🚨 Breaking: Israel (probably) killed Nasrallah in massive air strike

PLUS: HALF OF GLOBAL EYES

I was working on GLOBAL EYES when I saw the headlines. So I’m only sending half of GLOBAL EYES, below, because this news is so important I didn’t want to wait. The rest of will follow in Part II.

BREAKING: The IDF guy who blew up Hassan Nasrallah returns to Israel:

Global mood everywhere but Harvard:

My father asked me yesterday, or maybe the day before, why Israel hadn’t taken out Nasrallah yet. I told him that I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the headline, “Israel kills Nasrallah in massive air strike” within the next few days. Looks like I was right.

IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said that in the coming hours the army will attack the “strategic capabilities” that Hezbollah has buried underground in Dahiyeh in Beirut.

IDF says 65 rockets were fired from Lebanon into northern Israel in the last few hours.

Israel is crossing Tehran’s red lines, and the situation is becoming serious, said Ali Larijani, adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader. The “assassinations will not solve Israel’s problem. … With the assassination of resistance leaders, others will take their place.”

US says it only got heads up from Israel minutes before Beirut strike, wasn’t involved. Israeli officials appear to confirm notice given when jets were in the air; Gallant, Lloyd speak via phone during massive airstrike; US president briefed by national security team.

Nasrallah assassination attempt: Risks, consequences, and new opportunities for the Middle East. The intent behind Friday’s strike on Hezbollah's central headquarters—aimed at hitting Nasrallah—represents a regional shakeup:

The strike on the bunker of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah is nothing short of a seismic event in the Middle East. With Israel having shifted the rules of the game, what comes next? The risk of a broader conflict has risen, but there are also opportunities for a comprehensive settlement—everything now hinges on Hezbollah’s response. The intent behind Friday’s strike on Hezbollah's central headquarters—aimed at hitting Nasrallah—represents a regional shakeup, increasing the likelihood of a wider escalation while also creating chances for a comprehensive agreement.

First and foremost, the move signals a "change in the rules of engagement" in the fight against the so-called axis of evil. The assassination attempt, whose success remains unconfirmed, sends a clear message of Israeli resolve and boldness to the entire region, particularly Iran. This is undoubtedly a regionally destabilizing event. If the operation succeeds, it opens significant opportunities in the battle against terrorism in the north with Hezbollah and in the south with Hamas, as well as a chance to pursue regional agreements.

The IDF must now brace for various scenarios and their implications, both in terms of defending Israel and continuing its offensive operations. The most extreme scenario involves Iran unleashing Hezbollah and the Houthis, allowing them to launch an extensive missile and drone attack on Israel’s home front. In an even more severe scenario, Iran itself could join the conflict directly with strikes from its territory, although this possibility is considered low. A second, more plausible scenario involves targeted retaliation by members of the Axis of Evil and other terrorist groups, which could lead to attacks from multiple fronts, as well as spontaneous incidents in Judea and Samaria. The central question is whether, regardless of the strike’s outcome, Hezbollah’s leadership will stick to its hardline stance against Israel, continuing to tie the organization’s fate to the ongoing conflict in Gaza, or whether it will reconsider its strategy.

“Nasrallah was present at command center,” Israeli officials say. Israel and the world await updates on Hezbollah leader's fate following Beirut strike; No one there could have survived,” Israeli official says; Nasrallah was reportedly on brief visit to Beirut.

If he’s not dead, I’m sure he’s vexed by memes like these:

It gets better:

Israel is investigating whether Yahya Sinwar has been wounded or killed—or if he’s deliberately cut off contact with the outside world.

Communication between Sinwar and the world has halted, leading the Israeli security establishment to investigate whether he was injured in an airstrike on Gaza’s tunnel system—or if maybe he’s getting nervous about touching his electronic devices:

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has not had contact with anyone outside his organization for an extended period. Sinwar has been hiding in Gaza's tunnels since the massacre in southern Israel on October 7, trying to evade Israeli pursuit. For nearly 11 months, Sinwar maintained communication with his operatives outside the tunnels and, indirectly, with countries mediating a hostage deal with Israel, usually through intermediaries. Recently, however, communication between Sinwar and the outside world has been cut off. This has further complicated the already difficult negotiations due to significant gaps between the parties' positions.

Israel’s security establishment is investigating whether Sinwar was injured in one of the heavy airstrikes on Gaza’s tunnel systems, or if he has deliberately severed contact to reduce his chances of being targeted.

Zainab Nasrallah, the daughter of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, was reportedly killed in the Israeli airstrike:

Zainab, known for her outspoken loyalty to Hezbollah and her family's sacrifices, had previously spoken publicly about the death of her brother, Hadi, who was killed by Israeli forces in 1997. In a 2022 interview on Al-Manar TV, she described her family’s reaction: “When my brother Hadi was ‘martyred,’ my parents did not shed a single tear,” reflecting the family's pride in their path. She noted that her mother viewed Hadi’s death as a “shortcut” to the afterlife, and the family chose to honor his sacrifice rather than mourn traditionally. … If confirmed, Zainab’s death could have significant symbolic implications for Hezbollah, potentially influencing the group's response to the escalating conflict with Israel.

Nasrallah’s death should be a lesson to the United States:

An Israeli airstrike on a Hezbollah bunker reportedly has killed Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. If true, his death would cap an impressive ten-day campaign that began with the simultaneous detonation of Hezbollah pagers, continued to take out senior military leaders, and now has decapitated the organization itself. Diplomats and human rights activists might hand wring, but what Israel did was not only right and wise, but should also be a lesson for a new generation of US and European policymakers. …

As Hezbollah collapses due to Israel’s ten days of hell, the terror group likely has greater support in Morningside Heights than in Lebanon. Not only could the decapitation of Hezbollah avert a wider war between Israel and Lebanon, but it could also bring freedom to the Lebanese people whom Hezbollah has for too long held hostage and whose aspirations for a Western-oriented state Hezbollah has blocked.

The lesson for Washington, however, is broader. Diplomacy and compromise empowered Hezbollah and Hamas. They also empowered the Taliban and North Korea to the tune of billions of dollars and the Islamic Republic of Iran to an exponentially larger amount. Rather than continue such engagement, the United States should map out its opponents’ command-and-control and enemy regimes’ vulnerabilities and exploit them with a goal of bringing each regime to its knees. If Nasrallah’s death collapses Hezbollah, what might Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s sudden death mean for Iran? Or, Qods Force Chief Esmail Qaani’s demise? Or every Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ general or admiral? As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demonstrated, terrorist groups and radical ideologies need not be permanent fixtures on the world stage; rather, Western leaders should view them as enemies to eliminate.

Netanyahu’s trip to New York was “part of diversion” so Nasrallah would think he was safe.

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More news from the Middle East

• Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly today, warning Tehran that Israel would not hesitate to retaliate if Iran attacks: “If you strike us, we will strike you.”     

• Netanyahu told delegates that Israeli forces have destroyed 90 percent of Hamas’s rockets and killed or captured half of its forces. 

• Israel rejected a push by allies for a 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon and vowed to keep fighting Hezbollah “until victory.” The White House expressed frustration, saying the truce proposal had taken “a lot of care and effort.”

