Category Archives: defense policy

Unpleasant Signals

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Recall Russian President Vladimir Putin’s promise to send “unpleasant” signals to the US because President Joe Biden hasn’t yet kowtowed sufficiently to him—Washington was not showing a readiness to discuss all issues at a bilateral summit next month [now this month] is how The Jerusalem Post dryly put it at the end of May.

The comments by Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, came a day after US President Joe Biden said that he would press Russian President Vladimir Putin to respect human rights when the two leaders meet in June.

Having embarrassed Biden—and our nation—quietly with the Colonial Pipeline/Nord Stream 2 fiasco, Putin now is bent on embarrassing Biden—and us—more publicly.

JBS Meats was the recent target of a “ransomware” attack that caused JBS to shut down some servers and interrupt meat production in Australia and the US.

Now, a couple of Cox Media Group television stations, one in Florida, the other in Pennsylvania, have been hit by a cyber attack, forcing them both off the air. Cox expects to have them back on the air “soon.”

I expect more signaling in the coming days. And I worry, given what Biden gave away in the aftermath of Colonial, what he’ll give away in response to these signals behind closed doors in Geneva when he meets with Putin in a week.

Patty-Cake

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President Joe Biden (D) has an Executive Order out that, among other things, asks private industry pretty please to adapt to the continuously changing threat environment, ensure its products are built and operate securely, and partner with the Federal Government to foster a more secure cyberspace.

Clarion Intelligence Network Director Ryan Mauro has another idea, sort of.

Make no mistake about it, a defensive strategy towards the cyber threat is not going to work. There’s going to have to be an offensive strategy.

But he doesn’t go far enough, either.

It’s time for the US to do things like having its own Wikileaks, so that when Putin does something, guess what appears on the internet? A bunch of his own secrets, showing how corrupt he is—that will deter them.

No. That’s a mouse remonstrating with a hawk. The mouse insists the hawk’s ways are wrong. The hawk insists the mouse is lunch.

We need to make a serious response—rather, a serious collection of responses—to a cyber attack, which Mauro does correctly characterize as no difference, when you commit an attack, whether using a bomb or cyber strike.

No, our offensive response must be a sharp escalation—done faster than the attacker can respond—and across a broad spectrum. Our response must include a prompt cyber response that includes those secrets being exposed, but that also simultaneously shuts off electrical grids and penetrates and corrupts attacker national databases. Our response also longer-term penalties, even if they take some time to produce effect: immediately emplaced economic bars against government officials, oligarchs and their enterprises, and governments of the attacking nation or of the nation hosting the attackers. The response must continue: location of the equipment used to originate the cyber attack and the corruption of that equipment with malware (of which there is much on the dark net; no need to reveal our own malware capabilities).

The only real conundrum here is that our response must not be so all-out that it gives away our full capabilities before we’re in an actual war.

Nord Stream 2 and Joe Biden

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President Joe Biden (D) likes to present himself as talking big. Unfortunately for the rest of us, and for our nation, he acts small. In the latest example, he said that he

lifted sanctions on the Russia-to-Germany pipeline Nord Stream 2 “because it’s almost completely finished.”

He also said, after having agreed with Russian President Vladimir Putin to lift sanctions on and stop blocking Russia’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline,

I’ve been opposed to Nord Stream from the beginning…they know how I feel[.]

And “they” don’t care. “They” showed how little they care when Putin allowed Russian hackers to shut down a critical part of our own fuel distribution infrastructure.

Here’s Biden again, on the same pipeline:

It’s not like I can allow Germany to do something or not….

It’s not like Biden would have been allowing Germany to do anything or not. Our government was denying Russia’s ability to increase Germany’s—a European economic powerhouse and key NATO member—dependency on Russia. Until Biden gave up.

“Almost completely finished” means not done and no natural gas flowing and no benefit—or money—flowing to Russia. “Almost finished” were the easy parts of the pipeline; the most difficult 90 miles were what was left.

No, Biden “opposed” the pipeline until it became inconvenient to him to do so.

Now, with his meek…acquiescence…Russia gains firmer hold on the economies (and so the nations) of central Europe, most especially the erstwhile strongest economy, Germany’s. And it comes promptly after Putin ran his demonstration of what would happen to our own energy infrastructure if we continued our interference with Russian extraterritorial activities.

