Life takes us in many strange directions and wonderful discoveries. It never turns out the way we thought it would.
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
Tuesday, July 30, 2024
Dark Elements
Dark Elements
In 2013, an international team of scientists studying a remote area of the Pacific Ocean came across a bizarre phenomenon that defied long-held beliefs about oxygen production: Oxygen was being generated thousands of feet below the ocean’s surface in depths where sunlight cannot penetrate.
Researcher Andrew Sweetman of the Scottish Association for Marine Science initially thought they were dealing with faulty equipment.
But subsequent trips to the area – known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone – confirmed that potato-shaped metallic nodules were producing oxygen.
Dubbed “dark oxygen,” Sweetman’s team explained in their paper that the element is produced about 13,000 feet below the surface in complete darkness.
Generally, photosynthetic organisms – such as plants, algae and plankton – use sunlight to produce oxygen, which then cycles into the ocean depths. However, previous deep-sea studies have shown that organisms there only consume oxygen, not produce it, Sweetman told CNN.
However, the study showed that “dark oxygen” production was linked to the polymetallic nodules on the ocean floor.
These nodules – rich in valuable minerals such as cobalt and manganese – carry a high electric charge that can lead to the splitting of seawater into hydrogen and oxygen through a process called seawater electrolysis.
“It appears that we discovered a natural ‘geobattery,’” suggested co-author Franz Geiger in a statement.
The researchers explained that the findings challenge the conventional view that life on the planet began billions of years ago when photosynthetic organisms began producing oxygen.
“I think we therefore need to revisit questions like: where could aerobic life have begun?” said Sweetman.
The findings also raise questions about companies and nations exploiting resources on the ocean floor through deep-sea mining.
The Clarion-Clipperton Zone is an area rich in nodules carrying metals integral to energy production, such as electric car batteries and solar panels.
Sweetman said more research is needed to understand how “dark oxygen” production will be affected by deep-sea mining. Meanwhile, other scientists and environmentalists are calling for a moratorium on such mining until more is understood about the environmental impacts.
Even so, Canadian deep-sea mining firm The Metals Co. – which partially funded the study – criticized the findings and plans to publish a rebuttal, CNBC added.
Monday, July 29, 2024
Turkey Is Protecting Stray Dogs
No One Left Behind
TURKEY
Thousands of people protested in Istanbul this week against a new bill that officials say is aimed at reducing the numbers of stray dogs in Turkey, but that animal welfare groups fear could lead to mass culling across the country, Euronews reported.
Earlier this month, a parliamentary committee approved proposed legislation that would require municipalities to collect stray dogs and house them in shelters where they would be neutered and spayed. Canines that are in pain, terminally ill or pose health risks to humans are to be euthanized.
The bill also requires local governments to build dog shelters or improve conditions in existing ones by 2028. Officials who fail to fulfill their responsibilities in controlling strays could face up to two years imprisonment.
Meanwhile, people who abandon pets could face fines of up to $1,800, Sky News noted.
But since the bill was unveiled, nearly daily demonstrations have taken place against it. Critics and animal rights advocates fear that some municipalities will use the bill as a pretext to kill dogs instead of allocating resources to shelter them.
They also warned that shelters would eventually become overcrowded and neglected, leaving animals in poor conditions.
The government denies that the bill would lead to widespread culling, with the justice minister stating that anyone killing strays “for no reason” would be punished.
The current legislation is a watered-down version of an initial proposal that called for strays to be rounded up, housed in shelters and euthanized if not adopted within 30 days.
Turkish officials estimate that around four million stray dogs roam the country’s streets and rural areas.
Despite existing legislation requiring that stray dogs be caught, neutered, and returned to their original locations, poor implementation of the laws has caused the feral dog population to grow significantly.
The government vowed to tackle the stray problem after a child was severely injured by dogs in the capital Ankara earlier this year.
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Sunday, July 28, 2024
The Economist Magazine Cover For 07/27/2024
The Economist
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JULY 27TH 2024
How we chose this week’s image
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Cover Story
How we chose this week’s image
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Zanny Minton Beddoes
Editor-in-chief
We have two covers this week. In most of our editions we ask whether Kamala Harris can beat Donald Trump in the race for the White House. In Europe, as the Olympic games get under way in Paris, we look at how streaming media are changing the audience for sport.
Ms Harris is still a little-known figure for most Americans, despite being Joe Biden’s vice-president. Since she all but wrapped up the nomination on Tuesday, Democrats and Republicans have been racing to define her—as either a young, strong, optimistic black and South Asian woman on the side of ordinary Americans or, as Mr Trump has it, a “radical left lunatic”. Our cover was an attempt to help readers decide for themselves.
Here are those two visions of a waving Ms Harris looking a) vice-presidential and b) unhinged. The truth is that Mr Trump has plenty of damning material to work with from Ms Harris’s time as attorney-general in California (which, to many Americans, stands for homelessness, drugs and crime), her disastrous run in the primaries last time around (she was a poor speaker and took lefty positions such as wanting to ban fracking) and her part in the Biden administration (she is lumbered with his record on inflation and immigration).
This idea acknowledges all that, by showing that Ms Harris has a long road ahead of her—though, as one of our colleagues pointed out, a blue carpet is hardly heavy going.
Mr Trump will not have it all his way. Ms Harris’s task is to counter the Republican depiction of her and turn the focus back onto her opponent. Rather than letting progressives pull her to the left, she should put forward pragmatic policies that serve ordinary people. She can then say that Mr Trump is out to serve himself. An upbeat Ms Harris looking to the future will do well against a sullen, vengeful Mr Trump enraged about the past.
This cover doesn’t do that. Ms Harris is too far away: this is the week to give her a closer look.
That is why we liked this more. For the final cover we added a lime-green homage to the many admiring “brat” memes about her—though some of our staff warned that we were straying into dad-joke territory and others unaccountably thought the design was a reference to “Star Trek”.
This cover gets across the energy of Ms Harris’s first official rally, in Milwaukee on July 23rd, which was fizzing with enthusiasm. Gone was the awkward, unconvincing candidate of four years ago. Next to Mr Biden’s halting delivery, her words were full of vitality. After months of desultory campaigning, Americans at last have a race on their hands.
As the Paris Olympics begin, the message to audiences (and corporate sponsors) is that in a fractious, divided world, nothing unites people like sport. The idea is inspiring—but, outside the Olympics, it is largely untrue. More typical are the NFL and Indian cricket league, which both make almost all their money at home. Our cover explains how that is about to change.
