Milei’s Rise Exposes Argentina’s Malaise | India Becomes Fourth Country to Land on the Moon | Logistics Interdiction for Taiwan Unification Campaigns, and more

Changes to UK Surveillance Regime May Violate International Law  (Ioannis Kouvakas, Just Security)
The United Kingdom (U.K.) government has recently unveiled plans to revise the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (IPA),  the primary legislation governing the surveillance of electronic communications in the United Kingdom. The proposed revisions include five objectives pertaining to changes in the notices regime within the IPA, the process through which the government can ask private companies to carry out surveillance on its behalf, such as interception of communications and equipment interference (hacking). The proposed changes to the IPA notices regimes include an obligation to comply with the content of a potential notice during the review period and before a notice is actually served, an obligation to disclose technical information about the company’s systems during the same review period, measures to strengthen the extraterritorial application of the notices and obligations for companies to give advance notice to the U.K. Secretary of State before implementing any technical changes. This article focuses on the latter two changes. It examines how the United Kingdom likely would be in breach of international human rights law (IHRL) by interfering with the privacy and security of online users both within and outside of its borders, should it decide to move forward with the proposed revisions. 

An Arab League Interpol-Like Security Network Puts Dissidents and Human Rights Defenders At Risk  (Sherif Osman, Just Security)
I had been to Dubai many times to visit my family with no issues. So when plainclothes Emirati officers confronted me outside a restaurant there on Nov. 6, 2022, in front of my distraught family, and forcibly lead me to their unmarked car, I knew straight away that the reasons were political. A few weeks earlier, I had posted a YouTube video calling for Egyptians to use the occasion of the annual United Nations climate conference, COP27, which was held in Sharm El Sheikh, to protest against the Egyptian regime’s mass violations of human rights and the frightening increase in the cost of living. As a U.S.-Egyptian dual citizen posting from the United States, I didn’t think I had anything to fear. I was wrong. 

Logistics Interdiction for Taiwan Unification Campaigns  (Jacob Maywald et al., War on the Rocks)
If China attacks Taiwan, its ability to move the requisite levels of troops and supplies in a contested environment will be critical in determining its success. This makes logistics interdiction is an important, yet understudied, consideration. The good news for Western military planners is that whether the People’s Liberation Army launches a joint firepower strike campaign, a joint blockade campaign, or joint island landing campaign, its logistics capabilities would likely constitute a major weakness. This, at least, is the conclusion we drew from examining Chinese and Western military doctrine, studying similar historical campaigns, and conducting supply chain simulations.
If Beijing launched a joint firepower strike campaign, its objective would be to apply stand-off, coercive pressure to force reunification. A strike campaign would employ conventional ground- and air-launched ballistic and cruise missiles ranging in intensity from limited strikes against symbolic targets to a broader approach aimed at paralyzing Taiwan’s political, military, and economic systems. A limited campaign might consist of employing People’s Liberation Army ballistic missile capabilities against a few salient objectives. A broader campaign would include a combination of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, artillery, and other stand-off ground strike capabilities. Targets would include air bases, command and control centers, energy infrastructure, air defense, and long-range strike capabilities. 

Milei’s Rise Exposes Argentina’s Malaise (Oliver Stuenkel, Foreign Policy)
When Javier Milei rose to first place in Argentina’s recent national primaries, observers around the world disagreed on how to best make sense of the insurgent candidate. Brazil’s center-right Estadao newspaper described Milei as “extremist” and “far right”; Al Jazeera characterized him as a “populist,” while El País referred to him as an “ultraliberal libertarian” and highlighted that Milei thinks of himself as an “anarcho-capitalist.”
That debate will continue as Milei now seems to have a serious shot at becoming the next tenant of the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires; Argentines head to the polls to decide on Oct. 22. And perhaps such varying descriptions are only natural for a candidate who doesn’t belong to an established political party—and who defends policy proposals that often seem incompatible and, his critics say, ill conceived. His proposals to lift capital restrictions, lower taxes, repay the country’s debts to the International Monetary Fund, and modernize labor laws would find support among mainstream liberals, yet his calls for permitting the sale of human organs and abolishing the ministries of environment, health, and education reflect radical libertarian views.
At the same time, Milei’s decision to pick Victoria Villarruel, notorious for her defense of Argentina’s 1976-83 dictatorship, as his running mate, reveals illiberal and possibly authoritarian inclinations. In the past, Villarruel has regularly engaged in denialist discourse about one of Argentina’s darkest periods, rejecting that the generals disappeared tens of thousands of people. Milei has himself argued that if the Argentine Congress were unwilling to support his policies, he would govern via referendums, a strategy that Venezuela’s former President Hugo Chávez deployed to erode the country’s democratic foundations.