On foreign policy, it’s Trump disruption vs Harris engagement – Asia Times

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According to conventional wisdom, US voters are largely motivated by domestic concerns and especially the economy.

But the upcoming presidential election may be somewhat of an outlier. In a September 2024 poll, foreign policy actually ranks quite high in voters’ concerns – with more Democrats and Republicans combined saying it was “very important” to their vote than, say, immigration and abortion.

As such, understanding where Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic rival Kamala Harris stand on the significant international issues of the day is important. And we can do so by looking at the records of their respective administrations in the three regions they prioritized: the Indo-Pacific, Europe and the Middle East.

Donald Trump: disrupter-in-chief

In his 2017 inaugural address, Trump painted a dark picture of the US In his telling, his country was being taken advantage of by other nations, especially in trade and security, while neglecting domestic challenges.

To disrupt this, Trump promised an “America First” approach to guide his administration.

And in practice, his foreign policy certainly proved disruptive. He showed a clear willingness to buck traditions and undid some of former President Barack Obama’s signature policies, such as the Iran nuclear deal, which exchanged sanctions relief for restrictions on Tehran’s domestic nuclear program, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.

In so doing, he ruffled the feathers of allies and foes alike.

Trans-Atlantic relations were tense under Trump, especially because of his hostility toward NATO. After deriding the Atlantic alliance on the campaign trail, Trump stuck to the same tune while in office. He routinely insulted allies at high-level summits and allegedly came close to withdrawing from the alliance altogether in 2018.

Donald Trump meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in June 2019. Image: Kremlin Press Office / Handout / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images via The Conversation

While NATO did make inroads in bolstering its Eastern flank in that period, the alliance was primarily defined by internal turmoil and limited cohesion during Trump’s time in office. US relations with the European Union hardly fared better. In 2018, the US imposed steel and aluminum tariffs on the European Union, citing national security concerns.

Trump also broke with previous US presidents in his administration’s Asia policy. One of his first moves in 2017 was to abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal negotiated by Obama. Trump’s late 2017 national security strategy also announced a major shift toward China, labeling it as a “strategic competitor” – implying a greater emphasis on containing China as opposed to cooperating with it.

This hawkish turn played out especially in the field of trade. Trump’s administration imposed four rounds of tariffs in 2018-19, affecting US$360 billion of Chinese goods. Beijing, of course, responded with tariffs of its own.

The two countries did sign a so-called phase-one deal in January 2020 that sought to lower the stakes of this trade war. But the Covid-19 pandemic nullified any chance of success, and relations soured further with each Trump utterance of the pandemic being a “Chinese virus.”

Trump showcased somewhat contradictory impulses toward the Middle East and other issues. He pushed for disengagement and to undo Obama’s major policies.

Besides withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords in 2017, Trump abandoned the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. His administration also signed a deal to end the US presence in Afghanistan, and it withdrew forces from northern Syria.

But at the same time, Trump continued the bombing campaign against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq and authorized the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in 2020. The latter was consistent with a policy that aimed to pressure and isolate Iran economically and diplomatically.

The key example of diplomatic pressure came especially through the Abraham Accords, through which Trump helped facilitate the establishment of normal diplomatic ties between Israel, the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco.

Kamala Harris: alliance and engagement

Although not taking a driving role in foreign policy, Harris has been part of an administration that has committed the US to repairing alliances and engaging with the world.

This came across by undoing some major actions from the Trump administration. For example, the US quickly rejoined the Paris Climate Accords and overturned a decision to leave the World Health Organization.

But in other areas, the Biden administration has shown more continuity with Trump than many expected.

For instance, the US under Biden has not fundamentally deviated from strategic competition with China, even though the tactics have differed a little. The administration maintained Trump’s tariff approach, even adding its own targeted rounds against Beijing on electric vehicles.

Moreover, it cultivated different diplomatic platforms in the Indo-Pacific to act as a counterweight to China. This included the cultivation of the Quad dialogue with Australia, India and Japan, and the AUKUS deal with Australia and the UK, both of which attempted to further the Biden administration’s strategy of containing China’s influence by enlisting regional allies.

Finally, the Biden administration did maintain some channels of communication with China at the highest level as well, with Biden meeting Xi Jinping twice during his presidency.

A man and a woman walk along a balcony.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy walks alongside Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House compound on September 26, 2024. Photo: Tom Brenner / Getty Images / The Conversation

The Biden administration’s Middle Eastern policy displayed significant continuity with Trump’s approach – at first.

While it turned out to be chaotic, the US completed the withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan in summer 2021, as had been agreed under Trump. The Biden administration also embraced the format and goals of the Abraham Accords. It even tried to build on them, with the goal of fostering Israeli-Saudi diplomatic ties.

Of course, the attacks of October 7, 2023, in Israel completely changed the equation in the Middle East. Preventing the spiral of violence in the region has become an all-consuming task. Since then, Biden and Harris have tried, largely unsuccessfully, to balance support for Israel with mediation efforts to liberate the hostages and to ensure a cease-fire.

Trans-Atlantic relations, however, are an area where there were marked differences in the past four years. The tone of the Biden-Harris administration has been in sharp contrast with that of Trump, reaffirming frequently its clear commitment to NATO. And once Russia launched its illegal invasion in February 2022, the US placed itself at the forefront of supporting Ukraine.

Harris has suggested that she would continue Biden’s policy of providing Kyiv with extensive and continuous military support. In conjunction with allies, the White House of Biden and Harris also implemented a broad range of sanctions against Russia. But the US under Biden has not yet been willing to support Ukraine’s immediate entry into NATO.

What next?

Based on their records, what could we expect of a Trump or Harris presidency?

It’s unlikely either candidate will abandon strategic competition with China. But Trump is more likely to seriously escalate the trade war, promising extensive tariffs against Beijing. Trump’s commitment to defending Taiwan is also more ambiguous in comparison with Harris’ pledges.

US policy toward Europe will largely depend on the results of the election. Harris has frequently underlined her steadfast support for NATO, as well as for Ukraine. Trump, on the other hand, is showing signs that he is unwilling to further aid the regime in Kyiv.

And for the Middle East, it remains to be seen whether either Trump or Harris would be able to better shape events in the region.

Garret Martin is senior professorial lecturer, co-director Transatlantic Policy Center, American University School of International Service

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Japan’s shock election shows how much inflation matters – Asia Times

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Japan is remarkably safe, stable and comfortable, but it is in a dangerous part of the world, right next to China, North Korea and Russia. That makes it important to European allies and, above all, to its closest ally, the United States, as a liberal leader countering China and Russia in Asia.