The world as a golf ball is a lovely image, but it hardly screams “Olympics” at you. The gold medal is better, but it lacks the sort of drama that gets fans leaping off the sofa.
Two shifts lie behind the belated globalisation of sport. The first is on the supply side, as sport moves from national broadcast and cable-television channels to global streaming platforms. The second is on the demand side. The biggest obstacle to a sport’s foreign adoption is that, unlike other forms of entertainment, audiences want to watch their home team, rather than the best one. But fans’ attachment to teams is slowly giving way to their devotion to individual athletes who have built planet-spanning reputations.
This fantastic image has much more going for it. Women’s basketball is booming thanks to Caitlin Clark, a player whose performances have drawn fans who had never watched the game, let alone attended the University of Iowa, where she started. It helps that young fans, whose preferred medium is short-form video, are more likely than older ones to watch highlights and summary shows of the action across a league, rather than a single match featuring their favourite team.
Again, though, basketball was far removed from the Olympics. We debated whether readers would make the connection between the hoop and the five rings, and feared that they would not.
So we went with this idea instead. As the crowds melt away into anonymity, the stadium is filled with one individual fan’s enormous iPhone. For the final cover, we upgraded to the Stade de France and an iPad.
As they globalise, sports will face a complaint once directed at other entertainment industries: that unworthy foreign content is pushing out treasured local favourites. However, as in music or film, sports fans should be free to choose. To compete, sporting organisations should heed the Olympic motto: time to get faster, higher, stronger.
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Can Kamala Harris win? (Leader)
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A global gold rush is changing sport (Leader)
Saturday, July 27, 2024
Friday, July 26, 2024
A Pitched Battle For Abortion Rights In Poland
Promises, Promises
POLAND
Thousands of people protested across Poland this week after the country’s parliament rejected a bill that would decriminalize assisting abortion, dealing a blow to the ruling coalition of Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s electoral pledges to provide more access to the medical procedure, Agence France-Presse reported.
On Tuesday, demonstrators and women’s rights campaigners marched in a number of Polish cities, including the capital Warsaw, to express frustrations over the government’s failure to liberalize abortion laws.
Current legislation only allows the procedure in cases of rape, incest, or when it threatens the mother’s life.
Before winning the 2023 parliamentary elections, Tusk vowed to liberalize the procedure and undo the abortion restrictions implemented by the previous government of the conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS), according to Politico.
But earlier this month, a bill to decriminalize assisting abortions was narrowly defeated in parliament by a 218-to-215 vote.
Ahead of Tuesday’s demonstrations, Tusk expressed disappointment at the result but reiterated his commitment to decriminalizing abortion as central to his vision of a reformed Poland.
Even so, observers noted that legalizing abortion will be a challenging task for the prime minister, adding that it also exposed rifts within his governing coalition.
The conservative Polish People’s Party, a partner in Tusk’s coalition, voted against the draft law. In response, Tusk fired a deputy minister and called for sanctions against another lawmaker.
Meanwhile, three other proposed bills to ease abortion restrictions are being debated in parliamentary committees, but face resistance from conservative coalition members.
At the same time, President Andrzej Duda – an ally of PiS – has indicated he would veto any liberalizing abortion bills.
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Thursday, July 25, 2024
Wednesday, July 24, 2024
Tuesday, July 23, 2024
The National Archives Budget Is Not Sufficient
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/foia/2024-07-22/history-coalition-warns-critical-needs-national-archives?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=420f4e13-f4e5-4c58-984f-dafdce76d270
The Amazing World Of Private Intelligence Agencies
Madame President:
Your Tuesday morning briefing...Yesterday we talked about Iranian Revolutionary Guard efforts to carry out political assassinations in the US. (As far as we know, none have been successful.) Much of this can be credited to the growth of super high technology private intelligence agencies that are not under some of the same legal constraints as state intelligence agencies. In the case of the Iranians, a private spy firm identifies the section inside the Revolutionary Guards tasked with political assassinations. They get to know every man and woman inside this section. Profiles are maintained on each person and updated in real-time. Any electronic communication from anyone inside that section is captured (including probably encrypted platforms.).
One of my most beloved books of all time is "The Dogs of War" by Frederick Forsythe. It is a novel about the planning and execution of a coup plot against a small African country. The author goes into the most excruciating detail on how the plotters avoided detection by British law enforcement and international intelligence agencies. Phones were not used. Handwritten notes and whispering in the ear sufficed. Once the Iranian Revolutionary Guard figures this out, assassination plots will become very dangerous.
I shall share with you a fascinating article from the Economist Magazine on private intelligence agencies. There is an audio section at the front of the article to make it easier for you to absorb:
Technology Quarterly | Intelligence, Inc
Private firms and open sources are giving spies a run for their money
There is plenty of co-operation, too
Illustration of an eye with a keyhole in it. The background is a motherboard.illustration: claire merchlinsky
Jul 1st 2024
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As railways expanded across America in the 19th century, there was little law enforcement. Rail barons needed to keep track of threats. The Pinkerton detective agency frequently filled the gap, recruiting informants and passing dossiers to sheriffs. “That was the booming technology of that era,” says Andrew Borene, an American former intelligence officer. Today it is the internet. Mr Borene is executive director of Flashpoint, a “threat-intelligence” company which monitors terrorist groups and hostile intelligence services online, selling the information to governments and businesses. A few decades ago that work would have been the preserve of spy agencies.
The deluge of data is fuelling a boom in private-sector intelligence. This is empowering intelligence services by giving them new tools, access to unclassified data which can be shared with the public and with allies. It is also easing their load: cyber-security firms have been as important as Western spy agencies in defending Ukraine from cyber-attacks. But the boom is also challenging those services by blurring the line between the open and the secret, raising questions over what must be done by spies and what can be done by others. And as data become more abundant, more revealing and more central to geopolitical competition, questions arise about law, ethics and privacy. “The separation of private- and public-sector interests is a uniquely Western construct,” argues Duyane Norman, a former cia officer, “one that has great advantages but also important consequences.”
At the heart of this revolution is the internet. “We could not build our company if the internet had not become this core sensor,” says Christopher Ahlberg who leads Recorded Future, another firm which tracks bad actors online. “Everything eventually ends up on the internet.” The anonymity of the deep web, not indexed by search engines, and the dark web, which requires specialised software to access, makes them great places for terrorists, paedophiles and criminals. But that anonymity is often superficial.
