WH shelves CDC’s reopen guide; Navy’s new normal is distancing and masks; Space plane cargo, revealed; New Chinese malware; And a bit more.
WH shelves CDC guidance to reopen the country. The White House has decided to not implement the Centers for Disease Control’s 17-page draft of recommendations for reopening America, AP reports today, nearly a week after the draft first made the rounds among U.S. officials.
“The guidance contained detailed advice for making site-specific decisions related to reopening schools, restaurants, summer camps, churches, day care centers and other institutions,” AP reports. “It had been widely shared within the CDC and included detailed ‘decision trees,’ flow charts to be used by local officials to think through different scenarios.”
We’ve already seen some of the recommendations — like sneeze guards at customer contact points and dropping buffets, salad bars and drink stations for now. “Similar tips appear on the CDC’s site and a Food and Drug Administration page,” AP writes. But it now appears the full guidance has been “shelved” in part “because the virus is affecting various parts of the country differently,” a source close to the WH’s coronavirus task force told AP.
Bigger picture: “The Trump administration has instead sought to put the onus on states to handle COVID-19 response,” AP reminds us. And it’s worth noting that the White House did publish its own "Opening Up America Again" guidelines in April; but AP writes those "were more vague than the CDC’s unpublished report." Read on, here.
California just forked over nearly a billion dollars for masks from China, the LA Times reported Wednesday.
And the latest economic indicators suggest “nearly all the job growth in the 11 years since the Great Recession ended has vanished in a single month,” AP reports separately today off the latest data from the Labor Department.
Navy Chief: Distancing and masks “must be our new normal.” Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Mike Gilday, told sailors in a message Wednesday that the U.S. Navy's current coronavirus mitigation measures should remain in place even as states across the country begin reopening businesses to the public.
"As we continue to learn about this virus and how to mitigate its risk, the widespread public health measures you are actively practicing — physical distancing, face coverings, minimizing group events, frequent hand-washing, sound sanitation practices, a questioning attitude on how we are feeling — must be our new normal," Gilday wrote in a letter posted on the Navy's website late Wednesday afternoon. "We must harden our Navy by continuing to focus on the health and safety of our forces and our families. The health and safety of our Sailors and their families is, and must continue to be, our number one priority. Fleet operations depend on it."
Gilday's message follows a similar one from Defense Secretary Mark Esper this week when he said the military is preparing to live with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic for the foreseeable future. “There will be a new normal that we will have to adapt to for an extended period of time at least until we have a vaccine that we’re confident in,” Esper said at a virtual event with the Brookings Institution on Monday.
"Show courage in speaking up if you see shipmates falling short," Gilday advised sailor in his letter Wednesday. "As state and local officials begin to re-open communities, we must continue to focus on the health and safety of our Sailors and their families... We cannot simply take a knee or keep everyone in port until this enemy is defeated. We are America's away team. The uncertainty caused by COVID-19 makes our mission of protecting America at sea more important than ever." Read the rest of the CNO's message, here.
The U.S. military is considering requiring new recruits obtain medical waivers if they were hospitalized for COVID-19 before joining the service. The move is reportedly under consideration in part because “there is little understanding of the 'long-term' effects of the virus and those potential recruits may need further medical assessments,” CNN’s Barbara Starr reported Wednesday.
From Defense One
The Air Force’s Secret Space Plane Is Part of A Plan to One Day Shoot Microwaves to Earth // Patrick Tucker: The experiment would be part of a long history of testing microwaves for power transmission.
China Is Buying Global Influence on the Cheap // Kathy Gilsinan, The Atlantic: The U.S. gives more money than China to many international organizations. So why do they seem more sympathetic to Beijing?
Pentagon, Senators Blast FCC Decision to Let Company Share GPS Spectrum // Patrick Tucker: Space Force chief, Pentagon tech leaders, and the Armed Services chairman led calls to reconsider the controversial license for Ligado.
The TSA Hoarded 1.3 Million N95 Masks Even Though Airports Are Empty and It Doesn’t Need Them // J. David McSwane, ProPublica: As hospitals searched desperately for masks, TSA officials held onto unused ones despite two agency officials' request to donate them.
Trump’s Nuclear Policy Has Failed // Jon Wolfsthal: Recognizing that blunders and bad ideas have undermined stability and security is the first step toward recovery.
Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief from Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Send us tips from your community right here. And if you’re not already subscribed to The D Brief, you can do that here. On this day in 1915, America was shaken from its isolationism when 128 U.S. citizens on the RMS Lusitania perished after a German submarine sank the vessel 11 miles off the coast of southern Ireland.
