Cyber Wargame - An Indian Scenario

Maj Gen P K Mallick, VSM (Retd), Consultant, VIF

Immediately after the first gulf war in the early 1990’s the theories of Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and Information Warfare were being studied all over the world as a new kind of warfare. During that time, a course on Information Warfare was conducted at the National Defense University of USA. The course participants were from senior officers of the armed forces, representatives of Department of Defence and Department of State and policy makers from the government. Rand Corporation of US was conducting this course. Continue reading.......

Super High Altitude Areas in Eastern Ladakh: Designing Ground Operations

Lt. Gen. DS Hooda PVSM, UYSM, AVSM, VSM** and Lt. Gen. Rakesh Sharma PVSM,UYSM,AVSM,VSM (Retd.)

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The Chinese have exhibited a coercive and intimidating approach in 2020, in South and East China Seas, the Taiwan Straits, Nepal (Mt Everest), Bhutan (Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary in Eastern Bhutan’s Trashigang district) and Eastern Ladakh. Without a legal basis, the Chinese actions clearly demonstrate muscle flexing and hegemonic intentions. These are a part of China’s larger geopolitical aspirations and also reveal a greater willingness to use military force, as was apparent in the induction of 6 Mechanised and 4 Motorised Divisions across Eastern Ladakh. The Chinese aim was to show their national will and deter India from any quid pro quo military actions. These geopolitical ambitions, and the will or intent to employ military force to achieve those ambitions, is a major futuristic challenge for India.

The Chinese aggression in Eastern Ladakh at multiple areas, followed by an intransigent attitude in disengaging, de-escalating and return to pre-May positions, was a first of its kind. It has forcefully brought home the threat of a conventional war in the high altitude areas of the Northern borders and also heightened the likelihood of collusive support by Pakistan. In appreciation of the threat that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) poses, the Indian Armed Forces have undertaken robust and forceful measures in Eastern Ladakh. There has also been a positive movement in the Government for facilitating essential and emergency defence acquisitions to strengthen the armed forces, fill-in voids where they exist, and allocate additional resources for infrastructure development. However, there is a need to undertake a comprehensive assessment of our warfighting techniques in super high altitude areas.

Surveying Opinion on Withdrawing US Troops from Afghanistan and South Korea

Timothy S. Rich, Sofia Kamali and Kaitlyn Bison

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The Trump administration has repeatedly threatened to withdraw troops abroad, including those in two Asian countries facing vastly different security conditions, Afghanistan and South Korea. While the economic and political factors behind potential withdrawals receives growing attention, American public opinion lags behind, despite piecemeal evidence that a sizable portion of the American public remains concerned about military spending and prolonged commitments abroad. For example, a 2019 Chicago Council Survey found considerable variation in support for maintaining versus withdrawing U.S. forces. We ask not only whether the U.S. public supports withdrawing from these two countries, but to what extent partisan and demographic factors influence support.

The U.S. committed at one point to over 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan, coupled with billions of dollars to fight a Taliban insurgency and fund reconstruction. In February 2020, in accordance with a preliminary peace deal with the Taliban, the U.S. agreed to reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan to 8,600 within 135 days. Additionally, the U.S. committed to withdrawing all troops from Afghanistan by April 2021 if the Taliban upheld commitments to prevent terrorist groups using Afghan territory to threaten the U.S. and its allies and pursued intra-Afghan negotiations.

WAKING UP TO THE CHINESE INCURSION

by Allyson Christy

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Beginning with US President Richard Nixon’s journey to Beijing, advanced economies have underwritten China’s rise through foreign direct investment (FDI) and mentorship.

—Daniel Araya, China’s Grand Strategy

What may be understood today as a power impasse starting decades ago, yielded globalization advantages to a state clearly at odds with democratic values. Given that American industries, including steel, leather, and tires were presumed to decline from the 1970s, growth in Chinese productivity began to weigh on job losses, trade imbalances, and debt, creating a pattern of economic disparities, coupled with Beijing’s quick rise to power. Global supply chains suddenly widened vulnerability gaps — troublingly noted to information and communications technology and rising dependence on foreign outsourcing. Defense contractors connected to similar supply patterns, accompanying America’s manufacturing decline. Only later did it seem to highlight national security.