Ghost in the machine
Flashpoint began life by using fake personas—imagine an analyst masquerading as a would-be jihadist—to burrow into extremist groups online and gather information about their intentions. It still does that. But its main business is now data. For instance, it tracks the “wallets” where extremist groups store bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, says Mr Borene. The movement of funds in and out of such wallets can hint at impending terrorist attacks. Similarly Primerai, a firm based in San Francisco, was able to provide a government with eight hours’ warning of a cyberthreat by identifying hackers’ boasts on the deep web prior to an attack. The firm used natural-language processing, a type of ai, to analyse large amounts of text alongside the client’s proprietary data.
Another part of the industry illustrates a different model: rather than observing threats unfold on the internet, it monitors them from inside the network. The firms that build key hardware or software—think Google’s dominance in email, Microsoft in operating systems and Amazon in cloud computing—enjoy unparalleled insight into the private traffic that crosses their network. The result is a huge private machinery of signals intelligence, insights from which can be sold to clients as a defensive service. Microsoft tracks 78 trillion “signals” a day (such as connections between a phone and a cloud server), says Sherrod DeGrippo, the firm’s director of threat-intelligence strategy.
Analysts look for anomalies in those data and keep tabs on the tools, infrastructure and activities of established state or criminal hacking groups, known as advanced persistent threats (apts). Last year Microsoft revealed that “Volt Typhoon”, a Chinese hacking group, had targeted American infrastructure, including water and energy. More recently Mandiant, an information-security firm, has shown how the gru, Russia’s military-intelligence agency, was tied to the disruption of water utilities in America and Poland. These firms’ presence inside Ukrainian networks means that they see many threats that Western governments do not, says an insider.
Western intelligence agencies may break their countries’ laws under some conditions, for example by bribing foreign officials. Private firms cannot. But they have other advantages. “We can connect threat actors, their infrastructure and their targets in a way that intelligence agencies may not be able to,” says Mr Ahlberg. He points to agencies that may be authorised by law to operate freely abroad but not at home. “We can look abroad and look inside, in a way that is unique.”
Many firms jealously guard their data and are secretive about their methods and clients. They can also be surprisingly collaborative. Companies are watching the same groups of Chinese, Russian, North Korean and Iranian hackers. “We’re all going against the same threat actors,” says Ms DeGrippo, “but we all have a different set of data...The only way to get the complete picture is for us to work together.” Analysts also move between sigint agencies and threat-intelligence firms, bringing knowledge with them. Lewis Sage-Passant, the global head of intelligence at a large pharmaceutical company in Europe, says that in-house corporate intelligence teams can be similarly collegial. “They are cut-throat rival companies, but chances are the intelligence teams are…the very best of friends and they’re talking on an almost daily basis.”
“The uk intelligence community is facing an existential challenge”
For spies, much of this is good news. There is much they would like to spy on but, for want of time, money or other resources, do not. With satellites, the private sector has solved that problem. The growth of the commercial satellite industry allows states near-blanket coverage. In the past Britain bought hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of commercial satellite images each year, says Sir Jim Hockenhull, a British general. “Now we’re in the multiple millions.”
Then there are situations where the spies know a secret but cannot share it with allies or the public, for fear of revealing something about the source. This was common in space intelligence, says Aaron Bateman of George Washington University. During the cold war America rarely shared satellite images even with its nato allies, except Britain. Today, commercial satellite images are shared routinely. Governments can also tip off outside analysts to look for particular things; and those analysts stumble on intriguing things themselves. The result is “a larger workforce that the us government doesn’t have to pay for, but still benefits from”, notes Mr Bateman.
Not goin’ there, dude
That raises a wider question of life inside and outside the tent. Joe Morrison of Umbra, a radar-satellite startup, recalls being asked by Western officials why they ought to work with commercial unclassified vendors. “I said: access to talent that likes to smoke weed.” He was not joking. Intelligence agencies offer recruits the allure of working for organisations with sparkling histories and a patriotic mission. But waiting a year for security clearance, taking a pay cut and not being able to work remotely can be deal-breakers.
The most radical view is that Western intelligence needs to start from scratch. “The uk intelligence community...is facing an existential challenge,” argued Lucy Mason, a former British defence official, and Jason “M”, a serving intelligence official, in a paper published by the Alan Turing Institute in November. “It is being out-competed by providers of open-source intelligence and data companies.” Their solution was a new model, not one where national security is “done only by some cleared people in highly centralised, closed organisations”.
There is no doubt that non-secret sources are increasingly important. “If I’d gone and collected all of China’s military procurement records, I’d probably have got an obe,” says a former British intelligence officer, referring to a national honour. “The fact that they were, for many years, just sat there in open source completely bypassed everybody.” Location data scraped from mobile apps and traded by advertising brokers is now routinely used by intelligence agencies.
None of this means that those agencies can be abolished. The fact that public data can answer many questions that would once have required secret intelligence does not mean they can answer all such questions. Open sources shone a light on Russia’s pre-war military build-up in 2021. Nonetheless, only states had access to the most incriminating evidence, such as intercepts of Russian war plans and indicators that Russia was moving blood plasma to the front lines.
The second problem is that the value of public data often lies in fusing it with something secret. But crossing between unclassified (the “low side”, in the jargon) and the classified (“high side”) world is harder than it seems. An agency might want to compare publicly available records with secret intelligence on particular Russian intelligence officers. “What’s actually sensitive is the question you ask,” says a person familiar with these efforts. “As soon as the question comes from the high side down onto the low, that question, and the data you pull, is detectable.” Pulling troves of public data to the high side is too expensive—secret compute is a scarce resource.
The third issue is to do with the legal and ethical problems that arise in a data war. For Chinese intelligence services, a core part of their strategic competition with the West is about data. Over the past decade they have plundered huge data sets—government personnel records from America, electoral data in Britain, immigration data from India, phone logs from South Korea and road-mapping data from Taiwan.
Much of that is traditional intelligence gathering. Some of it is to enable China to catch Western spies. But it also has a larger and more sinister purpose. “Building databases of society has been [Chinese] intelligence …methodology since the 1930s,” writes Peter Mattis, a China expert and former cia analyst. “Start with the broadest possible data on individuals, then filter and target them for intel and influence.”
Western agencies are far more constrained. British spies can and do collect bulk personal data (bpd) from abroad. But if they want to retain or examine it, they need a warrant and must show that acquiring, keeping and using the data is proportionate to a specific aim. Hoarding it in case it is handy later will not do. It is easier for firms to collect bpd than agencies. The same is true in America. Emily Harding, a former cia analyst, says it is “hard or impossible” to “identify and scrub” data on Americans from large data sets—a legal requirement. So American agencies are “far behind private-sector entities with no such restrictions”.
