Tag: Intelligence
Stevenson’s army, April 13
I had planned, in next week’s class on the media, to say that most US leaks on foreign policy come from 3 sources: [1] administration officials launching trial balloons; [2] losers in the interagency fights who want to rally opponents; and [3] whistleblowers who want to expose some terrible government activities. According to WaPo, however, the leaker of recent highly classified documents was a 4th type — the Showoff who wants to demonstrate his inside knowledge. WaPo has tracked down the leaker, who seems to be a youg man in his 20s, working on a military base, who is an enthusiast about guns and gaming. No other apparent agenda.
Other reports based on the leaks say: Ukraine war is headed for stalemate.
– There’s lots of infighting among Russian officials.
– Serbia denies sending arms to Ukraine.
– Politico explains why the leaks went undetected for so long.
-NYT explains why Brazil won’t help Ukraine.
SAIS prof Cancian analyzes the service wish lists.
Atlantic Council has expert report on defense innovation. Document here.
NYT notes unrestrained behavior when strong partisan control of state legislatures.
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, April 12
– NY magazine has a summary.
– WSJ reports on Hungary.
– Guardian traces sources.
– Reuters says Iran shipped weapons via Syria relief flights.
– Guardian says UK special forces are in 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, April 11
– Politico reports on the GOP push to attack Mexico.
– Politico profiles Elbridge Colby, the anti-neocon.
-Economist sees US-China competition in Indian Ocean
– Blowback from intell leaks: South Korea. Lots of places.
– WaPo says Egypt planned to sell arms to Russia
-Amy Zegart assesses US intelligence challenges.
Bloomberg opinion is behind a paywall, but look at these recent points.
Let Bloomberg Opinion columnist Minxin Pei — with assistance from Bloomberg’s editorial board — calibrate your concerns. The perception of China’s increasing power tends to exceed the reality of it. Here are five reasons that is true.
- China’s military strength is overhyped: “For all its talk about the decline of the West and rise of the East, China remains a significantly weaker power than the US on practically all fronts. What China sees as unfair practices — including US surveillance operations in international airspace and waters near the Chinese coast — are merely a manifestation of the exercise of US power in its rivalry with a weaker adversary.”
- On top of that, Minxin says, China talks a big game on national ambitions but can’t follow through: “In case after case, leaders in Beijing have identified top national priorities and lavished them with support. And time after time, this ‘whole-of-nation’ effort, meant to mobilize the talent and resources of a giant country, has led only to waste, graft and failure.”
- Bloomberg’s editorial board says Washington frets about China’s financial leverage over the US, but that’s also overhyped: “Less than 2% of US foreign direct investment is held in China, and US venture-capital companies have invested only about $60 billion in Chinese startups since 2010, compared with $1.3 trillion in the US.”
- The China-Russia alliance is also less than it seems, Minxin writes, adding that influence doesn’t equal leverage: “The meagerness of the economic deals signed during Xi Jingping’s visit to Moscow — which glaringly omitted the second gas pipeline from Russia to China — indicates that China is not ready to go all in, at least for now. This portends trouble” for any alliance between the two nations.
- And the Saudi deal was significant, but the US remains firmly in control: “Those lamenting America’s apparent loss of influence in the Middle East should know that this is one of the costs of focusing US attention and resources on the competition with China — and it’s one the US can afford to pay.”
Bonus China Reading:
- US Must Still Fight for Taiwan’s Hearts and Minds: Nisid Hajari
- US ‘Guardrails’ With China Are Shaky at Best: Hal Brands
- The US, UK and Australia Send China a Message: James Stavridis
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, April 10
It’s all about leaks:
– WaPo on spying on allies
-Ukrainian air defenses in danger, by NYT
– Peter Baker compares leaks.
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, April 6
–Conflicts in Poland over Ukraine policies.
– Poland ready to give more MiGs.
– Putin blames Ukraine war on US.
– NYT has detailed graphics on Russian offensive.
– FP details Chinese spying.
– Vox has history of US industrial policy
– Reuters says China to inspect ships in Taiwan strait.
-Israeli concerns over Milley Iran comment.
– Semafor has report on Coast Guard’s global role.
– Freedom caucus & Progressives have some common goals.
