China expert sounds alarm on spy balloon hovering over US: "It’s very dangerous what they’re doing"

Two experts share five tips on how to be happier at work, taken from their new book, "Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay." Envy can reveal what you value – if you know how to decode what it's telling you.Malte Mueller/Getty Images Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy co-wrote "Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay." It looks at how people deal with difficult emotions and how they can harness them. The co-authors share 5 tips on how to be happier at work, taken from the book. Liz Fosslien is the head of content at Humu, a company that uses behavioral science to make work better. Her writing and illustrations have been featured by the Economist, the New York Times, NPR, and Freakonomics.Mollie West Duffy is an organizational and leadership development expert who has helped companies and start-ups such as Casper develop good workplace culture. She writes a blog about start-up culture, and has written for Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, and Quartz.Below, they share five key insights from their new book, "Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay."1. Emotions can be hard, but they're not good or badStarting at a young age, most of us are taught that feeling bad is bad. In the spring of 2021, as part of our research for this book, we invited readers to take a survey about their emotional experiences. More than 1,500 people responded, and 97% said they have heard big feelings described as "bad" or "negative."While big feelings are uncomfortable — at times, they can even feel unbearable — they aren't inherently positive or negative. When we take the time to understand them, big feelings like anger and regret can serve us. Anger fuels us to advocate for what matters, and regret provides us with insight into how to craft a more meaningful life.When we change the way we relate to big feelings, we take away some of their destructive power. Research shows that when we acknowledge and accept what we feel during challenging moments, we start to feel better. As UC Berkeley researchers put it, "Feeling bad about feeling bad only makes you feel worse."2. Envy can reveal what you value — if you know how to decode what it's telling youIn your most envious moments, it's easy to wish you were making a million dollars a year from the corner office, and ignore the responsibilities, stress, and long hours that come with the job. But you need to compare specifics.A few years ago, I learned that a friend of a friend had been promoted, and would soon be leading a team of 200 people. I was overcome with envy. That night, I lay awake questioning all of my career choices. I have always found days of back-to-back meetings exhausting; I've never aspired to run a team of hundreds of people.But there I was, sleepless and miserable about not running an enormous department. "Does my jealousy mean I should shift all my plans?" I wondered. "This whole time, have I been wrong about who I am and what I want?"The next morning, I awoke with the certainty that I was still the same meeting-avoidant person — and that I didn't want to trade places with my newly promoted acquaintance. I wasn't actually longing for the day-to-day that came with being a manager of managers; I just wanted the prestige and social validation of being able to announce a big, exciting accomplishment.Thinking through a day-in-the-life helped me realize that I didn't need to shift my entire career, but instead should keep going on my current path and look for more opportunities to become more visible.It's useful to understand that you may not actually want your friend's big house, but instead covet the sign of prestige it communicates, or the financial security it symbolizes. And then you can figure out a better path forward for you.3. You have to listen to the early signs of burnoutWe think we'll be able to tell when our brains are fried. But working and living in today's world can be so emotionally consuming that we don't even realize the extent of our fatigue.That's why burnout often seems sudden: it's the fall after you've been unknowingly running on empty for too long.One of the most dangerous aspects of burnout is that it impacts self-awareness. When you're in it, you're running on adrenaline, and the momentum feels so exhilarating that you end up adding more and more to your plate.Once burnout hits, it can take weeks or even months to overcome. So what early signs should you look out for? Here are some of the subtle cues that you might need to reassess how much you're taking on:Basic activities like going to the grocery store feel overstimulatingYou feel so overwhelmed that you've started to cut activities you know are good for you (e.g. exercise or alone time)You're saying "yes" even though you're already at capacityGetting sick and being forced to shut down for a bit sounds kind of niceWe're quick to ignore these signs because we can usually muscle through them — but they're important alarm bells. As Naveed Ahmad, the founder of Flourish, a company that helps people combat burnout, told us: "Sometimes life taps you on the shoulder with a feather, sometimes it hits you with a brick, and sometimes it runs you over with a bus. Learn to listen when it's just a feather."Once you notice this, you have to set and stick to your own boundaries; no one else is going to draw them for you. You may sometimes wonder, "Why don't the people who love me help me not overdo it?" Often, it's because they want you to be successful. A marker of success in our society is being busy — and they may be just as busy as you.So the next time you're on the brink of saying "yes" to something you're not excited about, pause. Ask yourself:If I say yes, what do I gain?If I do this, what will I not be able to do instead?If I say no, what's the worst thing that would happen?4. Perfectionism doesn't serve you — it actually hinders performanceOne of the most destructive aspects of perfectionism is that it prevents us from being kind to ourselves. We fear that if we relax, we'll become complacent and indulgent.But by obsessing too much over getting it exactly right, we actually undermine our ability to succeed. When high-achievers mess up, they see it as a learning experience, course-correct, and move on.Perfectionists get stuck, revisiting even the smallest mistake over and over, and making themselves feel terrible about even trying at all.This is called the "perfection paradox." We're so afraid of failing that we have a hard time doing. But cutting ourselves some slack actually makes us more likely to improve – and less likely to give up.Here are two recommendations for how to move forward with a healthier mindset. And remember: if you slip up here and there on the path to recovery, that's okay. As with all things in life, it won't be a perfect process.Replace "avoidance goals" with "approach goals"If your goal is to not fail, you'll never feel particularly good — and you won't be thrilled when you achieve it. Instead, start setting what psychologists call "approach" goals (achieving a positive) instead of "avoidance" goals (preventing a negative).For example, if you're going to give a presentation at work, say to yourself, "I want to impress people with my compelling storytelling" (approach goal) rather than, "I want to avoid looking like I don't know what I'm doing" (avoidance goal).Get rid of "always" and "never"These words are usually signs that your self-reflection is becoming self-destructive. The next time you catch yourself thinking the words "always" and "never," reframe the situation. Let's say that you're too exhausted after work to join your friends for dinner.Instead of thinking, "I always let people down," tell yourself, "I'm skipping one event to take care of myself." You can also remind yourself of all the times you did show up.5. Regret is painful, but it can help you craft a more meaningful lifeWe feel regret when we think about how our lives could have been better had we only done something differently.But while regret can ache, it can also be a powerful internal compass for how to live an engaged, meaningful life. Learning from your past is one of the most effective ways to set yourself up for a better, less regret-filled future.Before we get to all that, let's start with a few basics. Psychologists describe regret as a "counterfactual emotion," or a feeling that happens when we dream of what might have been, had we only chosen something else – the "counterfactual."The amount of regret we feel depends on how close we came to realizing one of those alternate possibilities. If you're running to catch a train and you miss it by a few seconds, you'll feel a lot more regret watching it pull out of the station than if you had arrived an hour late.Bronze Olympic medalists were much happier than silver medalists, because the bronze medalists were thrilled to have gotten anything at all. The silver medalists just obsessed over how they could have gotten gold.Regret can help us learn from the past to improve our future. So the next time you find yourself dwelling on a sentence that starts with "I should have," try swapping in the words, "What if?"For example, if you think, "I should have been more confident in myself," ask yourself, "What if I acted with more confidence?" Then write out a few answers to your question.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Dr. Oz has an Ivy-League medical degree, the trust of President Donald Trump, and a history of supporting misleading or downright false claims. Dr. Mehmet Oz attends a press conference in Istanbul, Turkey, July 2, 2019.Onur Coban/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Dr. Mehmet Oz, one of the US' best-known celebrity doctors, is running for US Senate in Pennsylvania.  But his health recommendations are not always supported by scientific evidence. Here are eight times Oz made false, baseless, or misleading scientific claims. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Among Dr. Mehmet Oz's achievements are ten Emmy awards, a syndicated television show, an Ivy-League medical degree, and a rapport with Donald Trump, who appeared on his show in 2016.Oz, like Trump, is seeking to follow his success on television with a career in Washington, D.C. The celebrity doctor announced on Tuesday that he's running for US Senate in Pennsylvania as a Republican for the open seat currently held by GOP Sen. Pat Toomey, who is retiring in 2022. Oz also served on the President's Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition under the Trump administration and was been thrust into the spotlight once again during the COVID-19 pandemic, appearing frequently on programs like "Fox and Friends," one of Trump's favorite shows.Though Oz has received some plaudits, he's also garnered plenty of controversy in the medical community for pushing unproven medical treatments and diets.In a 2015 letter to Columbia University, where Oz is a professor, 10 doctors said he promoted "quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain." A 2014 study in the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal found that of 40 randomly selected episodes from Oz's television show, his health recommendations were based on evidence just 46% of the time. Here are eight times Oz made misleading or downright false scientific claims.A representative for Oz didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.Oz pushed hydroxychloroquine to fight the coronavirus, even though its effects were still unproven.Oz visits "Outnumbered Overtime with Harris Faulkner" at Fox News Channel Studios in New York City, New York, on March 9, 2020.Roy Rochlin/Getty ImagesIn April 2020, Oz told "Fox and Friends" that hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, could be an effective treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Trump is a fan of the drug, calling it "the biggest game-changer in the history of medicine.""There's no question it's not proven to be beneficial in the large clinical trials we expect in America, and certainly the FDA and medical societies would desire," he said. "But these have been supported with case studies."Oz cited one French doctor's research on the drug, which found that of 24 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine, 75% were no longer sick after six days.The French doctor's research was not a peer-reviewed study published in an academic journal. He released the results on YouTube.According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the United States' top infectious disease expert, there is nothing but anecdotal evidence that the drug works against the coronavirus, Axios reported.At the time, experts were wary of the limited studies that have already been published about the effects of hydroxychloroquine on COVID-19, since they have shown mixed results, and the drug can also cause eye and heart damage.Oz repeatedly claimed that raspberry ketones are 'the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat.'Oz walks the runway at The Blue Jacket Fashion Show during New York Fashion Week, February 5, 2020, in New York City.Rob Kim/Getty Images for The Blue Jacket Fashion ShowIn a February 2012 episode of his show, Oz touted raspberry ketones, the compound that gives the fruit their smell, as "the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat." One study typically used to justify raspberry ketones as a weight-loss supplement tested eight substances at once, making it "impossible to tell which substances actually contributed to the extra fat loss, and which did nothing," according to the Public Affairs Council, a consumer-awareness resource.Another test, conducted on rats, found evidence supporting the compound. But the results of a test on laboratory rodents will not necessarily be the same for those done on humans, Melinda Manore, then-professor of nutrition at Oregon State University, told the Los Angeles Times.   "Rats are not humans," the Public Affairs Council said in a statement. "There is a total lack of research on raspberry ketones' effects on fat loss."Oz has said astrological signs "may reveal a great deal about our health."Oz attends the 2019 Forbes Healthcare Summit at the Jazz at Lincoln Center on December 5 in New York City.Steven Ferdman/Getty ImagesIn a now-deleted tweet, Oz said astrology could help people understand their personal health."For centuries, we have used astrological signs to examine our personality and how we interact with those around us," he said. "However, these signs may reveal a great deal about our health as well."Astrology is a pseudoscience, and scientists consider the link between it and medicine to be a relic of the time before the scientific revolution.Oz told viewers that green coffee extract "has scientists saying they've found the magic weight-loss cure."Oz testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, June 17, 2014.Associated PressDuring an episode of his television show in 2012, Oz suggested that viewers partake in magic beans."You may think magic is make-believe, but this little bean has scientists saying they've found the magic weight-loss cure for every body type: It's green coffee extract," he said.But green coffee extract is not a "magic" cure. It's not a cure at all, according to the Federal Trade Commission, which brought a lawsuit against a Texas-based company that used a "hopelessly flawed" study to support its weight-loss claims about the coffee extract. That study was later cited by Oz on his television show."The Dr. Oz Show has since removed nearly any hint of support for Green Coffee Extract from its website," according to Popular Science, "including the full episode devoted to its benefits and Oz's own study of its effects."The company behind the study agreed in 2014 to pay the FTC $3.5 million and ensure scientific substantiation for any future weight-loss claims it makes.That same year, Oz testified before the Congressional Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance about his advertisement of weight-loss products like the coffee extract."The scientific community is almost monolithic against you in terms of the efficacy of the three products you called 'miracles,'" former Sen. Claire McCaskill, chairwoman of the subcommittee at the time and a Missouri Democrat, told him.Oz said most countries require genetically-modified foods to have special labels.Oz attends The Hollywood Reporter's Most Powerful People In Media 2018, April 12, 2018, in New York City, New York.Ben Gabbe/Getty ImagesOz has expressed concerns about genetically modified foods, though scientific studies agree that they're safe."I do not claim that GMO foods are dangerous, but believe that they should be labeled like they are in most countries around the world," he wrote in a Facebook post.But a majority of countries do not require labels, according to the Genetic Literacy Project.More importantly, the Food and Drug Administration says foods should only be labeled if they threaten health or the environment. Legally mandating labeling, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), "can only serve to mislead and falsely alarm consumers."Genetically modified foods "are not likely to present risks for human health any more than their conventional [non-modified] counterparts," the World Health Organization says, and the AAAS maintains that they "pose no greater risk than the same foods made from crops modified by conventional plant-breeding techniques."  He's also said umckaloabo root extract "has been incredibly effective at relieving cold symptoms" even though it isn't.Oz visits "Extra" at Burbank Studios in Burbank California, September 17, 2019.Noel Vasquez/Getty ImagesOz has touted the health benefits of a little-known root extract from umckaloabo, a plant endemic to South Africa."It has been incredibly effective at relieving cold symptoms, and a new study shows it helps the flu," he said in a video city by Live Science.But "there's a lack of reliable studies on the benefits of these products," the National Center for Biotechnology Information said. "Some studies have shown that ... [herbal products including umckaloabo] can at best slightly relieve a cough." Oz recommended using lavender soap to cure leg cramps.Dr. Mehmet Oz attends a press conference in Istanbul, Turkey, July 2, 2019.Onur Coban/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images"I know this sounds crazy," Oz said on his television show in 2010, "but people put it under their sheets. We think the lavender is relaxing and maybe itself beneficial." A lavender soap bar may be relaxing, but scientific research does not support Oz's claim that it is "itself beneficial" for leg cramps.  A strawberry-and-baking-soda mixture can whiten teeth, Oz said.Oz speaks during a panel organized by the Turkish Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research on September 24, 2018, in New York.Mohammed Elshamy/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesOn his television show, Oz proposed an unconventional teeth-whitening method: strawberries and baking soda. The mixture may be effective at removing plaque, but it does not whiten teeth and may in fact harm tooth health, according to two studies by Dr. So Ran Kwon, a professor of dentistry at the University of Iowa."The only benefit of the do-it-yourself method [strawberries and baking soda] is while it seems to make your teeth look whiter, they look whiter because you're just removing plaque accumulation on your teeth," she said in a statement."You really want something that penetrates into your teeth and breaks down the stain molecules," she continued. "If you don't have that, you get just the superficial, and not the whitening from the inside, which was what you really want."Isaac Scher contributed to a previous version of this article. Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

TikTok has become a scapegoat in the US-China tech war. Experts say the current policy proposals could blow back on companies like Shein and Apple. TikTok has become a convenient scapegoat in the US-China tech war.Arif Qazi / Insider TikTok has become a main character in the US-China tech war. US politicians from both parties are looking for ways to ban the app or curtail its influence. But attacks on TikTok are a distraction from the bigger task of safeguarding data for all Americans. When the US last month spotted a Chinese surveillance balloon hovering about 66,000 feet over Billings, Montana, politicians and pundits alike used the opportunity to call out another China boogeyman: TikTok."A big Chinese balloon in the sky and millions of Chinese TikTok balloons on our phones. Let's shut them all down," Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah tweeted.House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul similarly likened TikTok to a spy balloon that sends sensitive data to the "mothership in Beijing" when he introduced in February a bill that would require the White House to ban TikTok or any app that may be subject to the influence of China.A few years after its arrival in the US, TikTok has become a main character in the US-China tech war. The short-video app is a common talking point for US politicians in both parties looking to stake a position on China. The Biden administration and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, referred to as CFIUS, are demanding that TikTok's Chinese owners sell stakes in its app as a condition for operating in the US, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. But the TikTok-focused attacks are also sparking policy proposals that could have serious consequences for companies caught up in the ongoing competition between the US and China, policy experts told Insider. Draft bills to ban TikTok — like McCaul's DATA Act and a more recent bill from Sens. Mark Warner and John Thune — tend to be written broadly in a manner that could end up shutting out a wide array of foreign-owned tech companies, such as fast-growing e-commerce apps Shein and Temu.The proposed bills in Congress could even affect some American companies with business functions in China, said Jenna Leventoff, a senior policy counsel at the ACLU, who coauthored a letter opposing McCaul's bill."This could apply to other large companies, like possibly Apple," Leventoff told Insider. "Apple has a lot of its technology made in China. The President or future administration could block Americans from doing business or using apps from a number of entities in China."Apple works closely with Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn in China to make iPhones and other products in the city of Zhengzhou, though the company has recently been looking to move some production out of the country, The Wall Street Journal reported.China could also retaliate against US companies in tech or other sectors should the US go after one of its rising stars."The US habitually politicizes technology and trade issues and uses them as a tool and weapon in the name of national security," a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on March 6. "Such practice violates the principles of market economy and fair competition. China will closely follow relevant developments."An alternative path for lawmakers looking to protect Americans from foreign-owned apps would be to enact stricter data privacy laws for all companies operating in the US, experts told Insider. But US tech companies that rely on data collection for advertising sales or other business practices have fought to curb such regulations."The US is way behind most other industrialized nations in terms of creating sweeping data privacy regulation," said Aram Sinnreich, a communications professor at American University and coauthor of the forthcoming book "The Secret Life of Data.""A lot of that is because of the countless millions of dollars that get spent by big tech firms like Amazon and Meta and Google lobbying the US government to allow those businesses to continue their data-extractive business models," he said.Why TikTok has become the center of anti-China rhetoricTikTok is a particularly effective scapegoat in Washington's anti-China rhetoric because it evokes an emotional response for many Americans. The app is integrated into many aspects of US culture, particularly for young people, sparking fears that China could wield it to influence the next generation of Americans."TikTok is a news-and-views type of site shaping opinions and helping others shape opinions," said Leland Miller, the CEO of the economic-research firm China Beige Book. "Nothing is bigger than TikTok and more important for a young cohort than TikTok is."TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is scheduled to testify before Congress in March.Matt McClain/The Washington Post/Getty Images.Outside of its cultural influence, officials are worried that TikTok's Beijing-based parent ByteDance could be compelled to give the Chinese Communist Party access to US user data via its National Intelligence Law.TikTok has hurt its own cause when it comes to its reputation around data privacy. For example, the company misrepresented how US user data was managed and then its parent company monitored the locations of reporters who exposed its practices.But it is also scrutinized more closely than other apps with China-based owners.Temu and Shein, for example, have shot up to the top of the Apple App Store this year, grabbing top 10 spots in Apple's ranking in recent weeks. Both platforms, like TikTok, collect data, such as a user's name, phone number, IP address, and geolocation, from US customers as part of their day-to-day operations.Yet, DC politicians haven't sounded the alarm about user data protections for either app, or spoken about how a TikTok ban could impact them.Stronger privacy laws are a way out, but could face pushback from Big TechLawmakers could protect American users and avoid outright bans of foreign-owned apps by enacting stricter data privacy laws at home, experts and policy advocates told Insider."It's a national embarrassment that we don't have a basic data privacy law in the United States," said Evan Greer, director at the tech activism organization Fight For The Future, which launched a petition opposing a TikTok ban. "Every day that lawmakers waste hand wringing about TikTok is another day that we don't have a national privacy law in the United States."Some officials, including Sens. Ron Wyden and Jon Ossoff, have acknowledged that legislation focused on TikTok is a distraction from the larger issue of safeguarding Americans' data across all apps. Still, efforts by members of Congress to pass federal legislation around data privacy, such as the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, have faced an uphill battle.Cutting off access to certain user data-tracking tools has been harmful to the businesses of US tech platforms in the past. Apple's 2021 user privacy changes stunted ad revenue at Facebook and Snapchat-maker Snap, for example.But blocking companies from gathering private information from users could also be a more effective path to protecting Americans while maintaining an avenue for Chinese companies to participate in the global economy."We need to continue pursuing more secure technical standards and encryption," said Milton Mueller, program director of the Masters of Science in Cybersecurity Policy program at the Georgia Institute of Technology and coauthor of an Internet Governance Project report on TikTok and national security. "That kind of security is something that I think both gives the users of the internet control without undermining the basic functioning of the internet and the globalization of the internet."This story has been updated to include a report from The Wall Street Journal that the Biden administration and CFIUS are demanding a divestment from TikTok's Chinese owners.