# The Shadow War  ## Metadata - Author: Jim Sciutto - Full Title: The Shadow War - Category: #books ## Highlights - Putin appeared to have sent two bold messages: to the British and the West, that he saw no territorial limits to Russia’s violent actions abroad; and to Russian dissidents and other critics, that they were not safe anywhere in the world. ([Location 46](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=46)) - British investigators had now determined that the two Russian military intelligence agents who had carried out the operation had brought enough Novichok into Britain to kill thousands. ([Location 48](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=48)) - Moscow seemed to be demonstrating how little it cared and, crucially, how little it feared Britain’s and the West’s response. ([Location 57](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=57)) - a NATO ally no less, he thought he would be safe. And he continued his work exposing what he claimed were the crimes of the Russian leadership. He allied himself with another London-based Russian dissident and Putin critic, Boris Berezovsky. ([Location 73](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=73)) - of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. In the end, he like Skripal was still within reach of the FSB. The 2006 operation was uniquely bold. The hotel where Litvinenko was poisoned—the ([Location 76](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=76)) - contacts, and so on, would grow to hundreds. In the midst of covering the story, I became a potential victim as well. Since in ([Location 86](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=86)) - In 2006, twelve years before Skripal’s poisoning alarmed the world, the Kremlin had already calculated it could get away with murder on Western soil. And it would be proved mostly correct. ([Location 105](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=105)) - However, the events of the last decade showed two consistent and disturbing lines: growing Russian aggression and persistent Western delusions about Russian intentions. The same pattern is discernible regarding China, which was launching its own inaugural battles in another, arguably more existentially dangerous Shadow War on the United States. ([Location 113](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=113)) - In cyberspace, from 2014 to 2015, Russia carried out a lengthy and expansive attack on the email system of the US Department of State—an operation that officials in the National Security Agency would later identify as a precursor to cyberattacks targeting the 2016 US presidential election. ([Location 119](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=119)) - US officials, led by President Barack Obama, accepted China’s assurances it would not militarize its man-made islands in the South China Sea—assurances Beijing reneged on almost immediately. Obama would later accept Chinese assurances that Beijing would dial back its cyber theft of US corporate secrets, malicious activity that remains rampant and aggressive today. Even after finally acknowledging these acts of aggression, many US officials and policy experts continued to portray them as short-term or easily reversible. ([Location 131](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=131)) - The image of then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton presenting her Russia counterpart Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a mock-up red “reset button” in Geneva will long survive as a symbol of the West’s chronic misreading of Moscow. Russian hackers had free rein inside the State Department’s email network for months before they were detected. Later, not a single US intelligence agency predicted Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The Obama administration’s dismissive view of the Kremlin would continue almost to the end of his administration. At the G7 summit in 2014, President Obama relegated Russia to “regional power” status, saying that its territorial ambitions “belonged in the nineteenth century.” His 2014 comments echoed his disdain for Mitt Romney’s foreign policy priorities in their October 2012 presidential debate: “When you were asked what was the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al-Qaeda. You said Russia, and the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for twenty years.” ([Location 137](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=137)) - The Obama administration’s dismissive view of the Kremlin would continue almost to the end of his administration. At the G7 summit in 2014, President Obama relegated Russia to “regional power” status, saying that its territorial ambitions “belonged in the nineteenth century.” His 2014 comments echoed his disdain for Mitt Romney’s foreign policy priorities in their October 2012 presidential debate: “When you were asked what was the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al-Qaeda. You said Russia, and the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for twenty years.” ([Location 140](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=140)) - States risked moving from misguided inaction to willful negligence. At the core of these repeated errors by administrations of both parties was a fundamental misreading of Russian and Chinese goals and intentions, colored by the hope—ultimately a false one—that Russia and China want what the United States wants. “I met Vladimir Putin back in the ([Location 149](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=149)) - Vladimir Putin . . . set himself the objective of thwarting the West per se. And that was an almost insuperable barrier to dealing with him in a constructive way.” ([Location 154](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=154)) - “China, whom I think in the 1990s we thought at least might take a path towards greater involvement in participating and reinforcing the security system that the United States largely created and that they benefited from,” said Carter, “instead would take a turn towards the assertion by ([Location 156](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=156)) - enemies of the West realize that while they are unlikely to win a shooting war, they have another path to victory. The United States and the West have had a tendency to misread what their enemies are doing, to see their actions through old lenses. They often get Russian and Chinese motives wrong, their goals wrong, and the long-term consequences wrong. Moreover, what the United States and the West see as their greatest strengths—open societies, military innovation, dominance of technology on earth and in space, long-standing ([Location 171](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=171)) - The United States and the West have had a tendency to misread what their enemies are doing, to see their actions through old lenses. ([Location 172](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=172)) - It’s as if China and Russia have started a new Cold War and America didn’t notice. The tactics are new and changing, but the goals have not changed. ([Location 176](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=176)) - more powerful on the world stage by weakening and destabilizing the West, its allies, and the systems they depend on. These two adversaries are also showing other countries the way, with Iran and North Korea starting down the same road. And it’s more than America in the crosshairs: they see every nation that is not helping them as a potential target. Eventually the United States will come to think of this Shadow War as America’s primary foreign ([Location 177](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=177)) - American citizens currently know nothing about it. The sooner it becomes the focus of political debates and international meetings, the brighter—and safer—America’s future will be. * * * The Shadow War is not the result of a secret plan, hidden deep in the recesses of Russian and Chinese intelligence services. Both the tactics and the thinking behind it have been hiding in plain sight. In February 2013, General Valery Gerasimov, chief of staff for the Russian Federation’s military, laid out his country’s strategy in detail in an essay published for the world to see in the weekly newsletter Military-Industrial Kurier. “In the twenty-first century, we