The Year of Elections Has Been Good for Democracy

Francis Fukuyama

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Liberals have engaged in a lot of catastrophic thinking during this “year of elections.” Many feared that authoritarian and populist politicians, from Hungary’s Viktor Orban to India’s Narendra Modi, would consolidate their gains by increasing their shares of the vote. According to Freedom House’s February 2024 Freedom in the World analysis, the world has been in a phase of democratic backsliding for nearly two decades, exacerbated by the rise of authoritarian great powers such as China and Russia, hot wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the ascendance or advancement of populist nationalists in countries that seemed to be securely democratic—Germany, Hungary, India, and Italy.

For liberals who want to preserve a world safe for democracies, perhaps the most alarming point came in mid-July, when Republicans confirmed former President Donald Trump as their party’s presidential nominee and ultra-MAGA JD Vance as his running mate. Although Trump tried to overturn the 2020 U.S. election, he was nonetheless the enthusiastic choice of his party. He had just survived an assassination attempt; his raised fists and call to “fight, fight, fight” drew a sharp contrast with the elderly sitting president, Joe Biden, whose debate performance the previous month made him a clear underdog.

India losing to smaller rivals in manufacturing, World Bank says

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India’s global trade share hasn’t kept pace with its fast growing economy, and the country is losing out to rivals like Bangladesh and Vietnam as low-cost manufacturing export hubs, the World Bank said.

India’s trade in goods and services has been declining as a percentage of gross domestic product over the past decade despite its economic heft, the multilateral lender said in a report on Tuesday.

The country’s share in global exports of apparel, leather, textiles, and footwear grew from 0.9% in 2002 to a peak of 4.5% in 2013, but has since declined to 3.5% in 2022, according to the World Bank. In contrast, Bangladesh’s share in global exports of these goods reached 5.1%, while Vietnam’s stood at 5.9% in 2022.

To boost exports and benefit from China’s shift away from labor-intensive manufacturing, India will need to lower trade costs, reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers and revise trade pacts, the lender said.

“This is an area where India could focus on,” Nora Dihel, a senior economist at the World Bank, told reporters in New Delhi. “This is a call to action.”

The campaign volunteer who used AI to help swing Pakistan’s elections: Interview with Jibran Ilyas

Thomas Gaulkin

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On December 17, 2023, a political event like no other caught the world by surprise. In the final minutes of a four-hour-long virtual rally ahead of Pakistan’s national elections, millions of supporters of the political party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (“Pakistan Movement for Justice,” commonly known as “PTI”) waited expectantly for a message from the party’s founder, former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan.

But there was a surprise: The Imran Khan who addressed them was not actually Imran Khan. It was an AI clone of his voice, generated by a $99 software app, coordinated by a PTI volunteer sitting thousands of miles away in Chicago.

Khan, a hall-of-fame cricket player turned politician, served as Pakistan’s prime minister from August 2018 until his April 2022 ouster from parliament and has been jailed since August 2023 on various controversial charges. Despite restrictions imposed on Khan and his party’s activities, both remain immensely popular throughout Pakistan and among Pakistani citizens living abroad. To reach those supporters as the February 8 election approached, PTI’s social media team organized the rally to get around the obstructions. Led by the party’s social media lead, Jibran Ilyas, the volunteer team got Khan’s approval to train an AI neural network on his voice and produce the simulated speech.

Breaking Away: The Battle for Myanmar’s Rakhine State

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What’s new? 

The Arakan Army has seized most of central and northern Rakhine State, on Myanmar’s border with Bangladesh, and seems on the verge of expelling the military. Scrambling for a riposte, the junta has conscripted Rohingya Muslims. The Arakan Army’s response is widely reported to include serious abuses against Rohingya civilians.

Why does it matter? 

Rakhine State faces huge humanitarian challenges as the Arakan Army assumes administration of an emerging proto-state. Fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands. A blockade diverts essential goods from civilians. External actors accustomed to working with national governments must determine how to address humanitarian and security issues with a non-state counterpart.

What should be done? 

The Arakan Army should avoid incendiary rhetoric, protect civilians, support credible investigations of reported abuses and initiate dialogue with Rohingya leaders. Mindful of risks and legal constraints, Bangladesh should increase engagement with the Arakan Army to stabilise borderlands, and donors should explore ways to expand humanitarian operations throughout Rakhine State.