Historic connections to trade deficits, unfair business practices, secrecy, theft, military expansion, and charges of regional hegemon may echo a timeline of events that are marked to concurrent and problematic imbalances. Public introspection implores a review of policies that have supported the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over four decades. Underscoring primacy goals in world affairs with the rapid modernization of the People’s Republic of China, urges attention to reviving America’s manufacturing and workforce strength, resilience, global standing, and security.

US To China: You Do NOT Control South China Sea

By COLIN CLARK

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US aircraft fly in formation over the Nimitz Carrier Strike Force on July 6, 2020, in the South China Sea. The USS Nimitz (CVN 68), right, and USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) and their carrier strike groups are conducting dual carrier operations in the Indo-Pacific as the Nimitz Carrier Strike Force.

WASHINGTON: In what a top China expert calls a “very significant” policy shift, the Trump administration sharpened America’s position today on who controls the South China Sea and how the region’s many disputes should be resolved. China is likely to be unhappy.

The move comes less than a week after the US mounted a rare two-carrier freedom of navigation operation (FONOP) in the South China Sea.

The change was announced in a statement by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, giving it greater visibility and making clear that the policy probably has direct support from the White House since Pompeo is one of President Trump’s closest advisors.

Trump’s Biggest Foreign Policy Win So Far

BY IAN BREMMER 
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Bremmer is a foreign affairs columnist and editor-at-large at TIME. He is the president of Eurasia Group, a political-risk consultancy, and GZERO Media, a company dedicated to providing intelligent and engaging coverage of international affairs. He teaches applied geopolitics at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and his most recent book is Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism. 

The British government announced that U.K. telecom carriers will be banned from installing new Huawei equipment for their 5G network by year’s end, effectively cutting China’s tech champion out of the country’s 5G future… a future which Chinese companies had grand plans to dominate. It’s time we acknowledge that the U.S. fight for tech supremacy versus China has been the single most successful foreign policy of the Donald Trump Administration. It’s not even close.

When Eurasia Group first wrote about the global tech cold war back in 2018, it wasn’t clear the Trump administration would be able to pull this off. Far from it.

Yes, the U.S. had the advantage going into the battle, but China had spent the better part of the last decade frantically playing catch up, from plowing resources into market leaders like Huawei to engaging in alleged corporate espionage and IP theft to get China’s technology capabilities to the point where it could realistically compete with the U.S., if not always on innovation than at least on price. (Beijing denies systematically stealing U.S. IP.)

Europe changes its mind on China

Thomas Wright

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Over the past few years, the European Union and a handful of other European countries have reluctantly moved away from a China policy organized around economic engagement toward a policy of limiting China’s influence in Europe for strategic and security reasons. This is a distinctly and uniquely European style of balancing, which involves marshaling Europe’s internal power and working to build unity across member states. It has almost nothing to do with kinetic military power and is instead focused on technology, diplomacy, economics, and politics.

The driving force behind this shift is China’s behavior — its refusal to end practices of intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers, its failure to enhance market openness for European companies, its use of coercive economic tools and political influence in Europe, and its illiberalism on the world stage. In some ways, the European shift is occurring despite American pressure, not because of it. If China were a responsible stakeholder, U.S. pressure would very likely lead to Europe hedging against the Trump administration and increasing engagement with Beijing. After all, most Europeans are profoundly worried by President Donald Trump, and China seemed well poised to take advantage of this with adroit diplomacy to weaken the trans-Atlantic bond. That it utterly failed to do so shows how badly Beijing has bungled its Europe policy.

The United States, China, and economic fragmentation

by Robert A. Manning

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Some argue that a process of deglobalization is underway. Brexit, for example, marks the first time since World War II that a nation has left a free trade agreement. US President Donald J. Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), rejected the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), renegotiated both NAFTA and KORUS, and has imposed tariffs on US allies under a dubious “national security” rationale. Since the collapse of the Doha Development Round in 2007, no effort has been made toward a new comprehensive World Trade Organization (WTO) global accord. Instead, consensus among major trading states that the WTO needs to be reformed has led to efforts to update and modernize that institution. Trump’s widespread imposition of tariffs on major trading partners and denigration of multilateral institutions, and creeping trade-restrictive measures worldwide—more than seven thousand adopted since 2008—are additional factors on which the future of the global trading system will turn. 