The growing reach of the private sector also raises issues. In the 19th century the Pinkertons were used to infiltrate and intimidate unions. Today states, companies and wealthy individuals use private firms to spy on dissidents and journalists. Some worry that it is possible for less scrupulous governments to use their corporate counterparts to collect information or do things they themselves, lawfully, could not.
So far, these issues have played out among a small group of securocrats, lawyers and privacy advocates, because the public has not grasped how much of their lives is now recorded, tabulated, collected and traded. “Today, in a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid,” concluded a report for America’s director of national intelligence in 2022, commercial data “includes information on almost everyone that is of a type and level of sensitivity that historically could have been obtained, if at all, only through targeted…collection”.
This is the end
This report has shown that spying has become more difficult in many ways, and easier in some. Intelligence agencies will need to work harder just to keep up with the accelerating pace of technological change, from pervasive surveillance to ubiquitous encryption. The digitisation of the world, the data deluge and ai are threats to much traditional spywork. But those trends also create opportunities: from exposing the digital tracks of state hackers to democratising intelligence.
That is a potential boon to intelligence agencies, increasing the scale at which they can collect, widening what they can collect on and expanding the ways in which they can publicise things that might once have been too secret to share. Yet these technologies, more than the spy planes and satellites of the 20th century, are bound up with those of the civilian world and impinge on it more deeply. In the democratic world, at least, the agencies that fail to take the public with them will find that either their capabilities or their legitimacy will fall dangerously behind. ■
This article appeared in the Technology Quarterly section of the print edition under the headline “Intelligence, Inc”
Be careful out there!
Stay "Far from the madding crowd."
Amo-a,
-JackW
Monday, July 22, 2024
Sunday, July 21, 2024
Saturday, July 20, 2024
The Economist Magazine cover for 07/20/2024
The Economist
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JULY 20TH 2024
How we chose this week’s image
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Cover Story
How we chose this week’s image
Insert a clear and simple description of the image
Zanny Minton Beddoes
Editor-in-chief
When the news comes fast, cover designers must be nimble. This week began with awful news: that a gunman had tried to veto the democratic choices of millions of Americans by assassinating Donald Trump. Fortunately, the shooter failed and Mr Trump suffered only a minor wound, though a bystander was killed and others were badly injured.
Our early cover ideas stressed how close America came to having a presidential election upended. On the left we have a bullet, stark and simple, painted with stars and stripes. On the right we have a more subtle image: Old Glory, with a bullet hole just nicking the edge of its uppermost stripe and blood trickling down, as if from Mr Trump’s lacerated ear.
Neither image, however, captured the effect the shooting has had on Mr Trump’s supporters. Many are convinced that he survived thanks to divine intervention. Nearly all are rallying around a leader they believe has been persecuted: by the media, by liberal prosecutors and now by what Senator Tim Scott called “the devil…with a rifle”. The shooter’s motives are unknown, and he was killed at the scene by the Secret Service. But many Republicans are sure he must have been inspired by the terrifying things Democrats have said about their hero.
So how about an elephant waving a placard? This one depicts Mr Trump in his iconic pose after being shot, picking himself up, raising a defiant fist and growling “fight, fight, fight!” It’s a lively image, but verges too closely on the comical. So how about turning the end of an elephant’s trunk into a fist? This one is more stylish.
This final elephant has ears like wings, as if the Republican Party is about to take flight. And it is gold, a favourite Trump colour. Striking, but not quite right. A different approach, noting how Mr Trump utterly dominates the Republican Party and is shaping it as he pleases, homes in on his raised fist, this time squeezing a hand-exercise ball.
On Monday night Mr Trump announced that J.D. Vance would be his running-mate and we changed our plans. The cover could not just be about Mr Trump. It had to signal that Mr Vance is a bold and—to liberals—alarming pick. He is young, clever and has an inspiring back story, rising from an addiction-scarred Appalachian family to Yale and the Senate. He once dismissed Mr Trump as “cultural heroin”, a brief thrill that does not solve people’s problems. But now he is a fan, promoting a similar mix of anti-immigration, anti-trade and anti-globalist policies, but more articulately.
We tried a drawing of the two men, stressing the fist again but adding the newly proclaimed heir apparent in the background. This was eye-catching, but not everyone is familiar with Mr Vance’s face, so we tried a photo, emphasising Mr Trump’s bandaged ear. This looked a bit too intimate.
So we settled on a picture taken in profile. Mr Trump is in the background. He may be the more important figure, but Mr Vance is the new one, and we want to signal that we will try to help readers make sense of him. He is half Mr Trump’s age, could one day succeed him and his anointment suggests that MAGA is evolving from one man’s political vehicle into a movement that could last a long time.
We used different headlines for our American and non-American editions; not all foreigners are fluent in American political jargon. The result was a vivid snapshot of a fast-moving campaign. By the time you read this, some fresh drama may well have occurred. As I write this, calls for Joe Biden to drop out of the race are intensifying.
For our readers in Asia, we had a cover about the markets. They are close to an all-time high in America, the euro zone and Japan, and many emerging-economy stocks are booming, too. Fears of recessions have so far proven wrong, yet inflation has tumbled; investors are breathlessly optimistic. However, we think they are paying too little heed to politics. If Mr Trump wins another term, America could raise towering trade barriers and Europe could lose its NATO security umbrella. Populists around the world are pushing against economic liberalism and even central-bank independence. Investors ignore such forces at their peril.
One cover idea was to do a collage of geopolitical worries, from Israel and Iran to war and destitution. Amid the mayhem, a stylised line on a graph keeps rising. It’s good, but a trifle cluttered.
Better to use a simpler image, of a bull that’s not looking carefully at its surroundings. Here’s one with blinkers: he can see the good economic news straight ahead, but not the warning signs of geopolitical turmoil on either side.
This was precisely the idea wanted to convey, but a visual metaphor doesn’t have to be pedantically precise. We opted for the more dramatic image of a completely blindfolded bull. The first one looked too weedy, so we pumped up its muscles. He looks powerful, but headed for trouble.
Cover image
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Where would Donald Trump and J.D. Vance take America? (Leader)
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Why MAGA is the future, not just present, of the GOP (United States)
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Euphoric markets are ignoring growing political risks (Leader)
→ Stocks are on an astonishing run. Yet threats lurk (Finance and economics)
Friday, July 19, 2024
Thursday, July 18, 2024
Wednesday, July 17, 2024
The Results Of The U.S. Presidentail Election Are Not A Foregone Conclusion Yet- The RIght Wing Was Repulsed In Western Europe
The Battles and the War
FRANCE / UK
Right-wing politicians opposed to immigration, the concentration of power in Brussels, and the erosion of traditional Christian culture were expected to sweep into power during a few big elections in Europe after their recent success in elections for the European Parliament, as National Public Radio explained.
