Chaos rises in Venezuela; Shutdown ends; US resumes making small nukes; AFRICOM reverses secrecy move; And a bit more.

Increasing chaos in Venezuela, CNN reports from a Caracas suburb: “This hillside community is where President Nicolas Maduro has nurtured his base of poor Venezuelans, trading vital state handouts for loyalty. Yet last week, night after night, locals have clashed with police special forces. On the afternoon we visited, armed forces were raiding homes and taking away residents.” More, here.

The U.S. State Department added a Venezuela envoy on Friday — and you’ve heard of him before. “Elliott Abrams, the Trump administration's newly appointed lead on Venezuela crisis, pled guilty to 2 misdemeanor charges of withholding information from Congress on the Iran-Contra scandal during his time in the Reagan administration,” Foreign Policy’s Robbie Gramer reminds us.

U.S. diplos can stay. One day later, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro reversed his demand that the U.S. pull its diplomats and families out of the country within 72 hours. New York Times, here.

Tossing his hat in with the Americans: Venezuela’s top military envoy to the United States, Col. Jose Luis Silva. Speaking from his embassy in Washington this weekend, he announced his defection from Maduro and to “opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president,” Voice of America reports. Venezuela’s military responded on Twitter (because of course) calling Silva a coward and posting a picture of him with the word “traitor” in red capital letters.

The bigger picture: Here’s a map showing how the world is coming to terms (and not) with Maduro’s stubborn rule. (Via Agence France-Presse.)

Supporting Maduro: Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, Turkey, Greece, Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Uruguay.

Here’s another one: Venezuela’s crisis in 5 charts. The Washington Post charts economic decline, medical collapse, and population flight, here.

From Defense One

The White House’s Move on Venezuela Is the Least Trumpian Thing It’s Done // Uri Friedman, The Atlantic: The Trump administration’s concerted diplomatic effort did not originate on Twitter.

Trump Announces Deal to End Longest-Ever Shutdown — For Now // Eric Katz, Government Executive: Congress is expected to quickly pass a new stopgap spending measure to reopen the government through Feb. 15.

The INF Treaty Is Doomed. We Need a New Arms-Control Framework // Eugene Rumer: The new approach will have to deal with a White House intent on acting unilaterally and a Russia seeking to reverse the effects of NATO’s eastward expansion.

Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. On this day in 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after takeoff at Cape Canaveral, Florida, killing all seven members of the crew.

Welcome to the 2019 budget and posture hearing season! First up before the House Armed Services Committee: “Department of Defense’s Support to the Southern Border.” That begins tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. EDT.
Attending that one for the Pentagon? “To be determined,” the preview page reads.

First up before the Senate Armed Services Committee: simply "China and Russia." That also kicks off tomorrow at 10 a.m. EDT.
Attending there: No current military or Pentagon officials. Instead, it’s Elbridge Colby of the Center For A New American Security, and a former Pentagon official; Ely Ratner also of CNAS; and Damon Wilson of the Atlantic Council.
Then Tuesday afternoon, SASC reviews Pentagon-wide “Cybersecurity Policies and Architecture.” Speaking of...

Here’s a 30,000-foot view of the Pentagon’s cyber vulnerabilities via Bloomberg’s Tony Capaccio, writing ahead of the release of an upcoming threat assessment.
Origin of the report: the office of Robert Behler, the Defense Department’s director of operational test and evaluation.
Why it’s in the news: Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy goes before SASC to talk about the cyber state of things. Catch that live tomorrow, here.

