Tag: Intelligence
Stevenson’s army, February 6
– WSJ on prior flights.
– Politico on the politics of the issue.
– David Sanger on the significance.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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A balloon should not pop diplomacy
The Chinese balloon reminds me that I am among the few who have witnessed a balloon launch. It was in Sicily in the late 1970s. The Italians and Americans were launching a balloon to study the ozone layer. I was science counselor of the US Embassy in Rome. Why not enjoy a day or two in Sicily talking with scientists?
Uneventful
The launch itself was uneventful. With the helium bubble at the top of the balloon, it measured something like 100 meters high. It would round out into a ball only as the atmospheric pressure lessened with altitude. The launch sounded like the soft fluttering of a small flock of birds. It was nothing like the launch I attended several years later in Natal, Brazil of a US Air Force rocket with a similar purpose. Then we weren’t much more than 100 meters from a very noisy launch that seemed to fire the missile directly over our heads.
The Italian balloon lacked navigational capability. As it approached the Eastern Seaboard, the Americans decided it presented a threat to commercial aviation, so they asked the Italians to destroy it. That they did. Could the Chinese have destroyed the balloon had the Americans asked them to do it? Certainly the Chinese should have that capability, if only to prevent the balloon from interfering with one of their own aircraft. But they apparently did not.
What are the Chinese up to?
The Chinese unquestionably have better means of observing the US than a balloon. Their satellites may not be as good as ours, but they needn’t be to gather lots of information. I suppose the lower cost of a balloon may have appealed to someone in the bowels of the Chinese bureaucracy. The ready and apologetic acknowledgement on China’s part suggests it was not an intentional provocation.
If the Chinese were seeking to provoke the Americans, they have succeeded. Republicans in Congress are criticizing Biden for not shooting it down right away and also for postponing Secretary of State Blinken’s trip to Beijing. Of course they would also have criticized him if he hadn’t postponed the trip or if he had shot down the balloon.
What are the Americans up to?
President Biden decided to let the balloon proceed on its merry way to the East Coast. The alternative was to try to shoot it down. But if it was in fact flying at >90,000 feet over Montana, that may not have been easily doable. The Administration has cited concern about the remnants falling to the ground, but the missile would also fall. Its fragments could cause more damage than the balloon and its payload.
My guess is the Americans are exploiting the balloon’s progress to gather intelligence. Both the balloon’s data gathering and its operation likely present opportunities. It is not a bad idea to make sure we know what the Chinese are targeting and how they do it. This isn’t likely their first balloon. Nor is it likely their last.
The Americans shot the balloon down once it could be expected to fall in the Atlantic Ocean. Falling debris would then not be an issue. The Americns will try to recover the balloon and its especially its instruments. That would provide answers to a lot of questions.
Mutual surveillance
David Frum argues in The Atlantic that mutual surveillance is a good thing and ought to be encouraged, as it was once upon a time with Russia. An Open Skies agreement with China today is unlikely. Domestic politics in both the US and China would preclude it under current circumstances. But the Chinese are unlikely to have gained enough intelligence from this balloon to compensate for the embarrassment they have caused themselves. So net, US gains, so long as it is able to contain the domestic criticism and proceed in due course with Blinken’s visit to Beijing. A balloon should not pop diplomacy.
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Stevenson’s army, February 4
– SO there was a spy balloon over Montana.
– NYT notes China has lots of surveillance capacity.
– WSJ answers questions.
– CIA warns China wants to be able to retake Taiwan by 2027.
-NYT tells timetable for new weapons in Ukraine.
– Atlantic Council analyst wants better process on technology security.
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Stevenson’s army, February 3
– US agreement with Philippines is a big deal.
– Meanwhile, NYT says China is gaining in Indonesia.
– US intelligence doubts Ukraine gain in Crimea.
– Russia may expand attacks.
– India boosts defense spending 13%.
– Senators want to block F16s to Turkey.
– In FP, Rand analysts discuss lessons from Ukraine.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, February 2, 2023
– McConnell punishes two of his critics.
– McCarthy rewards some of his.
– Bipartisan group warns DOD against unfunded priority lists.
– Poll shows US views on Ukraine options.
– Commerce official brags about effects of trade restrictions.
