Russian officials are casting Ms. Harris as a foreign affairs neophyte with no measurable influence on U.S. policy.

“We can’t assess the potential candidacy of Mrs. Harris from the viewpoint of our bilateral relations, for, so far, any of her contributions to our relations have not been noticed,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday, according to Russia’s state-run Tass News Agency. He added Ms. Harris has made some “unfriendly” remarks about Moscow in the past.

Mr. Peskov’s comments were notable because other leading American foes, such as China, North Korea and Iran, have thus far been conspicuously silent about President Biden’s decision to end his campaign for a second term and Ms. Harris’ emergence as the probable Democratic nominee.

A central question is whether Ms. Harris breaks from Mr. Biden’s foreign policy in any meaningful way, according to James M. Lindsay, senior vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Continuity rather than change is the most likely answer, if only because breaking with the president now will create problems for her campaign,” he wrote Monday in an analysis on the council’s website. “She wants to focus on her differences with Trump, not with Biden.”

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pulled no punches in his criticism of China at a major international religious freedom summit in Tokyo, asserting that Beijing is running “a surveillance state that would make the Nazis blush.”

In separate messages to the summit on Monday, Mr. Pompeo and Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te lamented fraying religious freedoms in Asia, saying the issue required renewed international focus and that communist China was a primary obstacle to progress.

Mr. Pompeo, a former member of Congress who was also CIA director before moving to the State Department, pushed a take-no-prisoners approach on the Taiwan issue, insisting that Taiwan is de facto “a free, independent and sovereign nation” — wording that is certain to infuriate Beijing, which considers the island democracy a renegade province.

“It seems to be time to rip off the Band-Aids. … It will make [Chinese President] Xi Jinping angry. … [but] at the end of day, we have to acknowledge core truths,” said Mr. Pompeo, who advised against “kowtowing” to China when it threatens Taipei.

Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown, who became the president’s most senior military adviser on Oct. 1, says a conflict with China is neither imminent nor inevitable, but that the U.S. military must be ready if war breaks out.

When asked in a public discussion at last week’s Aspen Security Forum whether the United States could defeat China in a conflict, Gen. Brown said: “Yes, I’m fully confident in our force.”

“We are the most lethal, most respected combat force in the world. … I’m confident, if we’re challenged, we will be there,” he said.

A recent simulation by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found the United States would defeat China in combat but at a heavy cost, with U.S. and allied forces losing tens of thousands of troops, dozens of ships and hundreds of aircraft in the war.

Gen. Brown said Beijing would likely seek to “go quick so they can do it before we can bring capability there.” To be ready for such, the Joint Chiefs Chairman said he is accelerating efforts to build up American military logistics in the region, stockpiling weapons, ammunition, supplies and other military support before a conflict breaks out.

The Chinese Communist Party is looking to take advantage of last week’s global internet outages to promote China’s cyber offerings and warn that a reliance on Western technology will bring future digital pandemics.

Outages caused by a faulty software update from the U.S.-based cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike have not led to disruptions in China to the same extent as in Western nations, according to reports. The Chinese cyber firm QAX said disruptions occurred at only tens of thousands of machines, largely in local offices of foreign enterprises and joint ventures, according to the South China Morning Post.

As IT professionals work to recover around the world, state-affiliated media in China have adopted public health terminology to trumpet the strength of China’s defenses, using language harkening back to the debates over the COVID-19 outbreak that spread from China to the world. The official Xinhua news agency cited an expert on Sunday claiming “more ‘digital pandemics’ like this are expected to emerge.”

James Taylor, who heads the Heartland Institute, blames “Big Tech” for pushing the proliferation of wind and solar energy sources to a degree that they have now gained a substantial grid share and forced reliable coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants to close.

“As a result, electricity blackouts and brownouts have become more common as unreliable wind and solar power fail to meet spikes in demand,” writes Mr. Taylor, who notes that this has all happened amid dramatic increases in electricity demand — the culprit of which is “Big Tech and its rapid growth in electricity consumption related to artificial intelligence, new data centers and other operations.”

The public “cover-up” of Mr. Biden’s diminished cognitive condition is a “scandal and those involved have negatively impacted national security because you can be certain that Russian intelligence for whom collection on the U.S. is their highest priority — certainly have focused on the President’s condition,” according to former high-level CIA officer Rob Dannenberg.

Mr. Dannenberg, who held various leadership roles at the agency, including chief of the Central Eurasia Division and chief of the Information Operations Center, writes in The Cipher Brief that a “strong case can be made” that Russian President Vladimir Putin “doesn’t have a solid preference” about who wins or loses the coming U.S. election. “Despite who is elected,” Mr. Dannenberg writes, Mr. Putin’s “central focus will remain on creating political conditions in the U.S. that divide and thus weaken Washington.”

• July 23 — Arms Transfers to MENA: Data Trends and Implications for Human Rights and Security, Arab Center Washington, DC

• July 23 — How might US politics impact Russia’s war on Ukraine? Atlantic Council

• July 24 — The Future of Army Space and Missile Defense with Lieutenant General Sean A. Gainey, Hudson Institute

• July 24 — Challenges and opportunities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: A conversation with President Félix Tshisekedi, Brookings Institution

• July 24 — Delivering on a Shared Vision with America’s Indo-Pacific Allies and Partners, American Enterprise Institute

• July 26 — Unpacking ASEAN’s Relationship with Myanmar, Stimson Center