Embedding Creativity in Professional Military Education: Understanding Creativity and Its Implementation

Adam Lowther, Brooke Mitchell, Gerard Puccio, and Nathan Schwagler

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Is it possible to incorporate a creative mindset into professional military education curriculum? In our War on the Rocks article, “Professional Military Education Needs More Creativity, Not More History,” we argued that it is possible, but did not explain how. Here, we offer some insight into developing a creative mindset by first explaining what we mean by creativity and then offering steps for embedding creativity education into a joint professional military education program. Our recommendations are drawn from successful creativity programs the private sector invests in for their own employees, from examples already used across professional military education, and from academic research. 

Importantly, the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s Vision and Guidance for Professional Military Education and Talent Management provides all the needed reasons to incorporate the successful elements of creativity education into a systems-level approach that weaves evidence-based creativity strategies into existing curriculum. It also does not require eliminating existing subject matter, only modifying the method of delivery. And the desire already exists among various service school faculties to do just that. 

UNDERSTANDING CREATIVITY

“. . . All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic”: An Open Letter to Gen. Milley

By JOHN NAGL and PAUL YINGLING
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As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, you are well aware of your duties in ordinary times: to serve as principal military advisor to the president of the United States, and to transmit the lawful orders of the president and Secretary of Defense to combatant commanders. In ordinary times, these duties are entirely consistent with your oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…” 

We do not live in ordinary times. The president of the United States is actively subverting our electoral system, threatening to remain in office in defiance of our Constitution. In a few months’ time, you may have to choose between defying a lawless president or betraying your Constitutional oath. We write to assist you in thinking clearly about that choice. If Donald Trump refuses to leave office at the expiration of his constitutional term, the United States military must remove him by force, and you must give that order. 

Due to a dangerous confluence of circumstances, the once-unthinkable scenario of authoritarian rule in the United States is now a very real possibility. First, as Mr. Trump faces near certain electoral defeat, he is vigorously undermining public confidence in our elections. Second, Mr. Trump’s defeat would result in his facing not merely political ignominy, but also criminal charges. Third, Mr. Trump is assembling a private army capable of thwarting not only the will of the electorate but also the capacities of ordinary law enforcement. When these forces collide on January 20, 2021, the U.S. military will be the only institution capable of upholding our Constitutional order.

Army Electronic Warfare: Big Tests In ’21

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

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Each of the Army’s future jammers plugs into a larger electronic warfare network.

WASHINGTON: After decades of US neglect of electronic warfare – while Russia and China pulled ahead – Army soldiers are just months away from getting their hands on two new and long-awaited long-range jammers.

Two contractors, Lockheed Martin and Boeing DRT, are now converting 8×8 Stryker armored vehicles into prototypes of the Terrestrial Layer System (TLS). Both company’s prototypes will be given to troops for field tests next year, starting with Operational Demonstration 1 in January. Meanwhile, Lockheed is putting together the first Engineering & Manufacturing Demonstration (EMD) prototype of an EW pod for the Grey Eagle drone, called Multi-Function Electronic Warfare – Air – Large (MFEW), which will be assessed by soldiers in April-June next year.

Both the ground-based TLS and the aerial MFEW are supposed to enter service in fall 2022. But that’s just the start. Each system will evolve into a whole family of smaller and larger variants, all built to common hardware and software standards, all sharing data wirelessly with one another, Army commanders, and artillery units. The objective is a diverse digital arsenal that can detect the enemy’s transmissions, crack their codes, locate their units for precision strikes, and disrupt their networks with jamming and hacking, ideally in ways too subtle for the enemy to even detect the deception.

The Quad Is Poised to Become Openly Anti-China Soon

by Derek Grossman
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One of the most heavily scrutinized aspects of the Donald Trump administration's Indo-Pacific Strategy is the role played by the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or “Quad,” comprised of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States. Since the Quad's resurrection from a decade-long hiatus in November 2017, the group has met five times and has emphasized maintaining the liberal rules-based international order, which China seeks to undermine or overturn. As I have previously argued, the Quad signals unified resolve among these four nations to counter China's growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific.

What has been striking about the Quad thus far, however, is that it has resisted openly identifying China as the primary target it seeks to rein in. Indeed, Quad press releases from the respective foreign affairs establishments of each country have never once raised the word “China,” nor did the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy, in mentioning the Quad, directly link (PDF) Quad consultations to addressing China.

