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Adam L Silverman

You are here: Home / Archives for Adam L Silverman

Adam L. Silverman is a consulting national security subject matter expert specializing in low intensity warfare (asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare, revolution, insurgency, terrorism), civil affairs, psychological operations, and cultural considerations for strategy and policy.

He routinely provides operational support to a number of US Army, DOD, and other US Government elements. Dr. Silverman holds a doctorate in political science and criminology from the University of Florida, as well as masters' degrees in comparative religion and international security. Full professional bio available here: https://www.balloon-juice.com/adam-silverman-bio/

Adam Silverman has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2015.

The Russian Bounties On US Soldiers Stuff

by Adam L Silverman|  April 15, 20219:52 pm| 42 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Military, Open Threads, Russia, Silverman on Security, War

Stuff is a technical term…

Earlier today, commenter Wyatt Salamanca, asked my take on the news that the US Intelligence community has determined that the Russians may not have put bounties on the heads of US service members deployed in Afghanistan. I’ve now had a chance to read the reporting and I have the same basic reaction as Marc Polymeropoulos. Polymeropolous is a retired Senior Intelligence Service officer who served 26 years in the CIA.

This headline appears to be incorrect. How is US intel walking anything back? The low to medium confidence level is exactly what was previously reported, that’s my recollection from press accounts. Seems like nothing changed. https://t.co/2xSJmWUw3T

— Marc Polymeropoulos (@Mpolymer) April 15, 2021

From The Daily Beast:

“The United States intelligence community assesses with low to moderate confidence that Russian intelligence officers sought to encourage Taliban attacks on U.S. and coalition personnel in Afghanistan in 2019 and perhaps earlier,” a senior administration official said.

According to the officials on Thursday’s call, the reporting about the alleged “bounties” came from “detainee reporting”–raising the specter that someone told their U.S.-aligned Afghan jailers what they thought was necessary to get out of a cage. Specifically, the official cited “information and evidence of connections to criminal agents in Afghanistan and elements of the Russian government” as sources for the intelligence community’s assessment.

Without additional corroboration, such reporting is notoriously unreliable.

The senior Biden official added on Thursday that the “difficult operating environment in Afghanistan” complicated U.S. efforts to confirm what amounts to a rumor.

I remember the reporting last year the same way that Polymeropoulos does. Specifically that we had intelligence, but that there was a significant debate within different parts of the Intelligence Community about how valid it was. What today’s statement tells us is that we have a single source – the detainee – and that the Intelligence Community has been unable to further validate his information. And, of course, because detainees will try to use anything and everything to get out of detention, this could be solid intelligence or it could be useless information. So without further corroboration from other sources, the analysts deemed it to be of low to moderate confidence.

What does low to moderate confidence mean in reality? It means it is actionable – as in we will do something as a result of the information – in regard to force protection/keeping US and coalition personnel safe in Afghanistan. But it is not actionable – as we will not do something as a result of this information – in regard to escalating a response in regard to our relations with Russia. That said, the administration did tell Russia that they are taking this seriously, even if it cannot be validated by other sources and methods, and therefore Russia should take note and act accordingly.

“We have noted our conclusion of the review that we conducted on the bounties issue and we have conveyed through diplomatic, intelligence, and military channels strong, direct messages on this issue, but we are not specifically tying the actions we are taking today to that matter,” a senior administration official told reporters in reference to the bounty claims.

This happens. Despite what people both inside and outside the Intelligence Community would like to believe, while a lot of it is rooted in social and behavioral science and methods, it is as much artisanry as it is science. And sometimes even a solid lead, which this may or may not be, cannot be validated by further investigation.

Sound_Advice_From_Dr_Strangelove

Open thread!

The Russian Bounties On US Soldiers StuffPost + Comments (42)

The Strategic Implications of President Biden’s Decision To Adhere To the Agreement To Withdraw US Forces From Afghanistan

by Adam L Silverman|  April 15, 20211:56 pm| 88 Comments

This post is in: America, Foreign Affairs, Military, Open Threads, Silverman on Security, War

Both BettyC and John did very good posts on President Biden’s decision on Tuesday to adhere to the agreement that the Trump administration negotiated with the Taliban and withdraw US forces from Afghanistan. I wanted to write a little bit about this in terms of the strategic implications and what I think the strategic calculus was.

For full disclosure: I was informally told to begin preparing in 2009 to be deployed to Afghanistan sometime in 2010, that at some point I’d be put back in training and assigned a new team. This did not happen. I was handed off to the Army’s second culture program and assigned to be the Cultural Advisor/Senior Civilian Advisor to the Commandant of the US Army War College, where I was dual hatted internally as the Professor of Culture, Strategy, and Policy, as well as dual hatted within the program as the senior subject matter expert and, ultimately, as the staffer Acting as the Deputy Director. It was an honor and privilege to serve the 48th, 49th, and 50th Commandants, so no complaints there. And from 2009 through 2014 I spent a lot of time providing support – from pre-deployment preparation to reach back analytical support – to elements at and above brigade deployed to Afghanistan. So while I don’t have boots on the ground time in Afghanistan like I do in Iraq – where I’ve also either volunteered to deploy or been asked to and agreed to deploy a number of times since 2014, which didn’t happen for a variety of reasons (cough, sequester, cough) – I have spent a lot of time working on Afghan and Afghan related issues for different Army elements.

