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18 July 2024

The United States Still Needs an Indian States Strategy

Richard M. Rossow

India’s surprise election results brought coalition politics back to prominence. While this result may have been difficult to predict for this particular election, coalitions have been the norm in India for decades. Over a dozen of India’s regional parties have exerted significant influence over Union government policymaking in recent years—including on issues important to U.S.-India ties.

Let this be an inflection point—the United States needs to build a far more robust and consistent program of work to engage and support India’s states.

There are two critical reasons why the United States must do more to deepen subnational cooperation:
  1. States Drive Development: India’s progress in areas like education, healthcare, sanitation, climate, and investment will primarily be determined by state governments. The 7th Schedule of the Indian Constitution has devolved power in these areas to states, and states have not further devolved authority to cities.
  2. Regional Parties Can Exert a Powerful Influence on U.S.-India Relations: We do not have to look far back into the history books for proof here. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) could not muster enough regional parties to assure clean passage of legislation to set liability for a civil nuclear accident. The compromise legislation approved in 2010 has precluded any nuclear trade with the United States.
The network of U.S. consulates plays a key role in building local connections with state governments. But sometimes, a senior U.S. visitor is required to really show commitment to engaging India outside of the Delhi-Mumbai lane. The United States has consulates in Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, and Hyderabad, and is planning two additional consulates—in Ahmedabad and Bangalore—in the coming years.

Myanmar’s junta implosion, revolution and national balkanisation

Graeme Dobell

The extraordinary arc of failure of Myanmar’s military has gone from coup and crack-down to the brink of regime crack-up.

When seizing power in February 2021, the military expected to consolidate power and crush resistance. Instead, the junta’s violence pushed popular opposition to become revolution and civil war. The military’s hold on Myanmar shrinks as it suffers a ‘succession of humiliating defeats’.

The spreading authority of rebel groups mean Myanmar’s government no longer controls most of the country’s international borders. The military dictatorship holds less than 50 percent of the country.

As the centre’s grasp on the country weakens, one possibility is that the centre collapses. The implosion prospect is about more than battlefield defeats but goes to the junta’s internal cohesion and vanishing legitimacy.

The junta head, Min Aung Hlaing, will be keeping a Caesar-like ‘et tu’ eye on his fellow generals. The daggers may not be plunged into his toga, but defeat makes any strongman disposable. This is not the coup Min promised. The shock and awe effects are on the military.

From Cold War to Cold Wars

Michael Kimmage

Russian president Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has caused its share of intellectual confusion. Putin has never coherently or consistently explained his intentions, and Russia’s decisionmaking has often been baffling. Although hostilities have stayed mostly in Ukraine, this has hardly been a localized or regional war. It has had extensive global consequences. This war is simultaneously a high-tech conflict, pushing the boundaries of drone and missile technology, and one of tanks and trenches, much like the world wars of the twentieth century. The nuclear parameters of this conflict evoke the Cold War that ran from the late 1940s to 1991.

However this unusual war is categorized, it is not necessarily the United States’ primary foreign policy challenge. The mounting tensions between China and the United States can overshadow Europe and the conflict in Ukraine. The relation of the war in Ukraine to actual and possible crises and invasions that might take place in Asia is at least as confusing as the war itself. Is Ukraine an omen of war in Taiwan? Or is Ukraine a footnote to the world war that might begin in Asia? In his new book, David Sanger, a distinguished New York Times journalist, cuts through the confusion. Among the many virtues of New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West (Crown, 2024) is its narrative and analytical clarity.

China’s Communist Party meets to set direction for troubled economy

Simone McCarthy

After months of unexplained delay, top officials from China’s ruling Communist Party are gathering in Beijing this week to signal the direction forward for the world’s second largest economy as it faces major economic challenges and friction with the West.

Stakes are high for the meeting, which takes place every five years and is known as China’s third plenum. It has historically been a platform for the party’s leadership to announce key economic reforms and policy directives.