This is not a trivial issue as the first iteration of the Quad, in 2007, fell apart largely because Australia and to some extent India got cold feet over how much to push China without impacting other dimensions of their bilateral relationships with Beijing (Japanese and Australian electoral politics and America's reorientation toward trilateral engagement with Japan and Australia contributed as well). Thus, if the Quad is to be sustained this time around, it will likely have to come to grips with a forward-leaning approach to opposing Chinese activities throughout the region. Just one defection to a softer line on China could easily spell doom for the Quad all over again.

What World War II Teaches Us When It Comes to Standing Up to China

by Salvatore Babones
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The parallels between 1930s Germany and 2010s China are profound. The free world's failure to contain the Nazi evil in Germany led directly to World War II. China may not be plotting a third world war, but the need to contain its evil is no less profound. Just as no one in 1938 could know for certain just how bad things would get over the next seven years, no one today can know for certain what is coming from China. Our goal should be not to find out.

The Reductio ad Hitlerum is the distinctive twenty-first-century addition to Aristotle's classic list of thirteen logical fallacies. It occurs when an argument becomes so heated that one party compares the positions of the other to those of Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were so evidently evil that anything associated with them must be bad. So if you want to argue against vegetarianism, just point out that Hitler was a vegetarian. Q.E.D.

In domestic politics, Trump-Hitler comparisons have become so routine that they have lost their shock value: the one saving grace of the personal Reductio ad Hitlerum is that it often says more about its wielder than about its intended victim. International relations scholars, perhaps more knowledgeable about the historical Hitler and his murderous regime, thankfully seem less ready to invoke him to settle petty scores.

The Defense Reforms Taiwan Needs

By MICHAEL HUNZEKER and BRIAN DAVIS
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The U.S-Taiwan relationship is evolving. It is becoming routine for the U.S. Navy to send ships through the Taiwan Strait. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar will soon meet President Tsai Ing-wen, in Taipei, the first such cabinet-level visit in at least six years. This past June, an Army special forces group trained alongside a Taiwanese counterpart—and then posted footage of the exercise on Facebook. There are even efforts to codify America’s commitment to Taiwan, including Rep. Ted Yoho’s recently proposed Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act, which itself comes on the heels of the Taiwan Defense Act, introduced in both the House and the Senate.

These moves represent a necessary and overdue reassessment of America’s longstanding posture of strategic ambiguity toward the island. After all, Xi Jinping is not mincing words. His military’s frequent violations of Taiwanese waters and airspace serve as a stark reminder that China is willing to use violence to compel unification. 

At the same time, this shift could well result in the United States offering Taiwan greater security commitments. Because any such promises will mean risking American lives to preserve Taiwan’s freedom, the policy debate surrounding the future of U.S.-Taiwan relations cannot revolve exclusively around what the United States can and should do for Taiwan. Rather, it must include a robust conversation about what the United States should reasonably expect Taiwan to do to provide for its own defense.

Hidden Hand review – China's true global ambitions exposed

Will Hutton
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This is a remarkable book with a chilling message. The Chinese Communist party, for which dominating rural China in order to encircle its cities and win the civil war is part of its historic backstory, is now intent on doing the same internationally. Using whatever lever comes to hand – generously financing a thinktank in Washington, owning a part-share of Rotterdam port, encouraging “friendship” clubs like Britain’s 48 Group Club – it is aiming to create an international soft “discourse” and hard infrastructure that so encircles western power centres that the dominance of the party at home and abroad becomes unchallengeable.

China, we know, has very different definitions of terrorism, human rights, security and even multilateralism to those accepted internationally. The book spells them out and shows how intent the party is on winning international acceptance for them as vital buttresses to its power. Acts of terrorism include not eating pork or speaking out against one-party “democracy”, as the Uighurs and denizens of Hong Kong are learning. Human rights should be understood as the people’s collective right for Chinese-style economic and social development. Multilateralism means states acting in harmony with China and its view that economic development is the alpha and omega of all international purpose – the vision set out in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The Road to ‘Red Hong Kong’?

By Shin Kawashima

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Led by the West, the international community has been vocal in its opposition to the Hong Kong national security law. Naturally, Hong Kong residents themselves have also protested. Yet, there are those among emerging and developing countries that support China’s Hong Kong policy, and in fact Beijing’s policy enjoys quite a lot of support in mainland China as well.

