#Reagan National Defense Forum

[darkmaga-returns]

The Abrams tanks transferred to Ukraine by the United States are undermanned and not the most useful equipment for the Ukrainian military, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said. Yet, despite this failure, coupled with many other Western weapon failures in Ukraine, the Biden administration is still burning tens of billions of dollars on Ukraine’s failed war effort against Russia in the knowledge that support will slow down once Donald Trump enters the White House next month.

“Those Abram tanks units are actually undermanned because it’s not the most useful piece of equipment for them in this fight, exactly as our military said,” he said during a speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California on December 8.

Sullivan also referred to the F-16 fighter jets that US President Joe Biden authorized sending to Ukraine in May last year.

“It’s now December of 2024, and we’ve had a limited number of pilots train not because we’re not prepared to train them — we are, as many as possible — but because the Ukrainians do not have the pilots to be able to build a full F-16 capability in time,” the security adviser said.

On December 2, Sullivan stated that the US would impose more sanctions on Russia before the current president leaves office next month to make way for Donald Trump. However, imposing new sanctions on Moscow is not the only last desperate effort made by the Biden administration to continue its anti-Russia agenda to the very end.

[mariacallous]

If U.S. President Joe Biden wants to check the pulse of the arsenal of democracy, all he has to do is look at Bill LaPlante’s wall in the Pentagon. The U.S. Defense Department industrial chief’s office is covered with production charts for every weapon that the United States is building to fend off a potential war with China while helping countries such as Ukraine and Israel fend for themselves in wars of their own.

It’s like an electrocardiogram of the U.S. defense industry: There’s a line going up to count the number of units moved and a line going sideways for the time that it took to move them. There are production rates for the Patriot missiles that the United States has sent to the Middle East to provide backup for Israel, the sea-launched Standard Missile-6 that the United States has deployed to the Indo-Pacific to potentially bloody China’s nose if it launches an assault on Taiwan, and the guided multiple launch rockets—known as GMLRs—that helped the Ukrainians liberate Kherson and the areas around Kharkiv in a one-two punch to the Russian army in 2022. “It’s a whole stair step,” LaPlante told a small gaggle of reporters at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California in early December 2023. The chart, he said, “keeps going and going.” And even though business is booming, Defense Department officials are facing a problem from hell. How can the Pentagon mobilize the U.S. defense industry to respond to not just one conflict or two, but potentially three wars? Foreign Policy talked to a dozen defense ministers, officials, and experts across the NATO alliance. They described an almost Sisyphean task to rebuild the trans-Atlantic—and trans-Pacific—defense industrial base to fight three wars not during a world war, but when much of the Western world is at peace. “We are moving from a just-in-time, just-enough economy model to a peak demand model,” said Dutch Adm. Rob Bauer, the chairman of NATO’s military committee, in an interview in his office at the alliance’s Brussels headquarters in October. Much like the manner in which the Western world had to convert factories at dizzying speed to produce protective medical equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic, Western leaders need to “make sure everybody understands the sense of urgency of where we are,” Bauer said. Officials are still trying to figure out what the right number is for every weapon on LaPlante’s chart. What makes planning especially difficult is the friction of war. Nobody expected the war in Ukraine to suck up thousands of artillery shells every single day, year after year. Few thought that Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip would exhaust precision-guided munitions in a couple of months. If the United States were in a war with China over the Taiwan Strait, it could run out of long-range precision munitions within a week, according to one study.

There was a time when the United States could turn plowshares into swords; in the Second World War, the United States built more of pretty much everything than any other combatant, from tanks to planes to ships to landing craft. Then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it the “arsenal of democracy” because it was. In five years, U.S. factories built 141 aircraft carriers, 88,410 self-propelled guns and tanks, and 257,000 artillery guns. 

