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  • On Labeling Adversarial Governments

    On Labeling Adversarial Governments

    The imprecise labeling of adversarial autocratic states in an information war can backfire on U.S., allies, and democracies in general.

    “ChiComm,” “Marxist,” “rogue state,” “communist” and “criminal” are broad labels that do not specify how autocracies like China, Russia, and North Korea actually behave, use, and abuse those concepts as distinguished from the nation state concept they claim in common with the U.S. and other democracies.

    Informationally you can punch your adversaries in the ideological back all day long, but it is more effective to hit them in their vital pressure points by clearly describing and showing their conduct, behavior, actions, and the results. Then you can contrast their ideology with force of conviction.

    The U.S. and democratic allies must be more precise in public communications and diplomacy about how Russia, China, North Korea and other dictatorships behave as adversaries to human freedom and toward the nations that value and defend human freedom. Show the domestic human suffering at home tied to their actions.

    Some old labels focus on ideologies that must be studied to be understood instead of observable conduct and behavior understandable to the many right away. In studying them, some may be taken with the utopian or ideal writings instead of focusing on what the nation holding those ideologies actually does. With ideological labels, not only may the adversary regime be provoked by being negatively defined, but will pass that on to their own people as if the criticism applied to them.

    Ronald Reagan grasped this in using the words “evil empire” to describe the Soviet Union’s government of mass control combined with its expansionist agenda and tied it to the Soviet Union’s state terror, such as the shootdown of KAL-007 and the Soviets’ close relationships with nations that sponsored terrorism against US Marines in Lebanon. Simultaneously, Reagan spoke sympathetically and empathically of the Russian people to Americans and international audiences. By clearly describing Soviet conduct to the world, Reagan let the audiences contrast the Soviets’ behavior with their utopian ideological camouflage (communism) instead of attacking it directly.

    Emphasizing the practical impossibility of Beijing’s, and formerly, the Soviets’ utopian Marxism or Communism helps debunk the delusion that it is a natural form of governance that occurs without forcing others to believe it. More precisely, the reason that such governments are hostile to freedom of religion is that freedom of religion competes either with the imperial religion they’ve authorized and imposed, or, competes directly with a quasi-religion of state in which the state (and impliedly whoever controls it) is the highest power.

    When speaking of the communist state, Reagan used humor and sympathy to describe the hard time Russians had getting things done in the notoriously inefficient communist system in which human freedom had sclerosed. He patted Russians on the ideological back and used wordplays that Russians would appreciate. The best jokes about Russia’s handling of power come from Russians themselves.

    Now we see similar behavioral characteristics to the old Soviet Union in Xi’s governance of China, albeit with multiples in human resources and capitalistic adaptations making China more capable than the Soviets were at the time. And we see North Korea acting aggressively not long after some new iteration of geopolitical trade or competition flares up between China and the United States.

    How do China and Russia camouflage their autocratic, totalitarian, and imperial characteristics in the world’s eyes today? They use nation state status to pose as democratic, reasonable, responsible, and worthy of international influence and power despite rocketing forward in the world in despotic, totalitarian trajectories.

    The Treaty of Westphalia defined modern states and their rights, moving the world toward a confederacy of nations sharing international principles and weak, quasi-enforceable laws of nation state autonomy and sovereignty favoring stronger states. Russian lifelong KGB-officer and President Vladimir Putin made powerful use of the nation state principles by conflating them with democratic, individual rights principles through his annual, international Valdai Conferences.

    He merely substituted his own regime as if it were an individual natural person historically picked on by the United States in the Cold War, against which he created his own conduct-oriented labels: “unipolar,” “international bully,” “hegemon,” and more. He refrained for years from using the word “imperialist” in public, and I speculate that he did so because it was so associated with the Soviet Union’s propaganda, and did not work. Yet the term seems to have been showing up again, along with “establishment,” “deep state,” and “cabal,” labels borrowed from conspiracy theories and ideological terms used to attack the United States government throughout American history. These terms are a blend of labels used by apocalyptic religious sects, 1960’s radicals, and anti-semitic fringe groups Putin wants to use to turn America into what the Soviet Union became by the 1990s..

    Mimicking democracies internationally by adopting nation state (not imperial) forms, China and Russia claim nation state status in a Westphalian mode, attending international political, economic, and scientific conferences, while claiming their autocratic, totalitarian, and imperial conduct toward people at home and abroad is irrelevant and “off the table” in such forums. So China attends Davos, and Russia participates in G20 and BRICS, but each retains as a right their autocratic, totalitarian, and imperial behaviors at home, and increasingly, wherever they expand their influence.

