America’s Role in the New Middle East

The Right Way to Manage a Nuclear North Korea

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Issue 1723 - November 23/11/2018

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A Venezuelan migrant toddler walks inside a humanitarian camp in Bogota on November 2018 ,13. Venezuelans migrants are transferred voluntarily to a humanitarian provisional shelter by Bogota›s Town Hall, the first city to announce an ‹Integral Plan of Attention for Venezuelans›, to offer social and humanitarian services. As reported by the United Nations Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), refugees and migrants from Venezuela around the world have reached three million. (Getty)

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A picture taken on November 2018 ,13, shows a woman walking by as a Tanzanian soldier from the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) patrols against Ugandan Allied Democratic Force (ADF) rebels in Beni. The Beni area has for the last four years been under seige from the ADF, an Islamist armed group that has killed hundreds of people since 2014. (Getty) 6

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America’s Role in the New Middle East The Need for a Coherent and Defined Strategy 8

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Iran is active and employing the tool of Shia militias as it seeks to extend its influence throughout the Arab Middle East. seeks to extend its influence throughout the Arab Middle East. With its effort to build a military infrastructure, embed the Revolutionary Guard and deepen Shia militia presence in Syria, the potential for a wider conflict with Israel has grown significantly. But multiple militaries are either in Syria or are operating there. Any area that has the militaries of the Syrians, Russians, the Turks, the Iranians, the Americans, and Israelis in close proximity is bound to be unstable and contain the seeds of escalation.

King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud presents state medal to U.S. President Donald Trump at Al-Yamamah Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on May ,20 2017. (Getty Images)

So far de-confliction has prevented a wider war, but there are new uncertainties after the Russians blamed the Israelis for the downing of one of their planes and the fifteen personnel who were on broad and were killed. Even though it was a Syrian missile that downed the plane and Israeli aircrafts that had carried out a strike were already back in Israel, the Russians could not blame the very forces they have intervened to save. In the aftermath of this event, the Russian tone toward Israel has changed—even as the Israelis have declared they will continue to hit Iranian/Syrian/Shia militia targets that might be the site of qualitatively new weapons that Israel sees as posing unacceptable threats to the Jewish state.

By Dennis Ross* For most policy-makers and pundits, the Middle East has long been a tinderbox. American presidents in the past feared a US-Soviet confrontation in the event of Arab-Israeli wars.

Richard Nixon, at the outset of his presidency, said a major effort was needed to prevent a war.

In no small part, he said that’s because he believed that the US retained vital interests in the region.

Today, the Middle East remains highly unstable.

Terrible conflicts in Syria and Yemen continue, and have taken a horrendous human toll. Iran is active and employing the tool of Shia militias as it

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In such circumstances, the US needs to have not just a stable presence in the region, but convey a sense of resolve about its goals in the area. If there was one theme I heard during a recent visit to Abu Dhabi, this was it. No doubt, the killing of Khashoggi and its aftermath added to the sense of unease that I felt in speaking to people at the 5th annual Abu Dhabi Strategic Debate. I heard concerns about Turkey trying to exploit the issue to gain advantage and put Saudi Arabia on the defensive.

Unease is driving these questions—and fair or not,

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there is unease about the US and its staying power.

Historically, the US saw great danger in allowing vacuums to form in the Middle East. It defined its interests in terms of ensuring that no hostile power gained control of the flow of petrochemicals from the region. Countering terror and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction came later as key elements of the American perception of its interests in the region. As a result, threats to the flow of oil, of terror, of proliferation and the need to pre-empt the possibility of the worst weapons getting into the worst hands all came to shape the American policy and commitment to the Middle East. Arab-Israeli peace as a goal was long-standing—for presidents like Carter and Nixon, it was a key not just to avoid possible confrontation with the Soviets but also to make it easier to manage our relations with Arabs and Israelis alike. For later presidents like Bush and Obama, it was seen as part of a counter-extremism policy because the conflict fed terrorist recruiting and gave the Iranians on the one hand and al Qaeda on the other a tool to use against those Arab leaders friendly to the United States.

At a time of great uncertainty in the region and questions about American staying power that began with the Obama “Asian pivot” and have continued with Trump’s refrain that we have wasted “7$ trillion” in Middle Eastern wars, there does need to be a new articulation of why the region remains important to the United States and why we will remain in it.

Today, the Trump administration speaks of its anti-

For my part, a guiding principle for such a framework would be that we will act to prevent vacuums from forming in the region. As we have seen in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, vacuums are always filled by the worst forces.

ISIS and anti-Iran policies and appears poised to present a peace plan. But the policies are not tied together in a coherent approach—and that, too, was what I heard consistently at the Abu Dhabi conference.

For my part, a guiding principle for such a framework would be that we will act to prevent vacuums from forming in the region. As we have seen in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, vacuums are always filled by the worst forces. It is true as well in Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy—when there is no visible diplomacy or process, hope declines and the views become more rejectionist. Being determined to prevent vacuums from forming need not mean that the US must go it alone or assume the sole burden of acting. We can look to partners to assume their responsibilities, knowing they are more likely to do so if they know the US will be there to back them.

The irony is that we are more likely to have partners if local actors know the US is reliable and is not leaving the Middle East. Perhaps, it is time for the Trump administration to explain not only to the American people but also our putative Arab partners what is guiding our policy

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Syrians walk along a destroyed street in the northern city of Afrin on May ,5 2018, two months after Ankara-led forces seized Afrin from Kurdish fighters. (Getty Images)

It would be reassuring if there were a clear framework guiding the US policy and it offered an explanation for why America would not withdraw from the area. in the Middle East and how and why we will sustain it. My simple answer is that the Las Vegas rules don’t apply to the region—namely, what takes place in the region—terror, refugees, and war—does not stay in the region. As such, withdrawing and leaving a vacuum will sooner or later affect the US—only when it does the cost will be higher. *American Middle East envoy Dennis Ross has served in the Administrations of Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, and is counselor and Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in Washington.

Members of Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement salute behind the coffins of three comrades killed in combat in Syria during their funeral in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh on November 2017 ,8.

(Getty Images)

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The Right Way to Manage a Nuclear North Korea Exploring “Left-of-Launch” Options Is a Dangerous Mistake 12

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North Korea’s de facto head of state, Kim Yong Nam, has suggested that nuclear capabilities - the country’s “treasured sword”- may be crucial to the country’s economy, as well: he describes them as enabling rather than inhibiting economic development.

Washington needs to accept that North Korea will remain a nuclear power for the foreseeable future and manage the situation accordingly. For 70 years, the U.S.-South Korean alliance successfully sustained deterrence on the Korean Peninsula, preventing the resumption of hostilities after the 1953 armistice put an end to the Korean War. Now the task will be to build and maintain a stable deterrent relationship with a nuclear-armed North Korea, a perennially insecure state with a fundamentally distrustful attitude toward the United States.

The new reality of North Korea’s capabilities— including the threat to the continental United States— demands careful thought about how Washington might influence nuclear decision-making in Pyongyang. A stable deterrence relationship requires making Kim feel secure about his arsenal, not insecure.

North Korea›s leader Kim Jong Un (L) shakes hands with US President Donald Trump (R) at the start of their historic USNorth Korea summit, at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore on June ,12 971911210 .2018

By Ankit Panda* North Korea is a nuclear weapons power, and even though Kim Jong Un signed his name onto three declarations this year pledging “denuclearization”— two with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and one with U.S. President Donald Trump—there’s no indication that he will give up his nuclear capability any time soon. He sees nuclear weapons as essential to his regime’s survival and, ultimately, his security.

North Korea’s de facto head of state, Kim Yong Nam, has suggested that nuclear capabilities—the country’s “treasured sword”—may be crucial to the country’s

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One example of a counterproductive posture is the widely reported U.S. effort to develop “left-of-launch” techniques, designed to disable North Korea’s missiles before they can be fired. North Korean decisionmakers, including Kim, are well aware of this pursuit.

Although the prospect of disabling an adversary’s missiles prior to launch may sound like a no-brainer for anyone interested in defending the United States and its allies from nuclear attack, the endeavor can backfire in ways that are particularly destabilizing.

In fact, given what is known publicly about North Korea’s capabilities and its nuclear command and control systems and procedures, sustained U.S. pursuit of such techniques could greatly raise the likelihood

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of nuclear war.

PYONGYANG’S COMMAND AND CONTROL Kim began 2018 by reminding the world of precisely such a danger. Seeking to put an end to lingering rumors of a U.S. limited “bloody nose” strike on North Korea, he insisted in his New Year’s Day address that the United States “will not dare to invade us because we currently have a powerful nuclear deterrent.” He added, “The whole of its mainland is within the range of our nuclear strike and the nuclear button is on my office desk all the time; the United States needs to be clearly aware that this is not merely a threat but a reality.” In the same speech, Kim called for the mass production of the monstrous ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons that he had tested in the preceding months, leaving no doubt that he considered North Korea an operational nuclear weapons power.

Kim’s “nuclear button” remark was designed to draw attention to a specific facet of North Korea’s nuclear deterrent: that it was operational and that ultimately he alone controlled a nuclear launch. But for any nuclear state, destructive capabilities do not in themselves produce deterrence or strategic stability with an adversary. As the United States and the Soviet Union learned during the early years of the Cold War, a robust system of nuclear command and control is more than an afterthought; it is critical to preventing nuclear war.