Now, Washington is trying to get back in business after three decades of post-Cold War belt-tightening that saw companies merge and production lines slow down. LaPlante said that the Pentagon has built a facility in Texas that has the capacity to surge 155 mm artillery shells as needed. Boeing is growing its capacity to build sensors for Patriot missiles at its Huntsville, Alabama, facility by nearly a third. In Europe, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic are becoming major producers of ammunition. Germany is buying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of artillery shells while Rheinmetall sets up shop inside Ukraine. Sweden, Denmark, and Norway have begun jointly procuring 155 mm barrels for Ukraine. And the Swedish manufacturer Saab—which no longer makes cars—is producing so many diesel-electric submarine hulls that it’s even looking at Southeast Asia as potential clients. Building industrial muscle means that the Pentagon needs to rebuild long-atrophied bureaucratic muscle, too. LaPlante has deputized a so-called “joint production cell” within the Pentagon, comprising defense officials who are visiting production floors. It’s not just a question of getting scientists and dollars, but also of getting factories full of skilled welders, assemblers, and foremen. “It’s dusting off a lot of skills that we’ve had in this country that we haven’t used in a while,” LaPlante said. 

But there’s a bigger problem, too: It’s one thing to assemble shells and missiles, and another thing altogether to assemble higher-end gear such as the B-21 Raider stealth bomber, which runs at about $750 million per airplane, with a production line that snakes across three U.S. states. Building the aircraft is so complex that U.S. officials have compared it to the nearly four-decadeslong process of building the interstate highway system.

Some of the weapons still have to be funded. Congress has already agreed to fund SM-6 and GMLRS. Other projects, such as the Pentagon’s plan to get up to 100,000 rounds of 155 mm artillery produced by 2025, need Congress to pass the supplemental budget, LaPlante said. With Congress out for the holidays, that’s on hold until at least January. And across the Atlantic, the European Union has fallen far behind its target of producing 1 million artillery rounds per year to feed Ukraine’s voracious appetite for ammunition while replenishing NATO stockpiles. 

But when LaPlante and other Pentagon officials go into meetings with industry and members of Congress to tout their plans, they face two big questions about the United States’ military-industrial buildup. Are they going to pull the plug, especially as Congress wavers on additional U.S. military aid to Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel? And even if they’re for real, are their plans even enough? 

When it comes to putting shells in barrels, since December 2022, the U.S. industrial base has doubled its output of 155 mm ammunition, growing it from 14,000 rounds per month to between 28,000 to 30,000, LaPlante said. U.S. Army officials hope to get to 60,000 rounds per month by September 2024, and to the magic number of 100,000 rounds per month by the end of 2025. 

The Pentagon has put about $3 billion toward the ramp-up so far, the price of about four B-21 bombers, sprinkling contracts across five U.S. states and three countries. 

The European Union is producing between 600,000 and 700,000 artillery shells per year, Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur told reporters in November, well short of the 27-nation bloc’s 1 million shell goal, which it hopes to reach next year. To support Ukraine and recapitalize its own stockpiles, Europe will have to reach about 3 million rounds per year in the next 10 years, Pevkur said. 

But Ukraine’s appetite for artillery ammo is voracious, about 6,000 shells per day at the peak of fighting this year— and the shortage of U.S. military aid is already causing troops to hold their fire on the front lines. The pain of growing the arsenal is hard, Western officials concede, but the pain of losing the war would be far worse. 

“There is no option but to rise to the occasion in this regard,” Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson said in an interview with Foreign Policy.

And when it comes to so-called smart bombs—weapons with GPS guidance kits built in—the situation is even more dire. Despite the United States allowing Israel to raid precision munition stockpiles in the region, more than half of the air-to-ground weapons fired into the Gaza Strip since October have been unguided “dumb bombs,” according to U.S. intelligence reports. 

All of that is without accounting for the weapons needed to fight the next war: ships, submarines, sea-based missiles, and coastal defenses. China has done everything short of invading Taiwan, though it has vowed to do so at some point soon. In a naval fight, shipyards count as much or more than hulls in the water, and there the United States is beached. Even when it comes to what the United States is really good at—building and operating high-end nuclear submarines—they are artisanal affairs. The rest of the U.S. Navy is shrinking while China’s is growing. “We’re spending 3.3 percent of GDP on national defense and you’re building a paltry 1.2 subs” a year, said U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I don’t think that is making [Chinese President] Xi Jinping quake in his boots.”

The United States has to outsource its defense procurement, as do most countries—which, in the long hangover of the post-Cold War era, means a very rude awakening. Some NATO countries, such as Poland, which keeps more of its defense industry in state hands than most other member countries, can expand production lines on the back of public spending. 