    When today democratic powers label China and Russia “communist,” “criminal,” or “corrupt” without being more specific, they impliedly over or under-brand the negative behaviors. If they are not really communist, counterexamples to this shared over the internet will make the label look disingenuous. If they are not in all actions “criminal” or “corrupt,” but do some good internationally and at home, the over-labeling itself appears corrupt. Imprecise labeling invites China, Russia, and others to counter with charges of hypocrisy via information warfare. Add some published footage of domestic U.S. hypocrisy regarding democratic and individual liberties (provoked in part by autocrat information war), and democracies find their systemic and informational advantages compared with autocracies neutralized in the internet age.

    The problem is not nation state structures, but how simplistic labels mislead with imprecision to self-defeat diplomacy, self-identity, statecraft, intelligence, competition and trade. So, while labeling other countries may be useful where kinetic warfare is imminent, it can actually be a self-defeating mechanism before conditions get there, or an accelerator toward warfare.

    Another problem in the domestic politics of democracies is labeling economic platforms blending capitalist and socialist approaches as “Marxist” or “communist.” Such labeling, by falsely conflating blended capitalist-socialist policies (Social Security & Medicare anyone?) with communism gives autocracies that do promote communism or corrupt dictatorship opportunity to claim equivalency despite that select domestic socialistic policies within a free enterprise system of laws are far different from communism as practiced in China.

    Broad ideological labels used in an undisciplined way tend to narrow a nation state’s options where they adopt a negative form of the ideological labels used by adversarial autocratic states indoctrinating their own people, such as “communism” in China. The risk becomes that foreign criticism will harden the Chinese people to invest in their regime, ironically, with a sense of ownership of the “ism.”

  • Debilitating counter-espionage mindset regarding China

    Debilitating counter-espionage mindset regarding China

    It is common for us to vent or joke about China’s “stealing.” While this has limited use against China’s public relations campaigns, the mental impression formed from the repeated theft conversation is a sense of moral triumph, disgust, and anger. Yet these emotions can shroud our minds from understanding our adversary. For the Chinese state, stealing is warfare.

    We should ask how, if at all, each stolen technology or secret fits into the P.L.A.’s combined warfare capability, plans, and readiness for kinetic warfare or military leverage against our Armed Forces and against our civilian population.

    What range of damage could the P.L.A. inflict U.S. and allied forces should the stolen technology be replicated and used against us? How might it help China dominate less powerful nations whose resources the P.L.A. wants? And how might the P.L.A. use won resources to multiply forces against us?

    We must hear from or read writings of combat veterans who have been on the using or receiving end of the technology in question, and or who have experienced the Chinese way of warfare. How does the stolen tech work or not work in practice? How might those combat veterans have wanted to adapt the technology to make it work better in combat conditions?

    From there, we can begin to deal with the problem of each theft, and, raise the level of seriousness in preventing future theft. The thief is a warrior planning the isolation, inertia, enslavement, or death of free nations and their people, as the Chinese state deems necessary. In the past, overextending themselves has not been their practice, however, they have been rapidly building an expeditionary military, some of it deceptively appearing to be civilian in nature.

    If you factor in the Russian state’s information warfare programming the fringes of free nations with “civil war” narratives and see it as a combined effort with China’s weaponization of the opioid and meth drug trades in the U.S. and elsewhere, it is an effort to destroy our will to be independent, free, and to fight external aggressors. By inducing preoccupation with petty, self-defeating methods of dealing with our relationships and problems at home, China and the Russian state would destroy our will and capability to defend against and defeat external enemies directing combined attacks on us. If they are successful, free nations will fall.

  • Recent History is Instructive: 2015 Warning from NSA’s Adm. Rogers

    Recent History is Instructive: 2015 Warning from NSA’s Adm. Rogers

    Recent history is instructive. Hear the then-Director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael Rogers:

    “At the moment, most of the [malicious cyber activity] has been theft,” Rogers said. “But what if someone gets in the system and starts manipulating and changing data, to the point where now as an operator, you no longer believe what you’re seeing in your system?”

    As we see the historically low volumes of trading in markets ebullient over seemingly positive economic data, old hands in successful investing sit on cash piles, signaling possible doubt about the bullish mania in the markets.

    It’s the kind of hack that can send perilous repercussions reverberating through the real world. In 2013, perhaps the most high-profile data manipulation incident to date created a $136-billion free-fall on Wall Street.

    Worth a reminder for those who see the economic warfare component motivating autocracies today.