I think there are three strategic considerations that went into the Biden national-security team’s analysis of how to proceed in Afghanistan. They are:

  1. What happens if we break the agreement the previous administration locked us into?
  2. What happens if we adhere to the agreement the previous administration locked us into?
  3. Have we done what was necessary, or, perhaps, is it even possible to do what is necessary through our operations in Afghanistan to set the conditions to secure the peace once we withdraw?

These questions/considerations are undergirded and framed within one of the key strategist’s questions: how much risk am I willing to assume? I think from the reporting we can pretty much conclude that Biden and his team ran the traps on the first two questions and concluded that honoring the agreement assumes less risk for the US, our allies and partners, and the region than breaking it. That doesn’t mean there isn’t any risk. I don’t for a moment think that the Taliban are going to be positive actors once we and our NATO allies withdraw, let alone between now and the withdrawal. And I doubt anyone on the Biden nat-sec team is so naive as to think that either.

The third question is the harder one to answer. Because it is, I think, abundantly clear that we have not done what was required, either on the battlefield or at the negotiating table or in advising and assisting or in doing political development and building infrastructure, to set the conditions to secure the peace once we withdraw. I also think it is abundantly clear that no matter who is doing the policy and strategy development, the planning, the analysis, etc regarding Afghanistan that we have in 2021 any real, let alone better idea of how to do or achieve any of this in Afghanistan. And that’s where the strategic rubber meets the operational reality road. The point of waging war is to establish conditions through the use of force to inflict so much pain on one’s opponent or opponents as to make them unable and/or unwilling to continue fighting that it allows one to secure the peace once fighting has concluded. I don’t know of anyone, including the Afghan subject matter experts I used to work with on this stuff, who have any good and/or realistic ideas how to do this vis a vis the Taliban. And if you cannot do this and you are not going to simply stay some place as a third party counterinsurgent and peacemaking force for ever, then you don’t have an achievable strategic objective.

And the largest, overarching, and overwhelming problem with the US’s Afghanistan policy and theater strategy for the better part of the past twenty years, is that it hasn’t been achievable. Getting bin Laden – either capture or kill – was achievable and has been achieved. Dismantling al Qaeda’s ability to use Afghanistan as a base of operation and originating node of influence in a transnational terrorist network was achievable and a lot of it has been achieved. But turning Afghanistan into a functioning state and society, that has an Afghan contextualized and acceptable form of small “l” and small “d” liberal democracy was always somewhere between an exceedingly heavy lift and impossible. A lot of that has to do with Afghanistan and its human and political geography; its socio-cultural, socio-political, socio-religious, and socio-economic reality as it is, not as we wish it was or might be. A lot of it has to do with the fact that it is almost impossible to successfully conduct a third party counterinsurgency to successful conclusion. There are only four or five of these that have ever been successful and what made them successful in terms of the actual military operations is no longer acceptable. The classic example of success is the Malaya campaign, which the US and our allies cannot and will not emulate anywhere.

Right now the good faith push back, as opposed to the “you can’t withdraw as it is disrespectful to everyone killed or wounded in action in Afghanistan”, which is a stupid reason to continue a war, is centered on the effect this will have on groups that the Taliban targets. Specifically women and girls, LGBTQ Afghans, less religious Afghans, Afghans that live in urban areas, non-Pashtun Afghans, and several other groups that the Taliban has historically brutalized, oppressed, and mistreated both when they were running Afghanistan and in the areas of Afghanistan they currently control. This is a compelling moral argument. It is an important argument. However, this argument basically requires American’s political leadership – from President Biden to both Democratic and Republican members of the House and the Senate – to hold a very public discussion with each other and the American people as to what this would entail, why it would be worth it for US security and that of our allies given the risks to both human and economic resources involved, and for the US military to actually produce a feasible, acceptable, and suitable theater strategy with clearly understood and achievable measures of effectiveness to undertake this mission. While I have no doubt the Biden administration officials are capable of doing this, in fact Secretary of State Blinken went to Afghanistan today to speak to the troops there about the decision, I don’t see members of Congress having this debate. Both because it would quickly devolve into jingoism, but also because the most jingoistic of our members of the House and the Senate seem to have the least professional integrity. No one in Congress wants this debate because no one in Congress wants it coming up in their next reelection campaign, no matter how much of the flag they wrap themselves in.

The protection our and our allies presence have provided for these groups in parts of, but not all of Afghanistan has been a by-product of what was our actual national and theater level objectives in Afghanistan. The calls to remain in Afghanistan to provide this protection as the end-state to be achieved would change the mission. It would not be counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism. It would become peace making and peace keeping. They are very, very, very different. Frankly, I’m not really sure the US military is properly educated and trained for this type of mission. We have spent a lot of time and money – I mean A LOT – over the past twenty years trying to get US conventional forces to be able to do tactical and operational missions that are either adjacent to what our various Special Operations elements do or are lite versions of those Special Operations missions. And, frankly, the strategic success in conducting these missions has been mixed even as every year the tactical and operational competency gets better among our conventional forces. But peace making and peace keeping missions are not something the US specializes in. It is such a limited priority that the only US military program devoted to it, the Peace Keeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI), has been partially defunded and was barely rescued from being completely defunded and shut down during the Trump administration.

