The Washington Post National Weekly - September 9, 2018

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THE FIX THE FIX

Another jolt from the left Another jolt from the left A MBER P HILLIPSBY A MBER P HILLIPS

solidly liberal congressional districts like New solidly liberal congressional districts like New York City and Boston.York (Gillum’s gubernatorial City and Boston. (Gillum’s gubernatorial nomination in a swing state isin aa whole arely do election upsets neatly upsets fit so neatly nomination swing state is a whole arelyfitdosoelection different ballgame.) different But champions of this into an ongoing political aspolitical narrative as ballgame.)

But champions of this into narrative an ongoing movement claim this is the beginning of is a the beginning of a the one that took place movement claim this thethis onepast thatweek took place this past week strategy that the Democratic Party when a Boston city councilor, Ayanna strategy that theshould Democratic Party should when a Boston city councilor, Ayanna have deployed in the 2016 elections: Move Pressley, threw out Pressley, a 20-yearthrew congressman, have deployed in the 2016 elections: Move out a 20-year congressman, unapologetically to the leftward, moretopopuRep. Michael E. Capuano (D), in Massachuunapologetically the leftward, more popuRep. Michael E. Capuano (D), in Massachulist poles of the party,list because the setts’s Democratic primaries. poles that’s of thewhere party, because that’s where the setts’s Democratic primaries. people are.

Policywise, there isn’t much daylight be- much daylight bepeople are.

Policywise, there isn’t It helps, activists say, theactivists candidates tween the two politicians. terms of the But in terms of the It that helps, say, that the candidates tweenBut thein two politicians. this movement is putting forward couldn’t be forward couldn’t be factions of the party they represent, theythey represent, they this movement is putting factions of the party more of a contrast to more President Trump intotheir couldn’t be farther apart. of a contrast President Trump in their couldn’t be farther apart. policies and background.

She had little-to-no Democratic Party estabpolicies The and Democratic background. The Democratic She had little-to-no Democratic Party estabParty is nominatingParty women and people women of lishment support. Helishment had the support. backing of is nominating and people of Hethe had the backing of the color at historically color high rates this election city’s mayor, fellow Massachusetts members of at historically high rates this election city’s mayor, fellow Massachusetts members of cycle. “We just havecycle. this “We percolation, Congress and Democratic leaders Congress leaders in Congress just havethis this percolation, this Congress andinDemocratic synergy, this transcendence happening in such as the head of such the Congressional synergy, this transcendence happening in as the head ofBlack the Congressional Black 2018 that people are responding to,” are Nina Caucus, Rep. John Lewis (Ga.).

2018 that people responding to,” Nina Caucus, Rep. John Lewis (Ga.).

Turner, head of Our Revolution, group She was the first black serve on woman to serve on Turner, heada of Our spun Revolution, a group spun Shewoman was thetofirst black out of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, the Boston City Council.

He is City white and He is white and out of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, the Boston Council.

SCOTT EISEN/GETTY IMAGES saidEISEN/GETTY after Gillum’s in Florida. represents a majority nonwhitea district SCOTT IMAGES win said after Gillum’s win in Florida. represents majorityinnonwhite district in In her victory speechIn Tuesday night, Press-Tuesday night, PressBoston.

Ayanna Pressley defeated a 20-year her victory speech Boston.

Ayanna Pressley defeated a 20-year ley called Trump a racist: “OurTrump president is a “Our president is a She had the support of thehad current leader on Rep.on Michael E. Capuano ley called a racist: She the support of the lawmaker, current leader lawmaker, Rep.(D-Mass.).

Michael E. Capuano (D-Mass.). racist, misogynistic, racist, truly empathy-bankrupt the far left of the party, Alexandria Ocasio-Cormisogynistic, truly empathy-bankrupt the far left of the party, Alexandria Ocasio-Corman,” shenational said.

All three of these newcomers national tez. He did not. man,” she said.

All threetoofthe these newcomers to the tez. He did not.

Whether paradoxical strat- paradoxical stratscene have a few things com-a few things Pressley’s primary win is the second-mostWhether the seemingly Democratic sceneinhave in the com-seemingly Pressley’s primary win is Democratic the second-mostto into movewhat to the egy left to to move win over Trump thatthis allow lump into notable congressionalnotable win oncongressional the left this year to the left to win over Trump mon thatthem allow us what to lumpegy them win onmon the left yearus to voters is afaction winning voters strategy to strategy be seemsone to beofa growing and formidable faction since Ocasio-Cortez since dethroned one of the is aremains winning remains to be seems to be a growing and formidable Ocasio-Cortez dethroned the seen. the bigofwinsseen. on the left big so far, only of theRep. Democratic are people of They leaders of the Democratic Rep. Joseph Party, Of the wins on the left so far, only of theThey Democratic Party: areOfpeople leadersParty, of the Democratic Joseph Party: Gillum Florida and Stacey Abrams,and the Stacey Abrams, the color. They have at least or have two policies Crowley, in the New York primaries.

OcasioGillum in Florida color.one They at least one or twoinpolicies Crowley, in the If New York primaries.

If Ocasionominee in Georgia,nominee are posi-in Georgia, are posithat them further left further on the to gubernatorial Cortez’s win in New York Citywin wasina New wake-up gubernatorial that to putthethem the left on the Cortez’s York City wasput a wake-up tionedcandidates to put it to thetioned test. Ocasio-Cortez the establishment call for Democratic call leaders that the party’s to put it to theand test. Ocasio-Cortez and spectrum thancandidates the establishment for Democratic leadersspectrum that the than party’s Pressleycase, should easilyPressley win the should generaleasily election they’re (In Pressley’s case, she base is agitated and motivated for a shake-up win the general election they’re challenging.

(In Pressley’s she base is agitated and motivated for a challenging. shake-up in their heavily Democratic so would districts; so would didn’t accept the superdidn’t PAC money, and she in the Trump era, Pressley’s win confirms the in theirdistricts; heavily Democratic accept super PAC money, and she in the Trump era, Pressley’s win confirms have theand members Congress they beat.of Congress they beat. supports abolishing supports Immigration and Custrend. the members abolishing Immigration Cus- of have trend.

But it’s notable twoit’s years after that, Sand-two years after SandtomsaEnforcement.) they unseated orAnd beatthey unseated Her win over Capuano a week after comes notable toms Enforcement.) or beat that, But Hercomes win over Capuano week after And ers’s make presidential the energycampaign, on the out white, older whoolder makecandidates up the who Florida Democratic voters ers’s presidential the energy on the out white, up thecampaign, Floridanominated Democraticsomevoters nominated some-candidates left is alive and well out— and kicking out party establishment. one for governor who to abolish thewants left —is and alivekicking and well party establishment. onewants for governor who to abolish the longtime members oflongtime Congress.

