Why Have China and India Suddenly Come Together?

Kanti Bajpai

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In late October, just before the U.S. presidential election, India-China relations turned a corner.

In the first of two sudden developments, India announced on Oct. 21 an agreement with China on patrolling rights in Depsang and Demchok in eastern Ladakh along the two countries’ contested Himalayan border. These had been denied to India after a deadly military clash in the nearby Galwan Valley in June 2020. The resumption of both sides patrolling will be followed by the withdrawal of thousands of Chinese and Indian troops deployed in forward positions since the 2020 clash. This agreement came after stabilizing buffer zones were created at other conflict points in eastern Ladakh in 2021-22.

A New Axis? Bangladesh’s Growing Alignment with Pakistan Sparks Security Concerns for India

Yuvraj Tyagi

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In a watershed moment since Bangladesh’s independence in 1971, a direct cargo vessel from Pakistan docked at Chittagong port, signalling a thaw in relations between the two nations after five decades of estrangement. The Panama-flagged ship, Yuan Xiang Fa Zhan, arrived on November 11 from Karachi, marking the establishment of a direct maritime route between the former adversaries. This development underscores a major strategic realignment in South Asia, with significant geopolitical implications for India.

The container ship, carrying goods from Pakistan and the UAE, delivered raw materials critical to Bangladesh’s garment industry and essential food supplies. Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Bangladesh, Syed Ahmed Maroof, hailed the event on social media as a breakthrough for bilateral trade, emphasizing streamlined supply chains and reduced transit times.

Previously, the absence of a direct maritime link forced Pakistani goods to transit through intermediate ports in Sri Lanka, Singapore, or Malaysia. Bangladesh further facilitated this trade shift by relaxing stringent import restrictions on Pakistani goods in September, a move that had previously caused significant delays.

The Myth of "No Military Solutions"

Michael Shurkin

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One of the odder bits of dogma one frequently encounters in policy circles is the idea that conflicts have “no military solution.” For example, on 12 November 2024, US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield asserted before the UN Security Council the following regarding Sudan’s civil war:

There is, quite simply, no military solution to this crisis. None. All countries should cease providing military support to the belligerents. And every one of us must continue to press the parties to return to the negotiating table with the aim of ending this conflict.

Taken at face value, the statement is not remarkable. But this is far from being the only time a senior U.S. diplomat or any other senior diplomat has made this assertion about seemingly intractable conflicts. A simple google search with the terms “State Department” and “no military solution” turns up such nuggets as the U.S. Special Representative to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad insisting on 3 August 2021 that there was “no military solution” to the Afghanistan War. He was echoing a State Department spokesman’s statement in 2011 that there was “no military solution” to the Afghanistan War. On 12 September 2022, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken opined that there was “no military solution” to the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Similarly, on 9 November 2022, another State Department spokesperson said that there was “no military solution” to the war in Libya. On 7 December 2014, a Washington Post columnist took the Obama Administration to task for insisting there was “no military solution” to no less than three conflicts (Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine). On 1 June 2006, Richard A. Boucher, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, affirmed that there “is no military solution” to the conflict in Sri Lanka between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil rebels.

This Foreign Country Holds More US Debt Than Any Other - and It's Not China

Drew Wood

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At the moment, the United States just recently ticked over $36 trillion in debt … and in the time it took you to read those words the interest on the debt went up another $100,000. How did we get to this point? Who do we owe all this money to? Should we be worried?

How Did the National Debt Grow So Large?

Just like a family budget, the national budget goes into debt when spending is higher than revenues. Crises like wars and the Great Depression caused the United States to incur heavy debt in the past, but in more recent years the debt has increased because of military spending and social programs that are inadequately covered by tax revenues. On average, the U.S. government takes in about $4.4 trillion in revenues every year but spends $6.1 trillion.

Debt Interest: Money Down the Drain

Every day, the U.S. government spends $2.4 billion just on interest on the national debt. Projections indicate that within a decade, interest payments on the debt will surpass what the country spends on Medicare, Medicaid, or discretionary defense items. That’s money that could fund other underfunded programs or do new beneficial things like provide expanded mental health services for veterans, small business loans, improve school funding, build infrastructure, or protect the environment.

