Indian Strategic Studies: 08/27/24

27 August 2024

The US Can Accelerate India’s Rise as a Legacy Chip Hub

Satya S Sahu and Amit Kumar

As the struggle for critical tech supremacy with China escalates, the U.S. and its allies grow increasingly wary about their reliance on China for “legacy” semiconductor chips. Earlier this year, U.S. policymakers called for prompt action to reduce domestic dependence on Chinese-made trailing-edge or commodity chips. Sharing this concern, the U.S. Department of Commerce launched a survey to map the supply chains for such chips in January 2024. This issue was also a prominent focus in the April U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council session, where both partners committed to identifying supply chain distortions caused by Beijing’s subsidized production of legacy chips. Such developments reflect a growing consensus in Washington and Brussels that China’s control over legacy chip supply chains poses serious economic and national security risks.

Legacy chips are critical components for a vast range of applications and products, from consumer electronics and vehicles to industrial equipment, military systems, and other critical infrastructure like power grids. To borrow parlance used in the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act, semiconductor chips fabricated on a process older than 28 nanometers are categorized as “legacy semiconductors.” In contrast, today’s leading-edge chips (the chips that power our smartphones and the GPUs that power AI tools like ChatGPT) are fabricated on more sophisticated 5 or 3-nanometer process nodes. While legacy chips lack the raw processing power of newer leading-edge chips, they are also vastly cheaper to produce. However, producing these chips profitably is also dependent on shipping huge volumes, with foundries operating with razor-thin profit margins.

Modi’s Visit To Ukraine: Posturing For Nobody’s Benefit – Analysis

P. K. Balachandran

There was little in the visit for the three parties involved – Ukraine, Russia and the US

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Ukraine last Friday was an exercise in posturing only to seem to be neutral between Russia and Ukraine without bringing any proposals or ideas to the table.

The posturing did not amount to much given the fact Modi had neither brought a workable proposal to end the war nor was he in a position to influence any of the warring parties.

Zelenskiy was expecting Modi to bring a peace proposal, but Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar merely said that all matters relating to the conflict were discussed in the talks.

The Ukrainians would certainly have expected India to stop or reduce the import of oil from Russia, but Jaishankar ruled out any such possibility saying that India needed a lot of oil and that it was impossible to get it from other countries given the fact that many of the top suppliers were under sanctions.

Afghanistan’s future uncertain three years after Taliban takeover

Imran Khalid

On Aug. 14, the Taliban marked the third anniversary of their return to power in Afghanistan with a public holiday and a televised military parade at the former U.S.-run Bagram airbase. Dubbed “victory day,” the celebrations occurred against the backdrop of global condemnation of the Taliban regime for creating what many call “the world’s most serious women’s rights crisis” and for making Afghanistan the only country where girls are banned from education beyond sixth grade.

Afghanistan is now a breeding ground for uncertainty. With a fragile power base and an escalating economic and humanitarian crisis, the Taliban face internal and external threats.

Neighboring countries, wary of a possible influx of international terrorist groups such as the Islamic State Khorasan Province, view the situation with increasing unease. Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s foreign assets remain frozen, sanctions persist and humanitarian aid has been largely cut off. The U.S. withdrawal, far from the political settlement many hoped for, allowed the Taliban to seize power almost by default.

Lessons From Sri Lanka: How Bangladesh Can Secure Its Democratic Future

Tasnim Odrika

Parallels between the economic and democratic trajectories – or the lack thereof – of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have long been noted by external experts. In a 2022 ANI interview, which has recirculated in light of the recent mass uprising in Bangladesh, a reporter asked longtime Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina if she foresaw the country facing a “Sri Lanka-type crisis.” Hasina was quick to dismiss the concerns with a brief “Not exactly.” However, when recent videos of Bangladesh’s mass protests emerged, showing demonstrators storming the Ganabhaban, it echoed the Sri Lankan protesters who stormed the presidential palace in 2022.

For the past 15 years, Bangladesh, like Sri Lanka under the Rajapaksa family, has been governed by the Awami League. Both countries have experienced authoritarianism under dynastic rule, characterized by rampant corruption, nepotism, and extravagant projects designed to distract citizens from issues such as debt and money laundering. Both the Sheikh and Rajapaksa families built their political empires on their families’ wartime leadership stories, with little else to bolster their legitimacy as current political leaders.

