We learn why O-Care roll-out crashed & burned…. Last night Donald Trump, the honoree at TAS’s annual Robert L. Bartley dinner (RLB was the legendary Wall Street Journal editorial page guru for three decades), told an anecdote that explains why governments mess up so often. During the mayoralty of Ed Koch the city tried to renovate Wollman’s skating rink, a Read More ›
More Big Picture viewpoints: Churchill’s memorable twin cautions about the Middle East. In 1929, after the victorious powers had carved up the region, WC explained: The whole of the Middle East is intimately related. Beneath the smooth surface of British rule and the slender garrisons which normally sustain it are smouldering the antagonisms of centuries. There are always feuds and Read More ›
What President Obama and too many others miss…. Herewith recent Big Picture viewpoints: Several top analysts, Michael Ledeen (“It’s War, You Idiots!”), David Goldman (“America’s Problems in the Middle East Are Just Beginning”), Roger Kimball (“Cairo is Burning? Where is President Obama?”) shred the feckless Mideast policies & naive worldview of the Obama administration. Ledeen writes: [T]here’s a global war, Read More ›
A US firm’s possible security game-changer …. Decision Sciences (DS) offers an overview of its revolutionary product designed to detect hidden nuclear weapon material. Its muon technology is explained by its CEO’s NBC interview (10:43). And here is another DS CEO interview on CBS Defense News (6:56–an earlier interview that does not account for what now is an operational product, Read More ›
Recent disclosures have generated rising popular concern over an increasing lack of personal data privacy. The technology tetrad of computing, television, telephony and vast databases has called forth comparisons to legendary writer George Orwell’s iconic novel about “Big Brother” dictatorship, 1984. In 1999 computer executive Scott McNealy said: “You have zero privacy anyway.” Millions of people perceive the specter of Read More ›
Egypt’s second revolution in two years resurrects a debate over what role, if any, the United States should play in promoting human rights around the globe. Much of the confusion surrounding this ongoing debate stems from Americans’ tendency to project their own revolutionary experience onto other situations that arise in vastly different cultural and civilizational contexts. This idealism is sometimes Read More ›
The stunning revelation that a segment of the intelligence community believes that North Korea already has a nuclear weapon compact enough to be placed upon a ballistic missile shows anew the limits of what intelligence agencies can determine as to what goes on in closed societies. What matters from a standpoint of intelligence acuity is less whether Pyongyang can put Read More ›
The Justice Dept. rules for press subpoenas …. Attorney-General Eric Holder talks about adopting new rules for how the feds subpoena reporter records. This is a typical Beltway ploy, one that “fixes” violations of old rules on the books by passing new ones. Doing so implies that there is a loophole in existing law that needs closing. But, inconveniently for Read More ›
As basketball star turned amateur diplomat Dennis Rodman planned a summer vacation with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s direct threat to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at America’s west coast induced President Obama to order a supplemental deployment of 14 more U.S. Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI) missiles by 2017, for a total GBI deployment of 44. The move Read More ›
In a speech on Monday at the Asia Society in New York, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon addressed Chinese cyber intrusions into U.S. government and business network infrastructures. In moving cybersecurity “to the forefront of our agenda,” Mr. Donilon noted that he wasn’t referring to “ordinary cybercrime or hacking.” He called on Beijing to recognize the importance of cyber issues, Read More ›