The United States can only prod and pray—the Pentagon’s own soon-to-be-released industrial strategy indicates that defense companies wouldn’t be able to respond fast enough for the U.S. military to fight a modern war.

For instance: The biggest bottleneck in sending GMLRS and 155 mm ammo to Ukraine is the lack of rocket motors, said Heidi Shyu, who oversees the Pentagon’s technology strategy. So the U.S. Defense Department has initiated a parallel effort to make sure that rocket motors get built, too. But it’s a slog.

“Ramping up production is not like a light switch, where you can flip the switch and bang, you can tenfold your production,” Shyu said. “You just can’t do that. Every country that has the ability to ramp up production is in the process of ramping up.” 

Further down the food chain, the U.S. Defense Department is running into problems; there aren’t enough testing beds for new weapons systems, for example. There aren’t enough good programmers to write good code. And there aren’t enough little things that go boom up and down the U.S. supply chain to feed all of the Ukrainian gun barrels, let alone those of other allies.

Europe is feeling the same crunch. 

“What are the smaller obstacles? First, fuses. Second, gunpowder. Third, shells.” said Pevkur, Estonia’s defense minister. “You have to be able to solve all of these small details in order to be ready to produce more rounds.” U.S. partners are getting creative, given the lack of backup. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced a 1-million-drone target to build one-hit kamikazes that can strike Russian troops deep behind their lines. They’re conducting do-it-yourself air defense with obsolete Soviet-era munitions. And Taiwan, still stuck in a billion-dollar backlog of U.S. weapons sales, has started doing F-16 maintenance on its own. 

But none of that is going to restore the arsenal of democracy, whose shelves—already bereft, if not barren—aren’t getting restocked like they used to. 

“There is an end to every stockpile,” Bauer said. “There’s an end to it.”

[usnewsranking]

DOGE Bros Brace for a Rude Awakening

Once upon a time, a bold outsider stepped into the Oval Office, vowing to "drain the swamp." With this mission, he assembled a team of business leaders, led by a prominent industrialist, to serve as “tireless bloodhounds,” rooting out inefficiencies in Washington’s sprawling bureaucracy.

It was 1982, and President Ronald Reagan launched the Grace Commission to identify and eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful government spending.

Much like President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed “Department of Government Efficiency,” led by entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the Grace Commission was purely advisory. It had no authority to enforce changes—only to make recommendations.

After two years of effort, the Grace Commission’s 150-plus members convinced Congress to enact exactly none of their proposals.

“You can’t find any evidence that they changed the growth of government one iota,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank, in an interview with CNN.

“There are lots of small examples of successes,” he acknowledged. “But I think you should ask Elon and Vivek: What makes them different from the Grace Commission? How will they succeed where others failed?”

In 2024, as in 1982, there is widespread agreement that the federal budget is bloated and could benefit from fresh perspectives to streamline government operations and save taxpayer dollars. Economists across the political spectrum told CNN they would welcome genuine efforts to reduce the deficit and rein in spending.

However, so far, neither Musk nor Ramaswamy seems to fully grasp the complexities of managing the $6.8 trillion U.S. budget.

“We keep pretending the federal budget is like sitting at the kitchen table, figuring out the family’s finances,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former adviser to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign and budget chief under President George W. Bush.

“That’s a lie. The budget is a fifth of the economy, and it’s incredibly difficult to manage and restructure. Musk and Ramaswamy are discovering that.”

The Math Problem

Musk and Ramaswamy face a daunting challenge in their quest to drastically slash government spending, particularly if they aim for the $2 trillion figure Musk has floated.

About 60% of the federal budget is mandatory spending, covering programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. These safety-net programs are politically untouchable, with little appetite in Congress for significant cuts. Even Trump has vowed to protect Social Security.

Another 10% of the budget goes toward paying interest on the national debt. Reducing this portion is essentially impossible without triggering a catastrophic debt default and financial meltdown.

That leaves only about 30% of the budget classified as discretionary spending. However, nearly half of that goes to defense, which is also politically and strategically challenging to reduce significantly.

“Removing $2 trillion in annual spending will be exceedingly difficult without addressing mandatory spending,” noted Isaac Boltansky, director of policy research at BTIG, in a recent report. “Lawmakers would need to make tough choices they’ve long avoided.”

