“It is extremely important to bring [them] to justice,” said Markenzy Lapointe, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. “We will deliver justice in the courtroom.”
A squad of former Colombian soldiers hired by CTU are among suspects who carried out the July 2021 attack, which authorities say originally was envisioned to be a coup rather than an assassination. The motives and ultimate masterminds of the attack remain unclear.
Tama Kudman, Veintemilla’s attorney, told The Associated Press that he would plead not guilty to both charges.
Claude Joseph, who was serving as prime minister when Moïse was killed, cheered the announcement. “Justice must prevail,” he tweeted, along with a picture of a U.S. government news release on Tuesday’s announcement.
Earlier this month, the president’s widow, Martine Moïse, who was shot during the attack but survived, called for the creation of a special U.N. tribunal to investigate the assassination, saying the case has faced obstacles for 19 months.
“The killers are out there,” she said.
A total of 11 suspects are now in U.S. custody, including key players like James Solages and Joseph Vincent, two Haitian-Americans who were among the first arrested after Moïse was shot 12 times at his private home in July 2021. Other suspects include Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a pastor and failed businessman whose associates have suggested he was duped by the real masterminds who have yet to be arrested.
Authorities have said that the original plan was to detain Moïse, force him onto a plane and whisk him to an unidentified location, but that plot crumbled when suspects couldn’t find a plane or sufficient weapons, according to court documents.
Sanon, who envisioned himself as Haiti’s new leader, was supposed to seize power, but the other suspects soon favored a former Haitian Supreme Court judge to take over instead. Police say the judge remains a fugitive.
A day before the killing, Solages falsely told other suspects that it was a CIA operation and that the real mission was to kill the president. Shortly before Moïse was killed, Solages yelled that it was supposedly a DEA operation so that the president’s security detail would comply.
Also detained are former Haitian Sen. John Joël Joseph, who had fled to Jamaica, and former U.S. government informant and Haitian businessman Rodolphe Jaar, who was extradited from the Dominican Republic.
As the U.S. investigation into the July 2021 assassination of Moïse pushes forward, the probe in Haiti is nearly idle. Three judges have stepped down from the case amid fears they will be killed and a fourth one was dismissed. Meanwhile, no court hearings have been held yet for the more than 40 suspects arrested in Haiti, with many of them including 18 Colombian soldiers languishing in a severely overcrowded jail in Port-au-Prince that often lacks food and water.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
As the U.S. and Europe look for ways to increase their output of shells to keep their own warehouses stocked and supply Ukraine for its warm weather offensives, they are looking at the current training efforts in England and Germany to change how Ukraine moves on the battlefield. Part of that means figuring out ways to fend off Russia without expending too much ammo.
“We are working with the Ukrainian soldiers in various places throughout Europe to emphasize additional training on maneuver,” Austin said, “so that as they place more emphasis on maneuver, and shaping the battlefield with fires and then maneuvering, there’s a good chance that they’ll require less artillery munitions.”
The U.K., which has already trained 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers in infantry tactics, has pledged to train another 20,000 this year with the help of Norway, the Netherlands and other NATO trainers on the ground.
There was some movement on the artillery issue in Tuesday’s Ukraine Defense Contract Group meeting in Brussels, a gathering of defense leaders from over 50 countries who meet once a month to coordinate military aid for Kyiv.
France and Australia have agreed to work together to produce more 155mm munitions, which are the backbone of Ukraine’s newly-acquired Western artillery arsenal.
The U.S. has also scrambled over the past year to increase its own output of 155mm shells, as Ukraine continues to fire thousands of rounds a day, burning through the one million-plus 155mm munitions the U.S. and allies have sent.
The U.S. Army has pledged to triple its monthly output of shells from the prewar total of about 14,000 a month to up to 90,000 a month by 2025.
The dwindling of ammunition stocks aren’t limited to cannon artillery. In recent meetings at the Pentagon, U.S. officials have informed the Kyiv’s representatives that it doesn’t have enough Army Tactical Missile Systems in its warehouses to spare for the Ukrainian military, POLITICO reported Monday.