China is grappling with a property sector crisis, high local government debt and weak consumer demand — as well as flagging investor confidence and intensifying trade and technology tensions with the United States and Europe.

Those challenges were underscored by its latest economic growth data, which were announced Monday. China’s gross domestic product expanded by 4.7% in the April to June months, compared to the previous year.

That represents a slowdown from the 5.3% growth reported for the first quarter and also missed the expectations of a group of economists polled by Reuters who had predicted 5.1% expansion in the second quarter.

China’s Economic Growth Comes in Worse Than Expected, Adding Pressure on Xi


China’s economy grew at the worst pace in five quarters as efforts to boost consumer spending fell short, piling pressure on Beijing to lift confidence at a twice-a-decade policy meeting this week.

Gross domestic product expanded 4.7% in the second quarter from the same period a year earlier, undershooting economists’ median forecast of 5.1%. Retail sales rose at the slowest pace since December 2022, showing a flurry of government efforts to juice confidence have done little to reinvigorate the Chinese consumer.

“The government will need to mull greater policy supports to deliver its annual growth target of around 5% after the disappointing second quarter data,” said Xiaojia Zhi, an economist at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong. “The increasing likelihood of Trump 2.0 also means that China will need additional policy efforts to boost its domestic demand in a timely manner, as external demand downside risks loom.”

President Xi Jinping is betting on manufacturing and high-tech sectors to propel China’s growth in the post-pandemic era. That strategy already faces uncertainty as Beijing’s trade partners erect new barriers against Chinese goods, with former President Donald Trump threatening more curbs if reelected. The second quarter data shows policymakers will also need to focus efforts on lifting domestic spending to keep the world’s No. 2 economy on track.

Ahead of the Third Plenum, diverging visions for China’s private sector

Christina Sadeler

As economic challenges loom, Chinese experts discuss their country’s private sector and how to boost its economy again. These voices broadly represent two groups – one that reflects current party policy with a high level of saliency in public discourse, and another, a well-established but now-marginalized cohort representing market-leaning reformers, aiming to address the crisis of confidence in the private sector. With the announcement of the CCP’s long-delayed third plenum that usually sets out China’s economic program for the next five years, now is a good time to take stock of these ongoing debates, ones that will not end after the major gathering in July.

The most recent quarterly economic data suggest a more stable growth after a difficult 2023. Still, major challenges affecting the sustainability of China’s economic system remain. These include a struggling real estate sector, piling local government debt, regional inequalities, and a decline of private sector investments in recent years.

The struggling private economy is an issue of concern for the Chinese leadership, given its relevance for economic growth, tax revenues, job creation, and not least for China’s innovation capacities. Compared to pre-Covid years, slowing growth has caused companies to face economic difficulties. So too, confidence of private entrepreneurs has been shaken and not just since the chaotic exit from China’s rigid zero-Covid policy at the end of 2022. The CCP under Xi Jinping has prioritized state-owned enterprises (SOEs), implemented stricter regulations, increased its control, cracked down on the tech-platform sector, mandated patriotism and coerced enterprises into making “donations” – a token gesture to achieve social and economic equality.

How Israel can confront the evil of Iran head-on - opinion

AVI ABELOW

Citing White House aides, The New York Times reported last week that President Joe Biden said he would have “abandoned Israel” had Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a large-scale attack in response to Iran’s attack on Israel.

Although Israel has not yet retaliated, the aggressive direct attack on April 13 – 170 drones, 30-plus cruise missiles, and more than 120 ballistic missiles – was a first, following decades of Iran’s attempts to destroy Israel’s safety and security via proxies.

The decision to attack cannot be minimized or attributed to Iran’s lack of success. If not for the miraculous synchronization of Israel’s various anti-missile defense systems, the attack could have crippled Israel. The fact that it did not has experts baffled.

