Social Media in Violent Conflicts – Recent Examples

 Maj Gen PK Mallick, VSM (Retd)

Introduction

Alan Rusbridger, the then editor-in-chief of the Guardian in his 2010 Andrew Olle Media Lecture, stated, “News organisations still break lots of news. But, increasingly, news happens first on Twitter. If you’re a regular Twitter user, even if you’re in the news business and have access to wires, the chances are that you’ll check out many rumours of breaking news on Twitter first. There are millions of human monitors out there who will pick up on the smallest things and who have the same instincts as the agencies—to be the first with the news. As more people join, the better it will get. ”

The most important and unique feature of social media and its role in future conflicts is the speed at which it can disseminate information to audiences and the audiences to provide feedback.

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China’s Cyber-Influence Operations

   Maj Gen PK Mallick, VSM (Retd)

… With its growing assertiveness in the international arena, China uses new technologies to achieve its foreign policy goals and project an image of responsible global power … spending billions on influence operations across the world ... fits in with China’s larger aim of expanding its soft power alongside its growing economic and military power … reach of Beijing’s overseas media is impressive and should not be underestimated. But the results are mixed ...

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Democracy in Afghanistan: Amid and Beyond Conflict

Anna Larson

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Summary

In 2021, a stable and democratic Afghanistan remains an elusive prospect due to the continued use and threat of violence by the Taliban and competing political actors, the executive stranglehold on government appointments, and international engagement focused solely on election days.

Even so, more flexible, lower-cost US engagement may yet produce results that can bolster democracy and encourage stability if incorporated into any forthcoming political settlement.

Any system of governance in which the Taliban have a stake will need to include elections of some kind. The Afghan people have become accustomed to participating in the democratic process. Despite widespread electoral fraud, elections remain popular.

New Americans from Afghanistan

James Freeman

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Have the parents of the next Sunisa Lee just landed in Virginia? On Thursday this column noted the Olympic gymnastics champion’s distinguished lineage. The children of American allies who fought alongside U.S. troops during the Vietnam War, Ms. Lee’s Hmong parents escaped murderous communists in Laos to find a better life in the United States. Now stalwart friends of American troops from another war are beginning to arrive in the U.S., but many more are still awaiting a rescue and face grave danger.

As for the welcome start to the desperately needed relocations, Alex Horton reports in the Washington Post:

About 200 Afghan interpreters and their families arrived in Virginia on Friday, the first evacuations of thousands imperiled because of their work with the United States in Afghanistan as the Taliban gains control of more territory nationwide.

As Fears Grip Afghanistan, Hundreds of Thousands Flee

Christina Goldbaum and Fatima Faizi

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KABUL, Afghanistan — Haji Sakhi decided to flee Afghanistan the night he saw two Taliban members drag a young woman from her home and lash her on the sidewalk. Terrified for his three daughters, he crammed his family into a car the next morning and barreled down winding dirt roads into Pakistan.

That was more than 20 years ago. They returned to Kabul, the capital, nearly a decade later after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime. But now, with the Taliban sweeping across parts of the country as American forces withdraw, Mr. Sakhi, 68, fears a return of the violence he witnessed that night. This time, he says, his family is not waiting so long to leave.

“I’m not scared of leaving belongings behind, I’m not scared of starting everything from scratch,” said Mr. Sakhi, who recently applied for Turkish visas for himself, his wife, their three daughters and one son. “What I’m scared of is the Taliban.”

Afghanistan after the U.S. Withdrawal: Trends and Scenarios for the Future

Antonio Giustozzi

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Executive Summary

This essay discusses the prospects for Afghanistan after the completion of the U.S. forces withdrawal and assesses that a relatively wide range of outcomes remain possible.

Main Argument

Neither the Taliban’s leadership nor any of their regional sponsors aim for the re-establishment of a Taliban autocracy. However, the deadlock in intra-Afghan talks raises the possibility of that happening by default, especially if the Taliban gain such a military edge that a balanced negotiated outcome becomes impossible. A Taliban military campaign could increasingly weaken the Taliban’s willingness to make concessions, whether to the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan or to individual factions of the political elite in Kabul. In that scenario, two outcomes are possible: a de facto Taliban autocracy, in which fragments of the old political elite could be co-opted in a marginal, window-dressing role; or state collapse, in which the Taliban would not be able to assert order over the chaos created by the defeat of the republic.