• Macron said it was “a mistake” for Netanyahu to refuse a ceasefire and that he would bear “responsibility” for a regional escalation. Speaking in Canada, where he met Trudeau (who also backed the ceasefire), Macron said the ceasefire plan had been prepared with Netanyahu himself.

• Lebanon’s health ministry said yesterday that Israeli strikes had killed 92 people and injured 153 in the past 24 hours. This brings the number of people killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon since Monday to more than 700.

Netanyahu said he had originally intended not to come to the UN General Assembly this year but after hearing the “lies and slander” leveled against Israel by other leaders, he decided to come to “set the record straight.”

“I decided to come here to speak for my people, to speak for my country and speak for the truth,” he stated, stressing that Israel yearns for peace. “We face savage enemies who seek our annihilation, and we must defend ourselves against these savage murderers, [who] seek not only to destroy us but also destroy our common civilization and return all of us to a dark age of tyranny and terror.” He recalled his address to the general debate last year, when he had stated that Israel faces the same timeless choice that Moses put before its people thousands of years ago, “that our actions will determine whether we bequeath future generations a blessing or a curse.” “And that is the choice we face today,” he emphasized, citing “the curse of Iran’s unremitting aggression or the blessing of a historic reconciliation between Arab and Jew.”

In the days that followed, that “blessing” approached in the form of a normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel, “but then came the curse of 7 October” as thousands of Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists burst into Israel, committing “unimaginable atrocities,” including brutally murdering 1,200 people, including children; sexual violence against women; and kidnapping 251 people from different countries.

The US and France were behind the push for a 21-day ceasefire:

… This initiative has been the core subject of intense discussions between European and Arab countries in New York, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, which opened on Tuesday, September 24. It consists of proposing a three-week pause in the fighting, which would give time for negotiations to resume; not only on Lebanon, but also on Gaza.

However, the belligerents would first have to accept the principle of such an agreement, at a time when Israel has claimed some 2,000 strikes against targets attributed to Hezbollah over three days. More than 600 people have been killed in Lebanon since Monday, including 50 children and 94 women. On Wednesday, Israel extended its strikes to areas that had never been targeted before, even during the 2006 war, in the Druze region of Chouf and Keserwan, the Christian mountain district north of Beirut.

Israel kills Hezbollah drone chief in Beirut, rockets fly at north as truce rebuffed. IDF also hits bridge on Syria-Lebanon border, used by Lebanese terror group to smuggle arms; Beirut says nearly 2 dozen Syrians killed in strike:

An airstrike killed a senior Hezbollah leader in a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Thursday afternoon, the military said, with fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed terror group showing little sign of slowing as an international bid to secure a ceasefire appeared to fall apart. The strike in the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahiyeh targeted the head of Hezbollah’s aerial forces, Mohammed Srur, who is largely responsible for the terror group’s drone fleet along with cruise missiles and aerial defenses.

Below is the Atlantic’s big insider-piece, by Franklin Foer, about the “year-long American effort to release the hostages, end the fighting in Gaza, and bring peace to the Middle East.” (Basically, it’s the administration’s effort to explain itself, using Foer as the stenographer. As such, it’s got a lot of interesting detail, but it doesn’t tell us anything really surprising or game-changing.)

★ The war that would not end:

… [T]he administration assigned itself a larger mission than full-throated solidarity in the aftermath of the [October 7] attack. It wanted to avert a regional war that might ensnare the United States. It aspired to broker an end to the conflict, and to liberate the estimated 251 hostages that Hamas had kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip. It sought a Gaza free from Hamas’s rule, and the dismantlement of the group’s military capabilities. And despite the scale of those tasks, it accelerated its pursuit of the Saudi normalization deal.

Above all else, Joe Biden—who could remember the dawn of the atomic age, when schoolkids practiced hiding under their desk—feared escalation.

What follows is a history of those efforts: a reconstruction of 11 months of earnest, energetic diplomacy, based on interviews with two dozen participants at the highest levels of government, both in America and across the Middle East. The administration faced an impossible situation, and for nearly a year, it has somehow managed to forestall a regional expansion of the war. But it has yet to find a way to release the hostages, bring the fighting to a halt, or put a broader peace process back on track. That makes this history an anatomy of a failure—the story of an overextended superpower and its aging president, unable to exert themselves decisively in a moment of crisis.

US stopped Israel from launching Hezbollah war in October based on false alarm. If you’re in a hurry, this is a summary of the key revelations in the Atlantic article:

In the opening days of the war, the US frantically tried to reach senior Israeli officials huddled to plan a major strike on Hezbollah to tell them they were not acting rationally and relying on bad intelligence … US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan eventually managed to pass a dictated note to Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer warning him against launching a preemptive strike against Hezbollah on October 11 …

Without providing sources, The Atlantic reported that top Biden administration officials were persuading the government to avoid launching a preemptive strike on Hezbollah when Dermer informed Sullivan that Hezbollah paragliders had flown across the border—similar to Hamas’s October 7 massacre days earlier—and fired shots at a funeral. … The cabinet was poised to approve a preemptive strike on Hezbollah, but the claims of a Hezbollah infiltration could not be backed by the CIA or the US military … Sullivan failed to directly get a hold of Dermer, who was locked in the cabinet meeting. Instead, he dictated a short note to the minister through his chief of staff, which was said to read: “You’re not making rational decisions. You’re acting in the fog of war on the basis of bad intelligence.” The Atlantic reported that Dermer informed Sullivan that the cabinet had called off the attack 45 minutes after receiving the note, thereby potentially avoiding all-out war with Hezbollah days after October 7.

The Atlantic also shared quotes from a January 8 meeting between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who expressed interest in normalization with Israel on the condition that Jerusalem would commit to allowing the establishment of a Palestinian state. A Saudi official described The Atlantic’s account of the conversation as “incorrect.” MBS reportedly also told Blinken during the meeting in Saudi Arabia he would not need the Israelis to commit to a total halt on counterterrorism raids in Gaza in exchange for a normalization deal.

Do I care personally about the Palestinian issue? I don’t. But my people do, so I need to make sure this is meaningful.”—÷MBS, reportedly.

“They can come back in six months, a year, but not on the back end of my signing something like this,” he said, according to the report. “Seventy percent of my population is younger than me,” the de-facto Saudi ruler reportedly said. “For most of them, they never really knew much about the Palestinian issue. And so they’re being introduced to it for the first time through this conflict. It’s a huge problem.”

I’m assuming the Israelis didn’t speak to Foer for this article, which was a mistake.

… A backlash against Biden’s support for Israel was growing, not just among pro-Palestinian activists, but within the administration itself. In early December, a group of White House interns published an anonymous letter accusing the president of callously ignoring civilian deaths. A State Department official resigned in protest. Dissent began to filter into the Situation Room. A group that included Jon Finer, the deputy head of the National Security Council, and Phil Gordon, national security adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris, quietly complained about Israeli tactics.

Brett McGurk would push back against the complaints, invoking his stint overseeing the siege of Mosul during the Obama administration, as the US attempted to drive ISIS from northern Iraq: We flattened the city. There’s nothing left. What standard are you holding these Israelis to? It was an argument bolstered by a classified cable sent by the US embassy in Israel in late fall. American officials had embedded in IDF operating centers, reviewing its procedures for ordering air strikes. The cable concluded that the Israeli standards for protecting civilians and calculating the risks of bombardment were not so different from those used by the US military.