Transferring the ATACMS, which would more than double the range of current Ukrainian rocket artillery to about 190 miles, would dwindle America’s stockpiles and harm the U.S. military’s readiness for a future fight, the Pentagon has told them.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
While the U.S. government disclosed last year that the new malware — called PIPEDREAM — was capable of infiltrating U.S. industrial control systems across multiple key sectors, Lee’s comments suggest that the danger was more acute than officials had disclosed. And his disclosure offers a new picture of the U.S. energy supply’s vulnerability to a crippling cyber assault — a possibility that had drawn widespread concern during the run-up to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion.
Lee described the malware as a “state-level, wartime capability.” He did not say if the malware had actually been installed in the targeted networks or if the hackers were just close to getting into the systems.
While Dragos does not link hacking groups to nation states as a matter of policy, other security researchers have said the PIPEDREAM malware used by Chernovite is likely connected to Russia.
The U.S. announced its discovery of the dangerous malware in April 2022, just three weeks after President Joe Biden warned that Russia was “exploring options for potential cyberattacks” against the U.S., and urging critical infrastructure groups to step up security efforts.
Lee said that Dragos worked with partners including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Department of Energy, the FBI and the National Security Agency to “keep something off of American soil that was going to be disruptive in nature.”
“I don’t use those words lightly, not trying to hype anything up, but the state actor responsible for this, there is no chance that this was not their go-to package to be able to actually bring down infrastructure,” Lee said.
A spokesperson for CISA declined to comment on the impact of the malware, and the three other agencies did not respond to requests for comment. When they first announced the discovery of the malware, the agencies said in a joint alert that “certain advanced persistent threat actors” were using new tools to impact multiple types of industrial control systems.
According to Dragos, PIPEDREAM malware is the “first ever” type that can be used across a variety of industrial control systems, and that was not designed to disrupt one specific system — making it particularly dangerous. The malware also does not get into systems through vulnerabilities that could be patched, making it very hard to defend against.
“You could increase temperatures, you could have unsafe conditions in a plant,” Lee said of the impact the use of PIPEDREAM could have. “There is no need to exploit anything, there is no need to find a vulnerability when a capability is already built into the plant so the plant environments can operate.”
Lee told reporters that he believed that since the PIPEDREAM malware was not used successfully against any U.S. infrastructure, the security community “moved past it quickly,” but that there is more to come from these hackers.
“Chernovite is still active, so we assess with high confidence that they are still active and working on this framework and we expect to see it deployed in the future,” Lee said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Pelosi told me in a recent interview that Chang, an engineer trained at MIT and Stanford, began with a light remark.
“Fifty billion dollars – well, that’s a good start,” Chang said, according to her recollection.
Four people present for the meeting, including Pelosi, said it quickly became evident that Chang was not in a kidding mood.
With Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, looking on, the billionaire entrepreneur pressed Pelosi with sobering questions about the CHIPS law — and whether the policy represented a genuine commitment to supporting advanced industry or an impulsive attempt by the United States to seize a piece of a lucrative global market.
Chang said he was pleased that his company could benefit from the subsidies; TSMC already had a major development project underway in Arizona. But did the United States really think it could buy itself a powerhouse chipmaking industry, just like that?
That very question now hangs over the Biden administration as it prepares to implement the semiconductor spending in the CHIPS and Science Act. The next phase is due to begin this month with the unveiling by the Commerce Department of a detailed process for awarding subsidies. The law already looks like a useful political trophy for Biden, claiming a prominent spot in his State of the Union Address.
The law is an emblem, in Biden’s telling, of his commitment to creating the jobs of the future and armoring America’s economy against the disruptions that an increasingly militant China could inflict, potentially by attacking Taiwan. Pouring subsidies into chip fabrication would “make sure the supply chain for America begins in America,” Biden said told Congress.