have ([Location 181](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=181)) - Gerasimov wrote in an article innocuously entitled “The Value of Science Is in the Foresight.” “Wars are no longer declared and, having begun, proceed according to an unfamiliar template.”3 ([Location 188](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=188)) - forming the basis of what Western intelligence officials now regularly refer to as the “Gerasimov Doctrine,” encompassing both military and nonmilitary methods. ([Location 191](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=191)) - “The very ‘rules of war’ have changed,” he wrote. “The role of non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power . . . of weapons in their effectiveness.” ([Location 193](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=193)) - crisis regulation—is resorted to only at a certain stage, primarily for the achievement of final success in the conflict,” Gerasimov wrote. These were the “little green men” who would ([Location 198](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=198)) - Bob Anderson led the FBI’s counterintelligence division until 2015 and identified and captured dozens of Chinese spies operating inside the United States. ([Location 209](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=209)) - Russia’s role and to amplify those US politicians who echo those doubts, including President Donald Trump himself. “Putin is one ([Location 219](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=219)) - president,” said General Hayden. China conducts its own information operations, including through the growing international presence of its state-run media. ([Location 225](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=225)) - of US military commanders and intelligence officials. Starting in 2015, NATO developed a new war plan for defending Europe from Russian aggression—a plan that for the first time identifies and even incorporates hybrid warfare tactics. ([Location 238](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=238)) - defend against this new kind of warfare without leadership at the very highest levels and, most important, from the president. “I simply do not understand why our ([Location 242](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=242)) - even China, all of which I think are legitimate issues, and silent on Russia,” said Carter. “I can’t explain that.” The advent of the Shadow War should have surprised no one. In military terms, hybrid warfare is a natural product of a world with a single ([Location 244](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=244)) - For China, Russia, and other US and Western adversaries, hybrid warfare is the only way to take on a country such as the United States with otherwise unchallenged military might. In other words, the so-called gray zone is the only field of conflict on which these adversaries believe they stand a chance of winning. ([Location 247](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=247)) - “In very short order, we saw the humiliation, the resentment, the feeling that things are happening without Russia’s interests being taken into account, the super-awareness of the power difference between the US and Russia. ([Location 252](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=252)) - Hybrid warfare] enabled much weaker countries to effectively take on much stronger countries. There’s a natural asymmetry.” ([Location 254](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=254)) - the Kremlin knows it will never truly compete with the United States for global leadership. It sees the competition more as a zero-sum game: America’s loss is Russia’s win, and vice versa. ([Location 259](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=259)) - international level—self-confidence,” Scarlett continued. “We see a degree of assertion and assertiveness coming in, beginning regionally and becoming more ([Location 263](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=263)) - Both Moscow and Beijing suffer from a crisis of legitimacy at home. Their leaders are not elected by their people and therefore have little claim to power other than the fact that they hold it. In the modern age, no amount of censorship and propaganda can keep Russian and Chinese citizens from observing that Americans do choose their own leaders. Therefore, their best defense against their own populations is to portray the US political system as broken and corrupt—at least, no less so than the Chinese and Russian political systems. ([Location 270](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=270)) - both China and Russia are seeking to right the wrongs of history and restore what they perceive as their countries’ rightful positions as world powers. For Russia, the sin is recent: the collapse of the Soviet Union, followed by what Russians see as its subjugation by Europe and the United States. For China, the sin goes back generations, beginning with China’s humbling in a series of nineteenth-century wars that over time, in their view, led its territory and economy to be similarly subjugated by the West. ([Location 275](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=275)) - city of fewer than half a million people. Estonia has a long history, but it is still a young nation, having regained its independence from the collapsing Soviet Union only a generation ago, in 1991. Its separation from Russia, along with its Baltic partners Latvia and Lithuania, angered Moscow, stirring bitter memories ([Location 310](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=310)) - Nazi forces in Estonia during World War II. The memorial had become a gathering point for Russian and Estonian nationalists in sometimes violent demonstrations in the preceding weeks and months. For Russians it represented ([Location 316](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=316)) - into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR. After moving the statue from Tallinn, the government planned to place ([Location 319](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=319)) - and news websites that Estonia planned to destroy the memorial altogether.1 Estonia’s foreign minister Sven Mikser, then a young member of parliament, recalled a growing sense of fear among ([Location 324](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=324)) - comments so quickly. “That was the first thing, when we understood that something is wrong,” he said. Both the pace and scale of the attack would quickly accelerate. Within an hour, the number of comments flooding his newspaper’s website jumped again, by a factor of ten, to 100,000 in ten minutes. The assault on the Postimees website was being repeated across the private and public sectors. Jaak Aaviksoo, just two weeks into his job as minister of defense, immediately took note. Like everyone in Estonia, he was educated in the power of ([Location 338](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=338)) - banks were down, government websites were down,” said Aaviksoo. Seated in an office from which he had yet to remove the furniture or artwork of his predecessor, Aaviksoo suspected a coordinated attack from abroad. “That was clear that it’s not bad weather,” he said. “It’s bad people out there.” Estonians, perhaps the most connected population in the world, suddenly found themselves cut off—with no access to news or government websites and thus no information about what was going on. Electronic banking, which at the ([Location 344](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=344)) - Estonia had become the first victim of a state-sponsored cyberattack on another nation. The attack took the form of a “distributed denial of service,” or DDoS, attack. ([Location 352](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=352)) - The attack on Estonia in 2007 was the opening salvo in the Shadow War. ([Location 369](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=369)) - “A large proportion of population was afraid, destabilized. No human casualties, no material loss, but the clear understanding was that we are under attack. ([Location 385](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=385)) - This was an attack on the psychology of a nation and its people: confuse, divide, antagonize, frighten, and sow doubts about their leaders. ([Location 