RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/shipbuilding-shipbuilding-shipbuilding-getting-the-navys-priorities-right/

I was very happy to see secretary of the Navy nominee John Phelan tell the Senate in his confirmation hearing that President Trump’s guidance to him is “shipbuilding, shipbuilding, shipbuilding.”

In a similar vein, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tweeted this week, “It is urgent that the Trump Administration build up the Navy.”

I couldn’t agree more. If the goal is to deter Communist Chinese aggression in the east, there’s no matter more urgent than strengthening and, yes, growing the U.S. Navy as fast as possible.

We need to build more ships, we need to stop retiring older ships, and we need to look at bringing some mothballed hulls back into the fleet.

I commend to everyone Jerry Hendrix and Brent Sadler’s essay in National Review magazine on this very subject, “Restoring Our Maritime Strength,” which lays out a detailed First Hundred Days blueprint for getting the Navy back on track. The two retired Navy captains know of what they speak, and I endorse their thinking to all those interested in rebuilding America’s naval power.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/12/china-mystery-nuclear-battery-submarine-taiwan-war-us-navy/

China’s new nuclear-battery attack submarine – a unique hybrid boat running on batteries like a conventional sub but which recharges them using a tiny nuclear reactor – could be the ultimate near-shore defence sub, and a big problem for US and allied forces in the western Pacific.

The submarine first appeared in commercial satellite imagery of the Wuchang shipyard in Wuhan, China back in April. Five months later, the Type 041 boat reportedly suffered an accident at its moorings – and apparently sank. 

While observers wait for signs Wuchang is repairing that first Type 041 or building new examples of the class, analysts are scrutinising its potential capabilities. Most notably the type seems to have a unique propulsion system – one that sidesteps longstanding engineering challenges in order to deliver a quiet attack submarine for near-shore operations, one that can stay submerged for long periods of time in order to preserve its stealth. The Type 041 is reportedly the first submarine with a tiny nuclear reactor that, while too small to power the entire boat, is big enough to charge the batteries for submerged operations. 

This is a novel approach to the problem of powering a mostly or entirely non-nuclear submarine while it’s underwater. Conventional diesel-electric submarines recharge their batteries using old-fashioned diesel engines. For that, they have to surface or at the least put up a “snort” air intake mast at periscope depth – potentially exposing them to detection and attack. The main alternative is to use nuclear power for propulsion, which produces a very capable boat but is very expensive.

Some navies mitigate this vulnerability by installing so-called “air-independent propulsion” systems in their smaller submarines. There are many different types of AIP. Some burn liquid oxygen. Others draw power from fuel cells. The Japanese navy builds attack submarines powered by lithium ion batteries, which can hold much more energy than normal batteries but are regarded as too dangerous to use in subs by most designers.

All AIP systems are complex, delicate and – when badly made – dangerous. 

https://www.thefp.com/p/dei-military-pete-hegseth-trump

A Free Press investigation reveals the extraordinary extent to which our armed forces put diversity over readiness. Pete Hegseth tells us that’s about to change.

Retired Air Force Brigadier General Christopher Walker, 59, spent almost two years as a senior adviser to the Air Force’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the Pentagon, attending dozens of meetings about implementing DEI initiatives. This was an unusual role given Walker’s career path: He had over 400 hours of combat flights and, most recently, had overseen West Virginia’s Air National Guard.

But in 2021, when the Air Force established its Office of Diversity and Inclusion, staffers assumed that Walker would be on board with their belief that DEI was a “warfighting imperative.” Why? Because Walker is black. But that assumption was wrong.

Walker was a mole.

Alarmed by DEI programs that were little more, in his view, than “Soviet indoctrination,” he leaked information to an organization called Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services (STARRS). This group consists of retired military veterans and civilians who oppose woke ideology in the military. They, in turn, alerted lawmakers like Sen. Tom Cotton and Rep. Mike Waltz about what they were hearing from Walker and other active duty service members who opposed the military’s diversity policies.

