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the Trump administration has stopped at nothing to push the argument that job creation is justification enough for supporting weapons manufacturers to the hilt. Even before Donald Trump was sworn in as president, he was already insisting that military spending was a great jobs creator. He’s only doubled down on this assertion during his presidency. Recently, overriding congressional objections, he even declared a national “emergency” to force through part of an arms sale to Saudi Arabia that he had once claimed would create more than a million jobs. While this claim has been thoroughly debunked, the most essential part of his argument — that more money flowing to defense contractors will create significant numbers of new jobs — is considered truth personified by many in the defense industry

In 2012, concerned that those caps on defense spending would cut into their bottom lines, the five top contractors went on the political offensive, making future jobs their weapon of choice. After the Budget Control Act passed, the Aerospace Industries Association — the leading trade group of the weapons-makers — warned that more than one million jobs would be at risk if Pentagon spending were cut significantly. To emphasize the point, Lockheed sent layoff notices to 123,000 employees just before the BCA was implemented and only days before the 2012 election. Those layoffs never actually happened, but the fear of lost jobs would prove real indeed and would last.

Pentagon spending was actually higher in 2018 than in 2012

From 2012 to 2018, overall employment at Lockheed actually fell from 120,000 to 105,000, according to the firm’s filings with the SEC and the company itself reported a slightly larger reduction of 16,350 jobs in the U.S. In other words, in the last six years Lockheed dramatically reduced its U.S. workforce, even as it hired more employees abroad and received more taxpayer dollars

where is all that additional taxpayer money actually going, if not job creation? At least part of the answer is contractor profits and soaring CEO salaries. In those six years, Lockheed’s stock price rose from $82 at the beginning of 2012 to $305 at the end of 2018, a nearly four-fold increase. In 2018, the company also reported a 9% ($590 million) rise in its profits, the best in the industry. And in those same years, the salary of its CEO increased by $1.4 million

From 2012 to 2018, the unemployment rate in the U.S. plummeted from roughly 8% to 4%, with more than 13 million new jobs added to the economy. Yet, in those same years, three of the five top defense contractors slashed jobs. In 2018, the Pentagon committed approximately $118 billion in federal money to those firms, including Lockheed — nearly half of all the money it spent on contractors. This was almost $12 billion more than they had received in 2012. Yet, cumulatively, those companies lost jobs and now employ a total of 6,900 fewer employees than they did in 2012, according to their SEC filings.

In addition to the reductions at Lockheed, Boeing slashed 21,400 jobs and Raytheon cut 800 employees from its payroll. Only General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman added jobs — 13,400 and 16,900 employees, respectively — making that total figure look modestly better. However, even those “gains” can’t qualify as job creation in the normal sense, since they resulted almost entirely from the fact that each of those companies bought another Pentagon contractor and added its employees to its own payroll

“the aerospace and defense (A&D) sector scored record revenues and profits in 2018” with an “operating profit of $81 billion, surpassing the previous record set in 2017.” According to the report, Pentagon contractors were at the forefront of these profit gains. For example, Lockheed’s profit improvement was $590 million, followed closely by General Dynamics at $562 million. As employment shrank, CEO salaries at some of these firms only grew. In addition to compensation for Lockheed’s CEO jumping from $4.2 million in 2012 to $5.6 million in 2018, compensation for the CEO of General Dynamics increased from $6.9 million in 2012 to a whopping $20.7 million in 2018.

weapons-making outfits spend more than $100 million on lobbying yearly, donate tens of millions of dollars to the campaigns of members of Congress every election season, and give millions to think tanks annually

research has repeatedly shown that, even with this supposed “multiplier effect,” defense spending produces fewer jobs than just about anything else the government puts our money into. In fact, it’s about 50% less effective at creating jobs than if taxpayers were simply allowed to keep their money and use it as they wished

As Brown University’s Costs of War project has reported, “$1 billion in military spending creates approximately 11,200 jobs, compared with 26,700 in education, 16,800 in clean energy, and 17,200 in health care.”

not only are the green energy and education areas vital to the future of the country, they are also genuine job-creating machines. Yet, the government gives more taxpayer dollars to the defense industry than all these other government functions combined.

Reports from the industry’s own trade association show that it has been shedding jobs. According to an Aerospace Industries Association analysis, it supported approximately 300,000 fewer jobs in 2018 than it had reported supporting just three years earlier

add to their army of lobbyists, their treasure trove of campaign contributions, and those think tanks on the take, the famed revolving door that sends retired government officials into the world of the weapons makers and those working for them to Washington

since 2008, as the Project On Government Oversight’s Mandy Smithberger found, “at least 380 high-ranking Department of Defense officials and military officers shifted into the private sector to become lobbyists, board members, executives, or consultants for defense contractors.” 

the United States needs a dramatic overhaul to adapt to the global threats of the 21st century, which should include moving away from military engagement and toward international cooperation on issues from peacekeeping to greenhouse gas reduction to global health to banking reform. Such an overhaul should also include cutting the defense budget in half by 2035, and perhaps even getting rid of the Pentagon itself.

one big, underappreciated reason for declining interstate war is that it doesn’t pay. Through most of history, global power and wealth have been determined by control of people, land and resources. Wars were fought over bodies and territory in zero-sum conflicts in which the victor took the spoils. Caesar was considered a Roman hero because he brought as many as 1 million slaves back from his Gallic wars alone. And as late as World War II, physical resources were still a key concern—Japan’s need for oil, Germany’s desire for Lebensraum (“living space”).