From Hong Kong’s perspective, the Chinese logic of “national security” crossed the Rubicon with the sweeping away of the economic development argument, to be replaced by the expanded application of national security legislation. It certainly appears to be turning point if we recall Hong Kong’s long history as a point of contact between China and the West and between continental China and Taiwan during the Cold War. However, I do not think that the decline of Hong Kong is now inevitable. Rather, it is likely that Hong Kong’s role will reorient towards China, which is why a reinterpretation of “One Country, Two Systems” was needed. Of course, what Beijing wants may not necessarily be what it ends up getting.

More pain than gain: How the US-China trade war hurt America

Ryan Hass and Abraham Denmark

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The ultimate results of the phase one trade deal between China and the United States — and the trade war that preceded it — have significantly hurt the American economy without solving the underlying economic concerns that the trade war was meant to resolve, writes Ryan Hass and Abraham Denmark. The consequences that have followed in the wake of the economic clash have served to exacerbate bilateral relations. This piece originally appeared in SupChina.

As a candidate in 2016, Donald Trump built his argument for the presidency around his claimed acumen as a dealmaker. As the 2020 election draws nearer, President Trump and his surrogates are doubling down on that assertion, including by calling attention to what he has deemed “the biggest deal ever seen”: the “phase one” trade deal with China. The agreement reportedly includes a Chinese commitment to purchase an additional $200 billion in American goods above 2017 levels by the end of 2021.

Six months after the deal was inked, the costs and benefits of this agreement are coming into clearer focus. Despite Trump’s claim that “trade wars are good, and easy to win,” the ultimate results of the phase one trade deal between China and the United States — and the trade war that preceded it — have significantly hurt the American economy without solving the underlying economic concerns that the trade war was meant to resolve. The effects of the trade war go beyond economics, though. Trump’s prioritization on the trade deal and de-prioritization of all other dimensions of the relationship produced a more permissive environment for China to advance its interests abroad and oppress its own people at home, secure in the knowledge that American responses would be muted by a president who was reluctant to risk losing the deal.

ORIGINS OF THE TRADE WAR

Hikvision, Corporate Governance, and the Risks of Chinese Technology

By Anna Lehman-Ludwig

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As concerns have grown in recent years about the economic, national security, and human rights risks posed by Chinese technology firms, the United States has responded by banning or restricting the way many Chinese firms can operate in the country. Around the world, other governments are taking similar measures, citing security risks due to these companies’ alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Many Chinese firms, like Hikvision, Huawei, and TikTok, have pushed back on these measures, asserting their independence from the Chinese government. However, questions remain about how susceptible these companies are to Chinese influence, and how countries can evaluate these risks to calibrate their policy measures according to the actual dangers posed to citizens and their data. In making this risk calculation, one of the most important questions regards the corporate governance structure of Chinese firms.

An illustrative example of a Chinese firm whose corporate governance raises significant concerns about Chinese influence is Hikvision. The Hangzhou-based Hikvision is the world’s leading video surveillance equipment supplier, with revenue of over $7 billion in 2018. The United States has raised a number of concerns about the security risks posed by Hikvision, however, and has leveraged a number of restrictions against the company in recent years.

Meltdown in Minsk

BY AMY MACKINNON
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Security forces arrested some 3,000 people overnight in Belarus after protests broke out in response to Sunday’s dubious election results, the results of which have been questioned by opposition activists as well as European governments.

Dozens of people were injured as riot police used rubber bullets, water cannons, and flash grenades to suppress the protests. NetBlocks, a service that tracks internet freedom, reported severe disruptions in internet access in Belarus on Sunday, while security forces blocked off access to main roads into the capital, Minsk. Early on Monday evening, further protests were violently dispersed, and opposition activists have called for a general strike to begin on Tuesday. 

As political unrest threatens to engulf another country on the borderlands between Russia and the European Union, we’ve gathered our top reads to help make sense of what’s going on in Belarus. After 26 years in power, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko faces the most significant challenge yet to his rule. Frustrations are mounting over economic stagnation and his laissez-faire handling of the coronavirus pandemic, driving support for opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, whose preelection rallies were some of the largest since the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

Global Migration Is Not Abating. Neither Is the Backlash Against It

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Around the world, the popular backlash against global migration has fueled the rise of far-right populist parties and driven some centrist governments to adopt a tougher line on immigration. But with short-term strategies dominating the debate, many of the persistent drivers of migration go unaddressed, even as efforts to craft a global consensus on migration are hobbled by demands for quick solutions.