Yet in the latest parliamentary votes in the United Kingdom and France, left-wing candidates won big, ending the Conservative Party’s government in Westminster and dashing the dreams of the far-right National Rally in France to hold power in Paris – this time.
In the UK, after 14 years of Tory government, voters gave the Labour Party a landslide victory and with it Sir Keir Starmer the reins of government in an election that also saw the Scottish National Party lose seats, Politico reported. Labour, furthermore, dominated the vote in London and the North of England, traditional powerbases for the left-leaning party. A Guardian columnist wondered if the UK was “bucking” the trend of the right accumulating power in the region.
Still, Starmer faces big issues related to crumbling infrastructure, dwindling services, funding shortfalls, and other issues, noted University of Liverpool urban planning professor Alex Nurse.
“(Labour’s) huge majority should, in theory, give Starmer the clout to see through most of his political agenda,” he wrote in the Conversation. “But in reality, the victory celebrations might prove short-lived, given the size of the challenges in front of him.”
In France, a leftist coalition of moderate socialists, greens, radicals, and communists called the New Popular Front expanded its share of parliament as it took the largest share of the vote, and kept Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally – as well as centrist President Emmanuel Macron’s allies – from gaining a majority, NBC News wrote.
The French parliament, however, is now facing gridlock unless two of those three parties can somehow reach a deal to share power – which they haven’t yet, almost two weeks after the election. Still, such an arrangement would be a first in France, which has no tradition of coalition governments.
“It was a good week for Europe. It was a bad week for Europe,” author and commentator Timothy Garten Ash wrote in the European Council on Foreign Affairs about the French and British elections. “Good because Britain now has a strong, stable centrist government … Bad because France looks set for a period of weak, unstable, divided government that will hamper the whole EU (European Union).”
Garten Ash says British and French leaders needed to receive solid mandates at a time when Russian forces are fighting to conquer Ukraine, China is a threat and the US political landscape is uncertain.
Meanwhile, the Tories are in disarray. Rank-and-file conservatives are expected to conduct a purge of party leaders that Reuters described as a potential “bloodbath.”
The French left, meanwhile, have managed to unite themselves – for now – but it’s unclear how long that may last, World Politics Review wrote. Still, as Politico noted, the French left never had a plan for winning.
Le Pen, however, remains undaunted. She is likely to run for president in 2027 when Macron will step down because of term limits. “The tide is rising,” said Le Pen, according to Foreign Policy magazine. “It didn’t rise high enough this time, but it’s still rising. And as a result, our victory, in reality, is only delayed.”
The First Atomic Bomb Exploded 79 Years Ago
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2024-07-16/first-atomic-explosion-16-july-1945?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=b0ccd651-b32b-4b70-9370-ae262565e0b8
J.D. Vance At Yale Law School-A Fascinating Insight
How Yale Propelled J.D. Vance’s Career
The G.O.P. vice-presidential nominee is remembered as a warm and personable student. But some are perplexed by what they see as his shift in ideology.
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A low-angle view of a gothic tower at Yale Law School.
When Yale Law accepted J.D. Vance for the fall of 2010, it offered him a nearly full ride.Credit...Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times
Stephanie Saul
By Stephanie Saul
July 17, 2024
Updated 9:30 a.m. ET
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When J.D. Vance applied to law school, he viewed it as a pathway out of his chaotic upbringing in working-class Middletown, Ohio.
Then he won a spot at his dream school. Yale Law not only accepted him for the fall of 2010, but also offered a nearly full ride.
Over the next three years, Yale dramatically influenced the trajectory of his life, leading to important connections, a job in venture capital and marriage to a classmate.
Even his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” was partly the outgrowth of a paper he wrote in a Yale class. And he leveraged the story, which chronicles his childhood and the alienation of the working class, into a best seller, a movie deal and a political career — winning election to the U.S. Senate in 2022, at age 38.
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Despite Yale’s transformative role in his life, Mr. Vance’s relationship with the school could be summed up as conflicted.
Graduating from Yale was “the coolest thing” he had ever done, “at least on paper,” he wrote in his memoir. But he also portrayed himself as an outsider who flubbed law firm interviews and was baffled when asked whether he preferred chardonnay or sauvignon blanc — he had never heard of either. And his classmates remember his sarcasm and cynicism when discussing what he thought of as the school’s liberal bubble.
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A framed portrait of J.D. Vance hanging against a white wall.
A photograph of J.D. Vance at Yale Law School, which displays portraits of notable graduates.Credit...James Bhandary-Alexander
Recently, he has adopted a more oppositional tone, taking on tax breaks for top universities. “Elite universities have become expensive day care centers for coddled children,” he wrote on social media.
A close look at Mr. Vance’s record at Yale, though, shows that he adapted rapidly, taking advantage of the school’s heady social and academic opportunities. He cooked for charity fund-raisers, organized reading groups, doted on his German shepherd, Casper, and led The Yale Law Journal’s flag football team. He spent a summer working on Capitol Hill.
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Many students and professors remember Mr. Vance as warm, personable and even charismatic. But several also said they were perplexed by what they saw as Mr. Vance’s profound ideological shift. They understood that he was conservative politically, but they viewed him as a Republican in the mold of John McCain or Mitt Romney.
Now, they say that he has abandoned his Never Trumper principles, taking hard lines against immigration and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, positions they believe he would not have previously embraced.
Sofia Nelson, a former classmate who is transgender and was once a close friend of both Mr. Vance and his wife, recalled that Mr. Vance delivered home-baked treats when they underwent top surgery. But years of friendship ended in 2021 over his support for an Arkansas bill opposing transgender care for minors.
“It hurt my feelings when he started saying hateful things about trans people,” they said.
Another classmate, Josh McLaurin, no longer talks to him, either.
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As apartment mates during their first year at Yale, Mr. McLaurin felt an affinity to Mr. Vance because they had both graduated from state schools. But their friendship began to fray, Mr. McLaurin said, after he chafed at what he viewed as Mr. Vance’s cynical and sarcastic jokes aimed at Yale elites.
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A smiling J.D. Vance in a crowd of supporters holding Trump signs.
