Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Advice From a Genuine China Expert That’s Genuinely Useless

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China, espionage, fentanyl, globalism, Mel Books, national interests, Nicholas Kristof, opioids, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, privacy, spying, Thomas Hobbes, TikTok

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s column on how the United States can avoid war with China generated two big takeaways that jumped out at me right away:

First, although his knowledge of the People’s Republic is impressive (he and his wife deservedly won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on China’s democracy movement and its brutal suppression in Tiananmen Square), his foreign policy thinking can be dangerously childish for anyone primarily concerned with defending and promoting critical U.S. interests..

Second, this column is worth focusing on because such childishness has been all too typical of the globalist strategy that dominated U.S. foreign policymaking and thinking in the decades between the end of World War II and the advent of the Trump presidency.

The problems with Kristof’s column begin with the headline “How to Avoid a War with China” – which unlike many headlines, accurately reflects the main theme. This objective is troublesome because except for pacifists or those unconcerned about preserving acceptable levels of American political independence and prosperity, it can’t be the top priority for U.S. China policy or for any other dimension of U.S. foreign policy.

And in fact, it hasn’t been the nation’s top international priority for decades. That’s why Washington has long pledged to defend numerous treaty allies by threatening adversaries with nuclear attack in response to aggression. The domination of these allies by the Soviet Union and/or North Korea and/or China has been deemed an outcome worth endangering America’s physical survival.

It’s perfectly legitimate for Kristof or anyone else to question these priorities. I myself have opposed incurring nuclear war risk in any number of circumstances (most recently, on behalf of Ukraine, which in my view is of no intrinsic importance to U.S. safety, sovereignty, or prosperity).

But if Kristof or anyone else seeks to fold back some or all such American nuclear umbrellas based on cost-risk calculations demonstrating why various national security objectives (including, for example, America’s own independence) aren’t vital after all, or unless these critics are simply doctrinaire pacifists, they need to take one of two steps for the sake of full disclosure to their audiences and intellectual honesty.

They can either explain how the United States can achieve vital objectives without the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons. Or they can acknowledge that achieving such U.S. objectives regardless of risk isn’t their concern. Since Kristof hasn’t argued for any of these points, from this standpoint, it’s difficult to view his column as anything else but a simple expression of fear.

Except two points that Kristof has made exemplify one example of what I’ve long called a deepseated American failure – especially by generations of globalists in and out of government – to think of U.S. foreign policy as an exercise in promoting or defending specific interests at all. My first comprehensive stab at this argument came here.

And further research revealed to additional ways in which “interest-based” thinking was avoided, including that which Kristof demonstrates – which I called (not too catchily) a search for abstract standards for judging U.S. foreign policy decisions that are incapable in and of themselves of helping America cope with important challenges or capitalize on important opportunities

These standards can take many forms – i.e., advancing human rights or strengthening international institutions or promoting the economic development of low-income countries. The one that Kristof is pushing in his column seems to reflect the idea that it’s not legitimate (or doesn’t pass some more elemental smell test) for the United States to defend itself against or even object to any Chinese threats in spheres in which America’s record isn’t simon pure or outstandingly effective itself.

Yes, this sounds positively ditzy. But what other interpretation can be put on the following two passages?

>“I’m among those wary of TikTok because of the risk that it might be used for spying. But I also know that the United States has similarly used private businesses to spy on China. When China purchased a new Boeing 767 in 2000 to be the Chinese equivalent of Air Force One, American officials planted at least 27 bugs in it” and

>”I think the United States should press China harder on some issues, such as the reckless way Chinese companies export chemicals to Mexico that are turned into fentanyl. That Chinese-origin fentanyl kills many thousands of Americans each year, and it’s hard to see why the deaths of so many aren’t higher on the bilateral agenda.

“But we also need humility. America’s politicians, pharma companies and regulators themselves catastrophically bungled the opioid crisis. Why should we expect Chinese leaders to care more about young American lives than our own leaders do?”

Regarding the TikTok and spying point, sure Kristof professes concern about the Chinese app. But if his paramount aim is helping to prevent Beijing from jeopardizing the privacy of individual Americans, why mention America’s own espionage operations other than to foster the impression that they somehow excuse China’s? What else can this suggestion of moral equivalence accomplish?

I suppose that, in principle, Kristof (or someone else) could think that abstaining from some (or all?) U.S. spying on China might help the United States. Maybe by encouraging Beijing to reciprocate? But again, he never mentions how or why.

Someone prioritizing U.S. interests would recognize that the fact that Washington is “guilty” of the taking same kinds of actions that China carries out (along with every other country with such capabilities) is completely irrelevant to the imperative of defending Americans from its probes. That’s the only objective – or even subject of interest – that should matter to anyone concerned with this nation’s well-being.