388](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=388)) - that the Estonian government planned to destroy the Soviet war memorial. He and his team were writing the code for these new filter programs in real time, while their ([Location 437](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=437)) - Soviet client states, such as Georgia, and—later—on Western nations, ([Location 459](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=459)) - Estonia has made since 2007 to defend itself. Estonia has become a sort of “cyber Beirut”—perpetually surrounded by the Shadow War and under threat ([Location 477](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=477)) - defenses have rendered them largely ineffective. DDoS attacks, President Kaljulaid told me confidently, have become “like rain.” “Nobody ([Location 480](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=480)) - A data embassy is a heavily protected collection of servers located outside of Estonia, containing a giant digital copy of all Estonian government data, from government communications to voter data to financial and health records. The idea is to back up the entire Estonian government outside the country, so that Estonia can access the data in the event of a disabling cyberattack at home. ([Location 513](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=513)) - “It enjoys all the rights according to the bilateral agreement between Estonia and the other country of an embassy,” President Kaljulaid explained. “So it’s, as all other embassies, technically our territory; only we can enter it and give permission to enter it.” ([Location 518](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=518)) - Members of the Cyber Unit are the “techie” Minutemen of the cyber battlefield, operating as a reserve unit of private sector volunteers to be called up to defend the nation when under cyberattack. Estonia’s NATO allies are studying the Cyber Unit as a model for their own countries. ([Location 537](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=537)) - Su and his team took careful steps to conceal the origin of their cyber intrusion. To do so, the hackers’ outbound connection from the target company would be routed through a series of servers in a number of different countries around the world. These “hop points,” as they are known, would obscure who was doing the hacking and where they were operating from—if and when the hackers were discovered. ([Location 622](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=622)) - by hand. “The intelligence is always picked up and transferred to China in person,” they wrote in a 2013 email.6 As it turns out, Su and his partners would have unfettered access inside Boeing’s network for three years before the intrusion was first discovered. During that time, they would claim to have stolen some 630,000 digital files—totaling a gargantuan 65 gigabytes of data—on the C-17 alone. They stole tens of thousands more files on the F-22 and F-35.7 ([Location 631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=631)) - As it turns out, Su and his partners would have unfettered access inside Boeing’s network for three years before the intrusion was first discovered. During that time, they would claim to have stolen some 630,000 digital files—totaling a gargantuan 65 gigabytes of data—on the C-17 alone. They stole tens of thousands more files on the F-22 and F-35.7 ([Location 633](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=633)) - charged with cyber espionage. The Office of the US Trade Representative estimates that the United States loses up to $600 billion per year in intellectual property. Since it deems China “the world’s principal IP infringer,” the USTR believes China may be responsible ([Location 638](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=638)) - The theft of US secrets is one of the most insidious fronts of the Shadow War: constant, deeply damaging to national security, and happening in plain sight. During my time as chief of staff at the US embassy in Beijing, US firms—though aware of the theft—often refused to ask for government help, or even to identify cyber breaches, for fear of alienating their Chinese partners or losing access to the Chinese market altogether. In fact, China’s strategy relies on—and cultivates—that fear. ([Location 641](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=641)) - One senior US law enforcement official described China’s espionage apparatus to me as akin to a “tapeworm,” feeding off tens of thousands of US institutions and individuals, to siphon away America’s most treasured asset: its ingenuity. Beijing’s goal is nothing short of surpassing the United States as the world’s most powerful and most technologically advanced superpower. ([Location 645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=645)) - “The Chinese are more vicious than the Russians,” Anderson told me, pausing to make sure I was listening. “They will kill people at the drop of a hat. They will kill families at the drop of a hat. They will do it much more quietly inside of China or in one of their territories, but they absolutely—if they have to—will be a very vicious service.” ([Location 655](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=655)) - the country. “We were buying coke, crack, meth, heroin,” Anderson recalls. “D.C. was the murder capital of the United States then.” As he rose through the ranks, he served on a SWAT team and hostage rescue team, before being promoted to supervisor of the FBI’s counterintelligence team in ([Location 662](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=662)) - The exact number of spies like Stephen Su is hard to pinpoint but Anderson estimates that, at any one time, there are dozens of teams like his operating in the United States. And behind them in China, Anderson says, are far more hackers at work, some employed full-time by Chinese security services, others working on a part-time basis. Call it a cyber “national service” program for young, well-educated Chinese. ([Location 688](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=688)) - “You’d go to jail here, but the Chinese have tens of thousands of young kids—like our MIT’s or Stanford’s best—hacking against the US,” says Anderson. “They pay them to do that. That is quite routine for them. ([Location 691](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=691)) - were frequently asking for updates on their compensation. On March 30, 2010, one of the China-based hackers emailed Su to ask if he “had any good news,” presumably regarding payment. Six days later, on April 5, he emailed Su again with the subject line, simply, “. . . .” To jump-start the payment process, he offered to share a sample of the stolen C-17 material with their buyers to pique their interest. ([Location 766](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=766)) - “The MSS [Ministry of State Security, China’s foreign and domestic intelligence service] [and] the [Chinese Communist] Party in China look at every individual in the mainland as a collector. And their family, extended family as a collector,” said Anderson. “Their strength is their people.” ([Location 776](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=776)) - intelligence service], FSB [Russia’s domestic intelligence service] from Russia. That’s different than the NIS [South Korea’s intelligence service]. That’s different from the SIS [the United Kingdom’s foreign intelligence service, known as MI6],” he continued. “That’s the strength, I think, that China has when it comes to this.” * * * Su Bin’s run as one of the most damaging Chinese spies of his generation ([Location 780](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=780)) - with two persons in China from October 2008 to March 2014 to gain unauthorized access to protected computer networks in the United States, including computers belonging to the Boeing Company in Orange County, California, to obtain sensitive military information and to export that information illegally from the United States to China.”17 Su also admitted to seeking financial profit from the theft. In July 2016, he was sentenced to forty-six months in prison and ordered to pay a ten-thousand-dollar fine. In announcing his plea, then–assistant attorney ([Location 790](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=790)) - plea sends a strong message that