What Trump’s UNGA Speech Tells the World

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1896 sculpture of Cain by Henri Vidal, not 2025 sculpture of Marco Rubio

Speeches by national leaders at the opening of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) have multiple goals and various audiences. Leaders of small countries hope to raise concerns with large countries in a setting where they can be the center of attention, if only for 15 minutes. Leaders of ostracized countries often seek to justify the behavior that got them ostracized in the first place. Some speeches are aimed at the leaders in the room, while others are aimed at the folks back home. Some are aimed at allied leaders, and others at competitors and still others at enemies.

Under normal circumstances, preparation for the US president’s speech is probably on par with preparing the State of the Union address to Congress. Both speeches utilize folks from multiple agencies and both are subject to weeks and months of internal debates about what will and will not get into the speech. While the SOTU address is as long as the President wants to make it, the UN politely asks that UNGA addresses be kept to 15 minutes or less, because so many leaders will be speaking. The UNGA speech is primarily foreign policy, while the SOTU is more domestic, but both are critical to laying out the president’s – and by extension, the USA’s – positions on all kinds of things.

For UNGA, the State Department takes the lead (broadly speaking) in preparing drafts and posing options to the final decisionmakers in the White House. Other agencies like DOD, Treasury, Commerce, and DHS, as well as folks like the Director of National Intelligence, all weigh in and put their requests into the funnel out of which the final draft emerges.

While all the prep work on the speech is under way, so too is the prep work for listening to the speeches delivered by other leaders. Is it more of the same, are there new policy nuances, or even major changes of direction being conveyed? Different analysts at State, DOD, and the Intelligence community will prepare a list of “what to listen for” points as they get ready to listen to the UNGA speeches from the countries within their purview. Once the speeches have been made, these same folks will then be sharing their analysis with their superiors and the White House. “Here’s what we heard . . . , here’s what it means . . . , and here’s how it may affect our own policies and responses . . .”

Meanwhile, every other foreign ministry and intelligence service in the world does the same with the UNGA speech of the President of the United States of America. Especially when that president is Donald J. Trump.

So what will these folks notice about Trump’s speech, and what will their analysis of his speech lead them to think or do?

First, they will notice the absolute dichotomy between policy prescriptions and petty personal grievances. Yes, the speechwriting team and the professionals behind them put a lot of substantive stuff into the draft of the speech that went on the teleprompter, but Trump went off-script so much that it was easy for that stuff to get lost in the verbal flood of whining about his domestic political enemies alternated with his own personal self-promotion. If the substance was prepared to fill the 15 minute time slot, the whining and boasting filled another 45 minutes or so. That 3:1 ratio speaks volumes about what matters to Trump: “Three parts me, and one part everyone else. And that ratio is me being generous to everyone else.”

Second, even in the substantive parts of the speech, the presentation was arrogant and insulting. (Why yes, I do think Stephen Miller had a large role in shaping the speech. Why do you ask?) Trump’s “I alone can fix it” from campaigns gone by was echoed in Trump’s declaration at UNGA that he has always been right about everything. From immigration to energy to wars to peacemaking to cultural issues to history, Trump’s assertion that he is always right and that the world would be better off if everyone just bowed down and did what he said was at the center of his speech. The prepared draft of the speech might have been more polite about it, but the message was the same. All the world could see how Trump views them — little kids who need to listen to Daddy, and then do what Daddy says so that they don’t get punished.

Third, Trump’s UNGA speech was a confirmation and distillation of something these folks have seen since 2015 from Trump: facts are optional to Donald Trump. They will see that science takes a back seat to whatever Trump’s particular views and preferences are. Signed agreements, especially those signed by someone other that Trump, are optional, not binding. Historical facts that do not fit with Trump’s worldview are overlooked, ignored, or blithely dismissed as irrelevant. Leaders and nations who seek to move Trump and US policies with fact-based arguments will have a very difficult, if not impossible task if they follow this route.

Fourth, Trump has no use for the opinions of other leaders, unless they comport with his own opinions. Dozens of nations call what Israel is doing in Gaza “genocide” but Trump does not give a damn. Countries of all political stripes recognize the reality of climate change (even as they might differ in how it should be addressed), but not Donald Trump.

Fifth, this speech confirms yet again that what Trump desperately seeks is validation. In his head, he dreams of giving his own version of Sally Field’s academy award acceptance speech — “I haven’t had an orthodox career and I’ve wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time [I won] I didn’t feel it, but this time I feel it. And I can’t deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me! Thank you.”

Sixth, these analysts from other nations regularly ask themselves “How long will Trump hold to a given position?” He renegotiated the NAFTA treaty with Canada and Mexico in 2019 and finalized it in 2020, only to come back in 2025 and ask “who would have ever sign a thing like this?” Grudges over personal slights he will carry with him for decades, but agreements with other leaders and other nations are much less predictable.

The danger to all of this is one basic thing: the world is learning –again — not to listen to the United States.

  • When Trump and RFK Jr. issued their untethered-to-scientific-analysis declaration that Tylenol should not be used by pregnant women, not only did the US medical community loudly shout “NO!” but so did medical leaders around the world (UK, Spain, India, Australia, etc.). The US has a long record of leadership in medical research and treatment — think of the elimination of smallpox and the work to do the same with polio — but now? Around the world, folks are asking what used to be an unimaginable question: Should we listen to anything medical coming out of the CDC?
  • When Trump made his big Liberation Day announcements and sought to put tariffs on almost every nation, he followed up on this with all kinds of exceptions, adjustments, and incoherent statements. Today the tariffs might look like this, but next week they went down, then a month later some of them went higher than before . . . and what the hell will they look like next year?
  • When NGOs and other leaders around the world found the rug yanked out from under them when Trump used DOGE to cancel grants for things like malaria prevention and anti-AIDS programs, as well as letting US food aid funneled through USAID rot in warehouses rather than be delivered to those who feed the hungry, they had to ask if the word of the US is worth anything any more. “We had a five year agreement – you put up this and we’ll handle that — and after 3 years, you reneged. Why should we trust you the next time you want to make a deal?”

Trump and his lackeys can laugh at the world all they want, but if the financial world follows the lead of the medical world and the scientific world, and ceases to trust that the word of the US is good, the US will be in a world of hurt. A non-trivial portion of US debt is held by foreign governments. When the Canadian public decided not to travel to the US or buy US bourbon, that hit the US hospitality industry hard. If foreign governments decide that rather than buying US treasury bonds, they’d prefer bonds from Germany or France or Australia, that will mean the US government would have to offer higher rates of return in order to get the money needed to pay for tax breaks for the rich run the US government.

In the world of international affairs, trust matters, and Donald Trump is pissing away what it took decades to earn. Good luck with that, Secretary of State/National Security Advisor/Archivist of the United States Marco Rubio.

 

[Corrected to fix a minor editing error regarding bond costs in the penultimate paragraph.]

 

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John Bolton and the MIHOP Gambit

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Let me throw a minority report opinion at you, based on this video, first released on YouTube two days before the FBI served a dawn warrant on John Bolton’s home:

I doubt former National Security Adviser John Bolton expressed any new personal opinions in the video above with regard to Putin and Russia.

Bolton’s general opinion about Trump’s transactional approach to international relations certainly isn’t new.

But Bolton spent more than 12 minutes airing out his opinions on Trump’s handling of Russia, Ukraine, India-Pakistan, and tariffs.

He also shared his opinion that Trump’s so-called “list of accomplishments” is Trump trying to accrue to obtain a Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump’s handling of the India-Pakistan conflict in May earned an ego-fluffing nomination for a Nobel from Pakistan in June.

US support of Israel’s bombing of Iran in July, supported by Bolton, makes the nomination a joke as does continuing US support of Netanyahu’s genocidal handling of Gaza.

These conflicting approaches to international relations may pose leverage for Putin to pressure Trump on Ukraine, using Trump’s narcissistic desire for a Nobel Peace Prize — a prize former president Jimmy Carter, vice president Al Gore, and the first Black American president Barack Obama have been awarded. Bolton doesn’t make this point but he does say Putin is manipulating Trump.

Bolton’s criticism of Trump isn’t limited to the video above, or his remarks in his 2020 book, In The Room Where It Happened. Bolton has been interviewed by many outlets here and abroad during which his criticisms are laid out and only growing as Trump continues to flog his erratic and transactional foreign policies. Here are a sampling of interviews with Bolton:

John Bolton, whom Trump described as “a very dumb guy”, is worried about Taiwan
60 Minutes Australia, May 4, 2025

Putin Will ‘Take Advantage’ Of Trump Meeting: Fmr. Nat’l. Security Adviser John Bolton
NewsNation via The Hill, August 8, 2025

Trump is in rush to get deal done: John Bolton on Russia-Ukraine talks
Elizabeth Vargas Reports, NewsNation, August 18, 2025

‘Sanctions Don’t Prohibit What India Did’: Ex-Trump NSA John Bolton On U.S. Tariffs On India
Hindustan Times, August 21, 2025

In this excerpt from the Hindustan Times interview above:

10:34 [MATTOO] You know Ambassador Bolton, if I could bring you back to that question of trust uh moving forward in uh the partnership with America. Lots of commentators over the years in India have been skeptical about the relationship with the United States. They’re saying that look this is a country that fundamentally has a lot more leverage than we do. That’s the question you know do you have the cards and the the sense that there is in India is that yes America is willing now to use its leverage in a way that is coercive, is extremely transactional, uh, and is in some ways brutal.

And you’ve seen President Trump speak very appre, in a very appreciatory tone about tariffs, saying that we’re willing to use it time and again for our foreign policy instruments. There’s a sense that defense technology could be something that America uses as well. And for example, our fighter jet uh something like General Electric fighter jet engines which India is co-developing with the United States to use for our fighter jets is something that India took a significant leap of trust in the United States to develop that partnership uh after years and years as you might be familiar with of suspicion about Washington.

What do you think what has happened over the last couple of weeks does to trust in the relationship? And if you’re speaking to an Indian audience as you are now, how do you pitch to them that the American relationship is one that they should still rely on, should still work on, should still continue to develop?

11:45 [BOLTON] Well, unfortunately, what Trump has done on the tariffs generally uh is destroy uh decades of effort with India, but with a lot of other countries as well uh to build up good faith and trust and reliance on the United States and uh it will take time to repair that. That’s that’s the unfortunate reality. But but here’s where I think it’s important to understand that Trump is aberrational. I don’t know anybody else uh Republican or Democrat who ran for president, let’s just say in 2024, who if elected would behave anything like this. Trump’s doing a lot of things domestically in the United States that are cause for great concern for us as well. And I don’t know any other candidate from 2024 who would do that.

