Afghanistan: The Day After US’ Inglorious Exit 2020 – OpEd

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By Dr Subhash Kapila

The United States perspectively seems headed for an inglorious military exit from Afghanistan prompted not by any significant military failures against Taliban but a military exit ordered by US President Trump for reasons politically expedient related to his bid for re-election as US President for a second term in 2010.

Afghanistan can be said that as consequence of the above United States determination stares at the likelihood of a vicious ‘Civil War’ the day after US exit from Afghanistan—a second military abandonment of Afghanistan by the United States.

The Taliban is viewed with intense hatred by a wide cross-section of the Afghanistan population due to their earlier barbaric medieval subjugation of Afghanistan spearheaded by Pakistan Army. Northern Afghanistan is not definitely not likely to countenance US current moves to incorporate Taliban in governance of Afghanistan in exchange for dubious Taliban guarantees that they will enable safe exit of US Forces from Afghanistan

Contextually, the above scenario provides the reality of a ‘Civil War’ engulfing Afghanistan on the day after the United States exiting Afghanistan.

Trump's Fawning Over Pakistan's Prime Minister Strains Ties with India

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by Minaam Shah

In his visit to Washington, Imran Khan came out as the winner by having successfully outplayed India and avoided a browbeating by the United States over Afghanistan.

Imran Khan was a very happy man when he left Washington, DC. In his highly publicized meeting with President Donald Trump, the Pakistani prime minister might just have secured a much needed “reset” with the Americans. Foreign-policy savants had long predicted a cold shoulder for Khan upon his arrival in Washington where Pakistan has created more foes than friends. Both inside and outside the American establishment, there has been a growing chorus wondering if it is time to dump and punish Pakistan. 

Among them was Trump himself. Last year in a tweet, he accused Pakistan of “giving us nothing but lies and deceit” and immediately suspended financial aid to Pakistan. Similarly, during the Indo-Pak crisis earlier this year, the United States had clearly sided with India. National Security Advisor John Bolton’s acknowledgement of India’s right to self-defense during the crisis was tantamount to an American green signal for the Indian airstrikes that followed the suicide bombing in Kashmir. In part, this reflected a change in America’s South Asia policy, which seemed to be based on two underlying principles: ending the war in Afghanistan and improving its partnership with India. With regard to both, Pakistan was seen an irritant. In Afghanistan, the United States has accused Pakistan of destabilizing the American efforts by harboring the Taliban and its affiliates, particularly the Haqqanis. Similarly, in recent years the United States has strengthened its ties with India, an arch rival of Pakistan. There is much economic and strategic momentum now carrying the relationship forward.

The Army experiment with the network in Afghanistan

By: Mark Pomerleau
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The Army is using brigades in Afghanistan to test a new sustainment concept for the upcoming tactical network. Army brigades in Afghanistan are testing a new set of rules on when to replace and refurbish equipment related to the service’s battlefield network.

Maj. Gen. Mitchell Kilgo, the new commander of Communications and Electronics Command, said Aug. 1 the Army’s Security Force Assistance Brigades, which are using new communications equipment and concepts that will be applied to the conventional force, are testing a new model for maintaining this equipment.

The Army is looking to the newly established advise-and-assist brigade that's headed to Afghanistan to help inform modernization efforts associated with communications gear for conventional units.

ASEAN’s Indo-Pacific Dilemma: Where To From Here? – Analysis

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By Dr. Frederick Kliem

ASEAN has now added to the ongoing Indo-Pacific debate. The question is, where to go from here? Is ASEAN’s Outlook an end in itself or a constructive roadmap for the future of regional cooperation?

At the just-concluded 34th ASEAN Summit in Bangkok, the regional bloc filled a void in the ongoing international Indo-Pacific debate. Various regional actors had previously released their own Indo-Pacific strategies and concepts, suggesting a redefinition of geo-strategic Asia.

China Vows to Counter US Deployment of Midrange Missiles in Asia

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Christopher Bodeen

With the INF officially lapsed, Beijing warns it will take action should the US deploy previously banned missiles to the Asia-Pacific.

China said Tuesday that it “will not stand idly by” and will take countermeasures if the United States deploys intermediate-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific region, which Washington has said it plans to do within months.

