No one hates ordinary people like the Republicans and their media enablers do.
By Tom Nichols – March 9, 2023
A political display is posted on the outside of the Fox News headquarters in New York in July 2020. (Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty)
Fox News will likely never face any real consequences for the biggest scandal in the history of American media. But will Republican voters finally understand who really looks down on them?
Loathing and Indifference
It’s time to talk about elitism.
Last month, I wrote that the revelations about Fox News in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit showed that Fox personalities, for all their populist bloviation, are actually titanic elitists. This is not the elitism of those who think they are smarter or more capable than others—I’ll get to that in a moment—but a new and gruesome elitism of the American right, a kind of hatred and disgust on the part of right-wing media and political leaders for the people they claim to love and defend. Greed and cynicism and moral poverty can explain only so much of what we’ve learned about Fox; what the Dominion filings show is a staggering, dehumanizing version of elitism among people who have made a living by presenting themselves as the only truth-tellers who can be trusted by ordinary Americans.
I am, to say the least, no stranger to the charge of elitism. When I wrote a book in 2018 titled The Death of Expertise, a study of how people have become so narcissistic and so addled by cable and the internet that they believe themselves to be smarter than doctors and diplomats, I was regularly tagged as an “elitist.” And the truth is: I am an elitist, insofar as I believe that some people are better at things than others.
But even beyond talent and ability, I do in fact firmly believe that some opinions, political views, personal actions, and life choices are better than others. As I wrote in my book at the time:
Americans now believe that having equal rights in a political system also means that each person’s opinion about anything must be accepted as equal to anyone else’s. This is the credo of a fair number of people despite being obvious nonsense. It is a flat assertion of actual equality that is always illogical, sometimes funny, and often dangerous.
If that makes me an elitist, so be it.
In this, elitism is the opposite of populism, whose adherents believe that virtue and competence reside in the common wisdom of a nebulous coalition called “the people.” This pernicious and romantic myth is often a danger to liberal democracies and constitutional orders that are founded, first and foremost, on the inherent rights of individuals rather than whatever raw majorities think is right at any given time.
The American right, however, now uses elitist to mean “people who think they’re better than me because they live and work and play differently than I do.”They rage that people—myself included—look down upon them. And again, truth be told, I do look down on Trump voters, not because I am an elitist but because I am an American citizen and I believe that they, as my fellow citizens, have made political choices that have inflicted the greatest harm on our system of government since the Civil War. I refuse to treat their views as just part of the normal left-right axis of American politics.
(As an aside, note that the insecure whining about being “looked down upon” is wildly asymmetrical: Trump voters have no trouble looking down on their opponents as traitors, perverts, and, as Donald Trump himself once put it, “human scum.” But they react to criticism with a kind of deep hurt, as if others must accommodate their emotional well-being. Many of these same people gleefully adopted “Fuck your feelings” as a rallying cry but never expected that it was a slogan that worked both ways.)
In 2016, I believed that good people were making a mistake. In 2023, I cannot dismiss their choices as mere mistakes. Instead, I accept and respect the human agency that has led Trump supporters to their current choices. Indeed, I insist on recognizing that agency: I have never agreed with the people who dismiss Trump voters as robotic simpletons who were mesmerized by Russian memes. I believe that today’s Trump supporters are people who are making a conscious, knowing, and morally flawed choice to continue supporting a sociopath and a party chock-full of seditionists.
I have argued with some of these people. Sometimes, I have mocked them. Mostly, I have refused to engage them. But whatever my feelings are about the abominable choices of Trump supporters, here is the one thing I have never done that Fox’s hosts did for years: I have never patronized any of the people I disagree with.
Unlike people such as Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham, I have never told anyone—including you, readers of The Atlantic—anything I don’t believe. What we’re seeing at Fox, however, is lying on a grand scale, done with a snide loathing for the audience and a cool indifference to the damage being done to the nation. Fox, and the Republican Party it serves, for years has relentlessly patronized its audience, cooing to viewers about how right they are not to trust anyone else, banging the desk about the corruption of American institutions, and shouting into the camera about how the liars and betrayers must pay.
Fox’s stars did all of this while privately communicating with one another and rolling their eyes with contempt, admitting without a shred of shame that they were lying through their teeth. From Rupert Murdoch on down, top Fox personalities have admitted that they fed the rubes all of this red, rotting meat to keep them out of the way of the Fox limos headed to Long Island and Connecticut.
You can see this same kind of contemptuous elitism in Republicans such as Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Elise Stefanik. They couldn’t care less about the voters—those hoopleheads back home who have to be placated with idiotic speeches against trans people and “critical race theory.” These politicians were bred to be leaders, you see, and having to gouge some votes out of the hayseeds back home requires a bit of performance art now and then, a small price to pay so that the sons and daughters of Harvard and Yale, Princeton and Stanford, can live in the imperial capital and rule as is their due and their right.
Some years ago, I was at a meeting of one of the committees of the National Academy of Sciences. The conferees asked me how scientists—there were Nobel Laureates in the room—could defend the cause of knowledge. Stand your ground, I told them. Never hesitate to tell people they’re wrong. One panel member shook his head: “Tom, people don’t like to be condescended to.” I said, “I agree, but what they hate even more is to be patronized.”
I believed it then, but we’re now testing that hypothesis on a national scale. I hope I wasn’t wrong.
In race to arm Ukraine, U.S. faces cracks in its manufacturing might
Missy Ryan, The Washington Post – March 9, 2023
Correction: A previous version of this article mischaracterized why Scranton, Pa., is known as “Steamtown.” The name is derived from the steam-powered locomotives that helped fuel the city’s industrial rise, not the early pioneering or electric power. The article has been updated.
SCRANTON, Pa. – A sharp hissing sound fills the factory as red-hot artillery shells are plunged into scalding oil.
Richard Hansen, a Navy veteran who oversees this government-owned munitions facility, explains how the 1,500-degree liquid locks in place chemical properties that ensure when the shells are fired – perhaps on a battlefield in Ukraine – they detonate in the deadly manner intended.
“That’s what we do,” Hansen said. “We build things to kill people.”
The Scranton Army Ammunition Plant, one of a network of facilities involved in producing the U.S. Army’s 155-mm artillery round, is ground zero for the Biden administration’s scramble to accelerate the supply of weapons that Ukraine needs if its military is to prevail in the war with Russia.
The Pentagon’s plan for scaling up production of the shells over the next two years marks a breakthrough in the effort to quench Ukraine’s thirst for weapons. But the conflict has laid bare deep-seated problems that the United States must surmount to effectively manufacture the arms required not just to aid its allies but also for America’s self-defense should conflict erupt with Russia, China or another major power.
Despite boasting the world’s largest military budget – more than $800 billion a year – and its most sophisticated defense industry, the United States has long struggled to efficiently develop and produce the weapons that have enabled U.S. forces to outpace their peers technologically. Those challenges take on new importance as conventional conflict returns to Europe and Washington contemplates the possibility of its own great-power fight.
Even as public support for the vast sums of aid being given to Ukraine grows softer and more divisive, the conflict has sparked a broader conversation about the need to shatter what military leaders describe as the “brittleness” of the U.S. defense industry and devise new means to quickly scale up output of weapons at moments of crisis. Some observers are worried the Pentagon is not doing enough to replenish the billions of dollars in armaments that have left American stocks.
Research conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) shows the current output of American factories may be insufficient to prevent the depletion of stockpiles of key items the United States is providing Ukraine. Even at accelerated production rates, it is likely to take at least five years to recover the inventory of Javelin antitank missiles, Stinger surface-to-air missiles and other in-demand items.
Earlier research done by the Washington think tank illustrates a more pervasive problem: The slow pace of U.S. production means it would take as long as 15 years at peacetime production levels, and more than eight years at a wartime tempo, to replace the stocks of major weapons systems such as guided missiles, piloted aircraft and armed drones if they were destroyed in battle or donated to allies.
“It is a wake-up call,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview, referring to the production problems the war has exposed. “We have to have an industrial base that can respond very quickly.”
A year into the Ukraine fight, American military aid has reached a staggering $30 billion, funding everything from night-vision goggles to Abrams tanks. Much of the weaponry was drawn from Pentagon stocks. Other systems must be produced in U.S. factories.
U.S. and NATO officials have touted the powerful effect of foreign arms on the battlefield, where they have enabled Ukrainian troops to hold Kremlin forces at bay and, in places like the southern city of Kherson, reverse Russian gains. But the armament effort also has rattled officials in the United States and Europe, depleting the military stockpiles of donor nations and revealing the gaps in their productive power.
As the front lines have hardened during the frigid winter months, the ground war has become a bloody, artillery-heavy fight, with Ukrainian forces firing an average of 7,700 artillery shells a day, according to the Ukrainian military, greatly outpacing the U.S. prewar production rate of 14,000 155-mm rounds a month. In the first eight months after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, Ukrainian forces burned through 13 years worth of Stinger antiaircraft missiles and five years of Javelin missiles, according to Raytheon, which produces both weapons.
Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has predicted the munitions squeeze may require a further boost in Pentagon spending, potentially ending the era in which ammunition functioned as a military “bill payer,” a part of the defense budget from which officials can trim to fund more expensive items like tanks or planes.
“What the Ukraine conflict showed is that, frankly, our defense industrial base was not at the level that we needed it to be to generate munitions,” Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, told lawmakers last week, pointing to the effort to accelerate output of artillery shells, guided rockets and other items. “Those are going to matter a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, because even if the conflict in Ukraine dies down, and nobody can predict whether that will happen, Ukraine is going to need a military that can defend the territory it has clawed back,” he said.
The problem is not limited to ammunition, nor to items being provided to Ukraine. According to Mark Cancian, a retired Marine officer and defense expert with CSIS, the pace of production at U.S. factories means it would take over 10 years to replace the U.S. fleet of UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, and almost 20 years to replace the stock of advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles. It would be a minimum of 44 years before the Pentagon could replace its fleet of aircraft carriers.
In Europe, the problems are equally grave. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned in February that the wait time for large-caliber weapons has more than tripled, meaning items ordered now will not be delivered for over two years. In Germany, amid plans for a dramatic military expansion, its ammunition supply is believed to be sufficient for two days of fighting. In one war game, British stocks lasted eight days.
To address those problems, European Union leaders are exploring ways to accelerate manufacturing, possibly by using advance-purchase agreements modeled on the race to develop a coronavirus vaccine. In Ukraine, the ammunition crunch is existential. In places like Bakhmut, where Ukrainian troops are locked in a grisly battle with Russian mercenary and military fighters, defending forces say they must ration artillery ammunition because they receive far less than they need.
Fortunately for Kyiv, Russia, with its defense industry under severe sanctions, has a similar problem. According to Kyrylo Budanov, the Ukrainian military intelligence chief, the Kremlin has been forced to reduce the pace of air attacks due to dwindling stocks of key munitions, including the Kalibr and Kh-101 cruise missiles. Producing enough missiles for one major strike, he said recently, now takes up to two months.
The Pentagon’s own analysis of the U.S. defense sector reveals an industry poorly equipped to match the productive prowess of World War II, when U.S. factories churned out planes and weapons that powered the Allied militaries to victory over the Axis powers. Its problems trace in part to the consolidation that occurred after the Cold War, as military spending fell and the number of uniformed personnel shrank by a third.
In a world where no major state-on-state conflict was expected, the federal government welcomed a wave of mergers and acquisitions that dramatically shrank the sector. At one point, 1,000 civilian defense jobs disappeared every day. In the 1990s, the United States had 51 major air and defense contractors. Today, there are five. The number of airplane manufacturers has fallen from eight to three. Meanwhile, 90 percent of missiles now come from three sources.
The Pentagon used to design weapons programs so there would be at least two manufacturing sources, but over time it began to view that excess capacity as wasteful. Officials sought ways to maintain the competition in part by piggybacking off the commercial sector, but it did not always work. “We quit buying more than we needed,” said David Berteau, a former Pentagon acquisition official who heads the Professional Services Council, an industry group. “We quit paying for more than we needed.”
It was easier to overlook production problems during the two decades of counterinsurgent war that followed the 9/11 attacks, when U.S. forces battled lightly armed militants in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. That is quickly changing with the demands posed by the large-scale conventional conflict underway now.
Industry experts say inconsistent, unpredictable military demand and short-term contracts dictated by appropriations cycles have further discouraged corporate investment in extra capacity. And because there is no commercial market for items like surface-to-air missiles or precision bombs, companies with specialized production cannot rely on civilian demand to keep them afloat.
Officials note that production lags also are due to the fact that military equipment today is inherently more complicated to build than it was during World War II, when Ford could produce a plane an hour. Now weaponry often requires microelectronics and parts from dozens or hundreds of facilities. Lockheed Martin’s F-35 stealth fighter, for one, contains 300,000 parts sourced from 1,700 suppliers.
Doug Bush, the Army’s chief weapons buyer, characterized the government’s decision to keep facilities like the one in Scranton in operation despite a decades-long absence of such sizable demand as a bet that paid off. “It was a public policy choice. An expensive one,” he said. “But they were kept as an insurance policy for this exact circumstance.”
The Army now plans to boost its monthly capacity for producing 155-mm shells from about 14,000 now to 30,000 this spring, and eventually to 90,000. The military also is spending $80 million to bring a second source online for the Javelin missile’s rocket motor, a key component, and plans to double production to around 4,000 a year.
The Army recently signed a $1.2 billion contract for Raytheon to build six more units of national advanced surface-to-air defense systems, which are being used in the war in Ukraine to defend against Russian missile and drone attacks, but they will not be ready for another two years.
Researchers note, however, that of the $45 billion Congress has appropriated for producing new weapons for Ukraine and replacing donated U.S. stocks, the Pentagon as of February had placed contracts for only around $7 billion, raising questions about whether it is moving fast enough.
Industry officials, lawmakers and Pentagon leaders agree that building a greater ability to quickly expand production of needed weapons will require both time and new investment. “You have to bring all of those different streams of increased production together at the right time,” Bush said. “And so that would be one challenge, and that is just, you know, sequencing a large scale industrial ramp up like this.”
While support for defense spending is typically strong on Capitol Hill, backing for arming Ukraine has slipped, especially among Republicans. One recent poll showed that 40 percent of Republicans now believe the United States is giving too much aid to Ukraine, up from 9 percent last spring.
And it is not clear how much more military spending, which already represents more than 3 percent of gross domestic product, Americans will countenance in an era of inflation and economic strain, no matter the rationale.
At a recent hearing, Rep. Lisa C. McClain (R-Mich.), told Pentagon officials that voters in her district were worried about getting mired in a “never-ending war” in Ukraine. “They believe that we are spending money and resources on a fight overseas, rather than getting our own fiscal house in order,” she said.
At the Scranton munitions plant, which is operated by General Dynamics, long steel billets undergo a multiday transformation from burning-hot shafts of metal to finished artillery shells ready to be trucked to a plant in Iowa, where they are filled with explosives and dispatched for training or battle. It can be two to three months from when shells leave Scranton until they are ready to be used.
The city surrounding the plant tells the story of broader industrial decline that is another important element in the production scramble today. As its coal and steel industries drew flocks of immigrant workers in the 19th century, Scranton became an important rail hub and was dubbed “Steamtown” for the steam-powered locomotives that helped fuel its rise.
But the city’s population declined along with the coal industry after World War II. Today, the previously booming city center shows the mixed results of economic revitalization efforts: shuttered store fronts, a handful of brewpubs, and an art house movie theater.
President Biden has identified Scranton, his hometown, as a symbol of the erosion of American manufacturing power, vowing to make a reversal of that trend a signature of his administration. “When jobs move overseas, factories at home close down. Once-thriving cities and towns became shadows of what they used to be, and they lost a sense of their self-worth along the way,” he said in late January.
Since its apex in 1979, more than 7 million jobs have disappeared from the American manufacturing sector, over a third of its workforce. The defense sector has also shed a third of its workforce.
While General Dynamics said the historic Scranton plant remains an attractive employer, in part because of its competitive wages, finding the right workers for its facilities is not easy in an economy with low unemployment and a dearth of traditional manufacturing skills like metalworking. “It’s still a challenge,” said Todd Smith, the company’s general manager for northeast Pennsylvania.
Biden has touted new investments in rail and other infrastructure that U.S. officials hope can anchor a new era of American productivity. “Where the hell is it written that . . . America can’t lead the world again in manufacturing?” he demanded.
Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti said she hopes for added jobs at the Scranton plant, which now employs about 300 people, and other defense manufacturers in the area. “It’s union work. It’s stable work. It’s work that you can build a career and support a family on,” she said. “So any of those types of jobs are critical for us.”
It is not clear how much the Scranton facility, which already runs 24/7 during the week along with some weekend hours, can expand its manufacturing output. Plant officials said the pace of production has not accelerated since the Ukraine war began, and they are not aware of plans to ramp up operations.
While the hoped-for production transformation may not happen fast enough for Ukraine, as Kyiv braces for a massive springtime assault by Kremlin forces, the next conventional conflict could be far larger and more deadly.
The Ukraine scramble “has also given us some ideas of what we need to look at when it comes to Taiwan and China, because we have seen the need to surge,” said Kea Matory, director of legislative policy at the National Defense Industrial Association. “So this is a good learning opportunity for us.”
The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima and Dan Lamothe in Washington and Kamila Hrabchuk in Kyiv contributed to this report.
If You Want To Lose Visceral Fat, Dietitians Say You Should Avoid These Foods
Georgia Dodd – March 9, 2023
Some types of body fat—like the visceral fat that lies deep in your abdomen and surrounds your internal organs—are more harmful to your health than others. Visceral fat increases your risk for certain health conditions, including breast cancer, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. But, luckily, exercising, cutting calories, and limiting certain foods can help minimize it.
To learn more about foods that you should avoid if you want to lose visceral fat, we spoke with Trista Best, a registered dietitian at Balance One Supplements, and Pam Hartnett MPH, a registered dietitian-nutritionist, owner of The Vitality Dietitians and health/nutrition writer. They agree that refined carbohydrates and sugary beverages should be avoided at all costs because they contain high levels of high-fructose sugar and are full of “empty calories.” Read on below to learn more!
Before we get into which foods to avoid, let’s first define “visceral fat.” Visceral fat, or abdominal fat, can be detrimental to your overall health for a plethora of reasons. “First, it is carried at the front of the body where it creates significant stress on the heart and other vital organs. This puts the individual at risk for heart disease and stroke, among other chronic conditions. Second, if allowed to persist it will form around organs and tissues which makes it difficult to lose, also increasing the risk of chronic disease,” Best explains. “Third, visceral belly fat can be a hidden danger for those who otherwise have a normal body weight. A person with a healthy BMI may be carrying a lot of belly fat while other areas of the body are relatively thin. This can create a false sense of reassurance that they do not need to worry [about] health or weight loss.” When you put on enough visceral fat, you may end up with a hard “pot belly” or a more apple-shaped physique.