12:30 [BOLTON] Uh, Trump doesn’t have a philosophy. Uh so I think ultimately there’s no legacy for him to leave to his successors, whoever they might be. Uh and I believe that the uh the uh the the force of his personality inhibits a lot of people from speaking up, but that doesn’t mean they agree with what he’s doing. That’s very unfortunate in my view.

12:52 [BOLTON] But I think the uh the the the true strategic sense here uh particularly for a country like India with its assets and capabilities and uh and threats that it faces right on its own border uh is is just to take a deep breath and remember that the world’s going to last longer than the next three and a half years. And uh it’s not pleasant to go through this. I’m not not going to try and persuade anybody of that. But uh but our objective should be to keep the damage to the relationship uh at a minimum uh and then to think about how to repair it as quickly as we can thereafter because I think that when Trump walks off the stage uh he will take almost uh the bulk of this history with him.

(emphasis mine)

Bolton calls Trump “aberrational” or an “aberration,” but this is not the only time Bolton has done so. He did so in June 2020 when interviewed by ABC News, in an interview for NPR in August 2023, in March this year in a tweet from his own Xitter account, and in the India Today video (11:52) featured above.

While criticizing Trump and his foreign policy (or lack thereof), Bolton makes a point of calling Trump an aberration so often through so many media outlets that it seems like a campaign slogan.

In the Hindustan Times Bolton also noted Trump’s repression of free speech critical of his geopolitics. Bolton had to know that he would face more aggressive tactics by the Trump administration to squelch his criticism.

But what if this was the point? To egg Trump on with repeated critical comments Bolton knew from experience would hit a nerve with Trump, to goad him into attacking Bolton?

What if Bolton made it — the investigation into him including the raid on his home yesterday — happen on purpose? In other words, a MIHOP gambit?

If so, what are the next moves by Bolton and Trump?

~ ~ ~

During the February 5, 2020 hearing before the House Committee on the Judiciary, there were a couple questions asked of then-FBI Director Chris Wray mentioning John Bolton by name. First, committee chair Rep. Jerry Nadler (D, NY-12):

Chair Nadler. Okay. Now, recent reporting suggests that the
President plans to seek payback against those individuals he
believes crossed him during the impeachment proceedings. I am
sorry to have to ask. Has the President, the Attorney General,
or any other Administration official asked the FBI to open an
investigation into Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, John Bolton, or any
Member of Congress?
Mr. Wray. Mr. Chair, I have assured the Congress and I can
assure the Congress today that the FBI will only open
investigations based on the facts, law, and proper predication.
Chair Nadler. I understand that, and I assume that it is
correct that neither the President, the Attorney General, or
any other Administration official has asked the FBI to open
improper political investigations?
Mr. Wray. No one has asked me to open an investigation
based on anything other than the facts, law, and proper
predication.

Later in the hearing, Rep. Joe Neguse (D, CO-02):

I want to give you an opportunity to clarify earlier part
of your testimony. The Chair had asked a question, and I think
there was some confusion around your answer. So, with respect
to a recent article that alleges that the Administration may be
attempting to initiate political investigations or politically
motivated investigations, rather, into their political
opponents, has the President, the Attorney General, or any
Member of the Administration asked you to initiate an
investigation into John Bolton?
I am not asking whether or not that request would be
improper or proper or whether or not if such a request was
made, if you have initiated such an investigation. I am simply
asking if they have asked you to do so.
Mr. Wray. I understand why you’re asking the question, and
I would just tell you my commitment to doing things by the book
includes not talking about whether any particular investigation
does or does not exist. You shouldn’t read anything into that.
That’s not a hint that anything is happening. It’s just I don’t
think that’s a question that I can responsibly answer if I’m
going to be faithful to my commitment to doing things by the
book.
Mr. Neguse. Well, we appreciate–
Mr. Wray. I will tell you, as I said to the Chair–I will
tell you, as I said to the Chair, that no one has asked me to
open any investigation on anything that’s not consistent with
the facts, the law, and proper predication.
Mr. Neguse. I would just say, Director Wray, with all
respect, as you could probably imagine, these questions, both
the question the Chair posed and the question that I posed, are
not academic or esoteric for us. Seven months ago, Special
Counsel Mueller sat in the same chair that you are in, and we
all know now, that the very next day, the President had his
infamous call with the President of Ukraine, in which he sought
foreign interference in our elections. Of course, as you know,
in just a few hours, the Senate will render judgment in the
impeachment trial of the President.
So, one can ask reasonable questions as we read these
reports that we just over the course of the last few days as to
potentially what other actions this Administration might take.
So, again, I appreciate your earlier answer, and I want to move
on to a different topic, which is election interference.
There was an article just a few weeks ago in the New York
Times, and I would ask for unanimous consent to enter it into
the record. “ `Chaos Is the Point’: Russian Hackers and Trolls
Grow Stealthier in 2020,” by Matthew Rosenberg, Nicole
Perlroth, and David Sanger of the New York Times.
[The information follows:]

MR. NEGUSE FOR THE RECORD

==========================================
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

Mr. Neguse. In the article, there are a couple of
references to new developments in terms of the way in which
Russian actors, the intelligence apparatus is engaging in
disinformation in attempted interference in our elections. I
wonder if you could comment about two in particular? I will
just quote.