I would feel more confident about Kamala Harris’s foreign policy views if I weren’t reading everywhere that Phil Gordon is her most trusted foreign policy hand and will surely be her national security advisor. (But everyone said she was certain to pick Josh Shapiro as her running mate, too. It’s possible this is just one of those things everyone in DC says—but which isn’t actually so.)

… A hardened piece of Washington conventional wisdom held that MBS felt a kinship, born of shared authoritarian tendencies, with Donald Trump. But after the 2018 murder of the Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi, MBS had become a voracious student of American politics. He spoke frequently with Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of Trump’s, and those conversations helped lead him to a fresh analysis of Saudi interests. (In the capitals of the Middle East, Graham is viewed as a potential secretary of state in a second Trump administration, so his opinions are given weight.)

MBS told Blinken that the Biden administration represented his best chance for realizing his plans: Two-thirds of the Senate needed to ratify any Saudi-US defense pact, and he believed that could happen only in a Democratic administration, which could help deliver progressives’ votes by building a Palestinian state into the deal. He had to move quickly, before the November election risked returning Trump to power.

I bet Blinken is the chief source for a lot of this. He was the only one who was in most of these meetings. Whoever it is, he was perfectly willing to burn MBS and Netanyahu. I’m sure MBS didn’t appreciate seeing the words, “I don’t care about the Palestinians” attributed to him.

Across Israel’s longest border, danger is mounting constantly. While King Abdullah’s reign is stable and a quiet border is in both sides’ interest—can the Hashemite regime deliver the goods?

The first reason for the Hashemite regime’s fragility derives from the kingdom’s large refugee population. In 1948, there were 400,000 people in Jordan and today there are 11.5 million, including many refugees. That growth has come mainly from enormous waves of immigration. Immigration from where? After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, many refugees arrived in Jordan from the east. Tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees are estimated to still reside in Jordan, but today their numbers are small in comparison with the Syrian and Palestinian refugees. A huge number of refugees fled into Jordan from the Syrian civil war that began in 2011. According to figures from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, some 670,000 Syrian refugees are registered in Jordan; but according to unofficial estimates, those refugees could even number a million or so. …

Given shelter in times of trouble, asylum seekers might be expected to show gratitude. But not necessarily. The flood of foreigners in Jordan is under incitement from various ideological and political sources, each with its own motivation to topple the Hashemite dynasty and take over the kingdom. The Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology, for example, has won great sympathy among Jordan’s large Palestinian sector. It’s the same ideology that’s shared by Hamas and that inspired the assassination of President Sadat in Egypt. Moreover, Iran is of course also troubling the waters and creating great pressure by way of Iraq and Syria at the borders of the kingdom. So Jordan has changed from a country adjoining territories such as an American-dominated Iraq to a country adjoining Iranian proxy organizations—all this at a time when the King’s loyal Bedouin minority is waging tough domestic battles that ruinously weaken it.

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🇷🇺🇺🇦 RUSSIA AND UKRAINE

Russia expands nuclear doctrine to include attacks on nonnuclear states:

Russian President Vladimir Putin made a fresh nuclear threat against the West and Ukraine on Wednesday, indicating that any nation’s conventional attack on Russia that was supported by a nuclear power would be perceived as a joint attack. At a meeting with the Russian Security Council, Putin said that in light of an “emergence of new sources of military threats and risks for Russia and our allies,” specialists from the Defense Ministry and other government agencies had conducted a year-long, in-depth review of the country’s nuclear doctrine. “The updated version of the document proposes that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear-weapon state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear-weapon state, should be considered as a joint attack on the Russian Federation,” Putin told the council. He said the conditions for the launch of Russia’s nuclear weapons would be “reliable information about a massive launch of aerospace attack means and their crossing of our state border.” He added, “We reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in the event of aggression against Russia and Belarus.”

The announcement comes after a flurry of nuclear-related threats from Russian officials in the face of Ukrainian requests to the United States and other allies to lift restrictions on weapons. Currently, Ukraine is not allowed to use longer-range missiles supplied by its allies against targets deep inside Russia.

Putin is already escalating his war on the West. Biden shouldn’t worry about giving Ukraine long-range missiles when Russia is upping its sabotage in Western Europe and aid to terrorists in the Middle East:

Since the war in Ukraine started, avoiding escalation—a leap into a larger, more globally consuming conflict—has been US President Joe Biden’s abiding preoccupation. But nearly three years in, the reality is that the war has already sprawled and escalated, just not quite in the ways many observers might expect. Concerns about escalation have flared in recent weeks, as Biden has considered whether to allow Ukraine to use US weapons, notably ATACMS missiles, to conduct long-range strikes into Russia. …

Vladimir Putin … has warned that if Western countries give Ukraine the go-ahead, they will effectively become belligerents in the conflict, with all the fallout that might follow—and on Wednesday said he is revising Russia’s nuclear doctrine to reflect that threat. … More likely [than conventional or nuclear war] ]is an intensification of two types of asymmetric escalation that Russia is already undertaking, meant to punish Ukraine’s backers without provoking full-on war with the West. First is an ongoing campaign of sabotage and subversion targeting Europe. … The second type of escalation involves exacerbating geopolitical turmoil in other conflict zones, particularly the Red Sea.

US intelligence stresses risks in allowing long-range strikes by Ukraine. Intelligence agencies concluded that granting Ukraine’s request to use Western missiles against targets deep in Russia could prompt forceful retaliation while not fundamentally changing the course of the war:

US intelligence agencies believe that Russia is likely to retaliate with greater force against the United States and its coalition partners, possibly with lethal attacks, if they agree to give the Ukrainians permission to employ US, British and French-supplied long-range missiles for strikes deep inside Russia, US officials said. The intelligence assessment, which has not been previously reported, also plays down the effect that the long-range missiles will have on the course of the conflict because the Ukrainians currently have limited numbers of the weapons and it is unclear how many more, if any, the Western allies might provide.

The assessment highlights what intelligence analysts see as the potential risk and uncertain rewards of a high-stakes decision that now rests with President Biden, who met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at the White House on Thursday. The findings may help explain in part why the decision has been so difficult for Mr. Biden to make, and show the internal pressures on him to say no to Mr. Zelensky’s request. US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters and internal deliberations, said it remained unclear what Mr. Biden would decide to do. …

US officials say the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, has been responsible for most of the acts of sabotage in Europe that have taken place thus far. If Mr. Putin decides to expand the shadowy campaign in response to the use of US and European missiles deep inside Russia, US officials believe the Russians will continue to do so covertly, rather than conduct overt attacks on US and European facilities and bases, to reduce the risk of a wider conflict. Mr. Putin’s rhetoric has been especially bellicose in recent days in anticipation of a decision on long-range strikes, and at least some of Mr. Biden’s top advisers believe that he is likely to respond with lethal force if the decision goes Mr. Zelensky’s way.

Those in the US military and the Biden administration who support the Ukrainians’ use of the missiles for strikes up to 190 miles inside Russia say it would allow them to target more distant Russian bases and ammunition storehouses. That would make it harder for Russia to supply its forces on the front lines inside Ukraine and potentially help the Ukrainians halt Russian advances. They say it would also demonstrate strong Western support for Ukraine at a moment of uncertainty about its prospects on the battlefield.

