| | | | Fareed: This Might Be the Worst Major Bill in a Generation | | | The Republican Party's proposed tax plan would ultimately starve America of much-needed investment and hobble future generations' ability to compete, Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column. Indeed, it might be the "worst piece of major legislation in a generation." "The medium- and long-term effects of the plan will be a massive drop in public investment, which will come on the heels of decades of declining spending (as a percentage of gross domestic product) on infrastructure, scientific research, skills training and core government agencies. The United States can't coast on past investments forever, and with this legislation, we are ushering in a bleak future," Fareed writes. "[D]uring the Depression, World War II and much of the Cold War, a sense of crisis and competition focused America's attention and created a bipartisan urgency to get things done. Ironically, at a time when competition is far more fierce, when other countries have surpassed the United States in many of these areas, America has fallen into extreme partisanship and embraced a know-nothing libertarianism that is starving the country of the essential investments it needs for growth. "Those who vote for this tax bill — possibly the worst piece of major legislation in a generation — will live in infamy, as the country slowly breaks down." | | Why It's Time for Some Bad Faith Talks with Kim | | Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was right this week when he suggested talking with North Korea. If the United States wants to find a lasting solution to the nuclear crisis it should open high-level negotiations, argues Peter Harrell in the Wall Street Journal. And while a satisfactory deal with Kim Jong Un's regime seems unlikely, bad faith negotiations could buy valuable time.
"President Trump is right that North Korea is unlikely to make meaningful nuclear concessions, and that economic strangulation and stepped-up covert activities are needed to force change in Pyongyang. But even maximally tough sanctions take time to bite. It took nearly three years of sanctions pressure before Iran got serious about negotiating over its nuclear program in 2013," Harrell writes.
"Assuming Pyongyang did agree to the pause and talks, it would at some point tire of the fruitless negotiations and pull out. But in the interim, the U.S. would have bought time to let economic sanctions work, to improve military defenses, and to launch new covert options. There is even a remote chance that time would bring change to Pyongyang. For a crisis with no good resolutions, simply buying time to develop new solutions may be the best of the bad options we have."
| | Asia's Other Slow-Moving Crisis | | America's attention, at least as far as Asia is concerned, might be on North Korea. But in the South China Sea, a slow-moving crisis is continuing, a new analysis from the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies suggests, as China continues construction in disputed waters that could have significant military implications.
"While pursuing diplomatic outreach toward its Southeast Asian neighbors, Beijing continued substantial construction activities on its dual-use outposts in the Spratly and Paracel Islands," the analysis says. "Beijing remains committed to advancing the next phase of its build-up -- construction of the infrastructure necessary for fully-functioning air and naval bases on the larger outposts."
Believed to be included in the construction: "[B]uried storage facilities…as well as previously-identified hangars, missile shelters, radar/communications facilities, and a high-frequency 'elephant cage' antenna array for signals intelligence at the southwest end of the island." - China shows off its sharp power. China might not be seeking to conquer foreign lands. But fears are growing that it is looking to "conquer foreign minds," The Economist editorializes. Call it the application of "sharp power."
"Like many countries, China has long tried to use visas, grants, investments and culture to pursue its interests. But its actions have recently grown more intimidating and encompassing. Its sharp power has a series of interlocking components: subversion, bullying and pressure, which combine to promote self-censorship. For China, the ultimate prize is preemptive kowtowing by those whom it has not approached, but who nonetheless fear losing funding, access or influence," The Economist says.
"China has a history of spying on its diaspora, but the subversion has spread. In Australia and New Zealand Chinese money is alleged to have bought influence in politics, with party donations or payments to individual politicians. This week's complaint from German intelligence said that China was using the LinkedIn business network to ensnare politicians and government officials, by having people posing as recruiters and think-tankers and offering free trips."
| | The Digital Arms Race Might Just Have Gotten More Dangerous | | | In the seven years since the Stuxnet computer worm was revealed as likely having been targeting Iran's nuclear facilities, "the cybersecurity world has waited for the next step in that digital arms race: Another piece of malicious software designed specifically to enable the damage or destruction of industrial equipment," writes Andy Greenberg for Wired. That next step seems to have been taken, and once again it has appeared in the Middle East. "Triton represents just the third-ever known malware specimen focused on damaging or disrupting physical equipment. The first was Stuxnet, widely assumed to have been designed by the NSA in partnership with Israeli intelligence. And late last year, a piece of sophisticated malware known as Industroyer, or Crash Override, targeted Ukraine's power systems, triggering a brief blackout in the country's capital of Kiev," Greenberg writes. Cyber analyst John Hultquist "sees Triton as escalating beyond those previous attacks, though. 'The biggest difference is that the tool that we're seeing was built for controlling the safety systems,' he says. 'Because those are the failsafes to protect assets and people, messing with those systems could have very dangerous consequences. You're not just talking about turning off the lights. You're talking about potential physical incidents at a plant.'" | | Americans' Support for Capital Punishment (Slowly) Ebbing Away | | Support for the death penalty among Americans has fallen to its lowest level in almost half a century, according to a new report, while the number of executions in the United States this year was the second lowest in 25 years.
"For the 17th consecutive year, the number of prisoners on the nation's death rows fell, as the combination of exonerations, non-capital resentencings, and deaths by natural causes again outpaced new death sentences imposed," according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which noted that 23 executions have been carried out in 2017.
Citing Gallup, the report added that 55 percent of Americans say they support the death penalty, "the lowest since March 1972." But that figure does not "include the thousands of executions carried out in China, where data on the use of the death penalty remained classified as a state secret," Amnesty said. "Iran alone accounted for 55% of all recorded executions. Together with Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan it carried out 87% of the global total. Iraq more than tripled its executions and Egypt and Bangladesh doubled theirs."
Also of note: "Of the 35 member states of the Organization of American States, only the USA carried out executions" in 2016. | | | | | | |
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