Kristof makes a similar disclaimer about understanding the need to respond to the Chinese fentanyl ingredients threat. But then he introduces more distractions – namely (a) a call for humility because Washington has performed so miserably in dealing with opioid use; and (b) the suggestion that if U.S. leaders had cared more about their own people, China’s leaders would care about Americans more as well.

Let’s say, however, that President Biden publicly criticizes America’s opioid record. I’m a fan of humility. But exactly what purpose would such a statement serve? Awakening Americans to the dangers of opioids and/or to their own leaders’ incompetence and/or indifference? Spurring them to demand more effective domestic countermeasures? As if many Americans aren’t already angry about the crisis’ domestic roots and haven’t clamored for action?

Or perhaps Kristof believes that Beijing would be satisfied enough with the resultant propaganda victory to conclude that actively helping to kill so many Americans was no longer necessary? I can’t think of any other value that would be added to a public U.S. eating of humble pie. But again, he leaves this discussion hanging, too.

Or maybe Kristof is worried that if the Chinese sign some agreement, then U.S. leaders will believe that the fentanyl pressure is off them? He sort of indicates this at the end, with his contention that the United States can best fend off various Chinese threats by strengthening its own society and economy. And he’s certainly right about the need for better U.S. domestic policies. But would Washington really be let off the fentanyl hook until deaths fall dramatically? That’s doubtful, and in any event, the author’s analysis here is awfully skimpy.

But it’s distraction Number Two that’s more revealing, because, as with Kristof’s seeming views on spying, it raises the possibility that as long as Washington’s own anti-fentanyl measures haven’t reached some level of acceptability (in whose eyes? China’s?), it can’t reasonably expect Beijing to lend a helping hand…and perhaps shouldn’t even try changing Chinese policies?

I can’t say for sure that’s Kristof’s view. But even if current Chinese leaders ever would consider such a beneficial course of action under any foreseeable circumstance, it’s anything but clear here, either, why in Kristof’s view even mentioning the American fentanyl record matters. However lousy it’s been, shutting off the flow of precursors from China would indisputably help save American lives So this outcome should be pursued vigorously, period. Why muck up the issue with any other considerations?

It may seem that I’m calling emphatically for a foreign policy of double standards and of hypocrisy. But that would be missing the point. I’m arguing instead for anchoring America’s approach to the world first and foremost to the defense and advancement of specific, concrete national interests – that is, to no standards whatever except for whatever contributes to those goals.

As for the hypocrisy charge, I plead (as a Mel Brooks movie once memorably put it) “Incredibly guilty. Because in the kind of fundamentally Hobbesian world that I’m of course assuming, I’m perfectly fine with the United States resorting to methods whose use by others it opposes because I’m completely uninterested in creating or upholding norms to which all should adhere. I’m simply interesting in doing whatever’s necessary, whenever it’s necessary, for the United States to create advantage – of course subject to the approval at some point of the American people – and to ensuring that the nation retains the power to enable this approach to succeed.

This doesn’t rule out cooperation with other countries at various times on various subjects. And if the American people endorse such a course, it doesn’t even rule out U.S. efforts to conform with those non-interest-based, abstract standards of behavior. What it does rule out is making any of the above the alpha and omega of foreign policy. And if you believe that any other test should rule instead, let me know.

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Im-Politic: How to Deal with TikTok

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censorship, China, Constitution, First Amendment, freedom of speech, Im-Politic, national security, privacy, social media, spying, TikTok

Extra! Extra! I think I’ve come up with solutions to a major China-related conundrum facing U.S. policymakers: How to prevent the wildly popular social media app TikTok from endangering America’s national security and the privacy of individual Americans (often with ominous national security implications) without violating Constitutional protections for speech.

Actually, it’s several solutions. First, it’s vital to remember that

>TikTok – like all entities in China – is ultimately an agent of the Chinese regime;

>it’s already been caught spying on American journalists and sending the information back to China; and

>it’s also already been caught engaging in news and information (including censorship) practices that serve Beijing’s interests. (For evidence for these last two claims, see links in this post from a pundit who’s by no means a China hawk.)

That’s why President Biden banned its presence on federal government-issued devices, and why no one has raised any First Amendment objections. The federal government clearly has the right even in peacetime to ensure that its workforce does nothing to expose itself to blackmail to foreign counterparts or transmit (however innocently) material that could serve foreign government interests. It’s doubly important to put these protections in place before U.S.-China security-related tensions rise further, and certainly before the two countries come to blows over Taiwan or some other dispute.

But this TikTok ban needs to be broadened to include all devices used by U.S. government employees even in private capacities, and to all devices used in any capacity by federal contractors and their employees. After all, no one has a right to work for or to do business with Washington. Those who wish to continue using TikTok would be entirely free to do so, but would need to find jobs and business elsewhere. Any security- and privacy-minded American state or municipal government should be entitled to take the same steps.