Hasina might have failed to see the parallels to Sri Lanka and predict the outcome of her authoritarian rule, but we can still derive lessons from the aftermath of the Aragalaya to ensure the reformation of Bangladesh’s democracy.

How China Could Blockade Taiwan

Bonny Lin, Brian Hart, Matthew P. Funaiole, Samantha Lu, and Truly Tinsley

Chinese leaders are determined to prevent Taiwan’s permanent separation and eventually bring it under their control. Beijing’s growing use of its military to put pressure on Taiwan in recent years has stoked concerns that it may invade the island. Yet China has options other than invasion, one of which is a blockade designed to break the will of Taiwan’s people to resist.

Drawing on Chinese military writings, tabletop exercises, private consultations, and expert surveys, this report lays out China’s potential motivations for a blockade and maps out possible scenarios of how China could approach blockade operations.

Why China Might Blockade Taiwan

Chinese military planners have long considered a blockade to be one of the main campaigns for which the PLA needs to prepare.

Science of Campaigns, a textbook published in 2006 by China’s National Defense University, defines a “joint blockade campaign” (联合封锁战役) as “an offensive campaign that is implemented by Navy-, Air Force-, Second Artillery- and Army campaign large formations with the assistive concerted efforts of the armed police force and militia . . . to sever enemy economic and military connections with the outside world.”

How quickly can Taiwan integrate US weapon systems? Speed is essential to help deter China.

Adam Kozloski

Over the past few years, discussions on Taiwan’s military readiness have honed in on the long delays in processing and delivering US weapon systems to Taiwan while China’s capabilities are rapidly growing—putting deterrence at risk. However, delivery is just one step in the process of integrating weapons within Taiwan’s armed forces. The full integration process extends beyond the weapons arriving on the island’s shores.

The period between delivery and integration is often invisible to the public, but it is a danger that I covered during my time as a foreign policy advisor in the US Senate. It is driving a strategic risk of failure for Taiwan’s porcupine strategy of signaling that the island is too costly a meal for China to digest, and Washington and Taipei must urgently address this issue before Beijing moves to take advantage of the delay with military aggression.

Defining the problem

The timeline for integrating weapon systems has remained largely hidden in part because the US Department of Defense uses vague and often subjective terms to define a country’s ability to integrate systems. Like any recipient country, Taiwan is reluctant to advertise weapon integration delays to its adversaries. Despite these challenges, the US Department of State and US Department of Defense are required by statute to certify to Congress that a country can integrate a weapon system being delivered. This is enumerated as a country’s “ability to absorb” within major weapon sales notices to the appropriate congressional committees and later to the public.

Rampant Nationalism Is Undermining China’s ‘Three Warfares’

Weilong (David) Kong

In two “regrettable incidents” this summer, several U.S. and Japanese nationals fell victim to frenzied stabbing attacks in China, resulting in one Chinese woman being killed while saving a school bus full of Japanese children from the assailant. While some in the country pushed for her to be posthumously granted the title of “model hero,” others resented her for being a “traitor” who “foiled revenge on the Japanese.”

These violent outbursts of xenophobia and the conflicted public reception have raised concerns about China’s rampant nationalism.

As the government scrambles to curtail online extremism, media-fueled nationalist fervor continues to permeate Chinese social life. From proclaiming Chinese cultural superiority by dismissing Western history as fake, to blatantly promoting xenophobia and antisemitism, nationalist zeal is not only captivating but profitable in the age of social media.

The Rise, Decline, and Possible Resurrection of China’s Confucius Institutes

Si-yuan Li and Kenneth King

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Confucius Institute – established by the Chinese government to promote the Chinese language, culture, and a positive image of China globally. Confucius Institutes rapidly expanded to more than 500 centers across 160 countries in little over a decade, becoming a central component of China’s international language and culture promotion (ILCP) strategy.

Yet their development has not been unchallenged. Over the past decade, Confucius Institutes have faced setbacks, most notably in the United States, where at least 100 have closed. These closures led to a major overhaul of the management structure of Confucius Institutes in June 2020, when the Chinese International Education Foundation (CIEF) was established as the effective brand holder, while the former headquarters was dissolved and replaced by the Centre for Language Education and Cooperation (CLEC). These changes marked a shift toward decentralization.

