[Michael Schuman] Can autocrats outdo democrats?

Even since China’s Communist Party revealed that it would scrap term limits on the presidency -- meaning the post’s current occupant, Xi Jinping, can now serve for life -- there has been much hand-wringing over what one-man rule could mean for the Chinese economy. Autocracies, we’re told, never end well, leaving economists and the business community concerned that the reforms the economy requires to return to solid footing, already slow in coming, may never be implemented.　There’s cause for worr

March 8, 2018

[Dahleen Glanton] Strange times in Gunland America

In the weeks since a deranged gunman walked into a high school in Parkland, Florida, and slaughtered 17 people with an AR-15 assault rifle, some bizarre things involving guns have happened in America.　A teacher in Georgia barricaded himself in a classroom and fired a gun, leading to a frantic lockdown and evacuation of the school.A suburban Chicago man heard a woman screaming in his apartment building and went to her rescue with an AR-15, and later boasted that the attacker was “a half a breath

March 8, 2018

[Virginia Heffernan] Ivanka makes the shoddy look cute

On July 27, 2017, near the end of one of the most compelling hearings yet on the Trump-Russia affair, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) offered an extraordinary insight. 　“Corrupt kleptocrats and international criminals make themselves rich in criminality and corruption,” he said. “Then at some point they need the legitimate world in order to protect and account for their stolen proceeds.”　The Whitehouse sketched a new bipolar world order, in which the so-called legitimate world, which in

March 7, 2018

[Ferdinando Giugliano] Italy takes a step back from Europe

There are two ways to look at Sunday’s Italian general election results. 　One is simply to focus on the arithmetic. From that perspective, the outcome is really not that different from what was expected. There was no outright winner: Neither the center-right coalition, nor the center-left nor the anti-establishment Five Star Movement managed to win a majority of seats. The vote produced a hung parliament, which will make it very hard to form a government. That means a period of instability lies

March 7, 2018

[Doyle McManus] Five things Trump could do to stop Russia’s meddling

Recently, the Pentagon’s cyberdefense commander was asked whether the government has done enough to protect the 2018 congressional election against Russian hacking. “We’re not where we need to be,” Adm. Mike Rogers told a Senate committee.　Rogers echoed warnings from other intelligence officials that Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to keep meddling in US and foreign elections until someone makes him stop.　“President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion that there’s little price to p

March 7, 2018

[The Baltimore Sun] Trump tariffs won’t bring back steel mills

If there’s any community that can feel the changes that have rocked the American steel industry over the decades, it’s Baltimore. What was once the single largest steel factory in the world, the giant Bethlehem Steel plant in Sparrows Point, is completely gone. Not even a shadow of this former ticket to the middle class for tens of thousands of Baltimoreans remains, and the warehousing, distribution and other businesses that have recently sprung up in its place, while welcome, provide nowhere ne

March 6, 2018

[Hal Brands] Xi may scare Asia back Into Washington’s orbit

One thing seems certain about Xi Jinping’s move to establish himself as China’s dictator for life: The bolder and more openly assertive foreign policy he has pursued since taking power five years ago is here to stay. The conventional wisdom is that the US, its Asian allies, and the broader international order are therefore in for a rough stretch, as China demands its place in the sun. 　What’s indisputable is that Xi’s approach to foreign affairs marks the culmination of a break with Deng Xiaopin

March 6, 2018

[Christopher Balding] Is China destined to dominate tech?

The digital world relies on data, and no one produces more of it than China’s 1.4 billion internet users. The vast wealth of information these users emit has helped Chinese tech companies become some of the world’s best, and led to speculation that China will inevitably dominate future technologies, such as artificial intelligence. But this is almost certainly mistaken. Data, it turns out, isn’t destiny.　Even in the digital age, data may have a declining utility. Tech companies already have mill

March 6, 2018

[Eli Lake] Why Trump is reluctant to escalate cyberwar

Leaders of the US intelligence community have no doubt that Russian trolls, bots and hackers are planning to meddle in the midterm elections this fall, and to date President Donald Trump has not instructed his cyber generals to hit back. 　This was the upshot of Senate testimony Tuesday from Adm. Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and chief of US Cyber Command. He was repeating a warning voiced by intelligence community leaders earlier this month. Asked if he has been direc

March 5, 2018

[Katie Reid] I traded my smartphone for a flip phone; here’s why

On Tuesday, I traded in my iPhone for a flip phone. Well, technically, I got to keep the iPhone. But when I asked the Verizon employee if the iPhone would be deactivated after he was finished setting up my sturdy new Kyocera, he looked at me gravely and replied, “It’s already deactivated.”So, yeah, I still have it, but it’s “passed on,” so to speak.　I first had the urge to ditch my smartphone over a year ago, when I realized the first thing I did in the morning -- like, as soon as I opened my ey

March 5, 2018

[Lawrence Downes] Holy nonsense: The ‘godly’ side of Donald Trump

This week I went on a strange trip, a pilgrimage to a place where common words and assumptions were flipped upside down and backward, where my vision blurred and I felt an unseen force trying to make my brain go stupid.　I read “The Faith of Donald J. Trump,” just published. Its subtitle: “A Spiritual Biography.”　What the hell, you say. But no, it’s real, and reasonably hefty, at 375 pages.　Check the flap: The authors are David Brody, a reporter with the Christian Broadcasting Network, and Scott

March 5, 2018

[Leonid Bershidsky] Putin wants modern weapons, not a modern Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday made clear his priorities for his next six-year presidential term: He spent about as much time talking about Russia’s new strategic weaponry as about all domestic policies put together.　Revanche and confrontation continue to drive Putin’s agenda. In the meantime, he appears to believe that Russia’s internal problems will largely fix themselves if he sets ambitious enough goals. Putin’s two-hour speech was designed to double as an annual state of the n

March 4, 2018