As for the use of TikTok in other capacities by private citizens, this entity should be required to run on the app a continuous crawl text stating that it’s a Chinese dictatorship controlled entity; that it’s passed sensitive and possibly compromising personal information to that government, and that the information it makes available is regularly skewed to reflect Beijing’s views and further its objectives. It seems reasonable that these caveats would persuade any thinking adult to switch to other platforms for their entertainment and whatever else they use TikTok for, and begin sharply curbing or at least monitoring their kids’ usage.

I’ve already recommended that all other foreign government materials that can be accessed in the United States be clearly and continuously (in the case of broadcasts or internet content) labeled as such, and these mandatory warnings can be tailored to suit the foreign government in question. (E.g., materials from allied governments would be less detailed than those from China or North Korea or Iran – or Russia.)

But if you’re not satisfied with these measures, here’s another way to justify banning TikTok from the U.S. market in one fell swoop: Authorizing the President to kick out any government-owned or related media or social media entity from any country that has displayed a pattern of endangering U.S. military forces

This way, not only can China be dealt with in a fashion consistent with the First Amendment before the outbreak of a full-scale shooting conflict that would obviously require censoring enemy-state material (its pilots have buzzed U.S. military aircraft flying over international waters several times), but also rogue states like Iran (see, e.g., here) and Russia (see, e.g., here). After all, why give demonstrably hostile foreign regimes any access to what Americans hear and see even if an official state of war doesn’t yet exist? 

Champions of civil liberties (and I count myself as one) are right to worry about government abusing all manner of actual and proposed   national security-related curbs on Americans’ freedoms.  But the above ideas contain plenty of highly specific guard rails based on concrete,  measurable criteria.  TikTok and China have already met every single one of these tests for all of the above limitations, and indeed that set by the  “U.S. forces” yardstick.  In fact, the case against them, based on these commonsensical standards, is so overwhelming that any reasonable person has to wonder why authorized TikTok use still remains so widespread.     

Making News: Back on National Radio on Banning TikTok & Other Decoupling from China

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Byte Dance, CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor, China, decoupling, export controls, Gordon G. Chang, Making News, national security, privacy, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, semiconductors, social media, tech, TikTok

I’m pleased to announce that I’m scheduled to be back tonight to the nationally syndicated “CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor.” Our subject – a raft of recent and proposed U.S. government moves to decouple the nation’s economy from China’s, including legislation to ban the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok.

The segment, which also features co-host Gordon G. Chang, is slated to be broadcast at 10 PM EST. But the entire program is always compelling, and you can listen live at links like this. As always, moreover, I’ll post a link to the podcast as soon as one’s available.

And keep on checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Deaf Leading the Blind on U.S. China Policy

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Barack Obama, Biden, Blob, China, Donald Trump, Fareed Zakaria, George W. Bush, globalism, Mainstream Media, national security, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, privacy, South China Sea, Taiwan, technology, Washington Post

Is “beyond clueless” or “beyond intellectually dishonest” the best way to describe Fareed Zakaria’s latest column for the Washington Post? It’s tough to tell. And you could ask the same of the editors at the Post‘s opinion pages, who clearly saw nothing wrong with letting this apologia for the United States’ thoroughly discredited (at least for those blessed with working and/or uncorrupted brains) pre-Trump China policies see the light of day.

Zakaria’s missive, from this past Thursday, suffers two glaringly obvious flaws. First, like America’s most influential leaders from both parties for decades before 2017 the author insists on the importance of Washington building and maintaining “a serious working relationship” with a regime that has developed (with oceans of reckless American assistance) into one of the world’s “two most powerful actors.”

And former President Donald Trump’s greatest sin (which Zakaria accuses President Biden of following)? Adopting a policy toward Beijing of “open hostility and criticism” that has caused the “collapse” of “communications channels for managing tensions,” and especially during crises or near crises such as that which appears to be developing over Taiwan.

But nothing could be clearer by now than the delusional nature of these procedure-obsessed and substance-free views (which of course despite Zakaria’s claim have continually been parroted by the Biden administration.) For by now it should go without saying that China’s top priority isn’t avoiding conflict with the United States. In particular, it lacks any interest in the President’s oft-stated  objective of creating clear “guard rails” and other rules of the road that result in a safe and orderly “competition” for goals like “winning the twenty-first century” whose definition seems just as vapid, utopian – and distracting – as his administration’s “liberal global order” references.

Instead, China’s top priority is specific and concrete: increasing its power (in all dimensions) and reducing America’s in every way possible. The reason? Eliminate the greatest obstacle to its plans to ensure its decisive control over every major trend shaping the globe’s future – whether the field is military prowess or technological advance or wealth creation or the evolution of society and culture (especially through privacy-threatening progress in cyber-hacking and facial recognition technology).

Not that the Chinese are eager for conflict or even any kind of frontal challenge or showdown – especially when prevailing is still anything but guaranteed. But the ultimate objective is prevailing, and the means entail building the domestic, regional, and global conditions needed to prevail, either without firing a shot or when clashes do break out.