  • Threat Assessment & Initial Recommendations: Adversarial Military Use of Hacked Medical Records

    Threat Assessment & Initial Recommendations: Adversarial Military Use of Hacked Medical Records

    At the Wall Street Journal, Christopher Porter and Brian Finch opined in “What Does Beijing Want With Your Medical Records?” that China’s 2015 Anthem hack accessed almost 80 million Americans’ private medical and insurance records as an ominous sign that it plans to expand and impose its massive surveillance state on Americans. Porter and Finch focus on the potential for China to utilize multiple mass data sets on Americans to assert control and call for Washington to “push back hard against any Chinese effort to extend its surveillance state into North America.” Agreed.

    Unmentioned, however, are adversaries’ research and development of potential military applications for possession of mass medical records, for example, the gathering of information on medical vulnerabilities of strategic and tactical leadership, military, intelligence, national security, and infrastructure personnel or their families.

    Given China’s intensive pursuit of CRISPR gene editing, long experience in the use of poisons, and hacking advances, a military use of mass medical data could be to probe genetic, drug, and medical device specifics for US targets to find features enabling a range of malign uses.

    Malign uses of such medical information may include proxy insinuation and leveraging by direct threats to personnel or loved ones through disclosure of intimate knowledge of their medical conditions or vulnerabilities (PSYOP); engineering microbes targeting individuals’ DNA and/or agents exploiting their specific vulnerabilities inside or outside the context of their duties; hacking into connected medical implants such as pacemakers, insulin dosing devices, oxygen machines, and more; hacking into provider pharmacies systems for reading and fulfilling high value targets’ prescriptions for prescription tampering in house or after the fact via substitution; and even knowing where to hack to surveil their medical appointment schedules so as to know where and when they will be, and that, in a medical context.

    As unsettling as this is, the good news is that awareness for potentially affected US personnel and agencies is the first step in hardening them against the abuse of such information. However, discussion of such concerns individually with health care providers by such personnel could create awkward misunderstandings from the perspective of providers not savvy to, and relatedly, less capable of believing that adversaries could or would be so cynical, vindictive, or intrusive. Such awareness building should not be put on individual personnel, but be communicated at a high level to the medical institutions, insurers, pharmacies, device manufacturers, and medicine delivery systems in question, and be disseminated through the ranks of those entities while a thorough internal security approach has been prepared to identify and prevent anomalous or intrusive events.

    From an overall diplomatic and policy perspective, without compromising countermeasures, efforts at achieving deterrent policies and negotiated balances of power against adversarial usage of medical information for destabilizing and war-inciting decapitation operations warrants swift and serious communications with our adversaries.

  • Working Brief: Non-Exhaustive List of Russia’s Active Measures Objectives

    Working Brief: Non-Exhaustive List of Russia’s Active Measures Objectives

    (1) Defeat the USA, supplant it worldwide in axial partnership with China, tolerating competition with China, divvying-up future-conquests and acquisitions of influence, real estate, and or natural resources;

    (2) Get close to selected elites and revolutionaries in all main western parties, charm them, compromise them, then later cut their political throats via various means, while promoting and using the most compliant and easily controlled to further Putin’s and his oligarchs’ national goals;

    (3) Using Putin’s popularity & brand, cultivate, & promote extreme, corrupt, & amoral allies abroad regardless of affiliation (exploitable, sympathetic) & infuse them with Putin’s amoral boldness;

    (4) Incite/drive global economic conflict of many kinds b/w USA & allies, & b/w USA and competitors (make USA a pariah consistent with Kremlin narratives) driving US competitors and allies together;

    (5) Exhaust USA’s governing, economic, & social resources by pushing it toward internal and global conflict at once, gradually drawing it into guarding behaviors, over-extension, and isolation;

    (6) Via information warfare, influence USA’s aggrieved groups to promote radical and delusional elements while influencing elites-in-residence to provoke them more;

    (7) Aid proxies in checking, diversionary, distractive, and if necessary, disabling, deniable attacks on USA assets and/or infrastructure during times of extremity to trigger human stress, resource stress, internal panic, and internal conflict primed to turn hot by decades of information warfare.

    This has been a slow-motion, particulate, tactical demolition project with a long term strategy and occasional intense phases with extreme operational uptempo. Think slow-motion Syria, with an ultimate goal of fostering the dismantling and sell-off of US territories after a civil war causes governing collapse in the US. The boldness of these tactics is part of their unbelievability from the standpoint of a nation accustomed to taking national security for granted, and thus their covert effectiveness, occurring in plain sight.