Its stability cannot be taken for granted. Even Japanese voters can get angry and disillusioned, as they showed in a destabilizing shock result in Sunday’s general election. In the election, the country’s long-ruling conservative coalition lost its parliamentary majority, while the opposition parties showed new energy and coherence.

This wasn’t supposed to happen: A new prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, who had made a career out of being a maverick outsider, called a snap election to exploit his apparent personal popularity.

Now, after he’s been in office for less than a month, Japanese commentators are comparing him insultingly to Britain’s Liz Truss, the Conservative who in 2022 famously survived for just 45 days as prime minister.

In truth, this is the sign of a healthy democracy, but it is an election result that holds lessons for other rich countries. It also leaves a key American security ally lacking a government just ahead of America’s own, rather momentous, election.

Japanese governments are normally formed within hours or, at most, days, but forming this one could take weeks or months.

The parliamentary arithmetic is difficult. In the 465-seat House of Representatives, a party or coalition needs 233 for a simple majority, but Ishiba’s Liberal Democratic Party fell in the election to just 191 seats while its coalition partner since 2012, Komeito, fell to 24, giving them a combined total of just 215, way down on the 279 the coalition held before the vote.

There are 12 independents, many of whom were kicked out of the LDP over financial scandals, but even if all those were readmitted the coalition would fall short. 

Under Japanese law, a special session of parliament must be held within 30 days after an election to choose a new prime minister, and hence government, although the vote is expected to be scheduled sooner, on November 11. So Ishiba now has less than two weeks to persuade one of the other small parties to support him in that vote.

If he fails to win the vote, an opposition leader may be able to cobble together an interim government, though that too looks a tall order. Whatever happens on November 11, the likely outcome is a fresh set of elections in the first half of 2025. At the latest, this might coincide with elections scheduled for the House of Councillors, Japan’s less powerful upper house of parliament, by July at the latest.

For other rich countries, the big lesson of Japan’s political earthquake is that inflation matters more to voters than it does to many economists.

For more than three decades, Japanese have become used to stable or even falling prices, a deflationary trend that reflected economic stagnation but at least made things predictable for ordinary citizens. Their incomes were depressed, but prices were dependably low. Two years ago, following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, this changed.

To economists, the inflation Japan has experienced since 2022 has looked moderate – or even welcome given that, besides high energy prices and a falling currency, it also appeared to reflect a new corporate dynamism. Wages started to rise faster, too. But they were outpaced by prices. People felt poorer.

Most importantly, incomes did not move at all for a crucial block of long-time supporters of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party: Nearly 30% of the Japanese population is now over the age of 65, of whom most depend on pensions that have not kept pace with inflation.

This is a lesson from the 1970s that many had forgotten: Inflation is especially cruel to those on fixed incomes. Older voters are likelier to turn out to vote than younger ones, and they can get angry too.

This concern about inflation coincided with financial scandals in the Liberal Democratic Party. Not surprisingly, many voters concluded that the ruling party was doing little to help them while pocketing money for itself.

This conservative party has ruled Japan since 1955, except for two short periods in the early 1990s and 2009-12. In the past, it had shrugged off countless financial scandals. But this time, the blend of scandal and inflation has proved its undoing.

The question, as always after political earthquakes, is whether the old conservative government can now rebuild itself and repair its image or whether this will be the start of a more sustainable change.

The Liberal Democratic Party remains the largest party in parliament, but it now faces a difficult choice. It can try to soldier on under its current leader, for want of anything better. Or — probably once he has failed to form a stable government — it can get rid of him and consider switching to one of the more obvious “change” candidates who lost out to him in the LDP’s September leadership election:

  • Sanae Takaichi, a right-winger who would offer herself as Japan’s first female prime minister, or
  • Shinjiro Koizumi, son of the popular Junichiro Koizumi, who was prime minister from 2001-06, and who at just 43 years old, would stand to be Japan’s youngest postwar prime minister (the previous youngest was Shinzo Abe at 52 in 2006) and thus to represent a new generation.

This matters to Europe and America for two main reasons. The first is that Western efforts to deter China from invading Taiwan depend critically on Japan’s plans to double its defense spending by 2027.

The financing of that buildup will be harder without a stable government majority. There is a broad cross-party consensus that Japan’s national security requires such a defense build-up but there is no consensus about how to pay for it.

The second reason is that if Donald Trump is elected as US president on November 5 and carries out his promise to launch a trade war against Europe and Japan, Europe will need a dependable and resolute Japanese partner in resisting that American economic aggression, but it might not get one.

This commentator continues to bet that Kamala Harris will, in fact, win the US election, boosted by a strong turnout among her party’s voters and enough revulsion among traditional Republicans against Trump.

But the Japanese lesson must be borne in mind for it touches one of her main weaknesses by virtue of her having been vice-president for the past four years: Inflation matters a lot to voters.

Formerly editor-in-chief of The Economist, Bill Emmott is currently chairman of the Japan Society of the UK, the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the International Trade Institute. This article was originally published on his Substack, Bill Emmott’s Global View. It is republished here with kind permission.

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SAIC to file lawsuit against EU over EV tariffs – Asia Times

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The Shanghai-based SAIC Motor Corp, which owns the British automotive marque MG, is planning to file a lawsuit against the European Commission now that the latter has started imposing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.

SAIC’s legal action plan comes as the EC announced on Tuesday that it will slap 7.8-35.3% tariffs on EVs made in China from Wednesday. The measure is definitive and will last for five years. 

Tesla, owned by American technology mogul Elon Musk, now faces a tariff of 7.8% when exporting its EVs from China to the European Union. It was the least hit by the EU’s tariff actions as it had cooperated with the bloc’s anti-subsidy investigation over the past 13 months.

Geely, one of the largest EV sellers in China, faces an 18.8% tariff while SAIC Motor faces the highest triff, 35.3%. Shenzhen-based BYD has to pay a 17% tariff. 

All these additional tariffs will come on top of a 10% tariff for all automobiles imported by the European Union. That means SAIC will have to pay a tariff of 45.3%.  

“China does not agree with or accept the ruling and has filed a lawsuit under the World Trade Organization’s dispute settlement system,” a spokesperson of the Chinese Commerce Department said Wednesday. ”China will continue to take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises.”