This movement on the congresImmigration and Customs Enforcement agen- Enforcement n members of Congress. n This movement is centered on the congresImmigration and Customs agen- is centered sional level, and so sional far it islevel, taking in it is taking place in cy, Andrew Gillum. cy, Andrew Gillum. ©The Washington Post©The Washington Post andplace so far

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This publication was prepared by editors at prepared The This publication was by editors at The Washington Post for printing and distribution by ourand distribution by our Washington Post for printing partner publications across thepublications country. All across articlesthe andcountry. All articles and partner columns have previously appeared The Post or on columns haveinpreviously appeared in The Post or on POLITICS washingtonpost.com and have been edited and to fithave this been edited to washingtonpost.com fit this THE WORLD format. For questions or comments regardingorcontent, format.

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WEEKLYWEEKLY

CONTENTS CONTENTS ON THE COVER ON THE COVER 4POLITICS 4 Wildlife Service At the U.S. Fish and At the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 10THE WORLD 10 forensic lab in Ashland, Ore., lab in Ashland, Ore., forensic 12COVER STORY scientist Rachel12 Jacobsscientist holds aRachel Jacobs holds a 16SCIENCE 16skull. Photo by carved orangutan carved orangutan skull. Photo by 18BOOKS 18 Washington LEAH NASH for The LEAH NASH for The Washington 20OPINION 20 Post Post 23FIVE MYTHS 23

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OPINIONS

Neil Armstrong and the flag on the moon HOMER HICKAM is the author of the memoir “Rocket Boys,” which was made into the film “October Sky.” This was written for The Washington Post.

More than a few Americans are fed up with Hollywood and want no part of what the industry produces. For a while now, once­unifying entertainment awards shows have become minefields of woke declarations and Trump­ bashing, which are perceived by many Americans who vot­ ed for the president as insults directed not just at him but also at them. ¶ This has now thrown “First Man,” a major new movie about one of America’s greatest heroes, into the path of some hard cultural head winds. Back in 1969, in the real world, Neil Armstrong and fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin spent some 10 minutes raising the American flag on the lunar surface. But in the film version, the flag scene is nowhere to be found. When the question of why came up last month at the Venice Film Festival, Ryan Gosling, the actor who plays Armstrong in “First Man,” stumbled with his answer, explaining that the landing was a “human achievement” and that Armstrong didn’t view himself as an “American hero.”

The result was outrage, especially from many of the folks who have felt insulted by Hollywood’s recent history.

Although I count myself among those who think Hollywood should stay out of politics, I think the folks railing against “First Man” are wrong.

The history here is instructive. Although the lunar flag-planting may seem like a given in hindsight, for months before the flight of Apollo 11 there was a debate within the federal government and in the press as to the wisdom of doing it. The argument for the flag was that the voyage was an entirely American effort that was paid for by American taxpayers, who deserved to see their flag planted in the lunar regolith.

The argument against was that it could cast the landing in the eyes of the world as a nationalistic exercise,

diminishing what was otherwise indisputably a triumph of American values and ideals, not to mention a demonstration of our technical superiority over our great adversary, the Soviet Union.

Ultimately, just a few months before the flight, Congress ordered NASA to put up the flag.

The result, a rushed bit of engineering, was a set of spindly tubes holding a governmentissued flag valued at around $5 and, since there was no room in the moon lander, flown clamped to a leg of the vehicle.

Armstrong and Aldrin put up the flag and saluted it, then got on to other business.

As it turned out, people across the world didn’t much care.

What they saw and celebrated were two fellow human beings walking on the surface of the moon. I watched Apollo 11 on a battered television set at Fort

NEIL A. ARMSTRONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS

This July 20, 1969, NASA photo taken by Neil A. Armstrong shows Buzz Aldrin posing beside the U.S. flag the astronauts planted on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission.

Lewis, Wash., along with other Army officers, most of us just recently returned from Vietnam.

The picture was so fuzzy I don’t even recall the flag, only the ghostly images of Neil and Buzz moving about. We fresh Vietnam vets were just relieved that our boys on the moon were alive and well.

“First Man” the movie is based on an excellent book that has the same title, but also the subtitle “The Life of Neil A. Armstrong.” It is not the story of the moon-landing but of the world-famous astronaut himself.

Author James R. Hansen worked hard to reveal a man who comes across in the book as a kind of techno-Atticus Finch — someone who never says outright what he believes but demonstrates it through his actions.

I suspect this vision of Armstrong affected the filmmakers. No one ever saw Armstrong do a fist-pump; he just didn’t do that kind of thing.

Raising the flag on the moon might be perceived as that kind

of gesture and therefore jar the flow of a film trying to uncover the inner workings of a man who spent a lifetime keeping his emotions in check. Although I personally would have included the flag-raising — it was a moment of rare lightheartedness between Neil and Buzz — I understand from experience the decisions that writers and directors sometimes make to fit their vision of their characters, even ones based on real people.

Because I’m interested in space history, and because I think “First Man” will be a unique and dramatic view of an important American who most of us never got to know very well, I will see this movie. If it’s anything like the book, I fully expect it to move me to even greater appreciation for my country, a nation that saw fit to attach to one of the moon lander legs not just its national flag but also this honest and humble declaration: “We Came In Peace for All Mankind.” n

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POLITICS

DeVos’s failed push for school choice B Y L AURA M ECKLER

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ducation Secretary Betsy DeVos came to Washington to promote the cause of her life — school choice.

Republicans controlled both the House and Senate. President Trump had promised a $20 billion program.

But more than a year and a half later, the federal push is all but dead.

That’s partly because DeVos herself emerged badly damaged from a brutal confirmation process, with few people — even in her own party — interested in taking up her pet cause.

She’s also been stymied by division among Republicans over the idea of federal incentives for school choice. And Democrats are united against her.

“She’s certainly not a very effective lobbyist” for her cause, said Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “She has enthusiastically pushed it, and arguably the politics of choice are more complicated than they were two years ago, and the choice community is more split.”

That has left DeVos with the bully pulpit. She uses it to promote alternatives to traditional public schools, typically plans that allow tax dollars to follow children when they leave for private schools. She may have won some converts, but she’s alienated many others.

Congress already has said no to her budget proposals. A proposed tax credit supporting voucherlike scholarships has died. A new spending bill again offers little for school choice enthusiasts.

And if Democrats gain power after this fall’s midterm elections, chances for action would fall even further. For all practical purposes, the fight is over, and she lost.

School choice has become the latest ambitious policy plan to arrive in Washington with great hope, only to die a quiet death.

Opposition has come from lawmakers who represent rural states and see little benefit in school choice programs when so few al-

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST

Education secretary’s unpopularity after grueling confirmation process helped kill policy proposals ternatives to traditional public schools exist in their communities. As structured, critics say, a grant plan proposed by DeVos would have amounted to a windfall for states that already have these programs.

