foreignpolicy--2020-06-22--Calls for Police Reform Are Getting Louder—Here Is How to Do It

Calls for Police Reform Are Getting Louder—Here Is How to Do It Horrifying videos of police officers suffocating and shooting Black people in the United States have generated outrage around the world .
The killings also triggered demonstrations in thousands of cities and towns in the United States and across the globe , temporarily displacing the COVID-19 pandemic from headlines .
Footage of peaceful protesters being beaten , tear-gassed , and rammed with police vehicles escalated the outrage .
Some demonstrators and commentators have called for defunding and abolishing the police outright .
For many , the persistence of police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and anything less seems like capitulation to the status quo .
All police violence must be condemned , but should the future of policing really come down to a decision about whether the police ought to be disbanded altogether ?
Amid growing pressure to radically cut funding for law enforcement , what the debate needs is a serious , evidence-based discussion about what works , and what does not , when it comes to restricting the use of force by police , improving public safety , and making police substantially more accountable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protect and serve.In the United States , police have substantially more discretion to use lethal force .
The first order of business is to curb the excessive use of force .
The International Association of Chiefs of Police has described “ use of force ” as the “ effort required by police to compel compliance by an unwilling subject.
” In other words , the force used should be proportional to the degree of resistance—but what does this mean in practice ?
In Europe , knee-on-neck restraints such as what was used to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ officers use other types of force only when “ absolutely necessary.
” In the United States , police have substantially more discretion and can resort to lethal force when they have “ objectively reasonable ” belief that their lives are in danger ( except in California , which tightened restrictions on the use of force in 2019 ) .
Perhaps it is not surprising that some officers shoot first and ask questions later .
It also does not help that U.S. police receive an average of 58 hours of firearms training compared to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eight hours of crisis intervention training .
Proposals to ban chokeholds , strangleholds , and other neck restraints such as the ones that killed George Floyd are good first steps , but much more needs to be done .
In the United States , national and state lawmakers are hastily introducing bills to reduce the use of force , improve civilian oversight , require the use of body cameras , and monitor officer misconduct .
They would do well to consult the 30 guiding principles recommended by the Police Executive Research Forum , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
According to Campaign Zero , a nongovernmental organization mobilizing against police brutality , restrictions on the use of force—especially in relation to lower-level infractions—have resulted in fewer killings of innocent people in big U.S. cities .
Adoption of de-escalation training and techniques may also lead to improvements , but experts say more research is required .
Given the political opportunity for reform , these promising measures should be incorporated into new national policing standards , along with a commitment to ongoing evaluation .
Another priority is getting more and better data on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the large number of homicides involving police in the United States , there is no reliable government database tracking the exact number of fatalities .
At the moment , just 40 percent of the country ’ s roughly 18,000 federal , state , and county police forces have contributed to a Federal Bureau of Investigation database tracking police misconduct .
To fill the gap , newspapers such as the Guardian and the Washington Post have assembled data repositories , and activists are mapping police-related deaths , though all are using unofficial sources .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ are flying blind.Despite the large number of homicides involving police , there is no reliable U.S. government database tracking the number of fatalities .
Police departments and their unions should also include more stringent accountability mechanisms in employee contracts .
Too often , police are legally shielded from any consequences of their actions .
At a minimum , complaints levied against officers must be investigated , disciplinary measures for misconduct need to be swiftly enforced , and any appeals for reinstating police officers after they use excessive force should be more carefully reviewed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ found that at least 1,881 officers were fired for misconduct between 2006 and 2017 from the largest U.S. police departments—and almost one-quarter of them were reinstated after an appeal .
Police departments should also monitor complaints about the use of force more carefully , not least because evidence shows that officers with a record of abuse can negatively influence the behavior of others .
As the proverb goes , “ A rotten apple quickly infects its neighbor.
” Making data on fatal and nonfatal police-related incidents public could improve oversight , deter misconduct @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Policies to strengthen internal discipline and prevent officers terminated for serious abuses from being rehired are also associated with improved overall performance .
Recruiting more women into the police may also contribute to reducing excessive force .
A 2017 study of police use of force found that male officers were three times more likely to have discharged their firearm while on duty than their female counterparts .
In another study published in 2002 , men were two to three times more likely to be accused of citizen complaints and cost police forces @ @ @ @ @ @ @ payouts to victims of excessive force or their families .
Increasing the diversity of police by boosting minority recruitment is important , but the evidence on the relationship between diversity and misconduct is surprisingly unclear .
Responders outside law enforcement must play a greater role in maintaining public safety .
Police certainly need more training for situations involving mental health , substance abuse , and homelessness .
Just as importantly , however , other services need to be available when police are in over their heads .
In practice , however , this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crisis intervention teams have been around since the 1980s , but their overall effectiveness is questionable .
Prevention strategies—based on ample U.S. and international evidence and scaled up—can also shrink the need for police in the first place .
Cognitive behavioral therapy , home visiting programs , and parent training programs are all effective crime prevention strategies .
There is also a growing chorus among advocacy groups for greater federal oversight and investigation of police departments that record a higher-than average incidence of excessive use of force , especially when there are significant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ force .
In the United States , for example , the Department of Justice ’ s investigations and recommendations have generated tangible reductions in gun violence .
Measures such as stricter policies against use of force , better training , and independent reviews contributed to a stunning decline in police shootings in cities such as Philadelphia.Stricter policies against use of force , better training , and independent reviews contributed to a stunning decline in police shootings in cities such as Philadelphia .
Another strategy is to demilitarize the police .
Around the world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
One of the most notorious examples of this is the so-called 1033 program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense , which supplies local police departments with surplus military equipment left over from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq .
Perhaps unsurprisingly , there is evidence that kitting up officers with armored personnel vehicles and grenade launchers can contribute to an overreliance on violence to solve problems .
One study , for instance , found that U.S. police departments supplied by the 1033 program had a higher incidence of lethal violence compared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ assistance .
At a time of spiraling deficits and reduced revenue , hard choices also need to be made about how police violence shouldn ’ t be curbed .
This means investing in what works , but also avoiding what does not work .
Take the case of implicit bias training—instruction in awareness about biases and prejudices about race , class , and gender .
Although Black people are as much as three times as likely to be killed by police officers than white people , it turns out that such training does @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bias or alter their behavior .
To the contrary , some research suggests that such training could actually increase the expression of bias in what researchers call a “ rebound effect ” when people try to suppress stereotypical thinking , but their deep-seated prejudices remain .
There is a heated debate about the effectiveness of body cameras worn by police , which have shown mixed results in randomized control trials .
While there are positive examples of police cameras reducing the incidence of police brutality and citizen complaints , it turns out that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , by itself , to curb police violence .
Robust policies and oversight are needed to ensure that police turn on their cameras during incidents and are prevented from tampering with video evidence after the fact .
Another intervention showing surprisingly limited effect is citizen oversight of police .
There are regular calls to set up mechanisms to improve transparency and accountability and strengthen police-community relations in the wake of officer-involved shootings—to prevent police departments from conducting entirely internal investigations of complaints , for example .
Roughly 80 percent of the 50 largest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ set up some type of citizen oversight mechanism .
But the evidence of their effectiveness is thin .
Part of the problem is that they are so diverse .
They should certainly not be viewed as a panacea.In this season of protest , Americans have a wide-open window of opportunity to reform their police .
There is no one strategy to reduce police violence .
Like most persistent and complicated social problems , there are no obvious , easy answers .
But that does not mean that there can not be progress , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ data and evidence from around the United States and the world on what works and what doesn ’ t .
Putting multiple policies into place , informed by the best data and evidence available as well as common sense , can ultimately make it far less likely for innocent people to die at the hands of police .
In this season of protest , Americans have a wide-open window of opportunity to reform their police .
A June survey by Monmouth University found that 76 percent of Americans agree that racial and ethnic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” up dramatically from 51 percent in 2015 .
The poll also showed that 57 percent believe that police officers are more likely to use deadly force if the suspect is Black , another seismic change of opinion .
A majority of 57 percent also find the protesters ’ anger to be “ fully justified.
” At the same time , 71 percent say they are very or somewhat satisfied with the work of their local police .
That suggests that now is not the time to abolish the police altogether , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @

Horrifying videos of police officers suffocating and shooting Black people in the United States have generated outrage around the world. The killings also triggered demonstrations in thousands of cities and towns in the United States and across the globe, temporarily displacing the COVID-19 pandemic from headlines. Footage of peaceful protesters being beaten, tear-gassed, and rammed with police vehicles escalated the outrage. Some demonstrators and commentators have called for defunding and abolishing the police outright. For many, the persistence of police violence—especially against African Americans—warrants radical policy moves, and anything less seems like capitulation to the status quo.