“One of the two Russian intelligence units that hacked
into Democrats in 2016, `Fancy Bear,’ has shifted some
of its work to servers based in the United States in an
apparent attempt to thwart the NSA, which is limited to
operating abroad. Also, the trolls at the Internet
Research Agency are trying to exploit a hole in
Facebook’s ban on foreigners buying political ads,
paying American users to hand over personal pages and
setting up offshore bank accounts to cover their
financial tracks.”

I wonder if you could expand in greater detail on both of
those two issues and how the FBI, I guess, is addressing both
of those developments.
Mr. Wray. So, certainly, I appreciate the interest. I think
I’d have to be pretty careful about how much detail I could
provide in an open hearing. I would say that we believe–we
assessed that the Russians continue to engage in malign foreign
influence efforts of the sort that I was describing before–
fake personas, trolls, bots, state-sponsored media, the whole
gamut in the bag of tricks.
We also assessed that just like any sophisticated actor,
that they continue to refine their approach. We saw that from
2016-2018. We’ve seen it from 2018 moving forward. Happily,
we’re refining our approach, too, and we’re trying to stay
ahead of it.

(emphasis mine)

In 2020, during Trump’s first administration, neither the Trump DOJ nor the Democratic Party-led House launched investigations into John Bolton as Trump’s NSA, and in the FBI’s case, did not launch an investigation based on politics into Bolton.

Trump has now overseen a massive purge of intelligence and security personnel, many of whom share one or two things in common: they were involved in investigations in which Trump was a central figure, or they were involved in investigations related to Russia.

How will the Trump administration justify investigating Bolton now when his first administration didn’t appear to have done so? What’s Team Trump’s next move? What about Bolton’s?

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Breathing Room: What’s in Your Shopping Cart?

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[NB: check the byline, thanks./~Rayne]

Usually when I publish a Breathing Room post, it’s a bit of a break from politics. Unfortunately there’s little in our lives not affected by politics and current events.

Everything you eat or drink has been political, but now food and beverages are even more volatile than eight months ago.

A simple weekly task like grocery shopping is rife with pitfalls, more so than during the early days of the pandemic.

Here’s a sampling of fresh groceries I frequently order from the local store of a national grocer:

This is ridiculous, a form of stupid bingo. Whatever I planned to cook this week is out the window if it relies on any of these out of stock or low inventory items.

Sure, I could go to the farmer’s market to see if I can find a locally grown option, but I have my suspicions the local farmers are having problems getting vegetables picked.

It’s possible some farmers might not show up at the market because they’re immigrants — no idea what their legal status may be but it doesn’t matter if they are scared they may be grabbed. The Asian gentleman with the gorgeous cōng, the Hispanic couple with the tasty zapallitos, the other Hispanic family with the calabazas and repollos may not be there this year.

Some items aren’t and haven’t been available because of persistent bad weather due to climate change. I haven’t been able to buy Napa cabbage with any regularity for two years now. Some dishes I cook are just not the same using regular green cabbage as a substitute.

The problem isn’t just Stephen Miller’s irrational and cruel immigration policies but the inability of the US to restrain its consumption of oil and natural gas, making climate change worse each year.

I’ll work my way around these supply chain disruptions and shortages. I’ll manage around the absurd prices on some items thanks to Trump’s irrational approach to overseas trade.

What really worries me: how do the folks in the bottom deciles navigate this? Are their children not getting enough fruits and vegetables because their parents can’t buy enough of them on their budget, or can’t find them even if they can afford them? How are families supposed to spend more precious time and gas running all over to find vegetables?

How the hell is this making America great again?

Don’t answer that, it’s a rhetorical question. None of this political bullshit causing shortages is necessary except to shake people down.

This is an open thread — tell us how you’re filling your shopping cart. Tell us how you’re helping others make ends meet.

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Without a Doubt, Worse than Nixon

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

On March 18, 1969, the U.S. military launched a secret program authorized by then-president Richard Nixon. Code named Operation Menu, the U.S. bombed targets in Cambodia until May 26, 1970.

The program was never authorized by Congress; information about the bombings were withheld from both Congress and the American public.

It was a gross abuse of executive power and the basis for drafting an Article of Impeachment against Nixon. The article did not receive adequate support in Congress because a number of members of Congress felt they had not done enough to restrain Nixon with regard to the Vietnam War, and public opinion had not yet shifted firmly against Nixon because of the Watergate scandal.

Three of six Articles of Impeachment did receive approval, however; the unauthorized bombing of Cambodia emphasized the abuses of power delineated in the approved articles.

Fortunately for Nixon, Republican members of Congress took him aside and told him they had the votes to impeach and remove him if he didn’t resign. Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, avoiding hearings and heightened scrutiny of his abuses of his office.

Donald Trump authorized the bombing of Iran. His secretary of defense did not restrain him by requiring an Authorization for Use of Military Force. Neither of them made much effort to keep the mission secret as it launched Saturday as Trump posted about it to his personal Truth Social account.

Congress was not informed of the operation in order to debate an AUMF. Congress received testimony from Trump’s director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on March 25 in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in which she said,

… The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003. The IC continues to monitor closely if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program.