But a larger body of evidence suggests countertrends—more a transition in the patterns and character of globalization, less a decline in interdependence than a shift toward more market-driven regionalization—evident in shorter, more local and regional global value chains and proliferating regional and intra-regional trade agreements. In lieu of global trade talks, regional integration continues apace led by Asia (including South Asia), whose intra-regional trade in 2016 as a percentage of total reached 58 percent, surpassing that of NAFTA’s 56 percent (comprising of Canada, Mexico, and the United States), and second only to the European Union’s 27 member countries at 69 percent. But, more than NAFTA and EU27, Asian economic integration, driven largely by Japanese auto and electronics investment in the 1980s and 1990s, and now by China’s growth, is largely market-driven amidst what is known as a “noodle bowl” of overlapping bilateral and subregional free trade agreements (FTAs) and with the Asia-Pacific only now moving to consolidate such agreements into a comprehensive regional trade accord. While there is substantial intra-regional trade and investment, these three major economic clusters reflect the geographic concentration of world trade. Another indicator of change rather than deglobalization is that despite profound policy uncertainties, global trade, prior to the coronavirus-induced economic recession, had continued to grow at a faster pace than global annual economic growth. 

What to Keep From Trump’s Foreign Policy After He’s Gone

Judah Grunstein 

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Should the four-year-long polar night of Donald Trump’s presidency come to a definitive end this November, most observers of his catastrophic handling of U.S. foreign policy will rejoice. After all, Trump has done significant damage to America’s national interests—and has done so in a uniquely corrosive way. He has undermined America’s alliances and partnerships while emboldening its adversaries, all in pursuit of an ad hoc, incoherent and personalized foreign policy devoid of strategic planning. Meanwhile, he has overseen domestic shifts that leave the U.S. more closely resembling the foreign nations it has long criticized, backsliding on democratic norms and the rule of law at home, while retreating as an advocate of human rights abroad. ..

‘Zero Trust’ Cybersecurity Plan This Year From DISA & NSA

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

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WASHINGTON: Agencies from across the Defense Department are coming together to turn zero trust from buzzword to reality. Led by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and the National Security Agency (NSA), the workshops’ goal is to create a set of “best practices” to guide upgrades across DoD, said Vice Adm. Nancy Norton. Norton commands both DISA, the Pentagon’s tech support agency, and JHFQ-DoDIN, the DOD’s operational HQ for day-to-day cybersecurity.

“The initial Zero Trust Reference Architecture … will be out towards the end of this year,” Norton told AFCEA’s annual Army Signal conference this morning. While lots of companies are eager to sell products labeled “zero trust,” the architecture is intended to show Defense Department organizations how they can upgrade the technology they already have.

That means converting systems that now rely on a single line of defense to a layered defense based on zero trust. Most current information technology – including countless aging systems in the Defense Department – relies on perimeter security, where logging in means you can access all the data on a given device or even a whole network. But cybersecurity experts assume these days that the enemy will get through that perimeter – or be already inside it with legitimate credentials, as Ed Snowden was at NSA. So zero trust constantly checks and re-checks each user and software process each time they try to access data, operating under the principle of “deny by default.” You don’t get access unless you specifically prove you should have it.

Review – The Great Betrayal: How America Abandoned the Kurds and Lost the Middle East

David L. Phillips

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The Great Betrayal: How America Abandoned the Kurds and Lost the Middle East by David L. Phillips is a book about the political and diplomatic history of the Kurds and tells the story of how the US let the Kurds down and situates this story within a historical and geopolitical context. It covers a long period of history but pays particular attention to the more recent political contexts and conflicts in Iraq and Syria. The book provides interesting insights on the role of Kurdish political actors in the Middle East as important and useful allies to the US and other western states. The book is valuable due to its international perspective on the Kurds. Moreover, the detailed account of the aftermath of the referendum in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, especially on politics and developments in Kirkuk, is impressive, as well as the complexity around Iran’s engagement in Iraqi and Kurdish political and military affairs. Having said that, The Great Betrayal fails the reader on many accounts. Paul Iddon has provided a very detailed overview of the various errors and misrepresentations appearing in this book, but there are some particular shortcomings which are worth highlighting.

