(Axios) This is a new column by Axios CEO Jim VandeHei and co-founder Mike Allen, based on regular conversations with White House and congressional leaders, CEOs, and top technologists.
Never before have we talked to so many top government officials who, in private, are so worried about so many overseas conflicts at once.
Why it matters: We don’t like to sound dire. But to sound a siren of clinical, clear-eyed realism: U.S. officials say this confluence of crises poses epic concern and historic danger.
Behind the scenes: Officials tell us that inside the White House, this was the heaviest, most chilling week since President Biden took office just over 1,000 days ago.
- Former Defense Secretary Bob Gates — who ran the Pentagon under presidents of both parties, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — tells us America is facing the most crises since World War II ended 78 years ago.
- He explains the White House’s system overload like this: “There’s this gigantic funnel that sits over the table in the Situation Room. And all the problems in the world end up coming through that funnel to the same eight or 10 people. There’s a limit to the bandwidth those eight or 10 people can have.”
Not one of the crises can be solved and checked off. All five could spiral into something much bigger:
1. Israel’s response to the Hamas terrorist attack, and growing fear of a spreading war that reaches to Iran and beyond. Officials point to the protests, threats and deadly, anti-American warnings of Arab nations after they thought — incorrectly — Israel struck a hospital in Gaza, killing hundreds. This is a preview of what they fully expect will be a worldwide response to the expected Israeli invasion of Gaza.
- The U.S. is deploying two aircraft carriers to the region. A U.S. Navy destroyer on Thursday shot down missiles from Yemen that appeared headed toward Israel. U.S. troops were fired on this week by drones in Syria and Iraq.
2. Vladimir Putin meeting in China this week with Xi Jinping to further strengthen their anti-America alliance. In a new Foreign Affairs article that top officials are sharing, Gates argues that both leaders believe America and other big democracies “are past their prime and have entered an irreversible decline.” Putin and Xi sniff weakness and are activating on many fronts, top administration officials tell us.
- This Reuters headline says it all: “Russia says it is coordinating Middle East policy with China.”
3. A malicious Iran. It’s unclear how involved Iran was in orchestrating or assisting the Hamas terrorist attack — but officials seem certain there are ties. More worrisome: U.S. officials fear Hezbollah — a much bigger terrorist group than Hamas, funded by Iran — will strike the moment Israel gets stuck in Gaza.
- Biden said Thursday night in his Oval Office address: “Iran is supporting Russia in Ukraine, and it’s supporting Hamas and other terrorist groups in the region.”
4. Then there’s the unhinged leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, and his frequent testing of long-range, nuclear-capable missiles. As Gates points out, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea combined could have twice as many nuclear weapons as America in two years.
5. A new weapon is being deployed in all these conflicts: a massive spread of doctored or wholly fake videos to manipulate what people see and think in real time. The architects of these new technologies, in background conversations with us after demonstrating new capabilities soon to be released, say even the sharpest eyes looking for fake videos will have an impossible time detecting what’s real. (We’ll have a column coming soon to Go Deeper on this topic).
- Fake video, on top of bots (fake people) and fake written content, is being used aggressively by all anti-American actors, intelligence officials say. Some experts estimate that more than 90% of content on the internet will soon be fake or manipulated.
What scares officials is how all five threats could fuse into one.
- The State Department on Thursday issued a rare “Worldwide Caution,” warning U.S. travelers abroad of “increased tensions in various locations around the world” that raise “the potential for terrorist attacks, demonstrations or violent actions against U.S. citizens and interests.”
These simultaneous threats are hitting at the very moment the American political system seems — and sometimes is — literally broken.
