Originally Posted By AlwaysFocus⏩

When a group of engineers and researchers gathered in a warehouse in Mukilteo, Wash., 10 years ago, they knew they were onto something big. They scrounged up tables and chairs, cleared out space in the parking lot for experiments and got to work.

They were building a battery — a vanadium redox flow battery — based on a design created by two dozen U.S. scientists at a government lab. The batteries were about the size of a refrigerator, held enough energy to power a house, and could be used for decades. The engineers pictured people plunking them down next to their air conditioners, attaching solar panels to them, and everyone living happily ever after off the grid.

"It was beyond promise," said Chris Howard, one of the engineers who worked there for a U.S. company called UniEnergy. "We were seeing it functioning as designed, as expected."

But that's not what happened. Instead of the batteries becoming the next great American success story, the warehouse is now shuttered and empty. All the employees who worked there were laid off. And more than 5,200 miles away, a Chinese company is hard at work making the batteries in Dalian, China.

The Chinese company didn't steal this technology. It was given to them — by the U.S. Department of Energy. First in 2017, as part of a sublicense, and later, in 2021, as part of a license transfer. An investigation by NPR and the Northwest News Network found the federal agency allowed the technology and jobs to move overseas, violating its own licensing rules while failing to intervene on behalf of U.S. workers in multiple instances.

Now, China has forged ahead, investing millions into the cutting-edge green technology that was supposed to help keep the U.S. and its economy out front.

Department of Energy officials declined NPR's request for an interview to explain how the technology that cost U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars ended up in China. After NPR sent department officials written questions outlining the timeline of events, the federal agency terminated the license with the Chinese company, Dalian Rongke Power Co. Ltd.

"DOE takes America's manufacturing obligations within its contracts extremely seriously," the department said in a written statement. "If DOE determines that a contractor who owns a DOE-funded patent or downstream licensee is in violation of its U.S. manufacturing obligations, DOE will explore all legal remedies."

"This is technology made from taxpayer dollars," Skievaski said. "It was invented in a national lab. (Now) it's deployed in China, and it's held in China. To say it's frustrating is an understatement."

The idea for this vanadium redox battery began in the basement of a government lab, three hours southwest of Seattle, called Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. It was 2006, and more than two dozen scientists began to suspect that a special mix of acid and electrolyte could hold unusual amounts of energy without degrading. They turned out to be right.

It took six years and more than 15 million taxpayer dollars for the scientists to uncover what they believed was the perfect vanadium battery recipe. Others had made similar batteries with vanadium, but this mix was twice as powerful and did not appear to degrade the way cellphone batteries or even car batteries do. The researchers found the batteries capable of charging and recharging for as long as 30 years.

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Originally Posted By XterraRob⏩

The Biden administration’s sweeping new export controls aimed at cutting off China from obtaining chips used in supercomputers has caused the “complete collapse” of the Communist country’s semiconductor industry, an analyst claims.

“This is what annihilation looks like: China’s semiconductor manufacturing industry was reduced to zero overnight,” Jordan Schneider, a US-based China tech expert and analyst at Rhodium Group, said in a lengthy tweet thread on Friday.

Mr Schnieder said rules announced by the US Department of Commerce last week restricting “US persons” from involvement in manufacturing chips in China had led to mass resignations of American executives from Chinese firms.

This had the effect of “paralyzing Chinese manufacturing overnight”, adding that the industry was in “complete collapse” with “no chance of survival”.

Mr Schneider did not immediately respond to a request for an interview, but wrote on Twitter that the rules which came into effect on 12 October would bring severe damage to “Chinese national security as a whole”.

“This is nothing like the 10+ rounds of performative sanctioning during the Trump years — this is a serious act of industry-wide decapitation.”

The US Commerce Department said in a statement announcing the new controls that they were in response to China using supercomputers and semiconductors to create weapons of mass destruction and commit human rights abuses.

“The threat environment is always changing, and we are updating our policies today to make sure we’re addressing the challenges posed by (China) while we continue our outreach and coordination with allies and partners,” Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Alan Estevez said in a statement.

Semiconductors are used in everything from cars to refrigerators, and are increasingly important in artificial intelligence and advanced military programmes.

Among the new measures were requirements for companies to have licenses to export high-performance chips used in artificial intelligence and supercomputers, and restrict US companies from exporting machinery used in manufacturing chips to China.

Any companies that violated the sanctions could face arrest by the US Department of Justice.

The Chinese government hit back on Thursday, accusing Washington of “Cold War thinking” and appealed for efforts to repair strained relations.

Experts said the new controls on represented a significant escalation in tensions between Beijing and Washington.

“With the latest action, the chasm between the US and China has now expanded to the point of no return,” Abishur Prakash, co-founder of the Center for Innovating the Future, told CNBC.

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WASHINGTON — The Senate’s annual defense authorization bill will now include $10 billion in military aid for Taiwan — more than double the initial amount proposed — even as it scales back language intended to help address the $14 billion backlog of arms sales the Asian nation already made from the U.S.