The statement from the director of the foreign ministry’s Arms Control Department, Fu Cong, follows the United States’ withdrawal last week from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), a move Fu said would have a “direct negative impact on the global strategic stability” as well as security in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

Fu said China was particularly concerned about announced plans to develop and test a land-based intermediate-range missile in the Asia-Pacific “sooner rather than later,” in the words of one U.S. official.

China, Mexico and US Trade

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George Friedman

Last week, it was widely reported that in the first half of 2019 Mexico replaced China as the United States’ top trade partner. China is now in third place, while Canada is in second. There has been a great deal of discussion in the media about what this means for U.S.-China economic relations. Much less attention has been devoted to what this new alignment means for economic relations within North America.

A Third World Country?

The importance of U.S.-Mexico trade may surprise some. In the minds of many Americans, Mexico is still a Third World country whose largest export is poor people looking for jobs. Truth is, Mexico has the 15th largest economy in the world measured in U.S. dollars. Australia ranks just one spot above Mexico, and countries like Spain, South Korea and Canada are not too far ahead either.

Measured in purchasing power parity, however, Mexico ranks as the 11th largest economy in the world. PPP measures economic activity against the ability of a country’s currency to buy goods. Both PPP and nominal gross domestic product measurements have their flaws. Measuring purchasing power in a country as diverse as Mexico is tough, to say the least. Measuring it against the dollar is also difficult, as currencies fluctuate against the dollar all the time, thereby changing their GDP totals and rankings even though the economy itself hasn’t grown or declined. (Those who already knew this – and those who didn’t want to know this – please forgive me for explaining this in detail.)

China’s Currency Moves Escalate Trade War, Rattling Markets

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By Ana Swanson, Alexandra Stevenson and Jeanna Smialek

WASHINGTON — The trade war between the United States and China entered a more dangerous phase on Monday, as Beijing allowed its currency to weaken, Chinese enterprises stopped making new purchases of American farm goods and President Trump’s Treasury Department formally labeled China a currency manipulator.

The escalation shook world markets as nervous investors looked for safe places to park their money. Wall Street suffered its worst day of the year on Monday, with the S&P 500 closing down nearly 3 percent. Selling was especially heavy in the trade-sensitive technology, consumer discretionary and industrial sectors.

Yields on United States Treasuries, which fall as prices rise, dropped as investors sought safety in government-backed bonds. Benchmark indexes in Asia and Europe also fell.

Trump Doubles Down On The China Trade War

by Salvatore Babones

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President Donald Trump is threatening another round of China tariffs, this time 10 percent on the remaining $300 billion in Chinese goods that are not yet subject to punitive tariffs. The new tariffs should go into effect on September 1, barring a change of heart on the part of the president or some real action on the part of the Chinese.

Trump’s aggressive push on tariffs has thrown the country’s expert class into a tizzy, with pundits predicting a severe shock to the American economy, blaming the trade war for every blip in stock prices, and warning of the potential for runaway inflation as consumers pay the price for Trump’s tariffs.

Meanwhile the economy is employing record numbers of people, inflation is runningwell below the Fed’s target rate, and stock markets are slightly up since the beginning of the “trade war” in April. The data simply refuses to satisfy the pundits’ appetite for economic carnage.

Norwich University is founded in Vermont as the first private military school in the United States.

Why the China-Russia Alliance Won't Last

by James Jay Carafano

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So, now everybody wants to be Bismarck. They see themselves shaping history by artfully moving big pieces on the geostrategic chessboard. And one gambit they just can’t resist is moving to snip the growing bonds of Sino-Russian cooperation.

My advice to them: Just stop.

Fears of an allied China and Russia running amok around the world are overblown. Indeed, there is so much friction between these “friends,” any attempt to team up would likely give both countries heat rash.

Prometheus, a bristlecone pine and the world's oldest tree, is cut down.

China and the Difficulties of Dissent

by Simon Leitch
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Over the last couple of weeks, a small but dedicated band of free speech advocates at the University of Queensland (UQ) have managed to catch the attention of the international media with their protests against the Chinese government. The struggles of the protest organisers have a significance far beyond university campuses, as the recent media attention devoted to China’s influence over our politicians, technology, infrastructure, and educational programs demonstrates. The recent campus protests provide a timely reminder of the difficulties of dissenting from the entrenched orthodoxy that China’s rise is benign or even beneficial for Australia and the wider West.