But in their assessment, US intelligence agencies express doubt that, even if the Ukrainians were permitted to use the long-range missiles, they would have enough of them to alter the course of the conflict in a fundamental way. Moreover, after the first strikes, they said, the Russians will likely relocate ammunition depots, command posts, attack helicopters and other vital battlefield functions out of range of the missiles. At Mr. Biden’s direction, the US military could provide more ATACMS (pronounced “attack ’ems”) to the Ukrainians. But officials say the US military itself has a limited supply of the missiles and needs to keep a reserve for its own potential military needs.

C—This sounds like cowardly nonsense.

Zelensky pleads for more US weapons in meetings with Biden and Harris, trying to fend off Russia’s invasion while also navigating tricky US politics that could determine future of American aid.

With growing concerns about the future of US support for Ukraine, Mr. Zelensky had separate meetings at the White House with Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris, a reflection of Ms. Harris’s role at the top of the Democratic ticket. In her remarks, Ms. Harris sought to strike a contrast with her opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, who has criticized US aid for Kyiv and said this week that Mr. Zelensky should have cut a deal and made concessions to Russia. “There are some in my country who would instead force Ukraine to give up large parts of its sovereign territory,” Ms. Harris said, “who would demand that Ukraine accept neutrality and would require Ukraine to forgo security relationships with other nations.” Those proposals, she said, are “the same” as those of Russia’s president.

Her comments came after Mr. Biden authorized the release of $8 billion in military aid, much of which was about to expire, in an effort to assure Mr. Zelensky that he has the administration’s support for the months to come—even after the election in November. Mr. Zelensky has argued, including in an address to the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, that the Biden administration should equip his nation with additional arms and authorize his military to strike deeper into Russia.

Trump outburst: US support to Ukraine “close to US$300 billion,” Europeans: deadbeats. Trump told prospective Georgia voters the US is getting taken for a ride but European support to Ukraine outmatches the US by practically all metrics:

US Presidential candidate Donald Trump at a recent campaign stop said American taxpayer-funded support to Ukraine was close to an eye-watering US$300 billion, and that Europe isn’t even close to paying its fair share. The reality is that Trump’s figure—“revealed’ to prospective voters in Savannah Georgia—was wrong and overstated US support to Ukraine by at least a factor of four … in the same Tuesday stump speech, Trump claimed that Ukraine’s European allies were dodging payment of their fair share of Ukraine assistance, and leaving America to pick up the tab. In fact, total US military assistance for the duration of more than 30 months of the war in Ukraine is actually less than total European military assistance provided to Ukraine.

Once state-to-state assistance of all types including military, financial and humanitarian aid is considered, Europe’s NATO members and other allies have collectively anted-up US$100 for every US$68 sent by America since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. American military assistance to Ukraine, its scale, Ukrainian greediness, and European fecklessness and free riding are recurring themes at the beginning of Trump’s campaign speeches which often last as long as 90 minutes. During his Savannah campaign speech, Trump led off with a diatribe that slammed Ukraine, the Zelensky government, the Biden administration and the whole of Europe.

“Every time Zelensky comes to the United States, he walks away with US$100 billion. I think he’s the greatest salesman on earth,” Trump said. Earlier in the day, in Pennsylvania, at roughly the same point in his stump speech, Trump threw out US$60 billion as the number. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry says, President Volodymyr Zelensky has visited the US four times, in December 2022 and 2023, in September 2023, with the fourth being this Monday. According to open-source investigations, he has never come back with US$60 billion in US assistance commitments.

Following the first visit data, compiled by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, US quarterly military support to Ukraine increased from US$9.4 billion to US$12.7 billion. The US contribution was US$1.4 billion following the September 2023 visit and US$0.3 billion following the December 2023 visit. According to official State Department figures released on September 6, the total value of all US military assistance to Ukraine from 2022 through the present is US$58.5 billion, less than one-quarter of the alleged US$300 billion “scam” Trump told Georgian voters and taxpayers. In accusing Europe’s NATO members and their allies of not pulling their weight in Ukraine and leaving the US to pick up the tab, Trump said:

“(You) know what Europe has given them, which is approximately our size. When you add up the countries together, their economy, it’s very close to our size. They've given them like a small fraction of that [US$300 billion] number. Just a small, very small, fraction and we have an ocean separating [the US from Europe and the War in Ukraine].” Those Trump claims are also demonstrably false in multiple ways. If military hardware and pure military assistance is totted up, then total non-US, primarily European, aid up to June 2024 is around US$58 billion, compared to the US US$55 billion over the same period.

From September 2023 through March 2024, US military assistance to Ukraine plummeted to less than US$2 billion because of the funding block imposed by Congress, which many say was at Trump’s instigation. This coincided with the Russian offensive that captured the city of Bakhmut. The value of military material delivered by European states to Ukraine, during those critical six months was more than 12 times that of the US. Trump, of course, made no mention of Europe stepping in as Ukraine’s arsenal during that period.

If the value of aid is calculated on a per capita basis, Europe’s sacrifice overshadows America’s even more. States such as Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia pay as much two percent of their GDP in assistance to Ukraine. The US kicks in a little less then a half of a percent—ahead of pro-Putin Hungary and neutral Switzerland, but behind practically the entirety of NATO and western Europe—including France, Italy, Spain and even Austria. If aid to Ukraine considers military, financial and humanitarian, then the gap is even wider than Trump claims.

… Later in his speech, Trump told listeners that Ukrainian resistance to Russia was futile as Russia always wins its wars: “What happens if they [Russia] win? That’s what they do. They fight wars. As somebody told me the other day, they beat Hitler, they beat Napoleon. That’s what they do. They fight and it’s not pleasant.”

Here’s Trump’s speech, if you want to watch it.

★ What the US election means for Ukraine. A Trump win would cause a crisis for Kyiv—but wouldn’t guarantee defeat:

… Former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, would helm an isolationist administration that would cease all US support for Ukraine, disengage from European security, and make friendly overtures to Russia and other authoritarian countries while projecting hostility to NATO and other traditional allies. … At worst, US detachment from Ukraine and Europe could cause the war to devolve into a wider conflict. …

… [R]ecent statements by Vance and an article in The Hill by Donald Trump Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (now a member of Trump’s transition team) have suggested that, as president, Trump would endorse a peace plan that would see Ukraine cede the Donbas region to Russia and abandon the prospect of EU and NATO membership in exchange for a cease-fire and a vague “security assurance,” which Kyiv would likely consider meaningless after similar assurances failed to maintain Ukrainian territorial integrity in 2014. A Trump-Vance administration could thus seek to legitimize Russia’s conquest while offering Ukraine nothing more than a revival of the nonaligned position that served it poorly in the past. … In this scenario, Kyiv’s fate would rest more than ever on its European partners. …

Waiting for the outcome of the US election is not an option. If Ukraine stands any chance of conducting an offensive in 2025, the United States and Kyiv’s other partners need to start implementing a new strategy today. Ramping up the necessary resource provision and training can soften the blow of a Trump victory by giving NATO time to adjust. The alliance is already taking steps to prepare for potential disaster, including the announcement over the summer of a new military command in Germany to oversee the provision of equipment and training to Ukraine, which could operate in the event of a US withdrawal from NATO under a Trump administration.