stealing from the United States and our companies has a significant cost; we can and will find these criminals and bring them to justice. The National Security Division remains sharply focused on disrupting cyber threats to the national security, and we will continue to be relentless in our pursuit of those who seek to undermine our security.” “Cyber ([Location 795](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=795)) - One, we deny everything, and two, we don’t care. We don’t even honor what an economic espionage statute is. We don’t even agree that it exists.’” Su Bin’s indictment in 2014 was a victory for the FBI and an example of good cyber police work. Despite Su and his team’s prodigious efforts to cover their electronic tracks, FBI analysts successfully followed their ([Location 806](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=806)) - China’s cyber capabilities have advanced to the point that Beijing no longer needs an operator on the ground in the United States. More and more, both the targeting and the hacking can be done from afar, within the safe confines of China. ([Location 826](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=826)) - you every single time, because they’re very good at what they do. “We are looked at as the most significant adversary they’ve got and they’re gonna lie, cheat, and steal . . . to figure out how they’re gonna get ahead of us,” Anderson told me. “I don’t think people look at it that way.” LESSONS Su Bin’s enormously successful conspiracy to steal secrets detailing some of the US military’s most advanced aircraft contains two sobering lessons for the United States. First, China has been aggressively stealing US government and private sector secrets and intellectual property for decades. For China, this state-sponsored theft is not a crime, but a policy. Its cost to the United States is estimated ([Location 846](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=846)) - Su Bin’s enormously successful conspiracy to steal secrets detailing some of the US military’s most advanced aircraft contains two sobering lessons for the United States. First, China has been aggressively stealing US government and private sector secrets and intellectual property for decades. For China, this state-sponsored theft is not a crime, but a policy. ([Location 850](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=850)) - For China, the goal of this theft is not just to catch up to the United States, but to surpass it. ([Location 854](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=854)) - Moreover, similar to the West’s approach to Russia, US leaders and policy makers mistakenly persisted in the view that China wants what the West wants, that is, accession to a rules-based international order. To compound the error, US government and business leaders boldly proclaimed that China’s entry into international treaties and associations, such as the World Trade Organization, would change its behavior over time. In fact, its entry likely facilitated rather than curtailed China’s theft of America’s greatest asset: its intellectual property. It’s a lesson the West is still learning today. ([Location 859](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=859)) - intoxicated. I could smell his breath,” Hug added. “He’s drunk, I thought.” Hug and his team were trapped in a bizarre standoff, within yards of the deadly crash they had been sent to document but with no freedom to do their work. As the OSCE monitors were held at bay, local emergency workers, Russian soldiers, and even a handful of journalists were moving ([Location 952](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=952)) - day: a group of representatives from across the intelligence community whose expertise was in just this kind of analysis. “We had them here in the building, reviewing activities from a year’s worth of adversary threats,” said Jones. “It just ([Location 1009](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1009)) - By that afternoon, we published a report saying that we assessed that MH17 was shot down by an SA-11, fired from separatist cell territory within Eastern Ukraine,” Jones told me. That evening, US intelligence agencies delivered their assessment to the White House, informing President Obama that Russian-backed separatists had destroyed a commercial aircraft over Europe with a powerful missile supplied by Russia. All 298 passengers ([Location 1038](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1038)) - with it that you have pretty convincing evidence. “It was a mixed-emotions day. It was a day when ([Location 1043](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1043)) - veteran of postings in Honduras, India, and Vienna with international organizations including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). None of his postings were as difficult and sometimes dangerous as ambassador to a country at war with Russia. The day after the MH17 crash, Pyatt recalls a contentious videoconference with Obama administration officials in Washington. “That was one of the darkest days of my time in Ukraine,” said Ambassador Pyatt. “I remember one of my Washington colleagues saying something along the lines of ‘We have to be very careful not to jump to conclusions.’” That answer was too ([Location 1049](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1049)) - It had lost track of the president of Ukraine—lost track of the leader of one of the largest countries in Europe. ([Location 1205](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1205)) - Vladimir Putin does not suffer fools. ([Location 1212](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1212)) - He hoped Sochi would serve as an international symbol of growing Russian wealth and might. Now, he suspected a CIA-orchestrated coup in Ukraine, timed precisely and intentionally to mar his Olympic games. ([Location 1240](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1240)) - “With hindsight, everybody thinks there is a plan. In practice, things are often day-by-day and more move-by-move,” said Scarlett. “My impression is there was a lot of reactive decision making [by Russia] involved in the Crimea and Ukraine crisis.” ([Location 1272](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1272)) - Events on the ground were rapidly outpacing deliberations inside the US government—a constant feature of the Shadow War. ([Location 1277](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1277)) - “That was Putinism. It was the most naked manifestation of his revisionist agenda,” said Pyatt. “And he did it in a Dirty Harry way. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ He was using military force to establish a political fait accompli and then challenging all of us to do something about it.” ([Location 1291](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1291)) - The scene was not one Pyatt or the State Department expected or desired. The Kremlin was already convinced the popular protests in the Maidan were the work of the US government. Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was publicly referring to the protests as a “coup d’état,” laying the blame on Ukrainian “fascists” backed by Americans. ([Location 1300](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1300)) - Inside the Obama administration, discussions focused on providing Moscow with a diplomatic “off-ramp” to defuse the crisis and eventually exit Crimea in a face-saving way. “It goes to the fundamental challenge that we face with Russia today which is that we are dealing with a government that does not believe in win-win,” said Pyatt. ([Location 1308](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1308)) - new Russian strategy of information warfare: the recognition that you can achieve political and diplomatic effects by manipulating information. “The Russian objective was not to win the argument,” Pyatt emphasized. “It was to win a war.” ([Location 1313](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1313)) - As the Ukrainian prime minister contemplated his own murder at the hands of Russian invaders, US and Western officials were still debating how to react. The divisions within Europe were the widest. Great Britain and France advocated for a robust response. Germany, which maintained the closest business and diplomatic ties to Moscow, pushed for patience. Some European