The United States and North Korea stand once again at the precipice of a renewed military escalation. Frustrated by the Trump administration’s negotiation tactics, Kim Jong Un has threatened the United States with a “Christmas gift.” Any escalation between Washington and Pyongyang can spiral into a devastating war between two nuclear-armed countries. In response to this threat, President Trump has hinted at the use of military force against North Korea, stating that “If we have to [use our military], we will do it.” By imposing unrealistic demands, arbitrary timelines, and openly antagonizing one another, leaders in Washington and Pyongyang are returning to the same playbook of hostility and aggression — except now there is a real possibility for an escalation in the next eight days.We are at this point primarily because the Trump administration refused to be specific about what it was willing to offer Kim. To address this problem, the Trump administration should provide a proposal with three specific elements to compel Pyongyang to cancel its “Christmas gift” and return to the negotiating table. Contrary to conventional thinking in Washington, issuing more threats will not compel Pyongyang to recommit itself to diplomacy. Rather, what is needed is clarity regarding the positive inducements Washington is willing to offer. North Korea needs to know what we are asking them to say yes to.Specifically, the U.S. should offer partial sanctions relief, declare the end of the Korean War, and offer to open a liaison office in Pyongyang in exchange for concrete steps by North Korea to suspend all weapons-related nuclear activities over a period of 12 months.Urgent Need for Concrete ActionAn escalation of tension between Washington and Pyongyang could trigger a nuclear war that would kill millions, unleashing generations of environmental and horrific health issues at a scale unseen since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even without using nuclear weapons, an estimated 250,000 people would die in Seoul alone from a mix of conventional artillery and chemical weapons unleashed by North Korea. The 28,500 Americans who are stationed in South Korea and 50,000 in Japan would immediately be at the frontlines of any military conflict.North Korea also possesses nuclear weapons that can now reach the mainland United States, potentially placing 300 million Americans’ lives at risk. In 2018, the U.N. Command, Combined Forces Command, and the U.S. Forces Korea confirmed that Pyongyang has successfully developed an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that can reach the entire continental United States as well as a thermonuclear device miniaturized to fit onto an ICBM, elevating North Korea from a regional challenge to a direct threat to the U.S..Despite these costs, there are some in Washington who advocate for more escalation. For instance, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies called for a campaign of “maximum pressure 2.0” against North Korea in a recent report, which is the same strategy that led us to the current stalemate. If what we seek is a different outcome, why repeat the same mistakes?A 12-Month DealA short-term deal is urgently needed to jumpstart diplomacy between Washington and Pyongyang. Fortunately, the willingness to make a deal is already there. For example, Kim Jong Un has publicly agreed to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” and pledged “permanent dismantlement” of nuclear facilities in Yongbyon in exchange for “United States tak[ing] corresponding measures.” North Korea and the United States also agreed to build a “peace regime” by formally ending the Korean War and discussed exchanging liaison offices to open channels of communication. But North Korea has since stepped away from these commitments because of a lack of clarity on what exactly the United States is offering in exchange for its cooperation on denuclearization.Below are three concrete steps that the United States can offer North Korea in exchange for suspending all weapons-related nuclear activities for 12 months:1. Partial sanctions relief North Korea is one of the most sanctioned countries in the world. There are nearly a dozen U.N. Security Council resolutions preventing the country from buying arms, natural gas, coal, minerals, textiles, seafood, and certain luxury goods. In addition, the U.S. has a set of unilateral sanctions and executive orders against North Korea as well. During the first year of his presidency, Trump imposed financial sanctions on North Korea and added sanctions targeting its “construction, energy, financial services, fishing, information technology, manufacturing, medical, mining, textiles, and transportation industries.” To jumpstart diplomacy, the United States should put on hold sanctions against non-military goods for a 12-month period, with automatic snap-back measure if North Korea does not hold its end of the bargain. The U.S. financial sanctions against North Korea have had severe consequences for humanitarian activities with North Korea, cutting off access to capital for international aid organizations. A suspension of sanctions on items that do not directly contribute to the nuclear or missile program would help ordinary North Koreans while retaining pressure that prohibits illicit activities by the North Korean government.2. Declare an end of the Korean WarNorth Korea and the United States have technically been at war with each other since 1950. Though the fighting ended in 1953 -— after some five million soldiers and civilians were killed — the two countries never reached a formal peace agreement. They only signed a Military Armistice Agreement to “insure a complete cessation of hostilities and of all acts of armed force in Korea until a final peaceful settlement is achieved.” The absence of a formal end to the war has fueled North Korea’s insecurities and desire for a nuclear deterrence against the United States. To chart a new path toward