Horrifying videos of police officers suffocating and shooting Black people in the United States have generated outrage around the world. The killings also triggered demonstrations in thousands of cities and towns in the United States and across the globe, temporarily displacing the COVID-19 pandemic from headlines. Footage of peaceful protesters being beaten, tear-gassed, and rammed with police vehicles escalated the outrage. Some demonstrators and commentators have called for defunding and abolishing the police outright. For many, the persistence of police violence—especially against African Americans—warrants radical policy moves, and anything less seems like capitulation to the status quo.
All police violence must be condemned, but should the future of policing really come down to a decision about whether the police ought to be disbanded altogether? Amid growing pressure to radically cut funding for law enforcement, what the debate needs is a serious, evidence-based discussion about what works, and what does not, when it comes to restricting the use of force by police, improving public safety, and making police substantially more accountable to the people they are supposed to protect and serve.In the United States, police have substantially more discretion to use lethal force.
The first order of business is to curb the excessive use of force. The International Association of Chiefs of Police has described “use of force” as the “effort required by police to compel compliance by an unwilling subject.” In other words, the force used should be proportional to the degree of resistance—but what does this mean in practice? In Europe, knee-on-neck restraints such as what was used to kill George Floyd are banned, and officers use other types of force only when “absolutely necessary.” In the United States, police have substantially more discretion and can resort to lethal force when they have “objectively reasonable” belief that their lives are in danger (except in California, which tightened restrictions on the use of force in 2019). Perhaps it is not surprising that some officers shoot first and ask questions later. It also does not help that U.S. police receive an average of 58 hours of firearms training compared to only eight hours of de-escalation training and eight hours of crisis intervention training.
Proposals to ban chokeholds, strangleholds, and other neck restraints such as the ones that killed George Floyd are good first steps, but much more needs to be done. In the United States, national and state lawmakers are hastily introducing bills to reduce the use of force, improve civilian oversight, require the use of body cameras, and monitor officer misconduct. They would do well to consult the 30 guiding principles recommended by the Police Executive Research Forum, an association of U.S. law enforcement officials. According to Campaign Zero, a nongovernmental organization mobilizing against police brutality, restrictions on the use of force—especially in relation to lower-level infractions—have resulted in fewer killings of innocent people in big U.S. cities. Adoption of de-escalation training and techniques may also lead to improvements, but experts say more research is required. Given the political opportunity for reform, these promising measures should be incorporated into new national policing standards, along with a commitment to ongoing evaluation.
Another priority is getting more and better data on police use of lethal force. Despite the large number of homicides involving police in the United States, there is no reliable government database tracking the exact number of fatalities. At the moment, just 40 percent of the country’s roughly 18,000 federal, state, and county police forces have contributed to a Federal Bureau of Investigation database tracking police misconduct. To fill the gap, newspapers such as the Guardian and the Washington Post have assembled data repositories, and activists are mapping police-related deaths, though all are using unofficial sources. Without better data, police and citizens are flying blind.Despite the large number of homicides involving police, there is no reliable U.S. government database tracking the number of fatalities.
Police departments and their unions should also include more stringent accountability mechanisms in employee contracts. Too often, police are legally shielded from any consequences of their actions. At a minimum, complaints levied against officers must be investigated, disciplinary measures for misconduct need to be swiftly enforced, and any appeals for reinstating police officers after they use excessive force should be more carefully reviewed. An investigation by the Washington Post found that at least 1,881 officers were fired for misconduct between 2006 and 2017 from the largest U.S. police departments—and almost one-quarter of them were reinstated after an appeal.
Police departments should also monitor complaints about the use of force more carefully, not least because evidence shows that officers with a record of abuse can negatively influence the behavior of others. As the proverb goes, “A rotten apple quickly infects its neighbor.” Making data on fatal and nonfatal police-related incidents public could improve oversight, deter misconduct, and strengthen badly tarnished community relations. Policies to strengthen internal discipline and prevent officers terminated for serious abuses from being rehired are also associated with improved overall performance.
Recruiting more women into the police may also contribute to reducing excessive force. A 2017 study of police use of force found that male officers were three times more likely to have discharged their firearm while on duty than their female counterparts. In another study published in 2002, men were two to three times more likely to be accused of citizen complaints and cost police forces at least two-and-a-half times more in liability payouts to victims of excessive force or their families. Increasing the diversity of police by boosting minority recruitment is important, but the evidence on the relationship between diversity and misconduct is surprisingly unclear.
Responders outside law enforcement must play a greater role in maintaining public safety. Police certainly need more training for situations involving mental health, substance abuse, and homelessness. Just as importantly, however, other services need to be available when police are in over their heads. In practice, however, this is harder than it seems: Mental-health crisis intervention teams have been around since the 1980s, but their overall effectiveness is questionable. Prevention strategies—based on ample U.S. and international evidence and scaled up—can also shrink the need for police in the first place. Cognitive behavioral therapy, home visiting programs, and parent training programs are all effective crime prevention strategies.
There is also a growing chorus among advocacy groups for greater federal oversight and investigation of police departments that record a higher-than average incidence of excessive use of force, especially when there are significant racial disparities in the use of such force. In the United States, for example, the Department of Justice’s investigations and recommendations have generated tangible reductions in gun violence. Measures such as stricter policies against use of force, better training, and independent reviews contributed to a stunning decline in police shootings in cities such as Philadelphia.Stricter policies against use of force, better training, and independent reviews contributed to a stunning decline in police shootings in cities such as Philadelphia.
Another strategy is to demilitarize the police. Around the world, police are acquiring increasingly sophisticated firepower. One of the most notorious examples of this is the so-called 1033 program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense, which supplies local police departments with surplus military equipment left over from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is evidence that kitting up officers with armored personnel vehicles and grenade launchers can contribute to an overreliance on violence to solve problems. One study, for instance, found that U.S. police departments supplied by the 1033 program had a higher incidence of lethal violence compared to departments that did not receive such assistance.
At a time of spiraling deficits and reduced revenue, hard choices also need to be made about how police violence shouldn’t be curbed. This means investing in what works, but also avoiding what does not work. Take the case of implicit bias training—instruction in awareness about biases and prejudices about race, class, and gender. Although Black people are as much as three times as likely to be killed by police officers than white people, it turns out that such training does not necessarily influence police officers’ implicit bias or alter their behavior. To the contrary, some research suggests that such training could actually increase the expression of bias in what researchers call a “rebound effect” when people try to suppress stereotypical thinking, but their deep-seated prejudices remain.
There is a heated debate about the effectiveness of body cameras worn by police, which have shown mixed results in randomized control trials. While there are positive examples of police cameras reducing the incidence of police brutality and citizen complaints, it turns out that merely outfitting police with cameras is insufficient, by itself, to curb police violence. Robust policies and oversight are needed to ensure that police turn on their cameras during incidents and are prevented from tampering with video evidence after the fact.
Another intervention showing surprisingly limited effect is citizen oversight of police. There are regular calls to set up mechanisms to improve transparency and accountability and strengthen police-community relations in the wake of officer-involved shootings—to prevent police departments from conducting entirely internal investigations of complaints, for example. Roughly 80 percent of the 50 largest police stations in the United States have set up some type of citizen oversight mechanism. But the evidence of their effectiveness is thin. Part of the problem is that they are so diverse. They should certainly not be viewed as a panacea.In this season of protest, Americans have a wide-open window of opportunity to reform their police.
There is no one strategy to reduce police violence. Like most persistent and complicated social problems, there are no obvious, easy answers. But that does not mean that there cannot be progress, and that there isn’t any data and evidence from around the United States and the world on what works and what doesn’t. Putting multiple policies into place, informed by the best data and evidence available as well as common sense, can ultimately make it far less likely for innocent people to die at the hands of police.
In this season of protest, Americans have a wide-open window of opportunity to reform their police. A June survey by Monmouth University found that 76 percent of Americans agree that racial and ethnic discrimination is a “big problem,” up dramatically from 51 percent in 2015. The poll also showed that 57 percent believe that police officers are more likely to use deadly force if the suspect is Black, another seismic change of opinion. A majority of 57 percent also find the protesters’ anger to be “fully justified.” At the same time, 71 percent say they are very or somewhat satisfied with the work of their local police. That suggests that now is not the time to abolish the police altogether, but to dramatically transform and improve it.


