The National Interest

Daniel L. Davis

Security, Americas

Here is a better way forward.

In February 1991 I fought as a green 2nd Lieutenant under then-Captain H.R. McMaster, who would go on to win combat fame in 2005 Iraq and as Trump’s National Security Advisor. I watched McMaster provide exceptional leadership of our unit prior to war and watched him perform brilliantly under fire during combat. It gives me no pleasure, therefore, to note that his most recent work in Foreign Affairs has to be one of the most flawed analyses I’ve ever seen.

McMaster’s essay, “The Retrenchment Syndrome,” is an attempted take-down of a growing number of experts who argue American foreign policy has become addicted to the employment of military power. I, and other likeminded advocates, argue this military-first foreign policy does not increase America’s security, but perversely undercuts it.

We advocate a foreign policy that elevates diplomacy, promotes the maintenance of a powerful military that can defend America globally, and seeks to expand U.S. economic opportunity abroad. This perspective takes the world as it is, soberly assesses America’s policy successes and failures of the past decades, and recommends sane policies going forward that have the best chance to achieve outcomes beneficial to our country.

Adopting this new foreign policy mentality, however, requires an honest recognition that our existing approach—especially since 9/11—has at times been catastrophically bad for America. The status quo has to be jettisoned for us to turn failure into success.

These failures have not been merely “policy mistakes” but have had profound consequences for our country, both in terms of blood unnecessarily wasted and trillions of dollars irretrievably lost. The very last thing we should do is defend a failed status quo and subvert new thinking. McMaster does both in his essay.

McMaster grievously mischaracterizes the positions of those who advocate for a sane, rational foreign policy. He tries to pin a pejorative moniker on restraint-oriented viewpoints via the term “retrenchment syndrome.”

Advocates for a restrained foreign policy, he says, “subscribe to the romantic view that restraint abroad is almost always an unmitigated good.” McMaster claims Obama’s 2011 intervention in Libya failed not because it destabilized the country but because Washington didn’t “shape Libya’s political environment in the wake of Qaddafi’s demise.” And he claims Trump’s desire to withdraw from Afghanistan “will allow the Taliban, al Qaeda, and various other jihadi terrorists to claim victory.”

In other words, the only policy option is to keep doing what has manifestly failed for the past two decades. Just do it harder, faster, and deeper.

But the reality of the situation is rather different.

We had won all that was militarily winnable on the ground in Afghanistan by the summer of 2002 and we should have withdrawn. Instead, we have refused to accept reality for eighteen additional years and we have lost thousands of American service members and trillions of American tax dollars to finance permanent failure.

We should never have invaded Iraq in 2003. But once we realized the justification for the war had been wrong, we should have rapidly withdrawn our combat troops and diplomatically helped facilitate the establishment of an Iraqi-led state. Instead, we refused to acknowledge our mistake, fought a pointless eight-year insurgency, and then instead of allowing Iraq to solve its own problems when ISIS arose in 2014, unnecessarily went back to help Baghdad fight its battles.

Likewise, the U.S. continues to fight or support never-ending combat actions in Syria, Libya, Somalia, Niger, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and other lesser-known locations. There is no risk to American national security in any of these locations that engaging in routine and perpetual combat operations will solve.

Lastly, large portions of the American public—and even greater percentages of service members who have served in forever-wars—are against the continuation of these wars and do not believe they keep us safer. What would make the country more secure, however, is adopting a realistic foreign policy that recognizes the world as it truly is, acknowledges that the reason we maintain a world-class military is to deter our enemies without having to fight, and recognizing that our interests are far better served by being an exemplar to the world rather than trying to force it to behave a certain way.

The time has come to admit our foreign policy theories of the past two decades have utterly failed in their objective. We have not been made safer because of them and the price continually imposed on our service members is unnecessary and unacceptably high. It is time to abandon the status quo and adopt a new policy that is based on a realistic view of the world, an honest recognition of our genuinely powerful military, and realize that there are better ways to assure our security and prosperity.

Daniel L. Davis is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who retired in 2015 after 21 years, including four combat deployments. Follow him @DanielLDavis1.

Image: Reuters

Ethen Kim Lieser

Technology, World

Creepy or cool?

As the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has made face masks and coverings become the norm in many regions of the world, tech companies are now seeking ways to keep ourselves better connected to our devices.

One such company doing just that is Japanese start-up Donut Robotics, which has developed a way to transform the coronavirus face mask into the latest tech gadget.

Made of white plastic, the “c-mask” fits over standard face masks and is able to connect via Bluetooth to a smartphone or a tablet application that can translate Japanese into eight other languages, transcribe speech into text messages, make phone calls and amplify the voice of the user.

One particular complaint that is ubiquitous among those talking to mask-wearers is that it can be, at times, difficult to hear them speak. So, this advancement could indeed help during work meetings and in classroom settings.

“We worked hard for years to develop a robot and we have used that technology to create a product that responds to how the coronavirus has reshaped society,” Taisuke Ono, the CEO of Donut Robotics, told Reuters.

Ono said Donut Robotics’ first 5,000 c-masks will be shipped to purchasers in Japan starting in September. The company is seeking to sell its product in China, the United States and Europe as well, which have shown strong interest, the CEO noted.

Donut Robotics is currently retailing the mask for about $40, but additional revenue could come from subscriber services provided via an app that the users will download.

Engineers at Donut Robotics came up with the innovative mask idea when they were searching for a particular product that could help ease the devastating financial effects of the coronavirus pandemic. When the coronavirus began spreading across the country quickly, the company had just secured a contract to supply robot guides and translators to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport—products that are now confronting an uncertain future amid the economic viability of global air travel.

Ono said the company was able to build a prototype mask in about a month by adapting translation software developed for its other robotics projects. The bones of the next-gen masks were created four years ago by an engineer to interpret speech by mapping face muscles.

Ono was able to raise 28 million yen ($260,000) for development by selling Donut Robotics shares via the Japanese crowdfunding site Fundinno.

“We raised our initial target of 7 million yen within three minutes and stopped after 37 minutes when we had reached 28 million yen,” he said.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Minneapolis-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.

Image: Donut Robotics.

Stephen Silver

Economics, World

A good day for the company.

Samsung’s smartphones regularly lead worldwide market share rankings, both for 5G and overall. But Samsung is also very much in the business of the display panels that go in smartphones, and according to a new report, Samsung panels are in more than half the smartphones that were sold in the first quarter.

According to a new report from Strategy Analytics, called Smartphone Display Panel Market Share Q1 2020: Revenues Climb by 3%, Samsung Display Maintains Lead, Samsung accounted for 52 percent revenue share for smartphones in the first quarter of 2020, with BOE Technology and Tianma Microelectronics taking the second and third spots.

Those three, Strategy Analytics said, take up more than 74 percent of the revenue in the sector, which recorded revenue of $9 billion in the quarter, which represented a 3 percent year-over-year increase.

“In Q1 2020, the display panel market for smartphones continued to see demand for OLED panels that drove the overall display market revenues while smartphone LCD panels got impacted due to the oversupply and drop in demand, leading to a fall in revenues and shipments for LCDs,” Jeffrey Mathews, an analyst with Strategy Analytics, said as part of the announcement. “Samsung Display grabbed major design wins for its flexible OLED panels with major smartphone OEMs that aided in its first quarter revenues.”

A report last month stated that in the OLED market specifically, Samsung controls 81.2 percent of the worldwide market, as of the first quarter.