peace, President Trump should state that the United States is no longer engaged in a war with North Korea and that it is willing to take steps to formalize a peaceful bilateral relationship. Ending the war would address Pyongyang’s perennial insecurities against external threats that has driven it to embrace weapons of mass destruction in the first place. It would also show that the United States is serious about transforming bilateral relations.Insisting that no such declaration can be made until Pyongyang fully denuclearized and ends its chemical and biological programs has proven futile and counter-productive. Washington cannot expect to achieve its end-goal at the outset of a diplomatic process. This step already enjoys support among members of Congress, thanks to years of grassroots advocacy by constituents, nuclear experts, veterans, and advocacy groups who have called for a nonmilitary solution to North Korea’s nuclear threat. H.Res.152, which currently has more than 40 cosponsors, expresses congressional support for a statement from President Trump to end the Korean War and calls on the President to create a roadmap for achieving permanent peace in the Korean Peninsula. 3. Open liaison offices in Washington and Pyongyang. Last June, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated that the U.S. “ wants to achieve a fundamentally different strategic relationship with our two countries.” Indeed, the Korean War framework that has defined U.S.-North Korea relationship for nearly 70 years is obsolete and restricts the ability of both countries to build trust. Absence of state-to-state relations handicaps Washington and Pyongyang’s ability to identify common interests and potential areas of cooperation. People-to-people exchanges at the governmental and nongovernmental levels would increase room for mutual understanding, remove cultural barriers, and overcome geographic distance.Liaison offices provide a mechanism by which more frequent interactions and discussions can take place, which increases the prospects for progress. As noted North Korea expert Suzanne DiMaggio stated, “We need vigorous diplomacy to test [Kim Jong Un’s] intentions, shape an outcome toward a less contentious relationship and make progress toward disarmament and denuclearization.” In exchange for these steps, North Korea should begin dismantling some of its nuclear facilities in Yongbyon within the next 12 months. It should also come forward with proposals to “establish new U.S.–DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity” as agreed to at the Singapore Summit.
***
Two years ago, a mistakenly-sent emergency alert about an incoming ballistic missile attack to Hawaii received national media attention and captured the public’s imagination about the horrors of a potential war with North Korea. It is no wonder that Americans support diplomacy, not war. Last summer, a poll commissioned by RealClearPolitics and the Charles Koch Institute showed that 70 percent of Americans supported President Trump’s diplomacy with North Korea. Less than ten days after the Singapore Summit in June 2018, President Trump announced that North Korea has begun “total denuclearization" without providing any detail on what that actually means in practice. Maximum ambiguity has brought the United States to the path of minimal gain. What we need now is maximum clarity backed by concrete actions.By laying out in specific terms what the United States is willing to offer, President Trump and Chairman Kim can defy the 70 years of inertia and begin in earnest the process of achieving peace.
UPDATE: Watch Jessica Lee discuss these issues here.
Jessica J. Lee was formerly senior research fellow on East Asia at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Previously, Jessica led the Council of Korean Americans, a national leadership organization for Americans of Korean descent. Prior to CKA, Jessica was a Resident Fellow at the Pacific Forum and a senior manager at The Asia Group, LLC
“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”
— George Orwell
Election season in the U.S. exemplifies how far the mainstream media has strayed from its mandate to inform and educate.
Like him or not, Robert Kennedy Jr.’s exclusion from CNN’s recent presidential debate, despite the global importance of this election, highlights this issue. It is widely assumed CNN made this decision in collusion with the two main political parties. But CNN’s actions are not isolated and underscore how established media outlets fail to cover America’s real political, economic and social problems in a nuanced manner.
RFK Jr.’s rising poll numbers concern both Republicans and Democrats, as he appears to attract votes from both sides. While it’s understandable that they would try to block him, why is the mainstream media complicit?
One possible answer lies in RFK Jr.’s campaign platform. Often ridiculed for his views, he addresses important issues like the crippling federal debt, the corrupt merger of state and corporate power, the wealth gap, the chronic disease epidemic, and the broken health-care system — all of which affect Americans. He prioritizes these over divisive cultural issues.
He tackles the crisis of trust in institutions and leaders that is gripping America. Yes, he has expressed problematic views on vaccines and other topics that are not evidence based, but so have the other candidates whose voices are heard.
Mainstream media is often considered corporate-friendly due to its heavy reliance on advertising revenue. When your advertisers include pharmaceutical and food companies, defence contractors and financial institutions, addressing critical issues could be seen as corporate suicide. As Noam Chomsky put it, the media often serves as a tool for “manufacturing consent,” rather than fostering informed public discourse. He emphasized that certain topics are confined within allowable boundaries set by powerful institutions, limiting the range of acceptable discussion.