That concern arose as early as DeVos’s confirmation hearing, when Sen. Mike Enzi (R) questioned whether school choice would offer much for rural places such as his home state of Wyoming.

DeVos also ran into trouble with libertarian-minded conservatives who complain that a new federal program will bring new federal regulations.

Her aides reply that she doesn’t want a large federal program, either. They point to states enacting or expanding school choice, and they claim success with a heightened public debate.

“The focus of the education de-

bate is on school choice now in a way it never has been,” said Nathan Bailey, an Education Department spokesman. He added: “Secretary DeVos has been clear from Day One that school choice should be driven from the local level.”

And there has been movement at that level. In Illinois, a new program creates a backdoor voucher, giving corporations a tax credit if they donate money for private school scholarships. Georgia expanded a similar program.

And North Carolina created publicly funded educational savings accounts to help families of children with disabilities pay private school tuition and other expenses.

Tommy Schultz, spokesman for the American Federation for Children, the group DeVos founded and led for many years, cited these and other advances. He said DeVos hasn’t been much of a factor — pro or con — during debates in

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s push for federal school choice programs has been hamstrung from the start of her contentious confirmation hearings, but aides say she’s scored a win just by spotlighting the issue.

these states and others.

“The national sentiment doesn’t get brought up in state-level debates over education bills,” he said.

Before being named education secretary, DeVos devoted her professional life and a slice of her family’s fortune to promoting school choice in her home state of Michigan and beyond.

Her motivation, DeVos says, is to make sure every child can escape failing schools, even if parents can’t afford private school tuition. Critics counter that vouchers and related programs help only a few students and drain money from public schools serving everyone else.

The first Trump budget proposed $1.4 billion to promote school choice, offset by deep cuts to other education programs.

It would have increased charter school funding and created a $250 million private school voucher program. It also had $1 billion to encourage districts serving poor children to let families choose their public school.

But in Congress, aides say the fight was over before DeVos arrived. The Senate had already twice rejected school choice plans during a 2015 debate, and even DeVos backers believed the outcome this time would be no different.

Another factor was DeVos herself, according to people in both parties. The secretary had barely survived a grueling confirmation process, which ended with Vice President Pence casting a tiebreaking vote for her. Her difficulty answering questions during hearings along with her embrace of voucher plans galvanized opposition around the country.

Aides inside the administration and on Capitol Hill said her unpopularity made her toxic, and it became almost impossible for her to effectively advocate for her program. One administration official said teachers unions had so bludgeoned her that lawmakers saw “no great benefit and a great deal of pain” with being associated with her chief cause. n ©The Washington Post

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POLITICS

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Hearings are used to show resistance BY

S EAN S ULLIVAN

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he 2020 presidential campaign came roaring into Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings this past week, with a pair of prospective Democratic candidates going to extraordinary lengths to demonstrate their opposition to President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.

Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.) on Thursday portrayed himself as a rebel willing to face expulsion from the Senate for releasing confidential documents from Kavanaugh, describing it as his “I am Spartacus” moment. In reality, the documents had already been cleared for release.

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) hinted that she might have hard evidence that Kavanaugh spoke about the special counsel investigation with someone at the law firm founded by Trump’s personal attorney. But she offered no such details when pressed.

Booker and Harris, two of the Democratic Party’s most prominent African Americans, took the headline-grabbing but shaky steps to put their opposition to Trump and Kavanaugh on full display for the country.

The jockeying by the two came amid a clamor by a liberal base demanding resistance to Trump’s agenda and nominees at all costs and under a glaring national spotlight exposing every stumble. At the same time, the bareknuckle brawling has divided Democrats, frustrating moderates facing tough reelection bids in states Trump won handily.

“It’s not who I am,” said Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who observed the questioning by Democrats and Republicans at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and has indicated he is open to voting for Kavanaugh.

The presidential ambitions of several Senate Democrats could cost the party in November’s midterm elections, with 10 Democrats fighting for reelection in states won by Trump.

Republicans seized on Booker’s actions, with Sen. John Cornyn

MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST

Potential presidential candidates build their own profiles with harsh questioning of Kavanaugh (Tex.) accusing him of making “himself a martyr in aid of his presidential campaign” and the GOP mocking him as the “Spartacus of Newark.” In July, Republicans pounced on Booker’s statement that supporters of Kavanaugh are “complicit” in “evil.”

Despite the actions of Booker, Harris and dozens of protesters who have repeatedly disrupted the hearings, Democratic hopes of defeating Kavanaugh have all but faded completely. Activists have so far failed to persuade pivotal centrist senators to oppose him and encountered difficulties around the country in motivating people to pressure them.

As a result, Kavanaugh is in strong position to be confirmed this month as Republicans hold a 51-49 advantage.

But for Booker and Harris, the fight for 2020 is just beginning.

Both are experiencing their first Supreme Court nomination hearings as members of the Judiciary

Committee.

On Thursday, Booker lambasted the panel’s procedure of keeping many Kavanaugh documents private as a “sham” with little merit and said he was releasing some, despite the dire consequences he could face for doing so. “Bring it on!” he said.

Cornyn, the second-ranking Republican senator and a fellow member of the Judiciary panel, accused Booker during the hearing of prioritizing his national ambitions.

“Running for president is no excuse for violating the rules of the Senate or of the confidentiality of the documents that we are privy to,” he said.

But the records that Booker posted on his website Thursday morning had already been cleared for public release, according to Democratic and Republican aides on the committee.

Pressed by reporters about whether he was told the docu-

Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.) and Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) are seen as likely contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination. Both have made clear their opposition to President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Brett M. Kavanaugh.

ments that he mentioned Thursday morning were approved for release, Booker said he read in Wednesday’s session from “committee confidential documents in violation of the rule.” He insisted he was continuing to release confidential documents.

Harris’s tense exchange late Wednesday with Kavanaugh centered on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible links to the Trump campaign. A C-SPAN video of the nearly eight-minute back and forth posted on Twitter on Wednesday evening was viewed nearly 4.8 million times by early Thursday afternoon.

Harris repeatedly asked Kavanaugh whether he talked about Mueller or his probe with anyone at the law firm founded by Trump’s personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz.

Kavanaugh said he didn’t remember and wasn’t sure he knew everyone who works at the law firm. On Thursday, Harris asked him once more, saying this time that she had received “reliable information” that he had had such a conversation. “I’m not asking you, ‘What did you say?’ I’m asking, ‘Were you party to a conversation’” about the Mueller inquiry. Kavanaugh said no.

A spokesman for law firm Kasowitz Benson Torres said in a statement that “no discussions” regarding the probe had occurred “between Judge Kavanaugh and anyone at our firm.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (DMinn.), another possible White House contender who sits on the Judiciary Committee, has questioned Kavanaugh on issues that have resonated with party activists, including presidential power and health care.

