Summary
Germany’s intelligence chief, Bruno Kahl, warned that Russia’s hybrid warfare, including cyberattacks and sabotage, could escalate to the point where NATO considers invoking Article 5, its mutual defense clause.
Speaking in Berlin, Kahl noted Russia’s growing military capabilities, including battle-hardened troops and advanced drone warfare, which could pose a direct threat to NATO by the end of the decade.
Russia may aim to test NATO’s unity rather than launch large-scale invasions, raising concerns over potential “red line” provocations designed to undermine the alliance’s credibility.
I’m now past the middle of this talk. While the points about how subversion works in general are insightful, his diatribe about unions makes no sense. He claims that unions got radicalized and became violent recently and that was helped by Soviet propaganda. That’s brutally wrong. Clashes between unions and company militias were much more violent historically and way before the October revolution, let alone the creation of the KGB. His talking points on this come straight out of Milton Friedman’s mouth. It’s straight up right wing propaganda. Given that right wing propaganda is the reason why the working class is on its knees today and has just elected Donald Trump, it begs the question whether his talk isn’t KGB subversion itself.
E: He gave the CIA coup in Chile that installed Pinochet as a good example for how to stop the process of Soviet subversion. Also straight up said that Americans should support right wing conservatives to curb this process. Restrict the rights on certain groups. Don’t elect the gays into power - they’re an enemy. 🤦
Yeah, I don’t agree with his position at all, just sharing an interesting talk that I think gives us insight as to some of what’s been going on the past 20 years. My takeaway was that Russia gave up fighting the US with force si they just try to create as much instability in the US as possible.
100%
There’s another point that occurred to me when listening to him. The process of citizens looking over another country’s regime with envy as theirs crumbles could occur without subversive action too. I don’t think there’s much US citizens to be envious for of Russia. On the other hand, I got shocked recently while looking at some income numbers for China. Wages in manufacturing is 104K CNY or US $14.3K. Adjusted for purchase power parity, that’s $52K. And look at these growth numbers:
Meanwhile the US equivalent is sitting aroung $57.5K right now. And the growth since the 80s…
If these trends continue it may come a time when it becomes self-evident that the Chinese model is the way to go.
Please keep in mind that independent-journalism isn’t allowed, in China,
so … those numbers may be more propaganda than objective
… and it isn’t just those-numbers, it is the entirety of all information about the Chinese economy which is suspect…
Remember Evergrande group?
They suspended trading of it, due to its imploding, & kept it suspended for, what, 2.5y?
Then it imploded within hours, when re-listed…
They’re hard disallowing their entire-economy’s implosion,
just as the Biden administration’s been doing, after that recent multiply-the-currency-by-7x-but-don’t-allow-inflation bullshit they did
( “quantitative easing” has consequences! )
WHEN deciding on which economic-system one wants to be in, it would be wise to decide also on how much percentage of propaganda in one’s statistics one is willing to settle for, right?
That too is a dimension of the economy!
_ /\ _