And not that American leaders shouldn’t make sure to maintain those communication lines with Beijing. With both countries possessing vast nuclear arsenals, lowering the odds of accidental conflict is clearly imperative.

But communication, much less broader engagement, mustn’t become an end in and of itself. History too often has shown that they encourage the (1) U.S. acceptance of empty promises; (2) rationalization of failure to achieve or preserve particular valued objectives in the here and now for the sake of payoffs stemming from a sense of mutual obligation that could be entirely unilateral and imaginary, over a time frame that tends to keep lengthening; and (3) the substitution of wishful thinking about attainable goals for gaining and maintaining the ability to deter or successfully counter specific, dangerous Chinese initiatives.

The second glaringly obvious flaw in Zakaria’s column is its exclusive reliance on former Obama administration officials to support his analysis – which makes as much as sense as citing former Carter administration officials as inflation-fighting experts.

After all, it was under Trump’s immediate predecessor that the Chinese began running wild throughout the South China Sea, pushing aggressive territorial claims and literally building islands with military facilities capable of controlling those commercially vital waters – and according to one senior U.S. admiral at the time, precisely because Beijing concluded that Obama would keep sitting on his hands.

It was also Obama who continued enabling China to pursue the predatory economic policies that badly damaged numerous manufacturing industries vital to American national security, and who turned a blind eye to the massive transfer by U.S. and foreign companies of advanced, defense-related techology to the People’s Republic.

But at least Obama “upgraded” the George W. Bush-era “Senior Dialogue” and “Strategic Economic Dialogue” in order to merge “the economic and security tracks” to “break down the barriers inside both the U.S. and Chinese governments to more effectively tackle cross-cutting issues such as climate change, development, and energy security.” Which accomplished exactly what to advance and defend American interests?

And this is where Zakaria’s editors at the Post come in. Evidently none of them thought to say something like, “Hey, Fareed. Maybe quote someone on China policy whose advice isn’t widely seen as a proven failure?”

Maybe they’re just supposed to look for stray commas and dangling participles?  I suspect that the real reason is that they’re part of the same group-thinking, self-perpetuating globalist Blob that keeps working overtime to ensure that the American public is never exposed to any genuinely fresh ideas about promoting the United States’ security, prosperity, and optimal place in the world – and whose  decades-long record of squandering the nation’s blood and treasure on behalf of one grandiose goal after another is its only claim to success.

Following Up: Sense and Nonsense in the Abortion Debate

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abortion, abortion rights, birth control, Clarence Thomas, Constitution, contraception, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Following Up, gay marriage, Ninth Amendmen, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, privacy, Roe v. Wade, same-sex marriage, Samuel Alito, Supreme Court

Even by the standards of the shameful misinformation- and sheer ignorance-dominated era in which we live, the national abortion debate is noteworthy for the shameful misinformation and sheer ignorance it’s generated, So I thought it would be useful to provide some crucial correctives.

First, the 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade ruling just overturned by six of today’s Justices did not create an absolute Constitutional right to an abortion. That majority opinion specifically stated that

“appellant [Jane Roe, the pseudonym of the pregnant woman who brought the case] and some amici [individuals and organizations that provided supportive “friends of the court” briefs] argue that the woman’s right is absolute and that she is entitled to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses. With this we do not agree. Appellant’s arguments that Texas either has no valid interest at all in regulating the abortion decision, or no interest strong enough to support any limitation upon the woman’s sole determination, are unpersuasive. The Court’s decisions recognizing a right of privacy also acknowledge that some state regulation in areas protected by that right is appropriate. As noted above, a State may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision.”

The Roe majority added its agreement with prior federal and state court decisions that, although the right of privacy “is broad enough to cover the abortion decision; that the right, nonetheless, is not absolute and is subject to some limitations; and that at some point the state interests as to protection of health, medical standards, and prenatal life, become dominant.” .

Second, as a result, “codifying Roe” through Congressional legislation, as sought by many critics of the Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson [Mississippi] Women’s Health Organization ruling overturning Roe, would not create an absolute Constitutional right to an abortion, either. In fact, the specific legislation offered in the House and Senate would clash violently with both the Roe and the follow-on 1992 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey decision by preventing the state or federal governments from imposing any limits on abortions “after fetal viability.” as long as “in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider, continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant patient’s life or health.”

Third, whatever was contained in legislation establishing national abortion rights, an act of Congress could well wind up providing only the most short-lived of guarantees. For that law would be likely targeted for abolition as soon as anti-abortion politicians gained sufficient control of both Houses of Congress and/or the Presidency (depending of course on whether a majority achieving this goal was veto-proof). And if the Senate filibuster is ended – another goal of many abortion rights backers – scrapping an abortion rights law would be even easier.