diplomats believed only American leadership could unite the West against Russian aggression. ([Location 1337](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1337)) - Where the United States and the West did fail was in the pace and the strength of their response. Western allies were divided, first on Russia’s responsibility, then on its intentions, and then on the best way to deter further aggression. US leaders were slow to recognize the facts on the ground, divided themselves as to how far the Kremlin was willing to go. When the United States and its allies were finally on the same page on Russia’s culpability, they were not on penalty and deterrence. In fact, they are still debating their response today, with the US president leading the push for a more conciliatory approach to Russia. ([Location 1404](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1404)) - At the G7 summit in 2014, President Obama had dismissed Russia as a “regional power,” saying that its territorial ambitions “belonged in the nineteenth century.” “The fact that Russia felt it had to go in militarily and lay bare these violations of international law indicates less influence, not more,” Obama said. His comments in 2014 echoed his dismissal of his Republican opponent Mitt Romney’s foreign policy priorities in an October 2012 presidential debate: “When you were asked what was the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al Qaeda. You said Russia and the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for twenty years.” Romney’s answer now looks prescient. “Russia indicated it is a geopolitical foe,” he said. “I’m not going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Russia or Mr. Putin.” But Russia’s nineteenth-century tactics had, for now, bested the West’s twenty-first-century politics and diplomacy. ([Location 1418](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1418)) - Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of Eastern Ukraine in 2014 presented the United States and the West with more stark lessons. First, it demonstrated that the Kremlin had both the intent and the ability to redraw the borders of Europe by force. And it was willing to do so right on NATO’s doorstep. Russia’s aggression was a qualitative step beyond its invasion of Georgia in 2008 in that Ukraine lies within the boundaries of Europe and right on the border of four US treaty allies: NATO members Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland. ([Location 1465](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1465)) - Second, the United States and the West missed or ignored repeated warnings of Russia’s intentions, including explicit threats to exert military influence over Ukraine by President Putin and other officials in the years and months before “little green men” showed up on the streets of Crimea. ([Location 1470](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1470)) - Today’s new reality in Ukraine raises an even more disturbing question central to the Shadow War: if Russia was able to seize territory inside Europe without a military response from the United States and the West, would it be willing and able to do the same to a NATO ally such as Estonia? It’s a question and a threat that remains unresolved. ([Location 1475](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1475)) - Since 2012, however, China had rapidly transformed them into man-made islands, which the United States feared would become permanent military installations—“unsinkable aircraft carriers”—some six hundred miles from the Chinese coastline and right in the middle of waters claimed by some half a dozen neighboring countries, including the Philippines, an ally the United States is obligated to defend against any and all military aggression. ([Location 1493](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1493)) - China had made repeated promises not to militarize these man-made islands. However, even from 15,000 feet up, those promises appeared empty. And even as construction continued, like the unfinished Death Star in Return of the Jedi, the islands were already carrying out military responsibilities—among them, warning away foreign military ships and aircraft. ([Location 1528](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1528)) - From the air, the South China Sea appears peaceful and quiet—a calm, turquoise blue expanse seemingly more fit for island vacations than war. In fact, these are some of the most heavily trafficked and highly valued waters in the world. Ships carry some 60 percent of the world’s trade through here. The waters cover some of the most fertile fishing grounds in Asia. Underneath the seafloor are rich reserves of oil and gas, still undeveloped. ([Location 1555](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1555)) - China’s territorial claims in the region are the most expansive. Beijing relies on what’s known as the “nine-dash line,” an arbitrary demarcation line on a map drawn by what was then the Republic of China in 1947, to lay claim to virtually all of the South China Sea. ([Location 1563](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1563)) - Whatever its endgame, China’s short-term calculation is transparent: the United States is not willing to go to war over these islands, so China is free to proceed. The US response has been to sail and fly through the area to demonstrate these waters and this airspace remain international and vessels should enjoy freedom of navigation as provided for in international law. These so-called freedom of navigation operations, or FONOPs, continue to contest Beijing’s activity in the region. But the islands haven’t moved, and in fact they are being further fortified militarily. ([Location 1588](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1588)) - Three years later, President Xi’s “promise” looked not only empty but cynical. By 2018 Admiral Philip S. Davidson, soon-to-be commander of US Pacific Command, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that China had deployed sufficient military resources on the man-made islands to significantly challenge US military operations in the region. ([Location 1618](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1618)) - The bases, Admiral Davidson testified, were complete. The only thing they lacked were deployed forces. “Once occupied,” he warned further, “China will be able to extend its influence thousands of miles to the south and project power deep into Oceania. The PLA will be able to use these bases to challenge the U.S. presence in the region, and any forces deployed to the islands would easily overwhelm the military forces of any other South China Sea–claimants.” ([Location 1625](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1625)) - In five years, it had manufactured new territory in the midst of highly disputed waters and equipped them with advanced military capabilities—all hundreds of miles from the mainland. And it had done so with the United States and its neighbors imposing virtually no diplomatic or economic costs on Beijing. ([Location 1632](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1632)) - “In a heartfelt effort to reassure China strategically and enlist its collaboration in noble global causes, US policy makers over the past decade have instead unfortunately emboldened China by looking weak and accommodating aggressive behavior,” Erickson told me. “By failing to impose significant costs for harmful Chinese behavior at sea, the Obama administration inadvertently encouraged Xi Jinping to continue, and even increase, maritime malfeasance.” ([Location 1642](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1642)) - China’s land grab in the South China Sea clearly demonstrates its “winning without fighting” strategy, that is, a perfect example of Beijing’s own approach to waging—and winning—the Shadow War. ([Location 1645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1645)) - “Xi Jinping does not desire an all-out war with the US,” explains Erickson, “but rather prefers to keep ‘winning without fighting’ in peacetime, or what the 2017 US National Security Strategy terms continuous competition—neither fully ‘at peace’ nor ‘at war.’” ([Location 1650](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1650)) - Unlike Russia in Ukraine, for instance, the Chinese military has barely fired a shot to achieve its objectives