Support for Hamas

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Iran has been exposed, once again, as supporting terrorism, this time straight from the horse’s mouth.

[Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau,] Ismail Haniyeh…thanked “the Islamic Republic of Iran; who did not hold back with money, weapons, and technical support.”

Nor does the support for Hamas come solely from Iran.

In his speech Friday at the start of his joint press conference with Republic of Korea President Moon Jae-in, President Joe Biden (D) spoke at length—bragged—about how he’d been in frequent contact with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and about how several levels of his administration had been in constant contact with various levels of Netanyahu’s government to pressure the Israelis to “find a way” to end the hostilities with Hamas (and, oh by the way, Egypt helped out), and how he, Biden, had pushed Netanyahu to stop the rioting in Jerusalem. Biden had not a word, not a syllable, of his effort to push the Hamas leadership to stop their terrorist attacks on Israel or to push the Hamas leadership to stop Palestinian rioting in Jerusalem.

That’s coupled with Biden’s anxious push to get Iran to let the US (re)join the Iran nuclear weapons acquisition deal, ultimately to lift sanctions, and to pay billions more American dollars to the terrorism- and terrorist-supporting state, much of which money will go to Hamas.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took note of that latter, also.

America is about to supply Iran with billions of dollars in sanctions relief to continue this. For America’s security, and for that of Israel, this is dangerous.

That’s this administration’s one-sided pressure on Israel, backed up by his Progressive-Democratic Party as Party Congressmen insistently accuse Israel of terrorism and apartheid, with nary a word about Hamas’ terrorism and with no contradiction from Party leadership. Biden has pretty words, to be sure, about undying support for Israel, but that prettiness is belied by his actual behavior.

Whether it’s Biden’s intent or not, the outcome of his behavior is decreased antithesis toward Hamas and Hamas’ terrorism (which much clearly is Party’s intent), and increased the danger to Israel and to us.

Demanding Surrender

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While Hamas increases its terrorist rocket attacks on Israel’s population centers—explicitly targeting civilian women and children with the targeting—and Israel increases its active defense against Hamas’ terrorism—while at the same time, warning the occupants of targeted buildings, including the terrorists therein, of the impending attacks—the Biden-Harris administration is stepping up its pressure on the Israeli government to come to a cease fire.

Since it isn’t possible for the Israelis to contemplate a cease fire until the terrorists cease firing, this amounts to Biden-Harris pressure on Netanyahu to surrender to Hamas.

This is a despicable Progressive-Democrat betrayal of our strongest ally in the Middle East and one of our strongest allies anywhere in the world—especially since Hamas’ purpose, and that of Hamas’ master, Iran, is not to force Israel to give them anything, but to achieve the utter destruction of Israel and the extermination of Jews. That purpose is well-known to the Progressive-Democrats, but it doesn’t matter to them.

At least, though, Biden-Harris is setting an example for Netanyahu. Biden-Harris has lifted bars to construction of Nordstream 2 and removed associated sanctions against Russian companies and government officials—ze’s own abject surrender to Russia.

It’s telling that Biden-Harris’ meekness in front of Vladimir Putin comes on the heels of a Russian entity hacking into a major US oil pipeline and shutting down 45% of the fuel deliveries to the east coast—until tribute ransom was paid (itself a disgusting display of abject cowardice that only increases the danger to us all).

Update: He’s gone ahead and done it. Biden has forced Netanyahu to call an end to Israel’s defense against Hamas’ terrorist attacks by agreeing an unconditional cease-fire, ostensibly brokered by Egypt (which has brokered similar deals in the past).

With this cease-fire, Israel has been forced to call off its active defense before it has reduced Hamas’ ability to assault Israeli women and children ever again.

Oh, when Biden announced the agreement, he had many pretty words about the US always standing with Israel, many flowery phrases nicely averring Israel’s right to defend itself.

But the bottom line is that Israel has been forced by Biden to stop defending itself before its task was finished, before Israel had achieved its goals of destroying Hamas’ weapons caches and launch facilities and of eliminating Hamas’ terrorist leaders.