foreignpolicy--2020-06-22--Silicon Valley Can’t Be Neutral in the U.S.-China Cold War

Silicon Valley Can ’ t Be Neutral in the U.S.-China Cold War If there is a silver lining to the coronavirus , it is that Americans are finally alert to the threat that an ambitious , authoritarian China poses .
Polling shows that the U.S. public has become significantly more hawkish on China since the crisis began ; a bipartisan consensus is coalescing around the idea that the Chinese Communist Party ’ s aims and values are incompatible with America ’ s .
Unfortunately , some of the United States ’ major tech companies are still trying to sit on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this issue well , because for several years I served as a policy advisor at Google .
There , I learned that a company ’ s policies , like a society ’ s laws , reflect its most basic values .
The problem today is that tech companies that are based in the United States but also operate in China are struggling to comply with values that are fundamentally at odds .
In the U.S. system , laws are legitimate insofar as they are conceived by what Jean-Jacques Rousseau called “ the general @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through the workings of a democratic political system .
Laws that are arbitrary or imposed by the will of a single person of authority are illegitimate .
Yet the Chinese system rests on the idea that the sole source of legitimacy is the CCP , which represents—it claims—the will of the Chinese nation in its entirety and violently suppresses challenges to its authority .
This sharp tension between the political value systems that prevail in the two countries is a primary cause of the spiraling bilateral competition .
Tech companies confront this tension @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Chinese laws , by enabling the arrest of dissidents for “ subversion of state power ” or the mass surveillance of Uighurs , which are rightly viewed by most Americans as immoral and illegitimate .
The natural response of most companies , which seek to maximize profits by operating in the world ’ s two largest national markets simultaneously , is to straddle this divide .
Think of this approach as “ one company , two systems.
” I saw this well-intentioned strategy up close , through my brief exposure to Project Dragonfly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ version of Google ’ s search engine available behind China ’ s so-called Great Firewall by conforming search results to CCP standards .
The experience left me deeply convinced that the “ one company , two systems ” model does not work .
Tailoring one ’ s principles to make them compatible with the CCP ’ s dictates makes them systemically incompatible with American values .
This contradiction was on display on June 3 .
Several hundred American and Chinese activists were commemorating the next day ’ s 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out .
The glitch , it turned out , was not technical but ideological .
The same week , Zoom shut down the account of the California-based dissident Zhou Fengsuo .
Elizabeth Economy , a prominent China scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations , then revealed that she , too , had been dropped from a Zoom seminar as she discussed Tiananmen Square , China ’ s brutal oppression of its Uighur minority , and other taboo topics .
“ We all joked about it , ” she wrote , “ but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had.
” It certainly appears that the takedowns amounted to a CCP attempt at extraterritorial censorship— “ no joke ” indeed .
Zoom , a California-based videoconferencing company whose profile has soared during the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns , responded that the takedowns resulted only from the company ’ s obligation “ to comply with local laws ” —China ’ s laws , in this case .
It apologized for impacting users outside of China , reinstated the accounts of U.S.-based activists , and pledged not to censor non-Chinese accounts .
Zoom also says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remove or block at the participant level based on geography.
” In other words , Zoom is rolling out a “ one company , two systems ” model—participants in China would be subject to censorship , but those outside of China would not .
The flaws in this model are already apparent .
While Zoom assured users in the United States that they would not be penalized for violating Chinese speech restrictions , the company did not guarantee that it would not scan or monitor the conversations or accounts of U.S.-based users .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ what happens when a user in the United States converses across borders with a user in China—or when a Chinese citizen based in Vietnam uses Zoom for academic purposes and discusses the Tiananmen massacre in their native Mandarin .
In fact , Zoom can ’ t offer meaningful reassurance on these issues .
That ’ s because the company , which employs at least 700 engineers in China through various subsidiaries , is subject to truly sweeping Chinese surveillance laws .
Internet companies are under particular pressure from the authorities in China ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ making sure that content avoids crossing the government ’ s lines .
Zoom ’ s own filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission acknowledge that its Chinese employees “ could expose us to market scrutiny regarding the integrity of our solution or data security features.
” That ’ s an understatement .
The CCP so dominates Chinese-based technology companies that the Chinese app TikTok ’ s algorithms privilege videos that praise President Xi Jinping and the Chinese government in deciding what to promote to the app ’ s users in the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Chinese employees is subject to China ’ s National Intelligence Law , which states that “ any organization or citizen shall support , assist with , and collaborate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law ” and keep any assistance confidential .
In the United States , the relationship between private firms and the national security establishment is hardly flawless .
But in general , Americans expect that companies will adhere to free expression , the rule of law , basic protections involving searches and seizures , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ excesses occur , they can be openly litigated and scrutinized by an uncensored press .
In China , the primary expectation is total compliance with the CCP , without the slightest regard for privacy protections .
Even the savviest attorneys will be hard-pressed to reconcile systems of laws that are inherently incompatible .
This isn ’ t a hypothetical challenge .
Zoom has admitted that the Chinese government asked it to terminate the activist accounts linked to the Tiananmen commemorations .
So one has to ask : What else has the CCP asked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t yet publicly admitted ?
Who ’ s to say that the Chinese government—which has long engaged in aggressive economic espionage against American companies—hasn ’ t tasked Zoom employees with monitoring sensitive business conversations for valuable insights ?
Or that a Chinese official hasn ’ t threatened an engineer ’ s family with legal jeopardy if the employee doesn ’ t build a backdoor into Zoom ’ s platform ?
The magnitude of the problem that such security breaches would pose is hard to overstate .
The pandemic has been a jackpot for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the intuitive videoconferencing service to keep in touch with family , speed date , teach students , broadcast religious services , conduct business , and even hold cabinet meetings .
In December 2019 , Zoom had 10 million daily meeting participants .
By April 2020 , that number had spiked to 300 million .
Due to security concerns , organizations such as SpaceX , NASA , Apple , and Google have banned employees from using Zoom for work purposes .
The U.S. Senate , the Department of Defense , and the German @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But there ’ s no avoiding the fact that an enormous amount of the world ’ s interaction is occurring on a platform that , as the New York Times ’ Paul Mozur wrote , is caught “ between the principles of free speech and the power of China ’ s huge censorship machine.
” Back in March , I warned that Zoom was caught in an impossible position and might end up exposing its users .
Unfortunately , it appears that this is exactly what transpired .
Zoom isn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its iPhones in China and sells more iPhones there than anywhere else—recently bowed to CCP requests to remove a popular podcast app from its App Store .
Many tech firms , finding themselves caught between the imperatives of two very different systems , have either been forced out of China or simply chosen not to operate there at all .
As companies such as Google , Netflix , Twitter , GitHub , and Facebook can all attest , the technical , legal , and moral challenges of serving users in the United States @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the technical challenges of operationalizing a “ one company , two systems ” model .
Judging from the actions Zoom has taken , there are two principal ways the company could have built tools to allow it to comply with China ’ s censorship laws relating to sensitive topics .
Those tools either track and detect violating accounts , or they track and detect violating content ( or some combination of both ) .
Enforcing censorship laws by tracking violating accounts would require Zoom to collect and compile information on the account owner @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likelihood of that owner violating Chinese censorship laws .
Enforcing these laws by tracking violating content would require Zoom to train a system , commonly referred to as a “ classifier , ” that allows it to automatically scan ongoing conversations and decipher what is being shown and said .
Even if Zoom develops a workable policy on such cases—a big “ if , ” given the inherent ambiguities—any automated enforcement system is bound to encounter edge cases that will lead it to ensnare content it shouldn ’ t .
It is also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with China ’ s local laws and government requests if it fulfill its most recent promise of making end-to-end encryption available for all users globally .
Then there are the legal obstacles .
Under international law , litigants can use the legal discovery process to compel a foreign corporation to produce information through its domestic affiliates , unless those affiliates have a substantially independent corporate governance structure .
This means that if Zoom ’ s subsidiaries in China are indeed controlled by Zoom , the Chinese government or any Chinese entity could compel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ information under the guise of a legal discovery request—assuming it chose not to use its authority to do so in secrecy under its National Intelligence Law .
In theory , a U.S. district court might not enforce such a discovery request , but historically U.S. courts have ignored local “ blocking ” statutes to obtain the documents .
These legal intricacies can prove sticky enough when the legal systems in question are those of two democracies that respect individual liberties and the rule of law .
The difficulties grow immeasurably when one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There are also major ethical problems .