Kim now faces the challenge of managing and

But the ultimate left-of-launch capability for Washington—and what would be tempting in a serious crisis—would be to tamper with Kim’s ability to press his proverbial nuclear button.

controlling his country’s nuclear capability, not least by making critical decisions about who can authorize and physically release nuclear weapons, when, and under what conditions. Like every other leader who exercises authority over a nuclear arsenal, Kim will have to navigate the so-called always-never dilemma of nuclear command and control. As articulated by the political scientist Peter Feaver, the dilemma refers to the fact that “leaders want a high assurance that [nuclear] weapons will always work when directed and a similar assurance the weapons will never be used in the absence of authorized direction.” Nuclear powers use a combination of methods and procedures to balance these priorities, both positive (such that nuclear weapons can be launched when ordered to be) and negative (such that nuclear weapons cannot be released otherwise).

For Kim, this will mean ensuring that his nuclear weapons remain responsive enough to deter the United States but that the launch procedure is not so delegated or loose as to risk an unauthorized or accidental launch—an event that would elicit a backlash that would surely destroy his regime. Although little is known publicly about North Korea’s nuclear

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Korean People›s Army (KPA) soldiers stand atop armoured vehicles during a military parade on Kim Il Sung square in Pyongyang on September .2018 ,9 1029604174

of theater-range nuclear weapons in Northeast Asia alone would have meant his certain demise. Now, however, he can hold in reserve an arsenal of ICBMs to have some hope of using nuclear weapons to stave off an invasion of his territory and have a fighting chance of deterring the United States from pushing on, given his ability to hold the U.S. homeland at risk.

Recent diplomacy between Washington and Pyongyang, however slow-moving, is intended to reduce the odds of war, such that in 2018, the issue of North Korean command and control may not seem immediately salient. But North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is here to stay, and there’s no guarantee that the tensions that colored late 2017 won’t return at some point. The question of what happens in a renewed period of crisis should be concerning.

THE PROBLEM WITH LEFT-OFLAUNCH TECHNIQUES The United States’ newfound interest in preemptively disabling North Korean nuclear delivery vehicles amplifies such concerns. Under the Obama command and control infrastructure, the country has administration, the U.S. Department of Defense— made at least a few key components of its nuclear in coordination with parts of the intelligence studying left-of-launch doctrine clear. For instance, in 2013, the Workers’ community—began techniques for sabotaging North Korean launches.

Party of Korea adopted the Law on Consolidating Position of Nuclear Weapons State. This law, among other things, made clear that “the nuclear weapons of Not much is known about how far these efforts the DPRK can be used only by a final order of the have been carried out in practice, but in theory the Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army United States would seek to use remote sabotage— to repel invasion or attack from a hostile nuclear presumably through undisclosed cyber-capabilities— to disable or tamper with specific North Korean missile weapons state and make retaliatory strikes.” launch software and computers. Another approach That statement clarified that only Kim—who might be to disrupt missile-manufacturing supply currently holds the title of the supreme commander chains. A leaked May 2017 unclassified Department of the Korean People’s Army—could order a launch. of Defense document described techniques that would It also laid out the circumstances under which North be both “non-kinetic” and short of the United Nations Korea would use its nuclear arsenal, but did so in charter definition of a “use of force.” But for North vague language designed to give very little away Korea, the effect of a left-of-launch mission would and maximize useful ambiguity. Given the regime’s be not much different from that of an old-fashioned capabilities, incentives, and the asymmetric balance counterforce strike: the United States would have put of power between North Korea and the United States North Korea’s missiles out of action before they were and its allies, nuclear first-use remains a possible ever used. rational choice for Kim. That’s why his acquisition of an intercontinental-range ballistic missile last year Hopes for the viability of certain left-of-launch was an especially big deal: it completed the basis for techniques—particularly remote sabotage—should his rational nuclear strategy. In the past, Kim’s use be tempered. Neither North Korea’s Cold War–era,

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reverse-engineered Russian Scud missiles nor its newer, homemade ones are at all likely to be digitally networked. It’s highly improbable that a U.S. Cyber Command component unit will be able to flip a switch in Fort Meade, Maryland, and thereby disable a roadmobile missile launcher in North Korea’s Chagang Province.

The United States might more modestly—and more effectively—tamper with networked equipment associated with North Korea’s missile manufacturing, in order to bake imperfections into serially produced missiles. But the ultimate left-of-launch capability for Washington—and what would be tempting in a serious crisis—would be to tamper with Kim’s ability to press his proverbial nuclear button. Depending on North Korea’s command and control infrastructure— whether it is based on radio, cellular, fiber optic, or, perhaps, soon even satellite communications—this may be the most promising means by which to prevent a North Korean launch.

The very discussion of left-of-launch capabilities, however, has had dubious implications for nuclear stability—even if the U.S. show of interest in them has been nothing more than a psychological operation to sow doubt in Kim’s ability to control his force. The prospect that his direct control over the nuclear button could be sabotaged gives Kim incentive to make different means to a nuclear launch available, thus erring on the risker side of the always-never dilemma.

The incentive to do this mounts dangerously in the event of a renewed crisis on the peninsula. In such a scenario, to maintain a credible deterrent posture, Kim would almost certainly seek to delegate some authority in advance of a strike and perhaps even order North Korea’s nuclear warheads, which are likely stored separately in peacetime, mated with their delivery vehicles. The history of the Korean People’s Army suggests that this type of decentralization would be highly unusual, but the requirements of operating nuclear forces may lead to these kinds of changes, especially in a crisis.

and control procedures that make the launch of its nuclear weapons much more likely. Sustained U.S. interest in left-of-launch capabilities might even push North Korea to seek some sort of mechanism ensuring that Kim’s untimely demise, or even rumors of it in the fog of war, would result in the release of any and all nuclear weapons that were available to the Korean People’s Army.

Furthermore, given the publicized U.S. exploration of left-of-launch measures, any perception that Washington is trying to disable North Korea’s force— even if it is not—could quickly convince Kim that he is in a “use them or lose them” situation. This could result in a much larger nuclear strike at the outset of a conflict than anyone anticipates, as Kim fears that he has a limited window to fire not only his theater-range missiles but also ICBMs at the United States.

MANAGING NUCLEAR DANGERS

Because Kim cannot have confidence that his regime or arsenal would survive a U.S. attack, planning for These scenarios may seem far-fetched given the any crisis with North Korea must account for the diplomatic process under way with North Korea, but possibility of a sharp shift in North Korean command they are precisely the sort that require forethought.

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Aircrafts peform a fly-by during a mass rally on Kim Il Sung square in Pyongyang on September ,9 1029603560 .2018

It also laid out the circumstances under which North Korea would use its nuclear arsenal, but did so in vague language designed to give very little away and maximize useful ambiguity. the details and techniques might be novel, but this is nothing more than a disruptive and new kind of counterforce, with all of its attendant downsides. It motivates North Korea to build a larger, more diverse system, and to launch first before the United States can disarm it.

Washington must weigh the benefits of left-of-launch operations against the costs.

If a conventional war were to begin on the peninsula, with nuclear escalation a present risk, the United States and its allies would seek to promptly disable or destroy North Korea’s nuclear assets. In this telling, left-of-launch capabilities are a desirable addition to whatever kinetic action might be possible. If taking out North Korea’s physical weapons would take multiple rounds of aircraft sorties in a conflict, for example, left-of-launch capabilities might provide that extra edge necessary to prevent nuclear annihilation. But when one considers that North Korea already knows all of this, the costs of left-of-launch quickly begin to outweigh the benefits.

To manage and reduce nuclear tension with North Korea in the short term, the Pentagon should publish a public report on the circumstances under which the United States would employ so-called nonkinetic means to disable an adversary’s nuclearcapable systems. These remain poorly understood and reporting since 2017 can only amplify North Korean insecurities and encourage a dangerous drift in Kim’s calculations. Congress, meanwhile, should elicit testimony from Defense Department policy staff on how, if at all, the United States is working to manage risks as it pursues these capabilities. Finally, as part of the diplomatic process with North Korea, the United States should explore avenues by which Pyongyang might privately communicate components of its nuclear doctrine.

Critics may point to the risks of this offering legitimacy to North Korea’s arsenal, but the benefits of managing nuclear dangers outweigh this largely symbolic cost. Whether U.S.policymakers want to accept it or not, North Korea is the United States’ third nuclear-armed adversary. To defend U.S. allies and the U.S. homeland requires Washington to make a serious effort to understand Kim’s thinking about his arsenal.

Pyongyang is likely to interpret the publicized U.S. interest in left-of-launch techniques in the worst possible way. For instance, the unclassified May 2017 document describing “pre-conflict left-of-launch operations” stated that they would be legal against an This article was originally published on Foreign Affairs. imminent missile threat without defining what would Ankit Panda is Senior Editor at The Diplomat and Senior qualify as “imminent.” In the North Korean reading, Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists.

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Brexit and Broken Promises Leaving the EU Without Consequences Was Always a Fantasy 18

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A guiding principle of the EU in these negotiations became that the United Kingdom had to suffer losses if it left. And so it will up 350 million pounds a week for spending on the National Health Service—which is now facing huge staff shortages, partly as a result of the limits on immigration that Brexit was designed to reinforce. But now that the terms of the Brexit agreement have been released, the scale of that fantasy is readily apparent to all.

WHEN FANTASY MEETS REALITY

Pro-Brexit supporters demonstrate in Whitehall on November 2018 ,14 in London, England. (Getty)

by Peter Hall The United Kingdom embraced a political fantasy in June 2016, when a slight majority of Brexit referendum participants voted for the country to leave the European Union. This was already apparent to some at the time. Not long after the vote, for example, pro-Brexit campaigners were forced to walk back claims that leaving the EU would free

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Brexiteers campaigned on the prospect that the United Kingdom could retain most of the advantages of remaining in the European single market, which allows for free trade in goods and services across the continent, without paying into the EU coffers or abiding by its regulations. At the same time, they claimed, it could be negotiating free trade deals with other countries designed to advance British exports and lower the cost of its imports.