The spokesperson also said that China has repeatedly pointed out that the EU’s anti-subsidy investigation of Chinese EVs contains a lot of unreasonable and non-compliant elements, and that it is a protectionist approach that aims to push forward unfair competition in the name of fair competition. 

“In the anti-subsidy investigation, there were some wrong definitions of subsidies while the EC ignored some key information and opinions submitted by us,” SAIC told the Beijing Youth Daily. “The EC also inflated the subsidy rates of some of our projects.”

SAIC said it deeply regrets the EC’s final ruling as it had provided thousands of documents, including questionnaires, written defenses and hearing statements, to the EC for legal defense but still failed to change the situation. 

It said it will bring the case to the Court of Justice of the EU to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.

In 2023, China exported 1.55 million units of pure EVs, up 64% from 944,566 units in 2022, according to Chinese Customs. In terms of sales value, China’s exports of pure EVs increased 70% to US$34.1 billion in 2023 from US$14 billion in 2022.

The average price of China’s exported EVs was US$22,000 last year, compared with about US$23,300 in 2022. 

China shipped 438,034 battery-electric cars to the EU in 2023. In the first half of this year, China exported 222,000 EVs to the EU, down 14.6% from 260,000 units in the same period of 2022. China Chamber of Commerce to the EU said the decline was a result of the negative impact of the EU’s anti-subsidy probe against Chinese EVs. 

Some Chinese media said the implementation of the EU’s tariffs is a setback to Chinese automakers’ overseas expansion plan. 

Caixin.com said in an article on Wednesday that as the EU is an important market to Chinese automakers, their growth will be slowed by the newly-imposed tariffs. 

SAIC’s falling profits

The EU said on September 13 last year that it would initiate a 13-month investigation into whether government subsidies have helped Chinese EV makers win market share in Europe in recent years. 

On July 4, the EU started imposing provisional tariffs on Chinese EVs. Since then, Beijing has initiated an anti-dumping investigation into the EU’s pork products and accelerated its ongoing probe of European brandy. 

Now the tariffs imposed on Chinese EVs are here to stay for at least five years. 

Some analysts have said that most Chinese EV makers can absorb the EU tariffs as their products are still cheaper than European ones even after they doubled their selling prices in Europe from the levels in China.

However, SAIC is having a falling margin problem due to rising competition from rivals such as BYD in China.  

In the first half of this year, SAIC sold 1.82 million units of automobiles, including the traditional and new energy cars, down 13.9% from a year earlier. Its total revenue fell 12.8% to 284.7 billion yuan (US$40 billion) for the same period while net profit, excluding one-off items, plunged 82% to 1.02 billion yuan.  

The state-owned SAIC, the second largest EV maker in China after BYD, saw its new energy car sales rose 29.9% to 524,000 units in the first half of 2024. BYD’s sales rose 28.4% to 1.61 million units for the same period.

Read: French brandy makers sacrificial lambs in China-EU trade war

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Palestine’s economy teeters on the brink after year of war – Asia Times

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The Palestinian economy has been devastated beyond recognition. Israel’s intense military operations in Gaza have led to unprecedented destruction, wiping out much of the enclave’s essential infrastructure, private property and agricultural resources.

Meanwhile, the occupied West Bank is also under severe strain. Similar patterns of destruction, alongside rising settler violence, land confiscations and expanding settlements, have left its economy buckling under the pressure of mounting public debt, unemployment and poverty.

Gaza’s economy was being suffocated even before the war. A blockade imposed by Israel in 2007 has severely restricted the import and export of goods, while fishermen were limited to a six-mile zone, crippling their ability to earn a livelihood.

The blockade caused Gaza’s GDP per capita (a measure of the wealth of a country) to shrink by 27% between 2006 and 2022, with unemployment rising to 45.3%. This gave rise to a situation where 80% of the population depended on international aid.

In addition to the economic blockade, Gaza suffered massive physical destruction due to Israeli military operations in 2008–2009, 2012, 2014, 2021 and 2022. Yet the cumulative effects of 16 years of blockade and military attacks are minor compared to the sheer destruction caused by the current war.

A report by the UN’s trade and development wing (Unctad) has revealed that in the space of just eight months, between October 2023 and May 2024, Gaza’s GDP per capita fell by more than half. The economic situation now is almost certainly worse.

According to the report, which was released in September 2024, Gaza’s GDP dropped by 81% in the final quarter of 2023 alone. The report concluded that the war had left Gaza’s economy in “utter ruin,” warning that even if there was an immediate ceasefire and the 2007–2022 growth trend of 0.4% returns, it would take 350 years just to restore the GDP levels of 2022.

A graph showing the sharp drop in Gaza's GDP after October 2023.

The only sectors still functioning are health and humanitarian services. All other industries, including agriculture, are at a near standstill. The destruction of between 80% and 96% of agricultural assets has led to rampant food insecurity.

The scale of destruction in Gaza is unprecedented in modern times and is happening under the world’s gaze. From October 2023 to January 2024 alone, the total cost of damage reached approximately US$18.5 billion – equivalent to seven times Gaza’s GDP in 2022.

A separate report by the UN Development Program, which was published in May, predicts that it will take more than 80 years to rebuild just Gaza’s housing stock if it repeats the rate of restructuring seen after Israeli military operations in 2014 and 2021. Merely clearing the debris could take up to 14 years.

The war has displaced almost all of Gaza’s population and has thrown people into dire poverty. Unemployment surged to 80%, leaving most households without any source of income. And prices of basic commodities have increased by 250%, which is contributing to famine across the Strip.

Palestinians walking down a street in Gaza that has been destroyed during the war.
The Gaza Strip is in ruins after more than a year of relentless bombardment. Photo: Anas-Mohammed / Shutterstock via The Conversation

The economic crisis has also extended to the West Bank, where GDP has fallen sharply. Military checkpoints, cement blocks and iron gates at the entrances to Palestinian towns and cities, as well as the denial of work permits for Palestinians in Israeli settlements, have resulted in more than 300,000 job losses since the start of the war.

The Unctad report reveals that the rate of unemployment in the West Bank has tripled to 32% since the start of the conflict, with labor income losses amounting to $25.5 million. Poverty is rising rapidly.

Israeli forces have also continued to confiscate Palestinian homes and land. Over the past year alone, 24,000 acres of land in the West Bank have been seized, and over 2,000 Palestinians have been displaced.

