The US military is planning to create a “hellscape” of drones in the Taiwan Strait if China moves to attack Taiwan, the top US military commander in the region has told The Washington Post.
US Wants To Create ‘Hellscape’ of Drones If China Attacks Taiwan
Related:
How American Drones Failed to Turn the Tide in Ukraine
President Joe Biden was not aware for days that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was hospitalized, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan ultimately informed Biden late Thursday afternoon, soon after Sullivan himself learned Austin had been hospitalized, the source said. Austin was admitted to the hospital on New Year’s Day due to complications from an elective surgery.
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Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks periodically assumed the duties of the defense secretary while she was on vacation in Puerto Rico during the time Austin was hospitalized, two US officials said. Hicks had arrived in Puerto Rico prior to Austin’s hospitalization.
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The congressional oversight committees were not notified of Austin’s hospitalization until Friday night, according to three congressional aides familiar with the matter.
Biden wasn’t aware for days that Defense Secretary Austin was hospitalized
How’s that promise to be transparent going, Biden?! /s
Could this man bring down Putin?
Ponomarev is deadly serious about his military plot: He described himself in an interview as the political head of a group called the Freedom of Russia Legion*, which he claims has an army of four exile battalions — usually numbering about 1,600 people — based in Ukraine, as well as between 5,000 and 10,000 followers in Russia.
He helps run a Congress of People’s Deputies [government in exile/parallel government**], a shadow parliament based in Poland with about 100 members, 40 of them in Russia, he says, that oversees the legion. That group is developing new laws and a new constitution for a post-Putin Russia. It plans a large gathering in Warsaw this month to develop a transition to free elections in Russia.
Ponomarev described operations inside Russia: a drone attack on the Kremlin in May by an urban guerrilla group [National Republican Army & Russian Volunteer Corps*] loosely affiliated with Ponomarev and the Congress of People’s Deputies; the legion’s raids on Belograd and Shebekino just inside the Russian border in June; and what he claims are daily sabotage attacks on railway lines inside Russia. He said the group is building toward a decisive march on Moscow.
The Russian exile leader also linked his group to the August 2022 assassination of Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist writer. U.S. intelligence officials had blamed that attack on Ukrainian intelligence and said they opposed it, according to an October 2022 account in the New York Times. Ponomarev said his group works closely with Ukrainian intelligence.
Ponomarev also claimed unspecified roles in two attacks this year on pro-Kremlin figures: the April assassination of a pro-war blogger named Vladlen Tatarsky and the May attempted killing of pro-Kremlin writer Zakhar Prilepin.
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“In a crisis, a small, disciplined force can play a decisive role,” he said. And that’s precisely his aim. By recruiting Russian volunteers (he says he gets 1,000 applications a month, which he vets down to 40 reliable recruits), he hopes he can build a force that will march on Moscow, in the way Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s militia’s did in June. Prigozhin halted his march and later died in a mysterious plane crash. But Ponomarev says he won’t stop.
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Ponomarev said he has support for his coup-plotting from Ukraine’s military intelligence service — and strong opposition from the United States. The message he has received from U.S. officials, he says, is: “We don’t want to be part of it.” [Doubt it!]
Right now, Ponomarev’s campaign seems more a series of modest trial runs than a full-fledged operation. Take the May 3 drone attack on the Kremlin. Ponomarev said the group smuggled several Ukrainian drones into Russia. Members fired one toward the Kremlin from east of the city and a second from southwest. They were carrying just one kilogram of explosives and didn’t do much damage, Ponomarev admitted, but they were meant to demonstrate the ability to hit a precise target.
Ponomarev considered it a triumph, of sorts, when Putin scaled back the planned Victory Day celebration of World War II triumphs in May — perhaps because the drone attack had worried the public. He said his followers have “several” more drones on ice for future attacks.