The True Aims of China’s Nuclear Buildup

Kyle Balzer and Dan Blumenthal

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Since 2018, American defense analysts have repeatedly identified China as the greatest threat to U.S. national security. They have variously described Beijing as a “systemic challenge,” a “pacing threat,” and even a “peer adversary,” owing to China’s massive military buildup, belligerent behavior in the Asia-Pacific, and global campaign of economic coercion. These vague, buzzy phrases point to a growing consensus: that China’s ambitions greatly imperil American national interests. There is no consensus, however, on the intention behind China’s strategic moves, chief among them its rapid buildup of nuclear weapons.

The U.S. defense community has largely viewed this buildup in a narrow military framework concerned with weapons capabilities and arms-race balance. A recent essay in Foreign Affairs by the researcher Tong Zhao has broadened the analysis by describing China’s nuclear arsenal not as a coercive tool to achieve well-defined military objectives but as a symbol of national strength by which Beijing can earn Washington’s respect as a major player in world affairs. But any understanding of this nuclear expansion must also account for Beijing’s revisionist intentions.

Israel and Iran Seemed on the Brink of a Bigger War. What’s Holding Them Back

Lara Jakes

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It has been nearly a month since Israel sent more than 100 jets and drones to strike Iranian military bases, and the world is still waiting to see how Iran will respond.

It is a loaded pause in the high-risk conflict this year between the two Middle East powers. Israel’s counterattack came more than three weeks after Iran launched over 180 ballistic missiles — most of which were shot down — on Oct. 1 to avenge the killings of two top Hezbollah and Hamas leaders.

The first volley of strikes came in April, when Iran decided to avenge an attack on one of its diplomatic compounds by directly bombarding Israel with at least 300 missiles and drones. Even then, Israel waited days, not hours, to respond.

Not long ago, analysts might have predicted that any direct strike by Iran on Israel, or by Israel on Iran, would have prompted an immediate conflagration. But it has not played out that way.

Partly that is the result of frantic diplomacy behind the scenes by allies including the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. But the calculated, limited strikes also reflect the fact that the alternative — a war of “shock and awe” between Israel and Iran — could lead to dire consequences not just for the region but also much of the world.

New Missiles Won’t Change Ukraine’s Broken War Math

Jennifer Kavanagh

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A Ukrainian government expert examines remnants of shells and missiles used by the Russian army to attack the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

When U.S. President Joe Biden greenlit Ukraine’s use of longer-range, U.S.-provided missiles known as ATACMS to strike targets deep inside Russia this week, he crossed what Russia has deemed a red line. The decision came after months of pressure from Kyiv, European allies, and Ukraine-supporting members of the U.S. Congress who blamed Biden’s foot-dragging for Ukraine’s cascading losses.

Biden’s gambit will fail for the same reason his broader Ukraine policy has: It ignores the conflict’s basic math. Given limits on U.S. stockpiles and defense production and Ukraine’s manpower constraints—all readily apparent from the war’s outset—there has never been a sustainable way for Washington to fuel its partner to total victory over Russia.

Why Emerging Powers Are Welcoming Trump’s Victory

Christopher S. Chivvis

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Emerging powers in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East have showered U.S. President-elect Donald Trump with congratulations since he won the election. The general response from these countries—with a few notable exceptions such as Brazil and Mexico—has been much warmer than it was after outgoing President Joe Biden’s win in 2020.

“You are my favorite president,” Argentine President Javier Milei said in a call with Trump last week. Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto offered to fly to the president-elect to congratulate him in person. Meanwhile, Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar recently said, “I know today a lot of countries are nervous about the U.S. [election], ok—let’s be honest about it. We are not one of them.”

We’re About to Find Out How Much America’s Leadership Matters

Oona A. Hathaway

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The global legal order rests on a kind of collective act of faith. For it to work, nations must trust that other nations will behave as if its principles matter. The system is not so unlike the dollar in this respect: It holds value only when — and only because — most of those who use it believe that it does.

This is why Donald Trump’s re-election to the American presidency is such a threat to global peace and security. He is — as an elected official and as a person — committed to breaking principles, not maintaining them. He understands and appreciates the value of the dollar. The global legal order? Not so much.

The last time he was president, Mr. Trump withdrew from critical treaties, launched what critics have deemed unlawful military strikes in Syria and on the Iranian general Qassim Suleimani in Iraq, and set off a damaging trade war with China. This time, his incoming administration appears poised to do far worse. His choice for national security adviser, Representative Michael Waltz, introduced legislation last year to use military force against drug cartels in Mexico. His pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has championed service members accused or convicted of war crimes. His choice for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is an apologist for both the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who has massacred his own people, and Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, who started an illegal war on Ukraine and is under an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court.