“We expect the display panel market to continue to observe a slowdown in smartphone panel demand due to disruptions in supply chains of customers along with a strong decline in demand for end-market products owing to COVID-19 pandemic,” Stuart Robinson, Executive Director of Handset Component Technologies Service for Strategy Analytics, said in the announcement. “We believe that the display panel vendors will continue to differentiate their portfolio with innovative display technologies among customers.”

While Apple and Samsung are rivals, and have gone at each other both in the smartphone markets and in the courts, Samsung has long provided most of the panels for iPhones. Supply chain reports have indicated that Samsung will provide most of the panels for the 2020 iPhones, although one of the models will reportedly use panels from LG Display and BOE. Another recent report, however, stated BOE’s panels had failed tests.

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters

Matthew Petti

Security, Middle East

And Iran is going on the diplomatic offensive.

Iranian authorities asked INTERPOL to issue an arrest warrant for U.S. President Donald Trump, a few days after the Trump administration asked the United Nations Security Council to extend its sanctions on Iran.

The diplomatic spat turns international institutions into a political battleground, pitting Russia and China as well as Iran against the United States. And it puts European nations in an awkward position as they try to preserve international agreements, including the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

“We foresee another failure for the U.S. in this arena,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Abbas Mousavi told reporters on Monday. “We advise them not to test what they have tested before and not to pave a way which leads to a deadend.”

U.S. Amb. Kelly Craft and Special Representative Brian Hook had presented a resolution to the Security Council last Wednesday asking the body to extend its arms embargo on Iran. Hook is currently in the Middle East to discuss the embargo, and met with senior officials in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday.

The embargo was set to expire in October 2020 under the nuclear deal with Iran, which puts restrictions on the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for economic relief.

The Trump administration left the deal in 2018, prompting Iran to resume its sensitive nuclear activities. The United States is now reserving the right to activate the “snapback” mechanism, which would restore UN sanctions on Iran, including the arms embargo.

Russia and China have rejected any U.S. right to activate snapback. European members of the Security Council were more cautious, warning that it would be a bad idea without saying whether the United States has the right to do it.

“We firmly believe that any unilateral attempt to trigger U.N. sanctions snapback would have serious adverse consequences in the U.N. Security Council,” Britain, France, and Germany declared in a June 19 joint statement. “We would not support such a decision, which would be incompatible with our current efforts to preserve the [nuclear deal].”

Hook countered in a conference call that “nobody can argue that Iran’s behaviour since 2015 merits a lifting of the arms embargo.”

Iran has also gone on the diplomatic offensive, asking INTERPOL on Monday to issue a “Red Notice” for several U.S. officials, including Trump. The international law enforcement agency rejected Iran’s request for an arrest warrant, stating that it cannot “undertake any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character.”

Iranian authorities accuse Trump of orchestrating the assassination of Maj. Gen Qassim Suleimani, an Iranian special forces commander who was killed by a U.S. drone in January.

U.S. officials originally claimed that the killing was necessary to stop Suleimani from carrying out an “imminent” attack, but later told Congress that it was a move to deal with Iran’s broader “strategic escalation” in Iraq.

The Trump administration had designated Suleimani’s branch of the Iranian military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a terrorist group in April 2019.

Hook mocked the Iranian request for an arrest warrant at a joint press conference with Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir.

“This has nothing to do with national security, international peace, or promoting stability, so we see it for what it is,” Hook said. “It's a propaganda stunt that no one takes seriously, and makes the Iranians look foolish.”

Matthew Petti is a national security reporter at the National Interest. Follow him on Twitter: @matthew_petti.

Image: Reuters.

Ethen Kim Lieser

Technology,

The bonus applies to both full- and part-time workers who were on Amazon’s payroll throughout the month of June, as well as teams in the U.S. and Canada.

Amazon on Monday announced that it has decided to pay out $500 million in one-time bonuses to front-line employees, those who are at the highest risk of contracting the coronavirus.

“Our front-line operations teams have been on an incredible journey over the last few months, and we want to show our appreciation with a special one-time Thank You bonus,” Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president of retail operations, wrote in a note to workers.

The e-commerce giant will pay full-time warehouse, Whole Foods and delivery workers a $500 bonus. Part-time employees will receive a $250 bonus, while Flex drivers who deliver packages for Amazon will receive $150 if they logged more than 10 working hours in June.

Store managers at Whole Foods are expected to receive a $1,000 bonus, and owners of Amazon’s third-party delivery services will get $3,000.

“My thanks and gratitude for the truly remarkable commitment to customers you have shown throughout this journey,” Clark wrote. “I have never been more proud of our teams.”

The bonus applies to both full- and part-time workers who were on Amazon’s payroll throughout the month of June, as well as teams in the U.S. and Canada.

In recent weeks, tensions have been rising between Amazon and warehouse workers, as many employees have voiced their concerns that the company hasn’t done nearly enough to protect them from COVID-19. Workers and 13 state attorneys general have called on the company to release more detailed information regarding coronavirus cases and related deaths among its employees.

Amazon has previously stated that it’s gone to “great lengths” to keep its facilities sanitized and make sure employees are following all of the necessary safety precautions, such as wearing face masks and practicing social distancing.

In March, Amazon announced that it would give a pay raise of $2 per hour to warehouse, delivery and Whole Foods employees. In addition, warehouse workers would be entitled to double overtime pay. However, the wage increases and double overtime pay came to an abrupt end in June.

Despite mounting criticism from its employees, Amazon defended its decision, saying that such salary boosts were warranted to “help meet increased demand” from online orders, which has since returned to more normal levels.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Minneapolis-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.

Caleb Larson

Security, Europe

Israel’s NLOS missile could breath new life into Poland’s defenses against Russia.

The Israeli defense and technology company Rafael is participating in Poland’s newest anti-tank program. The program, called the Ottokar-Brzoza tank destroyer program, aims to outfit Polish forces with a powerful new anti-tank capability.

The NLOS is the longest-range variant in Rafael’s SPIKE missile family. According to company data, the NLOS has a standoff range of thirty-two kilometers, or nearly twenty miles, giving the missile a large coverage area. The NLOS’ guidance unit identifies targets visually, without laser guidance, tracking radar, or GPS. As a result, the missile is less likely to be detected and intercepted before reaching its target and is considered “stealthier.” The missile uses forward observers on the ground or UAVs in the air to relay optical target information to the missile, which can differentiate between high- and low-level targets while in flight.

If the SPIKE NLOS is accepted, the Israeli company would license missile production to Mesko, a Polish munitions manufacturer, and the NLOS would be manufactured in Poland—an attractive offer for Poland’s domestic defense industry.

Rafael’s design features a hull-mounted missile launcher that holds eight SPIKE NLOS missiles and may be mounted to Poland’s KTO Rosomak 8x8 vehicle, or alternatively to Poland’s Soviet-era BWP-1. Mating the NLOS system to the latter platform could potentially give an otherwise obsolete vehicle new abilities.

Importantly for both Poland and Rafael, the newer NLOS launcher is compatible with the thousands of SPIKE missile variants that Poland already has in service, including the SPIKE LR and SPIKE LR2, and would give Polish forces a greater amount of logistical flexibility. The NLOS is also slated to participate in Poland’s Kruk attack helicopter program, a competition that aims to replace the aged Mi-24 helicopter fleet still flown by the country.

If Rafael wins the tender, the deal could potentially be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, depending on how many NLOS units Poland buys and how widely the anti-tank missiles are distributed. Despite being manufactured by a non-NATO country, the SPIKE NLOS and other SPIKE variants are interoperable with NATO, another beneficial feature for the Alliance partner.

