Category: Defense and National Security

WASHINGTON – A Massachusetts man has been arrested for providing information about Chinese dissidents in the United States to China’s government, the Justice Department said Monday. Litang Liang, 63, of Brighton, was arrested on May 9 on charges of acting as an agent of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) without notifying US authorities, according to the department.

The announcement of Liang’s arrest came on the same day as a court in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou revealed that a 78-year-old US citizen, John Shing-wan Leung, had been sentenced to life in prison for espionage. The Justice Department said Liang, between 2018 and 2022, had passed information about Boston-area residents, dissidents and groups, including “community organisations with pro-Taiwan leanings,” to Chinese government officials.

Iran Press TV Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has plotted in private to launch bold attacks inside Russia, according to leaked documents. Zelensky, who till recently was refused long-range weapons to use in attacks against Russia, behind closed doors sketched out plans earlier this year for major military actions such as occupying cities and villages inside Russia, bombing a pipeline that transfers Russian oil to Hungary, and using long-range missiles to hit targets on the Russian side of the border. The…

Pyongyang, May 15 (KCNA) — Kim Sol Hwa, researcher of the Institute for Japan Studies of the DPRK Foreign Ministry, issued the following article titled “What is final aim of Japan’s Military Collusion with NATO” on May 14:

The unprecedented military nexus between Japan and NATO has recently aroused great concern and vigilance of the international community. A typical example is that Japan is planning to open the NATO liaison office in Japan for the first time in Asia…

Beijing vows to ‘fight back resolutely and forcefully’ but denies that its diplomat intimidated a politician. By Paul Eckert for RFA 2023.05.09 — China expelled a Canadian diplomat in Shanghai on Tuesday, a day after Ottawa announced it would expel a Chinese diplomat accused of trying to intimidate a Canadian politician. The tit-for-tat expulsions follow years of strained ties between the major Pacific trade partners, and come amid mounting Canadian public concern about Chinese influence operations in the country in…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Washington Post in an interview published on Tuesday that the White House did not inform him about a leak of secret US documents that grabbed attention around the world in April.

“I did not receive information from the White House or the Pentagon beforehand,” Mr Zelensky was quoted as saying.

“It is unprofitable for us,” he added. “It is not beneficial to the reputation of the White House, and I believe it is not beneficial to the reputation of the United States.”

The materials posted online offered a partial, month-old snapshot of the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on April 12 that the Pentagon document leaks contained a mixture of true and false information about his country’s military, and downplayed its negative impact.

Japan’s defense ministry said on Tuesday it scrambled a jet fighter after spotting a suspected Chinese drone between the Japanese island of Yonaguni and Taiwan.

The drone flew towards Bashi Channel that separates Taiwan from the Philippines, the ministry said in a statement.

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden told Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr at the White House on Monday that the US commitment to the defence of its ally was “ironclad,” including in the South China Sea where Manila is under pressure from China.

Mr Marcos, on the first White House visit by a Philippines leader in 10 years, stressed the importance of the United States as his country’s sole treaty ally in a region with “arguably the most complicated geopolitical situation in the world right now.”

US officials said the leaders would agree new guidelines for stronger military cooperation, as well as stepped up economic cooperation, underscoring a dramatic turnaround in US-Philippine relations over the past year.

“The United States remains ironclad in our commitment to the defence of the Philippines, including the South China Sea,” Mr Biden told Mr Marcos in the Oval Office, reaffirming a 1951 Mutual Defence Treaty that calls for the United States to act in the event of an armed attack on the Philippine military.

Taipei, April 29 (CNA) The United States should engage with other democracies around the world to help Taiwan fend off threats from China, former U.S. national security adviser and outspoken China hawk John Bolton told a pro-Taiwan independence event in Taipei on Saturday.

“The U.S. response to help Taiwan against the Chinese threat has to be fully global,” Bolton said at the Global Taiwan National Affairs Symposium hosted by the World Taiwanese Congress, suggesting the establishment of “new structures of deterrence” against China.

Taiwan is “the center of gravity of the Chinese threat” to the world, said Bolton, who served as national security adviser under President Donald Trump from April 2018 to September 2019 and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006.

Two commanders in the Massachusetts Air National Guard were temporarily suspended last week in connection with a federal investigation into alleged classified intelligence leaker Jack Teixeira, the Air Force confirmed Thursday.