And it is here that we reach the strategist’s dilemma: a moral quandary. In chapter five of the Tao Te Ching, it’s author – Lao Tzu – states that:

Heaven and Earth are impartial; they treat all of creation as straw dogs.
The Master doesn’t take sides; he treats everyone like a straw dog.

This concept of dispassionately treating everyone as if they are the same is reflected in The Art of War, the classic Taoist treatise on strategy and the ethics of war and conflict. And it is the strategist’s dilemma, especially American strategists given our national ideals. We spend a lot of time in professional military education, especially at the higher, graduate, and professional education levels/equivalents (the Service academies, each Service’s strategists schools, and the Senior Leader Colleges/each Services War College) of trying to get the students, whether cadets and midshipmen or lieutenant colonels and colonels, to think about how America’s ideals influence or should influence our policy and strategy. Or whether they should even do so at all. We try to get them to think through whether it is better to try to formulate a policy and develop a strategy to achieve it that is dispassionate or that tries to incorporate and achieve some of our national ideals. Or whether it is even possible.

FDR faced this dilemma. He knew, because the allies knew, what Hitler was doing with the Final Solution. FDR knew that if he ordered the bombing of the NAZI rail lines, it would slow down the industrial extermination of the Jews of Europe. But he also knew that if he did so, it would tip the allies’ hand to the NAZI leadership. And while Hitler might not understand all the nuance, the military and intelligence leadership would. FDR’s decision was to prosecute the war as the best way of stopping the Final Solution even though it meant more Jews would die in the Holocaust than if he took direct action to stop the NAZI extermination program. It was the hardest of hard decisions and to this day it still generates enough controversy that scholars and analysts are debating it and polemicists use it to claim that FDR was a virulent anti-Semite, which he was not.

This is the strategic dilemma that the Biden national-security team and President Biden are facing. The only really compelling reason to stay in Afghanistan now is to put US and our coalition forces in between the Taliban and the Afghans that the Taliban would tyrannize, abuse, and mistreat. The US military is not really prepared to do this type of operation. The only one of our allies who really specialize in it, and who are the best at it, is New Zealand and they just don’t have the force capacity to do it by themselves. However, there are a number of compelling reasons to bring the Afghan campaign to a conclusion. The most prominent of them is that the Trump administration, when they were the US government, obligated the United States to do so.

There are no good strategic solutions to Afghanistan. We are a third party actor in Afghanistan. Even after twenty years of operations there, of our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines going back multiple times during the course of their careers, and hiring civilian subject matter experts with deep expertise into Afghan politics, culture, history, and religion, we still cannot formulate and/or articulate a way forward that both makes sense within an Afghan context and is achievable. Staying in Afghanistan assumes risk. Leaving assumes risk. The questions, after all the words are typed, is the same: how much risk and what types of risk are we willing to assume. And the answers will only come, as they always do, in time.

Changing what type of and how much risk we are willing to assume does not, however, dishonor the service and the sacrifice of anyone who served in Afghanistan over the past twenty years.

Open thread.

The Strategic Implications of President Biden’s Decision To Adhere To the Agreement To Withdraw US Forces From AfghanistanPost + Comments (88)

And We Have an Active Shooter/Mass Shooter in Knoxville

by Adam L Silverman|  April 12, 20214:33 pm| 43 Comments

This post is in: Gun Issues, Gun nuts, Open Threads, Silverman on Security

Cheryl indicated in comments that there was an active shooting at a school in Knoxville.

Multiple agencies are on the scene of a shooting at Austin-East Magnet High School. Multiple gunshot victims reported, including a KPD officer. The investigation remains active at this time. Please avoid the area. pic.twitter.com/ViQirnQSpx

— Knoxville Police TN (@Knoxville_PD) April 12, 2021

A reunification site has been established at the baseball field behind Austin-East High School near Wilson and S. Hembree. https://t.co/zmQGzwb6cO

— Knoxville Police TN (@Knoxville_PD) April 12, 2021

From The Knoxville News Sentinel:

Multiple people have been shot, including a Knoxville police officer, at Austin-East High School on Monday afternoon, the Knoxville Police Department posted on its Twitter account.

Two sources with knowledge of the situation who are not authorized to speak about it also told Knox News the shooting had occurred. One source said the situation is no longer “active.”

Police and emergency workers flooded the neighborhood around 3 p.m., and have blocked off access to the school and parts of the neighborhood.

The school has been locked down, according to Knox County Schools spokeswoman Carly Harrington.

Knox County Schools has established a reunification site for parents to connect with their children who attend the school. It is at the baseball field behind the school near Wilson Avenue and Hembree Street.

Not a lot of information/reporting on this yet. I’ll update as/if/when information comes in.