It is becoming far harder for Silicon Valley idealists to reconcile—internally and externally—the conviction that their companies have company values with the idea that the products those companies make are value-agnostic .
For instance , Christian media reported that Chinese Christians who joined a Sunday worship service via Zoom were later arrested by the CCP .
How long will Zoom ’ s American employees be content to cite compliance with “ local laws ” as their platforms are used to not only suppress free speech but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and minorities ?
At Google , the answer was “ not long.
” Many of the company ’ s own employees turned against Project Dragonfly in an open letter to management .
Other firms could soon face similar quandaries .
Amazon and Microsoft each operate cloud storage services in China .
What would happen if the CCP pressured Microsoft to turn over information on a Chinese dissident if it wanted to keep operating in China ?
Ever since 2004 , when Yahoo divulged to the Chinese government the email account of a newspaper @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a decade of forced labor—this dilemma has haunted Silicon Valley .
And what would happen if the CCP requested information on a user outside of China under the same conditions ?
Finally , the most harmful weakness of “ one company , two systems ” is also the most overlooked : geopolitics .
Zoom ’ s recent takedowns are likely to intensify a broader reckoning within the technology industry , which is being caused not by market pressures but by strategic pressures .
The coronavirus pandemic has amplified and accelerated the thrum @ @ @ @ @ @ @ autocratic China and a democratic United States .
That struggle features ambiguous gray-zone attacks that are both perpetual and strategically impactful , yet never quite meet conventional thresholds of war .
It may well be decided by which country better harnesses the forces of technological innovation .
In this deepening conflict , major tech firms are essentially dual-use assets , in the sense that their civilian technologies can be repurposed as powerful weapons of asymmetric warfare .
As Apple CEO Tim Cook remarked , “ scraps of data … each one harmless enough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and synthesized to derive and develop to algorithms that “ know you better than you may know yourself.
” Different applications of dual-use technologies , from facial recognition to 5G networking , are already being weaponized as tools of political control and geopolitical influence by the Chinese state .
As former Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg summed it up , “ China is using technology for the perfection of dictatorship.
” Governments are beginning to eye global technology companies as proxies—and potential targets—of their respective national power ; politicians are talking about artificial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the atomic bomb .
Sooner or later , U.S. firms will find it untenable to remain neutral in this contest—let alone to accommodate autocrats in Beijing—while also retaining good relations with Washington .
American policymakers will increasingly view U.S. companies that accommodate or assist the CCP as unpatriotic and corrosive to national security interests .
For many firms in Silicon Valley , this will be a rude shock .
For years , major firms have been treated as quasi-sovereigns .
Denmark appointed the world ’ s first official ambassador to the tech industry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ neutral digital Switzerland ” and encouraged other companies to do the same .
The perception is , as Palantir CEO Alex Karp wrote , “ The U.S. Marine serves ; the Silicon Valley executives walk.
” Yet with Chinese tech titans , such as Huawei and Baidu , supporting the CCP ’ s revisionist agenda , American policymakers won ’ t have much tolerance for U.S. firms remaining nonaligned .
The choice , as Republican Sen. Josh Hawley wrote earlier this month , is between “ American principles and free-speech , or short-term @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s conclusion reflects the growing bipartisan mood among Washington policymakers and should be a wake-up call to the rest of us in Silicon Valley : “ It is time for you to pick a side.
” Decoupling is increasingly accepted as the direction that trade policies are headed on both sides of the Pacific .
With U.S.-China relations currently more volatile than at any time since Tiananmen , it is an open question whether this decoupling will be slow and soft or hard and fast .
American companies should prepare for what was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decoupling in technology verticals deemed vital to national security .
Ultimately , Silicon Valley executives may not be interested in getting involved in a geopolitical contest , but the underlying divergent interests of the United States and China are rapidly ensuring this geopolitical contest is interested in Silicon Valley .
Time is running short for firms to decide where they stand .

If there is a silver lining to the coronavirus, it is that Americans are finally alert to the threat that an ambitious, authoritarian China poses. Polling shows that the U.S. public has become significantly more hawkish on China since the crisis began; a bipartisan consensus is coalescing around the idea that the Chinese Communist Party’s aims and values are incompatible with America’s. Unfortunately, some of the United States’ major tech companies are still trying to sit on an increasingly uncomfortable fence.
If there is a silver lining to the coronavirus, it is that Americans are finally alert to the threat that an ambitious, authoritarian China poses. Polling shows that the U.S. public has become significantly more hawkish on China since the crisis began; a bipartisan consensus is coalescing around the idea that the Chinese Communist Party’s aims and values are incompatible with America’s. Unfortunately, some of the United States’ major tech companies are still trying to sit on an increasingly uncomfortable fence.
I know this issue well, because for several years I served as a policy advisor at Google. There, I learned that a company’s policies, like a society’s laws, reflect its most basic values. The problem today is that tech companies that are based in the United States but also operate in China are struggling to comply with values that are fundamentally at odds.
In the U.S. system, laws are legitimate insofar as they are conceived by what Jean-Jacques Rousseau called “the general will” of the people, expressed through the workings of a democratic political system. Laws that are arbitrary or imposed by the will of a single person of authority are illegitimate. Yet the Chinese system rests on the idea that the sole source of legitimacy is the CCP, which represents—it claims—the will of the Chinese nation in its entirety and violently suppresses challenges to its authority. This sharp tension between the political value systems that prevail in the two countries is a primary cause of the spiraling bilateral competition. Tech companies confront this tension when they are tasked to comply with Chinese laws, by enabling the arrest of dissidents for “subversion of state power” or the mass surveillance of Uighurs, which are rightly viewed by most Americans as immoral and illegitimate.
The natural response of most companies, which seek to maximize profits by operating in the world’s two largest national markets simultaneously, is to straddle this divide. Think of this approach as “one company, two systems.” I saw this well-intentioned strategy up close, through my brief exposure to Project Dragonfly, a since-shuttered effort to make a version of Google’s search engine available behind China’s so-called Great Firewall by conforming search results to CCP standards. The experience left me deeply convinced that the “one company, two systems” model does not work. Tailoring one’s principles to make them compatible with the CCP’s dictates makes them systemically incompatible with American values.
This contradiction was on display on June 3. Several hundred American and Chinese activists were commemorating the next day’s 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre when their Zoom videoconference cut out. The glitch, it turned out, was not technical but ideological. The same week, Zoom shut down the account of the California-based dissident Zhou Fengsuo. Elizabeth Economy, a prominent China scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, then revealed that she, too, had been dropped from a Zoom seminar as she discussed Tiananmen Square, China’s brutal oppression of its Uighur minority, and other taboo topics. “We all joked about it,” she wrote, “but maybe there was no joke to be had.” It certainly appears that the takedowns amounted to a CCP attempt at extraterritorial censorship—“no joke” indeed.
Zoom, a California-based videoconferencing company whose profile has soared during the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, responded that the takedowns resulted only from the company’s obligation “to comply with local laws”—China’s laws, in this case. It apologized for impacting users outside of China, reinstated the accounts of U.S.-based activists, and pledged not to censor non-Chinese accounts.
Zoom also says that it is developing technology “to remove or block at the participant level based on geography.” In other words, Zoom is rolling out a “one company, two systems” model—participants in China would be subject to censorship, but those outside of China would not.
The flaws in this model are already apparent. While Zoom assured users in the United States that they would not be penalized for violating Chinese speech restrictions, the company did not guarantee that it would not scan or monitor the conversations or accounts of U.S.-based users. Zoom also left unaddressed the question of what happens when a user in the United States converses across borders with a user in China—or when a Chinese citizen based in Vietnam uses Zoom for academic purposes and discusses the Tiananmen massacre in their native Mandarin.
In fact, Zoom can’t offer meaningful reassurance on these issues. That’s because the company, which employs at least 700 engineers in China through various subsidiaries, is subject to truly sweeping Chinese surveillance laws. Internet companies are under particular pressure from the authorities in China; huge amounts of labor are dedicated to making sure that content avoids crossing the government’s lines. Zoom’s own filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission acknowledge that its Chinese employees “could expose us to market scrutiny regarding the integrity of our solution or data security features.” That’s an understatement. The CCP so dominates Chinese-based technology companies that the Chinese app TikTok’s algorithms privilege videos that praise President Xi Jinping and the Chinese government in deciding what to promote to the app’s users in the United States. Similarly, each of Zoom’s Chinese employees is subject to China’s National Intelligence Law, which states that “any organization or citizen shall support, assist with, and collaborate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law” and keep any assistance confidential.