Around the world, migration continues to figure prominently in political debates. In Europe, far-right populist parties have used the Migrant Crisis of 2015 and latent fears of immigrants to fuel their rise and introduce increasingly restrictive border policies in countries, like Italy, where they entered government. The popular backlash against immigrants has also pushed centrist governments to adopt a tougher line on immigration at home, while working with countries of origin and transit to restrict migration, whether through improving border controls or strengthening economic incentives for potential emigres to stay in their home countries.

Covid-19 Drug Research Is a Big Huge Mess

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THE PANDEMIC DISEASE Covid-19 does much more to the human body than a typical respiratory virus. In addition to neurological problems ranging from a loss of sense of smell to outright seizures, surprising gastrointestinal symptoms and kidney damage, and a potentially fatal haywire immune response, the disease also messes with a person’s blood. The sickest people start forming clots, potentially leading to stroke, heart attack, lung damage … it’s a mess. Physicians started noticing all this early in the pandemic, of course. The question was—and remains—what to do about it all.

“So, someone comes into the hospital and needs a blood-thinning medication to keep them from clotting,” says Tracy Wang, a cardiologist who specializes in that problem—it’s called anticoagulation—at Duke Clinical Research Institute. But which patients would benefit the most? Which drug should they get? How much? When? Figuring out that kind of thing is the foundational behind-the-scenes work of medicine, where clinical trials of protocols and medications connect with on-the-ground clinical work. Except, when it came to anticoagulants and Covid-19, the research hasn’t happened yet. “Each hospital tried to develop their own protocol,” Wang says. “Could we have joined up hospital networks and developed a coordinated anticoagulant regimen? Or, if we can’t agree, develop two or three regimens and compare those?”

Can Biden Outflank Trump on Trade?

Kimberly Ann Elliott 

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However one judges the results, there is no question that President Donald Trump has taken American trade policy in a very different direction than his predecessors going back decades. He has rejected multilateralism and severely weakened the World Trade Organization, while embracing the use of tariffs against allies and adversaries alike. Biden has been clear that, if elected, he would restore a more multilateral approach, especially with respect to challenging Chinese trade practices. He has also assured union supporters that he would put the interests of American workers at the core of his trade policy. Beyond those broad principles, however, Biden has been more vague about rolling back Trump’s tariffs, reforming and reviving the WTO, or negotiating new trade agreements.

Overall, unlike Democratic presidential candidates to his left such as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Biden has hewed throughout his career, including 36 years in the Senate and eight as vice president, to a mainstream approach to trade policy. While calling for the enforcement of labor and environmental standards, Biden has generally supported agreements with major trade partners. He voted for the original North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 and for legislation paving the way for China to join the WTO in 2001, and supported the negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership as Barack Obama’s vice president.

How Life in Our Cities Will Look After the Coronavirus Pandemic

BY RICHARD FLORIDA,
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Cities are at the center of this pandemic, as they have been during so many plagues in history. The virus originated in a crowded city in central China. It spread between cities and has taken the most lives in cities. New York has become the world’s saddest, most dismal viral hotspot.

Hunkered down at home, rarely venturing into hauntingly empty streets, most of us are still at a loss at how urban life will look afterwards. Will restaurants survive and jobs come back? Will people still travel in crowded subways? Do we even need office towers when everyone is on Zoom? Come to think of it, the idea of living on a farm seems suddenly attractive.

Cities thrive on the opportunities for work and play, and on the endless variety of available goods and services. If fear of disease becomes the new normal, cities could be in for a bland and antiseptic future, perhaps even a dystopian one. But if the world’s cities find ways to adjust, as they always have in the past, their greatest era may yet lie before them.

The Hiroshima Effect

BY MICHAEL HIRSH
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“Why is it night already? Why did our house fall down? What happened?” The befuddlement of 5-year-old Myeko Nakamura moments after the first atomic bomb fell at 8:15 on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, as related in John Hersey’s classic account Hiroshima, remains to a large extent our befuddlement today. Seventy-five years after about 80,000 of Myeko’s neighbors died in an instant, we are, like that little girl, grateful to be alive but somewhat mystified about how it happened—and what surviving in the nuclear age really means. 