Together with Mr. Trump’s, their ideas embody the rejection of a system that is grounded in the idealistic — but until now remarkably successful — faith in the willingness of nations to abide by a set of shared principles that guide their behavior. If they have their way and America’s commitment to supporting this legal order ceases, we may find out how much the global rules — and principled American leadership in support of them — really matter.

Lebanon’s Day After Will the Country Survive the War With Israel?

Maha Yahya

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On October 8, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the Lebanese people to rise up against Hezbollah, giving them a stark choice: “Stand up and take your country,” he said, “before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.”

Shortly before Netanyahu spoke, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had visited Lebanon in an effort to shore up Hezbollah’s morale. In the week since Israel began its full assault in late September, the group’s leadership and rank and file had been decimated by successive military operations. Thousands of Lebanese had been killed or injured and more than a million had been displaced by Israel’s heavy bombardment, including in Beirut itself, and the country’s politicians were pushing for a cease-fire. But Araghchi’s visit seemed to have scuttled those efforts. A few weeks later, Iran’s speaker of Parliament, Mohammad Galibaf, declared in an interview with the French press that Iran would negotiate with France on behalf of Lebanon for a cease-fire. Hezbollah is Iran’s protégé, and it is the most powerful actor within Lebanon—more powerful than Lebanon’s own armed forces. Both Araghchi and Galibaf made clear that the fighting would not end until Iran said so.

Netanyahu’s speech and Araghchi’s visit highlighted just how much Lebanon had become the center of the proxy war between Iran and Israel. It is the place where the two countries are most outwardly tussling over the Middle East’s regional order. Lebanon’s role in their fight has, accordingly, received substantial international attention.

Will Ukraine become Europe’s forever-problem?

Gabriel Elefteriu

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As the war reached its 1000th day this week, any form of victory seems further away from Kyiv’s grasp than ever before. Militarily, Ukraine’s situation is dramatic; politically, after the US election, it is irrecoverable. Soon, the West – especially Europe – may have to face the final results of its Ukraine policy. We should not shy from discussing the worst case scenario, not least because the record of Western strategy over the past 30 years suggests that versions of the worst are rather likely. The full reality of where things could realistically end for Ukraine is almost too hideous to contemplate, but it is important to be clear on the risks so we avoid even greater policy mistakes as the endgame approaches.

Negative prospects

The greatest risk is that Ukraine becomes Europe’s insoluble, festering, forever-problem and a recurring source of conflict with a major military power; a war-torn land that never gets to recover, locked in a spiral of resentment, corruption and violence, drained of talent and living on the charity of its sponsors; and perhaps an inadvertent exporter of trouble, including vast refugee flows, among its neighbours. Some might find in this parallels with how Palestine is seen by many Arab states.

News Influencers Have Eclipsed Traditional Media

Makena Kelly

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There’s new data released this week confirming much of what I’ve written in this newsletter for the past year: More and more Americans are getting their news from influencers on the internet.

The Pew Research Center, in partnership with the Knight Foundation, released a report this week that found that around one in five US adults regularly receive news from news influencers, or what the study defines as a person who consistently posts news-related content with more than 100,000 followers on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, or YouTube.

That’s more than 50 million people getting their news this way. When Pew asked adults from the ages of 18 to 29 years old, that number increased to 37 percent. Come 2028 (sorry!), these audiences will likely grow even bigger, with creators taking an even more dominant role in news distribution and consumption.

It seems like the Republicans have already figured this out. The Trump campaign’s willingness to engage and speak at length with friendly creators was advantageous for the campaign, as they leaned heavily on the vast right-wing media ecosystem online, from podcasts to content creators. Right-leaning creators have been steadily building an entire online ecosystem that feeds into their political ideology. A majority of the most popular podcasts in the US are conservative-leaning—including The Joe Rogan Experience, The Charlie Kirk Show, and The Candace Owens Show.

The Key to a Successful Trump Energy Agenda Is Electricity

Jason Bordoff and David R. Hill

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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright as energy secretary has been both widely celebrated and condemned because of the latter’s views on oil, gas, and climate change. The Wall Street Journal summed up the appointment with the headline: “Trump’s Choice for Energy Secretary Is a Fracking Booster and Climate Skeptic.” The coverage is consistent with post-election commentary on the energy implications of Trump’s return to power that has focused almost exclusively on his push to deregulate oil and gas production and his promise to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement for a second time. Yet if Trump wants to keep his promise to cut energy costs, bolster the U.S. economy, and respond to voter anxiety about inflation, his administration should focus less on oil and gas and more on something less polarizing: modernizing and expanding the country’s aging electric power system.