NATO Compatible, But Uncertainties Remain

Poland’s tank destroyer program is intended to bolster the country’s defenses against major armored movements from the East, namely Russia. Still, uncertainties linger.

NATO recently completed Defender-Europe 20, which was the “largest deployment of U.S.-based forces to Europe in more than 25 years with 20,000 soldiers deployed directly from the U.S. to Europe,” according to official reports. Another exercise within the Defender-Europe framework, Allied Spirit, focused on interoperability at the tactical level and saw 6,000 Polish and American troops training together in Poland.

Both exercises come on the heels of President Trump’s threat to remove Germany-based American troops, though where exactly the troops would be moved to remains uncertain. Locations as far away as Guam and Hawaii have been suggested as part of America’s reorientation toward the Pacific, though moving formerly Germany-based troops to Poland isn’t out of the question.

An American presence in Poland is seen as essential to deterring Russian aggression in Eastern Europe. In 2019, Trump and Polish President Andrzej Duda reportedly agreed to move up to 1,000 American troops to Poland, and more American troops in Poland would not only be welcome—but necessary for preventing or resisting a Russian invasion. With or without the Americans, Polish capabilities appear poised to grow.

Caleb Larson is a defense writer with the National Interest. He holds a Master of Public Policy and covers U.S. and Russian security, European defense issues, and German politics and culture.

Image: Reuters

Peter Suciu

History, Space

An exciting watershed.

The United States Air Force has relied on the massive C-130 cargo aircraft since the 1950s, and many of the aircraft in service could even be flying well into the 2030s. These cargo aircraft have been used in some fascinating ways—including being transformed into bombers and gunships—but there is another transport aircraft that truly took part in some unbelievable exploits.

That would be the C-119 Flying Boxcar, which was developed from the Fairchild C-82 Packet, a twin-engine, twin-boom, twin-tail transport that was designed to carry cargo, personnel, litter patients and even mechanized equipment. It lived up to the “Flying Boxcar” name as it featured clamshell cargo doors at the rear of the cabin, which could be used to drop cargo and even troops by parachute! As a transport, the C-119 could carry up to sixty-two fully equipped soldiers or 30,000 pounds of cargo.

From the time of its introduction in the 1940s it was modified and upgraded as new technologies were developed. It made its maiden flight in November 1947 and by the time production ended in 1955 more than 1,150 of the Flying Boxcars had been produced. The C-119 was used in the Korean War as a transport, where it carried troops and supplies.

Among its most important airlift mission of the war was in the bitterly cold winter of 1950 when C-119Bs were used to air-drop bridge sections to U.S. troops trapped by the Communist forces at the Chosin Reservoir. Those components and sections were used to repair a bridge over a deep chasm, and the resulting effort allowed thousands of U.S. Army soldiers and U.S. marines to escape.

Throughout the Cold War the Flying Boxcar continued to make deliveries around the world. During the Vietnam War the aircraft in the AC-119G “Shadow” and AC-119K “Stinger” configurations were also used as gunships to support ground forces. With side-firing weapons, those aircraft could fire up to 6,000 rounds per minute as they flew low and slow over enemy positions.

However, the most notable action involving a C-119J Flying Boxcar occurred on August 19, 1960 when the aircraft was used in the world’s first mid-air recovery of an object returning from space. The aircraft utilized a special recovery gear that was lowered from the open rear door, and it snagged the parachute of a Discoverer XIV satellite, which had been ejected from an orbiting space vehicle. The Discoverer XIV had been launched into a polar (north-south) orbit by an Agena A vehicle atop a Thor booster from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

After seventeen passes around the earth, the Agena A vehicle ejected the satellite from its nose. After the Discoverer XIV reentered the atmosphere it released the parachute and floated back. It took three passes, but the C-119 was able to successfully snag the canopy at an altitude of 8,000, after which a winch operator aboard the aircraft then reeled in the satellite.

Satellite catching then became an important and regular U.S. Air Force operation to recover secret reconnaissance satellite film.

The C-119 was also used by the Royal Canadian Air Force as a fire bomber—and it is the type of aircraft flown by Richard Dreyfuss in the movie Always.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com.

Image: Wikimedia

 

Caleb Larson

History, World

The Higgins boat might have been the most useful weapons at the Allies’ disposal.

It just might be the most recognized boat of the Second World War. The Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel, called the LCVP, or the Higgins Boat as it is more commonly known, is familiar from photographs and film shot during the war, particularly the Normandy Beach landings.

Most famously, a brave Coast Guard photographer took the iconic photograph Into the Jaws of Death from the back of a Higgins Boat. The haunting image depicts U.S. Army soldiers jumping off the boat into the water and towards the Omaha Beach. The story of the Higgins boat begins earlier though, before the war.

Rumor has it that the early Higgins boat was designed for bootleggers and smugglers who small sturdy boats capable of beaching quickly from shallow water. With the end of Prohibition in the early 1930s, the boat’s designer and namesake Andrew Higgins needed a new market for his nimble boat.

Dissatisfied with the landing boats designed by the Navy, The United States Marine Corps tested several commercial designs in the late 1930s, eventually settling on the former bootlegger boat designed by the Higgins boatbuilding company.

Although the design was indeed capable of beach landings, offloading men and supplies was rather slow as the design lacked a ramp. To disembark, Sailors and Marines had to jump off the sides or bow, badly exposed to fire from the shore. Still, the boat could perform better than other landing boats the Navy designed and it was rushed into service as a stop-gap measure.

Higgins Boat

Though Higgins’ early design was accepted, he was tasked with building a better landing craft, specifically a boat that would allow troops to more quickly disembark—via a bow mounted ramp.

The Higgins boat itself was rather small and simple. Its cargo space, located at the forward three quarters of the boat, could carry 8,000 pounds, or a little over 3,600 kilograms. This translated to thirty-six fully-armed soldiers, or an Army Jeep and a smaller, twelve-man squad.

Although the front ramp was made of steel, the Higgins’ sides were made of laminated plywood to save that precious wartime commodity. A mostly-wood construction also lowered the boat’s weight and allowed it to have a relatively shallow draft, the distance from the bottom of the hull to the waterline. A low draft allowed the boat to unload men and supplies quite close to the shoreline—of crucial importance for ship-to-shore operations.

Two gunners fired .30 caliber Browning machine guns over the heads of the troops onboard from firing cockpits in the rear. The driver sat on the port side next to the engine in the boat’s center. An extremely accurate recreation of what riding to shore in a Higgins was like can be seen in the opening sequence of the 1998 hit Saving Private Ryan.

Postscript

During the war, the Higgins boat ferried troops onto the beaches of North Africa, in France for the Normandy landings, and throughout the Pacific. Without Higgins, the Marine Corps’ island hopping campaign would not have been possible.

The boat’s usefulness could not be overstated. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander sang Higgins’ praises, stating that “Andrew Higgins is the man who won the war for us.” He went on to explain, “If Higgins had not designed and built those LCVPs, we never could have landed over an open beach. The whole strategy of the war would have been different.” A resounding endorsement from the one of the greatest generals of one of the greatest wars.

Caleb Larson holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy. He lives in Berlin and writes on U.S. and Russian foreign and defense policy, German politics, and culture.

Image: Wikimedia

Peter Suciu

History, Asia

A useful bomber.

Developed during World War II era, the Douglas A-26 Invader would see action in the Vietnam War nearly twenty years later. This twin-engine attack aircraft was in essence an upgraded version of the A-20 Havoc. However, the A-26 featured more powerful engines, had a longer range and heavier armament than the A-20—one version even had 18 forward firing .50 caliber machine guns!

In 1948, the aircraft was re-designated B-26 and subsequently saw service during the Korean War (1950-53), where it was mainly used as a night intruder against North Korean supply lines. The plane was removed from service in 1958, and that could have been the end of the story.

Yet it returned to duty twice more—and in a different role for the war in Vietnam.

In 1961, the United States Air Force recalled many Invaders back into service for use in clandestine operations in South Vietnam, where they were used as tactical bombers. While the B-26K aircraft were “officially” in service with the South Vietnamese Air Force, the Invaders were actually flown by American aircrews.

Two decades of use in combat took its toll and in 1964 the aircraft were retired again, yet those that remained in use were provided with a strengthening wing strap along the bottom of the wing spars as a way to prolong service life. This proved so successful that the USAF had forty Douglas Invaders upgraded and extensively modified by On Mark Engineering in Van Nuys, California. This included a rebuilt fuselage and tail, strengthened wings, improved engines, reversible propellers and wing-tip fuel tanks among other refinements.

The improved B-26K was henceforth known as the “Counter Invader” when it returned to Southeast Asia where it was used in ground-attack missions along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The aircraft’s forward, fixed armament consisted of eight .50 caliber machine guns in the nose and three more on each wing, while up to 8,000lbs of mixed ordnance—rocket pods, conventional drop bombs, gun pods and cannon pods—could be carried externally at multiple underwing hardpoints.

The modified aircraft could reach speeds of 323 miles per hour and had a range of 2,700 miles, as well as a ceiling of 30,000 feet.

The aircraft were deployed to Southeast Asia and attached to the 606th Air Commando Squadron and were based in Phanom Air Base in Thailand. As Thailand didn’t permit the basing of bombers on its territory, in May 1966 the aircraft were reassigned the old attack designation of A26A, which brought the Invader full circle.

In addition to be being deployed against the Ho Chi Minh trail, the B-26K/A-26A Counter Invaders were flown over the panhandle of Laos—an area along the North Vietnamese border known as the Steel Tiger—in operations that were highly “black” and as result the national insignia were painted over to maintain “plausible deniability” should the aircraft be forced down.

Because North Vietnamese anti-aircraft defenses were installed along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, most of the combat missions over Laos were flown at night as it would have been too dangerous to fly the slow-moving piston-engine B-26K during the day. When possible, the aircraft were equipped with AN/PVS2 Starlight scopes for enhanced nighttime visibility.

By the summer of 1968 the night interdiction missions had been gradually taken over by the AC-130A and AC-130E gunships and the Counter Invaders were phased out of active service. Losses were heavy, with no less than twelve out of thirty that had served in Thailand lost to enemy action.

The A-26 was the last propeller-driven twin-engine bomber produced for the United States Army Air Forces, and it was one of the few wartime aircraft still in service with the post-war U.S. Air Force, but it was also the only American bomber to fly in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com.

Image: Wikimedia

Peter Suciu

History, Europe

Prepare to say "Dasvidaniya."

When it was introduced in 1895, the Russian Nagant revolver was quite unique in a number of ways. It was a seven-shot handgun, produced in both double- and single-action versions, it was developed for Imperial Russia by Belgian industrialist and “friend” of the Imperial court Léon Nagant and it used a proprietary 7.62x38mmR cartridge that featured a distinct “gas-seal” system. That latter aspect of the weapon allowed it to be suppressed—which made the Nagant M1895 the first revolver that could be equipped with a “silencer” type device.

Nagant, who had achieved success with solid frame double action revolvers, previously worked with Captain Sergei Ivanovich Mosin of the Imperial Russian Army to develop the Model 1891 Mosin-Nagant bolt action rifle—which would go on to be used in countless wars for well over a century. Moreover, the 7.62x54mmR, which was developed for use in the M91 Mosin-Nagant, has remained one of the few standard-issue rimmed cartridges still in military use, while it has the longest service life of all military-issued cartridges in the world and shows no signs of going away.

How much actual input Nagant had on the Mosin-Nagant remains a point of debate, but he was an established firearms designer—one who has even been compared to American gun designer John Browning—and his work gave him an “in” with the Czar’s ordnance office. Reportedly even Czar Nicholas II took a liking to Nagant’s revolutionary design. The Czar, along with many of the European nobility, had a fascination with firearms but more importantly he tended to favor modern and forward-thinking designs, which he believed could give Russia an advantage on the battlefield.

The fact that the Nagant revolver held seven shots, at a time when most service revolvers held five or six rounds, may have sounded like a great idea to the Czar and his sycophant military advisors. The court may have found the notion that the Nagant revolver was produced in a double action model for officers and a single action model for the ranks (called the “private’s model”) appealing as well. It was a weapon that showed proper class distinction.

Yet, the most distinguishing feature of the M1895 Nagant was its gas-seal system, which moved the cylinder forward when the gun was cocked, closing the gap between the cylinder and barrel. The revolver was chambered for that aforementioned proprietary cartridge, which itself was unique in that the cartridge featured a projectile that was deeply seated entirely within the cartridge case. By sealing the gap in this way, the velocity of the bullet was increased by as much as fifty to one-hundred-and-fifty feet per second.

While the concept of sound suppressors—often referred to today as “silencers”—were in their infancy in the 1890s, it isn’t likely that Nagant’s goal was to actually suppress the sound, but rather his gas-seal design was a clever effort to increase the weapon’s velocity. This may seem needlessly complicated, but it actually worked well even if it did require a special cartridge. Moreover, the Nagant was still built with Russian soldiers in mind, meaning that a hammer was often the only tool available to repair anything!

Despite the fact that it may have sounded like a forward-thinking weapon to the court, it was largely obsolete by the time it was adopted. By the outbreak of the First World War, automatic pistols such as Germany’s Luger and the American Colt M1911 .45 pistol had been introduced—yet the Imperial Russian military stuck with the Nagant.

Ironically, the weapon that found favor with Czar Nicholas II was also used to execute him along with his wife, son and daughters in July 1918. The M1895 Nagant was carried by both the Reds and Whites in the Russian Civil War, and even remained in production after the Communists came to power—but interestingly after 1918 it was only produced in the double action version. Whether that was a result of “class warfare” or just as a way to simplify the production is a matter of debate.

Perhaps because it was the gun that was used to kill the Czar, it was a favored weapon of the Cheka, NKVD and later the KGB—all of which used silenced Nagant revolvers in various clandestine operations. Suppressed versions were later used by the Viet Cong to carry out assassinations during the Vietnam War. The latter fact highlights that while it was a largely antiquated design when it was introduced, its distinct attributions still made it a favored weapon in covert operations decades later.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com.

Image: Wikimedia

Peter Suciu

History, Americas

Another one for the dust bin of history.

Before America’s entry into the Second World War, the U.S. military developed the M1 Garand, the weapon General George S. Patton called, “the greatest battle implement ever devised.” However, there were “other” attempts to produce a main battle rifle.

As The National Interest previously reported, these included designs from Brigadier General John T. Thompson and Melvin Johnson, but also forgotten was the effort to develop a new submachine gun for the U.S. military.

While the Johnson rifle and light machine gun both had merits, the Reising submachine gun is one best left forgotten!

Designed by Eugene Reising, who had been an assistant to firearm designer John M. Browning, and patented in 1940, his submachine gun was innovative for its time. Unlike most submachine guns of that era, the M50 Reising fired from a closed bolt—a feature not widely seen until the 1970s and 1980s. At 6 pounds, 12 ounces it was lighter than the Thompson submachine gun, cheaper to produce and still capable of firing 550 rounds per minute.

The M50 Reising featured a full stock, which was not common with submachine guns at that time either. It featured a delayed blowback operation and offered selective fire. Feed was from a twenty-round box magazine, but twelve-round single stack magazines were also produced for training.

Its manufacturer, Harrington & Richardson Arms Company (H&R) of Worcester, Massachusetts produced the M50 as well as the M55, which was identical except that it had a folding wire buttstock, and a barrel that lacked a compensator and was half an inch shorter. The company also introduced the M60, which had a full stock and was a semi-automatic version with a longer barrel. Initially the M50 and M55 were marketed to police and military, while the M60 for private security guards.

Even before the U.S. entry into World War II, the military was short on weapons—with most of the M1 Garands going to the U.S. Army. As there was also a shortage of Thompson submachine guns, to fill the void for weapons, the USMC adopted the Reising in 1941 with 4,200 authorized per division with approximately 500 authorized per each infantry regiment. The first batches of the the M50 and M55 versions were issued to Marine Raiders and paratroopers and went off to the Pacific Island of Guadalcanal.

However, instead of becoming a legendary firearm that proved it was as tough as the marines who carried it, the Reising was a dismal failure.

The weapon proved utterly unreliable in the sand and mud, and according to some accounts, Lieutenant Colonel Merritt A. Edson, commander of the 1st Marine Raider Battalion, went so far as to order the submachine guns to be tossed in the rivers on Guadalcanal, and he suggested that instead the marines use the proven bolt-action Springfield 1903.

One issue was that the weapon was overly complicated in design and difficult to maintain. Moreover, the biggest problem was that many of the parts were hand-fitted in the factory. When it functioned, the Reising was more accurate than comparable submachine guns of the era such as the Thompson and German MP40, but in harsh conditions it was highly prone to jamming.

Given these issues it is easy to see how it has ended up on many a “worst gun“ list.

Yet in the post-war years, the Reising did see service with some police departments across the country, suggesting that if it was cared for it would be fine even in an urban jungle—but when used in an actual jungle, it proved little better than a club.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com.

Image: Wikimedia

Jeffrey Kucik

economy, Americas

The July 1 implementation date “couldn’t come at a worse time.”

The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is set to enter into force on July 1—three years after President Donald Trump first demanded revisions to NAFTA.

Reaching a new deal was not easy. Back in 2018, both Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau threatened to abandon talks because of significant disagreements over market access and dispute resolution. Those disagreements were eventually resolved in a deal signed in December of 2019 and the stage was set for a new round of economic cooperation.

Unfortunately, USMCA now faces new challenges. Implementation comes at a time when coronavirus has undermined faith in free trade and increased calls for protection.

The problems start with growing skepticism over globalization. The pandemic lays bare the vulnerabilities of an interdependent world economy. For decades, production spread across the world so widely that very little of what we buy is produced in one country. Under normal circumstances, this allows for lower-cost production and cheaper prices for consumers. However, when market shocks can snap the delicate links in global supply chains.

That is exactly what we’ve seen during the coronavirus outbreak. Governments took dramatic steps to curb the spread of disease, including factory closures, transportation restrictions, and public lockdowns. These measures slowed production within countries and reduced the flow of goods between them. The effects are severe enough that the World Trade Organization estimated that total global trade could fall by as much as one-third in 2020.

The most prominent example of supply shortages is personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline medical workers. Nearly half of facemasks are produced in China. China’s restrictions on PPE exports, implemented during their own battle with the coronavirus, meant less supply for other countries.

Frustrations with a lack of vital goods have led to increased calls for trade protection, rather than liberalization. This includes recent comments by United States Trade Representative (USTR) head Robert Lighthizer, who testified that tariffs were an appropriate response to the pandemic, arguing that “the things we need to fight the pandemic should be made in America.”

Given these circumstances, it is no wonder that there are questions over the timing of USMCA implementation.

Before the pandemic, USMCA members accounted for almost 30 percent of global GDP and over $1 trillion in total imports. Now, slowdowns across the region have amplified calls for delay. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which generally supports trade liberalization, cautioned that American firms need “flexibility” during the “unprecedented economic disruption” caused by the coronavirus. 

Skepticism over the viability of the USMCA has been echoed by key industries in the region—most notably, the automotive industry.

Automobile trade has long been a source of contention in the United States. It was a sticking point in several of America’s trade deals. Once Trump took office, he cited the outsourcing of American car production to Mexico as one of the main reasons to implement a border tax early in his administration. 

That is why the White House originally touted the USMCA’s new automotive rules as a major victory. The deal includes local content requirements, meaning that 75 percent of automotive content must be made in member countries. At the same time, almost half of production must be done by workers earning $16 an hour or more. Both of these provisions are widely seen as measured designed to protect car manufacturing in North America—and in the United States, specifically.

Implementing new content and wage requirements cannot happen overnight—especially under the current conditions imposed by the pandemic when firms have seen significant revenue drops. That’s why Mexican producers requested a delay in USMCA implementation back in March. Industry organizations cited ambiguity in the rules and difficulties establishing new supply chains needed to comply with USMCA rules.

American car companies shared these concerns. A sharp decline in new car purchases and slowdowns in production—both direct results of the coronavirus—mean car companies are struggling to stay afloat. As a result, the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, along with key members of Congress, lobbied for the delay.

Partly at the behest of carmakers, USTR—the wing of the executive branch responsible for negotiating America’s trade rules—clarified the auto industries’ obligations in June. However, complying with these rules requires time and resources. Those are two things in short supply. Hence, even with new guidelines, industry insiders still insist that the July 1  implementation date “couldn’t come at a worse time.”

The car industry is just one example. Similar sentiments have been expressed by other industries and America’s Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee, which recommended delaying USMCA last April.

Wavering support for USMCA comes amid other signs of escalating trade tensions. Trump has threatened new tariffs against China, whom he blames for the severity of the pandemic. At the same time, the White House recently had to walk back comments from economic advisor Peter Navarro that the U.S.-China trade truce was ending.

That rhetoric isn’t limited to China. The United States reportedly plans to reimplement tariffs on Canadian aluminum. The move comes on the back of murmurings that neither Mexico nor Canada are yet in compliance with USMCA.

Taken together, it looks like trade tensions are deepening at precisely the time USMCA members are supposed to work toward a more cooperative arrangement.

Ultimately, there are legitimate reasons to rethink our growing dependence on highly vulnerable supply chains. It may be perfectly sensible to increase the capacity in vital goods necessary to maintain public health and national security. At the same, the economic consequences of the coronavirus have to be taken seriously. It can’t be overlooked that the United States saw unemployment rise to levels unseen since the Great Depression. Many people, including the original NAFTA’s opponents, think trade deals will make these problems worse, not better.

Either way, the controversies over USMCA, which the White House claimed a major foreign policy victory, appear to be far from over.

Jeffrey Kucik is an Associate Professor in the School of Government and Public Policy and James E. Rogers College of law (by courtesy) at the University of Arizona.

Reuters

Peter Suciu

History, Space

Here's what we know about Boeing and NASA's achievement.

Last year a Chinese company announced it was working on a reusable space plane that could be launched from the wing of a larger “mothership” aircraft. After being jettisoned from the larger vehicle, a single rocket engine would boost the space plane into low orbit. While not much more is known about the project, the idea of a reusable “space plane” is far from new.

