A Start

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Thomas Duesterberg, a Hudson Institute Senior Fellow, proposed five steps for our Federal government to take to address the People’s Republic of China’s economy and growing technological prowess. They form the foundation for a good start in countering that nation’s rise against us.

• tighten export controls on technology and expertise related to AI or national defense. …also coordinate export controls with allies on semiconductor production and equipment

This should be expanded to include sourcing the raw materials, intermediate processed components, and finished products of any type from sources outside the PRC.

• work with Congress to limit Chinese access to US financing, with stronger outward investment controls and limited access to listing on American stock exchanges

This should include enforcing existing requirements that any company, foreign or domestic, must meet to be listed on an American exchange. Chief among these are that those listed must subject themselves to stringent American accounting practices and audits. The current requirements vis-à-vis PRC-domiciled companies listed or seeking listing are under discussion with the PRC; however, there is nothing to discuss here: either those companies satisfy, or they must be delisted or cannot be listed in the first place.

• impose sanctions on Chinese banks. Washington has largely not pursued them, though reporting indicates Chinese banks have facilitated and financed illicit commerce such as technology transfer to Russia, drug trafficking, and money-laundering, as well as the purchase of sanctioned Iranian and Russian oil

• show Chinese tech companies reciprocity. China effectively bars most American firms from its markets by either forbidding them or making entry contingent on ridiculous requirements, such as revealing source code. Washington should bar firms tit-for-tat, especially in response to intellectual property transfers demands from China

Not tit-for-tat, as that would work in both directions: were the PRC to reduce or drop those restrictions, we would then need reciprocate. The mistakes here are two: one is that the PRC cannot be trusted to stop its parallel…sub rosa…thefts of our companies’ source code, intellectual property, technologies. The second mistake is that we should be doing no economic business with the PRC in the first place.

• enlist allies in the fight. The administration has competing foreign-policy priorities, but limiting China’s ability to compensate for losing the US market would measurably enhance success

President Donald Trump’s (R) protectionist tariffs against friends and allies and others work at cross purposes with his foreign policy tariffs against the PRC (and against Russia, Iran, and northern Korea, albeit for these three the moves primarily are sanctions). Leaving aside the broader counterproductive nature of protectionism, such tariffs are counterproductive by reducing or eliminating the targeted nations’ incentive to work with us against the PRC, even with the PRC’s inimical practical and operational moves toward those friends and allies, and others.

In fine, more is needed for Duesterberg’s proposals. The PRC is an avowed—by it—enemy nation, committed to overcoming us economically, militarily, and so politically. The sort of steps proposed by Duesterberg need to be broadened in reach to address the entirety of the PRC economy, which would directly limit that nation’s military growth and improvement as well as its technology growth and improvement, which would indirectly limit its military. That, in turn, would limit its ability to overcome us politically.

There is, though, only so much our government can do by itself. Our private enterprises, small, medium, large, and international, need also to recognize the enmity the PRC has toward us and to recognize how much their own interactions with the PRC and with PRC-domiciled companies facilitate the PRC’s effort to dominate us. They need to move apace in withdrawing from those interactions and find non-PRC related sources for their production, from ores to processed ores to components for assembly to finished products. They need also to stop aiding and abetting the PRC through helping it develop its own technology base.

Naïve

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Holman Jenkins wrote this, regarding a peace deal for the barbarian’s invasion of Ukraine, in his Tuesday op-ed:

Even with Russian troops still on Ukrainian territory, NATO would be stronger, Russia would be thwarted, and the lesson would percolate globally.

Jenkins is naïve to the point of idiotic.

The only part of Jenkins’ remark that’s accurate is the first. NATO most assuredly would not be stronger in any material way, even with the accession of Finland and Sweden to the alliance. The European member nations have been so woefully and for so long neglecting their national defense establishments in parallel with their NATO solemn commitments that neither the alliance nor the member nations in their aggregate can mount a large enough force supplied for long enough to resist the continued Russian advance into the prior fallen Soviet empire that Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised he would be going after.

Fully a third of the member nations, now including Canada, continue overtly to refuse to honor their 2% of GDP financial and equipment commitments to NATO—an amount far short of the now-recognized need of 5% of GDP just to catch up. Germany, the economic powerhouse of the EU until very recently, does not even have enough soldiers on active duty to train replacements, much less expansion, and the nation does not have more than a regiment of combat ready armor.

Russia will not at all be thwarted. Putin wants to reconstitute the erstwhile Russian empire, and that includes recontrolling, if not outright reconquering, Ukraine, Poland, the Baltics, Moldova, and more. Even the heavily depleted Russian military can overmatch the NATO nations, especially with the ample and upgraded resupply from Iran, the People’s Republic of China, and northern Korea, along with soldier reinforcements from the latter two.