The World Bank estimates that nearly two thirds of global wealth is intangible—inventions such as the internal combustion engine or the solar panel that allow people to produce more power with less resources than older technologies, institutions including systems of property rights and education—leaving only around a third to be accounted for by built infrastructure, land and natural resources combined. Only in poorer countries are natural resources a large proportion of total wealth

the technological underpinnings of high productivity, such as the engines and solar panels and property rights, are “non-rival”—we don’t have to fight for them. If I occupy land, you cannot. If I use the technology of the internal combustion engine or double-entry bookkeeping, you can use it at the same time. In fact, if we both use the same technologies, we both benefit even more.

land and resources simply aren’t worth the cost of the fight for successful economies. And that helps to explain why the conflict that remains is increasingly concentrated in poorer countries where natural resources are still relatively important, especially in sub-Saharan Africa

The low returns of war may also help to explain the limited military ambitions of China, which has the world’s second-largest defense budget—about 40 percent the size of America’s. While China clearly wants dominance in the South China Sea, the country has only two aircraft carriers—one of which is a secondhand boat left over from the days of the Soviet Union. It conducts bomber flights in international waters, but the two warships are limited to the same area. And it spends a smaller percentage of its gross domestic product on the military than does the United States: 1.9 percent compared with America’s 3.2 percent. China’s recent success has been built on global connections that have left it the world’s largest trading nation. A world war would tear apart those connections

the United States retains a massive global military advantage, responsible for one out of every three dollars spent on defense worldwide and outspending the countries with the next seven biggest military budgets combined. But while that ensures dominance at confrontation on the battlefield, it is not so useful for the kind of conflicts the world still fights, dominated by guerrilla warfare. That is demonstrated by America’s not-winning streak over the past seven decades in civil conflict: Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. The “Global War on Terror” drags on; the two countries suffering the most terror attacks in the world are also the two countries the United States has invaded in the past 20 years.

This low efficacy of the Department of Defense is primarily because the military is limited in its ability to keep the peace in countries where much of the population doesn’t want it there at a cost in lives, finance and time that is acceptable to U.S. voters and lawmakers.

Rising productivity has increased carbon emissions and other pressures on global sustainability. Connectivity leaves people worldwide more exposed to threats from elsewhere including viruses real and virtual alongside financial contagion. These new national security challenges require a collective response: We can’t bomb our way out of climate change or financial crises—we have to cooperate through international organizations, agreements and the shared financial incentives for signing on to them.

The total number of people working in the Department of Defense itself (none of whom are in the field actually defending or deterring war) climbed from 140,000 in 2002 to just shy of 200,000 in 2012. Nearly three-quarters of a million civilian federal employees work for the Defense Department—add in the Department of Veterans Affairs and that’s about half of the total civilian federal workforce

an institution that was recently declared simply unauditable due to complexity, failed systems and missing records—this after a $400 million effort involving over 1,200 auditors

Retired Lieutenant General David Barno and colleagues from the Center for a New American Security have listed seven “deadly sins” of defense spending in a recent report, ranging from redundant overhead through inefficient procurement systems to excess infrastructure to a bloated retirement system that could generate annual savings of $49 billion if rectified. If that sounds too large to be plausible, in 2015, the Department of Defense itself reported administrative waste and excess bureaucracy cost the institution an annual $25 billion.

A budget cut to 1.5 times the military spending of our nearest competitor (China) would free up about $150 billion of the current $649 billion in U.S. spending (as reported by the World Bank). Taking $100 billion of that and adding it to the U.S. overseas development assistance budget would also bring the U.S. aid ratio up to 0.7 percent of gross national Income—the U.N. target.

over 10 years, the United States could move toward 2 percent of GDP going to defense, down from today’s 3.2 percent—that’s the target set for NATO as a whole back in 2006. And perhaps in 15 years, U.S. military spending could reach the current global median: 1.5 percent of GDP

Each American citizen—man, woman and child—currently pays an average of $1,983 a year to the Department of Defense. Over an average lifetime, that adds up to $156,000 per person. It is a simply incredible sum for a country at zero risk of invasion and with a reasonable aversion to violent territorial expansion

There is every indication that China wants to expand what it will call defense capabilities in the South China Sea. I expect eventually we will see warships and aircraft there regularly, if not based there permanently

China does not provide a breakdown for how it allocates its defense budget, leading neighbors and other military powers to complain that Beijing’s lack of transparency has added to regional tensions.

One senior Asia diplomat, speaking before the announcement was made, said the real rise would likely be at least double what China revealed considering efforts to build up the industrial military complex and deepen military-civilian integration.

there was not enough evidence to conclude that there had been any intercepts. “There is little evidence to prove that the Patriot hit more than a few Scud missiles launched by Iraq during the Gulf War,” a summary of the investigations concluded dryly, “and there are some doubts about even these engagements.” This report — which called on the Pentagon to declassify more information about the performance of the Patriot and request an independent evaluation of the program — never saw the light of day. A fierce lobbying campaign by the Army and Raytheon spiked it, save for a summary.

There is enormous pressure on the Saudi government to show that it is taking steps to defend its citizens. By asserting successful intercepts — assertions that are uncritically spread in headlines — the Saudi government is able to present itself as fulfilling its obligations to protect its population. And, like in 1991, the perception that a defense is working helps keep a lid on regional tensions

The danger here is that leaders in Saudi Arabia and the United States will come to believe their own nonsense. Consider this: Despite that the fact that anonymous U.S. officials have confirmed that there was no successful intercept in November 2017, President Donald Trump had a very different impression: “Our system knocked the missile out of the air,” Trump told reporters the following day. “That’s how good we are. Nobody makes what we make, and now we’re selling it all over the world.” This is a theme Trump has returned to again and again. When asked about the threat from North Korea’s nuclear-armed missiles, Trump said, “We have missiles that can knock out a missile in the air 97 percent of the time, and if you send two of them, it’s going to get knocked down.” Trump has repeatedly given every indication that he believes missile defenses will protect the United States.

Missile defense systems do not represent a solution to the challenge posed by growing missile capabilities or an escape from vulnerability in the nuclear age. There is no magic wand that can “knock down” all the missiles aimed at the United States or its allies. The only solution is to persuade countries not to build these weapons in the first place. If we fail, defenses won’t save us.

The election of a Russia-friendly political novice as president in Bulgaria - a member of both the EU and NATO - has given further impetus to French and German efforts to improve common defense operations.

