BattlelandNavy
Wash Times piece on Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen’s counterpart in China (Chen Bingde) saying that US naval ex’s in regional waters with local friends (Vietnam, Philippines, etc.) are “inappropriate.” Mullen replies that they’re not directed at China, which, of course, is the whitest of lies. The US sells beaucoup …
BattlelandChina
Mark Thompson picks up on Chins’s cheeky advice to visiting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen regarding our coupling of world-class defense spending with our world-class national debt/faltering economy. We can brush it aside, of course, seeing that it’s coming from our #1 excuse for defense spending (Mustn’t let those …
BattlelandNational Security
Economist story (6/18) about the recent wave of high-profile attacks by hacker collectives references “SQL injections,” or the technique of penetrating databases of companies, agencies, etc. McAfee, the web security firm, says about half of those it tracked over the first quarter of 2011 were made by Chinese “cyberspies” – a rather …
BattlelandTerrorism
In my continuing role as Head Judge for the online strategy community Wikistrat‘s month-long International Grand Strategy Competition featuring roughly 30 teams from top-flight universities and think tanks around the world, I get to peruse all manner of provocative thought from some of tomorrow’s best and brightest thinkers. And …
BattlelandNational Security
Reader Brad Hancock jumps at the chance to compare my recent Battleland post on the new US cyber strategy with my just-published World Politics Review column.
Mr. Hancock comments at my Globlogization site that:
Compare this piece in WPR to the one Barnett wrote for Time on the same subject three weeks ago. Time readers were
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BattlelandIndia
Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates has done a lot of good things over his tenure: he carved out a bureaucratic space for the small-wars crowd (Army, Marines, SOF) and he engineered the Navy-Air Force Full Employment Act (otherwise known as the AirSea Battle Concept) to keep the rest of the Building happy; he was tough enough on …
BattlelandRussia
Waiting on the Obama speech explaining this one.
Guardian piece Monday predicts that current US-Afghan talks will cement a very long-term deal on presence [hat tip to World Politics Review Media Roundup].
American and Afghan officials are locked in increasingly acrimonious secret talks about a long-term security agreement which
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BattlelandPentagon
China has been pre-approved for kinetic war strikes from the United States at any time. Let me explain how.
First off, what the strategy says (according to the same WSJ front-page article Mark cited yesterday):
The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding
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BattlelandPresident Obama
Picking up on Mark’s thread this morning, Galrahn, the eminent blogger at Information Dissemination, likewise sees a fight that’s getting nasty, arguing yesterday that the Army was “lucky” (in that, Will-no-one-rid-me-of-that-meddlesome-flag-officer! way) to see two of its great rivals for the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs …
BattlelandPakistan
I am amazed at how quickly the Obama administration is going out of its way to assure everyone that we’re sticking with Pakistan for the long haul no matter what. No discussion and little explanation, it’s just assumed that Pakistan becomes the new indispensable partner that anchors US national security, even as every day reveals …
BattlelandWeapons
The notion of doing away with traditional big-deck carriers gets a high-profile boost this month in the latest (May) issue of Proceedings, the U.S. Naval Institute’s official rabble-rouser. It’s written by a friend and colleague, Capt. Henry (Jerry) Hendrix, along with a retired Marine Lt. Col., Noel Williams. Hendrix, a truly …
BattlelandNational Security
As unrest sweeps across North Africa and the Middle East, China seems intent on making sure that whatever “bug” those folks have caught doesn’t infect its citizens — even if it has to kill them to keep it from happening. Beijing’s “negative trend” on human rights continues, contends the State Department’s just-released Country Reports …
BattlelandNational Security
[youtube = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9rvBLxGs-8%5D
A quartet of experts at Aviation Week magazine, the bible of flying gearheads, now tells us that China’s stealth F-20 jet may not be such a big deal:
China’s newest combat aircraft prototype, the J-20, will require an intense development program if it is going to catch up with
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