China Tests US Commitment To Indo-Pacific With Maritime Operations – Analysis

William Yang

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China’s recently increased maritime and aerial operations near the Philippines, Japan, and Taiwan is part of Beijing’s attempt to gauge the United States’ commitment to supporting allies in the Indo-Pacific region, say analysts. They noted the increased activity comes as Tokyo and Washington gear up for elections in the coming weeks.

“China sees an opportunity to test the United States’ commitment to the broader region. So, it is sending a signal to Washington that if they try to invest more in the Philippines and other relationships in the South China Sea, Beijing will try to complicate their security architecture and their ability to manage many issues at once,” said Stephen Nagy, a regional security expert at the International Christian University in Japan.

Chinese and Philippine coast guard vessels collided at least twice since last month near Sabina Shoal in the South China Sea. Sabina Shoal lies within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, or EEZ but Beijing says the partially submerged reef is part of its territory.

The latest collision happened shortly after noon on Saturday, August 31. Videos released by both China’s state broadcaster CCTV and the Philippine coast guard showed a Chinese coast guard vessel ramming into a Philippine vessel. Each side accused the other of “deliberately” causing the collision.

Xi Transforms the Party: Senior Cadre Selection in a New Era

Mark Stokes, Eric Lee, Cathy Fang, and Marek Haar

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INTRODUCTION

The People’s Republic of China (PRC, China) poses unprecedented security challenges in the Indo-Pacific region and the broader international community. As such, it is now more important than ever to anticipate who will lead the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and govern China. The composition of China’s leadership—including generational and individual characteristics, as well as group dynamics and balances of power—will have significant implications for China’s policies, political and social stability, and foreign relations.

The CCP is a system characterized by both external unity and internal competition for power and influence. The Party exerts tight control over the political future of China and, despite the opacity of its internal competition, a series of patterns had emerged prior to Xi Jinping’s rule that made it possible to forecast future political leaders. Between Deng Xiaoping’s (邓小平) rise to paramount leader in the late 1970s and Xi’s ascension in 2012, leadership succession had become an increasingly institutionalized process. After the tumult of the Mao and immediate post-Mao years, the Party came to prioritize orderly and predictable successions in order to preserve social stability and, by extension, ensure Party control over political authority. Since Xi’s rise, however, it has become unclear how future paramount leader successions will play out. That said, patterns of cadre elevation at other senior ranks are possible to discern.

National Insecurity: Frontier Governance and Ethnic Policy in Contemporary China

Aaron Glasserman

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We hear a lot today about China’s border conflicts, from high-altitude skirmishes with Indian forces in the Himalayas to legal tussles over maritime sovereignty in the South China Sea. But the People’s Republic of China (PRC) does not just have a border problem. It also has a borderlands problem, or what in official Chinese rhetoric is known as the “frontier question” (bianjiang wenti): the disparity—in terms of development, culture, security, and, ultimately, political control—between the country’s core regions and its vast periphery, delineated by 14,000 miles of land borders shared with 14 countries across nearly 200 county-level jurisdictions and inhabited by dozens of distinct ethnic groups.

The frontier question is not new. Retaining control over the enormous territory of the former Qing dynasty, which collapsed in 1912, has arguably been the defining challenge of the modern Chinese state. It is also closely related to another political problem, the “national question” (minzu wenti). The PRC is formally a multiethnic state comprising 56 officially recognized “nationalities,” consisting of the Han majority and 55 minorities, each of which possesses its own developmental trajectory yet is also (or must be) an inalienable part of the overarching “Chinese nation” (Zhonghua minzu). In order to defuse separatist aspirations and preserve its unified rule, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established a system of regional ethnic autonomy—including the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Tibet Autonomous Region, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and over a hundred other units across the provincial, prefectural, and county levels—in which relatively large and territorially concentrated minorities ostensibly enjoy special cultural and political rights.

Local Reporting Overstates PRC’s Economic Impact on the Kyrgyz Republic

Niva Yau

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Censorship is the most prominent tactic deployed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to manage public memory. Yet suppression of information constitutes only a fraction of Beijing’s efforts to curate narratives for overseas audiences. The manipulation of information through the active insertion of positive messaging is also a prominent feature and can be effective when taking local conditions into account.