and acquire new territory in the South China Sea. ([Location 1654](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1654)) - US diplomats and Obama administration officials debated how forcefully to respond. Inside the embassy, one senior diplomat outlined a strategy: let China think the United States was backing down on Scarborough so Beijing would push its territorial claims there too aggressively, thereby further alienating Southeast Asian countries and chasing them further into America’s corner. It seemed a remarkably risky strategy, giving ground at the expense of a US ally and setting a dangerous precedent for other contested islands. ([Location 1685](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1685)) - Note: How fucking stupid. Let’s be weak and abandon our allies so other countries want to be our allies. Peak fucking Obama foreign policy. - This was a consistent pattern inside the State Department and the Obama administration at the time. Negotiation will work. China can be convinced. Let’s not overreact. This approach applied to a whole host of issues and disputes between Washington and Beijing, including China’s cyber activities against the US government and private sector. And yet even as this approach often failed to change Chinese behavior, it persisted. ([Location 1707](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1707)) - Later in June, the Philippines withdrew its last naval vessel from the seas around the Scarborough Shoal. Its withdrawal was the result of an agreement quietly brokered between Beijing and Washington. The Obama administration believed it had a commitment from the Chinese side to withdraw as well. However, while Beijing withdrew its naval vessels, some thirty Chinese fishing trawlers remained inside the lagoon. China’s “little green men” were still occupying territory. A week later, twenty-six Chinese trawlers remained inside the lagoon. US diplomats in Beijing worried that China was reneging on its agreement and making its presence in the shoal permanent. Word of the US agreement with China was spreading. Vietnam’s ambassador to Beijing asked the US embassy if Washington had pressured the Philippines to back down on Scarborough. Meanwhile, China was taking a harder line elsewhere in the South China Sea, protesting Vietnamese patrols near the Spratly Islands and urging Vietnam’s National Assembly to avoid any action on a new maritime law that would formalize Vietnamese claims in the area. China was drawing its own conclusions from the US response as well. Chinese diplomats noted US “moderation” in the Scarborough Shoal, which reassured Chinese leaders that the United States would not risk military confrontation over what the diplomats referred to as “trivial” matters. ([Location 1713](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1713)) - Erickson of the Naval War College singles out China’s success—and the US failure to reverse it—as a defining victory in China’s Shadow War on the United States. “Beijing’s reneging on a US-China-negotiated return to the status quo ex ante in the 2012 Scarborough Shoal Standoff—and instead seizing the feature located within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone—is a success” for Beijing, said Erickson. ([Location 1746](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1746)) - Though the ships were not officially Chinese government vessels, the United States believes they were acting under the direction of Beijing, which frequently uses “fishing vessels” as a shadow navy. ([Location 1762](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1762)) - Oddly, in the case of the Hai Yang Shi You standoff, it was the smaller regional rival that appeared to have successfully thwarted China’s land grab, whereas the United States—despite far greater military capabilities—was outplayed in both the Scarborough Shoal and Spratlys. In the Shadow War, asymmetric power can win. ([Location 1777](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1777)) - China’s broad strategic goals in the South China Sea and farther afield are not—and have never been—secret. Andrew Erickson notes that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has enumerated—and methodically worked through—a series of national security goals since its founding in 1921, nearly one hundred years ago. Today it is on the verge of having achieved all of them. ([Location 1780](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1780)) - China’s security priorities begin with the party itself, with the core belief that the survival of the Chinese Communist Party is essential to national rejuvenation. ([Location 1783](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1783)) - In his final speech at the Eighteenth Chinese Communist Party Congress in 2012, the outgoing Hu called on China to become a “great maritime power” (haiyang qiangguo). The concept would be referred to more frequently in official documents and speeches under the subsequent reign of Xi Jinping. ([Location 1797](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1797)) - Beijing’s ambitions include not only disputed islands in the South China Sea but also islands in the East China Sea, the Senkaku Islands (or Diaoyu in Chinese), which are claimed by Japan, and of course Taiwan, whose independence China still sees as illegitimate. They are both US allies that the United States is obligated to defend. ([Location 1808](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1808)) - These operations and capabilities are not about defending China but about projecting Chinese power abroad—and defending China’s economic, diplomatic, and geopolitical interests around the world. In the simplest terms, China is building and deploying a true “blue-water” navy. ([Location 1821](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1821)) - China is building a global infrastructure to support a blue-water navy, much as the United States did in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. ([Location 1826](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1826)) - China has developed a broad military strategy that scholars describe as “high-low.” The “high” end is the fighting end: While China wants to avoid a shooting war with the United States, it must prepare for one as a deterrent to the United States and other adversaries. The “low” end encompasses hybrid warfare techniques, just below the threshold for war. ([Location 1842](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1842)) - “China attempts to do just enough to further its goals,” Erickson continued, “without triggering countermoves from the US, its regional allies, or other neighboring nations.” ([Location 1856](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1856)) - “To demonstrate ability to prevail in worst-case scenarios, and thereby also project deterrence in peacetime designed to pressure Washington and its allies to accommodate Beijing’s policy preferences without fighting,” Dr. Erickson told me, “China is developing and deploying a ‘high-end’ counterintervention force.” ([Location 1861](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1861)) - “A2/AD,” short for “anti-access, area-denial.” ([Location 1864](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1864)) - kidnapper satellites capable of snatching enemy satellites out of orbit; ([Location 1871](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1871)) - China’s objective is to demonstrate high-end military capabilities to the degree that it can deter the United States from even considering a high-end military conflict. Beijing aims to show Washington that the potential costs of such a conflict, both in human terms and in military hardware, would be too great to even consider. ([Location 1876](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1876)) - “The US now needs to pursue a ‘high-low’ strategy of its own,” Erickson told me. “Deterring Chinese aggression by demonstrating ability to prevail in a traditional armed conflict and resisting Chinese maritime expansion constantly in peacetime.” ([Location 1926](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1926)) - China’s construction of man-made islands in the South China Sea is an expansive and imminently tangible challenge to the rules-based international order established and championed by the United States since the end of World War II. It is an