Refined Carbohydrates
Refined carbohydrates are grain-based foods. They have the bran and germ extracted during the refining process. Not only does the process of refining a food remove the fiber, but it also removes much of the food’s nutritional value, including B-complex vitamins, healthy oils, and fat-soluble vitamins. Without fiber, refined carbohydrates provide no actual sustenance and only increase visceral fat. Some popular examples of refined carbohydrates include white bread and pasta.
“White bread,” Best says, “is made from refined flour, which is high in simple carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrates are quickly digested and absorbed, causing a rapid spike in blood sugar levels. This can lead to insulin resistance, which can increase the accumulation of visceral fat.”
Similarly, refined pasta “is low in fiber, which can further contribute to blood sugar spikes and insulin resistance,” she says. “Fiber helps to slow down the digestion process, which can help to regulate blood sugar levels and reduce the accumulation of visceral fat,” Best continues. Consuming too many refined carbs can lead to stomach inflammation which will only worsen visceral fat.
Sugary Beverages
Sugary beverages like soda, sweet tea, and high-sugar coffee drinks, only increase visceral fat. “Sugary beverages are often sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup is rich in fructose (hence the name), a type of sugar that is converted into fat by the liver. People who consume excess fructose intake can develop non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which is linked to an increase in visceral fat,” Hartnett says. “High sugar intake and rapid spikes in blood sugar can be inflammatory. Chronic inflammation can result in excess fat storage in the abdominal region.”
The high sugar content in soda and coffee (learn how heavily sweetened coffee can stall weight loss goals!) can cause a rapid spike in blood sugar. “Over time, your calls may become less responsive to the hormone insulin, resulting in insulin resistance. Insulin resistance has been linked to increased visceral fat accumulation,” Hartnett says.
Instead of refined carbohydrates and sugary beverages, Hartnett suggests opting for healthy fats. Consuming avocados, nuts, seeds, and fatty fish (like salmon, which is also good for boosting hair thickness and shine!), can help to reduce inflammation in the body and help prevent visceral fat accumulation. And, these foods can also keep you fuller, longer so you won’t feel the need to over-snack later in the day. But, dieting by itself won’t get rid of significant amounts of visceral fat. It’s best if you also exercise, too. Try some of these exercise methods to tone up your stomach and back fat!
Putin’s Troops Filmed Threatening to Turn Weapons on Bosses
Allison Quinn – March 8, 2023
REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko
A group of Russian troops sent to Ukraine to fight for the Kremlin’s “new” territory is threatening to raise absolute hell over what they describe as pointless suicide missions—and they’ve made clear they’re willing to turn their weapons on members of their own team if necessary.
The draftees from Kaliningrad have already appealed directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin to complain of ancient weapons, lack of training, and people dying “for nothing.” In a video released publicly earlier this week, they shamed top military brass by saying there appears to be no battlefield strategy whatsoever and declaring that “this is no way to fight a war.”
Now, a video has leaked capturing the aftermath of their complaints. In a five-minute clip released by the independent outlet Ostorozhno, Novosti, the men can be seen surrounding a commander sent out from Kaliningrad and warning him they will put up a fight if they are not heard.
“You can jail us all! How many years is it, 5, 7, 10? We don’t give a fuck!,” one soldier yells after the commander tries but fails to convince them to obey orders and storm Ukrainian positions.
The troops say they were never meant to be part of assault teams, but were instead assigned as members of territorial defenses. The Kremlin-backed proxy troops fighting in occupied Donetsk, they say, send them on suicide missions while they themselves “run away” or sit around away from the gunfire.
They shout that they’d rather go to jail than go on guaranteed-to-fail assault missions “for who knows what.”
“Did you see that puddle of blood here? That person was sent to storm [Ukrainian positions], so he pulled the trigger, because he knew where he was headed,” one soldier says. “Do you want suicides here?”
After the commander responds that they’ve presented a “weak” argument for not obeying orders, they warn that they will use force.
“No one is going on this storm. You can fucking jail us all. And if someone tries to trick us and say we supposedly aren’t going there and then they throw us on the frontline, it will be a shitshow, it won’t be forgiven, we will just go head to head against them,” one soldier says.
“Honestly, we’re ready for that,” he says, asking the entire group: “Is everyone ready for that?”
“Yes, yes! Everyone!” the group responds in unison.
“We are so fucking angry after the deaths of our friends, … we’ll walk on foot, we’ll leave by taxi. Fight your fucking self!” the apparent leader of the group says.
He goes on to tell the commander that several other soldiers had been “taken away,” apparently after also protesting conditions.
“They came at night. What is that? Is it 1939? NKVD? Black ravens?” he said, referring to the Soviet secret police rounding up “enemies” in night-time raids.
The latest uprising by draftees is just the latest of many as the Russian war machine finds itself running out of men to use as cannon fodder. And in a particularly ironic twist, more and more of the same young Russian citizens that Putin claimed to be trying to protect from outside forces with his full-scale invasion are now being sacrificed for the sake of his conquest on Ukrainian land.
“Previously, the Donetsk and Luhansk draftees were used as expendable materials, but now it’s the Russians,” military analyst Kirill Mikhailov told iStories of the mounting conflict between Kremlin-backed troops in Ukraine’s occupied territories. “They cannot fight any other way. If the approach doesn’t fundamentally change, which I doubt, then Russian draftees will keep dying this way.”
When Trump Passes the MAGA Hat, His Aides Clutch Their Wallets
Michael C. Bender – March 8, 2023
Steve Bannon speaks during AmericaFest in Phoenix, Ariz. on Dec. 20, 2022. (Rebecca Noble/The New York Times)
WASHINGTON — To pay for three presidential campaigns, Donald Trump has raised billions of dollars from corporate executives, online donors and, during his first race, even his own pocket.
One source of money Trump has never successfully tapped: the people closest to him.
While other recent presidents routinely drew financial support from key campaign aides and West Wing advisers, contributions to Trump from his team have been the exception rather than the norm.