The U.S. has begun producing smaller sub-launched nuclear weapons. “NNSA (the National Nuclear Security Administration) is moving fast. Has already started assembling the first new low-yield W76-2 warhead,” tweets Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists. The National Nuclear Security Administration responded to Defense Daily’s Dan Leone by announcing that its Pantex nuclear weapons plant in Texas has started making the new Trident warheads ordered up by the Trump administration’s nuclear posture review last year.
The Guardian has a bit more: “The NNSA said the first of the new warheads had come off the production line and that it was on schedule to deliver the first batch – an unspecified number referred to as ‘initial operational capability’ – before the end of September.”
How we got here. The Joint Chiefs’ vice chair said smaller-yield weapons are needed to deter other countries’ use of same, our own Patrick Tucker reported back in 2017.
But smaller nukes are worse than unnecessary, arms control experts say. There’s no way to tell whether an incoming Trident has “big” or “small” nukes atop it, so a targeted enemy will likely respond to the worse possibility. Melissa Hanham put it this way: “We’re just going to trust that you recognize this is ‘just a little nuclear weapon’ and won’t retaliate with all you’ve got. Remember! The US only intends to nuke you ‘a little bit.’”
More point-counterpoint on small nukes. Pro, from Albert J. Mauroni, who runs the Air Force’s Center for Unconventional Weapons Studies. Con, from former SecDef William Perry and Tom Collina.

The cost of America's nuclear program is still going up, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s Jan. 24 report: “The Administration’s current plans for U.S. nuclear forces would cost $494 billion over the 2019–2028 period—$94 billion more than CBO’s 2017 estimate for the 2017–2026 period, in part because modernization programs continue to ramp up.”
Not so fast? The new chair of the House Armed Services Committee is taking square aim at the Pentagon’s nuclear plans. Back in November, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., called for lawmakers to “totally redo the Nuclear Posture Review.” D1’s Marcus Weisgerber reported. “When you look at the needs we have in national security, the needs we have in the country and the $22 trillion debt, what they’re talking about in terms of totally rebuilding a nuclear weapons capacity in all pieces of the triad is way beyond what we can afford.” Read that, here.

Happening now: Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson is speaking with Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution in Washington. Logistics here.CNO Richardson recently returned from the Gulf region for some meetings with and awards to sailors in the 5th Fleet region, based in Bahrain. Here’s a bit from the Navy on that.
A day before that, he was in Tokyo urging “China to follow international rules at sea to avoid confrontations,” particularly concerning ship transit through both the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. And that was his message just a few days after speaking with Chinese officials on the mainland.

Japan and South Korea are in a “military spat”? CNN reports the two U.S. allies are in "a heated military dispute" that "began December 20 after an encounter between a Japanese plane, which Tokyo said was collecting intelligence, and a South Korean destroyer, which Seoul said was on a humanitarian mission." Some deep roots for those occasionally tense neighbors in the rest of CNN’s report, here.

At the Pentagon today: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is dropping by around lunchtime to see Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan.

Transparency update re: U.S. military in Somalia. Friday we reported on AFRICOM’s apparent decision to begin withholding data on its air war over Somalia — things like “fighters killed or damage done,” as the AP reported on Jan. 24.
Friday, AFRICOM reversed the decision and announced it “will again release the number of enemy fighters killed and damage information caused from its airstrikes,” Voice of America reported.
What may change in the days ahead: “our messaging to place less emphasis on the number of militants killed and place more context on how these strikes are helping our Somali partners achieve their strategic security objectives," AFRICOM spokesman John Manley told VOA. Read on, here.

Not to get all “Enemy of the State” on you, but “Between 2011-2017, the Pentagon flew 11 drone missions over the domestic United States in support of civil authorities and the like,” Kelsey Atherton reported this weekend on C4ISRnet.
The twist: “In 2018 alone, the Pentagon flew 11 more.” Fear not — it’s not as wicked a story as it might seem when you consider the drones involved in these new missions included DJI Phantom off-the-shelf models. More, here.

And finally today, the folks at PlanetLabs spoke to “60 Minutes” last night to tell us all about “how one small company [is] revolutionizing satellite intelligence.”
The gist: PlanetLabs “has put about 300 small satellites into space, enough to take a picture of the entire land mass of the Earth every day. Those small satellites have created a big data problem for the government which can't possibly hire enough analysts to look at all those pictures. Welcome to the revolution.” Begin reading or viewing, here.