enormous land grab in the midst of territory contested by more than half a dozen nations, several of which are US allies, and one that shatters the international treaty governing the sea. ([Location 1960](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=1960)) - Kosmos 2499 performed several “orbits” of the US satellite before firing its micro-thrusters to move on to its next target. From such distances, it could disable or destroy a US satellite in a number of ways. Russia and China have experimented with lasers and other directed-energy weapons that can “dazzle” satellites with relatively low-powered electromagnetic interference. ([Location 2016](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2016)) - Space is a new and dangerous front in the Shadow War. Russia, China, and other US adversaries are rapidly developing and deploying offensive capabilities in space designed to undercut the United States’ enormous advantage in the space realm, while exploiting the US military’s and US civilian population’s unmatched dependence on space assets and technologies. And like many fronts in the Shadow War, though the threat is growing, the United States is still debating how best to respond. ([Location 2028](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2028)) - China’s broader military strategy of “fighting and winning local wars under informationized conditions.” In layperson’s terms, that means applying information technology in all aspects of military operations, from cyber warfare on the ground to disrupting and destroying an enemy’s information technology in space, including by targeting satellites. ([Location 2082](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2082)) - “There is no doubt that both Russia and China have seen weaponizing space as a way they could asymmetrically shift the odds in their favor.” ([Location 2088](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2088)) - A space war would be confusing for civilians. For the military, it would be paralyzing, blinding service members on land, air, sea, and below the surface of the waves, in the process disabling a whole host of modern and sophisticated American weaponry. ([Location 2125](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2125)) - “The foundation of almost any military operation these days is based on some sort of space capability,” said General Shelton. “Whether it’s communications, or GPS, or intelligence capability that’s provided from space. All that information, and let’s face it, this is an information era that we’re in today.” ([Location 2133](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2133)) - With a successful campaign in space, a much smaller and less powerful rival could quickly level the playing field with the United States. ([Location 2141](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2141)) - The United States clung too long to its assumption that space was safe—that the rules established in the 1960s in the midst of the first space race still hold today. That outdated assumption led to a series of other mistakes, commanders say, including neglecting to defend space assets from threats and refraining from testing and deploying US weapons in space, at a minimum, as a deterrent. ([Location 2166](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2166)) - Space Command estimates some four billion people around the globe take an action dependent on GPS every day. It is a massive, state-of-the-art technology provided to the world by the US military for free. ([Location 2231](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2231)) - If adversaries can target and take out the satellites protecting the United States from nuclear attack, those space weapons themselves are by definition an existential threat. ([Location 2263](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2263)) - The United States is, however, equipping new satellites with new capabilities: thrusters and fuel to move out of the way of potential threats, shutters to block laser weapons, and perhaps soon, those “space depth charges” Secretary Work proposed. ([Location 2486](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2486)) - Today China and Russia can paralyze the United States from space, disabling the most powerful military in the world and bringing America’s civilian population to a standstill. Both Beijing and Moscow have tested and deployed weapons capable of depriving the United States of a whole host of technologies the public and private sector depend on. In this sense, America’s unparalleled advantage in space-based assets and technologies has generated an unparalleled vulnerability—which Russia and China are seeking to exploit to grave effect. ([Location 2573](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2573)) - Russia fired the first warning shot in a bold information war on the US political system in 2014, a full year before its first probing attacks on the Democratic Party in the 2016 presidential election. ([Location 2589](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2589)) - That changed with its attack on the State Department in 2014. Now, when NSA technicians identified and engaged their Russian adversaries, the Russian hackers didn’t leave. They would simply deploy new iterations of the same cyber tools and attack the network again. Russian hackers abandoned subtlety for blunt force. “Beginning in 2014, their principal goal was get the data,” Ledgett said. “‘We don’t care if you know we’re here.’” ([Location 2602](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2602)) - The US response to hacking followed a similar pattern as its response to other Russian attacks: missed warning signs followed by penalties insufficient to deter future attacks. ([Location 2646](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2646)) - In November 2015, one year before Election Day, the same FBI agent called the DNC once again with even more alarming news: a DNC computer was now transmitting information back to Russia. Once again, the DNC computer technician took no action—and the DNC says the FBI made no concerted effort to alert more senior members of the committee’s leadership. Those decisions allowed the Russian hackers to roam freely inside DNC computers for months more, allowing them to vacuum up more information to be released later to enormous effect. ([Location 2683](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2683)) - Just three days before the convention, WikiLeaks made its first batch of emails public. The stolen emails suggested that senior leaders of the Democratic National Committee had been biased in favor of Clinton over Sanders. DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was the focus of Sanders supporters’ ire, who made their anger clear as she took the podium. ([Location 2791](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2791)) - Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign as chairman, making her the first victim of Russia’s broadening influence operation on the election. ([Location 2795](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2795)) - Note: Is she a victim or was it the members of the Democratic Party - The subsequent email releases quickly became lead stories for US media, a phenomenon that would later fuel criticism from Clinton campaign officials and supporters that the media had too easily played foil to a foreign influence operation. ([Location 2796](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2796)) - Note: Reporting on corruption is bad journalism I guess - Inside the White House, a sometimes bitter debate was unfolding, pitting senior advisors, including Secretary of State John Kerry, who were pushing for a more robust US response, against others, led by President Obama, who feared both escalation with Russia abroad and allegations of influencing the election at home. ([Location 2906](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2906)) - At the summit of G20 leaders in Beijing in early September 2016, President Obama had warned President Putin face-to-face not to interfere on Election Day. “I felt that the most effective way to ensure that that didn’t happen was to talk to him directly and tell him to cut it out and there were going to be serious consequences if he didn’t,” the president said on December 16. ([Location 2915](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2915)) - Today, former