The lack of contributions from the Trump team is surprising, given the former president’s penchant for testing his top staff members’ allegiances and his tendency to view loyalty through a starkly transactional lens. Trump is also known to harbor deep resentment over the manner in which aides — in real or perceived ways — have leveraged their connections to him for their own financial gain.
The contrast also offers a window into how Trump, whose temperamental management style led to record turnover in the West Wing, has treated the people he has worked with most closely.
Many of Trump’s advisers, who were often expected to work around the clock, said this time spent working for him was worth more to the campaign than any check they could afford to write. Others pointed to Trump’s personal wealth and his already brimming campaign coffers, suggesting that their contribution either would not matter or would not be missed.
Meanwhile, aides to Trump’s predecessors, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, and his successor, Joe Biden, explained their contributions as a reflection of the loyalty and enthusiasm inspired by their respective bosses.
A review of eight years of campaign finance records showed only a handful of contributions to Trump’s campaigns or political committees from more than 40 of his senior staff members who had a hand in his three presidential campaigns and during his four years in the White House.
The opposite was true for a similar list of key advisers for Biden, Obama and Bush. The list was also checked against Federal Election Commission records for the presidents’ campaigns and related committees.
Reince Priebus, Trump’s first White House chief of staff, spent roughly $130,000 on federal candidates and political committees during the past eight years. Those donations included $5,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2020 and $1,000 in 2018 to a leadership political action committee run by former Vice President Mike Pence. Priebus, who declined to comment, never directly contributed to Trump.
David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, the top strategists for Obama’s first campaign, and Karl Rove, who held a similar position for Bush, contributed to the campaigns that employed them. So did Mike Donilon, who was Biden’s chief strategist in 2020.
Steve Bannon, who was Trump’s top strategist in 2016 and in the White House, gave $25,000 in 2017 to a group called Black Americans for a Better Future and contributed $2,800 in 2019 to Kris Kobach’s campaign for Senate in Kansas. But Bannon never gave to Trump.
“I have never given to any politician except a buddy, Kris Kobach,” Bannon said.
Among the first four Trump campaign managers, the only one to give a maximum contribution was Brad Parscale, who was often the subject of unproven accusations from his colleagues — as well as Trump — that he was pocketing money from the campaign.
Bill Stepien, who offered to take a pay cut when he replaced Parscale as campaign manager, gave the Trump campaign a series of small contributions.
Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s first campaign manager, has not contributed to Trump, but he has spent about $17,000 on other federal campaigns. Similarly, Kellyanne Conway, another former campaign manager, has not contributed to Trump but has spent nearly $30,000 on other campaigns in the past eight years.
“I have donated thousands upon thousands of hours of my time to help President Trump without compensation,” Lewandowski said, adding that he had also paid for his own travel to support the former president since 2017.
Conway said she “gave at the office.”
“In 2016, I did better than stroke a check; I became Trump’s campaign manager, and he won,” she said, adding that she did not contribute to any federal candidates during the four years she worked in the Trump White House.
There are also no donations in the past eight years from Trump’s senior leadership team for his 2024 campaign, including Susie Wiles, who worked without a salary for two years before the campaign started in November, and Chris LaCivita. LaCivita’s only federal contribution during the past eight years was to a Virginia House candidate.
Jason Miller, who is working for Trump for the third consecutive campaign, has given nearly $40,000 to other federal campaigns since 2015. But he has never donated to Trump.
“President Trump represents and fights for the working men and women of America, and the people who work for him are a reflection of that,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump. “In contrast to how the swamp usually operates, people on the campaign have dedicated their lives to this honorable cause.”
One outlier inside Trump’s entourage was Anthony Scaramucci, who contributed more than $250,000 to the Trump campaign and political committees in 2016 before working as the Trump White House communications director. Scaramucci was fired after 11 days and has since contributed to numerous anti-Trump candidates and causes.
Major donors, like Scaramucci, are often selected for administration roles. Steven Mnuchin, who was the Trump campaign finance director in 2016, served as Treasury secretary. Penny Pritzker was the Obama campaign’s finance director in 2012 and later served as the administration’s commerce secretary.
Trump also has not received contributions from most of his children, who have been unusually active in his political career.
Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s eldest son, gave $5,000 in 2017 to America First Action, a political action committee that supported the president. But the only other gift from his siblings was a $376.20 in-kind contribution from Eric Trump to cover meals at a meeting during the 2016 race. Both of those Trump sons and their significant others, Kimberly Guilfoyle and Lara Trump, have helped raise tens of millions for Donald Trump’s political efforts, according to people familiar with the matter.
Biden’s children Ashley and Hunter gave their father small online donations during the 2020 campaign. Michelle Obama, Obama’s wife, gave her husband $399 during his first campaign in 2007.
Both of Barack Obama’s campaign managers, David Plouffe and Jim Messina, contributed to their boss, as did Bush’s two campaign managers, Joe Allbaugh and Ken Mehlman, and Biden’s general election manager, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon.
Some Obama and Bush aides described an unspoken expectation for campaign contributions, particularly among top aides, though they said this was not rooted in direct pressure from the candidate.
Put simply, aides wanted to give money to the boss.
“I wanted to be on that list” of contributors, said Jennifer Palmieri, an Obama White House communications director. “Especially as senior staff, I wanted to show I was doing my part. Because this was not just a job for me — it’s my calling; it’s what I’m about.”
Ari Fleischer, a White House press secretary for Bush, recalled writing a $500 check to the 2000 Bush campaign while he was working on it. Bush, then the governor of Texas, was on the ropes after losing three early primary contests to Sen. John McCain of Arizona, and his huge war chest had taken a significant hit.
“It was a lot of money for me at the time, but I was happy to part with it because I wanted him to win,” Fleischer said.
For Bush’s second campaign, Fleischer had left the White House and opened a consulting firm. He was eager to give Bush a maximum contribution.
Anita Dunn, who donated to both of the Obama and Biden campaigns she worked for, said she felt a “deep commitment to the success” of those candidacies.
“The best presidential campaigns feel like crusades, and you want to support that person in every way possible — with your efforts and financially, if you have the ability to do so,” Dunn said.
While none of Trump’s four White House chiefs of staff, including Priebus, donated to the president they served, both of Biden’s chiefs, Ron Klain and Jeffrey Zients, donated to the president’s 2020 campaign, on which they served as advisers.
