Indian Strategic Studies: 09/23/24

23 September 2024

America and the Philippines Should Call China’s Bluff

Marites Dañguilan Vitug

After months of simmering tensions between China and the Philippines over conflicting territorial claims in the South China Sea, Manila and Beijing have engaged in a series of “candid” discussions on how to manage the disputes. The talks ramped up after a Chinese ship rammed a Philippine coast guard vessel off a contested shoal in August, and come amid a concerted diplomatic, military, and rhetorical push on the part of Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr., to counter Chinese aggression and to protect the Philippines’ sovereign territorial rights in the South China Sea. Despite his efforts, however, the risk of a crisis with Beijing—one that could pull the United States into a military standoff with China, should Washington be obliged to assist Manila under the terms of their mutual defense treaty—is only growing.

The tussle between the Philippines and China over rammed vessels is just the latest in a series of confrontations that many in both Manila and Washington fear could escalate into a full-blown war with China. Since Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power, in 2012, Beijing has laid claim to vast swaths of the South China Sea—claims that it has begun to assert more forcefully, leading to flare-ups not just with the Philippines but also with other countries in the region, including Malaysia and Vietnam. In June, the Chinese coast guard and the Philippine navy faced off directly for the first time when Chinese forces swarmed Philippine personnel in an attempt to block them from resupplying a key Philippine outpost in contested waters. The outpost, a World War II–era ship called the Sierra Madre, which Manila intentionally grounded a quarter-century ago on the shallow reef known as Second Thomas Shoal, has emerged as an unlikely but critical flash point. Wielding pickaxes, knives, and improvised spears, the Chinese forces ransacked the Philippine boats, looted firearms, and hammered the outboard motors, windshields, and communications equipment. In the melee, a Filipino sailor’s thumb got sliced off by a sharp piece of metal. The skirmish marked a significant escalation from China’s usual maneuvers of shadowing, blocking, and firing water cannons at Philippine ships.

Rampant Nationalism Is Undermining China's 'Three Warfares'

Weilong 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.

China hopes to leverage “homebrew” nationalism as an ideological defense to ensure its political security in an era largely defined by great power competition and weakening state power. However, this defense mechanism might be employed at the expense of China's ability to project soft power. For example, overheated nationalism among average citizens and public officials alike is backfiring on China's public opinion warfare and threatening its “Three Warfares” strategy.

Did China Just Demote Its Defense Ministry?

Shanshan Mei and Dennis J. Blasko

Among the most significant personnel changes of the Chinese Communist Party's recent Third Plenum meeting are two that didn't happen: Adm. Dong Jun, the country's defense minister, was neither added to the Central Military Commission nor appointed a State Councilor. This is an apparent demotion for the defense ministry, and could complicate the military-to-military relationship between China and the United States.

Traditionally, the head of the Ministry of National Defense of the People's Republic of China has been a member of the Party and state CMCs. That gave the incumbent direct access to Xi Jinping, who—along with being president of the People's Republic of China and the Party's General Secretary—is CMC chairman. The defense minister typically has also been a State Councilor, granting him status equal to the other national-level ministers and giving him direct access to the Chinese premier, the second-ranking Party leader and the PRC's head of government.

China, America and a global struggle for power and influence

Gideon Rachman

American and Chinese foreign policy sometimes feel like mirror images. The Americans are obsessed by containing Chinese power. The Chinese are obsessed by containing American power.

But the mirroring stops when it comes to how these policies are executed. Washington and Beijing bring different strengths to their battle for power and influence. As a result, they are pursuing different strategies.

America’s singular strength is its military might and its willingness to offer security guarantees to its allies. The US has collective defence agreements with 56 countries around the world — in Europe, Asia and the Americas. It also provides crucial military aid to other countries, such as Israel and Ukraine, that are not formal treaty allies.

China, by contrast, has a mutual defence treaty with just one country — North Korea. Unlike the US, it also has territorial disputes with many of its neighbours, which tends to push them in the direction of America.

But when it comes to economic relations, China has the advantage.

China’s Military Commander Identifies U.S. Missile System That Can “Sting” PLA, Disrupt Taiwan Invasion Plans

Shubhangi Palve

However, one key revelation stood out: the PLA’s concern over US-supplied MANPADS (Man-Portable Air-Defence Systems), which are viewed as a major threat if China proceeds with its dangerous plan to invade Taiwan.