"Rather than dreaming of a European army, the best approach to the Trump presidency is for European countries to step up their own defense spending," Fallon told reporters in the margins of the meeting.The EU's Mogherini, who chaired the gathering, went out of her way to say there were no plans to form a European army and countries would retain control over their militaries.

Some eastern and Baltic EU nations worry stronger European defense coordination could duplicate or undermine NATO, while Ireland, Sweden and Austria are more generally cautious.

Providing jobs is a good way to curry favor with local populations in places where the United States wants to maintain a military presence. Other foreign policy tools may not reach the right people. The well-known risk with foreign aid, for example, is that recipient regimes will divert it for their own purposes instead of investing in public goods. Contracting directly with local firms might help bypass corrupt governments. Subscribe Receive daily email updates: Subscribe to the Defense One daily. Be the first to receive updates. But there is a big problem with this seemingly sound logic: to date, there is no evidence that it works as promised.

By some estimates, ten percent of defense-related logistics contracts ended up in the hands of insurgents

The law limits the government’s ability to dictate the hiring of firms it does business with. This caused problems in Djibouti, where the United States has its only base in Africa, Camp Lemonnier. In 2013, the American company in charge of base support fired local Djiboutian employees in search of cheaper labor, despite a diplomatic understanding between the United States and Djibouti that the base would provide jobs for Djiboutians. Between the fallout and threat of hosting a Russian base, the Djiboutian government managed to hike Washington’s annual base rent from $30 million to $63 million.

Congress could make preferential procurement authorities conditional upon independently conducted studies of this spending’s effectiveness

First, we need to be able to answer questions such as: who is getting the business and how many jobs are created? That will enable systematic study of questions such as: what are the downstream effects on local markets? Do local jobs actually buy local goodwill?

People across the national security spectrum said: You don’t have to like, respect, or agree with Cohen and Patel, but you underestimate their drive and Machiavellian prowess at your own peril.

“Kash had a meteoric rise,” a senior administration official explained. “He gets hired for the Russia collusion [investigation], and that put him at the president’s doorstep. For the past year Kash has swung the biggest dick in D.C. because he could just say, ‘Oh, I’m going to go to the president.’ And we were on emails with him where he’s telling four-star generals, ‘Hey, this is a White House priority. Don’t make me go talk to the president, because I will.’ And the generals always rolled over.”

The CIA gambit took place last year. In fact, when I had spoken with Cohen about the matter, he had told me, “The idea was to put Kash in as the deputy, which doesn’t require Senate approval, and then to fire Gina the next day, leaving Kash in charge…. Robert O’Brien, [Trump’s national security adviser], is the one who deep-sixed it.” When I pressed Patel further about these machinations, which had occurred in December, I saw him turn lawyerly: “That stuff is between me and the boss. That’s the only thing I don’t comment on. Ever. It’s executive privilege.”

On the leg back to D.C., Miller invited me up to his cabin. I asked him about the $1.5 trillion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (a deeply flawed system I had covered at length for Vanity Fair)—a purportedly off-the-record conversation that someone in the Pentagon decided to simply post on the Defense Department’s website. What did this costly, badly flawed aircraft—27 years in the making—say about the Pentagon’s spending priorities? Miller started laughing before letting loose: “I cannot wait to leave this job, believe me. Talk about a wicked problem! I wanted to take that one on. F-35 is the case study…. [T]hat investment, for that capability that we’re never supposed to use…I’m like, ‘We have created a monster.’”

Sitting on his couch at the end of a surreal week, he finally took off the gloves. His target? The Defense Department itself, the largest organization in the world—and one he has served in various ways since he was 18. “This fucking place is rotten. It’s rotten.” Miller’s gravest concern, he said, involved a bedrock principle of American democracy: civilian control of the military. “When the system is weighted towards the Joint Staff and the geographic combatant commanders against civilian control, you know, we’ve got to rethink this.” He expressed a belief that by “idolizing and fetishizing” the top brass, members of Congress had ignored an erosion over time in the chain of command.

the Joint Chiefs were creating their own “security compartments” containing operational planning details “for the express purpose of hiding key information from career civilian and political leaders in the Pentagon”—up to and including the secretary of Defense. Talk about a deep state. “That means that policymakers were basing their decisions on partial information. It’s very dangerous and irresponsible, and that’s something I’ve actually highlighted in my conversations with [Biden’s] transition team.” I’ll admit it sounded loopy. To me it had all the elements of a Trump fever dream: The military and intelligence establishment was somehow scheming against the renegades. That is, until two other senior national security officials—with Miller and company—confirmed Cohen’s assertion.

‘Well, who are these people that have the complete picture?’ I felt like I finally did as acting SECDEF—to a point. I’m sure there’s still some stuff that was being compartmented. But I don’t know that for a fact.”

indicative either of lax security procedures or an especially dangerous environment close to a sensitive U.S. facility — or both

rampant and increasing insecurity, including rapes, assaults, and robberies. They expressed disbelief that American technology could not provide more safety and said the U.S. was doing little to help those living just beyond the base’s borders.

Few in Agadez understand the purpose of the drone base or what Americans do there. They know only what they see, smell, and hear: the towers, walls, and fences; clouds of dust from speeding military vehicles; smoke from the burn pit; and the buzz of drones above their heads. The rest is a mystery.

“The Americans have drones, they have planes, they have sophisticated equipment,” Liman Ahar Fidjaji, the president of an Agadez-based religious center for the prevention of conflict in Niger, told The Intercept. “But it’s not helping.”

A day after the attack, local law enforcement arrested the man who shot the video, Ibrahim said. “I have no idea who told them, but they knew who he was and they said they were arresting him because he posted the footage on social media,”

while the road to “Base Americaine” was well lit, Tadress lacked electricity. “It’s really dark, so you can’t see and can be robbed or even shot. Trucks loaded with migrants to Libya drive very fast through the neighborhood. They can’t see and they hit children,”

wild rumors, including long-running speculation that Americans are surreptitiously mining gold at the base

Following the end of the Cold War, the U.S. military embraced a governmentwide trend toward privatization, including an increasing reliance on contractors. Since 2001, Pentagon spending has totaled more than $14 trillion, one-third to one-half of which went to defense contractors, according to a 2021 report by Hartung and Brown University’s Costs of War project. More contractors than U.S. service members, according to a separate Costs of War report, have died in post-9/11 military operations.

