thenation--2020-12-08--Trump Is Leaving Us With a New Cold War

Trump Is Leaving Us With a New Cold War

In the military realm , Donald Trump will most likely be remembered for his insistence on ending America ’ s involvement in its twenty-first-century “ forever wars ” — the fruitless , relentless , mind-crushing military campaigns undertaken by Presidents Bush and Obama in Afghanistan , Iraq , Syria , and Somalia .
After all , as a candidate , Trump pledged to bring U.S. troops home from those dreaded war zones and , in his last days in office , he ’ s been promising to get at least most of the way to that objective .
The president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the opposition of his own generals and other officials on the subject ) has generated a fair amount of media coverage and endeared him to his isolationist supporters .
Yet , however newsworthy it may be , this focus on Trump ’ s belated troop withdrawals obscures a far more significant aspect of his military legacy : the conversion of the U.S. military from a global counterterror force into one designed to fight an all-out , cataclysmic , potentially nuclear war with China and/or Russia .
People seldom notice that Trump ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been two-faced .
Even as he repeatedly denounced the failure of his predecessors to abandon those endless counterinsurgency wars , he bemoaned their alleged neglect of America ’ s regular armed forces and promised to spend whatever it took to “ restore ” their fighting strength .
“ In a Trump administration , ” he declared in a September 2016 campaign speech on national security , America ’ s military priorities would be reversed , with a withdrawal from the “ endless wars we are caught in now ” and the restoration of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in office , he acted to implement that very agenda , instructing his surrogates — a succession of national security advisers and secretaries of defense — to commence U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan ( though he agreed for a time to increase troop levels in Afghanistan ) , while submitting ever-mounting defense budgets .
The Pentagon ’ s annual spending authority climbed every year between 2016 and 2020 , rising from $ 580 billion at the start of his administration to $ 713 at the end , with much of that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weaponry .
Additional billions were incorporated into the Department of Energy budget for the acquisition of new nuclear weapons and the full-scale “ modernization ” of the country ’ s nuclear arsenal .
Far more important than that increase in arms spending , however , was the shift in strategy that went with it .
The military posture President Trump inherited from the Obama administration was focused on fighting the Global War on Terror ( GWOT ) , a grueling , never-ending struggle to identify , track , and destroy anti-Western zealots in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the Middle East .
The posture he ’ s bequeathing to Joe Biden is almost entirely focused on defeating China and Russia in future “ high-end ” conflicts waged directly against those two countries — fighting that would undoubtedly involve high-tech conventional weapons on a staggering scale and could easily trigger nuclear war .
From the GWOT to the GPC It ’ s impossible to overstate the significance of the Pentagon ’ s shift from a strategy aimed at fighting relatively small bands of militants to one aimed at fighting the military @ @ @ @ @ @ @ peripheries of Eurasia .
The first entailed the deployment of scattered bands of infantry and Special Operations Forces units backed by patrolling aircraft and missile-armed drones ; the other envisions the commitment of multiple aircraft carriers , fighter squadrons , nuclear-capable bombers , and brigade-strength armored divisions .
Similarly , in the GWOT years , it was generally assumed that U.S. troops would face adversaries largely armed with light infantry weapons and homemade bombs , not , as in any future war with China or Russia , an enemy equipped with advanced tanks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a full range of nuclear munitions .
This shift in outlook from counterterrorism to what , in these years , has come to be known in Washington as “ great power competition , ” or GPC , was first officially articulated in the Pentagon ’ s National Security Strategy of February 2018 .
“ The central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security , ” it insisted , “ is the reemergence of long-term , strategic competition by what the National Security Strategy classifies as revisionist powers , ” a catchphrase for China @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rare italics to emphasize just how significant this was . )
For the Department of Defense and the military services , this meant only one thing : from that moment on , so much of what they did would be aimed at preparing to fight and defeat China and/or Russia in high-intensity conflict .
As Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis put it to the Senate Armed Services Committee that April , “ The 2018 National Defense Strategy provides clear strategic direction for America ’ s military to reclaim an era of strategic purpose… @ @ @ @ @ @ @ campaign against terrorists , long-term strategic competition — not terrorism — is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.
” This being the case , Mattis added , America ’ s armed forces would have to be completely re-equipped with new weaponry intended for high-intensity combat against well-armed adversaries .
“ Our military remains capable , but our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare , ” he noted .
“ The combination of rapidly changing technology [ and ] the negative impact on military readiness resulting from the longest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s history [ has ] created an overstretched and under-resourced military.
” In response , we must “ accelerate modernization programs in a sustained effort to solidify our competitive advantage.
” In that same testimony , Mattis laid out the procurement priorities that have since governed planning as the military seeks to “ solidify ” its competitive advantage .
First comes the “ modernization ” of the nation ’ s nuclear weapons capabilities , including its nuclear command-control-and-communications systems ; then , the expansion of the Navy through the acquisition of startling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , along with the modernization of the Air Force , through the accelerated procurement of advanced combat planes ; finally , to ensure the country ’ s military superiority for decades to come , vastly increased investment in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence , robotics , hypersonics , and cyber warfare .
These priorities have by now been hard-wired into the military budget and govern Pentagon planning .
Last February , when submitting its proposed budget for fiscal year ( FY ) 2021 , for example , the Department of Defense asserted , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ irreversible implementation of the National Defense Strategy ( NDS ) , which drives the Department ’ s decision-making in reprioritizing resources and shifting investments to prepare for a potential future , high-end fight.
” This nightmarish vision , in other words , is the military future President Trump will leave to the Biden administration .
The Navy in the Lead From the very beginning , Donald Trump has emphasized the expansion of the Navy as an overriding objective .
“ When Ronald Reagan left office , our Navy had 592 ships… Today , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” he lamented in that 2016 campaign speech .
One of his first priorities as president , he asserted , would be to restore its strength .
“ We will build a Navy of 350 surface ships and submarines , ” he promised .
Once in office , the “ 350-ship Navy ” ( later increased to 355 ships ) became a mantra .
In emphasizing a big Navy , Trump was influenced to some degree by the sheer spectacle of large modern warships , especially aircraft carriers with their scores of combat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ centerpiece of American military might overseas , ” he insisted while visiting the nearly completed carrier , the USS Gerald R. Ford , in March 2017 .
“ We are standing here today on four-and-a-half acres of combat power and sovereign U.S. territory , the likes of which there is nothing… there is no competition to this ship.
” Not surprisingly , top Pentagon officials embraced the president ’ s big-Navy vision with undisguised enthusiasm .
The reason : they view China as their number one adversary and believe that any future conflict @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the Pacific Ocean and nearby seas — that being the only practical way to concentrate U.S. firepower against China ’ s increasingly built-up coastal defenses .
Then-Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper expressed this outlook well when , in September , he deemed Beijing the Pentagon ’ s “ top strategic competitor ” and the Indo-Pacific region its “ priority theater ” in planning for future wars .
The waters of that region , he suggested , represent “ the epicenter of great power competition with China ” and so were witnessing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ naval units .
In the face of such destabilizing activity , “ the United States must be ready to deter conflict and , if necessary , fight and win at sea.
” In that address , Esper made it clear that the U.S. Navy remains vastly superior to its Chinese counterpart .
Nonetheless , he asserted , “ We must stay ahead ; we must retain our overmatch ; and we will keep building modern ships to ensure we remain the world ’ s greatest Navy.
” Although Trump fired Esper on November @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resisting White House demands to speed up the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan , the former defense secretary ’ s focus on fighting China from the Pacific and adjacent seas remains deeply embedded in Pentagon strategic thinking and will be a legacy of the Trump years .
In support of such a policy , billions of dollars have already been committed to the construction of new surface ships and submarines , ensuring that such a legacy will persist for years , if not decades to come .
