• Under Pressure, Britain Pushes Back on Huawei Dependence

    By Adam Xu

    The Trump administration’s campaign to keep Chinese tech giant Huawei out of its allies’ 5G networks appears to be gaining ground in Britain. Earlier this year, the British government proposed to allow Chinese tech giant Huawei restricted access to the U.K. 5G infrastructure, but relentless U.S. pressure; mounting opposition from Conservative Party backbenchers; and China’s conduct during the coronavirus epidemic have pushed the government to change course. Now, British officials are trying to forge an alliance of 10 democracies to develop their own 5G technology and reduce dependence on the Chinese firm.

  • New Visa Restrictions Will Make U.S. Economic Downturn Worse

    The Trump administration is expected to set limits on a popular program — the Optional Practical Training (OPT) — which allows international students to work in the U.S. after graduation while remaining on their student visas. The administration says the aim is to help American graduates seeking jobs during the pandemic-fueled economic downturn. Economists, however, argue that immigrant rights enhance the lives and livelihoods of native-born workers in many ways.

  • “Prof. Lockdown” Neil Ferguson Admits Sweden Used Same Science as U.K.

    The scientist behind lockdown in the UK has admitted that Sweden has achieved roughly the same suppression of coronavirus without draconian restrictions. Henry Bodkin writes in The Telegraph that Neil Ferguson, who became known as “professor lockdown” after convincing Boris Johnson to radically curtail everyday freedoms, acknowledged that, despite relying on “quite similar science”, the Swedish authorities had “got a long way to the same effect” without a full lockdown.

  • Coronavirus Shutdowns: Economists Look for Better Answers

    As Covid-19 cases took off in New York in March, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo imposed a lockdown of nonessential businesses to slow the spread of the coronavirus, calling it “the most drastic action we can take.” Eduardo Porter writes in the New York Times that now, researchers say more targeted approaches — in New York and elsewhere — might have protected public health with less economic pain.

  • “The Costs Are Too High”: The Scientist Who Wants Lockdown Lifted Faster

    It appears that most scientists still argue that now was not the time to lift the lockdown. Ian Sample writes in The Guardian that Sunetra Gupta, a professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford University, does not agree. She believes – somewhat controversially – that the lockdown should be lifted faster. In the rush to drive infections down, she fears the poorest have been brushed aside.

  • During Global Crises, Strategic Redundancy Can Prevent Collapse of Supply Chains

    When the novel coronavirus began spreading during the early months of 2020, it put kinks in multinational production chains — first in China and then around the globe. But it didn’t have to happen that way. Experts suggest companies use redundancy as a way to fortify their operations against unforeseeable events such as pandemics.

  • Coronavirus Crisis Accelerates March Towards Cashless Society

    The march towards a cashless society has gathered pace during the lockdown with analysts more confident than ever that the end is nigh for notes and coins, Harry Shukman writes in The Times.

  • Snapback of Sanctions under the Terms of the Nuclear Deal Is Fully Justified Today

    By David Albright

    “If Iran today wants a serious discussion about sanctions relief, it should start by abandoning the key threat Tehran poses to international peace and security: its uranium enrichment program,” writes David Albright, a nuclear weapons expert and the president of the Institute for Science and International Security. “Instead, Iran holds its own people hostage over the deadly coronavirus outbreak in a cynical campaign for wholesale sanctions relief.” The willingness of Iran’s leadership to refuse epidemic aid and thus dramatically, and unnecessarily, increase the number of sick and dying Iranians; the willing of the leadership to intensify and deepen the severe economic deprivation and misery across the country – and do all that in order to grow an economically nonviable, menacing uranium enrichment program — “That alone should lead all to consider just what is the real purpose of Iran’s enrichment program,” Albright writes.

  • As States Reopen, Tensions Flare Between the Rule Followers and Rule Breakers

    By Michele Gelfand

    As countries reopen their economies, tensions escalate between those who believe it is safe now to resume normal business activity – and even ignore social distancing and the need to wear face masks – and those who prefer a more cautious, slower path toward something resembling pre-coronavirus life. These differences aren’t just random personality types; they reflect our primal social mindsets – what I call “tight” and “loose” mindsets. And unless these differences are better understood, it will be that much more difficult to navigate life under COVID-19.

