"'The China that will face Joe Biden in January of 2021 is vastly more powerful and more formidable as an adversary than the China that he and Obama dealt with up until the end of 2016,' said Daniel Russel, a top Asian affairs official in the Obama administration and now a vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute..." Read the full article here: Full Article
"Dennis Ross, a former Middle East negotiator for Republican and Democratic administrations, said that another lure for the Emiratis was the possibility of obtaining advanced weaponry they have long sought, which the United States sells only to countries at peace with Israel to preserve its qualitative military edge in the region. “'It doesn’t mean the limits are gone, but they’re more favorable,' Mr. Ross said. He said he would expect the U.A.E. to get weapons like advanced drones. "Mr. Ross said [...]
"We don’t hear many good news stories out of the Middle East, particularly recently, in the midst of the despair over Beirut, regional conflicts and the ravages of covid-19. But on Thursday there was a hopeful development: President Trump announced a historic peace agreement that will normalize relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel. "Now what had been taking place below the table will be put on top of it. Security cooperation can be acknowledged in public and won’t have [...]
WestExec’s Spotlight Series highlights the issues some of our team members focus on. This week’s Spotlight features Michael Camilleri, former Western Hemisphere advisor on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and Director for Andean Affairs at the National Security Council from 2012-2017. Latin America: The United States has strong economic ties to its Western Hemisphere neighbors, but corruption and institutional fragility in the region, at times exacerbated by mixed messages from Washington, can make navigating business interests difficult. Michael helps [...]
"'We think we have a lot of talent inside the military that we just aren't aware of,' Work said. "To remedy that, Work said the commission recommends a grading, via a programming proficiency test, to identify government and military workers that have software development experience. The recommendations also include a computational thinking component to the armed services' vocational aptitude battery to better identify incoming talent..." Read the full article here: Full Article
"Columbia’s Waxman told Inside Cybersecurity that 'foreign disinformation campaigns remain a huge threat and the United States is still working to develop the tools to combat them.' "Waxman said, 'One reason why it's hard to combat disinformation through regulation is because while we need to protect our democracy from foreign interference, in our democratic system we don't generally believe the government should be policing speech and expression...'" Read the full article here: Full Article
"'If there is still anybody in India who thought that a nice peaceful relationship with Beijing was a possibility, that’s gone,' said Elbridge Colby, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense during the Trump administration. "'It’s going to put a lot of those traditional hindrances farther and farther behind us. This old trope that the U.S. and India is the partnership of the future and always will be—that’s no longer the case...'" Read the full article here: Full Article
"On this episode of the DefAero Report Daily Podcast, sponsored by Bell, our guests, from WestExec Advisors, Michèle Flournoy and Gabrielle Chefitz, co-authors of the CNAS report: 'Sharpening the U.S. Military’s Edge: Critical Steps for the Next Administration' discuss key points from the report and offer their advice to future national security leaders on the urgent agenda needed moving forward..." Listen to the full episode here: Full Episode
"Lisa Monaco, who worked as a low-level staffer on the Judiciary Committee from 1992 to 1994, said the office culture was dominated by women. Biden had appointed women as his staff director, chief counsel and chief crime counsel. "'Here was a group of women who were in charge. They ran the committee staff, they advised on the policy — and they had been empowered by Joe Biden,' she said. 'It was very formative for me as a young woman seeing these [...]
"We could have avoided this nationwide facepalm if unemployment benefits were designed to rise and fall with the health of the economy, in the first place. 'Automatic stabilizers prevent you from cutting off things too soon,' George Washington University professor Jay Shambaugh, who co-edited Recession Ready, and served on Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, told me. 'The idea that the unemployment rate is higher than at any point in the Great Recession and we’re about to pull support from the economy—that’s [...]