Given this reality, where can one find news, facts and opinions free from corporate influence? A potential answer is the shift in tone from former mainstream media personalities who have left networks like CNN, Fox and MSNBC. Many of these individuals are now reporting from independent online platforms, where they may have more freedom to express their views.
I spend significant time listening to podcasts from all political sides. Former cable TV personalities like Fox’s Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, CNN’s Chris Cuomo, and MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan are now expressing views they would never have aired under corporate influence. Freed from those constraints, they discuss sensitive topics such as American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s influence on American foreign policy, the media’s cosy relationship with big corporations, the role of media in fostering cultural animosity, and the reasons behind America’s seemingly endless wars.
These online platforms significantly impact mainstream media viewership. Consider Joe Rogan, the king of online podcasts. With an average of 11 million daily viewers, he surpasses the combined viewership of all mainstream news talk shows. While he delves into wacky topics and conspiracy theories, he also fearlessly addresses “no-go” subjects ignored by CNN and Fox.
While at Fox, Tucker Carlson averaged of 3.4 million daily viewers. Since his firing and move to X (formerly Twitter), his viewership has increased substantially, with his first three episodes averaging 19.3 million views. Carlson has noticeably transformed since leaving Fox. I have never been a fan of Carlson, but lately he comes across as more likeable and humbler and is now critical of the mainstream media, especially regarding American hawks and their endless warmongering. And it’s not just RFK Jr. or conservative-populists like Carlson whose voices are muted; even opinions from the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and the democratic left in America are rarely heard on CNN or Fox.
If there is one platform that unsettles the establishment, it’s TikTok. With 127 million U.S. users and as the preferred news source for generation Z, it has captured the attention of politicians from both sides of the aisle. Despite the ACLU asserting that banning TikTok would violate the First Amendment, Congress shows broad bipartisan support to either force a sale or ban it entirely due to its China connections and national security issues. However, some argue that China isn’t the primary issue behind this potential ban. For instance, recent college protests calling for a ceasefire in Gaza gained traction through TikTok. Views on Israel-Gaza are significantly divided by age demographics, with 18–24-year-olds more in favour of a ceasefire than older groups.
Whether it’s Gaza or Ukraine, the mainstream media seems completely divorced from the nuance associated with these conflicts and most never talk about peaceful solutions in spite of the difficult compromises any solution would entail.
This trend has not gone unnoticed by the political class.
In a recent Sedona Forum conversation between Sen. Mitt Romney and U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken on the narrative of Israel’s war in Gaza, Romney remarked: “Typically, the Israelis are good at PR — what’s happened here?” Blinken offered as one reason the “intravenous” feeds of perpetual news. “You have a social media ecosystem environment in which context, history, facts get lost and the emotion, the impact of images dominates … and it has a very challenging impact on the narrative.”
Romney added: “Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites, it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts.”
Political opinions are a personal choice. I am not advocating for the left or the right. Nor am I a populist or prone to buying into the conspiracy theories of some of the above-mentioned candidates or media personalities. But whether or not you agree with the diagnosis of the nonmainstream voices regarding the current situation, and especially their prescription of what’s required to address America’s myriad problems, it’s crucial to hear these voices directly, without a biased filter.
Personally, I’m fortunate to have the time to explore various news platforms online, allowing me to sift through data and verify what appears closest to the truth. Unfortunately, many Americans lack this luxury and rely on mainstream echo chambers, leaving them misinformed, angry and beholden to prevailing dogmas.
Until a media platform emerges that thoroughly sifts through all the news to present facts that more accurately represent reality, consume your daily media menu with a grain of salt.
This piece, originally published on July 10, has been republished with permission from The Toronto Star.
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Peter Thiel attends the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, U.S., July 6, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
The trouble with doing business with Israel — or any foreign government — is you can't really say anything when they do terrible things with technology that you may or may not have sold to them, or hope to sell to them, or hope to sell in your own country.
Such was the case with Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir Technologies, in this recently surfaced video, talking to the Cambridge Union back in May. See him stumble and stutter and buy time when asked what he thought about the use of Artificial Intelligence by the Israeli military in a targeting program called "Lavender" — which we now know has been responsible for the deaths of an untold number of innocent Palestinians since Oct 7. (See investigation here).