The blunt questions Democrats have asked Kavanaugh on the most explosive political, cultural and legal battles of Trump’s tenure highlight the emerging themes of the campaign, which could be one of the most wide open and crowded in recent memory. n ©The Washington Post

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SCIENCE

‘Minibrains’ raise hopes and fears C AROLYN Y . J OHNSON in Philadelphia BY

X

uyu Qian yanked open an incubator door at the University of Pennsylvania to reveal rows of cylindrical tubes swirling, like shakenup snow globes, with a strange and exotic flurry. The pale, peppercorn-sized spheres were labgrown globules of human brain tissue, or, as Qian occasionally refers to them, “minibrains.”

“Minibrain” is a controversial nickname, loathed by some scientists who fear it conjures alarmist images of fully functioning brains trapped in vats, while the reality today is balls of cells that can’t think or feel.

But the term vividly evokes the aspirational goal of this fastmoving area of research: to mimic the complexity of the human brain and illuminate the biology of the human mind, one of science’s darkest black boxes. As the technology, which scientists refer to in journal articles as “cerebral organoids,” improves, the more the “minibrain” title fits.

Today, organoids that resemble different regions of the human brain are routinely spun up from stem cells in large batches in laboratories around the world. Researchers have refined their recipes since the technique was first described five years ago, but the process is surprisingly hands-off: After a few nudges from scientists, stem cells grow into spheres with about a million neurons through a naturally occurring choreography that mirrors early brain development in the womb. At Day 100, Qian’s minibrains resemble a portion of the prenatal brain in the second trimester of pregnancy.

“People are more worried about if they reach a certain level — if it’s really like a human brain. We’re not there; we’re very far from there,” said Hongjun Song, who leads the laboratory at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, where Qian works. “But the question people ask is, ‘Do they have consciousness?’ The biggest problem I have so far is I think, as a field, we don’t know: What is con-

Scientists question the ethics of recreating the human brain

JESSICA KOURKOUNIS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

sciousness? What is pain?”

At the moment, minibrains are far from anything approaching moral personhood in a dish, and the technology may never come close. But the rapid pace of progress on organoids has led scientists and ethicists to call for a public ethical discussion that can move in tandem with the research.

“If, at the sunset of life, the brain is what you examine to know if someone has died, at the beginning of life is there a point where you might say, ‘Look, the brain is at the beginning of life?’ ” said Insoo Hyun, a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University. “Many people don’t understand where the science is now, and where it could go in the future — including, I think, the researchers.”

Organoids offer a powerful tool for scientists studying the mysteries of the brain, which by some

estimates is the most complex object in the world. Unlike cancer, which researchers can study by growing cancer cells in a dish, the brain and its disorders have been largely off-limits, except through hard-to-get post-mortem tissue or by trying to study much simpler animal brains.

More than a decade ago, scientists discovered it was possible to create stem cells by reprogramming a person’s skin cells. They could use the procedure to create any cell type in the body and study the basic biology of specific diseases that afflict people, ranging from Down syndrome to diabetes.

Sergiu Pasca, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, dreamed as a medical student of understanding the biological basis of autism and schizophrenia. Now, his lab uses stem cells from people who have those conditions to grow cerebral

A scientist dissects a glioblastoma tumor at the University of Pennsylvania. The tissue will be used to grow “cerebral organoids” that resemble different regions of the human brain.

organoids.

“This gives us aspects of human brain development that were previously inaccessible. Most of the work we’re doing right now is to study really the hidden biology of the human brain,” Pasca said.

By creating organoids from people with a genetic disease that causes autism and epilepsy, he was able to watch how brain cells migrate during early development.

Pasca and his colleagues saw clear differences — one type of neurons jumped around in an abnormal and inefficient way in the organoids from the patients, giving the researchers a window into a critical part of development that could have long-term consequences.

After the Zika virus was officially linked to brain defects in infants, Song and his wife and close collaborator, Guo-li Ming, sent

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SCIENCE minibrains to other collaborators, who exposed them to Zika. They saw the virus infect a kind of stem cell called a neural progenitor that generates new brain cells, wreaking havoc.

Ryan Salinas, a clinical fellow in Ming’s lab, grows organoids from patients with a deadly brain cancer, in the hopes they might provide a better tool for testing the effectiveness of drugs.

At the University of California at San Diego, stem-cell scientist Alysson Muotri is attempting to “Neanderthalize” a brain organoid as part of his larger search for the biological basis of modern humans’ sophisticated social abilities. He used gene-editing technology to introduce a mutation found in Neanderthal genomes to a modern human stem cell. The early, unpublished results, he says, are an organoid that, instead of being smooth and spherical, is lumpy like popcorn — suggesting that the gene mutation significantly influences early brain development.

Five years ago, an ethical debate about organoids seemed to many scientists to be premature. The organoids were exciting because they were similar to the developing brain, and yet they were incredibly rudimentary. They were constrained in how big they could get before cells in the core started dying, because they weren’t suffused with blood vessels or supplied with nutrients and oxygen by a beating heart. They lacked key cell types.

Still, there was something different about brain organoids compared with routine biomedical research. Song recalled that one of the amazing but also unsettling things about the early organoids was that they weren’t as targeted to develop into specific regions of the brain, so it was possible to accidentally get retinal cells.

“It’s difficult to see the eye in a dish,” Song said.

Now, researchers are succeeding at keeping organoids alive for longer periods of time. At a talk, Hyun recalled one researcher joking that the lab had sung “Happy Birthday” to an organoid when it was a year old. Some researchers are implanting organoids into rodent brains, where they can stay alive longer and grow more mature. Others are building multiple organoids representing different parts of the brain, such as the hippocampus, which is involved

KLMNO WEEKLY

JESSICA KOURKOUNIS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

in memory, or the cerebral cortex — the seat of cognition — and fusing them together into larger “assembloids.”

Even as scientists express skepticism that brain organoids will ever come close to sentience, they’re the ones calling for a broad discussion, and perhaps more oversight. The questions range from the practical to the fantastical. Should researchers make sure that people who donate their cells for organoid research are informed that they could be used to make a tiny copy of parts of their brain? If organoids became sophisticated enough, should they be granted greater protections, like the rules that govern animal research? Without a consensus on what consciousness or pain would even look like in the brain, how will scientists know when they’re nearing the limit?

“The scientists often look at this tiny little piece, 2 millimeters cubed, and to think that represents the potential for say, consciousness, or some larger construct — as a scientist, you think of course that is not really a human brain,” said Rusty Gage, president of the Salk Institute for Biological

Studies. “On the other hand, I’ve been in this long enough to know it’s not just the facts, it’s the perception of it and how the public sees it.”

