Tag Archives: foreign policy

Decisions

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In a Wall Street Journal article Monday, Google’s MFWIC, Sundar Pichai, defended his decision to support the People’s Republic of China with a Google “search” engine that’s carefully compliant with PRC censorship requirements.

What interests me this time, though, is this bit:

Mr Pichai…played down the idea that the Project Maven decision was made only based on employee feedback. He said Google has also listened to experts in ethics and artificial intelligence.

Project Maven is a DoD program intended to develop artificial intelligence for American national defense purposes—including, yes, an improved ability to kill our enemies when they attack us.

Pichai’s rationalization of his decision to turn his back on our national defense doesn’t matter. Our enemies are developing AI and will use it against us. Pichai’s decision only potentiates those enemies’ relative capabilities.

Don’t be evil.  That used to be Google’s motto.  How is it evil to help our country defend itself?  How is it not evil to help our enemies, even if without AI support (other than “search” AIs)?

Now the corporate motto, handed down from parent Alphabet, is Do the right thing.  How is refusing to help our nation defend itself a right thing?  How is helping our enemies a right thing?

Sundar Pichai knows the answers to these questions full well.

Doing Business with the PRC

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The People’s Republic of China is stepping up their corporate espionage.

Starting November 1, police officers will have the authority to physically inspect businesses and remotely access corporate networks to check for potential security loopholes, according to the regulations released Sunday by the Public Security Ministry. Police will also be authorized to copy information and inspect records that “may endanger national security, public safety, and social order,” the rules said.

And

The new regulations also reinforce requirements on censorship and surveillance laid out in the cybersecurity law.

And to steal company secrets and classified information, and to plant malware for future use.

This is just one more reason for businesses to stop doing business with PRC companies or inside the PRC.  Lose market share?  What’s the cost of having all your secrets stolen, PRC domestic companies set up in competition based on those secrets, and then you, having been milked dry, being tossed aside?

What’s the cost to the security of your home country?  Oh, wait—that’s that patriotism that companies like Alphabet so deprecate.

Free Trade in North America

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With a Mexico-US trade agreement in nominally in hand (our two nations’ legislatures have ratify it, and our own Progressive-Democrats in the Senate are already saying #NO, #RESIST, and too many Republicans are acquiescing, though), Mexico wants Canada to join the agreement.  Mexico’s President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, after speaking with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau:

There is still time to achieve a trilateral agreement[.]

And

We hope they reach that understanding so that it will be a trilateral agreement.

Certainly, Canada’s joining an agreement would be good, but first the Canadians have to get serious in their negotiations.  President Donald Trump already has offered a tariff-free régime, and Canada won’t even discuss it.  Trudeau and his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Christia Freeland, steadfastly are demanding their protectionist tariffs—dairy, for instance—remain in place.

Update: They’re in. Now it’s necessary to convince Progressive-Democrat and self-serving Republicans in the Senate to ratify the deal.

It’s a Start

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The Trump administration has agreed to sell $330 million worth of spare parts to the Republic of China.  The spares will support the RoC’s F-16s, C-130s, and other of the island nation’s military aircraft.

It’s a start.  However, we need to do more.  We should be selling uprated F1-16s, F-15s, and A-10s to them.  We should be selling missile defense systems to them and brokering deals between the RoC and Israel for the latter’s Iron Dome and Arrow missile and rocket defense systems.  We should be selling the RoC anti-ship and anti-aircraft weapons systems.  We should be selling them land-attack cruise missile systems.

We should be selling the RoC the training necessary to maintain and operate those systems.

We should be helping the RoC defend itself against an increasingly aggressive and acquisitive People’s Republic of China.

Talks and Conflicts

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The Saturday Wall Street Journal had a piece that worried about President Donald Trump’s decision to add more tariffs to People’s Republic of China’s goods just prior to another round of trade talks with the PRC.

[T]he decision’s timing risks deepening the already bitter trade fight by starting another tit-for-tat round of tariffs.

And

The tariffs are bound to complicate—if not derail—talks with top Chinese officials, which are currently scheduled in Washington for Sept 27 and Sept 28, say people familiar with the plans.

Another interpretation, carefully ignored by the authors, is that in any conflict, it’s necessary to keep pressure on the opposing side while negotiations occur.  The battlefield shapes the talks, and the talks shape the battlefield–the battlefield encompasses both the talks and the conflict.