The initial rapid growth of Confucius Institutes was attributable to the favorable geopolitical environment toward China during the early years of the initiative. Under President Hu Jintao, China adopted a diplomatic philosophy of “tao guang yang hui” (hiding capabilities and keeping a low profile), emphasizing soft power as a means for its peaceful rise.

Azerbaijan Moves Closer Toward China And Courts Investment Through New Deals – Analysis

Reid Standish

Azerbaijan is laying the groundwork to boost its ambitions in the South Caucasus and is looking to China for help.

In just two months, Baku’s ties with Beijing have quickly moved forward as the oil-rich country has inched closer politically and economically through a series of agreements that could boost China’s presence in the region and open the door to newfound Chinese investment into Azerbaijan.

The series of recent moves began on July 3 when Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Astana and declared they had upgraded bilateral ties through a new strategic partnership that calls for them to work closer together economically, militarily, and politically.

A few weeks later, Baku applied to upgrade its status within the SCO from dialogue partner to observer, setting the stage to potentially become a full member.

And then on August 20, Azerbaijan announced it had applied to join the BRICS group of emerging economies led by China and Russia that also includes Brazil, India, and South Africa as founding members.

Hanoi’s New Fears And Gains – Analysis

Collins Chong Yew Keat

Vietnam’s new leader To Lam is making China the destination for his first overseas visit, when he visited the country and met with Xi, signaling the option of China being the vital power that still remains on Vietnam’s policy calculations, especially in supply chain and economic dimension.

The fact that Lam chose China as his first overseas visit since his appointment reflects the fact that Vietnam attaches great importance to its relations with China, even with Washington’s greater courting of Hanoi in recent months in a tit for tat move after Xi and Putin both visited the country.

Biden’s visit to Hanoi last year also marked the escalation of the overtures and the race to ensure Vietnam remains a reliable future supporter of Washington’s quest to defend the rules-based order.

Vietnam needs greater expansion and access to the Chinese market, especially to its agricultural products and high-quality investments, while China is eyeing Vietnam for its geopolitical returns and in ensuring a trouble free neighbour in its southern flank. Vietnam’s new economic potential and its vast critical minerals including rare earths and the risks of Vietnam falling into Washington and the West’s orbit.

China’s Belt And Road Initiative: A Critical Analysis

Ambassador Kazi Anwarul Masud

The Asia Pacific region appears to be enthralled by China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which is basically aimed at developing infrastructure in the participating countries.

According to Eric Brown, Research analyst of the Geopolitical Economic Risk, Belt and Road Initiative promises to link China to both neighboring and distant regions along its southern and western frontiers through a massive infrastructure investment project, including roads, rail lines, ports, energy pipelines and digital networks. BRI promises to spend one trillion dollars which is several times larger than the Marshall Plan undertaken for the rejuvenation of the European economy. In total, the BRI incorporates more than 60 countries (figures vary), affects nearly 62 per cent of the world’s population and includes more than 30 per cent of global gross domestic product. Yet despite its impressive metrics, the project still satisfies only a fraction of the larger infrastructure demand in the region.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that the continent will require more than $26 trillion of investment between 2016 and 2030. The international community is aware of the trade tussle between the USA and China that may trigger a global recession. That aside, BRI may aim to supplant a China-led economic sphere in Eurasia in place of the West-led economic system that continues to rule the world since the Second World War.

Special operations forces ‘big fan’ of Replicator, especially for Pacific missions

Lee Ferran

US special operations forces are already a “big fan” of the Pentagon’s Replicator drone project, especially as the DoD imagines what a fight in the Pacific could look like, according to a senior official.

“First off, I think … it’ll field systems much more quickly than the standard defense industrial base process, procurement process,” Chris Maier, assistant secretary of defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, told the Defense Writers Group this morning.

“And so I think from the SOF [special operations forces] perspective, because we often are the ones able to do smaller projects, work them more quickly, test them with operators — in some cases actually [in an] operational context — then we can in some cases be proof of concept for the Replicator that then, if something works, can be scaled up much more quickly through Replicator than” through a traditional defense contractor.