Updated at 5:30 PM EDT

One killed in shooting at Austin-East High School, Knoxville police confirm. https://t.co/03cBwMsY6q

— knoxnews (@knoxnews) April 12, 2021

Open thread!

 

And We Have an Active Shooter/Mass Shooter in KnoxvillePost + Comments (43)

A Quick Word On What We Know About the Police Shooting of Daunte Wright

by Adam L Silverman|  April 12, 20212:51 pm| 178 Comments

This post is in: America, Civil Rights, Crazification Factor, Criminal Justice, Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Racial Justice, Silverman on Security

I’ve just finished watching the very, and not surprisingly, combative press conference held by Brooklyn Center, MN leadership regarding the police shooting of Daunte Wright. This included watching the body cam footage that they released and played. That video is below from Fox 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul.

WARNING, THE VIDEO IS GRAPHIC!

Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon described it as an accidental discharge, but that is both an antiquated and not exactly accurate description. The more accurate term, though equally banal term, is negligent discharge. It was negligent because it is clear that, as Chief Gannon described, the officer that shot and killed Daunte Wright was intending to use her taser. This is clear from the audio where she says:

I’ll tase you! I’ll tase you!

Get clear! Get clear!

TASER! TASER! TASER!

BLEEP!!! (ALS: this was either Fuck, Damn, or Shit) I shot him!

I shot him!

You can hear this in the audio in the video above. And you can see she’s holding her service GLOCK and has brought it to bear on Wright, not her Taser! And that she drops her gun/puts it down as soon as she realizes she’s shot him, which, in the video, is between the “BLEEP!!! I shot him! and “I shot him” as Wright drives off as he’s bleeding out from the wound.

The Tasers, as you can briefly see when the one on the officer trying to cuff Wright comes into focus on the video, has a yellow grip. The color is to help law enforcement distinguish it from their service weapons, regardless of make, to prevent shootings like this from happening. You can see the taser on his left hip (weak side) between the 52 and 54 second mark of the video above. It is holstered for a right handed cross draw, so the butt of the grip is facing out from the front of his body. I have no idea where the female officer’s Taser was holstered or how it was set up for draw, but it is usually they holstered on the opposite side of the body from the service firearm to prevent this from happening.

This doesn’t justify the shooting, it just explains it.

There were three officers on site and this quickly escalated from him being cuffed to a couple of seconds of scuffle before she decides to escalate to using “less than lethal” force, which, because of negligence in confusing her GLOCK with her Taser, turned into lethal force.

Daunte Wright was pulled over for expired tags, which is a running problem in Minnesota because of pandemic related delays in processing renewals. Expired tags are a misdemeanor offense. When they ran him in the computer, they got a return that he had a warrant for failing to appear after being sent a summons for a court appearance on a different misdemeanor. Neither of these things would seem to necessitate any form of escalation. Wright is not heard threatening the cops. He’s not moving towards them when he pulls away from being cuffed after the female officer intervenes while one of the two male officers is trying to cuff him. I’m not even sure why she would escalate to the Taser.

I’m going to make a semi-informed guesstimate, however. I would put money on the fact that this officer has attended a continuing education class with Bill Lewinski* and the absolutely bullshit training from his Force Science Institute, which teaches law enforcement to immediately escalate to the highest level of force lest they be killed by any interaction with the citizenry. Lewinsky created his own course of study and “field” within psychology when he did his doctorate and Canadian courts won’t allow him to provide expert testimony anymore because he is a “self proclaimed authority” on law enforcement use of force. Lewinski’s “police psychology” and his expert witness testimony justify every police shooting on the basis that police cannot wait to employ force lest they be harmed or killed. And if she didn’t take one of Lewinski’s continuing education course, then she had one on “killology”, which is equally garbage. Or one of the other similar courses that have turned too many law enforcement officers into “shoot first and don’t answer questions later” responders.

I write this as someone who has taught hundreds of law enforcement officers as a former criminology professor, as well as conducted continuing education for Federal and state law enforcement on how to conduct Engagement to deescalate situations in order to be more effective. And as someone who is a member of the Nassau County, NY Detectives Association**. Until or unless law enforcement training – both the initial entry education and especially the continuing education – is revised to remove the bullshit junk science that justifies immediate escalations of force, this is going to continue.

I expect that the community response is going to escalate, especially because some idiot prevented most of the news media from attending the press conference, so the mayor, the city manager, and Chief Gannon were predominantly taking questions from community activists.

I’ve now seen far too many of these types of press conferences and whoever is in charge of crisis communications for these departments are terrible. Too many of these pressers are combative and/or uninformative. This one was both and did far more harm than good.

The bottom line is that Daunte Wright is dead. For, at best, a pair of misdemeanors. Even if he had been adjudicated guilty of both of those misdemeanors, neither of them carry a sentence of death. Daunte Wright is dead because a cop made four errors in a matter of seconds. The first was to escalate the arrest as Wright was being handcuffed. The second was to decide the escalation warranted applying her Taser. The third was to draw her service GLOCK when, apparently, she intended to draw her Taser. And the fourth was to then pull the trigger on the GLOCK even though a GLOCK’s grip and a Taser’s grip feel very different. Daunte Wright was extrajudicially killed under cover of law because one of the three responding officers to a potential misdemeanor traffic stop.