“No one delved into how I thought,” Walker told The Free Press. “They took one look at me and assumed I believed these things. I learned to listen and had to bite my tongue a lot.”

Walker, who prefers to go by his pilot call sign, Mookie, took notes and mostly kept his head down, so he could keep reporting what was going on. “I thought, If this is allowed to stand, all of the senior people within the [Department of Defense] are going to bring along this propaganda and get rid of anybody who doesn’t go along with it.”

Mookie recalled a private meeting in 2022 attended by generals and other key Pentagon staffers. At the meeting, Alex Wagner, the Air Force assistant secretary, asked the group to brainstorm ways to get the general public to accept drag shows on Air Force bases.

Close to retirement and with nothing to lose, Mookie finally spoke up. “I reminded the group that since the 1980s, the Air Force has not allowed lingerie shows,” he said. “They don’t allow burlesque shows. So why would we allow drag shows?”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21364/communist-china-sputnik

This is no time for complacency. Communist China’s DeepSeek, a breakthrough in inexpensive AI computing that rocked US tech markets this week (tech investor Marc Andreesen called it a “Sputnik moment”) is really a wake-up to the Trump administration. Call to form a Manhattan Project as soon as possible – this week! – to ensure that America stays competitive in what is sure to be the next breakthrough – which China is already developing: unlimited amounts of totally clean energy produced by nuclear fusion in donut-shaped reactors called tokamaks.

US tech markets suffered a severe shock this week, when Communist China unveiled DeepSeek, an AI program founded in 2023 by Chinese hedge fund manager Liang Wenfeng that can sort through masses of some material effectively as well as comparable US programs, but for less money and with less-sophisticated computer chips. DeepSeek professes ignorance about Tiananmen Square — “Let’s talk about something else,” it emits –but is skilled at extrapolating whatever it has been fed. Financial analyst Matt Levine notes:

“[T]here is a sort of general skill like ‘program a computer to take a huge pile of analogous data and predict the most likely next _______,’ where the blank can be filled in with ‘word in the sentence’ or ‘stock that will go up….’ now everyone has a computer that can pick stocks, while there is infinity money in building a computer that can talk. So now the people who got good at building computers that can pick stocks are pivoting to processing natural language.”

The newest frontier appears to be a country’s ability — through government or through government-private partnerships — to produce unlimited amounts of totally clean energy by nuclear fusion in donut-shaped reactors called tokamaks. China’s “artificial sun” is already well on its way to developing unimaginable amounts of nuclear fusion energy that is clean, cheap and endless:

“China’s EAST reactor set a new record by sustaining a plasma loop for 1,066 seconds at temperatures over 180 million degrees Fahrenheit, marking a significant advancement in nuclear fusion research and potential energy production.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21361/trump-tiktok-law-nullification

In short, Trump nullified the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. A president, however, does not possess that inherent power.

China is using the app to target every future American president, Supreme Court chief justice, and House speaker by accumulating information — and blackmail material — on most of America’s young.

Since when does the U.S. need China’s approval to protect itself from China’s attacks?

The U.S., therefore, has the right to expropriate without compensation — confiscate or “forfeit” in legal terms — the app, including its algorithm.

On January 20, just hours after taking the oath of office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order effectively delaying the application of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, better known as the “TikTok ban.”

This executive order is legally questionable and severely undermines the national security of the United States.

The Act provides that no person may “distribute, maintain, or update” a “foreign adversary controlled application.” The measure designates any app owned by ByteDance, including TikTok, as such an app. In short, American app stores cannot distribute that app and no American business may offer web-hosting services to it.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/dont-wait-for-iran-to-get-nukes/

Donald Trump has twice issued ultimatums to Hamas: If the hostages held by Hamas are not returned by his Inauguration, “there’ll be hell to pay.”

It may not take that long, since last week a deal was announced for a cease-fire and 33 of the Israeli hostages returned in exchange for nearly 1000 Palestinian Arab prisoners in Israeli custody.  Once again, Trump’s foreign policy realism shames the Biden administration’s prissy foreign policy crew and its “rules-based international order” naïve idealism that for decades has ended in dangerous appeasement and shameful retreat.