Trump said little @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ground forces during the 2016 campaign , except to indicate that he wanted them even bigger and better equipped .
What he did do , however , was speak of his admiration for World War II Army generals known for their aggressive battle tactics .
“ I was a fan of Douglas MacArthur .
I was a fan of George Patton , ” he told Maggie Haberman and David Sanger of the New York Times that March .
“ If we had Douglas MacArthur today or if we had George Patton today and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ let them do their thing you wouldn ’ t have ISIS , okay ?
” Trump ’ s reverence for General Patton has proven especially suggestive in a new era of great-power competition , as U.S. and NATO forces again prepare to face well-equipped land armies on the continent of Europe , much as they did during World War II .
Back then , it was the tank corps of Nazi Germany that Patton ’ s own tanks confronted on the Western Front .
Today , U.S. and NATO forces face Russia ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a line stretching from the Baltic republics and Poland in the north to Romania in the south .
If a war with Russia were to break out , much of the fighting would likely occur along this line , with main-force units from both sides engaged in head-on , high-intensity combat .
Since the Cold War ended in 1991 with the implosion of the Soviet Union , American strategists had devoted little serious thought to high-intensity ground combat against a well-equipped adversary in Europe .
Now , with East-West tensions rising and U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what increasingly looks like a military-driven version of the Cold War , that problem is receiving far more attention .
This time around , however , U.S. forces face a very different combat environment .
In the Cold War years , Western strategists generally imagined a contest of brute strength in which our tanks and artillery would battle theirs along hundreds of miles of front lines until one side or the other was thoroughly depleted and had no choice but to sue for peace ( or ignite a global nuclear catastrophe ) .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ imagine far more multidimensional ( or “ multi-domain ” ) warfare extending to the air and well into rear areas , as well as into space and cyberspace .
In such an environment , they ’ ve come to believe that the victor will have to act swiftly , delivering paralyzing blows to what they call the enemy ’ s C3I capabilities ( critical command , control , communications , and intelligence ) in a matter of days , or even hours .
Only then would powerful armored units be able to strike @ @ @ @ @ @ @ true Patton fashion , ensure a Russian defeat .
The U.S. military has labeled such a strategy “ all-domain warfare ” and assumes that the U.S. will indeed dominate space , cyberspace , airspace , and the electromagnetic spectrum .
In a future confrontation with Russian forces in Europe , as the doctrine lays it out , U.S. air power would seek control of the airspace above the battlefield , while using guided missiles to knock out Russian radar systems , missile batteries , and their C3I facilities .
The Army would conduct @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long-range artillery systems and ballistic missiles .
Only when Russia ’ s defensive capabilities were thoroughly degraded would that Army follow up with a ground assault , Patton-style .
Be Prepared to Fight with Nukes As imagined by senior Pentagon strategists , any future conflict with China or Russia is likely to entail intense , all-out combat on the ground , at sea , and in the air aimed at destroying an enemy ’ s critical military infrastructure in the first hours or , at most , days of battle , opening the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enemy territory .
This sounds like a winning strategy — but only if you possess all the advantages in weaponry and technology .
If not , what then ?
This is the quandary faced by Chinese and Russian strategists whose forces don ’ t quite match up to the power of the American ones .
While their own war planning remains , to date , a mystery , it ’ s hard not to imagine that the Chinese and Russian equivalents of the Pentagon high command are pondering the possibility of a nuclear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their militaries and territories .
The examination of available Russian military literature has led some Western analysts to conclude that the Russians are indeed increasing their reliance on “ tactical ” nuclear weapons to obliterate superior U.S./NATO forces before an invasion of their country could be mounted ( much as , in the previous century , U.S. forces relied on just such weaponry to avert a possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe ) .
Russian military analysts have indeed published articles exploring just such an option — sometimes described by the phrase “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if ever there was one ) — although Russian military officials have never openly discussed such tactics .
Still , the Trump administration has cited that unofficial literature as evidence of Russian plans to employ tactical nukes in a future East-West confrontation and used it to justify the acquisition of new U.S. weapons of just this sort .
“ Russian strategy and doctrine… mistakenly assesses that the threat of nuclear escalation or actual first use of nuclear weapons would serve to ‘ de-escalate ’ a conflict on terms favorable to Russia , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of 2018 asserts .
“ To correct any Russian misperceptions of advantage… the president must have a range of limited and graduated [ nuclear ] options , including a variety of delivery systems and explosive yields.
” In furtherance of such a policy , that review called for the introduction of two new types of nuclear munitions : a “ low-yield ” warhead ( meaning it could , say , pulverize Lower Manhattan without destroying all of New York City ) for a Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile and a new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the developments described above , this Trump initiative will prove difficult to reverse in the Biden years .
After all , the first W76-2 low-yield warheads have already rolled off the assembly lines , been installed on missiles , and are now deployed on Trident submarines at sea .
These could presumably be removed from service and decommissioned , but this has rarely occurred in recent military history and , to do so , a new president would have to go against his own military high command .
Even more difficult would be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deployment .
During the Trump years , the notion that nuclear arms could be used as ordinary weapons of war in future great-power conflicts took deep root in Pentagon thinking and erasing it will prove to be no easy feat .
Amid arguments over the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan , Iraq , Syria , and Somalia , amid the firings and sudden replacements of civilian leaders at the Pentagon , Donald Trump ’ s most significant legacy — the one that could lead not to yet more forever wars but to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unnoticed in the media and in political circles in Washington .
Supporters of the new administration and even members of Biden ’ s immediate circle ( though not his actual appointees to national security posts ) have advanced some stirring ideas about transforming American military policy , including reducing the role military force plays in America ’ s foreign relations and redeploying some military funds to other purposes like fighting Covid-19 .
Such ideas are to be welcomed , but President Biden ’ s top priority in the military area should be to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — the one that has set us on a war course in relation to China and Russia — and do everything in his power to steer us in a safer , more prudent direction .
Otherwise , the phrase “ forever war ” could gain a new , far grimmer meaning .

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.
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In the military realm, Donald Trump will most likely be remembered for his insistence on ending America’s involvement in its twenty-first-century “forever wars” — the fruitless, relentless, mind-crushing military campaigns undertaken by Presidents Bush and Obama in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Somalia. After all, as a candidate, Trump pledged to bring U.S. troops home from those dreaded war zones and, in his last days in office, he’s been promising to get at least most of the way to that objective. The president’s fixation on this issue (and the opposition of his own generals and other officials on the subject) has generated a fair amount of media coverage and endeared him to his isolationist supporters. Yet, however newsworthy it may be, this focus on Trump’s belated troop withdrawals obscures a far more significant aspect of his military legacy: the conversion of the U.S. military from a global counterterror force into one designed to fight an all-out, cataclysmic, potentially nuclear war with China and/or Russia.
People seldom notice that Trump’s approach to military policy has always been two-faced. Even as he repeatedly denounced the failure of his predecessors to abandon those endless counterinsurgency wars, he bemoaned their alleged neglect of America’s regular armed forces and promised to spend whatever it took to “restore” their fighting strength. “In a Trump administration,” he declared in a September 2016 campaign speech on national security, America’s military priorities would be reversed, with a withdrawal from the “endless wars we are caught in now” and the restoration of “our unquestioned military strength.” Looking for holiday gifts with a conscience? Check out The Nation Shop and help support The Nation’s journalism while you complete your gift list.
Once in office, he acted to implement that very agenda, instructing his surrogates — a succession of national security advisers and secretaries of defense — to commence U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan (though he agreed for a time to increase troop levels in Afghanistan), while submitting ever-mounting defense budgets. The Pentagon’s annual spending authority climbed every year between 2016 and 2020, rising from $580 billion at the start of his administration to $713 at the end, with much of that increment directed to the procurement of advanced weaponry. Additional billions were incorporated into the Department of Energy budget for the acquisition of new nuclear weapons and the full-scale “modernization” of the country’s nuclear arsenal.
Far more important than that increase in arms spending, however, was the shift in strategy that went with it. The military posture President Trump inherited from the Obama administration was focused on fighting the Global War on Terror (GWOT), a grueling, never-ending struggle to identify, track, and destroy anti-Western zealots in far-flung areas of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The posture he’s bequeathing to Joe Biden is almost entirely focused on defeating China and Russia in future “high-end” conflicts waged directly against those two countries — fighting that would undoubtedly involve high-tech conventional weapons on a staggering scale and could easily trigger nuclear war. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung
From the GWOT to the GPC
It’s impossible to overstate the significance of the Pentagon’s shift from a strategy aimed at fighting relatively small bands of militants to one aimed at fighting the military forces of China and Russia on the peripheries of Eurasia. The first entailed the deployment of scattered bands of infantry and Special Operations Forces units backed by patrolling aircraft and missile-armed drones; the other envisions the commitment of multiple aircraft carriers, fighter squadrons, nuclear-capable bombers, and brigade-strength armored divisions. Similarly, in the GWOT years, it was generally assumed that U.S. troops would face adversaries largely armed with light infantry weapons and homemade bombs, not, as in any future war with China or Russia, an enemy equipped with advanced tanks, planes, missiles, ships, and a full range of nuclear munitions.
This shift in outlook from counterterrorism to what, in these years, has come to be known in Washington as “great power competition,” or GPC, was first officially articulated in the Pentagon’s National Security Strategy of February 2018. “The central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security,” it insisted, “is the reemergence of long-term, strategic competition by what the National Security Strategy classifies as revisionist powers,” a catchphrase for China and Russia. (It used those rare italics to emphasize just how significant this was.)
For the Department of Defense and the military services, this meant only one thing: from that moment on, so much of what they did would be aimed at preparing to fight and defeat China and/or Russia in high-intensity conflict. As Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis put it to the Senate Armed Services Committee that April, “The 2018 National Defense Strategy provides clear strategic direction for America’s military to reclaim an era of strategic purpose… Although the Department continues to prosecute the campaign against terrorists, long-term strategic competition — not terrorism — is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.” Current Issue View our current issue
This being the case, Mattis added, America’s armed forces would have to be completely re-equipped with new weaponry intended for high-intensity combat against well-armed adversaries. “Our military remains capable, but our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare,” he noted. “The combination of rapidly changing technology [and] the negative impact on military readiness resulting from the longest continuous period of combat in our nation’s history [has] created an overstretched and under-resourced military.” In response, we must “accelerate modernization programs in a sustained effort to solidify our competitive advantage.”
In that same testimony, Mattis laid out the procurement priorities that have since governed planning as the military seeks to “solidify” its competitive advantage. First comes the “modernization” of the nation’s nuclear weapons capabilities, including its nuclear command-control-and-communications systems; then, the expansion of the Navy through the acquisition of startling numbers of additional surface ships and submarines, along with the modernization of the Air Force, through the accelerated procurement of advanced combat planes; finally, to ensure the country’s military superiority for decades to come, vastly increased investment in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, hypersonics, and cyber warfare.
These priorities have by now been hard-wired into the military budget and govern Pentagon planning. Last February, when submitting its proposed budget for fiscal year (FY) 2021, for example, the Department of Defense asserted, “The FY 2021 budget supports the irreversible implementation of the National Defense Strategy (NDS), which drives the Department’s decision-making in reprioritizing resources and shifting investments to prepare for a potential future, high-end fight.” This nightmarish vision, in other words, is the military future President Trump will leave to the Biden administration.
The Navy in the Lead
From the very beginning, Donald Trump has emphasized the expansion of the Navy as an overriding objective. “When Ronald Reagan left office, our Navy had 592 ships… Today, the Navy has just 276 ships,” he lamented in that 2016 campaign speech. One of his first priorities as president, he asserted, would be to restore its strength. “We will build a Navy of 350 surface ships and submarines,” he promised. Once in office, the “350-ship Navy” (later increased to 355 ships) became a mantra.
In emphasizing a big Navy, Trump was influenced to some degree by the sheer spectacle of large modern warships, especially aircraft carriers with their scores of combat planes. “Our carriers are the centerpiece of American military might overseas,” he insisted while visiting the nearly completed carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, in March 2017. “We are standing here today on four-and-a-half acres of combat power and sovereign U.S. territory, the likes of which there is nothing… there is no competition to this ship.”
Not surprisingly, top Pentagon officials embraced the president’s big-Navy vision with undisguised enthusiasm. The reason: they view China as their number one adversary and believe that any future conflict with that country will largely be fought from the Pacific Ocean and nearby seas — that being the only practical way to concentrate U.S. firepower against China’s increasingly built-up coastal defenses.
Then-Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper expressed this outlook well when, in September, he deemed Beijing the Pentagon’s “top strategic competitor” and the Indo-Pacific region its “priority theater” in planning for future wars. The waters of that region, he suggested, represent “the epicenter of great power competition with China” and so were witnessing increasingly provocative behavior by Chinese air and naval units. In the face of such destabilizing activity, “the United States must be ready to deter conflict and, if necessary, fight and win at sea.”
In that address, Esper made it clear that the U.S. Navy remains vastly superior to its Chinese counterpart. Nonetheless, he asserted, “We must stay ahead; we must retain our overmatch; and we will keep building modern ships to ensure we remain the world’s greatest Navy.”
Although Trump fired Esper on November 9th for, among other things, resisting White House demands to speed up the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, the former defense secretary’s focus on fighting China from the Pacific and adjacent seas remains deeply embedded in Pentagon strategic thinking and will be a legacy of the Trump years. In support of such a policy, billions of dollars have already been committed to the construction of new surface ships and submarines, ensuring that such a legacy will persist for years, if not decades to come.
Do Like Patton: Strike Deep, Strike Hard
Trump said little about what should be done for U.S. ground forces during the 2016 campaign, except to indicate that he wanted them even bigger and better equipped. What he did do, however, was speak of his admiration for World War II Army generals known for their aggressive battle tactics. “I was a fan of Douglas MacArthur. I was a fan of George Patton,” he told Maggie Haberman and David Sanger of the New York Times that March. “If we had Douglas MacArthur today or if we had George Patton today and if we had a president that would let them do their thing you wouldn’t have ISIS, okay?”
Trump’s reverence for General Patton has proven especially suggestive in a new era of great-power competition, as U.S. and NATO forces again prepare to face well-equipped land armies on the continent of Europe, much as they did during World War II. Back then, it was the tank corps of Nazi Germany that Patton’s own tanks confronted on the Western Front. Today, U.S. and NATO forces face Russia’s best-equipped armies in Eastern Europe along a line stretching from the Baltic republics and Poland in the north to Romania in the south. If a war with Russia were to break out, much of the fighting would likely occur along this line, with main-force units from both sides engaged in head-on, high-intensity combat.
Since the Cold War ended in 1991 with the implosion of the Soviet Union, American strategists had devoted little serious thought to high-intensity ground combat against a well-equipped adversary in Europe. Now, with East-West tensions rising and U.S. forces again facing well-armed potential foes in what increasingly looks like a military-driven version of the Cold War, that problem is receiving far more attention.
This time around, however, U.S. forces face a very different combat environment. In the Cold War years, Western strategists generally imagined a contest of brute strength in which our tanks and artillery would battle theirs along hundreds of miles of front lines until one side or the other was thoroughly depleted and had no choice but to sue for peace (or ignite a global nuclear catastrophe). Today’s strategists, however, imagine far more multidimensional (or “multi-domain”) warfare extending to the air and well into rear areas, as well as into space and cyberspace. In such an environment, they’ve come to believe that the victor will have to act swiftly, delivering paralyzing blows to what they call the enemy’s C3I capabilities (critical command, control, communications, and intelligence) in a matter of days, or even hours. Only then would powerful armored units be able to strike deep into enemy territory and, in true Patton fashion, ensure a Russian defeat.
The U.S. military has labeled such a strategy “all-domain warfare” and assumes that the U.S. will indeed dominate space, cyberspace, airspace, and the electromagnetic spectrum. In a future confrontation with Russian forces in Europe, as the doctrine lays it out, U.S. air power would seek control of the airspace above the battlefield, while using guided missiles to knock out Russian radar systems, missile batteries, and their C3I facilities. The Army would conduct similar strikes using a new generation of long-range artillery systems and ballistic missiles. Only when Russia’s defensive capabilities were thoroughly degraded would that Army follow up with a ground assault, Patton-style.
Be Prepared to Fight with Nukes
As imagined by senior Pentagon strategists, any future conflict with China or Russia is likely to entail intense, all-out combat on the ground, at sea, and in the air aimed at destroying an enemy’s critical military infrastructure in the first hours or, at most, days of battle, opening the way for a swift U.S. invasion of enemy territory. This sounds like a winning strategy — but only if you possess all the advantages in weaponry and technology. If not, what then? This is the quandary faced by Chinese and Russian strategists whose forces don’t quite match up to the power of the American ones. While their own war planning remains, to date, a mystery, it’s hard not to imagine that the Chinese and Russian equivalents of the Pentagon high command are pondering the possibility of a nuclear response to any all-out American assault on their militaries and territories.
The examination of available Russian military literature has led some Western analysts to conclude that the Russians are indeed increasing their reliance on “tactical” nuclear weapons to obliterate superior U.S./NATO forces before an invasion of their country could be mounted (much as, in the previous century, U.S. forces relied on just such weaponry to avert a possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe). Russian military analysts have indeed published articles exploring just such an option — sometimes described by the phrase “escalate to de-escalate” (a misnomer if ever there was one) — although Russian military officials have never openly discussed such tactics. Still, the Trump administration has cited that unofficial literature as evidence of Russian plans to employ tactical nukes in a future East-West confrontation and used it to justify the acquisition of new U.S. weapons of just this sort.
“Russian strategy and doctrine… mistakenly assesses that the threat of nuclear escalation or actual first use of nuclear weapons would serve to ‘de-escalate’ a conflict on terms favorable to Russia,” the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review of 2018 asserts. “To correct any Russian misperceptions of advantage… the president must have a range of limited and graduated [nuclear] options, including a variety of delivery systems and explosive yields.” In furtherance of such a policy, that review called for the introduction of two new types of nuclear munitions: a “low-yield” warhead (meaning it could, say, pulverize Lower Manhattan without destroying all of New York City) for a Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile and a new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile.
As in so many of the developments described above, this Trump initiative will prove difficult to reverse in the Biden years. After all, the first W76-2 low-yield warheads have already rolled off the assembly lines, been installed on missiles, and are now deployed on Trident submarines at sea. These could presumably be removed from service and decommissioned, but this has rarely occurred in recent military history and, to do so, a new president would have to go against his own military high command. Even more difficult would be to negate the strategic rationale behind their deployment. During the Trump years, the notion that nuclear arms could be used as ordinary weapons of war in future great-power conflicts took deep root in Pentagon thinking and erasing it will prove to be no easy feat.
Amid arguments over the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Somalia, amid the firings and sudden replacements of civilian leaders at the Pentagon, Donald Trump’s most significant legacy — the one that could lead not to yet more forever wars but to a forever disaster — has passed almost unnoticed in the media and in political circles in Washington.
Supporters of the new administration and even members of Biden’s immediate circle (though not his actual appointees to national security posts) have advanced some stirring ideas about transforming American military policy, including reducing the role military force plays in America’s foreign relations and redeploying some military funds to other purposes like fighting Covid-19. Such ideas are to be welcomed, but President Biden’s top priority in the military area should be to focus on the true Trump military legacy — the one that has set us on a war course in relation to China and Russia — and do everything in his power to steer us in a safer, more prudent direction. Otherwise, the phrase “forever war” could gain a new, far grimmer meaning.


thenation--2020-12-08--Biden Needs To Find His Version of the Fireside Chat

“ I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking.
” So began President Franklin D. Roosevelt ’ s fireside chats on a bleak evening in March 1933—the darkest days of America ’ s Great Depression .
The stock market had lost 75 percent of its value stemming from the 1929 crash .
At least four thousand banks were completely drained of funds .
American families lined up at soup kitchens , with one in four households out of work .
Upon entering office , FDR swiftly declared a national bank holiday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ preserving the savings of millions of Americans .
But there was a problem : The public no longer had any faith in banks .
Without their trust , FDR ’ s efforts to keep the country afloat would be futile .
So , he set out to win them over .
He joined 60 million anxious Americans in their living rooms and kitchens , addressing them fondly as “ friends.
” He assured them “ that it is safer to keep your money in a reopened bank than under the mattress.
” When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cash out of mattresses and Mason jars and rushed to reinvest .
The markets saw a historic rise , and within two weeks , the banks recovered almost half the money they had lost .
Read the full text of Katrina ’ s column here .

EDITOR’S NOTE: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
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“I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking.”
So began President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats on a bleak evening in March 1933—the darkest days of America’s Great Depression. The stock market had lost 75 percent of its value stemming from the 1929 crash. At least four thousand banks were completely drained of funds. American families lined up at soup kitchens, with one in four households out of work. Upon entering office, FDR swiftly declared a national bank holiday and signed the Emergency Banking Act, preserving the savings of millions of Americans.
But there was a problem: The public no longer had any faith in banks. Without their trust, FDR’s efforts to keep the country afloat would be futile. So, he set out to win them over.
He joined 60 million anxious Americans in their living rooms and kitchens, addressing them fondly as “friends.” He assured them “that it is safer to keep your money in a reopened bank than under the mattress.” When banks reopened, many Americans pulled their cash out of mattresses and Mason jars and rushed to reinvest. The markets saw a historic rise, and within two weeks, the banks recovered almost half the money they had lost.
Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.


thenation--2020-12-09--How Rural China Became an Engine for Global Consumer Capitalism

If the trick to living well with technology is balance—between scrolling and occasionally mustering up the energy to leave the house and see friends—2020 has not only tipped these delicate scales but managed to ensure that they were laid waste altogether .
With billions of people isolated in their homes across the world with nothing but their screens to help them socialize , teach , learn , and work , many are discovering that digital relationships are a poor substitute for flesh and blood connections .
We have gorged too much , too mindlessly , on this thing that ultimately @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it seems ; the only way forward is to deny , absolve ourselves , and repeat .
Blockchain Chicken Farm : And Other Stories of Tech in China 's Countryside Xiaowei Wang ’ s Blockchain Chicken Farm : And Other Stories of Tech in China ’ s Countryside arrives in our oversaturated digital moment as a welcome reprieve , reminding us that there is more to technology than our thumbs hovering over our phones , unable to escape ourselves .
Wang , who is the creative director at Logic magazine , visited @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s countryside during the past year to document the ways in which rural towns have become the engines of global consumer capitalism .
Technology is steadily changing how work is done in these far-flung places .
In a village in the southern province of Guizhou , chickens are tracked with Fitbit-like ankle bracelets ; a 25-year-old man in the eastern province of Anhui remotely controls drones that spray pesticides on crops all over the country ; in the southwest , small communities are being turned into manufacturing zones for online shopping .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ uses “ they ” / ” them ” pronouns ) writes , often focus on cities , influenced by the bias of what theorist Jack Halberstam has deemed “ metronormativity.
” While metronormativity posits that “ rural culture and rural people are backward ” subjects who must be “ saved ” by “ internet , technology , and media literacy , ” Wang ’ s travels show the centrality of China ’ s countryside to global life .
What does it mean to hold on to the binaries of “ rural versus urban @ @ @ @ @ @ @ physical ” at a time when—as one of Wang ’ s case studies shows—nearly all the Halloween costumes worn by children in suburban America come from one tiny remote village in western China ?
It is only by bringing the supposed periphery into the center that we can begin to unpack the ties that bind us and see the systems that make our lives tick .
Many Western narratives about contemporary China draw on the language of contradictions : the “ gleaming skyscrapers alongside ramshackle food stalls , the chaos of crowds tracked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a wok reflecting the blue light of an iPhone.
” Wang finds this play with predetermined symbols unsatisfactory ; they deliver myth at the expense of actual insight .
“ I know you ’ re here writing about a book about Chinese technology , but the only way to understand China ’ s future is through its past , ” the author ’ s great-uncle , a former doorboy at a local Western restaurant who is still haunted by memories of famine in the nation , tells Wang .
The countryside commands a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ modern Chinese state .
During the civil war with the Nationalists from 1927 to 1949 , Mao Zedong had strongholds in rural areas and mobilized peasants to “ encircle cities from the countryside ” ; when he established the People ’ s Republic of China in 1949 , he made the countryside the site of his agrarian-centered revolution .
As power has flowed to the cities over recent decades , resentments have accrued around the hukou system , a government household registration system that disincentivizes people from migrating by limiting their access to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entitled elsewhere , such as education and insurance .
But mass migration to the cities for better jobs continues regardless .
Economists warn that China now faces an “ agrarian transition , ” which could further accelerate migration to urban sites as small-scale farming is supplanted by industrialized agriculture .
In 2010 , a state-affiliated think tank identified China ’ s 750 million rural workers—particularly dissatisfied younger workers living on the margins of a city—as a key threat to the government ’ s legitimacy : “ Policy-making must confront the pressing reality that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ generation will remain in towns and cities.
” The government , in response , has spurred efforts to construct a “ new socialist countryside ” over the past decade , marshaling technology giants to develop a place , Wang writes , “ filled with peasants starting e-commerce businesses , small-scale manufacturing , new data centers , and young entrepreneurial workers returning to their rural homes.
” The titular blockchain chicken farm is one such effort to forge a new countryside , itself doubling as a way to cool down social discontent about food @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in China : headlines over the years have warned of human hair being ground up in soy sauce and bubble tea balls being made with plastic peas .
In the quiet Sanqiao village , two hours from the southwest megacity of Chongqing , farmer Jiang oversees the local blockchain chicken operation in his area .
Launched by Lianmo Technology , the project affixes free-range chickens with a tamper-proof ankle bracelet that tracks their steps and location , logging this information through a blockchain ledger , which provides data on the chickens in an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ every two weeks for the presence of illegal antibiotics .
A QR code affixed to each ankle bracelet takes the ( largely middle-class ) consumers to a website where they can see the data of the chicken ’ s life cycle and be assured that the chicken they are consuming is sufficiently free-range .
Although the project ’ s future is uncertain—last year , Lianmo ordered 6,000 blockchain chickens , but there is no such order this year—Jiang remains optimistic , Wang reports .
But the problem is , Jiang continues , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and enjoys fresh air and clean soil , “ the villagers don ’ t quite know how to put a dollar value on that.
” Blockchain , now hailed as a way to ensure social trust , ironically has its roots in a paranoid way of thinking .
We can ’ t trust institutions , and every system will have bad actors , the thinking goes , so why not create a decentralized “ ledger ” where records are distributed and synced among many people—in the case of the blockchain chickens , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the consumers—ideally making the project impervious to a single effort to sabotage it ?
But as Wang observes , “ technical systems are legible only to a select few , ” and judging by the audiences of the bitcoin conferences held in California , these few are overwhelmingly white and male .
A similar hierarchy is evident in a conference for a high-tech drone company that Wang attends in the southern city of Guangzhou ; investors and venture capitalists sit at the very front , followed by engineers and bored-looking journalists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This typifies a paradox inherent in many tech circles today : “ utopian ” projects are undergirded by ideologies that have little faith in people , ushered through by rigidly hierarchical businesses , and they run on systems that are so , complex and esoteric that any avowed commitment to a democratic ideal feels thin .
Moreover , the goals they chase , which involve a complete “ connection ” of the world ’ s people , optimized control of global supply chains , and the synthetic generation of social trust mediated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remain mere illusions .
The pandemic has shown us how easily the vast sprawling machinery of our lives can collapse in the face of an aberrant threat .
It has also led to a ramping up of tensions between the United States and China .
Blockchain Chicken Farm is more interested in seeing what unites the citizens of the two countries than what distinguishes them from each other .
A brief visit to a facial recognition company in Beijing , an account that would have benefited from further detail given rising concern about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wang expecting to encounter a sinister , Soviet-like den .
“ [ I ] nstead , I was met with a total indifferent openness combined with the dry , surgical threat of a nondisclosure agreement .
It didn ’ t remind me of Silicon Valley ; it was Silicon Valley.
” And like Silicon Valley , the language of the hustle is everywhere .
When visiting Sanqiao village , Wang chances upon a large red banner strewn across a local hospital that announces “ Being lazy is a disgrace .
Being self-reliant leads @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is “ eerily reminiscent of several American values : Don ’ t be lazy .
Pull yourself up by the bootstraps.
” Wang later visits an oyster farm near the coastal province of Zhejiang , where they meet an entrepreneur who runs a global pearl business .
The oysters that yield the pearls are packed up and sealed , then flown halfway across the world to America .
Their pearls are sold by cheery white women influencers on Instagram via live “ unshucking ” videos .
These influencers often hail from North Dakota @ @ @ @ @ @ @ places with some of the highest unemployment figures in the United States and are “ consultants ” for various Multilevel Marketing schemes ( MLMs ) .
They have bought the oysters at a hefty price and must offload them quickly to avoid spiraling into debt : “ direct selling is not the cheerful respite from life it appears to be in ads , but a kind of desperate grab at survival.
” Technology , along with globalization , has evidently helped to connect the world , but such connection feels overwhelmingly like a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ diminishing profits .
It ’ s unsettling how what looks like joyful self-empowerment can edge so close to its opposite .
Discussions about tech , Wang writes , are often “ caught in a long list of binaries : Tech is dehumanizing , tech brings liberation .
Tech dragged the world into the mess it ’ s in , tech frees it from this mess.
” Can we ever break out of the binaries ?
Wang ’ s cautiously optimistic approach advocates for the messy , imperfect power of being human : that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up who you are and will become ; that technology , when harnessed properly , can one day serve open systems .
It is also telling that one of Wang ’ s last case studies , concerning a group of countercultural nihilist Chinese youth known as shehui ren , those who believe they can not advance to the “ upper-middle-class life promised to them in advertisements ” and who reject conventional values of jobs , marriages , and families , turn to live-streaming platforms and lifestyles that valorize the hustle .
One of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ young livestreamer named Nicly , shuns conventional beliefs in the value of education and hard work .
School , she says , is lame and boring ; besides , only the already wealthy can get rich from the usual paths of social advancement .
Instead , she hustles , selling face masks and perfume on her live videos .
Counterculturalism , in Nicly ’ s worldview , is indistinguishable from materialism—an approach that further enriches the wealthy few while occasionally rewarding the lucky striver .
You could condemn her personal choices , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the day .
Much has been written of the domination that tech giants exact on virtually every aspect of our lives , but increasingly attention is being given to ways we can challenge this , whether through pushing for policy changes or deleting apps and accounts that weigh us down .
Wang appeals , counterintuitively , for us to look at the way we relate to ourselves and to others offline , gently exhorting us to continually exercise awareness and care .
It ’ s the sort of work that asks us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ technology today—the continual hustle to secure one ’ s future ; the placement of self-image at the center of one ’ s universe ; the glinting promise of easy reward—and sit with indeterminacy , the present , and the unglamorous duties we owe to one another .
“ The present moment promises nothing—it only demands , ” Wang concludes .
What ’ s left is “ the tender , honest work of attempting to make meaning , instead of looking , waiting , or wanting .
”

If the trick to living well with technology is balance—between scrolling and occasionally mustering up the energy to leave the house and see friends—2020 has not only tipped these delicate scales but managed to ensure that they were laid waste altogether. With billions of people isolated in their homes across the world with nothing but their screens to help them socialize, teach, learn, and work, many are discovering that digital relationships are a poor substitute for flesh and blood connections. We have gorged too much, too mindlessly, on this thing that ultimately doesn’t serve us awfully well, it seems; the only way forward is to deny, absolve ourselves, and repeat. Books in Review Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside By Xiaowei Wang Buy this book
Xiaowei Wang’s Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside arrives in our oversaturated digital moment as a welcome reprieve, reminding us that there is more to technology than our thumbs hovering over our phones, unable to escape ourselves. Wang, who is the creative director at Logic magazine, visited a number of new businesses across China’s countryside during the past year to document the ways in which rural towns have become the engines of global consumer capitalism. Technology is steadily changing how work is done in these far-flung places. In a village in the southern province of Guizhou, chickens are tracked with Fitbit-like ankle bracelets; a 25-year-old man in the eastern province of Anhui remotely controls drones that spray pesticides on crops all over the country; in the southwest, small communities are being turned into manufacturing zones for online shopping.
Stories about technology, Wang (who uses “they”/”them” pronouns) writes, often focus on cities, influenced by the bias of what theorist Jack Halberstam has deemed “metronormativity.” While metronormativity posits that “rural culture and rural people are backward” subjects who must be “saved” by “internet, technology, and media literacy,” Wang’s travels show the centrality of China’s countryside to global life. What does it mean to hold on to the binaries of “rural versus urban, natural versus man-made, digital versus physical” at a time when—as one of Wang’s case studies shows—nearly all the Halloween costumes worn by children in suburban America come from one tiny remote village in western China? It is only by bringing the supposed periphery into the center that we can begin to unpack the ties that bind us and see the systems that make our lives tick.
Many Western narratives about contemporary China draw on the language of contradictions: the “gleaming skyscrapers alongside ramshackle food stalls, the chaos of crowds tracked by surveillance cameras, the steam of a wok reflecting the blue light of an iPhone.” Wang finds this play with predetermined symbols unsatisfactory; they deliver myth at the expense of actual insight. “I know you’re here writing about a book about Chinese technology, but the only way to understand China’s future is through its past,” the author’s great-uncle, a former doorboy at a local Western restaurant who is still haunted by memories of famine in the nation, tells Wang. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung
The countryside commands a mythic status in the narrative of the modern Chinese state. During the civil war with the Nationalists from 1927 to 1949, Mao Zedong had strongholds in rural areas and mobilized peasants to “encircle cities from the countryside”; when he established the People’s Republic of China in 1949, he made the countryside the site of his agrarian-centered revolution. As power has flowed to the cities over recent decades, resentments have accrued around the hukou system, a government household registration system that disincentivizes people from migrating by limiting their access to social benefits to which they would be entitled elsewhere, such as education and insurance. But mass migration to the cities for better jobs continues regardless.
Economists warn that China now faces an “agrarian transition,” which could further accelerate migration to urban sites as small-scale farming is supplanted by industrialized agriculture. In 2010, a state-affiliated think tank identified China’s 750 million rural workers—particularly dissatisfied younger workers living on the margins of a city—as a key threat to the government’s legitimacy: “Policy-making must confront the pressing reality that migrant workers now dominated by a younger generation will remain in towns and cities.” The government, in response, has spurred efforts to construct a “new socialist countryside” over the past decade, marshaling technology giants to develop a place, Wang writes, “filled with peasants starting e-commerce businesses, small-scale manufacturing, new data centers, and young entrepreneurial workers returning to their rural homes.”
The titular blockchain chicken farm is one such effort to forge a new countryside, itself doubling as a way to cool down social discontent about food safety. This is a perennial concern in China: headlines over the years have warned of human hair being ground up in soy sauce and bubble tea balls being made with plastic peas. In the quiet Sanqiao village, two hours from the southwest megacity of Chongqing, farmer Jiang oversees the local blockchain chicken operation in his area. Launched by Lianmo Technology, the project affixes free-range chickens with a tamper-proof ankle bracelet that tracks their steps and location, logging this information through a blockchain ledger, which provides data on the chickens in an efficient format. Chickens are further tested every two weeks for the presence of illegal antibiotics. A QR code affixed to each ankle bracelet takes the (largely middle-class) consumers to a website where they can see the data of the chicken’s life cycle and be assured that the chicken they are consuming is sufficiently free-range. Although the project’s future is uncertain—last year, Lianmo ordered 6,000 blockchain chickens, but there is no such order this year—Jiang remains optimistic, Wang reports. But the problem is, Jiang continues, that while his region is remote, pollution-free, and enjoys fresh air and clean soil, “the villagers don’t quite know how to put a dollar value on that.”
Blockchain, now hailed as a way to ensure social trust, ironically has its roots in a paranoid way of thinking. We can’t trust institutions, and every system will have bad actors, the thinking goes, so why not create a decentralized “ledger” where records are distributed and synced among many people—in the case of the blockchain chickens, they include the farmers, the inspectors, and the consumers—ideally making the project impervious to a single effort to sabotage it? But as Wang observes, “technical systems are legible only to a select few,” and judging by the audiences of the bitcoin conferences held in California, these few are overwhelmingly white and male.
A similar hierarchy is evident in a conference for a high-tech drone company that Wang attends in the southern city of Guangzhou; investors and venture capitalists sit at the very front, followed by engineers and bored-looking journalists, with drone operators at the back. This typifies a paradox inherent in many tech circles today: “utopian” projects are undergirded by ideologies that have little faith in people, ushered through by rigidly hierarchical businesses, and they run on systems that are so, complex and esoteric that any avowed commitment to a democratic ideal feels thin. Moreover, the goals they chase, which involve a complete “connection” of the world’s people, optimized control of global supply chains, and the synthetic generation of social trust mediated by a surveillance complex, will always remain mere illusions. The pandemic has shown us how easily the vast sprawling machinery of our lives can collapse in the face of an aberrant threat.
It has also led to a ramping up of tensions between the United States and China. Blockchain Chicken Farm is more interested in seeing what unites the citizens of the two countries than what distinguishes them from each other. A brief visit to a facial recognition company in Beijing, an account that would have benefited from further detail given rising concern about China’s surveillance apparatus, finds Wang expecting to encounter a sinister, Soviet-like den. “[I]nstead, I was met with a total indifferent openness combined with the dry, surgical threat of a nondisclosure agreement. It didn’t remind me of Silicon Valley; it was Silicon Valley.”
And like Silicon Valley, the language of the hustle is everywhere. When visiting Sanqiao village, Wang chances upon a large red banner strewn across a local hospital that announces “Being lazy is a disgrace. Being self-reliant leads to strength,” a slogan that is “eerily reminiscent of several American values: Don’t be lazy. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps.” Wang later visits an oyster farm near the coastal province of Zhejiang, where they meet an entrepreneur who runs a global pearl business. The oysters that yield the pearls are packed up and sealed, then flown halfway across the world to America. Their pearls are sold by cheery white women influencers on Instagram via live “unshucking” videos. These influencers often hail from North Dakota, Iowa, Wyoming, and other places with some of the highest unemployment figures in the United States and are “consultants” for various Multilevel Marketing schemes (MLMs). They have bought the oysters at a hefty price and must offload them quickly to avoid spiraling into debt: “direct selling is not the cheerful respite from life it appears to be in ads, but a kind of desperate grab at survival.” Technology, along with globalization, has evidently helped to connect the world, but such connection feels overwhelmingly like a mutual race to the bottom for ever diminishing profits. It’s unsettling how what looks like joyful self-empowerment can edge so close to its opposite.
Discussions about tech, Wang writes, are often “caught in a long list of binaries: Tech is dehumanizing, tech brings liberation. Tech dragged the world into the mess it’s in, tech frees it from this mess.” Can we ever break out of the binaries? Wang’s cautiously optimistic approach advocates for the messy, imperfect power of being human: that an algorithm or data can never sum up who you are and will become; that technology, when harnessed properly, can one day serve open systems. It is also telling that one of Wang’s last case studies, concerning a group of countercultural nihilist Chinese youth known as shehui ren, those who believe they cannot advance to the “upper-middle-class life promised to them in advertisements” and who reject conventional values of jobs, marriages, and families, turn to live-streaming platforms and lifestyles that valorize the hustle.
One of the shehui ren Wang profiles, a young livestreamer named Nicly, shuns conventional beliefs in the value of education and hard work. School, she says, is lame and boring; besides, only the already wealthy can get rich from the usual paths of social advancement. Instead, she hustles, selling face masks and perfume on her live videos. Counterculturalism, in Nicly’s worldview, is indistinguishable from materialism—an approach that further enriches the wealthy few while occasionally rewarding the lucky striver. You could condemn her personal choices, but the space for a genuine alternative diminishes by the day.
Much has been written of the domination that tech giants exact on virtually every aspect of our lives, but increasingly attention is being given to ways we can challenge this, whether through pushing for policy changes or deleting apps and accounts that weigh us down. Wang appeals, counterintuitively, for us to look at the way we relate to ourselves and to others offline, gently exhorting us to continually exercise awareness and care. It’s the sort of work that asks us to set aside the values circulated by technology today—the continual hustle to secure one’s future; the placement of self-image at the center of one’s universe; the glinting promise of easy reward—and sit with indeterminacy, the present, and the unglamorous duties we owe to one another. “The present moment promises nothing—it only demands,” Wang concludes. What’s left is “the tender, honest work of attempting to make meaning, instead of looking, waiting, or wanting.”


thenation--2020-12-09--The Georgia GOP’s Fight Against Voter Registration

It was shortly before noon on the Saturday before Election Day 2018 .
Polls showed Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams had a shot at becoming the governor of Georgia , which would have made her the first black woman to hold the office in US history .
My colleague Jordan Wilkie and I had already worked together on a number of articles on the race .
Three days before millions of Georgians would cast their ballots , Jordan was forwarded an e-mail suggesting there was a “ massive vulnerability ” in the state ’ s online voter registration system that could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ knowledge to alter the data within .
We scrambled to verify the information , contacting five widely recognized elections cybersecurity experts .
The state Democratic Party had also been alerted of the vulnerability by a private citizen .
By Saturday evening , they too had contacted cybersecurity experts .
Then–Secretary of State and Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp also had been alerted , as well as the FBI .
We ran a story early morning Sunday , and then another account including behind-the-scenes details .
Within two hours of the first story ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state Democratic Party was “ under investigation for possible cyber crimes.
” By noon , cable news outlets ran with the news ; print outlets soon followed .
Eighteen months later , on March 3 , the state attorney general ’ s office produced a report stating that there was “ no foundation ” to Kemp ’ s charges , officially closing the investigation .
A long inquiry had accomplished nothing , except to distract from the issue of the voting system ’ s vulnerabilities and cast doubt on the opposing party .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ after Election Day , the state Democratic Party sued Kemp and his staff , seeking to have the state remove a press release from its website announcing the investigation .
This series of events comes to mind not because of the actual issue at center—weaknesses in Georgia ’ s digital election system—but thanks to the state ’ s “ investigation.
” Last week , amid the swirling carnival of lawsuits , angry tweets from the White House , Rudy Giuliani ’ s Covid road show stop at the state capitol , and a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ workers unfortunate enough to appear in viral videos , Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that his office was launching a new investigation .
It would be focused on four nonprofit groups that allegedly committed fraud in their efforts to encourage voters to request absentee ballots for the January 5 special election , which will decide the balance of power in the US Senate .
One of the four groups was the New Georgia Project , founded by Stacey Abrams in 2013 .
Reached by phone at the end of the week @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the project , said it was the group ’ s fifth go-round with the secretary of state in six years .
None of the investigations have produced evidence of fraud or any other crime .
A series of organizations and individuals involved in voter registration or election integrity have gone through the same experience during a period stretching back at least a decade—the state accuses them of crimes or wrongdoing without evidence and announces “ investigations ” ; local and occasionally national media amplify news of the investigations ; and months or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with little to no findings .
“ These are thinly veiled attempts to discredit organizations from registering people to vote and carry out important civic actions , ” said Kristen Clarke , president of the Lawyers ’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law .
The same strategy has been deployed in other states , including Texas and Tennessee , she added .
“ It has a chilling effect : The impact is felt at the time the announcements are made , and if you follow the trails , these efforts amount to nothing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voice of “ marginalized communities and people of color.
” One of the earliest such investigations in Kemp ’ s first term as secretary of state targeted an organization then known as the Asian American Legal Advocacy Center .
Helen Ho , an attorney who directed the organization , noticed in late October 2012 that newly naturalized citizens her group had helped to register were being turned away from the polls during early voting .
She wrote Kemp a letter demanding that they be allowed to vote .
Kemp ’ s response was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her organization for such technical issues as photocopying voters ’ registration forms without their permission .
The investigation ended in March , 2015 , with no findings .
Ho said her group was determined to continue its work throughout .
“ The mission was always at the center—to build the political power of Asian-American and Pacific Islanders in our region.
” At the same time , the state ’ s efforts “ caused fear amongst all groups .
It was a scare tactic.
” Ho sees the investigation as an early attempt at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Voter suppression in terms of voter registration was not something people were even looking at ” in 2012 , she said .
The New Georgia Project was the next target .
From 2014 to late 2017 , the state investigated nearly 90,000 voter registration forms the project had gathered , looking for fraud .
In the end , the state elections board found potential problems linked to contractors on 53 forms , and no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the organization .
“ This is one way racism and white @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ufot said .
“ They can use their investigative powers to harass , for a chilling effect .
And they get more traction out of it from the press , ” she added .
As media coverage of the investigation dragged on , the organization found itself spending what amounted to “ easily over a million dollars ” on legal and other fees in response to the state ’ s charges , Ufot said .
“ We were defending ourselves in court , and in the court of public opinion , ” she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thought of rebranding , ” Ufot added .
Years later , donors still ask her , “ Are you still under investigation ?
” Since last week , the answer is yes—again .
Still , as of Friday evening , the state had not contacted her , or her lawyers .
Ufot said she assumes the secretary of state is basing his claims this time on a packet of postcards of the sort her group sends to out-of-state volunteers , who then fill them out and send them to people in Georgia , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a packet must have been sent to a wrong New York address , and the person who received the packet tweeted about it .
“ That tweet must be what they ’ re building their investigation on.
” The secretary of state ’ s office did not respond in time to requests for an interview about the case .
Marilyn Marks , executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance , is entering the second year of being under investigation .
Her nonprofit organization has been suing Georgia for three years , trying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ digital election system and use hand-marked paper ballots .