Non-defense discretionary spending is already at historic lows as a percentage of GDP, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. This reality further limits the potential for large cuts.

Zandi remains skeptical of Musk’s claims. “Focusing on government efficiency might save $200 billion a year at best, but $2 trillion annually? That’s not realistic,” he said. Musk, who suggested in October that he could cut at least $2 trillion, has yet to clarify whether this target is annual or over a longer period.

[mccareer]

Reagan National Defense Forum Panel 5 (with CNO) - A New Axis: How Cooperation Between Malign Actors Impacts Military Planning and Operations

https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/Speeches/display-speeches/Article/3993128/reagan-national-defense-forum-panel-5-a-new-axis-how-cooperation-between-malign/

[oipolinternacional]

Austin Speaks at 2024 Reagan National Defense Forum

Oipol & Oijust Global Operation | U.S Department of Defense (DoD), communication and video, Dicember 07, 2024 | 38:03 | Cooperation and edition Oipol & Oijust OSINT, cooperation and edition, Dicember 11, 2024 – Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III speaks at the 2024 Reagan National Defense Forum, Dec. 7, 2024, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. DOD VIDEO

[lepartidelamort]

“Pigs Can’t Fly”: Sullivan Says Hoholistan Failed to Send Enough Pilots for F-16 Training.

IQ gap !

When you’ve gotta train people to fly F-16s, that’s when the 20 point IQ gap between hohols and Russians really starts to matter.

RT:

The US did everything it could to provide Kiev with advanced weapon systems, including F-16 fighter jets, but the Ukrainian military did not have enough pilots who could be trained to operate more of them, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has claimed. Speaking on Sunday at the 2024 Reagan National Defense Forum, the senior official rejected accusations that the military assistance sent to Kiev by the administration of President Joe Biden was “too little too late.” On the contrary, Ukraine received as many weapons as possible thanks to the US, he said. ”When it comes to F-16s, President Biden authorized the sending of F-16s to Ukraine last May,” Sullivan noted. “It’s now December of 2024, and we’ve had a limited number of pilots train not because we’re not prepared to train them – we are, as many as possible – but because the Ukrainians do not have the pilots to be able to build a full F-16 capability in time.”

The other thing here, which Sullivan doesn’t want to say for obvious reasons, is that so much of the military equipment was sold to terrorist groups.

Hopefully, no one missed the videos of NATO equipment being used by terrorists in Syria.

That sort of thing was completely unavoidable, because the Ukraine is so endemically corrupt, with no one in power viewing it as a real country, but rather as an opportunity to enrich themselves.

The US authorities only pick allies based on their ability to enrich Jews, so it’s a match made in heaven in some ways. But they never really expected them to win a war against Russia. It didn’t ever make any sense. The original proposition, of provoking a war as an excuse for sanctions that would collapse the Russian ruble, was not necessarily a bad plan, but when it didn’t work, continuing the war was ridiculous.

When the war was started, it was never the goal to have the Ukraine win against Russia, which any moron could see was retarded. The scam was to give an excuse to do the sanctions and try to force a color revolution in Moscow. After that failed, psycho Russia-hating Jews and arms dealers wanted the thing to continue, so it did, but on a long enough timeline, Russia was always going to finish it, and we’re rapidly reaching that point, so all these people are well into the process of passing around blame.

Andrew Anglin for the DailyStormer

[garythingsworld]

Palantir CEO Dr. Alex Karp Outlines Future of AI Race During Reagan National Defense Forum - The Last Refuge

[yourreddancer]

Heather Cox Richardson  12.8.24

Late last night, the White House said in a statement that “President Biden and his team are closely monitoring the extraordinary events in Syria and staying in constant touch with regional partners.”

Early this morning, the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad fell to armed opposition.

According to Jill Lawless of the Associated Press, the forces that toppled Assad are led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a coalition of Islamic groups formerly associated with al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria and currently designated a terrorist group by the U.S. and the United Nations, although its leaders have tried to distance themselves from al-Qaeda.

President Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father to the Syrian presidency in July 2000, establishing a totalitarian dictatorship. In 2011, Assad cracked down on protesters who were part of the Arab Spring, sparking a civil war of a number of factions fighting Assad’s troops, which by 2015 relied on support from Russia and Iran.