Above all we are mystified that today’s leaders aren’t doing more to prevent a greater horror than Hiroshima; if anything, led by America’s history-shredding president, Donald Trump, they are making that prospect more likely.

True, there are reasons to turn this baleful anniversary into a moment, however brief, of self-congratulation. Despite several close calls in the past 75 years—some notorious, like the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, others known to only a few—nuclear weapons were never again used in anger after the second bomb fell on Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima. The day-to-day balance of terror that defined the 40-year Cold War between the two nuclear superpowers, the United States and Soviet Union, is long over. Despite renewed tensions between the major nuclear powers and the advent of scary new technologies, no one touts the benefits of a nuclear first strike, as those satirized in the war room of black comedies like Dr. Strangelove once did. And with the exception of rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran, nuclear proliferation does not seem to be a growing threat; everyone is thankful that no terrorist group seems close to getting the bomb.

Pentagon Requests More Time to Review JEDI Cloud Contract Bids

By Frank Konkel
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In a court filing Monday, the Defense Department requested a 30-day extension to issue an award decision in its multibillion-dollar Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract. 

The Defense Department had planned to award JEDI by Aug. 17 after numerous delays, including a 120-day remand sought by the agency in March to take corrective action on issues identified in a legal protest by Amazon Web Services after the Pentagon initially awarded Microsoft the contract in October.

“During the remand, DoD has identified areas of concern with respect to the revised proposals received from both offerors, resulting in multiple solicitation amendments, rounds of proposal revisions, and exchanges with the offerors,” the filing states. “In evaluating each offeror’s final proposal revisions, however, DoD has recently identified the need to reopen limited discussions related to certain aspects of the offerors’ pricing proposals.”

The filing indicates both companies would have another chance to submit questions and a revised bid.

“DoD anticipates that the re-evaluation process will be complete by early September,” the filing states.

On Rare Earths, the Pentagon Is Making the Same Mistake Twice

BY JAMES KENNEDY
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The Pentagon, which peers beyond the horizon using radars powered by rare earth materials, is far more short-sighted when it comes to securing access to the critical elements that drive so much of its high-tech arsenals of today and tomorrow. 

This lack of vision is evident in the Pentagon’s recent decision to fund MP Materials, the privately held company that owns the twice-defunct Mountain Pass mine in California. Officials say the investment is part of a strategy to ensure American access to these key minerals. But this deposit does not serve U.S. technology and defense industry needs. For one thing, the geochemistry of the deposit is deficient; for another, the project may well be a geopolitical ruse.

The fundamental problem with the Pentagon’s decision is that the Mountain Pass deposit cannot produce many of the heavy rare earths that are critical to the military. For example, it lacks terbium and dysprosium, used in all high-temperature military-grade magnets for guided weapons, drones and the F-35. (Nor does it serve the U.S. commercial market, lacking lutetium, used in medical imaging devices; thulium and ytterbium, used in X-ray devices; and erbium and holmium, used in medical lasers.) 

Global Economics Intelligence executive summary, July 2020

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The US economy experienced a record-breaking GDP contraction of –9.5% (year over year) in the second quarter of 2020 (–32.9% annualized). Many analysts expect positive growth in the third quarter, stemming from partial reopening, but a continued surge of COVID-19 cases could halt further expansion. In terms of pandemic control and recovery, the eurozone occupies a position between China and the United States, but its economy sustained a deep contraction in the second quarter as well. Preliminary flash estimates published by the European Union show a contraction of –15.0% (y-o-y) in the eurozone as a whole, with contractions in its largest economies of –22.1% in Spain, –19.0% in France, –17.3% in Italy, and –11.7% in Germany. These are the worst quarterly results ever recorded in the eurozone and reveal how steep a climb lies ahead. Industrial production has, however, been ramping up lately as eurozone economies reopen.

Some positive economic signs did emerge in June and July in that contractions in industry slowed, business- and consumer-confidence indexes did not worsen, and equity markets continued to recover. The improvements are a product of government crisis-support measures, positive growth in China, and the emergence of economies from restrictions. The resulting increases in demand have helped revive the price of oil and other industrial commodities.

Why The Future of Belarus Matters to the United States

BY PATRICK TUCKER
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On Monday night, heavily armed security forces poured into the streets of Minsk, the capital of Belarus, to quash massive and growing protests against five-term president and Putin-ally Alyaksander Lukashenko. Police crackdowns, replete with rubber bullets, tear-gas, and arrests, have followed an election on Sunday that the U.S. State Department said “isn't free and fair.” 

