Tag Archives: foreign policy

Damping the Benefits of Globalization

Posted on by
Reply

In one of the few sensible pushes members of the Biden administration is making, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, in her meetings in Seoul, Republic of Korea, pushed for the US and our friends and allies to shift away from dependency on the People’s Republic of China for supplies and instead to friend-shore the supply chain: get the supply components and raw materials either domestically or through trade with friends and allies.

Friend-shoring is about deepening relationships and diversifying our supply chains with a greater number of trusted trading partners. The purpose is to lower risks for our economy and theirs[.]

There are, of course, criticizers of such a change in emphasis.

…some economists have cautioned that such a shift could damp the benefits of globalization and lead to higher prices.

But this is to misunderstand, or to ignore, the real risks to globalization: dependency on our enemies for Critical Items in our supply chain. The PRC, for instance, already has attempted to corner the market on rare earths, and it already has attempted to use that monopoly to coerce Japan by embargoing rare earth sales and shipments to them. Russia is already restricting supplies of natural gas to Europe.

Walking away from the PRC, and Russia, and our other enemies on supply chain matters may or may not lead to higher prices; most likely, higher prices will be limited to the period of transition away from our enemies.

The higher cost, though, from continuing dependency on enemy nations is to our national security and to the uncertainty premium resulting from those enemies engaging in restricting or outright embargoing critical supply items in order to coerce.

Where in the World is Joe Biden?

Posted on by
Reply

Again?

Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska is in DC this week. On her itinerary was last Monday’s meeting with SecState Antony Blinken; Tuesday’s (scheduled as I write this Tuesday morning) meeting with the US’ First Lady, Jill Biden; and an address to Congress today.

Absent from her itinerary is a meeting with the man who occasionally sits in the Oval Office, Joe Biden (D).

Biden refuses to go to Kyiv to meet with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or any other of Ukraine’s government officials, and now that Ukraine has come to DC, he still won’t meet Ukrainian government officials, not even unofficial officials like First Lady Zelenska? All he’s done is give her a photo op on the White House South Lawn as though he was a monarch granting a boon.

What is it that Biden is so desperate to avoid?

Now It’s Mandatory

Posted on by
Reply

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) is planning to visit the Republic of China next month. Zhao Lijian, Deputy Director of the People’s Republic of China’s Foreign Ministry Information Department, speaking for the PRC’s Foreign Minister demurred.

It [the visit] will have a severe negative impact on the political foundation of China-US relations, and send a gravely wrong signal to “Taiwan independence” separatist forces. China firmly opposes such a visit.

That pretty well settles the matter. Now it’s critical that Pelosi not only travel to the Republic of China, she also must meet with RoC President Tsai Ing-wen, Premier Su Tseng-chang, and the President of the Legislative Yuan, Yu Shyi-kun.

Maybe meet with National Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng, too, although matters of national defense are outside Pelosi’s portfolio.

Where in the World….

Posted on by
Reply

…is Joe Biden?

Adding to the long list of European heads of state that have visited Ukraine and met face-to-face with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv and to the long list of American Congressmen who have done the same, Senators Lindsey Graham (R, SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D, CT) have met with Zelenskyy in Kyiv, just last Thursday.

Which raises anew the questions: where in the world is President Joe Biden (D)? Of what is he so terrified that he won’t go to Ukraine and meet with Zelenskyy face-to-face?

It’s not that Biden is unable to hack the trip itself; he’s been to Brussels in the last few months, after all.

Maybe Time to Start Holding them Liable

Posted on by
Reply

The heads of the FBI and of Great Britain’s MI5 have a warning for American and British businesses regarding

the threats posed by Chinese espionage, especially spying aimed at stealing Western technology companies’ intellectual property.
In a rare joint appearance on Wednesday at the headquarters of MI5, Christopher Wray, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Ken McCallum, Director-General of MI5, urged executives not to underestimate the scale and sophistication of Beijing’s campaign.
“The Chinese government is set on stealing your technology—whatever it is that makes your industry tick—and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market,” Mr Wray told the audience of business people. “They’re set on using every tool at their disposal to do it.”

Too much of that information aggregates to national security levels, and the lackadaisical protection of it threatens our security indirectly via the degradation of our two nations’ economic capabilities relative to the People’s Republic of China and directly through exposing our defense information to theft. That means business laxness—outright laziness in too many cases—cannot be excused with the companies involved being left simply to take their lumps.

Wray emphasized the matter as it concerns the US.

We want to send the clearest signal we can on a massive shared challenge—China…if we are to protect our economies, our institutions, and our democratic values.

To do that, business executives—particularly CEOs, CFOs, and CIOs, and their deputies—need to do their part and start taking seriously their own obligations to protect company secrets and other proprietary information, along with information of a national security kind.

It may be, then, that business executives need to start being held personally liable, civilly and criminally, for security breaches that allow hackers to steal their companies’ information. The businesses that employ them may need, as legal persons, to be held similarly liable for such breaches.