This devastation has been exacerbated by Israel’s decision to withhold the tax revenue it collects for the Palestinian Authority, which typically accounts for between 60% and 65% of the Palestinian public budget, as well as a significant decline in international aid. Aid to Palestine has dropped drastically over the past decade or so, falling from the equivalent of US$2 billion in 2008 to just $358 million by 2023.

The Palestinian Authority is facing a massive budget deficit, which is projected to increase by 172% in 2024 compared to the previous year. This financial strain has crippled the Palestinian government’s ability to provide essential services, pay salaries and meet the needs of a population battered by war, displacement and severe poverty.

The road to recovery

For the Palestinian economy to have any chance at recovery, several immediate steps are necessary.

First, international aid should flow into Gaza uninterrupted, and pressure must be applied to ensure that humanitarian aid – particularly food aid – reaches those in need. Data analysis by organizations working in Gaza suggests that Israel is currently blocking 83% of food aid from reaching Gaza.

Second, the destruction of homes, schools and infrastructure must cease. However, this seems improbable as Israel continues to pursue its military goal of destroying Hamas – an objective most analysts believe to be unachievable.

And third, the economic restrictions imposed on Gaza and the West Bank must be lifted. Sustainable development – and any prospect for recovery – cannot be achieved without granting the Palestinian people the right to self-determination and sovereignty over their resources.

This would require new peace agreements, an outcome that appears unlikely at present. But without these crucial interventions, the Palestinian economy will be completely devastated and the humanitarian crisis will worsen, making any future recovery within the lifetime of anyone currently living in Gaza virtually impossible to imagine.

Dalia Alazzeh is lecturer in accounting and finance, University of the West of Scotland and Shahzad Uddin is professor of accounting, University of Essex

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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BRICS+ wants new world order sans shared values or identity – Asia Times

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The last two summits of BRICS countries have raised questions about the coalition’s identity and purpose. This began to come into focus at the summit hosted by South Africa in 2023, and more acutely at the recent 2024 summit in Kazan, Russia.

At both events the alliance undertook to expand its membership. In 2023, the first five Brics members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – invited Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to join.

All bar Saudi Arabia have now done so. The 2024 summit pledged to admit 13 more, perhaps as associates or “partner countries.”

On paper, the nine-member BRICS+ strikes a powerful pose. It has a combined population of about 3.5 billion, or 45% of the world’s people. Combined, its economies are worth more than US$28.5 trillion – about 28% of the global economy. With Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE as members, BRICS+ produces about 44% of the world’s crude oil.

Based on my research and policy advice to African foreign policy decision-makers, I would argue that there are three possible interpretations of the purpose of BRICS+.

  • A club of self-interested members – a kind of Global South cooperative. What I’d label as a self-help organization.
  • A reforming bloc with a more ambitious goal of improving the workings of the current global order.
  • A disrupter, preparing to replace the Western-dominated liberal world order.

Analyzing the commitments that were made at the meeting in Russia, I would argue that BRICS+ sees itself more as a self-interested reformer. It represents the thinking among Global South leaders about the nature of the global order and the possibilities of shaping a new order.

This, as the world moves away from the financially dominant, yet declining Western order (in terms of moral influence) led by the US. The move is to a multipolar order in which the East plays a leading role.

However, the ability of BRICS+ to exploit such possibilities is constrained by its make-up and internal inconsistencies. These include a contested identity, incongruous values and lack of resources to convert political commitments into actionable plans.

Summit outcomes

The trend towards closer trade and financial cooperation and coordination stands out as a major achievement of the Kazan summit. Other achievements pertain to global governance and counterterrorism.

When it comes to trade and finance, the final communiqué said the following had been agreed:

  • adoption of local currencies in trade and financial transactions. The Kazan Declaration notes the benefits of faster, low-cost, more efficient, transparent, safe and inclusive cross-border payment instruments. The guiding principle would be minimal trade barriers and non-discriminatory access.
  • establishment of a cross-border payment system. The declaration encourages correspondent banking networks within BRICS and enables settlements in local currencies in line with the BRICS Cross-Border Payments Initiative. This is voluntary and nonbinding and is to be discussed further.
  • creation of enhanced roles for the New Development Bank, such as promoting infrastructure and sustainable development.
  • a proposed BRICS Grain Exchange, to improve food security through enhanced trade in agricultural commodities.

All nine BRICS+ countries committed themselves to the principles of the UN Charter – peace and security, human rights, the rule of law, and development – primarily as a response to the Western unilateral sanctions.

The summit emphasised that dialogue and diplomacy should prevail over conflict in, among other places, the Middle East, Sudan, Haiti and Afghanistan.

Faultlines and tensions

Despite the positive tone of the Kazan declaration, there are serious structural fault lines and tensions inherent in the architecture and behavior of BRICS+. These might limit its ambitions to be a meaningful change agent.

The members don’t even agree on the definition of BRICS+. President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa calls it a platform. Others talk of a group (Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi) or a family (Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jianan).

So what could it be? BRICS+ is state-driven – with civil society on the margins. It reminds one of the African Union, which pays lip service to citizens’ engagement in decision-making.

One possibility is that it will evolve into an intergovernmental organization with a constitution that establishes its agencies, functions and purposes. Examples include the World Health Organization, the African Development Bank and the UN General Assembly.

But it would need to cohere around shared values. What would they be?

Critics point out that BRICS+ consists of democracies (South Africa, Brazil, India), a theocracy (Iran), monarchies (UAE, Saudi Arabia) and authoritarian dictatorships (China, Russia).

For South Africa, this creates a domestic headache. At the Kazan summit, its president declared Russia a friend and ally. At home, its coalition partner in the government of national unity, the Democratic Alliance, declared Ukraine as a friend and ally.

There are also marked differences over issues such as the reform of the United Nations. For example, at the recent UN Summit of the Future the consensus was for reform of the UN Security Council. But will China and Russia, as permanent Security Council members, agree to more seats, with veto rights, on the council?

As for violent conflict, humanitarian crises, corruption and crime, there is little from the Kazan summit that suggests agreement around action.

Unity of purpose

What about shared interests? A number of BRICS+ members and partner countries maintain close trade ties with the West, which regards Russia and Iran as enemies and China as a global threat.

Some, such as India and South Africa, use the foreign policy notions of strategic ambiguity or active non-alignment to mask the reality of trading with east, west, north and south.

The harsh truth of international relations is there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests. The BRICS+ alliance will most likely cohere as a Global South co-operative, with an innovative self-help agenda but be reluctant to overturn the current global order from which it desires to benefit more equitably.