In the United States, the relationship between private firms and the national security establishment is hardly flawless. But in general, Americans expect that companies will adhere to free expression, the rule of law, basic protections involving searches and seizures, and the requirements of due process. When excesses occur, they can be openly litigated and scrutinized by an uncensored press. In China, the primary expectation is total compliance with the CCP, without the slightest regard for privacy protections. Even the savviest attorneys will be hard-pressed to reconcile systems of laws that are inherently incompatible.
This isn’t a hypothetical challenge. Zoom has admitted that the Chinese government asked it to terminate the activist accounts linked to the Tiananmen commemorations. So one has to ask: What else has the CCP asked Zoom to do that Zoom hasn’t yet publicly admitted? Who’s to say that the Chinese government—which has long engaged in aggressive economic espionage against American companies—hasn’t tasked Zoom employees with monitoring sensitive business conversations for valuable insights? Or that a Chinese official hasn’t threatened an engineer’s family with legal jeopardy if the employee doesn’t build a backdoor into Zoom’s platform?
The magnitude of the problem that such security breaches would pose is hard to overstate. The pandemic has been a jackpot for Zoom. Individuals and organizations have turned to the intuitive videoconferencing service to keep in touch with family, speed date, teach students, broadcast religious services, conduct business, and even hold cabinet meetings. In December 2019, Zoom had 10 million daily meeting participants. By April 2020, that number had spiked to 300 million. Due to security concerns, organizations such as SpaceX, NASA, Apple, and Google have banned employees from using Zoom for work purposes. The U.S. Senate, the Department of Defense, and the German government have similarly issued warnings and restrictions. But there’s no avoiding the fact that an enormous amount of the world’s interaction is occurring on a platform that, as the New York Times’ Paul Mozur wrote, is caught “between the principles of free speech and the power of China’s huge censorship machine.” Back in March, I warned that Zoom was caught in an impossible position and might end up exposing its users. Unfortunately, it appears that this is exactly what transpired.
Zoom isn’t alone in this conundrum. Apple—which manufactures its iPhones in China and sells more iPhones there than anywhere else—recently bowed to CCP requests to remove a popular podcast app from its App Store. Many tech firms, finding themselves caught between the imperatives of two very different systems, have either been forced out of China or simply chosen not to operate there at all. As companies such as Google, Netflix, Twitter, GitHub, and Facebook can all attest, the technical, legal, and moral challenges of serving users in the United States and China simultaneously are substantial.
Consider the technical challenges of operationalizing a “one company, two systems” model. Judging from the actions Zoom has taken, there are two principal ways the company could have built tools to allow it to comply with China’s censorship laws relating to sensitive topics. Those tools either track and detect violating accounts, or they track and detect violating content (or some combination of both). Enforcing censorship laws by tracking violating accounts would require Zoom to collect and compile information on the account owner in order to determine the history and likelihood of that owner violating Chinese censorship laws. Enforcing these laws by tracking violating content would require Zoom to train a system, commonly referred to as a “classifier,” that allows it to automatically scan ongoing conversations and decipher what is being shown and said. Even if Zoom develops a workable policy on such cases—a big “if,” given the inherent ambiguities—any automated enforcement system is bound to encounter edge cases that will lead it to ensnare content it shouldn’t. It is also unclear how it intends to continue complying with China’s local laws and government requests if it fulfill its most recent promise of making end-to-end encryption available for all users globally.
Then there are the legal obstacles. Under international law, litigants can use the legal discovery process to compel a foreign corporation to produce information through its domestic affiliates, unless those affiliates have a substantially independent corporate governance structure. This means that if Zoom’s subsidiaries in China are indeed controlled by Zoom, the Chinese government or any Chinese entity could compel the U.S.-based parent company to hand over information under the guise of a legal discovery request—assuming it chose not to use its authority to do so in secrecy under its National Intelligence Law. In theory, a U.S. district court might not enforce such a discovery request, but historically U.S. courts have ignored local “blocking” statutes to obtain the documents. These legal intricacies can prove sticky enough when the legal systems in question are those of two democracies that respect individual liberties and the rule of law. The difficulties grow immeasurably when one of the countries is a Leninist party-state.
There are also major ethical problems. It is becoming far harder for Silicon Valley idealists to reconcile—internally and externally—the conviction that their companies have company values with the idea that the products those companies make are value-agnostic. For instance, Christian media reported that Chinese Christians who joined a Sunday worship service via Zoom were later arrested by the CCP. How long will Zoom’s American employees be content to cite compliance with “local laws” as their platforms are used to not only suppress free speech but also to enable the oppression of dissidents and minorities?
At Google, the answer was “not long.” Many of the company’s own employees turned against Project Dragonfly in an open letter to management.
Other firms could soon face similar quandaries. Amazon and Microsoft each operate cloud storage services in China. What would happen if the CCP pressured Microsoft to turn over information on a Chinese dissident if it wanted to keep operating in China? Ever since 2004, when Yahoo divulged to the Chinese government the email account of a newspaper editor named Shi Tao—who was subsequently sentenced to a decade of forced labor—this dilemma has haunted Silicon Valley. And what would happen if the CCP requested information on a user outside of China under the same conditions?
Finally, the most harmful weakness of “one company, two systems” is also the most overlooked: geopolitics. Zoom’s recent takedowns are likely to intensify a broader reckoning within the technology industry, which is being caused not by market pressures but by strategic pressures. The coronavirus pandemic has amplified and accelerated the thrum of a new cold war between an autocratic China and a democratic United States. That struggle features ambiguous gray-zone attacks that are both perpetual and strategically impactful, yet never quite meet conventional thresholds of war. It may well be decided by which country better harnesses the forces of technological innovation.
In this deepening conflict, major tech firms are essentially dual-use assets, in the sense that their civilian technologies can be repurposed as powerful weapons of asymmetric warfare. As Apple CEO Tim Cook remarked, “scraps of data … each one harmless enough on its own” can be aggregated and synthesized to derive and develop to algorithms that “know you better than you may know yourself.” Different applications of dual-use technologies, from facial recognition to 5G networking, are already being weaponized as tools of political control and geopolitical influence by the Chinese state. As former Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg summed it up, “China is using technology for the perfection of dictatorship.”
Governments are beginning to eye global technology companies as proxies—and potential targets—of their respective national power; politicians are talking about artificial intelligence the way they once spoke of the atomic bomb. Sooner or later, U.S. firms will find it untenable to remain neutral in this contest—let alone to accommodate autocrats in Beijing—while also retaining good relations with Washington. American policymakers will increasingly view U.S. companies that accommodate or assist the CCP as unpatriotic and corrosive to national security interests.
For many firms in Silicon Valley, this will be a rude shock. For years, major firms have been treated as quasi-sovereigns. Denmark appointed the world’s first official ambassador to the tech industry; Microsoft has proclaimed itself a “neutral digital Switzerland” and encouraged other companies to do the same. The perception is, as Palantir CEO Alex Karp wrote, “The U.S. Marine serves; the Silicon Valley executives walk.” Yet with Chinese tech titans, such as Huawei and Baidu, supporting the CCP’s revisionist agenda, American policymakers won’t have much tolerance for U.S. firms remaining nonaligned. The choice, as Republican Sen. Josh Hawley wrote earlier this month, is between “American principles and free-speech, or short-term global profits and censorship.” Hawley’s conclusion reflects the growing bipartisan mood among Washington policymakers and should be a wake-up call to the rest of us in Silicon Valley: “It is time for you to pick a side.”
Decoupling is increasingly accepted as the direction that trade policies are headed on both sides of the Pacific. With U.S.-China relations currently more volatile than at any time since Tiananmen, it is an open question whether this decoupling will be slow and soft or hard and fast. American companies should prepare for what was once unthinkable: a sudden, hard decoupling in technology verticals deemed vital to national security. Ultimately, Silicon Valley executives may not be interested in getting involved in a geopolitical contest, but the underlying divergent interests of the United States and China are rapidly ensuring this geopolitical contest is interested in Silicon Valley. Time is running short for firms to decide where they stand.


foreignpolicy--2020-06-22--India Has Bungled Its Coronavirus Crisis

India has crossed two bleak landmarks in its battle against the coronavirus .
The country has now reached over 400,000 infections , making it the fourth-worst-hit country in the world , overtaking Britain , Spain , and Italy .
But it ’ s also lifted its 76-day lockdown and allowed workplaces , places of worship , hotels , and restaurants to reopen .