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Just days ago, Silicon Valley Bank (NASDAQ:SIVB) was still viewed as a highly-respected player in the tech space, counting thousands of U.S. venture capital-backed startups as its customers. But fast forward to the end of last week, and SVB was shuttered by regulators after a panic-induced bank run. So, how exactly did this happen? We […] Just days ago, Silicon Valley Bank (NASDAQ:SIVB) was still viewed as a highly-respected player in the tech space, counting thousands of U.S. venture capital-backed startups as its customers. But fast forward to the end of last week, and SVB was shuttered by regulators after a panic-induced bank run. So, how exactly did this happen? We dig in below. if (typeof jQuery == 'undefined') { document.write(''); } .first{clear:both;margin-left:0}.one-third{width:31.034482758621%;float:left;margin-left:3.448275862069%}.two-thirds{width:65.51724137931%;float:left}form.ebook-styles .af-element input{border:0;border-radius:0;padding:8px}form.ebook-styles .af-element{width:220px;float:left}form.ebook-styles .af-element.buttonContainer{width:115px;float:left;margin-left: 6px;}form.ebook-styles .af-element.buttonContainer input.submit{width:115px;padding:10px 6px 8px;text-transform:uppercase;border-radius:0;border:0;font-size:15px}form.ebook-styles .af-body.af-standards input.submit{width:115px}form.ebook-styles .af-element.privacyPolicy{width:100%;font-size:12px;margin:10px auto 0}form.ebook-styles .af-element.privacyPolicy p{font-size:11px;margin-bottom:0}form.ebook-styles .af-body input.text{height:40px;padding:2px 10px !important} form.ebook-styles .error, form.ebook-styles #error { color:#d00; } form.ebook-styles .formfields h1, form.ebook-styles .formfields #mg-logo, form.ebook-styles .formfields #mg-footer { display: none; } form.ebook-styles .formfields { font-size: 12px; } form.ebook-styles .formfields p { margin: 4px 0; } Get Our Activist Investing Case Study! Get the entire 10-part series on our in-depth study on activist investing in PDF. Save it to your desktop, read it on your tablet, or print it out to read anywhere! Sign up below! (function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]='EMAIL';ftypes[0]='email';}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true); Q4 2022 hedge fund letters, conferences and more   Road To A Bank Run SVB and its customers generally thrived during the low interest rate era, but as rates rose, SVB found itself more exposed to risk than a typical bank. Even so, at the end of 2022, the bank’s balance sheet showed no cause for alarm. As well, the bank was viewed positively in a number of places. Most Wall Street analyst ratings were overwhelmingly positive on the bank’s stock, and Forbes had just added the bank to its Financial All-Stars list. Outward signs of trouble emerged on Wednesday, March 8th, when SVB surprised investors with news that the bank needed to raise more than $2 billion to shore up its balance sheet. The reaction from prominent venture capitalists was not positive, with Coatue Management, Union Square Ventures, and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund moving to limit exposure to the 40-year-old bank. The influence of these firms is believed to have added fuel to the fire, and a bank run ensued. Also influencing decision making was the fact that SVB had the highest percentage of uninsured domestic deposits of all big banks. These totaled nearly $152 billion, or about 97% of all deposits. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insures up to $250,000 per account, per bank, for depositors. By the end of the day, customers had tried to withdraw $42 billion in deposits. What Triggered The SVB Collapse? While the collapse of SVB took place over the course of 44 hours, its roots trace back to the early pandemic years. In 2021, U.S. venture capital-backed companies raised a record $330 billion—double the amount seen in 2020. At the time, interest rates were at rock-bottom levels to help buoy the economy. Matt Levine sums up the situation well: “When interest rates are low everywhere, a dollar in 20 years is about as good as a dollar today, so a startup whose business model is “we will lose money for a decade building artificial intelligence, and then rake in lots of money in the far future” sounds pretty good. When interest rates are higher, a dollar today is better than a dollar tomorrow, so investors want cash flows. When interest rates were low for a long time, and suddenly become high, all the money that was rushing to your customers is suddenly cut off.” Year U.S. Venture Capital Activity Annual % Change 2021 $330B 98% 2020 $167B 15% 2019 $145B 1% 2018 $144B 64% 2017 $88B 6% 2016 $83B -3% Source: Pitchbook Why is this important? During this time, SVB received billions of dollars from these venture-backed clients. In one year alone, their deposits increased 100%. They took these funds and invested them in longer-term bonds. As a result, this created a dangerous trap as the company expected rates would remain low. During this time, SVB invested in bonds at the top of the market. As interest rates rose higher and bond prices declined, SVB started taking major losses on their long-term bond holdings. Losses Fueling a Liquidity Crunch When SVB reported its fourth quarter results in early 2023, Moody’s Investor Service, a credit rating agency took notice. In early March, it said that SVB was at high risk for a downgrade due to its significant unrealized losses. In response, SVB looked to sell $2 billion of its investments at a loss to help boost liquidity for its struggling balance sheet. Soon, more hedge funds and venture investors realized SVB could be on thin ice. Depositors withdrew funds in droves, spurring a liquidity squeeze and prompting California regulators and the FDIC to step in and shut down the bank. What Happens Now? While much of SVB’s activity was focused on the tech sector, the bank’s shocking collapse has rattled a financial sector that is already on edge.   The four biggest U.S. banks lost a combined $52 billion the day before the SVB collapse. On Friday, other banking stocks saw double-digit drops, including Signature Bank (-23%), First Republic (-15%), and Silvergate Capital (-11%). Name Stock Price Change, March 10 2023 Unrealized Losses / Tangible Equity SVB Financial -60%* -99% First Republic Bank -15% -29% Zions Bancorp -2% -47% Comerica -5% -47% U.S. Bancorp -4% -55% Fifth Third Bancorp -4% -38% Bank of America -1% -54% Wells Fargo 1% -33% JPMorgan -1% -21% Source: Morningstar Direct. *Represents March 9 data, trading halted on March 10. When the dust settles, it’s hard to predict the ripple effects that will emerge from this dramatic event. For investors, the Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen announced confidence in the banking system remaining resilient, noting that regulators have the proper tools in response to the issue. But others have seen trouble brewing as far back as 2020 (or earlier) when commercial banking assets were skyrocketing and banks were buying bonds when rates were low. The whole sector is in crisis, and the banks and investors that support these assets are going to have to figure out what to do.-Christopher Whalen, The Institutional Risk Analyst Article by Visual Capitalist.....»»

TikTok has become a scapegoat in the US-China tech war. Experts said focusing on one app masks the need for a comprehensive US data-privacy policy. TikTok has become a convenient scapegoat in the US-China tech war.Arif Qazi / Insider TikTok has become a main character in the US-China tech war. US politicians from both parties are looking for ways to ban the app or curtail its influence. But attacks on TikTok are a distraction from the bigger task of safeguarding data for all Americans. When the US last month spotted a Chinese surveillance balloon hovering about 66,000 feet over Billings, Montana, politicians and pundits alike used the opportunity to call out another China boogeyman: TikTok."A big Chinese balloon in the sky and millions of Chinese TikTok balloons on our phones. Let's shut them all down," Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah tweeted.House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul similarly likened TikTok to a spy balloon that sends sensitive data to the "mothership in Beijing" when he introduced in February a bill that would require the White House to ban TikTok or any app that may be subject to the influence of China.A few years after its arrival in the US, TikTok has become a main character in the US-China tech war. The short-video app is a common talking point for US politicians in both parties looking to stake a position on China.But the TikTok-focused attacks are also sparking policy proposals that could have serious consequences for companies caught up in the ongoing competition between the US and China, policy experts told Insider. Draft bills to ban TikTok — like McCaul's DATA Act and a more recent bill from Sens. Mark Warner and John Thune — tend to be written broadly in a manner that could end up shutting out a wide array of foreign-owned tech companies, such as fast-growing e-commerce apps Shein and Temu.The proposed bills in Congress could even affect some American companies with business functions in China, said Jenna Leventoff, a senior policy counsel at the ACLU, who coauthored a letter opposing McCaul's bill."This could apply to other large companies, like possibly Apple," Leventoff told Insider. "Apple has a lot of its technology made in China. The President or future administration could block Americans from doing business or using apps from a number of entities in China."Apple works closely with Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn in China to make iPhones and other products in the city of Zhengzhou, though the company has recently been looking to move some production out of the country, The Wall Street Journal reported.China could also retaliate against US companies in tech or other sectors should the US go after one of its rising stars."The US habitually politicizes technology and trade issues and uses them as a tool and weapon in the name of national security," a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on March 6. "Such practice violates the principles of market economy and fair competition. China will closely follow relevant developments."An alternative path for lawmakers looking to protect Americans from foreign-owned apps would be to enact stricter data privacy laws for all companies operating in the US, experts told Insider. But US tech companies that rely on data collection for advertising sales or other business practices have fought to curb such regulations."The US is way behind most other industrialized nations in terms of creating sweeping data privacy regulation," said Aram Sinnreich, a communications professor at American University and coauthor of the forthcoming book "The Secret Life of Data.""A lot of that is because of the countless millions of dollars that get spent by big tech firms like Amazon and Meta and Google lobbying the US government to allow those businesses to continue their data-extractive business models," he said.Why TikTok has become the center of anti-China rhetoricTikTok is a particularly effective scapegoat in Washington's anti-China rhetoric because it evokes an emotional response for many Americans. The app is integrated into many aspects of US culture, particularly for young people, sparking fears that China could wield it to influence the next generation of Americans."TikTok is a news-and-views type of site shaping opinions and helping others shape opinions," said Leland Miller, the CEO of the economic-research firm China Beige Book. "Nothing is bigger than TikTok and more important for a young cohort than TikTok is."TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is scheduled to testify before Congress in March.Matt McClain/The Washington Post/Getty Images.Outside of its cultural influence, officials are worried that TikTok's Beijing-based parent ByteDance could be compelled to give the Chinese Communist Party access to US user data via its National Intelligence Law.TikTok has hurt its own cause when it comes to its reputation around data privacy. For example, the company misrepresented how US user data was managed and then its parent company monitored the locations of reporters who exposed its practices.But it is also scrutinized more closely than other apps with China-based owners.Temu and Shein, for example, have shot up to the top of the Apple App Store this year, grabbing top 10 spots in Apple's ranking in recent weeks. Both platforms, like TikTok, collect data, such as a user's name, phone number, IP address, and geolocation, from US customers as part of their day-to-day operations.Yet, DC politicians haven't sounded the alarm about user data protections for either app, or spoken about how a TikTok ban could impact them.Stronger privacy laws are a way out, but could face pushback from Big TechLawmakers could protect American users and avoid outright bans of foreign-owned apps by enacting stricter data privacy laws at home, experts and policy advocates told Insider."It's a national embarrassment that we don't have a basic data privacy law in the United States," said Evan Greer, director at the tech activism organization Fight For The Future, which launched a petition opposing a TikTok ban. "Every day that lawmakers waste hand wringing about TikTok is another day that we don't have a national privacy law in the United States."Some officials, including Sens. Ron Wyden and Jon Ossoff, have acknowledged that legislation focused on TikTok is a distraction from the larger issue of safeguarding Americans' data across all apps. Still, efforts by members of Congress to pass federal legislation around data privacy, such as the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, have faced an uphill battle.Cutting off access to certain user data-tracking tools has been harmful to the businesses of US tech platforms in the past. Apple's 2021 user privacy changes stunted ad revenue at Facebook and Snapchat-maker Snap, for example.But blocking companies from gathering private information from users could also be a more effective path to protecting Americans while maintaining an avenue for Chinese companies to participate in the global economy."We need to continue pursuing more secure technical standards and encryption," said Milton Mueller, program director of the Masters of Science in Cybersecurity Policy program at the Georgia Institute of Technology and coauthor of an Internet Governance Project report on TikTok and national security. "That kind of security is something that I think both gives the users of the internet control without undermining the basic functioning of the internet and the globalization of the internet."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The World Economic Forum's 'AI Enslavement' Is Coming For You! Authored by J.B.Shurk via The Gatestone Institute, The mission objective of the World Economic Forum (WEF) is remarkably simple: the smartest, best people in the world should rule everyone else. In WEF parlance, their schemes of total supervision and behavioral modification will create a "sustainable" future for humanity. Humans become nothing more than "things" to be counted, shuffled, categorized, tagged, monitored, manipulated, and controlled. They become nothing more than cogs in the WEF's great trans-humanist, technocratic machine. Pictured: WEF founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab in Davos on May 23, 2022. (Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images) When Sir Thomas More wrote his socio-political satire about a fictional island society in the New World, he gave it the fabricated name, Utopia, derived from simple Greek and meaning, "no-place." Although More was humorously telling his audience that his idealized community existed nowhere, centuries of central planners chasing the fantasy of utopian societies have failed to get the joke. Worse, for every peaceful religious community seeking separation from modern civilization, there is a power-hungry tyrant seeking to impose his will upon everyone else. It seems as if not a generation goes by when some megalomaniac does not rise to proclaim, "If only the world does exactly as I demand, I will deliver you paradise here on Earth." Usually, these same narcissists go down in history remembered as either vainglorious buffoons or bloodthirsty tyrants — often both. Today, Klaus Schwab rises as leader of the World Economic Forum (WEF) to promise a "Great Reset" for the human race. He envisions a future Utopia achieved through technological precision, centralized management of Earth's resources, careful observation of citizens, the merger of human and artificial intelligence, and the monopolization of government power by a small professional class with recognized expertise. Although the WEF has spent the last 50 years organizing conferences, publishing policy proposals, and connecting global leaders in industry, banking, information technology, intelligence gathering, military strategy, and politics, its mission objective is remarkably simple: the smartest, best people in the world should rule everyone else. Separated from all its pretensions about "saving the world" from unchecked population growth and climate apocalypse, the WEF is nothing new. Its foundations have been around at least since the time of Plato, when two and a half millennia ago the Greek philosopher proposed that the ideal city-state would be ruled by "philosopher kings." Just as Plato surveyed the world and predictably concluded that people from his own vocation should logically govern everyone else, the World Economic Forum's global "elites" have come to a strikingly similar determination. Far from advancing anything forward-looking or modern, Schwab and his acolytes walk in the footsteps of an ancient Greek. For a half-century, the WEF's members have been on a quest to devise the perfect global government without any say from Western nations' voting populations, and to no-one's surprise, those same "philosopher kings" have nominated themselves to do the ruling. How convenient. As is true of almost all visions of Utopia, the WEF's new world order will be remarkably centralized. "Experts" on climate change will determine what kinds of energy may be used by businesses and consumers. "Experts" on sustainability will determine what foods humans (at least the non-"elite" variety) may eat. "Experts" on disinformation will determine what kinds of news and which side of a debate may be known and promoted. "Experts" on healthcare will determine how many times each citizen must be injected with ever-newer "vaccines," whether citizens must be kept in lockdown "for their own good," and whether face masks must be worn to prove continuing compliance. "Experts" on extremism will determine what kinds of speech are "harmful." "Experts" on racism will determine which groups in society have unfair "privilege." "Experts" in inequality will determine whose property must be taken and which groups the State should reward. "Experts" in whatever the State requires will determine that the State is acting reasonably every step of the way. However, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, individual rights, and other personal liberties will mean little in a WEF-constructed future running on philosopher-king-approved expertise. At no time can an individual's needs, wants or concerns be allowed to obstruct the "greater good." This is Schwab's drab vision of Utopia. Should he and the WEF clan pull it off, they will do so by using technology to enfeeble, rather than empower, the human race. Already, people have become familiar with the new terms of their future enslavement. Central bank digital currencies will allow governments not only to track every citizen's income and purchase history in real time but also to limit what a person may spend depending upon government-determined social credit scores, perceived infractions of the "common good," or perhaps unfair possession of "systemic privilege." Digital vaccine passports will not only provide universal tracking of every person's movements but also ensure stick-and-carrot compliance with future mandatory orders during declared "health emergencies." Personal carbon footprints measuring each individual's "culpability" for so-called man-made climate change will have the effect of recording everything a person eats and everywhere a person goes, while constantly "nudging" each citizen with digital rewards or penalties to modify behavior toward the government's preferred standards. It should go without saying that when any government possesses such omnipotent powers, invasions of privacy will only expand, declared "health emergencies" will become only more numerous, and government "nudging" will become only more intrusive. If this sounds more dystopian than utopian and every bit like an unwanted prison overseen by unaccountable government agents, that is precisely what it is. WEF zealots do not even hide their intentions anymore, already going so far as to push the construction of "Smart Cities" or "Fifteen Minute Cities" in which tens of millions of people can be relocated, live side-by-side in small apartment complexes, and move through a constant maze of entrances and exits accessed solely through digital ID verification and approval. In essence, the goal is to create a digital panopticon implementing all of the surveillance programs above, to provide future rulers with absolute control, while leaving everyone else in a permanent state of docile incarceration. In WEF parlance, such schemes of total supervision and behavioral modification will create a "sustainable" future for humanity. No doubt prison wardens feel much the same way when convicts are kept behind bars in rows of secured cages. The difference is that in the WEF's Utopia, no crime must be committed to reap Schwab's unjust "rewards." Now, if Westerners appreciated just what is coming their way, they might go apoplectic and resist the WEF's new world order. For this very reason, the most important war being waged today is one that is never discussed openly in the press: the covert war over information. When people are allowed to openly debate ideas in the public square (including the digital square of social media and web pages free from search engine shadowbans), that "free market of ideas" will go where the people debating those ideas take them. For government "narratives" not only to survive but also to dominate all dissenting opinion, government-allied platforms must tilt the scales of free speech in their favor by ridiculing, censoring or outright criminalizing the thoughts and words of dissident minds. In any other market, such intentional interference would be considered anticompetitive collusion in violation of antitrust laws, but because the World Economic Forum's acolytes treat competing free speech as dangerous "misinformation," the "free market of ideas" has been transformed into a controlled "safe space" for the government's friends. What happens when government ambivalence toward free speech is combined with the amoral technocratic force behind the WEF's plans for global Utopia? Well, as Herr Schwab recently proclaimed at the World Government Summit in Dubai when discussing artificial intelligence (AI), chatbots, and digital identities: "Who masters those technologies — in some way — will be the master of the world." (After that, is one-world-government still considered a "conspiracy theory"?) If the WEF controls the digital world, then it will essentially control the people. Once the stuff of science fiction, WEF technocrats even have a plan to "hack" into employees' minds by monitoring and decoding their brainwaves. Google is onboard with such thought control: it has declared its intent to expand a "pre-bunking" program meant to "immunize" people against what Google sees as "propaganda" or "misinformation" by indoctrinating unsuspecting Internet users with Google's own home-brewed yet approved propaganda. By manipulating Google's users without their knowledge, the search engine behemoth can ward off competing ideas — brilliant! Microsoft founder Bill Gates feels the same way. In an interview with German newspaper Handelsblatt, the self-styled vaccine expert argues that AI technologies should be used as powerful tools to combat "digital misinformation" and "political polarization." This comes on the heels of a recent discovery that Microsoft has already been using a British think tank, Global Disinformation Index (GDI), to secretly blacklist conservative media companies in the United States and prevent them from generating advertising revenue. The kicker? The U.S. State Department has been funding GDI's "disinformation" work through taxpayer funds to the National Endowment for Democracy and its own Global Engagement Center, which are then transferred to GDI before GDI launders the tawdry viewpoint discrimination back to Microsoft and other companies behind a thin veil of "objectivity." Following the WEF model of creating an all-powerful partnership between private industry and government authority, Microsoft and the State Department have figured out how to undermine dissent by having third-party organization, GDI, label all such speech as "harmful disinformation" on its "Dynamic Exclusion List." Likewise, publicly funded news outlets throughout the West — including Germany, Canada, Switzerland and Belgium — are working together to "develop online-based solutions" to target "hate comments and increasing disinformation." What could possibly go wrong when State-controlled institutions collude to control the dissemination of information? As former Twitter "Trust and Safety" executive Yoel Roth testified before Congress, "Unrestricted free speech paradoxically results in less speech, not more." From this Orwellian doublespeak standard, the clear line separating protections for free speech from outright censorship is whether the speaker articulates points of view in agreement with the WEF's ruling coalition of Big Tech titans and government authorities or not. In Schwab's Utopia, there is no room for truly free speech. What happens when the job of censoring the public is placed entirely in the digital hands of artificial intelligence? Even though some political leaders have cautioned that AI could be an "existential threat" to humanity, and even as technology pioneers such as former Google chief Eric Schmidt admit that AI-powered computer systems should be seen as every bit as powerful as nuclear weapons, the rush toward AI-constructed Utopia is full speed ahead. That should give anyone of sound mind troubling pause. After all, the cognitive biases of Big Tech "elites" such as Gates, Schmidt, and others will almost certainly translate into digital biases for any artificial intelligence. ChatGPT, an AI software program launched late last year, is already scaring the bejesus out of people with its overt political bias. In one instance, the AI concluded that using a racial slur was worse than allowing a city to be annihilated by a nuclear bomb. In another, the AI justified the suppression of Trump voters as necessary to "defend democracy" and prevent the spread of "dangerous speech," while simultaneously arguing that "AI should not be used to suppress the free speech" of Biden supporters. Meanwhile, no sooner had some experimenters gained access to Microsoft's new AI-powered chatbot than the synthetic brain started threatening people. These troubling early signs give credence to Schmidt's warning that AI should be regarded as equally and inherently dangerous as nuclear bombs. Where he and other WEF-allied global "elites" differ from the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project, however, is in their seemingly urgent desire to turn these awesome AI weapons directly against Western peoples. Clearly, if Schwab's World Economic Forum intends to usher in an AI-powered Utopia where he can be the "master of the world," then he has little use for human beings. In a very real sense, humans become nothing more than "things" to be counted, shuffled, categorized, tagged, monitored, manipulated, and controlled. They become nothing more than cogs in the WEF's great trans-humanist, technocratic machine — useful for a time, perhaps, but ultimately a burden to feed and house and logically expendable. If artificial intelligence can do the thinking that Schwab needs and support the ideas that Schwab adores, then humans are just in the way. Should the World Economic Forum get its centralized Utopia, the "thingification" of the human race will be a giant step toward its eventual disposal. Tyler Durden Wed, 03/01/2023 - 23:00.....»»