Unlike current cases surrounding elections in court , the coalition ’ s suits have brought noteworthy results , including a federal judge ’ s 2019 order to discontinue use of the voting machines the state had used for more than a decade .
The order was intensely critical of the state , but fell short of requiring hand-marked paper ballots .
A year ago this November , Marks was observing a trial of Georgia ’ s current voting machines and scanners during a local @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she could read a sign on one of the machines .
A secretary of state staffer photographed her .
The state then accused her of “ trying to interfere ” with the election .
The ensuing investigation has stunted her ability to recruit poll watching volunteers , she said .
“ They say , ‘ No , no ; this is too scary.
’ ” Meanwhile , in a development that appears to be of a piece with the upside-down current state of affairs , with President Trump attacking Georgia ’ s GOP @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s election results , the secretary of state announced Thursday what may be its first investigation into a Republican .
The investigation stems from a video that surfaced online showing Florida attorney Bill Price urging members of the Bay County Republican Party to follow his lead , move to Georgia for a few months , and register to vote in the January 5 election .
Price apparently moved in with a brother in the state , and actually attempted to register .
Price , who is white , could wind up being charged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ five and 20 years in prison .
That would be quite a departure from the last decade or so of secretary of state–led investigations linked to elections in Georgia .

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It was shortly before noon on the Saturday before Election Day 2018. Polls showed Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams had a shot at becoming the governor of Georgia, which would have made her the first black woman to hold the office in US history.
My colleague Jordan Wilkie and I had already worked together on a number of articles on the race. Three days before millions of Georgians would cast their ballots, Jordan was forwarded an e-mail suggesting there was a “massive vulnerability” in the state’s online voter registration system that could allow anyone with a minimum of computer knowledge to alter the data within. Looking for holiday gifts with a conscience? Check out The Nation Shop and help support The Nation’s journalism while you complete your gift list.
We scrambled to verify the information, contacting five widely recognized elections cybersecurity experts. The state Democratic Party had also been alerted of the vulnerability by a private citizen. By Saturday evening, they too had contacted cybersecurity experts. Then–Secretary of State and Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp also had been alerted, as well as the FBI.
We ran a story early morning Sunday, and then another account including behind-the-scenes details. Within two hours of the first story’s release, Kemp announced that the state Democratic Party was “under investigation for possible cyber crimes.” By noon, cable news outlets ran with the news; print outlets soon followed. no peace Trump Is Hijacking the Georgia Senate Race Joan Walsh
Eighteen months later, on March 3, the state attorney general’s office produced a report stating that there was “no foundation” to Kemp’s charges, officially closing the investigation. A long inquiry had accomplished nothing, except to distract from the issue of the voting system’s vulnerabilities and cast doubt on the opposing party. Six months later, on the day after Election Day, the state Democratic Party sued Kemp and his staff, seeking to have the state remove a press release from its website announcing the investigation.
This series of events comes to mind not because of the actual issue at center—weaknesses in Georgia’s digital election system—but thanks to the state’s “investigation.” Last week, amid the swirling carnival of lawsuits, angry tweets from the White House, Rudy Giuliani’s Covid road show stop at the state capitol, and a series of death threats aimed at election workers unfortunate enough to appear in viral videos, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that his office was launching a new investigation. It would be focused on four nonprofit groups that allegedly committed fraud in their efforts to encourage voters to request absentee ballots for the January 5 special election, which will decide the balance of power in the US Senate. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung
One of the four groups was the New Georgia Project, founded by Stacey Abrams in 2013. Reached by phone at the end of the week, Nsé Ufot, chief executive officer of the project, said it was the group’s fifth go-round with the secretary of state in six years. None of the investigations have produced evidence of fraud or any other crime. Current Issue View our current issue
A series of organizations and individuals involved in voter registration or election integrity have gone through the same experience during a period stretching back at least a decade—the state accuses them of crimes or wrongdoing without evidence and announces “investigations”; local and occasionally national media amplify news of the investigations; and months or years later, the effort is concluded with little to no findings.
“These are thinly veiled attempts to discredit organizations from registering people to vote and carry out important civic actions,” said Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The same strategy has been deployed in other states, including Texas and Tennessee, she added. “It has a chilling effect: The impact is felt at the time the announcements are made, and if you follow the trails, these efforts amount to nothing”—except an effective suppression of the voice of “marginalized communities and people of color.”
One of the earliest such investigations in Kemp’s first term as secretary of state targeted an organization then known as the Asian American Legal Advocacy Center. Helen Ho, an attorney who directed the organization, noticed in late October 2012 that newly naturalized citizens her group had helped to register were being turned away from the polls during early voting. She wrote Kemp a letter demanding that they be allowed to vote. Kemp’s response was to tell her his office was investigating her organization for such technical issues as photocopying voters’ registration forms without their permission.
The investigation ended in March, 2015, with no findings.
Ho said her group was determined to continue its work throughout. “The mission was always at the center—to build the political power of Asian-American and Pacific Islanders in our region.” At the same time, the state’s efforts “caused fear amongst all groups. It was a scare tactic.” Ho sees the investigation as an early attempt at voter suppression through targeting voter registration. “Voter suppression in terms of voter registration was not something people were even looking at” in 2012, she said.
The New Georgia Project was the next target. From 2014 to late 2017, the state investigated nearly 90,000 voter registration forms the project had gathered, looking for fraud. In the end, the state elections board found potential problems linked to contractors on 53 forms, and no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the organization.
“This is one way racism and white supremacy work in public policy,” Ufot said. “They can use their investigative powers to harass, for a chilling effect. And they get more traction out of it from the press,” she added.
As media coverage of the investigation dragged on, the organization found itself spending what amounted to “easily over a million dollars” on legal and other fees in response to the state’s charges, Ufot said. “We were defending ourselves in court, and in the court of public opinion,” she said.
“I’ve often thought of rebranding,” Ufot added. Years later, donors still ask her, “Are you still under investigation?”
Since last week, the answer is yes—again. Still, as of Friday evening, the state had not contacted her, or her lawyers. Ufot said she assumes the secretary of state is basing his claims this time on a packet of postcards of the sort her group sends to out-of-state volunteers, who then fill them out and send them to people in Georgia, urging them to register. She said a packet must have been sent to a wrong New York address, and the person who received the packet tweeted about it. “That tweet must be what they’re building their investigation on.”
The secretary of state’s office did not respond in time to requests for an interview about the case.
Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, is entering the second year of being under investigation. Her nonprofit organization has been suing Georgia for three years, trying to get the state to abandon its digital election system and use hand-marked paper ballots. Unlike current cases surrounding elections in court, the coalition’s suits have brought noteworthy results, including a federal judge’s 2019 order to discontinue use of the voting machines the state had used for more than a decade. The order was intensely critical of the state, but fell short of requiring hand-marked paper ballots.
A year ago this November, Marks was observing a trial of Georgia’s current voting machines and scanners during a local election. She asked election workers if she could read a sign on one of the machines. A secretary of state staffer photographed her. The state then accused her of “trying to interfere” with the election.
The ensuing investigation has stunted her ability to recruit poll watching volunteers, she said. “They say, ‘No, no; this is too scary.’”
Meanwhile, in a development that appears to be of a piece with the upside-down current state of affairs, with President Trump attacking Georgia’s GOP leaders for not reversing the state’s election results, the secretary of state announced Thursday what may be its first investigation into a Republican.
The investigation stems from a video that surfaced online showing Florida attorney Bill Price urging members of the Bay County Republican Party to follow his lead, move to Georgia for a few months, and register to vote in the January 5 election. Price apparently moved in with a brother in the state, and actually attempted to register.
Price, who is white, could wind up being charged with felony racketeering, punishable with between five and 20 years in prison. That would be quite a departure from the last decade or so of secretary of state–led investigations linked to elections in Georgia.