Russians Again Targeting Americans with Disinformation

The Russian group that interfered in the 2016 presidential election is at it again, using a network of fake accounts and a website set up to look like a left-wing news site, Facebook said today, as the NYT reports.

U.S. Says It Won’t Join WHO-linked Effort to Develop, Distribute Coronavirus Vaccine

The Trump administration said it will not join a global effort to develop, manufacture and equitably distribute a coronavirus vaccine, in part because the World Health Organization is involved, a decision that could shape the course of the pandemic and the country’s role in health diplomacy, as the Washington Post reports.

China’s Nuclear Ambitions

China is expected to at least double the number of its nuclear warheads over the next decade from the low 200s now and is nearing the ability to launch nuclear strikes by land, air, and sea, a capacity known as a triad, the Pentagon said today, as Reuters reports.

CSIS Executive Education

Join CSIS’s Trade Guys for their next crash course on trade policy. This two-day program breaks down the fundamentals of how U.S. trade policy is formulated, the legalities of trade in an international arena, and the impact of Covid-19 on supply chains. Register here.

Video Shorts

Check out CSIS’s new series of video shorts: “Testify,” "What's Happening," "Preview," and “High Resolution.” And don’t forget to subscribe to the CSIS YouTube Channel!

In That Number

1.4 Million

In the Chinese city of Wuhan, the original center of the coronavirus epidemic, state-run news media said that more than 2,840 primary and secondary schools, serving nearly 1.4 million students, reopened today.

Source: NYT

Critical Quote

“The United States will continue to engage our international partners to ensure we defeat this virus, but we will not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China.”

— Judd Deere, White House deputy press secretary

iDeas Lab

The last chapter of [re]GENERATION, a three-part mini-documentary series on climate change adaptation, presents a simple but unconventional bioengineering technique used to protect Nepal's grain basket region from unprecedented flooding and erosion.

The Andreas C. Dracopoulos iDeas Lab at CSIS enhances our research with the latest in cutting-edge web technologies, design, and multimedia.

Optics

(Photo credit: Nir Elias/Pool/AFP via Getty Images.) Israeli National Security Advisor Meir Ben-Shabbat elbow bumps with an Emirati official today.

This Town Tomorrow

Tomorrow, at 9:00 a.m., CSIS's Seth Center moderates a conversation about the future of the international order and the insights history offers in the aftermath of periods of disorder like the current Covid-19 pandemic.

And, at 11:00 a.m., join CSIS and the Center for a New American Security for the rollout of a joint report entitled Toward a More Proliferated World? The discussion will address new proliferation pressures and challenges to the effectiveness of traditional U.S. policy tools.

Later, at 2:00 p.m., the CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security convenes a panel of experts to assess Russia's Sputnik V vaccine and its geostrategic implications.

Video

The CSIS Global Food Security Program today hosted an online event for the public launch of [re]GENERATION, a three-part mini documentary series on climate change adaptation, shot on location in El Salvador, Kenya, and Nepal. This event focused on adaptation in the context of multiple global phenomena: climate change, water and food insecurity, migration, urbanization, and instability. Watch the full event here.

Podcasts

In the first episode of the new narrative podcast miniseries, "Russia in the Middle East," CSIS's Jon Alterman gives an overview of Russian policy in the Middle East and how the Middle East fits into Russia’s worldview. He also sits down with Dmitri Trenin, director of Carnegie's Moscow Center, and Celeste Wallander, president and CEO of the U.S.-Russia Foundation, for their insight into Russia’s foreign policy decisions.

Listen on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

Smiles

One of my favorite bands ever is the Go-Go’s. Formed in Los Angeles in 1978, the Go-Go’s dominated the early 80s. For New Wave teens like me at the time, there weren’t too many groups we held in higher regard or thought were cooler. In fact, the Go-Go’s defined cool in the early 80s.

Now, there’s a new Showtime documentary about the Go-Go’s, and they’ve released “Club Zero,” their first new single in 20 years. Watch Belinda Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin, Charlotte Caffey, Gina Schock and Kathy Valentine perform “Club Zero” and tell me this isn’t absolutely FANTASTIC. Maybe the best new song I’ve heard in a very long time. Oh, and I love Jane’s guitar…so cool.

I invite you to email me at [email protected] and follow me on Twitter @handrewschwartz

The Evening is my daily guide to key insights CSIS brings to the events of the day. It is composed with the External Relations team: Emma Colbran, Caleb Diamond, and Kendal Gee.