As scientists implant organoids into animals, creating mixed creatures — chimeras — with some human brain cells, new questions emerge. So far, a human organoid in a mouse brain makes up only a tiny portion of the brain. Gage has tested whether these mice have unusual cognitive abilities and found none.

But those questions will quickly change if an organoid is ever implanted into a primate brain. In October, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine will hold a workshop focused on the scientific opportunities and bioethical challenges that come either from altering genes or creating chimeras to model nervous system disorders in nonhuman primates. A draft policy from the National Institutes of Health proposed a steering committee that would advise on research in which human cells could make a “substantial contribution” to animal brains, excluding rodents.

There are other, non-organoid

Dan Zhang, a doctoral student, examines and sorts organoids at the University of Pennsylvania.

ways to approach some of the same questions. Christof Koch, president of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, said that every few weeks, researchers on his team receive a small cube of human brain that was removed during surgery.

“The brain stays alive — this discovery we made is the brain stays alive much longer than a mouse brain,” Koch said before adding a philosophical caveat that often comes up when researchers are talking about this area of research: “We don’t know what it means to stay ‘alive’ — the individual neurons remain responsive for three to four days.”

For ethicists such as Hyun, the goal of scrutinizing the research at its early stages is to avoid a repeat of the controversy surrounding the cloning of “Dolly the Sheep.”

The public felt taken by surprise by cloning, triggering an ethical discussion in 1997 after the technology was out in the world.

The difference between this and other times when scientists have brushed up against an ethical frontier may be how much the scientists want to take part. n ©The Washington Post

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KLMNO WEEKLY

WORLD

U.S. college hopes to stay in Hungary G RIFF W ITTE in Budapest BY

T

his week, 1,500 students from more than 100 countries will converge in the heart of this regal city on the Danube to prepare for classes at a university that enjoys respect among Hungarian academics, top international rankings and an American accreditation.

The only thing Central European University lacks is assurance that this year’s back-to-school rush in Budapest won’t be its last.

The university’s right to admit new students expires in January, and a hostile Hungarian government shows no sign of granting a reprieve.

“We’ve been taken hostage,” said Michael Ignatieff, a Canadian human rights scholar and former politician who, as the university’s president, may soon have to lead its retreat into exile.

There is no precedent for a European Union member state expelling an entire university. But Central European University — founded and funded by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s favorite boogeyman, liberal Hungarian American investor George Soros — has become the prime target of Orban’s campaign to dismantle Europe’s multicultural, tolerant liberalism and cement a culture that is unapologetically Christian, conservative and nationalist.

Orban has repeatedly attacked the university, known as CEU, as an agent of Soros’s alleged plots, including a plan to create “a mixed population” in Europe.

Since winning a landslide reelection in April, Orban’s siege of academia has expanded to include a blitz against gender-studies programs, an attempted takeover of scientific-research funding and a push to remake the nation’s literary canon.

His ambitions for a cultural counterrevolution extend beyond his nation’s borders. Across Europe, he proclaimed in a speech at a July youth festival, he foresees a chance to “wave goodbye” to liberal democracy — and with it to a

MEHMET YILMAZ/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES

Orban government has targeted Soros-funded university in campaign to dismantle liberalism generation of intellectual and artistic elites who advanced an “ideology of multiculturalism” and “adaptable family models.”

“We are on the threshold of a great moment,” he declared.

Orban has found allies for his cultural crusade in a far-right movement that is ascendant across Europe, in Russian President Vladimir Putin and in the White House.

President Trump’s former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, has celebrated the Hungarian leader as “a hero.” Hungary’s foreign minister was welcomed at the State Department in May. And the United States has dangled a possible meeting with Trump — a recognition Orban has long craved.

This willingness to engage, even as Hungary becomes increasingly autocratic, has generated criticism among democracy advocates. But it also gives the United States leverage in determining the future of CEU.

The new U.S. ambassador in Budapest, Trump appointee David B. Cornstein, is due to discuss the university with Orban in September in a meeting that could be pivotal.

Cornstein has made clear that Washington wants Hungary to back off its attacks and allow CEU — which has dual accreditation in Hungary and the United States — to remain in Budapest.

“I hope it will continue to connect our two countries for many years to come,” Cornstein said in a visit to the university shortly after his arrival in June.

A bipartisan group of senators has voiced support for the university, saying the departure of CEU from Budapest could set a dangerous precedent for American academic institutions worldwide — and cause grievous harm to the U.S.-Hungarian relationship.

Orban still may shrug off the Americans, as he has ignored repeated appeals from European

Students and faculty from Central European University protest in Budapest in April 2017 against legislation that seemed to target the school, which has been attacked by Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

leaders to allow CEU to stay. But to Ignatieff, American pressure is the university’s last hope.

Ignatieff, who was leader of Canada’s Liberal Party and has written extensively on autocratic regimes as both a journalist and a scholar, considers himself to have a grasp on Orban’s strategy.

“He understands that you can’t have stable, long-term domination of a political system unless you have an ideological project,” Ignatieff said.

Orban’s project involves visceral opposition to anything Soros touches. The prime minister’s reelection campaign was focused almost singularly on whipping up hatred toward the 88-year-old Soros, who has advocated what he describes as a humane approach toward the settlement of refugees.

Soon after Orban’s election to his fourth term, Soros’s nonprofit Open Society Foundations announced it could no longer protect its staff in Budapest and was shifting operations to Berlin.

But CEU — Soros’s other great philanthropic endeavor in his native city — has hung on.

The university was founded in 1991 to support Central and Eastern European nations as they transitioned to democracy after the fall of communism. CEU has graduate programs that are among the topranked in the world. It leads all Hungarian universities in attracting European research grants.

In April 2017, the Orban government rammed legislation through parliament that appeared tailormade to target CEU. It dictated that foreign universities are not allowed in Hungary unless they also offer classes in their home countries. In response, CEU launched an academic program at Bard College in New York.

But the government has refused to sign an agreement acknowledging the arrangement, leaving the university in limbo.

Ignatieff said that without clarity soon, the university will be forced to shift its home base to Vienna, where it is building what had been intended as a satellite campus. n ©The Washington Post

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KLMNO WEEKLY

Benedict seen as opposition symbol

BY C HICO H ARLAN AND S TEFANO P ITRELLI

in Rome

E

ver since Pope Benedict XVI became the first pontiff in six centuries to abdicate the papacy, transitioning to a life of near seclusion in a Vatican City monastery, there have been questions about how the notion of two living popes would impact the Roman Catholic Church.

Recent events offer something of an answer.

Although many people hoped to hear from Benedict amid new allegations that a coverup of sexual misconduct reached the highest levels of the church, he has established that an ex-pope should maintain a vow of silence about church matters — even during crises and even though he is particularly well-positioned to affirm or knock down the accusations.