That is far from a sure bet. As Chang told Pelosi, there is a long distance between the cutting of government checks and the creation of a self-sustaining chips industry in the United States.
His candid concerns represent a rough guide to the challenges Biden’s semiconductor policy will have to address if it is to succeed, long after the immediate political fanfare has abated — and well past the point that its generous subsidies for big business have run out.
Over lunch, Chang warned that it was terribly naïve of the United States to think that it could rapidly spend its way into one of the most complex electronics-manufacturing markets in the world. The task of making semiconductor chips was almost impossibly complicated, he said, demanding Herculean labors merely to obtain the raw materials involved and requiring microscopic precision in the construction of fabrication plants and then in the assembly of the chips themselves.
Was the United States really up to that job?
The industry evolves at incredible speed, Chang continued. Even if the United States managed to build some high-quality factories with the spending Pelosi championed, it would have to keep investing more and more to keep those facilities up to date. Otherwise, he said, Americans would in short order find themselves with tens of billions of dollars’ worth of outdated hardware. A once-in-a-generation infusion of cash would not be enough.
Was America really prepared to keep up?
If the United States wanted a semiconductor industry it could rely on, Chang said, then it should keep investing in the security of Taiwan. After all, his company had long ago perfected what Americans were now trying to devise on their own.
As course upon course of small plates came and went, Chang’s discourse ran on so long that his wife, Sophie, cut in at one point with a terse interjection; Chang told the group she thought he was talking too much. Tsai, observing the whole exchange, noted to Pelosi and the other Americans that Chang had a reputation for always speaking his mind.
Several people described Chang’s remarks on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a sensitive private meeting. Indeed, the only person who agreed to speak with me about it on the record was Pelosi. She was also the only one who sounded untroubled by Chang’s skepticism about the United States as a home for the semiconductor trade.
“He knows America quite well,” she said, “and the questions he asked I saw almost as an opportunity to respond, even if some of it was challenging.”
Unlike other people I spoke to, Pelosi said she was not put off by the severity of Chang’s language. Lauding Chang as an “iconic figure,” she told me several times: “I was in such awe of him.”
But Pelosi said she had also delivered a firm message of her own: “That we knew what we were doing, that we were determined to succeed with it – that it was a good start.”
Other Taiwanese executives present voiced hesitation, Pelosi acknowledged, with some questioning whether American environmental and labor laws were consistent with the goal of nurturing a sophisticated industry. In our conversation, she rejected the idea that there might be tensions between her political party’s grand economic and social aspirations, and the narrower aims of the CHIPS law.
Chang, naturally, is not a disinterested observer of the American semiconductor effort. His company is a singular global power; its overwhelming importance in the high-tech supply chain has become a vital strategic asset for Taiwan as it gathers allies in an age of deepening conflict with the Chinese Communist Party. If China blockaded or invaded the island, the impact on TSMC’s operations alone would convulse the international economy. That is a strong incentive for wealthy democracies to defend Taiwan with more than blandishments about self-determination.
Chang has questioned in other settings whether the United States is a suitable environment for semiconductor manufacturing, pointing to gaps in the workforce and defects in the business culture. On a podcast hosted by the Brookings Institution last year, Chang lamented what he called a lack of “manufacturing talents” in the United States, owing to generations of ambitious Americans flocking to finance and internet companies instead. (“I don’t really think it’s a bad thing for the United States, actually,” he said, “but it’s a bad thing for trying to do semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S.”)
He repeated a version of that critique over lunch in August, prompting one member of Pelosi’s delegation, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, to speak up and urge Chang to visit Krishnamoorthi’s home state of Illinois to get a better sense of the American workforce. Chang did not indicate he was tempted by the invitation.
