Wednesday, September 30, 2024

A Few Good Reads

Who is your favorite Pakistani blogger? Mine is Mosharraf Zaidi, and his analysis of the Kerry-Lugar Bill is brilliant reading. That article is one of the Afghanistan top 5 reads for the week.

This AEGIS BMD essay in Space Review by Brian Weeden will give you plenty to think about. Well, it certainly has given me a lot to think about. You folks who worked on Operation Burnt Frost will enjoy it.

Too many sailors who read here daily not to note this call by ADM Harvey. When a 3-star asks for your opinion, give it. When we raise issues related to gender on this blog, the comments of the post can creep towards 100. Surely you folks can muster a couple dozen comments for the Admiral, and that means you too ladies. ADM Harvey has one of the most useful blogs in the Navy, it is a shame more people aren't using the opportunity it offers.

USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) is on deployment. It might be worth watching BHRs Facebook and Twitter pages, and the reason I say this is because in the Pacific right now we have 2 Typhoons and a Tsunami today. Anything can happen, and they are the front lines for the US. Just saying, all kinds of opportunities for BHR to change the way the Navy uses social software, and there are a bunch of smart PAOs in the Pacific who will be backing them up.

Opinion: ARGs with Marines on them is naval diplomacy and soft power. Americans will find the BHR social software efforts to get the word out. In my opinion, the BHR PAOs need to be focused on connecting to audiences in the places you are going, not audiences in the places you come from. The Navy rightfully sees information as a weapon, but that should not apply to CHINFO. However, CHINFO needs to take a different approach to information, and look at information as an influence enterprise.

See the new article at the Jamestown Foundation by Michael S. Chase and Andrew S. Erickson Changes in Beijing’s Approach to Overseas Basing? It would appear the conversation of limited forward basing has begun in China. This is still a far cry from the "String of Pearls" theory, but establishing forward bases of any kind would represent a shift in policy.

No comments: