RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18885/china-drones-dji-spying

The Chinese company DJI controls nearly 90% of the world market for consumer and commercial grade drones.

The excellent reporting on DJI by Kitchen tracks efforts by the company to lobby against passage of a bill called the American Security Drone Act (ASDA), now before Congress, to outlaw federal government use of DJI products entirely. What is the risk? Not only the data gathered by the drones themselves, but everything collected by the mobile app with which users control their drones and manage their DJI accounts. Like many other mobile applications, this includes a user’s contacts, photos, GPS location, and online activities.

Every DJI drone in the skies above America is as good as a hovering Chinese spy.

DJI is engaged in a fierce lobbying effort to prevent passage of the ASDA bill. So fierce that they have enlisted police officers from local jurisdictions to come to Washington and lobby congressional staffers about how great DJI drones are for their cash-strapped local forces…. DJI lobbyists from firms like Squire Patton Boggs, Cassidy & Associates, and CLS Strategies are taking no chances. The company spent $2.2 million in lobbying efforts in 2020 and $1.4 million last year on lobbying activities, according to OpenSecrets.org.

Much as they are doing with products such as solar panels, the Chinese realize that cornering the market in an area where reach equals access is critical to their long-term plans to dominate. Their pattern includes stealing technology they cannot create themselves and using any means available to aid in that theft. Therefore, every bit of access to information they can scour is of more value to them than the product used to get it.

Understanding these patterns is central to recognizing that the Chinese do this to their own people as well…. [through] many different forms of what we may baldly call blackmail.

The Wilson Center, a bipartisan think tank in Washington, reported in 2017 that a small community of PRC students and diplomats have engaged in intimidation tactics ranging from intelligence gathering to financial retaliation… It was just those sorts of concerns that led the Trump administration to create the “China Initiative” within the Justice Department in 2018. This effort generated plenty of convictions of Chinese nationals in the US for technology theft and other forms of industrial espionage. The Biden administration ended the program this year….

China’s strategy has for years hinged on infiltration by some Chinese scientists and researchers working abroad in the US and other western nations, with threats against their Chinese relatives as leverage for them to do so.

Chinese intelligence gathering in the US takes many forms and has different purposes. Most Americans are familiar with some of their means and tactics, but not with how widespread and persistent they are.