“We can’t know exactly who is getting paid and who is profiting because we don’t know where the money is going. It comes down to subcontracting that is not transparent and having very little oversight,” said Heidi Peltier, a senior researcher at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and the director of programs at the Costs of War project. Government reports, lawsuits, and investigations by inspectors general have found that 30 to 40 percent of contract spending through the Defense Department is generally wasted or lost to fraud, corruption, or other abuses, Peltier noted.

an investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general found that the “Air Force did not construct Air Base 201 infrastructure to meet safety, security, and other technical requirements established in DoD, Air Force, and USAFRICOM directives.”

“If the bandits had an RPG and aimed it at the base, then I’m sure the Americans would have seen it and reacted,” he explained, using the shorthand for a rocket-propelled grenade. “The Americans have sophisticated tools. Drones are flying overhead every day and every night. But there are guys circulating in the streets around here with weapons. Why is that?”

could trigger whispers at home that the North is surrendering to Seoul and Washington, he said.

The seizure of Crimea has allowed Russia to use long-range, land-based anti-air and anti-ship systems

While the Black Sea Fleet assists with the defense of southern maritime approaches to Russia, it also allows Moscow to use the Black Sea as a jumping off point into the eastern and central Mediterranean. From Moscow’s perspective, these activities enable its diplomacy and power projection into areas where Russia previously had limited influence, and they retard what Russia believes are U.S. and NATO efforts to destabilize its partners in places like Syria.

the potential for Russian electronic warfare in the Black Sea has also increased. In June 2016, a massive GPS spoofing event took place in the eastern Black Sea (in October and November 2018, Russia reportedly jammed GPS signals during NATO’s Operation Trident Juncture exercise in the Norwegian Sea)

An equally important military consequence of the seizure of Crimea is that Russian over-the-horizon sensor systems are able to cover nearly all of the Black Sea. When Russian surface-to-air missiles began streaming into Crimea in 2014 and 2015, air defense radars, including long-range early warning, target acquisition, and target engagement radars, began proliferating as well. “There are air defense systems on every cape here,” one Crimean villager told a Reuters reporter in 2016

This “counter-navy,” rather than the Black Sea Fleet naval forces themselves, is the backbone of the maritime challenge in the Black Sea basin. The combination of Crimea-based, active, and passive mobile, long-range, over-the-horizon radars allows for excellent air and surface situational awareness. The anti-air and anti-surface missile batteries are among the most advanced on Earth, and their mobility makes them extremely difficult to target and destroy. Because they are land-based, they can also operate on interior lines of communication and are more readily resupplied than are ships at sea. Further, the presence of several dozen tactical fixed-wing strike and fighter aircraft particularly augments Russia’s anti-surface firepower in the Black Sea. In short, compared to surface warships and submarines, these systems offer excellent detection capabilities, a comparatively similar amount of punch, and a higher degree of survivability for a fraction of the cost. On their own, they are a significant sea denial challenge, but when coupled with the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s recently improved capabilities, they tip the regional military balance firmly in Moscow’s favor

the Black Sea Fleet and Caspian Flotilla have demonstrated Russia’s new proficiency with long-range land-attack cruise missiles, a capability that was once monopolized by the United States and which Russian military strategists place huge value on

One effect of Moscow’s annexation of Crimea was a significant extension of its 200-mile exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea, and Russia now shares a de facto maritime border with NATO in the region. This left Moscow’s maritime neighbors in NATO uneasy

While Moscow has seen some success in its efforts to create daylight between Ankara and NATO, Turkey has apparently not, at least officially, abandoned the goal of containing Russia in the region

Russia’s seizure and re-militarization of Crimea has resulted in a reemerging security dilemma in Moscow vis-à-vis NATO nations in the Black Sea. Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria, despite widespread overt and covert Russian influence campaigns, recognize that they require a modernized force to counter Moscow and are fitfully attempting to pull the balance closer to their favor. Nevertheless, in the short term, given the emplacement of Russia’s impressive “counter-naval” force in Crimea, regional navies will remain heavily dependent on their NATO allies, particularly the United States, for military assistance

By directly acquiring mines, accumulating equity stakes in natural-resource companies, making long-term agreements to buy mines’ current or future production (known as “off-take agreements”), and investing in new projects under development, Chinese firms traded much-needed capital for outright control or influence over large shares of the global production of these resources. Despite China’s slowing growth and a major pullback in its foreign direct investment in other sectors, the government has maintained robust financial support for resource acquisition; mergers and acquisitions in metals and chemicals hit a record high in 2018.

China lacks significant reserves of three resources vital to its tech ambitions: cobalt, platinum-group metals, and lithium. It has successfully employed two strategies to secure control of them. One is driven by China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which use development finance and infrastructure investment to embed themselves in higher-risk countries, establishing close ties with government leaders. The second is investment by state-linked private firms in market-based economies. Both strategies have shown agility and an ability to effectively adapt to local circumstances to achieve the same end.