Two things need to happen now. The first thing, which is general and applies everywhere, is this has to stop. The second is that a thorough, independent investigation needs to take place to figure out why this officers made several operational and tactical errors in short order that resulted in her shooting and killing Wright. And the lessons learned from that independent investigation need to be applied so this doesn’t happen again.

I expect that Brooklyn Center, MN is going to be a powder keg until explanations are forthcoming.

Open thread!

* Lewinski’s work has been raised in regard to Officer Chauvin’s defense in his murder trial.

** During my year teaching criminology in New York, prior to leaving academia and going to work for and with the military, one of my students was the then Deputy Commissioner of the Nassau County Police Department. He took my graduate research design and methods and graduate statistical analysis classes. I provided a small amount of analytical support to him and his department after he’d completed my classes and my membership in the Detectives Association was his way of thanking me. The membership got me a lapel pin, which is the crest of the Detectives Association, a money clip that has the crest of the Detective Association, and a membership card. Interestingly, he encouraged me to leave academia. He said to me one day: “What the hell are you doing wasting your time doing this for? What you can do is needed and can be put to better use elsewhere.” Two months later I’d quit rather than fix student grades and three weeks after that when I was recruited to go to work for the Army I took that job. And that ultimately led me to you lovely people…

A Quick Word On What We Know About the Police Shooting of Daunte WrightPost + Comments (178)

Russian Mobilization, Ukraine, and What the Hell Is Going On?!?!?!

by Adam L Silverman|  April 8, 20219:32 pm| 58 Comments

This post is in: China, Foreign Affairs, Information Warfare, Israel, Military, Open Threads, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Silverman on Security, War

“Probe with bayonets. If You encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw.” 

— Vladimir Lenin

Sorry for the delay, been a busy week, but I wanted to take a few moments and do the promised post on what is going on with Russia and Ukraine.

Reports have been trickling in from a variety of sources that Russia has been repositioning significant military assets near its western border with Ukraine. This has followed an increase over the past ten days or so of Russian Information and Psychological Operations directed at Ukraine, the US, NATO, and the EU.

While the Russian Ministry of Defense did announce military exercises along the border, these satellite images of the known Pogonovo training ground are worth pointing out amid heightened tensions between Russia and and Ukraine. https://t.co/73J1vLnSMs

— Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc) April 8, 2021

Alongside the Iskander, which likely belongs to the 119 Missile Brigade, @JanesINTEL has identified an influx of Central Military District troops to Vorenezh:

‣ 74th and 35th Motorized Brigades
‣ 120th Artillery Brigade
‣ 6th Tank Regimenthttps://t.co/Nm0opK90pg

— Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc) April 8, 2021

The official US position is that this is just repositioning for a military exercise:

A US official tells CNN that the US does not see the amassing of Russian forces as posturing for an offensive action, but that they are conducting training and exercises and intelligence has not indicated military orders for further action.https://t.co/JXNL0VuwP7 pic.twitter.com/uLXebN0YeP

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) April 8, 2021

This includes reports that Russia has mobilized all of its military assets everywhere.

This is actually a full mobilization of the Russian armed forces into combat readiness.

Everything from sleepy Siberian depots and air force bases to nuclear submarines and the tank divisions.#Russia https://t.co/ihO3Gxyh6m

— Petri Mäkelä (@pmakela1) April 6, 2021

And, of course, the Information Warfare and Psychological Operations are in full swing:

In Russian state TV, experts gladly discuss Russian nuclear strike in case of further escalation in Ukraine. “This will make Americans fear and we will be able to do what we want” – is the main message. pic.twitter.com/eEcbUg6U2B

— Sergej Sumlenny (@sumlenny) April 6, 2021

Yes, this is what they love to discuss. One friend of mine used to say “whoever Russia fights, it always imagines it fights the US troops”.

— Sergej Sumlenny (@sumlenny) April 6, 2021

Under Biden, games are over.

Instead of laughing about Trump’s embarrassing subservience to Putin, grim-faced experts on state TV anticipate harsh measures against the Kremlin by the Biden administration.

“We could end up living like we’re in Iran"https://t.co/kN4YZyQWY6

— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) April 6, 2021

What I specifically think is going on with Russia vis a vis Ukraine is something similar to what we saw back in late Winter/early Spring of 2014 before Putin moved on eastern Ukraine and Crimea once the Olympics were over. Basic maskirovka principles of diversion. Russian media has been going 24/7 on and on about how Ukraine has mobilized additional assets and is preparing to take back eastern Ukraine and, perhaps, even Crimea by force. And that the US is going to move military assets into Ukraine, which is just hyperbolic fantasy for domestic Russian consumption.