The lesson that will—and is already, to an extent—percolate globally is that the West, now including the US—does not have the stomach for fighting, if the sort of deal described by Jenkins goes through. That lesson puts eastern and central Europe at severe risk, and it puts the Republic of China at immediate risk, along with longer term risks to the Republic of Korea, Japan, Australia…and the US.

Not a Bad Idea

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A letter writer in The Wall Street Journal‘s Monday Letters section had one.

The column about how AI can mimic the voice of a family member to facilitate scams showed how important it is for families to have a code word or phrase, known only to immediate family members, that they don’t use online. If somebody calls a family member in distress and needs help, he or she has to supply the code word or phrase. Therefore, a caller who says, ‘Mom, I’m in trouble,’ will earn the response, ‘OK, what’s the code word?’ Without it, mom promptly hangs up the phone.

The code phrase (I think a word is too easily social-engineered into discovery, especially by AI) cannot be delivered by telephone or messaging apps, though; those pathways are too easily hacked or even merely eavesdropped on. The phrase needs to be delivered in writing and in person or at most by first class snail mail.

One more tweak: given the nature of emergencies, that phrase should be kept on the person, in a wallet or purse (because it likely won’t be frequently used and so likely will be forgotten). That, in turn, necessitates promptly changing the phrase in the event of a mugging or a pickpocket success.

And a follow-up: after mom has hung up the phone, she needs to report the AI phish effort.

They Don’t Have to Accept the Deal

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The Trump administration has frozen $2.2 billion in funds for Harvard, out of some $9-ish billion in progress, over Harvard’s refusal to rid itself of the antisemitic bigots and terrorist-supporters in its student, professor, and school management populations. The editors at The Wall Street Journal object, but they’re missing the point.

Stipulate that the feds have a duty to enforce civil-rights laws, and Harvard failed to protect Jewish students during anti-Israel protests. But the university agreed to strengthen protections for Jewish students in a legal settlement with Students Against Antisemitism, which praised it for “implementing effective long-term changes.”
The Trump Administration nonetheless demanded last week that Harvard accede to what is effectively a federal receivership under threat of losing $9 billion. Some of the demands are within the government’s civil-rights purview, such as requiring Harvard to discipline students who violate its discrimination policies. It also wants Harvard to “shutter all diversity, equity and inclusion” programs, under “whatever name,” that violate federal law.
But the Administration runs off the legal rails by ordering Harvard to reduce “governance bloat, duplication, or decentralization.” It also orders the school to review “all existing and prospective faculty…for plagiarism” and ensure “viewpoint diversity” in “each department, field, or teaching unit.”

Leave aside the underlying premise that the words of “the university” have any value given the ongoing assaults against Jewish students, interference with their getting to class and the ability to participate in class/hear the lecture of those who do make it, interference with their ability to speak at all, and the ongoing disruptions by the terrorist supporters.

Stipulate that Harvard is a private institution, and it can do pretty much what it wants concerning “governance bloat, duplication, or decentralization,” “plagiarism,” and “viewpoint diversity.” As long as the school takes Federal dollars, the Federal government gets to specify how those dollars get used, just as any other donor can do.

Harvard doesn’t have to accept the deal on offer. Harvard also doesn’t have to get Federal dollars. The one is intrinsic in the school’s status as a private enterprise. The other is not at all intrinsic in it. Those Federal donations are nothing more than that—a privilege being received by Harvard, not anything to which Harvard has any right, in any sense of that term.

Disingenuosity in our “Elite” Universities

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Recall that the Department of Energy has frozen or cut Federal funding to a number of our allegedly elite universities over their refusal to deal with the antisemitic bigots and terrorist supporters in their student bodies and professor work force, and recall the Department’s decision to cap at 15% what those universities skim off the top of the research grants the Department sends for what those universities are pleased to call indirect costs. Now, MIT, Brown University, Cornell University, and Princeton University among others, are suing DoE over the cuts.

Per their lawsuit:

The pace of scientific discoveries in the national interest will be slowed. Progress on a safe and effective nuclear deterrent, novel energy sources, and cures for debilitating and life-threatening illness will be obstructed. America’s rivals will celebrate, even as science and industry in the United States suffer.

This is disingenuous. The universities do not have an inherent right to those Federal—our tax-remitted—dollars, which is the only rational reason for that claim. To the extent the pace will be slowed, to the extent that progress will obstructed, that’s entirely on these universities, and their demand for continuing the Federal spigot flow. These universities each have large and burgeoning endowments that would support their programs for decades, which would be plenty of time into which to shoehorn in the weeks required for the required reforms.

To the extent our national rivals—the universities’ cynical lumping in of our enemies with our competitors—will celebrate, that’s also on these universities and their desperation to continue receiving the…donations…these enemy nations and competitors pay over.