Narratives of Violence: The Hong Kong Protests Through Opposing Media Outlets

Shumin Cao

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A set of protests shook Hong Kong from June 2019 to January 2020. The key players were the pro-democracy camp (notably students) and the pro-Beijing camp (notably the governments of China and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR)) (BBC, 2019). The first two groups initiated the protests, and the latter three combated them. Per the protests’ frequency and intensity, the conflict timeline can be divided into three phases, using a model of conflict escalation and de-escalation (Ramsbotham et al, 2016, p. 15). Accordingly, June to July was a phase of difference and contradiction. Protesters opposed an extradition bill which would have allowed the extradition of criminal suspects to mainland China under certain circumstances. They warned against a risk of exposing Hong Kong residents to unfair trials and violent treatment. In that first phase, peaceful marches were the norm, with only a few violent confrontations between police and protesters. The conflict began to escalate in June, when, for the first time, police used tear gas and protesters threw bricks. On July 1, a small number of demonstrators broke into the Legislative Council. From August to November, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets. By then, clashes between police and protesters had become more frequent and violent.

Panel: Taiwan Needs More Capacity to Defend Itself as China’s Military Modernizes

John Grady

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Taiwan must take the necessary steps to ensure its own defenses – from upgrading air and missile defenses and raising reserve forces’ readiness to protecting vital infrastructure like its water supply – to keep China at arm’s length, three experts on Pacific security said Wednesday.

“Taiwan is nowhere where it needs to be” in beefing up its own defenses, Michael Mazzarr, associate director of the strategy and doctrine program at RAND’s Arroyo Center, said during an Atlantic Council event.

“Power projection capabilities are significantly challenged” if crisis turns to conflict with China. Taiwan could struggle not just to sustain military operations in the first island chain, but also in the homeland as it tries to protect American infrastructure like pipelines.

VW’s dilemma in Xinjiang shows how the west is headed for an ethical car crash

Timothy Garton Ash

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On YouTube, you can watch a video clip of Volkswagen’s chief executive, Herbert Diess, denying that he knows what’s going on in Xinjiang. When the BBC correspondent helpfully spells it out – so-called reeducation camps for one million Uyghurs – Diess says: “I’m not aware of that.” Either he was being culpably ignorant about a region where Volkswagen has a factory, or he was lying.

This was in the spring of 2019, and a company spokesperson soon declared that Diess was “of course aware” of the situation in Xinjiang. The case is particularly sensitive because Volkswagen was originally set up by the Nazis, and its use of forced labour during the Third Reich has been scrupulously documented by German historians.

It is interesting to compare Diess’s response with a statement made earlier this year, by the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day. “As a community, we are always extremely reluctant to consider comparisons with the Holocaust,” Marie van der Zyl wrote in a letter to the British prime minister. But, she went on, there are similarities between what is reported to be happening in China and what happened in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. The violations of the human rights of the Uyghurs are “shaping up to be the most serious outrage of our time”, said Van der Zyl.

Mapping China’s semiconductor ecosystem in global context: Strategic dimensions and conclusions

John Lee

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Executive Summary

Historically, the semiconductor value chain has flourished thanks to transnational divisions of labor that supported high levels of economic efficiency and innovation. As a result, interdependencies throughout this value chain exist between different regions around the globe. The US-China technology rivalry, the COVID19 pandemic and global shortages in semiconductors have led many governments to scrutinize these interdependencies in the transnational semiconductor value chain. The US government for example has completed a review of the semiconductor supply chain. Europe’s new industrial strategy focuses on assessing and managing strategic dependencies in different technology ecosystems, including semiconductors.

China’s capabilities in the semiconductor value chain play a key role in these considerations. China’s government is making great efforts to raise the competitiveness of Chinese industry in the semiconductor sector, building on and supporting China’s role in global electronics manufacturing and emerging technological ecosystems. With growing strategic concerns in the US and Europe about China, a better understanding and systematic assessment of China’s capabilities in producing semiconductors is needed. What is the position within the semiconductor value chain of Chinese companies? In which areas is China highly reliant on foreign technology providers? How likely is China to catch up within this decade in a particular production step?

Deals, Drones, and National Will:The New Era in Turkish Power Projection

Rich Outzen

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Turkey has recently pushed the PKK fight from its own turf and blunted challenges in northern Syria, Azerbaijan, Libya, and the Gulf, all while strengthening its defense export sector.