But EU officials feared that if the United Kingdom got such a deal, other countries would follow its lead, thereby posing an existential threat to the union. Neither side wanted a socalled hard Brexit, in which the United Kingdom would leave without an agreement, but a guiding principle of the EU in these negotiations became that the United Kingdom had to suffer losses if it left. And so it will.

For some time, London thought that it would have the upper hand in negotiations, since many exports flow across the English Channel from Europe, not least among them German auto parts. But the EU had the real advantage: its member states can live more easily without free access to British markets than the United Kingdom can live without European access. After all, the European nations remain part of a single market that contains almost 450 million people. The United Kingdom, by contrast, has only the hope of forging new trade agreements with far-flung countries around the world, where the Commonwealth is little more than a fig leaf covering national self-interest and the United States under President Donald Trump has moved in a protectionist direction.

This reality still appears to be lost on the denizens of the fantasyland that British politics has become. On the right, the die-hard Brexiteers are denouncing the deal Prime Minister Theresa May has negotiated, claiming it amounts to little more than “vassalage� to Europe, as if something better could

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be on offer. On the left, the Labour Party has maintained that it would accept Brexit—as many of its traditional workingclass voters wanted—but only if the terms offered on exit were just as good as those the United Kingdom enjoyed while in the EU. Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn has never been an enthusiast for European integration, and his party’s objective is to walk a tightrope strung between those working-class Leave voters and the many supporters of remaining in the EU who flocked to the party in the last election. Seen in the cold, hard light of day, however, the party’s policy is nonsensical—another fantasy.

Of course, the main goal of the leadership of the Labour Party has little to do with Brexit itself. It is to force the Conservative government into another general election, one that Labour hopes to win despite a lead in the polls that is puzzlingly small given the disarray that has plagued the May government. And elections have already had a significant impact on the course of Brexit. More than any other, the decision that has proved so fateful for the new agreement and may yet prove fatal to the current British government was taken in April 2017, when May chose to call a general election well before one was necessary. Earlier in the year, the Conservative Party was riding high in the polls, and this seemed an opportunity to consolidate its majority. Instead, after an insipid campaign during which many of those who wanted to remain in the EU flocked in revenge to the Labour Party, the Conservatives emerged with a minority of seats in Parliament and had to cobble together a narrow coalition with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in order to govern.

THE BORDER BACKSTOP The DUP is a small party representing a largely Protestant vote in the divided province of Northern Ireland. After being

Anyone who wanted to make a political horror movie could scarcely dream up a better plot than the one through which the United Kingdom and the EU are now living

suddenly thrust into coalition with the Conservatives, that party began to give voice to the strong views held throughout Northern Ireland that there should be no impediments to flows of trade or people across its border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and, equally consequential, that there should be no such border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the British mainland.

The first of those aspirations was also the foremost priority of the Irish Republic, since the removal of restrictions at the border had been a linchpin of the 1998 agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland. Its dynamic new head of government, Leo Varadkar, campaigned successfully to ensure that this, too, would become a redline for the EU in the Brexit negotiations. Notwithstanding the many issues that Brexit raises for both sides, the key one—the third rail on which agreement could have foundered—became how to guarantee that there would be no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

After many battles, the final agreement addresses this issue with an aspiration that free flows of goods and people

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British Prime Minister, Theresa May delivers a Brexit statement on Downing Street on November 2018 ,14 in London, England. (Getty)

Brexiteers may bemoan the “backstop” that will keep the United Kingdom in the EU customs union for the foreseeable future but across the Channel many European states are concerned that the accompanying regulations are not strict enough

between the north and south of the Irish island can eventually be secured, accompanied by a key “backstop” specifying that the United Kingdom as a whole will remain in a customs union with the EU until both sides agree that the aspiration has been realized through technological or other means. That customs union will allow for a free flow of goods across borders, but it comes with the requirement that the United Kingdom abide by a host of EU regulations on state aid to firms, taxation, labor standards, and other matters while refraining from negotiating trade agreements with other countries.

Above all, this backstop is what the Brexiteers consider a betrayal. They fear, not without reason, that the United Kingdom will be locked for years, if not decades, into an EU customs union and accompanying regulations over which the British no longer have a say. As it has so often in the past, the “Irish question” brings consternation to British politics.

For all the frustrations of the Brexiteers, however, their situation recalls the famous words of Margaret Thatcher: There is no alternative. May is no Thatcher, and it is not

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clear she has been especially well served by the ministers she chose to negotiate Brexit, but the geopolitics of the situation make it unlikely she could have secured a better deal. And there is widespread agreement that withdrawal without a deal would create chaos—not only at the docks of the Channel ports but for the British economy as a whole.

At this point, no one knows if May’s leadership will survive the political turmoil that the announcement of this deal has caused or, indeed, if she can get approval for it from a deeply divided Parliament. Within the Conservative Party, Jacob Rees-Mogg, a leading Brexiteer, has already called for a vote of no confidence in her leadership. For the United Kingdom, this is not an especially good deal, something those on all sides of the Brexit debate have been quick to point out.

Moreover, it bears little resemblance to what those who voted to leave the EU in 2016 thought they were being offered.

Frustrations are present on the other side of the Channel as well. Many of the member states of the EU have their own reservations about the terms of the agreement: they continue to worry that the EU regulations to which the United Kingdom will be held as the price of remaining in the customs union are not tough enough. Their fear is that the British will erect a low-tax, low-wage, low-cost economy funneling cheap products across their borders with which their own firms cannot compete. That, too, is something of a fantasy, since the United Kingdom has a more advanced economy than many EU member states, but this is a deal that has to be approved unanimously by those states.

In short, anyone who wanted to make a political horror movie could scarcely dream up a better plot than the one through which the United Kingdom and the EU are now living. We do not yet know how this movie will end, however, not least because the scripts from which most of the major political actors are reading bear only a tangential relationship to reality.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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The Journey to a New Promised Land Caravan Attracts Diplomats and Denouncers in Tijuana

by Patrick J. McDonnell*

respect human rights.”

The Honduran diplomat said he came to express solidarity with his many compatriots who have descended on this border town in recent days as part of the Central American migrant caravan.

His presence drew angry reactions from a number of camp residents, who labeled the current, U.S.-backed government in Tegucigalpa a corrupt regime that maintains autocratic rule over a largely impoverished society.

“These are our people, we want to do what we can for them,” Alden Rivera, the Honduran ambassador to Mexico, told reporters Saturday during a morning visit to a sports facility here that is currently home to more than 2,600 migrants, mostly Hondurans. “In Honduras we

“If we had work and a proper government in Honduras we wouldn’t have had to embark on this difficult trip and live outdoors,” complained Maria Ramirez, 33, who said she was an outdoor fish vendor back in her hometown of San Pedro Sula, where the caravan started more than a

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“If we had work and a proper government in Honduras we wouldn’t have had to embark on this difficult trip and live outdoors,” soon ended as the diplomat continued his rounds and the migrants wandered off. It marked just another small ironic wrinkle in the ongoing saga of the caravan.

As more caravan members straggled into Tijuana on Saturday, where they have received a mixed reaction, most joined the more than 2,600 housed at the Benito Juarez sports facility, about a block from the U.S.-Mexico border.

The tall fence, across a busy highway, separates Tijuana from San Diego, but migrants can only see the sky above California. The fence blocks views of the land across the border line.

The Honduran ambassador, as well as a number of Mexican officials, visited the camp on Saturday as an expanding number of international media crews also arrived in Tijuana, keen to tell the story of the migrant caravan, which traveled about 3,000 miles to get here. Journalists lined up for limited access hours in the morning and afternoon, even as President Donald Trump, who focused an unrelenting publicity blitz on the caravan before the recent U.S. election, has since stopped talking about it.

Honduran Ambassador Alden Rivera (C) speaks with compatriot migrants taking part in the 'Migrant Via Crucis' caravan, who are protesting outside Honduras Embassy in Mexico City on April 2018 ,11. (Getty Images)

month ago. “How dare he come here and say he wants to help us!”

The ambassador’s entourage kept the diplomat shielded from the angry migrants, many of whom are expected to seek political asylum in the United States, asserting that they face persecution in their homeland.

“This ambassador and all the other politicos from Honduras should be in jail!” declared Hugo Lara, 28, from the Honduran town of Copan. “They stole all the money!”

The interaction between the ambassador and the migrants

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“What tribe are you from?” one TV journalist asked Jose Vargas, 36, a construction worker from the Honduran city of La Ceiba who, along with friends, used branches to construct a kind of hut near the entrance of the camp.

The unusual construction attracted a lot of media attention.

An Italian crew interviewed Vargas about life back home.

“I live in a regular house in Honduras,” a bemused Vargas explained afterward, speaking as he crouched at the entrance of his handcrafted hut. “But the branches here help keep the place cool in the day and warm in the evening.”

The migrants mostly slept in tents pitched on patches of grass and in a soccer field. Many were housed on mats in a gymnasium.

Men were able to bathe Saturday in newly installed outdoor

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showers on the edge of the soccer field. A truck parked on the street outside provided shower facilities for women.

After a meager breakfast of lentils, tortillas and coffee, many migrants wandered about as aid groups handed out clothing and evangelical pastors headed prayer sessions.

One church group organized an exercise session for kids on the soccer field.

Officials in this city of 1.6 million are wondering where to house the expanding ranks of migrants, whose numbers are expected to grow to as many as 10,000 in coming days.