It was a concept first envisioned by the United States Air Force in the 1950s, and this included the Boeing X-20 Dyna Soar (Dynamic Soarer) program, which was the first to develop a craft that could be used for a variety of military and reconnaissance missions.

That program was canceled before it had gotten very far, but subsequent efforts have taken the concept much further. This includes the highly secretive X-37B, which as The National Interest previously reported is now under the direction of the United States Space Force, the sixth and newest branch of the U.S. military.

However, the reusable X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV) still remains essentially a giant mystery, even as a “mini Space Shuttle” like craft continues to be used in a variety of missions, including the latest, which could last up to two years! Despite high profile launches, the Air Force and Space Force has actually said very little about the craft—but some details can be gleaned from the X-40A, the prototype that led to the X-37B’s development.

The unmanned and unpowered Boeing X-40A was actually the first-phase flight test vehicle for the U.S. Air Force’s Space Maneuver Vehicle program to develop a small, reusable but highly maneuverable spacecraft and for deploying satellites and conducting surveillance and logistic missions.

The program began in the late 1990s and the unpiloted X-40A was built by Boeing’s Phantom Works facility to around 80 percent scale of the future X-37. It was meant to test the aerodynamics and navigation of the Reusable Launch Vehicle program and the first drop test was conducted in August 1998 when a helicopter lifted it to about 10,000 feet above Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico and released. The aircraft made an unpowered flight that demonstrated its guidance, navigation and control capabilities.

After that flight the Air Force loaned the aircraft to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which conducted seven additional approach and landing tests at NASA Dryden in 2001 to further assess its systems. An Army CH-47D Chinook released the aircraft from an altitude of 15,000 feet and the craft flew in an autonomously controlled descent for 75 seconds and then landed on the main runway at Edwards Air Force Base.

The program successfully demonstrated the glide capabilities of the later X-37’s fat-bodied, short wing design, while it also validated the proposed guidance system for the OTV.

The one and only X-40A test vehicle is now on display in the Space Gallery at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com.

Image: Wikimedia

Amitai Etzioni

Security, Americas

Violence even by a small minority within a movement “is food for the adversary.”

The issue is an old one; however, current events require that we revisit the question of whether it is justified to resort to violence to gain social change in democratic societies (however flawed they are). The Black Lives Matter movement deserves great credit for mainly peaceful demonstrations, and for working hard to limit looting and violence. However, the use of force by some demonstrators has received support from a significant segment of the public. A recent CNN poll found that one out of four (27 percent) Americans believe that violent protests are justified. This is a considerable increase from the 14 percent who felt this way in 2016. Almost half of the Democrats hold that violent protests are justified; the same is true of 23 percent of White respondents. 

A troublingly large line-up of public intellectuals are again providing justifications for violent protest. Wellesley College assistant professor of African studies Kellie Carter Jackson recently wrote, “Violence disrupts the status quo and the possibility of returning to business as usual. . . . The American Revolution was won with violence. The French Revolution was won with violence. The Haitian Revolution was won with violence. The Civil War was won with violence. A revolution in today’s terms would mean that these nationwide rebellions lead to black people being able to access and exercise the fullness of their freedom and humanity.” Northeastern University associate professor of sociology Gordana Rabrenovic argues that the violence that African American people experience in their interactions with state-sponsored individuals and systems leads them to ask, “If they use violence, why shouldn’t we use violence?” American University provost Daniel J. Myers offers another justification: “Violent protest . . . advertise[s] the cause in a uniquely powerful way.” University of Pennsylvania professor, historian, and author of The Loud Minority Daniel Q. Gillion reports, “Nonviolent protest brings awareness to an issue; violent protest brings urgency to an issue. It forces individuals to pay attention to these important discussions of race relations.” Finally, New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote: “Some of the people now breaking things and burning things and looting things are ironically participating in a storied American tradition. There has long been a penchant for destruction in this country, an insatiable bloodlust, that the country conveniently likes to forget. American violence is learned violence. It is the American way. . . . White riots have often, historically, targeted black people, while black people have rioted to protest injustice. On either side, racism is the root. And we have refused to sufficiently address it. Now, that chicken is coming home to roost.” 

As I see it, revolutions are very rare, very hard to bring about, involve large bloodshed, and often are followed by new tyrannies. Moreover, there are prudent reasons to urge protestors not to resort to violence. According to Georgetown Professor Michael Kazin, “[N]on-leftists often see [the left] as a disruptive, lawless force. Violence tends to confirm that view.” Research shows that violent campaigns are less likely to succeed than nonviolent ones, and, conversely, those nonviolent movements have a higher success rate than violent ones.  

Three studies support this observation. University of Denver Professor Erica Chenoweth collected data on all major nonviolent and violent campaigns seeking the overthrow of a government or a territorial liberation since 1900. Her data shows that from the 1960s to 2006 the success rate of nonviolent movements was consistently higher than that of violent movements, and, within recent decades, the success rate of violent movements decreased steeply while the success rate of nonviolent movements greatly increased. 

Another study asked eight hundred people to react to a situation inspired by events in which violence erupted in a clash between White nationalists and antiracist groups. When antiracists resorted to violent tactics, study participants were less likely to support them and more likely to support the White nationalists. The study shows that “violence [by the antiracists] led to perceptions of unreasonableness, which reduced identification with and support for the protest group.”

These findings are further supported by Princeton University professor Omar Wasow’s study of presidential politics in the 1960s. He discovered that “proximity to black-led nonviolent protests increased white Democratic vote-share whereas proximity to black-led violent protests caused substantively important declines and likely tipped the 1968 election from Hubert Humphrey to Richard Nixon.” More recently, instead of scaring the elites into yielding, violence has contributed to the growth of increasingly large and heavily-armed police forces. 

Some claim now, as they did then, that the violence of those who supported Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and the Weathermen helped the overall cause because it made Martin Luther King, Jr.’s movement seem moderate in comparison. But this perspective ignores the fact that the elites used violent acts to smear the moderates. Violence even by a small minority within a movement, as sociologist Todd Gitlin observed, “is food for the adversary.”  The 1968 riots led to few reforms, but to great increases in the firepowers of the police. 

Moral deliberations point in the same direction. Violence is not merely a poor strategy, but it also raises major ethical concerns. The key moral value that the Black Lives Matter movement taps into is the sanctity of life. It is the recognition—reflected in the legal and moral codes of ancient and contemporary societies, above all in those of liberal democracies—that taking a life is a much more serious offense than most any other action. This is the reason courts typically mete out a much more severe punishment for murder than for other crimes. Moreover, one can readily recognize that all individual rights logically presuppose respect for the right to live. Dead people have very few rights; live ones, no matter how injured, may recover, exercise their rights, and confront those who oppressed them. This certainly holds for Black lives and is the reason major, encompassing reforms in the ways public safety is provided must be introduced and implemented. However, it is also the reason to oppose violence—every life precious. Indeed, I believe a strong case can be made for the Black Lives Matter movement to add to its brief the demand that all death penalties be outlawed.  

One may argue that—so far—loss of life has been inflicted almost completely by the police and not by the demonstrators, which is, indeed, to the demonstrators’ credit. However, once violence is justified, protests lose on both prudent and moral grounds.   

Amitai Etzioni is a university professor and professor of international affairs at The George Washington University. In 1968, he wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine called “Confessions of a Professor Caught in a Revolution.” For more about the Columbia University protests, see his memoir, My Brother’s Keeper. Etzioni is the author of Demonstration Democracy, among other books.