China’s ‘Quenching’ On Taiwan

The latest episode of ‘Quenching’ showcased various military maneuvers, including a large-scale helicopter air assault led by the Ground Force’s aviation unit, anti-access electronic warfare by an aircraft carrier strike group, and long-range rocket fire drills. Reconnaissance and strike drones were highlighted as key to supporting helicopter landing missions on the island.

Beijing’s stance remains clear: it considers Taiwan a part of China, to be reunified by force if necessary.

In the simulated assault, PLA helicopters and landing forces face stiff resistance from enemy units armed with MANPADS, which could pose a serious challenge.

Satellite Photos Show US Reclaiming World War II Airfield for China War

Ryan Chan

An overgrown airfield on a small island in the Pacific, once instrumental in America's role in ending World War II, is being reclaimed by the U.S. Air Force as it prepares for a possible future fight with China.

The remote island of Tinian, which is less than 40 square miles, is one of three principal islands in the Northern Mariana Islands, a string of sparsely populated islets in the Western Pacific Ocean that make up the U.S.'s westernmost frontier, along with the major military hub of Guam some 100 miles to the south.

Tinian was known for its strategic value during the war. Due to its proximity to Tokyo—less than 1,500 miles—it later became a staging base to launch bomber attacks on mainland Japan. The island is a similar distance to China and other flashpoints in Asia, with a U.S. Defense Department plan costed at nearly half a billion dollars now preparing it to help the United States deter, or defeat, the Chinese military.

After the Allies captured Tinian in 1944, the Navy immediately began constructing what was then the world's largest air base, building over existing airstrips for smaller Japanese fighter planes. North Field alone had four 8,500-foot runways and hardstands that supported up to 265 B-29 Superfortress bombers.

Integrated Deterrence, Integrated Friends: Countering China’s Aggression in the Indo-Pacific with Multilateralism

Christopher Lee

Integrated deterrence—this is the concept at the core of US strategy in the Indo-Pacific. By bringing to bear, as the 2022 National Defense Strategy puts it, “the seamless combination of capabilities” to deter adversaries, this strategy offers the flexibility required of such an unpredictable and complex security environment as the Indo-Pacific region’s. However, it is geared largely toward defending the status quo. This is an important objective, but if the existing state of affairs is being constantly altered by threat actor then the strategy must also be altered—or at least augmented.

China is fully committed to changing the regional balance in its favor with its continual aggressive tactics in the South China Sea. President Xi Jinping has presided over a campaign of economic coercion, island building, and military intimidation to gain the upper hand against the United States and its allies. Therefore, preventing China’s behavior may require an enhanced deterrence: a broader focus on multiple scope of cooperation with its allies in the Indo-Pacific region. Pursuing more trilateral and multilateral relationships and weaving them into a network with the United States’ existing array of bilateral alliances and partnerships, would further strengthen Washington’s vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific and deter Beijing.

The Exploding Pagers of Lebanon

Robert F. Worth

It felt like a science-fiction film, one Lebanese friend told me. At almost exactly the same moment—3:30 p.m. today—pagers exploded all over Lebanon, leaving hideous gashes and wounds on the heads, hands, and hips of their owners.

The significance of the attack quickly became clear: The pagers were being used by members of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant movement that has been fighting an undeclared war with Israel since October.

Israel has been using digital technologies to target members of Hezbollah for months, but today’s attack was unlike anything seen before and appears to have struck a new kind of blow. It maimed thousands of fighters and possibly crippled the group’s ability to respond if a broader conflict breaks out soon. It also exposed the identity of the victims, shattering Hezbollah’s careful efforts to maintain the anonymity of its members.

Even in a country that has long been accustomed to war, the intimate nature of this attack was deeply disturbing. Video clips from around Lebanon showed scenes of quiet daily life turning instantly into horror. At a fruit and vegetable market, a man in a blue baseball cap and a short-sleeve shirt is seen selecting green plums when an explosion knocks him to the floor, and he starts screaming in pain. In another clip, a woman is counting money at a cash register when the man in front of her is thrown violently to the ground.

Israel behind deadly pager explosions that targeted Hezbollah and injured thousands in Lebanon

Charbel Mallo, Tamara Qiblawi, Jeremy Diamond, Lauren Kent, Rob Picheta and Christian Edwards

Hezbollah has vowed to respond to an Israeli attack that killed multiple people and injured thousands across Lebanon on Tuesday when pagers belonging to members of the Iran-backed militant group exploded almost simultaneously, exposing a massive security breach and demonstrating the scale of Israeli intelligence.