Some Vatican watchers and insiders say the mere fact of Benedict’s 2013 abdication has made the modern papacy more vulnerable, emboldening voices of dissent. They say it’s hard to imagine a letter like the one released last month by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, provoking Pope Francis with a call to resign, without Benedict having created the possibility that modern popes might give up their seats before death.

Try as he might to stay out of the fray, Benedict has been used as a symbol of resistance for a segment of traditionalists who oppose elements of Francis’s reformist papacy and see Benedict’s vision of Catholicism as more aligned with theirs.

“He won’t stop the [Francis] revolution, but his presence reminds you — me, everyone — that another way is possible,” said Marcello Pera, a friend of Benedict and former president of the Italian Senate.

Once known as “God’s Rottweiler,” Benedict was not embraced by Catholics worldwide during his eight-year pontificate. But he won admiration among those who respected the depth of his academic work and his conviction that

DANIEL KARMANN/PICTURE-ALLIANCE/DPA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Pope emeritus is silent on most issues, but some traditionalists still use him as a foil to Francis church teachings shouldn’t bend with the times.

At 91, Benedict still largely resembles the firm theologian who stepped down five years ago, when he leaned into a microphone, offered a brief message in Latin and shocked the Roman Catholic Church. He still dresses in papal white. He chose not to revert to his given name, Joseph Ratzinger.

Friends say he is frail — he moves with the help of a walker — but he is mentally sharp. In a letter earlier this year to the Corriere della Sera, an Italian daily, he said he was “on a pilgrimage toward Home.”

Some historians say that, for all of Benedict’s theological work, it is his resignation that will most come to define his legacy.

In 2013, after eight years as pope, Benedict upended the rules of the modern papacy. He said he was aware of the “seriousness of this act.” He cited deterioration of his “mind and body.” Some close to

Benedict have said he feared becoming an incapacitated leader like John Paul II, with whom he worked closely for years. But rumors have lingered about other contributing factors, including the possibility of blackmail or pressure relating to scandals within the Vatican bureaucracy. Benedict in 2014 wrote to an Italian website, Vatican Insider, saying speculation about his resignation was “simply absurd.”

Officially, papal resignations are only valid if or when performed “freely.”

It will take years still to fully account for the ramifications of Benedict’s resignation, but Andrea Tornielli, a veteran Vatican journalist at La Stampa, an Italian daily newspaper, said even the visual has been striking and disorienting — with two men in papal white inside the Vatican walls.

“It’s kind of a duplication of the image,” Tornielli said. “It’s a total novelty in the history of the

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has been used as a symbol of resistance for a segment of traditionalists who oppose elements of his successor’s agenda during a fragile time in Francis’s reformist papacy.

church.”

Benedict has sought to relinquish his public life. He receives occasional visitors in his home, where he lives with a cat, is surrounded by books and has a view from the window of St. Peter’s dome. He goes on afternoon walks in the Vatican garden. Official photos occasionally show him meeting with Francis. He has attended public mass infrequently.

Elio Guerriero, a Benedict biographer who has known the pope emeritus since the 1980s, says he is content in his quiet daily life. His outlook has become sweeter and more affectionate,” Guerriero said.

Those who have visited Benedict since he abdicated say he has also tried to avoid fostering insurrection. Four years ago, after a hint that Francis might adopt a more relaxed stance on Communion for divorced Catholics, a small group of cardinals asked Benedict to intervene, according to the mainstream Italian daily La Repubblica. Benedict told them that he wasn’t the pope and shouldn’t be involved — and afterward privately alerted Francis.

After the release of the Viganò letter, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Benedict’s personal secretary, did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Washington Post. He told a German publication that Benedict would not comment, now or in the future, on the letter.

Benedict’s silence in this case has been in keeping with his effort to maintain a low profile. But it’s also noteworthy because the letter specifically cites Benedict and Francis as knowing for years about the sexual misconduct of a nowdisgraced prelate, Theodore McCarrick.

Despite Benedict’s general silence, or perhaps because of it, some conservatives have latched on to the pope emeritus as a symbolic ally. A mix of academics, journalists and Vatican officials have held conferences aimed at criticizing Francis — and sometimes praising Benedict’s teachings. Viganò spoke during at least one of those events. n ©The Washington Post

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COVER STORY

Solving the wildest of crimes

T

K ARIN B RULLIARD in Ashland, Ore. BY

he young golden eagle on the operating table showed no outward signs of trau­ ma. An X­ray had revealed no frac­ tures. ¶ But this bird, a protected spe­ cies, was dead — and that’s why it was here, beak­up in a laboratory. It had been shipped to this picturesque col­ lege town by federal agents somewhere in the West who suspected it had been electrocuted by power lines. Now its carcass was evidence in an investiga­ tion that could lead to criminal charges against a utility company. ¶ A veterinary pathologist was about to cut open the bird in the hope of determining its cause of death. This unusual federal facility, the world’s only full­service foren­ sics lab for wildlife crimes, analyzes thousands of creatures that each year cross its threshold in the form of carcasses, parts and products. Its mission is to use science to find how the animal died — and often, to figure out what kind of animal it was. ¶ “In police work, you know what your victim is — it’s Homo sapiens,” said Ken Goddard, a for­ mer crime scene investigator who now directs this place, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory.

“Our first job is to figure out what a victim is.”

PHOTOS BY LEAH NASH FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Veterinary pathologist Rebecca Kagan examines a golden eagle, a protected bird that was suspected of being electrocuted by power lines, at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 9,2018 SUNDAY, September, 2018

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Crime against wildlife is a multibillion-dollar global enterprise that experts say is only increasing as poaching and trafficking networks grow more sophisticated and move into dark corners of the Internet. When authorities interrupt that enterprise, this lab is often a critical stop in their investigations. Its scientists run DNA tests, examine bullets, identify poisons and compare remains to some 35,000 specimens in the lab’s reference collection — a ghoulish panoply of pelts, bones, feathers and claws.

When 13 bald eagles turned up dead on a Maryland field two years ago, chemists here found they had been killed by a banned pesticide. When a mysterious werewolf-like canine was shot in Montana this summer, geneticists concluded it was merely an oddlooking wolf. When one member of an infamous Irish gang pleaded guilty last fall to illegally exporting a rhino horn cup, he did so after the lab determined the vessel was fashioned from an endangered great Indian rhinoceros.

Not that Goddard or his colleagues will tell you that.

“We never call to see how the case went in court,” he said. “The gold star on the wall is a successful presentation, not a successful prosecution.”

The one-story, 40,000square-foot lab is a federal building, but it feels almost quaint, compared with the fortresses in Washington. Visitors don’t pass through metal detectors, though evidence is sometimes X-rayed upon arrival. A new parking lot barrier gate was installed this summer to deter truck bombers, not because of a specific threat, Goddard said, but because it’s protocol at government facilities. Goddard half-jokes that some officials at headquarters do not even know the 34-employee lab exists.