The grim dichotomy indicates India ’ s bungling response to the coronavirus , one that is sending the country hurtling toward a catastrophic health crisis .
New cases are rising unabated , growing at a faster rate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of beds and ventilators , testing remains low ; and the geographical spread of the virus is increasing , reaching new areas in rural India .
And yet , with its economy reeling under losses caused by the lockdown—its central bank , the Reserve Bank of India , has already estimated that this year will see negative growth—the country is opening up in order to try to stave off economic disaster .
In the process , it is walking head-on into a pandemic at its peak .
The crisis is already in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , New Delhi and Mumbai , which combined account for around a third of India ’ s total cases .
Hospitals are already full , and critical patients with a range of conditions being turned away .
Earlier this month , in Delhi ’ s suburb of Noida , an eight-month-pregnant woman died in an ambulance after six hospitals refused to admit her despite a 13-hour-long hunt .
In Mumbai , a 68-year-old COVID-19 patient died because health authorities could not arrange a ventilator for her , despite repeated pleas by her relatives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grim , yet it is only likely to get worse .
Delhi alone , its Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said last week , will have 550,000 cases by the end of next month , while another estimate sees a million cases nationwide by then .
But for many public health experts , little of this is surprising .
“ The pandemic is only exposing the systemic rot that we had been sweeping under the carpet all these years , ” said Oommen John , a senior research fellow at the George Institute @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who previously worked with the World Health Organization .
India ’ s poorly funded health care system—the government shells out less than 1.3 percent of GDP on health care each year—means that the country faces devastating shortages even in the normal course of things .
For every 1,000 people , the country has only 0.9 physicians and 1.7 nurses , while the global average is 1.6 doctors and 3.8 nurses .
This underfunding has often led to preventable disasters .
In 2017 , over 60 children , many of them infants , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hospital in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh after the facility ’ s oxygen supply ran out .
In the same year , over 180 children died in a state-run hospital in Maharashtra due to the lack of oxygen supply and ventilators .
However , beyond temporary , fleeting moments of outrage , health care has seldom attracted too much attention .
Even when it does , the Indian state has often veered toward limiting its own role and increasing the role of the private sector .
For instance , in the country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year , Prime Minister Narendra Modi ’ s government announced plans to rope in private players to design , build , and operate medical colleges and hospitals in each of the country ’ s 733 districts .
This reliance on private capital for providing health care is not new .
Recent estimates by a group of health researchers from Princeton University and the Center for Disease Dynamics , Economics and Policy found that India has 69,265 hospitals of which over 43,000 are privately owned and fewer than 26,000 are owned by the government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ subsidized , are often poorly funded and mismanaged .
As a result , many patients flock to private health care .
This has made private health care a flourishing business .
The government estimates the sector will be worth $ 372 billion by 2022 .
Oommen , the George Institute researcher , believes that even the little funding that health care has received has been misdirected .
“ We needed to build a strong , robust primary health care network around the country so that health care is accessible to all , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ network would have acted as a community surveillance system during the current pandemic .
“ Instead , consecutive governments have only invested in big-ticket hospitals , forcing people to come to a hospital even for minor ailments , rather than being able to go to local clinics , ” he added .
Private health care systems have been reluctant to come to the government ’ s aid in dealing with the surge , compounding the problem .
A doctor in one of Mumbai ’ s top private hospitals said that early on in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down due to the spread of infection within hospital staff .
At least two major private hospitals and many smaller facilities had to shut down in the city in April after large numbers of their employees tested positive for COVID-19 .
Twenty-eight-year-old Hemant Mehta ( a pseudonym used on request ) learned about this the hard way .
When his 77-year-old grandmother started developing COVID-19 symptoms , including dry cough and breathlessness , last week , the Mumbai businessman immediately called some of the most expensive private hospitals in the city .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all .
At that point , all we wanted was medical attention for my grandma , ” he said .
He spent the day calling half a dozen hospitals .
All of them declined to take in his grandmother , saying they had no beds .
Finally , a small private hospital not far from his house in Mumbai ’ s wealthy Juhu neighborhood agreed to admit her .
“ But when we got there , we realized the hospital was in such a bad state—the staff seemed untrained and there was no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to administer oxygen to my grandma , ” he said .
Less than 24 hours later , she was dead .
Her test results , received by the family only after her death , showed that she had tested positive for COVID-19 .
To ensure that private hospitals don ’ t refuse patients , governments across India have adopted punitive measures .
In Mumbai , authorities have taken over 80 percent of beds in all private hospitals .
Authorities in Delhi announced a similar move on Sunday .
These moves , however , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the two hot spots of Mumbai and Delhi show the deep trouble that these two cities are in .
As of Sunday , Mumbai , with 55,357 cases , had only 17 intensive care unit beds and 12 ventilators available , while Delhi , with over 41,000 infections , had only 26 ventilators and 62 ICU beds available .
And as figures grow , they may represent only the tip of the iceberg , given the relatively low levels of testing .
The global online database Our World In Data shows that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people , as compared to 111.84 tests in Russia and 79.91 in Italy .
Laboratories across the country are swamped with samples , leading to massive delays in patients getting their test results .
At a government hospital in central New Delhi , a government doctor , on condition of anonymity , said that such delays only contribute to the spread of the infection .
“ This week , we saw a patient with some symptoms who had been waiting for 10 days for his COVID-19 test results , ” she said , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This , experts say , is leading to many unknowing carriers of the virus walking around undetected .
A new survey report released by the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research indicated that 0.73 percent of the population in 83 sample districts had shown a history of being infected with COVID-19 .
If extrapolated nationwide , this figure could mean as many as 9 million infected cases so far , despite the official tally only being just under 400,000 infections .
This , experts say , indicates the lack of adequate testing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
One reason behind local governments not testing enough may be to control panic , and to target resources only toward those who are severely infected , ” said Oommen Kurian , a senior fellow and head of the health initiative at the Observer Research Foundation , a New Delhi-based think tank .
Such an approach , he added , might be counterproductive : “ In some ways , you are solving the smaller problem today but also making the big problem even bigger in the immediate future.
” The lack of testing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the actual deaths due to the virus—so far , India has officially recorded around 13,000 deaths , a relatively low figure compared to over 41,000 deaths in the United Kingdom and over 27,000 deaths in Spain , despite lower number of infections than India .
“ Since many are not able to access tests here , there will be many who will die of the virus without being testing .
These will not be counted as deaths due to COVID-19 , ” said Oommen , the medical researcher .
But even as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has another medical crisis coming its way .
Combining with the inevitable peak of coronavirus cases is the fear that hospitals will see a surge in admissions through the next three months , when the country ’ s monsoons bring the annual upswing of such diseases as malaria and dengue .
In 2019 , the country saw over 334,000 cases of malaria and over 136,000 cases of dengue .
Kurian said that the country ’ s health systems will be tested : “ There will be even more competition for the few beds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ symptoms of many of these diseases are also similar to COVID and hence , it is going to be a complex situation.
” In Mumbai , authorities are worried .
Already , social media timelines in the city are filled with urgent appeals from across society—with everyone expressing their concerns , from overworked doctors to patients inside hospitals surrounded by dead bodies to relatives begging for medical care .
A senior city government official , speaking on condition of anonymity , called it a “ very bleak ” situation .
“ For us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Any bigger a wave and we will be in deep , deep trouble .
”

India has crossed two bleak landmarks in its battle against the coronavirus.
India has crossed two bleak landmarks in its battle against the coronavirus.
The country has now reached over 400,000 infections, making it the fourth-worst-hit country in the world, overtaking Britain, Spain, and Italy. But it’s also lifted its 76-day lockdown and allowed workplaces, places of worship, hotels, and restaurants to reopen.
The grim dichotomy indicates India’s bungling response to the coronavirus, one that is sending the country hurtling toward a catastrophic health crisis.
New cases are rising unabated, growing at a faster rate than ever before; hospitals are running out of beds and ventilators, testing remains low; and the geographical spread of the virus is increasing, reaching new areas in rural India. And yet, with its economy reeling under losses caused by the lockdown—its central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, has already estimated that this year will see negative growth—the country is opening up in order to try to stave off economic disaster. In the process, it is walking head-on into a pandemic at its peak.
The crisis is already in full display in its top two cities, New Delhi and Mumbai, which combined account for around a third of India’s total cases.
Hospitals are already full, and critical patients with a range of conditions being turned away. Earlier this month, in Delhi’s suburb of Noida, an eight-month-pregnant woman died in an ambulance after six hospitals refused to admit her despite a 13-hour-long hunt. In Mumbai, a 68-year-old COVID-19 patient died because health authorities could not arrange a ventilator for her, despite repeated pleas by her relatives for two days.
