RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/military-spending-ukraine-defense-budget-putin-deterrent-taiwan-china-north-korea-entente-supply-chain-11667242695?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

Vladimir Putin has reminded us of a forgotten lesson of the Cold War: Deterrence isn’t merely about preventing nuclear war.

The U.S. and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization failed to deter Mr. Putin from launching a conventional war in February, and the costs of that failure—in blood and tears, in the military and economic support needed to keep Ukraine in the fight, in the economic shocks reverberating across Europe, in the food and fuel inflation threatening to destabilize governments across the Global South—continue to mount.

If conventional deterrence also fails against China, and Beijing attacks Taiwan, the costs will be even higher. Ukrainians at least were able to flee from the war zone. Trapped on their island, the people of Taiwan would have no place to go as war engulfed their homes. The shock to the world economy would be almost immeasurably greater. The importance of the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea to world commerce eclipses that of the Black Sea. It isn’t only computer chips whose global supply chain would be crippled by war over Taiwan. Everything made in China, Vietnam, Korea and Japan would become scarce. Global financial markets would tank. Japan and Korea would face critical shortages of fuel and food. Africa and Latin America would face massive economic damage.

Meanwhile, the failure to deter Russia is leading to increased American spending in Europe. We have sent around $20 billion to Ukraine since the invasion began and have dispatched an additional 20,000 troops to Eastern Europe. All this makes sense, but the contrast with our Asian commitments is sobering. Senators are currently working to send Taiwan $10 billion in U.S. aid over the next 10 years, half of what Ukraine has received in eight months of war. The U.S. announced plans to send six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to Australia Monday morning, but the impact was offset by news that up to half the American combat aircraft stationed in Japan will be withdrawn, with no agreed Pentagon plan for permanent replacements.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/28/america-world-war-iii-and-space-based-missile-defense/

The United States is staring down the barrel of another world war. Like previous world wars, the coming conflict will be fought using weapons and tactics with which we are currently unfamiliar—and it will require strategic thinking unlike the kind that dominated the previous century’s conflicts. 

Nuclear weapons, used with great effect in World War II to end that terrible conflict, will likely be used to initiate the next. The likeliest use of these terrible weapons will be by Russia in their unjust war against Ukraine. But, even if Ukraine is not where the atomic devastation occurs, China is very near the point of initiating an invasion against democratic Taiwan. And the mad mullahs of Iran appear on the brink of nuclear weapons breakout—as does the North Korean tinpot dictator, Kim Jong-un. 

It is a question of “when” rather than “if” the nuclear genie is loosed from its bottle.

Nuclear weapons have been with us for decades. We have perfected the murderous science behind these ghastly weapons to the point that great powers, like the United States, Russia, and China, all possess the ability to visit nuclear Armageddon upon each other (and the world). Despite having lived through the harrowing days of the Cold War, the United States never seriously invested in a reliable defense against nuclear weapons. In fact, most American leaders scorned the very concept of building reliable defenses against nuclear weapons as “destabilizing.”

After squandering precious time to develop a viable defense against nuclear weapons, Washington should immediately redirect as many resources as possible to the creation and deployment of space-based defenses as well as other ballistic missile defense systems. 

During the Cold War, the bureaucracy resisted Ronald Reagan’s calls for space-based missile defense on the grounds that the technology to create such a revolutionary system was not yet available (none other than legendary Hungarian-American Dr. Edward Teller, father of the neutron bomb, disagreed with the skeptics). Plus, the naysayers complained, deploying a defensive system into orbit to render nuclear arms obsolete would precipitate the very sort of nuclear attack the defensive system was designed to protect against. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/americas-woke-military-has-never-been-this-weak/

For the first time the Heritage Foundation’s index of American military strength has ranked us as ‘weak’. The index warns that the Army “remains ‘weak’ in capacity with only 62 percent of the force it should have”. And even the Army has admitted that it has missed its recruiting target by 10,000 personnel which is expected to climb to over 20,000 by the end of the next fiscal year.

As Heritage and the Wall Street Journal note, “From 2005 to 2020, the U.S. fleet grew to 296 warships from 291, while China’s navy grew to 360 from 216.” The Navy however is focused on inclusion and diversity. The situation at the Air Force is much worse with the Heritage report warning that “the munitions stockpile” would probably “not support a peer-level fight that lasted more than a few weeks”. But the Air Force is also focused on diversity and inclusion.

The Navy is rated as very weak in capacity and weak in readiness. The Air Force ranks as very weak due to “problems with pilot production and retention, an extraordinarily small amount of time in the cockpit for pilots, and a fleet of aircraft that continues to age”. The Heritage index warns that “there is little doubt that it would struggle in war with a peer competitor”.

The Space Force is described as weak because “there is little evidence that the USSF has improved its readiness to provide nearly real-time support to operational and tactical levels of force operations or that it is ready in any way to execute defensive and offensive counterspace operations.”

Only the Marine Corps is rated as strong. Even our nuclear capabilities are slipping with “Russia and China are aggressively expanding the types and quantities of nuclear weapons in their inventories. Nearly all components of the nuclear enterprise are at a tipping point with respect to replacement or modernization and have no margin left for delays in schedule.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-pentagons-recruitment-woes-army-military-navy-air-force-u-s-defense-11665664019?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The U.S. Army recently told the press that it missed its fiscal year recruiting goal by 25%, coming up short nearly 20,000 soldiers. For 50 years America has relied on volunteers to defend the country, but that system is a luxury maintained at a cost, and its struggles deserve attention.