Replicator, a major initiative by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks unveiled a year ago, aims to crank out hundreds of unmanned platforms in record time, or as she put it, to deliver “capabilities at greater speed and scale while simultaneously burning down risk and alleviating systemic barriers across the department.” The first Replicator systems were delivered to servicemembers in April, Hicks previously said.

The Pinnacle Of Blitzkrieg And The Pincer Movement – OpEd

Kung Chan

The basic military strategies of Blitzkrieg and the pincer movement are widely known through films. The Germans were the most successful practitioners of Blitzkrieg, and the pincer movement was the masterpiece of Nazi German Field Marshal Erich von Manstein. Under the command of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Oleksandr Syrskyi, the Ukrainian force has successfully launched offensives twice, but these cannot be considered true pincer movements. While they have managed to break through and advance, their strategic objectives and plans remain unclear. As a result, there is a significant risk of reverting to entrenched positions and trench warfare, which plays to Russia’s strengths.

This is the greatest danger, and the reason for this lies in strategic theory.

Modern offensive operations involve more than just breakthroughs; they are fundamentally about destroying the defensive system and eliminating or capturing enemy forces, as the Germans did during World War II. Both the pincer movement and Blitzkrieg are forms of offensive operations. The biggest challenge in offensive operations is not the breakthrough or initiation but how to bring it to a successful conclusion. The fundamental goal of a breakthrough is to dismantle the enemy’s defensive structure and create chaos, then to eliminate as many enemy forces as possible during the maneuver, and finally to withdraw, regroup, and seek the next opportunity. The most difficult part is achieving these goals when the climax of the battle arrives. Otherwise, it may lead to confusion and disorder. This was a problem faced by the Germans during the war. Despite repeatedly breaking through, Friedrich Paulus’s army even reaching near Moscow, Hitler’s orders made it difficult to withdraw, and the Soviets used the vast space to defend and eventually turn the tide. There are concerns that the Ukrainian army might face similar issues.

Not Only for Killing: Drones Are Now Detecting Land Mines in Ukraine

Lara Jakes

With a stiff gait, a drone dog stomped up and down a makeshift minefield at a U.S. Army testing center in Virginia, shuddering when it neared a plate-size puck meant to simulate an anti-tank explosive. On its back was a stack of cameras, GPS devices, radios and thermal imaging technology that military developers hope will help it detect mines at close range, sparing humans from that dangerous task.

For the most part, the dog appeared to know when to stay away from the mock mine, given the artificial intelligence embedded in its system to identify threats. “Mostly it does, but sometimes it doesn’t,” Kendall V. Johnson, a physicist at the countermine division of the Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command, said during a demonstration this summer outside Washington. “That’s something we’re working on currently.”

The drone dog is among a handful of emerging technologies in anti-mine warfare — a field that, until now, experts say had not changed much in the past 50 years. But just as drones, which are generally defined as uncrewed machines, not exclusively aircraft, that are piloted remotely, have proved in Ukraine to be an important offensive weapon in modern fighting, they now may also provide defense, with new and safer ways to detect and clear land mines.

U.S. debates support for Ukraine’s surprise offensive into Russia

Karen DeYoung, Alex Horton and Isabelle Khurshudyan

Caught unaware by Ukraine’s surprise military incursion into Russia early this month, the Biden administration is still debating whether to help Kyiv’s forces hold and perhaps even expand the sliver of territory they now occupy in Russia’s Kursk region.

The Pentagon has asked the Ukrainians what they need to make their gambit successful, U.S. officials said, but no decisions have been made to materially support the effort.

Internal administration discussions have focused on whether to adjust the contents of weapons packages that are now being dispatched every two weeks, to include more armored vehicles or to speed up delivery of certain munitions and other equipment that could help the Ukrainians “dig in and defend themselves” in the nearly 500 square miles of Russian territory Kyiv now says it holds, a U.S. official said.

Why the Media Moves in Unison

Yascha Mounk

For much of the pandemic, mainstream publications confidently rejected the possibility that an inadvertent lab leak may stand at the origin of Covid. The New York Times and The Washington Post, The Guardian and Vox all referred to this notion as a “conspiracy theory.” Fact-checkers at Politifact and other leading outfits claimed that the idea had definitively been “debunked.” Renowned scientists were banned from Facebook and YouTube for dissenting from the approved line.