In the Kyrgyz Republic, the PRC has been successful in creating a positive perception of itself among the local population. This has influenced choices made by the whole population, from government officials at the highest level in Bishkek to families in rural villages across the country. In the early months of the pandemic lockdown in 2020, I chatted over the phone with 20 Chinese-speaking Kyrgyz youth. I asked them about their decision to learn Chinese and their reasons for pursuing studies in the PRC. Surprisingly, hardly any of them had initially wanted to learn the language. Instead, many did not have a choice but were pushed to do so by their families, who told them that language proficiency would unlock financial opportunities for them. Unfortunately, a diploma from a Chinese university is worth little in the Kyrgyz job market, except for roles as translators for PRC companies or as petty traders of products manufactured in the PRC (Diplomat, December 12, 2022).

U.S. Army eyes drone-soaked Middle East to refine energy weapons

Colin Demarest

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U.S. Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo envisions a future battlefield swarming with sensors and electronics, swollen with digital chatter and interference, and starving for overhead defenses.

Why it matters: The Army is putting a premium on drone and counter-drone equipment in light of the Russia-Ukraine war and is scoping out sci-fi-style energy weapons to combat aerial threats.

Why he matters: Camarillo has for years served as the service's No. 2 civilian, working as its chief operating officer and keeping abreast of its weapon developments.

• He sat down with Axios for a 40-minute interview at the Pentagon.

The intrigue: A directed-energy proving ground is emerging in the greater Middle East, where laser and microwave weapons face real-world, punishing conditions.

• The Army this year dispatched to Iraq several laser weapons mounted on Stryker combat vehicles.
• It plans to send Epirus-made high-power microwave prototypes to the region in the coming months.
• Army Gen. Michael Kurilla, the U.S. Central Command boss, told Congress he would "love" to have additional directed-energy weapons in the area, especially as the Navy snipes Houthi drones launched from Yemen.

Ukraine Needs a New Storyline

Raphael S. Cohen,

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All wars have simple strategic storylines. In the U.S. Civil War, there was the Union’s Anaconda Plan to strangle the Confederacy and later the March to the Sea to slice what was left in two. In World War II, U.S. strategy centered on “Europe first,” as well as the principle of unconditional surrender by Germany and Japan. During the Vietnam War, the United States’ guiding mantra was “search and destroy.” In Iraq, the phrase was “clear, hold, build.”

As Domestic Discontent Simmers, Russia Again Tries to Draw Belarus Into War

Ksenia Kirillova

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Against the backdrop of Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk oblast, even sociological agencies loyal to the Kremlin have recorded a record drop in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rating since the war began. A recent survey conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center showed that Putin’s approval rating for the week of August 12–18 dropped by 3.5 percent to 73.6 percent. The level of trust in the Kremlin leader fell by 2.6 percent to 78.2 percent (Wciom.ru, August 23). The Public Opinion Foundation also recorded a drop in Putin’s ratings (Meduza, August 23). Data from independent sociologists paint a bleaker picture. According to the Levada Center, in August, only 45 percent of respondents named Putin among the politicians they trust. Denis Volkov, the center’s director, asserted that the drop in ratings is associated with the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk, adding to the general decrease in this indicator following the presidential elections in March (Аgents.media, August 29). Along with this, another result looks paradoxical. According to earlier research from the Levada Center, the number of those unhappy with what is happening in Russia has dropped to a historical low: only 12 percent of survey respondents said they were unhappy with their current lives. Volkov argued that adapting to life under sanctions and avoiding active participation in the war has contributed to the low number of Russians dissatisfied with their lives (Аgents.media, August 27). The Russian army, nevertheless, continues to sustain heavy losses at the front, and a mass mobilization of city centers could destabilize the uneasy domestic situation. To blunt that blow and better manage societal strife, Moscow seems set on pulling Belarus into the fray, though official Minsk continues to avoid the active fighting.

Why is Russia changing its nuclear doctrine amid the Ukraine war?

Sarah Shamim

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Russia is amending its doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons as a response to perceived Western involvement in the Ukraine war, its Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying on Sunday.

The comments came at a time when Russia is battling an incursion into its Kursk region by Ukrainian troops and amid growing attacks on Russian territory by Kyiv using Western weapons.

So what exactly is Russia’s nuclear doctrine, how big is its arsenal, what might change, and are others changing their policies too?