Unfortunately, Netanyahu buckled under Biden’s threat and did not launch an appropriate counterattack, a natural and expected response from any other country. What’s more, it is common knowledge that Iran will continue to try and attack Israel; they have said as much outright.

The fact is that Iran remains an existential threat to Israel.

Iraq once devastated Iran with chemical weapons as the world stood by. Governments still struggle to respond to chemical warfare

Peyman Asadzade

In April 1915, the German army tried a new tactic to break through allied trenches on the front lines of World War I: the first large-scale use of poison gas. It was a devastating attack on the unprepared allies, and as the heavier-than-air chlorine gas cloud passed over their lines, 1,100 unprotected soldiers died and others retreated, hacking and desperate for air. Although the Germans were slow to press their advantage, the gas had its intended effect and cleared miles of trenches where allied troops had previously stood guard.

Although successful on the surface, the gas attack at the Second Battle of Ypres, a city in Belgium, also highlighted the operational drawbacks of chemical weapons. Targeting an adversary with a weapon that can be dispersed by the whim of the weather and having it reach a target in sufficient quantities without blowing back on the attacking forces is no simple matter. It requires careful observation of the winds and precise placement of the weapons. At Ypres, chemist and future Nobel Prize-winner Fritz Haber, who had advocated for Germany’s use of the poison gas, was personally on hand to manage the placement of thousands of gas canisters. When the allies followed Germany’s example and began engaging in chemical warfare themselves, the overall effect was mixed. At the Battle of Loos, about six months after Ypres, a British chlorine gas attack blew back on the attackers.

Trump Shooting Is Secret Service’s Most Stunning Failure in Decades

C. Ryan Barber, James Fanelli and Jan Wolfe

Donald Trump’s near assassination presents the biggest crisis for the Secret Service in decades. At the heart of what will be a torrent of investigations: How was a 20-year-old lone shooter able to take up an exposed firing position on an open rooftop not much more than a football field away from the former president?

Scrutiny is likely to focus heavily on the Secret Service’s advance work to secure buildings near the Butler, Pa., rally, including one belonging to American Glass Research where Thomas Matthew Crooks was perched when he shot at Trump.

“The reality is there’s just no excuse for the Secret Service to be unable to provide sufficient resources to cover an open rooftop 100 yards away from the site,” said Bill Pickle, a former deputy assistant Secret Service director. “And there’s no way he should’ve got those shots off.”

A Secret Service sniper shot and killed the suspected gunman just moments after he fired multiple rounds. Crooks used an AR-style rifle that had been purchased by his father, according to people familiar with the investigation. Authorities also found explosive devices in the car he had been driving, according to people briefed on the investigation.

The Vicious Cycle of American Political Violence


The attempt on former U.S. President Donald Trump’s life on July 13 marked the first time in more than 40 years that someone has shot a current or former U.S. president. It is still not clear what motivated the gunman, but his attack comes at—and adds to—a moment of high political tension across the United States.

To understand what this incident means for both the presidential campaign and the future of the United States, Foreign Affairs senior editor Daniel Block spoke on Sunday evening with Robert Lieberman, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. “History reveals that American democracy has always been vulnerable,” Lieberman wrote in a 2020 article in this magazine, which he co-authored with the political scientist Suzanne Mettler. Roiled by the divisive Trump presidency, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the unrest sparked by the murder of George Floyd, “the country has never faced a test quite like this,” they wrote. Now, it faces another such test. The conversation below has been edited for clarity and length.

Over the past 24 hours, have you been thinking about any particular period or episode in U.S. history?

The thing that I’ve been mulling over is 1968, which was a year of political assassinations, of both Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, in the middle of a very tumultuous presidential campaign in which an incumbent president was in trouble. U.S. President Lyndon Johnson eventually dropped out leading up to the Democratic Party’s convention in Chicago, which was turbulent. Now, again, we have a tumultuous presidential campaign under the specter of political violence.

