Foreign Policy

[Commentary] In short, President Donald Trump is very likely a short-timer whose moment on our national stage — even if it lasts four years — will not have warranted the degree to which it has shifted our attention from the important long-term issues that do not go away simply because we stop paying attention to them or, as in the case of climate change or Russian wrongdoing, our president continues to pretend they don’t exist. President Trump will not inadvertently or otherwise damage the fundamentals of what makes America great. Indeed, recent events have restored hope that perhaps his story may one day be seen as proof that the American system works and that bad actors are ultimately brought down.

But we need to tear our eyes away from the spectacle of this clusterf--k of a presidency and its daily dramas and periodically look up and out to our horizons, recognizing that the narcissism aside, there remains real greatness in America that needs tending, planning, and nurturing in the context of the real world — even if, at the moment, there is very little evidence of that greatness at the center of our government.

Americans now find themselves in day four of a real-world experiment: What happens when an elected official with an authoritarian bent and a long-nurtured hatred of media criticism collides with a free press backed by strong democratic institutions?

I have spent years covering the media landscape in China, an illiberal one-party state with notorious and worsening censorship. In White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s hostile remarks, I immediately recognized what I have come to know very well — an explicit government demand for media censorship. I was far from alone in my alarm. The New York Times reported that the “news media world found itself in a state of shock” after the day’s remarks. Social media teemed with jokes at Spicer’s expense, juxtaposing his photo with outlandish claims like “the world is flat.” To some degree, clashing with the press is par for the course for governments and leaders around the world. But the authoritarian government in Beijing has shown how to delegitimize those outlets it doesn’t control, by presenting them as biased, unreliable, or unfair.

[Commentary] It’s often the little things that lead up to the big moments. At present, there’s legislation that’s about to head to President Barack Obama for signature that qualifies as one of those moments. Embedded in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is language aimed at streamlining the bureaucracy of the United States’ government-funded international media outlets. The proposed fix, the result of a hodgepodge compromise between the Hill, the White House, and some Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) officials, is to replace the part-time BBG with a full-time CEO who would have full authority to run the show.

The simplicity and likely efficiency of the new arrangement fits the pro-business zeitgeist of the new administration — except for one thing. The key to the success of US broadcasting has always been its professional reporting in alignment with democratic values. So, here’s a message to the president-elect: If it’s a bargain, if the brand is strong, and if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Our adversaries’ half-truths may sometimes look successful, but that does not mean we want to emulate them. American foreign broadcasting must continue to reflect the American values of free speech, openness to criticism, and tolerance of divergent opinions. That is why our democratic system is better, and in the long run, that is why it will win.

[Jeffrey Gedmin is a senior fellow at Georgetown University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He was president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty from 2007 to 2011.]

[Commentary] Despite moderate growth in the economy and historically low interest rates, the American labor market still hasn't fully recovered since the big hit of the global financial crisis.

American businesses including Apple, Google, and Oracle sit on piles of cash that in total amount to more than $1 trillion. If Apple thought it profitable to invest this money, surely it would. But it apparently does not see a viable strategy for such growth. Even companies without hoards of money sitting on the sideline are operating well below capacity; much of their physical capital sits unused.

[Altman teaches economics at New York University's Stern School of Business and is chief economist of Big Think]

On August 1, residents of Wenzhou, a city in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, saw their normal Wenzhou Television programming interrupted by caustic messages in stark yellow text appearing on a black background.

One message, emblazoned across the top of the screen, declared, "Damn the Chinese Communist Party's mouthpieces: China Central Television, Peoples' Daily" -- the first a broadcaster, the latter a newspaper, and both generally acknowledged to toe the party line -- as well as "the Propaganda Department and the State Radio and Film Administration," both agencies that exercise government censorship.

Wenzhou Television could not be immediately reached for comment.

More than a year after Edward Snowden revealed a vast network of eavesdropping by the United States, a new poll has found that people around the world are overwhelmingly opposed to American electronic spying and far less likely to believe that the US respects the personal freedoms of its own people.

The poll found huge opposition to the US government monitoring the e-mails and phone calls of people in their own countries. Overall, 81 percent of respondents said it was "unacceptable" for the US to monitor citizens of their countries, and 73 percent said it was unacceptable to spy on their leaders.

A US solar panel manufacturer whose business secrets were allegedly stolen by Chinese computer hackers has asked the US government to investigate the matter, setting in motion a process that could see the United States impose trade penalties for the first time in response to state-sponsored cyber-espionage against an American company.

In a filing with the Commerce Department on July 1, the US subsidiary of German company SolarWorld, which builds solar panels and equipment, asked officials to investigate allegations contained in a recent criminal indictment accusing five members of the People's Liberation Army with hacking the company's computers and stealing proprietary information.

Prosecutors say that the hackers took SolarWorld's price lists, product designs, and communications between the company and its lawyers in a series of computer incursions that began in 2012. SolarWorld wants Commerce Department officials to question Chinese officials and request documents about Beijing's alleged cyberspying.

[Commentary] “It’s abundantly clear that a total review of all intelligence programs is necessary so that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee are fully informed as to what is actually being carried out by the intelligence community." That was Sen Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, blasting US spies for not fully informing congressional overseers about one of the more contentious intelligence programs in recent memory.

But Sen Feinstein's bark was far worse than her bite. Shortly after her remarks, the senator proposed a bill that would have allowed the NSA to continue its bulk collection of Americans' phone records, by far the most controversial and legally questionable of all the secret NSA programs revealed by former contractor Edward Snowden. Now, after her unprecedented attack that accused the CIA of spying on Senate staffers and impeding an investigation into alleged torture, Sen Feinstein has to make a choice: stand her ground by taking concrete steps to rein in the agency or again back away from her most incendiary charges and allow another spy agency to continue with business as usual.

If she chooses to play hardball, Feinstein can make the tenure of CIA Director John Brennan a living nightmare. From her perch on the intelligence committee, she could drag top spies before the panel for months on end. She could place holds on White House nominees to key agency positions. She could launch a broader investigation into the CIA's relations with Congress and she could hit the agency where it really hurts: its pocketbook. One of the senator's other committee assignments is the Senate Appropriations Committee, which allocates funds to Langley.

Following the disclosure by Edward Snowden that the CIA's black budget request of $14.7 billion for 2013 surged past every other spy agency, it may be in for a haircut. But whether Feinstein will use any of the tools in her toolbox is far from certain.