Trade-offs and compromises might be necessary to ensure “unity of purpose.” It’s not clear that this loose alliance is close to being able to achieve that.

Anthoni van Nieuwkerk is professor of international and diplomacy studies, Thabo Mbeki African School of Public and International Affairs, University of South Africa

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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What the West can learn from China about using AI – Asia Times

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AI is already everywhere, ready to change the way we work and play, how we learn and how we are looked after. From hospitality to healthcare, entertainment to education, AI is transforming the world as we know it.

But it’s developing at a different pace in different parts of the world. In the West, it seems, there is a tendency to aim for perfection, with companies taking their time to refine AI systems before they are implemented.

China, on the other hand, has taken a more pragmatic path, on which speed and adaptability are prioritized over flawless execution. Chinese companies appear more willing to take risks, accept AI’s current limitations and see what happens.

And China’s desire to be the world leader in AI development seems to be working. Here are three important lessons the west can learn from China’s economic strategy towards AI.

1. Embrace imperfection

Many Chinese companies have adopted a “good enough” mentality towards AI, using it even when the technology is not fully developed. This brings risks, but also encourages fast learning.

For example, in 2016, Haidilao, a popular Chinese restaurant chain, introduced “Xiaomei”, an AI system which dealt with customers calling up to make reservations. While Xiaomei is not the most sophisticated AI system (it only understands questions about reservations), it was effective, managing over 50,000 customer interactions a day with a 90% accuracy rate.

It’s not perfect, but it provides a valuable service to the business, proving that AI doesn’t need to be flawless to make a big impact.

2. Make it practical

A key distinction between AI strategies in China and the West is the focus on practical, problem-solving applications. In many Western industries, AI is often associated with cutting-edge technology like robot-assisted surgery, or complex predictive algorithms.

While these advances are exciting, they do not always bring immediate impact. China, by contrast, has made significant strides by applying AI to solve more basic needs.

In China, some hospitals use AI to help with routine – but very important – tasks. For instance, in April 2024, Wuhan Union Hospital introduced an AI patient service which acts as a kind of triage nurse for patients using a messaging app.

Patients are asked about their symptoms and medical history. The AI then evaluates the severity of their needs and prioritizes appointments based on urgency and the medical resources available at that time. The results are then relayed to a human doctor who makes the final decision about what happens next.

By helping to ensure that those with the most critical needs are seen first, the system plays a crucial role in improving efficiency and reducing waiting times for patients seeking medical attention.

It’s not the most complex technology, but in its first month of use in the hospital’s breast clinic, it reportedly provided over 300 patients with extra consultation time – 70% of whom were patients in urgent need of surgery.

3. Learn from mistakes

China’s rapid adoption of AI hasn’t come without challenges. But failures serve as critical learning experiences.

One cautionary tale over AI implementation comes not from China, but from Japan. When Henn na Hotel in Nagasaki became the world’s first hotel staffed by robots, it received a great deal of attention for its futuristic concept.

But the reality soon fell short of expectations. Churi, the hotel’s in-room assistant robot, frequently misunderstood guest requests, leading to confusion. One guest was reportedly woken up repeatedly because a robot in his room mistakenly understood the sound of his snoring to be a question.

In contrast, many Chinese hotels have taken a more measured approach, opting for simpler yet highly effective robotic solutions. Delivery robots are now commonplace in hotel chains across the country, and while not overly complex, they are adept at navigating hallways and lifts autonomously, bringing meals to guests.

By focusing on specific, high-impact problems, Chinese companies have successfully integrated AI in ways that minimize disruption and maximize usefulness.

The Chinese restaurant chain I mentioned earlier provides another good illustration of this approach. After the success of its chatbot, Haidilao introduced “smart restaurants” equipped with robotic arms and automated food delivery systems. While innovative, the technology struggled during peak hours and lacked the personal touch many customers valued.

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Instead of abandoning the project, Haidilao continued to adjust and refine its use of AI. Rather than adopting a fully automated restaurant model, it went for a hybrid approach, combining automation with human staff to enhance the dining experience.

This flexibility in the face of setbacks represents a crucial willingness to pivot and adapt when things don’t go as planned.

Overall, China’s pragmatic approach to AI has enabled it to take the lead in many areas, even as the country lags behind the West in terms of technological sophistication. This is driven by a willingness to embrace AI’s imperfections, and then adapt where necessary.

Where speed and adaptability are critical, companies can’t afford to wait for perfect solutions. By embracing AI’s imperfections, focusing on practical applications, and real-world feedback, Chinese companies have unlocked the economic value of AI in a way that others are too timid to emulate.

Jialu Shan is research fellow at the TONOMUS Global Center for AI and Digital Transformation, International Institute for Management Development (IMD)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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China: US high-tech investment ban to hurt global supply chain – Asia Times

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The Chinese government expressed diplomatic discontent to the United States after the Biden administration finalized a set of rules to restrict American individuals and companies from investing in China’s three high technology sectors.

The Final Rule, which aims to implement the Executive Order signed by US President Joe Biden in August 2023, will limit US investments in the semiconductor, artificial intelligence and quantum computing sectors in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, the Treasury Department said Monday. The rules will take effect on January 2. 

US investors will also be required to inform the Treasury about their investments in some less advanced technologies that may lead to the threat to the national security of the US, according to the Treasury Department. 

“China expresses strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to the United States’ announcement of investment restriction rules against China,” Lin Jian, a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said in a media briefing on Tuesday. 

Lin said China has lodged representations with the US and will take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.

“It once again shows that American politicians seek their own political interests, undermining normal investment and trade, the free market and economic order. This will harm the global supply chain,” Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee said Tuesday. 

“This harms the interests of others,” he said, as well as those of “the US as a nation, its people and its companies. They will reap what they sow.” 

The Hong Kong government on Monday issued a policy statement, which clearly sets out the government’s policy stance and approach to promote the development of AI adoption by the financial services sector. 

Prohibited and notifiable transactions

Washington’s Final Rule, officially called “Addressing US Investments in Certain National Security Technologies and Products in Countries of Concern,” specifically directs the Treasury Secretary to issue regulations that prohibit US persons from engaging in certain transactions involving certain technologies and products that pose a particularly acute national security threat to the US.

It prohibits US investment in transactions related to China’s development of:

  1. electronic design automation software, certain fabrication and advanced packaging tools; the design, fabrication, or packaging of certain advanced integrated circuits; and supercomputers;
  2. quantum computers and production of critical components, certain quantum sensing platforms, and quantum networking and quantum communication systems;
  3. any AI system designed to be exclusively used for, or intended to be used for, certain end uses; any AI system that was trained using a specified quantity of computing power, and trained using a specified quantity of computing power using primarily biological sequence data.