Chile is home to 57 percent of the world’s known lithium reserves, the world’s largest known concentration, and SQM controls roughly half the country’s production

DRC is home to nearly two-thirds of the world’s cobalt production and half of its known reserves. Those resources are the prime target of investors for the booming battery industry. Over a decade of steady engagement, China has staked out a dominant position by developing strong political ties and investing in production assets and related infrastructure

China’s SOEs and private firms have made at least eight major equity and off-take plays in platinum-group metals in the Bushveld Complex. Such investments in South Africa’s highly concentrated and strategic resource deposits have helped make metals the country’s leading source of export growth, with nearly 50 percent of its metal exports going to China—tying South Africa’s economic welfare directly to Chinese investment.

the three countries where nearly 90 percent of global lithium production and more than three-quarters of the world’s known lithium reserves are located: Chile, Argentina, and Australia. In just six years, China has come to dominate the global market: More than 59 percent of the world’s lithium resources are now under its control or influence

China now owns or has influence over half of the DRC’s cobalt production, and has a massive stake in its mining industry. Six months ahead of the presidential elections, the event also sent a strong message to candidates about China’s deep investment in copper and cobalt mining—which constitutes 80 percent of the DRC’s export revenue and thousands of jobs—and its capacity to influence the future of the DRC’s economy

Though the final agreement included restrictions on Tianqi’s board and committee participation and its access to SQM’s sensitive data, Tianqi’s equity position still confers considerable influence over SQM.

In a cash-strapped industry, Chinese firms are financing mine expansion and new development in exchange for a guaranteed supply of lithium in both mature and emerging markets. In Argentina, where President Mauricio Macri is eliminating mineral export taxes, reducing corporate tax rates, and allowing profit repatriation, China is establishing a dominant position in the nascent sector with “streaming deals,” which provide development capital in exchange for future lithium yields to help projects get off the ground. Chinese firms, led by Ganfeng, have stakes in 41 percent of the country’s major planned projects that account for 37 percent of Argentina’s reserves. This raw-material strategy is already coming to fruition: Lithium export volumes from Argentina to China rose nearly fourfold from 2015 to 2017, and China has secured access to the country's lithium for the longer term.

This same strategy, combined with asset acquisition, has also been successful in Australia, whose proximity to China, significant lithium reserves, and broad political support for mining investment have attracted Chinese investment. Tianqi and Ganfeng have established stakes in 91 percent of the lithium mining projects underway and 75 percent of the country’s reserves, including some of the world’s largest.

Natural resources are abundant in China; it is the No. 1 producer and processor of at least ten critical minerals and metals that are essential to high-tech industries and upon which China’s commercial and strategic competitors depend. To reinforce its strength, Chinese firms are acquiring mines and output from the next-largest producers and reserves, giving China both an economic edge in the next high-tech industrial revolution and increasing geopolitical power.

Perhaps the best-known example both of China’s natural-resource dominance and its willingness to exploit it is rare-earth elements, a group of 17 elements that (despite their name) are commonly found, but rarely in concentrations that can be economically extracted. They are important materials for the defense, aerospace, electronics, and renewable energy industries. Over the past two decades China has produced more than 80 percent of the world’s production of rare-earth elements and processed chemicals. In 2010 it cut off exports to Japan amid rising tensions over the East China Sea, and the following year it imposed export quotas that threw governments and manufacturers into a panic. But with the exception of Japan, the attention to this critical vulnerability was short-lived, and little action was taken by other countries reliant on imports to diversify their resources or develop minerals action plans of their own.

China declared rare-earth elements a strategic resource in 1990 and prohibited foreign investment in the sector. Six state-owned enterprises control the industry, and the government cut production quotas in 2018 by 36 percent. With global demand for rare-earth elements projected at a compound average growth rate of more than 17 percent to 2025, a supply crunch is likely approaching—and China is already securing other nations’ supplies

While Russia strictly limits foreign participation in rare-earth element development, Chinese firms have accumulated off-take agreements and stakes in rare-earth element mines in Australia and Brazil

in 2017, China’s Shenghe Resources and two U.S. private equity firms acquired the sole U.S. and North American rare-earth element producer and processor, Molycorp, and its idled mining operations at Mountain Pass, California.

In 2016, China’s Yellow Dragon Holdings Ltd. co-invested with Bushveld Minerals, the primary vanadium developer in South Africa’s massive Bushveld Complex, to acquire Strategic Minerals, which owned the Vametco vanadium mine and plant. Yellow Dragon subsequently increased its investment in Bushveld Minerals and has become the fifth-largest shareholder. The holdings deepen China’s influence over South Africa’s vanadium resources and its role in the country’s emerging high-tech sector

China’s position is even stronger in graphite, a crystalline form of the element carbon whose high conductivity makes it a major component in electrodes, batteries, and solar panels, as well as industrial products such as steel and composites. For the last 20 years, China has been the leading global supplier of graphite, representing nearly 70 percent of the world’s production in 2018 and 24 percent of its reserves. While synthetic graphite, which is produced from petroleum coke, is an alternative, unfavorable economics constrain its use

New projects are concentrated in Mozambique, where the world’s largest graphite mine and fourth-largest known reserves are located. Already, Chinese firms have secured off-take agreements with the three major developers in Mozambique for the majority of their graphite production, and they are financing new development.

Japan is 90 percent reliant on China for its graphite

This resource consolidation could determine whether China is able to overcome the last major hurdle to achieving its ambitions: a competitive semiconductor industry.

Semiconductors can be pure elements or compounds and altered with impurities to improve their conductivity. Several materials are now being used to improve speed and performance, including rare-earth elements, graphite, indium, gallium, tantalum, and cadmium. China is the dominant producer of five out of the six, controls more than 75 percent of the world’s supply of three, and is consolidating control over them all

Should China succeed technologically, its capacity to scale production and flood markets (as it has already done with solar panels and wind turbines) has serious implications not only for leading semiconductor producers, but also for national security, if Chinese-manufactured chips are embedded in the devices upon which our data-driven lives, our economies, and our defense systems increasingly depend. While government and industry officials have started to restrict semiconductor sales and scrutinize Chinese acquisition of technology firms—e.g., the United States’ temporary ban on selling semiconductors to ZTE, or the recent flare-up over Huawei —such moves are strengthening China’s resolve to develop its domestic industry. More attention should be paid to its efforts to consolidate critical raw materials and the computing power they confer.

In April, U.S. government officials announced plans to meet with lithium industry leaders and automakers with the intention of developing a national electric-vehicle supply chain strategy. It is a start.