What is Russia’s nuclear doctrine?

• Russian President Vladimir Putin last signed off on the country’s nuclear doctrine in June 2020. The six-page doctrine is formally called the Basic Principles of State Policy on Nuclear Deterrence.
• It says Russia considers nuclear weapons to be exclusively a means of deterrence.
• The doctrine deems the use of nuclear weapons an “extreme and compelled measure”.

How Labour can fix the public sector

Dan Honig and Sam Freedman

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We have an extra bonus guest post this month, due to me being on holiday last week. I will have two pieces in the next week on the US election and the Tory leadership race.

But today’s post is by Dan Honig, an associate professor of public policy at University College London and Georgetown University. I first came across Dan’s work when I was running a small international development charity. His book - “Navigation by Judgment: Why and When Top-Down Management of Foreign Aid Doesn't Work” - was the only one I found that acknowledged how broken the system I was trying to engage with was (that’s a post for another day).

Dan’s new book “Mission Driven Bureaucrats” is based on a huge amount of research into what makes public sector workforces effective across the globe - including examples from developed and developing countries. UCL are hosting a launch next week at which I’ll be speaking (alongside more interesting people) which you can sign up to attend here. In this post Dan explores the key lessons from his book for thr new Labour government.

A cabinet shake-up suggests Zelensky is planning for ‘a new phase of the war,’ analysts say.

Marc Santora and Maria Varenikova

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President Volodymyr Zelensky’s overhaul of his government did not appear to signal fundamental shifts in domestic or foreign policy, analysts said Wednesday. But it comes at a dynamic moment in the war, with Russia stepping up airstrikes and inching forward in eastern Ukraine, and weeks before Mr. Zelensky is expected to travel to the United States, where the outcome of November’s elections could affect Washington’s support for his military.

While a reshuffle had long been in the works making the move now was a recognition by Mr. Zelensky that “Ukraine has to prepare for a new phase of the war and new phase of diplomacy and he would like to see some new managers for these processes,” said Mykhailo Minakov, a senior adviser on Ukraine for the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute.

He and other analysts noted that there had been unusual stability to this point in the president’s wartime team. The reshuffle, Mr. Minakov said, had been in the works for months, first discussed at the beginning of the year and again in the spring.

On Wednesday, the Ukrainian leader said the changes would bring “a new energy” to his administration. “These steps are related to strengthening our state in various areas,” he said during a meeting in Kyiv with Prime Minister Simon Harris of Ireland. He declined to comment on where some of the ministers who tendered their resignations might end up in the reshuffle.

From the Ukraine Conflict to a Secure Europe

Thomas Graham

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Introduction

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 put an end to European security as a cooperative project. That project was grounded in the so-called Helsinki Decalogue, a declaration within the 1975 Helsinki Final Act that laid out agreed principles of conduct between the West and the Soviet bloc.1 In the years and decades that followed, European security grew in complexity and scope, especially after the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union. Arms control agreements, institutional arrangements between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Russia, and the agencies of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) gave an ever denser structure to the security order. That order has collapsed. European security needs now to be reimagined and rebuilt during what promises to be a prolonged period of Russian hostility and obstructionism.

In this time of great uncertainty, the natural tendency is to defer long-term planning for Europe’s future security and focus on managing urgent matters—particularly as the war in Ukraine rages, governments struggle against “Ukraine fatigue” among their publics, and Ukraine’s battlefield fortunes wane. When the West believes that the goal should be Russia’s strategic failure lest it press further westward into Europe, a dispassionate discussion of future security arrangements is difficult to conduct.

Absent long-term planning, however, the future unfolds as the outcome of disparate measures taken for tactical reasons rather than as a matter of strategic design. This approach will yield a suboptimal arrangement for European security. The United States and its allies and partners need a strategic vision for the future around which to coordinate policies and operations in the years ahead. Even if the vision never fully materializes, as unforeseen contingencies inevitably intervene and force course corrections, it will lend purpose to current choices.

