Nature Abhors a Vacuum

The Retreat of African Democracy

A Weekly Political News Magazine

How the U.S. Can Step Up in the South China Sea

Saudi Arabia’s Efforts to Ensure Cyber Security

Issue 1732 - January 25/01/2019

Nature Abhors a Vacuum www.majalla.com

Editorial In all new beginnings, people have hope for the future to come, hope that what happens next in the coming years will be better than the years that were left behind and hope that the world their children will reside in will be better than the one they endured and lived through. As we welcomed the coming of a new year this month, Majalla has decided to explore some of the hopes and fears people have for the foreseeable future.

Dennis Ross argues that the US’s decision to leave Syria will only leave a vacuum that will cause more trouble than it solves. On one side there is ISIS and other affiliated groups that will seek to display their strength rather than admit defeat and there are Russia and Iran that will try to protect their ally in the Assad regime. Israel will not allow Syria to fall into the hands of Iran and will therefore be prepared to the clash with Iran in Syria. Just this week Israel launched strikes on Syrian sites, as it claimed that they were being used by Iran to launch attacks. Ross then makes the grim prediction that Iran will probably not launch strikes on Israel but rather on its other rival states in the Gulf.

Nic Cheeseman and Jeffery Smith looked into the state of democracy in the ever so troubled continent of Africa. The authors argued that there was hope in the early years after the Cold War, as many African states held free elections and apartheid finally ended in South Africa. However, in recent years many African leaders have grown more authoritarian as they started finding new ways of staying in power, for example many have opted to amend their national constitutions to keep themselves in power, rather than rigging elections in their favor.

Gregory Polling and Bonnie Glaser wrote on how the US and its allies can counter China’s illegal activities in the South China Sea. The authors noted that when there was similar trouble with China in the East China Sea, the US took the role of leading a coalition of likeminded allies such as Japan, the UK, France and Australia and deterred Chinese activities in the area. Now if there is any hope of stopping China’s acts in the South China Sea, then the US must do the same and reassume its leadership role of a similar coalition, moreover this coalition should also include Southeastern Asian states, particularly the Philippines.

Robert Chesney and Danielle Citron explore the new aspect of “deepfakes”. Deepfakes are manufactured audio visual productions that can convincingly show individuals doing or saying something they never did or said. The main component that makes these “deepfakes” work is the rising advances of artificial intelligence. While the rise of this new technology is distressing, the authors argue that methods of detecting the “deepfakes“ is becoming more sophisticated, but for the time being we will have to live with the disturbing reality that audio-visual evidence may not be evidence at all.

In a more positive story on AI and new technology, Klaus Schwab writes on the new industrial revolution or what he calls, “Industrial Revolution 4.0”. This new age will consist mostly of new AI and advanced cyber technology, but the author is weary that the ever increasing isolationist world may not allow this new age to flourish. The author argues that it is absolutely necessary for the world actors to coordinate and safeguard international conventions to preserve the open world, lest we may never fully enter the new high tech age.

Ahmed Taher took a look at the cyber threats that Saudi Arabia has and is still facing and the steps it took to counter them. One of such steps was the establishment of the National Cybersecurity Authority (CSA), which aims to make the Kingdom more prepared to counter cyber-attacks targeting it or its agencies. Taher argues that ensuring cyber security is an important step toward Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030.

Melissa Healy writes on new findings that demonstrate generic drugs such as Femora and Aromasin can be used to treat breast cancer. But one should not be hopeful yet as the side effects of these drugs might make them more harmful than beneficial.

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

Issue 1732 - January 25/01/2019

32 20 The Retreat of African Democracy

From the Archives: US President Ronald Reagan's 48 First Interview with an Arabic Publication

38 Globalization 4.0

Preventing Breast Cancer Just Got Easier 34

How the U.S. Can Step Up in 3224 the South China Sea

Deepfakes and the New 28 Disinformation War

44 Political Scandal and Film 3

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Suleyman Cobanoglu, 60 years old, pets his camel for Selcuk Camel wrestling festival in the town of Selcuk, near the western Turkish coastal city of Izmir, on January 2019 ,19. The Selcuk Camel wrestling festival in Turkey dates back over 2400 years and originated among the nomadic Turkic Tribes. Today, Turkey›s camel wrestling league holds more than 30 events across the country during the season November to March. (Getty)

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People from a caravan of Central American migrants climb down off a truck they were hoping to catch a ride from, on their way to the United States, on January 2019 ,20 in Huixtla, Mexico. Some members of the caravan are in Mexico while others are further behind in Guatemala. (Getty) 6

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British Prime Minister Theresa May leaves 10 Downing Street to attend the weekly Prime Ministers Questions, on January ,23 2019 in London, England. There are reports that MPs are proposing alternative plans to the Prime Ministers existing Brexit deal, including a possible extension to the exit date, currently scheduled for 29 March. (Getty)

May’s Plan B or Lack There of After having her deal rejected in parliament last week, Theresa May has been forced to attempt cross party talks. The aim of these talks was to come up with a plan B deal that would be presented to the negotiating table in Brussels.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn refused to hold any talks with the Prime Minister unless she puts a no deal option off the table, but in an attempt to appease hardline Brexiters in her party and to remain adamant on her “good deal or no deal” stance, she refused such a notion from the opposition leader. MPs have been trying to add

which is traditionally held at the House of the Congress, on January 3, but then retracted the invitation citing “security issues” due to the partial government shutdown, which is now the longest in US history. Trump’s response was that the secret service cited no major security issues and insisted on giving the address in its traditional venue and within its traditional annual timing, but Pelosi refused until he calls off the shutdown. Trump would later consider alternative venues, but then tracked back on such an idea and instead said he would give the address at the House chamber once the shutdown ends.

Mo Salah Mysteriously Deletes his amendments to May’s deal, among them are the Social Media option of extending the Brexit deadline and a refusal of a no-deal option; MPs are set to vote on these amendments on January 29.

Trump and Pelosi State of the Union Spat US President Donald Trump and Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi argued over this year’s state of the Union venue and invitation. Pelosi had initially invited the president to give the address,

A portrait of Mohamed Salah of Liverpool during the Premier League match between Liverpool FC and Crystal Palace at Anfield on January 2019 ,19 in Liverpool, United Kingdom. (Getty Images)

U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (L) speaks to members of the press about U.S. President Donald Trump and the State of the Union speech while she returns to the U.S. Capitol on January 2019 ,23 in Washington, DC. (Getty)

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Egypt and Liverpool striker, Mo Salah, left a cryptic tweet on January 23 simply saying: “2019 Resolution: Time to get in touch for real.” This left many fans confused, which wasn’t helped by the fact that he would go on to delete his twitter account and delete all his Instagram posts shortly after the tweet. Many fans speculated that the footballer’s actions might have something to do with his disputes

Alex Salmond, former First Minister of Scotland leaves Edinburgh Sheriff Court after being arrested and charged by police on January 24 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Mr Salmond had been under investigation following claims of sexual harassment. (Getty Images)

Malibu aircraft from Nantes heading to Cardiff, supposedly to settle in to his new home and start training with his new team. Tragically, the aircraft which was only carrying him and the pilot went missing in the English Channel and its signal had gone off the radar. The Guernsey Former Scottish Nationalist Party police then held an extensive 24 hour search leader, Alex Salmond, Gets Arrested operation which involved three airplanes, five helicopters and two life boats. However, on Alex Salmond, former Scotland First Minister, January 24, Captain David Barker who was was arrested on January 24 amid allegations leading the operation announced that he called against him that range from 2 rape allegations off the active search for the aircraft, citing that and 11 sexual assault accusations. Salmond has chances of survival were now slim. The captain denied the claims and has appeared in court gave his condolences to the footballer’s family shortly after his arrest. Salmond is most famous and said that although the active search had for calling a referendum in Scotland for its ended the case was still very much open. independence from the UK back in 2014 and campaigned in favor of Scottish independence. with the Egyptian FA, which include rows over his image rights and lack of security at the Egyptian football’s team’s camp at last year’s world cup.

Aircraft Carrying Footballer Disappears in the English Channel Premier League club Cardiff City had just signed Argentine footballer, Emiliano Sala, from French side Nantes for a reported club record fee 13 million pounds. Sala had then boarded a A picture taken on July 2018 ,26 shows Egyptian policemen stand guarding a checkpoint on a road leading to the North Sinai provincial capital of El-Arish. (Getty)

Egypt Continues its Fight against Terrorists as Security Forces Kill 59 Militants

Emiliano Sala and Ken Choo CEO on January 2019 ,18 in Cardiff, Wales. (Getty Images)

Egypt security forces clashed with Islamists in North Sinai on January 22, as the military issued a statement that said it had killed 59 militants and arrested 142 suspected fighters. The

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Associated Press also reports that the Egyptian military launched air strikes that destroyed 56 vehicles used by the terrorists to transport ammunition across the Western desert. The military statement also said that it destroyed 6 smuggling tunnels that link the Sinai Peninsula to the Gaza Strip. The clash happened one week after renewed attacks on Egypt’s Coptic minority took place and particularly after Islamists kidnapped a Christian man, who was a forensic police expert, in North Sinai while he was travelling in a taxi. As of the writing of this news summary, the man is still being held by the militants.

Venezuelan opposition leader and head of the National Assembly Juan Guaido declares self interim president as thousands of people protest against Nicolás Maduro on January 2019 ,23 in Caracas, Venezuela. (Getty)

Venezuela Protests Erupt as Trump Takes a Stance A wave of new protests broke out in Venezuela on January 23 as thousands took to the streets against Nicolás Maduro. President of National Assembly and opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, joined the protestors on the street as he declared himself the new president of the country. The protests were countered with clashes and tear gas from security forces. Trump responded to the events in Venezuela by recognizing Guaido as president of the country, as he was joined

by Canada in this recognition. Meanwhile, the EU took a more neutral stance on the situation as it said that the protests “cannot be ignored” and instead called for free and fair elections to be held in the country. In response to Trump’s declaration, Maduro gave 72 hours for US diplomats to leave Venezuelan soil.

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Nature Abhors a Vacuum No one in the region or outside should think that a war that may start in Lebanon will not spread to the rest of the region

By: Dennis Ross Nature abhors a vacuum. So does the world of power politics. It should come as no surprise that after President Trump declared he would be withdrawing US forces from Syria, the rush to fill the vacuum has heated up even before the US is out. It is not only that Daesh is trying to show they are not defeated yet—and thus claimed to be responsible for the bombing that killed four Americans; it is also that there are signs that the Iranians have again increased their flow of arms into Syria.

Israeli officials say the new Iranian effort began after the Trump announcement. It focuses more on putting advanced missiles into existing Syrian bases—

perhaps, believing that the Russians having committed to securing the Assad regime, would deter the Israelis from launching strikes against Syria’s bases. No doubt, the Iranian hope or expectation was based on the tougher posture the Russians took toward Israel following the shoot down of one of their aircraft in which fifteen Russian servicemen were killed.

Ironically, it was Syrian anti-aircraft missiles that shot down the plane well after Israeli planes had already returned to Israel from their strike mission; however, since the Russians are in Syria to save Assad, they found it expedient to blame the Israelis and not the regime they intervened to secure.

But if the Iranians counted on the Russians to deter or prevent Israeli strikes now against Syrian bases

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After all, in many ways the Qods Force advisors with their Shia militia proxies are the boots on the ground for the Russians and Assad in filling the vacuum and taking on the remnants of Daesh. on the ground for the Russians and Assad in filling the vacuum and taking on the remnants of Daesh.

However, both the Russians and Iranians failed to understand that with the US leaving, Israel also was going to feel the need to be more assertive in establishing its limits or red-lines in Syria. True, it had already carried out over 200 operations in Syria to make the point that it would not tolerate the Iranians creating in Syria what they have created in Lebanon.

But the Trump announcement further signaled that Israel was on its own—and the US would do nothing to limit either Iran’s further entrenchment or its development of a more advanced ballistic missile capability in Syria. Given the new circumstances, the Israelis chose to act. And, now, after having greatly reduced the number of their operations in Syria following the shoot down of the Russian plane, they have carried out two operations within 8 days.

A picture taken early on January ,21 2019 shows Syrian air defence batteries responding to what the Syrian state media said were Israeli missiles targeting Damascus.

- Israel struck what it said were Iranian targets in Syria today in response to rocket fire it blamed on Iran.

(Getty Images)

or facilities where the Iranians are operating, they were sadly mistaken. Yes, the Russians have again criticized the Israelis for “arbitrary” air strikes. But the Russians who want the US to leave Syria probably also miscalculated. Israel’s threshold for acting against the Iranians in Syria has become lower not higher after the US announcement. Why? With the US still there, Iran had reason to be somewhat more cautious for at least two reasons: first, to avoid possibly provoking an American military response against their forces; and second to avoid Russian pressures not to act in a way that would give the Americans a reason to stay in Syria. But with the Americans leaving, the Iranians apparently believed this was a good time to become more active—and the Russians might have thought so as well. After all, in many ways the Qods Force advisors with their Shia militia proxies are the boots

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The targets in and around Damascus, including at the Damascus international airport, have been Iranian weapon depots and warehouses, intelligence sites and training bases. In response, the Iranians launched a large ballistic missile carrying a significant warhead toward an Israeli ski resort on Mt Hermon in the Golan Heights. There many Israeli tourists at the site. The Israelis shot down the missile and then retaliated against different Iranian facilities, hitting weapons and a base at al Kiswah south of Damascus. They also destroyed those Syrian air defense batteries that fired on the Israeli aircraft. After retaliating, the IDF spokesman said that the Iranian missile “was fired by an Iranian force from the Damascus area from inside territory [the Syrian government] promised would not host an Iranian presence.”

Clearly, the Iranians are in places in Syria that are colocated with the Syrian military as well as at their own bases. Israel was acting to show they will prevent a

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certain kind of Iranian build-up.

For its part, the rocket Iran fired crossed a line. Just as last March when they flew an armed drone into Israel—for the first time being prepared to attack the Israelis directly and not through proxies from Syria—so now the size and payload of the missile they launched showed an Iranian readiness to inflict much more direct damage on the Israelis. Once again, they were frustrated by the Israelis and once again it was the Iranians, not the Israelis, who suffered casualties.

Will this calm the situation for the time-being? Maybe but with the US in the process of withdrawing from Syria, Israel will continue to believe it must establish its own red-lines that if crossed by the Iranians will trigger far tougher Israel actions. The question now is will the Iranians, having again suffered military losses in Syria, decide to de-escalate and adopt a lower-key posture in Syria. In no circumstances will they leave Syria. Whatever the Israelis say, they know Iran is not going to leave. But what the Israelis seek is a limitation on the character of the Iranian presence and the certainty that missiles with advanced guidance systems will not be deployed there.

The US announcement on withdrawal may have contributed to the escalation this week between the Israelis and Iranians. But it is not the source of the conflict. When the Iranian air force chief proclaims that “We’re ready for the decisive war that will bring about Israel’s disappearance from the earth,” the Israelis understand what they are facing and it guarantees that Israel’s leaders will feel they must deny the Iranians the ability to act on such threats. They will continue to act decisively against Iranian moves to create a more serious threat to Israel from Syria and Lebanon. And, they will signal the Iranians that if they think they can

The US announcement on withdrawal may have contributed to the escalation this week between the Israelis and Iranians.

trigger an attack with thousands of rockets against Israel from Lebanon and Syria and remain immune from Israeli retaliation directly against Iran, they need to think again.

No one in the region or outside should think that a war that may start in Lebanon will not spread to the rest of the region. Israel will hit high value targets in Iran if it is being hit by thousands of Hezbollah and Iranian rockets from Lebanon and Syria. Who will Iran hit in return? Its leaders feeling they can add little to what Hezbollah rockets are doing may choose to hit countries in the Gulf. This scenario could erupt quickly and not be contained so easily.

It is hard to see whose interests would be served by such a conflict. If the Trump administration were to explain bluntly to the Russians that such a conflict would draw the US back into the region, it would give Putin an incentive to do more to limit what the Iranians do in Syria. Avoiding a larger regional conflict may well depend on imposing such limits.

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Syrian children look at pigeons in the central Marjeh Square in Damascus on January ,21 2019. (Getty Images)

Former Israeli Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Gadi Eizenkot (L), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the new Israeli Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi take part in a handover ceremony for the new Israeli chief of staff on January 2019 ,15 at the Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv. (Getty Images)

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Saudi Arabia’s Efforts to Ensure Cyber Security A Pillar of Vision 2030 Written by: Ahmed Taher Baku- The field of communications and information technology has recently developed in its diversity, nature and its versatility.

These developments have led to increased global technological exchange and movement. This in turn has given many countries more responsibility to safeguard their national security and the security of their citizens since these new technologies can be utilized for both peaceful uses as well as malicious non-peaceful ones.

Cyberwarfare, the act of launching cyberattacks targeting information networks and online control systems, have emerged to become one of the most important issues that concerns the international community as a whole. Saudi Arabia has realized this and has therefore mentioned it in its Vision 2030 initiative, which included an important pillar that focused on the development of digital infrastructure as the basis for the success of all the Kingdom’s aspects and fundamental objectives. This means that there is an increasing necessity to protect this digital infrastructure from cyberattacks by rival countries or terrorist organizations that aim to sabotage Saudi national security and stability.

To secure its national cybersecurity, Saudi Arabia needed to establish a national body which can detect, deter and protect it from such attacks.

King Salman issued a royal decree in October 2017 ,31, ordering the establishment of the National Cybersecurity Authority (NCA).

Minister of State and cabinet member Dr. Mohammad al-Ayban serves as head of the NCA’s Board of Directors; furthermore the NCA’s members include head of the state’s security, chief of general intelligence, deputy interior minister and assistant defence minister. The NCA aims to promote and protect the networks, IT systems and software in the Kingdom.

It is nevertheless important to note that Saudi Arabia has shown

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Computer security concept. Padlock on computer circuit board. (Getty)

People stand next to the Ruyaa (vision) 2030 pavilion at the Gitex 2017 exhibition at the Dubai World Trade Center in Dubai on October 2017 ,8.

(Getty)

its cybersecurity capabilities even before the establishment of the NCA, as it protected its national institutions from malicious attacks. For instance, it countered an attack targeting Aramco’s e-system in August 2017.

In order to carry out its tasks successfully, NCA issued a document in October 2018, titled “Basic Controls to Enhance Cybersecurity” which aimed to set minimum standards to be applied in various national bodies in order to minimize cyber threats. This will contribute to enhancing the Kingdom’s cyberspace security and its vital economic interests and capabilities.

In this context, the document reviews the role of the NCA in addition to the most important institutions that assist it in its work.

The roles of the NCA can be summarized as the following:

First: Saudi National Cybersecurity Authority… Its Tasks and Efforts Securing cyberspace is a fundamental element for the 2030 Vision. This is especially true with the increase of cyber-threats which have increased the need to protect the information and communication systems. It is also paramount to maintain the

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Saudi Vision 2030 included an important pillar, which focused on the development of digital infrastructure as the basis for the success of all its aspects and major fundamental objectives. confidentiality and integrity of information and enable vital national bodies to access infrastructure assets in a smooth and safe manner.

It is for these reasons that a royal decree was issued to establish the NCA, the decree also included the NCA’s regulatory and operational terms of reference in the area of cybersecurity. It called for the enhancement of the protection of networks, IT systems and systems of operational technologies along with their hardware and software components and data. The decree ordered taking into consideration the growing importance of national

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cybersecurity and called for the establishment of a stable national cybersecurity system, which can help the Kingdom become a leader in global cybersecurity.

Accordingly, the NCA prioritized attracting competent and ambitious national cadres, building partnerships with public and private entities, stimulating innovation and investment in cybersecurity to contribute to achieving a technological renaissance that serves the future of the Kingdom's national economy.

The fact that King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud owns the NCA is evidence that the Kingdom prioritizes information security and quick responses to cyber-attacks.

It is important to note, however, that the NCA operates independently as to allow its experts to come up with the best and most efficient cyber security strategies. Thus, emphasizing the status and independence of this body to enact cybersecurity regulations and measures, the NCA has been able to apply these regulations on other government agencies and follow-up their application. That way, the NCA ensures all government agencies that work with it, work in a cooperative manner that ensures data protection throughout Saudi Arabia.

It is for the reason stated above, that the NCA established the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) to build a secure and flexible e-space sphere to protect the priorities of the country and its citizens. The NCSC will also be boosting the economy through enhancing cooperation with government agencies and vital installations that are sensitive to cyber-threats, responding to cyber-incidents and activating security knowledge of the situation.

It issued a statistical report on threats and cyber risks during the first quarter of 2018, which included the following: -1 During the period between January and March 2018, there was an increase in the number of attacks and cyber-threats compared to the fourth quarter of 2017 (which was at %5.13) as malware and hacking attempts represented most of the cyber-threats. This indicates that the attackers wanted to stay within the affected networks for as long as possible, and there was a gradual decrease in hacking attempts since the third quarter of 2017. However, the diagram shows a significant increase in the use of malware, indicating that the hackers were using new tools and methods to access and damage sensitive information.

-2 During the same period, government agencies were the most targeted, followed by institutions within the education sector and the telecommunications sector. These results reflect the hackers’ desire to affect the national economy as these sectors are among the most important as shown in the figure. These agencies would have been severely affected if the hackers were to obtain the sensitive information they sought.

The NCA’s efforts were not limited to establishing the NCSC. It also carried out many tasks as specified in its terms of reference.

Among most of its prominent achievements are the following: -1 Issuance of the national manifesto, which is known as

The NCSC’s objectives are aimed at enabling government agencies and vital installations to better prepare themselves against cyber-attacks. Thus they will be enhancing the overall status of cyberspace while also building and strengthening the Center's internal capabilities.

Saudi Arabia has shown its cybersecurity capabilities after it protected its national institutions from malicious attacks both before and after the establishment of the “National Cybersecurity Authority” (NCA).

"Strengthening Cybersecurity" with its binding rules for all parties to protect their security especially their data security. Notably, the NCA is responsible for cybersecurity in the Kingdom and is set to develop policies, governance mechanisms, frameworks, standards and guidelines related to cybersecurity in order to provide them for relevant parties. The NCA would then follow up these parties’ compliance with these guidelines and update them if deemed necessary.

-2 The launch of programs aimed at building national capacities in the field of cybersecurity. These programs include: - Cybersecurity Training Program (CyberPro), which aims at

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Participants including Saudi women attend a hackathon in Jeddah on August 2018 ,1, prior to the start of the annual Hajj pilgrimage in the holy city of Mecca. - Around 3,000 participants attended the threeday ‹Hackathon event› in Jeddah, the government said, with the aim of exploring high-tech solutions to make Hajj pilgrimage more efficient and safe. (Getty)

market in both public and private sectors to protect networks and IT systems.

raising the competency of public sector employees working in the cybersecurity field and recent university graduates in majors related to cybersecurity. In its first year, NCA aims to provide some 800 training opportunities to Saudi young men and women in this field with the help of international specialist companies under NCA’s supervision.

- Cybersecurity Scholarship initiative in partnership with the Ministry of Education via the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques’ Foreign Scholarship Program. NCA reached an agreement with the ministry to increase the number of places for foreign scholarships for the first year from 200 to 540 for both genders. The objective is to meet the need to build national capabilities in cybersecurity and cover shortages in the labor

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-3 Organization of many partnership workshops in cooperation with government agencies to raise awareness, readiness, maturity and sharing of information in the field of protection against cyber-threats at the national level. In this regard, the NCA organized a workshop in Riyadh in November 2018 ,8 on the national situation of cybersecurity in the Kingdom and the most important projects and initiatives launched by the NCA. The workshop was attended by more than 200 governmental and vital sectors' representatives.

The workshop discussed the most significant challenges and cyber-threats as well as the means of dealing with them. It also discussed the necessary preventive measures against these threats, assuring the NSA and other parties’ capabilities in enhancing their cybersecurity.

Second: Strengthening Cybersecurity Agenda’s Objectives The NCA has issued a document entitled "Strengthening Cybersecurity", which aims to develop policies, governance mechanisms, frameworks, standards and guidelines related to

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cybersecurity in order to provide them for relevant parties, follow up their compliance with them and update them all.

This step comes as a response to the royal decree issued in July 2018, which ordered all government agencies to raise their cybersecurity level to protect their networks, systems and e-data in accordance to NCA policies, frameworks, standards and guidelines.

The decree also included the private sector entities that have, operate or host sensitive national infrastructure.

These regulations aim at supporting basic cybersecurity controls and minimum cybersecurity requirements for sensitive information networks. Thus, meeting current security needs and increasing the entities’ readiness within the scope of these controls. The regulations would therefore protect sensitive systems and prevent unauthorized access which would result in costly risks and losses at the national level.

The controls adopted are based on five key components that focus on cybersecurity governance, enhancement and resilience in addition to cybersecurity on foreign parties, cloud computing, and industrial control systems. The manifesto document included 114 main controls.

Notably, these controls have been prepared through several stages. A survey of the visions of more than 260 national bodies was carried out; a study on the national decisions, standards, frameworks and controls was prepared by local and international bodies. Best practices and experiences in the field were extrapolated in addition to analyzing incidents and cyber-attacks at the level of government agencies and other sensitive parties during the past periods.

Third: Cybersecurity is Everyone’s Responsibility It wasn’t coincidental that the interest in cybersecurity extended to all areas in light of challenges facing the Kingdom to complete building its modern state in accordance with Vision 2030. It has

Saudi Arabia has shown its cybersecurity capabilities even before the establishment of the NCA, as it protected its national institutions from malicious attacks. For instance, it countered an attack targeting Aramco’s e-system in August 2017.

realized that to achieve its desired renaissance it needs to protect its systems and information structure.

Therefore, all sectors joined forces to attain cybersecurity, starting with the education sector.

Most universities in the Kingdom are keen on teaching information security subjects in their computer faculties. Some of them have even set up postgraduate programs in this field through the establishment of centers and institutions concerned with cybersecurity in order to help the NCA achieve its tasks and objectives. Below are some of the most prominent centers: -1 The National Center for Security Operations in the Interior Ministry. The Center provides security service, including the information, statistics and reports for the security services associated with the Ministry. It also coordinates the efforts of these bodies, and if necessary, it coordinates between the security services and government or civilian sectors.