The approach Ukraine and its Western allies are taking—the combined attrition of Russia’s military and the compression of its economy—has a good chance of succeeding if it can be sustained:

To understand how Russia can be brought to its knees, policymakers and the public first need to understand the historical and cultural influences that strengthen Russian will to fight. These admittedly discouraging factors go a long way toward explaining why Russia has not yet quit more than two years into this extraordinarily costly war. But all people have limits. Despite benefitting from the longstanding historical and cultural strengths I describe in this article, Russia quit in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and it quit in Chechnya in the 1990s. History informs forecasting. In the case of the Ukraine War, a realignment of historical factors suggests there are good prospects for Ukrainian and Western victory. …

Putin is breakable. While he is deeply fixated on Ukraine, he is also a creature of consummate self-interest. Self-interest is a potential weakness. First, look to the battlefield. Well over 5 million Red Army soldiers surrendered to the Germans in World War II. Probably thousands more surrendered to irregular Chechen fighters in the mid-1990s. Data on total Russian prisoners of war in Ukraine is not reliable, but at least thousands of Russians have lost the will to fight and surrendered. Some broke even during the 2022 invasion. Entire units collapsed and fled in Kharkiv later that year. Probably over 600 Russians surrendered in Kursk just in the first weeks of the 2024 incursion. ….

On the home front, Russian civilians hit breaking points during both the Soviet and post-Soviet eras. As the Soviet war in Afghanistan ground on beyond its second year, it appeared that a combination of casualties (perhaps only one-tenth of those suffered thus far in Ukraine), increasing economic decline, and a general loss of belief in the war’s purpose took their toll. Recruiting and conscription numbers fell, and eventually Soviet leaders came to view the war as a “bleeding wound.” They withdrew in defeat. Catastrophe in Chechnya in 1994 also was fed by, and in turn led to, wavering Russian will to fight. These were entirely rational reactions to bad policies, bad treatment of soldiers, and bad economic conditions.

Putin has a breaking point, or at least a point at which he will settle on terms he finds unfavorable. While he presently retains dominant control over the state and enjoys at least an imposed version of popular support, Putin is aging and may be weakening. His surprisingly passive and initially incoherent response to Yevgeny Prigozhin’s revolt in 2023 caused a reexamination of his carefully constructed aura of invulnerability. Putin’s equally lethargic response to Ukraine’s 2024 Kursk incursion and his increasingly fantastical claims about Russia’s economy reinforce perceptions that he may be hurting.

So where does this all lead? While history is not necessarily predictive, at least the cases of Afghanistan and Chechnya (in 1994) suggest that Russia’s biggest vulnerability may lie at the intersection between battlefield casualties and economic strain.

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US ELECTION

I thought this warranted a temporary section of its own—C.

★★★💣 Key nuclear questions that the US presidential candidates should answer:

• How many nuclear warheads does the United States need?

• What will you do if Iran gets the bomb?

• How will you deter North Korea’s aggression without deteriorating the situation on the Korean Peninsula?

• What steps will you take to strengthen the norm against nuclear use and ensure that a nuclear war is never fought?

• Do you trust your opponent to have sole authority over US nuclear forces? If not, how would you reform nuclear command and control policies to reduce the reliance on the judgment of a single individual?

• How will you ensure that technological advances do not increase the risk of nuclear war?

• How has Russia’s war in Ukraine changed your view of the role of nuclear weapons in Europe and by extension to Northeast Asia?

• How does China’s nuclear buildup shape your view of the requirements for the US nuclear arsenal and for nuclear policy?

• How would you respond to a South Korean decision to field its own nuclear arsenal?

• How would you respond to Iran’s continued nuclear buildup, which has considerably reduced the breakout time required for nuclear weapons, especially considering the escalating dangers resulting from the war in Gaza?

• What would you do to dissuade Saudi Arabia’s crown prince from responding to Iran with his own nuclear weapons program?

• If, as president, you were suddenly alerted that warning systems had detected a possible incoming nuclear attack on the United States, what questions would you ask before making a decision on how to respond?

• As the only official with the authority to order the launch of US nuclear weapons, in what scenarios would you contemplate the first use of nuclear weapons? How would you assess the potential costs versus benefits of a first strike?

• Will you pursue diplomacy and arms control with Russia despite heightened tensions and Russian nuclear rhetoric? Do you believe nuclear arms control still serves an important role in the current and future security environment?

• Do you believe that it is necessary for the US military to plan to potentially use nuclear weapons first? And do you believe that existing nuclear weapons and increasingly sophisticated conventional capabilities provide adequate deterrence options for the president?

I would add this one: “Does the land-based portion of the Triad make us less safe?”

These are the most important questions journalists could ask of the candidates, and no candidate who declines to answer them should ever be elected. No power of the American presidency is more significant than the God-like power to issue the order to melt the world. Only slightly less awesome is the president’s responsibility to mitigate the risk that someone else will give that order. Compared to this, everything else is a trifle. But I’ll be pleasantly surprised if either candidate is asked even one of these questions. (I can all but guarantee, though, that both candidates will be asked a lot of questions about the Haitians who are supposedly chowing down on pets in Springfield, though.) —Claire

Trump and Harris have no plans for a world on fire. The foreign policies of the last eight years aren’t sufficient for dealing with two hot wars and a cold one.

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AMERICAS

Argentina is still in crisis. Why lower inflation—and Milei—might not last:

To tame the runaway prices and spur job creation, Milei pledged that he would slash state spending. To illustrate the point, he traveled to campaign events with a chainsaw in hand. And since winning, Milei has indeed cut public expenditures. Inflation has come down. But after nine months in office, Milei has yet to deliver on his promises of broad transformation. The president has failed to capitalize on the political opening created by the fragmentation of the party system to deliver sustainable governance. …

By slashing state spending, Milei helped send the country into a deep recession: the government projects a 3.8 percent decrease in GDP for 2024. In time, this could turn into a serious political liability. Milei has faced low levels of social unrest by Argentine standards—two general strikes and one important protest. But as Argentines become more concerned about poverty and job security, this unrest could grow. … With a citizenry exhausted by permanent crisis, Milei still has a unique opportunity to follow through on his policy promises. But if his electoral gamble does not succeed, the opportunity may close. Even if Milei manages to obtain a plurality of legislators in Argentina’s next midterm election, it will only be his first step toward achieving his goals. Unless he finds a way to win the fight against foreign currency shortages, he, too, will fall victim to Argentina’s economy.

Our own worst enemies. The violent style in American politics:

… The principal danger to the United States is not any out-of-control technology or fringe militia group. It is not economic grievances run amok. It is not even Trump, who is as much a symptom of what ails the United States as he is a cause. Instead, the greatest source of danger comes from a cultural clash over the nature of the United States’ identity—one with profound implications for who gets to be a citizen. Its key actors are not isolated radicals but large numbers of ordinary Americans. According to new research carried out by my team at the University of Chicago, tens of millions of Democrats, Republicans, and independents believe that political violence is acceptable. Many of them hail from the middle and upper class, with nice homes and college educations. …

Unfortunately, violent populism is likely to grow more pronounced in the years ahead. Throughout history, societies in which large numbers of people support political violence are much more likely to experience unrest. … the country is entering an era of intense deadly conflict—one replete with politically motivated riots, attacks against minorities, and even assassinations.