In 2020, military observers took note when the Turkish Armed Forces employed drones to devastating effect in Syria, Libya, and the Caucasus. But this technological achievement must be regarded as just one part of a revamped Turkish approach to regional power projection—a change with economic, diplomatic, strategic, reputational, and battlefield implications. In the past five years, Turkey has notched many associated successes, such as pushing the PKK fight off its own turf and blunting challenges to its interests in northern Syria, Azerbaijan, Libya, and the Gulf. Ankara has also secured significant leverage in other disputes from the Horn of Africa to the Balkans, while strengthening its defense export sector.

As military expert Col. Rich Outzen, U.S. Army (Ret.), makes clear in this tightly argued Policy Note, Turkey’s power projection does not always align with U.S. interests, a reality exemplified by anti-SDF military operations and defense industry cooperation with Russia. But ending the U.S.-Turkey military alliance over such differences is neither productive nor tenable. Instead, America can seek to work with an emergent Turkey in the many cases, from Qatar to Afghanistan, where such collaboration advances U.S. strategic interests.

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ISIS’ Use of Sexual Violence as a Strategy of Terrorism in Iraq

Beatrice Aubert

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The sudden advance of the terrorist organisation, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), in 2014 started a violent civil war in Iraq. This conflict led to high instability in the already weakened country, and to this day, nearly two million people remain internally displaced in Iraq (GCT, 2021). The last few decades have been marked by conflict in Iraq with the Gulf War and the US invasion of 2003. This series of conflicts has exposed ethnic minorities and women to higher levels of violence (Dodge et al, 2018 p.18). Since ISIS declared itself as a Caliphate in 2014 and imposed the Sharia law, a widespread rise in human rights abuses has been observed, with a particular focus on sexual violence (Dahham, 2016 p.3). To further its Sunni fundamentalist ideology, ISIS has particularly targeted ethnic and religious minorities, with the characteristic example of the Yazidi community that was particularly devastated by the terrorist organisation (Kaya, 2019 p.10).

CISA Offers Vulnerability Disclosure Platform for Civilian Agencies

Mariam Baksh

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The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has added a vulnerability disclosure platform to the marketplace run by its Cybersecurity Quality Services Management Office as a way to reduce the burden on federal agencies working to comply with a binding operational directive it finalized last fall.

“Recognizing that policies alone are not sufficient, we also announced plans to launch a vulnerability disclosure platform service in the near future,” CISA Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity Eric Goldstein wrote in a blog post on Friday’s announcement of the platform. “Today, the future arrived.”

CISA issued a request for information on platforms that could help with the management of vulnerability reports security researchers submit to agencies in May 2020 and decided to provide the service through BugCrowd and EnDyna. Eleven agencies already have programs listed on the platform, including the Federal Communications Commission, and the Labor and Agriculture departments. The Defense Department uses a comparable platform through HackerOne.

NSA to National Security Employees: Avoid Working on Public Wi-Fi

MILA JASPER

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The COVID-19 pandemic changed what work looks like, and for some, telework remains an essential part of daily business. While most teleworkers connect via secure home networks, those that opt for public networks like those in hotels or coffee shops are putting their data at risk, according to the National Security Agency.

The NSA on Thursday released guidance for National Security System, Defense Department, and defense industrial base users describing how to identify vulnerable connections and protect common wireless technologies when working on public networks. US-CERT on Friday shared the guidance as well.

The first best practice, according to NSA, is to simply avoid connecting to public Wi-Fi at all.

Instead, it’s best to connect using personal or corporately-owned hotspots—just not open Wi-Fi hotspots. Hotspots should feature strong authentication and encryption, too, according to the guidance.

SUNISA LEE’S OLYMPIC GOLD CELEBRATED BY HMONG AMERICANS, FORGOTTEN ALLIES IN VIETNAM WAR

Matt Fratus

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Sunisa Lee, an 18-year-old Hmong American, took gold in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics women’s gymnastics all-around event on Thursday. With her victory, Lee became the first Hmong American to win an Olympic medal. In coverage of the Games, Lee’s performances were often cut with videos of her hometown fans in Minnesota. As her success grew, the crowds in the clips grew too, as the Hmong American community in St. Paul rallied to her side.

The city is a hub for the US Hmong community, which traces its beginnings to a 1970s immigration wave after the Vietnam War. Those Hmong families came to St. Paul and a few other cities, such as Fresno, California, fleeing persecution after Hmong soldiers fought beside American forces in Vietnam for much of the war.

Hmong soldiers were among the United States’ most ardent allies in the war, enlisted by the CIA in the so-called Secret War in Laos. They mainly fought alone and in secret, defending secret American bases, rescuing US pilots, and disrupting North Vietnamese supply lines. Hmong fought with Americans for the entirety of the war, from 1960 to 1975.