In the past year, we have seen an erosion of a decades-long taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus. Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons. …

There were exchanges with the media and public between the administration about Gabbard’s statement regarding the enriched uranium stockpile. If the status of that stockpile had changed with a firm move toward arming a weapon occurred, there has been no effort to communicate that with the Senate Intelligence or Armed Services Committees.

The American public was lied to by Trump who announced this past Thursday, “Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.”

Trump waffled publicly about U.S. military action against Iran, saying, ““You don’t know that I’m going to even do it,” Trump told one reporter. “I may do it. I may not do it. Nobody knows what I’m going to do. … “ I have ideas as to what to do, but I haven’t made a final [call] … I like to make a final decision one second before it’s due, you know?”

Trump failed to request approval from Congress before making that final call some time between Thursday and Saturday.

It’s possible the call had already been made and Trump’s apparent indecision was a head fake. An analyst with Haaretz seemed to think this was a possible strategy. EDIT: The Atlantic published an article at 12:29 a.m. ET Sunday in which they reported Trump had already decided to bomb Iran on Wednesday, before his public statement about a two-week window of decision.

Head fake or no, Trump violated the Constitution’s Article I, Section 8 which grants Congress the power to declare war. It is not a power granted to the executive who “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” under Article II, Section 3.

Trump has already repeatedly failed under the Take Care clause. This first strike against Iran conducted without Congressional approval should be a road too far.

The blowback from this may be enormous, beginning with global economic effects due to instability in the fossil fuels market and may include terrorist or overt military strikes against U.S. targets, perhaps by way of surrogate networks Gabbard also testified about on March 25.

Trump is without a doubt worse than Nixon. He should be impeached — again, yes — and this time removed from office.

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Sunday Night WTF: Tankers with a Tantrum

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Journalists need to validate this information and ask Whiskey Pete Hegseth WTAF is going on that so many tanker aircraft were deployed flying due east of the U.S. on a Sunday night.

 

Note the timing of each post with newer at the top and older at the bottom; the top two were obtained via Threadreader (time not available but assumed to be later than 21:02 ET), the others via Xitter. There may have been newer posts on Xitter but the platform wouldn’t let me dig any deeper without logging in and that’s not an option for me.

The number of tankers dispatched in the same direction on a Sunday night is quite odd given 40,000 active duty personnel deployed at multiple bases in the Middle East and at least two naval destroyers in the vicinity. The vessels are part of an increasing naval presence in the region over the last several months.

Now note the tantrum Trump had this evening on Truth Social – or a tantrum-like statement mimicking Trump’s habits – in which Trump appears to order stepped up ICE raids in blue cities and states, using DHS as a political weapon. (Stephen “Baby Goebbels” Miller, is this your work?)

Note especially the timing of the tantrum.

What a coincidence that one hour after this tantrum on Trump’s blog there are more than 20 military tanker aircraft in the air. It’s almost as if somebody wants their opposition to be too preoccupied to notice there has been no Authorization for Use Military Force or Declaration of War approved by Congress let alone an attack on the US meriting such authorization/declaration.

You might want to contact your members of Congress about this and ask them WTF.

You might also ask them whether they would consider impeachment and conviction for abuse of office in the form of politicization of an entire cabinet-level function.

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The Art of War, Ukraine Edition

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Marcy shared this observation yesterday via Bluesky about Ukraine’s attack on Russian air bases:

emptywheel @[email protected]

The Ukrainian attack used RU telecom networks rather than Starlink.

Hard to guess whether this will drive Putin or Elon nuts first.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/02/europe/inside-ukraine-drone-attack-russian-air-bases-latam-intl

Jun 02, 2025, 07:30 PM

The brazenness of using Russia’s telecom networks is noteworthy, especially after concerns that Ukraine’s military operations could be compromised by Russian access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite communications.

The avoidance of Starlink for this mission named Operation Spiderweb (Ukrainian: Operatsija Pavutyna) suggests Ukraine accepted this possibility as reality and deliberately worked around the compromised network.

The success of the mission may also suggest this was a solid assumption and avoiding Starlink an effective decision.

There are two points in reporting about Operation Spiderweb which haven’t been analyzed further:

— The specificity of the plan’s inception;

— The role of Ukraine’s security service, the Sluzhba bezpeky Ukrainy (SBU).

CNN and other outlets reported the number of drones Ukraine used to attack Russian military aircraft (117) and the amount of time the operation took from inception to the attack (one year, six months and nine days). The candor is rather shocking; perhaps cognitive dissonance explains why there haven’t been many analysts picking apart these openly shared details.

But these details may have messages within them considering how in-your-face they are. The number 117 seems peculiar because it’s an odd number though it’s not prime. Were all the drones that were smuggled in deployed? Was this another reason why the Trojan Horse wooden sheds were booby trapped — to eliminate any drones that did not deploy properly? Or perhaps the number simply is what it is on the face of it.

The exactness of the operation’s inception, though, seems deliberate, as if launch date meant something. Depending on how the one year, six months, and nine days are counted, the spiderweb began on November 22, 2023 or on December 23, 2023.

November 22 marked the beginning of the Orange Revolution in 2004.

December 23 marked the holiday observed by Ukraine’s Armed Forces — Operational Servicemen Day.

Just as importantly, June 1 on which the attack occurred was the anniversary of the day Ukraine transferred the last of its nuclear warheads to Russia in 1996 under the terms of the Budapest Memorandum to which the US was a party. In other words, this message might not have been intended just for Russia.

