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Security by algorithm, once again [[link removed]], becomes racism by algorithm. In 2011, the state of Kentucky thought that it could improve its criminal justice system and jail fewer people by instituting a system that used data to predict the likelihood of defendants committing further crimes and make bail recommendations to judges. At first, it kind of worked: 13% more people were released without having to pay bail in the months following the adoption of the algorithm. By 2016, however, judges had begun to use the recommendations in a way that reflected their pre-existing biases. When the algorithm gave a “moderate” risk score to a white defendant, judges tended to use it as a reason for leniency. When a Black defendant got a “moderate” risk score, however, it was often seen as an excuse for actually increasing bail. One more hit to the idea that technical solutions can truly address structural problems.

UK to Yemeni civilians: Drop dead

Last year, a UK court ruled that the country must halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia because the government had not adequately evaluated the threat that British arms would be used to kill civilians in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. Last week, the British government determined that Saudi airstrikes on Yemeni cities aren’t actually a big deal, and announced [[link removed]] the resumption of arms sales.

UK Trade Secretary Liz Truss said that civilian deaths from Saudi airstrikes on Yemen amount to “isolated incidents.” An academic survey of reporting on the airstrikes, however, estimates that indiscriminate violence in Yemen, led by Saudi airstrikes, has killed [[link removed]]over 12,600 civilians there.

The UK’s leading arms manufacturer, BAE Systems, has sold roughly $19 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia in the last five years, mostly in the form of supply and maintenance for the Saudi bomber force.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Cold War history, delivered daily

One of the upsides of the 2020s is that it will see a huge number of records from the height of the Cold War declassified and made available for public consumption. A new website [[link removed]], part of a marketing push for a forthcoming book on views of Africa in the American intelligence community, is posting a new declassified intelligence assessment about Africa from America’s Cold War-era archives each weekday.

The documents include the CIA’s 1985 assessment of whether pressure on Western European countries would result in their adoption of sanctions against South Africa’s apartheid regime. With the US Congress having finally begun serious debate on sanctions after years of pressure from activists, the Agency reported that “Allies [sic] governments — and particularly the British — are concerned that they may no longer be able to deflect antiapartheid activists and Third World governments with pleas that West Europeans can do little by themselves to constrain South Africa.”

The documents also include early versions of what would eventually grow into mass panic in American policy circles about Chinese influence in Africa. A 1960 document on China opening an embassy in Accra, Ghana, argues that the embassy was set up “in hopes of influencing the Congo, which is uncommitted to either China” — that is, the People’s Republic or Taiwan.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE Contagious Policies: Part II

Last week on Deep Dive, we learned about how policies to restrict civil society spread within regions, as countries see what their neighbors can get away with and follow suit. Of course, authoritarian policies also spread beyond regions. Some forms of authoritarian diffusion have a global reach, and this week we’ll focus on new research that delves into one vector in particular: the International Department of the Communist Party of China.

The International Department (ID-CPC) is essentially the Chinese Communist Party’s diplomatic wing. Separate from the Chinese state, it represents China’s ruling party abroad, forming relationships with other political actors and sharing the Party’s approach to development and governance. Christine Hackensesch and Julia Bader have a new article [[link removed]] in International Studies Quarterly that tracks how the ID-CPC functions, and the effects it can have on the countries it works with.

Chinese President Xi Jinping took over the ID-CPC in 2012, and, using the ID-CPC’s own documentation of the meetings it holds around the world, the researchers demonstrated that the ID-CPC has been much more active since then. Hackensesch and Bader measured the ID-CPC’s activities on two scales: which organizations it interacts with, and what kind of information it shares. The ID-CPC interacts primarily with other political parties around the world, and at a large scale: between 2002 and 2017, it met with 462 parties from 161 countries. For the most part, though, the ID-CPC acts like an official Chinese state diplomat would, meeting primarily with the party in power in a given country. In democracies, where opposition parties have a reasonable chance of being in power in the near future, the ID-CPC met with opposition parties roughly 30% less than it met with ruling parties. In authoritarian states, however, where opposition parties are unlikely to play a major role in governance, ID-CPC meet with the ruling party over seven times more often than with opposition parties.

More interestingly, those meetings serve as a way for the Chinese Communist Party to explain to other parties around the world how it goes about ruling China. As Hackensesch and Bader write, “particularly since 2014, the CPC has become more interested in sharing experiences about China’s authoritarian political system.” Before 2014, the Chinese government generally and the ID-CPC in particular was interested in importing lessons on development and governance from the rest of the world to apply in China.

