The president’s Monday declaration of a “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C.—notwithstanding most crimes’ decline from a post-pandemic peak—will further entangle the U.S. military, its equipment, and technology, in law-enforcement matters. It could also expose D.C. residents and visitors to unprecedented digital surveillance, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports.
A similar turn of events happened in June 2020, when the National Guard was sent into the streets of U.S. cities amid protests of police brutality. “Stingrays” and “dirtbags” were deployed to track cellphones. And spyplanes and Predator drones traced the skies, a world away from the war zones they were built for.
Now, with federal agencies and entities working with military personnel under declared-emergency circumstances, new gear could enter domestic use, Tucker writes. And local officials or the civilian review boards that normally oversee police use of such technologies may lack the power to prevent or even monitor it. For example, in 2021, the D.C. government ended a facial-recognition pilot program after police used it to identify a protester at Lafayette Square. But local prohibitions don’t apply to federalized or military forces. Read more, here.
ICYMI: Trump federalized the DC police, and declared an emergency as crime hit a 30-year low. Defense One’s sister publication, GovExec explains. The New York Times and Associated Press have more.
Anatomy of a decision: Trump had long planned a takeover, the Washington Post reported Tuesday morning, with “an informal playbook for how he would use the powers of the presidency to take control of the District of Columbia, with options prepared for him such as deploying more federal law enforcement officers or taking over the entire municipal government.”
Developing: Pentagon mulls military “reaction force” for civil unrest. A “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” of 600 National Guard troops—split between military bases in Alabama and Arizona—would be kept ready to deploy in as little as one hour to American cities facing protests or other unrest, according to documents reviewed by the Post’s Matt Viser, Emily Davies and Perry Stein. The documents say the cost could reach “hundreds of millions of dollars” if military aircraft and aircrews are used instead of cheaper charter aircraft.
The proposal “represents another potential expansion of President Donald Trump’s willingness to employ the armed forces on American soil. It relies on a section of U.S. Code that allows the commander in chief to circumvent limitations on the military’s use within the United States,” the Post reports. More, here.
Related reading:
Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2017, 32-year-old Heather Heyer was killed and nearly three dozen others were wounded at a rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned violent when one drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters.
Russian troops charge ahead
Ahead of his Friday summit with Trump in Alaska, Vladimir Putin’s invasion forces advanced another six miles or so in Ukraine’s east, toward Dobropillya in Donetsk, almost fully encircling a Ukrainian logistical hub at Pokrovsk.
“The advance is one of the most dramatic in the last year,” Reuters reports. “Ukrainian troops must pass through a narrow 10-mile corridor to enter [Pokrovsk], leaving them vulnerable to drone attacks,” the New York Times reports.
How it happened: “the Russians found a gap in Ukrainian lines this week after weeks of probing attacks, and then used their vast reserves of manpower to break through the lines,” a Ukrainian officer told the Wall Street Journal. Analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War noted parallels to previous recent gains for Moscow: “Russian forces used a similar tactical penetration in mid-April 2024 to facilitate the seizure of operationally significant territory northwest of Avdiivka,” ISW wrote Monday.
However, “It is premature to call the Russian advances in the Dobropillya area an operational-level breakthrough, though Russian forces very likely seek to mature their tactical advances into an operational-level breakthrough in the coming days,” ISW’s analysts write. “The next several days in the Pokrovsk area of operations will likely be critical for Ukraine’s ability to prevent accelerated Russian gains north and northwest of Pokrovsk.” Read more, here.
New: Officials in Ukraine have successfully tested a new direct-to-cell satellite technology from Elon Musk’s Starlink, Reuters reported Tuesday. The new gear “aims to provide reliable connectivity when terrestrial networks are unavailable, a critical asset for war-torn Ukraine where Russian attacks on infrastructure regularly disrupt communications,” the wire service explains. “Space X-owned Starlink has signed deals with telcos in 10 countries for a direct-to-cell service, with Kyivstar set to become the first operator in Europe to roll it out.” Read more, here.
Developing: Russia’s Geran drones are allegedly laying anti-tank mines along “an unspecified logistics route in Ukraine,” ISW warned in its Monday assessment. The War Zone has more on the video purporting to show the drones at work, here.
Developing: Trump says he’s preparing to discuss territorial changes for Ukraine at Friday’s summit with Putin in Alaska. “Russia has occupied a big portion of Ukraine…We’re going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine,” Trump told reporters Monday. Politico has a tiny bit more.And in commentary: “This isn’t how wars are ended: a veteran diplomat puts Trump-Putin summit in context,” via Donald Heflin of Tufts University, speaking Monday to The Conversation.
Pacific region
South Korea’s military is more than 20% smaller than it was six years ago, Reuters reported Sunday citing a new report from Seoul’s defense ministry. There were about 450,000 troops in uniform last month, down from 560,000 in 2019.
What’s going on: There are far fewer men of enlistment age across the country, and South Korea has the world’s lowest birth rate. As a result, “the military is 50,000 troops short of the number of troops adequate for maintaining defence readiness,” Reuters reports.
Developing: America’s acting ambassador to Seoul is visiting Hyundai’s shipyards in Ulsan with Foreign Minister Cho Hyun on Wednesday, Yonhap news agency reports. Trump is expected to meet with Seoul’s new President Lee Jae Myung in Washington on August 25.
China is about to merge two state-run shipbuilders to create the world’s largest, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday. The new entity is the result of combining China State Shipbuilding with another entity called China Shipbuilding Industry. The two companies totaled about 17% of the world market for shipbuilding, with an annual revenue of around $18 billion.
“CSSC’s main business is commercial, but it is also an important contractor for the Chinese navy,” the Journal notes. “The company it is absorbing designed and built China’s first homegrown aircraft carrier, the Shandong.”
By the way: Two Chinese ships collided while trying to harass Philippine Coast Guard vessels in the South China Sea on Monday. A Chinese cutter and guided-missile destroyer ran into each other in a confrontation captured on video that you can see on YouTube, here. USNI News called it “one of the most severe incidents among Chinese forces to date,” and “the most severe incident to occur between the two countries since last year’s June 17th incident, when the two countries clashed at Second Thomas Shoal.” Read more, here.
Additional reading: “Documents detail China’s AI-powered propaganda push,” Nextgov reported Monday, citing the work of Vanderbilt University researchers.
Around the Defense Department
Coast Guard commissions first new icebreaker since the 1990s, USNI News reports. The medium icebreaker USCGC Storis (WAGB-21) was commissioned Saturday in a ceremony in Juneau, Alaska, joining the only two other U.S. icebreakers: Healy (WAGB-20) and Polar Star (WAGB-10).
The Coast Guard needs about nine to do the job properly, officials have testified. Get up to speed with the Congressional Research Service’s January report.
Additional reading:
Lastly today: The Air Force wants to buy two Tesla Cybertrucks for target practice. “Testing needs to mirror real world situations,” said one document cited by Fortune. “The intent of the training is to prep the units for operations by simulating scenarios as closely as possible to the real world situations.” Read on, here.
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