Overall, the book provides a one-sided perspective on many issues without appreciating the complex politics and goals around specific incidents or processes. This selective account leads to gross simplifications and generalisations. For instance, the historical parts of the book, especially the First World War period when Kurdish self-determination was on the agenda, appear to rely on a small number of general books and some erroneous information and analysis. Then the author jumps to Kurdish politics in Iraq in the 1970s but quickly moves to the 1990s and in so doing does not sufficiently elaborate on the period between the First World War and the 1990s. This ultimately leads to a sweeping, selective and haphazard account of a complex history of a large geography. The historical account in the book, as well as some of the interpretations of contemporary events, represents a romanticised view of the Kurdish struggle at times. There is nothing wrong with the author’s obvious sympathy towards the Kurds and their desire for statehood. However, this sympathy relies on a one-sided and sometimes erroneous representation of events.

Army Says Long Range Missiles Will Help Air Force, Not Compete

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

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WASHINGTON: “The services are unified by the pacing threat,” Army Brig. Gen. John Rafferty told me, dismissing reports of service rivalries over land-based missiles.

Last week, retired Air Force three-star Dave Deptula denounced the Army’s drive to develop long-range missiles as “ridiculous,” a costly and redundant bid for a mission that he said aircraft do much better. This week, the Army officer overseeing those missile programs, Brig. Gen. Rafferty, reached out to Breaking Defense to offer a rebuttal.

Army Futures Command’s director of Long Range Precision Fires said he doesn’t see the “infighting between services over roles and missions” described in a recent Breaking Defense article. To the contrary, Rafferty’s team is looking for new ways to “work together, from a command & control and a targeting standpoint, with the Navy and the Air Force,” he said. “That’s coming in our experimentation, [which] really begins to pick up speed in the fall and into in ’21 and ’22.”

The Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines all recognize that:

Global Warming. Inequality. Covid-19. And Al Gore Is ... Optimistic?

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BEFORE HE WAS the guy with the climate change PowerPoint presentation, before he lost the US presidency by a nose (and a Supreme Court decision), Al Gore had a reputation for pitching ambitious policy solutions to the knottiest societal problems. From the Senate to the vice presidency, while most politicians were yelling about oil prices, Gore was talking about connecting information superhighways to public schools and taxing British Thermal Units to fight global warming.

For the past decade and a half, Gore, a self-described “recovering politician,” has been a capitalist. He’s chair of Generation Investment Management, a $20 billion equity firm focusing on environmentally sustainable companies. It might seem like a tough time to put on that specific happy face—a pandemic and resurgent fights over racial and economic inequality might take cuts in the queue ahead of a global economic meltdown and planetary ecosystem collapse. Even Generation’s annual sustainability report shows that public attention toward climate change has taken a backseat to concerns about the novel coronavirus. Yet somehow now, as the firm releases this fourth annual Sustainability Trends Report, Gore seems almost … optimistic. Which—well, how could that be?

Emotions raw as EU budget summit stretches into fourth day

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN AND RYM MOMTAZ
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Anger flared and emotions ran high Sunday after EU leaders struggled through a third day of negotiations over plans for a landmark €1.82 trillion budget-and-recovery package.

In one of the more electric moments, French President Emmanuel Macron lashed out at Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who had walked out of the leaders' gathering to take a phone call.

“You see? He doesn’t care. He doesn’t listen to others, has a bad attitude," Macron said, deriding Kurz, who is part of a self-described frugal faction that has pushed to shrink the overall size of the budget plan and reduce the amount of grants to be given to countries to help them recover from the coronavirus crisis. "He handles his press and basta!" Macron said.

As the clock struck midnight, the summit entered its fourth day, making it one of the longest in the bloc's history. But leaders were still deadlocked on the core question of the size of a proposed economic recovery fund.

Funding Unity in the EU

BY SUSI DENNISON
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This week marks the middle of July, and the clock is ticking for Europe’s political leaders. By the end of this month, they are determined to agree to the European Union budget for the next seven years along with a recovery fund to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. A special European Council meeting has been called for July 17 and 18, with capitals, instead of winding down for the summer, engaging in shuttle diplomacy, in the hope of finding some consensus for a deal. Representatives have also aired the possibility of a second meeting later this month. Some committed heads of state are even postponing their wedding plans in order to work on the agreement.