When I asked several Biden administration officials about Chang’s criticism, the message I got back was a confident-sounding “stay tuned.” The next stage of CHIPS implementation, they said, would reveal in more detail how the law would be used to unlock a torrent of private-sector investment and make American semiconductor fabrication a sturdy, long-range enterprise. They did not reject Chang’s concerns about the current U.S. workforce, but pointed to American tech hubs like Silicon Valley and North Carolina’s Research Triangle as evidence that we do know how to build dynamic, fully staffed tech hubs in this country. Now, they said, we need to build more of them.
Not long after his luncheon with Pelosi, Chang visited an area that figures to become one of those hubs. In Arizona, he joined Biden at a vast construction site in north Phoenix where TSMC is building a gargantuan complex that may stand as something of a counterpoint to Chang’s overarching skepticism about the law. His company mapped out plans for an Arizona project before Biden became president, but after the passage of the CHIPS law TSMC announced it would massively increase its investment in the state — from $12 billion to $40 billion — and build a second facility there, too.
The final result would be a fabrication center that is expected to supply Apple and other American tech companies, employing thousands in a state that also happens to be a major electoral battleground. Not incidentally, it would likely be eligible for U.S. subsidies.
That, Biden said in December, was more than just a good start. He declared in Phoenix that the United States was “better positioned than any other nation to lead the world economy in the years ahead — if we keep our focus.”
Morris Chang could have told Biden that was a big “if.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel agreed to legalize nine settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, The Associated Press reported. This action goes against the United States’ strong opposition to “any unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions,” Price said during the State Department briefing.
The Israeli leadership under Netanyahu has faced criticism from some who say the far-right policies are racist or misogynistic. During Netanyahu’s attempt to return to power last year, after being ousted in the previous election, he tapped into far-right extremist coalitions to gain support — coalitions now represented in the new Israeli government.
The U.S. has tread lightly in addressing the new coalition government, while also keeping its ties with a historic ally. Blinken previously met with Netanyahu two weeks ago during a two-day trip.
However, the U.S. State Department’s vocal opposition should be “no surprise,” Price said.
“During his recent trip to Israel, Secretary Blinken was clear: that all parties should refrain from actions that heighten tensions and take us further away from peace,” Price said. “Israel’s decision on settlements and outposts runs directly contrary to those objectives.”
Price said the State Department was now having “intensive discussions with the parties, including Israel.” These discussions are bilateral and multilateral, he said.
“When we were there, before we were there, after we were there, last week, again today, our message on this has been clear and consistent,” Price said. “We oppose any unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The Pentagon’s assessment of its stockpiles is informed in part by how many weapons and munitions planners think they might need to confront an enemy. Those plans have not been significantly revised since the start of the war in Ukraine, and have not recalibrated what the stockpiles the U.S. might need in reserve to face a weakened Russia, or account for the fact that Ukraine is essentially fighting that war right now.
One of the reasons the military is hesitant to send the ATACMS is due to a desire to maintain a certain level of munitions in U.S. stockpiles, said one U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military calculations.
“With any package, we always consider our readiness and our own stocks while providing Ukraine what it needs on the battlefield,” said a senior DoD official. “There are other ways of providing Ukraine with the capabilities it needs to strike the targets.”
Laura Cooper, the Pentagon’s top policy official for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia issues, said in a recent interview that “with every single capability that we provide, whether you’re talking, you know, HIMARS or you’re talking a particular kind of missile or ammunition, we’re always looking at the availability of our stocks, we’re looking at production considerations, and so that’s true of every capability, and we make decisions accordingly.”
Lockheed Martin has produced about 4,000 ATACMS in various configurations over the past two decades. Some of those missiles have been sold to allied nations, which bought the missile for their own multiple rocket launcher systems. Around 600 were fired by U.S. forces in combat during the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War.
One workaround being considered by Kyiv is to ask for Washington’s approval to buy ATACMS from an allied country that operates the weapon, using military financing from the United States, according to one of the people familiar with the discussions. The list of ATACMS users includes South Korea, Poland, Romania, Greece, Turkey, Qatar and Bahrain.
The other issue over sending ATACMS — that it’s too aggressive a move by Biden’s team — remains. But Ukrainian officials have heard such arguments about other weapons before, only for the Biden administration to reverse course and send artillery, missile defenses and tanks.
Despite Washington’s reservations, Ukraine continues to push for more advanced weapons, with ATACMS typically at the top of the list.
“Ukraine needs long-range missiles,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a January video address to the Ukrainian people, “to deprive the occupier of the opportunity to place its missile launchers somewhere far from the front line and destroy Ukrainian cities.”
On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley will be in Brussels to host the ninth meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a monthly gathering of 50 nations that will discuss what new military support they can provide Ukraine. Kyiv is planning a spring and summer offensive to counter Russia’s assaults in the Donbas and Moscow’s drone and missile campaign against civilian targets.
One person close to the Ukrainian government said that Kyiv doesn’t anticipate any new weapons in the assistance package Austin will announce this week. The drawdowns from existing stocks and contracts for new weapons won’t include ATACMS or F-16 warplanes, but will focus on ammunition, munitions, air defense and spare parts.
Whatever the U.S. package — and other pledges by partner nations — Ukraine is looking for more secrecy when those governments announce that assistance.
Officials in Kyiv are growing concerned that some of the more detailed lists coming out of Washington and elsewhere could risk providing too much information to their Russian foes, who can prepare defenses or countermeasures if they know what they’ll be facing, according to one of the people.
Zelenskyy alluded to those growing concerns on Thursday in Brussels when he met with European Union leaders to talk about what he needs this year and beyond.
Fresh off a successful trip to London where he met with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who pledged to help train Ukrainian pilots to fly NATO fighter jets, Zelenskyy said “we have moved towards the solutions concerning the long-range missiles and the training of our pilots… Also there are certain agreements which are not public but are positive. When these items will happen, our state will know this, but I don’t want to prepare the Russian Federation.”
The U.S. and allies have long maintained some element of mystery over some capabilities sent to Ukraine, cloaking some military aid under vague catchall categories such as rocket artillery or drones that could mean any number of things.
But the U.S. has also done more than most countries to announce the amount and nature of its donations and defense contracts proposed with Ukraine, as the Biden administration tries to show its commitment to Kyiv.
Others, such as Finland, Sweden, Spain and Canada, are more vague, and generally decline to list most of the specific equipment, weapons and munitions they provide.
The desire for more secrecy can be seen as a difficult request for some countries that are eager to show how deep their support for Ukraine goes, especially when that support can also mean American military financing to replace stocks in later years. At Thursday’s EU summit, Zelenskyy formally asked Slovakian Prime Minister Eduard Heger to transfer some of his country’s MiG-29 fighter planes to Ukraine.
On Friday, Heger said he was ready to start talks on the potential transfer. “The Ukrainian president asked me to deliver the MiGs. Now, because this official request has come, the process of negotiations can be started,” Heger said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace,” Trudeau tweeted Saturday. “@NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.”
“I spoke with President Biden this afternoon. Canadian Forces will now recover and analyze the wreckage of the object. Thank you to NORAD for keeping the watch over North America,” Trudeau added.
The latest incident comes a day after another F-22 downed an unidentified cylindrical object over Alaska airspace, which is currently being recovered by the U.S. military near the Alaskan town of Deadhorse.
The intercepts follow the cross-country saga earlier this month when a Chinese surveillance balloon overflew the U.S. from Montana to South Carolina, before it was downed over the Atlantic.
The U.S. Defense Department confirmed that NORAD detected the object over Alaska on Friday evening.
“As Canadian authorities conduct recovery operations to help learn more about the object, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will be working closely with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement.
Canada’s Defense Minister Anita Anand said that she and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had discussed the incident. “We’ll always defend our sovereignty together,” Anand said in a tweet on Saturday.
“This was the first time that a NORAD operation has downed an aerial object,” Anand said in a press conference Saturday evening.