Remarks by President Biden at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence

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THE PRESIDENT: It’s an honor to be here. I guess you all are the ones that lost the lottery, huh? (Laughter.) You had to be here in person.

Well, I’d like to thank Director Haines and Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Christy Abizaid, for showing me around the watch floor.

Folks, the main reason I came — and I mean this sincerely — is to say thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. The American people, almost by definition, are not able to know what you do. And you devote so much of your time, your effort, and many of you end up risking your lives in the Intelligence Community to do things to make sure that your families and people back here are safe — make a difference.

And you’d be amazed — as I traveled the world as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee or member of the Intelligence Committee for all those years, or as Vice President of the United States dealing with national security issues, or as President of the United States — how many of now my foreign counterparts thank you for what you do.

Mind the Gap: Priorities for Transatlantic China Policy

Bernhard Bartsch

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China is at the top of the transatlantic agenda. Throughout the first half of 2021, the Distinguished Reflection Group on Transatlantic China Policy, 21 individuals with a wealth of expertise on China and transatlantic relations - including MERICS' experts Bernhard Bartsch, Mikko Huotari and Jan Weidenfeld, worked to advocate a more joined-up approach to China. Its report outlines priorities and provides recommendations for strategies to shape transatlantic China policy. Download the report here:

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US Military Hypes Up Reports on China’s Nuclear Missile Silos

Dave DeCamp

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Recent reports have claimed China is massively expanding its nuclear arsenal based on what is said to be satellite images of missile silos. The latest report was published Tuesday by The New York Times and showed pictures that the Federation of American Scientists say are 110 nuclear missile silos being constructed in the desert of eastern Xinjiang.

Earlier in July, The Washington Post published satellite images that it claimed were over 100 missile silos being built near the northwestern Chinese city of Yumen. Some Chinese media outlets dismissed the report and said the picture was of windmills, and the image published at the top of the Post article has the words “Yumen Gansu Windfarm.” But since the report was published, the Chinese government has not confirmed or denied it.

According to The Associated Press, when asked about the latest report, China’s Foreign Ministry said it was not aware of the situation. This means either the silos are real, or China wants to give the US the impression that it is expanding its arsenal to give the appearance of a greater nuclear deterrence than what Beijing has.

Book Excerpt: Russian cyber weapons are waging war on US networks and American minds

Will Ricciardella

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Russia has the most sophisticated and destructive arsenal of cyber weapons of any foreign nation. In the hands of President Vladimir Putin, who ultimately controls this cyber arsenal as part of what is called the State System of Information Confrontation, these cyber weapons present a grave threat to America. Having been in the offensive cyber business for the past three decades, Russia has developed a set of potent tools that are superior in stealth, programming power, speed of attack and penetration of the adversary’s network, and creativity. The Russian president’s toolbox rivals that of American cyber warriors, and Russia’s highly innovative cyber doctrine has given Putin the ability to outplay the U.S. government and manipulate American citizens’ attitudes and perceptions of reality. Comparing Russia’s cyber hacking tradecraft with China’s, another very capable cyber adversary of the United States, former CIA and NSA director General Michael Hayden said, "The Chinese have scale and the Russians have skill." Former director of national intelligence James Clapper, referring to these countries’ cyber tactics, called the Chinese "loud" and the Russians "stealthy."

Intel's Ambitious Plan to Regain Chipmaking Leadership

Will Knight

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INTEL HAS SPENT the past few years lurching from one misstep to another and even had to outsource the manufacturing of its latest chips to one of its biggest rivals.

Now, in order to recapture its former glory, the company is betting it can execute a series of tricky manufacturing shifts. But it’s also hoping that a rebranding campaign will convince people that it isn't so far behind the competition after all.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger laid out a road map for several generations of chips at an event Monday. It includes new technologies designed to help the company compete with TSMC, a Taiwanese chipmaker that currently makes the most advanced and high performance computer chips, as well as Samsung in South Korea. The road map includes a timeline that will allow executives—and outsiders—to measure Intel’s progress.

The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of U.N. Diplomacy

Richard Gowan

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At the end of this week, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield will be in Tokyo, leading the U.S. delegation at the closing ceremony of the Summer Olympics. At first glance, Olympic sports and U.N. committee meetings may not seem to have much in common. But the ambassador may see some parallels between the Games and the political developments in Turtle Bay.