White Phosphorus And The Fog Of War: Blurred Lines Between Military Necessity And Civilian Damage – Analysis

Girish Linganna

A chemical, called ‘white phosphorus’, is often used to manufacture artillery shells, rockets and bombs. When exposed to oxygen, it ignites and burns at a very high temperature of 815°Celsius. This reaction creates a bright light and thick smoke, useful in military operations. However, this incendiary chemical can result in grievous injuries to any person who comes into direct contact with it. White phosphorus is not considered a chemical weapon because it works mainly through heat and flames rather than toxicity. It can be delivered using felt wedges, or small pads, soaked in phosphorus and has a distinctly ‘garlic-y’ smell.

How Exactly is White Phosphorus Used?

White phosphorus is mainly used to shield the army’s activities on the ground. It creates a smokescreen, both during the day and at night, to conceal the movement of troops. Additionally, it disrupts infrared optics and weapons tracking systems, helping protect military forces from guided weapons, such as anti-tank missiles.

When white phosphorus explodes in the air, it covers a larger area compared to when it explodes on the ground. This makes it useful for hiding large troop movements. However, this also means that its burning effects spread over a wider area, which increases danger to civilians in such crowded places as Gaza. On the ground, in case of a white phosphorus explosion, the danger zone is more concentrated as the smokescreen persists for a longer time. The duration the smoke stays in the air depends on the weather, so it is hard to predict exactly how long it will last.

The Trump Assassination Attempt Casts a Dark Shadow over America

Dov S. Zakheim

We may never know what motivated twenty-year-old Matthew Crooks to fire eight shots from an AR-15 rifle. Presumably he was aiming at Donald Trump, but whereas all he did was graze Trump’s ear, news reports indicate that he killed an innocent bystander and injured two others.

Crooks had won a high school prize for math and science. He obviously was intelligent. Why attempt to assassinate the presumptive Republican candidate? Perhaps Crooks worried that Trump was another Huey Long; perhaps he had read Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men, which was a thinly veiled novel about Long, the murdered populist. Indeed, Trump and his supporters have long argued that the Democrats were doing all they could to hound him out of the presidential race.

Conspiracy theorists will assert that the attack was the culmination of Democrats’ efforts to rid the country of Trump and all he stands for. Alternately, they might argue that the attack was meant to distract the public from the Democrats’ ongoing internal struggles over Biden’s decision to stay in the presidential race.

No doubt conspiracy theorists on the other side of the political divide will conjure up wild assertions of their own. Perhaps they will argue that the attack was all a set-up to discredit the Democrats and present Trump as a martyr, even if it meant harming, indeed innocent bystanders as “collateral damage.”

Israel may ‘cease to exist’ by 2026 if Netanyahu remains in power, Lieberman warns


Lieberman said in an interview with the Hebrew-language Maariv daily newspaper that Netanyahu is leading Israel “toward destruction” as he is incapable of managing the occupying entity.

According to Lieberman Netanyahu is primarily focused on maintaining his hold on power.

“Israel is facing existential threats and is undergoing a multi-dimensional crisis encompassing political, economic, and security issues—the most significant since its establishment.”

He criticized the entire political system in Israel, saying that it is compromised by interest groups.

Lieberman also censured the Israeli prime minister’s handling of the months-long war in the besieged Gaza Strip and the regime’s failure to prevent the retaliatory Hamas-led Operation Al-Aqsa Storm on October 7 last year.

Lieberman has previously called for the ouster of Netanyahu’s cabinet, underlining that the premier’s removal from power would be a reward for Israelis.

In addition to opposition leaders, Israeli settlers have over the past months railed against Netanyahu and his cabinet and condemned the regime’s refusal to negotiate with the Palestinian resistance for the release of the Israeli captives, who are being held by Hamas in Gaza.