The object, the Canadian defense minister said, appeared to be a small cylindrical object, smaller than the one that was shot down off the coast of North Carolina last week. Flying at roughly 40,000 feet, the object posed a “reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight,” she said.
Anand said it was downed at 3:41 p.m. ET about 100 miles from the U.S.-Canada border in central Yukon. Both U.S. and Canadian aircrafts were involved in the operation. American F-22s were launched from the Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage and Canadian F-18s from Cold Lake, Alberta. Canada’s Chief of the Defense Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre confirmed a AIM-9X Sidewinder missile, from the F-22, downed the object.
Anand did not confirm if the object is from China, saying it’s too early to determine where it came from.
Anand had met with Austin in Washington on Friday where the spy balloon shot down over the Carolinas was on the agenda. That balloon was primarily tracked and analyzed through NORAD, she told reporters during a morning briefing. “Last year, we announced the upgrade to our continental defense and NORAD, about C$40 billion [$30 billion],” she added. “This incident highlights the importance of that initiative.”
That upgrade focuses on improving NORAD’s ability to detect and track intrusions into North American airspace, Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs, told a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday.
“We’re taking steps with Canada to augment the existing North Warning System, including the development of a new system of sensors called Crossbow that will enhance NORAD ability to detect approaching airborne threats,” Dalton said.
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) commended the U.S. Air Force personnel who shot down the unidentified object in Canadian airspace. Sullivan called for a redoubling of efforts “to recover, exploit and analyze the unidentified aircraft shot down over Alaska and Canada … to fully understand the nature of the threat we are facing right now,” in a tweet on Saturday.
The FAA announced late Saturday it had closed some airspace above Montana for Defense Department activities. The airspace was reopened a short time later. In a statement, NORAD said it had detected a “radar anomaly” and sent fighter jets to investigate. However, no object was identified that correlated to the radar hits, NORAD said.
Montana Sens. Steve Daines and John Tester both released statements saying they were in contact with Pentagon officials over the incident.
Asked why there were seemingly more balloon downings and related incidents recently, a U.S. official said: “We are being more vigilant now.”
Recoveries of the Chinese balloon in the Atlantic and the unidentified craft over Alaska are still ongoing. NORAD said in a Saturday statement that the work in the High North is being hampered by adverse weather conditions.
“Arctic weather conditions, including wind chill, snow, and limited daylight, are a factor in this operation, and personnel will adjust recovery operations to maintain safety,” the statement said. “Recovery activities are occurring on sea ice.”
White House and Pentagon officials still do not have a positive identification or country of origin of the object shot down over Alaska, and would not confirm that Friday’s incident was a Chinese-made surveillance balloon like the one that was struck off the coast of South Carolina.
Sue Allan, Lee Hudson, Joseph Gedeon, Zi-Ann Lum, Lara Seligman and Alex Ward contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Geopolitical links: In addition, Trickbot was linked by IBM last year to cyberattacks in 2022 tied to the war aimed at both the Ukrainian government and private sector groups and, according to the Treasury Department, have also allegedly targeted the U.S. government and U.S. companies.
“The United States and the U.K. are leaders in the global fight against cybercrime and are committed to using all available tools to defend against cyber threats,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Thursday. “As Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine continues, cooperation with our allies and partners is more critical than ever to protect our national security.”
British attacks: The U.K.’s National Crime Agency identified almost 150 British victims of ransomware linked to Russian cybercriminal groups. And the action taken Thursday is part of an effort to shut down ransomware attacks aimed at the U.K., which are classified there as a “tier 1 national security threat.”
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said in a statement Thursday that “by sanctioning these cyber criminals, we are sending a clear signal to them and others involved in ransomware that they will be held to account.”
Past disruption efforts: The hackers associated with Trickbot have continued their activities despite Microsoft taking action in 2020 ahead of the U.S. presidential election to disrupt the group through actions including suspending IP addresses. Whether the new sanctions will be able to permanently damage the group remains unclear.