Then, in the course of a few weeks, the theory suddenly stopped being taboo. The evidence that there was reason to take the theory seriously had gradually accumulated on social media. Finally, in January 2021, a major article in New York Magazine marshaled some of the strongest evidence for the theory. Though it did not contain much new information, serious consideration of the topic started to appear in all the most prestigious outlets over the following days and weeks. Before long, the theory was routinely being described as a plausible, and perhaps even likely, explanation for the start of the pandemic.1

The media’s change in how it covered the origins of the pandemic is one of the most extreme examples of groupthink in recent history. But it is far from the only case in which journalistic coverage of an important topic has radically shifted over the course of a stunningly brief span of time.

Winning the Tech Race: Why American CEOs Must Lead, Not Follow

Michelle Giuda

The summer of 2024 is making a run for one of the most tumultuous in American political and stock market history. One presidential candidate dramatically stepped down, another barely dodged an assassin’s bullet, and the most important election on the world stage was reshaped in a matter of weeks. Lagging economic indicators and the warning of an American slowdown triggered a global stock sell-off. As this season of volatility heats up, one thing remains constant: the imperative for American and allied CEOs to lead the world with trusted technology.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), under the leadership of General Secretary Xi Jinping, has made leading the world in new technologies a core pillar of its strategy to remake this international system in its authoritarian image. China is a determined and capable adversary who is partnering with regimes in Russia, Iran, North Korea, and elsewhere to achieve its freedom-suppressing ambitions. This is our long-term reality, and we—the United States and our allies—have no choice but to win.

U.S. and allied governments can offer blueprints, principles, processes, and regulations for leading in AI, semiconductors, and other critical technologies. Still, our victory in the technology race will not be won in Washington, Brussels, or the United Nations. The real strategic impetus will come from our enterprising business leaders from Silicon Valley to Indianapolis to New York to Austin, with help from allies in places like Tallinn, Montevideo, Tel Aviv, and Taipei. We won’t regulate our way to victory over autocracy; we will have to innovate our way there. However, in order for this to be true, it will require CEOs and business leaders around the free world to embrace new thinking for a new world.

A Proportional Response? American Strategy and the Red Sea

Samuel Byers

“What is the virtue of a proportional response?” asks President Jed Bartlet of his National Security Council (NSC) in one episode of The West Wing. “They hit an airplane, so we hit a transmitter, right? That’s a proportional response.” Angrily, the president cuts off the aides trying to explain and interjects: “They do that, so we do this—it’s the cost of doing business. It’s been factored in. Am I right or am I missing something here?” Exasperated by the president’s interrogation of the virtues of a proportional response, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reluctantly admits, “It isn’t virtuous, Mr. President. It’s all there is, sir.”

The opening story arc of Aaron Sorkin’s magnum opus is an extended meditation on the limitations of military power and the responsibility of command. Faced with a crisis in the Middle East, a U.S. jet shot down over Syria, which happened to be carrying a member of his staff, the newly minted commander-in-chief struggles to calibrate his response to this affront to American military power. Ultimately, after asking his national security team to devise a “disproportional response” that “doesn’t make me think we are just docking somebody’s damn allowance,” Bartlet orders the original precision strikes to go ahead out of concern for the civilian casualties and diplomatic blowback that might attend a full-bore military incursion. The president’s chief of staff reminds Bartlet—and the viewer—that this is “how you behave if you’re the most powerful nation in the world. It’s proportional, it’s reasonable, it’s responsible—it’s not nothing!”

Is Ukraine’s Kursk gamble paying off?

Daniel DePetris

When the Ukrainian army made a sudden, quick thrust into Russia’s Kursk region on Aug. 6, handing yet another surprise to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his security services (the United States was surprised as well), the commentary settled into another period of bombastic celebration.

“They’re [Ukrainian forces] gaining an enormous morale boost,” retired Gen. David Petraeus said on CNN. “It’s a huge blow to Putin needless to say.” Carl Bildt, Sweden’s former prime minister, was even more ebullient, writing that “Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk has fundamentally changed the course of the conflict.” Retired Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe, exclaimed that Kyiv’s operation in Kursk tore apart Russia’s narrative of invincibility.

