On the menu today: On the campaign trail, it’s all coconut-tree memes and Oprah touting “joy!” and official coins and gold sneakers. Meanwhile, U.S. commercial airline pilots are experiencing more GPS jamming when they fly internationally, the North Koreans are conning U.S. companies out of cash through fraudulent remote-work schemes, a new report concludes, “China is outpacing the United States and has largely negated the U.S. military advantage in the Western Pacific through two decades of focused military investment,” and “the U.S. public are largely unaware of the dangers the United States faces or the costs (financial and otherwise) required to adequately prepare.” It’s a Mad Max geopolitical scene, and our leadership is a Care Bear riding into town on a My Little Pony.
Our Unprepared Leaders
In the latest issue of the magazine, our Noah Rothman offers a grim assessment of the foreign-policy views of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump:
Kamala Harris cannot say that she wants America’s most stalwart ally in the Middle East to win its war against Iran-backed terrorists. Donald Trump will not say that he wants a Western-facing country, which is being dismembered by one of America’s oldest enemies, to win its righteous war of self-defense. Both campaigns pay lip service to the need to confront China without leveling with the American people about what it will take to achieve our objectives. These may be serious times, but they have not generated commensurate seriousness in our politics. Pray that it doesn’t take an epochal disaster for America to come to its senses.
This past weekend, Trump announced the “launch of official Trump coins,” “the ONLY OFFICIAL coin designed by me — and proudly minted here in the U.S.A.” No doubt that’s time and energy well-spent, 43 days before Election Day.
Trump also called for capping the interest rate on credit cards at 10 percent — remember a few weeks ago, when Republicans criticized the Harris campaign for supporting government-mandated price controls? — and warned, “The Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss if I’m at 40 percent,” at a “Fighting Antisemitism in America” event. He also dismissed the idea of a second debate, insisting, “It’s too late.” (In 1980, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter debated a week before Election Day.)
Trump also met with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar, at Mar-a-Lago. (There are those who characterize Qatar as only posing as a U.S. ally while secretly supporting Islamist extremism, “an arsonist pretending to be a firefighter.”)
On the other side of the aisle, Vice President Kamala Harris announced she would not attend the annual Al Smith charity dinner in New York on October 17 — an event that almost no political figure ever skips. Harris campaign adviser Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, insisted that one of Harris’s most appealing comments of the campaign so far — “If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot” — was merely “a joke.” (Actually, if you break into the Naval Observatory, there is an excellent chance you will be shot by the U.S. Secret Service.)
As the Washington Post’s Dan Balz gently puts it, “Harris also has now done a limited number of press interviews. They have drawn mixed reviews. In part that’s because those events are seen through partisan lenses, but also because she has sometimes avoided answering direct questions.” Politico gives Democrats the bad news: “Kamala Harris didn’t get much of a post-debate bounce. . . . Harris and Trump are still on a collision course for a very close finish in November.”
Outside of the zany, outlandish circus of the campaign trail, the world is growing more dangerous. Hezbollah’s launching hundreds of rockets into northern Israel, although thankfully almost all of them have been intercepted. A couple of days ago, Biden administration officials conceded that no, a hostage release deal is not imminent, and as many of us have contended from the start, Hamas is proving to not be a serious, good-faith negotiator:
Another problem is that, according to Biden administration officials, Hamas makes demands and then refuses to say “yes” after the U.S. and Israel accept them. The intransigence has severely frustrated negotiators, who increasingly feel the militant group isn’t serious about completing an agreement. Critics have also accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of sabotaging the process, partly in an effort to appease the hard-right flank of his governing coalition.
The lead story on the website of the Wall Street Journal this morning:
American Airlines Capt. Dan Carey knew his cockpit equipment was lying to him when an alert began blaring “pull up!” as his Boeing 777 passed over Pakistan in March — at an altitude of 32,000 feet, far above any terrain.
The warning stemmed from a kind of electronic warfare that hundreds of civilian pilots encounter each day: GPS spoofing. The alert turned out to be false but illustrated how fake signals that militaries use to ward off drones and missiles are also permeating growing numbers of commercial aircraft, including U.S. airlines’ international flights.
“It was concerning, but it wasn’t startling, because we were at cruise altitude,” Carey said. Had an engine failure or other in-flight emergency struck at the same time, though, the situation “could be extremely dangerous.”
Pilots, aviation-industry officials and regulators said spoofed Global Positioning System signals are spreading beyond active conflict zones near Ukraine and the Middle East, confusing cockpit navigation and safety systems and taxing pilots’ attention in commercial jets carrying passengers and cargo.
The attacks started affecting a large number of commercial flights about a year ago, pilots and aviation experts said. The number of flights affected daily has surged from a few dozen in February to more than 1,100 in August, according to analyses from SkAI Data Services and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences.