“These sanctions will likely cause disruption to the adversary’s operations while they look for ways to circumvent the sanctions,” Adam Meyers, head of threat intelligence at cybersecurity group CrowdStrike, said in a statement Thursday. “Often, when cybercriminal groups are disrupted, they will go dark for a time only to rebrand under a new name.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The Hwasong-17 has the theoretical range to make it all the way to the United States from North Korea. But Pyongyang has yet to demonstrate the warhead’s survivability upon reentry or that it could hit a desired target from so far away.
Regardless, the message from North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Un is clear: Despite repeated efforts, the U.S. can’t stop us. It’s a defiant display that both underscores the nation’s stunning military advancement and Western failures to get the ruling Kim family to part with its weapons.
“It punches a hole in 20-plus years of U.S. homeland missile defense policy predicated on defending against a ‘limited’ missile threat from North Korea. That threat is no longer limited and the United States cannot count on missile defense to confer anything close to invulnerability to North Korean retaliation in a conflict,” said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of “Kim Jong Un and the Bomb.”
Critics of the ground-based midcourse defense system, or GMD, say it wouldn’t take so many North Korean missiles to get past it. It might only take one.
“The testing has been utterly unrealistic,” said James Acton, who co-directs Carnegie’s nuclear policy program. GMD has only ever been tested at night once and it failed, he continued, noting that that’s a problem since the sun makes it easier to track the reentry vehicle carrying the warhead. It’s why experts believe an adversary might launch ICBMs at night.
President Joe Biden has taken a hands-off approach to North Korea — but that’s not wholly by design. North Korea has yet to respond to the administration’s offer to sit down anywhere, any time without preconditions. The goal is to get Pyongyang talking about any issues in the relationship, but so far every advance has been rebuffed.
In the meantime, the U.S. has grown closer to South Korea and Japan — infuriating North Korea. Pyongyang has repeatedly expressed anger at the resumption and augmentation of joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises that North Korea views as a precursor to war. Both to improve its arsenal and respond to those drills, North Korea launched by far the largest number of cruise and ballistic missiles during a one-year period in 2022.
That historic rate in part led South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to openly weigh having his nation develop nuclear weapons.
“It’s possible that the problem gets worse and our country will introduce tactical nuclear weapons or build them on our own,” he said in January. “If that’s the case, we can have our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly, given our scientific and technological capabilities.”
The problem may only get worse. North Korea also showcased a series of vehicles carrying solid-fuel missile canisters representing their effort to develop land-based, solid-fuel ICBMs. Those weapons don’t need to spend time fueling up before launch — they essentially come preloaded — shortening the time Pyongyang has to rush them out for launch before an adversary shoots them on the ground.
However, analysts didn’t get a look at the real thing. They say that the canister on the nine-wheel chassis is likely a mock up. But this year’s version is bigger than previous iterations, showing North Korea is moving closer and closer to its goal of fielding an operational solid-fuel ICBM.
“North Korea generally parades systems they intend to produce,” said David Schmerler, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. “The designs from parade to launch might change slightly, but the addition of the canistered [launcher] reflects efforts in country to produce a land-based, solid-fuel ICBM.”
It’s unclear how the Biden administration will respond — a request for comment from the National Security Council wasn’t immediately returned. But the implication for policy is clear: Administration after administration has failed to stop North Korea’s march to this moment, and now Pyongyang is literally parading in front of the world.
“North Korea, whether we like it or not, is a third nuclear deterrence relationship for the United States that will need to be dealt with, much like we’d plan to deal with Russia and China,” said Carnegie’s Panda.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The visit is a marked shift in tone from previous engagements. French President Emmanuel Macron accused the U.S. of “hurting” his country when Congress passed its landmark Inflation Reduction Act.