The Rise of Fascist China

It is important to understand that China is a fascist dictatorship. The term “fascist” is now thrown around with such carelessness that it has lost most of its meaning outside the offices of a few historians or political science professors. But fascism, in its original early twentieth century incarnation, meant a political system defined by three attributes—authoritarianism, ethnonationalism, and an economic model in which capitalism co-existed with large state-directed industries and partnerships between the government and corporations.

Chinese State Hackers Suspected Of Malicious Cyber Attack On U.S. Utilities

Zak Doffman
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The notorious Chinese state-sponsored hacking group APT10, which is believed to act for the country's Ministry of State Security, is the most likely culprit behind a cyber campaign targeting U.S. utility companies in July. The disclosure on August 1 was made by researchers at Proofpoint, who warned that "persistent targeting of any entity that provides critical infrastructure should be considered an acute risk—the profile of this campaign is indicative of specific risk to U.S.-based entities in the utilities sector."

The spear-phishing campaign targeted company employees with emails purporting to be from the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES), emails that claimed to be delivering professional examination results but which were actually delivering "malicious" Microsoft Word attachments. Threat researchers at Proofpoint broke the news and dubbed the command and control malware "LookBack."

According to Proofpoint's Michael Raggi and Dennis Schwarz, once the emailed Microsoft Word attachment is opened, a malicious VBA macro drops files onto the host computer which then provide the malware with the command and control framework needed to access data on the machine. The malware can attack and mimic a wide range of processes on an infected machine—primarily, though, the objective is to steal data files and take operational screenshots. 

What’s Next for China’s Political Economy?

KEVIN RUDD

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Slowing growth and the ongoing trade and technology war with the United States have forced China’s leaders to address a fundamental dilemma at the core of the Chinese political economy. Can the Communist Party of China both deliver on the “Chinese Dream” and maintain absolute control over the country?

LONDON – To understand where the Chinese economy is headed, it is important to understand the wider context surrounding Chinese debates about what the future holds under President Xi Jinping. The centenary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2021 is the first weigh station for evaluating the progress made toward realizing Xi’s “Chinese Dream.” In 2013, the year after he became China’s paramount leader, Xi promised that by the centenary, poverty would be eliminated and the country would achieve “moderate prosperity,” which is usually interpreted in official Chinese outlets as middle-income status.

Whatever the actual numbers, the CPC will undoubtedly proclaim that both benchmarks were achieved with flying colors. It is central to Xi’s legitimacy that this be the case. Yet in the meantime, the 2021 target will add to the pressure on China’s economic managers, who must not allow the country’s growth rate to slow too much, regardless of the downside risks, foreign or domestic.

China's Strategic Situational Awareness Capabilities

By Elsa Kania

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China has invested considerably in advancing its capabilities for strategic situational awareness.1 Although traditional shortcomings in strategic early warning have been a serious concern for China, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) today is developing a more mature architecture that could enhance its capability to undertake nuclear counterattack and conventional operations. Although the improvement of capabilities for early warning and situational awareness will remain a challenge for the PLA,2 these capabilities today encompass a growing number of satellites for remote sensing and electronic intelligence (ELINT), large, phased array radars and a range of other radars that are increasingly sophisticated, and early warning aircraft, as well as unmanned systems. The expansion and maturation of these varied systems will continue to be a priority for the PLA, pursuant to new missions and operational requirements in the region and worldwide.

What Iran Will Do Next, and How to Stop It

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James Stavridis

The U.S. and its European allies must get ready to sweep mines, escort tankers, launch cyberattacks and, perhaps, sink Iranian ships.

James Stavridis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a retired U.S. Navy admiral and former supreme allied commander of NATO, and dean emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is also an operating executive consultant at the Carlyle Group and chairs the board of counselors at McLarty Associates.

Predictably, Iran is reacting badly to the announcement that Europe is planning to send a multinational naval force to protect merchant shipping passing through the Strait of Hormuz. "We heard that they intend to send a European fleet to the Persian Gulf which naturally carries a hostile message, is provocative and will increase tensions," said an Iranian government spokesman this week.

Why the U.S. Will Struggle to Reduce Its Military Commitments Abroad

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The United States has called on its allies to increase their support of various missions, particularly in the Middle East, in the hopes of refocusing resources on its competition with Russia and China. 

U.S. allies, however, have been largely unwilling or unable to commit more forces abroad. And those that have so far have offered only token additional support. 