This isn’t the first time military experts and other observers have jumped the gun — indeed, jumping the gun seems to be the pattern. Too many tend to extrapolate far too much based on a single military event, even if that event appears significant in the moment. First, it was Ukraine’s impressive defense against Russia’s initial invasion toward Kyiv in the opening weeks of the war. Then it was Ukraine’s swift counteroffensive in Kharkiv, which reclaimed the region from Russian forces in a matter of days. Then it was Russia’s beating back the Ukrainian army’s 2023 counteroffensive along the 600-mile frontline. Now it’s Ukraine’s invasion of Russian territory. In each case, the event was less a turning point and more an example of how interstate war ebbs and flows.

Why hasn’t Iran attacked Israel to avenge Hamas’s leader?

Dov S. Zakheim

Nearly a month has passed since Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in a Tehran guest house belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran blamed Israel for the Hamas leader’s death from a remotely denoted explosive, which appears to have been planted nearly two months earlier. Two IRGC operatives were reportedly responsible for planting that explosive.

Despite Israel refusing to confirm or deny that it had a hand in Haniyeh’s death, the Iranian government has vowed revenge. Iran has rejected pleas from both the U.S. and European leaders not to attack Israel, which could lead to an expansion of the current hostilities, thus far limited to the war in Gaza and limited exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah. Yet, despite its threats, Tehran has yet to act.

Officially, the Iranians have said that they will not respond if there is a cease-fire in Gaza, but the fighting in the enclave continues. Moreover, even if, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken has asserted, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted the latest American cease-fire proposal — and it is unclear whether Netanyahu has done so unconditionally — Hamas has rejected it.

What Ukraine’s Kursk Incursion Reveals about Russia’s Role in Central Asia - Opinion

Alouddin Komilov, Otabek Akromov & Mirshohid Aslanov

The world was caught off guard by Ukraine’s bold and daring incursion into the Kursk region of Russia on August 6. This surprise attack by a smaller nation against a nuclear power has shattered Russian President Vladimir Putin’s carefully constructed narrative of greatness and invincibility. While Western observers have primarily focused on the tactical advances made by Ukrainian forces, this attack has also unveiled more profound strategic vulnerabilities of Russia’s standing as a supposed great power. Notably, even Russia’s closest allies within the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)–Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan–have provided neither military nor political backing, leaving Moscow isolated in this conflict.

The CSTO, established in 2002, was initially intended to counter external aggression against its members and harmonize foreign policy stances. Much like Article Five of the North Atlantic Treaty, the CSTO members are bound by the principles of collective defense. Article Four of the organization’s charter states that if a bloc member is subjected to aggression by another state or group of states, it will be considered an attack on all members. However, the stark inaction of Russian allies within the CSTO in response to the recent Kursk incursion can be viewed as a final and decisive blow to the credibility of the Moscow-led military-political alliance, reducing it to a mere ‘paper tiger.’

Are the Russians Realists?

Matthew Bryant

Ten years ago, the borders of Eastern Europe shifted for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Euromaidan Revolution in Ukraine saw its pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, ousted from power, shortly followed by the takeover of Crimea by the Russian Federation. These events also started the war in the Donbas, which, in February 2022, escalated into an all-out war on Ukraine.

In the United States, this slow-burn regional escalation characterized Russian president Vladimir Putin as a latter-day Adolf Hitler who was attempting to reunite all of the exclave Russian populations under one banner. Dr. Sumantra Maitra’s The Sources of Russian Aggression: Is Russia a Realist Power? offers better causal explanations than allowing politicians to relive fantasies of WWII.

In the weeks following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Biden declared, “For God’s sake [Putin] cannot remain in power.” There is a certain comfort in believing that Russian foreign policy is predicated on the psychology of one individual. No doubt Putin has immense control over foreign policy, but to suggest that a different Russian leader would change Russian key strategic interests is contradicted by history. In 2008, diplomat William Burns, in an email to Condoleezza Rice, stated that “Ukraine in NATO remains the ‘brightest of all red lines.’” Despite the deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations throughout the 2010s, Ukraine’s entrance into NATO was still being promoted, even as pressure built. Ten years later, hundreds of thousands are dead, millions more have been displaced, and the threat of nuclear war grows with each new expansion of the war in Ukraine.

