Chinese telecom giant Huawei has long denied that it uses its products to conduct digital surveillance on behalf of China or any other country. Received this from a friend? SUBSCRIBE [[link removed]] CRITICAL STATE Your weekly foreign policy fix. If you read just one thing…

… read about Huawei spying on African dissidents.

Chinese telecom giant Huawei has long denied that it uses its products to conduct digital surveillance on behalf of China or any other country. Last week, a Wall Street Journal investigation [[link removed]] showed that, in at least two African countries, it certainly has. Officials in Uganda and Zambia confirmed that the company worked directly with the countries’ national security services to surveil regime political opponents. Huawei employees embedded with security services allowed the governments to access private, encrypted WhatsApp chats and Facebook messages, in some cases leading to the arrest of people whose only crime was peaceful protest. As regimes attempt to quickly augment their digital repression capabilities in the face of rising political organizing, support from infrastructure companies like Huawei will be a critical factor in determining the balance of power on tomorrow’s internet.

The post-9/11 generation goes to war

The 18th anniversary of 9/11 is around the corner, and shortly thereafter will be the 18th anniversary of the American wars that were launched in its wake. Years after “missions” were apparently “accomplished” and withdrawals guaranteed, America remains at war in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and soon the first American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines born after the attacks will begin their service in those wars. Last week brought a profile [[link removed]] of one such future soldier, 17-year old Jann Arroyo Morales, who will soon report to Fort Benning to begin basic training.

Morales is Puerto Rican, meaning that not only can he not remember the inciting incident of the wars he is about to join, but his congressional representatives can’t vote to end the wars, despite 35,000 Puerto Ricans currently serving on active duty.

Nothing in the article demonstrates the passage of time as clearly as the author Matt Gallagher, who began his writing career by blogging while serving in Iraq, including a sentence that shows exactly how old he now is: “[Morales has] been playing Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2, which is not just a real game but a popular one.”

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Iran’s forever war

Rising tensions with the US have taken some attention away from Iran’s most costly conflict: its intervention in Syria to prop up the Assad regime. Iran has spent some $15 billion on military support for Assad since the start of the Syrian civil war, and over 2,100 Iranians have been killed in the conflict. In the process, Ariane Tabatabai argued [[link removed]] in Foreign Affairs last week, the war has changed Iran’s approach to security.

Many of Iran’s foreign relationships have been reordered by the conflict. Cooperation in Syria has brought on a new era of closeness between Iran and Russia, while reports of Iran coercing Afghan refugees within its borders to join pro-Assad militias call into question its role as a shelter for some in the region.

The war has also bloodied the Iranian military in open combat for the first time since the Iran-Iraq war. New approaches to recruitment, unit cohesion, doctrine, and proxy relationships from the Syrian war have all changed the Iranian way of war in ways that will likely reverberate throughout the region.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE

Policymakers like being consumers of research. Part of their job is to take in new information and work it into the policymaking process. What they have less experience with, however, is being subjects of research. Despite serving as crucial decisionmakers on a range of issues, there are very few systematic studies on how security and development bureaucrats do their jobs on a day-to-day basis. For the next two editions of Deep Dive, we’ll look at some of the research that shows what happens when we turn the microscope around and look at the policymaking community.

There has been a major shift in recent years toward training policy professionals to work with data. If you are a security or development bureaucrat who went to graduate school recently, you almost certainly had to take some data science and coding classes. The theory is that policymakers should be unbiased in their policy evaluations, and that data and data training should reduce bias. But does it actually?

In a new article [[link removed]] for the World Bank Economic Review, Sheheryar Banuri, Stefan Dercon, and Varun Gauri show that the answer is, at best, sort of. Banuri, Dercon, and Gauri ran survey experiments with development professionals at the World Bank and the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) that tested their political bias in evaluating the results of a study and their susceptibility to positive and negative framings in determining a study’s success.