In addition, the Center also follows up security emergency cases to assess the situation and see whether there is need for its intervention in the case of the concerned body’s inability to deal with it or in the case that situation could pose a national level threat.

It consists of the main operations department and includes representatives from all security sectors and liaison officers from the Ministries of Defense and National Guard to easily receive

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A picture taken on May 2016 ,10 shows over Shaybah, the base for Saudi Aramco›s Natural Gas Liquids plant and oil production in the surrounding Shaybah field in Saudi Arabia›s remote Empty quarter desert close to the United Arab Emirates, on May 2016 ,10.

(Getty)

Building cybersecurity is vital for protecting the Kingdom›s projects and achievements,

and pass information. It also includes a number of departments: Department of Planning and Information, Department of Crisis and Disaster Planning, Department of Technical Support, Department of Television Monitoring, Department of Administrative Affairs and Emirates of Regions.

-2 The National Center for Cybersecurity Technology in King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST). It was established in the framework of KACST’s quest for Saudi society to rapidly transition to a tech savvy society. Moreover, it was founded on KACST’s goal of making Saudi Arabia a leader in the field of information technology through the application of the National Science Technology and Innovation Plan (NSTIP) during the next 20 years in addition to strengthening cooperation with the leading authorities in this field.

It also seeks to become a regional center for research in the field of cyber-crimes and digital forensics as to make strategic leads in the field of information security on regional and global levels.

In order to achieve all of these objectives, the Center organized a series of specialized training courses in several areas, namely: information security, encryption, digital analysis, reverse engineering, network security, application security and analysis of e-hacking.

-3 Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity and Programming, which is a national institution that was established under the umbrella of the Saudi Arabian Olympic Committee. It

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aims to build national and professional capabilities in the fields of cybersecurity and programming in line with the established and internationally recognized practices and standards to expedite the ascent of the Kingdom to the ranks of developed countries in the domain of technology innovation.

In this context, the institution’s work was specified as following: - Establishing activities and programs that help increase the community's awareness of the importance of cybersecurity and programming and encouraging and supporting young people to become professional in these areas.

- Building and launching specialized educational and training initiatives to assist in the rehabilitation and building of distinctive national competencies.

- Establishing and organizing competitions and encouraging the spirit of competition, in addition to supporting and qualifying young people to participate in local or global competitions specialized in cybersecurity and programming.

-4 The Cybersecurity Unit at Prince Sultan University. It targets motivating, educating and training new generation of cybersecurity researchers and professionals to produce experts in cyber-technologies and systems.

The unit fosters several collaborations with national and international security research groups and centers, governmental agencies, companies and academic institutions with the purpose of excellence in security solutions outcomes.

Overall, the Cybersecurity Unit aims to contribute significantly in providing educational, research, outreach, and partnering security services nationally and internationally.

Finally, building cybersecurity is the most important element to protect the Kingdom's projects and achievements as it enables the Kingdom to move forward towards establishing the rules of development and construction in all its aspects

These rules are defined as following: - Preservation of the privacy and confidentiality of information by preventing access to information except by the authorized party.

-Verification of user identity, integrity, unity and homogeneity of information to prevent change and tampering.

-Readiness of information and equipment and availability upon request to the authorized party after verification of identity.

This is the essence of cybersecurity process, which has been successfully achieved by the Kingdom to ensure the success of its Vision 2030.

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The Retreat of African Democracy The Autocratic Threat Is Growing

By Nic Cheeseman and Jeffrey Smith In the decade following the Cold War, Africa saw many democratic success stories. In 1991, Benin and Zambia were the first former dictatorships to hold multiparty elections after the fall of the Soviet Union. In both countries, the opposition triumphed. South Africa replaced apartheid with majority rule in 1994, and soon after that, Nelson Mandela was elected president.

Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi also held elections and saw power change hands. All told, by the middle of the first decade of this century, every major peaceful state in Africa except Eritrea and

Swaziland, the continent’s last absolute monarchy, was, at least in principle, committed to holding competitive elections.

But in recent years, Africa’s political trajectory has begun moving in the opposite direction. In Tanzania, President John Magufuli has clamped down on the opposition and censored the media. His Zambian counterpart, President Edgar Lungu, recently arrested the main opposition leader on trumped-up charges of treason and is seeking to extend his stay in power to a third term. This reflects a broader trend. According to Freedom House, a think tank, just 11 percent of the continent is politically “free,” and the average level of democracy, understood as respect for political rights and

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The vast majority of Africans want to live in a democracy, but the proportion who believe they actually do falls almost every year. because of constitutional term limits, and unable to join this chosen successor thanks to his unpopularity, Kabila had to move to Plan B: manipulate the polls to ensure the victory of an opposition leader he hopes will be weak and pliant, empowering him to govern from the shadows.

Elsewhere, democracy is threatened by sophisticated politicians who subvert the rule of law for their own interests; the corrupting influence of oil, gas, and minerals; growing debt burdens; spreading Chinese influence; and autocrats who promise economic success in exchange for political repression. Underlying them all are Western indifference and, sometimes, hostility.

RULE BY LAW

An opposition supporter stands on a car next to a placard with an image of opposition figure Jean Pierre Bemba during a demonstration against the electoral process scheduled for the December elections in fear of fraud on Lumumba Boulevard, east of Kinshasa, on October 2018 ,26. (Getty Images)

civil liberties, fell in each of the last 14 years. The Ibrahim Index of African Governance shows that democratic progress lags far behind citizens’ expectations. The vast majority of Africans want to live in a democracy, but the proportion who believe they actually do falls almost every year.

Many of the woes of Africa’s developing democracies are not new, but old authoritarians are learning new tricks. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), President Joseph Kabila may have become the first leader on the continent to preserve his influence by rigging the presidential election in favor of an opposition candidate, Felix Tshisekedi. Forced to step down

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A good test for the health of a democracy, in Africa and elsewhere, is whether leaders leave office when the law says their time is up. So far, term limits in Africa have been respected more times than they have been disregarded. But a growing number of leaders—and their enablers—have removed such restrictions or given themselves longer terms through “constitutional coups,” which rewrite the rule books to effectively make the incumbent president for life. Since 2000, at least 30 African presidents have tried to extend their rule, and 18 of them have succeeded. In 2018 alone, the presidents of Burundi, Uganda, and Togo made such attempts.

Killing off term limits is part of a worrying trend. Many African leaders, afraid of an international backlash if they openly defy their laws, have taken to changing, rather than breaking, them.

International donors are often quick to censure governments that flout the rules but far slower to cut off relations with those that change the law through due process, even if they are brazenly rigging the system in their favor. This helps explain Kabila’s innovative strategy in the DRC; knowing that his own people and the international community expected a transfer of power, he is trying to retain control by faking one.

Unsurprisingly, countries without term limits tend to be more unstable than those with them. If politicians don’t respect term limits, the rule of law loses its meaning and citizens’ faith in the democratic process erodes. According to a recent Afrobarometer survey covering 36 countries, just 40 percent of Africans believe that their last elections were “free and fair.” If citizens are disillusioned with the electoral process, deliberately shut out of politics, or unable to speak and protest freely, they will grow apathetic and frustrated. The proportion of citizens saying that democracy is the best political system for their country increased

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from 63 percent in 2003 to 75 percent in 2013, but by 2018, it had fallen back to 68 percent. That should be a wake-up call for democracy’s advocates. African leaders and their supporters should worry, too. After all, research shows that in the long term, democracy contributes to good governance, human development, and economic growth.

The legal chicanery goes beyond term limits. Africa’s counterfeit democrats have passed bills through pliant legislatures to enable them to restrict freedom of speech and suppress the opposition.

Inspired by autocratic countries such as China, Russia, and, in some instances, North Korea, leaders often justify these restrictions under the dubious guises of maintaining public order and combating terrorism and “fake news.” Authoritarian politicians in Tanzania and Uganda, for example, no longer have to rely primarily on baton-wielding security forces to muzzle dissent. This rule-by-law approach allows leaders to manipulate the legal process for their own purposes while avoiding the bad press that often results from state violence.

TO THE VICTOR, THE SPOILS Almost everywhere, oil and democracy mix about as well as oil and water. Valuable natural resources insulate governments from domestic and international pressure to reform and lead to high levels of corruption and more intense political—but not necessarily democratic—competition, since holding power can generate such high returns. In Africa, just one petrostate, Ghana, is also a full democracy, and it discovered oil only after a stable and competitive political system had been firmly established.

Every other major African oil producer, with the possible exception of Nigeria, holds deeply problematic elections.

This correlation is particularly troubling because several African countries have recently discovered oil and natural gas reserves.

Uganda expects its first oil to flow in 2021. Kenya is pledging to get there even sooner. Tanzania is finalizing deals to exploit one of the biggest gas finds in recent years. And Mozambique hopes to begin construction on a new liquefied natural gas export plant

International donors are often quick to censure governments that flout the rules but far slower to cut off relations with those that change the law through due process, even if they are brazenly rigging the system in their favor.

in 2019, making use of the huge deposits prospectors found in 2010. Although natural resources could conceivably empower these governments and provide for their citizens, they are more likely to further entrench authoritarian and kleptocratic rule.

African democracies face more economic problems than abundant oil and gas. Growing national debts have left governments vulnerable and prompted spending cuts that threaten to destabilize democratic systems, including success stories such as Ghana.

Although the role of China is often overstated—it holds only 20 percent of African debt—the influence of nondemocratic foreign powers is growing. In Djibouti, Beijing has converted its vast loans into political influence and pressured the government into allowing it to build an enormous military base, China’s first in Africa.

China claims that it does not attach strings to foreign aid and state loans, but using its influence to prop up deeply unpopular authoritarian governments is an intervention, whatever its leaders claim to the contrary. That meddling could yet prompt a backlash across Africa. One is already under way in Zambia, where rumors that the country is about to hand over prize assets such as the national electricity supplier because it can no longer fulfill debt repayments have led to protests and rising anti-Chinese sentiment.

But it may already be too late: public demonstrations will struggle to reshape the deeply unequal relationship that already exists between a growing number of African governments and China.

STRONGMEN Ideas can play as important a role as policies in undermining democracy. The most dangerous idea for democracy today is the

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Djibouti Navy soldiers welcome China's hospital ship Peace Ark at the port of Djibouti on August 2017 ,23 in Djibouti city, Djibouti. The Peace Ark left for Djibouti on Wednesday and will provide medical services for local residents in Djibouti and Chinese residents working in Djibouti during its nineday goodwill visit. (Getty Images(

Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda.

THE YEAR AHEAD

misguided belief in the “developmental autocrat”—a leader who will sacrifice human rights to spur economic growth. All the rage in the 1970s, this idea has recently experienced a revival among African leaders and a number of media commentators and policy advisers, driven by the apparent economic success of authoritarian Rwanda. Under President Paul Kagame, the country’s highly repressive political system has delivered seemingly impressive economic results, with growth rates estimated to be around eight percent from 2001 to 2013 (although many academics and critics of the regime dispute these figures).

In Kenya, a close ally of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s has pointed to Kagame’s success to justify weakening opposition parties.

And in Zimbabwe, the new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, is clearly fashioning himself in Kagame’s image, resulting in the brutal repression of protests just this week. But copying Kagame makes for poor economics and worse politics. Kagame’s perceived economic successes are based on tight control over a centralized system of patronage that does not exist—and would be extremely difficult to construct—in the vast majority of African states. Moreover, Rwanda has achieved its so-called progress on the back of abuses that, if they carry on unchecked, will very likely destabilize the political system and undermine the country’s economic gains.

However incompetent they prove in the long run, developmental autocrats are also bad news for political freedom and human rights in the short term. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the past three years have set annual records for the numbers of journalists jailed worldwide, and at least five journalists were killed in Africa in 2018 alone. The top jailers in Africa last year were all authoritarian states: Cameroon, the

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There are some bright democratic spots on the African horizon.

Ethiopia’s new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has launched the most radical political liberalization in the country’s history.

Over the next year, South Africa should make progress against corruption as the ruling African National Congress recovers from the Zuma years. Across the continent, young political leaders, such as Robert Kyagulanyi in Uganda, have emerged with the potential to transform their countries. In some places, civil society and opposition leaders will manage to halt the process of democratic decline. But these high points are more likely to prove the exception than the rule.

In February, Nigeria will hold elections in which President Muhammadu Buhari will attempt to defy illness, waning popular support, and the fragmentation of his party to stay in power.

Expect fireworks. Whoever wins, the election will probably be close, triggering accusations of vote rigging. Mauritanian President Ould Abdel Aziz has promised not to run in this year’s presidential election, but few expect the contest to be a credible one, since the government has already jailed high-profile opposition leaders, including the renowned antislavery activist Biram Dah Abeid, on trumped-up charges. The fallout from the DRC’s flawed election is also likely to loom over the continent for the rest of the year. There is a real danger that instead of standing up for democracy, foreign countries will allow the result to stand. Already, the Southern African Development Community has proposed a power-sharing arrangement that would allow Tshisekedi to retain the presidency, riding roughshod over the likely will of the people. The evidence from similar deals in Kenya and Zimbabwe in 2008 is that such quiet diplomacy benefits only those who rigged the elections—and the people who get the best positions—while stunting the growth of a genuinely independent opposition. A level playing field is vital for democracy to flourish. In many countries across Africa, it is alarmingly tilted.