Exacerbating this danger is the deliberate and accelerating breakdown of the arms control architecture that for decades provided restraint, transparency, and predictability for each side’s conventional and nuclear forces. In their absence, Russia and the West are assuming and planning for worst-case scenarios. The first crack appeared in 2002, when the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, signed three decades earlier to prevent Washington and Moscow from deploying nationwide defenses against long-range ballistic missiles. Five years later, Russia effectively suspended another landmark agreement, the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, and NATO followed suit. The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty—which banned an entire class of destabilizing nuclear-capable missiles on European territory—has been dealt a likely fatal blow with this year’s decisions by Washington to withdraw from the treaty and by Moscow to suspend implementation of it.

The fate of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is also in doubt, with four Republican U.S. Senators writing to President Donald Trump this past spring asking if he would consider “unsigning” the treaty. The future of the 2010 New START treaty is also unclear

At the same time as checks on existing weapons are falling away, new technologies threaten to further destabilize the military balance. Sophisticated cyberattacks could compromise early warning systems or nuclear command-and-control structures, increasing the risk of false alarms. Prompt-strike forces, including delivery systems that pair conventional or nuclear warheads with a hypersonic boost-glide vehicle or cruise missile, can travel at very high speeds, fly at low altitudes, and maneuver to elude defenses. If deployed, they would decrease a defender’s warning and decision time when under attack, increasing the fear of military planners on both sides that a potential first strike could deliver a decisive advantage to the attacker. Then there is the militarization of outer space, a domain that remains virtually unregulated by agreements or understandings: China, Russia, and, most recently, India have built up their antisatellite capabilities, and Washington is mulling a dedicated space force. 

the absence of dialogue between Russia and the West—in particular, between civilian and military professionals in the defense and foreign ministries. The current disconnect is unprecedented even when compared with the height of the Cold War

The United States and its NATO allies are now stuck in a retaliatory spiral of confrontation with Russia.

transatlantic discord has damaged the perception of NATO as a strong alliance

By virtue of its vast geography, permanent membership in the UN Security Council, rebuilt military, and immense nuclear forces, Russia can disrupt geopolitical currents in areas vital to the interests of the United States, including Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Arctic. Further clashes and crises are not just possible but probable

The fact that Trump and Putin reportedly agreed to a new dialogue on strategic stability and nuclear dangers at a meeting in Helsinki in July 2018 was a step in the right direction. But their inability to follow through—including at the level of civilian and military professionals, who need the green light from their leaders—underlines how dysfunctional relations have become

the United States and Russia could take more specific steps to reduce the likelihood of a new nuclear arms race—of vital importance for international security, particularly in light of the probable demise of the INF treaty. All nations have an interest in seeing the New START treaty fully implemented and extended through 2026, the maximum five-year extension permitted by the treaty.

Today, decision-makers in Washington and Moscow have only a precious few minutes to decide whether a warning of a possible nuclear attack is real and thus whether to retaliate with a nuclear attack of their own. New technologies, especially hypersonic weapons and cyberattacks, threaten to make that decision time even shorter. The fact that Russian troops are deployed, and routinely conduct military exercises, in Russia’s western regions close to NATO’s boundaries, and NATO troops are deployed, and have recently conducted military exercises, close to Russia’s borders further raises fears of a short-warning attack. Such shrinking decision time and heightened anxieties make the risk of a mistake all too real. Leaders in both Washington and Moscow should clearly direct their military leaders to work together on ways to minimize such fears and increase their decision time

leaders in Moscow, London, and Paris could once again become consumed with fears of a short-warning nuclear attack that could decapitate a nation’s leaders and its command and control, which would greatly increase the risk of false warnings.

Exchanging more information about each side’s operations and capabilities could help ensure that prompt-strike systems, such as modern hypersonic missiles, do not further erode strategic stability. This is primarily a U.S.-Russian issue, but with China’s reported development of hypersonic missile capabilities, addressing it will ultimately require broader engagement. It would also help to offer more transparency on nonnuclear prompt-strike systems and commit to segregating these conventional capabilities from nuclear-weapons-related activities or deployments.

Cyberattacks on nuclear facilities, nuclear command-and-control structures, or early warning systems could cause miscalculations or blunders, such as a false warning of a missile attack or a failure to prevent the theft of nuclear materials. As states continue to develop and refine their ability to attack satellites, the United States and Russia could be blinded in the early stages of a conflict.

the understanding, first articulated in 1985 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Affirming this principle was an important building block to ending the Cold War.

some have suggested abandoning U.S.-Russian talks and waiting for new leadership in both countries. That would be a mistake. Dialogue between the two presidents remains essential: only that can create the political space for civilian and military officials in both nations to engage with one another in discussions that could prevent catastrophe

Washington and Moscow are acting as if time is on their side. It is not.

public officials and leaders of government-aligned militias such as Mohammed and Farhad are forbidden by law to hold mineral rights.

Bush administration Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, an architect of the Iraq invasion, and other U.S. defense officials also joined the SOSi board

Task Force officials remained bullish on strategic mining long after the project was closed down; some even saw it as a possible form of Taliban rehabilitation. “The only way to realistically economically reintegrate the Taliban back into Afghanistan’s economy is with mining,” Emily Scott King, the former director of the Task Force’s natural resource group, said in 2019 at a special operations policy forum in Washington, D.C. “It can work within the hierarchy that the Taliban is used to, with commanders running small processing facilities or becoming the brokers for small miners.”

SOSi’s transition to a military contracting powerhouse came through its connections to the office of retired Army General David Petraeus

“There’s no conceivable way extraction or export could be done without the collusion of insurgent groups,”

“The U.S. government cannot directly do business with Afghan companies, so it goes through SOSi, a private entity, to secure deals with all the major Afghan media networks to broadcast Resolute Support and NATO communication material,”

Beyond its powerful American connections, SOSi was well positioned for growth because it wasn’t afraid to get dirty. In his thesis, Hartwig recommended offering the Afghan government “some type of benefit” to win support from “key leaders” for future mineral projects. Through its subsidiary, that is exactly what SOSi did, apparently cutting the president’s brother in on the deal.