Fourth, I wrote on Friday that a Constitutional right to privacy is essential for any political system like America’s that claims to value individual liberties, whether it’s explicitly mentioned in the U.S. Constitution or not. As with all legitimate rights, it can’t be absolute – because in principle and in real life, too many of these can come into conflict. But without an underlying right to privacy, no limits on government’s authority to control individual behavior would exist save those that are explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.

These are numerous and important (like freedom of expression and religion, the right to keep and bear arms, to be protected against unreasonable searches and seizures). And although it’s often overlooked, the Ninth Amendment holds that “certain rights” not enumerated in the Constitution must be “retained by the people.”

But the text of the Ninth Amendment offers no examples or guidance of any kind. And without an underlying right to privacy, it’s not the slightest bit difficult to understand that despite the assurance offered by the Dobbs majority, many other current individual liberties could be endangered. Nor is the evidence limited to Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion concurring with the Dobbs ruling, which argued that with the right to privacy out of the way, Supreme Court rulings legalizing contraception, same sex marriages, and same sex relationships should be overturned with the same logic.

Even now, politicians in some states are moving to outlaw certain kinds of birth control devices. And it’s surely pertinent to note that Dobbs opinion author Justice Samuel Alito – who insisted that “It is hard to see where we could be clearer” in stating that the majority opposed equating the legalit of abortion and the legality the other forms of intimate behavior mentioned above – himself opposed the 2015 pro same-sex marriage decision using the exact same kinds of arguments he made in Dobbs. So I certainly think he could have been clearer.

But there’s another important reason to prize a right to privacy.  It has to do with the nature of constitutions themselves. Their whole point (unless they’re the phony kind concocted by dictatorships) is establishing limits on government. Why else bother with such exercises? And what set of limits on government is more crucial than those determining how it can and cannot treat private individuals’ behavior? 

These four aspects of the abortion rights debate certainly don’t exhaust the list of  falsehoods and plain old hare-brained ideas warping a controversy that’s otherwise entirely legitimate and necessary. But the sooner they’re recognized and cashiered, the likelier the nation will be to craft (or re-craft, as I’d put it, given my belief that Roe and Casey got the basics right) an abortion consensus behind which Americans can unify.  

Im-Politic: The Court’s New Abortion Decision is Egregiously Wrong Itself

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abortion, abortion rights, Constitution, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, gun control, Im-Politic, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, privacy, Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has finally decided to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling supporting a Constitutional right to an abortion based on the majority’s vigorously argued position that “Roe was…egregiously wrong and on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided” and that the follow-on 1992 Casey decision “perpetuated its errors.”

Maybe so, but at least based largely on the official summary (the Syllabus) of today’s ruling released by the Court, the six Justices who backed the Dobbs v. Jackson (Mississippi) Women’s Health Organization decision expressed some views themselves about what government can and can’t regulate that look pretty internally contradictory at first glance and that seem – eggregiously – at variance with ideas about Americans’ liberties that – to quote a legal standard they cite – are “deeply rooted in [our] history and tradition” and “essential to this Nation’s ‘scheme of ordered liberty.’”

Perhaps first and foremost, the Dobbs ruling states that “the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.” And at least since a draft of the decision making this point was leaked in May, any number of pro-life supporters have argued that rescinding the right to an abortion by no means amounts to a nation-wide ban on the practice, and that states will remain perfectly free to keep or enact permissive abortion policies.

But in Dobbs, the Court has also called abortion a “critical moral question” because it “destroys what Roe termed ‘potential life’ and what the law challenged in this case calls an ‘unborn human being.’” Today’s Dobbs decision emphasizes this point in order to insist that their judgement poses no intrinsic challenge to other rights concerning highly personal behaviors, like the availability of birth control or gay marriage – which presumably don’t rise to abortion’s level.

All of which raises the question: If abortion is in a morality class by itself because of its devastating effects on the unborn, why do the six Justices supporting the Dobbs decision believe that states should have the any authority to regulate it? What satisfactory definition of morality could permit such a uniquely heinous practice to be permitted anywhere in the United States? Why, indeed, should it not be banned nationally – with or without whatever exceptions this or future Courts happen to allow.

In fact, contrary to the majority’s views, today’s Dobbs decision leaves in place many of the gravest threats to Americans’ freedom from government’s reach that appeared to receive support in the leaked draft version. Principally, the Court has now affirmed that not only does the Constitution grant no right to an abortion. It also holds that there’s no right to privacy having to do with the freedom to make “intimate and personal choices” that are “central to personal dignity and autonomy.”

To be sure, the six Justices in the majority correctly contend that no Constitutionally granted rights are absolute, observing that this founding document creates a system of “ordered liberty” that “sets limits and defines the boundary between competing interests” – and also, by extension, between competing rights, since many regularly clash with each other in real life.