A child was among at least nine killed in the blasts, which wounded about 2,800 people, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said. At least 170 people are in a critical condition, he said, though the nature of the other injuries is unclear.

The attack underscores Hezbollah’s vulnerability as its communication network was compromised to deadly effect and follows a series of targeted assassinations against its commanders.

Meanwhile, dozens of walkie talkies exploded in Lebanon on Wednesday, leaving at least one person dead and more than 100 injured, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry, which said the affected devices belonged to Hamas members.

The incidents risk further escalating tensions in the Middle East already heightened over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

Israel's New Campaign of "Terrorism Warfare" Across Lebanon

Jeremy Scahill, Murtaza Hussain, and Sharif Abdel Kouddous

For the second day in a row, electronic devices across Lebanon, including walkie talkies, exploded on Wednesday, killing 14 people and injuring over 450, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.

The attack came one day after thousands of pagers across the country exploded at the same time, killing eleven people—including a 9-year-old child—and wounding nearly 3,000, including many civilians and government and hospital workers. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel for the attacks.

“Everyone's scared to send text messages, to make calls, and they're afraid to open laptops. It's definitely led to some level of complete disorientation, fear, confusion, paranoia. It has huge psychological effects,” said Amal Saad, a leading expert on Hezbollah. “People have started to say, ‘Okay, this is going to be the new type of warfare. This is going to be how they're going to fight. It's going to be terrorism warfare. So this is the new normal now.’ People are preparing themselves for more of this.”

Russia Strengthens Ties With Iran to Solidify Position in Middle East

Stephen Blank

On September 15, Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov announced that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian would attend the BRICS (a loose political-economic grouping originally consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) summit in Kazan, Tatarstan, on October 22–24. Additionally, Pezeshkian plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss strengthening political, economic, and military cooperation between Moscow and Tehran (TASS, September 15). The strategic partnership between Iran and Russia has solidified since the beginning of Moscow’s war against Ukraine and has significantly progressed as tensions in the Middle East are rising, largely due to the war in Gaza. The partnership itself, however, comes at a high price for Russia. The Kremlin’s previous Middle Eastern strategy aimed to position Russia as a valuable interlocutor with every regional government while not taking sides in their myriad conflicts. Today, that tactic is no longer feasible. Moscow’s need for an uninterrupted flow of Iranian drones and missiles, plus the reorientation of Russian trade to the south and east to combat Western sanctions, appear to be the driving actors of this transformation (see EDM, March 6, July 29, September 5, 17).

Russian-Iranian cooperation in the Middle East has been steadily growing. In Syria, reports show that Iran is increasingly using Russian facilities to build a naval base, including the use of the Russian air base in Khmeimim as a terminus for deliveries there. Tehran’s use of Russian facilities is meant to contribute to the Iranian domination of Syria with Moscow’s help (MEMRI, August 12). Similarly, in Iraq, the Kremlin-linked Rybar Telegram project is holding meetings with Iranian officials, supporting their efforts to gain greater control over Iran’s media and information space (T.me/rybar, August 28). Likewise, Russian state-owned news agency TASS is opening an office in Tehran, displaying the two sides’ increasing media cooperation (TASS, August 28).

When Cyber Warfare met Psychological Warfare

Ron Jager

Rigging thousands of pagers worn and used by Hezbollah terrorists and operatives in Lebanon, Syria, and other northern locations surrounding Israel to explode simultaneously, signifies only a sliver of insight into Israel’s offensive capabilities. With over 4000 terrorists injured simultaneously, many critically, the devastating psychological effect of the cyber-attack attributed to Israel on Hezbollah is only a pre-emptive stage in the expected war on the murderous terror organization in Lebanon.

With the threat from Hamas largely destroyed, despite its still-lethal ability to plant explosives and carry out guerilla attacks, and mopping up operations being executed by a relatively small IDF force in the Gaza Strip, the focus of Israel has shifted to the north. Hezbollah, the terror organization, and the Republic of Iran, a terror state have been put on notice.

Hamas, one of the most experienced terrorist organizations in the area of propaganda and psychological warfare, sought to combine terror warfare with a psychological campaign that would lower the morale of Israelis, create divisions within the nations’ solidarity, question the need to fight and sacrifice, diminish confidence in the political and military leadership, and lastly weaken personal and community resilience.

The Mystery of Hezbollah’s Deadly Exploding Pagers

Lily Hay Newman

An unprecedented wave of small blasts erupted across Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least 11 people and injuring nearly 2,800 after the wireless pagers of Hezbollah members began exploding, according to local officials.

