New Think Tank Helping Russia Gain Influence in Africa

Here is more from the New York Times:

Mr. [Jose] Matemulane runs a think tank called Afric, which describes itself on its website as “funded by donors with a common passion to foster Africa’s development,” without mentioning Russia. In an interview, though, Mr. Matemulane said the group was launched last year with support from a St. Petersburg businessman he declined to name.

Afric received prominent billing at a summit for dozens of African leaders hosted by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia at the Black Sea resort of Sochi last week, and announced it would partner with a Russian propaganda specialist who had previously focused on the United States.

It also drew the notice of Mamadou Koulibaly, a candidate for president of Ivory Coast in elections next year.

“I will ask them if they can introduce me to people with money who will help me,” Mr. Koulibaly said of Afric. “This is important. A campaign needs money.”

Afric — an acronym for Association for Free Research and International Cooperation — is building ties with African politicians and commentators while publishing articles that extol the benefits of cooperating with Russia. It has also invested heavily in election monitoring missions that mirror Russia’s approach in its own elections: bringing in sympathetic foreigners who praise the votes’ fairness and transparency, even as established Western organizations criticize them.

The article goes on to note that investigative journalists have reported that Afric is funded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was indicted by the US for running the "troll farm" that sought to sway the 2016 US presidential election.  Afric employees deny any connection.

In July, a Russian think tank with links to an infamous troll farm said two of its employees were detained in Libya.

Here is a 2017 report on Russian think tanks and soft power from the Swedish Defense Research Agency.

Kurdish Group to Engage More With DC Think Tanks

Here is more from Al-Monitor:

An Iranian Kurdish rebel group is the latest faction to jump on Washington’s anti-Tehran bandwagon.

The Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan, an armed group with communist origins exiled in northern Iraq, registered with the Justice Department late last month as a lobby aiming to “establish solid and durable relations” with the Donald Trump administration. The registration hints at a more public role for a group that has left a digital track record of foreign advocacy on Capitol Hill dating back several years.

Salah Bayaziddi, a Canadian citizen who identifies as a journalist and doctoral candidate in federal filings, will lead the effort on a volunteer basis, writing op-eds, meeting US officials and engaging Washington think tanks. In a September filing with the Justice Department, Komala leader Abdullah Mohtadi said the group “seeks to represent the human rights of Iranian citizens and promotes the democratic representation of minority voices in Iran.” Komala has a track record of insurgent activity against the Iranian government.

These days, nearly every type of foreign entity is engaging with Washington more, which inevitably means that think tanks will see more activity with these foreign entities and likely score big contracts to host events, write reports, and engage with the US government on behalf of those entities.

The Think Tanker Behind Huge DoD Robot Arms Race

A former top think tank official is behind the US Department of Defense's huge push into the robot arms race and what is known as centaur warfighting.

Here is more from The New York Times:

Almost unnoticed outside defense circles, the Pentagon has put artificial intelligence at the center of its strategy to maintain the United States’ position as the world’s dominant military power. It is spending billions of dollars to develop what it calls autonomous and semiautonomous weapons and to build an arsenal stocked with the kind of weaponry that until now has existed only in Hollywood movies and science fiction, raising alarm among scientists and activists concerned by the implications of a robot arms race.

 “China and Russia are developing battle networks that are as good as our own. They can see as far as ours can see; they can throw guided munitions as far as we can,” said Robert O. Work, the deputy defense secretary, who has been a driving force for the development of autonomous weapons. “What we want to do is just make sure that we would be able to win as quickly as we have been able to do in the past.”

Mr. Work, 63, first proposed the concept [of centaur warfighting] when he led a Washington think tank, the Center for a New American Security. His inspiration, he said, was not found in typical sources of military strategy — Sun Tzu or Clausewitz, for instance — but in the work of Tyler Cowen, a blogger and economist at George Mason University.

In his 2013 book, “Average Is Over,” Mr. Cowen briefly mentioned how two average human chess players, working with three regular computers, were able to beat both human chess champions and chess-playing supercomputers.

It was a revelation for Mr. Work. You could “use the tactical ingenuity of the computer to improve the strategic ingenuity of the human,” he said.

Although the article does not mention it, Think Tank Watch should point out that Tyler Cowen also hails from the think tank world, as General Director of the libertarian-leaning Mercatus Center. 

As for Mr. Work, he still has extremely close ties to the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), and speaks there from time to time.  Robert Works' biography can be found here.

Michele Flournoy, who is Hillary Clinton's likely pick for Defense secretary if she becomes president, is Co-Founder and CEO of CNAS.  Her think tank biography can be found here.