But if the American system of government and law aren’t distinguished fundamentally by the assumption that a substantial burden of proof lies with government for infringing on the freedom to make “intimate and personal choices” related to “personal dignity and autonomy,” then it’s difficult to imagine fundamentally what it is distinguished by. In other words, if you can’t find something like a “right to privacy” in the Constitution, you’re not looking very hard.

And ironically, just yesterday, the Court supported this kind of argument when it struck down New York State’s “concealed carry” gun control law. That majority argued that this statute unconstitutionally “required law-abiding, responsible citizens to ‘demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community’ to carry arms in public.” That is, an excessive burden of proof was placed on ordinary Americans, when it should belong to government. Why shouldn’t this kind of reasoning apply to abortion?

Finally, how can anyone believe that “a State’s regulation of abortion is not a sex-based classification” that “violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause?” What men does the Dobbs majority believe will be affected by its decision? And how can these Justices reject the – inevitably gender-based — logic of the Casey decision’s statement that

“The Roe rule’s limitation on state power could not be repudiated without serious inequity to people who, for two decades of economic and social developments, have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail. The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives”?

One claim made by many Dobbs supporters is true — the practical, on-the-ground effects of the decision will be limited for the time being , mainly because the total numbers of legal U.S. abortions have been falling significantly in the last three decades, and because practically all of these have taken place during a pregnancy’s first trimester. (See here for the data.) Interestingly, that’s after Mississippi’s proposed abortion near-ban would go into effect.

Moreover, some other so-called “trigger laws” will allow abortions early in pregnancies, too. But others (see, e.g., here) will significantly narrow this window (even outlawing the procedure before most women even know they’re carrying), and in some of these and others, the lack of exceptions for instances of rape and incest, for example, are truly abhorrent. And now with Dobbs the law of the land, who knows what other outrages may lie in store?      

At one point the Dobbs ruling, the majority wrote that “In interpreting what is meant by ‘liberty,’ the Court must guard against the natural human tendency to confuse what the Fourteenth Amendment protects with the Court’s own ardent
views about the liberty that Americans should enjoy.”  As far as I’m concerned, that advice about leaving personal beliefs out of judicial decisions is a vitally important rule of thumb across the legal board, and as indicated by the above examples of tortured reasoning in today’s abortion rights decision, it’s one the Dobbs majority just threw under the bus.    

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Are Apple Products “Designed in California…& Extorted by China?”

Tags

Apple Inc., Breitbart.com, China, Donald Trump, economics, forced technology transfer, free trade, globalization, infotech, John Carney, national security, privacy, surveillance, tech, TheInformation.com, Tim Cook, Trade, {What's Left of) Our Economy

You have to give Tim Cook credit for sheer gall, at least if a recent report is true (as it appears to be, since it he hasn’t yet denied it). There was the Apple, Inc. CEO in 2018, at a forum in Beijing no less, in effect warning former President Donald Trump to ditch his plans to impose America’s first ever serious tariffs on Chinese goods, largely because “What I’ve seen over my lifetime is that countries that embrace openness, that embrace trade, that embrace diversity are the countries that do exceptional — and the countries that don’t, don’t.”

And not two years before, according to this account, Cook had promised China that over the next five years, the infotech giant would make a $275 billion effort to strengthen the People’s Republic’s technology and manufacturing base if China’s thug regime would back off a major crackdown it had launched on the company’s massive Chinese operations.

Moreover, as made clear in the December 7 article in TheInformation.com, Cook’s commitments not only have inevitably and massively affected U.S. and China trade and broader economic flows, and will continue to do so going forward. They’re likely to endanger America’s national security. After all, Cook, for reasons having squadoosh to do with free trade or free markets or economic fundamentals, evidently pledged to

>invest “many billions of dollars more” than what the company was already spending annually in China: in part on building new research and development centers”;

>help Chinese manufacturers develop “the most advanced manufacturing technologies” and “support the training of high-quality Chinese talents”;

>collaborate on technology with Chinese universities and directly invest in Chinese tech companies”; and

>collaborate on technology with Chinese universities and directly invest in Chinese tech companies”;

>use more components from Chinese suppliers in its devices”; and 

>give business to Chinese software firms”.

Since every economic and academic entity in China is ultimately under the thumb of the Chinese government, Cook’s submission to Beijng’s pressure has made enormous amounts of resources and knowhow available to a Chinese regime that has challenged American security interests in East Asia and around the world, and that powerfully threatens Washington’s ability to protect Americans’ privacy and political freedoms through its increasingly impressive hacking and other surveillance capabilities (including via the wildly popular TikTok video-sharing app).

In the worst (but ever more plausible) case, in a future conflict with Beijing, Chinese weapons that kill U.S servicemen could be partly and/or indirectly financed and developed by Apple – and, as I’ve made clear, e.g., here and here, by the numerous other U.S. companies that have fueled China’s tech and therefore military prowess.