The stories are grim, yet it is only likely to get worse.
Delhi alone, its Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said last week, will have 550,000 cases by the end of next month, while another estimate sees a million cases nationwide by then.
But for many public health experts, little of this is surprising.
“The pandemic is only exposing the systemic rot that we had been sweeping under the carpet all these years,” said Oommen John, a senior research fellow at the George Institute, a Sydney-based global medical research center, who previously worked with the World Health Organization.
India’s poorly funded health care system—the government shells out less than 1.3 percent of GDP on health care each year—means that the country faces devastating shortages even in the normal course of things.
For every 1,000 people, the country has only 0.9 physicians and 1.7 nurses, while the global average is 1.6 doctors and 3.8 nurses.
This underfunding has often led to preventable disasters. In 2017, over 60 children, many of them infants, died over five days at a government-run hospital in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh after the facility’s oxygen supply ran out. In the same year, over 180 children died in a state-run hospital in Maharashtra due to the lack of oxygen supply and ventilators.
However, beyond temporary, fleeting moments of outrage, health care has seldom attracted too much attention.
Even when it does, the Indian state has often veered toward limiting its own role and increasing the role of the private sector. For instance, in the country’s annual budget presented earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government announced plans to rope in private players to design, build, and operate medical colleges and hospitals in each of the country’s 733 districts. This reliance on private capital for providing health care is not new.
Recent estimates by a group of health researchers from Princeton University and the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy found that India has 69,265 hospitals of which over 43,000 are privately owned and fewer than 26,000 are owned by the government. The state-owned facilities, though highly subsidized, are often poorly funded and mismanaged. As a result, many patients flock to private health care. This has made private health care a flourishing business. The government estimates the sector will be worth $372 billion by 2022.
Oommen, the George Institute researcher, believes that even the little funding that health care has received has been misdirected. “We needed to build a strong, robust primary health care network around the country so that health care is accessible to all,” he said, adding that such a network would have acted as a community surveillance system during the current pandemic.
“Instead, consecutive governments have only invested in big-ticket hospitals, forcing people to come to a hospital even for minor ailments, rather than being able to go to local clinics,” he added.
Private health care systems have been reluctant to come to the government’s aid in dealing with the surge, compounding the problem. A doctor in one of Mumbai’s top private hospitals said that early on in the pandemic, hospitals feared being shut down due to the spread of infection within hospital staff. At least two major private hospitals and many smaller facilities had to shut down in the city in April after large numbers of their employees tested positive for COVID-19.
Twenty-eight-year-old Hemant Mehta (a pseudonym used on request) learned about this the hard way.
When his 77-year-old grandmother started developing COVID-19 symptoms, including dry cough and breathlessness, last week, the Mumbai businessman immediately called some of the most expensive private hospitals in the city.
“We did not mind spending money at all. At that point, all we wanted was medical attention for my grandma,” he said.
He spent the day calling half a dozen hospitals. All of them declined to take in his grandmother, saying they had no beds.
Finally, a small private hospital not far from his house in Mumbai’s wealthy Juhu neighborhood agreed to admit her. “But when we got there, we realized the hospital was in such a bad state—the staff seemed untrained and there was no doctor around. The nurses were struggling to administer oxygen to my grandma,” he said.
Less than 24 hours later, she was dead. Her test results, received by the family only after her death, showed that she had tested positive for COVID-19.
To ensure that private hospitals don’t refuse patients, governments across India have adopted punitive measures. In Mumbai, authorities have taken over 80 percent of beds in all private hospitals. Authorities in Delhi announced a similar move on Sunday.
These moves, however, might be far from enough.
Data from the two hot spots of Mumbai and Delhi show the deep trouble that these two cities are in.
As of June 14, Mumbai, with 55,357 cases, had only 17 intensive care unit beds and 12 ventilators available, while Delhi, with over 41,000 infections, had only 26 ventilators and 62 ICU beds available.
And as figures grow, they may represent only the tip of the iceberg, given the relatively low levels of testing. The global online database Our World In Data shows that India has performed 4.66 tests per 1,000 people, as compared to 111.84 tests in Russia and 79.91 in Italy.
Laboratories across the country are swamped with samples, leading to massive delays in patients getting their test results. At a government hospital in central New Delhi, a government doctor, on condition of anonymity, said that such delays only contribute to the spread of the infection.
“This week, we saw a patient with some symptoms who had been waiting for 10 days for his COVID-19 test results,” she said, adding that this was a common occurrence.
This, experts say, is leading to many unknowing carriers of the virus walking around undetected.
A new survey report released by the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research indicated that 0.73 percent of the population in 83 sample districts had shown a history of being infected with COVID-19. If extrapolated nationwide, this figure could mean as many as 9 million infected cases so far, despite the official tally only being just under 400,000 infections. This, experts say, indicates the lack of adequate testing.
“The testing numbers have plateaued. One reason behind local governments not testing enough may be to control panic, and to target resources only toward those who are severely infected,” said Oommen Kurian, a senior fellow and head of the health initiative at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank.
Such an approach, he added, might be counterproductive: “In some ways, you are solving the smaller problem today but also making the big problem even bigger in the immediate future.”
The lack of testing is also making it difficult to ascertain to the actual deaths due to the virus—so far, India has officially recorded around 13,000 deaths, a relatively low figure compared to over 41,000 deaths in the United Kingdom and over 27,000 deaths in Spain, despite lower number of infections than India. “Since many are not able to access tests here, there will be many who will die of the virus without being tested. These will not be counted as deaths due to COVID-19,” said Oommen, the medical researcher.
But even as it braces for the peak, India has another medical crisis coming its way.
Combining with the inevitable peak of coronavirus cases is the fear that hospitals will see a surge in admissions through the next three months, when the country’s monsoons bring the annual upswing of such diseases as malaria and dengue. In 2019, the country saw over 334,000 cases of malaria and over 136,000 cases of dengue.
Kurian said that the country’s health systems will be tested: “There will be even more competition for the few beds that we have. Plus, the symptoms of many of these diseases are also similar to COVID and hence, it is going to be a complex situation.”
In Mumbai, authorities are worried. Already, social media timelines in the city are filled with urgent appeals from across society—with everyone expressing their concerns, from overworked doctors to patients inside hospitals surrounded by dead bodies to relatives begging for medical care.
A senior city government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, called it a “very bleak” situation.
“For us, we hope this is the peak. Any bigger a wave and we will be in deep, deep trouble.”


foreignpolicy--2020-06-22--Germany Is Finally Ready to Spend

Germany Is Finally Ready to Spend

Germany ’ s fiscal prudence hasn ’ t made the country popular .
Over the past several years , economists have written countless op-eds blaming Germans for sucking demand out of the world economy .
For example , the economist Paul Krugman has argued that “ the whole world has a Germany problem.
” The combination of Berlin ’ s “ ruinous obsession ” with balanced budgets and its considerable exports creates excess savings that need to be invested abroad .
That , in turn , creates large trade imbalances with nations that take in the investments .
Debtor countries @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have thus argued that Berlin needs to loosen its purse strings to address global economic imbalances .
Now , if COVID-19 has done any good , it is that it has put such calls on standby .
On June 3 , German Chancellor Angela Merkel ’ s coalition government presented a 130-billion-euro ( $ 145 billion ) fiscal stimulus package worth 4 percent of German gross domestic product over two years .
Coming on top of direct transfers to companies and employees starting during the lockdown , Germany ’ s fiscal response to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent of GDP .
Berlin is finally spending .
Compare Merkel ’ s response this time to her policies during the 2008-2009 financial crisis .
In those years , she reluctantly accepted the need for stimulus of under 2 percent of GDP over two years only after the economy had been contracting for three consecutive quarters .
In the COVID-19 crisis , by contrast , Berlin has already put forward the second fiscal plan just three months after the first German COVID-19 fatality .
Beyond attempting to right the German economy , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s EU partners .
To see how , consider not only the size but also the composition of Berlin ’ s latest national fiscal stimulus package .
First , it dwarfs other euro area countries ’ plans .
France ’ s fiscal measures to date amount to mere 3.6 percent of GDP by comparison .
Further , with its focus on consumption incentives and government spending , the German stimulus will have knock-on effects on imports from other European countries .
If German households , corporations , and the public sector buy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also increase .
When the EU ’ s largest economy is spending big , not only German boats are lifted .