That war has turned half of Syria’s prewar population of 23 million (a little more than the population of Florida) into refugees and killed more than half a million people. With Russian and Iranian support, Assad managed to regain control of most of the country, with rebels pushed back to the north and northwest.

A stalemate that had lasted for years ended abruptly on November 27.

Iran and Hezbollah have been badly weakened by the ongoing fight of Israel against Iran-backed Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. On November 27, Israel and Lebanon signed a ceasefire agreement that made it clear that Hezbollah had been tied down in Lebanon and that its ability to fight had been severely compromised. At the same time, Russia has been badly weakened by almost three years of war against Ukraine, and the Russian ruble fell sharply again in late November after additional U.S. sanctions targeted Russia’s third-largest bank, creating more economic hardship in Russia and undercutting Putin’s insistence that he is winning against the West.

When opposition forces began an offensive on November 27, they took more than 15 villages in Aleppo province that day. Journalist Lawless recounted a quick history of the next 11 days, recording how the insurgents swept through the country with little resistance, taking Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, on the 29th. The Syrian military launched a counterattack on December 1, but the insurgents continued to gain ground, and by December 7 they had captured Syria’s third-largest city, Homs. They announced they were in the “final stage” of their offensive.

Today, December 8, Assad fled with his family to Moscow, where Russian president Vladimir Putin has offered him asylum. As Nick Paton Walsh of CNN put it, “Without the physical crutches of Russia’s air force and Iran’s proxy muscle Hezbollah, [Assad] toppled when finally pushed.”

In Damascus, crowds are praying and celebrating, and opposition forces have liberated the prisoners held in the notorious Saydnaya military prison. More than 100,000 detainees are unaccounted for, and their families are hoping to find them, or at least to find answers.

Meanwhile, after Assad’s regime fell, the U.S. Air Force struck more than 75 ISIS-related targets in Syria. “ISIS has been trying to reconstitute in this broad area known as the Badiya desert,” a White House senior official told reporters. “We have worked to make sure they cannot do that. So when they try to camp there, when they try to train… we take them out.”

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan explained at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, that the U.S. will work to prevent the resurgence of ISIS. It will also make sure “that our friends in the region, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, others who border Syria, or who would potentially face spillover effects from Syria, are strong and secure.” Finally, he said, the U.S. wants to make sure “that this does not lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.”

Speaking to the nation this afternoon, President Joe Biden announced: "At long last, the Assad regime has fallen. This regime brutalized and tortured and killed literally hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrians." He called the fall of Assad’s regime a “fundamental act of justice” and “a moment of historic opportunity for the long-suffering people of Syria to build a better future for their proud country.”

But it is also “a moment of risk and uncertainty,” the president said. He noted that the U.S. is “mindful” of the security of Americans in Syria, including freelance journalist Austin Tice, who was kidnapped in 2012 and imprisoned by Assad’s regime. “[W]e believe he is alive,” Biden told reporters. “We think we can get him back, but we have no direct evidence of that yet.”

Biden noted that Syria’s main backers, Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia, could not defend “this abhorrent regime in Syria” because they “are far weaker today than when I took office.” He continued: “This is a direct result of the blows that Ukraine [and] Israel” have landed on them “with the unflagging support of the United States.”

In contrast to Biden’s comments, President-elect Donald Trump’s social media accounts took Russia’s side in the Syrian events. Noting that the insurgents looked as if they would throw Assad out, Trump’s account said that “Russia, because they are so tied up in Ukraine, and with the loss there of over 600,000 soldiers, seems incapable of stopping this literal march through Syria, a country they have protected for years.” The account blamed former president Barack Obama for the crisis of 2011 and said that Russia had stepped in then to stop the chaos. The Trump account suggested that Assad’s defeat might be “the best thing that can happen to” Russia, because “[t]here was never much of a benefit in Syria for Russia, other than to make Obama look really stupid.”

“In any event,” the account continued, “Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!”

In contrast to Trump’s focus on Russia, journalist Anne Applebaum, a scholar of autocracy, took a much broader view of the meaning of Assad’s fall. In dictatorships, she wrote in The Atlantic, “cold, deliberate, well-planned cruelty” like Assad’s “is meant to inspire hopelessness. Ludicrous lies and cynical propaganda campaigns are meant to create apathy and nihilism.” Random arrests create destabilizing waves of refugees that leave those who remain in despair.