From esports analyst to a Ukrainian entrepreneur: Ivan Oleskii shares how the Russo-Ukraine conflict has changed his life forever in a detailed 12-month diary. Ivan Oleskii in April, working on refitting cars for Car4Ukraine.Ivan Oleksii An as-told-to photo diary of life in Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24, 2022.  Ivan Oleksii, an esports analyst from Kherson, explained how the war recast his life.  In the last year, he spent long nights spent in bomb shelters, contributed to the war effort, and got engaged.  Putin's invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022. In the last 12 months, Ukrainian cities have been reduced to rubble, millions have been displaced and become refugees, and Russia and Ukraine have suffered tens of thousands of casualties in the fighting. All Ukrainians' lives have been changed in ways they would have struggled to conceive a year ago.  This diary is based on conversations, edited for length and clarity, with Ivan Oleksii, 26, an esports analyst living in Kyiv with his girlfriend when the war started. He now converts civilian trucks into battle vehicles for the Ukrainian army. He spoke to Insider's Bethany Dawson. February 2022Three images together, the left image is a mattress propped against a window in a Kyiv apartment. The middle and right photo show the inside of a bomb shelter.Ivan OleksiiThis is the first day of the war. In truth, we didn't really know what to do when the war started, and so we had a makeshift approach to keeping ourselves safe in the middle of an active warzone. The left photo shows mine and my now-fiancée's apartment in Kyiv. We'd spent months refurbishing it, had finally started buying furniture, and were preparing to move in. The last thing we needed was a bed and a mattress, but the invasion had broken out before we could use it. As the war started and shelling began raining down, we were aware that if our window blew up, it could severely injure us — or worse. So we thought, if we couldn't sleep on our bed, it could at least save our lives. You can see the balloon I gave my fiance on Valentine's Day, and just ten days after, we had to put a mattress next to the window to make sure we didn't die. We only stayed in Kyiv for three days of the war. We spent most of this time hiding in bomb shelters and planning on how to keep safe — how to survive. After three days underground, it became clear that we'd need to flee to a safer part of the country. Soon we found a home in Boryslav, west of Lviv. March 2022The start of Ivan's work to support Ukrainian troops, in March.Ivan OleksiiAt the start of the war, we were completely lost. We didn't know what to do or how to cope. But after a couple of weeks, many of us sat up and thought, "OK, we have to do something." However, I couldn't fight. Not because of physical limitations, but because I didn't have any experience fighting, and I just would have been an easy target. I knew I could do more with a laptop than with an AK-47.So the first initiative I worked on was WarStop.com, where we set up Amazon wish lists to supply Ukrainian soldiers with goods that would keep them alive on the front line. This image was from the end of March when the first orders started flooding in. You can see piles of generous donations behind me and Juliana, who runs To Fulfil a Dream, an NGO that provides assistance and support to Ukrainian refugees and our soldiers. April 2022Ivan Oleskii, left, with his fiancée and her family in a café in April.Ivan OleksiiHere I am with my — at this point, to-be — fiancée and her mom and little sister. This was the first time in months that we could try to enjoy some form of normality. It felt really strange to be sitting in a café next to the windows, a part of the room you normally would avoid. It was such a novelty to drink coffee and have cake, even in Truskavets, a city far away from the active fighting. Honestly, it felt amazing, it was a breakthrough in life in a war. But it was still scary, still dangerous. There was still the voice in your head saying, "This is crazy, get out of here." But either way, you had to try to get back to normal, because if you remain scared every single day, you'll just burn from the inside. May 2022Ivan proposed to his girlfriend in May.Ivan OleksiiIn May, I got engaged to my girlfriend of seven years, Natalia. I was initially planning to propose to her at an Imagine Dragons concert that was supposed to be held on June 3, but that was cancelled for obvious reasons. I proposed at home instead, in our apartment as just a small surprise. Though it might not have been what I envisioned, I wanted to do it then rather than continue to wait through the war. I actually had a photo of the exact ring I wanted in my pocket before the war started, and I had been waiting for a nice moment to go ahead and buy it, and to propose. But when the war broke out, I realised I had no idea when this nice moment would come about, so I decided to propose without waiting. The war has made it so you now go after what you want. You do things now without a delay because now there's a real chance that the next day, you might be hit by a rocket. Now you can't live life on pause. June 2022Ivan's fiancée in the summer time.Ivan OleksiiThis photo shows Natalia and a pug we were looking after for a friend. For us, we took summer to try and enjoy our lives. War was still raging, but we wanted to find happiness in these times. July 2022Ivan taking his to-be sister-in-law out for a walk in the Ukrainian countryside.Ivan OleksiiWe're very lucky that we live near the Carpathian Mountains, so we're surrounded by natural beauty and can escape the real world for a minute when we want. In these times, it was really nice to just go out and feel normal.And yes, even during a war, a 10-year-old will be grumpy about being dragged out on a walk. August 2022An award presented by the Ukrainian defense minister to the Car4Ukraine team in August.Ivan OleksiiThis photo was an incredibly special day for me and my team. I'm part of Car4Ukraine, an organization that turns cars into trucks for the Ukrainian military to use. In August of 2022, the Minister of Defense gifted this medal to Roman Hapachylo, the vice president of our organization, who acts as the face of it all. It felt amazing that not only had we found a way to help the people fighting for our country directly, but our country recognized us for that work. It was a moment where, even in such a dark time, you knew you were doing the right thing. September 2022Half of the people working on Car4Ukraine gather in September to celebrate 100 refitted cars.Ivan OleksiiWhile we celebrated Car4Ukraine in August, that didn't stop when September rolled around. This month we marked the production of our hundredth truck to be sent to the Ukrainian military. Loads of people from the Car4Ukraine family came together to celebrate. This was roughly half of the people involved in the project, everyone from making our stickers to installing machine guns onto the backs of tanks.It was amazing to look at the last seven months and note that we made great waves in supporting the Ukrainian military. With the good weather, and the unity between all the people and visitors, the event felt like a light in the darkness. It was one of those moments when we realized that Russia had no chance. October 2022Ivan and his fiancée return to their Kyiv apartment to find it surrounded by anti-tank obstacle defense.Ivan OleksiiThis photo was a truly crucial moment for my fiancée and me, as it was the first time we'd returned to Kyiv since we fled our apartment on the third day of the war. As we stood at the entrance to our apartment complex, we remembered how shrapnel covered the space around our apartment after the Ukrainian air-defense system destroyed a Russian rocket. When we returned to the apartment nine months later, the marks of the war were less scary but still so obvious. Here we're standing in front of a military hedgehog, a form of the static anti-tank blockade that stops military vehicles from entering certain areas. Even though war felt like a part of life by this point, it was still a shocking thing to see. Imagine you're coming back to your apartment, your home, and you are greeted by a huge structure that is in place just to make sure that tanks won't enter your home. It was jolting.November 2022Ivan in Denmark in November 2022, meeting two people who had supported Car4Ukraine.Ivan OleksiiIn November, I went over to Denmark to meet two people who were helping Car4Ukraine and were, in turn, helping the Ukrainian army. Here I'm sitting with Pelle, who gave our project 10 cars in total. He found them, fixed them, and then supplied them to us. Next to him is Yette, a retired doctor who saw adverts of people selling items that could be of use to soldiers, things like warm clothes and binoculars. She managed to persuade people with an offer they could not refuse: take no money for your things and instead donate them to Ukraine. She managed to amass hundreds of items for our effort. It was amazing to meet them, strangely, because they had no relationship with Ukraine. They had no family there, no real links to the country, and it's not like they had loads of money to give. Instead, they were just regular Danish people who sincerely wanted to help Ukraine.December 2022Children selling cakes to raise money for the Ukrainian armed forces.Ivan OleksiiIn December, I continued to see people who were working to do anything to help Ukraine. This photo is of some kids running a bake sale. This was cute, obviously, but the context is more important. The two children on the right are the kids of a family friend. She's a single mom and had some financial difficulties due to being one of the seven million people internally displaced by the war. In addition, there were delays with her social-support payments, so it's been a hard time for her in many ways. Her children raised about $70 with the bake sale, which translates to at least two weeks' worth of food. But when her children came home with the money, she wanted it to go to the people fighting for her country. So, she gave it to me so I could give it to the soldiers through Car4Ukraine. January 2023Ivan, far right, with two men from Car4Ukraine, a military chaplain, and a solider near Bakhmut.Ivan OleksiiOn New Year's Eve, I travelled from the relative safety of our home in Boryslav to the warzone of Bakhmut to meet soldiers and deliver a fleet of cars to the front lines, and I spent the first day of 2023 right next to the active fighting. It was strange to start a fresh year, a chance for a new beginning, hearing the sounds of shelling nearly a year after Putin's invasion began. It was interesting to be with these people at such a big celebration, very far away from our homes, when we hadn't known each other a year ago. But now this cause has united us. It was scary and definitely dangerous — my fiancée was very worried — and I was aware there was a real chance of being killed, but it was still the right thing to do, to go into the fighting to help in the way that I could.February 2023Ivan with his parents and the besieged streets of Kherson.Ivan OleksiiNearly one year to the day after the war started, I saw my parents at home in Kherson for the first time in over a year. It was unforgettable. They had no idea I was coming, and I used the Find My Friends function on my iPhone to see where they were. My dad was in the supermarket, so I went in and turned to corner to see him browsing the aisles. I went over to ask if he needed a lift home. "Where the hell did you come from?" he asked, and we hugged for the first time since Putin invaded. We surprised my mom at home with flowers, and we were all crying over finally being back together again. Though it was beautiful to see my family again, being back in Kherson was difficult. I could barely recognize the roads I grew up on. The street my school was on was totally besieged. A place that should have conjured happy memories instead felt like a set from a post-apocalyptic movie. From the grounds where I played soccer to the shop where I used to buy fries as a teenager, it was all gone. Nobody was there. It was a shadow of what it once was. Onward to a new year The feeling of uncertainty is still very present as we move into the second year of this war.However, one thing is clear: We have to keep going and live our lives no matter what.Ukraine will win the war, 100% — and this will include the liberation of all our territories, including Crimea.During this trip back to Kherson, for the first time, since I moved out of the city at age 18, I realized that I actually want to come back to Kherson and help rebuild it.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Last year, Ivan Oleksii was an esports analyst living in Kyiv. He shared a 12-month diary of how Putin's invasion of Ukraine changed his life forever. Ivan Oleskii in April, working on refitting cars for Car4Ukraine.Ivan Oleksii An as-told-to photo diary of life in Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24, 2022.  Ivan Oleksii, an esports analyst from Kherson, explained how the war recast his life.  In the last year, he spent long nights spent in bomb shelters, contributed to the war effort, and got engaged.  Putin's invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022. In the last 12 months, Ukrainian cities have been reduced to rubble, millions have been displaced and become refugees, and Russia and Ukraine have suffered tens of thousands of casualties in the fighting. All Ukrainians' lives have been changed in ways they would have struggled to conceive a year ago.  This diary is based on conversations, edited for length and clarity, with Ivan Oleksii, 26, an esports analyst living in Kyiv with his girlfriend when the war started. He now converts civilian trucks into battle vehicles for the Ukrainian army. He spoke to Insider's Bethany Dawson. February 2022Three images together, the left image is a mattress propped against a window in a Kyiv apartment. The middle and right photo show the inside of a bomb shelter.Ivan OleksiiThis is the first day of the war. In truth, we didn't really know what to do when the war started, and so we had a makeshift approach to keeping ourselves safe in the middle of an active warzone. The left photo shows mine and my now-fiancée's apartment in Kyiv. We'd spent months refurbishing it, had finally started buying furniture, and were preparing to move in. The last thing we needed was a bed and a mattress, but the invasion had broken out before we could use it. As the war started and shelling began raining down, we were aware that if our window blew up, it could severely injure us — or worse. So we thought, if we couldn't sleep on our bed, it could at least save our lives. You can see the balloon I gave my fiance on Valentine's Day, and just ten days after, we had to put a mattress next to the window to make sure we didn't die. We only stayed in Kyiv for three days of the war. We spent most of this time hiding in bomb shelters and planning on how to keep safe — how to survive. After three days underground, it became clear that we'd need to flee to a safer part of the country. Soon we found a home in Boryslav, west of Lviv. March 2022The start of Ivan's work to support Ukrainian troops, in March.Ivan OleksiiAt the start of the war, we were completely lost. We didn't know what to do or how to cope. But after a couple of weeks, many of us sat up and thought, "OK, we have to do something." However, I couldn't fight. Not because of physical limitations, but because I didn't have any experience fighting, and I just would have been an easy target. I knew I could do more with a laptop than with an AK-47.So the first initiative I worked on was WarStop.com, where we set up Amazon wish lists to supply Ukrainian soldiers with goods that would keep them alive on the front line. This image was from the end of March when the first orders started flooding in. You can see piles of generous donations behind me and Juliana, who runs To Fulfil a Dream, an NGO that provides assistance and support to Ukrainian refugees and our soldiers. April 2022Ivan Oleskii, left, with his fiancée and her family in a café in April.Ivan OleksiiHere I am with my — at this point, to-be — fiancée and her mom and little sister. This was the first time in months that we could try to enjoy some form of normality. It felt really strange to be sitting in a café next to the windows, a part of the room you normally would avoid. It was such a novelty to drink coffee and have cake, even in Truskavets, a city far away from the active fighting. Honestly, it felt amazing, it was a breakthrough in life in a war. But it was still scary, still dangerous. There was still the voice in your head saying, "This is crazy, get out of here." But either way, you had to try to get back to normal, because if you remain scared every single day, you'll just burn from the inside. May 2022Ivan proposed to his girlfriend in May.Ivan OleksiiIn May, I got engaged to my girlfriend of seven years, Natalia. I was initially planning to propose to her at an Imagine Dragons concert that was supposed to be held on June 3, but that was cancelled for obvious reasons. I proposed at home instead, in our apartment as just a small surprise. Though it might not have been what I envisioned, I wanted to do it then rather than continue to wait through the war. I actually had a photo of the exact ring I wanted in my pocket before the war started, and I had been waiting for a nice moment to go ahead and buy it, and to propose. But when the war broke out, I realised I had no idea when this nice moment would come about, so I decided to propose without waiting. The war has made it so you now go after what you want. You do things now without a delay because now there's a real chance that the next day, you might be hit by a rocket. Now you can't live life on pause. June 2022Ivan's fiancée in the summer time.Ivan OleksiiThis photo shows Natalia and a pug we were looking after for a friend. For us, we took summer to try and enjoy our lives. War was still raging, but we wanted to find happiness in these times. July 2022Ivan taking his to-be sister-in-law out for a walk in the Ukrainian countryside.Ivan OleksiiWe're very lucky that we live near the Carpathian Mountains, so we're surrounded by natural beauty and can escape the real world for a minute when we want. In these times, it was really nice to just go out and feel normal.And yes, even during a war, a 10-year-old will be grumpy about being dragged out on a walk. August 2022An award presented by the Ukrainian defense minister to the Car4Ukraine team in August.Ivan OleksiiThis photo was an incredibly special day for me and my team. I'm part of Car4Ukraine, an organization that turns cars into trucks for the Ukrainian military to use. In August of 2022, the Minister of Defense gifted this medal to Roman Hapachylo, the vice president of our organization, who acts as the face of it all. It felt amazing that not only had we found a way to help the people fighting for our country directly, but our country recognized us for that work. It was a moment where, even in such a dark time, you knew you were doing the right thing. September 2022Half of the people working on Car4Ukraine gather in September to celebrate 100 refitted cars.Ivan OleksiiWhile we celebrated Car4Ukraine in August, that didn't stop when September rolled around. This month we marked the production of our hundredth truck to be sent to the Ukrainian military. Loads of people from the Car4Ukraine family came together to celebrate. This was roughly half of the people involved in the project, everyone from making our stickers to installing machine guns onto the backs of tanks.It was amazing to look at the last seven months and note that we made great waves in supporting the Ukrainian military. With the good weather, and the unity between all the people and visitors, the event felt like a light in the darkness. It was one of those moments when we realized that Russia had no chance. October 2022Ivan and his fiancée return to their Kyiv apartment to find it surrounded by anti-tank obstacle defense.Ivan OleksiiThis photo was a truly crucial moment for my fiancée and me, as it was the first time we'd returned to Kyiv since we fled our apartment on the third day of the war. As we stood at the entrance to our apartment complex, we remembered how shrapnel covered the space around our apartment after the Ukrainian air-defense system destroyed a Russian rocket. When we returned to the apartment nine months later, the marks of the war were less scary but still so obvious. Here we're standing in front of a military hedgehog, a form of the static anti-tank blockade that stops military vehicles from entering certain areas. Even though war felt like a part of life by this point, it was still a shocking thing to see. Imagine you're coming back to your apartment, your home, and you are greeted by a huge structure that is in place just to make sure that tanks won't enter your home. It was jolting.November 2022Ivan in Denmark in November 2022, meeting two people who had supported Car4Ukraine.Ivan OleksiiIn November, I went over to Denmark to meet two people who were helping Car4Ukraine and were, in turn, helping the Ukrainian army. Here I'm sitting with Pelle, who gave our project 10 cars in total. He found them, fixed them, and then supplied them to us. Next to him is Yette, a retired doctor who saw adverts of people selling items that could be of use to soldiers, things like warm clothes and binoculars. She managed to persuade people with an offer they could not refuse: take no money for your things and instead donate them to Ukraine. She managed to amass hundreds of items for our effort. It was amazing to meet them, strangely, because they had no relationship with Ukraine. They had no family there, no real links to the country, and it's not like they had loads of money to give. Instead, they were just regular Danish people who sincerely wanted to help Ukraine.December 2022Children selling cakes to raise money for the Ukrainian armed forces.Ivan OleksiiIn December, I continued to see people who were working to do anything to help Ukraine. This photo is of some kids running a bake sale. This was cute, obviously, but the context is more important. The two children on the right are the kids of a family friend. She's a single mom and had some financial difficulties due to being one of the seven million people internally displaced by the war. In addition, there were delays with her social-support payments, so it's been a hard time for her in many ways. Her children raised about $70 with the bake sale, which translates to at least two weeks' worth of food. But when her children came home with the money, she wanted it to go to the people fighting for her country. So, she gave it to me so I could give it to the soldiers through Car4Ukraine. January 2023Ivan, far right, with two men from Car4Ukraine, a military chaplain, and a solider near Bakhmut.Ivan OleksiiOn New Year's Eve, I travelled from the relative safety of our home in Boryslav to the warzone of Bakhmut to meet soldiers and deliver a fleet of cars to the front lines, and I spent the first day of 2023 right next to the active fighting. It was strange to start a fresh year, a chance for a new beginning, hearing the sounds of shelling nearly a year after Putin's invasion began. It was interesting to be with these people at such a big celebration, very far away from our homes, when we hadn't known each other a year ago. But now this cause has united us. It was scary and definitely dangerous — my fiancée was very worried — and I was aware there was a real chance of being killed, but it was still the right thing to do, to go into the fighting to help in the way that I could.February 2023Ivan with his parents and the besieged streets of Kherson.Ivan OleksiiNearly one year to the day after the war started, I saw my parents at home in Kherson for the first time in over a year. It was unforgettable. They had no idea I was coming, and I used the Find My Friends function on my iPhone to see where they were. My dad was in the supermarket, so I went in and turned to corner to see him browsing the aisles. I went over to ask if he needed a lift home. "Where the hell did you come from?" he asked, and we hugged for the first time since Putin invaded. We surprised my mom at home with flowers, and we were all crying over finally being back together again. Though it was beautiful to see my family again, being back in Kherson was difficult. I could barely recognize the roads I grew up on. The street my school was on was totally besieged. A place that should have conjured happy memories instead felt like a set from a post-apocalyptic movie. From the grounds where I played soccer to the shop where I used to buy fries as a teenager, it was all gone. Nobody was there. It was a shadow of what it once was. Onward to a new year The feeling of uncertainty is still very present as we move into the second year of this war.However, one thing is clear: We have to keep going and live our lives no matter what.Ukraine will win the war, 100% — and this will include the liberation of all our territories, including Crimea.During this trip back to Kherson, for the first time, since I moved out of the city at age 18, I realized that I actually want to come back to Kherson and help rebuild it.