Notes:
Read More »The Pentagon began a new effort to contact former service members who may have been forced out of the military and deprived of years of benefits due to policies targeting their sexual orientation, starting with those who served under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Pentagon working to restore benefits to veterans targeted for being LGBTQ+
Head of aerospace and defence group says western manufacturers will find it impossible to completely cut ties
‘We can de-risk but not decouple’ from China, says Raytheon chief
Related:
Aerojet gets $215 million to boost production of solid rocket motors used in weapons for Ukraine
Yes, I do think the US has an eye on instigating a conflict with China.
As the war rages on in Ukraine, the United States is doing more than supporting an ally. It’s learning lessons — with an eye toward a possible clash with China. No one knows what the next U.S. major military conflict will be or whether the U.S. will send troops — as it did in Afghanistan and Iraq — or provide vast amounts of aid and expertise, as it has done with Ukraine. But China remains America’s biggest concern. U.S. military officials say Beijing wants to be ready to invade the self-governing island of Taiwan by 2027, and the U.S. remains the island democracy’s chief ally and supplier of defense weapons.
How Ukraine war has shaped US planning for a China conflict
Related:
The US may not be able to continue its ongoing support for Ukraine if weapons makers do not ramp up production, US Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro told Fox News on Wednesday evening.
US may not maintain military support for Ukraine, Navy secretary says
Propaganda (too much to debunk):
*Updated note: The translation links no longer work. You’ll need to copy and paste the links into Google Translate.
The current status of the investigation into the murder of Darya Dugina (translation)
And, most likely, it was not the Americans, but the British. In the USA you have to get in order to eliminate a people, much too many signatures from the very top. And then you would say directly that it was. So it was in Afghanistan with the leader of Al-Qaeda, Bin Laden. The assassination was approved with the signature of President Obama. So it was with the assassination of Iranian General Suleimani on the personal order of President Trump. The British quieter and without the signature collection. And they love their cars. The MINI Cooper, for example. This is a weakness. And the next step – for the beauty of purely English murder it would be to strangle Natalia Vovk somewhere and to give Russia the blame. So you could finish the Whole thing. And the tracks would be blurred.
The articles are in German by independent journalist Thomas Roper. I’ve provided links to the English translations by Google next to them (the language can be switched at the top of the translated articles). He suspects that it was British intelligence, as did Nicolas. Thomas connects Ilya Ponomarev, Michael Khodorkovsky, and Alexei Navalny to George Soros. He also points out that Ilya Ponomarev wrote, and worked, for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which is connected to the Free Russia Foundation. CSIS is funded by various Western governments, corporations (oil and defense industries), and NGOs; including George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. On another note, quite a few from the Biden Administration have worked at CSIS including Antony Blinken (State Department), Kathleen Hicks (Defense Department), and Kurt M. Campbell (National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific).
Related:
Soros and Kiev supported the group is behind the murder of Darya Dugina (translation)
Read More »Senate Passes $280 Billion Industrial Policy Bill Meant to Counter China
The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 passed in a vote of 63-33, with 17 Republicans voting in favor. The over 1,000-page legislation includes $52.7 billion for direct funding for the construction and expansion of semiconductor manufacturing and $24 billion for tax incentives and other purposes.
The bill will authorize roughly $200 billion in science and technology research funding that will be spread across several government agencies over the next five years. The largest recipient of the research funds will be the National Science Foundation, which will receive $81 billion.
Related:
Third, the CHIPS Act actually has provisions designed specifically to restrict investments in China. These so-called “guardrails” require that companies taking federal dollars for American projects must also agree not to invest in state-of-the-art technology in China—not just with the federal dollars, with any dollars. Good-faith critics have raised fair concerns that these guardrails should be broader, tougher, and firmer. But any guardrails at all represent unprecedented restrictions on what U.S. companies can do in the People’s Republic. It’s one thing to say an ideal bill would hurt China even more; it’s quite another to try and claim that less-than-perfect restrictions count as “help.”
Pelosi’s Husband Dumped Up to $5M of Tech Stock Right Before Senate Passed CHIPS
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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