Image: Reuters

Matthew Petti

Security, Middle East

Lot number 128. Previous owner: apostate.

George Washington University has released the first batch of its “ISIS Files,” a trove of bureaucratic documents captured from the Islamic State during the Iraqi offensive in Mosul.

The files paint a picture of a militant group that enmeshed itself into daily life even as it fought a war against the entire world with stunning brutality. Most of this first batch is related to real estate and finance, with only a few documents related to ideology and terrorism.

“The picture that emerges from this repository is revealing in both its range and complexity,” wrote Haroro J. Ingram and Devorah Margolin, senior fellows at the George Washington University's Program on Extremism, in a paper released alongside the files.

“[D]ocuments from the Islamic Police and Agriculture departments tell of an organization seemingly obsessed with bureaucracy and institutionalizing every detail of its system of control,” they continued. “The collection also offers a human perspective of the Islamic State, with each file detailing the lives of those that lived under the Islamic State’s occupation.”

The documents were unearthed by Rukmini Callimachi, a New York Times reporter who was embedded with the Iraqi military during the 2016 offensive to recapture the major metropolis of Mosul.

Callimachi and her colleagues recovered around 15,000 pages of documents. The New York Times and George Washington University worked together to digitize them, and handed the originals to the Iraqi Embassy in Washington.

Only 68 files are currently available on the university website, with more to be released over the coming months. The files have been translated into English, and personal information has been redacted from both the Arabic and English copies.

The largest part of the 15,000 pages is related to agriculture, Ingram and Margolin wrote.

But even the agricultural files have a darker side. ISIS raised money by seizing land from the religious minorities and dissenters it expelled or slaughtered, renting the properties out to loyal Sunni Muslim farmers.

Spreadsheets from the ISIS real estate office show lot numbers and tenant names next to derogatory terms for the original owners: “heretic” or “apostate.”

The ISIS files project has raised ethical concerns. It has also brought back painful memories of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, when U.S. forces confiscated millions of pages from the Iraqi state archives.

Iraqi writer Sinan Antoon described both the 2003 files and the ISIS files as “plunder” in an interview with The Intercept.

However, George Washington University maintains that it followed ethical best practices in dealing with the archive.

“As caretakers of these historic documents, we are acutely aware of the important social role of repositories and recognize their value to the public interest,” the university wrote on its website. “The key underlying principle that shapes our work is that in archiving The ISIS Files, we will endeavor to do no harm.”

Its goal, the university stated, is “[t]o ensure unbiased open access to the documents while respecting data and privacy concerns of those named and identified in them.”

Matthew Petti is a national security reporter at the National Interest. Follow him on Twitter: @matthew_petti.

Image: Reuters.

Stephen Silver

Technology,

The price increase was not announced, but is reflected on the company's websites, the report said.

AT&T absolutely bled subscribers in the first quarter of 2020, even by the standards of cord-cutting that have accelerated. According to one measure, the company lost over a million video subscribers in the quarter, with DirecTV losing nearly 900,000 and AT&T Now losing about 138,000. This makes up for around half of the 2 million subscribers lost in the first quarter by major pay-TV providers in the U.S.

This followed news last December that, per Ars Technica, the company had announced a price increase starting in January.

Now, a new report says that AT&T has announced another increase, albeit only for new customers.

According to the website TV Answer Man, AT&T on Monday "raised the first-year monthly price for new subscribers to DIRECTV and AT&T TV." The company, however, has not raised prices for AT&T TV Now, nor has it touched prices for existing customers.

The price increase was not announced, but is reflected on the company's websites, the report said.

"New subscribers to DIRECTV now must pay $59.99 a month for the first year of its Select plan (155 channels), compared to $49.99 previously; $69.99 a month for the first year of its Choice plan (185 channels), compared to $59.99 a month previously; $79.99 a month for the Xtra plan compared to $69.99 previously; and $84.99 a month for the first year of its Ultimate package (250 channels), compared to $74.99 a month previously," the report said.

This is reflected on the sites. The Select Package, per AT&T's website, is now priced at $59.99 a month. According to the Wayback Machine, that same site offered the package for $49.99 a month as of May 7. The same is the case for the Choice and Ultimate packages.

In another change, AT&T last week stopped offering AT&T Watch TV, the ultra-skinny bundle launched two years earlier for $15 a month.

"Standalone WatchTV is no longer available for new sign ups or to re-subscribe," the website said.  "Existing WatchTV customers who subscribe to the app or have a qualifying AT&T Unlimited plan can continue to use the service. The site then, after a few seconds, automatically redirects to the myAT&T login page.

Fast Company described AT&T Watch TV as "an obvious PR ploy from the start," aimed at currying favor at the time that AT&T was seeking government approval for its ultimately successful acquisition of Time Warner.

Also this week, Forbes reported some details showing that AT&T employees appear to have unwittingly signed up customers for DirecTV Now subscriptions without their permission, in order to goose subscriber numbers. In 2017, after the scheme was discovered, "the company fired employees found to have engaged in unethical practices." This led to multiple shareholder lawsuits.

A CNBC report last month said AT&T was looking to dump the money-losing DirecTV, but no such deal has yet come to fruition.

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters. 

Stephen Silver

Technology,

So far, the reviews are mostly positive. However, there are a few challenges you might need to overcome

Back in May, Sonos announced that it was selling a new soundbar, called the Arc. Retailing at $799, it represented Sonos' first product to be equipped with Dolby Atmos support.

The first reviews of the new product arrived earlier this month, with The Verge, Gizmodo and other outlets praising the soundbar's quality, while noting that it would only work with newer TVs.

Now, more reviews of the Arc have appeared.

RTINGS.com, in a review published Monday, gave the Sonos Arc a score of 6.5, calling it "a decent overall soundbar." It listed pros that included its "sleek and very well-built design," an upgradeable setup and the Room Correction feature. Cons included "lack of bass" and "poor performance at max volume."

"It's quite a versatile bar, though there seem to be some issues with the bass range and it performs quite poorly at max volume," the review said. "Overall, the soundbar sounds a bit bright, even after using the room correction feature. On the upside, it's a very well-built bar that has a sleek design and it features built-in Google Assistant and Alexa."

The reviewer went on to note that a new firmware update has been released, following the completion of their evaluation.

In RTINGS' rankings of the best Dolby Atmos soundbars, published last month, it listed the Samsung HW-Q90R as the best one, with a mixed-usage score of 8.2, compared with 6.5 for the Arc. That soundbar, however, is more expensive, with a listed price of around $1,000.

TechRadar, in a review published last week, gave the Sonos Arc five stars, and described it as "bending the rules of surround sound." It praises the Dolby Atmos use, what it called a "discrete all-in-one soundbar" and the surround sound, while cautioning that the product "Doesn’t suit every room," and that the Trueplay Tuning feature is iOS-only.

"The Arc from Sonos is a streamlined soundbar that offers a premium surround sound experience without the need for supplementary speakers," the review said. "If you want a minimalist surround sound package and you have a squarish home cinema room then the Sonos Arc is an excellent all-in-one surround sound system."

Metro, in the U.K., also recently reviewed the Sonos Arc, calling it "a big, bold gadget taking over flagship duties from the seven-year-old Playbar."

"The Arc hasn’t become Sonos’ most expensive product for any old reason but £800 is still on the affordable side when you look around at the other Atmos-enabled soundbars out there," the review said. "The sound is terrific and it fits in simply and reliably with other Sonos speakers you may have around the house."