Of course, sham elections are nothing new in Africa, but for a while things were going in the right direction. Today, however, democracy is in danger of collapsing in places where it has until recently been fairly secure. Senegal, long one of Africa’s most free and open societies, will hold a presidential election this year amid growing government repression of the opposition. The political temperature is also rising in Malawi, where in May, the -78year-old president will face both a former head of state and his current vice president, who broke ranks with the ruling party over unresolved corruption and governance-related issues. African democracy is in for a bumpy 2019. The only thing necessary for authoritarianism to triumph over democracy is for people of conscience—in Africa and worldwide—to do nothing about it.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

NIC CHEESEMAN is Professor of Democracy at the University of Birmingham.

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How the U.S. Can Step Up in the South China Sea The Right Way to Push Back Against Beijing

By Gregory Poling*, Bonnie S. Glaser* Over the course of his two years in office, U.S. President Donald Trump has been vocal in his disdain for most forms of multilateralism. Yet when it comes to two pressing maritime issues in East Asia, his administration sees the value of friends. First is the problem of stopping illegal transfers of fuel to North Korean tankers in the East China Sea, a tactic that Pyongyang uses to skirt U.S. and UN sanctions. To crack down on the smuggling, the United States and Japan have brought together a coalition of states to identify and report vessels engaged in these illicit ship-to-ship transfers.

Then there is the South China Sea, where Beijing continues its military build-up and has doubled down on maritime claims that fly in the face of international law. Navies from within and outside the region have responded to China’s

aggressive posturing by undertaking more operations, including exercises, intelligence gathering, and passages through contested waters, aimed at maintaining freedom of navigation in the air and at sea, a development U.S. officials have lauded.

Unfortunately, U.S. leadership has been evident on only one of these maritime issues. Washington has been the driving force behind the multilateral effort to crack down on North Korean smuggling. But it has been much less effective in coordinating with like-minded states to defend freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. Pushing back against Chinese revisionism will require an international effort that Washington is in a prime position to shape. In devising how best to do so, Washington could take a page from its own playbook in the East China Sea.

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Since May, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom have based surveillance planes at the U.S. military’s Kadena Air Base in Okinawa to conduct regular patrols over the East China Sea and Sea of Japan.

Royal Naval Vessel HMS Albion arrives at the port of Tanjung Priok in Jakarta, Indonesia on April ,22 2018. (Getty Images)

A SUCCESSFUL COALITION In October 2017, the United States began surveillance flights over the East China Sea to monitor and disrupt the activities of ships suspected of violating sanctions on North Korea.

At the start of 2018, the Trump administration decided to expand that effort by enlisting more countries to track vessels believed to be carrying prohibited cargo. In February 2018, the Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, reported that the United States and Japan planned to organize an international meeting to form this coalition. The invitees reportedly included Australia, France, Singapore, South Korea, and the United Kingdom.

Since May, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom have based surveillance planes at the U.S. military’s Kadena Air Base in Okinawa to conduct regular

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patrols over the East China Sea and Sea of Japan. A British warship was also deployed to Japan to assist the effort. The surveillance aircraft collect information on vessels suspected of violating sanctions against North Korea. They photograph the hull numbers of boats engaging in illegal ship-to-ship oil transfers and report them to the United Nations to help bring those parties to account by blacklisting the vessels and companies involved and pressuring member states, especially China and Russia, to crack down on violators.

The coalition expanded in September with the establishment of an Enforcement Coordination Center aboard the USS Blue Ridge. The ship hosts more than 50 personnel from Australia, Canada, France, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Among other purposes, the coordination center was reportedly established to facilitate bridge-to-bridge communications between coalition ships and suspected smuggling vessels. In November, Admiral Phil Davidson, the U.S.command chief for the Indo-Pacific region, said that Washington had dedicated two ships to these patrols and increased its surveillance flights by 50 percent.

The coalition’s efforts have so far had mixed results. In December, a U.S. defense official told NBC that on 30 occasions since October 2017, smugglers have abandoned ship-to-ship transfers upon being observed by patrols.

Unfortunately, the group has also arguably become a victim of its own success. A UN report from August suggests that smuggling has moved out of the East China Sea and Sea of Japan into the territorial waters of surrounding countries such as China to avoid detection. Ship-to-ship transfers are increasing as a result.

How effective the coalition will be in halting North Korean sanctions violations over the long term remains to be seen, but the ambitious multilateral effort has undeniably succeeded in turning up the pressure on sanctions violators and UN member states that have been turning a blind eye to their activities.

PUSHING BACK AGAINST BEIJING If the coalition to crack down on smuggling in the East China Sea was largely orchestrated by Washington, the

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growing involvement of third parties in South China Sea operations to counter Beijing has been more organic. For several years, the United States quietly urged like-minded states to increase their presence in the South China Sea to help assert their freedom of navigation despite excessive Chinese maritime claims. But Washington has not yet tried to build a formal coalition in service of those aims, leaving it to other countries to individually assert their rights.

U.S. urging might have played some part in the steppedup military activities by other states in the South China Sea this year. But China’s militarization of its artificial islands in the Spratlys, especially its deployment of surface-to-air and antiship cruise missiles to them in May, likely played a much greater role. These developments have heightened fears that Beijing is tightening its control over the sea and airspace of the South China Sea, which could undermine key legal principles underpinning the global maritime order, prevent Southeast Asian partners from accessing their rights and resources, and eventually cause instability and potential conflict in the region. This in turn has prompted other states to assert their own rights and send a message that the United States is not the only country concerned about maintaining freedom of navigation.

In 2018, Australia increased the frequency of its longstanding patrols in the South China Sea. Vice Admiral Michael Noonan, head of the Royal Australian Navy, told an audience at the International Institute for Strategic Studies on November 28 that the navy “regularly sails through [the] Spratlys and Taiwan Strait.” He also said that although it is not Australian policy to sail within 12 nautical miles of disputed features in the South China Sea, as the United States regularly does through freedom of navigation operations, it supports the rights of others to do so.

The United States undertakes freedom of navigation operations throughout the world to challenge excessive maritime claims or assert its noncompliance with restrictions other countries place on internationally guaranteed rights

This increase in naval activity shows that concern about China’s attempts to rewrite the rules of customary international law in the South China Sea is spreading.

at sea. U.S. ships perform a variety of such operations in the South China Sea, including within 12 nautical miles of occupied features. In some cases, these operations are to assert that the United States does not recognize the existence of a -12nautical-mile territorial sea around artificial islands that were previously underwater at high tide; in others, they challenge Beijing’s demand for prior notification before foreign warships can sail through the territorial sea.

In June, a French maritime task group joined up with British helicopters and ships to sail through the South China Sea. They did not enter the -12nautical-mile territorial waters around disputed features or target any specific Chinese claim, but just as with Australia’s patrols, their presence was meant as a message. French Defense Minister Florence Parly revealed at this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue that German observers were also on board one of the ships. Two months later, the United Kingdom went a step further when the HMS Albion sailed through the Paracel Islands to challenge China’s illegal claim to straight base lines around those features. By drawing base lines in violation of international legal principles, Beijing declared that the sea within those lines is its internal waters and closed to foreign vessels. The Albion’s passage, which challenged that claim, was the first time a navy other than the United States’ publicly engaged in a clear freedom of navigation operation.

On August 31, the day of the Albion’s exercise, the U.S. Navy

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A Philippine air force plane sits at the runway of the Philippineclaimed island of Thitu during the visit of Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana to the island in The Spratlys on April 2017 ,21.

(Getty Images)

seas, not just the freedom of navigation of foreign military vessels. These include the exclusive rights of Southeast Asian coastal states to fish, exploit seabed resources, and exercise law enforcement and other jurisdictions in their own waters. Freedom of navigation operations, even if undertaken by a diverse coalition of states, are not enough to defend international law and push back against Chinese revisionism.

To begin doing that, the United States should exercise the same multilateral leadership it has shown in the East China Sea and include like-minded parties such as Australia, France, Japan, and the United Kingdom in joint exercises and other coalition-building activities with Southeast Asian partners, especially the Philippines and Vietnam.

This will send a clear signal that these countries, like the United States, are interested in defending not only their own freedom of navigation but also the rights of the South China Sea claimants. Such cooperation could lead to the eventual establishment of a combined task force based in one of the Southeast Asian states to help deter further Chinese aggression or new claims in the South China Sea.

and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force participated in a bilateral training exercise in the South China Sea. Then in September, Japan sent a submarine to join three of its destroyers in an antisubmarine warfare drill in the South China Sea. It marked the first time that Japan publicly acknowledged a submarine exercise in those waters.

This increase in naval activity shows that concern about China’s attempts to rewrite the rules of customary international law in the South China Sea is spreading.

No other state has an equivalent to the U.S. Freedom of Navigation Program, but all foreign navies operating in the South China Sea are asserting freedom of navigation through these exercises, even if that is not their sole purpose. After all, China objects to any foreign military activities without notification in waters it claims, and Chinese forces frequently issue warnings to foreign military vessels and planes to leave ill-defined “military alert zones” or stop “threatening the security” of Chinese facilities merely by transiting in international airspace and nearby waters.

THE TIME TO LEAD IS NOW The emergence of this new international willingness to assert rights in the South China Seapresents an opportunity for leadership, but one the United States has not yet seized.

Beijing’s claims threaten a wide range of freedoms of the

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Diplomatically, the United States should enlist these nations and others such as Canada and European partners to put the South China Sea back at the top of the international agenda. A good place to start would be including strong language on the South China Sea in the annual G7- leaders’ statement that goes beyond the mere expression of concern about freedom of navigation and support for diplomatic processes that were part of the April 2018 G7- Foreign Ministers’ Communiqué. This language should make clear that the G7 states are committed to upholding all lawful uses of the seas, including Southeast Asian states’ exercise of their rights to the resources within their exclusive economic zones. A concerted international diplomatic effort will raise awareness of Chinese coercion in the South China Sea and make continued rule breaking costlier by undermining Beijing’s image as a responsible global leader and attractive partner to other countries.

An effective South China Sea coalition will be one that helps defend the rights Southeast Asian states should enjoy in their own waters, while getting Beijing to make long-term compromises with its neighbors or pay a steep diplomatic and economic price. But for that to work, Washington needs to bring the same creativity and ambition to the South China Sea that it has to the East China Sea. This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

GREGORY POLING is Director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative and a Fellow in the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

BONNIE GLASER is a Senior Adviser for Asia and Director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

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Deepfakes and the New Disinformation War The Coming Age of Post-Truth Geopolitics

by Robert Chesney and Danielle Citron A picture may be worth a thousand words, but there is nothing that persuades quite like an audio or video recording

of an event. At a time when partisans can barely agree on facts, such persuasiveness might seem as if it could bring a welcome clarity. Audio and video recordings allow people to become firsthand witnesses of an event, sparing them the

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As deepfake technology develops, democratic societies must learn resilience. This will mean accepting that audio and video content cannot be taken at face value and fighting the descent into a post-truth world. and that the resulting fakes are so convincing that they are impossible to distinguish from the real thing.

Advances in digital technology could soon make this nightmare a reality. Thanks to the rise of “deepfakes”— highly realistic and difficult-to-detect digital manipulations of audio or video—it is becoming easier than ever to portray someone saying or doing something he or she never said or did. Worse, the means to create deepfakes are likely to proliferate quickly, producing an ever-widening circle of actors capable of deploying them for political purposes.

Disinformation is an ancient art, of course, and one with a renewed relevance today. But as deepfake technology develops and spreads, the current disinformation wars may soon look like the propaganda equivalent of the era of swords and shields.

DAWN OF THE DEEPFAKES

Stills of a deep fake video of Barack Obama created by researchers in 2017.

need to decide whether to trust someone else’s account of it.

And thanks to smartphones, which make it easy to capture audio and video content, and social media platforms, which allow that content to be shared and consumed, people today can rely on their own eyes and ears to an unprecedented degree.

Therein lies a great danger. Imagine a video depicting the Israeli prime minister in private conversation with a colleague, seemingly revealing a plan to carry out a series of political assassinations in Tehran. Or an audio clip of Iranian officials planning a covert operation to kill Sunni leaders in a particular province of Iraq. Or a video showing an American general in Afghanistan burning a Koran. In a world already primed for violence, such recordings would have a powerful potential for incitement. Now imagine that these recordings could be faked using tools available to almost anyone with a laptop and access to the Internet—

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Deepfakes are the product of recent advances in a form of artificial intelligence known as “deep learning,” in which sets of algorithms called “neural networks” learn to infer rules and replicate patterns by sifting through large data sets. (Google, for instance, has used this technique to develop powerful image-classification algorithms for its search engine.) Deepfakes emerge from a specific type of deep learning in which pairs of algorithms are pitted against each other in “generative adversarial networks,” or GANS. In a GAN, one algorithm, the “generator,” creates content modeled on source data (for instance, making artificial images of cats from a database of real cat pictures), while a second algorithm, the “discriminator,” tries to spot the artificial content (pick out the fake cat images). Since each algorithm is constantly training against the other, such pairings can lead to rapid improvement, allowing GANS to produce highly realistic yet fake audio and video content.

