FRIDAY NEWS ROUNDUP — OCTOBER 2, 2020
THE THREAT OF FAR-RIGHT GROUPS; AZERBAIJAN & ARMENIA GO TO WAR; MOSCOW PROPOSES A CYBER TRUCE; EVALUATING TAIWAN’S MILITARY; U.S.-EU DATA PRIVACY
Good morning to you from Washington, D.C. The overnight news that President Trump and the First Lady have tested positive for Covid-19 has stunned Washington. While the impact on politics, the campaign, and markets will unfold over the coming days, what is most important is the health and speedy recovery of all those exposed. Questions about how the president is protected, the continuity of government, and the handling of the pandemic will dominate the coming days. Fittingly for 2020, the questions raised, just days ago, by one of the most jarring presidential debates in history have been overshadowed by sudden, momentous events.
This week, we had the privilege of hosting one of the most influential American political scientists working today, Dr. Joseph Nye, for a conversation about his new book Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump. See our conversation with Dr. Nye and other influential leaders and thinkers on our YouTube page.
This week, Joshua reviewed Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World, breaking down Tom Burgis’s excellent work on how money from autocrats and criminals finds its way into our banks and businesses. On this week’s Farrcast podcast, Dan looked at the impact of the first debate and what looms next in the election.
In this week’s Roundup, Dan talks about the Proud Boys and the growing threat of right-wing violence and vigilantism in domestic politics. Michael explains what caused the battle that is currently raging between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Joshua looks at Moscow’s latest proposals for a cyber truce. Ethan does a deep dive on the logistics challenges facing Taiwan if they hope to deter or repel an invasion from the People’s Republic of China. One of our interns, Oscar Bellsolell, gives a European perspective on how the EU’s data privacy rules might make business impossible for U.S. tech firms. And as always, we finish with some news you might have missed.
The Seeds of an American Insurgency
Dan Mahaffee
Throughout the week, post-debate coverage has focused on President Trump’s response to whether he condemned “The Proud Boys,”a self-identified “men’s organization for ‘western chauvinists…’” or, as most would more simply say, white supremacists. While most events in 2020 are seen through the most partisan lenses, and how we might interpret “sure,” “stand back,” “stand by,” and “stand down,” the most charitable, yet fair, evaluation came from South Carolina GOP Senator Tim Scott, who said, “I think he misspoke. I think he should correct it. If he doesn’t correct it, I guess he didn’t misspeak.” On Thursday, President Trump did finally come to the podium, requiring 48 hours to clarify that he did, in fact, condemn white supremacists.
That “The Proud Boys” are even part of the post-debate dialogue demonstrates the growth of political extremism in America. Violent groups have grown up on both sides, but the contrast in the candidates’ response has been stark. There have not only been clear differences in how the candidates have addressed political violence in the respective camps of right and left, but also alarm we should all share about how the U.S. government and state and local law enforcement have openly flirted with right wing radicals.
On the left, those identifying under the Antifa umbrella or organized as part of “Black Bloc” anarchist tactics have sought to foment violence or seek out conflict with far-right groups. For many trying to engage in legitimate, lawful, non-violent protest, these far-left groups have distracted from their aims. The radicals would counter that they are “accelerating” needed political change through violence — but their nihilism alienates potential allies, destroys communities, and deepens, rather than bridges, the fault lines in our society. As has been seen in 100+ days of violence in Portland violent actors provoke violent police responses for the sake of performative political violence.
As such violence threatened to grow further after a nights of violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the disputed police shooting of Jacob Blake, when former Vice President Biden, on August 31st, said at a speech in Pittsburgh:
I want to be very clear about all of this: Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It’s lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted…Violence will not bring change, it will only bring destruction. It’s wrong in every way.