– Analyst urges making Commerce the 18th intelligence agency. Reasonable case to me.
– Nonpartisan agreement on some Constitutional amendments. These also look surprisingly reasonable.
– Jim Fallows has good list of things we Americans should know about China.
– DOD wants to manage itself better.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, January 20-23
Charlie has been back a few days, but I’ve been down for the count, so here is a massive catchup edition:
January 23:
The ever-valuable D Brief has this: Norway’s military chief said around 180,000 Russian troops have been killed or injured in Ukraine so far. “Russian losses are beginning to approach around 180,000 dead or wounded soldiers,” and “Ukrainian losses are probably over 100,000 dead or wounded,” Defense Minister Eirik Kristoffersen told TV2 on Sunday. He also said an estimated 30,000 civilians have been killed in the war so far, though he didn’t elaborate on how he arrived at any of his numbers.
[This is interesting because the two subjects NOT covered by the western media are Ukrainian casualties and operational restrictions imposed by NATO couontries.]
– We talked in class about George Santos. New York magazine claims to list all of his lies.
– The pending appointment of Jeff Zients to be WH chief of staff resurrected this story about how he failed to create a Department of Trade. As we’ll discuss in class, congressional committees weren’t happy with either the plan or the reorganization power Zients proposed because it weakened their jurisdiction.
-The Economist often has clever headlines. Politico wins the prize this week for: Who Shot the Serif?
January 22:
Happy Year of the Rabbit!
As I read the accumulated papers, I see these items of special interest:
– Congress and the administration are heading to a fight over arms to Turkey.
– Rifts are emerging in NATO over Ukraine aid.
– NYT has background on Taiwan’s “ambassador”
– Paul Kane laments the retirement of Senate “work horses” and includes data on diminished voting on amendments [because of the filled “amendment tree”]
– Ezra Klein analyzes disconnects in the GOP and interviews an author who says GOP politicians have been dominated by conservative media.
– NYT explains how US got $31 trillion debt.
January 20:
I see that a lot has been happening during my travels. The big news on Ukraine is the dispute between US & Germany over tanks. A good catch-up piece is today’s D Brief, a newsletter worth reading regularly.
WaPo also has good background on Ukraine planning. The CIA Director has also been meeting in Kyiv. WSJ has good info on weapons issues.
The Inspectors General for DOD, State & AID have a combined report on US assistance to Ukraine.
On China & Taiwan, WOTR had a good explanation of the delivery delays in US arms for Taipei. It turns out that National Guard units have been training Taiwanese. And WSJ says China’s brick & road initiative is faltering.
Good news for Congress: NYT says lawmakers changed the rules that in effect give them a $34,000 pay boost which they never would have voted for directly.
More good news at State: Sec. Blinken has ordered a shift from Times New Roman fonts for official documents to Calibri. When I worked on the Policy Planning Staff I failed to persuade Under Secretary Pickering to take advantage of the retiring of the Wang Computers and allow overseas cables to be written with upper and lower case letters instead of the required [by the former technology] ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME.
Also January 20:
Many of you know that I favor a return to Regular Order in Congress, the way the armed services committees do the NDAA, with vigorous oversight, a bill open to many amendments, and a compromise process that allows the ill to be signed into law — for 62 years now. But both Democratic and Republican leaders have opposed those open rules. Speaker McCarthy now wants to bring them back. Here’s what happened last time.
Harlan Ullman, the original proponent of shock and awe tactics, now calls for a major revision of US defense strategy.
Fletcher’s Dan Drezner puts his economic statecraft syllabus in his Substack column. I like his work and will review this for things I should be assigning.
The Partnership for Public Service has a guidebook for new officials that has a lot of good ideas on how to be an effective bureaucrat. I probably should make it required reading.
On Politico a sometime historian compares FDR’s help to Britain before Pearl Harbor to the West’s help to Ukraine today. Good background, but I’d note that FDR was constrained by US public and congressional opinion, not by a fear of provoking war with Hitler. Biden is limited by concerns about Russia reactions.
Two European analysts see conflicts of interest in writers about nuclear weapons policy.
A new CSIS report says we should be thinking seriously about letting South Korea get nukes.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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