The Tijuana mayor, Juan Manuel Gastelum, has labeled many of the migrants criminals and “bums” and said he was contemplating calling for a referendum on whether the city should accept them. On Sunday, some residents opposed to the migrants’ presence are planning a protest march. There is also talk of a pro-migrant counterdemonstration.

Several migrants sleeping in the gymnasium said they heard rocks landing on the roof of the facility overnight, which they viewed as a hostile act.

But not everyone is hostile to the new arrivals in this border town that has long hosted northbound migrants — and where most residents trace their origins to other parts of Mexico. Residents of Tijuana regularly drove up to the sports facility, donating food and clothing for the migrants.

Caravan participants are keenly uncertain of their fate.

The imposing fencing and Border Patrol presence along the international boundary have caused a realization that crossing into the United States will be far from easy.

The Tijuana mayor, Juan Manuel Gastelum, has labeled many of the migrants criminals and “bums” and said he was contemplating calling for a referendum on whether the city should accept them.

Many are talking about trying to acquire visas for Canada or somewhere in Europe, though such ambitions seem fanciful at the moment.

Meanwhile, on the U.S. side of the border fence, the scene seemed normal on Saturday, though helicopters occasionally buzzed the skies above the border community of San Ysidro. About 2 p.m., a U.S. Marine helicopter landed in the hills behind the Jack in the Box on San Ysidro’s main drag, startling some residents. But the aircraft took off a few minutes later. No one seemed to know why it had come.

In advance of the caravan’s arrival at the border zone, U.S. authorities installed new coils of razor wire on border fences, along the vehicular entry to the United States and even on the beach strip of Border Field State Park, which is adjacent to Tijuana’s beachside Playas de Tijuana neighborhood. Late Friday, the Border Patrol was present in force, with horses, all-terrain vehicles and vans on the U.S. side of the beach.

As the sun set on Saturday, however, a lone Border Patrol

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Zaira Fonseca from Honduras (L) cries while looking for her lost son in a shelter, in Mexicali, Baja California state, Mexico, on November 2018 ,17. (Getty Images)

After a meager breakfast of lentils, tortillas and coffee, many migrants wandered about as aid groups handed out clothing and evangelical pastors headed prayer sessions. agent stood a few feet north of the fence, as people on the Tijuana side peered through gaps in the metal barrier.

Sundry visitors made their way to both sides of the fence to have a look, in many cases their curiosity piqued by news of the caravan.

“It’s calm here, but a place with a lot of energy,” said Roberto Provencio, 38, an engineer from San Diego who visited the U.S. stretch of the beach on Saturday. “I came to think, to contemplate, and to say a prayer for the people — for the people on both sides of the fence.” *Patrick J. McDonnell is the Los Angeles Times Mexico City bureau chief.

This article was originally published in the LA Times.

Gerson Valle, 17, a Honduran migrant travelling in a caravan towards the United States in hopes of a better life, stands outside a temporary shelter near the U.S.Mexico border in Tijuana, Mexico, on November 2018 ,16.

(Getty Images)

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Saudi Foreign Minister: Turkey Not Blaming Mohammed bin Salman over Khashoggi’s Murder

Adel al-Jubeir Says CIA Assessment on the Journalist’s Killing is False Majalla - London In response to comments made by the Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post earlier this month where he said that the order to kill

journalist Jamal Khashoggi came from the “highest levels” of the Saudi government, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir clarified that the Turkish government had “affirmed that these statements were not made in reference to the Crown Prince.”

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In an interview with Ashaq Al-Awsat newspaper, Majalla’s sister publication, the foreign minister said that the Kingdom appreciates Turkey’s cooperation in forming the Joint Task Force but highlighted that the Saudi Public Prosecution was yet to receive the detailed evidence through three memoranda that it had requested from its Turkish counterpart.

“We hope that the Turkish authorities will provide the Public Prosecution with the evidence related to the case to be referred to the court. I would like to emphasize that the legal measures that were taken, ensure justice and accountability and thwart any attempts to politicize the case,” he said.

Khashoggi, a US-based Washington Post columnist was killed on October 2 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a team of Saudi officers who travelled from their country.

The Kingdom’s top diplomat also responded to the recent reports by major media outlets that the CIA has concluded that Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, ordered the assassination of Khassoggi. The assessment was apparently the substance of an intelligence briefing given to members of Congress. A spokesperson for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC, immediately denounced the newspaper’s allegations as ‘false’, while both President Donald Trump and the State Department said that the final conclusions of the case are yet to be made.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir addresses a news conference in the desert kingdom›s capital Riyadh on November ,15 2018. (Getty)

Jubeir denied any involvement by MBS and stressed that these reports were only based upon leaks as no official announcement has been released supporting the statements.

“I noted that they are based on assessment and not conclusive evidence. In all cases, we, in the Kingdom, know that such allegations about the Crown Prince are completely not true and we totally reject them; whether such allegations are made through leaks or otherwise,” he said.

He also addressed reports that the US had intercepted a call between Khashoggi and MBS’s younger brother and Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US Khalid bin Salman, denying that such a discussion took place.

“This is also not true at all and has been firmly refuted, which points to the conclusion that the sources of these leaks are not reliable,” he said.

Saudi authorities have consistently denied the royal family’s involvement, describing the murder as a ‘rogue operation’. They have detained 21 suspects, having charged 11 of them and demanded the death penalty for five of the accused.

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“We hope that the Turkish authorities will provide the Public Prosecution with the evidence related to the case to be referred to the court.” - al-Jubeir Jubeir also insisted that the investigation into the murder of Khashoggi is a legal case and should not be politicized.

“The Kingdom has put the case of Jamal Khashoggi in its legal framework and it won’t accept any politicization of this issue, because it does not serve the ties between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, nor does it serve cooperation among Islamic countries,” he said.

Jubeir decried media campaigns which have attempted to politicize the case and highlighted that throughout history Saudi Arabia has been a victim of such campaigns which seek to undermine the Kingdom.

“Those that stand behind these efforts and their motives are now exposed, especially after the transparent announcement of the results of the investigations and the referral of the matter to the courts. Throughout history, the Kingdom has been the target of many media tendentious campaigns, and different sources and arguments were used to undermine the role of the Kingdom and its position.”

The foreign minister offered a clear chronological explanation of why there was a shifting narrative from the Saudi government for weeks after Khashoggi’s disappearance in early October which caused some to question Saudi’s version of events.

“What happened was as follows: those who carried out the crime presented a misleading and false report, and accordingly the story was denied. When conflicting reports became apparent that contradicted the information they presented in their report, King Salman ordered the Public Prosecutor to conduct an investigation, which resulted in the preliminary findings that were first announced by the Public Prosecutor. As the investigations continued, and sufficient evidence and confessions were gathered to refer the matter to court; the Public Prosecutor announced the results of his investigation and indicted a number of individuals and referred them to court. Should the investigation uncover any new evidence the Public Prosecution will announce that in a transparent manner.”

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How Standing Up For the Poor Helped PalestinianAmerican Rashida Tlaib Get Elected to Congress Tlaib Calls for Peaceful Coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis

By Mansaf El Mazgheny (1) Rashida Tlaib was born on Saturday 24 July 1976 in Detroit, Michigan to Palestinian migrant parents. Tlaib is the oldest of 14 siblings and her father made a living by working on an assembly line in a Ford car factory.

(2) Tlaib graduated from Detroit’s South-Western High School in 1994, and then went on to Wayne State University from which she earned a BA in Political Science in 1998.

(3) Straight after her graduation in 1998, she married Fayez Tlaib, another Palestinian-American. She did not follow her parent’s decision to have many children, and has instead opted for just two sons with her now ex-husband. Tlaib’s marriage and children did not stop her from pursuing a law degree, which she earned from Thomas M. Cooley Law School in 2004.

(4) Throughout her adult life, Tlaib had a desire to pursue humanitarian causes and it was this desire that inspired her entry into politics nearly ten years ago in 2008. Since then, she has been dedicated to providing a voice for the needs of Detroit’s poor and disenfranchised.

(5) Tlaib joined the Democratic Party and has since fought for the following issues: universal healthcare, increasing minimum wage, protecting the environment, lowering university fees to more reasonable levels and abolishing the gender pay gap.

(6) In regards to the PalestinianIsraeli conflict, Tlaib has expressed her support for a two state solution in which both nations live in peaceful coexistence.

(7) In 2004, Tlaib started an internship with Michigan State Representative

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Steve Tobocman who in 2007 became Majority Floor Leader. Tlaib’s hard work impressed Tobocman so much that he appointed her a member of his staff in 2008.

(8) Tlaib has been a vocal critic of Trump since his campaigning days.

In August 2016 ,8 while Trump was giving a speech in Detroit, she loudly heckled and protested against the then Republican presidential candidate.

She was eventually removed from the venue so that he could continue his speech.

(9) This incident did not deter her as she continued to criticize Trump’s policies outside the venue as well as throughout her own election campaign for a seat at the House.

(10)Now Tlaib will still continue to oppose Trump, but not at street protests but through political decorum in Congress

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By Samantha Morris We’ve all been there! It can irritate you, frustrate you, prevent you from moving forwards or seeing perspective and generally have you going round in circles. Yes it’s the hang-up!

The truth is that hang-ups don’t just appear out of

thin air. They are either attached and triggered by our own stories or you may find yourself consciously or unconsciously re-living or picking up other people’s baggage.

So what are your hang ups? How are they preventing you from moving forwards? And how can you start to hang them up to dry?