Mr. Vance at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday, where he was nominated for vice president.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Even so, the two stayed in touch after graduating in 2013. As the Republican presidential primaries were underway in February 2016, Mr. Vance discussed his dislike for Mr. Trump in a Facebook message. “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler,” Mr. Vance wrote.
Mr. McLaurin, disturbed by Mr. Vance’s shift to support Mr. Trump, disclosed that message in 2022, during Mr. Vance’s campaign for U.S. Senate.
“He realized that the only way that he could realize and give effect to his own anger in politics was to identify with the MAGA movement,” said Mr. McLaurin, who is a Democratic state senator in Georgia.
In his memoir, Mr. Vance describes arriving at Yale, feeling like an “awe-struck tourist.”
“Yale Law, with its prestige and privilege, was a culture shock unlike anything I had ever experienced,” he wrote.
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But he developed a cadre of confidantes in a class of about 15 students assigned to remain together through the first semester. In his book, Mr. Vance describes his closest friends in that group as “misfit toys.”
In addition to Sofia Nelson, now a public defender in Detroit, the group included his future wife, Usha Chilukuri, the daughter of Indian immigrants, and Jamil Jivani, a Canadian from a mixed-race family. (Mr. Jivani, now a Conservative member of Canada’s Parliament, remains a close friend to Mr. Vance, but would not comment for this article.)
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The Ohio steel town that shaped J.D. Vance’s life and politics.
Some who observed Mr. Vance in the group recall how he at first struggled with assignments. And his book describes comments he got that first year: “Not good at all,” one professor wrote. And on another paper: “This is a vomit of sentences masquerading as a paragraph. Fix.”
Amy Chua, a professor who taught his first-year contracts class, recalled in an interview that he scored near the top of 100 students on the exam, and that he admitted he had studied extra hard for the test.
It appeared, even to Ms. Chua, she said, that he lacked the intense interest in law exhibited by some students.
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Mr. Vance worked in a highly regarded law clinic for veterans and drove to Washington to negotiate on behalf of a client, but he was not among the most engaged students. By 2011, he had mostly lost interest in practicing law, he would later write.
George L. Priest, a Yale Law professor who has long identified as a Republican, recalled that Mr. Vance was good enough to be hired as his research assistant but not a standout. “He didn’t distinguish himself in any particular way in my view,” Mr. Priest said.
Mr. Vance won a spot on the staff of The Yale Law Journal — a prestigious position that is often a steppingstone to a coveted appellate court clerkship — but not as one of its top editors. He instead worked with a group of editors whose primary job was to check citations.
An avid Ohio State football fan, he was better known for organizing the publication’s flag football team, which played against other law review teams. In a posting to the Wall, a Yale chat group, he tried to recruit other staff members to the team, dangling a trip to Boston to play The Harvard Law Review. Then, he resorted to self-deprecation.
“My name is JD Hamel,” he wrote on the Wall in September 2012, using the surname acquired from his stepfather, one of several paternal figures in his unstable childhood. “Many of you don’t know me. Those who do understand that I’m a little chubby and a lot slow. If I can play flag football, so can you.”
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And in a paragraph that foreshadowed his political ambitions, he wrote: “Football is the most popular sport in America. Twenty years from now, when you’re at the county fair convincing Billy Bob and Gunther to support your fledgling campaign, you damn well better know the difference between offense and defense.”
In 2013, Mr. Vance, again posting as JD Hamel, complained on the Wall that he had filed his taxes in February but hadn’t received a refund by April.
“If I don’t get my refund by the time I graduate and go on vacation, I’ll be left to conclude that the Obama administration targets political enemies through tax laws,” he said, in a remark that appears to have been tongue-in-cheek.
One major influence at Yale, he has said, was a 2011 talk by Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist known for co-founding PayPal and supporting hard-right political candidates.
Mr. Thiel spoke about elite professionals trapped in hypercompetitive but unrewarding jobs while innovation had stalled.
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Mr. Vance would later write that the talk led him to forgo a law career; he would practice for less than two years.
“Peter’s talk remains the most significant moment of my time at Yale Law School,” Mr. Vance wrote. “He articulated a feeling that had until then remained unformed: that I was obsessed with achievement in se — not as an end to something meaningful, but to win a social competition.”
Inspired, Mr. Vance decided to track down the billionaire, according to Dan Driscoll, one of a small group of fellow veterans at Yale Law.
“I remember sitting at the kitchen table,” Mr. Driscoll said. “We Googled ‘Peter Thiel @’ for about two hours.” They finally located a Stanford University email address, and Mr. Vance sent him a note, according to Mr. Driscoll.
“Peter wrote back and said, ‘Stop by my house next time you’re out here,’” said Mr. Driscoll, a businessman who ran for Congress from North Carolina in 2022 as a Republican.
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Mr. Thiel would become a major supporter of both Mr. Vance’s venture capital firm and his Senate campaign.
Professor Chua was another pivotal connection.
Mr. Vance’s contracts class with her coincided with the release of her book about tough-love parenting, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.”
Toward the end of the semester, Mr. Vance, who had read the book, sent her an email, attaching a 20-page piece about growing up with a drug-addicted mother.
“You have a book in you,” she emailed back.
He continued to develop a 60-page manuscript in another class taught by Ms. Chua, international business transactions. Mr. Vance used his family’s story to discuss the ills befalling working-class white people, and infused personal stories with political theory.
“‘This grand theory is not working,’” Ms. Chua said she told him. “‘Turn this into your own memoir.’”
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“I think he took another whole year,” she added. “He kept working on it. He did independent studies with me.”
Then she introduced him to her literary agent, Tina Bennett.
He was off.
Sharon LaFraniere contributed reporting.
Stephanie Saul reports on colleges and universities, with a recent focus on the dramatic changes in college admissions and the debate around diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education. More about Stephanie Saul
See more on: 2024 Elections, J.D. Vance, Donald Trump
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What If The Nazis Invaded The US In World War II In The Same Way They Invaded Russia?
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Carl Hamilton
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Historian with a focus in 20th century US/Soviet mil his.Jun 27
How did the Soviet industry fare during Operation Barbarossa? Did they have enough resources to replace losses during major battles like Kursk and Stalingrad?
In 1941 during the catastrophe that was Operation Barbarossa, Zhukov was chief of staff, and at one point he described in a memo from the Stavka, that the situation was “pretty difficult” and not very likely to improve. This is a slight underestimation. There are two ways of looking at it, one slightly optimistic and one slightly pessimistic. One the bright side, the Soviet Union persevered, were able to establish and increase their military industrial output and win the war, which is extremely impressive while losing so much of their territory.
On the other hand, when Zhukov said the situation was difficult, what he meant to say in expressive words was that the Soviet economy was a bucket of dogshit on wheels going down a hill at 100km/h towards a very solidly built brick wall.
From 1941 to the end of 1942, the Soviet lost about 34% of their entire country’s output, including 48% of agricultural output, 32% of the civilian population and 23% of their factories. Disregarding the extreme military losses, that’s quite a thing to lose within 18 months. Imagine for a moment, that America was invaded, and their starting point was that America had lost from New York to New Orleans and to Chicago. This was the conditions, something America itself pointed out in WW2.
In short, it’s difficult to even describe the scale of what the Soviets lost, and I can tell you that they did not recover their civilian society until the 1950s, that’s how great the devastation was. The fact that the Soviets were able to produce anything at all is impressive, the fact that they outproduced the Germans under these cataclysmic conditions, is a downright miracle.
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Saturday, July 13, 2024
The Economist Magazine Cover For 07-13-2023
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This week news about elections in Britain and France rumbled on, as did Joe Biden’s unsteady presidential campaign. But we decided to step back and focus on an issue in which a little effort could do a vast amount of good. This is the quest to help young brains reach their potential.
Around the world, 22% of under-fives—roughly 150m children—are malnourished to the point of stunting. Half the world’s children suffer from micronutrient deficiency, which can also impede brain development. Poor nutrition and a lack of stimulation can translate into a loss of as many as 15 IQ points. This can lower incomes by a quarter. Damage during the “golden window” of the first 1,000 days after conception is likely to be permanent. Demography adds urgency to appeals for action: fertility is highest in countries where malnutrition is most widespread.
This calls to mind alphabetti spaghetti, a dish seemingly brought into existence by a rhyme. Here we have the brainy version, in which a young Einstein is picking out the famous equation for mass-energy equivalence. It’s fun, but it’s Western. The ill-nourishment we are talking about is in poor and middle-income countries.
Two slices of bread have been chomped to create the negative space for a brain. That fits our story. Many parents, even in middle-income countries, think it is enough to stuff an infant with stodgy carbohydrates but neglect protein and micronutrients. Sexism plays a role, too. In patriarchal societies, husbands often eat first, wolf the tasty protein and leave their pregnant wives short of iron. This is clever, but hard to grasp.
Here is a cover based on phrenology, which mapped cranial bumps onto character traits. The missing piece just happens to resemble a floret of broccoli.
It makes sense for us to point to science. Researchers in Bangladesh are looking into how most women in local slums have inflamed intestines, meaning they lack the right gut bacteria to absorb nutrients properly. In Africa scientists are working out how to treat anaemia (a lack of iron) without encouraging malaria (since the parasite thrives in iron-rich blood).
Yet phrenology is utterly bogus. In a field like nutrition, which itself has a weakness for fads and fantasies, that makes it an unfortunate metaphor.
This is a beautiful design. For want of a brain-shaped handful of beans, young minds are being stunted. Families sheltering from warfare cannot venture out to plant or harvest. Hungry children fall sick more often, and the energy they spend battling bugs cannot be devoted to growing grey matter.
But we felt the begging-bowl sent the wrong message. Poverty is far from the only cause of brain-stunting malnutrition. Roughly half of the small children who have very restricted diets do not come from poor families. Often the problem is simply that parents do not understand what makes a balanced diet.
The broccoli is back, stylised to look like a brain. It conveys our focus on childhood, nutrition and intelligence, which is good. But it also looks too much like a cover on eating five helpings of fruit and vegetables a day. That is a commendable habit, but it is not our focus.
We liked this better. We have rendered the world-brain in gold, because pinkish-grey was off-putting. Here you can see the great longitudinal fissure separating the cerebrum. It seemed overly anatomical, so we tried rotating the hemispheres to create an echo of the equator. Because that looked wrong, too, we opted for a uniform, wrinkled, golden sphere.
Over the years our cover has featured many images of war and destruction. And yet a simple brain was too much to stomach. It’s funny what makes people squeamish.
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The Economist Magazine Cover For 07/06/2024
Cover Story: Making the case for Biden to withdraw
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We had one worldwide cover in print this week, about the growing pressure on Joe Biden to abandon the race for the White House. Unusually, we also had one extra digital cover. This was our take on the outcome of the British election, which was determined after we went to press.
Mr Biden had planned for the presidential debate on June 27th to prove his critics wrong about the decline in his mental abilities, and so to revive his ailing campaign. Instead he struggled for 90 agonising minutes to recall words and facts and was unable to land arguments against a weak opponent. It was a catastrophe.
Mr Biden is blameless for his failing powers, but not for the cover-up that followed the debate. Abetted by his family, senior staff and Democratic elites, the president has insisted that he is still up to the world’s toughest job. The folly behind that falsehood became the central thrust of our argument.
Mr Biden deserves to be remembered for his accomplishments and his decency rather than his decline. But there is no getting away from the fact that his mental and physical competence have become central to this race. Our task was to represent that without being crass or cruel.
The false teeth on the presidential lectern are not only off-putting, they also stray into Monty Python territory.
A recliner in the Oval is better—because it contrasts the fitness of man with the demands of his position. Mr Biden can still appear dynamic during short, scripted appearances. But you cannot run a superpower by autocue. And you cannot put an international crisis on hold because the president is having a bad night.
This melancholy drawing points to a different set of risks. As the head of state, America’s president embodies the virtues of the republic. The more he is seen as a stubborn old man who leaves the real work to his courtiers, the more he will undermine Americans’ faith in their system of government.
The trouble with this autumnal scene is that we were feeling angry at the Democratic Party’s hypocrisy. Mr Biden’s campaign team insist that the president works so hard he leaves his staff drained. His supporters argue that those awful 90 minutes should not overshadow the past three and a half years. But what matters is whether they foreshadow the next four. For years they have sneered at Republican politicians’ failure to stand up to Donald Trump, and here they were failing to be straight about Mr Biden.
This is angry alright. We might have gone with it except for rumours that Democrats were beginning to speak out against Mr Biden. If he did the honourable thing this weekend, and withdrew from the race, our cover would rightly seem to be a cruel misjudgment of the man and his character.
That is why we settled on a cover based on this. This sketch is confusing, because Mr Biden is clearly not the man behind the Zimmer. By taking him away, however, we could both focus on the presidency and also have a cover that would make sense if the president pulled out of the race.