If the transactions in the three categories are not covered by the prohibited transaction definition, US investors will be subject to the notification requirement. 

”US investments are often more valuable than their capital alone, because they can also include the transfer of intangible benefits,” said the Treasury Department’s Office of Investment Security (OIS).

“Intangible benefits that often accompany US investments and help companies succeed include: enhanced standing and prominence, managerial assistance, access to investment and talent networks, market access, and enhanced access to additional financing.”

The OIS said certain investments by US persons into a country of concern can be exploited to accelerate the development of sensitive technologies or products – including military, intelligence, surveillance, or cyber-enabled capabilities – in ways that negatively impact the national security of the US.

”The US has taken frequent actions to suppress and slow the rapid growth of China’s high technology sectors,” Li Haidong, director of Center for American Studies, China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times. 

“This deviates from the United States’ basic stance of maintaining stable relations with China, and also deviates from the American public’s hope that political elites will focus their energy on domestic issues, instead of creating external conflicts,” Li said. 

His comments came ahead of the US presidential election, which will take place on November 5. 

AI computing power

On August 9 last year, President Biden signed an Executive Order to declare a national emergency to address the threat to the US posed by countries of concern that seek to develop and exploit sensitive technologies or products critical for military, intelligence, surveillance or cyber-enabled capabilities. 

On June 21 this year, the Treasury Department proposed a set of rules on outbound investment screening. It said it would set the AI computing power thresholds for a prohibited transaction and a notifiable transaction. 

The Final Rule now sets the AI computing power’s speed threshold for a prohibited transaction at 1025 floating point operations (FLOPs) for an AI system generally, and at 1024 FLOPS for an AI system using primarily biological sequence data. 

It also sets the threshold for a notifiable transaction involving the development of AI systems at 1023 FLOPS. All these thresholds are the lowest in the government’s proposed ranges, meaning that the Final Rule has broad coverage.

Jack Clark, former policy director of OpenAI, writes in his blog that the notifiable threshold general-purpose AI systems is set at 1026 FLOPS in the US and 1025 FLOPS in the European Union. 

To illustrate what this means in practice, he said H100 SXM, Nvidia’s latest graphic processing unit, can train AI systems at different speeds but the cost for training at a speed of 1026 is 10 times that for 1025. 

He said A100, a slower AI chip, can also run at a speed of 1026 but it would cost even more. 

He said the 1025 threshold in the EU will eventually hit more companies than regulators anticipated.

Read: Beijing: new Treasury rules amount to ‘decoupling’

Follow Jeff Pao on X: @jeffpao3

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Whether Trump or Harris wins, US must redefine its Asia strategy – Asia Times

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This article was orginally published by Pacific Forum. It is republished with permission.

Just days away from what appears to be an extremely close US election, pundits are hastily trying to make sense of both major candidates’ potential foreign policy platforms. In the battle between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, each has sought to portray the other as somehow weak on China in an effort to out-hawk the opposition.

Trump has called for 60% tariffs on all of Chinese imports, thereby threatening global financial markets that are still reeling from Covid-19 pandemic recovery and struggling to adjust to US-China decoupling in critical technology sectors.

Harris has insisted that her goal as president would be “making sure the United States of America wins the competition for the 21st century.”

To some national security commentators watching from Asia, there is little difference between two candidates. Both, after all, view American power as indispensable and see their country locked in zero-sum competition with China.

That view is at odds with and keeps them and their political parties from coming to terms with two difficult truths, recognition of which is prerequisite to construction of a more successful Asia strategy:

  • The United States no longer enjoys unrivaled status as the world’s sole superpower.
  • China is not universally viewed with suspicion – let alone hostility – throughout the region.

True, by most objective measures the United States’ position in Asia at the end of 2024 is more secure than it was in 2020.

The Biden administration has secured access to nine bases in the Philippines as part of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement put on hold under Rodrigo Duterte (2016-2022). In the span of one month in 2023, the administration established a new US-Japan-South Korea trilateral with its two East Asian allies and concluded a double upgrade in the US-Vietnam Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.

The Lowy Institute’s newly released Asia Power Index confirms this positive trendline, finding that the United States remains the most powerful country in Asia, and that while Beijing continues to chip away at Washington’s lead, “China’s power is plateauing” rather than surpassing that of the United States.

Despite those noteworthy accomplishments, however, the longer-term trendline for the United States is concerning.

As Washington continues to project a strategy that implicitly assumes American primacy while it abstains from the evolving regional economic architecture by rejecting free trade deals, the United States is increasingly losing influence in Asia.

Official inattention and inconsistency are largely to blame for the current situation and can be corrected – but time is running out.

While US policymakers frequently make the point that the United States is the largest source of foreign direct investment in Southeast Asia, this is only true if you consider total investment stocks. According to new data from the Lowy Institute, over the last decade China has invested significantly more in the region than has the United States ($218 billion to $158 billion).

Wary of alienating a country that is their biggest trading partner and an inescapable geographic reality, Southeast Asian states are unwilling to join what they perceive as US-led efforts to contain China.

According to a recent survey by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, more Southeast Asian states now say that they would choose China over the United States if forced to pick between the two, the first time Beijing has eclipsed Washington as the partner of choice.

Increasingly bellicose anti-China rhetoric in Washington – never more evident than in an election year in which each party seeks to outbid the other as tougher on China – has not been balanced by a positive vision for regional stability that embraces economic statecraft or conventional tools of diplomacy.

Whether Democrat or Republican, the next administration has an opportunity to reframe Washington’s Asia policy in response to regional demand for a more active and balanced US role in the region. The incoming president should consider three guiding principles to get the balance right.

First, Asian states want a more benign and sustainable US presence, one not simply predicated on security partnerships and military bases but capable of delivering much needed public goods such as economic investment and development finance to meet the needs of Asia’s rapidly growing middle classes.

Asia’s middle class is expected to grow to 3.5 billion by 2030, making it the largest in the world. A 2019 report by the Asian Development Bank estimated that the infrastructure needs of developing countries in the Indo-Pacific would amount to $1.7 trillion a year through 2030 when climate change adaptation was factored in.

Yet according to one recent study, official development finance to Southeast Asia in 2022 was at its lowest level since 2015 in real terms.