The main opposition candidate, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, has fled to Lithuania — but not before recording a video in which she nervously and solemnly reads a statement urging Belarusians to accept the official — though internationally disputed — election results in favor of Lukashenko. 

Shortly after her statement, the Lithuanian foreign minister suggested that she made it under duress; her husband, an opposition journalist, has been jailed in recent weeks. Meanwhile, the Belarusian government has blocked the Internet throughout the country and several prominent journalists have been arrested or are simply missing. But opposition forces continue to reach audiences via apps such as Telegram. The episode has echoes of Ukraine’s 2014 Revolution of Dignity in which Ukrainians rejected the pro-Putin rule of Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych. Similarly, what happens next in Belarus could have profound consequences for democratic movements in Eastern Europe and even the U.S. military presence there.

Russia's Coronavirus Vaccine Is Not A 'Sputnik Moment'

By Alex Berezow, PhD 
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Today, Vladimir Putin announced that Russian regulators have approved the world's first coronavirus vaccine. He's so confident in it that he claims that one of his daughters has been vaccinated already. So, who wants to sign up for Putin's vaccine?

Not me. There's a lot that we can't verify, including Putin's claim that his daughter is vaccinated. There is no published data on safety or efficacy for outside scientists to examine. That data won't be available until September. Notably, the vaccine hasn't completed Phase III clinical trials, which constitute the largest and most important phase of testing because the vaccine's safety and efficacy are assessed in thousands of people. (The World Health Organization does not list the Russian vaccine as even being in Phase III.)

A New U.S. Policy Framework for the African Century

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U.S. policy toward Africa is in need of a facelift—in both substance and strategic vision—to keep up with the continent’s shifting demographics and growing influence on the world stage. Africans will be integral to addressing some of the world’s thorniest problems. The continent holds three nonpermanent seats at the UN Security Council, and it represents the largest and most unified bloc at the UN General Assembly.

A revitalized relationship with African countries must prioritize engagement with African counterparts because there are strategic issues on the table. It has to levy real carrots and sticks, not just deploy moralistic arguments about a policy outcome.

The United States should expand its diplomatic partners and repertoire, investing in cities, deepening its ties with regional bodies, elevating its private sector, and working alongside other external actors.

The United States should revamp its public diplomacy and communication with both African and U.S. audiences. By reimagining its soft power, as well as tapping behavioral economists, advertising professionals, and pollsters, the United States has a real opportunity to connect with the next generation of African leaders and advance its objectives in the region and the wider world.

Europe's biggest countries are seeing Covid surges -- but not this one

By Barbie Latza Nadeau and Livia Borghese

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(CNN)A horrifying moment in the Covid-19 pandemic hit Italy on March 27, 2020, when the civil protection authorities announced that 969 people had died in just 24 hours. In the weeks before that, images of coffins stacked up in church parlors and being driven down the streets of the northern Italian town of Bergamo in a caravan of military trucks poured into the homes of Italians, by then locked down for nearly three weeks.

Now, just four months later, life in Italy, the country Vice President Mike Pence once said "no one wanted to be like," is nearly back to normal, despite occasional spikes in cases that have been attributed to migrants arriving in the country or living in close quarters.

The death toll has leveled off at just over 35,000, with the number of new reported deaths now less than a dozen most days. The total number of cases now at 250,103 with daily increments in the low hundreds at most.

Pentagon Gives Up Huge Slice Of Spectrum For 5G

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

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WASHINGTON: After a remarkably fast interagency review, the White House today announced a massive transfer of electromagnetic spectrum from military use to commercial 5G. It will be the “fastest transfer of federal spectrum to commercial use in history,” US Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios told reporters proudly this afternoon. But, Kratsios and Pentagon CIO Dana Deasy assured reporters ahead of the announcement, the rush won’t compromise military readiness or operations.

The 100 megahertz of spectrum runs from 3450 MHz to 3550, so-called mid-band frequencies prized by 5G developers because they allow longer-ranged transmissions than the millimeter-wave spectrum that makes up most of what’s been available in the US so far. Kratsios and other officials told reporters shortly before this afternoon’s announcement that the move would dramatically expand 5G access for all Americans – fulling a congressional mandate in the 2018 MOBILE NOW Act – and strengthen potential competitors to Chinese giant Huawei in the global market.

