> Former British military pilots are being lured to China with large sums of money to pass on their expertise to the Chinese military, it is claimed.
> Up to 30 former UK military pilots are thought to have gone to train members of China's People's Liberation Army.
> The retired British pilots are being used to help understand the way in which Western planes and pilots operate, information which could be vital in the event of any conflict, such as over Taiwan.
> "They are a very attractive body of people to then pass on that knowledge," a Western official said. "It's taking Western pilots of great experience to help develop Chinese military air force tactics and capabilities."
The disclaimer sentence
> There is no evidence that any pilots have broken the Official Secrets Act or that they have committed any crime.
is funny - how would they gather that evidence without confessions from the pilots involved or from the Chinese? Even if they don't tell them any secrets, there remains the fact that they train them at all. With the next big conflict where this might be used being Taiwan, where the West has already taken the opposite side.
From the second link:
> The MOD also said that the United Kingdom is only one of several Western countries whose aircrew (and likely other sources of military expertise) are currently being targeted in this way. No details were provided of other nations involved.
Personally, reading this, I think the news is getting more ridiculous by the day. I think this is much worse, I don't think Saudi Arabia is likely to end up as a direct adversary, and even if it did it would not matter much. But China...
It's weird to me that it's legal for former military members of one country to be employed by another for any military purpose at all, without the express approval of the home country.
Here's a guess: it has been known to various counter-intelligence agencies around the world for a while, but only now someone decided to escalate just a tiny bit and clean up some of the mess. Can't say I don't like it, though I dislike the seemingly ongoing worldwide escalation in international relations.
>is funny - how would they gather that evidence without confessions from the pilots involved or from the Chinese?
MI6 is a thing. What do you think they do all day. You really think these people with classified info in their heads are just walking around blabbing secrets in China or Saudi or wherever?
That would be evidence they won't be able to use in court? It would be giving up on their sources at the least, even if they are not disclosed directly. I have my doubts in them being able to find out exactly which pilot gave the Chinese some specific piece of information. They would need a source that is part of the direct training, which I find a bit optimistic.
>Anyone working in the UK for “hostile” states like Russia and China who fails to register their role will face up to five years in jail, Suella Braverman will announce on Tuesday.
With respect to Saudi's, a lot of Saudi of military is serviced/supported by Pakistanis who feeds info directly back to PRC. And TBH it wouldn't surprise me if PRC "lured" ex Japanese / Korean pilots for info as well.
> Anyone working in the UK for “hostile” states like Russia and China who fails to register their role will face up to five years in jail, Suella Braverman will announce on Tuesday.
This is exactly like Russian 'Foreign Agent' law introduced about 10 years ago. Should we be following in the footsteps of despotic regimes? If we have just declared that these regimes are morrally bankrupt, we should be doing the opposite?
The US leaking capability to SA is like China leaking capability to NK. When SA runs fully amok the US will be worse off than if it were just in conflict with a single opponent because alliances with garbage bring you into a 2 against 200 position that is almost entirely outside your control.
This has been going on for years, but now it's news? Here's a blurb from some random 2009 blog post on how this works (more about Iraq, but Vinnell has been training Saudi forces for years, and probably is involved with Yemen as well):
> "The Pentagon has awarded a 48-million-dollar contract to train the nucleus of a new Iraqi army to Vinnell Corporation, a US firm which also trains the Saudi National Guard. The Fairfax, VA-based company, a subsidiary of the US aerospace firm Northrup Grumman, said on its website it was hiring former US army and marine officers to train infantry battalions and combat support units for the new Iraqi army. The Vinnell Corp. of Alexandria, Va., owned by politically connected Northrop-Grumman."
It's just so painfully obvious that these kind of articles wouldn't be getting published right now if the US government wasn't angry with Saudi Arabia about crude oil production.
> The Pentagon has awarded a 48-million-dollar contract to train the nucleus of a new Iraqi army to Vinnell Corporation, a US firm which also trains the Saudi National Guard.
Were similar contracts in place for training Afghani Army? Maybe we should get a refund?
I found shocking how western media just declared Afghani army as incapable and closed the chapter. Someone was in charge of this program for 20 years. Someone had oversight of billions spend. Were western contractor facilitating corruption? Was this a shocking failure of western management?
