Stevenson’s army, December 18

I have long been concerned that the US, especially the military, have given priority to cyber offense rather than defense in spending, planning, and thinking. Now we have the massive Russian hack of the US government which looks to me like espionage rather than “war.” [Maybe we need some secret understandings on this. In the analog era, it was OK for countries to steal and bribe to get secrets, but not to kill. And while cyber espionage can give an adversary potential advantages in combat, retaliation should not be deadly.] But the political rhetoric is close to “act of war,” when we should take it as a wake up call to be better at defense and resilience.
NDAA imperiled. It looks as if Trump will wait until Dec 23 to veto the NDAA, forcing Congress to reconvene before noon on Jan. 3 for override votes. House votes first. If  it fails, the 59 year record of NDAAs will  fall. RollCall has more details.
The administration released a “tri-maritime strategy” paper but can’t explain it.
Interagency fight over order blocking US investments in Chinese firms with military links.
Just over 155 million people voted for the presidential candidates in November. If just 32,000 of them had voted for GOP congressional candidates, the Republicans would have won control of the House.
WaPo has a Biden appointment tracker.

Climate change boosts Russian agriculture.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).