IDF has fended off more than three billion cyberattacks since Oct 7


Israel Defense Forces has been the target of more than three billion cyberattacks since Oct. 7, according to Col. Racheli Dembinsky, commander of the IDF’s Center of Computing and Information Systems (Mamram)

The attacks were all intercepted and no damage was done to any computer systems, Dembinsky added while speaking at the “IT for IDF” conference in Rishon Lezion on Wednesday.

The targets included operational cloud computing used by many systems serving troops on the ground during combat to share information and locations of forces.

Cyberattacks were also carried out against Israel on Oct. 7, when Palestinian terrorists invaded southern Israel, killed 1,200 people and abducted more than 250 into Gaza.

“I received a phone call that morning and thought there was a malfunction in the alert system. I quickly understood there wasn’t a malfunction, but a broader attack,” Debinsky recalled.

How Georgia Sided With Its Enemy

Ani Chkhikvadze

In Tbilisi, on a cobblestoned street next to the Georgian Parliament, a robotic female voice warned protesters to disperse or face legal action. The demonstrators were gathered in opposition to the reintroduction of the controversial “foreign agent” law by the ruling Georgian Dream party.

Images From the Shooting at Trump’s Rally Demonstrate the Power of Photojournalism

DAVID BAUDER

The photograph of a bloodied Donald Trump with his fist in the air and an American flag looming in the background is quickly emerging as the pivotal image of Saturday’s shooting, and it wouldn’t exist without a journalist who acted quickly and on a hunch.

Video of the assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally filled television screens before it was even clear what had happened. Yet the work of the Associated Press’ Evan Vucci, Getty’s Anna Moneymaker and Doug Mills of the New York Times—whose picture caught apparent evidence of a bullet whizzing past Trump’s head—proved the enduring potency of still photography in a world driven by a flood of moving pictures.

Vucci’s image, one of many he took on Saturday, could also have political implications from many directions—as indelible images often do in the days and years after seismic events happen.

“Without question, Evan’s photo will become the definitive photo from the (assassination) attempt,” said Patrick Witty, a former photo editor at TIME, the New York Times and National Geographic. “It captures a range of complex details and emotions in one still image—the defiantly raised fist, the blood, the agents clamoring to push Trump off stage and, most importantly, the flag. That’s what elevates the photo.”

What to Know About Women in Secret Service as Critics Blame ‘DEI’ for Trump’s Shooting

KOH EWE

Blame is being laid left and right for the shooting at Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pa., on Saturday that left the former President injured and a supporter dead.

Some have blamed Democrats’ rhetoric for fanning partisan tensions; conspiracy theorists baselessly suggest the incident was staged by Trump himself; and a growing cohort, particularly on the right, is zeroing in on the failures of the Secret Service and its supposed prioritization of “DEI”—the acronymous shorthand for initiatives that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, which Republicans have opposed across federal agencies, schools, and other organizations, as well as at the state level.

Footage focused on the female agents in Trump’s security detail quickly gained traction on social media, along with re-circulated clips of a CBS report from 2023 that repeated the Secret Service’s goal to increase its representation of women to 30% by 2030.

In retweets and replies, billionaires Elon Musk and Bill Ackman—who each announced their endorsements of Trump after the attempted assassination—seemingly agreed with the narrative that “diversity hires” were at fault for security lapses that led to the shooting.

The non-proliferation problem

Joseph S. Nye

Avril Haines, the US director of national intelligence, warned in March that ‘Russia’s need for support in the context of Ukraine has forced it to grant some long-sought concessions to China, North Korea and Iran with the potential to undermine, among other things, long-held non-proliferation norms.’

How much does this matter? Some theorists have long been sceptical about efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, even arguing that proliferation can be a stabilising force. If the horrors associated with nuclear weapons are one reason why there have been no wars between great powers since 1945, they argue, perhaps the same effect can be replicated at the regional level. India and Pakistan developed a nuclear balance in the 1990s, and there have been no disastrous consequences so far.

