National emergency. A trillion for the military.

And America's influence operations. Your weekly news roundup

Jackpot!

A $1 trillion Pentagon budget isn’t enough, at least according to an audacious column by Hal Brands, American Enterprise Institute senior fellow and Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor (lol) of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins graduate school of “advanced” international studies. Crazy as that might sound — and it is crazy — Brands is expressing a view commonly held in the national security world. As James Bond put it, “The world is not enough.” Pull up just about any four star general testifying before Congress and you’ll see. Missile gaps, collection gaps, processing gaps, competitive gaps, drone gaps, AI gaps; the list is endless. They never say how they can prioritize the resources they do have better. Because no one makes them. The assumption is more, always. That hasn’t been challenged in more than 20 years.

So the next time you see some national security bigshot urge Congress for more funding — which the Secret Service is doing now after its most recent protective failure — keep in mind that they always want more. Always.

National emergency. The White House renewed post-9/11 national emergency measures this week granting the U.S. government special authorities “to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat” of foreign terrorism, per a notice released on Wednesday. On some level it is merely a bureaucratic matter. On another, it is the way of national security, hiding powers that the American people should reject. But they can’t do so when the media doesn’t to tell them what’s afoot. Not a single major media outlet bothered to report on the national emergency renewal described here, inured as they are to perpetual war.

U.S. Army plans for potential operation inside Ukraine. The Army is looking for “cultural role players” who previously served in the Ukrainian government to participate in Louisiana-based exercises designed to simulate village-level operations for American troops. This is taking place in the context of the Ukraine war reaching its most dangerous stage yet, with Ukrainian forces occupying Russian territory and the previous Washington rules on long-range weapons striking inside Russia eroding. Some say such training is merely routine, and some could argue that the Army is just being smart in anticipating that they might be called upon to be some kind of peacekeeping force. The truth, though? The training reveals what the Army is doing as opposed to what they are saying.

American “influence” operations. During Covid, the Pentagon ran a secret information warfare  campaign intended to challenge the Philippines’ adoption of China’s vaccine, Reuters reported this Summer. Now, the same people who mounted this brilliant time waster, are creating a new influence cell of the African Command that is collocated with Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. The new clandestine Internet influence operation, according to federal records we reviewed, is part of a growing clandestine “strategic” influence campaign led by the U.S. military that is pursuing the dream of increasing pro-American, pro-democracy, anti-Islamist sentiment through information manipulation.  

The psychological operations, perception management, information warfare, counter-disinformation warfare, and influence operations machine has been churning forever. The latest organization is just part of a long legacy of trying to figure out what the military’s role is, who should do this, and whom they should report to. None of the considerations are based on an analysis of whether any of this works. I’d say go figure, but the figure is laid out above: $1 trillion.

Pentagon’s John Madden moment. On Thursday, in a must-be-seen-to-be-believed moment, the Pentagon spokesperson was asked about whether the fighting between Lebanon and Israel undermines  the administration’s promise to avoid a regional war. Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh responded:

“Any attack that is going to escalate tensions in the region is not going to be helpful to deescalating.” 

As a kid in geometry class, I remember laughing at the proof “A=A”; little did I know that what seemed like tautology was in fact preparing me to comprehend the entirety of Washington wisdom. Behold that wisdom:

It’s not just Dick Cheney endorsing Kamala Harris. Over 100 Republican national security leaders endorse Harris, per a new list that includes former Secretaries of Defense, heads of the CIA, and other bigwigs and cold warriors, the great minds behind our failed foreign policy. The media casts these sorts of endorsements as a boon for the Harris campaign, but you have to wonder how much affection voters have for the bureaucrats who oversaw our foreign policy and security failures.