The widespread mistrust that the bulk of its partners share regarding U.S. intentions against Iran has hampered the White House's ability to garner support for its security program in the Persian Gulf. 

In other places, like Syria, the United States will likely be able to cobble together some extra reinforcements, but nowhere sufficient enough to allow Washington to completely draw down its presence. 

Time and again, the United States has attempted to redirect more of its attention and resources toward its competitions with Russia and China. But Washington's other commitments around the world continues to undermine this effort. Since taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump has sought to address this problem by pressuring allies to commit more military resources to places like Syria (where the United States is trying to draw troop levels) and most recently, the Persian Gulf (where it now faces an increased risk of a military clash with Iran). 

Sanctions: The New Economic Battlefield

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Economic warfare is being fought with an intensity not seen since the period leading up to World War II as countries deploy tariffs, embargoes and economic sanctions to force policy changes or punish their adversaries.

Free trade is coming off second best, and global trade has stalled. There’s been no growth in trade volumes since late 2017, contributing to a slowing world economy.

The World Trade Organization, as the upholder of global trading rules, looks increasingly impotent. Its resemblance to the League of Nations in the late 1930s will sharpen if, as is possible, the U.S. withdraws in the lead-up to next year’s presidential election.

A rising tide of trade embargoes in the early 1940s was the catalyst for Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor and attacks in Southeast Asia to secure its supplies of rubber and oil.

While the escalation of tariffs between the U.S. and China has been the greatest concern to economists and institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the use of economic sanctions is becoming increasingly aggressive and extends far beyond UN Security Council mandates.

How Fishing Boats Have Become Warships

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by Markos Kounalakis

Deep-sea fishing charters are a staple of most American coastal marinas—from Miami to the San Francisco Bay. Boats loaded with fuel and fun rock their way out on gentle waves to open waters and ocean sunsets. Summer freedom at its finest.

Now, imagine if the million registered floating funhouses in Florida and the million plus in California were suddenly impressed into the U.S. Navy to run offensive operations ramming ships or sent on snooping day-sails. If you can picture this, then you have a sense of other countries’ new hybrid navies. Around the world, fishing boats have become the new warships.

Fighting on the high seas and in ports of call is always treacherous, but the dangers just got worse. Battling against navy ships and subs trying to sink fleets, stake out seas, or show force now also means that every trawler, research vessel, fishing boat, and dinghy is also a potential combatant.

Taliban say differences resolved on US troop withdrawal

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The United States and the Taliban have resolved differences in peace talks over the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan and guarantees from the insurgents that they will cut ties with other extremist groups, a Taliban official said Tuesday.

The U.S. side did not immediately provide details about the latest round of talks held in Qatar, where the Taliban maintain a political office. But Zalmay Khalilzad, the American envoy who has been leading the talks since they began late last year, tweeted that they had made "excellent progress."

The two sides have been meeting for the last two days, and technical teams were continuing discussions on Tuesday in Doha. The Taliban official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss details of the negotiations.

Khalilzad, who has been tasked with finding a peaceful resolution to the nearly 18-year war — America's longest conflict — has made intra-Afghan talks and a permanent cease-fire priorities in the negotiations. But the Taliban have continued to sideline the Kabul government, dismissing it as a U.S. puppet and refusing to recognize it.

The Conflict in and around Ukraine

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This week’s featured graphic concerns the conflict in and around Ukraine, highlighting the territory and border checkpoints not under the control of the Ukrainian government. For an insight into the complexity Ukraine peace process, read Anna Hess Sargsyan’s recent contribution to the CSS Analyses in Security Policy series here.

Europe Needs to Calculate for the U.S. Military's Shortcomings

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Richard Barrons Maximilian Terhalle

European governments can either think very hard about the obvious implications stemming from the United States’ inability to fight two major powers at the same time or neglect them altogether.

“No, Sir!” replied James Mattis in 2017, when asked if the United States could fight two wars simultaneously. Thereby, he had made it unmistakably clear that America could not fight two major powers at the same time.

While America’s strategic limitations have not withered away, a serious debate about the implications has not occurred. This has to be recognized as an urgent problem. Putin’s support for Trump during the 2016 election campaign, the latter’s repeated questioning of NATO’s Article 5, the new trade war against China and other crises, including Iran, have all generated news but obfuscated the most vital and simmering question of today: assuming that Mattis is right, how will the United States, if at all, address the empty strategic space created by its decidedly limited capacity to confront and, if necessary, fight China and Russia at the same time?

