China’s Bhutan Gambit

By Sudha Ramachandran

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China is stepping up pressure on Bhutan to settle their bilateral border dispute. In addition to laying claim to more territory in Bhutan, Beijing has revived an old land swap deal that will require Thimphu to cede control over territory in order to settle its border dispute with China.

“The boundary between China and Bhutan is yet to be demarcated, and the middle, eastern and western sections of the border are disputed,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on July 21. “China has proposed a package solution to these disputes,” he added.

Until recently, the Sino-Bhutanese border dispute involved territory in the western and central sectors only. Beijing claimed 764 square kilometers of Bhutanese territory: 495 sq km in the Jakurlung and Pasamlung Valleys in north-central Bhutan and another 269 sq km in western Bhutan.

Since early June, China has laid claim to the Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary, which covers an area of 650 sq km and lies in Bhutan’s eastern district of Trashigang.

It was at the Global Environment Facility (GEF) meeting on June 2 and 3 that China claimed Sakteng for the first time. Bhutan had requested funding for a project in the wildlife sanctuary and Beijing objected to the GEF funding it on the ground that it “is located in the China-Bhutan disputed areas.” Sakteng is on “the agenda of [the] China-Bhutan boundary talk[s],” the Chinese delegate at the GEF meeting claimed.

BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS: WHAT AFGHANISTAN CAN (RE)TEACH MILITARY PLANNERS ABOUT CONFLICT TERMINATION

Mark Gilchrist
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Despite plenty of recent experience in peacekeeping, Western militaries have largely forgotten how difficult it is to end hostilities in a conflict where they are a belligerent. Military officers are well versed in how to fight wars, but few are similarly educated in how to terminate them, and even fewer have the opportunity to actually bring them to a close. The signing of a tentative peace agreement between the United States and the Taliban brings this issue into sharp focus and provides a unique opportunity to reflect on the military’s role in conflict termination.

Afghanistan is once again demonstrating that conflict termination is a messy, uncertain, inherently political, and consistently violent process. The tumult of the experience in Afghanistan will hopefully re-teach planners how difficult it is to bring conflict to a politically acceptable close when the adversary is in a position of strength. As a result, it presents an opportunity to close a crucial gap in our collective military education by enabling a better understanding of how the military can satisfy a government’s revised political objectives when victory is no longer possible.

Why Understanding Conflict Termination is Important

No, Mr. Prime Minister, Pakistan Does Not Have a Free Press

BY MICHAEL KUGELMAN
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One year ago this week, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan sat next to U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House and declared to reporters that Pakistan has “one of the freest presses in the world.” He added: “So to say that there are curbs on [Pakistan’s] press is a joke.”

In reality, there’s nothing funny about the state of Pakistan’s media environment today. The apparent abduction on July 21 of a prominent journalist, Matiullah Jan, in broad daylight in Islamabad underscores the perils of a Pakistani media climate victimized by a broader, and increasingly robust, crackdown on dissent.

According to local and international news reports, Jan was picked up outside the school where his wife, Kaneez Sughra, works. Sughra told Deutsche Welle: “The doors of his car were open, and the keys were still inside. … I could see from the car that he was taken forcibly.” Fortunately, later in the day, Jan was released. On July 23, he released a video on his YouTube channel in which he described his ordeal. He said that “those who kidnapped me are the same forces who have been against democracy” in Pakistan. “Police uniform or plain clothes, these days everyone is on the same page.” But if history is any guide, there will be little effort to investigate and hold accountable those behind the incident.

Why is Xi Jinping pitting China against the world?

Lily Kuo 
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Earlier this week, Chinese leader Xi Jinping held a rare meeting in Beijing with business leaders. Admitting that the Covid-19 pandemic had a “huge impact” on the country’s economy, Xi used a Chinese idiom to assure his listeners.

“While the green hills last, there will be wood to burn,” he said. “If we maintain our strategy … we will find opportunity in crisis and turbulence. The Chinese people will surely prevail over all difficulties and challenges ahead”.

Xi’s remarks – reported in state media under the headline: “Xi Jinping conveyed confidence! Confidence! Nevertheless, confidence!” – belie a difficult and increasingly hostile international environment, one that critics say the Chinese leadership brought on itself through miscalculation and stifled dissent within the ruling party.

In just the last two months, China has ordered the closure of a US consulate in the country’s southwest; fought a deadly border clash with India, an unresolved border that threatens to erupt again; seen the abrupt end of the so-called “golden era” of relations with the UK; engaged in a war of words with Australia, bringing relations close to an all-time low; forced a draconian national security law on Hong Kong, earning international condemnation; and fallen further into a rivalry with the US that is forcing other countries to choose sides. Increasingly, they are choosing the US.

Xi Wants Chinese Students Back in the Countryside

BY DON GIOLZETTI
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As the novel coronavirus outbreak waned in China, millions of wary students in select provinces and cities have gradually returned from their bedrooms to their classrooms. Myriad health safety measures await them, as does a new policy designed to promote their physical activity. The cause isn’t COVID-19 but a renewed ideological campaign barely noticed outside the country.

China’s cabinet, the State Council, and the powerful Central Committee quietly announced joint guidelines on March 26 to improve China’s “labor education.” Once referred to as the “biggest shortcoming” in China’s education system by a top official, the measures look to reverse declining physical activity among Chinese youth while instilling “the Marxist view of labor.” “Over the years, some youth have become less appreciative, less willing, and less able to perform manual labor,” the document states.

The newly released rules call for more manual labor activities in curriculums across academia to inculcate students with a “hard-working spirit.” Schools from the elementary to the university level must provide mandatory labor classes, including vague activities that “work up a sweat” and household chores like doing laundry. While the policy is short on specific activities, it hints that students will do work at companies, farms, and factories.

Iranian Response to Attacks on its Nuclear Program

by Scott Stewart

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In the wake of several recent incidents that appear to have targeted Iranian missile and nuclear production facilities, the Iranian government likely will feel pressured to retaliate using terrorism. However, Tehran’s own terrorism capabilities are extremely limited, and current constraints on its proxies are likely to make them reluctant to conduct major attacks on Iran’s behalf.

A number of mysterious incidents have occurred in Iran over the past several weeks, among which were the June 25 explosion at a ballistic missile production facility in Khojir and the July 2 explosion in a factory at Iran’s main nuclear production facility in Natanz that was reportedly producing a new generation of centrifuges. Due to the opaque nature of Iran, it is difficult to get a clear idea of exactly what is happening and whether these fires and explosions are linked. We don’t know for certain if these incidents are attacks or merely industrial accidents that outside forces are trying to claim as attacks to cause internal problems for Iran. 

No matter the causes of these incidents, from the Iranian perspective there have simply been too many to treat them as accidents, and therefore it is only reasonable to assume that Tehran will respond as if they were attacks. Based on capability and past Iranian behavior, it is safe to assume the Islamic Republic will retaliate using terrorism. In response to these threats, Israeli and U.S. intelligence collection will redouble their monitoring of Iranian government and proxy group operations in an attempt to determine what approach Iran will take and thwart any attacks. 

To Secure His Legacy, Khamenei Is Packing Iran’s Government With Young Radicals

BY SAEID GOLKAR, ASHA SAWHNEY
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In just under a year, Iran will elect a new president. Coming after the U.S. election this November, there is some hope that the occasion could usher in improved U.S.-Iranian relations. Yet, given the way Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been narrowing the field of candidates, that seems unlikely.

Khamenei set the scene for the upcoming vote with a manifesto published in February 2019 with the title “The Second Phase of the Revolution.” In it, he reflects on the 40 years since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and charts a vision for the next 40. Khamenei appears to understand that, at age 81, he will not remain leader forever, and so he seeks to ensure that his principles outlive him. The predominant strategy the manifesto puts forth is “javangarayi va javansazi modiriyat-e keshvar” or the “youthfulness and rejuvenation of the country’s management,” through which young supporters “prepare the ground for the formation of a young and pious government.”

In government, this so-called youth-washing project has taken the form of stocking unelected political offices with people who are either younger or more hard-line. Since 2019, Khamenei has replaced several military elites in the armed forces (Joint Staff), conventional military (Artesh), and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to inject new blood into the veins of the regime. His old representatives in the state bureaucracy, local governments, and universities have likewise been replaced by a young and even more radical generation.

Biden and the Ghosts of Iraq

BY ROBERT DRAPER
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One early evening in November of 2005, I found myself walking through Union Station in Washington, D.C., with then-Sen. Joe Biden. The train that was to ferry us to his resident city of Wilmington, Delaware, had already completed boarding, so we were striding at a very fast clip. Still, the senator kept talking the entire way. I’d asked him a question as we walked, and he was still answering it as we disembarked in Wilmington 75 minutes later. That question was: Why, three years earlier, had Biden voted in favor of giving President George W. Bush the authority to wage war in Iraq?

Biden’s answer boiled down to this: He had believed that the authorization vote would give the president leverage to force the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to effectively relinquish his illicit weapons program. Further, he had believed that Bush would not blunder recklessly into war. The senator’s windy monologue featured multiple digressions relating to the Bush family’s wealth, to Vice President Dick Cheney’s nefariousness, and to the futile valor of Secretary of State Colin Powell. But those cameos were themselves illustrative of the greater tragedy.

The American way of cyber warfare and the case of ISIS

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Many in the defense community have still not embraced hacking as a combat mission or the work of securing systems and networks transitioning from administrative job into warfighting function. This transformation has led to much theorization and debate, yet as a practical matter remains poorly understood at the policy level. This is partly is due to linguistic limitations; the difficulty of agreeing what to name new concepts, and how to adopt a universal verbiage to describe conflict between humans for centuries. More substantively, fighting over the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of digital devices and services occurs in ways that are not easily observed by those who are not immediately “at the front” with access to network logs and digital artifacts. Persuasive arguments that offensive cyber capabilities are the first military innovation developed directly from the intelligence community imply that cyber operations continue to follow—as Jon R. Lindsay puts it—“logic of intelligence.” But intelligence as an organization and an activity is often overwhelmingly secretive, and so too are cyber operations.

USCYBERCOM’s decision to declassify a series of foundational documents related to one of its most prominent cyber operations is therefore a unique opportunity to draw back this veil. The National Security Archive at George Washington University has done a tremendous service to international relations, intelligence studies, and defense scholars in pursuing and assembling these materials. Critically, the Archives work occurred under proper review processes—in a manner that preserves key intelligence and operational equities—while offering a unique view into Joint Task Force Ares (JTF Ares) and Operation Glowing Symphony. This view is by necessity incomplete, but it is a better picture than passing comments about dropping “cyber bombs,” or stolen glimpses otherwise offered by unauthorized leaks and pilfered documents. It presents a record clean of the problematic manipulation of ideologically motivated defectors, shadowy third parties, and the machinations of hostile intelligence services.

Will Spain Be the Next Country in Need of a Bailout?

by DESMOND LACHMAN AND JOHN KEARNS
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Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez poses in front of Picasso's "Guernica" during his visit to the Reina Sofia Museum with his Italian counterpart, in Madrid on July 8, 2020. - Italy and Spain will seek to jointly convince four reticent EU members to back a huge bailout aimed at overcoming the coronavirus crisis, their prime ministers said today in Madrid. European Union leaders are negotiating a plan worth up to 750 billion euros ($850 billion) to help countries absorb the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis. 

One has to pity the Spanish people. No sooner did Spain finally recover from its housing-bust-induced 2008 recession than a once-in-a-century coronavirus pandemic caused a worldwide economic slump.

This does not bode well for Spain’s longer run economic outlook, especially considering that the country remains stuck with the Euro, a currency over which it has no control. Nor does it bode well for Spanish political stability, which was shattered in the aftermath of its Great Economic Recession.

Spain’s economy was painfully slow to recover from its 2008 economic recession, which saw its GDP drop by 4 percent. It was only by 2016 that Spanish income per capita returned to its 2008 level. Similarly, after unemployment rose to a staggering 25 percent of the labor force, it was only in 2016 that it finally dropped below 20 percent.

The United States and Japan Should Team Up on 5G

JAMES L. SCHOFF

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If not for the coronavirus pandemic, the world would be enjoying the Tokyo Olympic Games this week. Japan’s telecommunications industry had planned to take advantage of the fanfare to bolster its launch of 5G mobile commercial service, complete with autonomous cars, 3D athlete tracking, and a virtual stadium—plans that have also been shelved for now. Yet the holdup is temporary. While the global pandemic has delayed Japan’s 5G rollout, the virus will likely lead to increased demand for 5G over time. After all, social distancing is much easier to manage with a reliable, high-speed internet connection.

The Olympics might be postponed, but international 5G competition is ramping up. The coronavirus is spreading amid intensified technological competition between the United States and China, which is creating new opportunities for European, Japanese, and U.S. companies to collaborate. Meanwhile, governments are continuing to work together in multilateral forums, even as the leading Chinese 5G vendor Huawei gains market share. To establish a competitive edge, policymakers in Tokyo and Washington should focus on a few priority areas. They should also depoliticize the introduction of this new technology as much as possible.

U.S.-JAPAN 5G COOPERATION IS A WORK IN PROGRESS

Big-Power Rivalries Hamstring Top U.N. Missions

BY COLUM LYNCH, ROBBIE GRAMER 
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The U.N. effort to select a leader for an important new mission to promote peace and democracy in Sudan has foundered in the face of internal Sudanese divisions and big-power competition, pitting France against Russia and China and raising questions about the U.N. leader’s authority to select his own envoys.

Since early June, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has proposed two candidates to lead the newly established United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan, which was created to help Sudan’s new government in its fragile political transition to democracy. Both have faced pushback.

The first, Nicholas Haysom of South Africa, a veteran U.N. troubleshooter who has led missions in Afghanistan and Somalia, was passed over by Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in early June. The second, a French diplomat with extensive experience in Africa, Jean-Christophe Belliard, was subsequently blocked by China and Russia, on the grounds that he potentially lacked the support of the Sudanese military.

Why the U.S. needs better cyber deterrence

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The U.S. lacks a well-formulated policy of cyber deterrence, one that ensures adversarial states will anticipate the consequences of their own cyber operations and online influence campaigns against the U.S., according to a U.S. senator who is a prominent voice in the cybersecurity field.

Why it matters: With elections looming in November, hacks afflicting Twitter and other services, and misinformation rampant on social media platforms, the U.S. remains a vulnerable target for state-backed cyber operations.

A clear, enunciated policy of cyber deterrence could help mitigate future attempts at covert electoral interference in U.S. politics as well as serious disruptive cyberattacks.

What he's saying: Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and co-chair of the bipartisan Cyberspace Solarium Commission — a high-level expert group focused on U.S. cybersecurity and defense — spoke to Codebook in a recent telephone interview about this need.

"I probably have sat through ... 25 hearings over the last 7½ years on both Intelligence and Armed Services where it’s been made crystal clear that we don’t have a policy that causes our adversaries to calculate the risk of their actions," says King. "We are a cheap date."

COVID Drives AUSA Mega-Conference Online: Gen. Ham

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

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WASHINGTON: Every October, the Walter E. Washington convention center in downtown DC – a behemoth building covering two whole city blocks – fills with soldiers, contractors, and reporters. Over 30,000 people pack shoulder-to-shoulder in conference rooms to hear from Army leaders, speak face to face, line up for fried chicken, shake hands, hug, and handle military hardware from prototype rifles to full-sized tanks. But with COVID-19 cases rising alarmingly around the country, none of that will happen this October.

“We’ve made the difficult decision to convert the 2020 AUSA Annual Meeting from an in-person meeting to a virtual experience,” said retired Gen. Carter Ham, the Association of the US Army’s president and CEO, in a statement Tuesday afternoon. The mega-conference – historically one of the biggest in-person gatherings for the defense industry in the DC area – will now take place entirely online over Oct. 13-16. Breaking Defense plans to cover the virtual event as exhaustively (and as exhaustingly for our reporters) as it has the physical one every year since 2011.

“With recent trends, it just became clear to me that we simply could not, in any reasonable manner, ensure a safe, secure environment for the 32,000-plus people we expected this October,” Gen. Ham told me in an follow-up email. “We are working very closely with the Army to craft an agenda which provides opportunities for key leaders to connect with our members and constituents.”

What the U.S. Can Learn From Other Countries’ Policing Reforms

Erik Alda 

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“J’étouffe!”—I’m suffocating! Cedric Chouviat’s plea was repeated seven times as four French police officers sought to subdue him with a chokehold in early January, near the Quai Branly, which runs along the Seine River in central Paris. Chouviat, a 42-year-old father of five who worked as a deliveryman, went into cardiac arrest and died two days later. An autopsy revealed that his larynx had been crushed.

His cry echoed that of Eric Garner, who also died after being put in a chokehold by a New York City police officer in 2014. A variation of the haunting refrain was heard in Minneapolis on May 25. “I can’t breathe,” George Floyd repeated as a police officer kneeled on his neck for over eight minutes. .

Trump says virus in US will get worse before it gets better

By ZEKE MILLER
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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump warned on Tuesday that the “nasty horrible’” coronavirus will get worse in the U.S. before it gets better, but he also tried to paint a rosy picture of efforts to conquer the disease that has claimed more than 140,000 American lives in just five months.

He also professed a newfound respect for the protective face masks he has seldom worn. He pulled one from his pocket in the White House briefing room but didn’t put it on.

After a three-month hiatus from his freewheeling daily virus briefings, Trump returned to the podium, keeping the stage to himself without the public health experts who were staples of his previous events but keeping close to scripted remarks prepared by aides.

Besides declaring support for masks as a way to fight the pandemic, he admonished young people against crowding bars and spreading the disease.

It all marked a delayed recognition by Trump that the economic reopening he’s been championing since April — and, more importantly, his reelection — were imperiled by spiking cases nationwide.

Building a better world through education: 6 big ideas

Christopher J. Thomas

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Indeed, education has helped to build a better world. Most people are generally more prosperous and secure than at any time in history. This is thanks in part to educational institutions that have fostered skills, research capabilities, and social and civic attitudes that underpin rapid progress in recent decades on issues from food security to communications, transport, and health care.

Young people around the world are now bringing a new set of challenges into sharp relief. They are negotiating tough issues including climate change, inequality, exclusion, governance, job instability, and technology. They are redefining what it means to be a global citizen, and to live sustainably.

Will educational institutions help them build the world they want? Will they prepare all children and young people to meaningfully participate in the journey?

The Yidan Prize Foundation searches for groundbreaking education research and practice every year. Nominations for the prize are sourced openly and globally, and judged by an eminent panel of educators. Here are six big ideas from all of the prize winners to date that help us reimagine what education systems can and should do to help young people realize their potential:

Optimizing Assessment for All: Assessment as a stimulus for scaling 21st century skills in education systems

Esther Care

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This paper marks the final installment in a series of five reports detailing the work of the Optimizing Assessment for All project at Brookings to strengthen education systems' capacity to integrate 21st century skills into teaching and learning, using assessment as a lever for changing classroom practices.

Assessment has been identified as a driver in education in several ways. Often seen negatively affecting teaching and learning through the “teaching to the test” notion, it also has more positive effects: One of these is through the use of results from large-scale assessment for change in policy and consequent education reform. Another is through the implementation of formative assessment approaches (Black & Wiliam, 2009) to inform teaching strategies and practice in the classroom. For both functions, assessments that generate information that is reliable and valid for purpose are required. International large-scale assessment programs—such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS, of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement [IEA]) or the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA, of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD])—commit a great deal of effort to ensuring that their assessments target the constructs (knowledge, skills, or competencies) of interest and sample the populations of interest, to ensure that the information derived from the programs truly represents the realities of student achievement and in turn reflects the goals and effectiveness of national education systems.

The Double-Edged Sword of Oil, Energy and Mining in International Politics

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Despite concerns over the environmental impact of industrial mining and the contribution that fossil fuels make to global warming, resource extraction continues to be a major source of revenue for both developing countries and wealthier nations alike. In fact, the amount of resources being pulled from the earth has tripled since 1970, though the global population has only doubled in that time.

Amid global efforts to reduce carbon emissions as part of climate change diplomacy, fossil fuels remained among the most prized extractives, for a simple reason: Global demand combined with the wealth they generate have historically given some countries, including members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, outsized global influence.

The lucrative contracts associated with the extractive sector help to explain why resource extraction remains central to many developing countries’ strategy to grow their economies. But the windfalls don’t come without risks, most prominent among them being the “resource curse” that can plague countries that fail to diversify their economies to generate alternate sources of revenue. Corruption can also thrive, especially when government institutions are weak. And when the wealth generated from resource extraction isn’t fairly distributed, it can entrench a permanent elite, as in Saudi Arabia, or fuel persistent conflicts, as in the Democratic Republic of Congo. More recently, the drop in demand due to the coronavirus pandemic combined with an ill-timed price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia has caused oil prices to plummet. A subsequent deal for both sides to cut output did little to shore up global oil markets.

The environmental impact of fossil fuels is driving some changes, in particular a push to develop renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar. But the transition to renewable energy sources is slow to develop, even as its long-term financial viability remains uncertain.

There Is No Arctic Axis

BY ELIZABETH BUCHANAN
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As observers speak of a new Cold War between the United States and China, policymakers seem to misunderstand Sino-Russian relations in the Arctic as an alliance. This stems in part from the lack of a quantified framework to understand the ongoing shifts in the international system: the return of nationalism, fractures in the rules-based liberal order, and the rise of nontraditional security threats such as climate change. The misreading of the relationship in the Arctic also stems from a lack of subject-matter expertise among policymakers on what drives Sino-Russian ties—a shortfall that will shape future understanding of the Arctic region.

After Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Western sanctions dried up existing capital and technology pools for Russian energy projects in the Arctic. The sanctions targeted Western companies cooperating with Russian energy firms and investing in Russian Arctic projects, paving the way for Chinese state firms to engage. The Kremlin’s need for foreign capital places Beijing in a position of power in the Arctic, but Russia is wary of Chinese investment. Moscow is attuned to both the potential and pitfalls of doing business with Beijing: Overreliance on China to fulfill Russia’s economic security agenda in the Arctic could increase Beijing’s regional footprint.

Trump Mulls Withholding Aid to Ethiopia Over Controversial Dam

BY ROBBIE GRAMER
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The Trump administration is weighing withholding some aid to Ethiopia over a Nile dam project that has severely strained its relationship with downstream countries Sudan and Egypt, six officials and congressional aides familiar with the matter told Foreign Policy.

The massive dam, Africa’s biggest, has become a flash point of geopolitical tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia, with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi hinting that his country could use military force to halt the project. Many in Egypt fear the dam could threaten its water supplies. 

But some U.S. officials said the project has also fueled divisions and confusion over policy within the U.S. government, ever since Sisi asked President Donald Trump to help mediate negotiations over the dam last year. 

U.S. participation in four-way talks over the dam earlier this year, led by the Treasury Department, helped advance talks. However, Ethiopia refused to sign a final agreement. Now there’s growing concern that the Trump administration is putting its thumb on the scales to favor Egypt at the expense of Ethiopia—even as new signs of progress emerge in negotiations.

The Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales

By George Friedman
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The British recently finished building two new aircraft carriers, the Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales. Last week, Britain announced that one of the carriers would be based in the Pacific. Obviously, the timing of the announcement had to do with the Chinese actions in Hong Kong. Hong Kong had been a British possession, which under a treaty with China would eventually revert to full Chinese control. China’s repression of Hong Kong is seen as violating guarantees China made concerning the preservation of rights in Hong Kong during the transition, and therefore Britain views that repression as a violation of China’s commitments to Britain. Thus, the decision to base a carrier in the Pacific. The carriers are nearing the end of their testing, but as the Chinese know as well, building a vessel is a far cry from having an operational aircraft carrier. The carrier must be supplied with aircraft and the crews trained in operations. Supplying a carrier is enormously difficult, as it consumes vast amounts of material during operations. A logistic vessel, carrying huge amounts of everything from fuel to ammunition, must accompany it, and crews must be trained in the fine art of resupply at sea, […]

The Army’s new directorate eyes multidomain integration

Mark Pomerleau

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WASHINGTON — The Army has created a new entity within is operations and plans directorate, G-3/5/7, to focus on non-physical capabilities and better ready the service for multidomain operations.

The new directorate, Department of the Army’s Management Office-Strategic Operations (DAMO-SO), was created about six months ago and replaces DAMO-CY, which focused primarily on cyberspace operations. The organization now encompasses cyber, electronic warfare, information operations, space, enterprise IT networks, tactical communications networks, data architectures and artificial intelligence.

“We’re an organization that pulls together a lot of the multidomain operating capabilities. Things like cyber, electronic warfare, information operations, space,” Brig. Gen. Martin Klein, director of DAMO-SO, told C4ISRNET in a July 20 interview. “We’re also bringing into the directorate the capabilities of really underwriting the Army’s ability to digitally transform into this new era … Part of what we’ve been asked to do is underwrite multidomain operations and then to digitally enable our warfighting systems.”

The office will serve as the Army point of contact for joint initiatives with the other services, namely Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2).

Three actions CEOs can take to get value from cloud computing

By Chhavi Arora, Tanguy Catlin, Will Forrest, James Kaplan, and Lars Vinter
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If you are a CEO, you already know what the cloud can do for your business in a post-COVID-19 world. You’ve probably even told your organization to get you there already. So why is your move to the cloud1 coming along so slowly, even though you may have been talking about it for years? It might be because you and your management team have yet to take a sufficiently active role, or provide the air cover your chief information officer (CIO) and chief technology officer (CTO) need.

CIOs and CTOs are on the front foot right now thanks to their crucial role during the COVID-19 pandemic. That makes this a good moment to further elevate top-team support for the cloud enablement needed to accelerate digital strategy, the digitization of the company, its channels of distribution, and its supply chains—all of which already needed to be moving more quickly than they were.

The CEO’s role is crucial because no one else can broker across the multiple parties involved, which include the CIO, CTO, CFO, chief human-resources officer (CHRO), chief information security officer (CISO), and business-unit leads. As we explain in this article, the transition to cloud computing represents a collective-action problem—one that requires a coordinated effort across the team at the top of an organization. It’s a matter of orchestration, in other words, and only CEOs can wield the baton.

Where There’s Smoke, the U.S. Navy’s on Fire

James Stavridis

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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.

The fire that tore through amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard for more than four days starting July 12 devastated a $4 billion ship and injured more than 70 sailors and civilian firefighters. The resultant smoke that covered San Diego's harbor and downtown for days afterward seemed a visible symbol of the condition the U.S. Navy finds itself in around the globe. 

It also brings to mind a history lesson. In many of the offices I occupied during my Navy career, I kept a painting of the USS Maine on the wall. It shows the battleship in early 1898, in Havana harbor — just before it blew up at anchor and sank, killing hundreds of sailors. The event was a cause celebre that put into motion the Spanish-American War.