The current oil outlook suggests little reason for concern about pump prices, with sluggish Chinese economic growth, rising electric vehicle sales, and the return of more OPEC barrels to the market. As for the trajectory of U.S. oil and gas supply, markets will matter far more than policy. Indeed, for all the political rhetoric, it is hard to tell which party was in control when looking back over the past two decades of steady U.S. oil and gas production growth.

The Russia-Ukraine War in 2030

Happymon Jacob

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Consider this scenario for the Russia-Ukraine war in the year 2030: As much as U.S. President Donald Trump or other third parties tried to force a final settlement and lasting peace, they only succeeded in getting the two sides to agree to a series of measures to manage their war. With neither Moscow nor Kyiv accepting each other’s war aims—and with neither side strong enough to decisively defeat the other—the two countries are mired in a low-intensity but continued conflict with occasional, limited skirmishes. A complete end to the fighting is nowhere in sight. In some ways, the situation is reminiscent of the period after the first Russian invasion in 2014, when the Europe-brokered Minsk agreements contained but did not end the war in Ukraine’s Donbas region during the eight years that preceded the much larger 2022 invasion.

In this scenario, Western support for Ukraine continues, but it has dwindled as the United States shifts focus to its strategic rivalry with China and as populist, pro-Russian parties gain ground in European countries. Russia continues to receive some support from North Korea and other partners, but this has not enabled a decisive breakthrough. As the United States seeks to peel Russia away from China, Europe sees a “managed” Russia-Ukraine conflict as less risky than an all-out war.

Trump May Not Understand How Dangerous the World Is Now - Analysis

Luke McGee

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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s looming return to office is causing sleepless nights in Europe. Diplomats expect Trump 2.0 will cause more headaches because the world is less stable today than it was in 2017.

Chief among their fears is the growing partnership between Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. “Trump is getting one global theater. And everything our adversaries are doing right now seems connected,” a Western security official said, on the condition of anonymity.

Nets, jamming and ‘cyber scalpels’: Pentagon weighs homeland counter-drone tech in mountain tests

Michael Marrow

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Hovering hundreds of yards away, the small quadcopter drone was nearly invisible to the naked eye, but its size didn’t make it any less of a potential threat to operations on the ground here.

Spotted by sensors, defending personnel dispatched their own drone — this one armed with a net. A few minutes later, in the Colorado air, the friendly drone snagged the interloper, popped a parachute and both floated harmlessly to the ground.

The incident, this time, was not a real threat but a demonstration, part of a series put on by US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) to explore ways to counter small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS), an increasingly ubiquitous presence not only on the battlefields of Ukraine and the Middle East but lurking around American bases back home. The Pentagon has documented hundreds of suspected drone incursions at military facilities in the last few years, even if many are thought to be the work of hobbyists.

Nets were just one tactic on display during this two-week exercise in October called Falcon Peak, which was limited to non- and low-kinetic mitigation techniques to stop sUAS. On this Army base here, defense industry firms brought kit tailored to defeat the drones in scenarios where military officials emphasize their options are limited by regulations that protect civilian travel, largely preventing them from using many commonly available but more aggressive kinetic and non-kinetic tools.

How Elon Musk Became a Kingmaker

Simon Shuster

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Hang on a minute. Whom did we just elect? The Republican ticket had two names at the top: Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. But parts of this delirious November created the impression that someone else has taken hold of our collective destiny.

We already knew him in various roles—the guy who bought Twitter and fired more than half its staff, the inventor who brought the space program back to life, the carmaker whose new trucks make kids stop and stare on the sidewalk. All of a sudden, Elon Musk had moved into the realm of politics, headlining rallies, steering government appointments, shaping the agenda for the next President of the United States.

For more than three years he’s been one of the world’s richest and most powerful men. Markets soar and tumble on his tweets. Astronauts fly in his spaceships. Armies advance with the signals from his satellites. Conspiracy theories go mainstream through his embrace. But it was only in the spotlight of these elections that the full extent of his influence came into view.

Not since the age of William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate who greased FDR’s ascent nearly a century ago, has a private citizen loomed so large over so many facets of American life at once, pulling the nation’s culture, its media, its economy, and now its politics into the force field of his will. Standing beside him, even Trump can seem almost in awe, less of a boss than a companion to the man for whom this planet and its challenges are not big enough.

