President Donald Trump is reportedly close to issuing an executive order that would ban Chinese companies like Huawei Technologies Co. from building 5G wireless networks in the US. The significance of such an order goes beyond its obvious implications for American telecommunications companies.　The prospect of closing technology-related markets to competitors from China raises a fundamental problem that is going to plague policymakers for the foreseeable future: How can they draw the line between

Viewpoints Feb. 21, 2019

It’s backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, buoyed by China’s green energy policies and has a track record as a pioneer in the world’s largest car market. Surely, BYD has all the ingredients of a winning electric-car maker?　Yet investors aren’t convinced. The company’s Hong Kong-traded stock has fallen more than 30 percent in the past year and even declined after BYD posted a 290 percent jump in January electric-vehicles sales from a year earlier to 28,668 units. That outpaced a 149 perc

Viewpoints Feb. 21, 2019

Every now and then, a few apparently random news events come together and influence how you see the world. My most recent lesson is that blackmail and blackmail risk are a lot more common than I had thought.　The first relevant news event is the allegation by Jeff Bezos that the National Enquirer has been blackmailing him with the threat to release photos of his private parts (there is much more detail to this story). Several other people have since alleged that the Enquirer has engaged in additi

Viewpoints Feb. 20, 2019

Hanging on a wall behind the omelet bar at President Donald Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida -- where the commander in chief apparently stopped for a bite on Saturday after declaring a national emergency the day before -- is an old, framed poster. It’s from an ad campaign Walgreens once ran featuring the president back when he was the sorcerer of “The Apprentice.”　In white block letters on the poster, next to a photo of Trump cocking his index finger at the camera and shouting in fu

Viewpoints Feb. 20, 2019

Japan has aged; Singapore is aging. Japan’s workforce is shrinking; Singapore’s has plateaued. Japan’s homogeneous society has struggled with immigration; Singapore’s island culture has been welcoming of foreigners, though increasingly less so.　So is the city-state scoring an own-goal by inviting a demographic decline and Japanese-style lost decades? 　After Monday’s annual government budget, in which Singaporean Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat announced stronger curbs on immigrants in service in

Viewpoints Feb. 20, 2019

The problems in Afghanistan often feel intractable, like a knot of countless ropes bound together. Every time a strand is pulled, another part of the knot tightens up. Currently, the Taliban refuse to have talks with the Afghan government, which they label a puppet regime; the Kabul government insists that any power-sharing agreement allow limited numbers of Western troops to remain; the Pakistanis, who have long sheltered Taliban leaders, are unwilling to fully encourage a peace settlement; the

Viewpoints Feb. 19, 2019

Algorithms have long been able to produce basic news stories from press releases or sets of financial data; that’s not much of a threat to most humans in the news business. Now, however, artificial intelligence has taken a step further. It’s learned to perform a tougher task -- to produce convincing-looking fake news.　Stringing together a few formulaic passages from a set of numbers is a mechanical job. Inventing a fake news story on a random subject requires imagination; not every human is up t

Viewpoints Feb. 19, 2019

Substance often runs a distant second to drama in the age of Donald Trump. So it was when America’s intelligence chiefs visited Capitol Hill recently to deliver their agencies’ annual worldwide threat assessment. It got traction in the news media largely because Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and CIA director Gina Haspel gave testimony that implicitly cut across Trump’s policies toward North Korea and Iran. Kim Jong-un has no intention of giving up his nuclear weapons, Coats and Has

Viewpoints Feb. 19, 2019

Brace yourself: A growing number of hard-up Chinese borrowers are not making good on their debts. The pattern is all too familiar.　After a record year of defaults in 2018, two big issuers failed to meet their obligations in recent weeks. Coal miner Wintime Energy Co., one of China’s biggest defaulters last year, missed interest payments again this month. Beijing Orient Landscape & Environment Co., which builds water-treatment plants, was late on a 500 million yuan ($73.8 million) bond due this m

Viewpoints Feb. 18, 2019

As the US-led world order continues to fall apart, second-tier powers are trying to salvage what they can. But in Germany and France, at least, voters don’t really want the US to be part of the process.　The annual Munich Security Report, which provides the starting point for discussion at the annual security forum in the German city, is often a good indication of the Western security community’s current mood. The 2019 report, titled “The Great Puzzle: Who Will Pick Up the Pieces?” is somewhat le

Viewpoints Feb. 18, 2019