The stakes are high. In the EU, Council President Charles Michel’s latest proposal is a budget of just over 1.1 trillion euros ($1.25 trillion) over seven years. He also wants to empower the European Commission to borrow up to 750 billion euros ($860 billion) for the pandemic recovery fund. But there remain a number of sticking points. Chief among them is the government of the Netherlands’ firmly held view that any decisions about the recovery fund have to made unanimously. There’s also the difficulty of ensuring that taxpayers’ money goes toward a green recovery for a rules-based Europe while states such as Hungary and Poland are dragging their feet on both the transition away from carbon and respecting European values. With these countries set to do relatively well in terms of the allocations of the recovery fund, commentators have voiced concerns about how they can be convinced to play ball.

Trump’s Trade Policy Is Making America Stronger

By Robert E. Lighthizer

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Iam pleased that my essay on trade and the dignity of work (“How to Make Trade Work for Workers,” July/August 2020) has generated so much interest and discussion. And I welcome the opportunity to respond to critiques that have appeared in Foreign Affairs and elsewhere. 

This debate is not about small things but about the kind of economy and society we want our children to inherit. We do future generations a disservice if we resort to the usual partisan carping on an issue when consensus is achievable—and indeed, has been achieved under the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump—even in an otherwise divisive climate. The passage in Congress of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) by overwhelming numbers and the bipartisan support for a tougher China policy are proof that a new consensus is quickly solidifying

THE LOST CAUSE OF THE TPP

Many critics of the administration’s trade policy start by lamenting the death of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In my view, the TPP was a bad agreement for the United States. Its chapter on the rules of origin (which stipulates that a certain percentage of content in traded goods must be from the free-trade area in order to qualify for duty-free treatment) would have allowed China to set up new auto assembly platforms in Malaysia and Vietnam, divert high-value parts to those plants (up to 55 percent of total content), and flood the U.S. market. The agreement had weak or unenforceable obligations in such important areas as labor, intellectual property, and currency manipulation. The chapters on state-owned enterprises and digital trade were riddled with loopholes. For these reasons, there was substantial, bipartisan opposition to the TPP in Congress. Indeed, both major party candidates in the 2016 presidential election opposed it. 

Precision Technologies: Replacement to Conventional Weapons?

By Parkha Durrani
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In the dark arena of nuclear catastrophe, after the advent of nuclear related technologies emerged, the dynamics of Global security environment transformed into a Paradox of Power among the great powers. A series of power struggle became a notion between strategic competitors in the 20th century. US and Soviet Union neglected the idea of war after World War 2, when seeking the potential power of deterrence of Nuclear weapons. Since then, the world restrict itself from indulging in any nuclear war rather states became more inclined towards arms control and nonproliferation negotiations in order to avoid, conventional wars.

21st century, sets a hallmark for domination of technology in global strategic security environment. The impacts of major wars on the states provided a lesson to protect not only state itself along its nation from a nuclear winter. Advancements in the technology opens a gateway to a more precise and intelligent wars without much resources and escalation rather limited force to achieve desirable military outcomes. With such a vast spectrum of emerging technologies today, will they replace the nuclear deterrence? Or do these small yield precision technologies have potential to overtake the nuclear weapons? Or what can be the limit of its threshold for replacement?

Theoretical Framework:

Crisis in Russia Deepens and Spreads, but Putin Remains in Denial

By: Pavel K. Baev

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Every country in the world is experiencing its own particular version of the ongoing global health-and-economic crisis, and Russia faces a particularly complex one, aggravated by outstanding and escalating mismanagement. President Vladimir Putin insists that the COVID-19 pandemic is under control and that the economic contraction is being mitigated; but in fact, neither has been contained, while the Kremlin leader’s self-serving political agenda is antagonizing an increasing portion of the population and the elites. Putin relies on the habitual combination of information control and targeted repressions for suppressing the discontent; yet, his own sociological research, conducted—rather unconventionally—by the Federal Protection Service (FSO), warns about rising anger (Meduza.io, July 16). Feigning supreme confidence, Putin refuses to acknowledge the swift erosion of his severely corrupt autocratic regime, but denials only back him into an ever-tighter corner, from which, as previous experiences indicate, he tends to lash out violently—and in an unpredictable direction.