The Budapest Memorandum may also explain the role of SBU to effect this operation. While one source in CNN’s reporting attributed the successful mission to “Ukraine’s special services,” most reports credited the operation to the SBU.

SBU is Ukraine’s counterintelligence organization with paramilitary features. It does not have the same reporting structure as Ukraine’s Armed Forces. It’s also responsible for the security of Ukraine’s president and reports directly to him. The flat structure may have ensured the level of secrecy necessary to carry out Operation Spiderweb.

The not-quite-military role of the SBU may also have been critical to lawfare. An operation conducted by SBU may be construed as a counterintelligence operation and not a military operation, fuzzing the ability of the target to respond under terms of its own doctrine or terms of treaties. If a trigger for Russia to launch an escalated military response is the use of conventional kinetic weapons on its soil by another country’s armed forces, Operation Spiderweb skirts this threshold having used non-traditional weapons deployed by a counterintelligence function.

By its subtle emphasis on the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine made a point of Russia’s failure to comply with the memorandum’s terms after repeated threats of nuclear attacks against Ukraine and the west. Targeting long-range aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons, Ukraine punctuated the Memorandum’s terms including nuclear non-proliferation.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has had a number of top military personnel swapped out during the course of the Russo-Ukraine war (ex. the commander of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces in June 2024, the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces in February 2024, all regional military recruitment chiefs in August 2023), which might have suggested to outsiders cohesiveness could have been compromised by poor performance, disagreements with the conduct of the war, and plain old corruption. The personnel changes may have given the appearance Ukraine was not fully aligned toward repelling Russian aggression.

But as Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, all warfare is based on deception.

The illusion these personnel changes created may have been relied upon as a head fake, allowing Vladimir Putin and the Russian military to feel excessively confident about the outcome of the war. That confidence was surely ruptured just as Russia and Ukraine entered a new round of negotiations to end the war this Monday in Istanbul. Russia opened by presenting a “memorandum” of terms but Ukraine has expressed its lack of faith in Russia’s compliance with co-signed memoranda.

Detonating explosives targeting the Kerch Strait bridge — a bridge one one likely use if driving from Turkey to Ukraine — added emphasis.

There is one more important facet to the timing of the operation’s inception. In February 2024, the Financial Times reported on leaked Russian military files:

When exactly were these documents leaked? To whom had they been leaked and how long was it before the Financial Times reported on them?

Is it possible the inception of Operation Spiderweb coincided with the leak of these documents which occurred after repeated attempts by Russia to blackmail Ukraine and the west using the threat of nuclear war?

Which brings up a third point not discussed in media coverage of Operation Spiderweb: by eliminating a sizeable portion of Russia’s capacity to deliver nuclear weapons, Ukraine has blunted Russia’s threat against the west and China.

This was worth all the military aid provided to Ukraine to date, and then some. Ukraine has more than earned a place in the European Community and NATO.

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The Special Relationship is Now Pretty Ordinary

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The UK Foreign Office and the UK Department for Business and Trade are rethinking some things

You knew that sooner or later, this was coming. From the Guardian:

UK officials are tightening security when handling sensitive trade documents to prevent them from falling into US hands amid Donald Trump’s tariff war, the Guardian can reveal.

In an indication of the strains on the “special relationship”, British civil servants have changed document-handling guidance, adding higher classifications to some trade negotiation documents in order to better shield them from American eyes, sources told the Guardian.

[snip]

Before Trump’s inauguration, UK trade documents related to US talks were generally marked “Official – sensitive (UK eyes only)”, according to examples seen by the Guardian, and officials were allowed to share these on internal email chains. This classification stood while British officials attempted to negotiate with Joe Biden’s administration, even after a full-blown trade deal was ruled out by the White House.

Now, a far greater proportion of documents and correspondence detailing the negotiating positions being discussed by officials from No 10, the Foreign Office and the Department for Business and Trade come with additional handling instructions to avoid US interception, with some classified as “secret” and “top secret”, sources said. These classifications also carry different guidance on how documents may be shared digitally, in order to avoid interception.

Companies with commercial interests in the UK have also been told to take additional precautions in how they share information with the trade department and No 10, senior business sources said. These include large pharmaceutical companies with operations in the UK and EU.

Trump sure is succeeding with that “disruption” stuff, isn’t he?

Then consider this: if the Foreign Office and Department for Business and Trade are doing this, one can only imagine what the Ministry of Defence is doing along these lines, as well as MI5, MI6, and GCHQ.

Slowly but surely, the Special Relationship is becoming pretty damn ordinary.

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Stupid or Evil? It’s Definitely Not Liberation

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

I don’t have the words for Donald Trump’s liberation-by-massive-tax-increase yesterday. I’ll let an academic handle it:

The one problem with France 24’s video above is that it repeats Trump’s bullshit, even though it offers a rebuttal to the tariffs themselves.

The “economically illiterate” bullshit it repeated was the percentage Trump claimed other countries assessed the US. The numbers are skewed.

One potential source for the inaccuracy: AI. Krishnan Rohit queried several AI platforms and received a freakishly uniform response which may explain Trump’s numbers.

The rest of the thread can be found here.