Putin Puts Forth Resolute Indifference to Kursk Debacle

Pavel K. Baev

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The impact of Ukraine’s August 6 offensive operation into Kursk oblast remains an open strategic question following four weeks of increasingly intense and fluid fighting (see EDM, August 14, 15). Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first reaction to this incursion was clearly misinformed by intelligence assessments portraying it as just another tactical raid. It was only on August 24 that he found time for an extensive briefing with the Chief of the General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov and his first deputy, Colonel General Sergey Rudskoy (RBC; Kremlin.ru, August 24). The top brass did not have any good news for the commander-in-chief, but he apparently did not demand a decisive counterattack aimed at the complete expulsion of enemy troops from Russian territory. While some “patriotic” Russian bloggers claim that the Kursk battle signifies the transformation of the “special military operation” into a real war, Putin prefers to define Russian defensive battles as a counter-terrorist operation (TopWar.ru, August 29). Putin’s lack of initiative in countering this incursion demonstrates how he is trying to avoid the perception within Russia that Ukraine is a formidable foe and that Moscow may not be able to win this war.

On the Kremlin’s instruction, Russian mainstream media has downplayed the significance of the Ukrainian offensive and sought to present the continuing retreats of Russia’s forces and citizens from Kursk villages as a “new normal” (Meduza, August 21). Russian society finds this reassurance comforting but far from convincing, and the hidden angst translates into diminishing support for Putin’s war policy, which even the official polling agencies have not quite been able to camouflage (The Moscow Times, August 30). Economic consequences of the unfolding calamity are accumulating slowly, and many Russians are relieved that no new sacrifices are required and that rumors about a new mobilization are growing old (The Moscow Times, August 23; Svoboda.org, August 30). The families of conscripts are anxious about the fate of poorly trained soldiers, and the approaching autumn conscription cycle casts a gloomy shadow (Svoboda.org, August 21; Vedomosti, August 26).

Russia’s New Maritime Collegium Inaugurated in Renewed Focus on Arctic Policy

Sergey Sukhankin

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On August 13, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree inaugurating the Maritime Collegium of the Russian Federation. Under the collegium’s umbrella, three additional bodies—the Council for Strategic Development of the Navy, Council for Defense of the National Interests of the Russian Federation in the Arctic, and Council for Development and Securing of Maritime Activities—were established (Kremlin.ru, August 13). The new entity will be directly subordinated to the Russian president and headed by former Secretary of the Security Council and long-term Putin ally Nikolai Patrushev, who is currently in charge of national maritime policy (Vzglyad, August 13). The creation of this new collegium will likely bring a renewed focus to Russia’s policies in the Arctic, given the document’s visible pivot to the region. In addition to continuing militarization, Russia may be expected to strengthen its defense and military partnerships with China in the Arctic.

According to the official decree, the collegium’s main task is to “elaborate on measures aimed at preserving the status of a great naval power.” This broad task includes several specific measures that will be monitored and coordinated by the new body. These include the following:

• The development of Russia’s naval potential, including fixing problems in the shipbuilding industry and the drastic renewal of domestic naval research and development by attracting scientists and research institutions to best implement national maritime policy and the protection of Russian national interests;
• The defense of Russian national interests in terms of the exploration, exploitation, and protection of natural resources in the World’s Ocean, as well as the Arctic and Antarctic regions;
• The development of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) as a “national transportation communication” artery to secure Russia’s guaranteed access to global transit via the World’s Ocean; and
• The development of mutually beneficial partnerships and relations in naval activity, given the conditions for “forming a polycentric world,” entailing a multipolar approach to Russian international relations in the maritime sphere (Kremlin.ru, August 13).

‘Trade steel for blood’ — The Army’s plan to bring soldiers into the 21st century

Patty Nieberg
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Soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade took to the Louisiana woods in August to compete against their most formidable enemy, the 1st Battalion 509th Infantry Regiment dubbed ‘Geronimo,’ with a deception plan in place.

Geronimo, the home team at Fort Johnson, Louisiana, faces off against units year-round at the Joint Readiness Training Center in realistic combat scenarios based on lessons learned in global conflicts. JRTC is designed to take away or add stressors on soldiers as well as hold units accountable with simulated casualties and hits that would take them out of the fight.

The 2nd Brigade came in knowing their enemy had the upper hand on home turf so they had to think ahead. Soldiers decided to use “raspberry pis,” which are single-board computers the size of a credit card that can be bought off Amazon to emulate a computer or show up as some kind of electronic signature to confuse their enemy.