European officials had initially pushed President Joe Biden and senior U.S. lawmakers to make the law more inclusive of European companies. The law provides $369 billion in subsidies and tax credits that aim to incentivize purchases of electric vehicles and build up green infrastructure. One of the most hotly contested provisions, a $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit, is limited to cars built in North America and with battery critical minerals sourced domestically or from a free trade agreement partner — which the EU is not.
Habeck and Le Maire say they haven’t given up that campaign. But in the face of uncertainty about how far the Biden administration will go to address their concerns, the officials said the European Union, one America’s most important trading partners, deserves at least a transparent accounting of how the U.S. government will use the law to funnel money to industry.
“We agreed on the necessity of full transparency on the level of subsidies and tax credits,” Le Maire told reporters after the meetings, as well as “necessity to ensure constant communication at the ministerial level, especially on the strategy on tax credits.”
“You cannot have any fair competition if there is not full transparency on the level of public subsidies and public tax credits that are granted to private companies,” he added.
But outside of pledges for transparency and cooperation, the meetings with U.S. officials did not appear to yield any concrete agreement to alleviate the EU’s top concern with the IRA — the North American assembly requirement for subsidized electric vehicles.
Le Maire said the sides agreed in principle that the “implementation of the IRA should include as many EU components as possible.” But he declined to detail if that meant the U.S. had budged on the EV tax credit terms, or if they would seek to maximize EU parts under existing the parameters.
The economic dustup has shown how complex and potentially adversarial the race toward a clean energy future will be. Even as they pursue their own self-interests, economies like the U.S. and EU have at least one shared goal beyond slowing climate change: ensuring China does not dominate supply chains for battery production and renewables.
For their part, European nations are already developing their own subsidy scheme to prevent a feared migration of EU manufacturing to the U.S., where energy costs are lower and states are standing by with sweeteners to dish out. After meeting with U.S. officials, the ministers said the need for Europe to respond with its own subsidy package is clearer than ever.
“One conclusion we have to draw from the meetings,” Le Maire said, is that “we see the absolute necessity for Europe to arrive at the definition and implementation of a European green tech plan.”
U.S. officials have encouraged the EU to boost its own industries, often noting there is ample room in the market for widespread government support for clean energy.
A Treasury Department readout of the meeting said Yellen stressed the need for innovation and development of technology “on both sides of the Atlantic to speed the transition to green energy and meet our collective climate goals.”
The Treasury Department provided preliminary guidance in late December on how it is going to implement key features of the electric vehicle tax credits and promised complete details in March. In a win for the EU, it hinted at adopting an expansive definition of which countries are considered U.S. free trade agreement partners. It also said imported electric vehicles would be eligible for a separate credit for commercial clean vehicles. However, many legal experts said it’s unlikely the administration could bend the law any further.
The German and French officials emphasized a promise to cooperate on creating a common market for the components that go into many clean energy products, with Habeck hailing the creation of a “critical minerals club” between the trading partners. France and Germany had already agreed last year to join a “minerals security partnership” to bolster critical mineral supply chains.
“The idea is we will find concrete measures … on how we reach more diversity in the supply chain,” Habeck said. “If that is reached, then we might have the steps for further agreements, for further alignment for the goods that are produced out of the critical minerals.”
Habeck and Le Maire also met Tuesday with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), who played a key role in crafting the final details of the IRA, particularly the electric vehicle consumer tax credit.
Speaking at an online event hosted by the news outlet Semafor before that meeting, Manchin defended the IRA bill as an important step toward achieving U.S. energy security and said it was never his or Congress’ intention to hurt Europe.
“We can bring them in to basically participating [in the IRA provisions],” Manchin said. “But every country does what they can to stimulate their market, to keep their people working, to have a strong economy. They can’t deny us from doing the same thing.”
Manchin also encouraged European officials to offer incentives to increase investment in clean energy and technologies to fight climate change. He expressed concern the EU wants “to continue to beat the living crap out of people by charging carbon taxes, carbon fees and everything [else they’re] doing, rather than giving them incentives, basically, to mature these industries quicker.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