In the political bias test, respondents were asked to look at two studies. One of the studies investigated the effectiveness of a skin cream on treating an unnamed new disease (a less political example) and the other investigated the effectiveness of raising the minimum wage (among economists, a very political example). The respondents were asked to say whether each study supported the policy intervention being tested — that is, prescribing the skin cream or raising the minimum wage. The results of the two studies were the same in terms of numbers of positive outcomes found, but many policymakers perceived them differently. Respondents — many of whom are trained economists — were overall about 20% less likely to accurately describe the outcome of the minimum wage study than the skin cream study.

The framing study was even more stark. Respondents were presented with a treatment for a deadly disease that would definitely save only one-third of all patients versus a treatment that has a one-third chance of saving every patient and a two-thirds chance of not saving anyone. Policymakers were 45% more likely to choose the “safe” choice — definitely saving a third of patients — if it was presented as definitely saving some people rather than as definitely letting most people die. The two options are functionally exactly the same, so the huge discrepancy suggests that policymakers are definitely influenced by how a policy option is framed.

There was some positive news for exponents of the idea that data training reduces bias. Respondents with better math skills were more likely to get the political bias question right, as were respondents with economics degrees. But the overall results suggest that there is still a long way to go, and that policymakers should open themselves up to more research if they want to know if they are living up to their ideals.

The study also seems to expose a funny cultural disparity between the World Bank and DfID. World Bank staff were offered a free coffee mug in exchange for their participation in the study, while DfID staff got nothing for filling out the survey. Yet when results came back, the response rate at the World Bank was 43% and at DfID it was 72%. Either economists don’t respond to incentives the same the world over, or the mugs were ugly.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] SHOW US THE RECEIPTS

Critical State’s own Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein traveled [[link removed]] to a Midwestern ashram where a guru known as Amma is attempting to change the world through hugging. Amma’s followers value her hugs as a source of divine healing, and the small town of Elburn, Illinois — the site of her seventh North American ashram — values Amma and her followers as a source of economic renewal.

Jon Letman told [[link removed]] the story of an American beer that’s in bad taste, and not because it’s an IPA. Manhattan Project Beer Company makes its money selling beer branded with names from nuclear weapons history. None of the beer names are great, but one in particular — “Bikini Atoll” — has drawn the ire of people from the actual Bikini Atoll, a region of the Marshall Islands where the US tested nuclear weapons in the 1940s and 50s. Radiation from the tests caused widespread illness among people living in the area, who had no say in whether or when the tests took place.

Monica Campbell spoke to [[link removed]] migrants trying to enter the US who are stuck waiting in Tijuana, Mexico, while US courts consider their asylum claims. Asylum-seekers used to be able to remain in the US while their claims were considered, but a Trump administration policy has forced more than 14,000 asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while the court system slowly does its work.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL PLAYED

You know that thing where before and after photos show how quickly being president can age a person? That, but for being [[link removed]] CENTCOM commander — in charge of US military forces in the Middle East — during the Trump administration.

The bond curve inverted last week, meaning the market believes a recession is imminent. A lot of people are alarmed, but at least someone is into it [[link removed]].

Pro-government Chinese rappers are always on call [[link removed]] to lend their talents to the Chinese state. They’ve weighed in on the escalating crisis in Hong Kong, and the power of their artistic voice has staggered [[link removed]] observers.

As part of its long-running effort to be the parody version of itself, the US military uses the simple mnemonic DOTMLPF-P to remember the elements of operational planning: Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership and education, Personnel, Facilities, and Policy. Anyway, here’s [[link removed]] Madonna.

As an addendum, the tendency for militaries to become the parody version of themselves isn’t limited to the US. The British version of DOTMLPF-P is, incredibly, TEPID OIL [[link removed]].

The world’s greatest tennis player is now also its leading [[link removed]] drone [[link removed]] countermeasure [[link removed]].

If you’re looking for something to commemorate the enlistment of the first uniformed Americans born after 9/11, check out this haunted 2001 McDonald’s Easter plate, available on eBay [[link removed]].

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Follow The World: DONATE TO THE WORLD [[link removed]] Follow Inkstick: DONATE TO INKSTICK [[link removed]]

Critical State is written by Sam Ratner and is a collaboration between PRI’s The World and Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRI/PRX, BBC, and WGBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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