In late May, Putin announced that the spread of the novel coronavirus in Russia had reached a “plateau”; since then, the official data has been duly reporting about 6,500 new infections a day (Svoboda.org, July 15). The real picture can only be sketched from fragmented bits of information, like the plea for urgent help from the mayor of Norilsk, who confirmed that the figures were being deliberately distorted (Newsru.com, July 16). The pandemic situation in Moscow may have indeed improved after the lockdown in April, enforced by Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, but his guess that up to 60 percent of Muscovites now have immunity is not grounded in any scientific evidence (Moskovsky Komsomolets, July 17). Meanwhile, in many regions, the authorities are under pressure to downplay the scale of the disaster, betrayed by revelations such as that 820 medics in Sverdlovsk Oblast have already been infected (Kommersant, July 17).

How SARS-CoV-2 causes disease and death in covid-19

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Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our coronavirus hub

The first set of lungs felt like rubber, says Rainer Claus, so damaged that it was impossible to imagine how any amount of oxygen could get through them. The lungs in the rest of the ten covid-19 victims that he and his colleagues at the University Medical Centre Augsburg, in Germany, autopsied in early April were in similarly awful condition.

This has been, for the most part, the story around the world. People get infected with sars-cov-2, the virus which causes covid-19, by breathing in tiny liquid droplets containing virus particles. Those particles gain entry to the lungs, where they start reproducing themselves. If the immune system does not stop it—which it mostly does—the virus causes so much damage that the lungs can no longer do their job, ending up like those in Augsburg.

But there are other facets to the disease not so easily understood. It robs some of the infected of their sense of smell; in others the toes or fingers darken as if bruised. Hearts swell; blood clots; immune systems cripple organs they are meant to be saving. Doctors around the world are trying to find out how much these various symptoms are attributable to direct effects of the virus, to secondary effects of the damage it does to the lungs, or even, in some cases, to the treatments used against it. The more of the story they can disentangle, the better the standard of care is likely to get.

Economic Competition in the 21st Century

by Howard J. Shatz

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What is strategic competition in economics?

What is competition as outcome versus competition as action?

How do countries compete for markets, technologies, and standards?

What are the economic tools for geopolitical competition?

What are the tools of economic warfare?

What are the three pillars of the current rules-based international economic system, and why is there rising competition to set future rules for the international economy?

How does U.S. aggregate domestic economic prosperity translate into international power in the global economy?

Why is economic competition relevant to the U.S. armed forces?

What are the policy implications of economic competition?

COVID-19 and Pandemics: The Greatest National Security Threat of 2020 and Beyond

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How should the United States define its national security? At the U.S. Army War College, where I teach, that is one of the first questions we pose to our students. It’s not a simple one. While there is general agreement that national security includes protecting the territory of the United States and the lives of its citizens, securing agreement on more expansive definitions becomes challenging. Most students agree that economic prosperity is vital to national security. Some want to expand the definition further to include protection of key allies and partners, protection of values such as democracy and basic human rights, or upholding a world order that preserves stability. Of course, the more expansive the definition of national security, the greater the means required to protect it.

How a state defines national security helps it discern and defend against threats to that security. One of the next tasks we give our students is to articulate those threats and how the United States should defend against them. Here, the discussion usually revolves around a list of states—Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea inevitably come up. Discussion then usually moves to non-state threats, with international terrorism topping the list, followed often by proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and international organized crime. Some students argue that things like climate change and pandemic disease should be included on the list. Others argue that these non-traditional threats do not merit inclusion.

The new ways the military is fighting against information warfare tactics

Mark Pomerleau

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One of the clearest examples of how the military wants to defeat adversaries using information warfare is by publicly disclosing what those enemies have been doing and what capabilities they have.

Information warfare can be abstract, combining cyber, intelligence, electronic warfare, information operations, psychological operations or military deception as a way to influence the information environment or change the way an adversary think.

“At our level, the most important thing we can do is to be able to expose what an adversary is doing that we consider to be malign activity, in a way that allows that to be put in the information environment so that now more scrutiny can be applied to it,” Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh, commander 16th Air Force, the Air Force’s newly established information warfare organization, told reporters during a media round table in late February.

One of the first ways the Department of Defense has sought to test this is through U.S. Cyber Command’s posting of malware samples to the public resource VirusTotal. Malware samples discovered in the course of operations by the Cyber National Mission Force are posted to the site to inform network owners. It also helps antivirus organizations of the strains build patches against that code and helps identify the enemies’ tools being used in ongoing campaigns.