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Not Just Spy Balloons: The CCP’s Expansive Spy Campaign Against America Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), News that the Pentagon was tracking a Chinese communist spy balloon hovering over the United States this week is raising concerns about the extent of China’s espionage efforts against America and its citizens. A Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldier uses binoculars by the perimeter fence of the PLA Hong Kong Garrison barracks on November 17, 2019. (PHILIP FONG/AFP via Getty Images) But just how far is the regime willing to go in order to spy on and undermine the United States? The espionage efforts of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state, go much broader and deeper than mere sensor balloons. Such efforts include human intelligence gathering, transnational repression schemes, cyber theft and hacking, intellectual property theft, and even the harvesting of Americans’ genetic material. In the words of one retired Air Force General, “If [the CCP has] any access to American society, then they’ll use that access to undermine American society.” HUMINT and Transnational Repression Key among the CCP’s efforts to spy on the United States is its traditional human intelligence (HUMINT) efforts, which relies on person-to-person exchanges of information, both wittingly and otherwise. The CCP’s HUMINT network permeates American society at many levels, with many such efforts being overseen directly by the regime’s top intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS). One of the most infamous such cases is that of Christine Fang or “Fang Fang”, the alleged Chinese spy who posed as a university student, and fostered relationships with numerous politicians in California and elsewhere, including Rep. Eric Swalwell when he was a city council member, and used that access to collect intelligence on up and coming politicos. Fang reportedly targeted at least two Midwestern mayors with whom she had romantic or sexual relationships. Politicians aren’t the only targets of such espionage, however. Many everyday Americans, particularly those of Chinese descent, are frequently the preferred targets of the CCP’s spy and harassment campaigns. In such efforts, MSS agents and their U.S. proxies have allegedly stalked an American Olympic figure skater and her family, conspired with New York police officers to gather intelligence on the Asian American community, and even plotted to attack a U.S. Army veteran running for Congress in a bid to silence and intimidate people holding critical views of the CCP. FBI Director Christopher Wray testified that Chinese agents and their proxies actively stalked U.S. residents and planted bugs in their cars and homes. Cyber Theft and Hacking Similarly, the regime has used cyber attacks and misinformation campaigns to illicitly collect U.S. defense information and sow division among American citizens. U.S. intelligence leaders have identified the CCP as the world’s largest malicious cyber actor, and its affiliated hackers have stolen more data from Americans than every other nation combined. Such efforts are often aimed at stealing vital technological secrets, such as when suspected state-backed agents hacked into a U.S. government department last year and stole sensitive defense information. Likewise, CCP-sponsored hackers have penetrated and stolen sensitive information from multiple U.S. telecom firms. The incidents highlight what U.S. defense officials have long warned: that the regime is studying how the United States fights with the intent of developing technologies capable of toppling its military and forcibly transferring cutting-edge American technologies to China. Americans’ sensitive personal information is also a valued target, as evidenced by multiple massive hacks by Chinese actors over the years, including the breaches of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, credit-reporting agency Equifax, Mariott hotels, and insurer Anthem. These hacks resulted in hundreds of millions of Americans’ personal data being stolen. Officials and experts have said the regime is using this massive trove of Americans’ personal data to aid in its espionage and overseas influence operations, and feed its artificial intelligence technology. The TikTok logo is displayed at a TikTok office in Culver City, California on Dec. 20, 2022. (Mario Tama/Getty Images) Social Media and Telecommunications The CCP also uses its control over the data of Chinese companies to leverage Chinese-owned social media and telecommunications giants against an unsuspecting American populace. TikTok, a popular short video app owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, is perhaps the most telling example of this. Described by intelligence leaders as a “national security threat” and labeled by security experts as a “weaponized military application,” social media giant TikTok has censored stories Americans see at the request of the CCP and has allowed its Chinese engineers access to U.S. user data. Officials have repeatedly sounded the alarm about the app because CCP law mandates Chinese companies provide data to the regime upon request. Relatedly, employees at ByteDance used geolocation data from TikTok to illicitly stalk American journalists believed to be reporting on the company. The national security risks posed by Chinese social media apps also apply to other tech firms, including telecommunications. In recent years, Washington has cracked down on Chinese telecom firms, including Huawei and ZTE, for this reason. Huawei and its employees have been found to have deep links with Chinese military and intelligence. Federal prosecutors have charged the company with conspiracy to steal trade secrets, while the Canadian government alleged that the company actively employed CCP spies. The firm also reportedly actively engaged in covert attacks on Australian and U.S. networks as far back as 2012. BGI Group Laboratory technician working on samples from people to be tested for CCP virus at “Fire Eye” laboratory, Wuhan, Hubei China, Feb 6, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images) Biodata The CCP’s efforts to glean every last bit of information from the United States go further than intellectual property and surveillance balloons. Indeed, the assault goes down to the bone, and then down deeper: To Americans’ genetic material. Clinical and genetic data of U.S. citizens obtained by Chinese biotechnology companies through their partnerships with U.S. institutions pose national security risks, a top U.S. counterintelligence agency warned in 2021. The mass DNA collection performed by companies such as genome-sequencing firm BGI could be used in myriad ways against the United States, according to congressional reports. These include allowing the CCP to blackmail individuals with the threat of exposing embarrassing medical information, or even using data on health conditions such as allergies to conduct targeted biological attacks against diplomats, politicians, high-ranking federal officials, or military leaders. Some experts have warned that the CCP could use this rich genetic information to create bioweapons to target certain groups of people. Importantly, while BGI is a private company, it has definite ties to the CCP. In January 2018, China’s state-run media Xinhua reported that Du Yutao, the Party secretary of BGI’s research institute, spoke of the importance of learning and putting into action of “the spirit behind the 19th National Congress,” referring to a twice-in-a-decade CCP meeting. BGI maintains concrete ties to the CCP and its scientists have expressed their interest in the regime’s efforts to develop biochemical weapons, which experts suggest may link the company’s efforts to harvest the genetic material of Americans to a darker interest in developing weapons to be used against Americans. Nuclear and Hypersonic Research Beyond active efforts to spy on the United States, the CCP also uses state-sponsored talent programs to give itself a long-term edge in critical research. By recruiting experts and scholars from abroad to study at work in China, such talent programs aim to develop a new generation of researchers in areas crucial for China’s technological and military development. The most telling case of this phenomenon concerns the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the United States’ most advanced nuclear research center. According to a report, to date, at least 162 researchers from the LANL, at least one of whom had a top-secret security clearance in the United States, now work for China, where many of them now assist the regime’s development of its most cutting-edge weapons, including hypersonic missiles. Many of the researchers who worked at the LANL came to the United States to be trained and work in areas critical to national security were involved in the CCP’s talent programs. At least 59 of those who worked at the LANL and subsequently returned to China to do research were part of the regime’s “Thousand Talents Program” or its youth branch, for example. To that end, one report on the issue found that “[Chinese] talent programs are ever-expanding recruitment networks,” with which the regime continuously usurps knowledge from the United States. Strategic Purchases of Farmland Chinese companies with links to the CCP are also purchasing strategic parcels of land in the United States, which has sparked concern that the regime could conduct espionage or otherwise sabotage U.S. national security interests. Read more here... Tyler Durden Mon, 02/06/2023 - 21:40.....»»

If China pushes too hard, its own rhetoric may backfire if the US decides to send balloons or drones into Chinese airspace, said Julian Ku. Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang speaks in Egypt on January 15.Fadel Dawod/Getty Images China has to consider what it will do if the US sends balloons into Chinese airspace, a legal expert said. The US shot down what it described as a Chinese "surveillance balloon" on Saturday. If Beijing pushes too hard on its response, its own rhetoric may backfire later, Julian Ku told NYT. As Beijing calculates its full response to its balloon being shot down off the southeastern US coast on Saturday, it needs to consider what it will do if the US starts sending balloons to China, an international law expert said.In a statement on Sunday, China condemned the Department of Defense for destroying the balloon, saying the Pentagon "obviously overreacted" and "seriously violated international practices." But the Foreign Ministry's complaint stopped short of accusing the US of breaking international law, which it often declares if it believes it can argue such a case, Julian Ku, a professor of law at Hofstra University who studies China's role in international law, told The New York Times."Moreover, they need to think about their own rights in case the US starts sending balloons or drones into China," Ku told the outlet. "If they push too hard here, it would undermine a future legal argument they might need to make."It's unclear how long China may choose to dwell on the balloon incident. So far, its official statement —  less than 200 characters — has been muted and unusually brief, compared to how the country has sparred diplomatically with the US in the recent past.Beijing claims the unmanned balloon was a civilian airship that drifted over American soil by accident, and said it "required the US to handle this properly in a calm, professional, and restrained manner."The closest it came to a threat was saying that it is "reserving the right to make further necessary actions."On the other hand, its previous reactions to perceived transgressions — like with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's August visit to Taiwan — have been far more aggressive."Those who play with fire will perish by it," China's foreign ministry wrote on August 2 in response to news of Pelosi's trip, warning the US to "not go further down the wrong and dangerous path."Beijing also responded by conducting live-fire military drills around Taiwan, after it said it would not "sit idly by" if Pelosi landed in Taipei."We treat our enemies with fine wine, but for our enemies we got shotguns," China's ambassador to Sweden infamously said on radio in 2019. He'd aired his threats to local authorities when Chinese-born Swedish political publisher and dissenter Michael Gui was awarded the Tucholsky Prize following his 2015 disappearance in Thailand.Notably, China also now has a new foreign minister, Qin Gang, a former ambassador to the US who in January replaced most of the ministry's top-ranking spokespersons known for Beijing's aggressive "wolf warrior diplomacy."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

"It's very difficult with what we have, because what we have was not meant to shoot down balloons," a former naval aviator told Insider. The US Air Force's F-22 Raptor.Mai/Getty Images Shooting down the suspected Chinese spy balloon is harder than it seems, a former Navy pilot told Insider. Engaging it is no easy task, and attempting to do so puts people on the ground at risk, the expert said.  Still, there is a growing call for the balloon to be shot down. Why can't the United States just shoot down the suspected Chinese spy balloon floating over northwestern America like a growing chorus of GOP lawmakers, as well as former President Donald Trump, are demanding?Because it's not that simple, a former Navy pilot told Insider.Attempting to take out the high-altitude balloon with the air defense systems the US has is "very difficult," it's hard to engage it with fighter aircraft, and shooting it down also risks injuries and fatalities on the ground, explained Brynn Tannehill, a former naval aviator and senior technical analyst at the RAND Corporation think tank. Balloons like the one that was spotted this week over the continental US can operate at more than 100,000 feet, and according to Tannehill, most US anti-air weapons systems were not "designed" to eliminate targets that high up. Most systems "weren't designed to shoot down things operating at the kinds of high altitude balloons can operate at," Tannehill said, explaining that an aircraft would likely struggle to get close enough to it to get within gun range, either. Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said on Friday that the Chinese balloon is estimated to be operating at about 60,000 feet, "well above the range of civilian air traffic or where civilian air traffic would normally fly." That puts it in range of some systems, but there are other challenges. And it's still a potential stretch for fighter aircraft.The US Air Force's top air superiority fighter, the fifth-generation F-22 Raptor, which the US military scrambled in response to the Chinese balloon, has a maximum operating altitude of over 50,000 feet, according to the Air Force. That could be pushed, but it's not ideal."The F-22 is like a Lamborghini," Tannehill said. "But you don't take your Lamborghini off-roading because it wasn't meant to do that."It could still take a shot, but most of the US military's air-to-air missiles weren't designed to operate as high up as a high-altitude balloon would fly because of their control surfaces, specifically the fins, wings, and tail, Tannehill said, explaining that "control surfaces lose effectiveness as you go higher."Additionally, the former naval aviator said, missile systems, both surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles, "aren't designed to attack balloons because balloons don't look like the kind of valid targets that they were designed to attack," like enemy aircraft or missiles."They don't move like a cruise missile," Tannehill said of these kinds of balloons, "They look more like a cloud or chaff, and modern missiles are designed to ignore chaff," a kind of radar countermeasure."It's very difficult with what we have, because what we have was not meant to shoot down balloons," she said. Assuming a fighter aircraft like the F-22, with its M61 Gatling gun, or an air-defense missile system could get a hit on the Chinese balloon to take it down, which is uncertain, there's still the risk of causing injuries or deaths on the ground. The Pentagon said on Friday that US officials had considered shooting down the balloon, but that they assessed that the balloon did not pose a threat while in flight or to Americans on the ground. Steps were also taken to prevent the balloon, identified as a surveillance balloon, from gathering intelligence on sensitive military operations, making downing it less of a necessity.The military said there were also concerns that shooting the balloon down could result in safety risks from falling debris.And the debris in question is not just from the balloon. "If you shoot it down, then you've got raining debris," Tannehill said, explaining that if it's shot down with the M61 Gatling gun, "you're going to be spraying 20 millimeter rounds that will continue carrying on for miles and miles that could kill someone on the ground."If missiles are used, then there's the possibility that one would miss. "There's still a non-trivial chance that you're going to miss, and now you have ordnance going somewhere you really don't want it to," Tannehill. She added that "the mental calculus is that the balloon floating around up there is not going to kill anyone," but the approach to taking it out could.Still, some have urged that the Chinese balloon be shot down, despite the risks. Miles Yu, a former China policy adviser to the Trump administration, told Insider that it's "a blatant violation of American sovereign space.""Any foreign object entering American sovereign space without permission should be subject to be shot down immediately," said Yu, a senior fellow and director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute think tank. Yu said that the US has the "capability" to shoot down the balloon, but doesn't have "the will."The Chinese foreign ministry claimed on Friday that the balloon is a "civilian aircraft" primarily used for weather research and that it blew off course. The Pentagon, however, has insisted it is a surveillance balloon, but there are no immediate plans to shoot it down.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

