Category Archives: defense policy

Another Cynical Mueller Leak

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Special counsel Robert Mueller is examining what role, if any, former national security adviser Mike Flynn may have played in a private effort to obtain Hillary Clinton’s emails from Russian hackers, according to people familiar with the matter.

It’s becoming increasingly crystalline that, whatever purpose Special Counsel Robert Mueller has in his “investigation,” it’s a dishonest one.  That’s the only reason that occurs to me for his careful string of “leaks” to the public, of which this is only the latest.

Investigators working for Mr Mueller have been conducting interviews and collecting information as they seek to determine whether Mr Flynn was involved in Mr Smith’s effort, and if his son, Michael G Flynn, and the consulting firm Flynn Intel Group had a role, the people said.

There’s just no reason for these leaks to be occurring, and they could not be, in their number or in the length of the ongoing stream of them, without Mueller’s active approval.

And this especially potentially damaging leak:

US officials with knowledge of the intelligence said investigators also have examined reports from intelligence agencies that describe Russian hackers discussing how to obtain emails from Mrs Clinton’s server and then transmit them to Mr Flynn via an intermediary.

While it’s easy enough for thinking persons to speculate that such intelligence agency reports exist, the fact of their existence is likely classified.  While it’s easy enough, also, for thinking persons to draw conclusions of their own consistent with what these leaked intel reports appear to claim, the reports’ contents and conclusions, even in general terms, likely are classified, also.  How is this sort of information being leaked?  Why is Mueller allowing it?

Peter Carr, a spokesperson for the special counsel, declined to comment.

Of course he did.  If Mueller or any of his team spoke on the record, they’d be unable to release as much “information” regarding this ongoing investigation.

Why am I not Surprised?

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The International Institute for Security Studies has the story.

North Korea’s missile programme has made astounding strides over the past two years. An arsenal that had been based on short- and medium-range missiles along with an intermediate-range Musudan that repeatedly failed flight tests, has suddenly been supplemented by two new missiles: the intermediate-range Hwasong-12 and the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), Hwasong-14. No other country has transitioned from a medium-range capability to an ICBM in such a short time. What explains this rapid progression? The answer is simple. North Korea has acquired a high-performance liquid-propellant engine (LPE) from a foreign source.

Available evidence clearly indicates that the LPE is based on the Soviet RD-250 family of engines, and has been modified to operate as the boosting force for the Hwasong-12 and -14. An unknown number of these engines were probably acquired though illicit channels operating in Russia and/or Ukraine. North Korea’s need for an alternative to the failing Musudan and the recent appearance of the RD-250 engine along with other evidence, suggests the transfers occurred within the past two years.

These engines could have come from Ukraine or from Russia; however, Oleksandr Turchynov, Secretary of Ukraine’s Security and Defense Council, denies that Ukraine was the source.

Ukraine has never supplied rocket engines or any kind of missile technology to North Korea.

There’s no reason to doubt the Ukrainian denials.  The rocket engines were manufactured in Ukraine (in addition to then-Soviet Russia) and so the Ukrainians would have access to the technology, certainly, and they could have had some leftover engines.  But the development work was done in Soviet Russia’s defense facilities; Russia today also has that technology (although they’ve moved beyond it), and manufacturing facilities, and Russia has an interest in exacerbating the northern Korean threat to our allies and to us.  Too, any such engines remaining in Ukraine likely would have been transferred to Russia along with Ukraine’s nuclear missiles under the Budapest Memorandum.

The IISS speculates that disgruntled Ukrainian engineers, in the extremity of the economic dislocation from Russia’s invasion and partition of Ukraine, could have done the transfer.  That seems unlikely, too, though: getting the engines out of Ukraine would have been much dicier than getting them out of Russia—which has a border with northern Korea.  There’s also little reason to suspect that only the technology was transferred; northern Korea hasn’t demonstrated the manufacturing facility for building RD-250s.

There is some less unfavorable news associated with this.  Being liquid fueled, northern Korea’s ICBMs would have to be fueled just before launch; that generally gives considerable warning that a launch (or launches) is imminent and so associated responses would have time to be prepared.

Technology Theft

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In a piece on American CEOs’ (and Apple’s in particular) cowardice in their dealings with the People’s Republic of China’s government—censor your stuff or you can’t operate in the PRC, give up your technology to or you can’t operate in the PRC, and these worthies meekly comply—comes this reminder on the latter bit:

Just about everybody in the US capital is complaining about how China forces foreign companies to give up technology in return for market access.

In truth, the PRC isn’t alone in this: willing participants are those American CEOs who acquiesce in the name of short-term profit rather than long-term gain.

This collusion (is that a word?  Can I use it?) is especially irritating in the Apple case given CEO Tim Cook’s willingness to stand up to the US government over decrypting an Apple smartphone used by the San Bernardino terrorists.  Cook is willing to collude with the PRC, but he’s not willing to collaborate with our own government.  He was right in the terrorist case, too….

It’s time to inject some backbone into these CEOs.  The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which is used to pass on or to block acquisition of American companies by foreign investors if the resulting technology transfer would harm our national security.  CFIUS needs to be broadened with the authority similarly to pass on American companies doing business in foreign jurisdictions if the resulting technology transfer would harm our national security.

Worried about other nations’ companies getting in in place of American ones?  We’re proud of our technology lead over the rest of the world, and justifiably so.  Even were those other nations’ companies actually able to fill the vacuum of the absence of ours, that would just leave the PRC to extort access to second best.

A Good Idea

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The sooner, the better, too, and make it broader.

The US is considering deploying Patriot surface-to-air missiles in Estonia, US Vice President Mike Pence told Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas on Sunday.

“We spoke about it today, but we didn’t talk about a date or time,” Ratas told state broadcaster ERR after the meeting.

This would be excellent.  We also should talk Estonia about deploying THAAD and ABM systems there.  And then we should deploy all three.

And put systems in Poland and Czech Republic, if they’ll have them after ex-President Barack Obama (D) suddenly cancelled the missile defense systems we were going to set up there.  And put systems in Ukraine.

That’s just for Russia’s benefit.  We also should plus up the missile defense systems deployed in the Republic of Korea (if President Moon Jae-in finally can recognize the threats of northern Korea and the People’s Republic of China) and in Japan.  We also should talk to Australia, the Republic of China, and Vietnam about missile defense deployments there.  And India.

Space-Based Defense

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LtGen James Abrahamson, USAF (Ret) and Ambassador Henry Cooper, who were directors on President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, had some thoughts on this in their recent Wall Street Journal Letter to the Editor.

Brilliant Pebbles, the space-based interceptor we advocated, promised a high probability of kill (over 90%) of all of a “limited” strike of up to 200 attacking re-entry vehicles—the number then controlled by a Russian submarine commander. It’s better than anything we have today. It became the SDI era’s first formally approved ballistic-missile defense system, with a validated cost estimate of $10 billion in 1988 dollars (now $20 billion) for concept definition and validation, development, deployment and 20 years operation of that constellation of 1,000 Brilliant Pebbles. This isn’t expensive….

Such a thing is particularly inexpensive compared to the cost of those attacking re-entry vehicles getting through to their military and urban targets.

The best defense is a good offense: we should be orbiting offensive weapons, also.  Keep in mind, too, that offensive weapons in orbit need not be nuclear in order to satisfactorily service targets: the energy released by impact after “falling” to earth from orbit compares very favorably with the energy released from nuclear warheads and with none of the radiation or fallout complications.