“We came in with a deception plan because we wanted to show the enemy that we were in a place where we weren’t so that he would commit forces into our strongest defenses and not into our weakest,” said Capt. Charlie O’Hagan commander of the 101st’s Multi-Functional Reconnaissance Company. “We created, with those decoys, battalion headquarters, company headquarters, and we put them throughout the southern area.”

To Remain Relevant the Marines Must Adapt to a Changing World

Walter Boomer & James Conway & Anthony Zinni

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As remarkable as it sounds, the United States Marine Corps is currently organized and equipped for the wrong mission. The Service, once renowned for its offensive mantra as “first to fight”, has become too focused on defending against the highly unlikely scenario in which the Chinese navy projects from the South China Sea to engage U.S. forces and seize control of the Pacific and beyond. To meet this potential threat, the Marines embraced a new operating concept called “Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations” (EABO) and significantly altered Marine Corps force structure and capabilities by implementing a supporting plan called “Force Design 2030” (now called simply “Force Design”).

The intent of Force Design was to convert existing Marine infantry and artillery formations into small, mobile, self-sufficient missile-equipped units spread across the Pacific Ocean’s first island chain through which the Chinese Navy ships must transit on their way to points east, south and north. It must be noted that these dispersed units are themselves unlikely to contribute in any meaningful way to prevent a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which is considered by planners as both the most likely and most dangerous course of action available to China.

If China elects to strike U.S. bases in Japan, Guam and Hawaii to support the attack against Taiwan, they could use land based missiles fired from Chinese territory and allow the Chinese air force and navy to concentrate on seizing and then defending Taiwan while remaining outside the range of Marine missile batteries.

The US Should Support the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan

Luke Coffey

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More than three years ago, the Taliban swept back into power in Afghanistan after a two-decade insurgency against the internationally backed Afghan government. Since then, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated considerably. The country faces an acute humanitarian crisis affecting millions and has once again become a haven for transnational terrorism.

This tragic outcome was not inevitable, and it is worth reviewing recent history. Starting in 2014, United States troops in Afghanistan were no longer leading daily combat operations but were instead primarily training the Afghan military. When President Donald Trump entered office in January 2017, there were only 11,000 US troops in Afghanistan conducting the counterterrorism and training mission. This was down from a peak of 100,000 troops in 2010–11. In February 2020, Trump agreed to a deal with the Taliban that would have seen the phased withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan by May 2021. This agreement was the starting point of the Afghan government’s collapse and the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021.

In January 2021, when President Joe Biden entered office, there were only 2,500 US troops in Afghanistan. Crucially, the US still provided close air support for Afghan forces. While this was not enough troops to ensure that the Afghan government could control the whole country, it was enough for the US to meet its counterterrorism objectives and prevent the Taliban from taking power. Instead of canceling the flawed withdrawal agreement with the Taliban—something that was in Biden’s power to do—the president merely delayed the date from May to September. On July 2 the US departed the strategically located and geopolitically important Bagram Airfield in the middle of the night without warning its Afghan partners. Around the same time, the US stopped providing Afghan troops with close air support. By the end of July, almost all US and international forces had left the country.

The War on Excess: The Army Has an Equipment Management Problem and Needs a Culture Change to Solve It

Ian W. Black and William Parker

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Excess equipment is an albatross hanging from the Army’s neck. Two decades of conflict, increasing operational requirements since the end of the post-9/11 wars, and lack of placing mundane requirements on training plans has left the service with a severe problem: too much stuff, too often in the wrong places. Worse, given changes in the Army’s equipment transfer standard policy, excess problems may mutate into decreased equipment readiness due to increases in unforeseen maintenance costs. Efforts over the years to address the issue—with Unit Equipping and Reuse Working Groups, for example, and All Army Excess Campaign Plan—have been unable to make progress toward solving the problem. The latest effort, Rapid Removal of Excess (R2E), is in its nascent stages. But applying new practices to the same problem without addressing why the excess problem occurs will only lead to more rounds of R2E-like programs. R2E isn’t the answer; culture change is.

On April 27, 2021, the Senate Committee on Armed Services received testimony from leading authorities on management challenges and opportunities within the Department of Defense. Among the three witnesses, Dr. Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist and tenured professor at the Wharton School of Business, provided particularly candid insights. “I worry that DoD culture is a threat to national security,” he told members of the committee.