  • The Government’s One‑Size‑Fits‑R Lockdown Is Bad Health Policy and Bad Economics Too

    “It was when Matt Hancock used the term ‘reproduction number’ for the 15th time in his latest press conference that I stopped counting. R, as this concept is also known, has become the government’s new totem, the driver of policy, the means of calibrating our response to the dangers of COVID-19….  As a concept, it is certainly seductive. R, as everyone now knows, refers to the average number of people that one infected person will transmit the virus to,” Matthew Sayed writes in The Times. But “R is, after all, an average for the entire UK. As a single point estimate, it doesn’t take into account the marked regional differences in transmission. It takes no account of the variance between different settings, such as care homes and factories. It takes no account of the fact that the spread of the virus isn’t the same for each person but is shaped to a significant degree by superspreading events. Adam Kucharski, an epidemiologist and the author of The Rules of Contagion, estimates that 80% of transmission occurs via as little as 10% of the population.In other words, the R number for the majority of us is, in fact, zero.”

  • Canada-Detained Senior Huawei Executive a Step Closer to Being Extradited to U.S.

    A Canadian judge has rejected efforts by a senior Huawei executive to evade extradition to the United States to face a series of charges. Meng Wanzhou was arrested in December 2018 on a U.S. warrant while on a stopover at the Vancouver international airport. Meng is charged with lying to prospective investors by hiding the fact that Huawei was selling communication gear to Iran in breach of U.S. sanctions. The Canadian investors would have been legally and financially exposed to U.S. penalties because their investment in Huawei would have made them unwitting participants in breaching the sanctions.

  • Mapping the China Debate

    The debate over U.S. foreign policy toward China is often reduced into the usual hawk-versus-dove metaphor. Hawks see U.S.-China great power competition as requiring a more aggressive posture, while doves worry about the downsides of an adversarial relationship. Ganesh Sitaraman writes that this dualist frame glosses over the fact that neither camp has a shared set of views. Rather, both hawks and doves contain a variety of subgroups—and some subgroups disagree with others on critical policy questions. “But without tractable categories for analysis, the debate over policy toward China is too often imprecise and confusing.”

  • U.K. Set to Reverse Huawei Decision

    In a dramatic turnaround, the British government will in a few days announce that it was reversing its decision earlier this year to allow Huawei to provide components for Britain’s 5G communication infrastructure. In January, the government said it would push for a deal which would allow Huawei to supply up to 35 percent of the components of the new 5G network, and that these components would be allowed only on the “edge” of the networks, not the networks’ “core.” The government is now set to announce that Huawei’s components will not be allowed in the U.K. 5G networks, and that all of the Chinese company’s gear will be removed from older communication networks by the end of 1922. The government’s January deal would probably have failed to gain approval in parliament, as Conservative backbenchers who oppose the January deal now have more than enough votes to block it.

  • How Market Manipulation in the Age of Pandemic Is Destroying Traditional Safe Havens

    The Coronavirus pandemic has created enormous volatility in global financial markets but prices of safe haven assets such as gold and bitcoin are not surging, as one might expect, thanks to intense and large-scale manipulation, according to analysis by the University of Sussex Business School. The contrast with the last major global financial catastrophe is telling. Following the Lehman Brothers collapse in September 2008, the correlations between the S&P 500 index and gold, or the Swiss Franc, or U.S. Treasuries were all around minus 40%. During March and April 2020 the correlation between the S&P 500 index and gold was plus 20%. The University of Sussex says that even more surprising is the behavior of the bitcoin/US dollar rate – since this cryptocurrency emerged in January 2009 its behavior was completely uncorrelated with any traditional asset, but as the S&P 500 index plummeted in early March 2020, so did bitcoin. Their correlation was plus 63% then, and it remains unsettlingly high at 40%. The biggest beneficiaries of these market attacks, beyond those placing the trades, are holders of US dollars and US assets. These become the main sources of positive returns for global investors in attempts to curtail the recent trend of some central banks to diversify their reserves away from the US dollar.

  • Israeli experts propose radical post-corona exit strategy

    By Abigail Klein Leichman

    The biggest worry as we start emerging from isolation in the COVID-19 pandemic: How do we return to schools and businesses without triggering a fresh outbreak? Israeli mathematicians suggest a staggered approach to reenter public places and workplaces without causing a new outbreak.