Finland ’ s finance minister , for one , has noted that Helsinki should be “ very grateful ” for Germany ’ s national fiscal stimulus plan .
“ This sacrifice by German taxpayers will help us incredibly much , ” the minister said this month .
What ’ s more , as Berlin taps into debt markets , it will also make it easier for the European Central Bank ( ECB @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s most indebted members .
The reason is that the ECB is required to balance its asset purchases of government bonds among the 19 member states of the currency union .
If there are more German treasuries on the market , it is easier for the ECB to buy treasuries from other nations .
By spurring imports into Germany and boosting investments , Merkel ’ s stimulus package is also a start to correct some long-standing economic imbalances within the EU .
The flip side of Germany ’ s excess savings and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Washington and Paris is weak consumption and chronic underinvestment .
Since the 2000s , investment by the public and the corporate sector as a percentage of GDP has fallen and been much below other eurozone countries .
The fiscal stimulus tries to tackle this structural problem .
On the federal level , the plan outlines a public investment initiative to help Germany transition to a more climate-friendly economy , improve its health and education infrastructure , and even spur research in areas from artificial intelligence to quantum computing .
At the subfederal level @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to public investment by taking on the provision of more social benefits that had been paid by the municipalities .
This frees up much needed fiscal space in poorer regions that have put off investments in the past .
Berlin ’ s investment priorities are aligned with the EU ’ s strategic sovereignty and climate agenda .
Berlin aims to spend more than 7 billion euros ( $ 8 billion ) on fifth-generation telecommunications infrastructure and research alone .
Another 9 billion euros ( $ 10 billion ) is earmarked to fund a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of that slated for investment abroad .
The plan also lifts caps on subsidies for solar energy and increased funding to upgrade shipping of liquefied natural gas .
Other priorities are cybersecurity , health , and armaments procurement .
Finally , the stimulus may foreshadow a broader structural shift away from Berlin ’ s focus on Germany ’ s export-oriented businesses .
Despite some pressure to do so , Merkel did not yield to business demands for a cut to the corporate tax rate .
German corporations are already cash-rich .
Profitability is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The chancellor even stood firm against demands for aid to the auto industry in the form of a scrappage scheme for internal combustion-engine cars .
In 2009 , Berlin helped jump-start car sales by handing out 2,500 euros to buyers that returned their older ones .
Her refusal to repeat the scheme is remarkable .
Auto executives and trade union leaders have German politicians on speed dial .
But environmental concerns , along with a realization that blindly subsidizing Germany Inc. is not the way forward , outweighed vested interests .
That ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Europe .
The move suggested that Germany is slowly pivoting away from its existing economic model , which is heavily focused on cost competition and exports .
And it also helped calm criticism in Europe that Berlin is giving its industry an unfair competitive advantage through generous crisis state-aid measures .
Berlin , in short , is back in the business of economic policymaking .
The government is moving fast and recognizing that a part of the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic has to come via a rebalancing toward internal demand and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the example for Europe , its stimulus spending encourages other member states to meaningfully expand their fiscal efforts too .
The European economy that emerges from the pandemic might be structurally sounder than the one that came before .

Germany’s fiscal prudence hasn’t made the country popular. Over the past several years, economists have written countless op-eds blaming Germans for sucking demand out of the world economy. For example, the economist Paul Krugman has argued that “the whole world has a Germany problem .” The combination of Berlin’s “ruinous obsession” with balanced budgets and its considerable exports creates excess savings that need to be invested abroad. That, in turn, creates large trade imbalances with nations that take in the investments. Debtor countries such as France and the United States have thus argued that Berlin needs to loosen its purse strings to address global economic imbalances.
Germany’s fiscal prudence hasn’t made the country popular. Over the past several years, economists have written countless op-eds blaming Germans for sucking demand out of the world economy. For example, the economist Paul Krugman has argued that “the whole world has a Germany problem.” The combination of Berlin’s “ruinous obsession” with balanced budgets and its considerable exports creates excess savings that need to be invested abroad. That, in turn, creates large trade imbalances with nations that take in the investments. Debtor countries such as France and the United States have thus argued that Berlin needs to loosen its purse strings to address global economic imbalances.
Now, if COVID-19 has done any good, it is that it has put such calls on standby. On June 3, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government presented a 130-billion-euro ($145 billion) fiscal stimulus package worth 4 percent of German gross domestic product over two years. Coming on top of direct transfers to companies and employees starting during the lockdown, Germany’s fiscal response to the pandemic amounts to a whopping 13.3 percent of GDP. Berlin is finally spending.
Compare Merkel’s response this time to her policies during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. In those years, she reluctantly accepted the need for stimulus of under 2 percent of GDP over two years only after the economy had been contracting for three consecutive quarters. In the COVID-19 crisis, by contrast, Berlin has already put forward the second fiscal plan just three months after the first German COVID-19 fatality.
Beyond attempting to right the German economy, the stimulus spending will yield spoils for Germany’s EU partners. To see how, consider not only the size but also the composition of Berlin’s latest national fiscal stimulus package. First, it dwarfs other euro area countries’ plans. France’s fiscal measures to date amount to mere 3.6 percent of GDP by comparison.
Further, with its focus on consumption incentives and government spending, the German stimulus will have knock-on effects on imports from other European countries. If German households, corporations, and the public sector buy more, demand for foreign goods will also increase. When the EU’s largest economy is spending big, not only German boats are lifted. Finland’s finance minister, for one, has noted that Helsinki should be “very grateful” for Germany’s national fiscal stimulus plan. “This sacrifice by German taxpayers will help us incredibly much,” the minister said this month.
What’s more, as Berlin taps into debt markets, it will also make it easier for the European Central Bank (ECB) to keep on financing the eurozone’s most indebted members. The reason is that the ECB is required to balance its asset purchases of government bonds among the 19 member states of the currency union. If there are more German treasuries on the market, it is easier for the ECB to buy treasuries from other nations.
By spurring imports into Germany and boosting investments, Merkel’s stimulus package is also a start to correct some long-standing economic imbalances within the EU. The flip side of Germany’s excess savings and export surplus that draws the ire of Washington and Paris is weak consumption and chronic underinvestment. Since the 2000s, investment by the public and the corporate sector as a percentage of GDP has fallen and been much below other eurozone countries.
The fiscal stimulus tries to tackle this structural problem. On the federal level, the plan outlines a public investment initiative to help Germany transition to a more climate-friendly economy, improve its health and education infrastructure, and even spur research in areas from artificial intelligence to quantum computing. At the subfederal level, Berlin aims to alleviate structural bottlenecks to public investment by taking on the provision of more social benefits that had been paid by the municipalities. This frees up much needed fiscal space in poorer regions that have put off investments in the past.
Berlin’s investment priorities are aligned with the EU’s strategic sovereignty and climate agenda. Berlin aims to spend more than 7 billion euros ($8 billion) on fifth-generation telecommunications infrastructure and research alone. Another 9 billion euros ($10 billion) is earmarked to fund a hydrogen industry, with $2 billion of that slated for investment abroad. The plan also lifts caps on subsidies for solar energy and increased funding to upgrade shipping of liquefied natural gas. Other priorities are cybersecurity, health, and armaments procurement.
Finally, the stimulus may foreshadow a broader structural shift away from Berlin’s focus on Germany’s export-oriented businesses. Despite some pressure to do so, Merkel did not yield to business demands for a cut to the corporate tax rate. German corporations are already cash-rich. Profitability is not the problem; underinvestment is.
The chancellor even stood firm against demands for aid to the auto industry in the form of a scrappage scheme for internal combustion-engine cars. In 2009, Berlin helped jump-start car sales by handing out 2,500 euros to buyers that returned their older ones. Her refusal to repeat the scheme is remarkable. Auto executives and trade union leaders have German politicians on speed dial. But environmental concerns, along with a realization that blindly subsidizing Germany Inc. is not the way forward, outweighed vested interests.
That’s good for Germany, but also for Europe. The move suggested that Germany is slowly pivoting away from its existing economic model, which is heavily focused on cost competition and exports. And it also helped calm criticism in Europe that Berlin is giving its industry an unfair competitive advantage through generous crisis state-aid measures.
Berlin, in short, is back in the business of economic policymaking. The government is moving fast and recognizing that a part of the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic has to come via a rebalancing toward internal demand and investment. Since everything Germany does sets the example for Europe, its stimulus spending encourages other member states to meaningfully expand their fiscal efforts too. The European economy that emerges from the pandemic might be structurally sounder than the one that came before.