This technology has the potential to proliferate widely.

Commercial and even free deepfake services have already appeared in the open market, and versions with alarmingly few safeguards are likely to emerge on the black market.

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The spread of these services will lower the barriers to entry, meaning that soon, the only practical constraint on one’s ability to produce a deepfake will be access to training materials—that is, audio and video of the person to be modeled—to feed the GAN. The capacity to create professional-grade forgeries will come within reach of nearly anyone with sufficient interest and the knowledge of where to go for help.

Deepfakes have a number of worthy applications. Modified audio or video of a historical figure, for example, could be created for the purpose of educating children. One company even claims that it can use the technology to restore speech to individuals who have lost their voice to disease. But deepfakes can and will be used for darker purposes, as well. Users have already employed deepfake technology to insert people’s faces into pornography without their consent or knowledge, and the growing ease of making fake audio and video content will create ample opportunities for blackmail, intimidation, and sabotage. The most frightening applications of deepfake technology, however, may well be in the realms of politics and international affairs. There, deepfakes may be used to create unusually effective lies capable of inciting violence, discrediting leaders and institutions, or even tipping elections.

Deepfakes have the potential to be especially destructive because they are arriving at a time when it already is becoming harder to separate fact from fiction. For much of the twentieth century, magazines, newspapers, and television broadcasters managed the flow of information to the public. Journalists established rigorous professional standards to control the quality of news, and the relatively small number of mass media outlets meant that only a limited number of individuals and organizations could distribute information widely. Over the last decade, however, more and more people have begun to get their information from social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, which depend on a vast array of users to generate relatively

Deepfakes may be used to create unusually effective lies capable of inciting violence, discrediting leaders and institutions, or even tipping elections.

unfiltered content. Users tend to curate their experiences so that they mostly encounter perspectives they already agree with (a tendency heightened by the platforms’ algorithms), turning their social media feeds into echo chambers. These platforms are also susceptible to so-called information cascades, whereby people pass along information shared by others without bothering to check if it is true, making it appear more credible in the process. The end result is that falsehoods can spread faster than ever before.

These dynamics will make social media fertile ground for circulating deepfakes, with potentially explosive implications for politics. Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election—spreading divisive and politically inflammatory messages on Facebook and Twitter—already demonstrated how easily disinformation can be injected into the social media bloodstream. The deepfakes of tomorrow will be more vivid and realistic and thus more shareable than the fake news of 2016. And because people are especially prone to sharing negative and novel information, the more salacious the deepfakes, the better.

DEMOCRATIZING FRAUD The use of fraud, forgery, and other forms of deception

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As deepfake technology spreads, an ever-increasing number of actors will be able to convincingly manipulate audio and video content in a way that once was restricted to Hollywood studios or the most well-funded intelligence agencies soldier shooting civilians or discussing a plan to bomb a mosque, thereby aiding the terrorist group’s recruitment.

Such videos will be especially difficult to debunk in cases where the target audience already distrusts the person shown in the deepfake. States can and no doubt will make parallel use of deepfakes to undermine their nonstate opponents.

to influence politics is nothing new, of course. When the USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor in 1898, American tabloids used misleading accounts of the incident to incite the public toward war with Spain. The anti-Semitic tract Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which described a fictional Jewish conspiracy, circulated widely during the first half of the twentieth century. More recently, technologies such as Photoshop have made doctoring images as easy as forging text. What makes deepfakes unprecedented is their combination of quality, applicability to persuasive formats such as audio and video, and resistance to detection. And as deepfake technology spreads, an ever-increasing number of actors will be able to convincingly manipulate audio and video content in a way that once was restricted to Hollywood studios or the most well-funded intelligence agencies.

Deepfakes will be particularly useful to nonstate actors, such as insurgent groups and terrorist organizations, which have historically lacked the resources to make and disseminate fraudulent yet credible audio or video content. These groups will be able to depict their adversaries—including government officials—spouting inflammatory words or engaging in provocative actions, with the specific content carefully chosen to maximize the galvanizing impact on their target audiences. An affiliate of the Islamic State (or ISIS), for instance, could create a video depicting a U.S.

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Deepfakes will also exacerbate the disinformation wars that increasingly disrupt domestic politics in the United States and elsewhere. In 2016, Russia’s state-sponsored disinformation operations were remarkably successful in deepening existing social cleavages in the United States.

To cite just one example, fake Russian accounts on social media claiming to be affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement shared inflammatory content purposely designed to stoke racial tensions. Next time, instead of tweets and Facebook posts, such disinformation could come in the form of a fake video of a white police officer shouting racial slurs or a Black Lives Matter activist calling for violence.

Perhaps the most acute threat associated with deepfakes is the possibility that a well-timed forgery could tip an election.

In May 2017, Moscow attempted something along these lines. On the eve of the French election, Russian hackers tried to undermine the presidential campaign of Emmanuel Macron by releasing a cache of stolen documents, many of them doctored. That effort failed for a number of reasons, including the relatively boring nature of the documents and the effects of a French media law that prohibits election coverage in the 44 hours immediately before a vote. But in most countries, most of the time, there is no media blackout, and the nature of deepfakes means that damaging content can be guaranteed to be salacious or worse. A convincing video in which Macron appeared to admit to corruption, released on social media only 24 hours before the election, could have spread like wildfire and proved impossible to debunk in time.

Deepfakes may also erode democracy in other, less direct ways. The problem is not just that deepfakes can be used to stoke social and ideological divisions. They can create

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a “liar’s dividend”: as people become more aware of the existence of deepfakes, public figures caught in genuine recordings of misbehavior will find it easier to cast doubt on the evidence against them. (If deepfakes were prevalent during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, imagine how much easier it would have been for Donald Trump to have disputed the authenticity of the infamous audiotape in which he brags about groping women.) More broadly, as the public becomes sensitized to the threat of deepfakes, it may become less inclined to trust news in general. And journalists, for their part, may become more wary about relying on, let alone publishing, audio or video of fastbreaking events for fear that the evidence will turn out to have been faked.

DEEP FIX There is no silver bullet for countering deepfakes. There are several legal and technological approaches—some already existing, others likely to emerge—that can help mitigate the threat. But none will overcome the problem altogether.

Instead of full solutions, the rise of deepfakes calls for resilience.

Three technological approaches deserve special attention. The first relates to forensic technology, or the detection of forgeries through technical means. Just as researchers are putting a great deal of time and effort into creating credible fakes, so, too, are they developing methods of enhanced detection. In June 2018, computer scientists at Dartmouth and the University at Albany, SUNY, announced that they had created a program that detects deepfakes by looking for abnormal patterns of eyelid movement when the subject of a video blinks.

In the deepfakes arms race, however, such advances serve only to inform the next wave of innovation. In the future, GANS will be fed training videos that include examples of normal blinking. And even if extremely capable detection algorithms emerge, the speed with which deepfakes can circulate on social media will make debunking them an uphill battle. By the time the forensic alarm bell rings, the damage may already be done.

A second technological remedy involves authenticating content before it ever spreads—an approach sometimes referred to as a “digital provenance” solution. Companies such as Truepic are developing ways to digitally watermark audio, photo, and video content at the moment of its creation, using metadata that can be logged immutably on a distributed ledger, or blockchain. In other words, one could effectively stamp content with a record of authenticity that

could be used later as a reference to compare to suspected fakes.

In theory, digital provenance solutions are an ideal fix. In practice, they face two big obstacles. First, they would need to be ubiquitously deployed in the vast array of devices that capture content, including laptops and smartphones.

Second, their use would need to be made a precondition for uploading content to the most popular digital platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Neither condition is likely to be met. Device makers, absent some legal or regulatory obligation, will not adopt digital authentication until they know it is affordable, in demand, and unlikely to interfere with the performance of their products. And few social media platforms will want to block people from uploading unauthenticated content, especially when the first one to do so will risk losing market share to less rigorous competitors.

A third, more speculative technological approach involves what has been called “authenticated alibi services,” which might soon begin emerging from the private sector. Consider that deepfakes are especially

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dangerous to high-profile individuals, such as politicians and celebrities, with valuable but fragile reputations. To protect themselves against deepfakes, some of these individuals may choose to engage in enhanced forms of “lifelogging”—the practice of recording nearly every aspect of one’s life—in order to prove where they were and what they were saying or doing at any given time. Companies might begin offering bundles of alibi services, including wearables to make lifelogging convenient, storage to cope with the vast amount of resulting data, and credible authentication of those data.

These bundles could even include partnerships with major news and social media platforms, which would enable rapid confirmation or debunking of content.

Such logging would be deeply invasive, and many people would want nothing to do with it. But in addition to the high-profile individuals who choose to adopt lifelogging to protect themselves, some employers might begin insisting on it for certain categories of employees, much as police departments increasingly require officers to use body cameras. And even if only a relatively small number of people took up intensive lifelogging, they would produce vast repositories of data in which the rest of us would find ourselves inadvertently caught, creating a massive peerto-peer surveillance network for constantly recording our activities.

LAYING DOWN THE LAW If these technological fixes have limited upsides, what about legal remedies? Depending on the circumstances, making or sharing a deepfake could constitute defamation, fraud, or misappropriation of a person’s likeness, among other civil and criminal violations. In theory, one could close any remaining gaps by criminalizing (or attaching civil liability to) specific acts—for instance, creating a deepfake of a real person with the intent to deceive a viewer or listener and with the expectation that this deception would cause some specific kind of harm. But it could be hard to make these claims or charges stick in practice. To begin with, it will likely prove very difficult to attribute the creation of a deepfake to a particular person or group. And even if perpetrators are identified, they may be beyond a court’s reach, as in the case of foreign individuals or governments.

Another legal solution could involve incentivizing social media platforms to do more to identify and remove deepfakes or fraudulent content more generally. Under current U.S. law, the companies that own these platforms are largely immune from liability for the content they host, thanks to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. Congress could modify this immunity, perhaps by amending Section 230 to make companies liable for

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As deepfake technology develops and spreads, the current disinformation wars may soon look like the propaganda equivalent of the era of swords and shields. harmful and fraudulent information distributed through their platforms unless they have made reasonable efforts to detect and remove it. Other countries have used a similar approach for a different problem: in 2017, for instance, Germany passed a law imposing stiff fines on social media companies that failed to remove racist or threatening content within 24 hours of it being reported.

Yet this approach would bring challenges of its own. Most notably, it could lead to excessive censorship. Companies anxious to avoid legal liability would likely err on the side of policing content too aggressively, and users themselves might begin to self-censor in order to avoid the risk of having their content suppressed. It is far from obvious that the notional benefits of improved fraud protection would justify these costs to free expression. Such a system would also run the risk of insulating incumbent platforms, which have the resources to police content and pay for legal battles, against competition from smaller firms.

LIVING WITH LIES But although deepfakes are dangerous, they will not necessarily be disastrous. Detection will improve, prosecutors and plaintiffs will occasionally win legal victories against the creators of harmful fakes, and the major social media platforms will gradually get better at flagging and removing fraudulent content. And digital provenance solutions could, if widely adopted, provide a more durable fix at some point in the future.

In the meantime, democratic societies will have to learn resilience. On the one hand, this will mean accepting that audio and video content cannot be taken at face value; on the other, it will mean fighting the descent into a post-truth world, in which citizens retreat to their private information bubbles and regard as fact only that which flatters their own beliefs. In short, democracies will have to accept an uncomfortable truth: in order to survive the threat of deepfakes, they are going to have to learn how to live with lies.

Preventing Breast Cancer Just Got Easier Will More Women Give these Drugs a Try?

By Melissa Healy* Breast cancer will strike 1 in 8 women in her lifetime.

But women who face an increased risk of being that one unlucky patient may improve their chances with three prescription medications, according to a new report.

If 1,000 women took one of the three medications for roughly five years, somewhere between seven and

18 breast cancers could be prevented, and possibly more. But each of the drugs — two originally used to treat breast cancer and a third that prevents the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis — comes with the possibility of serious side effects, including blood clots and a higher likelihood of uterine or endometrial cancer.

That mixed picture prompted a panel of preventive health care experts to suggest that doctors routinely

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For women at average risk of breast cancer, the harms of the drugs clearly outweigh their benefits, the panel said.

Breast Cancer Awareness ribbon on display at the Xtend Barre 'Plie For Pink' charity fundraiser for The National Breast Cancer Research Foundation on October 2018 ,27 in New York City. (Getty Images)

discuss these medications with women who have an elevated risk of breast cancer.

For women at average risk of breast cancer, the harms of the drugs clearly outweigh their benefits, the panel said.

The draft recommendation was released Tuesday by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which will accept public comments on the proposal until Feb. 11.

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The new recommendations expand the medication toolkit that can be used to ward off breast cancer. For the first time, the task force added a class of drugs called aromatase inhibitors to the cancer-prevention lineup. These drugs include anastrozole (known commercially as Arimidex), exemestane (Aromasin) and letrozole (Femara).

For post-menopausal women, a five-year course of aromatase inhibitors appears to offer more potent breast cancer prevention than the two drugs long known to have such effects — tamoxifen (sold as Nolvadex and Soltamox) and raloxifene (Evista).