NSA deputy director Rick Ledgett believes the US response to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election was weak, therefore inviting future Russian cyberattacks on US elections. “We gave them the go-ahead,” Ledgett told me, his frustration impossible to miss. “If you allow bad things to continue to happen, despite the fact that you know it, you’re setting a policy. You’re setting a precedent. You’re defining that as acceptable behavior.” ([Location 2929](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2929)) - “The US is not in a good position to get into a cyber war with other people, because we are more vulnerable than almost anybody else in the world,” said Ledgett. “It’s the old adage about, you don’t start a rock fight if you’re living in a glass house.” ([Location 2938](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2938)) - More recently, President Trump authorized the Pentagon and Cyber Command to respond to foreign cyberattacks with offensive cyber operations of America’s own. However, it is not clear what level of foreign interference would trigger such a response. US cyber experts and policy makers agree that maintaining the integrity of current and future elections requires both a credible offensive deterrent and more effective defensive measures. It is not yet clear that the United States has achieved either. ([Location 2990](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=2990)) - Most alarmingly, Russian submarines are turning up more and more off the US coastline. The apparent message: Russia’s advanced submarines can strike the US homeland with minimal or no warning. ([Location 3221](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=3221)) - NATO ally Norway, which lies close to one of Russia’s most crucial submarine bases, contracted to buy P-8s of its own. NATO is also conducting more exercises to hone skills in antisubmarine warfare. ([Location 3261](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=3261)) - According to data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), in 2000, China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) deployed a total of 163 surface ships and submarines versus 226 in the US Navy. By 2016, China had narrowed that gap to near parity: 183 ships and submarines in the PLAN compared to 188 in the US Navy. By 2030, US military planners project that China will surpass the US Navy, at least in raw numbers, with 260 ships and subs versus 199 for the United States. ([Location 3283](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=3283)) - In March 2018, Russian president Vladimir Putin boasted of a drone submarine capable of carrying a nuclear weapon across oceans to attack enemy cities. In a brash speech weeks before his election to a fourth term, Putin held court before the Russian parliament in front of giant floor-to-ceiling video screens displaying computer animations of the new weapons systems. In one, an unmanned underwater drone, launched from a submarine, carried a nuclear warhead underwater at high speed before emerging to strike a coastal city. ([Location 3303](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=3303)) - The Russian president also revealed what he claimed was a nuclear-powered cruise missile with an unlimited range and the ability to weave around enemy missile defenses, and a new missile capable of hypersonic flight, traveling—he said—“like a meteorite, like a ball of fire” at several times the speed of sound. Menacingly, Putin claimed the new weapons would render both US and NATO defenses “completely useless.” ([Location 3309](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=3309)) - The alliance is meaningless if Europe and the United States are cut off from each other. Their strength depends on keeping both the lines and lanes of communication open between the North American and European continents. ([Location 3340](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=3340)) - blue-water ([Location 3353](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=3353)) - Russia still controls Crimea and large portions of Eastern Ukraine. China still controls its man-made islands in the South China Sea and is expanding its military presence there. Russia and China have successfully deployed and tested antisatellite weapons that threaten US assets in space. China’s theft of US state secrets and private sector intellectual property has not decreased in effectiveness. Both Russia and China have demonstrated the capability to penetrate US political parties and election systems for the purposes of interfering in the US political process, with worrisome implications for future elections. In addition, Russia has established a further military beachhead in Transnistria. And it continues to disrupt elsewhere in Eastern Europe via nonmilitary means, such as its attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016. ([Location 3453](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=3453)) - One consistent lesson of the Shadow War is that the United States and the West put themselves in a losing position by succumbing to a fundamental and persistent misreading of Russia and China. ([Location 3490](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=3490)) - The United States could also impose sanctions on Russian oil exports, as the West did in response to Iran’s nuclear program, or Russian banks, by denying or limiting access to US dollar-denominated financial transactions. The latter would severely punish Russian president Vladimir Putin personally. So far, both the Obama and Trump administrations have avoided such broad economic moves. ([Location 3559](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=3559)) - Crucially, offense and defense are inextricably intertwined. Just as on the football field, a credible offense is not possible without a credible defense. And, in the Shadow War, it is not clear that the United States and the West can truly mount a credible defense due to the inherent openness of Western societies. This is particularly true in the cyber dimension. ([Location 3585](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=3585)) - General Clapper told me. “The problem that I saw is that it’s almost pointless to talk about cyber offense, unless you are very confident in your ability to defend, and then be resilient, if you have a counterretaliation.” ([Location 3589](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=3589)) - actors, or to demonstrate a willingness to do so. In November 2014, a group that identified itself as the “Guardians of Peace” hacked ([Location 3715](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=3715)) - their use. The release of the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review in February 2018 raised a new and alarming possibility: that the United States could, under very limited circumstances, order the use of nuclear weapons in response to a devastating cyberattack. US ([Location 3734](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=3734)) - Ultimately, the Shadow War may be won or lost on the basis of a sense of shared mission—both within the United States and among Western allies. Division is catnip for Russia and China. In fact, such division is both a product and a goal of the Shadow War. Defeating those tactics requires a unified understanding of what the West is fighting for. ([Location 3825](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=3825)) - The “playbook” went something like this. They each blamed any dissent at home on enemies abroad. They each pointed to perceived victimization in the past to rally their people to a common cause today. They each dismissed dissidents and other critics as traitors. They each fed their populations false information. And, together, they justified a whole host of bad to reprehensible behaviors on the raw emotions of fear and hate. ([Location 3844](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=3844)) - I witnessed American companies experience the systematic theft of their secrets and intellectual property by the Chinese government and Chinese state-owned enterprises. The theft was not bad behavior by individual actors, but Chinese policy designed to weaken the United States and benefit China. ([Location 3874](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07CRJ5QRH&location=3874))