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Sonos. 

Stephen Silver

Technology,

If one of the leading Apple analysts is to be believed, those purchasing this year’s iPhones won’t get a couple of the benefits that they’re used to getting when they buy one of the devices.

If one of the leading Apple analysts is to be believed, those purchasing this year’s iPhones won’t get a couple of the benefits that they’re used to getting when they buy one of the devices.

A research note published Sunday by Ming-Chi Kuo of TF Securities, and reported on by CNBC and elsewhere in the business press stated that Apple will not be including either earbud headphones or a power adapter with this year’s iPhones. Kuo also used the name “iPhone 12” in the report, although it’s not clear that’s the name Apple will use.

Kuo had said last month that the earphones were probably not going to be offered in the box. Analysts with Barclays, last week, had reached a similar conclusion about the lack of earbuds or a charger, according to MacRumors.

The move is seen as an effort to cut costs, as the addition of 5G capability is expected to make this year’s iPhones more expensive than previous editions have been. It will also, in theory, encourage users to make separate purchases of those items, or choosing the more expensive AirPods. A new 20W power adapter is also expected to be offered separately, per Kuo’s note.

The report by Kuo also predicted that Apple will release a new iPhone SE in 2021, also without headphones or a charger. Apple released an iPhone SE this spring, the first update to that lower-cost iPhone in four years.

Kuo and other analysts have been putting out predictions about what we’re likely to see in this year’s iPhones, and also about the likely timing for their arrival.

Consensus seems to show that Apple will put out four new iPhones this year, at least some of which will have 5G capability, in a first for Apple. There were concerns earlier this year that coronavirus’ effect on the supply chain in Asia would cause a delay in the iPhone, although most analysts now predict the phones will arrive somewhere in the late September/early October time frame.

We do know that the iPhone will feature the debut of iOS 14, which was introduced last week’s at the company’s “virtual” World Wide Developers’ Conference. Also at the event, Apple officially announced that, in its Mac computers, it will switch from Intel chips to what it calls “Apple Silicon.”

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Bruce W. Bennett, Soo Kim

Security, Asia

The end of the Korean War and peace on the peninsula are no more likely to occur as the result of a peace agreement than has North Korean denuclearization occurred as the result of multiple denuclearization agreements. Ultimately, North Korean objectives matter, and real peace does not appear to be part of those objectives.

The end of the Korean War and peace on the peninsula are no more likely to occur as the result of a peace agreement than has North Korean denuclearization occurred as the result of multiple denuclearization agreements. Ultimately, North Korean objectives matter, and real peace does not appear to be part of those objectives.

The North Korean regime has been very clear that its two primary objectives are regime survival and Korean unification controlled by the North. The North Korean regime has reason to be worried about its survival, given its many failures in the last several years, to include the difficulties it is apparently facing in just feeding the people of Pyongyang now. The regime seems to perceive that it can overcome its third world, impoverished conditions if it can impose unification on the South, perhaps the only justification for the regime’s building dozens of nuclear weapons.

But first, the North must help decouple the ROK/U.S. alliance. Without U.S. extended deterrence, the South could be vulnerable to North Korean nuclear coercion and attacks. While we seldom consider the Korean War ending with the North’s original objective of victory, Kim Jong-un appears to be hoping to achieve that outcome. His insistence on the importance of unification has been a recurring theme in his New Year’s addresses.

Despite Kim’s dream of controlling the peninsula, a unification imposed by North Korean nuclear coercion or attack would be unlikely to really end the Korean War. Seeking dominance rather than unification, a North Korea in charge of all of Korea would probably use its hallmark brutality in purging ROK business, political, and military leaders, replacing them with North Koreans loyal to the Kim Family but so lacking in the knowledge and experience required to run South Korean business that they could instead destroy those businesses. The North’s use of nuclear weapons would also probably lead to the imposition of substantial international trade sanctions, which when combined with North Korean mismanagement could gradually strangle even the ROK economy which is heavily export-oriented—a real trade war. The wealth of the South would not last long in such extreme circumstances, leaving the South Korean people impoverished as the North might expropriate their residual wealth. This is not a picture of peace.

To end the Korean War, the North could abandon its designs for dominating the South. Doing so would allow the North to abandon its quest for a major nuclear weapon force, instead of investing in the welfare of the North Korean people. After all, North Korea has not needed nuclear weapons to defend itself against U.S. attacks since 1953. The North’s saying so is simply an excuse for building an offensive nuclear weapon force when no defensive force is needed.

Both sides could then turn to eliminating the hostility that each feels. But North Korea appears far more hostile toward the United States than vice-versa. After all, no U.S. indoctrination tells its people that the North Koreans are the eternal enemies of the United States, but North Koreans are trained that Americans are their eternal enemies from a very young age. Can there be true peace on the Korean peninsula if such behavior continues?

Many of the sanctions against North Korea are condition-based. If the North constrains and eventually reduces its nuclear weapon program, those sanctions will be relaxed. And without nuclear weapon threats and those sanctions, both sides could build toward ending the Korean War. But North Korea has to decide that it seeks peaceful coexistence and not peninsula dominance. Is it ready to do so?

Bruce Bennett is a senior defense analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School.

Soo Kim is a policy analyst at RAND.

Ethen Kim Lieser

Technology,

But still worth your hard-earned money? 

Samsung’s 65-Inch Q70T QLED Falls Short of Previous-Gen Models but Still Delivers the Goods

 

By Ethen Kim Lieser

If you feel uneasy about committing thousands of dollars on a QLED HDTV, perhaps a mid-range option with some nice added perks would be the way to go.

Well, it appears that Samsung has you covered—the 65-inch Q70T Series QLED HDTV is now retailing for $1,100, $200 off the regular price.

At this reasonable price range, know that the Q70T is much cheaper than its OLED TV rivals—which can easily creep into the $2K or $3K range. Despite the smaller investment, you’ll still be getting yourself arguably the planet’s second-best panel.

The Q70T is the successor to the Korean tech giant’s Q70 and Q70R QLEDs from 2019. However, the Q70T surprisingly lacks a bit of the verve from the previous generations, as it doesn’t perform as well, has lower peak brightness and lacks the much-coveted local dimming feature, which comes with the Q70R. On the flip side, you will get eARC support on the Q70T.

Despite these issues, the Q70T still provides outstanding overall image quality with plenty-deep black levels. The set’s robust video processing is also a welcomed boon for hardcore gamers and lovers of intense action films.

Be aware that the wide-angle viewing, though, falls a bit short of the higher-end models, so if you have wider or wraparound seating arrangements, make sure to take note of that. And if you find yourself often watching TV during the daytime or in a bright room, the Q70T does a valiant job in masking those annoying glares and reflections.

The Q70T employs Smart TV capabilities powered by Tizen, which can be a mixed bag for some. Much like its Korean archrival LG’s webOS platform, the Tizen has a pleasant stripped-down interface but it really lacks any real punch that is needed for today’s data-heavy streaming TV world.

Yes, Tizen has access to run-of-the-mill popular apps like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, but a platform like Android TV or Roku will give you much more bang for your buck. Moreover, Tizen really isn’t that flexible when it comes to sideloading apps, which could affect the TV’s use in different markets and regions. On a more positive note, Amazon Alexa is now built into the software.

The overall design of the Q70T is indeed classic Samsung. The panel is as thin as you can get for a QLED TV right now and it does exude a slick and refined look. The legs, however, are set quite far apart, so if you’re using a TV stand or a table, make sure that it is long enough.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Minneapolis-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.