"It's Time For The Scientific Community To Admit We Were Wrong About COVID & It Cost Lives" Real "mea culpa", ongoing and rapid revision of history, or further narrative management with regard 'amnesty' over what "the others" did to those who thought for themselves over the last few years... You decide... In no lesser liberal rag that Newsweek, Kevin Bass (MS MD/PHD Student, Medical School) has penned a quite surprising (and 'brave') op-ed saying that "it's time for the scientific community to admit we were wrong about COVID and it cost lives..." [ZH: emphasis ours] As a medical student and researcher, I staunchly supported the efforts of the public health authorities when it came to COVID-19. I believed that the authorities responded to the largest public health crisis of our lives with compassion, diligence, and scientific expertise. I was with them when they called for lockdowns, vaccines, and boosters. I was wrong. We in the scientific community were wrong. And it cost lives. I can see now that the scientific community from the CDC to the WHO to the FDA and their representatives, repeatedly overstated the evidence and misled the public about its own views and policies, including on natural vs. artificial immunity, school closures and disease transmission, aerosol spread, mask mandates, and vaccine effectiveness and safety, especially among the young. All of these were scientific mistakes at the time, not in hindsight. Amazingly, some of these obfuscations continue to the present day. But perhaps more important than any individual error was how inherently flawed the overall approach of the scientific community was, and continues to be. It was flawed in a way that undermined its efficacy and resulted in thousands if not millions of preventable deaths. What we did not properly appreciate is that preferences determine how scientific expertise is used, and that our preferences might be—indeed, our preferences were—very different from many of the people that we serve. We created policy based on our preferences, then justified it using data. And then we portrayed those opposing our efforts as misguided, ignorant, selfish, and evil. We made science a team sport, and in so doing, we made it no longer science. It became us versus them, and "they" responded the only way anyone might expect them to: by resisting. We excluded important parts of the population from policy development and castigated critics, which meant that we deployed a monolithic response across an exceptionally diverse nation, forged a society more fractured than ever, and exacerbated longstanding heath and economic disparities. A students adjusts her facemask at St. Joseph Catholic School in La Puente, California on November 16, 2020, where pre-kindergarten to Second Grade students in need of special services returned to the classroom today for in-person instruction. - The campus is the second Catholic school in Los Angeles County to receive a waiver approval to reopen as the coronavirus pandemic rages on. The US surpassed 11 million coronavirus cases Sunday, adding one million new cases in less than a week, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.FREDERIC J. BROWN / AFP Our emotional response and ingrained partisanship prevented us from seeing the full impact of our actions on the people we are supposed to serve. We systematically minimized the downsides of the interventions we imposed—imposed without the input, consent, and recognition of those forced to live with them. In so doing, we violated the autonomy of those who would be most negatively impacted by our policies: the poor, the working class, small business owners, Blacks and Latinos, and children. These populations were overlooked because they were made invisible to us by their systematic exclusion from the dominant, corporatized media machine that presumed omniscience. Most of us did not speak up in support of alternative views, and many of us tried to suppress them. When strong scientific voices like world-renowned Stanford professors John Ioannidis, Jay Bhattacharya, and Scott Atlas, or University of California San Francisco professors Vinay Prasad and Monica Gandhi, sounded the alarm on behalf of vulnerable communities, they faced severe censure by relentless mobs of critics and detractors in the scientific community—often not on the basis of fact but solely on the basis of differences in scientific opinion. When former President Trump pointed out the downsides of intervention, he was dismissed publicly as a buffoon. And when Dr. Antony Fauci opposed Trump and became the hero of the public health community, we gave him our support to do and say what he wanted, even when he was wrong. Trump was not remotely perfect, nor were the academic critics of consensus policy. But the scorn that we laid on them was a disaster for public trust in the pandemic response. Our approach alienated large segments of the population from what should have been a national, collaborative project. And we paid the price. The rage of the those marginalized by the expert class exploded onto and dominated social media. Lacking the scientific lexicon to express their disagreement, many dissidents turned to conspiracy theories and a cottage industry of scientific contortionists to make their case against the expert class consensus that dominated the pandemic mainstream. Labeling this speech "misinformation" and blaming it on "scientific illiteracy" and "ignorance," the government conspired with Big Tech to aggressively suppress it, erasing the valid political concerns of the government's opponents. And this despite the fact that pandemic policy was created by a razor-thin sliver of American society who anointed themselves to preside over the working class—members of academia, government, medicine, journalism, tech, and public health, who are highly educated and privileged. From the comfort of their privilege, this elite prizes paternalism, as opposed to average Americans who laud self-reliance and whose daily lives routinely demand that they reckon with risk. That many of our leaders neglected to consider the lived experience of those across the class divide is unconscionable. Incomprehensible to us due to this class divide, we severely judged lockdown critics as lazy, backwards, even evil. We dismissed as "grifters" those who represented their interests. We believed "misinformation" energized the ignorant, and we refused to accept that such people simply had a different, valid point of view. We crafted policy for the people without consulting them. If our public health officials had led with less hubris, the course of the pandemic in the United States might have had a very different outcome, with far fewer lost lives. Instead, we have witnessed a massive and ongoing loss of life in America due to distrust of vaccines and the healthcare system; a massive concentration in wealth by already wealthy elites; a rise in suicides and gun violence especially among the poor; a near-doubling of the rate of depression and anxiety disorders especially among the young; a catastrophic loss of educational attainment among already disadvantaged children; and among those most vulnerable, a massive loss of trust in healthcare, science, scientific authorities, and political leaders more broadly. My motivation for writing this is simple: It's clear to me that for public trust to be restored in science, scientists should publicly discuss what went right and what went wrong during the pandemic, and where we could have done better. It's OK to be wrong and admit where one was wrong and what one learned. That's a central part of the way science works. Yet I fear that many are too entrenched in groupthink—and too afraid to publicly take responsibility—to do this. Solving these problems in the long term requires a greater commitment to pluralism and tolerance in our institutions, including the inclusion of critical if unpopular voices. Intellectual elitism, credentialism, and classism must end. Restoring trust in public health—and our democracy—depends on it. The problem was not people's ignorance of the facts, it was the organized antagonism and censorship against anyone presenting data that was contradictory to the mandate agenda. This is setting aside proclamations like those from the LA Times, which argued that mocking the deaths of "anti-vaxxers" might be necessary and justified.  After two years of this type of arrogant nonsense it's hard to imagine people will be willing to pretend as if all is well. The active effort to shut down any opposing data is the root crime, though, and no, it can never be forgotten or forgiven. People are still livid... One cannot help but notice that the timing of the Atlantic's appeal for passive forgetfulness and now this op-ed mea culpa coincides with the swiftly approaching end of the COVID emergency declarations, amid a growing political backlash to the last two years of meaningless lockdowns and mandates, and Democrats were instrumental in the implementation of both.  A large swath of the population sees one party as the cause of much of their covid era strife.   Perhaps the mainstream media is suddenly realizing that they may have to face some payback for their covid zealotry?  “We didn't know! We were just following orders!”  It all sounds rather familiar. Tyler Durden Tue, 01/31/2023 - 09:59.....»»

Alphabet's (GOOGL) Google adds a new feature to Google Clock that will allow users to use their own voice clip as their alarm tone. Alphabet's GOOGL division Google is putting strong efforts toward making Android apps more user-friendly by adding innovative features.This is evident from the company’s latest step of adding a custom alarm sound feature to its Android app, Google Clock.This new feature will allow users to record their own custom alarm sounds for regular alarms or alarms at any time. Users will now be able to use their own voice clip as the alarm tone.It can be done by tapping the “Record new” sound button in the alarm section, which will then launch Google Recorder, through which users will be able to record their voice clip.Move to BenefitThe latest move strengthens the features of Google Clock, which is used by almost every Android user on a daily basis.Further, the new feature complements the existing feature of Google Clock, which lets users use a song or a podcast from Spotify or YouTube Music, or a downloaded clip from the on-device internal storage, as their alarm tone.Hence, we believe Google’s efforts to add customizing features to its Clock app will continue to deliver an enhanced experience to Android users.Notably, Android forms an integral part of Alphabet’s Google Services segment.Hence, the latest move adds strength to this particular segment.Strengthening Google ServicesApart from the Google Clock efforts, Google has been constantly working toward bolstering its other services.Recently, it introduced memory saver and energy saver modes on Chrome to improve the browser’s performance.Additionally, the company is reportedly working on a security option for Chrome to provide an enhanced security experience to users.This apart, Google recently added touch control features to the Google Home app for compatible devices. The touch controls include volume up/down, un/mute, power on/off, play, pause, channel, and a source list.YouTube is also reportedly testing a search engine feature that will assist users in finding specific content on its platform.Further, it introduced handles for YouTube channels to support creators in establishing their distinct presence and brand on YouTube.We believe all these efforts will likely contribute well to the performance of the Google Services segment in the near term. This in turn will drive Alphabet’s overall top-line growth.Notably, Google Services accounts for the majority of Alphabet’s total revenues.Google Services’ revenues increased 2.5% year over year to $61.4 billion, accounting for 88.8% of the total third-quarter 2022 revenues.Zacks Rank & Stocks to ConsiderCurrently, Alphabet carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).Some better-ranked stocks in the broader Zacks Computer & Technology sector are Arista Networks ANET, Agilent technologies A and Asure Software ASUR. All the stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.Arista Networks has lost 8.5% in the past year. The long-term earnings growth rate for ANET is currently projected at 17.5%.Agilent has gained 10.6% in the past year. A’s long-term earnings growth rate is currently projected at 10%.Asure Software has gained 37.9% in the past year. The long-term earnings growth rate for ASUR is currently projected at 23%. 5 Stocks Set to Double Each was handpicked by a Zacks expert as the #1 favorite stock to gain +100% or more in 2021. Previous recommendations have soared +143.0%, +175.9%, +498.3% and +673.0%. Most of the stocks in this report are flying under Wall Street radar, which provides a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor.Today, See These 5 Potential Home Runs >>Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Agilent Technologies, Inc. (A): Free Stock Analysis Report Asure Software Inc (ASUR): Free Stock Analysis Report Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL): Free Stock Analysis Report Arista Networks, Inc. (ANET): Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research.....»»

Will 2023 Be Worse Than 2022? Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Ron Paul Institute, Even though one has become accustomed to seeing the United States government behaving irrationally on an epic scale with no concern for what happens to the average citizen who is not a member of one of the freak show constituencies of the Democratic Party, it is still possible to be surprised or even shocked. Shortly before year’s end 2022 an article appeared in the mainstream media and was quite widely circulated. The headline that it was featured under in the original Business Insider version read “A nuclear attack would most likely target one of these 6 US cities — but an expert says none of them are prepared.” The cities were New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and San Francisco. The article seeks to provide information and tips that would allow one to survive a nuclear attack, repeating commentary from several “experts” in emergency management and “public health” suggesting that a nuclear war would be catastrophic but not necessarily the end of the world. One should be prepared. It observes that “those cities would struggle to provide emergency services to the wounded. The cities also no longer have designated fallout shelters to protect people from radiation.” It is full of sage advice and off-the-cuff observations, including “Can you imagine a public official keeping buildings intact for fallout shelters when the real-estate market is so tight?” Or even better the advice from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s “nuclear detonation planning guide” that for everyday citizens in a city that has been nuked: “Get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned.” Dr. Ron Paul asks “Are they insane? They act as if a nuclear attack on the United States is just another inconvenience to plan for, like an ice storm or a hurricane.” The article argues that the six cities would be prime targets as they are centers for vital infrastructure. The bomb blasts would kill hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans with many more deaths to follow from radiation poisoning, but the article makes no attempt to explain why Russia, with a relatively sane leadership, would want to start a nuclear war that would potentially destroy the planet. Also, the targeting list of the cities provided by the “experts” is itself a bit odd. Surely Russia would attack military and government targets as a first priority to limit the possible retaliation while also crippling the ability of the White House and Pentagon to command and control the situation. Such targets would include both San Diego and Norfolk where the US Atlantic and Pacific fleets are based as well as the various Strategic Air Command bases and the underground federal government evacuation site in Mount Weather Virginia. Reading the article, one is reminded of the early years of the Cold War that sought to reassure the public that nuclear war was somehow manageable. It was a time when we elementary school children were drilled in hiding under our desks when the air raid alarm went off. Herman Kahn was, at that time, the most famous advocate of the school of thought that the United States could survive the “unthinkable,” i.e. a nuclear war. An American physicist by training, Kahn became a founding member of the beyond neocon nationalist Hudson Institute, which is still unfortunately around. Kahn, who served in the US Army during the Second World War as a non-combat telephone lineman, started has career as a military strategist at the RAND Corporation. Kahn endorsed a policy of deterrence and argued that if the Soviet Union believed that the United States had a devastating second-strike capability then Moscow would not initiate hostilities, which he explained in his paper titled “The Nature and Feasibility of War and Deterrence.” The Russians had to believe that even a perfectly coordinated massive attack would guarantee a measure of retaliation that would leave them devastated as well. Kahn also posited his idea of a “winnable” nuclear exchange in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War for which he is often cited as one of the inspirations for the title character of Stanley Kubrick’s classic film Dr. Strangelove. The appearance of the Business Insider article dealing with a cool discussion of the survivability from a nuclear war suggests that the nutcases are again escaping from the psychiatric hospital here in the US and are obtaining top jobs in government and the media. While one continues to hope that somehow someone will wake up in the White House and realize that the deep dark hole that we the American people find ourselves in mandates a change of course and a genuine reset, there is little daylight visible in the darkness. My particular concern relates to the entangling relationships that have kept our country permanently at war in spite of the fact that since the Cold War ended in 1991 no potential adversary has actually threatened the United States. Now, the federal government appears to be in the business of cultivating dangerous relationships to justify defense spending and placing the nation on the brink of what might prove to be catastrophic. The current US mission to “weaken Russia” and eventually also China in order to maintain its own “rules based international order” includes such hypocritical and utterly illegal under international law anomalies as the continued military occupation of part of Syria to deny that country’s leaders’ access to their oil fields and best agricultural land. A recent UN humanitarian agency investigation determined that the Syrian people are suffering and even starving as a result of that and US imposed sanctions that the Biden Administration maintains against all reason and humanity. At the present time, however, the most entangling of all relationships, even more than with Israel, has to be the engagement of the US in the proxy war being fought against Russia on behalf of Ukraine, which is exactly what threatens to turn nuclear if someone blinks at the wrong time. Billions of dollars in direct aid as well as billions more in the form of weapons stripped from arsenals in Europe and the US have been given to the corrupt regime of President Volodymyr Zelensky while Zelensky continues to work assiduously to milk the situation and draw Washington into a deeper war directly confronting Moscow. In fact, by some reckonings the war has already begun, with the US and its allies clearly dedicated to crippling the Russian economy while also getting rid of President Vladimir Putin. The 101st Airborne is now in place in Romania next to Ukraine to “warn” the Kremlin while the Pentagon has recently admitted that some American military personnel are already in Ukraine, contrary to the denials by White House spokesmen. The British have also revealed that some of their elite Special Ops personnel are on the ground. And there are reports that more American soldiers will soon be on the way, ostensibly to “track the weapons” being provided to Zelensky, which will include US-made, Patriot Missile batteries some of which might even be placed in NATO member Poland to provide air cover over Western Ukraine, a definite act of war as seen by Russia, which has warned that such a move would mean that the US and its allies had “effectively become a party” to the war in Ukraine and there will be “consequences.” “Consequences” means escalation. The soldier-“trackers” mission may be in response to reports that weapons provided by NATO have been corruptly sold or given to third countries by the Ukrainians. The several US initiatives taken together could produce a rapid escalation of the conflict complete with dead Americans coming home in body bags and an inevitable direct US involvement in combat roles that could lead anywhere, but at this point it is the Russians who are acting with restraint by not targeting the NATO and US “advisers” who are already active in Ukraine. Suspicion is also growing that the United States “green-lighted” in advance recent cruise missile attacks carried out by Ukraine against military targets deep inside Russia. Since the attacks, the White House has declared that Ukraine has “permission” to attack Russia and has basically conceded to the unbalanced Zelensky the right to make all the decisions and run the war that the US is largely funding, which is a formula for disaster. It is already known that Ukraine is receiving top level intelligence provided both by the US and also other NATO states. The precision attacks on Russia suggest that the Ukrainian army was given the coordinates of possible active targets, something that the US would be capable of providing but which would have been beyond the abilities of Ukraine, which possesses no satellite surveillance capability. If it is true that the White House was involved in escalating the conflict it would be a very dangerous move, inviting retaliation by Moscow. To be sure, some idiots in Washington, mostly of the neocon variety, continue to see war against Russia as something like a crusade for world freedom. Rick Newman, Yahoo’s top Finance Columnist, observes how “Budget hawks in Congress are worried about granting President Biden’s request for an additional $38 billion in aid for Ukraine to help defeat the invading Russians.” He concludes “They’re right. Thirty-eight billion isn’t enough. Make it $50 billion. Or even $100 billion. The more, the better, until the job is done.” Apparently, the bellicose Rick does not quite get that Russia has made clear that if it is about to be defeated by force majeure it will go nuclear. And Congress and the White House don’t seem to get it either, with both the Republican and Democratic parties oblivious to the real danger that confronts the American people. Nuclear war? Sure! Just hide in your basement, if you have one, and tune in. Tyler Durden Thu, 01/12/2023 - 05:00.....»»

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon calls out the "dangerous" government debt and "shenanigans of politics" impacting sectors which could help the U.S. economy grow by 3%......»»

Southwest Airlines passengers impacted by the holiday "flightmare" may never see their lost luggage again, according to international aviation expert Mike Boyd......»»