A Southern Development document on file in the Ras al-Khaimah Offshore Free Zone, the secretive United Arab Emirates jurisdiction where its full ownership records are held, confirms that on June 17, 2014 — three days after Ashraf Ghani was elected president — SOSi owned 80 percent of the company, with Hashmat Ghani owning the remainder

Hashmat Ghani’s son, Sultan Ghani, listed a short SOSi internship in 2013 on his resume. Sultan Ghani now runs The Ghani Group, the family’s privately owned conglomerate with interests that include mining and military contracting. He apparently keeps in touch with old friends at SOSi. A photo uploaded to LinkedIn during the summer of 2019 shows him meeting with SOSi Vice President Helmick, and the account features praise for his interpersonal skills posted by another SOSi executive

Buying chromite from unlicensed local mines remains illegal in Afghanistan, but Ashraf Ghani’s election opened a rich new vein of opportunity. While the American Task Force and his own son once urged legalization of artisanal mining, the president has instead redistributed bureaucratic power, enabling extralegal activities.

A document leaked to OCCRP reveals that on December 26, 2019, the High Economic Council, in a process overseen by the president, authorized Southern Development to take on a project far larger than the original task force project in Kunar. The company received a mineral processing permit and permission to purchase artisanal chromite in six Afghan provinces: Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Kunar, Ghazni and Maidan Wardak.

In the spring of 2018, more than a year before Afghanistan’s High Economic Council signed over the rights to the chromite, Southern Development’s Kabul office had imported new crushing equipment from South Africa for its Afghan operation. In fact, Global Venture and its consultants, according to Scott King, had since 2013 been “advising private sector investors” with mining interests in Afghanistan about how to “quietly” restart initiatives like the Kunar chromite project. At the same 2019 Special Operations forum, she highlighted a mysterious $10 million investment into what she claimed were “legal” Afghan chromite mines.

Until late 2019, the company falsely claimed to have won chromite exploration rights in Kabul province from Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines and Petroleum. The claim disappeared from the website after reporters asked about it.

Mining takes time to generate profits and it’s unclear if SOSi has started to see a return on its investments yet, but the price of chromite ore hovers around $200 per ton and with a worldwide market for stainless steel, Southern Development could become highly profitable. Meanwhile, its success is already spawning copycats.

Another American military contractor, DGCI, which is under federal investigation for its work in Iraq and Afghanistan, hired another former Task Force staffer in 2019, in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to mine lithium in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province. Since then, DGCI has also tried to cultivate a relationship with the Ghani family, holding public charity events with Sultan Ghani.

“You can trace a line from the bombing of Cambodia to the present,” said Greg Grandin, author of “Kissinger’s Shadow.” “The covert justifications for illegally bombing Cambodia became the framework for the justifications of drone strikes and forever war. It’s a perfect expression of American militarism’s unbroken circle.”

Grandin estimated that, overall, Kissinger — who also helped to prolong the Vietnam War and facilitate genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, and Bangladesh; accelerated civil wars in southern Africa; and supported coups and death squads throughout Latin America — has the blood of at least 3 million people on his hands

In his 2003 book, “Ending the Vietnam War,” Kissinger offered an estimate of 50,000 Cambodian civilian deaths from U.S. attacks during his involvement in the conflict — a number given to him by a Pentagon historian. But documents obtained by The Intercept show that number was conjured almost out of thin air. In reality, the U.S. bombardment of Cambodia ranks among the most intense air campaigns in history. More than 231,000 U.S. bombing sorties were flown over Cambodia from 1965 to 1973. Between 1969 and 1973, while Kissinger was national security adviser, U.S. aircraft dropped 500,000 or more tons of munitions. (During all of World War II, including the atomic bombings, the United States dropped around 160,000 tons of munitions on Japan.)

Ray Sitton, a colonel serving the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would bring a list of targets to the White House for approval. “Strike here in this area,” Kissinger would tell him, and Sitton would backchannel the coordinates into the field, circumventing the military chain of command. Authentic documents associated with the strikes were burned, and phony target coordinates and other forged data were provided to the Pentagon and Congress.

Kissinger was the chief architect of U.S. war policy in Southeast Asia, achieving almost co-president status in such matters. Kissinger and Nixon were also uniquely responsible for attacks that killed, wounded, or displaced hundreds of thousands of Cambodians and laid the groundwork for the Khmer Rouge genocide.

For decades, the U.S. government has shown little interest in examining allegations of civilian harm caused by its military operations around the world. A 2020 study of post-9/11 civilian casualty incidents found that most have gone completely uninvestigated, and in those cases that have come under official scrutiny, U.S. investigators regularly interview American military witnesses but almost totally ignore civilians — victims, survivors, family members, and bystanders — “severely compromising the effectiveness of investigations,” according to researchers from the Center for Civilians in Conflict and the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute. The U.S. military rarely conducted investigations of civilian harm allegations in Cambodia and almost never interviewed Cambodian victims. In all 13 Cambodian villages I visited in 2010, I was the first person to ever interview victims of wartime attacks initiated 9,000 miles away in Washington, D.C.