Authoritarian regimes seek “to rob people of any ability to plan for a different future, to convince people that their dictatorships are eternal. ‘Our leader forever’” she points out, was the slogan of the Assad dynasty. But soldiers and police officers have relatives who suffer under the regime, and their loyalty is not assured, as Assad has now learned.

The future of Syria is entirely unclear, Applebaum writes, but there is no doubt that “the end of the Assad regime creates something new, and not only in Syria. There is nothing worse than hopelessness, nothing more soul-destroying than pessimism, grief, and despair. The fall of a Russian- and Iranian-backed regime offers, suddenly, the possibility of change. The future might be different. And that possibility will inspire hope all around the world.”

[misfitwashere]

December 8, 2024 

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

DEC 9

Late last night, the White House said in a statement that “President Biden and his team are closely monitoring the extraordinary events in Syria and staying in constant touch with regional partners.”

Early this morning, the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad fell to armed opposition.

According to Jill Lawless of the Associated Press, the forces that toppled Assad are led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a coalition of Islamic groups formerly associated with al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria and currently designated a terrorist group by the U.S. and the United Nations, although its leaders have tried to distance themselves from al-Qaeda.

President Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father to the Syrian presidency in July 2000, establishing a totalitarian dictatorship. In 2011, Assad cracked down on protesters who were part of the Arab Spring, sparking a civil war of a number of factions fighting Assad’s troops, which by 2015 relied on support from Russia and Iran.

That war has turned half of Syria’s prewar population of 23 million (a little more than the population of Florida) into refugees and killed more than half a million people. With Russian and Iranian support, Assad managed to regain control of most of the country, with rebels pushed back to the north and northwest.

A stalemate that had lasted for years ended abruptly on November 27.

Iran and Hezbollah have been badly weakened by the ongoing fight of Israel against Iran-backed Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. On November 27, Israel and Lebanon signed a ceasefire agreement that made it clear that Hezbollah had been tied down in Lebanon and that its ability to fight had been severely compromised. At the same time, Russia has been badly weakened by almost three years of war against Ukraine, and the Russian ruble fell sharply again in late November after additional U.S. sanctions targeted Russia’s third-largest bank, creating more economic hardship in Russia and undercutting Putin’s insistence that he is winning against the West.

When opposition forces began an offensive on November 27, they took more than 15 villages in Aleppo province that day. Journalist Lawless recounted a quick history of the next 11 days, recording how the insurgents swept through the country with little resistance, taking Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, on the 29th. The Syrian military launched a counterattack on December 1, but the insurgents continued to gain ground, and by December 7 they had captured Syria’s third-largest city, Homs. They announced they were in the “final stage” of their offensive.

Today, December 8, Assad fled with his family to Moscow, where Russian president Vladimir Putin has offered him asylum. As Nick Paton Walsh of CNN put it, “Without the physical crutches of Russia’s air force and Iran’s proxy muscle Hezbollah, [Assad] toppled when finally pushed.”

In Damascus, crowds are praying and celebrating, and opposition forces have liberated the prisoners held in the notorious Saydnaya military prison. More than 100,000 detainees are unaccounted for, and their families are hoping to find them, or at least to find answers.

Meanwhile, after Assad’s regime fell, the U.S. Air Force struck more than 75 ISIS-related targets in Syria. “ISIS has been trying to reconstitute in this broad area known as the Badiya desert,” a White House senior official told reporters. “We have worked to make sure they cannot do that. So when they try to camp there, when they try to train… we take them out.”

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan explained at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, that the U.S. will work to prevent the resurgence of ISIS. It will also make sure “that our friends in the region, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, others who border Syria, or who would potentially face spillover effects from Syria, are strong and secure.” Finally, he said, the U.S. wants to make sure “that this does not lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.”

Speaking to the nation this afternoon, President Joe Biden announced: "At long last, the Assad regime has fallen. This regime brutalized and tortured and killed literally hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrians." He called the fall of Assad’s regime a “fundamental act of justice” and “a moment of historic opportunity for the long-suffering people of Syria to build a better future for their proud country.”

But it is also “a moment of risk and uncertainty,” the president said. He noted that the U.S. is “mindful” of the security of Americans in Syria, including freelance journalist Austin Tice, who was kidnapped in 2012 and imprisoned by Assad’s regime. “[W]e believe he is alive,” Biden told reporters. “We think we can get him back, but we have no direct evidence of that yet.”

Biden noted that Syria’s main backers, Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia, could not defend “this abhorrent regime in Syria” because they “are far weaker today than when I took office.” He continued: “This is a direct result of the blows that Ukraine [and] Israel” have landed on them “with the unflagging support of the United States.”

In contrast to Biden’s comments, President-elect Donald Trump’s social media accounts took Russia’s side in the Syrian events. Noting that the insurgents looked as if they would throw Assad out, Trump’s account said that “Russia, because they are so tied up in Ukraine, and with the loss there of over 600,000 soldiers, seems incapable of stopping this literal march through Syria, a country they have protected for years.” The account blamed former president Barack Obama for the crisis of 2011 and said that Russia had stepped in then to stop the chaos. The Trump account suggested that Assad’s defeat might be “the best thing that can happen to” Russia, because “[t]here was never much of a benefit in Syria for Russia, other than to make Obama look really stupid.”

“In any event,” the account continued, “Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!”

In contrast to Trump’s focus on Russia, journalist Anne Applebaum, a scholar of autocracy, took a much broader view of the meaning of Assad’s fall. In dictatorships, she wrote in The Atlantic, “cold, deliberate, well-planned cruelty” like Assad’s “is meant to inspire hopelessness. Ludicrous lies and cynical propaganda campaigns are meant to create apathy and nihilism.” Random arrests create destabilizing waves of refugees that leave those who remain in despair.

Authoritarian regimes seek “to rob people of any ability to plan for a different future, to convince people that their dictatorships are eternal. ‘Our leader forever’” she points out, was the slogan of the Assad dynasty. But soldiers and police officers have relatives who suffer under the regime, and their loyalty is not assured, as Assad has now learned.

The future of Syria is entirely unclear, Applebaum writes, but there is no doubt that “the end of the Assad regime creates something new, and not only in Syria. There is nothing worse than hopelessness, nothing more soul-destroying than pessimism, grief, and despair. The fall of a Russian- and Iranian-backed regime offers, suddenly, the possibility of change. The future might be different. And that possibility will inspire hope all around the world.”

—

[roosterjournal]

Palantir CEO Sounds Alarm: America Confronts a 'Legitimation Crisis' Amid Defense Talks at Reagan Forum

Politicians and industry leaders met at the 2024 Reagan National Defense Forum to discuss America’s national defense and the global threats facing the country during a time of change. A notable voice at the event was Dr. Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, who warned about a “legitimation crisis” in the United States. He emphasized that the incoming Trump administration has a significant opportunity…

[christinamac1]

US Defense Secretary Austin should resign over scurrilous attack on peace community

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 6 Dec 23 President Biden, struggling to gain support for his $105 billion weapons boondoggle to further US wars against Russia and Gaza, sent out his chief advocate for perpetual war, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, to hammer away at advocates for a sane, peaceful US foreign policy. Austin told the Reagan National Defense Forum in…

[georgemcginn]

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III Hosted Meeting in Honor of Pal Johnson, Minister for Defence of Sweden

View Online Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III Hosted Meeting in Honor of Pal Johnson, Minister for Defence of Sweden Dec. 5, 2023 SECRETARY OF DEFENSE LLOYD J. AUSTIN III: Well, Mr. Minister, welcome back to the Pentagon. It was great to see you briefly on Saturday in California at the Reagan National Defense Forum, and I’m glad that we’ll get a chance to spend a bit more time together…

[cavenewstimes]

Secretary Raimondo to Participate in Reagan National Defense Forum

Secretary Raimondo to Participate in Reagan National Defense Forum ASowah@doc.gov Wed, 11/29/2023 – 15:19 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, November 29, 2023 Office of Public Affairs publicaffairs@doc.gov U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo will participate in a fireside chat at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum (RNDF) at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley,…

[gameforestdach]

