POTUS wants troops to build the Wall; Things you don’t write down; US Army to test 6.68mm carbines; Pentagon’s Syrian-training goals increase; And a bit more.
Border wall update via POTUS45 this morning, on Twitter: “If the Democrats do not give us the votes to secure our Country, the Military will build the remaining sections of the Wall. They know how important it is!”
For more on the politics behind the tweet: Democratic House and Senate leaders are dropping by the White House today in hopes of averting a Dec. 21 shutdown of DHS and several other federal agencies — visit Fox News or Politico or the Washington Post.
POTUS44’s Government Ethics Director, Walter Shaub, replied to Trump’s tweet about the military building the wall: “In their free time? Because they can’t use DOD’s appropriations for that. They are not the White House’s personal staff of coat checkers and gardeners. They don’t work on the leader’s hobby horses. This isn’t the Saudi kingdom.”
Seems like a good time to check in on those troops at the border. Here are a few things they’ve been up to since we last looked:
- Posting wooden street signs;
- inventorying equipment;
- practicing putting up C-wire;
- actually putting up C-wire;
- stringing C-wire together with barbed wire;
- so much C-wire;
- practicing for riot protection;
- riding in helicopters with feds;
- looking around;
- riding in cherry-pickers;
- getting some pretty great views of the countryside;
- putting on gas masks;
- and, of course, not arresting anyone — but rather “help[ing] make sure CBP personnel can perform their assigned Federal functions.”
From Defense One
Does a New US Goal for Syrian Training Portend a Longer Mission? // Paulina Glass: The military’s top general raised expectations for the Syrian Democratic Forces — and lowered them for a quick exit for U.S. troops.
As Exports of Surveillance Tech Rise, Freer Countries Face a Choice // Justin Sherman and Robert Morgus, Council on Foreign Relations: How far will societies pursue security along paths paved by dictators?
Who Is Paying for the War in Yemen? // Samuel Oakford and Ryan Goodman, The Atlantic: The Pentagon says that “errors in accounting” mean Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have not been properly charged for refueling.
Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Thanks for reading! And if you find this stuff useful, consider sharing it with somebody you think might find it useful, too. On this day in 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.
The U.S. military added three new observation posts along the Turkish-Syrian border, al-Monitor reported Monday.
Locations: Kobane, Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ain.
Purpose: “The formal aim is to prevent YPG militants from firing on Turkish forces across the border and avert an escalation of tension that would in turn undermine the ongoing campaign against IS. But in Turkish eyes, the posts are designed to protect the Kurds.” More here.
War on ISIS update: “Attacks in Iraq today are more frequent [today] than 2016 and ISIS retains 1,000s (maybe 10,000s) of fighters in Iraq and Syria combined,” the Middle East Institute’s Charles Lister tweeted Monday after reading this sobering New York Times story on the ISIS war in Iraq, reported from Baghdad on Sunday.
ICYMI: Listen to Middle East scholar Hassan Hassan give us his forecast for the war against ISIS and America’s wider counterterrorism conflicts in our latest episode of Defense One Radio. Hear that entire discussion for free today on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or via the Defense One app.
Research vs censorship, a debate. A terrorism researcher has collected and curated many jihadi videos from groups like ISIS, al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab. Now the British government wants the researcher to clamp down on the curated content.
The site: “Jihadology.net, still live as of this writing, is a multiyear effort by Aaron Y. Zelin, an expert in global jihadism,” The Atlantic’s Graeme Wood wrote on Monday.
The rub: “Critics believe it serves terrorists; jihadists circulate links to the site’s videos long after YouTube and Facebook have deleted them.” Those critics have now extended to the British government.
Wood’s argument: “The continued operation of Jihadology is a boon for researchers and only modestly useful to our enemies.” Read the rest of his case, here. Extra reading: There are a few other considerations in this censorship debate that are worth exploring. See, e.g., Amarnath Amarasingam and Charlie Winter.
Food for thought: Are we in the midst of an “age of propaganda,” as opposed to an “age of information”? (h/t cybersecurity researcher @thegrugq)
This week in things you do not write down: “How to respond to FSB offer of employment?” That’s inside ABC News’ report about accused Russian spy Maria Butina, who on Monday “agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy and cooperate with federal, state and local authorities in any ongoing investigations.”
For the record, the formal language of Butina’s plea says she “agreed and conspired, with a Russian government official (‘Russian Official’) and at least one other person, for Butina to act in the United States under the direction of Russian Official without prior notification to the Attorney General.” Her goal appeared to have been, in part, gaining access to influential GOP members in the U.S., as well as gun rights advocates like this fella.
And as part of Butina’s plea, we now know a bit more about longtime Republican operative Paul Erickson, “with whom [Butina] had a multiyear romantic relationship,” ABC reports.
Erickson was apparently a bit conflicted at one time in their relationship, jotting down on a piece of paper, “How to respond to FSB offer of employment?” FBI investigators later found the note during a raid of his South Dakota home. Read the rest of the ridiculous ongoing whopper of a modern spy story, here.
So there's a climate-change summit going in Poland. There, “mocking laughter” and shouted protests filled the room after the U.S. representative tried to pitch coal as part of the solution. According to the Washington Post: “The protest was a piece of theater, and so too was the United States’ public embrace of coal and other dirty fuels at an event otherwise dedicated to saving the world from the catastrophic effects of climate change. The standoff punctuated the awkward position the American delegation finds itself in as career bureaucrats seek to advance the Trump administration’s agenda in an international arena aimed at cutting back on fossil fuels.” Read on, here.
ICYMI: Ebola watch returns in Africa. The 2nd deadliest Ebola outbreak in history has now spread to a major city — the Democratic Republic of Congo's Butembo, home to nearly a million people, ABC News reported last week, almost four months after the outbreak was declared.
Locations: DRC’s North Kivu and Ituri provinces, “which share borders with Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan.” The latest estimates include more than 230 dead among nearly 450 confirmed cases so far. A bit more, here.
U.S. Army to evaluate new 6.68mm small arms next year. The Next Generation Squad Weapons program aims to replace today’s standard 5.56mm carbines and light machine guns with something that packs more punch, Military Times reports.
Background: “To those not closely tracking ammunition developments, the 6.8mm caliber, which falls between the 5.56mm and 7.62mm calibers, may appear to have come from nowhere. But a round in that caliber proved its mettle nearly a century ago, and ongoing analysis of the 6.5 to 6.8mm caliber range has been key among a subset of experts for more than a decade.”
Part of a system: The new guns, whenever they’re chosen and whenever they arrive in the field, will reportedly come with new sights and training systems. “Pentagon officials and Army weapons programs wanted more than a better caliber — they wanted a “leap ahead” technology that would deliver capabilities beyond the numerous adjustments that transformed the original M16A1 into the M4 carbine.” Read on, here.
Happening tomorrow: a missing-man formation flight over Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni.
The cause: Five U.S. Marines are still “missing after their KC-130J Hercules collided midair with an F/A-18 Hornet early Thursday off Japan’s southern coast,” Stars and Stripes reports.
Finally today, and just in time for Christmas: a nuclear-diplomacy coloring book. Really.
Catching up on North Korean nuclear negotiations? The Nuclear Threat Initiative will bring you current with this overview of the threats from Pyongyang and a continued commitment to a second summit from Washington.