But this deal is very questionable, fraught as it is with the same moral hazards that have always accompanied decades of such agreements: the Palestinian Arabs’ habit of not keeping their word, and serially violating the terms of every deal; the disproportionate number of prisoners to be released; Israel’s withdrawal from territories that Hamas has used for launching attacks; and the strong possibility that those released prisoners will help Hamas regroup and resume the war.

A much more strategically important goal should be destroying Iran’s theocratic regime, given that it’s mere months from having the wherewithal to make several nuclear weapons. More negotiations, “parchment barriers,” or “deals” piled on top of those that have been going on for ten years, are not viable, and have only provided time and billions of dollars for the mullahs’ nefarious purposes. What we need, as First Lord of the Admiralty Duff Cooper said during the doomed Munich talks, is not “the language of sweet reasonableness” but the “language of the mailed fist.” And we need it stat.

Moreover, it’s not just about the nukes. The bipartisan appeasement of the Islamic Republic of Iran for nearly half a century has been one of the most destructive assaults on our power of deterrence and national prestige, ranking with our retreats from Saigon and, for al Qaeda and other terrorists, from Mogadishu in 1993, and especially Beirut ten years earlier, when 241 American servicemen, mostly Marines, were bombed by an Iranian proxy gang of jihadists that became Hezbollah. Nor did the Reagan administration punish Iran, not even bombing its training camps in the Bekaa Valley, as France (sic!) and Israel did.

The wages of appeasing Iran include proving to the mullahs that Americans––for all their wealth and power––are corrupt infidels enslaved to pleasure and comfort. This perception has not weakened, despite the current setbacks inflicted on Iran by Israel. After all, during the Trump administration Tehran faced challenges like “maximum pressure” on its economy, further infuriating the regime’s already angry citizens. But given the mullahs’ passionate belief in their divine mission, and the continuing civilizational failure of nerve in Western nations, the Iranian theocrats still believe they will achieve the aims enjoined on them by their faith.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/19/the-last-question-is-the-most-important-question/

This past week, the U.S. Senator from Montana, Senator Tim Sheehy, asked the very last, but the single most important question of the day during Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing: “How are you going to lead the reinvigoration of our national shipbuilding industry and restore our Navy?” While much of the rest of the hearing was a spectacle of hysterical accusations and a cavalcade of calumnies, Senator Sheehy’s last question of the day brought up the most important issue facing America’s national defense. Pete Hegseth was well prepared for this question and responded by quoting President Trump, who has said that “shipbuilding will be one of his absolute top priorities” and that Mr. Hegseth, once confirmed, will be pulling this issue up into the Office of the Secretary of Defense so that “the bureaucracy does not strangle important initiatives that need to happen.” Mr. Hegseth went on to say that America “needed to reinvigorate our capacity” by making “rapid investment, rapid fielding,” and then “to incentivize outside entities to fill the gap” as we make historic investment into our defense industrial base.

This may seem like a new challenge for most Americans who are tired of endless wars in the Middle East, so it is worth setting the stage as to why such an effort is urgently needed. It is for three major reasons.

First, the focus of the Pentagon for the last 35 years has been land wars in the Middle East and support of the land war in Ukraine; however, the fight that is brewing from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will not be a land war. It will be a contest of war at sea across the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. This struggle will be one where the U.S. will face the great challenge, not seen since WWII, of taking the fight to the PRC and sustaining the sea lines of communication to allies and partners in the region. The Pentagon is in a difficult process of rethinking and recapitalizing its forces as it confronts the intense security threat from the PRC. This burden falls on the totality of the U.S. military, but the U.S. Navy has pride of place in the current cold war with the PRC.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/17/how-president-trump-can-make-american-intelligence-great-again/

Eight years ago, after Donald Trump’s historic 2016 presidential election victory, I published an article with the same title above, listing urgent recommendations for President Trump to reform America’s then-17 intelligence agencies so they could revert to the great agencies they once were that helped our nation win the Cold War. I believed at the time that the growing politicization of U.S. intelligence, especially concerning the Russia collusion hoax during the 2016 campaign, and bloated intelligence bureaucracies had damaged the reputation of our intelligence agencies and undermined their ability to provide crucial intelligence support to the president.