Happening now: SecNav, AF chief of staff and UnderSec for policy confirmation hearings. Socially distancing senators are already holding in-person confirmation hearings for three senior defense jobs, including:
- Kenneth Braithwaite, current ambassador to Norway, to be Navy Secretary;
- Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., who currently commands Pacific Air Forces, to be Air Force Chief of Staff;
- and the current Assistant Defense Secretary for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities, James Anderson, now formally up for a job he’s already “performing the duties of” as the military’s next Under Secretary for Policy.
For the first time since November, Iraq finally has a prime minister, the Washington Post reports today. The last guy, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, resigned in the face of mass protests. The new guy is 53-year-old former journalist and intelligence chief Mustafa al-Kadhimi, and he addressed parliament for the first time this morning.
Perhaps most importantly, “His premiership also appears to have won the backing, or at least acceptance, of both Iran and the United States, powerful actors in a country that has repeatedly found itself center stage in their proxy fight.”
The challenges ahead include “Plunging oil prices [that] have hastened a potential economic catastrophe, leaving the government unable to fund its provisional 2020 budget without reforms,” the Post reports. And of course, “Coronavirus is still stalking the country.”
Kadhimi still has to name suitable chiefs for Iraq’s Oil and Foreign Affairs ministries, as well as three other posts that were not approved by Iraq’s parliament. Continue reading, here.
Most Americans are paying about $2 per gallon for gas. Their military? More than $10 per gallon. The New Republic’s Zack Kopplin looked into why the hell that’s happening on Wednesday, here.
Trump vetoes congressional resolution limiting his military authority against Iran. The measure passed the Republican-controlled Senate on Feb. 13 on a vote of 55 to 45, and the Democratic-led House passed it, 227 to 186, on March 11. It was introduced after Trump ordered a drone strike that killed top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani and an Iraqi militia leader in Baghdad. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has scheduled an override vote for 1:30 p.m. Thursday, but is not expected to draw the necessary 66 votes. Washington Post has a bit more, here.
Facebook and Instagram recently removed eight Iranian-linked networks for "coordinated inauthentic behaviour” and for sharing coronavirus misinformation, the social media giant announced Tuesday, al-Jazeera reported. Some of the activity dated back to 2012, showing how long the Iranian-linked accounts have been trying their hand at influence operations.
Facebook also took down a “network of fake accounts linked to QAnon,” as well as “white supremacist websites VDARE and the Unz Review,” Reuters reports. Those networks “recently began pushing coronavirus-related disinformation, taking advantage of a surge in online interest in the pandemic to promote anti-Semitic and anti-Asian hate speech tied to it” as part of an apparent effort “to build an audience and drive people to their pages or off-platform sites,” the company’s top cybersecurity officer explained. More from Facebook, here.
The Pentagon says it killed just 132 civilians in various operations during 2019, according to its annual civilian casualty report (PDF, here) just delivered to Congress. But Reuters reports “the figures were far lower than those reported by watchdog groups.”
The U.S. is considering letting Huawei and U.S. firms work together on 5G standards. “The U.S. Department of Commerce is close to signing off on a new rule that would allow U.S. companies to work with China's Huawei Technologies on setting standards for next generation 5G networks,” Reuters reported Wednesday evening.
New cyberattack tool tied to Chinese military. Dubbed Aria-body, the malware has been deployed in several countries by Naikon, a hacker group that has previously been traced to the Chinese military, the New York Times reports, citing a new report by Israel’s Check Point Software Technologies
How this thing behaves: “Aria-body could penetrate any computer used to open the file in which it was embedded and quickly make the computer obey the hackers’ instructions. That could include setting up a secret, hard-to-detect line of communication by which data on the targeted computer would flow to servers used by the attackers. It could also replicate typing being done by the target user, meaning that had the Australia attack not been detected, the tool would have allowed whoever controlled it to see what a staff member was writing in the prime minister’s office, in real time.” Read on, here.
If you work in the Pentagon and are seen as “disloyal” to POTUS, a man was just hired to get rid of people like you, Foreign Policy’s Jack Detsch reported Wednesday.
Venezuela’s government has released video of a purported confession by one of the former U.S. Special Forces soldiers seized in a failed May 3 invasion. Watch.
SecState Pompeo: the U.S. will use “every tool” available to return Americans being held in Venezuela. In remarks to reporters on Wednesday, the secretary of state added, “There was no U.S. government direct involvement in this operation.” (Washington Post)
BTW: The leader of that whole operation "is under federal investigation for arms trafficking," AP reported Wednesday.
Just getting caught up? Bellingcat has a good rundown of events surrounding the plot and its failure.
And finally today: The U.S. Space Force just released a new recruiting ad that seemingly promises to send new recruits to space, which appears (to us military reporters) to stray considerably from the Space Force’s primary responsibilities. But we get it. Space is cool, and even Tom Cruise is working with NASA on something up there in the not-too distant future. Tiny bit more on that, here.