Obama did not receive contributions from his first two chiefs of staff, Rahm Emanuel and Pete Rouse, but did from his third and fourth, William M. Daley and Jacob J. Lew. Bush’s first White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., donated to his campaign, but his second, Joshua B. Bolten, did not.
But the Obama and Bush chiefs who did not contribute also had no record of giving to any other federal committee or candidate during the 10 years their bosses each were in office and running for office.
On the other hand, Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, has given more than $8,000 to other candidates and committees during the past eight years.
Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s second-longest-serving chief of staff with 15 months in the job, gave about $20,000 to other candidates during that time.
Why did Mulvaney never contribute to Trump?
“I never got the impression that he needed the money,” he said.
The algae, which is known formally as the single-cell Karenia brevis, has concentrated near Tampa and neighboring communities.
Scientists have found the algae at rates ranging from 10,000 cells per liter to more than 1 million cells per liter – levels that result in fish kills and breathing difficulties in exposed humans, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
The agency said red tide becomes harmful to people at 10,000 cells per liter.
Red tides produce a toxin called brevetoxin that can make humans ill if they breathe the toxin in through sea spray or get wet with contaminated water.
The illness can cause a range of symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including:
Coughing and sneezing
Shortness of breath
Eye, skin, and throat irritation
Asthma attacks
The FWC it had received multiple reports of dead fish respiratory irritation at communities through the Southwest Florida. One community, Indian Rocks Beach, decided to cancel a beach festival slated for next month amid red tide concerns.
Red tides are a naturally occurring phenomenon that have been observed in the Gulf of Mexico since the 1800s. Nascent studies have connected nutrient-laden runoff from farms and developments to increased levels of red tide along the coast.They begin to form on the coast beginning in the fall, and typically clear up by Spring.
Josh Hawley thinks you’re too stupid to realize Tucker Carlson is lying to you | Opinion
The Kansas City Star Editorial Board – March 8, 2023
Facebook/HawleyMO
Fox News lies to its viewers. Josh Hawley is fine with that.
Old news? Maybe. Certainly, we’ve known of both Fox’s mendacity and the Missouri Republican senator’s cynicism for a long time. But fresh developments have revealed yet again how deep the rot goes.
Monday night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson offered a ludicrous alternative take on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — that deadly attack on American democracy in the name of defying the will of the voters in order to keep Donald Trump in the White House. Using a feeble smattering of clips eked out of 40,000 hours of unseen Capitol surveillance video furnished to him by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Carlson made a ridiculously weak case that it wasn’t actually a rebellion against the lawful and constitutional transfer of power to Joe Biden — instead, it was simply “mostly peaceful chaos,” generated by sightseers and tourists.
“The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress,” Carlson said. It was a bald-faced attempt to rewrite history, to tell Americans that what they witnessed on Jan. 6 wasn’t real. “Gaslighting” is an overused term, but it describes Carlson’s efforts perfectly.
The good news is that many Republicans who typically defer to Fox News pushed back on Carlson’s falsehoods. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina used a barnyard epithet to describe the absurdity. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell aligned himself with a letter from the Capitol Police chief, who accused Carlson of “cherry-picking” his video clips to show calmer moments amid the insurrectionist storm.
These leaders showed it’s more than possible to be a member of the GOP and still respect the truth of what happened on Jan. 6.
Unless you’re Josh Hawley. He embraced Carlson’s version of the insurrection. “Sunshine is always the right answer,” he tweeted Tuesday, openly and directly mocking McConnell’s rightful denunciation of the Fox idiocy.
Please. It’s not “sunshine” to furnish government videos only to one favored propagandist, as McCarthy did to Carlson. Real transparency would’ve meant making the footage widely available to all the news outlets that asked for it.
But it’s no surprise McCarthy gave the videos to Fox. Over the last few weeks, filings in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against the network have revealed that Fox hosts were happy to air Trump’s false and discredited claims even though senior figures — all the way up to owner Rupert Murdoch and prime-time host Sean Hannity — knew at the time they were patently false. Instead, Hannity and Carlson actively undermined Fox’s few real journalists, even calling for the firing of one reporter who debunked Trump’s lies.
Why? Because they were afraid of losing conservative viewers to even further-right-wing alternatives such as Newsmax. “Weak ratings make good journalists do bad things,” Fox News exec Bill Sammon wrote in a December 2020 email. He might believe that. We don’t.
Fox host on Trump: ‘I hate him passionately’
Believing one thing and telling viewers another is a regular practice at Fox, clearly. Carlson is a fierce defender of Trump when he’s on the air. Behind the scenes? “I hate him passionately,” Carlson said of Trump, in a text revealed by the Dominion lawsuit. “What he’s good at is destroying things.” His viewers never heard that view.
That is the guy McCarthy put in charge of shedding “sunshine” on Jan. 6.
We don’t know Hawley’s real feelings about Trump. But we suspect that — like those up and down the ranks at Fox News — the senator knew better than to believe the former president’s lies, yet still embraced them out of expediency and fear. That’s likely why he led the ludicrous and doomed Senate effort to deny Biden’s rightful election.
Fox executives worried about losing viewers. Hawley had donors and voters to think about.
Now? There’s the matter of his reputation. Carlson on Monday said the famous video showing Hawley fleeing from the insurrectionists was “edited deceptively” by the Jan. 6 committee because, in fact, several other senators were also running away. We’re not sure how that makes Hawley look better, but the senator must take comfort in having an embarrassing moment ever-so-slightly whitewashed.
The problem is that Carlson’s insurrection denialism won’t wash. More than two dozen of Hawley’s Missouri constituents — including, most recently, a member of the Missouri National Guard — have been arrested or charged for their participation in the insurrection. Across the border, another nine Kansans have also been accused of involvement.
Anybody who cares to know what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, understands it was the bloody, violent and irredeemable affair we all saw unfolding in real time with our own eyes.
The folks at Fox News know it, no matter what Tucker Carlson says on his show. And Josh Hawley knows it too.
What will Miami look like with more sea rise? This high-tech car helps us picture it
Alex Harris – March 8, 2023
Hurricane Ian’s destructive storm surge last fall shocked many Floridians, even some who’d weathered severe hurricanes before. In some places, the waters were so high that survivors had to scramble to the second story or their roof for safety.
Experts say it’s tough for people to visualize what those record-breaking levels of surge would look like until they arrive.
But FloodVision, a new tool from nonprofit climate advocacy group Climate Central, could change that, with help from a high-tech car they’ve nicknamed the “flood rover.”
The vehicle isn’t anything special (it’s actually a rental), but the cameras and sensors strapped onto it are. They form a mobile scanning system that acts a lot like a souped-up Google Maps car, except the finished product is a simulation of a future flooded street.
Benjamin Strauss, CEO and chief scientist of Climate Central, calls it a “visual, visceral, powerful” way to explain the risks of hurricanes — and rising seas — to communities most at risk.
“We know the images are more powerful than any map we can make, or any graphic we can show you,” he said.
Strauss’ team has already done some scanning in Miami, Miami Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa, and they debuted the car and the new system at the Aspen Ideas: Climate conference in Miami Beach this week.
This is a simulation of what a Miami street could look like in 2070 with no interventions to slow down sea level rise. It was produced with FloodVision, a new technology from Climate Central.
In one example in Miami, researchers at Climate Central captured a picture of a neighborhood with the car cameras, then superimposed the two or so feet of sea rise the region is projected to see by 2070 under NOAA’s intermediate high standard.
The result: enough water to come halfway up a tree and soak through the doors of parked cars. It’s a familiar sight to residents of flood-prone neighborhoods like Brickell, which can reach the same levels of flooding after an intense rainstorm.
Strauss plans to use the technology to simulate images of what sea rise or intense storm surge could look like to educate communities about the risks they face from climate change. One potential hurdle is that the technology does not account for protections that local governments may have already installed, like elevated roads or higher sea walls and stronger stormwater pumps.
Without that, the picture of what could likely happen is skewed in places like Miami Beach, which has spent millions installing new protections against rising seas. But despite the growing body of scientific evidence showing the need for coastal cities to adapt to sea level rise, the execution of these projects has been controversial in the places that need them most.
Strauss hopes that his team’s work can be used to help cut through the noise and visually show residents the benefit of investing in flood protection.
“It’s expensive to build flood protections, and it’s also disruptive,” he said. “This technology can be used, essentially, to show what you’re preventing.”
California Readers Share Photos of Their Winter Wonderland
By Soumya Karlamangla – March 8, 2023
The Owens River Gorge in eastern California. Credit…Stephen Cunha
So much snow has transformed the landscape across the state.
Winter weather in the Golden State, of all places, continues to draw national attention this year.
First, atmospheric rivers flooded towns and swallowed cars. Then, snow fell in Silicon Valley, Santa Cruz, Oakland and a whole host of places unaccustomed to it. Graupel, an ice-snow combo, dusted the Hollywood sign. Yosemite National Park closed indefinitely after record snowfall buried cabins and blanketed roads.
And starting Thursday, another set of heavy storms is expected to hit much of the state, which could bring more flooding and rain damage. I don’t need to tell you — it’s been a wild winter.
Late last month I was driving in Paso Robles, a city on the Central Coast known for its wineries and olive groves, when I noticed the tops of the gently sloping green hills sprinkled with snow. I’d never seen anything like it.
The small town of Shandon in San Luis Obispo County last month. Credit…Soumya Karlamangla/The New York Times
Twenty miles east in Shandon, a small community also in San Luis Obispo County, the skies were mostly blue — but the roofs of cars, small homes and wooden barns were all blanketed in snow. I watched as a father and daughter, bundled in scarves and jackets, assembled a wobbly snowman from what had fallen on a grassy field in the city’s park.
Today we’re sharing photos you emailed us of what this winter has looked like in your neck of the woods. Leslie Bates, a reader who lives in Gualala on the Mendocino Coast, said that she had been sending snow pictures to her brother who lives in the Catskills in New York: “The world turned upside down!”
Craig Whichard’s cabin in Arnold. Credit…Craig Whichard
Sandra Sincek, who lives in Julian, a small mountain town northeast of San Diego, described her child’s first sled run of the year.
“Occasionally we will get a few inches of snow, but this was a glorious winter event,” she wrote. “When the clouds finally parted, our son carried his wooden snow sled to the top of the hill, carefully positioned it, climbed in, and let go.”
Craig Whichard wrote to us from his cabin in Arnold, on the western side of the Sierra Nevada and about 70 miles east of Stockton. He said that the five feet of snow that fell late last month was more than he’d seen in his 14 years there.
More on California
Struggling to Recover: Weeks after a brutal set of atmospheric rivers unleashed a disaster, the residents of Planada in Merced County are only beginning to rebuild.
Exploring Los Angeles: Walking down Rosecrans Avenue is not necessarily a pleasure. But it does offer a 27-mile canvas of the city’s vastness and its diverse communities coexisting.
A Bridge Goes Dark: A light installation across part of San Francisco’s Bay Bridge, had to be turned off because of the region’s harsh weather. They hope to raise $11 million to refurbish it.
In Cloverdale in Sonoma County. Credit…Star CarpenterA geodesic dome in the Santa Cruz mountains. Credit…Karrie GaylordThe view from Hollister in San Benito County. Credit…Susan HeckSnow-capped San Gabriel Mountains, seen from Glassell Park in Los Angeles. Credit…Emily Zuzik HolmesSnow-covered mountains behind the Hollywood sign. Credit…Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Studying Ukraine war, China’s military minds fret over US missiles, Starlink
Eduardo Baptista and Greg Torode – March 7, 2023
Video: How U.S. support of Ukraine affects a potential defense of Taiwan Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman.
BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) -China needs the capability to shoot down low-earth-orbit Starlink satellites and defend tanks and helicopters against shoulder-fired Javelin missiles, according to Chinese military researchers who are studying Russia’s struggles in Ukraine in planning for possible conflict with U.S.-led forces in Asia.
A Reuters review of almost 100 articles in more than 20 defence journals reveals an effort across China’s military-industrial complex to scrutinise the impact of U.S. weapons and technology that could be deployed against Chinese forces in a war over Taiwan.
The Chinese-language journals, which also examine Ukrainian sabotage operations, reflect the work of hundreds of researchers across a network of People’s Liberation Army (PLA)-linked universities, state-owned weapons manufacturers and military intelligence think-tanks.