Der anhaltende Clinch zwischen der US-Regierung und Nvidia über den Export fortgeschrittener Halbleiterprodukte nach China hat einen neuen Höhepunkt erreicht. US-Handelsministerin Gina Raimondo ist in dieser Angelegenheit besonders aktiv und betont die Notwendigkeit, den Abfluss von Spitzentechnologie-KI-Chips nach China zu unterbinden. Nvidias Antwort auf die US-Sanktionen, die den Export fortgeschrittener Halbleiterprodukte nach China verbieten, ist die Neugestaltung seiner GPUs. Diese Überarbeitungen werden als Versuch gesehen, die von der US-Regierung verhängten Einschränkungen zu umgehen. Die Situation hat besonders Nvidia getroffen, einen wichtigen Akteur auf dem Markt für künstliche Intelligenz. Mehr dazu auf ExtremeTech. Während ihrer Rede im Reagan National Defense Forum unterstrich Ministerin Raimondo die Wichtigkeit, fortschrittliche KI-Technologie außer Reichweite Chinas zu halten. Diese Haltung ist Teil einer breiteren Strategie, um Chinas Zugang zu fortschrittlichen Chips zu beschränken, die bedeutende Fortschritte in künstlicher Intelligenz und anderen hochentwickelten Technologien ermöglichen könnten. Weitere Einzelheiten gibt es auf Tom's Hardware. Die direkte Herangehensweise der Handelsministerin beinhaltete auch die offene Kritik an Nvidia für die Herstellung von Mikrochips, die sich an den Rand der Bundesgesetze bewegen. Diese Gesetze verbieten den Export leistungsstarker, KI-fähiger Hardware in bestimmte Länder, einschließlich China. Nvidia befindet sich im Zentrum der neuesten US-Technologiesanktionen, die auf China abzielen. Die Sanktionen haben erhebliche Auswirkungen auf die globale Halbleiter- und KI-Technologielandschaft. In einem Interview mit Fortune warnte Raimondo vor möglichen Neugestaltungen von zuvor verbotenen Chips. Sie mahnte, dass solche Versuche zu noch strengeren Einschränkungen führen könnten, was die Entschlossenheit der Regierung zeigt, diese Sanktionen durchzusetzen. Als Reaktion auf die verschärften Sanktionen gibt es Anzeichen dafür, dass Nvidia und seine Partner darauf vorbereitet sind, ihre A800-GPUs in Regionen außerhalb Chinas, wie Nordamerika, Lateinamerika, Europa, Afrika, Indien und Japan, zu vermarkten. Die A800-GPU, ein Teil von Nvidias Ampere-Architektur, ist so gestaltet, dass sie den Spezifikationen der US-Sanktionen entspricht, indem sie ein reduziertes Funktionsset bietet. Raimondos Botschaft ist eindeutig: Nvidia darf keine KI-GPUs nach China verschicken. Sie betonte auch die Notwendigkeit zusätzlicher Mittel für ihr Ministerium, um China daran zu hindern, im Wettlauf um die KI-Technologie aufzuholen. Die deutlichen Worte der Handelsministerin in Bezug auf Nvidias neugestaltete Chips zeigen eine strenge Haltung gegenüber jeglichen Versuchen, die neuen Exportvorschriften zu umgehen. Diese Situation verdeutlicht das komplizierte Zusammenspiel zwischen globalen Technologieunternehmen und nationalen Sicherheitsbedenken, insbesondere im Kontext des Technologiewettstreits zwischen den USA und China.

[arpov-blog-blog]

...."Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin offered a stark public warning to Israel on Saturday, saying the government there risks “strategic defeat” in Gaza if it doesn’t do more to protect civilians.

The comments came a day after the breakdown in negotiations over hostage and prisoner releases led to the resumption of the Israel-Hamas war. Austin told an audience at the Reagan National Defense Forum that if Israel doesn’t do everything possible to protect civilians, it might help “drive [Palestinians] into the arms of the enemy,” and would “replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.”

The Biden administration has been warning its Israeli counterparts in private over the human toll of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, where Hamas has placed rocket launchers and command-and-control centers in civilian neighborhoods.

Austin said the U.S. learned hard lessons in Iraq and Afghanistan over killing and displacing civilians and acknowledged that fighting a war in a dense urban center places significant burdens on a democratic nation trying to follow the laws of war.

“The lesson is not that you can win in urban warfare by protecting civilians,” said Austin, who commanded troops in the Middle East. “The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians.”