The results are worse than Russian army procurement where millions of uniforms just go missing!
> It's just so painfully obvious that these kind of articles wouldn't be getting published right now if the US government wasn't angry with Saudi Arabia about crude oil production.
It seems to me that the timing is the point and it is more relevant now that the relationship has become more adversarial. No one would've been paying as much attention in 2009 and rightfully so since those relationships wouldn't have as much of a conflict of interest.
And let's not forget that in 2009, MBS had yet to order Jamal Khasoggi to be killed by being cut in half by a bone saw.
Well, they are free people, not slaves. If they want to take a job in the private sector, they should have the freedom to do it, including working for a sovereign state that is not an enemy. Of course, they have knowledge of classified stuff, but I'm sure there are protocols around that, and they are aware of it.
It would be more scandalous if they were to take jobs with Russia, or Iran. But Saudi Arable is a US ally, so what's the problem?
This sort of thing isn’t all that unusual. John Paul Jones, whom many regard as the "father" of the United States Navy, served as a rear admiral for the Imperial Russian Navy after he retired from the US Navy.
Perhaps not unusual, but ethical? That’s a different matter. A former US general working for a theocratic, monarchy with a deeply concerning history on human rights raises some serious red flags in my mind.
Back the day Napoleon, from Corsica, actually whantedbto join the British Army before he settled to become an Artillery Officer in the French Army. The rest is, quite literally, history.
I would not count of SA being an ally for ever. I find this highly inappropriate especially for someone with sich high rank. Very very dangerous territory that could end up with a treason charge.
In the United States, the charge of treason only has meaning within the context of a declared war (due to it's specific definition within the constitution). Given that wars are no longer declared, I don't foresee even literal traitors being charged with treason until either a law is passed creating a different charge with different criteria, or Congress decides to check the Executive regarding the declaration of war. No reason to believe either are on the horizon; it's entirely possible no one will ever be charged with treason in the United States ever again.
Non-competes should include compensation commensurate for the non-compete period. In the case of these individuals is the retirement package not sufficient to guard national secrets?
My dim understanding is that once you are enrolled in General- and Admiral-level security clearances, you are not quite free free to freelance your experience globally without significant limitations.
The key questions raised would seem to be: did they in fact obtain the required signoffs, and are the current requirements sufficient or do they need some adjustment?
You don't get official "signoff" when you're at that level. You get plausibly deniable permission with the understanding that the powers that be reserve the right to pull the rug out from under you should doing so be politically expedient.
Saudi Arabia hasn't really been a us ally since about 2016 when Saudi Arabia tried dumping oil price to ruin the us shale industry. Ever since the USA has been preparing to strike back. Look up the NOPEC bill. It looks like the USA plan is to charge Saudi Arabia with manipulating oil prices (being a cartel is literally the stated goal of OPEC). SA knows this and they're aligning themselves with Russia and China (with whom they're ideologically closer anyway).
Also just a comment, the dichotomy "they are free not slaves" is entirely useless to this discussion. There are countless examples from elsewhere in society of where a person isn't a slave but still has constraints on how they can earn money.
But then who has "really" been an ally since whenever? All sovereign nations have national interests, and they are not 100% allied with the US interests.
Still, in the case of Saudi Arabia, their most important security concern is Iran. And there, they are aligned with the US. Also, the US is the most important security partner of Israel, and, according to wikipedia [1], Saudi Arabia has quite a good working relationship with Israel
reports have surfaced in recent years indicating extensive behind-the-scenes diplomatic, intelligence, and security cooperation between the two as part of a larger Arab-Israeli alliance against Iran (see Iran–Israel proxy conflict and Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict) and, more recently, Turkey under Erdoğan. At the same time, the Saudi relationship with the Palestinian National Authority is deteriorating.
A former general working for Saudi Arabia is in no way traitorous. It absolutely makes sense, both in their personal interest, but also in the general US national interest.
Yes, I know about Kashogi. But those guys are not going there to tell MBS to kill more disidents. They are going there to give security advice. And that security advice will benefit the US, not hinder it, because it will result in a stronger ally, not a stronger enemy.
Wow, I can't believe the "free market" argument is being used to justify top military leaders serving other countries. I guess we aren't a country anymore. Just one big (free) market.
Not only that, we have active duty American service members stationed in Saudi Arabia working as instructors and advisors on how to maintain and employ that hardware.
Saudi pilots are routinely trained at American military flight schools like Fort Rucker and NAS Pensacola. The performance of these Saudi student pilots is usually terrible[1], by the way, to the point that it's a running joke in the American military aviation community. This is probably because their officers are selected based on having royal blood, not based on merit, whereas getting into flight school is highly competitive for Americans. I'm told that Saudi Arabia pays a lot of money to send these guys for training, so instructors aren't allowed to fail them. Basically, the instructors pencil-whip their progress and let them graduate, but then Saudi Arabia seems to really need some experienced Americans on-hand to keep things from going off the rails.
[1] I was paired with a Saudi during flight school. For example, all students had to score 100% on a written test on aircraft limits and emergency procedures before ever getting into the cockpit. American students would get a second chance if they got one or two questions wrong, but that was rare and embarrassing, and there would be no third chance. My Saudi partner, on the other hand, scored something like 16% on his first attempt and then received five or six more chances. When we actually got into the air, he wasn't much better. During the first week, I approached my commander and told him that I was uncomfortable flying with this guy, but he assured me that our instructors dealt with this situation all the time and knew how to manage it safely. Later in my career, I saw a bit of what happens behind the scenes and learned that cheating among Saudi students was also rampant and effectively allowed to continue.
It's not confusion, it's disgust. Everybody understands that Saudi's are the leading exporters of terrorism and the US helps enable that terrorism with our money and intel. Then we condemn Putin and expect the entire world to take it seriously.
The court filing alleges that Allen had been tapped by two unregistered representatives of Qatar — a business executive named Imaad Zuberi and a former US ambassador to the UAE, Richard Olson — to advocate on Qatar’s behalf. (That Olson used the email address rickscafedxb@yahoo.com, a reference to the seedy Rick’s Cafe in the film Casablanca and the airport code for Dubai, might have been a tip-off that no one should be shocked that something was awry.)
Agh, and he probably thought he was just so clever with that email too. Ex-military officials should stick to joining the boards of defense conglomerates that their former friends and colleagues are going to spend billions of dollars with.
My guess is that the military is only the tip of the State iceberg.
Shortly after Olson left the State Department, several Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, launched a blockade against Qatar that sparked a massive spending spree in Washington on lobbying and other efforts to influence the US policy.
Olson, Zuberi and retired Marine four-star Gen John Allen traveled to Doha early in the diplomatic crisis to meet with top Qatari officials and discuss ways of resolving the issue, according to court records and a statement Allen’s spokesman provided to the wire service last year.
Chances are good these US ex-military are not loyal to Saudi Arabia. They're only doing it for the money, not fanatical idealisms. We have the Logan Act and Espionage Act to protect us, and we benefit from these activities through income taxes.
Law is only a paper veneer to keep honest people honest. Legal acts do about as much to deter desertion and security leaks as speed limit signs keep people from speeding.
That's an awfully bold statement. It'd be nice if you showed some evidence that classified information leakage and military desertion rates are anywhere near the rate of speed limit violations, which at a first approximation I would guess is pretty near 100% of licensed drivers doing it at least once. As a person who served in the military and still holds a clearance, I don't know the true rates, but in 15 years I have so far witnessed 0 desertions and 0 classified spills (caveat that I did witness one accidental copy of a classified course catalog onto an unclassified e-mail that was self-reported and immediately resulted in every unclassified workstation and hard drive in the 1st CAV headquarters being quarantined and wiped until it was determined the spill went no further, and we had no network access for a week while that was happening).
It's not uncommon for ex-military to take such jobs as a way to insulate the Pentagon (or your favourite government) even though they in fact still 'work'for them.
This was (still is?) a classic of French influence in Africa, for instance.
Here my interpretation is that the US keep a close watch on the Saudis...
That's an interesting interpretation and I hope you're right. I read it and just assumed it was people finally cashing out after public service and going to the highest bidder.
Those only work for people in the US or countries that will extradite which I would guess SA would be unlikely to do in this case.
I’m not saying that there’s going to be a bunch of treasoning or anything, just that the laws you’re citing wouldn’t be particularly useful if said treasoning did happen.
Doing anything remotely perceived as treasonous seems dumb. More than likely they are acting closer to spies for the US (against SA) in these positions.
> Those only work for people in the US or countries that will extradite which I would guess SA would be unlikely to do in this case.
I wouldn't be so sure. SA depends on the US for a significant amount of military equipment and training. They might turn over a US traitor if they got even a whiff of that help being threatened.
Readit News
BBC headline "Ex-UK pilots lured to help Chinese military, MoD says"
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63293582
With more background info: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/is-china-really-using-...
Some highlights from the BBC article:
> Former British military pilots are being lured to China with large sums of money to pass on their expertise to the Chinese military, it is claimed.
> Up to 30 former UK military pilots are thought to have gone to train members of China's People's Liberation Army.
> The retired British pilots are being used to help understand the way in which Western planes and pilots operate, information which could be vital in the event of any conflict, such as over Taiwan.
> "They are a very attractive body of people to then pass on that knowledge," a Western official said. "It's taking Western pilots of great experience to help develop Chinese military air force tactics and capabilities."
The disclaimer sentence
> There is no evidence that any pilots have broken the Official Secrets Act or that they have committed any crime.
is funny - how would they gather that evidence without confessions from the pilots involved or from the Chinese? Even if they don't tell them any secrets, there remains the fact that they train them at all. With the next big conflict where this might be used being Taiwan, where the West has already taken the opposite side.
From the second link:
> The MOD also said that the United Kingdom is only one of several Western countries whose aircrew (and likely other sources of military expertise) are currently being targeted in this way. No details were provided of other nations involved.
Personally, reading this, I think the news is getting more ridiculous by the day. I think this is much worse, I don't think Saudi Arabia is likely to end up as a direct adversary, and even if it did it would not matter much. But China...
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MI6 is a thing. What do you think they do all day. You really think these people with classified info in their heads are just walking around blabbing secrets in China or Saudi or wherever?
It's a manufacturing consent piece to setup this:
>Anyone working in the UK for “hostile” states like Russia and China who fails to register their role will face up to five years in jail, Suella Braverman will announce on Tuesday.
[0] https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/hostile-state-workers-...
With respect to Saudi's, a lot of Saudi of military is serviced/supported by Pakistanis who feeds info directly back to PRC. And TBH it wouldn't surprise me if PRC "lured" ex Japanese / Korean pilots for info as well.
This is exactly like Russian 'Foreign Agent' law introduced about 10 years ago. Should we be following in the footsteps of despotic regimes? If we have just declared that these regimes are morrally bankrupt, we should be doing the opposite?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_foreign_agent_law
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> "The Pentagon has awarded a 48-million-dollar contract to train the nucleus of a new Iraqi army to Vinnell Corporation, a US firm which also trains the Saudi National Guard. The Fairfax, VA-based company, a subsidiary of the US aerospace firm Northrup Grumman, said on its website it was hiring former US army and marine officers to train infantry battalions and combat support units for the new Iraqi army. The Vinnell Corp. of Alexandria, Va., owned by politically connected Northrop-Grumman."
More on that:
https://www.corpwatch.org/article/iraq-vinnells-army-defensi...
It's just so painfully obvious that these kind of articles wouldn't be getting published right now if the US government wasn't angry with Saudi Arabia about crude oil production.
Were similar contracts in place for training Afghani Army? Maybe we should get a refund?
I found shocking how western media just declared Afghani army as incapable and closed the chapter. Someone was in charge of this program for 20 years. Someone had oversight of billions spend. Were western contractor facilitating corruption? Was this a shocking failure of western management?
The results are worse than Russian army procurement where millions of uniforms just go missing!
Training went well, but why would they bother once we're gone?
It seems to me that the timing is the point and it is more relevant now that the relationship has become more adversarial. No one would've been paying as much attention in 2009 and rightfully so since those relationships wouldn't have as much of a conflict of interest.
And let's not forget that in 2009, MBS had yet to order Jamal Khasoggi to be killed by being cut in half by a bone saw.
Context matters.
Ex-UK pilots lured to help Chinese military, MoD says https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63293582
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It would be more scandalous if they were to take jobs with Russia, or Iran. But Saudi Arable is a US ally, so what's the problem?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Jones
We don't live in the 19th century anymore so.
The key questions raised would seem to be: did they in fact obtain the required signoffs, and are the current requirements sufficient or do they need some adjustment?
You don't get official "signoff" when you're at that level. You get plausibly deniable permission with the understanding that the powers that be reserve the right to pull the rug out from under you should doing so be politically expedient.
Also just a comment, the dichotomy "they are free not slaves" is entirely useless to this discussion. There are countless examples from elsewhere in society of where a person isn't a slave but still has constraints on how they can earn money.
But then who has "really" been an ally since whenever? All sovereign nations have national interests, and they are not 100% allied with the US interests.
Still, in the case of Saudi Arabia, their most important security concern is Iran. And there, they are aligned with the US. Also, the US is the most important security partner of Israel, and, according to wikipedia [1], Saudi Arabia has quite a good working relationship with Israel
A former general working for Saudi Arabia is in no way traitorous. It absolutely makes sense, both in their personal interest, but also in the general US national interest.Yes, I know about Kashogi. But those guys are not going there to tell MBS to kill more disidents. They are going there to give security advice. And that security advice will benefit the US, not hinder it, because it will result in a stronger ally, not a stronger enemy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_re...
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Truly late stage capitalism here.
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This isn't at all surprising, why wouldn't you hire American military to go with your American military hardware?
Saudi pilots are routinely trained at American military flight schools like Fort Rucker and NAS Pensacola. The performance of these Saudi student pilots is usually terrible[1], by the way, to the point that it's a running joke in the American military aviation community. This is probably because their officers are selected based on having royal blood, not based on merit, whereas getting into flight school is highly competitive for Americans. I'm told that Saudi Arabia pays a lot of money to send these guys for training, so instructors aren't allowed to fail them. Basically, the instructors pencil-whip their progress and let them graduate, but then Saudi Arabia seems to really need some experienced Americans on-hand to keep things from going off the rails.
[1] I was paired with a Saudi during flight school. For example, all students had to score 100% on a written test on aircraft limits and emergency procedures before ever getting into the cockpit. American students would get a second chance if they got one or two questions wrong, but that was rare and embarrassing, and there would be no third chance. My Saudi partner, on the other hand, scored something like 16% on his first attempt and then received five or six more chances. When we actually got into the air, he wasn't much better. During the first week, I approached my commander and told him that I was uncomfortable flying with this guy, but he assured me that our instructors dealt with this situation all the time and knew how to manage it safely. Later in my career, I saw a bit of what happens behind the scenes and learned that cheating among Saudi students was also rampant and effectively allowed to continue.
To clarify the US is invoking terror on the Yemeni Iranian proxy forces and therefore the population.
https://www.vox.com/23166516/scandal-john-allen-brookings-th...
The court filing alleges that Allen had been tapped by two unregistered representatives of Qatar — a business executive named Imaad Zuberi and a former US ambassador to the UAE, Richard Olson — to advocate on Qatar’s behalf. (That Olson used the email address rickscafedxb@yahoo.com, a reference to the seedy Rick’s Cafe in the film Casablanca and the airport code for Dubai, might have been a tip-off that no one should be shocked that something was awry.)
Shortly after Olson left the State Department, several Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, launched a blockade against Qatar that sparked a massive spending spree in Washington on lobbying and other efforts to influence the US policy.
Olson, Zuberi and retired Marine four-star Gen John Allen traveled to Doha early in the diplomatic crisis to meet with top Qatari officials and discuss ways of resolving the issue, according to court records and a statement Allen’s spokesman provided to the wire service last year.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/954208-ex-us-ambassador-to-...
Not all laws.[1]
> Legal acts do about as much to deter desertion and security leaks as speed limit signs keep people from speeding.
Seems to be working well so far.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gr...
This was (still is?) a classic of French influence in Africa, for instance.
Here my interpretation is that the US keep a close watch on the Saudis...
I’m not saying that there’s going to be a bunch of treasoning or anything, just that the laws you’re citing wouldn’t be particularly useful if said treasoning did happen.
I wouldn't be so sure. SA depends on the US for a significant amount of military equipment and training. They might turn over a US traitor if they got even a whiff of that help being threatened.