Senate Armed Services Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., included a modified Taiwan defense package as part of a massive bipartisan amendment he filed last week to the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. The full Senate is expected to vote on the NDAA, including the Taiwan defense provisions, when lawmakers return to Washington after the November midterm elections.

Reed told reporters last week that the NDAA’s defense package for Taipei remains “consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act.” The bill’s defense provisions for Taipei come from the sprawling Taiwan Policy Act, which the Senate Foreign Relations Committee advanced 17-5 last month.

The White House had expressed concerns regarding the initial version of the Taiwan Policy Act, introduced by Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez, D-N.J. He worked with the White House to address many of those concerns, but the NDAA only contains the defense components of Menendez’s bill while removing provisions that would upgrade diplomatic ties with Taipei, give Taiwan the same treatment as major non-NATO allies and sanction China. China considers Taiwan a rogue province and has threatened to return it under the mainland’s control, by force if necessary.

Still, the $10 billion in Foreign Military Financing — a program that allows other countries to purchase U.S. military equipment with grants and loans — marks another significant increase from the $4.5 billion proposed in Menendez’s initial version of the bill.

WASHINGTON — After months of delays, the unclassified version of the National Defense Strategy hit the streets on Thursday, pledging a renewed focus on China and including not much in the way of surprises.

Now, experts say, is time to answer the big question: Can the Defense Department actually execute it?

“Bottom line, regarding the strategy writ large, I’d say it’s fundamentally sound and logically supported. The department did a good job of thinking through what problem it needs the military to focus on, and has a sensible, coherent approach to getting after it,” said Jim Mitre, who served as executive director of the 2018 NDS.

“The issue is, can the department execute this strategy and really do it in time?” Mitre, currently the director of the international security and defense policy program at the RAND Corporation, told Breaking Defense. “Can it modernize its forces, establish greater resilience to adversary attack, develop a more tech savvy workforce, et cetera, with alacrity? … In particular can it do so on a timeline that’s sufficient to deter war with China, not just in some far-off future, but in the next few years?”

Stacie Pettyjohn, director of defense programs at the Center for a New American Security, agreed that the strategy lays out a “sound vision,” but will require the Biden administration to make difficult choices to allocate resources to prioritize threats — in particular, managing the immediate threat posed by Russia without “derailing efforts” to compete against China.

The need to deter China is the single biggest theme of the NDS, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said yesterday during a briefing on the new strategy.China is “the only competitor out there with both the intent to reshape the international order and increasingly, the power to do so,” he said. In contrast,Russia represents an “acute threat”that poses an immediate threat to US interests, as seen in its invasion of Ukraine, the NDS states.

“Immediate needs have a tendency of overwhelming future threats, and the Pentagon has repeatedly deferred making changes to its force structure and posture necessary to bolster deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region,” Pettyjohn said in a written statement.

On the technology side, the NDS lists command, control and communications systems, long-range strike, and space as key investment priorities, said Seamus Daniels, the defense budget analysis fellow for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

However, “I think the strategy lacks a discussion of sort of the main trade offs when we’re talking about force structure versus modernization versus readiness,” he said. “Are they going to try and free up funds by limiting the day-to-day deployments? Or is that going to come in the form of force structure cuts?”

One missed opportunity, Mitre said, was that the strategy did not focus enough on how the department plans to overcome the well-established barriers that keep it from moving as quickly as it needs to accomplish its goals.

For example, the strategy notes a need for the Pentagon to forge closer ties with academia and industry — particularly with companies outside its typical roster of defense firms. It states that the department will be a “fast follower” on technologies like artificial intelligence, autonomy and microelectronics, where commercial firms are driving innovation. The NDS also vows to increase collaboration with the commercial space industry, a space it believes it can leverage “[industry’s] technological advancements and entrepreneurial spirit to enable new capabilities.”

But all those ideas have been well agreed upon for years, with a serious push for commercial technology starting with former Defense Secretary Ash Carter in 2015. While it’s positive that the NDS signals the Pentagon’s desire to work more closely with the private sector, Mitre noted that the strategy falls short in that it does not spell out why that has historically been difficult, and how the department will overcome those impediments this time.

“We know that that’s been a challenge, there’s been some important progress there. But the department’s still grappling with the ‘valley of death.’ And the strategy doesn’t have a clear solution to how the department should address the valley of death problem,” he said, using a phrase that describes the funding gap between the research and development phase and a program of record, where technologies often wither and die.

During a Thursday background briefing on the NDS, a journalist asked how the strategy would lead to faster technology adoption. A senior defense official acknowledged that “this is a refrain you have no doubt been subjected to before,” but said they had greater hope of success after seeing how the Pentagon mobilized to provide weaponry for Ukraine, including existing systems that have been used in new ways on the battlefield.

“So it does tell me … that this can be more more feasible going forward, because we’ve had this experience,” the official said.

