Strategy Shelf

Dispatches & Publications on Defense, Freedom, & Security

Pitch: Tech Firms Should Provide In-Person ID Verification & Related Secure Tech Service

For security of identity, it makes little sense for companies to require people to scan and send official documents proving their ID across servers on the internet to an online company that for whatever reason has flagged online activity or presence as “suspicious.” For one, consider that the company security challenger is communicating with a…

Trump’s rhetorical Greenland spectacle

President-elect Donald Trump, by calling for the effective U.S. purchase or annexation of Greenland, an autonomously-run territory of European NATO ally Denmark, seems to be playing mind games with Copenhagen, yet by so doing does damage to Ukraine, Israel, and NATO in open, obvious benefit to Vladimir Putin and Xi…

Internet Morphs WSJ Article on 2021 IC Differences on Covid-19 Origin into “Cover-up”

Feature photo from China Daily. On Friday December 27th, 2024, the Wall Street Journal published “U.S. Intelligence Review of Origins of Covid-19 Masked Deep Divisions,” (also titled “Behind closed Doors: The Spy-World Scientists Who Argued Covid Was a Lab Leak”) reporting that the FBI was the only member of the…

The Ouster of Christopher Wray

If President-elect Trump had learned anything since his first term he would have retained Christopher Wray as FBI Director for the duration of Wray’s term. Instead, Trump ousted an effective FBI director who served in the best traditions of the FBI’s national security and law enforcement missions. Specifically Mr. Trump…

Keeping the U.S.A. Out of Foreign Nation State Hands

Here is a historic quote no less true today during attempts to put Kash Patel over the FBI, Tulsi Gabbard over the ODNI, and Pete Hegseth over the Defense Department: “If Russia seizes the West’s secret services, it controls Western policies. If it taps into Western intelligence services, it makes…

Who Has America’s Center of Gravity: The United States of America’s Race for President, 2024

The Center of Gravity of the United States is mostly about who the great majority of Americans really are, deep down, toward others. Deep down, are they about loving their neighbors or hating them? If hatred rules, the United States will fall apart in division and poverty, and our adversaries…

Africa, Awaken to Intentions of Putin, Xi Jinping

Africa’s future leaders will discover that they are expected to acquiesce to Russian and Chinese imperial foreign policy expectations in which Africans are tools, or they will be removed, even by signature Putin methods. A more accurately evocative image by which to remember the KGB ideals of the Russian nationalist…

Putin Perpetuates Mass Abuse of the Poor and Middle Classes via Weaponized Migration

Historic Repeat Thesis: The regime of Vladimir Putin is one of a number of resurgent vanguard dictatorships with ideological-DNA inherited from super-nationalist strains of autocratic authoritarianism shared by Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. Like them, Putin commits mass collateral damage and displacement abuse against poor and middle class peoples at home…

To Shorten Wars and Prevent Wider War The Biden Administration Should Lift Allies’ Conventional Strike Restrictions Against Iran’s and Russia’s Conventional Military Targets

October 4, 2024 Ukraine & Israel: Ukraine and Israel face common adversaries axially aligned. Russia and China enable Iran and its terror proxies with lethal supply and know-how to wage war against Israel. Russia and China could sanction Iran but do not. Iran, China, and North Korea likewise back Russia’s…

Strategic Lens on China’s Economic Vicissitudes

Recent Economic Backdrop Appears as Organic Economic Downturn By Summer 2024, China’s economy had reportedly reached average GDP growth between 5.3% in Q1 and 4.7% in Q2 on course with meeting its 2024 goal of 5%. However, during Q3 China saw a dive in consumer spending, 17%-18% young urban unemployment,…