The reporting also includes an explicit threat presented as real concern that this could become a tactical nuclear war, which ignores the fact that Ukraine doesn’t have nukes. But it is effective in the Information domain of reinforcing actual Russian military doctrine that, if the Russian military is unable to win a conventional fight, then Russia will use its nuclear weapons tactically to reverse conditions in the battle space. Putting out this type of information is itself part of Russia’s Information Operations/PSYOP doctrine for setting the battle space ahead of military operations. The purpose of this is to freeze the US and NATO from taking action because neither are willing to risk a nuclear strike by Russia or escalation to a nuclear exchange. I’m not really sure this information warfare is effective, but it is in line with Russia’s military doctrine of using Information warfare and PSYOP to set the battle space ahead of actual military operation at the same time that they are physically preparing to set the theater of operations.

At the same time, all of this also provides a convenient way for Putin to change the topic from the fact that Navalny appears to have contracted either COVID or TB from the other inmates on his cell block, that they’re torturing him using sleep deprivation, and that he’s now in the infirmary as a result of a combination of whatever respiratory infection/disease he’s contracted and the effects of his hunger strike.

Russia’s build up and increased Information warfare and Psychological Operations directed at Ukraine, the US, NATO, and the EU is also not happening in a vacuum. The Russians and the PRC are in fact quietly collaborating. We’ve been watching it in real time in Libya where the Russian backed Libyan general is being supported by not only Wagner mercenaries, but also Erik Prince’s Frontier Services Group, which is wholly owned by the PRC. The attempted coup in Jordan?* We already know one of Prince’s Israeli associates was involved. And Prince is the bridging node here between the PRC/Xi and MBS of Saudi and MBZ of the Emirates, who appear to have been behind the coup. So I have no doubt that there is, at least, informal coordination by Putin and Xi, as well as regional players like Muhammed bin Salman,  Muhammed bin Zayed, and Bibi because all of them suddenly are facing a very different strategic reality with the Biden administration than they did with Trump who didn’t actually give a damn about any of this stuff beyond being able to have these authoritarians say nice things about him while they took advantage of him.

One final point: this is basically the equivalent, by Putin and Xi at the geo-strategic level and Muhammed bin Salman and Muhammed bin Zayed and Bibi at the regional strategic level, of the bad guys increasing operations during a Relief in Place/Transfer of Authority (RIP/TOA) just as the outgoing units are almost out of the area of operations (AOR) and the incoming units are just fully taking control as the left seat/right seat ride comes to an end.

And in Putin’s case it conforms to Lenin’s statement: “Probe with bayonets. If You encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw.”

Right now Putin, as well as XI, Bibi, Muhammed bin Salman, Muhammed bin Zayed, and everyone else is probing to see what Biden and his team will do. In Putin’s case it is entirely possible that he is high on his own misinformation and agitprop supply that Biden is some sort of addled, neurologically ill mental case that is being taken advantage of by Ron Klain, Kamala Harris, and Tony Blinken who are really running the US government. Regardless, all of these bad actors, even the ones like Saudi, the UAE, and Israel that are supposedly partners and clients, are probing. If they find steel, they’ll withdraw. If they find mush, they’ll proceed.

That said, I’d like to see us call Putin’s bluff. The US Army has recently stood back up V Corps. It should be temporarily relocated to Kyiv and it should be plussed up with the 1st Armored Division and the rapid response brigade combat team – the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team – should be brought from FT Bliss and Vicenza respectively to keep them company. Operational Detachments Alpha (ODAs) from the 10th Special Forces Group, Civil Affairs Teams Alpha (CAT-As), and theater strategic Psychological Operations Teams should be added as enablers from Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR). Let the conventional elements train with our Ukrainian, NATO, and EU partners. Have the 10th Group bubbas do some Foreign Internal Defense training, the CAT-As do some military support to government work, and the PSYOPers conduct some counter-Psychological Operations with their Ukrainian, NATO, and EU partners.

Open thread!

* It’s been a busy week. I’m nowhere near caught up, but hope to be by tomorrow noon. So I’ll hopefully get to the Jordan post I promised sometime this weekend.

Russian Mobilization, Ukraine, and What the Hell Is Going On?!?!?!Post + Comments (58)

Credit Where It Is Due: Please Allow Me To Introduce Ms. Hannah Simpson Creator of Unleaven the Curve

by Adam L Silverman|  April 4, 202111:17 pm| 70 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

When I did my Passover post, I started with a picture I had seen posted somewhere on the Internet of a woman wearing a piece of matzo as a face mask. I had no idea who she was, but as it was just before the start of Passover 2020 and I thought it was hilarious, I saved it. And then I used it for the top of this year’s post.