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EUROPE

Germany’s growing East-West divide. Populist movements are redefining local politics, and this carries international implications:

Both AfD and BSW display a number of similarities that are concerning for international partners. Germany’s position as a major European power means its domestic political contest can threaten the efficacy of major multilateral bodies, including NATO and the European Union. The parties have expressed opposition to NATO and Germany’s response to the war in Ukraine, calling for an end to the war through negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Earlier this year, the AfD and BSW were the only two parties who boycotted the address to the German parliament by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. So similar are their stances, that far-right extremist and leader of the AfD in Thuringia Björn Höcke invited Sahra Wagenknecht to “come join us” prior to her leaving Die Linke party.

Several Spanish organizations, some funded by Iran, are set to hold events across the country on October 6 and 7 to celebrate Hamas’ attack on Israel.

Spain’s postal workers union decided to go on Strike on October 9 to protest “Israeli aggression,” while failing to mention the massacre that took place across southern Israel before the war began. Israel’s embassy in Madrid has appealed to the relevant Spanish authorities to cancel a planned parade by the Masar Badil organization, affiliated with Hamas, celebrating Hamas’ atrocities in the city. Despite the embassy's efforts, the parade is still set to take place.

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AFRICA

African leaders demanded global powers address the longstanding inequity in the UN Security Council’s composition:

They articulated a compelling case, highlighting how the legacy of colonialism and its lingering effects have left the continent disproportionately excluded. This exclusion is not merely a matter of representation, it directly impacts Africa’s ability to influence discussions on critical issues, such as conflict resolution, climate change and sustainable development. The leaders emphasized the urgent need for the 15-member Security Council to reflect contemporary realities, arguing that its current structure is antiquated and ill-suited to address the complex challenges of the modern world. They pointed out that the failure to incorporate a broader spectrum of voices within the Council compromises the UN’s legitimacy and effectiveness, particularly in responding to Africa’s pressing peace and security challenges.

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ASIA

Taiwan’s defense ministry raised the alarm about a renewed surge of Chinese military activity around the island and live fire drills:

On Thursday, the defense ministry said it had detected a second day of large-scale Chinese military activities nearby, with 29 aircraft engaged in a "joint combat readiness patrol" with Chinese warships. The day before it warned of 43 Chinese military aircraft operating around the island. Of these 23 flew to the south of Taiwan through the Bashi Channel separating it from the Philippines and then up along Taiwan’s east coast, a ministry map showed, although without entering territorial air space. Pointing to a visit from Sept. 18 to 20 by the chief of China's southern military command to the US military in Hawaii, the ministry said that at the same time China carried out “multiple waves of live-fire attacks” in drills in the Yellow and Bohai seas near the Korean peninsula and Japan.

China is doing all it can to build up its military while creating the illusion of dialogue, the ministry added. The effort “highlights the hegemonic nature of an authoritarian regime that lacks policy stability, posing a serious challenge to neighboring countries.”

Bargaining chips. What the Vance Doctrine means for Taiwan:

… Contrary to the stereotype of the chest-thumping Republican, Vance has stated that he is alarmed by runaway bipartisan hawkishness towards China, seeing in it, perhaps, the same hubris that led members of Congress from both parties to overwhelmingly support George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. Whereas some Republicans, such as Trump’s last Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and former House Select Committee chairman Mike Gallagher, call for a comprehensive pressure campaign to undermine Beijing, Vance wants to avoid unnecessary confrontation with China. … Reading between the lines, the Vance Doctrine should give Taiwan pause. Few economic arrangements are more totemic of the neoliberalism Vance laments than America’s dependence on its chip exports. If America doesn’t manufacture “the components that Americans rely on for their everyday life,” Vance said in a May 2024 speech, “then we are never going to be able to build the kind of middle class that we want in this country.” Though the comment was in the context of China’s industrial rise, it could just as easily be interpreted as a critique of America’s relationship with the Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC.

While Vance’s political ally Elbridge Colby, a probable pick for a high-level foreign policy job of his own in the event Trump wins, sees keeping Taiwan out of China’s hands as the lynchpin of America’s global strategy, it is difficult to square Colby’s form of structural realism with the Vance view that the country has simply been doing too much for too long in too many places. Vance might defend the island in the near term, but such an action would appear contingent upon Taiwan’s current centrality to the semiconductor supply chain. If America’s bipartisan industrial policy goal of manufacturing advanced chips at home succeeds, Colby and Vance may no longer share common ground on Taiwan.

For the first time, Hong Kong imprisons a journalist for sedition:

Hong Kong judge on Thursday sentenced a former editor of a popular online news outlet to one year and nine months in prison for publishing articles deemed “seditious,” an unprecedented penalty for journalism that was long considered routine and is ostensibly protected in the city. Chung Pui-kuen, 54, was a top editor at Stand News, a nonprofit digital news outlet that rose to particular prominence during 2019 anti-government protests in Hong Kong. The outlet was forced to close in December 2021 after police raided its office and arrested several executives and editors. Chung, who was the outlet’s editor in chief, and Lam, the acting editor in chief at the time of the raid, were convicted in late August of sedition for publishing articles that the judge ruled could sow “hatred” of the Hong Kong government and authorities. These articles include news reporting, interviews, profiles and commentary pieces, all published between 2020 and 2021.

The city’s media environment was once one of the most boisterous in Asia, and it continued to thrive even after Britain handed Hong Kong over to China in 1997. It was an aspect of life that highlighted the “one country, two systems” formula that allowed the financial city to operate differently from the mainland. But in the wake of the anti-government protests in 2019, those who offer views counter to the official narrative—journalists, opposition lawmakers, activists and ordinary citizens—have been targeted. Analysts say this is all part of an effort to remake Hong Kong in Beijing’s image.

(I loathe the locution “Analysts say.” We don’t need “analysts” to tell us this.—C.)

Who is in the running to be Japan’s next prime minister? Whoever the Liberal Democratic Party chooses, they will have to handle graft, the economy—and maybe Donald Trump. Here’s what to know about the contenders.

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GLOBAL

World leaders gather at a UN desperate to save itself. Ongoing crises in Sudan, Gaza and Ukraine have underscored the inefficacy of the world’s foremost decision-making body. Great power competition may be to blame:

The backdrop to this week’s gathering of world leaders at the United Nations could hardly be more grim. Wars, increasing anxiety over the state of democracy and deep geopolitical divisions roil the global scene. At the dais of the UN’s General Assembly, dignitaries will once more appeal to the virtues of cooperation. But the august institution itself is grappling with its inability to reckon with a surging tide of challenges. The UN Security Council, dominated by the veto-wielding victors of World War II, has long been derided as an anachronism. But the ongoing wars in Ukraine and over Gaza have only underscored the inefficacy of what is the world’s most significant decision-making body. Tough collective action to rein in Russia’s invasion of its neighbor has proved impossible with the Kremlin on the Council, while the United States has for months shielded Israel from international pressure, stymying efforts to force a cease-fire between Israel and militant group Hamas as the death toll mounts. Officials in Turtle Bay looked on feebly over the weekend as Israel’s fight with Hezbollah in Lebanon threatened to sprawl into a full-blown war. …

… Politicians and advocates are clamoring for change. Last week, Finnish President Alexander Stubb called for an end to single veto powers—where only one of the permanent members can block action. Ahead of the Summit of the Future, David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, floated the idea that veto powers in the Security Council get suspended when the body is reckoning with mass atrocity events. The summit itself looks set to accelerate conversations about expanding the Council to better reflect the world as it is today.

