Thorny Issues.
The US stands defenseless.
Programming Note: News Items will be distributed tomorrow and Wednesday. It will be off the grid for the remainder of the week. It returns to Monday, 5 January, resuming its ‘normal” distribution schedule (Monday-Friday, and the Sunday ‘Weekend Edition’). Thanks to those who wrote to inquire about my knee surgery. So far, so good.
“Most mornings I learn more from New Items than I do from all of the traditional papers I read combined.” — Michael Blair, former presiding partner, Debevoise & Plimpton.
1. President Trump yesterday said he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy were “getting a lot closer, maybe very close” to an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, while acknowledging that the fate of the Donbas region remains a key unresolved issue. The two leaders spoke at a joint news conference after meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Sunday afternoon. Both leaders reported progress on two of the most contentious issues in peace talks - security guarantees for Ukraine and the division of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region that Russia has sought to capture. Both Trump and Zelenskiy offered few details and did not provide a deadline for completing a peace deal, although Trump said it will be clear "in a few weeks" whether negotiations to end the war will succeed. He said a few "thorny issues" around territory must be resolved. (Source: reuters.com)
2. Iran’s president has claimed that his country is in an all-out war with the West, shortly before Donald Trump meets with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (today). Masoud Pezeshkian said that the “full-scale war with the US, Israel and Europe” was worse than Iran’s war with Iraq in the 1980s, in which hundreds of thousands of people died “We are in a full-scale war with the US, Israel and Europe; they do not want our country to stand on its feet,” he said in the interview published on the website of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Saturday. (Sources: the-independent.com, timesofisrael.com)
3. China staged live-fire drills around Taiwan earlier today, deploying troops, warships, fighter jets and artillery for its “Justice Mission 2025” exercises, as the island scrambled soldiers and showcased U.S.-made hardware to rehearse repelling an attack. The Eastern Theatre Command said it had concentrated forces to the north and southwest of the Taiwan Strait and carried out live firing and simulated strikes on land and maritime targets. The drills will continue on Tuesday and include exercises to blockade the island’s main ports and encircle it. (Source: reuters.com)
4. Rocketman update: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the launch of long-range strategic cruise missiles yesterday, which confirmed the integrity of its nuclear power and counter-attack readiness in the face of security threats, state media KCNA said earlier today. The launch is the latest event attended by Kim in a flurry of activity by the North Korean leader to underscore the country’s military and economic progress before a key ruling party congress expected to be held in early 2026. Kim expressed "great satisfaction" as the cruise missiles flew along their orbit above the sea west of the Korean Peninsula and hit their target, KCNA said. (Source: reuters.com)
5. The offensive and defensive power of low-cost commercial drones was known by the US military as early as 2017. In that year, Defense Innovation Unit, the Pentagon’s Silicon Valley Office, established the military’s first commercial drone unit, with the support of the then–secretary of defense James Mattis. Named Rogue Squadron, it conducted mock drone fights in parking lots and created the first mass adoption program within the military for commercial drones, called Blue UAS (unmanned aerial system). Yet today, because of bureaucratic inertia and the accelerating drone capability by foreign adversaries, the US stands defenseless. Currently, no US military installation can reliably repel a complex drone attack like Ukraine’s assault of Russian nuclear bombers. Our civilian infrastructure is even less protected. (Source: wired.com)
