Today's D Brief: Top US, China officials to meet; Service chiefs pan ‘readiness’; Lawmakers slam Army CID; Putin’s smear campaign; And a bit more.

Two key White House officials will meet their Chinese counterparts for the first time on Thursday. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and POTUS46’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan scheduled that high-profile, low-expectation visit in Anchorage, Alaska. Politico has more on how the two nations’ delegates appear to be on significantly different pages in terms of messaging ahead of Thursday.

BTW: Here’s a grab-bag of U.S. security concerns when it comes to China: 

• South China Sea navigational tensions and Beijing’s increasingly militarized man-made islands;
• The Microsoft Exchange server breach;
• China’s fast-growing navy;
• Beijing’s enormous so-called “maritime militia”;
• The impact of new national security laws in Hong Kong;
• The future of U.S.-Taiwan relations and navigational freedom in the Taiwan Strait;
• China’s alleged human rights abuses against its own Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang;
• How and when to alter Trump-era tariffs on trade goods;
• Arctic security and navigational concerns; 
• And the North Korean nuclear threat. (What’d we miss? Let us know.) 

That Blinken-Sullivan Alaska stop will follow today’s visit to Seoul by Blinken and SecDef Austin. The two secretaries dropped by Tokyo on Tuesday. And while there, Blinken warned, “China uses coercion and aggression to systemically erode autonomy in Hong Kong, undercut democracy in Taiwan, abuse human rights in Xinjiang and Tibet, and assert maritime claims in the South China Sea that violate international law,” adding, “We will push back if necessary when China uses coercion or aggression to get its way.”

“[O]ur goal is to make sure that we maintain a competitive edge over China, or anyone else that would want to threaten us or our alliance,” Austin said Tuesday. 

Austin also emphasized America’s partnerships and allies in his remarks from Tokyo: “We know that competing in today’s shifting global dynamics, can only be done through the spirit of teamwork and cooperation, which are the hallmarks of our alliance with Japan,” Austin said, according to the Associated Press. (CNN has additional coverage here.) After his RoK visit today, Austin heads to New Delhi while Blinken and Sullivan fly to Anchorage.

From Defense One

Lawmakers Slam Army CID Chief One Year after Spc. Gullen’s Death // Elizabeth Howe: A hearing saw bipartisan disappointment in apparent lack of reform.

Putin Authorized Smear Campaign Against Biden, US Intelligence Concludes // Patrick Tucker: Less hacking, more laundering, 2020 tactics show evolution of Russian information warfare efforts.

Better Weapons or More Soldiers? Army Chief Warns Budget Forcing Him to Choose  // Marcus Weisgerber: “We'd like to make it bigger, but what we have to do is prioritize,” said Gen. James McConville.

Can Plant-Based Vaccines Speed Up Production? // Patrick Tucker: Clinical trials for Medicago’s new manufacturing process may glean the go-ahead.

Biden’s Idea for a Saudi Offensive Arms Halt Is Unfeasible  // Bilal Y. Saab: A solid defense needs a potent deterrent, which requires a credible offense.

Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief from Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Send us tips from your community right here. And if you’re not already subscribed to The D Brief, you can do that here. 

The chiefs of the Air Force and Marine Corps think the U.S. has the wrong approach to “military readiness,” according to their joint op-ed published Monday in War on the Rocks.
The current setup places far too much emphasis on keeping large amounts of forces “ready to go tonight,” and this comes at a big cost, argue Gen. Charles Q. Brown and Gen. David Berger. “If we maintain our target fixation on current force availability and fail to adapt and modernize fast enough, wargaming suggests mission failure as the likely outcome.”
What to do? First, make it easier to retire older weapons. “Urgent actions are required now within the entire defense community — our services, industry, the Defense Department, and Congress — to facilitate the necessary changes,” Brown and Berger write. “Those actions must provide the departments and the individual military services the authorities they need to shift funding from accounts related to sustainment of legacy programs and those programs that do not create or sustain an enduring warfighting advantage over our peer competitors, and reallocate that capital to truly transformative modernization.” Read their piece, here.
This readiness debate reminds us of one of our favorite Donald Rumsfeld lines, authored in a memo dated Jan. 6, 2003 (and read by Rumsfeld himself in a 2014 documentary): 

• “I want to make a list of things I’ve done at the Pentagon like getting rid of words… ‘national missile defense’, ‘requirements’, ‘readiness’ — readiness for what?” (Of course, one could easily make the case that Rumsfeld should have spent more time readying for what came after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but that’s all moot now.) 

That UN arms embargo on Libya is “totally ineffective,” according to a new 548-page UN report on illicit arms in Libya, which was released Tuesday. “The report, which covers the period from October 2019 through late January 2021, also details some of the myriad other problems that have destabilized Libya in the years since the Western-backed uprising against dictator Moammar Gaddafi in 2011, from armed attacks on airports and oil facilities to targeted assassinations and abuse of migrants seeking to emigrate to Europe,” the Washington Post’s Missy Ryan reported Tuesday evening.
Russia, Turkey, Qatar, Jordan, Syria, Egypt and the UAE were each called out. The private Russian companies Wagner Group and Rossiskie System Bezopasnosti Group were both named as well, as was Turkish military contractor Sadat.
What to do about it? The UN experts recommend an overflight ban for Libya, naval inspections, and an expansion of the UN’s scope for countering illicit petroleum sales. Read over nine more ideas for how to improve matters on page 47 of the report, hosted by WaPo, here. 

Today on the Hill: “Strategic competition with China” is the focus of one key hearing. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, along with three think tankers and a former Navy submariner, took up that topic this morning at 10 a.m. ET. Catch the livestream here.
“Climate change, national security and the Arctic” is the focus today at a House hearing before the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. That started at 9 a.m. ET, and features the Navy’s former Assistant Secretary for Energy, Installations and Environment Vice Adm. Dennis McGinn. Later, House lawmakers will look at “The Business Case for Climate Solutions” in a hearing before the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee at 11 a.m.
The future of DHS is what the House’s Homeland Security Committee is thinking about this morning, along with featured witness DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Livestream here. And a bit later this morning, “DHS Management Challenges” will be the focus of a hearing before the House’s Appropriations Subcommittee on DHS.
And Dr. Anthony Fauci is discussing nationwide COVID vaccination efforts before a hearing at the House’s Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Livestream that one here.