South Korea is poised to become the first country to impose curbs on the lucrative app stores run by Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, setting up a potential showdown with the Biden administration. President Moon Jae-in’s Democratic Party used its parliamentary supermajority to push out of committee a bill that would ban companies from forcing developers to use their online payment systems. The ruling party’s heft in the National Assembly suggests the Telecommunications

Technology Aug. 25, 2021

One of my great concerns about the pandemic was that it would hinder the global mobility of people and labor, perhaps permanently. Unfortunately, my worst fears are being realized: As COVID mutates, it is affecting not only tourism and business travel but migration more generally. Consider that after the end of the Vietnam War, the US took in more than 1 million Vietnamese migrants over a 20-year period. After the Soviet Union withdrew its troops in Afghanistan, the US also took in many Afghani

Viewpoints Aug. 25, 2021

Is there really a Taliban 2.0? At the triumphant insurgent group’s first press conference in Kabul, a spokesman promised something akin to sweet reasonableness, in turn prompting something akin to optimism that the militia’s mindset has changed over the past 20 years. Listen! They’re talking about allowing women to work! But the reassurances of Zabiullah Mujahid about the new, improved Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan should be treated with caution. There is every chance that th

Viewpoints Aug. 24, 2021

When the Taliban was last in control of Afghanistan, the world used cellphones for voice calls, the Internet was accessed from desktop computers over copper phone lines, and digital photography was in its infancy. But within a few years of defeat by the US military in 2001, the militant Islamists who’d once eschewed technology were deploying makeshift surveillance drones and coordinating their political and operational messaging through a network of mobile handsets. The decision to embrac

Viewpoints Aug. 24, 2021

Thailand is preparing for life with Covid, with preliminary plans being drawn up to relax some restrictions and reopen its borders to vaccinated visitors even as new cases hover around 20,000 a day. The National Communicable Disease Committee on Monday approved a shift in the country’s strategy to “learning to live with Covid-19,” recognizing the endemic nature of the virus, according to Opas Karnkawinpong, director-general of the Department of Disease Control. The focus goi

World News Aug. 23, 2021

China is investigating Hangzhou’s top government official for serious disciplinary violations, casting a spotlight on the city that is home to Jack Ma’s Ant Group Co. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Hangzhou Municipal Party Committee Secretary Zhou Jiangyong, 53, has been placed under investigation for serious violations of party discipline and state law, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in a statement Saturday. While the agency didn’t elaborate on Zhou&rs

World News Aug. 23, 2021

The rapid fall of Afghanistan to Taliban control presents the UK and its NATO allies with two primary dilemmas -- the first is immediately pressing, and the second has longer-term implications. The urgent task is to determine a policy for Afghans seeking refuge. Although there are many calls, from lawmakers and the media, to offer more support, asylum policy has been fraught political ground in both the UK and Europe for years. It doesn’t take much for the magnanimity that surfaces in the

Viewpoints Aug. 23, 2021

One of the saddest stories of the year has gone largely unreported: the slowdown of political and economic progress in sub-Saharan Africa. There is no longer a clear path to be seen, or a simple story to be told, about how the world’s poorest continent might claw its way up to middle-income status. Africa has amazing human talent and brilliant cultural heritages, but its major political centers are, to put it bluntly, falling apart. Three countries are more geopolitically central than the

Viewpoints Aug. 17, 2021

Could climate alarm bells be ringing in the Kremlin? Official pronouncements and a newfound urgency suggest the reality of greener global demand may finally force a fossil fuel behemoth to accept the inevitable. Last week, in a ministerial meeting that touched on environmental monitoring, President Vladimir Putin warned officials that over the past four decades or so, temperatures increased in Russia nearly three times faster than the global average. He noted climate change was behind wildfires

Viewpoints Aug. 17, 2021

How weird is the future going to be? Just a little bit -- or plain flat-out radically unthinkably weird? And is this future 1,000 years from now -- or 100? The notion that the future will be weirder than we think, and come sooner, is a possibility raised by Holden Karnofsky, the co-chief executive officer of Open Philanthropy. It’s an intriguing and provocative idea. One complicating factor will be different forms of genetic engineering. As genomics progresses, we will be able to alter t

Viewpoints Aug. 6, 2021

America’s population may be shrinking. That’s mostly because of COVID, but it’s also part of longer-term trends in fertility that show no signs of abating. These trends, which are worldwide, have already caused major economic dislocation and are likely to continue to do so. First, some data. From 1936 to 1956, the US fertility rate rose from 1.8 to 3.2. At the peak of the baby boom, the average woman in the US was having at least three children who survived until adulthood. (A

Viewpoints Aug. 2, 2021

On Monday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is poised to lift almost all of the remaining restrictions imposed to fight the COVID-19 pandemic in England. Even as the delta variant drives a rebound in infections, the government is determined to get customers back into shops, diners back into bars and restaurants, people out and about. I’m going to skip the celebration. For all of the claims that science would dictate the ebb and flow of restraints on civil liberties, the July 19 cessat

Viewpoints July 19, 2021

When the Apple II personal computer was shipped in 1977, it came with a detailed manual for upgrading and repairing the device. Parts were readily available from Apple (and, later, other manufacturers), and if Apple owners didn’t want to fix or upgrade at home, they could find plenty of small, competitive repair businesses to do the work for them. That was then. These days, Apple’s products arrive sealed shut, often with proprietary screws. Service manuals, circuit-board schematics

Viewpoints July 15, 2021

Former President Donald Trump’s lawsuits against Twitter, Google and Facebook for kicking him off their platforms are sure losers, legally speaking. The First Amendment protects people against state action, and tech companies aren’t state actors. Yet Trump’s main argument to the contrary -- that congressional Democrats coerced the platforms into cutting him off by threatening to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act -- deserves close scrutiny. Wittingly or not,

Viewpoints July 13, 2021

While the US Congress and White House wrangle over spending on infrastructure and social programs, the most pressing problem for the US remains little acknowledged and unaddressed: Tens of millions of people work full-time and can’t afford food, clothes, housing, health care and a proper education for their children. Their struggle is sowing division, fanning political and social tensions and raising doubts in many Americans’ minds about the merits of capitalism and democracy. It d

Viewpoints July 9, 2021