Inside the IC’s New Counterintelligence Strategy

Ireland Degges

In early August, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published a new edition of the National Counterintelligence Strategy.

The refreshed version includes nine goals split across three pillars, which focus on addressing threats posed by foreign intelligence entities, or FIEs; defending U.S. strategic advantages; and laying a foundation for future counterintelligence, or CI, operations. It was developed by NCSC with input partners across the Intelligence Community and wider U.S. government to provide “a comprehensive vision and direction for the CI community to address increasingly complex foreign intelligence threats,” NCSC Director Michael Casey said in a statement.

Keep reading to learn more about the strategy and its place in the IC’s sweeping transformation efforts.

The 2024 National Counterintelligence Strategy

Pillar 1

Today’s CI landscape is shaped by operations by foreign adversaries in the “gray zone,” which the strategy defines as “a space between war and peace that encompasses intelligence activities that push the boundaries of accepted norms.”

AI in Precision Persuasion. Unveiling Tactics and Risks on Social Media

Gundars Bergmanis-Korāts, Tetiana Haiduchyk & Artur Shevtsov

Introduction

The past decade has seen extraordinary developments in various deep machine learn-ing techniques in the field of generative AI. This has allowed the creation of sophisticated AI models capable of generating textual, auditory, and even visual content. In today’s landscape, the market-driven hype surrounding these models has skyrocketed. New potential use cases for them are being discovered in almost every sphere of human affairs, allowing us to observe the real consequences of this wide adoption of the usage of AI models. Previous research1 has shown that this rapid advance of AI presents significant opportunities, such as identifying hostile communications. However, it also entails substantial risks, including the generation of deep fakes and other manipu-lative content on social networks, which can be used to disseminate disinformation. A clear example of the increasing risks is the tenfold rise in the proportion of tweets by pro-Kremlin hyperactive anonymous ‘troll’ accounts in 2023 compared to the first months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.2 The application of AI models by adversaries for conducting global persuasion operations, which can lead to AI incidents,3 forces us to stay vigilant and ready to counter these threats effectively.

The most illustrative example is the impact of LLMs on text generation. Models such as GPT, Gemini, and Claude are trained on a vast corpus of data collected from diverse information sources ranging from news articles to code repositories and non-public databas-es. These models have performed well4 on a wide variety of content generation or editing tasks, which has seen them quickly adopted by users across various categories and modalities. Consequently, concerns about disinformation, security risks, and dissemination of biased or low-quality information across the web have begun to emerge. Recent research published in Nature demonstrated that using online search to verify potentially false news may actually increase belief in it, particularly when search results prioritize low-quality sources.5 Such phenomenon is overly concerning in cases where AI-generated content is flooding the web and being indexed by search engines. In the visual domain, AI models, mainly focused on image generation due to video development being at an early stage, show a similar trend. Leading models like Stable Diffusion, DALL·E, and Midjourney exhibit impressive results in image quality, notably in digital art for their creativity and expressiveness.

Rethinking the Narrative: A Critical Examination of Private Military Contractors

Alan Chiasson

I recently explored two notable articles: Take the Money and Go by Morgan Lorette, published in Real Clear Defense, and After the Fall by Paul C. Fine, featured in Providence Magazine. Both articles, released in August 2024, contribute to the ongoing discourse about private military contractors (PMCs) in Iraq and Afghanistan, offering insights into their lives and motivations. While these pieces bring valuable perspectives to the table, they do not fully capture the complexities and nuances of the PMC landscape. This article seeks to enhance the conversation by providing a more comprehensive and balanced examination of the issues surrounding PMCs.

Defining the Roles: Mercenaries vs. Private Security Contractors

A fundamental issue with the articles is the conflation of mercenaries and private security contractors. Lorette’s piece implies that PMCs are akin to mercenaries, driven solely by profit. However, this oversimplifies a complex issue. Mercenaries are typically defined as individuals who engage in armed conflict for personal gain, without allegiance to the state or the cause for which they are fighting. In contrast, private security contractors operate under legal contracts and are often employed to provide security services in conflict zones. Their roles are regulated by laws and agreements, differentiating them significantly from mercenaries.

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