Army taps ‘Ghost Fleet’ authors to write novel on multi-domain warfare

Hope Hodge Seck

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The Army’s concept of future warfare is getting the Tom Clancy treatment.

At the Association of the United States Army’s annual conference held in Washington in October, a session on the service’s plans to improve professional writing contained a teaser for a first-of-its-kind project: a novel envisioning a future conflict in a technology-infused battlefield.

“Task Force Talon: A Novel of the Army’s Next Fight,” written by “Ghost Fleet” authors August Cole and P.W. Singer, will “share the real-world lessons from Field Manual 3.0, as well as lessons learned from both contemporary conflicts and recent Army exercises and training,” according to an excerpt provided exclusively to session attendees.

The FM 3-0, most recently updated in October 2022, covers Army operations. As then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville wrote in the manual’s forward, it’s intended to demonstrate “the first principles of speed, range, and convergence of the cutting-edge technologies needed to achieve future decision dominance and overmatch against our adversaries.”

Russia Has Suffered Colossal Losses in Ukraine. Is Its Army Depleted?

Anatoly Kurmanaev

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Russia’s military made its largest territorial gains in more than two years in October, as it pressed farther into Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region — but at a heavy cost.

British and Ukrainian military officials, as well as BBC researchers, claim that Russia suffered its highest rate of dead and injured soldiers during that month. The arrival of thousands of North Korean troops in Russia is also raising questions about whether the Kremlin has enough soldiers to make up for its losses. What do we really know about Russia’s casualties and its ability to replace them?

The losses that matter

It is difficult to obtain concrete information about Russian casualties, which comprise deaths and injuries. Moscow has an incentive to minimize its losses and rarely discloses any information; Ukraine and its allies have an incentive to overstate them.

Even if they are accurate, the Western casualty estimates usually lump together deaths with all injuries. Military experts say that category is too broad to fully explain the state of the war. Lightly wounded soldiers can quickly recover, for example.

What determines a military’s true ability to fight are its irreplaceable, irrecoverable or permanent losses — soldiers who are dead or so seriously injured that they will never see battle again.

Beyond Sanctions: Economic Warfare and Modern Military Conflict

Pieter Balcaen

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With the war in Ukraine approaching the end of its third year, the military conflict has become a war of attrition. Russia has understood the importance of shifting to a war economy to sustain this war of attrition, devoting a large share of its industrial capacity to the war effort. Hence, while analysis of the war must account for the military attrition taking place, it is equally or even more important to consider the economic dimension of this attrition.

Contemporary discussions on economic warfare and economic coercion, including those examining the war in Ukraine, focus primarily on diplomatic and legislative actions (e.g., the use of negative sanctions). These sanctions consist of a series of boycotts, embargos, blacklists, quotas, and asset freezes that are widely accepted as a low-risk, less-costly alternative to military force. From a historical point of view, however, economic coercion often takes a much broader form, as was the case in the major conventional wars of the twentieth century. Furthermore, strategic thinking about economic warfare during those conflicts reserved an important role for the military, including the use of naval power to impose blockades in World War I and the use of strategic bombing to accelerate the effects from blockades in World War II.

An exploration of economic warfare in historical high-intensity conventional conflicts highlights the importance of disorganizing an opponent’s economy using military means as part of the total war effort. By understanding this fact and the strategic perspective that undergirded it, we can complement the current prevailing Western views of economic coercion, which predominantly focus on using economic (nonmilitary) means such as sanctions to weaken an adversary.

America Needs a New National Strategy for Irregular Warfare

David Maxwell

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In 1982, President Ronald Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 32 (NSDD-32), which outlined a comprehensive strategy for countering Soviet expansionism and influence worldwide. This directive provided clear guidance on employing all elements of national power – diplomatic, informational, military, and economic – to advance U.S. interests and counter Soviet aggression.

Today, the United States faces a similarly complex global security environment, with challenges ranging from great power or strategic competition to transnational terrorism.

To effectively navigate these challenges, the U.S. needs a new national strategy for irregular warfare (IW) that builds on the legacy of NSDD-32 while adapting to 21st century realities.

The need for a comprehensive IW strategy has become increasingly apparent in recent years. In their recent article, Thomas Marks and David Ucko lament that there is struggle for an IW strategy. The revisionist powers of China and Russia are employing their own forms of political warfare and hybrid approaches through the “Little Green Men” and “Unrestricted Warfare.” The rogue and revolutionary powers of Iran and North Korea conduct their own unique forms of unconventional and political warfare. These adversaries are adept at operating in the “gray zone” between peace and open conflict, using a range of irregular approaches to advance their interests while avoiding direct military confrontation with the United States.