After the extreme weaponization of U.S. intelligence against the 2016 and 2020 Trump campaigns and his administration, as well as woke mismanagement of intelligence agencies by the Biden administration, intelligence reform is far more urgent today than when Mr. Trump assumed the Oval Office in January 2017.

This is because President Trump has lost confidence in America’s intelligence agencies. As a result, unless there are massive intelligence reforms, the $95 billion-plus that the U.S. is scheduled to spend on intelligence programs in 2025 will be a huge waste of tax dollars.

I have developed five critical steps the Trump administration should take to fix U.S. intelligence. These steps are based on my 25 years working in and with the Intelligence Community and are also drawn from Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton’s extraordinary opening remarks at this week’s confirmation hearing for CIA Director-nominee John Ratcliffe.

Return U.S. intelligence agencies to their original purpose: providing the best possible intelligence support to the president to help him make national security policy decisions to keep our nation safe. This support includes intelligence collection, analysis, and covert action.

Today’s American intelligence agencies have lost sight of their primary mandate to serve the president and operate so independently and arrogantly that they have been accused of being an unelected layer of government. Our intelligence agencies have been called an “administrative state,” a “deep state,” and a “security state.” Many intelligence officials and their supporters actually believe U.S. intelligence agencies should oversee and adjudicate the President’s national security policies.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/yes-greenland-is-strategic/

I love it when Donald Trump makes the media talking heads explode.

If you believed their hyperventilating reaction to this week’s masterful press conference at Mar-a-Lago, the United States Navy was getting warships out of mothballs in preparation for legitimate threats to American security in Greenland and the Panama Canal.

And it wasn’t only in the U.S.

French foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, puffed up like a peacock and beat his tiny chest on hearing the news. “There is no question of the EU letting other nations in the world, whoever they may be, attack its sovereign borders,” the little Frenchman sniffed. “We are a strong continent.”

Outgoing German chancellor Olof Scholz backed up his French bud with words of his own, with talk of “the principle of the inviolability of borders.” Those would be Denmark’s borders, not Germany’s.

The Danish foreign minister, while telling reporters that Greenland “has its own ambitions” and could become independent in the future, was more level-headed in acknowledging America’s very real national security concerns.

“We are open to dialogue with the Americans on how we can possibly cooperate even more closely than we do to ensure that the American ambitions are fulfilled,” he said.

Guess what? Greenland is indeed strategic. FDR realized that at the onset of World War II when he ordered the U.S. Army to establish an air base in the south-east of the country once Denmark had been invaded by the Nazis in 1940. My Dad commanded the coastal artillery unit at the base, known as Bluie-West One – later renamed Narsarsuaq Air Base – as a 29-year old US Army Major.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/senator-tom-cotton-targets-chinas-police-presence-in-the-u-s/

Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) is pushing a crackdown on illegal Chinese government-run police outposts that operate in the United States, one of his first moves since assuming the chairmanship of the Senate’s intelligence panel last week, National Review has exclusively learned.

Cotton’s Expel Illegal Chinese Police Act, introduced earlier today, targets the Chinese regime bureaucracy aimed at conducting subversive repression activities on U.S. soil.

The bill, a copy of which was obtained by NR, would kick off a sweeping assault on Chinese political influence activities in America linked both to the police station network and to broader activities overseen by the United Front Work Department.

It would revoke the visas of Chinese government and CCP personnel operating police stations and other illicit outfits in the U.S.

The bill would also impose full blocking sanctions on Chinese law enforcement agencies involved in setting up illegal outposts in the United States, and it would make their employees ineligible for visas to enter the United States.