U.N. officials like to praise the Olympics as a model of international cooperation. Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon donned a track suit to help carry the Olympic flame at both the London and Rio Games, in 2012 and 2016 respectively. His successor, Antonio Guterres, has not been to Tokyo. But he has praised the athletes for demonstrating the energy that he would like to see governments bring to talks on climate change and global inequality. ...

The EU’s new connectivity agenda

Jacob Mardell

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What (not) to learn from the Belt and Road Initiative?

The Council of the European Union recently approved conclusions on “A Globally Connected Europe.” The adoption of this policy document is the latest milestone in an ongoing European attempt to orchestrate a new connectivity strategy, partly in response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

In 2018, an EU joint communication on “Connecting Europe and Asia” was released, establishing the building blocks for a “sustainable, comprehensive and rules-based” connectivity strategy. Over the past year, the topic of connectivity has picked up steam, with European Parliament urging a global connectivity strategy, the adoption of an EU Indo-Pacific strategy with connectivity elements and G7 discussions about a new “build back better world” initiative.

Military Conscription and Its Role in Shaping a Nation

Nina Nasr

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The military was created long before the formation of the current modern state. Established for the purpose of obtaining and protecting territory and resources, the military has played and continued to play a significant role in state formation and building. Consequently, the state and the army’s intricately intertwined relationship has attracted a significant amount of scholarly attention. However, the military is an institution that has expanded beyond its initial goals of offense and defense. Such an expansion has come as a defiance to the general and technical perception of what the military represents. It is a tool for state formation and building but it has also become a means from which nation-building and cohesion could be promoted. While there is a sufficient amount of research on the military relative to state building, existing literature only goes so far in explaining the effective role of the military vis-à-vis nation-building. Thus, this study will be focused on the latter; it will specifically evaluate one of the military’s policies, conscription, with respect to the activation of national sentiment. By assessing the degree to which military conscription can break down existing ethnic barriers and unite citizens with a common national cause and identity, we can positively reframe the controversial perception of conscription. On a broader scale, it will also refine our current understanding of the military not just as a coercive institution but also as a social one with short-term and long-term influences on social attitude, behavior and consequently, nation-building.

The Appeals and the Limits of Digital Education in the Post-Covid Era

Sirvan Karimi

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Though shifting to online teaching and learning has been a persistent trend for the last two decades, remotely delivered teaching has become a pervasive and ubiquitous worldwide phenomenon during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is no misgiving that the staggering impact of COVID-19 on education sector will cement e-learning as an indispensable ingredient of the traditional teaching and learning system. The intensification of the shift to digital teaching and learning is alleged to have the potential to reduce educational costs, diminish bargaining leverage of faculty and teachers’ unions in the education sector, and enhance learning capacity of students. Contrary to the views of ardent exponents of online teaching and learning, it can be demonstrated that e-learning neither reduces educational costs nor can it undermine the bargaining leverage of faculty and teachers’ unions.

Online delivery of education is believed to have provided a golden opportunity to significantly reduce educational costs. The pathways to the realization of low educational cost through digital teaching and learning are; increasing student-teacher ratios (increasing enrollment in each section of a course since there is no spatial limitation), transferring certain educational activities to computers, curtailing salary costs by redesigning processes that would facilitate an effective and efficient utilization of teacher time, reducing school-based facility costs, and realizing economies of scale by leveraging initial development costs as widely as possible (Bakia, et al. 2012; also Morris, 2008).

Unthinkable and Invisible International Relations

Zeynep Gülşah Çapan

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The colonial underpinnings of International Relations (IR) have been receiving increasing attention (Grovogui 2006, Krishna 2006, Sabaratnam 2011, Çapan 2017a, Shilliam 2021). The discipline has addressed its own Eurocentrism in a myriad of ways such as non-Western IR and Global IR. (Acharya and Buzan 2009, Acharya 2014). One of the shortcomings of these approaches has been a focus on adding more perspectives into an already existing account of the international rather than questioning the politics of knowledge that constitute the international (Çapan 2020). This intervention aims to elaborate further on the politics of knowledge that continue to make events, histories and knowledges unthinkable and invisible within the discipline.

