FRIDAY NEWS ROUNDUP — December 11, 2020
Preparedness & Complacency about Democracy, Government Goes After Facebook, Remembering Chuck Yeager, Roundup on Russia
Happy Friday from Washington, DC. As we move towards the darkest weeks of the year, we might be forgiven for thinking that the news is following suit. According to the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield the United States can expect daily death tolls from COVID-19 to exceed the death toll on 9/11 each day for the next 2–3 months. If true, that suggests that we might not even be at the halfway point of our experience of this pandemic.
Meanwhile, the nominations for President-elect Biden’s cabinet keep coming, and there are many familiar names. While this will likely be the most diverse cabinet in the country’s history in terms of race and gender, there is strong continuity from the Obama administration. Even nominees who were not in the Obama administration have ties to it: GEN (ret.) Lloyd Austin, the nominee to be Secretary of Defense, for example, was Vice Chief of Staff of the Army from 2012–13 and Commander of Central Command from 2013–2016. There are pluses and minuses to this approach, and we will have to wait until 2021 to see how they balance.
This week, Joshua reflected on his year of reviewing books in the Diplomatic Courier with his list of the top books of the year. In Defense One, CSPC President & CEO Glenn Nye and Senior Fellow James Kitfield argued that President-elect Biden should leap at the opportunity to extend the New Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty before it expires in February.
This afternoon, we are honoring two giants of recent American history we lost in the last year, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Congressman John Lewis, with a virtual ceremony for our inaugural Thurgood Marshall Award in recognition of their lifetime of work towards fulfilling America’s promise for all of its people. We hope you can join us.
This week in the Roundup, Dan talks about the ongoing efforts to overturn the effects of the presidential election and how the preparation that states took to safely conduct an election in a pandemic have opened them up to (baseless) allegations of fraud. Ethan looks back on the life of an American hero, Chuck Yeager. Michael analyzes the new antitrust allegations against Facebook. And Joshua talks through the many interesting defense stories coming out of Russia of late. As always, we end with some news you might have missed.
Hacking Democracy
Dan Mahaffee
The paradox of preparation is one of the most confounding dynamics for anyone who works in fields like cybersecurity, epidemiology, and disaster response. In the lead up to a crisis situation, there are those who describe the preparations as too expensive or intrusive. When the crisis arrives, the preparations mitigate the crisis, but this appears to validate those who originally decried the preparations. The crisis — mitigated thanks to the preparations — is perceived as far less impactful than those arguing for preparedness originally claimed the crisis would be. Clearly, they must be profligate worrywarts, the critics will cry. Over time the preparations weaken, defenses crumble, and complacency rules the day. Having successfully carried out the 2020 election — with many needed preparations and reforms in the face of the pandemic and partisanship — we now risk a similar complacency as efforts to delegitimize this election now target the democratic process itself.
In terms of the paradox of preparedness, the “Y2K bug” is one of the best examples of this. For those Zoomers in the audience, the Y2K bug was a concern that the switch over of dates from 19XX format to 20XX format would confuse computers with 2-digit year values reading January 1, 2000, as January 1, 1900. Concerns that this would affect a range of critical infrastructures and networked systems led to a wide-reaching effort to fix the affected sections of computer code. Fears of a global tech outage came to nought, Y2K became a long-lasting punchline, and the year 2000’s real crisis would come in November.
In 2020, there was similar concern about how the election might unfold in the throes of a pandemic. States moved to make it easier for Americans to vote as absentee rules were adjusted and vote-by-mail was expanded. While many of these measures were far more hurried than past changes to election procedures, the system was able to handle the highest turnout in a modern presidential election — turnout that benefitted both parties.
In preparing for the election, one of the concerns that was raised was the timely tabulation and canvassing of vote-by-mail ballots. The scandals over the summer at the U.S. Postal Service shed light on the concerns about their delivery, but another challenge were the state legislatures that approved vote-by-mail but mandated that the counting of mail ballots could not begin until election night. This would delay the counting of predominantly Biden-leaning mailed ballots, thus creating the “red mirage” that serves as one cornerstone for the many unproven allegations of election fraud.