Starts at 1:07:18
Here's the text of his response through our translating tool (emphasis mine):
Look again....I'm not ....I'm not...you know, you know...with... without, without going into all the... you know I'm not on top of all the details of what's going on in Israel, because my bias is to defer to Israel. It's not for us to to second-guess every, everything. And I believe that broadly the IDF gets to decide what it wants to do, and that they're broadly in the right and that's, that's sort of the perspective I come back to. And if I, if I fall into the trap of arguing you on every detailed point, I'm actually going to, I would actually be conceding the broader issue that the Middle East should be micromanaged from Cambridge. And I think that's just simply absurd. And so I'm not, I'm not going to concede that point.
Sources from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told +972 Magazine back in April that military personnel ignored "Lavender" AI’s 10% false positive rate and, using the technology with little human input, intentionally targeted alleged militants in their homes with unguided “dumb bombs,” despite an increased likelihood of civilian harm.
According to the magazine, "Lavender" relied on sprawling surveillance networks and assigned a 1-100 score to every Gazan based on the likelihood the person was a Hamas militant. This is used by another software program called "Where's Daddy?" that warned when one of these "militants" were in residence. Voila! Aim and fire. More than 37,000 Palestinians were on this so-called "kill list" in the first months of the war, according to +972's reporting. From the magazine:
“We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity,” A., an intelligence officer, told +972 and Local Call. “On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”
Thiel is a billionaire investor, and Palantir serves as both a major investor and creator of AI technologies. For over a decade it has received major contracts across the U.S. government — including the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI. At the same time its business is international. Palantir is currently testing its new Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) in realtime, on the Ukrainian battlefield. It has been described as "an intelligence and decision-making system that can analyze enemy targets and propose battle plans." Other Palantir security technologies include AI for predictive policing and surveillance.
No doubt this is why the company has been called “the AI arms dealer of the 21st century." According to this glossy TIME magazine spread back in February, "more than half a dozen Ukrainian agencies, including its Ministries of Defense, Economy, and Education, are using the company’s products. Palantir’s software, which uses AI to analyze satellite imagery, open-source data, drone footage, and reports from the ground to present commanders with military options, is 'responsible for most of the targeting in Ukraine,' according to CEO Alex Karp."
But what about Israel, where more than 39,000 Palestinians (out of a population of only 2 million) have been killed since Oct. 7, the great majority of them, according to most accounts, even Israeli accounts, civilians? In January, Palantir held a board meeting in Tel Aviv for the first time in "solidarity" with Israel, and announced a new "strategic partnership with the Israeli Defense Ministry to supply technology to help the country’s war effort."
“Both parties have mutually agreed to harness Palantir’s advanced technology in support of war-related missions,” Palantir Executive VP Josh Harris told Bloomberg at the time. “This strategic partnership aims to significantly aid the Israeli Ministry of Defense in addressing the current situation in Israel.”
According to Bloomberg, "no further details on the arrangement were disclosed, including what technology would be provided." So it's not clear that Palantir's fingerprints were on any technology related to the IDF's AI kill-search-destroy program in the early part of the war. However, the company was already providing tools to Israel before the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks even happened. In comments during that January meeting, CEO Karp said, “our products have been in great demand...We have begun supplying different products than we supplied before (the war).” This came a year after Palantir introduced AIP and while its use on the Ukraine battlefield was already in full swing, so who knows.
Nevertheless, is it really a surprise that Thiel says his "bias is to defer to Israel"? It's a paying client, after all. Though it is a bit remarkable to hear someone who is sometimes lumped in with the "America First" foreign policy community — not to mention one of J.D. Vance's intellectual muses — say it, at least so bluntly. But Thiel also says the IDF is "in the right," echoing Karp's consistently muscular pro-Israel messaging, signaling that this is not all business but ideological, too.
For Palantir, overseas wars are clearly paying off, but not so much for Palestinians, or, for that matter, Americans who may find themselves subject to this prediction, surveillance, and targeting technology, soon enough. Thiel may be stuttering on stage, but there is a clear message here, if anyone is listening.
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Committee chairman Jack Reed (D-RI), left, looks on as co-chair Roger Wicker (R-MS) shakes hands with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on President Biden's proposed budget request for the Department of Defense on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., April 9, 2024. REUTERS/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades
Now that both political parties have seemingly settled upon their respective candidates for the 2024 presidential election, we have an opportune moment to ask a rather fundamental question about our nation’s defense spending: how much is enough?
Back in May, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, penned an op-ed in the New York Times insisting the answer was not enough at all. Wicker claimed that the nation wasn’t prepared for war — or peace, for that matter — that our ships and fighter-jet fleets were “dangerously small” and our military infrastructure “outdated.” So weak our defense establishment and so dangerous the world right now, Wicker pressed, the nation ought to “spend an additional $55 billion on the military in the 2025 fiscal year.”