That left the question of taste. Some may feel that this cover pokes fun at the physically infirm. Yet the Zimmer frame is a universal symbol of failing powers even if, obviously, you can struggle to walk without struggling to think. You only have to be aware of the context to know that we are not saying that physically disabled people should be barred from serving as president.
Others may feel that criticising Mr Biden is simply too harsh. But harshness is justified here. The Biden team are campaigning on the claim that a Trump presidency would be a disaster for America. Yet their attempts to shore up their candidate contradict what tens of millions of Americans saw with their own eyes. That will only make a Trump presidency more probable.
A few Democrats have called for Mr Biden to step aside. To bring about the political renewal that America now so clearly needs, more must come forward. It is not too late.
Britain’s election took place while we were publishing this week’s edition. In 2019 Labour limped to its worst result in almost a century; Boris Johnson won a victory that was meant to keep him in power for a decade. Under the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer, Labour has swept to power, with a projected majority of at least 170, just shy of the one Sir Tony Blair achieved in 1997. The Conservatives have been battered: their expected tally of 121 seats is worse than any in their modern history.
Here is the new prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, painting the town red—and spilling some enamel on Larry the Downing Street cat. This change of management is a good result for Britain. A country that was one of the first in the West to succumb to populist radicalism when it voted for Brexit has picked a serious-minded centrist who pledges stability.
There are lots of reasons for Sir Keir to be cautious—not least that he is a cautious man. However, he will need to be bold to improve Britain’s chronically low productivity and raise the efficiency of the British state. If he succeeds, he may offer a lesson to centrists elsewhere: not just how to win power, but how to use it. It starts with him seizing the moment.
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The Russian Meat Grinder
‘Meat-grinder’ Recruitment
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The Russian army is recruiting female convicts to ship to the frontlines in Ukraine. In exchange for enlisting to serve as medics, radio operators and snipers, the former prisoners receive a $2,000-a-month salary, reported the New York Times. The newspaper estimated that around 40 of 400 inmates in a Saint Petersburg prison for women recently accepted the offer.
They are just the latest example of the Russian military’s desperation to find more bodies to throw into the “meat grinder” of war that has developed in the two years since Russia invaded Ukraine. Tens of thousands of male convicts have also joined the Russian effort, including murderers and rapists.
President Vladimir Putin claims that NATO provoked the invasion and has prolonged the war due to Western military aid to Ukraine. But he has also rejected the idea of Ukraine as a sovereign state outside Mother Russia. To realize his policy goals, more than 150,000 Russian soldiers have perished in fighting citizens of a country that the president claims doesn’t exist, according to Agence France-Presse.
To make up for such epic losses, Russia has welcomed recruits from Cuba, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, India, Zambia, Somalia, and elsewhere, wrote the Kyiv Independent, an English-language Ukrainian new site. He’s offering citizenship, high salaries and jobs in Moscow to those foreigners who help Russia fight Ukraine.
Even so, many of the thousands of Nepalis in the Russian army want to quit. Now, Nepal has even stopped issuing foreign work permits for citizens who would seek employment in Russia to prevent more from entering the war. Nepalese leaders have been in talks with Russian leaders to repatriate the remains of fallen Nepali soldiers amid other issues, added Al Jazeera.
Around 2,000 Sri Lankans have also been fighting on Russia’s side. They claim they were duped into coming to Russia, where they believed they would find a civilian job but instead found themselves pressed into the country’s military.
The salary of $2,000 a month has lured Cubans who generally receive less than $25 a month, noted the BBC. An offer of Russian citizenship also entices African mercenaries who might find more opportunities in a Eurasian power than in their struggling, developing countries.
These efforts have helped Russian officials make the claim that 100,000 people have joined up since the beginning of the year, reported Reuters.
But some have been tricked into coming, according to Babel, a site funded by supporters of Ukraine. Recruiters promise jobs – and then tell the applicants they must first pay off their recruitment expenses by serving in the army.
Or they respond to fake ads for jobs or to study in Russian universities, as did Siddhartha Dhakal, 22, from Mandandeupur in Nepal.
Dhakal, a student, had paid to go to Russia to study medicine, but found on his arrival that he had been tricked and that his only option was to join the military. He was sent to the front and captured by Ukrainian forces in November.
“He is our only one son, our only hope,” his father, Biru Dhakal, told the Guardian, sobbing. “Please bring him home.”
500,000 San Francisco Bay Families Find Their Finacial Life Held Hostage By A Ransomware Attack
There is a huge local problem here in the San Francisco Bay Area right now that has relevance all over the world. Patelco is a credit union that serves over 500,000 customers throughout the Bay Area. Some cybercriminals have taken control of the computer system for the credit union. They are demanding an undisclosed ransom (Probably millions of dollars) to release control of the computer system.
If you do your banking with this credit union, you have huge problems. You cannot look at your deposit accounts and credit card accounts. If you go to purchase with your debit card, it will not work. Checks written to pay bills will not be cleared properly, if at all. We all have critical bills like electricity bills, water bills, etc. that must be paid or there will be cut-offs of electricity, natural gas, and water. Most of us have credit card bills, auto loans, consumer loans, etc. If these are not paid on time, one's credit rating will suffer. One's car loans could go into default. One's home loan could default. Repossession of cars and houses could follow. This is one of a person's worst nightmares.
The first question that we need to ask is "What went wrong at Patelco Credit Union?" In simple terms, an employee was not being alert and attentive. They clicked on what looked like an innocent link. The criminals were let into the bank's computer. As a matter of interest, from time to time I get a text message that appears to come from the U.S. Postal Service. It claims that a package is awaiting my pickup. I am directed to click on a link. I do not fall for this one. Elena gets questionable links from time to time. She always comes to me and asks me if it is bonafide. Sometimes these criminals use more sophisticated methods than links to break into a computer system. I will leave those to the cybersecurity experts.
The second question is how do you as a person or family protect yourself from a disaster like this? A simple pearl of wisdom from long ago applies here: "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." Have a backup financial institution and a high-limit credit card not tied to any bank. Also learn a lesson that I have learned from many dear Asian friends. Keep cash in the house.
The third question is what does Patelco Credit Union due to solve this crisis? Let us hope that they were smart enough to buy insurance against such a cyber-attack. Law enforcement agencies criticize insurers who quickly pay the criminals. It incentivizes others to launch these attacks. I hope that Patelco had a cyber-attack contingency plan. In my mind, an organization should resist paying this ransom. Sometimes a large investment must be made to rebuild a compromised computer system and make it more secure. Several other major credit unions in the Bay Area could step up and provide these 500,000 depositors with services while the computer system is being rebuilt.
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