In studies, women taking aromatase inhibitors were more likely to experience hot flashes and pain in their bones and muscles compared with women taking a dummy pill. But preliminary signs showed no significant increase in the risk of blood clots.

“It’s always great to have more choices,” said University of California, Los Angeles internal medicine specialist Dr. Carol M. Mangione, who chaired the panel’s deliberations on breast cancer prevention drugs.

Breast cancer is the most common non-skin cancer and the second-leading cause of cancer death in women. In 2018, some 30 percent of new cancer cases in women were breast cancers, representing 266,120 patients. When a newfound malignancy is confined to the breast, at least 90 percent of women go on to live for at least five years. If it has spread to distant organs, the prognosis can be far bleaker.

The new recommendations highlight an enduring mystery: Why don’t more women whose mothers or sisters have been diagnosed with breast cancer, or who have a personal history of abnormal findings on mammograms, take these drugs? There’s clear evidence that they can prevent breast cancer, a disease justifiably feared by women. But very few women utilize them to prevent a first occurrence of cancer.

No more than three out of 10 primary care doctors have ever prescribed these drugs for breast cancer prevention, studies suggest. And just 16 percent of women who could benefit from them are thought to be using them. Even women who are well informed about the drugs’ benefits and risks apparently focus

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more heavily in their downsides and show little interest in taking them, the panel said.

For women who are healthy and who have generally passed through the discomforts of menopause, the side effects can be unpleasant and even dangerous, to be sure. Women taking tamoxifen and raloxifene had higher rates of blood clots, endometrial cancer, cataracts and hot flashes. Bone and muscle pain and hot flashes are common side effects of aromatase inhibitors, and they may slightly increase a woman’s risk for heart attack or stroke, though the evidence for this is conflicting.

But for women whose odds of developing breast cancer within five years are elevated, the preventive benefits of these drugs have probably been underestimated, Mangione said. That’s because most of the women who participated in studies to test the medications were at average risk for breast cancer. If the drugs were to be tested only on women at higher risk, there’s reason to believe their effectiveness would be more pronounced, she said.

One more benefit of tamoxifen and raloxifene: Both were found to reduce a woman’s risk of vertebral fractures.

“For anybody who is healthy and taking care of themselves, it gives you pause to think about taking a medication for five years,” Mangione said. “The important thing is to understand your own risk profile and to understand the possible harms and benefits, and have that conversation. It’s still a personal choice whether you take one of these medications.”

In the five years since the task force first declared tamoxifen and raloxifene worth considering as breast cancer preventives, neither doctors nor patients appear to have gotten the message, Mangione said.

“One of the goals of this new recommendation, and with the inclusion of another class of drugs, is the

Breast cancer is the most common non-skin cancer and the second-leading cause of cancer death in women.

hope this will raise awareness that this is something worth talking to your physician about,” she said.

That’s especially true for older women with a mother or sister who’s had breast cancer, for women 45 or older whose mother or sister had cancer in both breasts, and for women who were diagnosed before age 50, she added.

In drafting its recommendations, the task force acknowledged that there are special populations of women for whom the mix of potential harms and benefits are less well understood. For women who bear a high-risk variant of the BRCA 1 or BRCA 2 gene, the prevention benefits of these drugs are not clear. That’s also true for African-American women, who are diagnosed with breast cancer at rates similar to white women but are more likely to die of the disease.

What is clear is that these drugs drive down rates of

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Dr. Lavina Lickley headed the Toronto portion of a cancer study where 167 local women participated in a world-wide study by the National Institutes of Health that found Raloxifene, a osteoporosis drug was more effective in preventing breast cancer in post-menopausal than Tamoxifen, a known breast cancer prevention medication. (Getty Images)

estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer, and not the rarer ER-negative form of the disease. Tamoxifen and raloxifene do so by blocking the proliferation of estrogen-sensitive epithelial cells, where breast cancer can develop. Aromatase inhibitors decrease the amount of estrogen available to bind to those epithelial cells, in part by impeding the conversion of androgen to estrogen.

Tamoxifen and raloxifene can be used to treat both premenopausal and postmenopausal women. They have both been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for breast cancer reduction, and are both available as generic medications.

The aromatase inhibitors should be used only in post-menopausal women, and are sold in generic forms. But the FDA has not assessed or approved the marketing of these drugs for breast cancer prevention.

The drug safety agency is unlikely to be asked to do so, since no pharmaceutical company would substantially profit from a medication now available as a generic drug.

Originally published in the LA Times.

Melissa Healy is a health and science reporter with the Los Angeles Times writing from the Washington, D.C., area.

A radiologist examines a mammogram

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Globalization 4.0 A New Architecture for the Fourth Industrial Revolution 38

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Like its predecessors, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is best described by its leading technologies: artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, and the Internet of Things. such a project again.

This time around, however, the change is not just geopolitical or economic in nature. The Fourth Industrial Revolution—the complete digitization of the social, the political, and the economic—is tugging at the very fabric of society, changing the way that individuals relate to one another and to the world at large. In this era, economies, businesses, communities, and politics are being fundamentally transformed.

Reforming existing processes and institutions will not be enough. Government leaders, supported by civil society and businesses, have to collectively create a new global architecture. If they wait, or simply apply a “quick fix” to repair the deficiencies of outdated systems, the forces of change will naturally develop their own momentum and rules, and thus limit our ability to shape a positive outcome.

THE PARADOXES OF PROGRESS

iPal smart AI for robots for children's education are displayed at the AvatarMind booth at CES 2019 consumer electronics show, at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada on January 2019 ,8. (Getty Images)

By Klaus Schwab* The world today needs a new framework for global cooperation in order to preserve peace and accelerate progress. After the cataclysm of World War II, leaders designed a set of institutional structures to enable the postwar world to trade, collaborate, and avoid war—first in the West and eventually around much of the globe. Faced with a changing world, today’s leaders must undertake

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In the decades after 1945, the world’s economies underwent an ambitious process of integration. Western Europe led the charge, charting unprecedented growth rates as it aimed for an “ever closer union.” Japan and the “Asian Tigers” followed, gaining access to global markets and supersizing their economies. By the early 2000s, the brics economies— Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—had spurred international trade to levels previously unseen; exports now count for about one-fifth of global GDP— the highest level in history. Throughout, the United States played a leading role, setting up the institutional structures that underpinned the global system, securing trade routes, and pumping wealth into foreign markets.

Today, this mega engine of globalization seems to be slowing down. As a percentage of GDP, trade is no longer rising. Worse still, the free-market consensus is unravelling. Around the world, protectionists are making inroads, often elected by voters who feel the current system is stacked against them. Their frustration is understandable: although globalization lifted millions out of poverty, it also meant decades of eroding incomes and precarious working

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conditions for many others. For American workers, the golden years of globalization ended decades ago.

Manufacturing employment in the United States peaked around 1980 and dropped precipitously starting around the time China entered the WTO in 2001. Despite a booming economy, manufacturing jobs are back at pre–World War II levels.

In many other countries, growth rates are dismal and unemployment figures stubbornly high. Across much of Latin America, including Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela, inflation and negative growth are the order of the day. Europe, still reeling from the aftershocks of the financial crisis, is dealing with a powerful backlash against immigration. Even China is struggling to meet its growth expectations.

Populists and protectionists feed on these ills, and their solutions have about them the rosy glow of nostalgia. Life may not have been materially better in a less globalized world—although for some communities it was—but the society people lived in may have felt more secure, familiar, and certain. Subscribe to this narrative and tariffs, immigration barriers, and a return to national sovereignty will seem like sensible ideas.

But this is wishful thinking. Granted, pushing back against the system of globally integrated value chains may well help revitalize the local manufacturing of cars, electronics, or agricultural produce in Western economies. The real issue, though, is that the production and exchange of physical goods matters less and less each year. From here on out, decisive competitive advantages in the global economy will stem less from low-cost production and much more from the ability to

If in the past global integration grew as trade barriers came down, it will now rely on the connectivity of national digital and virtual systems and the related flow of ideas and services. This is the core of Globalization 4.0.

innovate, robotize, and digitalize.

THE NEXT WAVE We are, put simply, living in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the most recent wave of groundbreaking innovation. The first brought steam trains, steamships, and the industrialization of weaving and mining. The second electrified—literally—much of the world, introduced the modern assembly line, and brought us the car and the airplane. The third, from the 1970s onward, was centered around the computer and early digitization.

Like its predecessors, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is best described by its leading technologies: artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, and the Internet of Things. These are technologies that will affect many industries in the decades to come and accord unprecedented importance to the digital world. What unites them is that they transform the very structures of economic interaction: the twin trends of digitization and virtualization are creating an economy of near-unlimited mobility in which cyberspace is home to all data. As online platforms pursue vertical integration, they cut out traditional intermediaries.

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A Navya electric minibus with autonomous driving ability stands at the Charite hospital and medical campus during a press event on March 2018 ,26 in Berlin, Germany.

(Getty Images)

And artificial intelligence is creating “smart” systems that are not just analytical but also predictive and prescriptive.

In this world, globalization won’t disappear; it will deepen.

If in the past global integration grew as trade barriers came down, it will now rely on the connectivity of national digital and virtual systems and the related flow of ideas and services. This is the core of Globalization 4.0.

This new form of globalization is arriving at breakneck speed. Consider digital flows: already in 2016, a study by McKinsey & Company calculated that “digital flows— which were practically nonexistent just 15 years ago—now exert a larger impact on GDP growth than the centuriesold trade in goods.” It also found a -45fold increase in the amount of cross-border bandwidth from 2005 to 2016 and predicted another fivefold increase by 2022.

All of this has sent a jolt through the global economy.

The first sector to be affected was manufacturing, where automation, localization, and individualization have begun to replace traditional supply chains. Going forward, this means that competition will be based less on costeffectiveness and more on the ability to innovate.

In this new environment, the world is a company’s oyster.

Consider the U.S.-based tech giants: in less than 25 years,

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Amazon grew from a startup e-commerce store to the world’s second-largest traded company, revolutionizing retail, cloud computing, and other Web services; Apple became the world’s first trillion-dollar company in 2018, barely a decade after it released the first iPhone.

Titans of previous industrial revolutions, such as Cornelius Vanderbilt’s railroad companies, ExxonMobil, and IBM, also benefited from such winner-takes-all dynamics, but their economies of scale tended to taper off, bounded either by natural limits or by man-made laws. In our era, however, limitless network effects have replaced old economies of scale. For “big tech” firms, the upper user limit is nothing less than the entire global population, and they are expanding at a record pace. Planes and cars took more than six decades each to reach 50 million users. Computers and mobile phones managed the feat in 14 and 12 years, respectively. In the age of ubiquitous smartphones, it took WeChat, the all-in-one app that has become a dominant means of communication for China’s netizens, only a year to reach this milestone. At latest count, four companies count a billion users or more: Three American ones (Alphabet, Facebook, and Microsoft) and a Chinese one (Tencent). The market power these companies have garnered along the way is awesome.

It doesn’t end there. By moving into new industries—such as cloud computing, healthcare, loans and payments— Amazon, China’s Alibaba, and other tech companies are becoming digital conglomerates. Other platforms, such as Airbnb, WeWork, and Uber, expand globally without ever owning the physical assets their services rely on.

Along the way, these firms have outgrown the boundaries of traditional businesses and disrupted social patterns.

Artificial intelligence, big data, and the ability to build mass-use tech platforms are starting to determine even national power.

For those with access to technology, this is great news. For labor, not so much. As economies of scale evaporate, and robots and AI increasingly replace humans, companies no longer require hundreds of thousands of employees to run their operations. The industrial giants of yesteryear were among the world’s largest employers. Today, those lucky enough to be employed are either highly skilled and highly paid, or low skilled and low paid.

The United States is not even the country where workers will be hit the most. The industrialized West outsourced most of its manufacturing jobs to lower-cost developing countries during a previous wave of globalization. Look instead to Bangladesh, the Philippines, or Vietnam, where advanced industrial robots are replacing skilled human workers in sewing and other trades.

The result is a widening gap between the winners and the losers of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. At the top of the pyramid, a small crop of founders, investors, and other shareholders form a fantastically wealthy elite. At the bottom, low-skilled employees must count on minimum

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wages to live. The ranks of the middle class, once the connecting tissue of society, are thinning, and social cohesion is suffering as a result.

Making matters worse, digitization has opened the floodgates to information and disinformation alike.

Algorithms, not humans, now determine much of what we see and read. Disinformation campaigns distorted recent elections in the West, and similar things are happening around the world. Citizens’ trust in their government leaders, their judiciaries, and the media is at or near an all-time low.

THE CORNERSTONES OF A NEW ORDER It is hard to overstate what’s at stake for societies and their governments in the face of these shifts: success or failure will help determine quality of life for generations to come. Confronted with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, governments and societies have three options. They can protect the “losers” of this transformative change, putting in place effective social safety nets, active labor-market policies, and efficient healthcare systems. They can double down on neoclassical laissez-faire economic policies, with the hope that the resulting wealth will benefit all sectors of society. Or they can leverage the opportunities of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, designing and governing inclusive platforms and systems that are fit to deal with the complexity of the new wave of global integration.

In the early stages of the Third Industrial Revolution, the New Frontier and Great Society agendas under U.S. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson strengthened the United States’ international leadership position as well as its domestic cohesion. By the end of the 1960s, the country had managed to put a man on the moon and halve its poverty rates while its companies were global market leaders. Though the benefits were by no means shared evenly, per capita GDP per capita rose to record levels.

The potential of the Fourth Industrial Revolution dwarfs even the progress made during the three previous industrial revolutions combined. There is no reason today’s leaders could not proactively manage negative externalities and ensure that inclusive policies distribute opportunities fairly. Digital resources are limitless, and so too can be the wealth they create.

Yet achieving this outcome requires more than patchwork actions that seek to reinvigorate outdated systems. We need fresh thinking about what free and fair economic relations in today’s world means. The global system that states built after World War II was designed around the globalization of planes, cars, global manufacturing value

chains, and early computers. But that global system has run its course, and no international organization in existence can cope with the challenges of Globalization 4.0. There is very little discussion of, let alone consensus on, how to regulate technologies or deal with the Fourth Industrial Revolution’s winners and losers.

What, then, should the new global operating system look like? It should begin by accepting the reality that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is even more borderless, interconnected, and interdependent than the global economy of integrated supply chains. Second, global cooperation should focus on the governance issues at the heart of the current transformation: cybersecurity, the uses of AI and the gene-editing technology CRISPR, and intellectual property and data protection agreements.

Security, above all, has always been a precondition for globalization. That remains true in cyberspace: when the Internet is not safe, economies suffer. We must ensure the safety of Globalization 4.0’s digital sea-lanes and havens.

Artificial intelligence, for its part, can do as much harm as good and requires careful regulation. As the United States, China, and other states vie for leadership in the field—and in other technologies, such as gene editing—they should agree on what is and isn’t allowed. The same applies to financial systems. Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have already proven their advantages over traditional money, but they are not immune to exploitation by speculators and criminals. Going forward, central bankers and policymakers should agree on how to optimize the system’s blockchain backbone so that it can benefit everyone.

Threats from the nondigital world won’t go away, either.

Wildfires, droughts, and tropical storms remind us that

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A model of Uber's electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle concept (eVTOL) flying taxi is displayed at the second annual Uber Elevate Summit, on May 2018 ,8 at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles, California.

(Getty Images)

Global cooperation should focus on the governance issues at the heart of the current transformation: cybersecurity, the uses of AI and the gene-editing technology CRISPR, and intellectual property and data protection agreements.

Security, above all, has always been a precondition for globalization.

climate change threatens our habitats, biodiversity, economies, and societies. Meanwhile, population growth is set to continue for another few decades, although at a slower pace. This means that geopolitical hot spots will multiply and that migration will accelerate. Faced with such extreme conditions, sovereign nations have a right to design adequate national policies and contingency plans.

But multilateral coordination is key, as we share one planet and are responsible for its commons. In doing so, leaders must accept that we now live in a multipolar world in which several countries and regions will need to share the burden and the bounty of global leadership.

Finally, we must come to terms with the sharing and platform economies. So far, they have benefited the endusers and, above all, the platforms’ owners. Most platforms are concentrated in a few global hubs, and their advantages have accrued mostly to a small group of early, risk-seeking investors. Because these platforms rely on fewer employees and cut out middleman companies, they hurt national treasuries and many existing businesses. In response, international agreements should lay out new methods of taxation. Rather than taxing labor, which could handicap already precarious forms of employment, governments could agree to tax platform activities “at source”—namely—where users are based. That way, governments around the world could benefit, and fund the education and reskilling of their people.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES As we address the challenges of Globalization 4.0, we would do well to follow three crucial principles. First, the

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dialogues that take place to shape Globalization 4.0 must involve all the relevant global players. Governments, of course, have a key leadership role to play, but business is the driver of innovation and civil society serves a critical role in making sure this innovation is applied with the public’s interest in mind. Second, the preservation of social and national cohesion should be placed front and center. Safeguarding and strengthening the pillars of social justice and equity will be necessary to sustain national social contracts and preserve an open world. This cannot happen without bottom-up decision-making, which enables the substantive engagement of citizens around the world. Third, coordination—achieving shared objectives— will yield more successes than cooperation—acting out a common strategy. The Paris Agreement on climate change and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are examples of a coordinated approach that leaves room for actors to devise their own strategies. In a world where shared values are a rare commodity, coordination based on shared interests is the most manageable approach to global governance.

We’ve been here before. In the second half of the twentieth century, leaders from all sectors of society laid the institutional foundations for sustained peace, security, and prosperity. Since that time, however, the world has radically changed. A new approach is now called for, one that shapes our global future through a sustained commitment to improving the state of the world. Leaders can debate whether they should work with the good of their country, or that of humanity, in mind. But this much is clear: Globalization 4.0 will only accelerate from here. We must do what we can to harness it for good—and for all.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

KLAUS SCHWAB is Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum.

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Political Scandal and Film HBO’s ‘Brexit’ Movie Plays Right into Today’s Headlines 44

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By Meredith Blake* The future of Brexit is in doubt, but “Brexit” the movie is already here.

Days after the House of Commons rejected the deal negotiated by Prime Minister Theresa May by a historic margin, sending Britain further into political chaos, comes “Brexit,” an HBO film starring Benedict Cumberbatch about the 2016 referendum in which voters decided to leave the European Union.

The film centers not on well-known figures like May, her predecessor David Cameron or prominent Brexit supporter Boris Johnson, but on Dominic Cummings (Cumberbatch), who as the director of the successful Vote Leave campaign used data to identify and target millions of inactive voters with the simple message “take back control” and ultimately scored one of the greatest political upsets in recent memory.

Written by acclaimed playwright James Graham and directed by Toby Haynes (“Black Mirror”), it is the latest in a long line of fact-based political movies at HBO, the network behind “Game Change,” “Recount” and “All the Way.” But as an account of an event that is unfolding by the minute, “Brexit” is something slightly different — a work of instant history that arrives with the outcome unclear.

Dominic Cummings, former adviser to the Education Secretary Michael Gove, poses for a photograph when he was campaign director at Business for Sterling, on March 2001 ,19, in London, England. (Getty Images)

“It puts you in the room where it happens so you understand how it happened rather than what happens, which we all know,” said Cumberbatch in a recent phone interview. “That’s why I was drawn to this drama.”

Graham was inspired to write the film by the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, a vocal opponent of Brexit, a week before the referendum. At the time, Graham was in New York in rehearsals for “Privacy,” a play about the corrosive effects of technology, at the Public Theater. Graham also wrote the TV movie “Coalition,” about the formation of the 2010 coalition government, which aired on Britain’s Channel 4 in 2015.

Viewing his native country from a distance, he wondered “what the hell was happening and how it could have descended into such an appalling

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The film centers on Dominic Cummings (Cumberbatch), who as the director of the successful Vote Leave campaign used data to identify and target millions of inactive voters with the simple message “take back control”. state,” he said. “I knew I wanted to try to make sense of that campaign and how toxic it became.”

Graham is known for his deft handling of recent political and cultural history, most notably the Olivier Award-winning play “This House,” which charted the power struggle between the Labour and Conservative parties in the House of Commons during the turbulent 1970s. (A Broadway staging of “Ink,” a play about Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of the Sun newspaper, opens in April.)

Graham’s first draft was sprawling and epic and involved a larger cast of well-known politicians like former Prime Minister Cameron, but the “punchy and aggressive” Cummings — a relatively obscure political advisor once described

by Cameron as a “career psychopath” — ultimately emerged as the most interesting protagonist. As a portrait of a prickly oddball wielding massive influence via technology, “Brexit” is reminiscent of “The Social Network” and even “The Fifth Estate,” which starred Cumberbatch as Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

“I realized it’s these strategists who work behind the scenes who were responsible for the majority of the policies and the decision-making. It felt right and responsible to bring them kicking and screaming into the light in order to better understand what happened,” the writer said.

(Graham was guided by two nonfiction books, “All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain’s Political Class” by Tim Shipman, and “Unleashing Demons: The Inside Story of Brexit”

by Craig Oliver).

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The polarized politics of Brexit are similar to those in the U.S.: largely white, older, less-educated and rural voters rejecting the kind of globalization they felt was pushed on them by “elites.”

The Vote Leave campaign “appealed to people who were left behind and previously had been apathetic about politics but were mobilized in the millions to effect this historic change,” Graham said.

Though he is a long-standing critic of the European Union who is uniquely sensitive to these disaffected voters, Cummings is also wary of the referendum, according to “Brexit.”

“He knew a simple yes-no, in-or-out vote was a divisive and simplifying means to answer a very complicated question,” said Cumberbatch. “It polarizes and debilitates any potential for serious and substantive debate, where many people are disgruntled, whether they feel their generation has been left out by the establishment in Westminster, or whether they’re remainers [those who favored remaining in the E.U.].”

While the film’s portrayal of cynical, profane British politicians may remind some American viewers of the work of Armando Iannucci, especially “The Thick of It,” Graham saw it as “a classic sports movie” and took inspiration from “Moneyball,” written by Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian. “Here was a team nobody gave any credit to” — the Vote Leave campaign — “They were the underdogs and they were definitely going to lose and yet they found a new way of playing that surprised everybody and changed the game forever.”

Director Haynes played up the satirical elements of Graham’s script, using an ironic classical music score (“Ode to Joy,” from Beethoven’s 9th symphony, features prominently) and wideangle lenses to send up pompous politicians.

Inflammatory figures like Nigel Farage are treated as crass buffoons who provide comic relief. The result is a boisterous romp of a movie about a

subject that is anything but.

This Hollywoodification of the Brexit story has rankled some in the U.K., where the film was broadcast on Channel 4 earlier this month.

Reviews have been positive, with Cumberbatch’s charismatic performance as Cummings inviting numerous comparisons to his role in “Sherlock.”

But some have wondered aloud whether it’s too soon to have perspective on the referendum and its aftermath, likening it to writing “All the President’s Men” immediately after the Watergate break-in.

Speaking hours before May’s deal was rejected on Tuesday, Graham politely offered a different view. “Our country is in free-fall and we haven’t hit rock bottom yet. I believe that drama and storytelling is a vital weapon in making sense of

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As a portrait of a prickly oddball wielding massive influence via technology, “Brexit” is reminiscent of “The Social Network” and even “The Fifth Estate,” which starred Cumberbatch as Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. and films about this in the future.”

The film was shot last summer in just 23 days, a tight schedule that forced everyone involved to commit to Graham’s script, said Haynes, even as the Brexit saga continued to unfold.

To convincingly portray his character, Cumberbatch mastered Cummings’ tricky Durham accent and sported a receding hairline. He also dined with the strategist and his wife. Like many of his peers in the British entertainment industry, Cumberbatch voted to remain in the European Union. Yet he found Cummings to be “generous and open and transparent and amusing.”

Benedict Cumberbatch visits SiriusXM Studios on November 2018 ,1 in New York City.

(Getty Images)

the chaos.”

Other critics have accused the film of “whitewashing” some of Vote Leave’s shadier tactics, including the (possibly criminal) violation of campaign spending limits, as inquiries are still underway, and of portraying Cummings as a sympathetic, wizard-like figure with an uncanny understanding of Britain’s forgotten men and women.

“I never treated this like journalism,” said Graham.

“I didn’t think it was a checklist of everything that ever happened. I viewed it as a character study about the people who were involved and who made the decisions. I think the time is absolutely right to be doing that no matter what further revelations come out about conduct or behavior.”

Besides, he added, “This isn’t the defining version of Brexit. I hope there will be many, many plays

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“One of the reasons I am an actor is to tell stories and to do that you have to empathize with your character and you have to go into their mind-set.

That was a good thing for me to do, as a remainer, to get in a leave mind-set and understand it and understand the people [Cummings] was engaging in that election, that campaign, that vote. I think we all need to do that a bit more,” he said. “Just listen.”

Graham believes “Brexit” holds value for American viewers at a moment of similarly profound dysfunction. “Across the West, you’re either totally one thing or you’re totally another,” he said. “And I think it’s really poisonous for our politics.”

Originally published in the LA Times. *Meredith Blake is an entertainment reporter for the Los Angeles Times based out of New York City, where she primarily covers television.

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From the Archives: US President Ronald Reagan's First Interview with an Arabic Publication Majalla - Washington This interview was originally published in on March 1984 ,2.

President Reagan wore a grey suit, a white shirt and a blue tie. He seemed fit and well after his holiday in California. Indeed, he said that he had not felt this active or fit before. In fact, the crisis in Lebanon has not left a mark—not a single wrinkle—on his face. It is clear that he is a man who deals with crises easily, and that he felt at ease when King Hussein and President Hosni Mubarak suggested he ought to continue to pursue the peace plan developed in September 1982.

The interview with President Reagan took place at his breakfast table.

He covered only two aspects of his foreign policy: the Middle East and relations with the Soviet Union.

Q: Mr. President, despite the legitimacy of President Jamil’s government, it has now fallen and been replaced by another legitimate government.

Will you support this new government’s goals in the interest of Lebanese sovereignty, regardless of what form it takes?

A: All I want to say is that efforts are still being made tirelessly to reach a peaceful political solution to this problem. I will do everything I can to help. And I believe that other countries feel the same. We do not usually act unilaterally in such matters, we move forward based on good communication with other governments. I see no alternative to that.

There is no doubting the importance of the whole Middle East to the free world—perhaps more so for our allies than [the US]. But that will never diminish its importance. If the opportunity for an alternative presents itself, for example, what would it be? A new war between Syria and

Israel, such has happened so many times before? Is there anyone who thinks that an American president will stand idly by and watch Israel be destroyed? The region is vital to us.

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President Ronald Reagan at Durenberger Republican convention Rally, 1982 (Getty)

A: Even though the United States has resorted to using force in Lebanon, Syria seems to have resisted, and even beaten, it.

My question is—would you act differently if you were given a chance to go back to the beginning? And is what happened in Lebanon a lesson on how American military force should be used?

No, I know all about the problems of the Middle East and its long history. The solution to the Lebanese problem may be in finding a government with complete sovereignty over the country, without the warlords and their militias. There hasn’t been a government like that in Lebanon. There can be no solution to the problem without a government that can stop these warlords on its borders, unite the country and give guarantees of security to Lebanon’s neighbors, especially Israel. I don’t know any other option open to us. We were trying to establish peace, and I believe what we have done is the answer. If they were not able to establish peace there, then I do not regret trying. What we did was legitimate. Entering a war with a country like Syria?! No, I don’t believe that’s the answer either. We will go ahead with the application of a comprehensive peace program in the Middle East.

Q: How would you propose to do that?

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It has always been our belief that the peace process would succeed if some of the moderate Arab countries began to take the lead in negotiations.

This is what I talked about yesterday and the day before with President Mubarak and King Hussein [of Jordan]. They both welcome this and believe that we must go ahead with the plan regardless of the situation in Lebanon. It has always been our belief that the peace process would succeed if some of the moderate Arab countries began to take the lead in negotiations.

Remember that we started from a point where Arab countries announced first and foremost that they did not recognize Israel’s right to exist as a nation. So there were two camps facing each

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other. Sadat thawed the ice with the peace treaty with Israel. Our number one priority is to try to find other Arab countries like Egypt.

Q: The week before your announcement of the redeployment of the Marines in Lebanon, you very strongly criticized the suggestion from [Speaker of the House of Representatives] Thomas O’Neill and others that American troops should be withdrawn from Lebanon. Do you think that the statements made while you were thinking seriously about redeploying the Marines, or possibly withdrawing them, created a breakdown of trust in Washington? Second, now the Marines have been withdrawn from inside Lebanon, how long will they stay on board ships near the coast?

How long they stay will be determined by what happens and whether we are successful or not. Their movement from land to sea will have no effect on how long they stay. We are now studying the possibility of creating an international taskforce and at the same time providing further security for our forces.

I think O’Neill was suggesting that we run away, but we were always thinking about the practicality of continuing our task by re-deploying our forces. And there is still an opportunity for peace, so we will stay where we are. This has been our primary objective.

Q: In other words, you expect them to stay for the 18 months you planned?

Do you mean staying onboard the ships?

Q: Yes. Yes, but we hope it doesn’t take long. Things change, and sometimes not exactly as we want them to. But there is still reason for us to hope and we will stay as long as there is still hope.

They didn’t die in vain.

Q: In light of some of your descriptions of the matter of the Marines in Lebanon, it seems they were unsuccessful. What would your response be, in this election year, to the accusations you will face that the Marines became victims in an irrelevant, failed mission? And will you send the Marines in again?

No, they did not die in vain. If we had surrendered and then withdrawn, that would mean they had become victims of a frivolous endeavor. Remember the original situation when the war was raging in the middle of Beirut: PLO forces and terrorists were moving around unabated and even occupied parts of Lebanon. The northern borders of Israel were exposed to their attacks—launching rockets, shells and artillery against civilians.

After that, Israel invaded Lebanon and its forces got 25 miles into the country. They began to retreat before them right up to Beirut.

And the problem remained unresolved.

We agreed—ourselves and our allies—to send a multi-national force in an attempt to convince foreign forces to leave the country. We have achieved that with the PLO. After that the Israelis agreed to withdraw, and began that process in stages.

As for the Syrians, who had agreed previously, they have consolidated their position and said, ‘No, we won’t go.’ I believe this is the biggest obstacle facing us. The thought was that the multi-national force would provide some stability after the formation of the government and that the armed forces would take control of the areas occupied by the Syrians, the Israelis and the PLO. At the same time, we trained the Lebanese armed forces and provided them with weapons. Their combat skills are better than they showed in recent clashes. The problem is that Muslim soldiers have deserted—meaning that these forces are reduced in sized and number.

I have to say that I have contacted the families who lost their sons in Lebanon. I have been deeply affected by the fathers, mothers and widows who told me of their belief in the mission on which their sons and husbands were deployed. They told me many times that their sons and husbands had written to them constantly about their faith in the goal for which they were sent to Lebanon. And before the start of terrorist attacks against them, I also heard speeches from Lebanese citizens thanking us and saying that they did not know what their fate would be without the presence of American forces there.

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US President Ronald Reagan (R) and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak attend the arrival ceremonies in the east room of the White House, February 1982 ,3 in Washington DC. (Getty)

The solution to the Lebanese problem may be in finding a government with complete sovereignty over the country, without the warlords and their militias. There hasn’t been a government like that in Lebanon a UN force? And if so, would you withdraw the American fleet from the Lebanese coast to get the Soviets to agree to this force?

I will not respond to the last part of the question. In fact, I don’t want to think about it now. But as far as a UN force is concerned, that has been my preference from the start. The veto and Russian opposition are what has forced me to consider something other than a UN force.

Q: How quickly would you like to see this force in Lebanon?

And what would the role of the Marines be far from the coast, especially as they weren’t able to protect the Lebanese government while they were on the ground?

It was not a question of protecting the Lebanese government.

They were there to help the government with stability. With regards to the UN force, I had hoped to see it there—not just yesterday, but the day before as well. As president, I say that the multinational force is still there and that they can land on the beach in no time if that is required.

Q: If the Marines move offshore, how can they achieve this goal in that situation, when they failed while they were onshore?

I admit that the people I described as warlords control the region more than ever. At the same time, the government is trying to negotiate with these same people to involve them in government.

It has not been announced that this is out of the question yet.

Until this is done, we need to keep trying.

President Ronald Reagan and President of Lebanon Amin Gemayel pose for photos at the top of the steps that lead down to the Rose Garden at the White House on July 1983 ,22.

Q: Will you send [the Marines] back to Lebanon, Mr. President?

If it would help to establish peace, then yes. I have to tell you that I have learned that the hardest decision I can make in this job of mine is to send those brave young men to places where their lives are in danger.

Q: Mr. President, are you prepared to replace the Marines with

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Q: You mentioned a few minutes ago that you wanted to work together with President Hosni Mubarak to put together a peace plan for the Middle East. But only yesterday, both here and in Washington, Hosni Mubarak made statements directly opposed to your policy and your views. In one of them, President Mubarak suggested that the United States should enter into direct talks with the PLO. In the second, he mentioned that the withdrawal of the Marines was a disaster that will cost America the confidence of its friends in the region. In the light of statements like these from the president of an Arab country that you rely on, can I ask what the basis of your cooperation with President Mubarak is regarding the peace plan for the Middle East?

President Mubarak made the statements you mentioned in

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his farewell speech. But I also remember what he said in our discussions, the three of us together, that lasted many hours. It is true that perhaps he was convinced, more so than us, that Arafat is the legitimate representative of the Palestinians. We agree that the Palestinian problem is crucial to the peace program and that there must be a fair resolution to this problem. President Mubarak was expressing his view in opposition to those who propose the return of the Marines to the United States. He sees that as a disaster, and King Hussein shares that view. But when he learned that we would redeploy them he showed he was pleased with our presence in that part of the Mediterranean.

Q: This is an election year, and not necessarily the year of establishing peace in the Middle East, which particularly concerns moderate Arab countries. They know that Israel rejected the initiative of September 1982 ,1. They rejected it on September 2, because they said it was a threat to Israeli security and a violation of the Camp David Accords. At that time, and a year later, you described Israeli settlements as an obstacle to peace. Israel ignored the comments on both occasions. What can you present to moderate Arab countries so you can move forward with the initiative, especially if these countries see no sign that you have any influence over Israel, which is opposing your plan?

This situation resembles, somewhat, the times I was negotiating with management for the union. You try as much as you can to strengthen your position before entering negotiations so that you can negotiate from a position of strength. For this reason, you see that each side is trying to strengthen their position as much as possible. I have to tell you that I have found King Hussein and President Mubarak to be completely faithful to the Camp David Accords and Resolution 242 and other UN resolutions, and they believe that negotiations must take place in this framework.

I believe that Israel will greatly benefit from this process, as after practicing peace and getting secure borders, it will not be forced to destroy its economy by remaining a nation at arms.

Q: When [Secretary-general of the Soviet Politburo] Chernenko

I believe we have made great progress in redressing the balance with the Soviets. But we are not yet at the point where we will stop

gave his recent speech, he mentioned that he wanted to maintain the balance between East and West. What does that balance mean to you? Is there a fair balance now? Does Chernenko mean they have to become stronger?

I believe we have made great progress in redressing the balance with the Soviets. But we are not yet at the point where we will stop. We still have to deploy the MX missiles and B1 bombers on the border. In my opinion this is of the utmost importance as it will serve as a sufficient deterrent. I do not believe that will make us equal with them. I am still determined that the ideal solution would be the two superpowers reaching an agreement that would lead to a real reduction in the stockpile of nuclear weapons. I hope that if we start on that road we will finish with a result that completely rids us of these weapons.

Q: Why have you become more optimistic? Has something happened between Chernenko and the vice president?

I listened to what happened in the meetings. And while Mr. Chernenko did not back down from the Soviets’ key positions, he expressed his desire to establish better relations. He felt that we both have to do something to prevent regional conflicts from spreading to a wider arena and that there must be a means of preventing any reckless use of nuclear weapons. In other words,

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In this handout from the White House, U.S. President Ronald Reagan (2nd R) shakes hands with a boy as Mikhail Gorbachev (R) looks on during a tour of Red Square May 1988 ,31 in Moscow, Soviet Union.(Getty)

We already suggested that, but the Soviets did not respond.

We originally believed at the beginning of the talks that the weapons that most caused instability and panic among people are the ones where you press a button and then the world ends.

And if the button were ever pressed there would be no going back. We thought that the bombs and missiles launched from submarines caused less unrest because they are carried by a traditional weapon. We made our position very clear and told the Soviets that we wanted to discuss all types of weapons but they did not respond.

Q: Did Mr. Chernenko say anything about Vice President George Bush?

As I said, he spoke about his anxiety over nuclear weapons, and the need to find a solution to this threat.

Q: Mr. President, are you a reckless cowboy?

Yes. I feel like one, yes!

what he said and how he said it show his belief that we can reach an agreement together.

Q: Mr. President, as a show of goodwill towards the new leadership in the Soviet Union and a thawing of relations in the nuclear weapons negotiations, could you stop the further deployment of American Pershing II and Cruise missiles in Western Europe for a time, perhaps until the end of this year?

No. I do not believe we should do that. The Soviet Union has more than 1,000 mid-range missiles and the NATO countries have no deterrent that can stand up to these missiles. Our allies asked us to deploy the missiles in 1979 and the American administration agreed. This situation has come to us, and we agree there must be a deterrent. I believe that the Soviet Union has made it perfectly clear during these negotiations that its goal is to prevent us from deploying those missiles.

Q: Do you see any possible benefit in widening the scope of negotiations now to include a diverse range of nuclear weapons that both sides have, not just European missiles but also strategic weapons—and possibly bombers—so that negotiations can proceed on a wider and more comprehensive basis, and possibly lead to more comprehensive results?

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Q: Former President Nixon said that you have to get together with the Soviet leadership to show them that you are not a “reckless cowboy,” as he says. You mentioned yourself that you are not sure of the Russians, and that it would be foolish to say you know them. So why don’t you try to meet and get to know them at a summit to confirm, to them at least, that you are not, as Nixon described you, “a reckless cowboy,” and get to know them better? What’s the harm in that?

There is one American president who had a meeting like that.

And straight away, rumors flew all around the world about a healing of the rift between the two great powers. The two leaders got to know each other and the meeting ended. And after that there was a complete deterioration in relations because he came up with nothing practical. I don’t know if they really think I’m a cowboy or not—I only played that role in two films. But I believe that they must know, and as soon as possible, that I mean what I say about disarmament and peace.

Q: Mr. President, could you tell us as accurately as possible what you think of the new Soviet leadership? Do you expect them pursue a more lenient or strict line, or will they simply be a continuation of the previous leadership?

A few years ago, one of our ambassadors to the Soviet Union said that the second most foolish thing is to say you understand the Russians. Ever since then, I have been curious to find out what the most foolish thing is. There is one truth, and that is that there is one leadership and that there is a person who has not announced a retreat from a certain position or a change in the situation or moderation. But before us are also Mr. Chernenko’s first comments, in which he announced that he will work for better relations.

Q: Are you taking that at face value?

Yes. Until they prove otherwise.