Since then, however, the ID-CPC has almost exclusively framed its work with parties around the world as a way to educate others about the Party’s approach, and the parties they meet with have largely welcomed those lessons. The African National Congress (ANC), for example, which has led South Africa since the rise of democracy there in 1994, said in 2015 that the party “sets great store by the friendly cooperation with the CPC and is willing to learn from the CPC’s 65 years of governance in China.” By 2018, the ANC was planning to send party members to China for communication training, which ANC Secretary-General Ace Magashule hoped [[link removed]] would achieve “in the ANC a greater sense of loyalty from amongst our own cadreship.”

As the ID-CPC has zeroed in on training foreign parties in its own image as one of its primary goals, the tools it has at its disposal have increased. The CPC is now actively involved in training political parties around the world, including by building [[link removed]] the Nyerere School of Ideology in Tanzania, to be a home for training members of ruling parties in six southern African countries. Those tools allow the CPC to teach the blocking and tackling of its approach to governance, for good and ill, to a wide audience than ever before.

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Kyle Vass reported [[link removed]] on shows of solidarity between environmental activists in Louisiana and Taiwan who are both fighting against expansion by Formosa Plastics, a Taiwan-based petrochemical corporation. One of Formosa’s plants in Taiwan exploded last year, forcing thousands from their homes, and in 2017, Formosa was forced to pay the largest penalty in the history of private citizen lawsuits against industrial polluters in America for dumping waste into coastal waters in Texas. The company has plans to expand into Louisiana, and two local activists are facing criminal charges for peaceful protests against the expansion. Taiwanese activists, who have been fighting Formosa’s pollution for years, expressed support for their counterparts in Louisiana.

Kate Kizer discussed [[link removed]] what Jamaal Bowman’s defeat of House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Eliot Engel in a recent Democratic primary means for the future of American foreign policy. Bowman spoke about foreign policy frequently in his campaign, challenging Engel’s hawkish record and putting forward a platform that cuts military spending and focuses on human security. The first major test for Bowman’s message in Congress, Kizer wrote, will come next year, once defense spending caps are removed and Congress must make decisions about the future of Pentagon budgets.

Shirin Jaafari chronicled [[link removed]] the last days of well-regarded Iraqi security expert Husham al-Hashimi, who was murdered last week in Baghdad. No one has yet claimed credit for the shooting, but in the days before his death Hashimi had mentioned threats from the Iranian-backed Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah. Hashimi had recently published a report on Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, which include Kataib Hezbollah. Hashimi is remembered very fondly in the security community, where he was regarded as among the most knowledgeable and accessible voices on Iraq’s security situation.

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

The US never came up with a better psy-ops than convincing its adversaries that its military procurement processes were something to be emulated [[link removed]].

One way to think about how destabilizing the Global War on Terror era has been is to imagine how you would go about explaining this [[link removed]]to someone from 20 years ago.

Automatic identification systems (AIS) use transponders to show where ships are at any given time. Do you want to track oil tankers going to and from Iran? You use AIS. Do you want to see if anyone is fishing in disputed waters in the South China Sea? You use AIS. Of course, some ships don’t want you to be able to know where they are, which leads to some amusing situations [[link removed]].

Not pictured [[link removed]]: an M1 Abrams tank with “Fighting Vehicle” emblazoned across its turret and an infantry platoon scampering away, stifling giggles with spray paint and stencil in hand.

Not to spoil the ending, but the Modi-Abe hip bump makes this [[link removed]] art.

Arguably, you’d be more likely to get in touch with a drug kingpin if you said it was [[link removed]] about a drug deal, but journalistic ethics are important!

In the future, a parent will be checking in to be sure that their child is actually asleep and will find them instead with a flashlight on under the covers, reading this book [[link removed]]. Outraged, the parent will demand that the child go to sleep this instant, as they have school the next morning! The child will give a sly smile and demand additional screen time in exchange for going to sleep. A contest of wills ensues, but the prospect of dealing with a grumpy child tomorrow strikes directly at the parent’s center of gravity: their own sanity. The parent will capitulate, and, as they go to sleep, the child will mutter under their breath, “bedtime is just politics by other means.”

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Great Power Competition is: “I think we should really look at it through the lens of uh… competition." — a real life security expert.

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

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from 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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