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Hang Up Your Hang-Ups Life Tips for a Happier Life

Here are 6 top tips for hanging up your hang ups and living a happier and more fulfilling successful life.

1.What are your hang-ups?

This is not always the easiest question to ask or to answer as it may dig up a myriad of emotions depending on your unique experiences. However, if

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you become clear on what your triggers are and how you respond then it’s easier to start to positively challenge your hang-ups.

2.Whose story is it?

Contrary to popular notion, we don’t just carry our own life experiences, but we also pick up on other

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people’s stories and hang-ups too. So why not try to stand back from the situation and genuinely ask yourself is this my own story and belief or someone else’s? If it’s the latter, is carrying someone else’s story serving you or them? and how might you benefit from cleansing yourself of other people’s hang-ups and taking back your own power?

3.How is it preventing you from moving forwards?

Hang-ups can prevent you from moving forwards so it’s really important to ask yourself what might be different in your life if you learnt, healed and let go of your hang-ups? What opportunities may open up? and how would this feel?

4.Set Yourself Free From Self-Fulfilling Prophecies Do you ever find yourself living the same story over and over again? Just as other people may project their hang ups onto you, it’s also very important to ask if you might also project your hang-ups onto other people or situations. It may feel very easy and safe to apply the same story to every experience, work situation or relationship.

Yet, as time changes, people change, situations change and even you change. So how is it serving you or not serving you to live by what may be perhaps an outdated story?

5.It Takes Time: Admittedly, its easier to say and

Remember, hang-ups may be like stains: difficult at first to get rid of, but over time and with some cleaning they will gradually start to disappear.

harder to actually hang up your hang-ups. After all, your unique story is a trusted safe script, which may have been learnt and ingrained in your memory over years. Therefore, if your hang-ups go right back, it may be increasingly difficult to untangle and undo in a short amount of time.

Ask yourself is this something that you can or can’t move on from? If it’s the latter, start off by working through your hang-ups slowly and perhaps seek support from a psychotherapist. If it’s the former, a coach will be able to help you positively challenge your hang ups and encourage you move forwards with a renewed mindset and energy. Remember, hang-ups may be like stains:

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difficult at first to get rid of, but over time and with some cleaning they will gradually start to disappear.

6.Be kind to yourself, you don’t have to have it all figured out at once! It may be a mouthful to take all of this in at once, so do yourself a favour and don’t try to. Break it all down into manageable chunks and work through the points at your own pace.

Samantha Morris is an Internationally accredited IAPC&M Confidence and Success Coach. She globally coaches people from all walks of life to positively overcome a wide range of professional

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This is not always the easiest question to ask or to answer as it may dig up a myriad of emotions depending on your unique experiences. and personal challenges so that they may live a confident, successful and thriving life!

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Turning Point for Oscar HungryNetflix 9 Movies Nominated for Best Picture, Including a First for Netflix with ‘Roma’

by Glenn Whipp Netflix broke through at the Emmy Awards five years ago when Television Academy voters gave “House of Cards” nine nominations, making it the first streaming program to earn a series nod. Since then, Netflix has racked up 225 Emmy nominations and 43 Emmys and, with its monolithic for-yourconsideration promotional spaces, practically redefined television awards campaigning.

embraced. (“Beasts” actor Idris Elba became the first Screen Actors Guild Award winner to not earn an Oscar nomination.)

But let’s also be real here. For all the talk about Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members viewing Netflix as an existential threat to the theatrical film experience, the streamer has never had a movie that could be marked as a slam-dunk best picture contender. The child soldier story of “Beasts” was emotionally The film side has proved trickier for Netflix. Oscar powerful and undeniably tragic. It was also voters have been largely immune to the streamer’s overlong, unfocused and seemed to take a bit too offerings, ignoring titles such as 2015’s “Beasts much pleasure in the atrocities it was expertly of No Nation” that other awards season groups documenting.

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Nicolas Celis, Eugenio Caballero, Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Nancy Garcia, Fernando Grediaga and Alfonso Cuaron pose during the red carpet of Netflix film ‹Roma› directed by Alfonso Cuaron as part of Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia at Teatro Ocampo on October 2018 ,23 in Morelia, Mexico. (Getty Images) 1053244518

Subsequent Netflix contenders including two from last year — Bong Joon-ho’s enjoyably nutty and strange creature feature “Okja” and Dee Rees’ leisurely paced, disquieting melodrama “Mudbound” — had their merits. “Mudbound,” in fact, picked up four Oscar nominations. Did it belong among the best picture nominees? I’d argue that if any movie was overlooked last year, it was Sean Baker’s spellbinding, immersive drama “The Florida Project.”

This year Netflix has a movie that not only will likely earn the streamer its first-ever best picture Oscar nomination; it’s a film so good that it could go on to win. That movie is Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma,”

This year, though, Netflix has a movie that not only will likely earn the streamer its first-ever best picture Oscar nomination; it’s a film so good that it could go on to win.

That movie is Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma,” a glorious, intimate drama that combines the filmmaker’s gift for visual poetry with a story

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that is delicate, mysterious and full of surprises.

At times, the movie, beautifully shot in black and white, feels experimental in its novelistic approach to storytelling and memoir. But for all its formal prowess, “Roma” is fundamentally a movie that elevates the spirit with a generous empathy and love for its characters. In telling the story of the women who raised him, the Oscar-winning Cuarón has made his greatest film.

Film critics groups are going to bow to it. (The movie, produced by Participant Media, already won the Golden Lion prize for best film at the Venice festival.) I’d expect “Roma” to win the top prize from either the New York Film Critics Circle or the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. Maybe both. That doesn’t happen often, but Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” was special enough to pull off the feat in 2014.

A win from either group would give “Roma” momentum. More important though, Netflix’s awards season consultants have convinced the company to break precedent and release Cuarón’s film theatrically on Nov. 21, a good three weeks before it will be available for streaming.

That provides “Roma” a window of opportunity to build buzz and assuage academy naysayers who grumble about Netflix’s policy of releasing

The wild card remains Adam McKay’s sure-to-be-scathing Dick Cheney biopic “Vice,” which was screened for journalists for the first time on Saturday November 17.

movies simultaneously in theaters and on its service. It will also provide awards season voters with more opportunities to see the meticulously crafted, 65mm, Dolby Atmos movie in an optimal presentation. (Netflix is also offering early theatrical releases for the Coens’ inspired western anthology “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” and Susanne Bier’s thriller “Bird Box.”) “I want this movie to be seen by as many people as possible,” Cuarón told me recently before a guild Q&A we did together for the film. “And Netflix will make that possible. I also appreciate their effort and passion to provide people with the chance to see it in a theater. This was a labor of love.”

It’s impossible to envision a scenario in which “Roma” doesn’t earn a best picture nomination and make history for Netflix. Its chances of winning the Oscar are less certain. It’s a foreignlanguage movie (Spanish and Mixtec) shot in black-and-white with a cast that will be largely unknown to voters.

Other movies are also likely to find champions among critics groups, namely “The Favourite,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ stinging, subversive costume drama, and “If Beale Street Could Talk,” Barry Jenkins’ follow-up to “Moonlight” that masterfully adapts James Baldwin’s 1974 novel. Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman,” his best movie in years (not including his noteworthy documentaries), could also win a few honors, including long overdue recognition for Lee himself.

Here’s how I’d handicap the best picture race at this early juncture, with the movies ranked based on their likelihood of securing a nomination.

1) “A Star Is Born” 2) “Roma” 3) “Green Book” 4) “The Favourite”

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Alfonso Cuaron poses for a selfie with fans during the red carpet of Netflix film ‹Roma› directed

by Alfonso Cuaron as part of Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia at Teatro Ocampo on October 2018 ,23 in Morelia, Mexico. (Getty Images) 1053242484

5) “If Beale Street Could Talk” 6) “Black Panther” 7) “BlacKkKlansman” 8) “First Man” 9) “Widows” I’ll stop there as the academy has never nominated more than nine movies since adopting, in 2011, its current, complicated voting system that allows for a variable roster of five to 10 best picture nominees. (Seriously, I think 10 is probably mathematically impossible, but I’m going to keep my slide rule in the drawer for now and not get into it.)

The wild card remains Adam McKay’s sure-tobe-scathing Dick Cheney biopic “Vice,” which was screened for journalists for the first time on Saturday November 17. Everyone loves a

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It’s impossible to envision a scenario in which “Roma” doesn’t earn a best picture nomination and make history for Netflix. Its chances of winning the Oscar are less certain. latecomer barging in and upending awards season absolutes, and “Vice” has the potential to be that spoiler. Or it could be like “Unbroken,” and the song will remain the same.

This article was originally published in the LA Times

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The Beatles ‘White Album’ at 50

A Classic or an Overindulgence?

by Greg Kot When it comes to Beatles nostalgia, the band’s self-titled 1968 “White Album” has a king-size reputation — the biggest album (30 songs!) by the biggest band in the world at the time. But, to paraphrase a Beatles song, it was all too much, and its producer, George Martin, and at least a couple of its participants, George Harrison and John Lennon, would be among the first to agree.

A half-century later, little has changed, at least in the marketplace for more Beatles. Despite a 138$ price tag, a newly released 50th anniversary “White Album” box set is No. 2 on the Amazon CD/vinyl sales rankings. It’s a -4pound doorstop: six CDs and a Blu-Ray disc containing the original album, 27 early acoustic demos and 50 session tracks, most of them previously unreleased, plus a hardcover book. The mix, by George Martin’s son, Giles, is immaculate, and in many ways the Beatles have never sounded better or more intimate.

But is the actual music worth the fuss? The pop historians

have trained generations to believe the Beatles could do no wrong, and that the “White Album” was one of the group’s greatest achievements. It undeniably contains some of the band’s finest songs. But does it really make the case for the Beatles in late-career overdrive, or is it a wildly erratic hit-and-miss hodgepodge that could’ve been better served as a single album?

The original “The Beatles” was packaged for posterity.

It spread 30 songs across two discs when released on Nov. 1968 ,22, with a white cover designed by pop artist Richard Hamilton. The band’s name was subtly embossed on the sleeve above a seven-digit stamp, as if it were an exclusive art piece. It looked cool, radical, and its sound — both more subtle and more bombastic than anything the Beatles had recorded before — signaled its game-changing objectives.

The ambition belied the turmoil swirling within and around the Beatles at the time. Even though the quartet was coming off the 1967 release of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely

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Hearts Club Band,” widely acknowledged as an art-pop landmark, the Beatles’ interpersonal relationships were in disarray.

Band manager Brian Epstein, a stabilizing force, died in 1967. A trip to India in early 1968 to visit Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and study transcendental meditation ended with the band members disillusioned and feeling exploited. The world was in a darker time as well. The optimism of the ’67 “Summer of Love” in which “Sgt. Pepper” had been released had given way to the Vietnam War quagmire, the Prague Spring Soviet invasion of Poland, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. The bleaker, more cynical tone of a number of songs that would eventually appear on the “White Album,” particularly those of Lennon and Harrison, reflected this crisis atmosphere.

More disruptive changes were in the air. Lennon and Paul McCartney were in the midst of severing ties with their wife and fiancée, respectively, and partnering with new love interests (Lennon with Yoko Ono and McCartney with Linda Eastman). Lennon struggled with heroin addiction and was becoming increasingly estranged from McCartney, his songwriting partner.

Harrison and drummer Ringo Starr were beginning to chafe under McCartney’s expanding artistic control. And there was simmering resentment over how much praise was showered on “Fifth Beatle” Martin for the studio accomplishments of “Sgt. Pepper.”

Nonetheless, things started promisingly when the band reconvened in May 1968. The quartet took a back-tobasics approach and banged out 27 acoustic demos in Harrison’s home in Esher, Surrey, outside London. The four-track recordings are terrific, the primary reason to dig into the box set as they show the Beatles feeding off a new impulse in rock, the more pastoral feel of recordings

by Bob Dylan and the Band that had begun circulating in musician circles. While in India, the Beatles jammed on acoustic guitars, and Lennon and McCartney adopted the clawhammer style of finger-picking they were shown by British folk singer Donovan to craft new songs such as “Julia” and “Blackbird.”

The box set also culls tracks from five months of studio sessions that followed the Esher demos. Instead of the sound layering that characterized “Sgt. Pepper” and the 1966 masterpiece, “Revolver,” the arrangements remained relatively pristine. The outtakes reveal how Lennon’s characteristically contrarian take on the counterculture, “Revolution,” evolved into three distinct recordings, two of which appeared on the “White Album” as the bluesy “Revolution 1” and the avantgarde collage “Revolution 9,” plus a definitive hard-rock

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It’s a -4pound doorstop: six CDs and a Blu-Ray disc containing the original album, 27 early acoustic demos and 50 session tracks, most of them previously unreleased, plus a hardcover book. take that was released as a single. But other than an early version of Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and a ragged but thrilling run through “Helter Skelter,” the three discs of studio extras will largely appeal only to Beatles obsessives.

In the same way, the “White Album” now feels more than ever like an indulgence from a band that was no longer in sum-is-greater-than-the-parts collaboration.

Lennon was clearly drawing greater inspiration from Ono, who accompanied him to the sessions, than he was from McCartney. Only two weeks before “The Beatles” was released, Lennon and Ono released their debut album, “Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins,” with its scandalous nude cover image.

One of the casualties of the widening McCartney-Lennon rift was the checks and balances that the two main songwriters typically imposed on one another’s work.

McCartney in particular tossed out some of the flimsiest songs of the Beatles era (“Martha My Dear,” “Honey Pie”). Starr inexplicably earned his first songwriting credit on a Beatles recording (the forgettable “Don’t Pass Me By”), while Harrison continued to feel neglected (not for nothing did he enlist his pal Eric Clapton to play on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” in a last-ditch effort to salvage a song that the Lennon-McCartney brain trust had rejected).

Tensions ran so high that Starr briefly quit the band, recording engineer Geoff Emerick exited the sessions altogether and Martin, feeling underutilized, took an unannounced vacation and left the recording in the hands of fledgling engineers Chris Thomas and Ken Scott.

One of the reasons Martin left was that he felt he was being ignored and wouldn’t be missed, according to a forthcoming book, Kenneth Womack’s “Sound Pictures: The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin, the Later Years, 2016–1966.”

The producer never much liked the “White Album.” As he later told Beatles biographer Mark Lewisohn, “I really didn’t think that a lot of the songs were worthy of release,

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and I told them so. I said, ‘I don’t want a double album.

I think you ought to cut out some of these, concentrate on the really good ones and have yourself a really super album. Let’s whittle them down to 14 to 16 titles and concentrate on those.’”

It was an opinion echoed by Harrison and Lennon. As it turns out, they were right. The “White Album” would’ve been a classic had it been trimmed to the following 12 keepers. Everything else doesn’t match the high standards the Beatles had previously set for themselves.

WHITE ALBUM KEEPERS “Back in the USSR”: A good portion of the album finds the Beatles appropriating and in some case satirizing beloved peers and influences, none more so than the leadoff track with its nods to Chuck Berry’s “Back in the USA” and the Beach Boys’ “California Girls.” Yet in Starr’s absence, the remaining trio led by McCartney piles on the excitement: piano flurries, exuberant Beach Boys-style harmonies, a wicked guitar solo.

“Dear Prudence”: Squishy bass, a tolling guitar and harmony vocals swim atop the psychedelic breeze.

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps”: The Harrison track was nearly orphaned until Clapton came aboard to play the solo, and then it was buried as the seventh track on Side 1. Poor George couldn’t catch a break, but he was right to fight for the song. It’s one of the album’s most enduring moments.

“Happiness is a Warm Gun”: Lennon’s multipart masterpiece serves as a mini-history of rock ’n’ roll (folk finger-picking, blues chords, hard rock, doo-wop vocals)

Even though the quartet was coming off the 1967 release of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” widely acknowledged as an art-pop landmark, the Beatles’ interpersonal relationships were in disarray

while skewering America’s obsession with guns in the wake of the King and Kennedy assassinations.

“Blackbird”: A sparse beauty of a protest song as McCartney’s poignant melody and poetic wordplay allude to the longing and perseverance of the civil rights struggle.

“Julia”: Lennon’s heartbreaking ode to his late mother casts a dreamlike spell as it yearns for something that could never be.

“Yer Blues”: The Beatles rarely dabbled in blues, but Lennon dives into the deep end with caustic guitars and cauterizing vocals. Even as he parodies white British kids who reverently imitated African-American blues singers, he also one-ups them.

“Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey”: Clanging bells, agitated guitars, a song pitched on the edge of hysteria as Lennon finds hard-won love amid an atmosphere of tension and paranoia.

“Sexy Sadie”: Lennon left India feeling used by the Maharishi, and this vicious diatribe does some scoresettling. It also inspires one of the singer’s most expressive vocal arrangements.

“Revolution 1”: Lennon was not a follower. He expresses his skepticism about the counterculture revolution with typical slyness and wit over a deceptively laid-back arrangement that draws on blues and doo-wop.

“Helter Skelter”: In response to the electric storm whipped up by Jimi Hendrix and Cream, McCartney goes toe-totoe with the heavyweights. His Little Richard-inspired vocal fights for space amid the heavy-metal carnage of Ringo “I’ve got blisters on my fingers” Starr and the boys.

“Long Long Long”: Harrison’s spiritual quest has never sounded more haunting.

Contenders: “Glass Onion”; “Ob-La-Di, Ob-LaDa”; “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”; “I’m So Tired”; “Piggies”; “Rocky Raccoon”; “I Will”; “Birthday”; “Savoy Truffle”; “Mother Nature’s Son”; “Cry Baby Cry.” Duds: “Wild Honey Pie,” “Martha My Dear,” “Don’t Pass Me By,” “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?,” “Honey Pie,” “Revolution 9,” “Good Night.”

Greg Kot has been the music critic for the Chicago Tribune since 1990.

Originally Published in Chicago Tribune

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The Beatles ÂŤThe White AlbumÂť anniversary set.

(Courtesy Amazon.com) (Tribune News Service)

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Around a Nearby Star Astronomers Find a Cold Planet Three Times the Size of Earth 42

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by Deborah Netburn* An international team of astronomers has detected evidence of a cold planet at least three times the size of Earth orbiting an ancient red dwarf star, right in our stellar neighborhood.

If you were traveling at the speed of light, it would take you just six years to reach it.

In the context of the universe, that’s basically right next door.

The newly discovered world, described Wednesday in Nature, is associated with a small, dim star known as Barnard’s star that is older than our solar system. It takes the planet 233 days to complete a single orbit around its cool red sun.

It is now the second-closest known planet to our solar system.

The only closer known planet is an Earthsized body that orbits the small red star Proxima Centauri in the Alpha Centauri triple star system. That planet was discovered in 2016 and lies just four light-years from Earth.

The planet around Barnard’s star is probably too cold to host life, researchers said.

Although it is about as close to its own star as Mercury is to the sun, scientists say it is probably as cold as Saturn. That’s because Barnard’s Star emits only 0.4 percent of the sun’s radiant power.

