Tim Talks Politics - The Weekly Brief, April 13, 2018
The Weekly Brief - April 13, 2018
Death by diarrhea: Public health in the US
I don’t often get to share stories on public health, but a couple stories came across my feed in the last couple of weeks that suggested some interesting trends in the American health profile. FiveThirtyEight takes a look at the causes of death in America and finds that there has been a noticeable increase in deaths by...diarrhea?
Yes, and that is largely due to complications from antibiotic compromised immune systems. The overuse of antibiotics is well-document and the Council on Foreign Relations provides an excellent primer on what the future looks like post antibiotics.
Mr. Zuck goes to Washington
It was a wild week on Capitol Hill with the much-anticipated Congressional testimony of Facebook CEO, or King, Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook has been under increasing scrutiny and public displeasure for its lax privacy standards that has contributed to the unethical use of data by third parties like Cambridge Analytica. The most recent privacy scandal involving Facebook has led to calls for everything from regulating the tech companies to take a look at America's cybersecurity environment where there have been some notable improvements.
But it wasn't just Facebook that was making the news for its apparent disconnect with the American public (oh, the irony!). Google employees signed an open letter demanding that the company not assist the American government in any projects related to war. This only contributes to the bad public Image of Silicon Valley as being the entity that feeds at the public trough while getting a free ride on any type of civic responsibility.
Google was quickly lambasted as a threat to national security and Facebook, despite the Zuckerberg charm offensive, continues to be criticized. The upside is that in a divided America the growing concern over Big Tech is now a bipartisan issue. Philosophically speaking, blogger and social media critic Cal Newport wrote perhaps one of the most insightful pieces on the philosophy that undergirds the Big Tech corporations.
The piece provides excellent insight into why companies like Facebook seem so out of step with the American public: It could very well be because they have a completely different worldview. Though it’s easy to criticize the tech companies, Pew Research demonstrates just how central Facebook is to our daily lives, which underlines Rand’s point that people, not just tech companies, need to address problems like disinformation.
The Odd Couple: Trump and Macron
With yet another chemical attack in Syria last week, the international community is debating whether or not the final red line has been crossed before a stronger intervention. Two unlikely leaders have emerged as being on the same foreign policy page in this instance and that is Donald Trump and French president Emmanuel Macron.
The attack and calls for greater international intervention came just a few days after Trump expressed a wish to bring American troops back from Syria, but the attack clearly put this plan on the back burner. In the short-term, this means that America needs to start thinking seriously about what a sustainable medium-to-long-term strategy could look like for Syria. And it'll have to go beyond just one off military strikes. Brookings adds additional weight to the need for sustainable strategy arguing that, in the long-term, withdrawing from Syria will fail to rid the Middle East of groups like ISIS.
Turkey after Tehran
Of course, the respective missions of Russia and Turkey in Syria must be considered in any Western plans for intervention. Even though last week's Tehran summit between Iranian President Rouhani, Russian President Putin, and Turkey President Erdogan seems to bring the three powers to some degree of unity, Turkey's ongoing operations in Syria are beginning to rub Russia the wrong way.
Turkish stocks also took a major fall this week off of President Erdogan’s announced economic policies and natural gas giant Russia who was apparently considering membership in OPEC chose to demur.
What these moves all suggest is that the nascent alliance forming between the three countries may just be a marriage of convenience and not something more long-term. Rising tension between Russia and the US will continue to exert pressure on Turkey.
Warfighting after ISIS
Though it's strange to think about Syria as being a short-term problem given its 7-year lifespan as a war zone, ongoing security concerns in the South China Sea and the shift in the fight against ISIS mean that America must give attention to overall military policy and the shape of future wars.
Additionally, the long-term strategy still has to be developed for those areas that have been freed of ISIS control. This means that America needs to consider what the future fight against terrorism could look like and address the undergirding concerns that lead to terrorist uprisings.