Way back in April, Andrew Stuttaford and I reported on the increasing rate of Russian jamming of GPS signals over international airspace above the Baltic Sea, and how this increased the odds of an aviation disaster. I pointed out that the Biden administration was unlikely to do anything about it, for fear of being deemed “provocative” or “escalatory” in the fight against Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
All around the world, you see further signs that America’s enemies are on the move, marshaling their forces, and taking steps to tie us down or even steal from us.
Did you know that the North Koreans and Chinese got a Tennessee man to set up a “laptop farm” to get North Koreans and Chinese workers paid for remote work that companies thought was being done by American and British citizens? It was a “a scheme to deceive U.S. companies into hiring foreign remote IT workers who were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in income funneled to the [North Koreans] for its weapons program,” according to Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. Who knows how many remote workers your company is using to help put money in the pocket of Kim Jong-un?
Walter Russell Mead turned some heads in his column in the Journal last week, with the provocative headline, “U.S. Shrugs as World War III Approaches.” But Mead was just laying out the grim, eye-opening assessments of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy. The short version is that it’s as bad as you fear, but here are some key excerpts:
The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war. The United States last fought a global conflict during World War II, which ended nearly 80 years ago. The nation was last prepared for such a fight during the Cold War, which ended 35 years ago. It is not prepared today. . . .
The Commission finds that, in many ways, China is outpacing the United States and has largely negated the U.S. military advantage in the Western Pacific through two decades of focused military investment. Without significant change by the United States, the balance of power will continue to shift in China’s favor. . . .
Russia will devote 29 percent of its federal budget this year on national defense as it continues to reconstitute its military and economy after its failed initial invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russia possesses considerable strategic, space, and cyber capabilities and under Vladimir Putin seeks a return to its global leadership role of the Cold War. . . .
The Commission finds that [the Department of Defense’s] business practices, byzantine research and development (R&D) and procurement systems, reliance on decades-old military hardware, and culture of risk avoidance reflect an era of uncontested military dominance. Such methods are not suited to today’s strategic environment. . . .
The Commission finds that the U.S. defense industrial base (DIB) is unable to meet the equipment, technology, and munitions needs of the United States and its allies and partners. . . .
The U.S. public are largely unaware of the dangers the United States faces or the costs (financial and otherwise) required to adequately prepare. They do not appreciate the strength of China and its partnerships or the ramifications to daily life if a conflict were to erupt. They are not anticipating disruptions to their power, water, or access to all the goods on which they rely. They have not internalized the costs of the United States losing its position as a world superpower. A bipartisan “call to arms” is urgently needed so that the United States can make the major changes and significant investments now rather than wait for the next Pearl Harbor or 9/11. The support and resolve of the American public are indispensable.
Being a leader requires doing a lot more than saying things that are popular. It requires leveling with the public about the hard realities of the world, and what steps need to be taken to mitigate the threats we face. Leadership is a responsibility to bear, not a prize to be won.
This year has brought a fundamentally unserious presidential campaign to the American people, in a deadly serious world. Good luck to the winner, and to us. We’re all going to need it.
ADDENDUM: Everyone is raving about our Charlie Cooke and Luther Ray Abel’s account of a road trip for the ages; it is not to be missed:
Over the course of eight cyclonic, madcap, sun-and-rain-soaked days, the two of us drove 2,765 miles by car, flew 2,591 miles by plane, rode 34 roller coasters — which, taken together, threw us upside-down 107 times and dropped us 5,570 feet (that’s more than a mile and twice the height of the Burj Khalifa) — stayed in hotels and motels of profoundly varying repute, ate every type of roadside food we could imagine, and made our mark on 15 of these United States. We visited cities and got lost in the wilderness. We saw splendor and dilapidation. We rummaged back roads and we drove highways. We went, that is to say, to America — with all its many faces, fantasies, and foibles. Simon, Garfunkel, Kathy, and that man in the gabardine suit — eat your hearts out!
But first: what we didn’t do. What we didn’t do — by a mutual and sacred agreement — was take advantage of any modern technology or predictable convenience. Our ground rules for the journey were as follows. We would navigate by paper maps alone, book nothing in advance except our airfare, and neither eat nor lodge in any chain. We would not stare into our phones. We would stream no music; only local radio and pre-compiled mixtapes were permitted. And, to add a touch of surreality for ourselves and an unsuspecting public, we would wear Hawaiian shirts for the duration. Our one concession to comfort: We were permitted to stay with any friends or acquaintances we had along the route. But, if we did, we could not ask them to do anything on our behalf that we were forbidden to do ourselves. Our budget, door to door, was $2,000, including gas.
Netflix, here’s your next hit series.