But would prudence still prevail in a world of ‘nuclear-armed porcupines?’ US President John F. Kennedy did not think so. As he put it during a March 1963 press conference,

With all of the history of war, and the human race’s history, unfortunately has been a good deal more war than peace, with nuclear weapons distributed all through the world, and available, and the strong reluctance of any people to accept defeat, I see the possibility in the 1970’s of the President of the United States having to face a world in which 15 or 20 or 25 nations may have these weapons. I regard that as the greatest possible danger and hazard.

We need a rational discussion about the Russian threat - ANALYSIS

GEORGE BEEBE

Understanding the intentions of a potential adversary is one of the most important yet most difficult challenges that any statesman faces. Underestimating a state’s aggressive intent can discourage the prudent defensive preparations necessary to deter a war, as happened in the prelude to World War II. Overestimating it can produce a cycle of increasingly threatening military measures that spirals into a conflict neither side has sought, as happened in the run up to World War I.

Finding the sweet spot between these poles is critical in dealing with Russian intentions toward NATO, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this week at a summit meeting in Washington. Getting the balance between deterrence and diplomacy right is particularly important given Russia’s massive arsenal of nuclear weapons, which makes the stakes of any descent into direct conflict between Russia and NATO potentially existential.

But to judge from NATO rhetoric, no such delicate balance is required: the Russia challenge is regarded as a modern reprise of Nazi Germany’s aggression, and the chief danger facing the alliance is thought to be the temptation to appease and thereby invite further Russian conquest. Hence President Biden’s recent assertion that if the Russian military is not stopped decisively in Ukraine, it will “move on to Poland and other places.”

Mercenaries in Ukraine- Will They Win the War?

Patrick Drennan

Russia is using their vast oil and mineral wealth to hire mercenaries from impoverished parts of Pakistan, Syria, and Africa. The BBC created a useful chart, that shows the increasing use of mercenaries, and conscripts from the poor parts of Russia.

Despite his denials, Putin’s recent visit to North Korea is an attempt to recruit more. The mercenaries have few Russian language skills, and no ideological interest. While they probably represent only about 18,000 (and growing) numbers of the total troops engaged in frontline attacks on Ukraine, they have their uses. Many of them are given two weeks training and sent to die in headlong charges against the Ukrainian drones and artillery - often before they can be paid.

Ukraine has about 13,000 mercenaries (a conservative estimate based on both Russian and Ukrainian claims). Many are driven by an ideological hatred of Putin and his administration, as well as the money. Although there are some mercenaries in the Ukrainian forces who only joined for the money. The Ukrainians pay US$600 to US$3,300 per month depending on specific combat role, and the Russians about $1200 per month. The difference between being a paid volunteer and a mercenary is borderline - both are being employed to fight for others.

The American State–Media Complex Is Escalating the Ukraine War

Dominick Sansone

A pair of recent military strikes on civilian targets in the Ukraine war demonstrate the expanding risk of escalation. Unfortunately, the United States and its European allies are directly contributing to that risk through their provision and likely operation of advanced weapons systems in Ukraine—all while simultaneously refusing to countenance a realistic solution to the conflict.

The first attack took place several weeks ago when an American provided ATACMS utilizing cluster munitions struck a packed beach in Crimea. The result was over 100 injuries and multiple deaths among the beachgoers. Those killed included three children.

Coming from the Russian side, a children’s hospital in Kiev was likewise hit this past week with a missile. It is believed that at least two people were killed and 17 wounded in the attack, drawing significant rebuke in the Western press.

These twin attacks demonstrate the ways in which the U.S. decision to supply long-range precision munitions in Ukraine is not merely prolonging the war, but also forcing Putin’s hand in regard to expanding the scope of the conflict. Russia maintains escalation dominance in the area—or at least should—but the actions of the United States continue to push the boundaries. The stakes therefore keep getting higher, with no apparent off-ramp for either side.