I can now happily inform you all, and give credit where it is due, that the creator of the picture and the matzo face mask model in the picture is Ms. Hannah Simpson. Ms. Simpson tried to let me and everyone else know in the comments, but our SPAM filter ate it and it was only discovered a short time ago by WaterGirl who forwarded it to me. Here’s the original image, which, of course has attribution as it was tweeted by Ms. Simpson:

This year in quarantine.
Next year in Jerusalem.#UnleavenTheCurve#Passover2020 #Pesach #virtualseder #covid19 #passover #matzah #facemask pic.twitter.com/uFaza8BCQW

— Hannah Simpson חנה הייה-לב סימפסון (@hannsimp) April 8, 2020

And here’s Ms. Simpson’s explanation via her now unSPAMed comment:

In reply to Sister Golden Bear.
@Sister Golden Bear: Ironic the post talks about this, but the woman in the cover photo of this blog post is herself transgender. It’s me, and this is my photo that I have not yet been properly attributed for. It’s proper title is #UnleavenTheCurve and it belongs to and features Hannah Simpson.
https://instagram.com/p/B-dLXzyHvy1/
In reply to me (Adam)
Hi Adam Silverman,
This is actually me, my selfie. Here is the original link, in fact:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-dLXzyHvy1/?igshid=145ozedtcttt5
I’m a Jewish and transgender comedian who regularly writes and speaks on the intersections of queer identity, our faith, and modern life in general. Since the pandemic, I have also been working in Covid19 ICUs, morgues, vaccine sites, and as a contact tracer because I wanted to step up and serve my community (New York City). You can find lots more of my writing including about Passover by googling my name and Passover. I also run an Etsy shop selling Jewish Pride pins and jewelry at ChangedMe.etsy.com.
The hashtag and title for the photograph is #UnleavenTheCurve.
I hope you will promptly please properly attribute the image to me by editing this post immediately. As your blog is monetized, that’s a separate conversation to be had. I ask that you add my full name and clickable hyperlinks to my Instagram.com/hsimpso and/or Twitter.com/hannsimp accounts to drive followers to me. I also highly recommend that you consider using readily available “reverse image searches” before posting pictures because this information would have come up, and exposure without attribution is plagiarism. Saying you are not sure where something came from, if no due diligence was taken, does not suffice.
Thank you for addressing this promptly.

I will add one final point: Ms. Simpson, no offense was intended, nor attempt to steal or misappropriate your work. Had I had any idea whose it was, and that it was created for a specific purpose/campaign, I would have first tried reaching out and asking if you were okay with us using it and, if you were not, then I would not have done so.

And I’m very sorry that both I and Balloon Juice made your acquaintance in this manner. I’ve had my professional work plagiarized in the past, so I understand exactly what your concerns are and I hope that this post, and adding appropriate attribution to the original one, will make proper amends.

If you still want me to take the pic in the original post down, please let me know and I will do so. I’m going to go, as soon as I hit publish on this one, and put the actual tweet in in place of it and ensure that it is properly attributed with a note indicating what I did and when.

Open thread!

Credit Where It Is Due: Please Allow Me To Introduce Ms. Hannah Simpson Creator of Unleaven the CurvePost + Comments (70)

Passover 2021: We Were Slaves In Egypt

by Adam L Silverman|  March 27, 202110:39 pm| 90 Comments

This post is in: Food, Food & Recipes, Immigration, Open Threads, Recipes, Religion, Silverman on Security

Passover 2021 has arrived. I can tell by the festive masks!

This year in quarantine.
Next year in Jerusalem.#UnleavenTheCurve#Passover2020 #Pesach #virtualseder #covid19 #passover #matzah #facemask pic.twitter.com/uFaza8BCQW

— Hannah Simpson חנה הייה-לב סימפסון (@hannsimp) April 8, 2020

 

(This is Ms. Hannah Simpson*. The Instagram with her original and initial post of the image is at this link.)

For those of you who celebrate Passover, as well as for those that don’t, like a lot of Jewish holidays it can be boiled down to: “(Insert name of oppressive ruler or nation here) tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat!”

The longer version can more accurately be distilled down to two key parts. The first is that the ancient Hebrews were enslaved by the Egyptians when a new dynasty came to power, eventually rose up, and, through a successful slave revolt that featured a lot of the hallmarks of what we today think of as irregular and asymmetric warfare, gained their freedom. The second is that the reality, that our religious forebears were enslaved simply for being who they were – a distinct community – has a relevance for all Jews in every generation in terms of both understanding the world and relating to it. While the Passover ritual, the Seder (Hebrew for order), focuses around why this night – the first night of Passover in Israel and the first two nights everywhere else – is different from all other nights, the lesson is that, in truth, this night isn’t all that special. That some three thousand years or so ago, depending on which dating schema one subscribes too, our forebears were enslaved. That we, their spiritual successors should consider ourselves to be in their place; hence the constant use of “we” throughout the Seder. And, as a result, we need to understand that the world of 2021 isn’t all that different from the Egypt that enslaved the ancient Hebrews as there are far too many who are still enslaved discriminated against, and/or subjugated for simply being a distinct community.

The lesson here is one of empathy leading to action. It is recognizing that the inequalities and inequities that our fellow Americans, regardless of faith or ethnicity or race experience, and that non-Americans face every day is exactly the same as what our forebears experienced in Egypt. The ongoing attempts by those who lost the Great Rebellion, now doing business as the Civil War, on the battlefield to win the post war peace by consolidating minoritarian, white Supremacist rule through reimposing and reinforcing the Jim Crow system first created in the 1870s to keep Black Americans functionally enslaved in a legally permissible manner given that slavery was and still is technically illegal and unconstitutional is one example.