Pagers started exploding at around 3:30 pm local time, according to a statement from Hezbollah officials, who say that “various Hezbollah units and institutions” were impacted in the incident. The blasts continued for more than an hour, according to Reuters. A Hezbollah statement says a “large” number of people were injured and said they suffered from a wide variety of injuries.

In the immediate aftermath of the explosions, CCTV and phone footage posted to social media, which has not been independently verified, appears to show hospitals flooded with wounded people, as well as apparent explosions happening around waist height and images of damaged pagers. People with links to the region say the explosions caused street-level chaos.

Israel inches closer to decision on northern operation against Hezbollah

Seth Frantzman

Amos Hochstein, a senior advisor to President Joe Biden, held meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant on September 16. The meetings happened a day after Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen launched a long-range missile at central Israel. They also came amid rising tensions between Hezbollah and Israel and a push for Israel to launch a military operation to clear the Iranian-backed group from Israel’s northern border.

Netanyahu met with Hochstein in Tel Aviv at the Kirya, the site of Israel’s Ministry of Defense, and discussed Hezbollah’s threat. “The Prime Minister made it very clear that it will not be possible to return our residents without a fundamental change in the security situation in the north,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office noted. Netanyahu said Israel would do what is necessary to protect its security and bring back the 60,000 Israelis who have been evacuated since Hezbollah began its attacks on Israel last October.

Gallant also met with Hochstein, along with US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew, in a separate meeting at Ministry of Defense Headquarters, according to a statement from his office. Other attendees were Shachar Katz, Gallant’s chief of staff, Brigadier General Guy Markizano, Gallant’s military secretary, and Brigadier General Benny Gal, head of the IDF’s Strategic Division.

Hezbollah vows retaliation against Israel for deadly pager explosions

Christian Edwards, Adrienne Vogt, Aditi Sangal and Kathleen Magramo

For most of the past year, cross-border skirmishes between Israel and Hezbollah have been the daily background music to life in Lebanon.

But Tuesday’s exploding pagers attack represents a level of escalation that is perhaps even greater than the assassination of Fu’ad Shukr, the senior Hezbollah commander killed by an Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb in lateJuly.

Although Israel is refusing to comment on the explosions, Hezbollah has said it holds Israel “fully responsible for this criminal attack.” The Lebanese government has also blamed Israel for the attack.

In fact, this is just the latest in a series of blows to the militant group. After the assassination of Shukr, Hezbollah waited nearly four weeks to launch its response, firing some 300 rockets and drones at Israel in retaliation, the majority of which were shot down by Israeli air defenses.

Now, perhaps thousands of Hezbollah militants have been injured in the pager explosions—a major blow to the Iranian-backed group. The explosions underscore Hezbollah’s profound vulnerability to Israeli infiltration of its intelligence and communications networks.

What we know about the Hezbollah walkie-talkie explosions

Matt Murphy & Joe Tidy

At least 26 people including two children were killed and thousands more injured, many seriously, after communication devices, some used by the armed group Hezbollah, dramatically exploded across Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In the latest round of blasts, exploding walkie-talkies killed 14 and injured at least 450 people, according to Lebanon's health ministry.

The explosions occurred in the vicinity of a large crowd that had gathered for the funerals of four victims of Tuesday's blasts.

BBC teams in the city reported chaotic scenes in which ambulances struggled to reach the injured, and locals became suspicious of anyone using a phone.

The explosions deepened unease in Lebanese society, coming a day after an apparently similar, and highly sophisticated attack targeting pagers used by Hezbollah members.

The militant group blamed its adversary Israel. Israeli officials have so far declined to comment.

Forging the 5G future: Strategic imperatives for the US and its allies

Ngor Luong

Strategic context

The fifth generation (5G) of mobile and cellular networks is a transformative technology crucial for improving digital connectivity for enhanced efficiency and productivity in both commercial sectors and military applications. 5G offers an improvement in data speed, volume, and latency over fourth-generation (4G and 4G LTE) networks.1 With improved wireless connectivity, 5G can unlock new capabilities that support enhancements to a variety of industries and sectors including autonomous vehicles, advanced robotics, and smart agriculture, among others.2 These new connective capabilities offer improvements within military operations including essential intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems and streamline command and control (C2) in military operations.3

