in the absence of a treaty or some other protective international mechanism are highly destabilizing to a region, often spurring decades of hostility before cooperation is even pursued. Similarly, as access to irrigation water is threatened, one result can be mass migrations of out-of-work, disgruntled people from the countryside to the cities—invariably a recipe for political instability.

U.S. and Europe Outline Deal to Ease Trade Feud

Richard M. Rossow

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It Will Take Four to Tango

The United States and India will engage in our first “2+2 Dialogue” on September 6 in New Delhi, bringing together the heads of our respective defense and foreign ministries. This is the “successor” to the U.S.-India Strategic and Commercial Dialogue (S&CD). The S&CD met twice—in 2015 and 2016—never quite hitting its stride in terms of deepening our partnership on either the strategic or commercial relationship. The timing is critical; bilateral relations are in a trough, largely due to a range of trade concerns. The July 6 2+2 Dialogue must focus on three objectives:

BRICS Summit In Johannesburg: Here's What The Five Countries Are Looking For

by Xuebing Cao

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All eyes are on Johannesburg for the 2018 BRICS summit, as the likes of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi take their places at the table. It marks the tenth annual gathering for this international organisation of the leading emerging economies. So what can we expect? The summit of the BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa - started in June 2009 at Yekaterinburg, when Russia hosted the leaders of this bloc, though it did not originally include South Africa. BRIC became a formal institution the following year, aimed at facilitating global political and economic transformation, and South Africa officially joined in 2011.

The age of cyberwar is here. We can't keep citizens out of the debate

David E Sanger

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In almost every classified Pentagon scenario for how a future confrontation with Russia and China, even Iran and North Korea, might play out, the adversary’s first strike against the United States would include a cyber barrage aimed at civilians. It would fry power grids, stop trains, silence cellphones and overwhelm the internet. In the worst-case scenarios, food and water would begin to run out; hospitals would turn people away. Separated from their electronics, and thus their connections, Americans would panic, or turn against one another.

The Pentagon is working on a software “do not buy” list to block vendors who use software originating from Russia or China

Pentagon creating software ‘do not buy’ list to keep out Russia, China 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon is working on a software “do not buy” list to block vendors who use software code originating from Russia and China, a top Defense Department acquisitions official said on Friday. Ellen Lord, the under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, told reporters the Pentagon had been working for six months on a “do not buy” list of software vendors. The list is meant to help the Department of Defense’s acquisitions staff and industry partners avoid buying problematic code for the Pentagon and suppliers. “What we are doing is making sure that we do not buy software that has Russian or Chinese provenance, for instance, and quite often that’s difficult to tell at first glance because of holding companies,” she told reporters gathered in a conference room near her Pentagon office.

Congress puts electronic warfare in its crosshairs

By: Mark Pomerleau   

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Congress is taking aim at the military’s electronic warfare shortfalls in an attempt to rebuild the electronic warfare enterprise and ensure U.S. systems are superior to adversaries, such as China and Russia. A lengthy proposal in the conference report from the Senate and House Armed Services Committees’ annual defense policy bill directs the Pentagon to establish a cross-functional team to evaluate the capabilities of adversaries.

New Wars in the City: Global Cities – Global Slums

By Dr. John P. Sullivan

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Urban warfare is increasingly being recognized as a feature of contemporary and future war. Indeed, successfully negotiating urban operations is an imperative as the “era of urban warfare is already here.” This now and future operational space is fraught with challenges as described in the previous essays in this series. These challenges include the complexity of operating in urban terrain ranging from tunnels, to vertical spaces, population density and diverse demographics, sprawl, architectural and political complexity, culminating in humanitarian challenges. Add to this: environmental and ecological challenges, such as hazardous materials disasters, and famine and resource scarcity resulting from urban fighting.