But also crucial to point out – the deal signed by Cook (far from the only target of China’s successful campaigns of forced tech and manufacturing production transfer over a period stretching back decades), also challenges a core idea of free trade theory in a way first pointed out by friend John Carney of Breitbart.com.

As Carney wrote more than two years ago, economists and others who were crticizing Trump’s tariffs were making an especially important mistake. They were assuming “that all of the goods that are imported from China are made there because China is the lowest cost manufacturer of those goods. If that were true, moving production out of China would necessarily increase costs of production and reduce efficiency.”

But as he proceeded to remind, China couldn’t be such a paragon of manufacturing value. If it were, why would Beijing have been relying for so long on such a wide variety of “mercantilist tactics to attract and retain manufacturing business from global businesses, including requiring companies to manufacture goods in China in order to access its domestic markets and imposing steep tariffs on imports for foreign-made goods”?

In fact, Carney continued, “China’s policies…impose what economists call ‘deadweight losses’ on the global economy by preventing companies from moving their supply chains to cheaper sources.” And tariffs can serve as an essential counter-weight. 

Apple is nothing if not public relations-obsessed, and several years ago responded to public concern about all its production in the People’s Republic with an ad campaign stressing that its products are “designed in California.”  At least for accuracy’s sake, the company should now add “and extorted by China.”  And the news should greatly energize Washington’s efforts to stop U.S. companies from strengthening and enriching this burgoning menace.               

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: U.S.-China Decoupling Help…From China!

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{What's Left of) Our Economy, China, investing, Wall Street, national security, finance, Xi JInPing, decoupling, stock markets, tech, privacy, IPOs, Didi Chuxing, Didi

Here’s an absolutely stunning and potentially crucial development that I sure didn’t anticipate: The Chinese government is emerging as one of the most powerful forces working to decouple the American and Chinese economies.

In fact, Beijing’s recent crackdown on Chinese entities (remember: since China has no free market economic or financial system, these organizations shouldn’t be called “companies” or “businesses”) could rival the tariffs and the technology curbs imposed by the Trump administration and continued by President Biden as a means of (1) reducing America’s dangerous economic reliance on this increasingly hostile rival, and (2) cutting the long-time outflow of valuable U.S. capital and knowhow that inevitable enriches and strengthen the People’s Republic.

This turn of events is so unexpected, because, as I’ve written, finance looms as the one policy front on which decoupling had made the least progress.  Worse, despite the obvious and more subtle threats posed by this trend to individual investors (described insightfully here by investment analyst and friend Steven A. Schoenfeld), not to mention to American security, prosperity, and privacy, the flow of U.S. capital to the People’s Republic kept swelling. So far this year alone, a record $12.5 billion has been raised for Chinese entities on U.S. stock markets in 34 listings – way up from $1.9 billion worth of new listings in 14 deals during the same period last year. And many more seemed on the way.

But don’t think that these numbers come anywhere close to revealing China’s presence in U.S. finance. The kinds of initial public offerings (IPOs) mentioned just above have been appealing to Chinese entities and to the regime because with the U.S. exchanges the world’s biggest by far, passing muster with them is like a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Therefore, it’s inevitably encouraged investors the nation and world over to pile in. As a result, the total market capitalization of these entities stood at no less than $2.1 trillion as of two months ago.

In recent days, however, China has made clear that some national security concerns of its own, along with dictator Xi Jinping’s determination to bring these gigantic, highly advanced organizations closer to heel, were now outweighing the prospect of continuing to attract more oceans of U.S. and other global investment. Just two days after ride-sharing giant Didi Chuxing raised a record $4.4 billion in a June 30 Wall Street debut, Beijing’s internet regulators ordered it to stop signing up users. This past Monday, China ordered that its app be removed from Chinese app stores (as recounted here).  The announced justifications: the need both to protect national security, and users’ personal data. 

But since China’s leaders are not exactly known as champions of personal privacy, the former was surely the real reason, along with the desire to reassert control. Last weekend, in messages presumably endorsed and even placed by Chinese authorities on the Twitter-like platform Weibo, Didi was actually accused of transferring the data it collected overseas.

Since then, moreover, the crackdown has gone beyond Didi. On Monday, China also announced a cyber-security review of two entities also listed in U.S. markets, and The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese regulators had suggested that Didi postpone its IPO. The following day, Beijing “issued a sweeping warning to its biggest companies, vowing to tighten oversight of data security and overseas listings just days after Didi Global Inc.’s contentious decision to go public in the U.S.”

This news, along with the beatings taken by the share prices of these U.S. listed companies and major counterparts in trading worldwide, have prompted widespread speculation that the Chinese IPO wave in American finance is over, a least for the time being. And almost right on cue, reportedly today a Chinese entity decided to drop its own U.S. IPO plans because of Beijing’s new stance. 