Can artificial intelligence help society as much as it helps business?

By Jacques Bughin and Eric Hazan

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The answer is yes—but only if leaders start embracing technological social responsibility (TSR) as a new business imperative for the AI era. Article (PDF-3MB)

In 1953, US senators grilled General Motors CEO Charles “Engine Charlie” Wilson about his large GM shareholdings: Would they cloud his decision making if he became the US secretary of defense and the interests of General Motors and the United States diverged? Wilson said that he would always put US interests first but that he could not imagine such a divergence taking place, because, “for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.” Although Wilson was confirmed, his remarks raised eyebrows due to widespread skepticism about the alignment of corporate and societal interests.

The skepticism of the 1950s looks quaint when compared with today’s concerns about whether business leaders will harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and workplace automation to pad their own pockets and those of shareholders—not to mention hurting society by causing unemployment, infringing upon privacy, creating safety and security risks, or worse. But is it possible that what is good for society can also be good for business—and vice versa?

North Korea took $2 billion in cyberattacks to fund weapons program: U.N. report

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Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - North Korea has generated an estimated $2 billion for its weapons of mass destruction programs using “widespread and increasingly sophisticated” cyberattacks to steal from banks and cryptocurrency exchanges, according to a confidential U.N. report seen by Reuters on Monday.

Pyongyang also “continued to enhance its nuclear and missile programmes although it did not conduct a nuclear test or ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) launch,” said the report to the U.N. Security Council North Korea sanctions committee by independent experts monitoring compliance over the past six months.

The North Korean mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment on the report, which was submitted to the Security Council committee last week.

From the Gulf to Egypt, Foreign Powers Are Playing With Fire in Sudan

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Richard Downie

A cast of foreign actors is seeking to shape Sudan’s incomplete political transition after the fall of longtime President Omar al-Bashir, each nudging it in the direction they favor. Their competing agendas are complicating negotiations between the ruling Transitional Military Council and civilians in the pro-democracy movement represented by the Forces for Freedom and Change. The two sides reached a major agreement on July 5 to jointly manage a three-year transition to civilian rule, and there was a recent breakthrough on Aug. 4, as they finalized that July deal and thrashed out its details. Yet the transition remains fragile and vulnerable to spoilers.

The involvement of so many outside powers in Sudan’s affairs underlines the country’s strategic importance, not only to its African neighbors but to the broader Red Sea region and the Persian Gulf. The danger for Sudan is that it could get sucked into geopolitical rivalries that do not serve its national interests, dashing the hopes of its citizens for a peaceful, democratic future. ...

Why Doctors Should Organize Meeting the challenges of modern medicine will require more than seeing patients.

By Eric Topol

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In the fall of 2018, the American College of Physicians published a position paper on gun violence. “Firearm violence continues to be a public health crisis in the United States,” its authors wrote, in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. The report argued that assault weapons should be banned and that “physicians should counsel patients on the risk of having firearms in the home.” When it was published, the National Rifle Association responded with a tweet: “Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane.”

The N.R.A.’s tweet provoked an unprecedented response from the medical profession. Using the hashtag #ThisIsMyLane, emergency-room physicians, trauma surgeons, pediatricians, and pathologists, all of whom are involved in the care of patients with gunshot wounds, posted images of shooting victims and bloodstained hospital floors. Some shared selfies in which they were splattered with blood. “Do you have any idea how many bullets I pull out of corpses weekly? This isn’t just my lane. It’s my fucking highway,” Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist, tweeted. Melinek’s tweet went viral. Doctors appeared on television and wrote op-eds expressing their disgust with the N.R.A.

Iran’s Focus: Cyberwarfare and Retaliation on the West

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Benjamin J. Anderson

With Iran’s insatiable appetite for nuclear independence and cyber warfare retaliatory strikes against the West, the imposed sanctions have resulted in increased socio-economic unrest at a time where greater individual access to technology and communication devices by individuals may result in further regional destabilization.

Socio-economic Factors Affecting Iran

Iran’s desire to move into the nuclear age has resulted in significant international sanctions due to the potential instability created within the region. While Iranian leadership has forged ahead with its nuclear ambitions, whether ideological, religious, or for independence, the resultant international sanctions, inspections, and oversight has translated into socio-economic factors that appear to be transforming the country from within. As Copley points out, during the end of 2017 and beginning of 2018, Iran saw a spike in “widespread protests” that had not been observed since 2009, in part due to an increase in “youth unemployment” (2018, January).