But the lab is at the forefront of this kind of science. Its genetics refrigerators store tens of thousands of animal DNA samples. Its deputy director, Ed Espinoza, has made several breakthroughs, in-

LEFT: At the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lab in Ashland, Ore., wood identification specialist Cady Lancaster holds part of a guitar made of Brazilian rosewood.

RIGHT: Forensic scientist Ariel Gaffney displays a macaw.

cluding a method for identifying types of ivory and the use of a mass spectrometer to determine the species, and sometimes origin, of wood — a growing target of traffickers. Biologist Johnnie French travels to African countries to train rangers there on crime scene investigation (CSI) techniques to use when they find poached rhinos and elephants.

But French’s primary job is as a sort of curator and manager of a macabre collection that reflects humans’ long-held fascination with gathering animals alive and dead. Room after room at the lab hold metal lockers and drawers bursting with specimens that have been seized by authorities or donated: a cabinet of silky big cat pelts, a tray of rainbow-hued birds-of-paradise, a freakish purse made from a monkey, the tanned and suede-like skin of an elephant’s face. The collection is so vast that the lab is soon breaking ground on a 14,000-squarefoot warehouse to house it.

One storage closet, labeled “BACULA — DRIED ORGANS,”

holds real animal penis bones and impostors. (One foot-long item sold for sham medicinal purposes as a tiger penis was actually from a bull, the lab found.)

French gives what he calls his “sights and smells tour,” which begins with a small room where the larvae of flesh-eating beetles in transparent bins strip the meat from animal bones so that they can be analyzed for injury or stored for reference. Across the hall is French’s prep room, where he skins and tans or taxidermies newly acquired samples.

“This guy’s one of my favorites,” said French, a former army paratrooper, as he pulled a dead but very alive-looking Gaboon viper out of a walk-in freezer, one of several snakes seized in a federal investigation in Nevada. “This high school kid had 43 of the most venomous snakes in his room.

And his mom had no idea.”

An hour later, a FedEx delivery came: Two bins of frozen carcasses from the Santa Ana Zoo in California, which, like other zoos, donates to the lab’s collection.

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This one held a rhea, several primates and a giant anteater that, French discovered as he ripped open several layers of plastic bags, was missing its head for reasons he did not know.

“I’ll process each of its digits individually. That way we can always go back in five years or 10 years and say, ‘You know, this necklace looks like it has giant anteater claws,’ ” he explained.

Knowing what each claw looks like would help the scientists determine whether such a necklace was “made from one individual or three.”

The lab handles mostly federal cases, but it is also the official lab for the 182 nations party to CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Goddard was hired to help launch it in 1979, after what he describes as several years working as “a police crime lab director in Southern California digging up bodies out in the desert.” The facility ended up in Ashland, a

town flanked by two mountain ranges just north of the California border, in part because a local chiropractor pushed Oregon senators to support the project.

The lab began working cases a decade later, and Goddard, a garrulous 72-year-old with the bass voice of a radio announcer, has been there since. He says the work has given him confidence that he’ll look back on his professional life as meaningful; it’s also provided fodder for his side-gig as a crime novelist.

“A sense of humor is important,” Goddard said as he stood among various animal products displayed in the morphology lab, which, he emphasized with a smirk, has never come across a sasquatch sample. “You can’t take yourself too seriously in this work.”

That afternoon, veterinary pathologist Rebecca Kagan carried the dead golden eagle into a backroom and turned off the lights.

Wearing red goggles, she held an alternate light source, the kind often used in forensics to detect

LEFT: At the lab, visiting student Shay Fizer holds up an acorn woodpecker.

RIGHT: Biologist Johnnie H. French is surrounded by some of the 35,000 specimens in the reference collection he manages.

fingerprints. But, as she and colleagues had discovered years before, it also can reveal electrical injuries on hair or feathers.

Kagan was surprised to find none on the bird, so she carried it back to the elevated metal table.

Soon, she found another surprise.

Blood was pooled in spots inside the golden eagle, which she had begun to carve open.

“It’s not really consistent with electrocution. Interesting,” Kagan said. It could have been caused by the ingestion of rodent poison, she said, which chemists would have to determine.

A chart on the lab’s wall showed various rifle pellets. Another explained how to tell the difference between golden and bald eagles based on skeletal remains.

The lab’s findings have often been used in prosecutions under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. But the Trump administration said this spring that it would no longer apply the treaty, 100 years old this year, to unintentional bird killings. Golden and bald eagles re-

main broadly protected under another federal law, however, so the birds continue to show up in Ashland.

Across the room, Tabitha Viner, also a veterinary pathologist, wore purple surgical gloves and listened to Simon and Garfunkel while examining a bald eagle that may have been struck by a wind turbine.

“In a human autopsy, people don’t hide their bruises,” but animals do, Viner said. “The question from special agents always is: Did a human kill it?”

Viner, who previously worked at Smithsonian’s National Zoo, had X-rayed her bird, and now she was sitting in front of a computer inspecting the results.

“Both wings are fractured. This humerus is half-gone. This leg is fractured,” she said, adding that all were signs of a high-speed blunt-force impact more damaging than, say, a car collision.

“Our nation’s icon,” she said quietly as she continued her exam of the carcass. “Kinda broken.” n ©The Washington Post

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KLMNO WEEKLY

BOOKS

When Reagan stared into the nuclear abyss N ONFICTION

l

REVIEWED BY

M ATTHEW D ALLEK

O THE BRINK President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983

By Marc Ambinder Simon & Schuster.

364 pp. $27

ne of the Cold War’s scariest years was 1983. Although detente had eased superpower tensions in the 1970s, the United States and the Soviet Union were edging toward the precipice during Ronald Reagan’s third year in office. In March, Reagan called the Soviet Union “an evil empire,” rattling the men in the Kremlin. The president backed up his words with deeds. He lavished the U.S. military with funding, issued national security orders directing his government to wage economic and political war against the U.S.S.R., and announced his plan for a Strategic Defense Initiative (a.k.a.

“Star Wars”), which was supposed to establish a nuclear shield that would take out any incoming ballistic missiles and render “mutually assured destruction” obsolete.

For their part, Soviet leaders started to fear that the West was newly emboldened and that Reagan was willing to launch a first nuclear strike. The world shuddered when a Korean passenger plane strayed into Soviet airspace, the Russian military shot it down and Reagan branded it a “crime against humanity.” The pent-up fears, suspicions and tensions came to a boil when Soviet leaders misread NATO’s Able Archer 83 war game. Concluding that the exercise was the start of a first strike, the Kremlin mobilized its nuclear arsenal for war.