The fiscal 2024 budget could shed further light on how serious the Pentagon is about funding its strategic priorities, as well as the tradeoffs it is willing to make, Daniels said. One key indicator to look at is the size of the FY24 budget request next spring, specifically whether the department is able to keep defense spending from dropping below the rate of inflation.

“The still a significant and expensive strategy, similar to 2018,” he said. “It will still require a significant level of investment, at least keeping pace, if not above inflation.”

Daniels added he would be interested in seeing how the Pentagon “balance[s] the procurement platforms for the fight today versus [long-term] modernization investments.”

Mitre added that the responsibility for implementing the defense strategy doesn’t fall squarely on the Defense Department’s shoulders. Congress must also allow the Pentagon to take calculated risks in order to fund its strategic priorities.

“There’s too many programs that are sacred cows. Too many times people claim that any reduction in US forces anywhere is assuming unacceptable risk,” he said. “As people critique what the department is trying to do, what happens is that the trade space gets narrower, and as its trade space narrows, its progress slows down.”

Details of upgrades at RAAF Base Tindal to support B-52s and more come as the U.S. and Australia strengthen ties and look to deter China.

An airbase in northern Australia is being upgraded to better accommodate deployments of up to six U.S. Air Force B-52 strategic bombers in a potentially provocative move that’s been widely seen as a deterrent toward China. While deployments of U.S. bombers to Australia are in themselves not new, the latest development includes dedicated facilities that will make regular stationing of these aircraft much more efficient and also comes at a time of significant tensions between the United States (as well as close ally Australia) and China, especially over the future of Taiwan.

The upgrade work at Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Base Tindal, a remote installation south of Darwin, in the Northern Territory, is being funded by the U.S. government and its extent was today confirmed by Australian officials, ABC reported. The changes to the base will include an expanded apron with space for six B-52s, squadron operations facilities, and maintenance infrastructure. Once completed, the airbase will be much better able to host bomber detachments, as well as tankers and fighters, with work also addressing fuel and munitions storage and mission planning buildings. Currently, Tindal is the permanent home to a single RAAF F-35A stealth fighter squadron.

The cost of the squadron operations and maintenance facilities at Tindal has been put at $14.4 million, with the total value of the modernization at the base reaching $100 million.

China told state-owned natural gas importers like Sinopec and CNOOC to halt LNG sales to Europe, per Bloomberg.

The order to halt resales comes as Beijing looks to protect domestic gas supplies for the winter.

China has been a crucial supplier of gas to Europe as the region faces a Russia-driven energy crisis.

Beijing has reportedly told state-owned natural gas importers to halt resales of cargoes to buyers in Europe and Asia, to make sure China has enough supply for domestic needs this winter.

The National Development and Reform Commission has spoken to Chinese energy giants PetroChina, Sinopec and CNOOC to ask them to stop the shipments of liquefied natural gas, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

An economic slowdown in China after Beijing imposed a strict zero-COVID policy dampened local demand for gas, leaving its importers with a surplus of natural gas that they resold to Europe and elsewhere.

They threw a lifeline to Europe amid its energy crisis by reselling unneeded LNG purchased from Russia. In August, an estimated more than 4 million tons of Chinese LNG was resold — or roughly 7% of Europe's imports in the first half of the year — according to a Nikkei report.

Xi’s work report to 20th party congress cites need to ‘win regional wars’, though speech at Great Hall of the People makes no mention of it
Return of phrase is welcome sign that the PLA will focus on smaller-scale warfare, observer says

The People’s Liberation Army must move quicker with troop training and new strategies to reach its target of becoming a world-class military, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in opening the 20th Communist Party congress.

Fast modernisation of the PLA’s organisation, personnel and military technology standards, under the absolute leadership of the party, would be key not only to defending China’s sovereignty but also its security and developmental interests, Xi said delivering his latest work report to the congress.

“We will work faster to modernise military theory, personnel and weapons,” Xi said in the nearly two hour speech, which was punctuated by brief bursts of applause from the masked delegates. “We will enhance the military’s strategic capabilities.”

“The use of military power needs to be normalised and used in diverse ways,”he said in the report published on Sunday.

"China is replacing Russia as the No. 2 space power," Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., told Breaking Defense.

WASHINGTON — While the US led the world in the total number of space launches in 2022 with China coming in second, a new report calls China the winner for the most defense-related payloads.

“China is replacing Russia as the No. 2 space power,” Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., and author of the “Space Activities in 2022” report [PDF], told Breaking Defense Thursday. McDowell is also the author of the online newsletter “Jonathan’s Space Report,” which chronicles worldwide space launches.

The US attempted 78 launches in 2022, with 72 of them successful, according to the report published Tuesday. Russia successfully launched 21. China attempted to launch 64, and 62 made orbit. For each country, many of those launches carried multiple satellites.For specifically defense-related satellites, the report finds that China orbited 45, the US 30 and Russia 15.