The groups of concern on the right have grown out of the usual miasma of white supremacism and “patriot militias.” Groups like the KKK have been joined by new arrivals like The Proud Boys, Boogaloo Boys, the Three Percenters, and the Oath Keepers (more on them in a moment). In addition to these other groups, there are those individuals who are inspired by these various causes. The most notable recent case was that of Kyle Rittenhouse, who is in custody for facing charges for killing two and wounding one during street violence in Kenosha. Rittenhouse — aged 17 and now a cause célèbre on the right — traveled to Kenosha to, in his words, aid police and protect property, even though he was too young to own a gun, yet alone the AR-15 he was carrying. Facing murder charges along with violations of Illinois, Wisconsin, and federal firearms laws, administration officials in the Department of Homeland Security were given talking points that painted Rittenhouse in a clearly sympathetic light. Federal government officials were to note that he sought to halt rioting and protect property — rather than engage in vigilantism inspired by online agitators and militias.
On the right, that line between vigilantism and law enforcement is further blurred with the revelation by The Atlantic, where an analysis of the roster of the “Oath Keepers” reveals membership, past and present, throughout police departments, sheriffs’ offices, the National Guard, and the U.S. military. If we cannot see our police departments, and the broader administration of law and order, as an exercise divorced from partisan politics, then this nation finds itself in a precarious position. Placing the police on one side of our political divide or the other — by politicians, by police union leaders, or the police rank-and-file themselves — places us all in a dangerous position. Politicized policing is the opposite of law and order and avoidable harm will befall good cops and innocent civilians.
The absurdity of this political violence is revealed in the nature of one specific case, where violence broke out in Portland between a group called “Patriot Prayer” and Antifa counter-protestors in which a member of Patriot Prayer was killed. When a U.S. Marshals and sought the suspect, a self-identified Antifa “member,” he was killed by the task force. While the circumstances surrounding this killing remain murky, President Trump described the following: “this guy was a violent criminal and the U.S. Marshals killed him…And I will tell you something — that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution.”
U.S. Marshals and the police exist to neutrally enforce the law and bring wrongdoers before a court of law to face justice. They are not in the business of retribution. While we look with alarm at the growth of violence and the threat of armed political conflict on American streets, the seeds of an insurgency are planted in rhetoric that furthers the cycle of violence. Politicizing law enforcement and the functions of government accelerates the descent away from the rule of law. When law enforcement aligns itself or tilts towards one party, the other feels the need to take the law into its own hands. Unrest and insurgency become inevitable as political leaders become impotent bystanders to a deepening cycle of violence — or, worse yet, tacitly acknowledge and foment violence for their ends.
Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the Return of Mercenarism
Michael Stecher
Last week, a war broke out on the fringes of Europe and it barely cracked the front section of the newspaper. For those of us who remember the 90s, the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh in the South Caucasus between the Black and Caspian Seas — like the other conflicts sparked by the end of Soviet Communism — was an “ancient hatred,” beyond the United States’ interests to address. After 20 years of intermittent attempts to mediate the dispute, the two sides skirmished in 2016 and again in July, but the situation quickly returned to the status quo ante. Last week, however, the gloves came off. The conflict has already escalated substantially and the major powers in the region are being drawn in. While far from the agenda in the United States, this fight involves major international issues and portends the further “Hezbollah-ization” of conflict in the 21st Century.
In the last days of the Soviet Union, the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, which was majority populated by Armenian Christians, sought to be united with the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and removed from the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic, which was predominantly Azeri (part of the Turkic language group) and Shi’a Muslim. Mikhail Gorbachev stopped this transfer, but after the Soviet Union fell Armenia attacked Azerbaijan. The better-organized Armenian forces took control of the Nagorno Karabakh and surrounding areas before Russia organized a cease-fire. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced by the conflict and Armenia established an unrecognized quasi-state to administer the territory. The conflict was never settled and dozens of soldiers have been killed in clashes across the Line of Contact each year since. Attempts at international mediation stalled as neither side was prepared to make the kinds of concessions that would allow for serious negotiations to commence.
Armenia has pursued a strategy of fortification featuring a long-standing friendly relationship with Russia, participation in Russian-led international organizations like the Collective Security Treaty Organization and Eurasian Economic Union, and easily defended mountainous terrain. Azerbaijan, however, has developed a multi-pronged effort to alter the balance of power. Azerbaijan possesses substantial oil and gas resources in the Caspian Sea that have caused its economy to grow substantially faster than its landlocked and hydrocarbon-lacking neighbor. These assets — along with shared linguistic and historical links — fostered closer relations with Turkey under President Recep Tayip Erdogan, who wants Turkey to become a powerful regional player and a major gas hub for southern Europe, not just a pass-through for Russian gas. Azerbaijan also built military and intelligence links with Israel, who are eager to have a partner along Iran’s northern border. The country’s oppressive and oil-rich kleptocratic elite also has close ties to the oppressive and oil-rich kleptocratic elite around Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Heavy fighting broke out last week, though the proximate causes are obscure because both parties are pushing their own narratives somewhat clumsily in an area with very limited international media presence. Both tactically and strategically, Azerbaijan is on the offensive, but they may also be responding to Armenian attempts to develop previously-depopulated land for agriculture. According to independent military analyst and former summer camp bunkmate of mine Rob Lee, Azerbaijan has used artillery to suppress Armenian air defenses and advanced Turkish- and Israeli-made drones to close highways to Armenian reinforcements. There is also heavy fighting in the mountains in Nagorno Karabakh, but it is difficult to assess the contours of the battle in open source reporting.
Turkey has offered its full-throated support for Azerbaijan, prompting a diplomatic subtweet from the U.S. State Department, who said that “participation in the escalating violence by external parties would be deeply unhelpful and only exacerbate regional tensions.” Turkish forces near the border may be preventing Armenia from deploying its most advanced military hardware to the battlefield and (unverified) Armenian sources have accused the Turkish Air Force of intervening directly. Russia has been more muted thus far, but has around 3,000 troops stationed in Armenia and has covertly resupplied Armenian forces during prior outbreaks of violence.
Turkey and Russia are engaged in semi-active hostilities across an arc of conflict stretching from Libya to Azerbaijan and it appears that Turkey is willing to be aggressive at the moment because they may have found a weak point in Russian strategy. Russian foreign policy has many threads: leader of the international consortium of oppressive and oil-rich kleptocrats; focal point of the former Soviet space; opponent of the liberal, transatlantic-oriented world; defender of ethnic Russians abroad; and mother-church of the Orthodox rite. In the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, Russian claims of protection for Eastern Christians and support for oppressive and oil-rich kleptocrats are in conflict, while Turkey faces no equivalent dilemma. In Libya and Syria, Russia has the upper hand, so Erdogan may see a strategic benefit of expanding the zone of conflict to a theater where he is in the driver’s seat, even if Azerbaijan cannot entirely expel Armenian forces from the disputed area.
What is clear, however, is that Turkey is using one of its most strategically advanced assets in the fighting: its Syrian refugee mercenary forces. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, there are currently around 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, in addition to internally displaced people in parts of Syria under effective Turkish control. Many of these people are destitute and desperate, making them potentially eager recruits for a paramilitary force. Turkey has employed these paramilitaries in Syria, Libya, and now Nagorno Karabakh. These are not ethnic or sectarian militias, since they appear to be predominantly Syrian Arab Sunnis fighting on behalf of Turkic Azerbaijani Shi’ites. The closest analogue to these forces is the Russian-led Wagner Group, which has reportedly deployed in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Sudan, and the Central African Republic. The Wagner Group is often referred to as a Private Military Contractor, but they are actually something much more familiar: a mercenary army.
The term “mercenary” may evoke the condottiere of early modern Italy, Hessians at the Battle of Trenton, and Europe’s long colonial history, but they are an increasingly important tool of statecraft for major powers in weak or failing states. Like traditional proxy forces, these mercenary forces can be employed in support of a great power’s national objectives without risking major loss of life among their regular military forces. If they are killed in action, there is little domestic outcry. Unlike proxies that are used by outside powers to fight locally — like the Syrian Kurds or Yemeni Houthis — mercenaries can be deployed to conflicts far from home.
The progenitor of the recent trend towards increased mercenary use is Lebanese Hezbollah. While the group was initially set up with Iranian support in southern Lebanon to fight the Israeli occupation, since the Israeli withdrawal, their forces have become deployable shock troops and military trainers, especially in Syria but also in Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere. Hezbollah is clearly other things as well, but its ability to provide Iran with deployable, attritable, quasi-deniable forces has been noticed by other regional powers.
There are clearly limits to the effectiveness of these mercenary organizations. They are almost certainly less combat effective than high quality regular military forces. In 2018, roughly 500 Wagner Group mercenaries and affiliated Syrian fighters attacked a U.S. military outpost in Syria. No U.S. forces were wounded and the attackers were driven off by heavy fire, leaving more than 200 dead. They also cannot be deployed everywhere: Syrian mercenaries will not be able to help Turkey in its ongoing dispute with Greece and Cyprus, for example. As more of the world becomes loosely governed, however, amid conflict and competing claims for influence, there will be more opportunities for major powers to recruit and employ mercenary forces. If Libya, where there are various mercenary forces backed by Russia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and others amid reports of war crimes, is any indication, this will further exacerbate governance challenges in weak states and immiserate millions of people, including those in Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Russia Proposes a Cyber Truce with Washington, Seriously
Joshua C. Huminski
This week Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, proposed a truce between Washington and Moscow on “international information security”. According to a statement released from the Kremlin, “we would like to once again address the US with a suggestion to agree on a comprehensive program of practical measures to reboot our relations in the field of security in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs).”
The four-point proposal suggests the establishment of a regular high-level dialogue, continuous communications between “Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers, Computer Emergency Readiness Teams and high-level officials”, the development of a bilateral cyber agreement akin to the Soviet-American Agreement on the Prevention of Incidents On and Over the High Seas, and “guarantees of non-intervention into internal affairs of each other, including into electoral processes”. Putin closes by suggesting that a “global agreement on a political commitment of States on no-first-strike with the use of ICTs against each other” should be reached.
The proposal was unaccompanied by any admission of guilt or involvement by Moscow in electoral interference, the hacking and dumping of Democratic National Committee emails, cyberspace intrusions, or any other of the litany of Russia’s cyber activities.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, denied that Russia had any involvement in, well, anything, saying, “For several years now, unsubstantiated accusations have been made against us of committing cyberattacks aimed at undermining the American electoral process and, more broadly, the entire domestic political system.” He added, “As we have said on several occasions, there are no grounds for such statements.”
The proposal has no legs and is unlikely to go anywhere. At best, this is an attempt by Putin to appear to be constructive and conciliatory, putting the onus back on Washington. When the agreement falls through or there is another cyber incident, Russia will point to the proposal as evidence that Moscow wanted to avoid or prevent such an eventuality, but Washington did not.
Such a tactic is not surprising. In 2017 at the Group of 20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany, President Trump tweeted that President Putin suggested the creation of an “impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded.” The unit did not survive one news cycle before the president backtracked in another tweet saying, “The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn’t mean I think it can happen. It can’t-but a ceasefire can,& did!”
Some have suggested that this is an attempt by Russia to present a friendlier face to a possible incoming Biden administration, or an attempt to distract from new allegations of Russia’s interference in the 2020 election from Microsoft and others.
The likelihood that it is the former is very slim, but if it is, it is unlikely to be successful. An incoming Biden administration would almost certainly take a harder line with Russia if nothing else to differentiate it from President Trump.
In response to a New York Times series of questions on Russia, Biden responded “yes” to I f Russia continues on its current course in Ukraine and other former Soviet states, should the United States regard it as an adversary, or even an enemy? In 2009, Biden said, “we will not recognize any nation having a sphere of influence. It will remain our view that sovereign states have the right to make their own decisions and choose their own alliances.” It would be fair, therefore, to assume that Biden will take a hard line with Russia, especially after reports that Russia is spreading disinformation about the candidate’s mental health.
Dragging a Logistic Corpse
Ethan Brown
On the shady edges of the combat spotlight, the logistics wing of any good military labors in relative anonymity. That is, until the logistics fail to support the combat force engaged in conflict. History has repeated this lesson again and again.
Napoleon, despite his use of ètapes, depots, and a revolutionary contribution system, was driven from Russia in 1812 due to logistical failures (admittedly, this is a gross oversimplification of the campaign and the effects of the brutal Russian winter). Nazi Germany failed utterly in its attempt to seize the grain fields of Ukraine as its “fallow gateway” to the oil-fields of the Middle East in World War Two, and in Napoleanic fashion, Operation Barbarossa was a decided catastrophe for both the Wermacht and the many Russian lives spent to keep Moscow from Nazi conquest (ditto winter, and where does cold-WX gear come from? Logistics). 5th (and 6th) generation fighter jets are cool, integrated Joint All Domain Command and Control is neat, and shiny new warships are all the rage, but a military is only as good as its logistics section.
One of the “niceties” of my time in the Air Force, and especially being part of the Special Operations Command, was knowing that I would be given the necessary tools to make war. I had an impressive array of radio’s and other communications and targeting equipment, the lightest and most durable protective gear (sorry 1st Sergeants, I never actually wore my side-plates), and a variety of weapons suited to the specific mission I was involved in at the time. Despite many veteran meme-lore panels that talk about how bureaucratic, slow, and inefficient the process that is for logistics, when the time comes to fight the enemy, the U.S. military provides at least the minimum essentials for its personnel. Of course, when our forces are spread thinly abroad, that supreme logistics chain is strained, but it works.
This goes beyond simply the ‘bullets and beans’, as the S4 colloquially goes by amongst the hierarchy of service members. The DoD of course, is the most well-equipped fighting force in the history of civilization — far outspending the next closest state (China). These two military rivals have repeatedly and continue to skirt one another in the INDO-PACOM region, highlighting the potential for conflict outbreak at a given moment.
Between the Eagle and the Dragon
Caught amidst these two titans of defense spending, is Taiwan. This space has covered a variety of events and areas of interest regarding the small island state, incredibly vulnerable and within spitting distance from the Chinese mainland. Taiwan remains under the constant threat of the Chinese Communist Parties assertion that there will be reunification, “inevitable”, says Chinese state media, ominously omitting the word “peaceful” from this claim in recent months.
A modernized, cohesive and well-equipped Taiwanese military would not deter that violent reunification, but would at least alter the calculus of brazen rhetoric by the CCP and its militant arm, the PLA. Recall that at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the USS Theodore Roosevelt was docked in quarantine at Guam, the PLA Navy sailed its Liaoning Aircraft Carrier strike group unabated through the Strait of Taiwan. The pressure persists from without, but also compounds from issues within the Taiwan defense forces.
Under that constant reunification threat, Taiwan has no shortage of internal shortcomings and flaws which compound the issue of the titan to its west. Taiwan no longer practices conscription, and as such, its standing active military is a hollow shell of its former self, while its reserve forces are in even greater disarray.
Rotting from within
Based on exhaustive data compiled annually by the Global Firepower Index, Taiwan presently ranks #26 out of 138 registered/tracked states. China sits comfortably at #2, behind only the United States. The exponential difference between #2 and #26 is difficult to truly quantify, but suffice to say the staggering disparity between the two countries places the Taiwan defense forces at a monumental disadvantage.
This tragic reality was made poignant last month, when an article in Foreign Policy profiled the suicide of Huang Zhe-Jie, a Taiwan Army Lieutenant who lived in the quagmire of logistical ineptitude: “As Taiwanese politicians showcase flashy U.S. weapons bought with taxpayers’ money, the logistics inside the military remain so abysmal that a young army officer killed himself after being pressured to buy repair parts out of his own pocket”. Zhe-Jie was one of the few Taiwan service members who served of his own volition, looked to as a model after enlisting into the airborne infantry, then commissioning as a logistics officer as part of the 269th Mechanized Infantry Brigade. The 269th is the lynchpin maneuver unit charged with the defense of Taoyuan City on the northern banks of the island, all but certain to bear the brunt of a PLA invasion force, should ‘reunification’ ever come.
To briefly summarize- soldiers in the Taiwan defense forces are pressured into buying their own equipment in order to conduct their duties. This in spite of last month’s finalization of a $62 Billion sale of 66 F-16 Fighter jets for the Taiwan Air Defense Forces, who I profiled early this year amid yet another incursion by PLA air forces. Taiwan’s air forces too, are under an immense amount of pressure to defend their homeland despite glaring inventory obsoletion and inferiority in the shadow of the modernizing PLA. Just last week, U.S. Undersecretary for Economic Affairs Keith Kratch visited Taipei for the memorial service of Taiwan’s democratic father, Lee Teng-Hui. The PLA Air Forces sent 18 of their aircraft over the Strait of Taiwan’s midline, forcing Taiwan air defense forces to scramble and intercept. Kratch is the highest-ranking State Department official to visit the island state in four decades, and as such, the Chinese Communist Party promised a “necessary response”.
The Eagle has many places to land
Since implementing the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the Defense Departments priority of effort has been the Indo-Pacific- a decided victory per the thought strategos who argue for pivoting away from the counter-terror paradigm of conflict and orienting the defense enterprise against peer states and power rivals. Just because the theater has become the priority, however, does not imply that the logistics have pivoted in kind. In recent weeks, I’ve covered how the US Navy plans to build a flotilla of self-supporting, multi-role fighting vessels for rapid deployment and counter-assault across the vast nautical spaces in the China-shaded hemisphere. The Marines have followed in kind, evolving their infantry fighting forces into the Marine Littoral Regiment. However, all of those modularity adaptations must bend to the will of logistics.
The DoD has been poring over the issue, and force-fed (to an even higher degree than the GWOT paradigm) the idea of ‘Joint-ness’, wherein the interoperability of our service branches take on a much more important facet of great power competition. The de facto supply lines in competition with China in the Indo-Pacific are immense, and while the U.S. 7th Fleet is in possession of some 20,000 sailors, 70 ships, and hundreds of aircraft, the largest forward-staged maritime command in the DoD is responsible for 124 million square kilometers of territory. It is a challenge, to say the least, operating in such expansive domains, but Taiwan’s utter fragility in its ability to support its own warfighters serves as a lynch-pin for the 7th fleet operations. Traversing far from home port in Yokosuka, Japan puts the USS Ronald Reagan Strike groups (CVN-76) out of realistic response times from a Taiwan incident.
The support architecture for 7th fleet is based out of Singapore, thus the logistical maritime routes are under the crosshairs of Chinese-crafted artificial islands in the same vein as Taiwan. Those logistical support ships (about 50), are contracted vessels with a mix of military and civilian crews. Sailing an aircraft carrier into a hot zone is par for the course, sending those critical and vulnerable non-fighting vessels anywhere near adversarial coverage is a tempting target.
How then does the 7th fleet’s task-organization factor into this analysis? For starters, with Taiwan at such a fragile and hollow state of affairs constrains US freedom to force project against Chinese Communist aggression across the broad swaths of territory under 7th Fleets purview. As ties deepen between the United States and Taiwan, the discussion of collective defense in the NATO model will grow in tandem. Collective, meaning both parties contribute. To quote the expression from Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast (referencing Germany supporting the Austro-Hungarian empire in WWI), “dragging a corpse” is the current status quo if the U.S. is drawn into a conflict with the PLA at the behest of a compromised Taiwan.
Warfare gets fancier with time, and the tools to make it so always seem to leap from the pages of a science fiction novel. Regardless of the shiny inventory available, logistics and their ability to deliver (or even possess) the goods will damn them or deliver them in conflict.
The Irish Data Protection Commissioner — Silicon Valley’s Latest Nightmare
Oscar Bellsolell
At the end of August, the Irish regulator overseeing compliance with European data protection regulations — the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) — ordered Facebook to shut down the routine transfers of European citizens’ data to servers in the United States. If the parties cannot find a way to settle this issue, the days of the transnational internet where data travels unhindered could be numbered.
The dispute that the social media giant is fighting on the other side of the Atlantic stems from legal distinctions over data protection between the United States and the European Union. It is no mystery that European data protection laws are somewhat restrictive. In short, the regulation states that the European Commission reserves its right to decide whether a third country guarantees adequate privacy protection, without which they can forbid the transfer of data to that country. This mechanism was applied back in 2000 to declare that the United States offered an adequate level of protection, a decision known as the Safe Harbor Agreement.
Austrian lawyer and privacy activist Maximilian Schrems did not agree with this resolution. In 2013, Mr. Schrems called on Irish courts to ban Facebook Ireland Inc. from transferring their data to the United States, arguing that the surveillance activities carried out by the NSA and the FBI violated European law.
In 2015, the European Court of Justice ruled that the Safe Harbor Agreement was not valid. Facebook, however, argued that much of the data they transferred to the United States was based on protective Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) adopted by the Commission, an alternative allowed under GDPR. The DPC then encouraged Mr. Schrems to reformulate his lawsuit and claim that the SCCs also could not apply since the American surveillance programs were incompatible with the protection of privacy and personal data in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
Mr. Schrems filed that suit and the ruling — referred to as Schrems II — jeopardizes the future of operations on European soil of American companies that depend on intercontinental transfers of data. Although this ruling was handed down in July, the Silicon Valley-based company has continued to do business as usual to this day, which is why the DPC has now required Facebook to stop data transfers. The immediate consequence of not complying with the Irish regulator’s orders could be a billion-dollar fine and a further penalty of up to 4% of its $70.7 billion annual revenue.
For decades, countries have tried to “nationalize” their internet spaces, beginning with China, but also among countries that seek to control the information that their citizens can consume. That politically open democracies in North America and Europe would try something similar is a new phenomenon. There is one big truth behind the popular mantra “data is the new oil.” In the great powers’ competition for geotechnological dominance, data fuels the advancements in technologies such as artificial intelligence — see how TikTok’s algorithm has propelled the app to stardom — and states just will not let others come and take that. We have seen this with the Trump administration’s crusade against Chinese social media platforms — TikTok and WeChat. The fear that the Chinese communist authorities could force TikTok to turn over American users’ data has changed the way these social networks will have to operate in the U.S.
We may be witnessing the last days of the transnational internet as we know it. If countries are no longer willing to let companies gather data from their citizens and take it home with them, we will need a new international regulatory framework to make mutual trust in data management possible. Ironically, we may also see a change in national regulations that grant more legal data protection to foreigners than to nationals.
Facebook’s response to the DPC was not long in coming. The data protection officer at Facebook Ireland Inc. has expressed that the continuity of Facebook and Instagram operations in the European Union is indeed at serious risk, while they have also requested the order to be frozen. It will be at the end of this year when the Irish regulator issues a final decision.
Facebook has sent a message that their platform does essential work in helping small and medium businesses promote themselves in a way that was not accessible to them before. They are telling the E.U. regulator that the ball is in their court. Will this strategy work? It seems like it is in both parties’ interests to reach a new agreement under the current GDPR. It is also in the United States’ best interest to make that agreement possible, so whoever is president next year will need to work with Brussels and Congress to make such a deal possible. Until that happens, lawyers will figure out a way to delay the current dispute for months or even years.
But the European threat could be more serious than some think — what if there is no new data transfer mechanism? The first solution that comes to mind is opening data centers in Europe, but this could be impossible for some companies, especially as they are starting up. If other large markets and regional bodies make similar rules, it could fragment the market entirely and make it much more difficult for any new internet startups to arise
Facebook also needs a plan B. The company’s revenue mainly comes from the United States and Europe, so Facebook might consider reengineering their social network design to become less vulnerable to an eventual closure in a whole region — while their business model in the U.S. and Europe might not be exportable to Asia and Africa as of now, becoming a mobile payment/multipurpose app could potentially boost the user-count in those regions. A Facebook and Instagram shut down in the European Union could only happen in this fateful year. For now, though, this potential shut down remains a dystopian nightmare.
News You May Have Missed
Studies Suggest That MIT’s Plans for Nuclear Fusion Reactor Will Probably Work
Thomas Triedman
Seven papers recently published in the Journal of Plasma Physics concluded that MIT’s effort to design a practical, emissions-free power plant is “very likely to work.” The project, known as SPARC, hopes to replicate the way the sun produces energy by creating a “burning plasma,” a self-sustaining fusion reaction involving hydrogen isotopes. While fission and fusion are both nuclear processes that release energy, fission involves splitting up a heavy and generally unstable atom like uranium, while fusion (the process involved here) involves combining, or fusing together, lighter atoms such as hydrogen isotopes. Because the burning plasma is expected to reach temperatures hotter than the sun, liquid helium (4.2 degrees Kelvin) would be used to cool it, and superconducting magnets would form a field to contain it. This plant has the potential to be a better alternative to existing fission power plants that produce dangerous and radioactive byproducts. In addition, once it is up and running, SPARC could provide a wealth of information about plasma-based fusion devices — and how to make them commercially available.
White House Blocks C.D.C. “No Sail” Order for Cruise Ships, Cruises Set to Resume October 31
Eric Dai
C.D.C. Director Dr. Robert Redfield’s proposal to extend the current “no sail” order for cruise ships in the United States until February 2021 was overruled at a meeting of the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force on Tuesday. The order, which was first implemented in April and then extended in July, is set to now expire on October 31, the day the cruise industry had already set for itself for the resumption of cruises. White House deputy press secretary Brain Morgenstern denied that the lifting of the ban, which would have hurt Florida’s large tourism industry, was politically motivated.
NASA Astronaut Crew Plans on Casting Their Ballot from Space
Oscar Bellsolell
American astronauts set to travel to the International Space Station are getting ready to vote from 200 miles above the Earth. Flight engineer Kate Rubins — along with two Russian cosmonauts — is scheduled to launch October 14 on the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft from Kazakhstan. Meanwhile, astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi will launch to the ISS on October 31 aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience capsule. All U.S. astronauts planning to vote from space — who must be registered to vote in Texas — will access their electronic ballot and cast their vote, which will be emailed back to election officials in Houston. Astronauts have been able to cast their ballot from space since 1997, when the Texas legislator ruled they could vote off-planet during the early voting period — when they fill out their ballots, astronauts list their address as “low-Earth orbit.”
Amnesty International Withdraws from India Following Government Pressure
Amnesty International, one of the leading international human rights organizations, has been hounded out of India. According to the group, the Indian government has raided its offices, harassed its staff, and frozen its bank accounts to punish it for reporting on the role played by government officials in fomenting violence against Muslims in the country and torturing prisoners in Kashmir. The Indian government replied in a statement denying the allegations and adding, “All the glossy statements about humanitarian work and speaking truth to power are nothing but a ploy to divert attention from their activities which were in clear contravention of laid-down Indian laws.” Members of the ruling party have called human rights and environmental advocacy “anti-national.” Dozens of countries around the world have implemented laws designed to prevent international organizations and human or civil rights NGOs from operating in their countries, a remarkable retreat for human freedom.
The views of authors are their own and not that of CSPC.