Charlie added a Thursday bonus:
– WH has released a 12 page review of the Afghanistan withdrawal. AP summarizes.-
-FP says we need an economic war council for dealing with China.
-Lawfare praises State rules for military AI.
– FT says US opposes roadmap for Ukraine in NATO.
-Economist has fascinating story about improvements in camouflage.
– I’ve come across several Georgetown youtubes on the all-volunteer force at 50.
-Poli sci prof confirms decline in committee legislating
– Another reports benefits in grandstanding.
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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Quandaries of the modern professor
Two challenges strike me this week:
- What to do about student use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to prepare written product.
- What to do about the risk that a student may be a spy for a foreign government.
These are real-life quandaries.
AI tools in the classroom
ChatGPT and other AI tools that prepare written product in response to user inquiries are the immediate problem. They go a step beyond what we are all used to. We all use search engines to look for relevant bibliography. We also read Wikipedia to get oriented to a new subject or check facts. I am fortunately not teaching classes with assigned written products these days, but I am supervising graduate students preparing theses. What do I think about use of generative tools to produce written material? Do I feel the same about their use as an exploratory tool and as a final product?
It seems to me the answer to that second question has to be no. Final product has to come from the student her/himself, with citations to sources. But I can’t really object to AI use as an exploratory tool. We all need to start someplace. My own habit is to start as much as possible with primary source materials, but I am an historian. I don’t really see why a political scientist or an economist shouldn’t ask generative AI to summarize the latest data on election results or business cycles. That is a small step past using a search engine on those terms. Even if current AI technology doesn’t deliver much, no doubt future generative tools will.
Learning is key
The real issue then is how you determine what the student has learned, beyond the products of the AI tools s/he may have used. It seems to me that isn’t so hard. Exams (without computers) can serve that purpose. So too can oral presentations or informal chats with the professor.
When I was a graduate student preceptor (teaching assistant) at Princeton, I received a paper from a student who hadn’t performed well in class. He referred in the first paragraph to the “pre-lapsarian Adam.” When I asked him what that meant, he was unable to respond. Plagiarism is not new. I didn’t need “Turnitin,” a software that can now check for it.
Spies in the classroom
No one who teaches international affairs anywhere on earth can be sure he/she hasn’t had a spy–past, present or future–in the classroom. Certainly a goodly number of students at SAIS, both Americans and non-Americans–later pursue careers in their home country intelligence agencies. We also get students who pursue degrees while they are still working for government agencies, or after they have completed careers in them, with intelligence responsibilities. Teaching them analytical methods and policy frameworks is a good idea, not a bad one.
The problem is current spies who hide their true identities. That is what the Washington Post says SAIS’s Russian student pretending to be a Brazilian did. The Post focuses on what he himself might have been doing. The example they give is reporting last year on US attitudes towards a Russian invasion of Ukraine. That Moscow could have gotten reading the daily press. The Post also focuses on what he might have done in the future. Penetrating the International Criminal Court’s computer systems is the case in point, as he had an internship lined up there before being arrested. That seems to me more serious.
Another issue
But I would point to another issue: recruitment. International affairs schools are brimming with students who will go on to bigger and better things, in government and in the private sector. A covert agent might have a field day lining up people living on student stipends and finding it difficult to pay tuition or otherwise make ends meet. Once recruited, such an individual becomes subject to lifetime blackmail.
The consequences could be long term and catastrophic.
The tougher problem
Spies in the classroom seems to me a much tougher problem than AI in the classroom. A professor can be expected to know when students are learning. But professors don’t command the tools required to ferret out covert operatives. That is an intelligence and law enforcement responsibility, not an academic one. Covert spies in the classroom could compromise classmates (or professors) and create problems for decades in the future.
There are more than 750,000 foreign students in the US. Do we really think the CIA and FBI are capable of keeping an eye on even a small fraction of them? And would we want the limitations that would necessarily come if they tried to do so?
No easy answers
Nor would I want the university administration to take on that responsibility. The most we can expect from it is to make reasonable efforts to ensure students are not using false identities. Beyond that, I suppose we’ll need to keep a watch out for suspicious behavior. But I confess as a Foreign Service officer I met several Americans who spied for foreign governments: Walter Kendall Myers (Cuba), Aldrich Ames (Soviet Union and Russia), and Felix Bloch (Soviet Union). I suspected none of them.
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