Secondly, it’s not necessary for the United States to be the single most powerful player for it to make positive contributions to regional order. Washington policymakers are deluding themselves if they are crafting regional strategy from an assumption that the US still enjoys unchallenged primacy in Asia.

Primacy should no longer be the lodestar of US strategy and is an unrealistic goal anyway. A foreign policy based on primacy squanders scarce resources and overstretches policymakers at a time when American voters are most concerned with the economy and healthcare.

Third, smaller states want options. While it has become cliché, the reality is that Asian states do not want to be forced to choose between China and the US. China has been the dominant economic partner for the entire region for some time, and it isn’t going away.

By contrast, the United States is seen as fickle and often a source of instability. In Indonesia and Malaysia, citizens have boycotted American companies such as McDonald’s and Starbucks to express their outrage over US support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

Indonesia and Malaysia are both significant regional partners for Washington and proverbial “swing states,” whose populations frequently put pressure on their political leaders to distance their countries from the United States. Policymakers in Washington therefore need to be more cognizant of how their country is perceived in the region.

In light of these limitations on US power and influence, the next president should recognize the value of America’s alliances and partnerships across the globe, which act as a force multiplier when rowing in the same direction. Washington should continue to empower partners and allies that are willing to play constructive roles in preserving a rules-based (not necessarily liberal) international order.

Ultimately, neither candidate is likely to follow these prescriptions to a tee. Neither party shows any sign of abandoning the current trajectory, which privileges rivalry with China at all costs with a vaguely defined goal of “winning” that competition.

Primacy may be too baked into the cake for any US leader to let go of. In a climate of great power competition globally and political brinkmanship at home, no candidate sees anything short of US dominance as a viable platform.

However, the next American leader may be forced to reconcile with shifting voter preferences. While foreign policy is never a priority issue in any US election, a large percentage of Americans say that it ranks relatively high on their list of concerns: 62% of all voters indicate that foreign policy is very important in determining whom they will vote for (that breaks down to 70% of Trump supporters and 54% of Harris supporters).

Each candidate has sought to be seen as the candidate of change. While the rest of the world is unlikely to view this election that way (both are incumbents to varying degrees), change is precisely what US Asia strategy needs. The election provides a valuable opportunity to reimagine US goals in light of 21st-century global realities.

Hunter Marston (@hmarston4), a PhD candidate at Australian National University, is a Southeast Asia associate with 9DASHLINE and an adjunct research fellow with La Trobe Asia.

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To challenge China, the next US president should fix trade – Asia Times

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This article was originally published by Pacific Forum. It is republished with permission.

In the September presidential debate, former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris had sharply contrasting views on issues ranging from energy to immigration to policy toward China and the Middle East.

Yet, both agreed that tariffs were useful for US foreign policy.

The debate started with tariffs, and the two candidates went back and forth on the likelihood that the new tariffs would cause inflation. By the end of the debate they returned to their discussion on tariffs, where they disagreed on the sectors where they thought tariffs should be imposed and on which countries should be targeted – but agreed that tariffs are useful.

Regardless of the detrimental consequence of tariffs, including inflation, the candidates emphasized the need to impose them to protect critical sectors and spur domestic manufacturing.

The debate clearly demonstrated the arrival of a new era in the United States, one in which the two parties are recalibrating the balance between national security and economics.

Biden’s trade war and Trump’s

The United States has a growing list of grievances about Beijing’s mercantilist practices. These include

  • widespread market-access restrictions, from equity caps on investment to regulatory harassment;
  • pervasive subsidies directed at national champions that tilt the competitive playing field against foreign firms in China and in third markets; and
  • widespread forced technology transfer and intellectual property theft.

To protect domestic industries vital to national security and incentivize China to change its practices, both the Trump and Biden administrations have imposed tariffs on Chinese products.

In March 2018 President Trump announced the administration would impose a 25% tariff on imported steel and a 10% tariff on imported aluminum. Following the announcement, the Trump administration imposed several rounds of tariffs on steel, aluminum, washing machines, solar panels as well as goods specifically from China, impacting more than $380 billion worth of trade at the time of implementation and amounting to a tax increase of nearly $80 billion.

President Biden said in a 2019 speech: “President Trump may think he’s being tough on China, but all he has delivered is more pain for American farmers, manufacturers, and consumers.”

Yet, the Biden administration has largely upheld existing tariffs, with some exceptions. These include suspending certain tariffs on European Union imports, replacing tariffs with tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) on steel and aluminum from the EU and UK, as well as steel from Japan, and allowing tariffs on washing machines to expire after a two-year extension.

In May 2024, the Biden administration announced additional tariffs on $18 billion of Chinese goods, resulting in a tax increase of $3.6 billion.

Authors’ compilation derived from White House Fact Sheet

President Biden’s trade policy differs from the former president’s in that he seeks to increase production and jobs in a select group of emerging high-tech industries. Additionally, he has tightened trade restrictions with China under the “Small Yard, High Fence” approach, limiting the sale of American technology to Beijing while directing federal subsidies to US manufacturers competing with Chinese manufacturers. Another key difference in President Biden’s trade policy is that his strategy relies on bringing international allies together to counter China through a mix of domestic incentives and potentially coordinated tariffs on Chinese goods.

Weighing Washington’s tariffs on Beijing

Among the reasons countries impose tariffs are:

  • to protect domestic industries vital to national security,
  • to incentivize foreign countries to change their practices, and
  • to raise revenue.

The Trump and Biden administrations both stated they imposed tariffs for the first two reasons.

The Trump administration argued that tariffs were “imposed to encourage China to change its unfair practices” as they “threaten United States companies, workers, and farmers.”

Similarly, after the Biden administration announced tariff hikes on May 14, the White House announced tariff increases were designed “to protect American workers and American companies from China’s unfair trade practices,” including forced technology transfers and theft of intellectual property. The administration also pointed out China’s “growing overcapacity and export surges that threaten to significantly harm American workers, businesses, and communities.”

The biggest problem with the latest round of tariffs imposed in May is that it cannot resolve the problems the Biden administration sought to tackle. Rather than focusing on changing China’s forced technology transfers and protecting intellectual property rights, the tariff increases were more about boosting US industries.

Furthermore, doubts persist about whether tariffs truly benefit the US economy. By raising the cost of parts and materials, tariffs increase consumer prices, and reduce private sector output. This will eventually reduce the return to labor and capital, incentivizing Americans to work less and invest less.