America’s 5G Capabilities Are About to Get a Big Boost

BY PATRICK TUCKER
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The Pentagon will share the use of a big chunk of electromagnetic frequencies in a bid to help U.S. manufacturers bring commercial 5G products to market faster than their Chinese competitors, DoD and White House officials announced Monday.

The military’s release of the frequencies between 3.4 and 3.5 GHz is something like a giveaway of thousands of miles of prime real estate, and follows a similar decision to free up a nearby chunk of frequencies. It is the result of a 15-week effort by 180 experts working at “a record pace to develop a spectrum-sharing plan to support U.S. 5G leadership while protecting critical national security systems,” Defense Department CIO Dana Deasy said in a statement.

The right to share the frequencies with the military will likely be auctioned off, similar to the ongoing auction of Citizens Broadband Radio Service, or CBRS, spectrum auction in the 3.55 to 3.65 Ghz band. That auction could fetch as much as $10 billion. 

The Defense Department controls large portions of the mid-band spectrum in the 3 GHz to 6 GHZ range. It has been working with industry groups like the National Spectrum Consortium to better figure out ways to share that spectrum. And it’s been conducting experiments at Utah’s Hill Air Force Base on dynamic spectrum sharing — essentially, a scheme to allow non-military devices to use certain frequencies when the military isn’t doing so — which may make it possible to free up more spectrum in the future.

Building a digital New York Times: CEO Mark Thompson

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Over an eight-year tenure that began in 2012, Mark Thompson, president and CEO of the New York Times Company, has overseen a dramatic transformation of the storied institution into a digital-centric news brand. Under his watch, the Times’s digital readership has jumped to nearly 5.7 million subscribers, from half a million. Its annual revenue from digital-only subscriptions topped $450 million at the end of 2019. The Times has said it now has 6.5 million paying readers, more than halfway toward Thompson’s target of ten million subscribers by 2025. In late July, the Times Company announced that Thompson, age 62, will retire as CEO and be succeeded on September 8 by Meredith Kopit Levien, the Times Company’s executive vice president and COO, who was hired as head of advertising by Thompson in 2013.

“I’ve chosen this moment to step down because we have achieved everything I set out to do when I joined the Times Company eight years ago—and because I know that, in Meredith, I have an outstanding successor who is ready to lead the company on to its next chapter,” Thompson said, as part of the transition announcement. “There’s nothing that makes me more proud than the fact that our newsroom is substantially larger today than when I joined. The world needs Times journalism now more than ever.”

Report on Member States’ progress in implementing the EU Toolbox on 5G Cybersecurity

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This document constitutes the report on the implementation of the Toolbox referred to in the Commission Communication "Secure 5G deployment in the EU - Implementing the EU toolbox". Its main objective is to provide an overview of the state of play of the ongoing Toolbox implementation process by Member States as of June 2020. It was prepared and agreed by the NIS Cooperation Group, with the support of the Commission and ENISA.

Related documents: 

5G Toolbox Implementation Report (.pdf)

War Is Not an Option: China’s Growing Military Strength Threatens America’s Influence, Not Survival

by Doug Bandow 

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The People’s Republic of China is evolving into a great power. Its military spending ranks second behind America. The People’s Liberation Army is acquiring formidable capabilities. President Xi Jinping, Chairman of the Central Military Commission and de facto PLA commander-in-chief, has demonstrated that he is willing to use China’s military.

This has spurred demands in Washington for greater military outlays, increased force deployments in Asia, and preparation for a great Indo-Pacific war. Citing the so-called Thucydides Trap, derived from the Athenian historian’s celebrated history of the Peloponnesian War, some U.S. policymakers appear to believe conflict is inevitable.

It is not. Beijing is ambitious, to be sure. However, its designs are far less grand than those of America, which is determined to continue dominating the globe. Even if Chinese leaders imagine their nation eventually taking over as the world’s greatest power, such an attempt is likely to be well into the future. Their country’s weaknesses – demographic, economic, and political – are manifest. Today the PRC must spend more on internal security than on what is typically called defense. The price of ensuring domestic obedience is likely to continue rising as XI Jinping continues reaching back to Mao Zedong’s more totalitarian model.

A See-Saw Relationship: An Overview of Afghanistan’s Ties with India and Pakistan

Hargun Sethi

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This content was originally written for an undergraduate or Master's program. It is published as part of our mission to showcase peer-leading papers written by students during their studies. This work can be used for background reading and research, but should not be cited as an expert source or used in place of scholarly articles/books.