Infographic Of The Day: Is Your Government Requesting User Data From Tech Giants? - Part 1

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'User data'; it's a phrase many of us might not even have been aware of until recent changes to the law made it a hot topic that we can't ignore. New data protection laws have forced technology companies to become much more transparent about the ways they use your data and how they are sharing it with global governments.

To do this, tech giants such as Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook publish regular transparency reports, which shed light on how the policies and actions of governments and corporations affect privacy, security and access to information. However, these reports tend to be impenetrable to anyone who‘s not an expert on such matters, so we decided to create a series of visualisations to break it all down.

Artificial intelligence in America’s digital city

Adie Tomer

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This report is part of "A Blueprint for the Future of AI," a series from the Brookings Institution that analyzes the new challenges and potential policy solutions introduced by artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.

Cities are an engine for human prosperity. By putting people and businesses in close proximity, cities serve as the vital hubs to exchange goods, services, and even ideas. Each year, more and more people move to cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas to take advantage of the opportunities available in these denser spaces.

Technology is essential to make cities work. While putting people in close proximity has certain advantages, there are also costs associated with fitting so many people and related activities into the same place. Whether it’s multistory buildings, aqueducts and water pipes, or lattice-like road networks, cities inspire people to develop new technologies that respond to the urban challenges of their day.

Protests, General Strike Bring Hong Kong to a Standstill

By Yanan Wang and Christopher Bodeen

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A general strike in Hong Kong descended into citywide mayhem Monday as defiant protesters started fires outside police stations and hurled bricks and eggs at officers. After disrupting traffic early in the day, they filled public parks and squares in several districts, refusing to disperse even as police repeatedly fired tear gas and rubber bullets from above.

While previous large rallies over the past two months of anti-government protests have generally been held over the weekends, Monday’s strike paralyzed regular city operations in an effort to draw more attention to the movement’s demands.

Hong Kong is on “the verge of a very dangerous situation,” said Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who insisted that she has no plans to resign despite the ongoing tumult.

Civ-Mil in Danger? Blame the Pundits, Not the Academies

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By George Fust

I teach civil-military relations at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. While searching for readings for an elective course taught in the spring semester, I came across a 2010 article written in the L.A. Times, "An increasingly politicized military." One passage stood out:

"By all accounts, the curricula of the service academies and the war colleges give remarkably little attention to the central importance of civilian control. They do not systematically expose up-and-coming officers to intensive case studies and simulations designed to give them a sense of the principle's real-world implications."

So where are we now? Nearly a decade later, those cadets have graduated and are now mid-career officers. Do civilians have less control over the military as a result of the claim that the military received poor instruction on proper civ-mil relations? Can curriculum "fix" broken civil-mil relations? Curriculum can inform and inspire, but it is not the keeper of the culture. The academies and the military itself have developed a unique conception of professionalism. The belief in service and placing the country above one's own need reinforces healthy civil-military relations. Those who join the military's ranks don't require academic literature and theory to understand their role in the system. As evidence, the majority of officers who commission into the military (around 80%) do so through R.O.T.C. This commissioning source does not have any curricula on the importance of civilian control, and yet, the system works.

When should the Army’s cyber school teach information warfare?

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Mark Pomerleau 

Each of the U.S. military services are reorganizing under a banner of information warfare, a subject area that often includes cyber, electronic warfare, signals intelligence and information operations. But, now, the Army’s cyber school is struggling to figure out how — and when — to teach those disciplines.

“The big elephant in the room is how are we going to incorporate information operations as part of the convergence or transformation,” Maj. Chase Hasbrouck, course manager for the Cyber Common Technical Core at the Army cyber school. Hasbrouck spoke to Fifth Domain during a week-long visit and was embedded with students at Fort Gordon earlier this year.

Of course, the Army’s cyber school needs to continue teaching students the appropriate skills set out by U.S. Cyber Command for personnel that will one day feed up to the joint cyber mission force ... but what about the other disciplines? The head of Army Cyber Command, Lt. Gen. Stephen Fogarty, has repeatedly said that by 2028 he’d like the command to transition to an approach more along the lines of Army Information Warfare Operations Command.