There are numerous studies claiming the negative economic consequences of tariff policy. In August 2019, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the negative GDP effects of recent tariff increases had outweighed the positive ones and were decreasing real output by 0.3%. Meanwhile, the Tax Foundation estimated in July 2023 that the long-run effects would bring GDP down by 0.2% and total employment down by 142,000 jobs.

Another issue with the extended tariff policy is that China has evaded its impact. The US-China trade war and rising risks of investing in China prompted global companies to adopt a “China Plus One” strategy, diversifying production into ASEAN countries. These nations became attractive alternatives to replace China for their relatively young populations, free trade agreements with key players, and prime geographical locations.

However, it wasn’t just American firms relocating to Southeast AsiaChinese manufacturers also shifted operations there. Currently, Chinese firms attempt to bypass tariffs by selling components to manufacturers in ASEAN, where the final goods will not be regulated by the US. In the electric vehicle industry, Chinese companies are rapidly expanding into Southeast Asia, making it difficult to regulate them under current trade policies.

Harming allies

Successive administrations have pursued protectionism, from Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act subsidies. Unfortunately, these protectionist policies are also hurting friendly countries. The steel and aluminum tariffs also affect the European Union and Japan, while the subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act have created challenges for US allies trying to conduct business in the US.

In response, countries like Japan, the EU, Canada, Australia, and others have adopted their own domestic subsidies.

Getting trade policy right

If the new administration aims to achieve the stated goal of changing China’s unfair trading practices, the new president should consider reviewing its trade-distorting policies and reigniting a policy of market-driven economic integration with its allies.

To regulate China’s non-market, export-driven model of growth, the administration should work through international organizations and institutions, just as it did during the recent G7 meeting in Italy. Through channels such as the G7, the WTO and the OECD, the US could build an international coalition demanding that Beijing change direction. If those efforts should prove ineffective, the administration could authorize collective action to rein in China’s exports while simultaneously revitalizing the market economy.

Su Hyun Lee ([email protected]) is a researcher focusing on US-China relations and economic security at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy. Previously, she was a 2021-22 resident Korea Foundation fellow at the Pacific Forum.

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US election as an epistemological crisis – Asia Times

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America is in the grip of a crisis of truth and its political and electoral systems are under duress. Losing the connection between what is true and what is fiction could have enormous consequence in the middle of this US election campaign.

Academics refer to this as an epistemological crisis, a situation where different people believe different “truths” and it becomes difficult to get a shared understanding of key facts. This, they argue, can lead to polarisation and potentially, even, an ungovernable country, based on an inability to decide on what is factually correct.

Jonathan Rauch, the journalist and author of “The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth”, says historically disagreement about what is true has, on some occasions, led to untold killing and suffering.

Right now in the US, it’s clear that there are massive differences in what people believe is true. Polls show, for instance, that around 69% of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters think the 2020 election result was not legitimate and that Joe Biden did not win.

This division is amplified by what is happening in and around the campaigns, and the use of new and developing techniques. The Trump campaign, for instance, continues to make claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Sharing misinformation (that is, when inaccurate content is disseminated but not with the intent to mislead) has always been part of political life, but it is now quickly amplified by social media. Spreading disinformation takes this to the next level when organizations or individuals deliberately spread lies. But the means to do so have grown more sophisticated, as demonstrated in the recent Moldovan election, where a massive Russian disinformation campaign was discovered.

History reminds us that fake news is at a premium during wartime and the world is currently experiencing two major conflicts. In both cases, the geopolitical consequences for the US are sky-high.

By spring 2024, US news media were reporting on Russia’s potential to interfere in the US election. The US administration’s position on the Ukraine war in particular matters greatly to the Kremlin, and it is no secret that a Donald Trump victory would suit Putin far better than a continuation of the Ukraine-funding Democrat alternative.

In September, US officials warned of election threats, not only from Russia but also Iran and China. Former director of the US Cyber-Security and Infrastructure Agency, Chris Krebs, stated that 2024 is “lining up to be a busy election interference season.”

What makes these multi-faceted and constantly evolving threats even harder to manage is the fact that Maga influencers are embroiled in the proceedings. This makes a unified American response against an external threat all but impossible.

One recent such example involved a company in Tennessee which was used by members of the Russian state-owned broadcaster RT (formerly Russia Today) to spread Russia-friendly content. The content-creators were paid US$10 million by RT to publish pro-Russia videos in English on a range of social media platforms. The RT employees were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act.

This is one of many developments by the foreign interference machine as the election on November 5 nears. Other incidents include dozens of internet domains used by the Kremlin to spread disinformation on websites designed to look like news sites and to undermine support for Ukraine.

The US government’s response to these complex and boundary-blurring threats is complicated by the tension between maintaining discretion and informing the public.

Old challenges, new technology

Looking back, the 2016 presidential campaign and subsequent victory for Trump brought many firsts, some comical, others deadly serious in this post-truth arena.

The lighter side included inaccurate claims made by White House press secretary Sean Spicer about the size of Trump’s 2017 inauguration crowd. When Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway declared on television to have “alternative facts” to those reported by the media on the crowd size, her phrase entered general use.

With hindsight, such falsehoods now seem a little quaint, as the images from the day told the truth better than any script. Far more disturbingly, Russia’s Project Lakhta involved a “hacking and disinformation campaign” described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 Report as vast and complex in scale.

The scheme involved human and technological input and targeted politicians on the political left and right, with a view to causing maximum disruption. Just a year later, Russia interfered in the 2020 race, this time spreading falsehoods about Biden and working in Trump’s favor.

Fast forward to 2024 and we are awash with AI-created images and writing. Now any sort of lie is possible. Deep fakes, voice, image and video manipulation now mean that we literally can no longer believe our ears and eyes.

Meanwhile, back on the campaign trail in 2024, Team Trump demonstrates few qualms when dishing out alternative facts. A long-time proponent of “truthful hyperbole” the former real-estate dealer takes exaggeration to a point no longer on the scale.

From sharing an AI-generated image of Taylor Swift endorsing him (she soon backed his opponent) to claims that helicopters were not getting through with hurricane relief, the news cycle is awash with baseless content.

An inevitable outcome of this crisis and conflict over truth is voters’ confusion and disengagement, and increasing public tension, with a new poll reporting that the majority of Americans are expecting violence after the election.

Voters deserve to know whether what they know is real, but in this campaign it is increasingly clear that they don’t and the consequences of this could be stark.

Clodagh Harrington is lecturer in American Politics, University College Cork

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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