Historically, the United States has been a leader in the telecommunication industry. Thanks to government support for innovation in the private sector, the United States was dominant in earlier generations of mobile and cellular networks. In 1913, the government reached an agreement with AT&T, allowing the company to monopolize but operate as a public utility by providing phone services to the majority of Americans.4 As a result, Bell Labs, the research and development (R&D) arm of Bell System, bolstered its innovation in the telecommunication industry, developing critical technologies such as transistors, satellite communications, lasers, communications theory, and cellular communications.5 Private sector innovation, exemplified by Bell Labs, and a variety of innovation policies had enabled the U.S. to surpass Japan in 3G leadership by 2009 and dominate 4G hardware and software since.6

Ukraine Eyes American Technology as Cornerstone of Future Energy Mix

Mateusz Kubiak

On August 27, Ukraine’s Energoatom, the sole operator of the country’s nuclear power plants, announced that it secured the first approvals from local officials for the future development of a new nuclear project at the formerly abandoned site of the Chyhyryn Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) (Energoatom.com.ua, August 27). The company intends to build four nuclear reactors at the site based on the Westinghouse-owned AP1000 pressurized water reactor technology as a part of its wider program to deploy a whole fleet of new nuclear units across the country. Undoubtedly, Energoatom’s plans are well grounded—both in the context of earlier signed cooperation agreements with Westinghouse and in the light of the need to rebuild Ukraine’s energy system due to the impact of Russia’s war. Nevertheless, even if Ukraine would like to commence work on the new nuclear units as quickly as possible, actual construction is unlikely to start before the end of the war without adequate systems to defend against Russian missiles and drones as well as increased support from Kyiv’s Western partners.

Energoatom already entered into cooperation with Westinghouse as early as 2021. At the time, the two companies confirmed the choice of the AP1000 technology for future nuclear reactor projects in Ukraine (Info.westinghouse.com, August 31, 2021). The two sides signed a contract initiating engineering and procurement of long-lead items (i.e., specific equipment that takes several years to procure, design, fabricate, and deliver) for the first AP1000 unit at the Khmelnytskyi NPP in November 2021 (Info.westinghouse.com, November 22, 2021).

A Course Correction on National Security

Jane Harman and Eric S. Edelman

The next president of the United States will be confronted with a very different strategic environment than the one that greeted President Joe Biden.

On Attrition An Ontology for Warfare

Lt. Col. Amos C. Fox

Let’s hit a reset, please. Attrition is perhaps one of the most misunderstood and abused ideas in contemporary military thinking. Policymakers, military practitioners, and theorists often use and abuse a slew of pejoratives to undercut attrition.1 This phenomenon is a byproduct of 1980s and 1990s writing, which advocated nonattritionalist forms of warfare that appeared to be better aligned to advancing the U.S. Army’s AirLand Battle doctrine, Marine Corps Warfighting doctrine, and supporting the all-volunteer force. The writing and doctrine from this period influenced a generation of military practitioners who are today’s senior military leaders and policymakers within the Department of Defense, the U.S. government, and many of the United States’ political-military partners.2 Many of the assertions made at the time were unscientific, ahistorical, and proffered to generate and maintain consensus for AirLand Battle, yet they continue to resonate deeply with the generation nurtured on those sentiments.

Authors such as William Lind assert that attrition is a form of warfare.3 According to Lind, attrition warfare uses firepower at the expense of movement to reduce an enemy combatant’s numbers. Lind and his coterie of associates further suggest that other types of warfare use firepower and movement to create unexpected and dangerous situations for an adversary.4 Edward Luttwak takes an almost identical position, writing that “an attrition style of war” creates an embellished reliance on firepower at the cost of more movement-centric styles of war.5 In the often cited but flawed Race to the Swift: Thoughts on Twenty-First Century Warfare, Richard Simpkin places maneuver and attrition in a suspended position of contrast—casting each of theories as the opposite of the other and asserting that the former is far superior to the latter.

Military Leaders, Industry Partners Brainstorm Solutions to Logistics Challenges

Alexandria Brimage-Gray

The key to ensuring materiel readiness in a contested logistics environment will be expanding the scope of how and when logistics is considered, planned and executed, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told senior logisticians Sept. 12.

"We want to fight with an unfair advantage," Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., said during his keynote address at the Worldwide Logistics Symposium. "We have to act like there is a crisis without the crisis … to make the changes needed now."

Brown joined Defense Logistics Agency Director Army Lt. Gen. Mark Simerly, Defense Department logistics leaders, military logisticians from other nations, and industry partners from across the globe to brainstorm solutions to strengthen the global network of sustainment. The event was held Sept. 12-13 at DLA Headquarters.