Somebody with more smarts about large language models (LLMs) and AI will have to validate this, but it sure looks fishy. Given Team Trump’s predilection for appointing/hiring individuals based on ideology and affinity with Trump, it’s not impossible AI was relied on during the tariff formulation and rollout process, versus the expertise and experience of qualified individuals.

Whatever the case, Trump just rolled out a massive tax increase on the American public. Oddly, CNN conveyed this succinctly in spite of its bent toward pro-Trump rhetoric:

Note the rollout using one of the stupidest Trump appointees across either of Trump’s terms — Peter Navarro. He’d parrot bullshit all day if a mic is shoved in his face.

Also note the phrase “repeated belief,” not a fact but a belief. Team Trump expects the public take what they are saying on faith and not on the basis of past experience.

And then the outright lies CNN’s Chris Isidore points out in that bit emphasized with a red underline: tariffs are NOT paid abroad but here in the US by the importer. The tariffs are added to the cost of goods sold, thereby increasing the likelihood prices to consumers will be higher very soon.

Another academic explains how tariffs — taxes on buyers of imported goods work. See Richard Wolff’s explanation at 5:17 to 6:20 in this video:

Tariffs on imported goods = taxes on us.

You like coffee and tea? It’s going to be more expensive, especially since we don’t grow tea here and our coffee industry is minuscule, consisting of Kona coffee beans. Even fabric for clothing made in the US will be more expensive because we don’t have a fabric industry here in the US any longer at any serious scale; it would take years to re-establish manufacturing here.

Re-establishing industries to replace products now so much more expensive will be challenging given the cost of materials and the competition for labor both to build facilities and staff them after completion.

It’ll take much longer than the 10 years over which this massive tax increase is supposed to generate $6 trillion dollars in revenue — that’s about $1800 per American citizen, $150 more a month.

This country has made this same stupid choice before, so stupid it became part of a movie’s economics teacher’s schtick:

What does uber conservative Ben Stein think about this iteration of voodoo economics rising from the grave, wearing orange foundation and a straw-like hairdo, stomping about as if credibly alive? What does he think about Trump kicking off an unnecessary recession and possibly a depression with his irrational import duties?

This entire mess represents two facets of Trump his base haven’t accepted or ignored. He’s the kind of guy who likes to destroy stuff but can’t successfully build a better version afterward, as if he’s permanently stuck in the demolition phase of construction.

He’s also a plain old fashioned mafioso. All of this is a form of shakedown, borne by the American public as well as global trading partners. You know he’d lift tariffs on any country that offered him vigorish of some form. Quid pro quos are his thing.

He’s a made man — which may explain why tiny islands with US bases on them being assessed tariffs, but Russia isn’t.

Are we really supposed to believe that because trade with Russia is so low that Russia should escape tariffs altogether, while our most valuable trade partners haven’t?

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Four Years and Five Weeks

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Trump announces the end of the transatlantic alliance

First it was Emmanuel Macron, putting his hand on Trump’s knee as he publicly corrected Trump in the Oval Office, in the presence of cameras, on the fact that Europe’s contributions to support Ukraine were (a) grants, not loans, and (b) larger than the contributions made by the US. Trump, in turn, tried to toss out his well-worn talking points, but the damage was done. Trump was called out by a foreign leader as a liar, in his very own office and seat of power.

Then it was Keir Starmer, waving a fancy invitation from King Charles to a state dinner, who did exactly the same thing. He publicly corrected Trump in the Oval Office, in the presence of cameras, on Europe’s support for Ukraine. Again, Trump hemmed and hawwed, and embraced the (Starmer: “unprecedented!”) invitation to a second state visit, but the damage was done. Trump was called out by a second foreign leader as a liar, in his very own office and seat of power.

You had to know this would not sit well.

As network after network played the clip of Macron’s hand on Trump’s knee, after all the networks showed Trump fawning over the Bright Shiny Thing that Starmer dangled in front of him, as Starmer very politely called Trump a liar, everyone knew that this would not end well.

And today, it was Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s turn . . . and as anyone with half a brain could anticipate, it *did* not end well.

Personally, I was amused by J.D. Vance’s holier-than-thou whining about Zelenskyy making a benign appearance in Pennsylvania saying “thank you” to the US for their support and calling it Election Interference. I don’t remember Vance taking up umbrage when the head of DOGE Elon Musk appeared and spoke at the national political rally of the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany (AfD) party just days ahead of the recent German election, and who repeatedly praised the AfD via Xitter. After the AfD came in second, with a sizable caucus in the new Bundestag, Musk called the head of the AfD to offer congratulations and called her party the future of Germany, and Vance’s reaction was *crickets*.

Well, to be scrupulously fair, that’s not true. He *did* say something, but rather than condemning such interference, Vance joined it. At the Munich Security Conference, Vance praised the AfD (not by name but by lauding their political positions on immigration and other policies) and attacked mainstream German political parties for refusing to work with the AfD.

Americans might not have been listening to all of this, but the Europeans were – especially the Germans – and they knew exactly who Vance was praising. After the German elections, the victorious chancellor-elect made a stunning statement. From Deutsche Welle:

After his party’s victory in the election was confirmed Sunday night, [CDU party leader Friedrich] Merz said that he wanted to work on creating unity in Europe as quickly as possible, “so that, step by step, we can achieve independence from the US.”

Until recently, this would have been a highly unusual thing for any leader of the CDU to say. After all, it has always had a strong affinity for the US.

“Merz aligns himself with the legacy of historical CDU leaders such as [former chancellors] Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl, both of whom played pivotal roles in strengthening transatlantic relations,” said Evelyn Gaiser, a policy advisor on transatlantic relationships and NATO with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a German think tank that is associated with but independent of the Christian Democrats.

[snip]

Merz spoke out after JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) in February, in which the US vice president said that the biggest threat to Europe did not come from Russia or China, but “from within.”

“This is really now the change of an era,” Merz said on stage at the MSC. “If we don’t hear the wake-up call now, it might be too late for the entire European Union.”

Add this into the context of withdrawing from the World Health Organization and eliminating all the work done by USAID, and the message is crystal clear. While yes, this meeting today in the Oval Office was about Ukraine, it was really a sign of something much much larger.

In April 2021, when Joe Biden addressed a joint session of Congress in a non-State of the Union address, he said this:

I’ve often said that our greatest strength is the power of our example – not just the example of our power. And in my conversations with world leaders – many I’ve known for a long time – the comment I hear most often is: we see that America is back – but for how long?

We now know the answer: four years and five weeks.

RIP the Transatlantic Alliance (1945-2025).

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Who Needs Intelligence Sharing?

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On January 27th, an AP story appeared on the news website Military.com with the headline “Intelligence Sharing by the US and Its Allies Has Saved Lives. Trump Could Test Those Ties.” On the surface, it reads like one of those analysis pieces that come out when the White House changes from one party to the next, with the added twist of knowing what the first Trump administration was like.

The Associated Press spoke with 18 current and former senior European and U.S. officials who worked in NATO, defense, diplomacy or intelligence. Many raised questions and concerns about Trump’s past relationship with America’s spies and their ability to share information at a time of heightened terror threats and signs of greater cooperation between U.S. adversaries.

The importance of trust

The U.S. and its allies routinely share top-secret information, be it about potential terror threats, Chinese cyberattacks or Russian troop movements. America’s closest intelligence partners are New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Britain, and it often shares with other nations or sometimes even adversaries when lives are at stake.

[snip]

Cooperation particularly between the U.S. and the U.K. is “strong and robust enough to withstand some turbulence at the political level,” said Lord Peter Ricketts, former U.K. national security adviser and current chair of the European Affairs Committee of the upper chamber of the British Parliament.

However, any strong intelligence relationship is underpinned by trust, and what if “trust isn’t there?” Ricketts said.

Ricketts’ question is no longer a hypothetical. This is the reality faced by intelligence services who in the past have been friendly with the US intelligence community. The AP put out their story on January 27th, and that seems like years ago. Today this reads like a warning.

The takeover of USAID that has played out this past week is *not* just a battle over who runs offices in DC. The bulk of USAID’s staff work overseas, alongside their local partners. When phone calls from these overseas missions back to DC go unanswered, and when US staffers abroad are told to stand down, all those local partners are going to get very, very nervous, and not just because their paychecks stop. They’re going to talk to others in their government, trying to find out what it going on. At the same time, they will be providing input (either directly or indirectly) to their own country’s intelligence service, as their spooks add it to whatever they are learning from elsewhere. In the US, folks worry about those who are losing their jobs; overseas, these fights will result in people dying, like those who don’t get the clean water, medical care, or disease prevention measures like malaria nets. Those other countries are watching with horror the stories of Musk’s minions breaking into sensitive databases, over the objections of trusted career people, and wonder what of their own information is now in the hands of a privateer, and if the same this is (or will be) going on at the CIA, DIA, and other US intelligence agencies.

I guarantee you that all these other countries are watching the battle over USAID much more carefully than folks in the US.

Or look at the targeting of General Mark Milley, widely respected by his counterparts among our allies and within their intelligence services. OK, Biden pardoned him to protect him, but Trump withdrew his security clearance, and also his personal security detail. On January 29th, newly confirmed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth launched a process to investigate Milley, seeking to strip him of at least one star, cut his retirement pay, and punish him further. Given what the US attorney for DC is doing by going after DOJ attorneys for investigating the rather noticeable break-in of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, it’s not hard to imagine that Hegseth’s henchmen will be rather thorough in their work and ruthlessly push aside anyone who gets in their way.

Now imagine you are a member of a foreign intelligence service — perhaps the head, or perhaps a mid-level staffer whose specialty is the US. You see the USAID invasion. You see the public decapitation of the FBI. You see the targeting of career DOJ officials. You see Hegseth paint a target on the back of Milley (and others, like John Bolton and John Brennan). You see all this, much of it in the bright light of public reporting. You hear more from your contacts, who paint more detailed pictures of these purges and fights. You see all this, and you ask yourself two questions, over and over again.

1) Are the things we shared with the US intelligence community in the past safe from being revealed in public, and thus causing us harm?
2) Can we trust the US intelligence community with information we might share with them in the future?

Given what we’ve seen over the last week, the answers to these questions are becoming more and more clear: 1) no and 2) no.

I haven’t talked to those “18 current and former senior European and U.S. officials who worked in NATO, defense, diplomacy or intelligence” to whom the AP spoke. The AP headline was hypothetical – “Trump could test those ties” – but now on February 3rd, it’s real. Trump has been f’ing around with those intelligence service ties, and he’s about to find out what happens.

The short answer is becoming clear, as Trump’s vision of America First becomes America Alone.

 

 

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