The Responsibility to Protect: A Disputed Matter

Margherita Buso

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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.

The international system can be seen as that arena where the clash between the principle of state sovereignty and the protection of human rights occur. Traditionally, such concepts have been interpreted more as contrasting, rather than as complementary elements, since the general idea was that the implementation of one would have determined the weakening of the other. This tension was perpetrated throughout time and lately projected in the creation of the United Nations (UN), which aims for international peace and security among states. This institution can be seen as the accurate representation of such tension, as on the one hand the UN seeks for the maintenance of peaceful relations between states and human rights’ protection; on the other hand, it embodies the main legal source of authority on the use of force (Badescu, C., 2012). However, recently, the introduction of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has challenged the ‘natural order’ of the international system by providing a different understanding of state sovereignty, including state accountability. By relying on the above-mentioned doctrine, the essay will argue that, even though there is a tension between state sovereignty and human rights’ defence, it is possible to overcome it by interpreting sovereignty as the states’ responsibility towards the protection of its own citizens, rather than merely as a tool for limitless power.

NATO and 5G: what strategic lessons?

Andrea Gilli * 
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Thanks to their higher speed, larger data volume, lower latency, and capacity to sustain very high density-connections (including machine-to-machine communications), 5G networks are set to unleash a major economic revolution, potentially adding trillions of dollars to the global economy (at least according to recent forecasts).1 From smart cities to Artificial Intelligence (AI); telemedicine to driverless cars; virtual reality to the Internet of Things (IoT); Industry 4.0 to all manner of applications that will comprise this new ecosystem, 5G ushers in enormous opportunities. 5G communications still require significant investments, both for research and development of key technologies, and for building the supporting infrastructure. Moreover, the next generation of telecommunications raises several important questions about the political economy of spectrum allocation and standard definition, their military applications, the role of Chinese companies and the attendant cybersecurity risks. These are all relevant topics for NATO from which the Alliance can draw some strategic lessons.

INFORMATION WARFARE

J A M E S P. FA R W E L L

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Through the long and varied history of the U.S. Marine Corps, one thing has remained consistent: its ability to recognize when change is needed and adapt to the situation. A significant factor that contributes to the Corps’ adaptability is the constant focus on training and education that every Marine — officer and enlisted—receives throughout the length of their career. In the 36th Commandant’s Planning Guidance, 2015, General Joseph F. Dunford Jr. highlighted how the Corps can continue to meet those changing needs: “The challenges of an increasingly uncertain, complex, and decentralized operating environment will continue to place new demands on our leaders at all levels. Our recruiting standards, manning policies, training, and education must constantly evolve to produce Marines who can meet those challenges.”1 

As a Corps, we must move away from the Industrial Age educational approach of listening to a lecture, memorizing facts, and then regurgitating those facts. For Marines today, training and education must be understood as vastly different exercises of the mind and body. Marine Corps training refers to job-oriented training aimed at accomplishing the tasks associated with the military mission. It prepares us for what we know we will have to do in combat. The concept of education itself seems intuitive: learning in an academic setting. However, distinctions for our purposes must be made because education entails much more than that simple concept—it also prepares us for dealing with the unknown in combat. For our purposes here, though, higher education generally refers to a university education that qualifies the degree holder to work in a professional field. Further education generally includes postgraduate studies focused on a master’s or doctoral degree. As one of the youngest Service schoolhouses, where does that place Marine Corps University (MCU) on the degree-granting spectrum and what is our responsibility to the servicemembers who attend?

Digital Transformation: Powering the Great Reset

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COVID-19 is a watershed moment for the digital transformation of business. The rules for success have changed and are ever more reliant on harnessing the power of digital models to create new value and experiences. Accelerating digital transformation, with purpose, is essential for companies to survive and thrive in the new normal. Successful leaders will now seize the opportunity to advance a new trajectory for digital transformation that aligns with the changing role of business: to be a powerful enabler of long-term value creation for all its stakeholders.

This paper offers an opening frame for a multiyear, cross-industry programme to co-create the new playbooks for executive decision-making and action in a post-pandemic business normal. It presents three opportunities for digitally enabled corporate leadership to support the Great Reset of our economies and societies.