The Defense Department has been clear that it isn’t interested in looking back. “At this point we don’t have an intent to re-litigate cases,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., when she asked last year whether the Pentagon was planning to revisit past civilian harm allegations from the forever wars. The possibility that the Defense Department will investigate civilian harm in Cambodia 50 years later is nil.

trauma can have intergenerational effects; it can be passed on, whether genetically or otherwise. Even at this late date, the pain of America’s war in Cambodia lives on

survivors believed that more than half of all the villagers living in Doun Rath during the late 1960s and early 1970s were either killed or wounded by American attacks

Both Vuth and her sister, 72-year-old Vuth Thang, broke down as soon as I explained the purpose of my reporting. They were away from their home in the village of Por when a B-52 strike wiped out 17 members of their family. “I lost my mother, father, sisters, brothers, everyone,”

Villagers said that when they first saw American aircraft overhead, they were awestruck. Having never seen anything like the giant machines, people came out to stare at them. Soon, however, residents of Mroan learned to fear them. Cooking rice became dangerous as Americans flying above would see the smoke and launch attacks. Helicopters, survivors said, routinely strafed both the nearby fields and the village itself, then comprised of about 100 homes. “This one was the most vicious,” said Sheang, pointing at a photograph of a Cobra gunship among pictures of other aircraft I provided. When the “coconut shell” helicopter, a U.S. Army OH-6 or “Loach,” marked an area with smoke, villagers recalled, the Cobra would attack, firing rockets that set homes ablaze. “During the American War, almost all houses in the village were burned,” said Sheang.

in May 1971, U.S. helicopter gunships shot up a Cambodian village, wounding a young girl who couldn’t be taken for treatment because a U.S. officer overloaded his helicopter with a looted motorcycle that was later gifted to a superior, according to an Army investigation and exclusive follow-up reporting by The Intercept. The Cambodian girl almost certainly died from her wounds, along with seven other civilians, according to previously unreported documents produced by a Pentagon war crimes task force in 1972.

As Cambodians lay wounded and dying, the ARVN Rangers looted the village, grabbing ducks, chickens, wallets, clothing, cigarettes, tobacco, civilian radios, and other nonmilitary items, according to numerous American witnesses. “They were stealing everything they could get their hands on,” Capt. Thomas Agness, the pilot of the helicopter that carried Brooks and some of the ARVN, told me. Brooks, however, had the biggest score of all. With the help of South Vietnamese troops, he hauled a blue Suzuki motorcycle onto a helicopter, according to Army documents.

While court martial charges were filed against Brooks, his commanding general dismissed them in 1972, instead giving him a letter of reprimand. Records indicate that no other troops were charged, let alone punished, in connection with the massacre, the looting, or the failure to render aid to wounded Cambodian civilians.

In late 1978, Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia to oust the Khmer Rouge from power, driving Pol Pot’s forces to the Thai border. The U.S., however, threw its support behind Pol Pot, encouraging other nations to back his forces, funneling aid to his allies, helping him keep Cambodia’s seat at the United Nations, and opposing efforts to investigate or try Khmer Rouge leaders for genocide.

Kissinger’s mammoth memoir, “White House Years” was published. As journalist William Shawcross pointed out, Kissinger failed to even mention the carnage in Cambodia because “for Kissinger, Cambodia was a sideshow, its people expendable in the great game of large nations.”

Martin O’Malley was mocked for suggesting that a climate-change-intensified drought in the Levant—the worst drought in 900 years—helped incite the Syrian Civil War, thus kickstarting the Islamic State. The evidence tentatively supports him. Since the outbreak of the conflict, some scholars have recognized that this drought pushed once-prosperous farmers into Syria’s cities. Many became unemployed and destitute, aggravating internal divisions in the run-up to the war

Scheffran underlined these climate connections but declined to emphasize them. “The Syrian War has so many complex interrelated issues—and most of them are political and economic—that the drought is just one contributing factor to the instability in the region,”

it’s all about the exogenous shock. We were all interested in, to what extent does a big event like a flooding or a drought undermine society, or trigger a conflict outbreak?

Heatwaves, droughts, and other climate-related exogenous shocks do correlate to conflict outbreak—but only in countries primed for conflict by ethnic division. In the 30-year period, nearly a quarter of all ethnic-fueled armed conflict coincided with a climate-related calamity. By contrast, in the set of all countries, war only correlated to climatic disaster about 9 percent of the time

climate disaster will not cause a war, but it can influence whether one begins

Models predict that northern Africa and the Levant, both already drought-prone, will dry out significantly over the course of the century. On the phone, Schleussner also cited southern Africa and south-central Asia as regions to watch. (It’s no coincidence that some of the largest, longest wars this century have occurred in those places.)

a drought-and-flood-fueled armed conflict near the Mediterranean Basin could send people toward Western Europe in the hundreds of millions

“I wouldn’t say that there would be a mass migration to Europe, but I would expect to see a large number of people being displaced within Africa,”

There is literally, in legal parlance, no such thing as an environmental refugee,” says Edward Carr. “To meet the international standard for refugee, a changing environment is not a forcing. It doesn’t count.”

When would you attribute the decision to move to changes in the climate? Does a place have to be dry for five years? For 10 years? Does someone have to have three children die, and then they decide to move?

Climate change could push Western politics toward demagoguery and authoritarianism in two ways, then. First, it could devastate agricultural yields and raise food prices; destroy coastal real estate and wash away family wealth; transform old commodities into luxury goods. Second, it could create a wave of migration—likely from conflict, but possibly from environmental ruination—that stresses international reception systems and risks fomenting regional resource disputes.

it could erode people’s sense of security, pushing them toward authoritarianism

Like the CEO in the 1950s who predicted that America would see flying cars and three-day workweeks by the year 1999, I’ve assumed that every ongoing trend line can be extrapolated out indefinitely. They can’t. The actual future will be far stranger.

climate change must be mitigated with all deliberate speed. But he also suggests certain cultural mechanisms. Some Americans may favor more restrictive immigration policies, but—in order to withstand against future waves of mass migration (and humanely deal with the victims of climate change)—racist fears must be unhooked from immigration restrictionism. In other words, as a matter of survival against future authoritarians, white supremacy must be rejected and defeated.

Improving the United States’s immune response to authoritarian leadership—a response that could be repeatedly tested in the century to come—can follow from weaving its civic fabric ever tighter. I don’t know what this will look like, exactly, for every person. But here are some places to start: Volunteer. Run for local or state office. Give to charity (whether due to religion or effective altruism). Organize at work. Join a church or a community choir or the local library staff. Make your hometown a better place for refugees to settle. Raise a child well.

climate realists have always split their work between mitigation—that is, trying to keep the climate from getting worse—and adaptation—trying to protect what we already have