Fifty Years Later, Andrei Sakharov’s Seminal Essay Is a Powerful Model of Writing for Social Change

By Masha Gessen

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The following is adapted from a keynote address delivered on July 22, 2018, at the beginning of the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center’s week devoted to “writers and artists as activists.” In cases, the author has revised the Times translation of the Russian original and reinstated original emphasis. We are here to talk about writing for social change. Fifty years ago today, the New York Times devoted three full pages to an essay by the Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov, who was about to emerge as that country’s leading dissident and one of the world’s most visionary humanitarian thinkers. On Saturday, the Times published an essay about the essay, headlined “The Essay That Helped Bring Down the Soviet Union.” (I think Sakharov might have turned over in his grave at that title, both because he was an almost unimaginably modest man and because he would have found the Cold War framing that birthed the headline objectionable.) In the column about the essay, the Israeli politician and the former dissident Natan Sharansky writes that Sakharov “championed an essential idea at grave risk today: that those of us lucky enough to live in open societies should fight for the freedom of those born into closed ones.” The United States, Sharansky continues, has been retreating from this obligation, and, under Donald Trump, has shirked it altogether. That is indisputably true, as far as it goes, but it doesn’t do the Sakharov essay justice. The essay is a great piece of writing, and a great piece of writing for social change, not only because it is an exercise in thinking in public, on paper, but because it is an invitation to think—and to argue with the author.

Where do information operations fit in the DoD cyber enterprise?

By: Mark Pomerleau  

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Events such as interference in the 2016 election are demonstrating how the internet has amplified the reach and impact of age-old military tactics such as information or influence operations. These new cyber-enabled information operations have many in the U.S. government and thought leadership community concerned both about the United States' ability to counter and coordinate similar activities, especially given the the Department of Defense divested a lot of its information-related capability at the conclusion of the Cold War. Many in Congress and in the academic community, as such, have called upon U.S. Cyber Command as the likely organization to orchestrate these types of activities.

Pakistan’s Populist Triumph

OMAR WARAICH

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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—At long last, Imran Khan is the prime minister of Pakistan. After winning the highest number of seats in parliament in this week’s election, the former cricket legend and philanthropist is now set to form a national government and possibly rule two of Pakistan’s four provinces, making him the country’s most powerful civilian leader in decades. It’s a remarkable reversal of fortunes for Khan, who for decades was mocked by his opponents as a naïve, inexperienced celebrity keen to perpetuate his own fame. Khan, however, remained determined. “I always fight till the last ball,” he told me a few years ago. 

Pakistan General Elections- Sobering Thoughts the day After

By Dr Subhash Kapila
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Pakistan’s political dynamics in the last seventy years stand significantly distinguished by a singular irony that in rare periods when there is no military rule, the civilian Prime Minister of Pakistan appoints the Pakistan Army Chief at least notionally. The very Pakistan Army Chiefs so appointed turn around at the next General Elections to put in place their own script as to who the next Prime Minister should head Pakistan. Pakistan General Elections 2018, once again substantiate this propensity of Pakistan Army Chiefs. Pakistan General Elections 2018 has not thrown up any dramatic surprises as the emergence of PTI Chairman Imran Khan as the Prime Minister of Pakistan has worked out as scripted by Pak-Army-Judiciary nexus and whose opening moves were initiated by this not so benign combination in mid-2017 with political disqualification for life of Former PM Nawaz Sharif on judicially debatable charges.

Pakistan's Sham Election

By C. Christine Fair

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Newcomers to Pakistani politics greeted the outcome of Wednesday’s general election—an apparent victory for former cricket star Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party—with optimism. They were quick to note that Pakistani authorities focused on increasing female participation, both as candidates and as voters. (Although women have had the right to vote since the country came into existence in 1947, cultural norms have often denied them the right to cast their ballots.) The Wall Street Journal gushed that Khan’s apparent victory will “break the country’s two-party system.” Others wondered whether his election will have salubrious effects on Pakistan’s shambolic economy, foreign policy, or internal security.

Can Imran Khan be the new face of Pakistan?

Kiran Stacey and Farhan Bokhari 

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The crowd gathered under the Thokar Niaz Baig flyover has been waiting in the steamy Lahore night for over an hour when Imran Khan finally appears. He climbs on top of a shipping container, his white shalwar kameez fluttering behind him, and leans over the railing to salute hundreds of flag waving supporters. “This is the moment of change for Pakistan,” he bellows. “I will deliver a Pakistan which is different.” Mr Khan, the country’s charismatic former cricket captain, has for the past few weeks been delivering the same message at rallies across the country, attracting crowds of several thousand during what aides say has been a gruelling and bitterly fought general election. More than 20 years since he first began campaigning to end what he says is endemic corruption in Pakistan, opinion polls suggest he is on the verge of victory in Wednesday’s election. He had hoped to win in 2013 but came a distant third, with analysts saying he spent too much time giving speeches at mass rallies and not enough on stitching together political alliances. 

Hard days ahead

I.A. Rehman

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THANK heavens election 2018 is over, though the bitterness and acrimony it generated will take long to subside. Many people have won the contest, many times more have lost. The real winners seem to be the much-maligned and resourceless citizens who remained true to their commitment to democracy, a system whose benefits they have never enjoyed. They braved all kinds of hardships yesterday, including bad weather, and trudged long distances to uphold the majesty of the ballot box. They were also keen to prove the political pundits wrong.

Trump Provides China an Opening in Europe

Philippe Le Corre

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While Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin were busy gathering for a high-profile summit in Helsinki on Monday, a far less publicized meeting between two other world powers was simultaneously held in Beijing. The twentieth EU-China summit was maybe less attention grabbing but is still significant in its own right. Although the EU-China relationship is becoming more fraught, both sides shared an interest in a summit marked by more positive tone this time around.

A bitter Beijing is ready to fight Washington and win the trade war.

by Gordon G. Chang

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On Wednesday, Qualcomm Inc., the world’s leader in mobile-phone chips,announced the abandonment of its bid to buy Dutch-based NXP Semiconductors. The $44 billion deal, which would have been the semiconductor sector’s biggest takeover ever, had to be scrapped because Beijing, escalating the so-called “trade war” with the United States, withheld approval.  In withholding approval, Chinese leader Xi Jinping made clear that it’s not possible to bargain with his country at this time. America now has no choice but to fight Beijing to the end.

RIP Taiwan?

by John J. Mearsheimer

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WHAT ARE the implications for Taiwan of China’s continued rise? Not today. Not next year. No, the real dilemma Taiwan will confront looms in the decades ahead, when China, whose continued economic growth seems likely although not a sure thing, is far more powerful than it is today. Contemporary China does not possess significant military power; its military forces are inferior, and not by a small margin, to those of the United States. Beijing would be making a huge mistake to pick a fight with the American military nowadays. China, in other words, is constrained by the present global balance of power, which is clearly stacked in America’s favor.

China and Africa: the Zimbabwe file

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The Chinese link with Zimbabwe’s ruling party, Zanu-PF, goes back to 1963—as does, notably, China’s association with new president Emmerson Mnangagwa. For the first decade and a half, the connection was military, with the Chinese providing training and materiel in the fight against white rule. Mnangagwa was part of the first group of guerrillas sent by Robert Mugabe to a military academy in Nanjing. Yet the cynical and tactically agile Mugabe also ensured that independence in 1980 did not bring with it much reward for the Chinese. Speaking privately to a colleague (who happened to be a spy of apartheid South Africa), Mugabe described a celebratory state visit to China and North Korea as ‘a lot of bull’. It had been a necessary obligation, but the offer of aid by these allies was, in his view, just an attempt to establish a fifth column in Zimbabwe—a posse of ‘Marxists who will start a process of undermining’. If the relationship could be described as manipulative during the early years, it was Mugabe pulling the strings.

Daily Memo: Turkish Military Matters, US Energy Supplies

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Is the U.S. preparing to bomb Iran? Australia, of all places, seems to think so. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation cited government officials as saying the U.S. was preparing to strike Iranian nuclear facilities as early as next month. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull dismissed the reports, while the defense minister said Australia was unaware of any U.S. action. That said, the report is strange. Top U.S. officials wrapped up meetings with their Australian counterparts this past Tuesday without mentioning Iran. And it’s unclear why the Turnbull government would leak this story. From a purely strategic perspective, a U.S. strike on Iran makes little sense. It can’t destroy Iran’s nuclear program with tactical strikes, and tactical strikes are the only thing it’s in a position to conduct. An attack would only galvanize the Iranian people, who are otherwise upset with a government reeling from the dissolution of the nuclear deal. Strategic or not, though, some officials in the Trump administration such as National Security Adviser John Bolton have advocated military action in Iran for years. The bottom line is that it is unlikely that the U.S. is preparing to attack. If that changes, we’ll let you know.

Counterterrorism: Taking Down the Big Man

By Kevin Ivey

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Disrupting terrorist networks is inherently difficult, and success is difficult to measure. Clandestine by nature, these groups generally hide their internal functions, institutions, and various chains of command. While a potentially vast cadre of fighters, sympathizers, and suppliers wait in the wings, the outside world only glimpses a few leaders, who often serve as figureheads for their organizations. With little else to go on, states often make targeting these leaders a key priority. From the Shining Path in Peru to ISIL in Syria and Iraq, security forces carry out operations to capture or kill mid- and upper-level leaders in the hopes that their absence will be the knockout blow necessary to defeat a terrorist organization. Recent attention has turned to ISIL leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who is rumored to be still alive. Intelligence gathering and planning is likely underway in multiple countries to capture or kill the man who continues to lead one of the world's deadliest terror groups. But is leadership decapitation, as this strategy is known, effective?

US is ‘outgunned’ in electronic warfare, says cyber commander

By: Mark Pomerleau  

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Two military leaders admitted at the TechNet Augusta conference this week that the United States is falling behind in its electronic warfare capability. “When it comes to electronic warfare, we are outgunned,” Maj. Gen. John Morrison, the commander of Fort Gordon and the Army Cyber Center of Excellence, said during a Tuesday presentation at the conference held in Augusta, Georgia. “We are plain outgunned by peer and near-peer competitors.” This sentiment was seconded by Lt. Gen. Paul Funk II, the commanding general of III Corps, who addressed the TechNet audience via video teleconference, adding that the U.S. is also outranged in EW.

Strategic Command will now oversee nuclear communications

By: Andrew C. Jarocki   

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The communication system which keeps the president in touch with the nuclear triad during a crisis will now be the responsibility of the head of U.S. Strategic Command. The change came about from concerns that the nuclear command, control and communications systems, or NC3, lacked a clear chain of command under the current structure. The system is comprised of satellites, radars and fixed or mobile command posts. “The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has appointed the commander of U.S. Strategic Command to be the NC3 enterprise lead, with increased responsibilities for operations, requirements, and systems engineering and integration,” a U.S. STRATCOM spokeswoman told SpaceNews.

Daily Memo: The Middle East Makes Waves, North Korea Walks Back, the US Talks Trade Truce

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Threats to halt the flow of oil through Middle Eastern waterways are starting to feel more like promises. On Thursday, Saudi Arabia suspended oil shipments through part of the Red Sea after Houthi fighters attacked two tankers, one of which, they claim, was a Saudi warship. (The Houthis are Yemeni rebels that have fought, through the support of Iran, the Saudi-aligned government in the capital of Sanaa.) In coded language, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, appeared to confirm the attack, saying the presence of U.S. forces in the Red Sea is what led to the attacks. The same day, the U.S., Egypt and Gulf states began demining exercises in the Red Sea – these kinds of exercises would immediately be put to use in the event of an oil blockade.

Hundreds storm border fence into Spain's north Africa enclave of Ceuta

Sam Jones

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About 800 people have tried to enter Europe by storming a border fence that separates Morocco from Spain’s north African enclave of Ceuta, according to Spanish police. The incident on Thursday morning followed renewed warnings about Spain’s ability to cope with the rising number of migrants and refugees who have been arriving on its southern coast. It also came just hours before the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, was to meet the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to discuss the EU’s response to the migration crisis.

The View From Olympus: Paradigm Shifts

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The Establishment’s hysterical reaction to President Trump’s successful summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin is driven not by outrage but by fear. The Establishment knows how to succeed in obtaining what it cares about, power and money, within the current paradigms. Those paradigms include America as the only real world power, before which all other nations must bow; an endless supply of money; Wilsonianism, i.e. forcing “democracy” down all other countries’ throats; and cultural Marxism, which seeks to put women over men, blacks over whites, and gays over straights (where they conflict, cultural Marxism takes precedence over democracy). But those paradigms are all beginning to shift. President Trump represents, at least in part, new paradigms which leave today’s Establishment irrelevant, isolated, and powerless. In response, the Establishment howls in fear and in hatred, especially hatred of a President who represents the heartland instead of the coastal elites.

How Russia Is Taking Over the Middle East, One Country at a Time

Chuck Freilich 

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In recent years Russia has staged a comeback in the Mideast, big time, to the extent that it may replace the United States as the leading foreign power in the region. Russia's success has been a combination of both deft diplomacy as well as weapons and nuclear reactor sales to states throughout the region, from Iran to Morocco. The weakness of U.S. regional policy under the Obama administration, followed by the total chaos under Trump, have further contributed to Russia's success. Russian policy has been sophisticated, but has also benefited from the void left by the United States.

Henry Kissinger Pushed Trump to Work With Russia to Box In China

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Henry Kissinger suggested to President Donald Trump that the United States should work with Russia to contain a rising China. The former secretary of state—who famously engineered the tactic of establishing diplomatic relations with China in order to isolate the Soviet Union—pitched almost the inverse of that idea to Trump during a series of private meetings during the presidential transition, five people familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast. The potential strategy would use closer relations with Russia, along with other countries in the region, to box in China’s growing power and influence.

How to Stop Losing the Information War

BY MAJ. LUKE KARL

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No one is in charge of messaging, counter-messaging, and coordinating America’s instruments of information power. Here’s a way to change that. Russia “is waging the most amazing information-warfare blitzkrieg in the history of information warfare,” Gen. Philip Breedlove told NATO leaders at their 2014 summit. There’s no evidence that Moscow’s efforts have since slackened—nor that the United States is institutionally equipped to develop an effective response. This was not always the case. During and just after the Cold War, the U.S. more than held its own in the sphere of information operations. And though the internet — and particularly social media — have greatly increased the speed and scale (and decreased the cost) of such operations, the experience of those years suggests a way to build and run an IO organization to lead them successfully.

How the U.S. is Preparing for a Quantum Future

By John Breeden II

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For my previous column, I talked about the threat that future quantum computers pose for today’s government data, and how the United States is risking falling behind other countries in the development of quantum science. In turn, I received more comments via tweets, email and other social media platforms than with any other column I’ve written recently. This is clearly a topic that is on people’s minds, which is a good thing because we need to be aware of both the advantages of this emerging technology and also the potential pitfalls.

'Information' is playing outsize role in warfare

By: Mark Pomerleau 

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More so now than ever, information is playing an outsize role in military capabilities and being rolled into conventional elements. In 21st century warfare, war is cognitive as much as it’s kinetic, Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told a small group of reporters in his office this week.  Top competitors, Stewart said, are organizing their forces in this new information space and have developed doctrine to fight and win in the information age. Russia views many facets of the information space — to include information operations, space/counterspace, cyber, cyber-enabled psychological operations and electronic warfare, to name a few — as critical to fighting and winning future conflicts, especially against the U.S., according to a recent and unclassified report on Russia’s military published by DIA.

Where do information operations fit in the DoD cyber enterprise?

By: Mark Pomerleau  

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Events such as interference in the 2016 election are demonstrating how the internet has amplified the reach and impact of age-old military tactics such as information or influence operations. These new cyber-enabled information operations have many in the U.S. government and thought leadership community concerned both about the United States' ability to counter and coordinate similar activities, especially given the the Department of Defense divested a lot of its information-related capability at the conclusion of the Cold War. Many in Congress and in the academic community, as such, have called upon U.S. Cyber Command as the likely organization to orchestrate these types of activities.