“Misunderstandings, the consequence of trying to control the uncontrollable, hurtled the world toward a conflict that not one single thinking person on either side ever wanted,” Marc Ambinder writes in “The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983.” His book describes the scare from the vantage point of the soldiers, spies, military commanders and political leaders who had to try to manage it, and how leaders of good will on both sides were trapped in a cycle of mistaken assumptions, mutual fears and human foibles. This deeply researched book is written with

BOB DAUGHERTY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sign a treaty to eliminate intermediate-range missiles at a White House ceremony on Dec. 8, 1987.

verve, and serves as a study in the messy intricacies of nuclear doctrine and the utter incapacity of humans to faithfully control awesome arsenals of unfathomable destructive force.

The technology was imperfect and prone to failure. Once, Soviet satellites indicated that an intercontinental ballistic missile launched from the United States was heading toward the Soviet Union. But the satellites had merely picked up on “reflections from high clouds passing over F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming.”

“The Brink” is not all a bleak narrative about the war that almost came to be in that terrortinged year. Ambinder also explains how the war scare became a seedbed for the unwinding of Cold War tensions and communism’s collapse by decade’s end. “The politicians, strategic thinkers, generals, and intelligence professionals

who made hard choices in the early 1980s deserve to be ranked in the upper echelons of historic achievement,” he asserts. “They helped win the Cold War. They deserve credit for that.”

In his judgment, as tensions peaked, Reagan started to empathize with the Soviet leadership, recognizing how much they feared him. He let them know that he was not going to launch a first strike and that he was serious about diplomatic negotiations. He dialed down the rhetoric and evolved during his time in the Oval Office. After the close calls of his early White House tenure, Reagan “began to try to understand the world through the minds of the Soviet leaders.”

This “Reagan-centric” view of how the Cold War ended is part of a growing trend in scholarship.

But it tends to shortchange Mikhail Gorbachev’s arguably

more influential role in winding down the Cold War, as well as decades-long developments in explaining the decline of the Soviet-U.S. standoff. Nonetheless, Ambinder shows Reagan and his team moving deliberately and thoughtfully to ease tensions in the wake of the war scare, contributing to our understanding of Reagan’s role in this milestone.

At times, “The Brink” moves so quickly from scene to scene and involves so many characters, plotlines and acronyms that the arc of the story can be hard to track. Ultimately, however, “The Brink” conveys not just the causes of the 1983 war scare but also how control of nuclear weaponry is inherently a flawed human undertaking. n Dallek is working on a book about the John Birch Society. This was written for The Washington Post.

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KLMNO WEEKLY

FIVE MYTHS

Tesla BY

B RENT G OLDFARB

AND

D AVID A . K IRSCH

Tesla — manufacturer of elegant, high­performance electric vehicles — and its high­profile chief executive, Elon Musk, have been in the news lately, but not always in the best light. One week, the company is going private; a few weeks later, no deal. The company isn’t the biggest electric­vehicle manufacturer, but it’s the one with the most buzz. And with that, come some big myths.

MYTH NO. 1 Tesla is destined to fail.

The company is burning mountains of cash, accumulating $9 billion in operating losses since it was founded. For the quarter ending in June, the net loss ballooned to $717 million.

It’s among the most shorted stocks on the market, with investors having sold about 25 percent of tradable shares in the belief that it’s overpriced.

But the company has many strengths, including a record of designing and producing attractive, exciting cars.

Consumer Reports gives high marks to Tesla’s vehicles, and perhaps most important, Tesla drivers love their cars. Even the much-debated stock price remains near its all-time high, providing the company with room to raise additional capital when needed. The Model 3 is successfully outselling (nonelectric) luxury offerings from BMW, Lexus, Porsche and Mercedes.

MYTH NO. 2 The future of mass-market electric cars depends on Tesla.

Tesla is one of many manufacturers of EVs. Nissan, Ford, General Motors, BMW, Kia and others all sell electric cars.

Jaguar’s new EV, the I-PACE, is getting reviews that suggest it’s equal to or better than Tesla’s in terms of driving experience. A broader view of electric-vehicle technology tells an even more encouraging story: In 2017,

Toyota sold 30,000 plug-in Prius Primes with an EV range of 25 miles, and more than 150,000 traditional hybrids that don’t plug in to recharge. Toyota sells more hybrid cars in six months than Tesla expects to sell all year.

EVs are close to 5 percent of sales in California, hybrids and electrics make up 52 percent of the Norwegian market, and EVs are seen as a major tool for reducing air pollution in Chinese cities.

MYTH NO. 3 Elon Musk knows what he’s doing.

While Musk has created a narrative focusing attention on exceptionally cool products or the generalities of production, Tesla’s failure to recognize and respond to the profound challenges of scaling belies an inability to absorb expertise based on more than 100 years of automobile manufacturing.

Perhaps Musk’s supreme confidence has gotten in the way of transforming his vision into reality. Even he has admitted some big mistakes, such as “excessive automation,” and it is clear that his “funding secured” tweet was an unforced error.

MYTH NO. 4 Tesla can be profitable if it hits Musk’s goals.

Musk says the Model 3 will be profitable as average costs decline with scale. He set a goal of producing 5,000 Model 3s a week by the end of the second quarter. Corresponding to the

STEFAN WERMUTH/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Tesla makes electric cars as well as supercharger stations for them, such as these in Rubigen, Switzerland. But the company has also generated a lot of mythology.

production increase, with the introduction of the Model 3, Tesla’s revenue growth has been dramatic: Revenue from April through June was $4 billion, 43 percent more than in the same period in 2017.

However, the goal of 5,000 units per week exists because Musk set it. There is no proof that the company will be able to sell 5,000 Model 3s a week profitably.

Musk refuses to supply a $35,000 version of the Model 3, stating that this cannot yet be done profitably. But that’s where the bulk of demand is. Despite the hubbub about the delivery backlog, new customers are waiting only a few weeks for souped-up Model 3s, suggesting that many preorders were for the basic $35,000 model and that demand for the only type of car that Musk can produce profitably — the high-margin $50,000 or $60,000 one — is soft.

argument for the valuation of Tesla is that it is disrupting the auto industry, creating a new type of company.

Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to conclude that Tesla is anything but a car company — and subject to the same realities as any other. Battery production notwithstanding, not only do most other major manufacturers have significant capabilities in different areas, they have something else: a proven ability to produce at scale. Since before Henry Ford, scaling has been the bane of new car companies, and it has emerged as the bane of Tesla.

If Tesla can be framed as something else, then it can continue to raise money based on an abstract promise of a disrupted future. But if it’s just a car company, then it needs to start making money by selling cars. n

MYTH NO. 5 Tesla is more than a car company.

“Tesla is a technology company first, and a car manufacturer second,” as the Street put it recently. One

Goldfarb and Kirsch are associate professors of management and entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland. They are the authors of the forthcoming “Bubbles and Crashes: The Boom and Bust of Technological Innovation.”

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