An artist›s impression of the super-Earth planet that orbits Barnard›s star, whose light casts an orange tint. (IEEC/ Science-Wave - Guillem Ramisa) (Tribune)

But the new discovery is exciting for other reasons.

The proximity of the newly found planet to Earth makes it an excellent target for future observations. It is so close that the next generation of telescopes may be able to image it directly, the researchers said.

In addition, the new find provides further evidence that planets are nearly ubiquitous around red dwarf stars, said Ignasi Ribas, an astronomer and director of the Institute of

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If you were traveling at the speed of light, it would take you just six years to reach it. In the context of the universe, that’s basically right next door Space Studies of Catalonia in Spain, who led the work.

“The chances of finding new ones is quite high,” he said.

The new detection was made by a team of scientists working on an astronomy collaboration called Red Dots. Together, they are scanning the night sky for planets orbiting nearby dim red dwarf stars. Ultimately they hope to find a world in the habitable zone of these stars, where liquid water could pool on its surface.

This is not the first time that astronomers have thought they had found a planet around Barnard’s star.

Back in the 1960s Peter van de Kamp, a Dutch astronomer based in the United States, reported the discovery of two planets roughly the size of Jupiter orbiting the red dwarf.

To come to this conclusion he used a technique called astrometry that measures the movement of a single star across the celestial sphere. The idea is that the gravity of a planet orbiting that star would cause the star to shift its position ever so slightly compared with more distant background stars.

Based on his observations, Van de Kamp believed one of the planets completed a full orbit around the dim star in 12 years, while the other completed its orbit in 20 years.

However, as astrometry measurement techniques became more precise, scientists found that the supposed signals of Van de Kamp’s two planets did not exist after all.

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The new discovery of a single, much smaller planet orbiting Barnard’s star is based on a different observational technique called radial velocity. In this method scientists use spectrometers to look for a small wobble in the light from the star that would indicate it has a planet orbiting around it.

“A light source that comes toward us would have its wavelength slightly blue shifted, while a light source that moves away from us has its wavelength slightly red shifted,” Ribas said.

The magnitude of the wobble reveals the minimum mass of the planet that is responsible for the motion.

The radial velocity method was developed in the 1990s and has been steadily improving ever since, Ribas said. Even so, the size of the newly found planet is just on the edge of what current instruments can detect.

This particular discovery was possible only because the research team was able to examine hundreds of measurements that had been made over 20 years, he said. That gave them enough data to detect the small signal of the planet.

To ensure the detection was accurate, the authors also observed Barnard’s star every possible night during 2016 and 2017 from the Calar Alto Astronomical Observatory in Spain. A clear signal at a period of 233 days

It is now the second-closest known planet to our solar system.

arose again and again.

Rodrigo Diaz, an astronomer at the University of Buenos Aires who was not involved in the new work, said that while the findings are promising, he’d still like to see more evidence of the new planet’s existence.

“Difficult detections such as this one warrant confirmation by independent methods and research groups,” he said in an essay accompanying the new study.

The European Space Agency’s Gaia Space Observatory may be able to make detections

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An artist›s impression of the view from the surface of a superEarth planet that orbits a star just six light-years away.

(ESO/M. Kornmesser) (Tribune)

that would further confirm the presence of a planet around Barnard’s star, he said, but those data aren’t expected to be released until the 2020s.

Martin Kurster an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy who worked on the new study, said it is possible that the detection of the new planet could one day be disproved.

The proximity of the newly found planet to Earth makes it an excellent target for future observations. It is so close that the next generation of telescopes may be able to image it directly

However, he thinks that the presence of the planet is currently the best interpretation of the data the team has collected so far.

found in the future,” he said. “But I don’t think that is likely to happen.”

“It could be that a different explanation for the observational evidence we have will be

*Deborah Netburn is a science reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

This article was originally published in the LA Times

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Beyond the AI Arms Race America, China, and the Dangers of Zero-Sum Thinking

by Remco Zwetsloot, Helen Toner, Jeffrey Ding

Googling the term yields more than 50,000 hits. Some even warn of an AI Cold War.

The idea of an artificial intelligence (AI) arms race between China and the United States is ubiquitous.

Before 2016, there were fewer than 300 Google results for “AI arms race” and only a handful of articles that mentioned the phrase. Today, an article on the subject gets added to LexisNexis virtually every week, and

One question that looms large in these discussions is if China has, or will soon have, an edge over the United States in AI technology. Dean Garfield, the president of a U.S. trade group called the Information Technology Industry Council, recently told Politico that such fears are “grounded in hysteria.” But many prominent figures disagree. Former Alphabet CEO

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Exaggerating Chinese advantage risks worsening the increasingly zero-sum conversation around AI competition One of the most in-depth discussions of U.S.–Chinese AI competition can be found in AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, a recent book by the Taiwanese-American venture capitalist and AI expert Kai-Fu Lee. Drawing on his in-depth knowledge of—and personal experience with—the Chinese and U.S. tech sectors, Lee, like Schmidt and Work, concludes that “China will soon match or even overtake the United States in developing and deploying artificial intelligence.”

There is much to like about AI Superpowers. Lee persuasively counters many common misperceptions about China and AI, and he offers thoughtful personal reflections. Unfortunately, the parts of the book that inform his core thesis about China’s relative advantages over the United Statesare the parts that leave the most to be desired. In the end, Lee’s overly rosy portrayal of China’s AI capabilities both detract from the book’s other contributions and risk feeding the zero-sum arms race thinking that he himself warns could hurt humanity’s ability to harness AI for good.

AI AND THE GLOBAL ORDER

This photo taken on July 2018 ,30 shows a robot arm transferring food at ROBOT. HE restaurant in Shanghai.

- The little robotic waiter wheels up to the table, raises its glass lid to reveal a steaming plate of local Shanghai-style crayfish and announces in low, mechanical tones, ‹Enjoy your meal.› (Getty)

Eric Schmidt, for instance, warned in 2017 that “By 2020, [the Chinese] will have caught up [to the United States]. By 2025, they will be better than us. And by 2030, they will dominate the industries of AI.” And former Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work, among others, has argued that China’s advances in AI should spark a “Sputnik moment” for the United States, inspiring a national effort comparable to the one that followed the Soviet Union’s early victories in the space race.

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AI Superpowers unfolds in three parts, each with its own core argument. The first part is about the Chinese technology sector, a topic that Lee—who led Microsoft Research Asia and Google China before founding Sinovation Ventures, one of the biggest venture capital firms in China—is uniquely qualified to talk about. He traces the sector’s evolution from its initial “copycat” approach, in which it sought to replicate Western technologies and business models, to its current state of cutthroat competition and innovation, which makes Silicon Valley look boring by comparison. Along the way, Lee details how China’s tech giants, such as the e-commerce platform Taobao, triumphed against competition from established foreign firms such as eBay. The core reason for Chinese technology firms’ success, according to Lee, is that they are willing to engage with the nitty-gritty of the real world. They

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prefer messy vertical integration, in which one firm controls everything from design to production, retail, and marketing, to Silicon Valley’s cleanly siloed digital platforms. Compare the Chinese food delivery giant Dianping—which started out as a reviews site but soon dove into delivery, providing everything from a payment platform to a scooter-riding delivery staff—with the U.S. firm Yelp, which initially offered delivery services that mostly relied on restaurants’ own infrastructure before retreating to focus on its function as a review app.This difference is partly cultural, but it also stems from necessity: intellectual property protections are weaker in China than in the United States, so to deter competitors Chinese firms have to invest huge amounts of capital in building hard-to-replicate physical infrastructure. In the United States, by contrast, Lee believes that the combination ofintellectual property laws and a cultural distaste for anything that smacks of copyingoften allows Silicon Valley companies “to coast on the basis of one original idea or lucky break,” leading to complacency.

The second part of the book develops Lee’s argument about the U.S.–Chinese technological rivalry, which we will return to below. In the third part, he deals with the socioeconomic effects of AI. Here again, Lee is full of insights. He first takes issue with the argument that the economic impact of AI will resemble that of other general-purpose technologies, such as the steam engine and electricity, which converted many previously high-skill tasks (such as handcrafting textiles) into low-skill tasks (such as operating a steam-driven power loom), thereby creating new employment opportunities for large numbers of lowerskill workers. In contrast to this “de-skilling” effect, the trend with information technologies has generally been to increase the productivity of high-skill workers, often by reducing their reliance on other auxiliary

Just how important data is to developing AI capabilities—and how well Chinese companies can utilize the data they have access to—remains an open question

roles—think, for example, of the decreasing need for secretaries as e-mail and word processors have replaced telephones and typewriters. Lee argues that this “skill bias” in the economic effects of AI will leave large swaths of low- and middle-skill workers unable to contribute productively to the economy.The AI revolution will also come much faster than previous technological revolutions, mainly because software, in contrast to steam engines,can be instantly replicated and distributed across the world. Lee predicts that 50–40 percent of U.S. jobs will be capable of being

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Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, talks with Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, right, during a gathering of CEOs and other executives at Microsoft›s main campus September 2015 ,23 in Redmond, Washington. (Getty)

automated within the next couple of decades, which will probably increase unemployment rates by around 25–20 percent.

AI also differs from many past technologies in its natural tendency toward monopoly, thanks to the self-reinforcing cycles that strengthen the best companies: the more users a company has, the more data it can access, allowing it to develop a better product that will attract even more users.