Echoing Cold Warriors of a bygone era, the senator espoused the need for “overwhelming military superiority.” But how to gauge when such superiority had been achieved? Would $55 billion ensure this martial dominance? Would $50 billion, or far less, not do?
Too few policymakers and potential voters today are asking these vital questions, relying instead on well-worn tropes about deterrence, strength, and credibility to sustain the Pentagon’s massive budget. (The current 2024 fiscal year budget is $825 billion, with the 2025 DoD request sitting at $849 billion.) But with the presidential race now set, it behooves Americans to think more deeply about their spending on defense and national security. They have an example to follow.
In 1971, with the American war in Vietnam still raging, Pentagon analysts Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith published a strategic decision-making primer titled “How Much Is Enough? Shaping the Defense Program.” The two Defense Department officials worried that frustration over Vietnam had caused the public mood to shift and that spending was no longer adequate against contemporary communist threats. “People are choosing sides,” they argued. “The middle ground seems to be eroding.”
But they also weren’t convinced that “the nation’s military needs” were “necessarily what the Joint Chiefs of Staff” said they were. To them, “pure” military requirements didn’t exist, especially when it came to grand strategy. Defense spending choices incurred both costs and risks. Thus, it was the principal task of the secretary of defense to “shape a defense program in the national interest.” Of course, biases and intuitional pressures affected how one defined “national interest.” Not surprisingly, in their role as analysts — and because they had worked for Robert S. McNamara — Enthoven and Smith advocated for a quantitative-heavy, systems analysis approach to “rational decision making.”
While much of the book is heavy with dense, analytical prose, “How Much Is Enough?” still asks useful questions that remain relevant for us today. How well are DoD budget practices aligned to U.S. foreign policy objectives? Are spending ceilings logical or “arbitrary”? Are some military services “entitled” to a certain percentage of the defense budget, and, if so, why? What is the relationship between spending on social programs versus national security?
Perhaps most importantly, Enthoven and Smith argued for a “central plan” to drive resource requests and avoid duplication of effort. Once more, they encouraged spending criteria that supported the “national interest.” In evaluating forces structures and strategic mobility, weapons systems and nuclear stockpiles, analysts always had to keep in mind a central question: “for what purpose?”
Such queries raised ire within hawkish circles, especially as American troops were withdrawing from what seemed a losing war in Southeast Asia. With South Vietnam teetering, the specter of falling Asian dominoes still held purchase in the early 1970s. Meanwhile, talk of engaging with the Soviet Union over nuclear arms limitations elicited harsh rebukes from those claiming the Nixon administration was pursuing a dangerous policy of “appeasement.”
But the questions Enthoven and Smith posed mattered then and they matter now. At the national policy level, ends and means are supposed to interact. But in our current environment, calls from Senator Wicker and the like simply ask for more means with little attention paid to the ends they intend to serve. In short, we haven’t been very good at asking if our ever-increasing defense budgets are linked to any tangible, practicable grand strategic objectives.
A recent report from the Stimson Center notes that “US defense spending has increased nearly 50% since the start of the 21st century.” Contrary to Wicker’s fear-mongering, the report suggests that this “permanent war economy” is only serving to “hamper US military readiness.”
It seems crucial, therefore, that we question the strategic rationale for the amount of money we are spending. Is pursuit of global hegemony and dominance — what some call “primacy” — to allay our fears, in fact, an achievable objective? Will spending billions of more dollars offer us the security guarantees for which some pundits advertise?
The problem here is more than just bipartisan budget inertia, of spending more because we seemingly always spend more. Rather, as Enthoven and Smith insinuated, our track record of “balancing military objectives with other national objectives,” a difficult task for sure, has been spotty at best. Policy elites still struggle to devise appropriate “yardsticks of sufficiency” that measure capabilities against security objectives. Worse, when it comes to our national security strategy, voters don’t appear all that inclined to ask the hard question “how much is enough?”
With the 2024 electoral field apparently established, now is a good time for Americans to ask that very question. Interrogating policies of U.S. primacy underwritten by massive military spending may appear, to some, politically infeasible. No political candidate likely believes they could win at the polls by arguing that Americans don’t have the right to pursue primacy on the global stage. But, in an election year, voters actually are well-placed to ask tough questions when it comes to defense spending. In the end, they’re paying for the answer.
In 1971, Enthoven and Smith were asking similarly hard questions because they believed it served the nation’s best interests. Undoubtedly, Senator Wicker feels similarly. But it’s worth voters engaging in this moment when the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East seemingly demand more, more, more. Of course, we shouldn’t underestimate the threats we face. But surely now is the time to ask both our presidential candidates, “how much is enough?”
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