The Army’s troubles are acute but not unique. The Air Force barely hit its numbers for 2022. The Navy met its targets for enlisted sailors but came up short about 200 officers. Both the Navy and Air Force had to dip into “delayed entry” pools of recruits usually kept in a holding pattern for later, which means the services will start a new recruiting year in an even tougher position. The numbers are worse in the reserves.

Several factors are contributing to the shortfall. Fewer than one-quarter of Americans ages 17 to 24 are eligible to serve, and the reasons for disqualification include obesity, addiction and criminal history. The decision to close high schools during the pandemic kept recruiters at bay and left many teens mentally unwell, another disqualification.

Record job openings and Covid transfer payments hurt enlistment, but the problems run deeper. Fewer than one in 10 youth are inclined to serve, according to survey data. Dismal civic education hasn’t helped; teenagers taught to think America is a racist or imperialist country won’t wear the uniform.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cybersecurity-awareness-chuck-brooks

With another National Cybersecurity Awareness Month upon us, few major things have changed from the past year in terms of threats. As the capabilities and connectivity of cyber devices have grown, so have the cyber intrusions from malware and hackers. The cyber- threat actor ecosystem has grown in both size and sophistication. They are also openly collaborating in sharing targets. And tools. The cyber threat actors include various criminal enterprises, loosely affiliated hackers, and adversarial nation states.

Information sharing on threats and risk is one of the most principal functions of government and industry collaboration.

Achieving a full awareness of nefarious actors who operate in the cyber realm and protecting against their capabilities is an arduous task. Clearly, industry cannot respond to growing cyber-threats alone, especially for small and medium businesses who lack the resources and expertise. Increased government and industry cooperation to meet those challenges is a viable course to help mitigate threats and challenges. It is a proven risk management model that makes good sense. In several areas.

Information sharing on threats and risk is one of the most principal functions of government and industry collaboration. Sharing such information helps allow both government and industry to keep abreast of the latest viruses, malware, phishing threats, ransomware, and insider threats. Information sharing also establishes working protocols for lessons-learned and resilience that is critical for the success of commerce and the enforcement against cyber-crimes.

Both Solar Winds and the Colonial pipeline breaches highlighted the government’s assistance in mitigating breaches and moving toward resilience. Government was directly collaborating with the companies to discover the extent of the breaches and options for amelioration.

Remediation of breaches is important to continuity; no matter what, breaches will happen. The incorporation of best practices and the lessons learned from the various and many corporate breaches over the past few years is certainly valuable data for both industry and government in terms of prevention, recovery, and continuity.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/154-scientists-at-los-alamos-nuke-lab-defected-to-china/

Defected of course implies that they ever worked for any nation other than China.

It’s a good thing that the Biden administration corruptly shut down the Trump administration’s attempt to stop Communist China from spying on us, manipulating us and robbing us blind to avoid offending anyone… like Beijing.

“We have heard concerns from the civil rights community that the “China Initiative” fueled a narrative of intolerance and bias. To many, that narrative suggests that the Justice Department treats people from China or of Chinese descent differently. The rise in anti-Asian hate crime and hate incidents only heightens these concerns.”

Goodbye China Initiative and U.S. National Security.

At least 154 Chinese scientists who worked on government-sponsored research at the U.S.’s foremost national security laboratory over the last two decades have been recruited to do scientific work in China — some of which helped advance military technology that threatens American national security — according to a new private intelligence report obtained by NBC News.

The report, by Strider Technologies, describes what it calls a systemic effort by the government of China to place Chinese scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where nuclear weapons were first developed.

Many of the scientists were later lured back to China to help make advances in such technologies as deep-earth-penetrating warheads, hypersonic missiles, quiet submarines and drones, according to the report.

We are literally financing our own destruction in every possible way. It’s not surprising that Communist China would want to plant its own people at Los Alamos. The mindboggling thing is that they were able to plant over 150 of them. No waiting.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/two-cair-broadcasts-in-one-day/

Two TV newscasts about the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations show a number of qualities that are present in almost all of CAIR’s TV appearances.

CAIR is on TV every day. If it misses a day, it will be on two, three, or four times or more on the following day. Last year, CAIR was on TV over 440 times.
When CAIR is on TV, it is always positive coverage. None of the hundreds and hundreds of yearly presentations of CAIR in the TV news are even mildly critical of the group.
There is always something wrong, obscured, or misrepresented in the broadcast.
The TV reports often recite CAIR press releases almost word for word.

This Monday KDFW broadcast begins by showing us still images of people wearing hairnets in a large room.

On the 911 national day of service today, the DFW chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations spent the afternoon working to help feed the hungry here in north Texas. Volunteers packed more than 100,000 meals and care packages. Their mission? To protect civil rights, enhance understanding of Islam, promote justice, and empower American Muslims.

It might take more than one viewing to realize that CAIR isn’t feeding anybody. CAIR reps are only stuffing the packages on behalf of another organization, U.S. Hunger, which KDFW never mentions even once in the broadcast. By practically reading word for word from CAIR’s press release, KDFW has produced a commercial for CAIR.