Russia fired new ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says

Anastasiia Malenko, Tom Balmforth and Max Hunder

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Russia fired a hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday in response to the U.S. and UK's allowing Kyiv to strike Russian territory with advanced Western weapons, in a further escalation of the 33-month-old war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a televised address, said Moscow struck a Ukrainian military facility with a new medium-range, hypersonic ballistic missile known as "Oreshnik" (the hazel) and warned that more could follow. He said civilians would be warned ahead of further strikes with such weapons.

After approval from the administration of President Joe Biden, Ukraine struck Russia with six U.S.-made ATACMS on Nov. 19 and with British Storm Shadow missiles and U.S.-made HIMARS on Nov. 21, Putin said.

"From that moment, a regional conflict in Ukraine previously provoked by the West has acquired elements of a global character," Putin said in an address to the nation carried by state television after 8 p.m. in Moscow (1700 GMT).

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said use of the new missile amounted to "a clear and severe escalation" in the war and called for strong worldwide condemnation.

Money Talks and Hunger Walks: Buying Down State-Actor Influence Risk

Tom Johansmeyer

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Risk is easily measured in meals. Vladimir Lenin claimed, “[e]very society is three meals away from chaos.” Britain’s MI5 believes society is “four meals away from anarchy.” If you can’t feed people, societal discord could follow, and where there are preexisting grievances, the problem is even more acute.

For foreign influence operations, food insecurity offers a ready lever for targeting communities at their most vulnerable. It’s easy to manipulate hungry people. And when that insecurity comes from a natural disaster, the influence operational environment becomes quite fertile. Victims look for hope, which leaves an open door for foreign influence. The problem has already taken hold and is poised to grow. But the solution already exists—right under our noses—money.

It’s tough to target hungry people when victims are fed. To put food back on the table, vulnerable states could turn to parametric insurance, a risk-transfer format already used by some developing market nations for hurricane and earthquake protection.

Google Selling Chrome Won’t Be Enough to End Its Search Monopoly

Paresh Dave

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To dismantle Google’s illegal monopoly over how Americans search the web, the US Department of Justice wants the tech giant to end its lucrative partnership with Apple, share a trove of proprietary data with competitors and advertisers, and “promptly and fully divest Chrome,” Google’s browser that controls more than half of the US market. The government also wants approval regarding who takes over Chrome.

The recommendations are part of a detailed plan that government attorneys submitted Wednesday to US district judge Amit Mehta in Washington, DC, as part of a federal antitrust case against Google that started back in 2020. By next August, Mehta is expected to decide which of the possible remedies Google will be required to carry out to loosen its stranglehold on the search market.

But the tech giant could still appeal, delaying enforcement of the judge’s order years into the future. On Wednesday, Google president Kent Walker characterized the government’s proposals as “staggering,” “extreme,” “a radical interventionist agenda,” and “wildly overbroad.” He wrote in a blog post that the changes being sought “would break a range of Google products—even beyond Search—that people love and find helpful in their everyday lives.” He also asserted the privacy and security of Google's users would be put at risk.

Relevance! Relevance! Relevance! Microsoft at 50 Is an AI Giant—and Still Hellbent on Domination

Steven Levy

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Jaime Teevan joined Microsoft before it was cool again. In 2006, she was completing her doctorate in artificial intelligence at MIT. She had many options but was drawn to the company’s respected, somewhat ivory-tower-ish research division. Teevan remained at Microsoft while the mother ship blundered its way through the mobile era.

Then, as the calendar flipped into the 2010s, an earth-shattering tech advance emerged. A method of artificial intelligence called deep learning was proving to be a powerful enhancement to software products. Google, Facebook, and others went on a tear to hire machine-learning researchers. Not so much Microsoft. “I don’t remember it like a frenzy,” Teevan says. “I don’t remember drama.” That was a problem. Microsoft’s focus remained largely on milking its cash cows, Windows and Office.

In 2014, Microsoft surprised people by promoting the ultimate company man, Satya Nadella, to CEO. Nadella had spent 22 years pulling himself up the ranks with his smarts and drive. And his likability. The latter trait was a rarity at the company. Nadella knew its culture intimately, and he knew he had to change it.