[BostonCard]

There’s a difference between signal intelligence and human intelligence. Our services have been very good at tracking the Russians and deducing what they are going to be doing based on what we can see. But when you surround a country on three sides with deployed 150,000 troops it is not too hard to deduce what’s about to happen. We can see everything that’s going on in the battlefield, and because the Russians can’t figure out encrypted Comms, we can hear them as well.

What we can’t do well is know what Putin is thinking. But we’ve actually done surprisingly well even here, probably helped along by the fact that the upper echelons of Russian military and intelligence have very mixed feelings about the war. It is clear that someone (likely multiple someone’s) were talking.

But all of this is more a reflection of Russian failures than US sustained efforts. And he is right that successive presidents have prioritized elsewhere, because of threats from Al Qaida and ISIS, China, or wishcasting a better relationship with Russia (not partisan, three straight Presidents were drawn in by the lure that we could have better relationships with Russia).

And yet, even now, Ukraine is sadly less consequential economically and geopolitically than a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. But China has made a career about studiously avoiding the pitfalls that have befallen Russia/Soviet Union, which is why Ukrainian success is so important.

BC

[BostonCard]

There’s a difference between signal intelligence and human intelligence. Our services have been very good at tracking the Russians and deducing what they are going to be doing based on what we can see. But when you surround a country on three sides with deployed 150,000 troops it is not too hard to deduce what’s about to happen. We can see everything that’s going on in the battlefield, and because the Russians can’t figure out encrypted Comms, we can hear them as well.

What we can’t do well is know what Putin is thinking. But we’ve actually done surprisingly well even here, probably helped along by the fact that the upper echelons of Russian military and intelligence have very mixed feelings about the war. It is clear that someone (likely multiple someone’s) were talking.

But all of this is more a reflection of Russian failures than US sustained efforts. And he is right that successive presidents have prioritized elsewhere, because of threats from Al Qaida and ISIS, China, or wishcasting a better relationship with Russia (not partisan, three straight Presidents were drawn in by the lure that we could have better relationships with Russia).

And yet, even now, Ukraine is sadly less consequential economically and geopolitically than a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. But China has made a career about studiously avoiding the pitfalls that have befallen Russia/Soviet Union, which is why Ukrainian success is so important.

BC