Lee argues that this tendency toward monopoly

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will exacerbate both domestic and international inequality: domestic, because of the rise of “superstar firms” that tend to decrease labor’s share of national income;international, because most AI talent and resources are concentrated in China and the United States. (The auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that nearly 16$ trillion in GDP growthcould accrue from AI by 2030, of which70 percent will go to the United States and China alone.) Lee sees the main threat from AI as “tremendous social disorder and political collapse stemming from widespread

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unemployment and gaping inequality.”

THE RACE FOR AI SUPREMACY Lee’s treatments of the Chinese technology sector and the socioeconomic impacts of AI are both excellent.

But it is the remainder of the book that has received the most attention: the part dealing with the U.S.–Chinese strugglefor AI supremacy,in which Lee argues that China is poised to catch up with or overtake the United States in most areas of AI.Unfortunately, this is also the section that leaves most to be desired, both in what it argues and what it leaves out.

China’s particular potencies, according to Lee, include “abundant data, hungry entrepreneurs, AI scientists, and an AI-friendly policy environment.” Lee points to two underlying trends that play to these strengths.

The first is the shift from “the age of discovery” to “the age of implementation.” That is to say that, according to Lee, “much of the difficult but abstract work of AI research has been done.” He claims that recent progress in AI rests almost entirely on a single breakthrough—deep learning, a class of algorithms loosely inspired by the interconnection of neurons in the brain—and that all that is left is for “entrepreneurs to roll up their sleeves and get down to the dirty work of turning algorithms into sustainable businesses.”

This will benefit China by making its disadvantage in fundamental research less important while playing to its strengths—entrepreneurialism and the country’s vast quantity of good-enough engineers.

Lee’s view that today’s progress in AI is the product of a single breakthrough, however, is by no means a consensus one, and he does little to defend it. In fact, the conceptual foundations of deep learning were laid

“Historically, Chinese science and technology megaprojects have often furnished pretexts to divert funds from high-quality labs toward more politically connected entities

decades ago, with later researchers finding clever new ways of implementing existing concepts and exploiting the capabilities afforded by faster hardware and larger data sets. In other words, far from being a onetime breakthrough, deep learning has been advanced by a series of small to medium-sized innovations, which are continuing to this day.This dynamism undermines Lee’s argument that the “age of exploration” has ended. In all likelihood, labs that focus not just on applications and products but also on more fundamental research—an area in which Lee concedes that the United States has a strong advantage over China—will continue to push the envelope in ways that profithungry entrepreneurs cannot.

The second trend that Lee sees tilting the playing field toward China is a shift from “the age of expertise” to “the age of data.” Although he acknowledges that the United States has more elite researchers than China does, he claims that in today’s world data is more important than top talent, “because once computing power and engineering talent reach a certain threshold, the quantity of data becomes decisive in determining the overall power and accuracy of an algorithm.” And China, asthe “Saudi Arabia of data,” has much more of it than the United States. The latter claim is indisputable: China has more Internet users than the United States and Europe combined. These users rely on “super-apps” such as WeChat for everything from booking doctors’ appointments to filing taxes, and provide the apps with additional data by using them to process thehuge number of mobile payments in China’s virtually cashless economy.

Yet just how important data is—and how well Chinese companies can utilize the data theyhave access to— remains an open question. Andrew Ng, one of the

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world’s leading AI researchers, has argued that “big data is overhyped,” since many problems don’t produce big enough data sets to train AIs on.And insiders at Tencent, the owner of WeChat, have revealed that the company struggles to integrate data streams gathered by its different internal departments due to a combination of bureaucratic and technical hurdles.

More generally, a big problem with the common comparison between data and oil (implicit in Lee’s “Saudi Arabia of data” analogy) is that the utility of any data set is mostly limited to questions relating to that specific data set. It’s true that non-Chinese companies would be hard pressed to match their Chinese counterparts at, say, predicting which news stories Chinese consumers will be interested in. And facial recognition based on street-level surveillance footage is likely to remain a stronghold of Chinese companies, given the (highly concerning) amount of effort currently directed there. But it is far from clear that these specific advantages will help China make progress in the domains that policymakers often talk about, such as AI’s effect on the military balance of power. Perhaps because Lee’s focus is on novel commercial products and services, he is mostly silent on the question of why we should expect these narrow advantages to have the large geopolitical implications the book alludes to.

Lee also provides an overly rosy description of China’s top-down, government-sponsored innovation projects. The state has poured billions into developing technologies such as semiconductors and robots— efforts that Lee sees as part of a “techno-utilitarian” approach that is extremely effective despite some inefficiencies.Yet China’s overhyped government plans usually under-deliver. For instance, the analysts Gregory Allen and Elsa B. Kania have cited China’s 150$ billion semiconductor fund as evidence of the country’s edge in spurring the development of strategic industries. But the fund has invested only 12$ billion since its establishment in 2014. (For context, the South Korean firm Samsung spent nearly 27$ billion in capital expenditures for its semiconductor group in 2017 alone.) Finally, even if money does get spent, the effect can even be counterproductive: historically, Chinese science and technology megaprojects have often furnished pretexts to divert funds from highquality labs toward more politically connected entities.

To be clear, the picture that Lee paints is not entirely one-sided. He argues, for example, that the United States has a decisive advantage in many business applications of AI due to its corporate culture and more standardized data practices,and that American firms have a sizeable lead in autonomous vehicles. Yet Lee

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seems so eager to counter those who underestimate China’s AI capabilities that he tends to overestimate them instead. This is understandable. But exaggerating Chinese advantage risks worsening the increasingly zero-sum conversation around AI competition that Lee’s book is a part of—whether he likes it or not.

RESETTING THE ARMS RACE NARRATIVE Lee is clearly aware of the risk of accelerating a downward spiral in the conversation around AI, and he explicitly tries to address this risk in his final chapter.

He argues that the rhetoric around AI races could lead to zero-sum thinking that undermines progress and the ability of China and the United States to reap mutual gains. Instead of militarizing AI, Lee wants us to see that the technology’s true value “lies not in destruction but in creation”; he suggests that readers should think of international AI competition as “more akin to the early export of steam engines and lightbulbs than as an opening volley in the global arms race.”

Thesearguments, unfortunately,come as too little, too late within the context of the book. Given the book’s title and overall tone, it is hardly surprising that coverage of it has focused on its predictions of geopolitical competition. A headline in The Economist summarized Lee’s thesis as: “In the struggle for AI supremacy, China will prevail.” If Lee had wanted to avoid fanning these flames, he would have done much better to linger on U.S. as well as Chinese strengths,and to acknowledge just how much uncertainty still exists about AI and its impacts rather than speculatively filling in gaps in ways that make China look good.

Ultimately, however, Lee is correct in cautioning against intense arms race dynamics. There are, to be sure, many things the United States can and should be doing to reap the gains from AI, such as funding basic research and development, taking measures against illicit technology transfer, and crafting a supportive regulatory approach. But a full return to a Cold War mindset comes with many significant risks, such as prematurely deploying accident-prone weapons systems or inadvertently proliferating dangerous technological capabilities. This would, in all likelihood, harm rather than help national security, to say nothing of society at large. If this is the path that policymakers choose to follow, they should do so with a full appreciation of the dangers and on the basis of solid intelligence. The stakes are much too high to act on the basis of fear and speculation alone.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Egyptian Squash Player Raneem El Weleily Ready to Reclaim World No.1 Spot “My ambitions and my dreams are limitless.I play for fun only.”

by Abdulhakim Abu Alam Raneem El Weleily, is one of the world›s best known and talented squash players. Born in the coastal province of Alexandria, the -29year-old Egyptian is currently holds the world’s No.2 spot after her compatriot Noor Al-Sherbini. *What are your ambitions after winning the World Championship and the US Open?

- My ambitions and my dreams are limitless. I play for fun only. I adore that game like crazy. I play and compete in championships out of love for the game, but it turned to a profession after I began to compete for titles. *Is it possible for a player to reach a point of mental satisfaction after winning these titles?

Maybe some do, but at this point their time in the stadium will come to an end their skill will clearly decline. I still want to compete and win tournaments. I want to return to the top of the world rankings as I am currently at number 2. *But your colleague and compatriot Noor al-Sherbini is in first place?

- I know. I love Noor very much. She is my friend but the stadium is something else and she wants to stay at top of the rankings and I want to return.

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*Some people feel that there is personal competition between you and Noor Al-Sherbini as you always meet in the finals?

- We did not meet this year in the final of the American Open where I won the title but in previous years we met a lot. I love Noor very much and the games I play with her are enthusiastic. We try to present a wonderful picture of our country and this is important but I am competing with other players like Nicole David, whom I love to play against. * You said previously that “squash players fund themselves.” What does that mean?

- This is true. The Egyptian Federation is not obliged to support all these players in 17 annual championships. It funds one championship every two years only but the player is responsible for travel and for competing for tournaments. If the player wins it will be easy later, but if they lose, I think they will not complete the journey. 90 percent of Egyptian players fund themselves. * But players have contracts with clubs and sponsors?

Not all club contracts with players include the cost

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of participating in tournaments and sponsors have contract with certain players. *What tournament will you participate in next?

The Hong Kong International Championship which will be held on November 20. I am currently on an intensive training program to prepare for it. *Why is the game of squash so popular in Egypt?

I think it is because our players have won world championships and men and women hold the top rankings. There is a strong demand to play this game in Egypt. *But it is said that squash is the fourth most popular sport in Egypt after football, handball and volleyball?

That is not true. Squash has become the second most popular sport in Egypt after football and its matches pull large audiences and there is great media coverage for all the competitions that we participate in. *Some people want to know about the social life of the beautiful Egyptian star Raneem El Weleily.

I have been married to squash player Tariq Mo›men since 2014 and we have a happy and very quiet married life.