At the UN General Assembly yesterday, “world leaders urged a concerted diplomatic drive to end the war in Gaza and to avert further escalation in the region. Strong demands for genuine UN reform persisted, with several African leaders calling for permanent representation on the Security Council. In two high-level meetings, senior UN officials warned that some of the world’s most effective antibiotics are losing their effectiveness against “superbugs,” while others urged nations to “stop gambling with humanity’s future” by getting rid of nuclear weapons.”

Secretary-General António Guterres to the General Assembly: “We are edging towards the unimaginable—a powder keg that risks engulfing the world.”

Delivering his 2024 report on the UN’s work ahead of the general debate, Mr. Guterres said world leaders were gathering in the shadow of raging conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and elsewhere, and rising uncertainty over climate change, ending poverty and reigning in AI. “Our world is in a whirlwind. We are in an era of epic transformation—facing challenges unlike any we have ever seen—challenges that demand global solutions,” the UN chief said. He warned that geo-political divisions are deepening, temperatures around the world are rising, wars are raging—without any end in sight, and nuclear posturing and new weapons are “casting a dark shadow.” he said.

Mr. Guterres told Heads of States and Government in attendance that he stood before them with two “overriding truths.” “First, the state of our world is unsustainable-- we cannot go on like this. And second, the challenges we face are solvable—but that requires us to make sure the mechanisms of international problem-solving actually solve problems.” While the Summit of the Future, which preceded the annual high-level week and saw UN Member States agree a forward-looking declaration known as the Pact for the Future “was a first step,” the Secretary-General underscored “we have a long way to go.”

Getting there requires confronting three major drivers of unsustainability:

• A world of impunity, where violations and abuses threaten the foundation of international law and the UN Charter.

• A world of inequality, where injustices and grievances threaten to undermine countries or even push them over the edge.

• And a world of uncertainty, where unmanaged global risks threaten our future in unknowable ways.

“These worlds of impunity, inequality and uncertainty are connected and colliding,” said Mr. Guterres, adding that the level of impunity is politically indefensible and morally intolerable,” and there are those who feel they can trample international law, violate the UN Charter, and invade other countries but are “entitled to a get out of jail free card.”

… Going on to say the conflicts and deepening political divisions have left the world in a “purgatory of polarity,’ the Secretary-General said that more and more countries are filling the spaces of geopolitical divides, doing whatever they want with no accountability. “That is why it is more important than ever to reaffirm the Charter, to respect international law, to support and implement decisions of international courts, and to reinforce human rights in the world. Anywhere and everywhere.”

He’s right—which is why he shouldn’t have allowed the UN repeatedly to disgrace itself to the point of losing all legitimacy.

How private intelligence companies became the new spymasters. In a world awash with digital data, private intelligence companies now compete with state agencies, turning everyone into potential spies and transforming the age-old craft of espionage into a high-stakes technological arms race:

What changed in the 2010s was the maturation of “digital counter-intelligence,” most notably in the field of cyber threat intelligence. Companies began openly countering Russian and Chinese hacking, often publishing their findings in great detail. The debate, explains Rid, became “more evidence-based and far less secretive.” These companies were often hunting the same groups of hackers from China, Russia, North Korea and Iran and they created a community of learning and tradecraft, in which different parts of the jigsaw could be put together. … All this is an opportunity for spycraft. For one thing, it expands collection capacity. Take the example of the Falklands War. America found that its spy satellites, designed to watch the Soviet Union, were in the wrong orbit to point at the South Atlantic (“Nobody ever thought there’d be a damn war in the Falklands for God’s sake,” noted Robert Gates, later the CIA director). The private sector has since solved that problem. The spectacular growth of the commercial satellite industry allows states to enjoy near-blanket coverage.

★★★ Big Tech’s coup. How companies seized power from states—and how states can claw it back:

[D]emocratic governments have lost their primacy in the digital world. Instead, companies and their executives are increasingly in charge. This power shift is the sum of society’s systemic dependence on technology firms, the legal gray zones in which they operate, and the unique characteristics of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. It is a product of how public institutions have been stripped of their technological knowledge, agency, and accountability. It is a reality that generations of politicians of various parties have allowed to set in.

… If democracy is to survive, leaders must fight this coup head on. They need to shrink their overdependence on powerful tech companies. They must empower public interest technology as a counterweight. They need to rebuild their own tech expertise. Most of all, they must build effective and innovative regulatory regimes that can meaningfully hold tech companies (and governments using tech) to account. Doing so is needed to sustain open, free, and vibrant digital societies based on the rule of law. …

Too often, states operate at an information disadvantage when it comes to technology. With few exceptions, they lack the access to information as well as expertise required to understand (let alone regulate) new algorithms and inventions. Because knowledge is power, this dearth leaves policymakers in a weak negotiating position vis-à-vis powerful tech companies, which leads to even more outsourcing. …

Tech firms are also consolidating power through their pocketbooks. The biggest tech companies are exceptionally wealthy: Microsoft’s market cap stands at US$3.2 trillion, more than the GDP of France, the seventh-largest economy in the world. As a result, these firms have no problem spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying. And the lobbyists often find they are pushing on open doors. Because politicians and other officials have so little tech expertise, corporate representatives can easily mold their thinking. Tech companies have similarly used their money to frame the world’s collective understanding of their industry by investing in think tanks, conferences, and academic institutions.

One of the frames tech businesses have been most successful in promoting is that, as Facebook put it when trying to dissuade European regulators from implementing the EU’s data protection directive in 2012, “regulation stifles innovation.” This argument is as wrong as it is self-serving, especially as big tech companies become gatekeepers and make life for innovative start-ups difficult. Yet the phrase remains popular through today. …

So far, democratic governments appear to be shockingly unconcerned about the rising power of tech companies. Activists and journalists have repeatedly set off alarms about the industry, but consecutive US administrations have been deliberately lax when it comes to the sector, hoping to laissez-faire their way through any and all concerns. The EU has been more proactive, but very few of its laws are aimed at ending the power grab. Democracies need a clear vision of how to comprehensively govern tech.

Claire—this is a hugely important article. It is the first description I’ve seen, in print, of a phenomenon that seems to me growingly obvious and of immense significance. Global power is shifting from states to tech companies. It’s the most significant change in the configuration of power since the power of the great empires devolved to that of nation-states.

I have confidence that the US government won’t take any of the steps Marietje Schaake rightly proposes. It’s too late. It has become too dependent on Big Tech—both for critical technology and for campaign finance. It doesn’t have the upper hand in negotiations. What’s more, our elected officials lack the intellectual candlepower even to understand any of this, no less challenge the tech barons. They don’t even understand. they’ve been usurped. This is the article of the day, the year, and the decade.