The abuse of those non-Americans fleeing tyranny, oppression, and political, criminal, and/or domestic violence to reach the US is another. As was the case with the Hebrews led by Moses into the desert, no one grabs whatever they can carry, takes their children, and flees from danger through danger for shits and giggles. They do it because they have no choice. Because staying put is not a viable option. And, in the case of those fleeing to the United States, because they know if they can make it to the end of their journey, they’ll eventually reach the border and, if they’re seeking asylum, a US government facility flying the American flag. They know that if they can make it to the end of their journey, if they can survive fleeing from danger through danger, they’ll eventually see the American flag, like a pillar of smoke by day or a pillar of fire by night, and they’ll know that they’ve reached safety. Because they believe to the point of knowing that where that flag flies, there is hope and safety and the chance for something better. A modern promised land even if those of us living in it all too often take it for granted and we fail to live up to the ideals that inspire non-Americans to risk everything to join us here.

The intolerance, discrimination, and abuse of LGBTQ Americans, especially the recent shift of focus to discriminating and abusing Americans who are trans, is a third example. Since the political and judicial battle regarding gay marriage has been lost, the same bigots, or simply political and religious hucksters seeking to enrich and empower themselves through the use of a wedge issue, have decided that transgender Americans make a useful target. Exact same type of bigotry with brand new packaging and marketing to continue a grift that puts people lives at risk.

Passover teaches us, in the words of Faulkner, that the past isn’t dead; in fact it really isn’t past. But where Faulkner’s turn of phrase was meant to illuminate the benighted nature of the south that was the Confederacy, for Passover it has, or it should have, a different meaning. Specifically, that because our forebears were slaves then, which has to be understood as we were slaves then, that we cannot forget what it means to not be free, to fight for one’s freedom, and to make sure that we continue to help others do so until everyone is free.

And now, if you’ll indulge me, I will put on the emergency tiara, the new grill gloves (rated to 1,427F!), and the frilly apron so I can regale you with the culinary part of Passover 2021.

Tiara

I just got a new 22 inch Weber Master-Touch Kettle Grill. And I inaugurated it this afternoon by doing an indirect heat roasted boneless leg of lamb and roasted root vegetable medley of multi-color fingerling potatoes and carrots for my Mom and myself for a small, COVID-19 safe Passover meal. I did the reverse sear method. So I brought the lamb up to an internal temperature of 125, removed it from the indirect heat side of the kettle, wrapped it in silver foil, and let it rest for half an hour while my oven warmed up to 500F. Then I reverse seared it for 15 minutes until it was nice and crackling crisp on the outside, removed it, and sliced it. I had the indirect heat side of the grill at a consistent 278 to 283 degrees and the direct heat side around 375 or so. It took around 2 and a 1/2 hours from lighting the charcoal chimney to doing a 20 minute burn off to prepare the grill, to actually roasting the lamb and the vegetables, to resting the lamb, to reverse searing it, to slicing and serving it.

Here’s a picture of when I opened the kettle to put the potatoes and carrots on:

Passover 2021: We Were Slaves In Egypt

And here’s the finished product ready for serving:

Passover 2021: We Were Slaves In Egypt 1

It came out perfect. You could really taste the difference between doing it over coals versus in the oven. I’m sure I’ll be doing steak or chicken on it over the next couple of days, but the next big project for the kettle grill will be to do a hybrid brisket sometime in the next couple of weeks. Basically, this’ll be for my mom who doesn’t really like smoked foods other than pastrami and lox. So while I’ll set the kettle up for an indirect heat as if I was smoking something, the snake method of setting up the coals, I’m not going to add any wood chunks for smoking, just the all natural chunk wood charcoal. And I’m going to prep the brisket like I would for in the oven: trim the hard fat that won’t render, then apply kosher salt and black pepper in a dry brine/rub for 12 to 24 hours prior to cooking to form a pelicule. Then a light wet rub of mustard with a little tomato paste or ketchup and bed it down in a roasting pan on thinly sliced onions with more on top just before roasting time. This will go on the grill and I’ll use the indirect heat to do it low and slow. So not a Texas style smoked brisket, but sort of a hybrid of how I’d do it in the oven with doing it over hot coals. I’ll do a post to let everyone know how it turns out.

Open thread!

PS: Last night when I removed the lamb from the shrink-wrap so I could dry brine it, I managed to splash lamb’s blood all over my face and head. So I’m pretty hopeful that the Angel of Death will definitely be passing over tonight.

* Update 11:30 PM 4 APR 2021: Ms. Simpson reached out and contacted me, via the comments, which, of course got caught in the SPAM filter for a week and would’ve gone completely unnoticed if WaterGirl hadn’t been in there trying to recover a regular commenter’s comment that had been eaten out of there. She wanted to let me know that she was both the creator and the model for the image in the original post and, of course, to be properly acknowledged as such. I’ve updated this post with her tweet of the image and a link to the original image she posted at her Instagram and done a new post giving her explicit credit and apologizing for not attributing the original pic because I had no idea who it was.

Passover 2021: We Were Slaves In EgyptPost + Comments (90)

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