Col. Sean Riley, commander of the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod, suspended the head of the subordinate 102nd Intelligence Support Squadron where Teixeira worked. The commander in charge of supporting airmen like Teixeira, who are mobilized on full-time, active-duty Title 10 orders, was suspended as well, according to Air Force spokesperson Rose Riley.

In addition to temporarily removing the commanders from their jobs, the Department of the Air Force has also revoked their access to classified networks and information, Riley told Air Force Times. Reuters first reported the development on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON — The House committee dedicated to countering China is preparing bipartisan proposals for the fiscal 2024 defense authorization bill that would accelerate U.S. munitions production and arms transfers to Taiwan, its chairman told Defense News in an exclusive interview.

The committee is drawing on lessons learned from the Taiwan tabletop wargame it held last week as it drafts its proposals, which aim to ramp up production of high-priority munitions, help clear the $19 billion arms sale backlog to Taipei and bolster Pentagon cybersecurity cooperation with the island nation.

“We’re hoping to get consensus on a series of proposals that the committee can endorse that would be tailor-made for insertion into this year’s [National Defense Authorization Act],” Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., said Thursday.

BEIJING — China’s military has dispatched a pair of navy ships to take part in joint drills with Singapore’s navy and join in a regional maritime security exhibition.

The exercises starting Friday in the Southeast Asian city state come amid China’s growing presence in the South China Sea, which it claims sovereignty over virtually in its entirety.

Concerns are especially pronounced in the U.S., which on Wednesday joined with forces from the Philippines in major exercises in Philippine waters facing the South China Sea that are likely to anger China. Beijing’s more assertive stance comes as its relations with the U.S. and its allies have hit historic lows.

State television’s military channel identified the ships being sent as the guided missile frigate Yulin and the minesweeper hunter Chibi. They will also be present for the May 3-5 IMDEX Asia National Defense and Maritime Security Show, which will feature 25 warships and attendees from 62 countries.

KYIV, Ukraine — NATO allies and partner countries have delivered more than 98% of the combat vehicles promised to Ukraine during Russia’s invasion and war, the military alliance’s chief said Thursday, giving Kyiv a bigger punch as contemplates launching a counteroffensive.

Along with more than 1,550 armored vehicles, 230 tanks and other equipment, Ukraine’s allies have sent “vast amounts of ammunition” and also trained and equipped more than nine new Ukrainian brigades, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.

More than 30,000 troops are estimated to make up the new brigades. Some NATO partner countries, such as Sweden and Australia, have also provided armored vehicles.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have held talks by telephone, their offices said, before the two countries marked the inauguration of Turkey’s first nuclear power reactor.

The Akkuyu nuclear power plant in Turkey’s southern Mersin province has been built by Russia’s state nuclear energy company Rosatom.

Erdogan thanked Putin on Thursday during their call for his help on the power plant, the Turkish leader’s office said. They also discussed the Black Sea grain initiative and the situation in Ukraine, it said.

Putin said they agreed to deepen economic, trade and agricultural cooperation. He said the two countries were working on an initiative by Erdogan to send flour made from Russian grain to countries that needed it.

Both presidents took part virtually in a ceremony marking the loading of nuclear fuel into the first power unit at Akkuyu.

Iranian forces on Thursday seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker that was bound for Texas, according to the U.S. Navy.

The Navy’s 5th Fleet said the oil tanker Advantage Sweet was seized by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the Gulf of Oman, which lies between the Arabian Sea and the Strait of Hormuz.

The American naval fleet said the merchant ship issued a distress call, and the U.S. is monitoring the situation.

“Iran’s actions are contrary to international law and disruptive to regional security and stability,” the 5th Fleet said in a statement. “The Iranian government should immediately release the oil tanker.”

The 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee passed an amendment to the Counter-Espionage Law on Wednesday. The revised law refines the definition of espionage activities, explicitly categorizing “collaborating with spy organizations and their agents” and “conducting cyber-attacks against state organs, confidential-related units, or critical information infrastructure and etc.” as espionage activities.

The revised law will come into effect on July 1.

The UK government has signaled it will break its pledge to carry out a “bonfire” of legislation dating from Britain’s membership of the European Union, risking the fury of Conservative Brexit supporters.

Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch told a private meeting of Euroskeptic Conservative MPs on Monday that it would not be possible to remove the laws — which number around 4,000 pieces of legislation — by that deadline, according to a person present at the meeting.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has repeatedly promised that he would review or remove all EU laws from the British statute book by the end of 2023, arguing that doing so would be a tangible benefit of Brexit.