Wall Street of course isn’t happy – huge underwriting and trading fees stand to be lost. But China’s evident change of priorities represents a golden opportunity for U.S. leaders to jump in and lend a helping hand. They should make the regulatory moves needed to keep Chinese entities out of U.S. markets for good going forward, and speed up efforts to kick out those remaining. And as is not the case with other decoupling policies, American officials seemingly can be certain that China’s powerful flunkies in the Washington, D.C. swamp won’t be trying to gum up the works.

Making News: Podcast Now On-Line of National Radio Interview on TikTok, China Strategy, Biden, & the Stimulus Negotiations

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China, Congress, decoupling, election 2020, Joe Biden, Making News, Mark Meadows, Market Wrap with Moe Ansari, national security, privacy, stimulus package, tech, TikTok, Trump

I’m pleased to announce that a podcast is now on-line of an interview I did yesterday on Moe Ansari’s nationally syndicated radio show.

Click here and then scroll down a bit to the segment with my name on it to listen to a timely, informative session on three major headline issues: what President Trump is trying to accomplish with his decision to ban from U.S. markets the popular Chinese social media app TikTok; how a President Joe Biden is likely to handle China issues; and what to expect from the current White House-Congress talks on the economic stimulus package. The segment comes on at about the 23:50 mark.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

 

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Microsoft Can’t Be Trusted to Run TikTok

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censorship, China, Microsoft, national security, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, privacy, social media, tech, TikTok

When I read that President Trump’s recent decision to ban TikTok from the U.S. market gave the popular Chinese social media app’s services one chance to survive intact – a purchase of its U.S. business by an American-owned company (most likely, it seems, Microsoft) – my “Uh oh” antennae started buzzing. I knew that there’s no reason for confidence that a U.S.-owned tech multinational would adequately safeguard American national security and individual privacy interests versus the kinds of threats that have already been posed by TikTok’s obligations to an increasingly hostile Chinese government, much less uphold values in the freedom of expression family.

I knew this because research for a 2013 article I published on Bloomberg.com revealed that Microsoft was one of the many big U.S. tech companies whose drive for access to China’s potentially huge customer base involved extensive activities aimed at strengthening the technological prowess that has helped make the People’s Republic such a danger to America as well as the world at large.

As I wrote – based on the companies’ own financial reports – these efforts have included the establishment of state-of-the-art factories and laboratories, along with training programs that have taught literally hundreds of thousands of Chinese students state-of-the-art tech skills not only at facilities run by these businesses, but through partnerships with Chinese universities.

Worse, as made clear by a Financial Times report last week Microsoft, whose operations in China “have included collaborations with researchers at China’s military-controlled National University of Defense Technology,” has done nothing important since this piece came out to scale back such cooperation with China’s dictatorial regime.

For example, in 2015, Chinese leader Xi Jinping “visited Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, where he praised the company for “driving forward the development of China’s ICT [information and communications technology] industry”. Moreover, last month, “Microsoft was the sole US company invited to a televised entrepreneurs’ summit with Mr Xi.”

Perhaps most troubling, the Financial Times reported that “The company’s management of its research staff is very light.” According to a former executive at Microsoft China, limiting research collaborations is “a really tough question — research is a very liberal environment in itself. People might question [research collaborations] but from the point of view of our researchers, they want to work with the best partners they can find in their field.”

And what did Microsoft get for itself and its shareholders for all this assistance? Almost nothing. Even though its Windows operating system enjoys an estimated 90 percent market share, piracy of its products is so widespread that China accounts for less than two percent of its global revenues, according to its president. So I’m glad I don’t have to make the case that Microsoft can be relied on vigilantly to resist Beijing’s pressures to remain privy to important U.S. data – by hook or by crook.

Indeed, another recent Financial Times article claimed that Microsoft is mulling a takeover agreement that would give it “one year to separate TikTok from its Chinese parent and address US government concerns over the security of the data generated by the app.” Yet even if Microsoft’s U.S.-based executives do their darnest to shut the Chinese government out, that could leave plenty of time for TikTok’s Chinese employees to work with the regime to create new or keep open existing backdoors to Beijing.  Alternatively, once the deal is done, Microsoft might simply manage ongoing cybersecurity issues as “lightly” as the U.S. parent has managed its research team-ups with China’s regime.

Moreover, requiring Microsoft to conclude the separation much sooner would still leave the company – which would still be anxious for more China business – free to  wind up emulating TikTok’s practice of taking down content deemed offensive by China. Such subjects include praise for the Tiananmen Square protests of 1990, or the Tibetan independence movement. And Microsoft certainly wouldn’t be the first U.S. tech company to regulate speech with political aims in mind.

For all I know, effective safeguards against all these contingencies might be developed. But at very best, preventing China from continuing to exploit TikTok – and other tech products and services it’s currently offering to U.S. customers or could offer – will be a never-ending struggle. Best to remove as many uncertainties as possible, and make defense as easy as possible, by simply kicking TikTok and other Chinese products like it out, and keeping them out.