Why Nato fears for its future America could scale back its involvement under Trump

Lily Lynch

This year’s Nato summit was supposed to be a muted, celebratory affair. In contrast with last year, when President Zelensky aired his fury about Ukraine being denied a clear path to membership, it was to be cohesive and restrained. Before gathering, the outgoing Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, had emphasised the importance of predictability, stability, and unity.

If there were fissures, they had been smoothed over: deviant Hungary, long a blemish on the pact’s public-facing unanimity, had agreed not to block military aid to Ukraine provided it would not have to partake in any Nato operations there. All members of the alliance were in total agreement on the basic facts of the war, Stoltenberg insisted. Under Biden’s steadfast leadership, he asserted, the world had united behind Ukraine.

The self-mythologising PR was fitting for a summit that was also the 75th anniversary of the alliance’s founding. And 75 years after the 12 original signatories of the North Atlantic Treaty gathered in Washington to pledge collective defence, the alliance and the world look very different. NATO has always cast itself as a moral arbiter, disseminating “values” and ideology, while simultaneously fostering member states’ dependency on the United States and securing American hegemony over Europe. But this vassalisation has reached a new stage since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The invasion brought a Cold War alliance of questionable 21st-century utility roaring back to life; the long-time neutral holdouts of Sweden and Finland have even opted to join. During the Cold War, NATO counted many of its most ardent critics among left-wing opponents of US militarism; today, its most prominent skeptics are on the Right, and include Donald Trump.

From Books To Bytes: The Role Of Technology In Shaping Future Education – OpEd

Numra Aamir

The era of revolution marks the beginning of big changes. As we step into the fourth industrial revolution, technology becomes a powerful tool that can influence what we think and how we act. As Robert Winthrop White once said, “Technology shapes society and society shapes technology.” The modern world is changing fast, and this has sparked a long debate about the good and bad sides of technology.

You can easily see how education has changed over time, from using paper to tech touch, Technology has completely transformed how we teach and learn. Educational technology has brought us many tools, ways of learning, interactive multimedia, and most importantly, artificial intelligence (AI). AI has changed our world by making information just a click away. Online learning platforms have made it easy for anyone to access education. With technology playing a bigger role, we’re getting more engaging and creative content, multimedia in classrooms, easy-to-access information, and opportunities for lifelong learning. The internet and online courses are giving the next generation the skills they need. AI helps us understand data better, and technologies like virtual and augmented reality create exciting learning experiences. Plus, educational apps and games add another fun dimension to our education systems. Some of the future trends of technology in educational industry are as following:

The internet acts like a magic wand, changing how we learn. It gives us almost unlimited access to information, from books and articles to videos and journals. This means that learning isn’t just confined to classrooms anymore. It opens up a world of equal opportunities for everyone, no matter where they come from.

Elon Musk Couldn’t Beat Him. AI Just Might

JASON PARHAM

A recent study published by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that rage is a lucrative business. Since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict last October, “accounts posting anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim content have seen a sharp rise in followers on X,” the study concluded, and the social media company appeared to be making money from ads that showed up alongside those posts. Imran Ahmed knows this problem all too well, and he’s made it his life’s work to expose what happens when hate can be profitable. It’s been this way since September 11, 2001, the day before his 23rd birthday.

“I felt connected to it,” Ahmed tells me over Zoom. His family is Pashtun, one of the largest ethnic groups in Afghanistan. The Taliban were also Pashtun. “I thought, I’ve got to do something to fix the world,” he says. “Fix this deep evil, this deep wrong.” So Ahmed went back to college, studying politics at the University of Cambridge, which later led to a role as a political adviser to Hilary Benn, then the shadow foreign secretary in Parliament.

But Parliament came with its own set of challenges. Ahmed’s second life turn came in 2016, as the Labour Party campaigned to keep the UK in the European Union. As debate over Brexit intensified, Ahmed tells me, the party was experiencing “a rapid infiltration of antisemitism.”