Afghanistan has been a key player in Asian geopolitics owing to its geostrategic and geopolitical location. Being situated at the crossroads of the Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, it has been a transit and transport hub since the ancient Silk route. In the context of global affairs, its central location and borders with six other nations including Iran, Pakistan, China, Turkmenistan have made it a hot-bed for conflict and cooperation. In this regard, the withdrawal of Soviet forces from the Afghan Civil war has considerably changed Afghanistan’s role and position in the whole of Asia. Moreover, the emergence of various Mujahidin parties sponsored by neighbouring countries and interference from outside powers has turned Afghanistan into total havoc.

Amidst all the chaos, both the neighbouring countries of India and Pakistan have been vital for Afghanistan in restructuring and changing its political landscape. From providing military, diplomatic and financial support on part of the Indian side, to attempt to hold peace talks between insurgent groups and the government, while at the same time providing a safe haven to these extremist groups on the Pakistani side; the bilateral relationship with each of the two nations have been of prime importance in Afghanistan across various regimes since the late 1990s. 

CONVERGING CHINESE AND RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION COMPOUNDS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY

By Andrea Kendall-Taylor and David Shullman

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In recent weeks the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) propaganda and disinformation blitz around COVID-19 has drawn increasing attention, and with good reason. In addition to promoting a narrative about Beijing’s global leadership around the pandemic, the Chinese government has adopted Russian disinformation tactics in promoting conspiracy theories purporting that COVID-19 originated in Europe, the United States, and beyond to distract from its failed initial response to contain the outbreak from spreading beyond Wuhan.

Several accounts of China’s information operations have noted the incorporation of Russian disinformation tactics. Yet the full significance of this development cannot be understood without appreciating the broader alignment between Russia and China. In other words, China’s adoption of Russian information operation techniques is about more than “authoritarian learning,” or the passive diffusion of such practices from one authoritarian regime to the next. Instead, Russia and China are deepening ties and increasing coordination on a range of economic, defense, technological, and political issues. These repeated interactions facilitate an intentional sharing of best practices and are building a foundation for sustained cooperation moving forward.

Xi Jinping Is Not Stalin

By Michael McFaul

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In a series of speeches this summer, senior officials in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump have cast the United States and China as antagonists in a new Cold War. Speaking to the Arizona Commerce Authority in June, U.S. National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien compared Chinese President Xi Jinping directly to the Soviet dictator in power when the actual Cold War began: “Let us be clear, the Chinese Communist Party is a Marxist-Leninist organization. The Party General Secretary Xi Jinping sees himself as Josef Stalin’s successor.”

A month later in California, U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo gave a speech about Xi that President Harry Truman could have delivered about Stalin. “General Secretary Xi Jinping is a true believer in a bankrupt totalitarian ideology,” he said, adding that Xi’s ideology “informs his decades-long desire for global hegemony of Chinese communism.” Echoing American policymakers at the beginning of the Cold War, Pompeo framed the fight with Xi and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as one in which only one side ultimately could win: “If the free world doesn’t change . . . communist China will surely change us.” He later repeated his warning on Twitter, writing, “China is working to take down freedom all across the world.”

What Is The Future Of Chinese Tech Companies In The U.S.?

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First, President Trump started a trade war between the U.S. and China. Now the two rivals seem to be at war over technology. In June, the U.S. designated telecom company Huawei a threat to national security. Today, the focus is TikTok. President Trump floated the idea of banning the social networking platform that millions of Americans use. TikTok's parent company in Beijing is considering selling to Microsoft. Adam Segal directs the Digital and Cyberspace Policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations, and he joins us now to talk about the future of Chinese tech companies in the U.S.

Good to have you here.

ADAM SEGAL: Thanks for having me on.

SHAPIRO: You know, experts say TikTok does not harvest any more user data than Facebook does. So what makes the Trump administration so nervous about this platform?

SEGAL: I think two things. First, according to the 2017 national intelligence law in China, all Chinese companies, entities appear to have to cooperate with the intelligence services. So there's a fear that that data will be turned over to the Communist Party and to the Chinese government. I think also TikTok represents a symbol for the Trump administration of the first global social media company to emerge out of China, and it's a challenge to the U.S.'s domination of the Internet.