Brown said the solution to contested logistics challenges is to establish a globally connected, resilient defense ecosystem through collaborative regional sustainment strategies that leverage the strengths of allies, partners and the defense industry base.

Exiles Cannot Save Russia But the West Can Learn From—and Should Support—Those Who Fled Putin

Michael Kimmage and Maria Lipman

In late 2022, a Moscow court sentenced the Kremlin critic Ilya Yashin to eight and a half years behind bars. He was a prominent and outspoken member of the Russian opposition and an ally of Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny, prominent opposition figures who both met untimely deaths. Had he not been freed in last month’s prisoner swap with the United States, Yashin, too, might have met an untimely death. Now exiled in Berlin, he can do his political work unimpeded.

Yashin did not want to leave Russia. He would have preferred to stay: he told reporters at a press conference in Germany, “I understood my imprisonment not only as an antiwar struggle but also as a fight for my right to live in my country, to engage in independent politics there.” He had asserted a right that his government flatly rejected. Navalny asserted the same right when he returned to Russia from Germany in 2021, knowing full well the tribulations that he would endure.

Yashin’s desire to pursue independent politics in Russia, even after having been imprisoned for pursuing independent politics, is understandable. The country’s political future will be written not in Berlin or London or New York but in Russia itself. It will be written by those who live out the war there, whether or not they support it. To leave is to lose the opportunity to participate in the process and to abandon the country in wartime, inviting shame and stigma, especially for those who settle in the West. To leave is also to join the exiled opposition, an unstructured network far removed from the levers of power in Moscow.

What is Israel's secretive cyber warfare unit 8200?

Although Israel has not commented on the intelligence operation that caused thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon to explode almost simultaneously, the attack has put a spotlight on Israel's secretive 8200 cyber warfare unit.

Here are some facts about the Israel Defence Forces' specialist cyber warfare and intelligence unit, known in Israel by its numbers in Hebrew "shmone matayim," which is part of the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate.

- Unit 8200 is the equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency or Britain's GCHQ, and is the largest single military unit in the Israel Defence Forces. It is descended from early codebreaking and intelligence units formed at the birth of the state of Israel in 1948.

- Its activities are usually highly secret and range from signals intelligence to data mining and technological attacks and strikes.

- Some of the operations it has allegedly been involved in include the 2005-10 Stuxnet virus attack that disabled Iranian nuclear centrifuges, a 2017 cyberattack on Lebanon's state telecoms company Ogero, and the thwarting of an ISIS attack on a civilian airliner travelling from Australia to the United Arab Emirates in 2018.

U.S. Interest Rates are Finally Dropping. Is That Good?

Cameron Abadi and Adam Tooze

The U.S. Federal Reserve began raising interest rates several years ago to combat inflation. This week, after new data emerged about a weakened labor market and more general signs of a potential recession on the horizon in the United States, financial markets are expecting interest rates to finally begin dropping. The effects are sure to spread not only across the country but the rest of the world.

Direct from Michael Dell: Leadership lessons and the future of AI

McKinsey Quarterly

There are only a handful of people who have taken a start-up from zero to $88 billion in revenue and continue to lead it today. Michael Dell is one of them. The founder, CEO, and chairman of Dell Technologies has steered his company through four decades of change and wave after wave of technology trends. The company that he founded in his college dorm room in 1984 has become a giant with remarkable staying power.

Some trends matter, while others disappear. Michael Dell believes that AI is a trend like no other, one that will transform the way organizations operate, organize themselves, and do business. His company’s latest evolution has been to become an end-to-end provider of AI solutions to enterprises. Those organizations are rapidly experimenting (72 percent of companies have now adopted AI, up from 55 percent in 2023), while navigating cost, talent, security, and risk challenges. These are early days: McKinsey research shows that fewer than 10 percent of companies have seen EBITDA gains from AI at scale. Dell Technologies brings an arsenal of accelerated AI servers, unstructured-data storage, AI PCs, and a portfolio of networking and services to the challenge. All of this is a bet that organizations aiming to move fast while protecting their increasingly valuable data will want AI at their fingertips.

Michael Dell is uniquely positioned to give a clear picture of the potential of AI and generative AI (gen AI). He recently sat down with McKinsey senior partner Tarek Elmasry to provide insight on that subject and much more. Their wide-ranging discussion extended to the ever-increasing power of data, the resilience of the personal computer, and the leadership lessons that come from building a technology company over 40 years of technological change. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.