While Chinese officials have avoided any openly critical comments about Moscow’s actions or battlefield performance as they call for peace and dialogue, the publicly available journal articles are more candid in their assessments of Russian shortcomings.
China’s defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment about the researchers’ findings. Reuters could not determine how closely the conclusions reflect the thinking among China’s military leaders.
Two military attaches and another diplomat familiar with China’s defence studies said the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, headed by President Xi Jinping, ultimately sets and directs research needs, and that it was clear from the volume of material that Ukraine was an opportunity the military leadership wanted to seize. The three people and other diplomats spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss their work publicly.
A U.S. defence official told Reuters that despite differences with the situation in Taiwan, the Ukraine war offered insights for China.
“A key lesson the world should take away from the rapid international response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that aggression will increasingly be met with unity of action,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the topic’s sensitivity, without addressing concerns raised in the Chinese research about specific U.S. capabilities.
STARLINK GAZING
Half a dozen papers by PLA researchers highlight Chinese concern at the role of Starlink, a satellite network developed by Elon Musk’s U.S.-based space exploration company SpaceX, in securing the communications of Ukraine’s military amid Russian missile attacks on the country’s power grid.
“The excellent performance of ‘Starlink’ satellites in this Russian-Ukrainian conflict will certainly prompt the U.S. and Western countries to use ‘Starlink’ extensively” in possible hostilities in Asia, said a September article co-written by researchers at the Army Engineering University of the PLA.
The authors deemed it “urgent” for China – which aims to develop its own similar satellite network – to find ways to shoot down or disable Starlink. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
The conflict has also forged an apparent consensus among Chinese researchers that drone warfare merits greater investment. China has been testing drones in the skies around Taiwan, a self-ruled democracy that Beijing has vowed to bring under its control.
“These unmanned aerial vehicles will serve as the ‘door kicker’ of future wars,” noted one article in a tank warfare journal published by state-owned arms manufacturer NORINCO, a supplier to the PLA, that described drones’ ability to neutralise enemy defences.
While some of the journals are operated by provincial research institutes, others are official publications for central government bodies such as the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence, which oversees weapons production and military upgrades.
An article in the administration’s official journal in October noted that China should improve its ability to defend military equipment in view of the “serious damage to Russian tanks, armored vehicles and warships” inflicted by Stinger and Javelin missiles operated by Ukrainian fighters.
Collin Koh, a security fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said the Ukrainian conflict had provided impetus to long-standing efforts by China’s military scientists to develop cyber-warfare models and find ways of better protecting armour from modern Western weapons.
“Starlink is really something new for them to worry about; the military application of advanced civilian technology that they can’t easily replicate,” Koh said.
Beyond technology, Koh said he was not surprised that Ukrainian special forces operations inside Russia were being studied by China, which, like Russia, moves troops and weapons by rail, making them vulnerable to sabotage.
Despite its rapid modernisation, the PLA lacks recent combat experience. China’s invasion of Vietnam in 1979 was its last major battle – a conflict that rumbled on until the late 1980s.
Reuters’ review of the Chinese journals comes amid Western concern that China may be planning to supply Russia with lethal aid for its assault on Ukraine, which Beijing denies.
TAIWAN, AND BEYOND
Some of the Chinese articles stress Ukraine’s relevance given the risk of a regional conflict pitting China against the United States and its allies, possibly over Taiwan. The U.S. has a policy of “strategic ambiguity” over whether it would intervene militarily to defend the island, but is bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself.
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns has said that Xi has ordered his military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, while noting that the Chinese leader was probably unsettled by Russia’s experience in Ukraine.
One article, published in October by two researchers at the PLA’s National Defence University, analysed the effect of U.S. deliveries of high-mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS) to Ukraine, and whether China’s military should be concerned.
“If HIMARS dares to intervene in Taiwan in the future, what was once known as an ‘explosion-causing tool’ will suffer another fate in front of different opponents,” it concluded.
The article highlighted China’s own advanced rocket system, supported by reconnaissance drones, and noted that Ukraine’s success with HIMARS had relied on U.S. sharing of target information and intelligence via Starlink.
Four diplomats, including the two military attaches, said PLA analysts have long worried about superior U.S. military might, but Ukraine has sharpened their focus by providing a window on a large power’s failure to overwhelm a smaller one backed by the West.
While that scenario has obvious Taiwan comparisons, there are differences, particularly given the island’s vulnerability to a Chinese blockade that could force any intervening militaries into a confrontation.
Western countries, by contrast, are able to supply Ukraine by land via its European neighbours.
References to Taiwan are relatively few in the journals reviewed by Reuters, but diplomats and foreign scholars tracking the research say that Chinese defence analysts are tasked to provide separate internal reports for senior political and military leaders. Reuters was unable to access those internal reports.
Taiwanese Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said in February that China’s military is learning from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that any attack on Taiwan would have to be swift to succeed. Taiwan is also studying the conflict to update its own battle strategies.
Several articles analyse the strengths of the Ukrainian resistance, including special forces’ sabotage operations inside Russia, the use of the Telegram app to harness civilian intelligence, and the defense of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.
Russian successes are also noted, such as tactical strikes using the Iskander ballistic missile.
The journal Tactical Missile Technology, published by state-owned weapons manufacturer China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, produced a detailed analysis of the Iskander, but only released a truncated version to the public.
Many other articles focus on the mistakes of Russia’s invading army, with one in the tank warfare journal identifying outdated tactics and a lack of unified command, while another in an electronic warfare journal said Russian communications interference was insufficient to counter NATO’s provision of intelligence to the Ukrainians, leading to costly ambushes.
A piece published this year by researchers at the Engineering University of the People’s Armed Police assessed the insights China could glean from the blowing-up of the Kerch Bridge in Russian-occupied Crimea. The full analysis has not been released publicly, however.
Beyond the battlefield, the work has covered the information war, which the researchers conclude was won by Ukraine and its allies.
One February article by researchers at the PLA Information Engineering University calls on China to preemptively prepare for a global public opinion backlash similar to that experienced by Russia.
China should “promote the construction of cognitive confrontation platforms” and tighten control of social media to prevent Western information campaigns from influencing its people during a conflict, it said.
(Reporting by Eduardo Baptista in Beijing and Greg Torode in Hong Kong; additional reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart in Washington. Editing by David Crawshaw.)