2022 Greatest Hits: The Most Popular Articles Of The Past Year And A Look Ahead One year ago, when looking at the 20 most popular stories of 2021, we said that the year would be a very tough act to follow as "the sheer breadth of narratives, stories, surprises, plot twists and unexpected developments" made 2021 the most memorable year yet in our brief history, and that it would be an extremely tough act to follow. And yet despite the exceedingly high bar for 2022, not only did the year not disappoint but between the constant news barrage, the regime shifts, narrative volatility, market rollercoasters, oh and the world being on the verge of a nuclear Armageddon for much of the year, the past year was the most action, excitement, and news (including fake news)-packed yet. Where does one even start? While covid - which was the story of 2020 - finally faded away from the front page and the constant barrage of fearmongering coverage (with recent revelations courtesy of Elon Musk's "Twitter Files" showing just how extensively said newsflow was crafted, orchestrated and -y es - censored by the government, while a sudden U-turn by China in its Covid Zero policy prompting a top Chinese research to admit that the "fatality rate from the omicron variant of the virus is in line with the flu"), and the story of 2021 was the scourge of soaring inflation (which contrary to macrotourist predictions that it would prove "transitory" just kept rising, and rising, and rising, until it hit levels not seen since the Volcker galloping inflation days of the 1980s)... ... then the big market story of 2022 was the coordinated central bank crusade to put the inflation genie back into the bottle and to contain soaring prices (which were no longer transitory, especially after Putin launched his "special military operation" in Ukraine which we will discuss shortly)... ... even if it meant crushing the housing market... ... sparking a global recession, or as Goldman calls it a "broad-based but necessary slowdown in global growth"... ... and leaving millions out of work (the BLS still pretends hundreds of thousands of workers are being added to payrolls even though as we all know - as does the Philadelphia Fed - that is a lie, and the real employment number has not changed since March)... ... not to mention triggering the worst bear market in both stocks and bonds since the global financial crisis. Yes, less than a year after the S&P hit a record just above 4800 in January of this year, both global stock and bond markets have cratered, and in a profound shock to an entire generation of "traders" who have never lived through a hiking cycle and rising inflation, for the first time since 2008 no central banks are riding to the market's rescue. Meanwhile, with a drop of more than 20% in 2022 translating into a record $18 trillion wipeout, the MSCI All-Country World Index is on track for its worst performance since the 2008 crisis, amid the Fed's relentless rate hiking campaign. Add bond market losses - because in 2022 everything was sold - and you get a staggering $36 trillion in value vaporized, which in absolute terms is nearly double the damage from the Lehman failure and the global financial crisis. None of this should come as a surprise: the staggering liquidity injections that started in 2020, continued throughout 2021 and extended into the first half of 2022 before gently reversing as QT finally returned; the final tally is that after $3 trillion in emergency liquidity injections in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic to "stabilize the world", the Fed injected another $2 trillion in the subsequent period, most of which in 2021, a year where economists were "puzzled" why inflation was soaring (this, of course, excludes the tens of trillions of monetary stimulus injected by other central banks as well as the boundless fiscal stimulus that was greenlighted with the launch of helicopter money). And then, when a modest $500 billion in Fed balance sheet liquidity was withdrawn... everything crashed. This reminds us of something we said two years ago: "it's almost as if the world's richest asset owners requested the covid pandemic." Well, last year we got confirmation for this rhetorical statement, when we calculated that in the 18 months after the covid pandemic hit, the richest 1% of US society saw their net worth increase by over $30 trillion, which in turn officially made the US into a banana republic where the middle 60% of US households by income - a measure economists use as a definition of the middle class - saw their combined assets drop from 26.7% to 26.6% of national wealth, the lowest in Federal Reserve data, while for the first time the super rich had a bigger share, at 27%. Yes, for the first time ever, the 1% owned more wealth than the entire US middle class, a definition traditionally reserve for kleptocracies and despotic African banana republics. But as the Fed finally ended QE and started draining its balance sheet in 2022, the party ended with a thud, and this tremendous wealth accumulation by the top 1% went into reverse: indeed, just the 500 richest billionaires saw their fortunes collapse by $1.4 trillion with names such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Masa Son and Larry Page and Sergey Brin all losing more than a third (in some cases much more) of their net worth. This also reminds us of something else we said a year ago: "this continued can-kicking by the establishment - all of which was made possible by the covid pandemic and lockdowns which served as an all too convenient scapegoat for the unprecedented response that served to propel risk assets (and fiat alternatives such as gold and bitcoin) to all time highs - has come with a price... and an increasingly higher price in fact. As even Bank of America CIO Michael Hartnett admits, Fed's response to the the pandemic "worsened inequality" as the value of financial assets - Wall Street -  relative to economy - Main Street - hit all-time high of 6.3x." In other words, for all its faults, 2022 was a year in which inequality finally reversed - if only a little - and as Michael Hartnett said in one of his final Flow Shows, "Main St finally outperformed Wall St significantly in 2022" as the value of financial assets relative to the economy slumped from 6.3x to 5.4x. Sadly, we doubt that this will cheer anyone up - be it workers - who have seen their real, inflation-adjusted earnings decline for a record 20 consecutive months (or virtually all of Joe BIden's presidency)... ... or investors who have seen crushing losses across all industries, with the exception of the one sector we have been pounding-the-table-on bullish on since the summer of 2020: energy (with our favorite stock, Exxon, blowing away the competition with its nearly triple digit return YTD). There is some good news for jittery bulls looking ahead at 2023: statistics show that two consecutive down years are rare for major equity markets — the S&P 500 index has fallen for two straight years on just four occasions since 1928, and they usually marked market crashes or social cataclysms -  the Great Depression, World War II, the 1970s oil crisis and the bursting of the dot-com bubble. The scary thing though, is that when they do occur, drops in the second year tend to be deeper than in the first. And with Joe Biden at the helm, betting on a second great depression may be prudent. Even if that sounds hyperbolic, when it comes to markets the big question for 2023 is simple: have markets bottomed or is there much more room to fall, in other words, are we facing a hard or soft landing. And speaking of Joe Biden at the helm, another glaring risk factor for 2023 is - of course- nuclear war. Because while the great inflation fight and Biden bear market were the defining features of 2022 from an economic and capital markets standpoint, the biggest event in terms of geopolitical and social importance was the war between Russia and Ukraine. While one could write - pardon the pun - the modern day equivalent of "war and peace" on the causes behind the war in Ukraine, for the sake of brevity we will merely note that a conflict that had been simmering for years if not decades... ... finally got its proverbial spark in February when - encouraged by NATO to join the military alliance in an act that Russia had repeatedly warned would be casus belli against Ukraine - Putin ordered a "special military operation" against Ukraine, sending Russian troops to invade the country because, as he subsequently explained, "if Russia did not do this now, it itself would be invaded by neighboring NATO countries a few years later." And speaking of what else Putin said in the lead up to the Ukraine war, the following snapshots reveal much of the Russian leader's thinking about the biggest geopolitical conflict since World War II. And while the geopolitical implications of the war are staggering and long-reaching, the single most important consequence to the world, and especially Europe, is the threat of persistent energy shortages over the coming years as Russian energy output has been sanctioned and curtailed for the foreseeable future... ... in the process sending energy prices in Europe and elsewhere soaring, and pushing inflation sharply higher. Which is especially ironic, because the same central banks we showed above that are hiking rates like crazy in hopes of containing inflation are doing precisely nothing to address the elephant in the room, namely that inflation is not demand-driven (which the Fed can control by adjusting the price of money) but entirely on the supply-side. And since the Fed can't print oil or gas, all that central banks are doing is executing Vladimir Putin's indirect bidding and pushing the world into a global recession if not all out depression as they hope to crush enough energy demand to lower prices in a world where energy supply is also much lower. What they forget is that this will lead to tens of millions of unemployed people, and while that is not a major issue yet, something tells us that the coming mass layoffs - both in the US and around the globe - and not just in tech but across all industries, will be the story of 2023. One final thing worth mentioning in the context of the Ukraine war is what it means strategically for the future of the world, and here we would argue that some of the best analysis belong to former NY Fed repo guru, Zoltan Pozsar whose periodic dispatches throughout 2022 (all of which are available to professional subscribers), and whose year-end report on the fate of Bretton Woods III, the petrodollar, the petroyuan and petrogold, are all must-read for anyone who hopes to be ahead of the curve in today's rapidly changing world. Away from Inflation and the Ukraine war, the next most important topic in the past year, were the revelations from the Twitter Files, exposed by the social medial company's new owner, Elon Musk, who paid $44 billion so that the world can finally see first hand just how little free speech there really is in the so-called land of the free and the home of the First Amendment, and how countless three-lettered, deep-state alphabet agencies - and the military-industrial complex - will do anything and everything to control both the official discourse and the unofficial narrative to keep their preferred puppets in the White House, and keep those they disapprove of - censored and/or locked up, both literally and metaphorically... or simply designate them "conspiracy theorists." None other than Matt Taibbi wrote the best summary of what the Twitter Files revealed, namely America's stealthy conversion into a crypto-fascist state where some unelected government bureaucrat tells corporations what to do: This last week saw the FBI describe Lee Fang, Michael Shellenberger and me as “conspiracy theorists” whose “sole aim” is to discredit the agency. That statement will look ironic soon, as we spent much of this week learning about other agencies and organizations that can now also be discredited thanks to these files. A group of us spent the last weeks reading thousands of documents. For me a lot of that time was spent learning how Twitter functioned, specifically its relationships with government. How weird is modern-day America? Not long ago, CIA veterans tell me, the information above the “tearline” of a U.S. government intelligence cable would include the station of origin and any other CIA offices copied on the report. I spent much of today looking at exactly similar documents, seemingly written by the same people, except the “offices” copied at the top of their reports weren’t other agency stations, but Twitter’s Silicon Valley colleagues: Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, even Wikipedia. It turns out these are the new principal intelligence outposts of the American empire. A subplot is these companies seem not to have had much choice in being made key parts of a global surveillance and information control apparatus, although evidence suggests their Quislingian executives were mostly all thrilled to be absorbed. Details on those “Other Government Agencies” soon, probably tomorrow. One happy-ish thought at month’s end: Sometime in the last decade, many people — I was one — began to feel robbed of their sense of normalcy by something we couldn’t define. Increasingly glued to our phones, we saw that the version of the world that was spat out at us from them seemed distorted. The public’s reactions to various news events seemed off-kilter, being either way too intense, not intense enough, or simply unbelievable. You’d read that seemingly everyone in the world was in agreement that a certain thing was true, except it seemed ridiculous to you, which put you in an awkward place with friends, family, others. Should you say something? Are you the crazy one? I can’t have been the only person to have struggled psychologically during this time. This is why these Twitter files have been such a balm. This is the reality they stole from us! It’s repulsive, horrifying, and dystopian, a gruesome history of a world run by anti-people, but I’ll take it any day over the vile and insulting facsimile of truth they’ve been selling. Personally, once I saw that these lurid files could be used as a road map back to something like reality — I wasn’t sure until this week — I relaxed for the first time in probably seven or eight years. Well said Matt, and we say this as one of the first media outlets that was dubbed "conspiracy theorists" by the authorities, long before everyone else joined the club. Oh yes, we've been there: we were suspended for half a year on Twitter for telling the truth about Covid, and then we lost most of our advertisers after the Atlantic Council's weaponized "fact-checkers" put us on every ad agency's black list while anonymous CIA sources at the AP slandered us for being "Kremlin puppets" - which reminds us: for those with the means, desire and willingness to support us, please do so by becoming a premium member: we are now almost entirely reader-funded so your financial assistance will be instrumental to ensure our continued survival into 2023 and beyond. The bottom line, at least for us, is that the past three years have been a stark lesson in how quickly an ad-funded business can disintegrate in this world which resembles the dystopia of 1984 more and more each day, and we have since taken measures. Two years ago, we launched a paid version of our website, which is entirely ad and moderation free, and offers readers a variety of premium content. It wasn't our intention to make this transformation but unfortunately we know which way the wind is blowing and it is only a matter of time before the gatekeepers of online ad spending block us for good. As such, if we are to have any hope in continuing it will come directly from you, our readers. We will keep the free website running for as long as possible, but we are certain that it is only a matter of time before the hammer falls as the censorship bandwagon rolls out much more aggressively in the coming year. Meanwhile, for all those lamenting the relentless coverage of politics in a financial blog, why finance appears to have taken a secondary role, and why the political "narrative" has taken a dominant role for financial analysts, the past three years showed conclusively why that is the case: in a world where markets gyrated, and "rotated" from value stocks to growth and vice versa, purely on speculation of how big the next stimulus out of Washington will be, now that any future big stimulus plans are off the table until at least 2024 thanks to a divided Congress, and the Fed is still planning on hiking until it finally crushing inflation, we would like to remind readers of one of our favorite charts: every financial crisis is the result of Fed tightening, and something always breaks. Which brings us to the simplest forecast about the coming year: 2023 will be the year when something finally breaks. As for more nuanced predictions about the future, as the past three years so vividly showed, when it comes to actual surprises and all true "black swans", it won't be what anyone had expected. And so while many themes, both in the political and financial realm, did get some accelerated closure, dramatic changes in 2022 persisted and new sources of global shocks emerged, and will continue to manifest themselves in often violent and unexpected ways - from the ongoing record polarization in the US political arena, to "populist" upheavals around the developed world, to the gradual transition to a global Universal Basic (i.e., socialized) Income regime, to China deciding that the US is finally weak enough and the time has come to invade Taiwan. As always, we thank all of our readers for making this website - which has never seen one dollar of outside funding (and despite amusing recurring allegations, has certainly never seen a ruble from either Putin or the KGB either, sorry CIA) and has never spent one dollar on marketing - a small (or not so small) part of your daily routine. Which also brings us to another critical topic: that of fake news, and something we - and others who do not comply with the established narrative - have been accused of. While we find the narrative of fake news laughable, after all every single article in this website is backed by facts and links to outside sources, it is clearly a dangerous development, and a very slippery slope that the entire developed world is pushing for what is, when stripped of fancy jargon, internet censorship under the guise of protecting the average person from "dangerous, fake information." It's also why we are preparing for the next onslaught against independent thought and why we had no choice but to roll out a premium version of this website. In addition to the other themes noted above, we expect the crackdown on free speech to only accelerate in the coming year - Elon Musk's Twitter Files revelations notwithstanding, especially as the following list of Top 20 articles for 2022 reveals, many of the most popular articles in the past year were precisely those which the conventional media would not touch with a ten foot pole, both out of fear of repercussions and because the MSM has now become a PR agency for either a political party or some unelected, deep state bureaucrat, which in turn allowed the alternative media to continue to flourish in an information vacuum (in less than a decade, Elon Musk's $44 billion purchase of Twitter will seem like one of the century's biggest bargains) and take significant market share from the established outlets by covering topics which established media outlets refuse to do, in the process earning itself the derogatory "fake news" condemnation. We are grateful that our readers - who hit a new record high in 2022 - have realized that it is incumbent upon them to decide what is, and isn't "fake news." * * * And so, before we get into the details of what has now become an annual tradition for the last day of the year, those who wish to jog down memory lane, can refresh our most popular articles for every year during our no longer that brief, almost 14-year existence, starting with 2009 and continuing with 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. So without further ado, here are the articles that you, our readers, found to be the most engaging, interesting and popular based on the number of hits, during the past year. In 20th spot with just over 510,000 views, was one of the seminal market strategy reports of 2022 by the man who has become the most prescient and accurate voice on Wall Street, former NY Fed repo guru Zoltan Pozsar, whose periodic pieces previewing the post-war world - one where Bretton Woods III makes a stunning comeback, where the petrodollar dies, and is replaced by the Petroyuan - have become must-read staple fare for Wall Street professionals. In "Wall Street Stunned By Zoltan Pozsar's Latest Prediction Of What Comes Next", Zoltan offered his first post-Ukraine war glimpse of the coming "Bretton Woods III" world, "a new monetary order centered around commodity-based currencies in the East that will likely weaken the Eurodollar system and also contribute to inflationary forces in the West." Subsequent events, including the growing proximity of Russia, China and various other non-G7 nations, coupled with stubborn inflation, have gone a long way to proving Zoltan's thesis. The only thing that's missing is the overhaul of the world reserve currency. In 19th spot, some 526,000 learned that amid the relentless crackdown against free speech by a regime which Elon Musk's Twitter Files have definitively revealed is borderline fascist (as in real fascism, not that clownish farce which antifa thugs pretend to crusade against) Zero Hedge was among the first websites to be targeted by the CIA when that deep state mouthpiece, the Associated Press, said that "intelligence officials accused a conservative financial news website [Zero Hedge] with a significant American readership of amplifying Kremlin propaganda." As we explained in "Now We've Done It: We Pissed Off The CIA" - the 19th most viewed article of 2022 - we have done no such thing but as the AP also revealed, the real motive behind the hit piece is that "Zero Hedge has been sharply critical of Biden and posted stories about allegations of wrongdoing by his son Hunter." Of course, only a few weeks later we would learn that reports of wrongdoing by "his son Hunter" as unveiled in the infamously censored laptop story fiasco, were indeed accurate (despite dozens of "former intel officials" saying it is Russian disinfo) but since only "Kremlin propaganda" sites dare to attack Joe Biden while the MSM keeps deathly silent, nobody in the so-called "free press" bothered to mention it. Incidentally, since the CIA did a full background check on us and republishing some pro-Russian blogs was the best they could find, we are confident that  On the other hand, since being designated a pro-Russian operation meant that we have been blacklisted by most advertisers, we are increasingly reliant on you, dear readers (and not Vladimir Putin) for support, and we would be extremely grateful to everyone who can sign up for our premium product to support us into 2023 and onward. In 18th spot, and suitably right below our little tete-a-tete with the CIA, was the disclosure of a huge trove of corruption Hunter Biden's "laptop from hell." In April, with over 568,000 page views, readers learned that "450GB Of 'Deleted' Hunter Biden Laptop Material To Be Released Within Weeks." The ultimate result was the long overdue confirmation by the mainstream press (NYT and WaPo) that the Biden notebook was indeed real (again, despite dozens of "former intel officials" saying it is Russian disinfo) but since the state-corporatist apparatus had already achieved its goal, and suppressed and censored the original NYPost reporting just ahead of the 2020 presidential election and Biden had been elected president, few cared (just a few months later, thanks to Elon Musk and the Twitter files would we learn just how deep the censorship hole went, and that it involved not only the US government, the Democratic Party, the FBI, but also the biggest tech and media companies, all working together to censor anything that they found politically unpalatable). Yes, 2022 was also a midterm year, and with more than 617,000 views, was our snapshot of what happened on Nov 8 when in a carbon copy of 2020 it initially seemed like Republicans would sweep Congress as we described in the 17th most popular article of 2022, "Election Night Results: FL "Catastrophic" For Dems, Vance Takes OH, Fetterman Tops Oz"... but it was not meant to be and as the mail-in votes crawled in days and weeks later, the GOP lead not only fizzled (despite a jarring loss among Florida Hispanics), but in the end Democrats kept the Senate. Ultimately the result was anticlimatic, and with Congress divided for the next two years, governance will be secondary to what the Fed will do, which in our humble view, will be the big story of 2023. For all the political, market and central bank trials and tribulations of 2022, one could make the argument that the biggest story of the past year was Elon Musk's whimsical takeover of twitter, which started off amicably enough as laid out in the 16th most popular article of 2022 (with more than 627,000 page views) "Buffett Says "Musk Is Winning...It's America" As TWTR Board Ponders Poison Pill", then turned ugly and hostile, transitioned into a case of buyer's remorse with Musk suing to back out of the deal only to find out he can't, and culminated with the release of the shocking Twitter Files, Musk's stunning expose of the dirt and secrets of how the world's most popular news outlet had effectively become a subsidiary not only of the Democratic party but also of the FBI, CIA and various other deep state alphabet agencies, validating once again countless "conspiracy theories" and confirming once and for all that any outlet that still dares to oppose the official party line is the biggest enemy of the deep state. And speaking of the deep state, we had a glaring reminder in September why one should be very careful when crossing the US secret police FBI when pro-Trump celeb pillow entrepreneur Mike Lindell was intercepted by the Feds during a hunting trip and had his cell phone seized as described in "FBI Tracks Down Mike Lindell On Hunting Trip, Surrounds His Car And Seizes Cell Phone". That this happened to one of the most vocal critics of the 2020 election just two months before the midterms, was surely a coincidence, as over 625,000 readers obviously concluded. 