Tag Archives: political economy

Maybe Time to Start Holding them Liable

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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.

Relations with the People’s Republic of China

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Maurice Greenberg, Chairman and CEO of CV Starr & Co, an insurance and investment company with subsidiaries domiciled in the PRC and Hong Kong, said in his Wall Street Journal Wednesday op-ed that he wants the US to “rebuild relations” with the People’s Republic of China.

It is in our national interest, now more than ever, to do all we can to improve U.S.-China relations.

And

The US and China have a long history of collaboration dating to before World War II. When the People’s Republic of China reopened to the world, the US extended favorable trade terms to foster China’s economic growth….

What Greenberg ignored is that the People’s Republic of China has no relation to the pre-World War II China beyond sitting in the same geography. What he also ignored is that since the PRC “opened” and we extended favorable trade terms, the PRC has been running a campaign of stealing our intellectual property through outright theft, hacking, and coerced transfers as a condition of doing business within the PRC. That nation also has been running a parallel campaign, using the same techniques, to steal our national defense and foreign policy secrets.

Frank talks can build trust relationships with the PRC? No, the only thing we can trust of what the PRC’s government men say is their commitment to replace us on the world stage and to subordinate us to them.

We don’t to rebuild relations with the PRC. Let the PRC want to build, from the beginning, relations with us.

Energy Crisis—It’s What We Deserve

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Ignorant peasants that we are, we’re too dependent on fossil fuels. High prices and energy shortages are our due. The words of folks like the Sierra Club’s personage are just—to coin a phrase—code words for “stop arguing, and do it our way.”

Here’s Kelly Sheehan, Sierra Club’s Senior Director of Energy Campaigns:

Concerns about energy shortages in Europe and the spiking fossil fuel costs Americans are experiencing are both symptoms of our continued reliance on fossil fuels[.]

Shape up, guys. She added this:

As long as we rely on volatile global commodities like oil and gas, we’ll always be vulnerable to geopolitics and the whims of greedy fossil fuel executives.

Yeah, because making profits is so evil. Never mind that profit is what starts and grows companies, starts and grows supporting companies, starts and grows employment, starts and grows companies that cater to the needs and wishes of those employees—creates and increases prosperity all around.

Oh, and that volatility? Much, if not most, of that comes from the uncertain, varied, and varying regulations applied, adjusted, withdrawn by virtue-signaling government personnel and from the uncertainty of granting (and later withdrawing) exploration and production leases and permits for a host of fossil fuel-related projects also effected by virtue-signaling government personnel.

Geopolitics? The instability here is amply illustrated by the Netherlands government’s attack on farming(!).

Inflation and the high cost of energy, from gasoline and diesel to fuel our transportation and shipping vehicles to electricity and natural gas to heat and cool our homes and work places, are most assuredly on the ballot this fall and will be there still in the fall of 2024.

A Simple Question

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And a simple answer.

In an article in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal about the West’s economic sanctions on Russia and their impact on Russian citizens, the authors, Ann Simmons and Yuliya Chernova, ask a simple question:

How effective are the sanctions against Russia proving to be?

The answer to that is blindingly obvious and is given by the answer to this question: How many battalions has Putin been forced by those sanctions to withdraw from Ukraine?

Meantime, in the face of namby-pamby sanctions and inadequate arms and ammunition shipments, Ukraine continues to lose ground, and Ukrainian civilian women, children, and old men continue to be butchered by the barbarian.

Regulatory Review and Streamline

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Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) has a thought on this.

Youngkin signed Executive Order 19 to create the Office of Regulatory Management. This office will streamline the regulatory review process by subjecting agencies to its oversight. The executive order directs the new office to implement a 25% reduction in regulatory requirements.

And

The order states the office will review all regulations for their impact on local governments, the regulated community and private citizens. It will also streamline the regulatory process by requiring agencies to prepare a unified regulatory plan for every fiscal year.

It could work. It could, though, just turn into another layer of bureaucracy in getting regulations handled and new proposals enacted or rejected. As some of you might expect, I have a couple of thoughts of my own on this.

Although regulations must be reviewed every four years, the executive order states this is not uniformly achieved….

Regulations not reviewed on time or whose review isn’t finished on time should be deemed expired on the date of their review anniversary and no longer in existence as of that date. This requirement will require legislative action, though, rather than a Governor’s Executive Order.

And this thought, also deadline oriented:

According to the order, most regulatory proposals take two to three years to be adopted. The office will work to streamline this process to more quickly approve or reject proposed regulations.

Set hard deadlines—vis., 30 days, 90 days, as appropriate to the stage of proposal, 6 months to enactment—and if a stage of review is not complete by its deadline or the overall proposal not ready for enactment by its deadline, the proposal is deemed rejected and cannot be brought up again until after the next election cycle. This, too, will require legislative action rather than an EO.

Don’t allow stalling or dithering or indecision, or excuses for any of that. Push the pace, and specify the concrete, measurable response to stalling or dithering or indecision.