Schaake has not, however, persuaded me that regulation wouldn’t stifle innovation. She should explain, if this is true, why exactly there’s so little innovation in Europe compared to the US. I’m willing to believe that the disparity is owed to something else. Perhaps many things. But what are they?

Related:

• Alex Karp has money and power. So what does he want? In a rare in-depth interview, this billionaire man of mystery, the head of Palantir Technologies, talks about war, AI and America’s future:

He’s not a household name, and yet Mr. Karp is at the vanguard of what Mark Milley, the retired general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called “the most significant fundamental change in the character of war ever recorded in history.” In this new world, unorthodox Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Mr. Karp and Elon Musk are woven into the fabric of America’s national security. Mr. Karp is also at the white-hot center of ethical issues about whether firms like Palantir are too Big Brother, with access to so much of our personal data as we sign away our privacy. And he is in the middle of the debate about whether artificial intelligence is friend or foe, whether killer robots and disembodied AI will one day turn on us. … “Saving lives and on occasion taking lives is super interesting,” Mr. Karp told me. …

Palantir got its start in intelligence and defense—it now works with the Space Force—and has since sprouted across the government through an array of contracts. It helps the IRS to identify tax fraud and the Food and Drug Administration to prevent supply chain disruptions and to get drugs to market quicker. It has assisted Ukraine and Israel in sifting through seas of data to gather relevant intelligence in their wars—on how to protect special forces by mapping capabilities, how to safely transport troops and how to target drones and missiles more accurately.

Populism’s broken economic promises. How countries with populist leaders get left behind:

… Populism is surging. But even though its effects on countries’ political systems and the extent to which it fosters democratic decay have been widely discussed in recent years, but its economic implications have been understudied. What economic policies do populists pursue, and with what results? To fill this gap, we carried out a comprehensive study of populist leadership across the world. We built a data set covering 120 years of history and 60 countries and identified 51 populist leaders whom we define as those who place a conflict between the “people” and the “elites” at the center of their electoral campaigns or governance. We then studied the economic policies they pursued and the consequences that followed.

The findings were grim. Although, on the surface, populist leadership may seem to have mixed economic effects, we found that most populists weaken a state’s economy, especially in the long run. They do so in large part by undermining the rule of law and by eroding political checks and balances. Our study makes clear that although populists may sell themselves as the solution to a country’s ills, they tend to make life worse. Populists, in other words, hurt the “real people” they claim to be saving.

Overcoming the fear of escalation. The Biden administration’s fear of escalation with both Russia and Iran has overlooked the manifest weaknesses of both adversaries:

… Despite previous commitments to Kyiv, Biden initially refused to do anything beyond imposing sanctions on Russia should Vladimir Putin turn his military exercise into an invasion. The declaration that there would be no serious military response eliminated deterrence. Ukraine’s valor in resisting Putin’s early blitz to wipe the country off the map rallied Western support and generated a flow of aid. Yet, the United States has been behind the curve in providing advanced weapons and has continued to restrict Kyiv’s right to use long-range weapons against targets in Russia for fear of “escalation” into the general war Putin has threatened since the invasion. After the recent G-7 meeting demonstrated allied unity on Ukraine, Putin declared, “Calls to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, which has the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, demonstrate the extreme adventurism of Western politicians.” Yet, the West accepting a strategic defeat in Ukraine will produce a destabilizing effect across the world, inviting aggression elsewhere. The Russian nuclear threat is clearly a bid for escalation dominance based on fear, jumping to the highest rung on the ladder because its leaders know it is at a disadvantage on the lower rungs. …

If Biden wants to leave a real legacy to his country and the world after his four years in office (and do his successor an immense favor), he will continue to move forward and upward to end the wars in Europe and the Levant by outmaneuvering the aggressors and restoring credible deterrence in these theaters or any others.

Time for Modi to step in on the Red Sea. Nothing the West says or does will convince the Houthis to halt their campaign. But the Indian prime minister is perfectly suited to the task:

… As long as the Houthis continue their attacks, more seafarers from these and other emerging economies will lose their lives. And as is painfully clear by now, nothing the West says or does—not even American missile strikes against Houthi territory—will persuade the militia to stop its campaign. Russia and China, for their part, have seen their vessels spared and are, in fact, benefiting from the campaign against Western shipping. There is someone who has both the motivation and the standing to intervene though—and that’s India’s Modi.

Indian nationals stand to lose their lives to missiles, drones and explosives launched for no reason other than the fact that the Houthis want attention. … Modi is a man keen on conducting foreign policy independent of global alliances. What’s more, India’s economy today is far larger than it was during the times of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, another leader who was keen to turn the country into a serious and independent global player. This lends weight to Modi’s foreign policy, and makes him perfectly positioned to read the Houthis the riot act. The Indian leader need only stress the obvious by reminding the Yemeni rebels that their campaign mostly harms innocent non-Westerners and is disrupting the lives of many more.

Won’t work.—Claire

The key to Ukraine is in Beijing:

Perhaps the most misunderstood and under-discussed—relative to its vital importance—aspect of this war is the role of China. We find ourselves in a very curious situation. On the one hand, Beijing’s involvement in supporting the Russian economy as well as Putin’s military machine is well documented; on the other hand, it only appears as an afterthought in Western debates. 

When the war began and Western sanctions hit, Russia effectively reoriented its economy—from energy exports to manufactured goods imports—towars China, to the point where it is now deeply dependent on it. …. In short, without Beijing’s help, Moscow could not keep up its illegal war. … arguably, even decisive is the pro-Russian signal sent from Beijing, which weighs heavily in the calculations of all these anti-Western (or, at best, “nonaligned”) actors. In the Global South most roads tend to lead to Xi’s court, as China acts as the lynchpin of the emerging so-called “alternative” to the US-led world order. 

The Ukraine war is not, therefore, simply a contest between Kyiv and Moscow. Just as Ukraine depends on Western backing to survive and keep fighting, so does Russia depend on assistance from the Chinese-led Eurasian Axis and the broader Global South. This is a proxy war where the fates of both Ukraine and Russia, in different ways and to different degrees, hang on their bigger and stronger sponsors. The West may increase its help to Zelensky; but then China and its fellow revisionist powers will increase their help to Putin. We have already seen this happen. Neither side can afford to let their ally fail, as the geopolitical consequences would be more costly for them, at the global level, than the price of continued support. … It’s increasingly clear that the way to end the war and ensure a stable long-term peace is to look beyond Russia and act upon its support system. In other words, the key to the Ukraine war is in Beijing.

Won’t work.—Claire

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‼️ ➪ MIDDLE EAST 201: I have a scheduling conflict this weekend, alas! So class will be canceled on Sunday, September 30. I’d be happy to schedule a make-up meeting mid-week: If anyone is game for it, let me know in the comments.

For the following week (Sunday, October 4), please continue with the reading we’ve been doing, plus a few more suras and ayahs that I’ll be adding to this reading list over the next few days. Read in the assumption that we’ll be joined on October 4 by a guest who will either be Nervana (inshallah!) or who will be like Nervana, in that he or she will be well-qualified to answer any questions you have.

You’re of course all very welcome to meet, using the usual Zoom link, to discuss the readings. (I may be even be back in time to join you, if you’re there for a while.)

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TODAY’S ANIMAL

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the elusive, nocturnal Striped Himalayan Pinball Wizard. A rare sighting indeed: