The Pentagon carried out more airstrikes against the Somalia-based al-Shabab terrorists in 2023 than any year so far in the Biden presidency, and could be on track to break that mark again this year.

National Security Correspondent Ben Wolfgang reports that U.S.-backed Somali government troops are considered by analysts as distinctly inferior to the Afghan army that surrendered to the Taliban in 2021. President Biden has escalated against al-Shabab, but that doesn’t mean there’s a clear route to victory over the al Qaeda affiliate that remains set on overthrowing the Mogadishu government and establishing a jihadist-led Islamic emirate in the Horn of Africa.

The question of how al-Shabab funds and arms itself is vexing. U.S. intelligence says the group “generates around $100 million per year” through local business extortion and illicit trade, and was — as recently as 2021 — acquiring weapons from foreign suppliers, primarily in Yemen, home of the Iran-backed Houthi militia.

The Pentagon has tapped 27-year-old American entrepreneur Alexandr Wang’s Scale AI for a major partnership to test and evaluate AI applications for U.S. troops, the San Francisco-based company has announced.

It’s a major milestone for the Pentagon as it expands its Replicator initiative aimed at remaking the military by infusing AI into weapons systems. DefenseScoop notes news of the partnership follows the Pentagon’s launch of Task Force Lima to determine how the powerful algorithms of AI “large language models” should or shouldn’t be implemented within the military.

It’s all in the spotlight at the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) symposium, which opens Tuesday. National Security Tech Reporter Ryan Lovelace is at the symposium, where Mr. Wang is slated to speak Thursday. Others on hand include Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen H. Hicks, who says the department has identified more than 180 instances where generative AI tools could make the military more effective.

Beijing has announced it will no longer respect a de facto maritime boundary with Taiwan and will expand Coast Guard activities around a Taiwan-controlled island off China’s coast — a move likely to accelerate the slide toward confrontation over the U.S.-backed island democracy that the Chinese Communist Party has vowed to bring under its control.

Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon reports that the new tension centers on Kinmen, a small Taiwanese-controlled island just 1.8 miles off the coast of China that was the scene of heavy fire exchanges in the 1950s and remains heavily fortified to this day, with beach-landing obstacles, heavy guns and even a Taiwanese special forces contingent.

National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz takes stock of FBI Director Christopher A. Wray’s assertion in a speech to the recent Munich Security Conference that Chinese hackers are stepping up efforts to get inside networks used to control critical U.S. infrastructure in preparation for future sabotage.

Amid the rising tension on all fronts, it’s worth recalling the Taiwanese foreign minister’s warning last year that the threat of a Chinese military invasion is “real.” Beijing’s announcement on the Kinmen crisis also comes amid reports that U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher, the GOP chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, is heading a delegation to Taiwan this week.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is a hero and Vladimir Putin a coward, according to Times’ Deputy Editorial Page Editor Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, who writes that the renowned dissident was jailed on bogus charges because he exposed the corruption of the Russian president and his cronies, including now-deceased Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin. 

“Rather than face his opponent in a free and fair election this year, Mr. Putin cowered in fear and used others to do his dirty work and murder Mr. Navalny,” Mr. Shapiro asserts, arguing that, “unlike Mr. Navalny, who is already being immortalized as the hero he was, when Mr. Putin dies, he will be remembered for what he is — a coward hiding behind the stone walls of the Kremlin.”