The notion of unthinkability is borrowed from Trouillot’s (1995) discussion of the Haitian Revolution. He argued that the Haitian Revolution ‘entered history with the peculiar characteristic of being unthinkable even as it happened’, as contemporaries failed to ‘understand the ongoing revolution on its own terms’, as they ‘could read the news only with their ready-made categories, and these categories were incompatible with the idea of a slave revolution’ (Trouillot 1995: 73). He argues that there are two tropes within narratives of Haitian revolution: formulas of erasure and formulas of banalization (Trouillot 1995: 96). The formulas of erasure ‘erase directly the fact of a revolution’ whereas formulas of banalization ‘empty a number of singular events of their revolutionary content so that the entire string of facts, […] become trivialized’ (Trouillot 1995: 96).

NSA Releases Security Guidance For DoD, Contractors On Public Networks

BRAD D. WILLIAMS

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WASHINGTON: The National Security Agency today released a set of best practices for using public networks, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Near Field Communications. The guidance is specifically aimed at those who work with national security, Defense Department, and defense industrial base data, devices, and systems, but the advice can be adopted by any sensible user.

NSA’s guidance, Securing Wireless Devices in Public Settings, highlights some of the many security threats associated with using public networks, noting, “The risk is not merely theoretical; these malicious techniques are publicly known and in use.”

Indeed, most of the threats covered in the guidance have been known to the cybersecurity community for years, if not decades. But they could be unknown to many, and the information is therefore worth sharing.

NPS Cybersecurity Expert Explores ‘Weapons of Mass Disruption’ in New Book

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The German War Machine of World War II utilized a military tactic, known as Blitzkrieg, to create psychological shock and disorganization of enemy forces through surprise, speed and superiority in firepower. The German concept, which translates to “lightning war,” has been around – though under the earlier name Schwerpunktprinzip – since the Prussian military in the early 19th century.

In today’s day and age, Dr. John Arquilla, Distinguished Professor of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, believes Blitzkrieg is alive and well, but has evolved into a different form.

In his latest book, "Bitskrieg: The New Challenge of Cyberwarfare," Arquilla talks about how the art of warfare has changed over the past decade. He believes that the next generation of combat will be won with bits and bytes guiding the bullets and bombs.

Tuya may be the China threat that beats Russia's ransomware attacks

HAL BRANDS AND KLON KITCHEN

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In May, Americans lined up at gas stations for days because of a Russian ransomware attack. Recently, a similar Russia-sourced attack struck a large group of companies via software used by IT departments to manage remote computers. But those attacks are about money, not about power or information, and a little-known Chinese technology company, Tuya, is on the verge of being able to blow Russian hackers away.

Tuya, a nominally private Chinese company backed by WeChat megalith and Beijing-government crony Tencent, takes “things” and makes them “smart” by connecting them to the internet, a function known as “platform as a service,” or PaaS. Tuya dominates the global “internet of things” (IoT)/PaaS market. It operates from Hangzhou City, China, and its hardware, software, cloud services and applications power more than 100 million “smart” devices in 1,100 product categories in 220 countries — including consumer products, surveillance equipment, and manufacturing and supply chain applications.

US military changing strategy after losing simulated war with China

Helen Elfer

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A general has revealed that the US military “failed miserably” in a war game, leading to a major fighting strategy change.

The United States’ readiness for armed conflict was put to the test in an exercise last October, which ended up uncovering serious weaknesses in its warfighting strategy, reports Business Insider.

Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Hyten said on Monday: “Without overstating the issue, it failed miserably."

During the simulated war, described as “a fictional confrontation with China” that involved a fight over Taiwan, the imaginary enemy upended the blue team’s (ie the United States’) strategy of “information dominance”.

Review – Europe and America: The End of the Transatlantic Relationship?

Roberta N. Haar

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I regularly listen to BBC Radio 4 in the morning, and NPR before I go to bed. The way the media on opposite sides of the Atlantic described the recent G-7 summit of world leaders in Cornwall points to diverging goals by the attendees. While it is true that everyone was offering a narrative of better collaboration after the Donald Trump era, in what was President Joe Biden’s first overseas trip, it is also true that the G7 leaders wanted different things to come out of the meeting.

The differences on display in Cornwall and the damage done to transatlantic relations by the Trump era are the main topics explored in Federiga Bindi’s 2019 edited volume Europe and America: the end of the Transatlantic Relationship? The title’s question mark foreshadows the differences that will be discussed. The book is divided into two parts, the first of which considers the foreign policies of eight members of the European Union (including the United Kingdom) and focusses on each state’s national foreign policy priorities. The second part covers Russia and the United States, and also contains a conclusion by Bindi that casts a broad historical and geopolitical net that captures the foreign relations of many of the aforementioned countries, as well as Latin America and Africa.