At each step, these allegations have been laughed out of courts. Efforts by the president to pressure state legislatures to retroactively change their election laws have failed. This week, all 50 states and the District of Columbia certified their presidential electors by the “safe harbor” deadline, ensuring that Congress counts their electoral votes. Institutionally, these efforts are failing, but they are supporting the narrative of a stolen election and creating a new shibboleth in conservative politics.
That is where the case brought by the Attorney General of Texas to effectively annul the electoral votes of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin comes into play, as President Trump, 17 Republican state attorneys general, and 106 Republican Members of the House of Representatives have joined the Texas AG by filing amicus briefs. Behind unproven claims of unspecified malfeasance, they seek to invalidate the votes of 20 million people. As many have discussed, including in these pages, anyone considering their future in Republican politics is facing a base electorate increasingly convinced — despite the lack of evidence and failure in the courts — that the 2020 election was stolen.
Hurried measures made sure that Americans could have their voices heard at the polls, and despite the partisan tenor of our politics, the legal and institutional checks have held — for now. The paradox of preparedness could easily set in now, as many of the worst-case scenarios — both in terms of election logistics and certification — have yet to pass. Again, this is because of preparedness, but it cannot invite complacency.
The high turnout of the 2020 campaign avoided the outcome where nail-biter results in key swing states and a close electoral college race would invite a 2000 election redux. The Trump campaign playbook of disputing the election and firing away legal cases was activated anyway. In Georgia, for example — even absent evidence of fraud — vote-by-mail, early voting, and expanded absentee voting are all coming under fire from GOP lawmakers as the warped narrative about 2020 becomes partisan orthodoxy. In the Wisconsin legislature, GOP lawmakers called for testimony from a talk radio host, among others, about the election, but not the director of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. How far will these efforts go in the future?
The Texas lawsuit and the various other cries for Supreme Court intervention focus on the constitutional arguments that state legislatures set election rules, ignoring the various precedents, state laws, common law, and norms and expectations of the voters that their ballot will be counted. In some highly gerrymandered state legislatures, how long will it be before there are rules proposed for those legislatures to be able to invalidate elections and seat their own electors if they suspect fraud? Even that might be tame, as Rush Limbaugh muses about secession and websites pop up targeting state election officials for assassination.
Sadly, the pride that we should feel in the conduct of the 2020 election is being overshadowed by this effort to invalidate and delegitimize its results and the democratic process itself. Americans have voted in wars, depressions, and pandemics before, and they did so through the challenges of this year. In historic circumstances, the American people made their voices heard. Preparation paid off. But if we arrive at a point where one party believes the only answer is to silence the political voice of citizens who vote against that party, then it is far more than an election that is at stake.
The United States Goes to War with Facebook
Michael Stecher
On Tuesday night, news leaked that a coalition of the Federal Trade Commission, the attorneys general of the District of Columbia and Guam, and 46 state attorneys general — every state except Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and South Dakota — would file suit against Facebook for a variety of monopolistic, anti-competitive behavior. The remedy the plaintiffs are seeking is serious: breaking up Facebook by separating out the core Facebook platform, what you find if you go to www.facebook.com, from the photo-sharing app Instagram and the messaging service WhatsApp. The allegations in the filings are serious and build upon a growing chorus of public criticism against the company, but will not be an easy case. Analyzing this narrowly through a legal lens, however, underestimates the danger that Facebook and Big Tech faces as a result of its decade-long credibility bonfire.
The plaintiffs allege that Facebook used an interlocking series of tactics to stifle potential competitors. Building on its position as the leading social media service, Facebook created a suite of open-access tools that would allow third-party developers and websites to integrate with Facebook to increase their reach. Facebook then used the insights it gleaned from that integration, as well as a scanning tool it purchased, to identify potential threats to its business. Services that presented a threat or could become a threat if acquired by a competitor were given a choice: agree to be acquired by Facebook or lose access to the tools that allowed them to operate.
This strategy, according to the attorneys general:
[S]erves to: (a) extinguish competitive threats; (b) hobble competitors and potential competitors by depriving them of the important tools upon which they have become reliant; (c) keep acquisition targets out of the hands of other firms that are well-positioned to compete against [the core Facebook product]; and (d) prevent competitors or potential competitors from having access to next generation technology that might threaten Facebook’s monopoly. The result is less competition, less investment, less innovation, and fewer choices for users and advertisers.
For years, watchers of the tech industry have noticed the trend of Facebook working to build a “moat” around its business by making potential investors an offer they cannot refuse. Often this took the form of direct offers for purchase, other times duplicate services linked to the existing reach of the Facebook network would appear to try and squeeze another service out. Either way, one of the effects was to discourage outside investors from backing projects that “flew too close to the sun.”
This is not to say that the case against Facebook will be easy to make. The last time an antitrust case resulted in the breakup of a monopolistic firm was the case against AT&T in 1984, the case that created the “baby bells”. Courts have been skeptical of such heavy handed remedies. The plaintiffs do not just need to prove that Facebook took action or acquired competitors in order to hobble competitors; they also need to show that this action actually suppressed competition in a way that caused harm.
Demonstrating that harm might be difficult since Facebook’s products are free for consumers and, as the company’s statement in response to the lawsuit points out, advertising is a more competitive space than social networking as narrowly construed by the plaintiffs. Facebook will also point out that the FTC reviewed the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp at the time and did not intervene, they will no doubt enter into evidence reams of documents that show that the government did not consider these to be anticompetitive. The sense that the government is trying to get a second bite at the apple is unappealing, even if it is allowed.
One place where Facebook might be particularly vulnerable is on the issue of user privacy. Dina Srinivasan, a fellow at the antitrust program at Yale’s School of Management, has argued that, when Facebook launched, privacy and authenticity were two of its core differentiating factors from Myspace, then its top competitor. Users could have greater confidence that they controlled what personal information was disclosed and to whom. Facebook was also very solicitous of feedback and made changes to protect users’ privacy in response to pressure.
After the demise of Myspace, Facebook began to reduce its privacy protections and force users to opt-out of sharing (rather than opt-in). The state attorneys general picked up this argument and pointed out that Facebook stopped some changes to its privacy rules during the period when it was under threat from Google’s failed social media experiment, Google+. “If there was ever a time to avoid controversy,” an internal document states, “it would be when the world is comparing our offerings to [Google+].” This might show that Facebook’s monopolistic market power is forcing users to accept a lower quality social media product with fewer privacy protections.
Regardless of the merits of these particular allegations, Facebook has united a wide spectrum of the U.S. political system in opposition to its business. A decade ago, President Barack Obama hosted a virtual town hall at Facebook’s headquarters as a way of signaling that he was aligned with the tech economy, economic growth, and the future. It is hard to imagine any national politician doing the same today. Some of that backlash is common across the tech sector, where the visionary innovators of a decade ago have become Bond villains. Much of it, however, is unique to Facebook because it has become so ubiquitous in our lives and engenders so much concern. Whether it is viral disinformation, leaks of private information, or online hate speech and radicalization, there is a growing sense that Facebook is out of control, and the system is pushing back.
That pushback will not end with these lawsuits, or even with Facebook. Google is facing its own antitrust complaint from the Justice Department. In the absence of federal online privacy regulations, states like California are moving forward with their own, increasing the pressure on Congress to take action. Around the world, countries are attacking the U.S.-based internet giants in order to promote a vision of the internet that is less free-flowing and open. Amazon, for example, has to be thinking whether its business model of directly selling goods, selling ads for other people’s goods, and providing cloud computing services can possibly survive in this new era of regulatory scrutiny. The next phase of the battle to oversee the internet, once dreamed to be an ungoverned space of limitless freedom and open dialogue, has begun.
The Last Flight West
Ethan Brown
The Right Stuff is being in the right place at the right time, and surviving.
For a man who danced with the devil on more than one occasion, with dog fights over the skies of World War II Europe, evading Nazi ground forces after being shot down over France, and breaking a variety of aerospace flying records, Charles Elwood Yeagar certainly seemed to have that “stuff”.
On Tuesday morning, 2020 struck again, this time adding one of the world’s most well known and accomplished pilots to its list of those departed. Chuck Yeager, U.S. Air Force test pilot and all-around aeronautical wiz, passed away in Los Angeles at the age of 97. Born in Myra, West Virginia to a father in the natural gas business, Yeager attended Citizens Military Camp at Fort Benjamin-Harrison in 1939/1940. There he gained renown as a marksman, but having the engineer father, was fascinated by machines and their inner workings. Seemingly, he would end up in a maintenance position as the world descended into war, but the winds of fate blew in a different direction.
Service
Upon the outbreak of hostilities in 1941, Yeager opted to join the Army Air Corps at the age of 18. Thanks to his aptitude for engines and machinery, he became a crew chief servicing AT-11 Bomber Trainers, the embryo for thousands of U.S. heavy aviators in the war. His natural inclination for diagnosing engine problems would prove to be a boon for his flying career. His first ride in an airplane (one of those lumbering bomber-trainers which received his intuitive attention regularly) did not go so well…as the pilot practiced landing in dry lake-beds in the California desert, Yeager experienced the full treatment of motion sickness and didn’t think flying would suit his tastes, however a programmatic need for aviators in that war would change his mind.
During this era, pilots had to meet two key requirements in order to elevate to combat status- two years of college, and be at least 20 years of age. Due to the stark demand for more pilots, the defense enterprise altered requirements regulations and introduced the “Flying Sergeants Program”, which required a high-school diploma. While Yeager, the enlisted mechanic, was keen to prove his mettle in the air, acceptance and completion of the program also got him out of the tedious “guard duty”.
During flight training in California, Yeager was certified on the largely obscure P-39 Airacobra single-engine fighter, an excellent low-altitude aircraft, but tricky to navigate at the blocks where combat over Europe would take place in the near future. He was assigned to the 363rd Fighter Squadron, 357th Fighter Group, and California is where he met Glennis Dickhouse- the only thing he would love more than flying.
Yeager excelled in every aspect of pilot training, serving as a measuring stick for his pilot-trainee peers. Following some top-off training at various places throughout the continental U.S. on their way east, the 363rd embarked on the Queen Elizabeth and headed to a small town on the Coast of England in 1943 to join the 8th Air Force and the growing conflagration of World War II.
Upon arrival, the 363rd was the first in theater to be equipped with the P-51 Mustang, arguably (not really) the top fighter of the war. Yeager’s top billing as a fighter pilot was validated during his time with the 8th Air Force, scoring 12.5 enemy kills, five of which occured in a single day of flying. All of his sortied aircraft were named after his soon-to-be wife Glennis, and he was successful against the best machines in the Nazi inventory- including the FW-190 and the legendary Messershmit Bf-109. On March 5th, 1944, Yeager’s luck would run out, and he was shot down over Bordeaux, France while diving headlong into a hornets nest of FW-190s.
He parachuted out, and the tale of his evasion throughout Nazi-occupied France and his eventual escape into neutral Spain is the stuff of superhuman legend, at one point helping a wounded B-24 navigator through mountain passes, raging rivers, and enemy patrols, ultimately returning to allied control weeks after his initial jetison over France.
Yeager was also one of the first Allied pilots to shoot down the revolutionary German Me-262: the first jet-engine fighter to ever see combat. As the report goes, the Luftwaffe fighter was on final approach to an airfield, and as Yeager had become separated from his squadron mid-mission, he diverted to give chase. The only method to successfully engage the dangerous enemy fighter was straight down the gauntlet of enemy air-defenses, which he guided his P-51D straight into at extreme low-altitude, knocking the jet out of the sky and causing the enemy AAA to actually strike each other on opposite sides of the flightline.
Women in flight
Yeager also contributed to the integration of women into the aerospace industry, helping several notable women break records and reset norms in a male-dominated environment. Blanche Stuart Scott was already famous for being the first female to solo-pilot an airplane in 1910, but Yeager had Scott fly in the backseat of a T-33 trainer in 1948, making Scott the first woman to fly in a Jet. Jackie Cochrane, renowned as a former WASP commander and award winning race pilot, was joined by Yeager as a chase pilot when she became the first woman to break the sound barrier in 1953.
The Test Pilot who couldn’t qualify for NASA
After the war, Yeager returned to California where he married Glennis and had two children. He was selected for the Bell X-1 Rocket Plane program, to test speed and performance capabilities which would lead to the creation of the modern fighter jet inventory. Most American’s know about his October 14, 1947 flight, where he became the first human to exceed the speed of sound at level flight, and of course, there is the obligatory reference to the fact that he did so with two broken ribs sustained in a horse-riding accident the night prior. This affliction required Yeager, who wouldn’t admit to the injury for fear of being replaced on the record-setting test flight, to fabricate a device that would allow him to seal the X-1’s door latch prior to being released from the B-29 that carried the test-jet into the atmosphere.
Yeager also set a variety of follow-on aircraft performance records, breaking Mach 2 (twice the speed of sound or about 1400 mph at 30k feet) nearly 50 years after the Wright brothers first achieved flight. Upon reaching Mach 2.4 at 80,000 feet, Yeager was forced to jettison over the desert. About a decade after that incident, Yeager piloted an F-104 to a record-altitude of 104,000 feet, which then went into a flat spin. He was able to eject at a mere 6,000 feet, but the ejection seat caught his parachute shroud lines, the rocket motor crushed his helmet visor and burned his face, and the incident nearly did him in. He returned to flying just weeks later.
The race into space against our Communist rivals of course was the rage and preponderance of aviation efforts in the 50’s and 60’s. Yet for all his contributions to the aerospace enterprise, when soliciting candidates for the Mercury Space program, Yeager was not considered. This was due to the hilariously absurd fact that he did not meet the NASA requirement of possessing a college degree. He would, however, go on to contribute greatly to the space program, flying as a chase pilot in the X-15 rocket jet, which helped develop the technology for space travel. Yeager would go on to command fighter squadrons in both Korea and Vietnam, cementing the legacy of those larger-than-life fighter pilots alongside with other legends such as Robin Olds and Chappy James, at a time when such heroes were desperately needed.
The last flight west
It is always a difficult morning to see a legend having taken their final bow. Chuck Yeager will be remembered as one of the most iconic symbols of the golden era of aviation- a time when grits, guts, and sheer willpower had more to do with success than the innovative technology which marks the revolution of airspace in today’s hyper-connected world. Yeager’s exploits, notably breaking the sound barrier, were largely kept close to the public affairs chest until sometimes months after the achievement, on the basis of propaganda security with communist rivals. Those press releases on such exploits only fueled the fire of his tremendous legacy, one which certainly inspired generations of pilots and innovators in the ensuing decades. He retired as a Brigadier General in the 1970s, and was honorably promoted to Major General by President George W. Bush in 2005. Despite leaving the service after decades of achievement, he continued to fly and contributed to the growth of the aerospace industry. In his spare time, could be seen acting in some hit movies, writing an autobiography, and generally, being one of the coolest cats around.
He certainly had the right stuff, or at least he had a knack for surviving being in the right place at the right time.
Russia News Roundup
Joshua C. Huminski
FireEye Hacked
This week, cybersecurity firm FireEye, one of the leading digital forensic companies, announced that it itself had been hacked, almost certainly by a nation-state. Responsible for investigating the Equifax and Sony breaches, FireEye contacted the FBI shortly after discovering the penetration. In its announcement, FireEye said “a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities” was responsible and that it had deployed “novel techniques” to steal the company’s own tool kit. In response the FBI, which acknowledged that a nation-state was behind the theft but did not acknowledge which, said, “The F.B.I. is investigating the incident and preliminary indications show an actor with a high level of sophistication consistent with a nation-state.”
It is believed that Russia is the nation-state in question, raising questions as to who and why now. It is important to note, again, that Russia is not a monolithic actor and that the hack here does not necessarily imply central control or direction. Within Russian intelligence there are numerous entities competing for primacy, dominance, and advantage. Some speculate that with the U.S. focused on securing the election infrastructure, its attention may have been elsewhere.
This is a somewhat spurious argument, as FireEye is a private company, and not the NSA which itself was the victim of a massive theft in 2016 by the still unidentified “ShadowBrokers”. Tools stolen from the NSA have appeared in other more recent hacks, suggesting that the vault of data and tool kits has spread far and wide. FireEye has repeatedly identified Russian intelligence as the source of high-profile hacks, suggesting that it may have been targeted as a result.
According to Kevin Mandia, the Chief Executive of FireEye, “This attack is different from the tens of thousands of incidents we have responded to throughout the years.” He added that the attackers in question “tailored their world-class capabilities specifically to target and attack FireEye.” The care with which the attack was carried out, the deployment of novel tools and techniques, and the level of operational discipline and clandestine nature of the attack isn’t typical of Russian intelligence hackers. These hackers — in a very general sense — like the victim to know that they were there and that they could wreck more havoc if they so chose.
The impact of this theft is unlikely to be as significant as the ShadowBrokers’ breach. FireEye’s tools are designed for remediation, investigation, and forensic analysis — for the most part — and are designed using malware found on the internet — again, for the most part. The NSA’s tool kit was bespoke using a number of zero-day exploits for which there were no defenses or patches. According to Mandia, none of the tools lost used zero-day exploits.
Russians in the Red Sea
On Tuesday, the Russian government announced that it signed an agreement with the government of Sudan to host a naval facility at Port Sudan. The agreement, originally signed in November, which lasts 25-years, allows Russia to keep four vessels (including nuclear powered ones) on station on the Red Sea and upwards of 300 naval personnel. If neither party objects, the agreement could be automatically extended by 10 years.
This is the latest evidence of Russia’s attempts to reassert itself internationally, and the first major naval facility outside of the Mediterranean where the Russian Navy operates a facility at Tartus, Syria. The Soviet Union operated a facility in Somalia during the Cold War, but that closed shortly after the collapse of the USSR. Negotiations with Djibouti had been underway, with Moscow hoping to join the United States and Russia in the tiny African country, but those collapsed.
Positioned in the Red Sea, Russia’s facility is well placed to ensure its ability to project power both within that body of water, but also into the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. Russia also is working to expand its presence throughout the African continent, and this will undoubtedly help it do so given the agreement’s authorization for the hosting and transport of personnel and weapons. The naval agreement builds off a May 2017 cooperation agreement between Khartoum and Moscow, which saw Russian defense advisers on-the-ground in Sudan.
Doomsday Plane Pilfered
A nuclear command and control plane — also known as a “doomsday plane” — designed to survive a nuclear exchange and allow Russia’s president to issue orders, was robbed during maintenance in Taganrog, in southwest Russia. Nearly 40 pieces of radio equipment worth 1 million rubles ($13,600) were stolen from the aircraft after an unknown group of thieves broke into the plane via a cargo hatch. The Il-80 is one of four such planes in service in Russia, but reports suggest the aging fleet may be retired and replaced with upgraded Il-96–400M wide-body versions.
Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov said the theft was an “emergency situation” and that measures will be taken to prevent this from happening in the future.” A Russian military expert said it was possible the thieves stole the equipment for its scrap value, but also said it was a “highly classified data leak”. Foreign intelligence would love to get their hands on radio and cypher equipment from the “doomsday plane”.
News You May Have Missed
China Retaliates against U.S. Financial Sanctions and Travel Bans
Thomas Triedman
As part of an escalating diplomatic row stemming from China’s moves to end the “one country, two systems” policy towards Hong Kong, Beijing announced Thursday that it would reimpose visa requirements for U.S. diplomatic passport holders visiting Hong Kong and Macau. Additionally, Beijing will impose sanctions against U.S. officials, members of Congress, and NGO employees, citing “vile” actions towards Hong Kong. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying declared that American aggression is the beginning of a “dangerous and mistaken path,” an ominous threat that implies Beijing’s willingness to take more drastic measures. These tensions will add to the list of issues that the incoming Biden team will have to address to find an appropriate balance of engagement and containment for one of the most complex and important diplomatic relationships on the planet.
China Reaches Major Milestone in Quest for Renewable Energy, Turns on Its Fusion Reactor
Thomas Triedman
Last week, Chinese scientists announced a significant technological advancement towards a workable fusion reactor. The HL-2M Tokamak reactor, Beijing’s most advanced nuclear fusion experimental device, uses a magnetic field to contain the superheated plasma — a gas of ions and unbound charged particles. Unlike fission, which powers currently operating nuclear power plants, fusion does not produce radioactive waste in significant quantities and is less susceptible to explosions and meltdowns. International advancements in fusion research may be promising for the future of clean energy, although the widespread use and commercialization of fusion is likely decades away. Chinese scientists plan to use this device to supplement ongoing research through the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) consortium of China, the United States, Russia, India, and South Korea.
The views of authors are their own and not that of CSPC.