SOF 2050: How Robotics, AI, and Human Augmentation Will Redefine Special Operations of the Future

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As the landscape of warfare evolves, Special Operations Forces (SOF) are at the forefront of integrating cutting-edge technologies to enhance their operational capabilities. The convergence of robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and human augmentation is set to redefine how SOF conducts missions, making them more efficient, effective, and adaptable. This article explores current trends, anticipated developments by 2050, and the implications of these advancements for SOF, with a particular emphasis on the ongoing combat operations in Ukraine and Israel.

Current Trends in Robotics and AI in Combat Operations

The ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Israel have highlighted the critical role of robotics and AI in modern warfare. In Ukraine, the use of drones for reconnaissance, surveillance, and targeted strikes has become a game-changer. Both Ukrainian and Russian forces have deployed UAVs extensively, demonstrating their effectiveness in gathering intelligence and executing precision strikes while minimizing risks to personnel. The conflict has accelerated the development and deployment of drone technology, showcasing how unmanned systems can alter the dynamics of battlefield engagements.

Social Media Manipulation in the Era of AI

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Li Bicheng never would have aroused the interest of RAND researchers in his early career. He was a Chinese academic, a computer scientist. He held patents for an online pornography blocker. Then, in 2019, he published a paper that should have raised alarms worldwide.

In it, he sketched out a plan for using artificial intelligence to flood the internet with fake social media accounts. They would look real. They would sound real. And they could nudge public opinion without anyone really noticing. His coauthor was a member of the Chinese military's political warfare unit.

Li's vision provides a glimpse at what the future of social media manipulation might look like. In a recent paper, RAND researchers argue it would pose a direct threat to democratic societies around the world. There's no evidence that China has acted on Li's proposal, they noted—but that should not give anyone any comfort.

“If they do a good enough job,” said William Marcellino, a senior behavioral scientist at RAND, “I'm not sure we would know about it.”

Cyberspace and Space Similarities, Differences and Related National Security Issues

Thomas H. Barth

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Introduction

A. Similarities, Differences, and National Security Implications of Cyberspace and Space

Cyberspace and space share several key similarities. Both are new frontiers for national security that blur traditional ideas about borders, sovereignty, and defense strategy. Both also share a history of starting as intelligence activities rather than as warfighting domains, and both remain closely linked to their intelligence origins.

Both were also originally dominated by the government but have become increasingly essential commercial activities, and the United States (U.S.) military is increasingly turning to the private sector for many of its cyberspace and space services. Both are accessible through the use of sophisticated technology employed by a technically capable workforce

Although space and cyberspace are similar in many respects, there are also differences between them. Space is a naturally occurring part of our earthly surroundings, whereas cyberspace is a manmade phenomenon. Space-based systems typically require massive capital outlays; in comparison, cyberspace operations require much smaller capital outlays.

The similarities and differences between cyberspace and space present several national security issues for the U.S. Three of these issues concern (a) defining the national security relationship between the government and the commercial sector in each domain; (b) the recruiting, professional development, and retention of a technically capable workforce; and (c) achieving unity of effort within each and between both, which includes determining the appropriate relationships between U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) and the National Security Agency (NSA), between U.S. Space Command (SPACECOM) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and between both CYBERCOM and SPACECOM and the geographic and functional CCMDs.

New Tool Detects Fake, AI-Produced Scientific Articles

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When ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence can produce scientific articles that look real — especially to someone outside that field of research — what’s the best way to figure out which ones are fake?

Ahmed Abdeen Hamed, a visiting research fellow at Binghamton University, State University of New York, has created a machine-learning algorithm he calls xFakeSci that can detect up to 94% of bogus papers — nearly twice as successfully as more common data-mining techniques.

“My main research is biomedical informatics, but because I work with medical publications, clinical trials, online resources and mining social media, I’m always concerned about the authenticity of the knowledge somebody is propagating,” said Hamed, who is part of George J. Klir Professor of Systems Science Luis M. Rocha’s Complex Adaptive Systems and Computational Intelligence Lab. “Biomedical articles in particular were hit badly during the global pandemic because some people were publicizing false research.”

In a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, Hamed and collaborator Xindong Wu, a professor at Hefei University of Technology in China, created 50 fake articles for each of three popular medical topics — Alzheimer’s, cancer and depression — and compared them to the same number of real articles on the same topics.