2022 was not a good year for markets, and certainly wasn't good for retail investors whose torrid gains from the meme stock mania of 2021 melted down almost as fast as the Fed hiked rates (very fast). But not everyone was a loser, and one story stood out: that of 20-year-old student Jake Freeman (who together with his uncle) bought up a substantial, 6.2% stake in soon-to-be-broke retailer Bed Bath and Beyond, and piggybacking on the antics of one Ryan Cohen, quietly cashed out after making a massive $110 million by piggybacking on one of the most vicious short/gamma squeezes in recent history. The "Surreal Story Of A 20-Year-Old Student Who Acquired 6% Of Bed Bath & Beyond, And Made $110 Million In 3 Weeks" was the 14th most read article of 2022. The 13th most read story of 2022 with over 668,000 reads was the bizarre interlude involving superstar-trader and outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul, and his bizarre attack by a "right wing" progressive as described in "Paul Pelosi Undergoing Brain Surgery Following 'Brutal' Attack; Suspect Identified." While authorities have struggled to craft a narrative that the attacker, nudist transient David Depape of Berkeley, was a pro-Trumper and the attack was politically motivated, the evidence has indicated that he suffered from serious mental illness and drug addiction and lacked any coherent political ideology; some have even claimed that there was a sexual relationship between him and Pelosi, a theory that could be easily disproven if only the police would release the bodycam footage from the moment of the arrest. Unfortunately, San Fran PD has vowed to keep it confidential. Depape's trial is set to be 2023's business, so expect more fireworks. 2022 was also a year in which Europeans realized how brutally expensive electricity can be when the biggest commodity, nat gas and oil supplier to Europe, Russia, is suddenly cut off. And judging by the 668,500 people who read "How In The Name Of God": Shocked Europeans Post Astronomical Energy Bills As 'Terrifying Winter' Approaches" and made it into the 12th most popular article of the year, the staggering number were also news to our audience: indeed, the fact that Geraldine Dolan, who owns the Poppyfields cafe in Athlone, Ireland, and was charged nearly €10,000 for just over two months of energy usage, was shocking to everyone. To be sure, there were countless other such stories out of Europe and with the Russia-Ukraine war unlikely to end any time soon, Europe's commodity hyperinflation will only continue. Adding insult to injury, Europe is on a fast track to a brutal recession, but the ECB remains stuck in tightening mode, perhaps because it somehow believes that higher rates will ease energy supplies. Alas that won't happen and instead the big question for 2023 will be whether Europe is merely hit with a recession or if instead the ECB's actions escalates the local malaise into a full-blown depression. Earlier we said that one of the most prophetic voices on Wall Street in 2022 (and prior) was that of Zoltan Pozsar, who laid out his theory of a Bretton Woods III regime in the days immediately following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Well, just one month later we saw the first tentative steps toward just such a paradigm shift when in April the Russian central bank offered to buy gold from domestic commercial banks at a fixed price of 5000 rubles per gram; by doing so the Bank of Russia both linked the ruble to gold and, since gold trades in US dollars, set a floor price for the ruble in terms of the US dollar. We described this in "A Paradigm Shift Western Media Hasn't Grasped Yet" - Russian Ruble Relaunched, Linked To Gold & Commodities", an article red 670,000 times making it the 11th most popular of the year. This concept of "petrogold" was also the subject of extensive discussion by Pozsar who dedicated one of his most recent widely-read notes to the topic; if indeed we are witnessing the transition to a Bretton Woods 3 regime, 2023 will see a lot of fireworks in the monetary system as the dollar's reserve status is challenged by eastern commodity producers. The 10th most popular article of 2022, with 686K views was a reminder of just how much "the settled science" can change: as described in "You Murderous Hypocrites": Outrage Ensues After The Atlantic Suggests 'Amnesty' For Pandemic Authoritarians, many were shocked when after pushing for economy-crushing lockdowns, seeking to block children from going to school (and stunting their development), and even calling for the incarceration or worse of mask, vaccine and booster holdouts, the liberal left - realizing that it was completely wrong about everything to do with covid, a virus with a 99% survival rate - suddenly and politely was hoping to "declare a pandemic amnesty." Brown Professor Emily Oster - a huge lockdown proponent, who now pleads from mercy from the once-shunned - wrote "we need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID. Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward." The response from those who lost their small business, wealth, or worse, a family member (who died alone or from complications from the experimental gene therapy known as "vaccines" and "boosters") was clear and unanimous; as for those seeking preemptive pardons from the coming tribunals, their plea was clear: “We didn't know! We were just following orders."  And from one covid post we segue into another, only this time the focus is not on the disease but rather the consequences of mandatory vaccines: over 730K readers were shocked in February when a former finance professional discovered a surge in "excess mortality", or unexplained deaths among otherwise healthy young adults, yet not linked directly to covid (thus leaving vaccines as the possible cause of death), as we showed in "Long Funeral Homes, Short Life Insurers? Ex-Blackrock Fund Manager Discovers Disturbing Trends In Mortality." This wasn't the first time we had heart of a surge in excess mortality: a month earlier it was the CEO of insurance company OneAmerica to observe that the death rate for those aged 18-64 had soared by 40% over pre-pandemic levels (this was another post that received a lot of clicks). While the science is clearly not settled here - on either covid or the vaccines - the emerging trend is ominous: at this rate the excess deaths associated with covid (and its vaccines) will soon surpass the deaths directly linked to covid. And anyone who dares to bring this up will be branded a racist, a white supremacists, or a fascist, or all three. One of the defining features of 2022 was the record surge in the price of food. And while much of this inflation could be attributed to the trillions in helicopter money injected over the past three years, as well as the snarled supply chains due to the war in Ukraine, a mystery emerged when one after another US food processing plant mysteriously burned down. And with almost 800,000 page views, a majority of our readers wanted to know why "Another US Food Processing Plant Erupts In Flames", making it the 8th most read post of the year. While so far no crime has been alleged, the fact that over 100 "accidental fires" (as listed here) have taken place across America's food facilities since the start of 2021, impairing the US supply chain, remains one of the biggest mysteries of the year. While some will argue that runaway inflation was the event of 2022, we will counter that the defining moment was the war between Ukraine and Russia, which broke out in February after what the Kremlin said was a long-running NATO attempt to corner Russia (by pushing Ukraine to seek membership in the military alliance), forcing it to either launch an invasion now, or wait several years and be invaded by all the neighboring NATO countries. Still, many were shocked when Putin ultimately gave the order to launch the "special military operations", as most had Russia to merely posture. But it was not meant to be and nearly 840K readers followed the world-changing events on February 2 when "Putin Orders "Special Military Operation" In Ukraine's Breakaway Regions." The war continues to this day with no prospects of peace or even a ceasefire. And from one geopolitical hotspot we go to another, namely China and Taiwan, which many expect will be the next major military theater at some time in the near future when Beijing finally invades the "Republic of China" and officially brings it back into the fold. Thing here got extra hot in early August when Democrat Nancy Pelosi decided to make an unexpected trip to the semiconductor-heavy island, sparking an unprecedented diplomatic escalation, with many speculating that China could simply fire at Nancy's unsanctioned airplane. In the end, however, as nearly 950,000 found out, the situation fizzled as "China Summoned US Ambassador Overnight, Says Washington "Must Pay The Price"." Since then Pelosi's political career has officially ended, and while China has not yet invaded Taiwan, it is only a matter of time before it does. While Covid may have been a 2021 story, that was also the year when nobody was allowed to talk about the Chinese pandemic. Things changed in 2022 when liberal censorship finally crashed under its own weight, and long overdue discussions of Covid became mainstream. nowhere more so than on Twitter where Elon Musk fired all those responsible for silencing the debate over the past three years, and of course, the show of the always outspoken Joe Rogan, where mRNA inventor Robert Malone, gave a fascinating interview to Joe Rogan which aired on New Year's Eve 2022 and which took the world by storm in the first days of the new year. It certainly made over 908,000 readers click on "COVID, Ivermectin, And 'Mass Formation Psychosis': Dr. Robert Malone Gives Blistering Interview To Joe Rogan." The doctor, who had been suspended by both LInkedIn and Twitter, for the crime of promoting "vaccine hesitancy" argued that if the risks of vaccines are not discussed, informed consent is not possible. As Malone concluded "Informed consent is not only not happening, it's being actively blocked." Luckily, now that Elon Musk has made it possible to discuss covid - and so much more - on twitter without fears of immediate suspension, there is again hope that not only is informed consent once again possible, but that the wheels of true justice are starting to steamroll liberal censorship. A tragic and bizarre interlude took place in early July when "Former Japanese PM Abe Shot Dead During Speech, "Frustrated" Assassin Arrested", a shocking development which captured the attention of some 927,000 readers.  While some expected the assassination to be a Archduke Ferdinand moment, coming at a time of soaring inflation around the globe and potentially catalyzing grassroots anger at the ruling class, the episode remained isolated as it did not have political motives and instead the killer, Yamagami, said that he killed the former PM in relation to a grudge he held against the Unification Church, to which Abe and his family had political ties, over his mother's bankruptcy in 2002. That's the good news. The bad news is that with the fabric of society close to tearing across most developed nations, it is only a matter of time before we do get a real Archduke 2.0 moment. Just days after Rogan's interview with Malone (see above), another covid-linked "surprise" emerged when Projected Veritas leaked military documents hidden on a classified system showing how EcoHealth Alliance approached DARPA in March 2018, seeking funding to conduct illegal gain of function research of bat borne coronaviruses. But while US infatuation with creating viral bioweapons is hardly new (instead it merely outsourced it to biolabs in China), one of the discoveries revealed in "Ivermectin 'Works Throughout All Phases' Of COVID According To Leaked Military Documents" - the third most popular post of 2022 with 929K page views, is that the infamous "horse paste" Ivermectin was defined by Darpa as a "curative" which works throughout all phases of the illness because it both inhibits viral replication and modulates the immune response. Of course, had that been made public, it would have prevented Pfizer and Moderna from making tens of billions in revenue from selling mRNA-based therapies (not vaccines) whose potentially deadly side effects we are only now learning about (as the 9th most popular post of 2022 noted above confirms). The fake news apparatus was busy spinning in overtime this past year (and every other year), and not only when it comes to covid, inflation, unemployment, the recession, but also - or rather especially - the Ukraine fog of propaganda war. A striking example was the explosion of both pipelines connecting Russia to Europe, Nord Stream I and II, which quickly escalated into a fingerpointing exercise of accusations, with Europe blaming Putin for blowing up the pipelines (even though said pipelines exclusively benefit the Kremlin which spent billions building them in the recent past), while the Kremlin said it was the US' fault. This we learned in "EU Chief Calls Nord Stream Attack "Sabotage", Warns Of "Strongest Possible Response", which was also the 2nd most read article of the year with just over 1,050,000 page views. In the end, there was no "response" at all. Why? Because as it emerged just two months later in that most deep state of outlets, the Washington Post, "Evidence In Nord Stream Sabotage Doesn't Point To Russia." In other words, it points to the US, just as professor Jeffrey Sachs dared to suggest on Bloomberg, leading to shock and awe at the pro-Biden media outlet. The lesson here, inasmuch as there is one, is that the perpetrators of every false flag operation always emerge - it may take time, but the outcome is inevitable, and "shockingly", the culprit almost always is one particular nation... Finally, the most read article of 2022 with nearly 1.1 million page views, was "White House Says Russian Forces 20 Miles Outside Ukraine's Capital." It cemented that as least as far as ZH readers were concerned, the biggest event of the year was the war in Ukraine, an event which has set in motion forces which will redefine the layout of the world over the next century (and, if Zoltan Pozsar is right, will lead to the demise of the US dollar as a reserve currency and culminate with China surpassing the US as the world's biggest superpower). Incidentally, while Russian forces may have been 20 miles outside of Kiev, they were repelled and even though the war could have ended nearly a year ago and the world would have returned to some semblance of normalcy, it was not meant to be, and the war still goes on with little hope that it will end any time soon. And with all that behind us, and as we wave goodbye to another bizarre, exciting, surreal year, what lies in store for 2023, and the next decade? We don't know: as frequent and not so frequent readers are aware, we do not pretend to be able to predict the future and we don't try, despite repeat baseless allegations that we constantly predict the collapse of civilization: we leave the predicting to the "smartest people in the room" who year after year have been consistently wrong about everything, and never more so than in 2022 (when the entire world realized just how clueless the Fed had been when it called the most crushing and persistent inflation in two generations "transitory"), which destroyed the reputation of central banks, of economists, of conventional media and the professional "polling" and "strategist" class forever, not to mention all those "scientists" who made a mockery of both the scientific method and the "expert class" with their catastrophically bungled response to the covid pandemic. We merely observe, find what is unexpected, entertaining, amusing, surprising or grotesque in an increasingly bizarre, sad, and increasingly crazy world, and then just write about it. We do know, however, that with central banks now desperate to contain inflation and undo 13 years of central bank mistakes - after all it is the trillions and trillions in monetary stimulus, the helicopter money, the MMT, and the endless deficit funding by central banks that made the current runaway inflation possible, the current attempt to do something impossible and stuff 13 years of toothpaste back into the tube, will be a catastrophic failure. We are confident, however, that in the end it will be the very final backstoppers of the status quo regime, the central banking emperors of the New Normal, who will eventually be revealed as fully naked. When that happens and what happens after is anyone's guess. But, as we have promised - and delivered - every year for the past 14, we will be there to document every aspect of it. Finally, and as always, we wish all our readers the best of luck in 2023, with much success in trading and every other avenue of life. We bid farewell to 2022 with our traditional and unwavering year-end promise: Zero Hedge will be there each and every day - usually with a cynical smile (and with the CIA clearly on our ass now) - helping readers expose, unravel and comprehend the fallacy, fiction, fraud and farce that defines every aspect of our increasingly broken economic, political and financial system. Tyler Durden Sat, 12/31/2022 - 11:05.....»»

Unnecessary information on your resume wastes precious space and could even be used against you in the hiring process. Here's what you should remove. Unnecessary information on your resume can waste precious space better saved for things that can actually help you get the job, and in some cases, it can actively hurt your chances of landing the position.z_wei / Getty Images Hiring managers glance at resumes for mere seconds before making decisions about moving a candidate forward. Extraneous information can bog down your resume and in some cases, it can hurt your chances of landing the job. Here are 32 things you should strike from your resume right now. 1. An objectiveIf you applied, it's already obvious you want the job.The exception: If you're in a unique situation, such as changing industries completely, it may be useful to include a brief summary.Reza Estakhrian/Getty Images2. Irrelevant work experiencesYes, you might have been the "king of making milkshakes" at the restaurant you worked for in high school. But unless you plan on redeeming that title, it's time to get rid of all that clutter.But as Alyssa Gelbard, founder of career consulting firm Resume Strategists, points out: Past work experience that might not appear to be directly relevant to the job at hand might show another dimension, depth, ability, or skill that actually is relevant or applicable.Only include this experience if it really showcases additional skills that can translate to the position you're applying for.3. Personal detailsDon't include your marital status, religious preference, or Social Security number.Though it might have been the standard to include in the past, this information could lead to discrimination, so you shouldn't include it anymore.4. Your full mailing addressA full street address is the first thing that Amanda Augustine, a career expert for TopResume, immediately looks to cut from a resume."Nobody needs to have that on their resume anymore, and, to be quite honest, it's a security concern," she previously told Business Insider.d3sign5. More than one phone numberAugustine suggests including only one phone number on your resume, ideally your cell phone, so you have control over who answers your incoming phone calls, when, and what the voice mail sounds like."Also, you don't want employers trying to contact you in five different places, because then you have to keep track of that," she says.6. Your hobbiesIn many cases, nobody cares.If it's not relevant to the job you're applying for, it could be wasting space for more valuable elements of a resume.7. Blatant liesA CareerBuilder survey from 2015 asked 2,000 hiring managers for memorable resume mistakes, and blatant lies were a popular choice. One candidate claimed to be the former CEO of the company to which he was applying, another claimed to be a Nobel Prize winner, and one more claimed he attended a college that didn't exist.Rosemary Haefner, former chief HR officer at CareerBuilder, says these lies may be "misguided attempts to compensate for lacking 100% of the qualifications specified in the job posting."But Haefner says candidates should concentrate on the skills they can offer, rather than the ones they can't.8. Too much textIf you're using a 0.5-inch margin and eight-point font in an effort to get everything to fit on one page, consider it an "epic fail," says J.T. O'Donnell, founder of career advice site Careerealism.com, and author of "Careerealism: The Smart Approach to a Satisfying Career."She recommends lots of white space and no more than a 0.8 margin.Augustine agrees, warning particularly against dense blocks of text."Let's be honest: You're looking this over quickly, you're glancing through it, your eyes glaze over when you get to a big, long paragraph," she says.9. Too many bulletsIn the same vein, you can also overload your resume with too many bullet points, which Augustine calls "death by bullets.""If absolutely everything is bulleted, it has the same effect as big dense blocks of text — your eyes just glaze over it," she says.Augustine explains that bullets are only to be used to draw attention to the most important information. "If you bullet everything, everything is important, which means really nothing stands out," she says.LightField Studios/Shutterstock10. Time offIf you took time off to travel or raise a family, Gelbard doesn't recommend including that information on your resume. "In some countries, it is acceptable to include this information, especially travel, but it is not appropriate to include that in the body of a resume in the US."11. Details that give away your ageIf you don't want to be discriminated against for a position because of your age, it's time to remove your graduation date, says Catherine Jewell, author of "New Resume, New Career."Another surprising way your resume could give away your age: double spaces after a period.12. ReferencesIf your employers want to speak to your references, they'll ask you. Also, it's better if you have a chance to tell your references ahead of time that a future employer might be calling.If you write "references upon request" at the bottom of your resume, you're merely wasting a valuable line, career coach Eli Amdur says.13. Inconsistent formattingThe format of your resume is just as important as its content, Augustine says.She says the best format is the format that will make it easiest for the hiring manager to scan your resume and still be able to pick out your key qualifications and career goals.Once you pick a format, stick with it. If you write the day, month, and year for one date, then use that same format throughout the rest of the resume.Getty Images14. Short-term employmentAvoid including a job on your resume if you only held the position for a short period of time, Gelbard says. You should especially avoid including jobs you were let go from or didn't like.15. Present tense for a past jobNever describe past work experience using the present tense. Only your current job should be written in the present tense, Gelbard says.16. A less-than-professional email addressIf you still use an old email address like BeerLover123@gmail.com or CuteChick4Life@yahoo.com, it's time to pick a new one.It only takes a minute or two, and it's free.17. Any unnecessary, obvious wordsFor example, there's no reason to put the word "phone" in front of the actual number."It's pretty silly. They know it's your phone number," says Amdur. The same rule applies to your email address.Nuthawut Somsuk/Getty Images18. Your contact info at your current jobAmdur writes at NorthJersey.com:"This is not only dangerous; it's stupid. Do you really want employers calling you at work? How are you going to handle that? Oh, and by the way, your current employer can monitor your emails and phone calls. So if you're not in the mood to get fired, or potentially charged with theft of services (really), then leave the business info off."19. Headers, footers, tables, images, chartsWhile a well-formatted header and footer may look professional, and some cool tables, images, or charts may boost your credibility, they also confuse the applicant-tracking systems that companies use nowadays, Augustine previously told Business Insider.The system will react by scrambling up your resume and spitting out a poorly formatted one that may no longer include your header or charts. Even if you were an ideal candidate for the position, now the hiring manager has no way of contacting you for an interview.20. Your boss' nameDon't include your boss' name on your resume unless you're okay with your potential employer contacting the person. Even then, Gelbard says the only reason your boss' name should be on your resume is if the person is someone noteworthy or very impressive.21. Company-specific jargon"Companies often have their own internal names for things like customized software, technologies, and processes that are only known within that organization and not by those who work outside of it," Gelbard says. "Be sure to exclude terms on your resume that are known only to one specific organization."Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images22. Social media URLs that are not related to the positionA link to your Instagram account has no business taking up prime resume real estate. "Candidates who tend to think their personal social media sites are valuable are putting themselves at risk of landing in the 'no' pile," says Tina Nicolai, executive career coach and founder of Resume Writers' Ink."But you should list relevant URLs, such as your LinkedIn page or any others that are professional and directly related to the position you are trying to acquire," she says.23. More than 15 years of experienceWhen you start including jobs from before 2005, you start losing the hiring manager's interest.Your most relevant experience should be from the past 15 years, so hiring managers only need to see that, Augustine says.On the same note, don't include dates on degrees and certifications that are more than 15 years old.24. Salary information"Some people include past hourly rates for jobs they held in college," Nicolai says. This information is unnecessary, and the employer could use it against you in salary negotiations.Speaking of which, you also shouldn't list your desired salary in a resume. "This document is intended to showcase your professional experience and skills. Salary comes later in the interview process," says Amy Hoover, former president of Talent Zoo.Rachel Gillett25. Fancy fontsCurly-tailed fonts are a no, according to O'Donnell. "People try to make their resume look classier with a fancy font, but studies show they are harder to read and the recruiter absorbs less about you."26. Annoying buzzwordsStay away from words and phrases like "best of breed," "go-getter," "think outside the box," "synergy," and "people pleaser."Instead, try "achieved," "managed," "resolved," and "launched."27. Reasons you left a company or positionCandidates often think, "If I explain why I left the position on my resume, maybe my chances will improve."In reality, doing so is "irrelevant," Nicolai says: "It's not the time or place to bring up transitions from one company to the next."Instead, use your interview to address this.28. Your GPAOnce you're out of school, your grades aren't nearly as relevant anymore.If you're a new college graduate and your GPA was a 3.8 or higher, it's okay to leave it. But, if you're more than three years out of school, or if your GPA was lower than a 3.8, ditch it.29. A photo of yourselfEven a small photo can take up considerable space on a resume, and it usually doesn't add much anyway.30. An explanation of why you want the jobThat's what the cover letter and interviews are for!Your resume is not the place to start explaining why you'd be a great fit or why you want the job. Your skills and qualifications should be able to do that for you.We Are/Getty Images31. Opinions, not factsDon't try to sell yourself by using all sorts of subjective words to describe yourself, O'Donnell says. "I'm an excellent communicator" or "highly organized and motivated" are opinions of yourself and not necessarily the truth. "Recruiters want facts only. They'll decide if you are those things after they meet you," she says.32. Generic explanations of accomplishmentsDon't just say you accomplished X, Y, or Z — show it by quantifying the facts.For instance, instead of saying, "Grew revenues," try saying, "X project resulted in an Y% increase in revenues."Vivian Giang and Natalie Walters contributed to earlier versions of this article.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The mess at Twitter is eating away at whatever cachet Elon Musk once had with San Francisco's tech workers. Business InsiderMusk at a 2022 Halloween party.Taylor Hill/Getty Images In 2015, Elon Musk got applause for Tesla. In 2022, he gets booed for appearing on stage. Being booed at a Dave Chappelle show capped a long weekend of Elon tweeting inflammatory things. His tweets, and the strong reaction from the crowd, highlight just how divisive Musk has become. In 2015, Elon Musk appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. After Colbert called Musk "the real Tony Stark," and Musk got a round of applause for the Tesla, Colbert asked Musk whether he was "sincerely trying to save the world."Musk demurred, saying he was trying to "do useful things.""You're trying to do useful things," Colbert said, "and you're a billionaire. That seems a little like either superhero or supervillain. You have to pick one." Back then, Musk's trajectory seemed to be headed towards the former: Tesla had already made great strides towards making electric cars cool, and SpaceX was bringing a sense of excitement and possibility back to the space race. Fast forward seven years, and Musk received an altogether different reception at another comedy legend's show.On Sunday night, Elon made a surprise appearance at a Dave Chappelle show at San Francisco's Chase Center. "Make some noise for the richest man in the world," Chapelle said. Musk was quickly showered with boos from the estimated 18,000 people in attendance."You weren't expecting this, were you?" Musk asked Chapelle as the boos continued."It sounds like some of those people you fired are in the audience," Chapelle joked, referring to the deep, sweeping job cuts at Twitter over the month or so since Musk took control of the company.—Chris Stokel-Walker ~ @stokel@infosec.exchange (@stokel) December 12, 2022Twitter and Elon's 'dark comedy'Musk is a huge comedy nerd. His love of shows like "Rick and Morty" is well known. He hosted Saturday Night Live, something that's impossible to imagine any other tech CEO doing.And it's hard to imagine any crowd in San Francisco in 2022 reacting with anything but boos when being asked to "make some noise for the richest man in the world."Still, the footage is difficult to watch. Musk's discomfort on stage create the odd sensation of feeling sorry for the world's richest man.The booing came at the end of a weekend that saw Musk take a lot of flack, even by recent standards: On Saturday, he was tweeting insinuations that Yoel Roth, his former head of Twitter's Trust & Safety division, approved of "children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis." It was an extremely bad-faith reading of Roth's 2016 dissertation and one that quickly made Roth the target of death threats.Then, on Sunday, Musk posted: "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci." It's a groaner designed to troll transgender people, reiterate his long-running opposition to anti-COVID measures like the lockdowns of 2020, and give red meat to the "anti-woke" users Musk seems to see as his true fan base. (Dave Chapelle, of course, also has a history of antagonizing the transgender community.) After his tweet got 1 million likes, he followed it up with another post: "Truth resonates …"When one person with under 700 followers replied with "So does a crowd full of boos," Musk was quick to react on Twitter, blaming the booing on angering "SF's unhinged leftists."—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2022It's dangerous to extrapolate the overall public sentiment towards Musk from a single comedy crowd at one event in San Francisco. Musk still has plenty of fans and admirers, including and especially at the highest levels of power in Silicon Valley. And yet, it remains an extraordinary turn of events given that Tesla's cars are one of San Francisco's most ubiqiuitous status symbols — making it likely that some significant percentage of the audience in attendance had, in not-so-distant memory, contributed directly to Musk's wealth and power.On that subject, the shifting perceptions around Musk may be cause for alarm at Tesla. California is one of Tesla's largest and historically strongest markets, with electric vehicles accounting for almost 18% of new car sales in the state, per official data. The company was founded and originally headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, too. As Musk becomes less of a hometown hero, that could in turn alienate some of Tesla's biggest and most dedicated customers.On November 10, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote: "In what has been a dark comedy show with Twitter, Musk has essentially tarnished the Tesla story/stock and is starting to potentially impact the Tesla brand with this ongoing Twitter train wreck disaster. Ives announced that Wedbush was taking Tesla off Wedbush's "Best Ideas" list. "From selling Tesla stock again and again, to the PR nightmare that Twitter has become, cutting 50% of employees and then needing to bring some back, Musk's attention focus from Tesla to Twitter, and ultimately the fear that this Twitter lightening rod of controversy on a daily (almost hourly) basis starts to negatively change the Tesla brand globally," Ives wrote.As Ives put it: "Tesla is Musk." And it's less clear by the day what, exactly, Elon Musk is.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The inventor of the infinite scroll tried to fix social media. Now he's using tech to talk to animals (To receive weekly emails of conversations with the world’s top CEOs and business decisionmakers, click here.) During the early years of the Cold War, an array of underwater microphones monitoring for sounds of Russian submarines captured something otherworldly in the depths of the North Atlantic. The haunting sounds came not from enemy craft, nor aliens, but humpback whales, a species that, at the time, humans had hunted almost to the brink of extinction. Years later, when environmentalist Roger Payne obtained the recordings from U.S. Navy storage and listened to them, he was deeply moved. The whale songs seemed to reveal majestic creatures that could communicate with one another in complex ways. If only the world could hear these sounds, Payne reasoned, the humpback whale might just be saved from extinction. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] When Payne released the recordings in 1970 as the album Songs of the Humpback Whale, he was proved right. The album went multi-platinum. It was played at the U.N. general assembly, and it inspired Congress to pass the 1973 endangered species act. By 1986, commercial whaling was banned under international law. Global humpback whale populations have risen from a low of around 5,000 individuals in the 1960s to 135,000 today. For Aza Raskin, the story is a sign of just how much can change when humanity experiences a moment of connection with the natural world. “It’s this powerful moment that can wake us up and power a movement,” Raskin tells TIME. Raskin’s focus on animals comes from a very human place. A former Silicon Valley wunderkind himself, in 2006 he was first to invent the infinite scroll, the feature that became a mainstay of so many social media apps. He founded a streaming startup called Songza that was eventually acquired by Google. But Raskin gradually soured on the industry after realizing that technology, which had such capacity to influence human behavior for the better, was mostly being leveraged to keep people addicted to their devices and spending money on unnecessary products. In 2018, he co-founded the Center for Humane Technology with his friend and former Google engineer Tristan Harris, as part of an effort to ensure tech companies were shaped to benefit humanity, rather than the other way around. He is perhaps best known for, alongside scholar Renée DiResta, coining the phrase “freedom of speech is not freedom of reach.” The phrase became a helpful way for responsible technologists, lawmakers and political commentators to distinguish between the constitutional freedom for users to say whatever they like, and the privilege of having it amplified by social media megaphones. Raskin is talking about whale song because he is also the co-founder and President of the Earth Species Project, an artificial intelligence (AI) nonprofit that is attempting to decode the speech of animals —from humpback whales, to great apes, to crows. The jury is out on whether it would ever truly be possible to accurately “translate” animal communication into anything resembling human language. Meaning is socially constructed, and animal societies are very different to ours. But Raskin is optimistic that the attempt is worthwhile, given that connection with animals can be a force strong enough to galvanize humans into protecting the natural world at such a critical juncture in the fight against climate change. More from TIME [video id=EwUFJE7x autostart="viewable"] The Earth Species Project is applying natural language processing—the AI technique behind human translation software and chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT—to recordings of animals. While they haven’t succeeded in “decoding” any animal speech yet, computer scientists at the nonprofit recently designed an algorithm that is able to isolate the sounds from a single individual animal (the algorithm works well on bats and dolphins, and is not bad at elephants,) in a recording of multiple “speakers.” Raskin says solving this issue—known as the “cocktail party problem” since it is comparable with the difficulty of focusing on one person speaking in a crowded room—is a first step toward decoding the mysteries of the animal kingdom. Read More: AI Chatbots Are Getting Better. But an Interview With ChatGPT Reveals Their Limits Although fixing the ills of social media and decoding animal speech may seem worlds apart, Raskin sees them as part of a holistic mission. The Earth Species Project and the Center for Humane Technology are both “experiments into how you shift trillion dollar industries,” Raskin says. They share the same goal: changing society for the better, not through the traditional Silicon Valley route of building an app or cornering a business model, but by changing culture. TIME spoke with Raskin this summer. In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss not just animal translation, but the state of social media, applying those lessons to the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, and how—amid everything—to secure a place for both humanity and nature in a fast-changing world. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. Before we get onto talking about the Earth Species Project, I want to talk about your life up to now. Your father was Jef Raskin, the famous expert in human-computer interaction at Apple who left a huge mark on that company. You yourself were a Silicon Valley founder who worked on subtly changing people’s behaviors through technology. Then you gave that all up to sound the alarm on social media. Now you’re trying to talk to animals through AI. Talk me through your trajectory. My mother worked in a palliative care hospice. From her, I learned what it is like to care for someone with dignity. My father created the Macintosh project at Apple. And he also came with a very humanistic sense of care, at a moment in Silicon Valley before it had been captured by engagement and the attention industrial machine. You could still ask these questions: what is technology even for? One of the things that makes humanity unique is not that we use tools—lots of species use tools—but the extent to which our tools remake us. There is no such thing as to be human without using some form of technology. Whether that’s language, whether that’s fire, or anything that came after. One of the things that people miss is the extent to which our technology changes our social structures and our culture. Just look at the plough. It changed how we lived, it created surplus food that let us move into cities, which changed the nature of family and relationships. If you’re going to use animals to plough your field, it’s not compatible with animistic traditions anymore, so it changes religion. Growing up, especially with my father, I was given this lens of how fundamental technology is to what humans become. We have a choice about what we do with technology, and what’s at stake is our identity and how we interrelate with the rest of the world. My father was really interested in the idea of ergonomics: how human beings bend and fold. If you don’t understand and study ergonomics, you end up designing things like chairs that really hurt us. There’s also an ergonomics of relationships, of communities, of societies—a way that we bend and fold. If we’re blind to ergonomics, we break ourselves. If capitalism isn’t ergonomic to our biosphere, we break the container that we live in. And this is the through-line. For almost all my work, I ask: how do we create things that understand the ergonomics of how we as human beings work, how our biosphere works, how our technosphere works, so that we can create things that help us thrive as a whole? You’ve done a lot of work around making technology more humane. But decoding animal speech seems out of left-field. How are the two connected? Civilization can’t exist without the accumulated culture and knowledge that comes from language. It’s right there at the core of human identity. The more you look, the more you realize human identities tied up with language, and that tells you that there’s something really important there for us to examine. Because even if we’re able to draw down all the carbon from the atmosphere tomorrow, which we should do, that wouldn’t fix the core problem, which is human ego. We need to change the way that we view ourselves, the way we relate to ourselves, and hence the rest of the world. That’s the connection with technology. Once we can change that identity, that creates the opportunity for entirely new patterns of behavior and for solving these problems. The big hope is that there are these moments in time, when we get a shift in perspective. And that shift in perspective changes everything. Humans have been speaking vocally and passing down culture for somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 years. For whales and dolphins, it’s 34 million years. Generally the things that are wisest will have lasted longest. Imagine what kind of wisdom there can be in cultures that have been going on for 34 million years. It just gives me goosebumps. Do you have in mind what you want people’s perspective to be shifted toward? Yeah. I think it’s a stance of interdependence. If, generally speaking, you can empathize and you see someone else, or some other being as less than other, then suddenly, you’re more connected than you were before and your sphere of care expands. Many linguists understand human language to be tied up in our own brain structure and life experiences. Obviously both of those things are very different when we talk about animals. Maybe there are whale concepts that humans couldn’t possibly understand. Do you think it is actually possible to have a conversation with a whale? Or is it more like you would need to interpret what the whale is saying in a much more abstract way? I think it’s really important to hold these two poles. On one side, there’s being too anthropomorphic. Where you think, we have these feelings, therefore the animals do. On the other side, there’s human exceptionalism where we think we are so special that we don’t share anything with other animals. And of course, the truth is going to be somewhere in between. I think there are going to be some things that we’re going to find a similarity with, that we can directly communicate about, and then there are going to be the things that we don’t share. And therefore, that part will be a much more metaphorical kind of communication. And I don’t know, actually, which one is going to be more exciting. Will it be the parts that we can directly translate into human experience or the ones that we can’t? But I think what people often forget is this, this shared set of experiences is large. [Raskin shares his screen.] Here is a pilot whale who has been carrying her dead calf for three weeks. Grief is clearly some kind of really profound shared experience. Here is a chimp who is browsing Instagram, who is able to use it, and actually uses it often to follow other chimps. So there’s something here that is truly conserved. The answer is, of course, we don’t know because we’re doing science. This is a journey into the unknown. But we should keep a very open mind, not to fall into human exceptionalism. Just like we shouldn’t fall into anthropomorphism. I want to shift gears and talk about social media. You helped coin the term “freedom of speech is not freedom of reach.” To what extent do you feel like that concept has had an impact? And to what extent do you think that there’s still more to be done? I think it’s been a really helpful concept to get out in the world. Renée DiResta, who ended up penning the article that got that concept out into the world, has done a fantastic job. It clearly has done good work but needs to do more, because we are constantly trapped in the false dichotomy of saying, either we have content moderation, censorship, or we have free speech. But that phrase is pointing at a bigger thing, which is that we need to be thinking as a society as a whole. Facebook’s stock price has dropped by half, which I don’t think is just us, of course. But while we’ve had success, the stakes are even higher now, because we are still the commodity. Just like a tree is worth more as lumber than as a living tree, and a whale is worth more dead than alive, we are going to be worth more as polarized, distracted, narcissistic, tribalistic people, than we are as full, whole individuals. Shoshana Zuboff points out that capitalism takes things that are outside of the market and pulls them into the market. And once they’re in the market, then you can extract, abstract, deplete and pollute. And that’s what’s happened with human attention and engagement. It was outside of the market, it’s now inside the market. We need to think about the next layer up. We know that if you let markets run without any guardrails, they will always grow to break the thing they’re growing inside of. If your liver starts to grow, not listening to anything else, it’ll eventually take over your body and you die. That’s how cancer works. And so markets always need to come with guardrails, to keep them safe for the body they’re growing within. We’ve done that for capital markets. We do it for things like human organs. We have never done it with human attention or engagement. That’s a market that needs guardrails, otherwise, you’re constantly going to have like the race to the bottom of the brainstem. When I think about it at an even higher level, there’s this fundamental equation. Technology plus autocracy equals stronger autocracy. But technology plus democracy equals worse democracy. And if we do not solve that problem, then the values that we care most about will not have a seat in the future. Powerful machine learning systems are rapidly becoming accessible to businesses and members of the public. Some can generate realistic images. Others can generate realistic text. It took 10 years for technologists to force through a coherent set of guidelines for social media, and social media destabilized our world in the meantime. Now we’re seeing a very similar revolution at its earliest stages in terms of accessible generative AI. What do you think a few ethical red lines should be for technologies like GPT-3 and Dall-E? Who knew that AI was going to come first for art, story and relationships? The story has always been that it takes our jobs first. But actually it’s coming for things that we think are very core to human identity. And we have not yet grappled with all of that. I think there are some simple things that work across social media and AI. And that is: the scale of impact needs to scale with the kinds of guardrails you’re within. That is, if you’re touching a million people, versus touching 500 million or a billion people, you should probably have different standards that you’re operating to, compared to if you’re only touching 50 people. The next one is, you’re going to have to move to a world where we know that when something is posted online, it’s posted by a human. And that’s scary for a whole bunch of reasons. All of a sudden, it means you need to have stronger identity protections on the internet, which, if you don’t do it right, opens up a whole bunch of authoritarian surveillance stuff. But the flip side is, if we don’t do any of that, then we are witnessing the end of video and photographic evidence as a medium that we trust. That’s a neutron bomb for trust on the internet. So we’re gonna have to thread that needle between privacy, individual safety, ability to speak and express, and also society’s ability to hear and make sense. We’re going have to balance those things. And the last one is, I think one of the biggest lessons that Silicon Valley has not yet learned is that “democratize” does not equal “democracy.” If you put James Bond supervillain weapons in everyone’s hands, something bad is going to happen. The way I’ve been thinking about it is, even the phrase “chatbots” is the wrong phrase to use. Because that puts your mind back to the 1990s. Every time you say “chatbot,” replace it with “synthetic relationship.” Recently there was the Google engineer who was fired for believing his language model was sentient. And the takeaway is not whether it’s sentient or not. That’s the wrong question to ask. The right question to ask is, if he believes that he’s in a relationship with this language model that’s so profound that he’s willing to stand up and get fired, that means a lot of people are going to feel that the language models they encounter are sentient. Suddenly you get this realization that relationships are the most transformative technology human beings have. So that means loneliness is about to become one of the largest national security threats. Just as an example, there are relationship scams, where people go on Tinder, and they start a relationship, and then they end up getting scammed and asked for money. We should expect this harnessing of people’s lack of cohesion, lack of meaning, lack of belonging to a group or community. So we need to get in front of this. Read More: Fun AI Apps Are Everywhere Right Now. But a Safety ‘Reckoning’ Is Coming How do you suggest we do that? First we need to have an actual honest conversation about these things. Because right now we’re stuck in the conversation about how this is a neat piece of technology. Versus what does this mean? What are the asymmetric powers that are about to be deployed? For lawyers, who have an asymmetric power over their clients, they have a duty to act in the client’s best interest. We need to recategorize technology of this power as being in a fiduciary relationship. The paradox of technology is that it gives us the power to serve and protect at the exact same time as it gives us the power to exploit. So we are either entering into our darkest night, if we’re continually trapped by perverse incentives, or our most golden era. It’s going to be a touch-and-go relay race, from utopia to dystopia, until the final act. And I think of both the Center for Humane Technology and the Earth Species Project as trying to bend that arc systemically towards the golden era versus our darkest night......»»