Happy Saturday.
Here’s today’s ITK Daily.
To be ITK, know this:
Insight | TWIN framework
The best communicators embrace the TWIN framework:
TWIN = Targets to Win, Influence, and Neutralize.
In a complex communications effort, you will likely have 5, 7, 9, 11, and 25 targets (audiences) that you need to win, influence, and neutralize.
Full post here.
CSIS documents reveal Chinese strategy to influence 2021 election: Beijing had two goals: to seek return of minority Liberal government and defeat Conservatives perceived to be hawkish. Globe + Mail
Beyond the balloon: the US-China spy game: Chinese state intelligence-gathering has grown in ambition and scale, leaving Washington struggling to catch up. FT
+ In Beijing’s Military Museum of the Chinese People’s Revolution, the prize exhibit is the pockmarked wreckage of an aircraft that became an icon of the cold war — an American U-2 spy plane. The exhibit is a reconstruction made from the remains of four of the five CIA U-2s shot down over China from 1962.
+ During the Cultural Revolution, “China was so closed that operatives would go to Hong Kong markets to buy fish because it was wrapped in Chinese newspapers which were otherwise very hard to get.”
Liz Truss calls for ‘economic NATO’ to stand up to China: Former UK prime minister to urge stronger Taiwan ties as a counter to Beijing. Politico
Pentagon’s top China official visits Taiwan: FT reports the Pentagon’s top China official has paid a rare visit to Taiwan amid the crisis in relations between Washington and Beijing over a suspected Chinese spy balloon shot down two weeks ago. Michael Chase, deputy assistant secretary of defense for China, has arrived in Taiwan, according to one of four people who said he would travel to the island.
Washington’s China hawks take flight: The story of how decades of US engagement with China gave way to estrangement. FP
+ Did decades of US efforts at engagement, which started with President Richard Nixon opening relations with China and lasted through Obama’s presidency, simply fail to deliver? Or did the arrival of Xi and his aggressive, revisionist approach to China’s place in the world render it moot?+ Many Western lawmakers, policymakers, and China analysts place the blame of spoiled relations solely at Xi’s feet.
+ “You can’t use the terminology that we used for our conflict with the Soviet Union for our conflict with China. It is apples and oranges. We had virtually no trade relationship with the Soviet Union. Our most vital trade relationship is with China. So I do worry about a bunch of Cold Warriors and Cold War enthusiasts thinking that you can run a competition with China like you ran a competition with the Soviet Union. It’s not the same thing.”
Bloomberg: Biden plans to host spring State Dinner for South Korea’s Yoon
+ The two nations are improving cooperation on supply chains and security.
+ Biden hosted his first state dinner in December for Macron.
How Ukrainian photographers captured a year of conflict: The Information Front project aims to fight false truths by showing the reality of war. FT
Report: Fog of war: How the Ukraine conflict transformed the cyber threat landscape Google
+ Importantly, this marks the first time that cyber operations have played such a prominent role in a world conflict.
Ukraine war: Zelensky rules out territory deal with Putin in BBC interview: Access here.
Blinken: Crimea a ‘red line’ for Putin as Ukraine weighs plans to retake it: Politico reports the secretary of state, in a private call with experts, expressed his hesitation about a possible Ukrainian offensive for the peninsula.
Putin’s plot to stoke ancient resentments in the bloodlands: A year after the invasion, the Russian leader’s aim remains to rip Ukraine apart. His focus now is on exploiting historic enmities in the west of the country, but he still does not understand Ukrainian resilience. The Times
+ Putin’s wars all too often kick off with Wagnerian brio and peter out after the initial slugfest.
+ What remains is a frozen conflict, a lever that the Kremlin can use later to destabilise the neighbourhood at a time of its choosing.
+ That’s not a mark of strategic genius; instead it’s a lazy dictator’s recognition that comprehensive peace treaties can box him in.
+ Ceasefires rather than major statecraft will be Putin’s diplomatic instrument of choice in Ukraine this year, deployed as an elongation of the conflict, a breathing space rather than as a serious humanitarian concession.
+ Putin is counting on war fatigue in the West, disillusion with the Zelensky government and on the weakening of Kyiv’s fighting spirit.
+ Putin’s calculation for the second year of war is thus straightforward enough: to exhaust the Ukrainian population to such a degree that it pushes its government to reach a settlement with Moscow.
+ By smashing electricity grids and phone masts he makes daily life almost unbearable for Ukrainians.
+ The central failure of Putin? Not his military blunders, not the shortcomings of his intelligence services, not even his crazed dream of building a New Russia. Rather it has been his inability to listen to what Ukrainians were saying about their lot, their discomfort in the shadows of Moscow, his refusal to accept their victimhood and his toxic conviction that Ukrainians had not earned their right to an independent state.
Russia’s death toll from Ukraine war is as high as 60,000, UK says: WSJ reports UK Defense Ministry estimates that more than 200,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded since the start of the invasion.
Putin’s war is crippling Ukraine’s economy—and Russia’s, too: As the conflict enters its second year, it’s clear that the cost to both sides will be intolerably high. Leonid Bershidsky
+ But as the war enters its second year, it’s becoming clear that the cost to both sides will turn out to be intolerably high. There’s no outcome that looks good for anybody, and the longer the conflict lasts, the higher the economic toll will climb.
+ The physical damage is compounded by Ukraine’s deep corruption, which remains entrenched even as the war has rendered theft of public funds that much more morally reprehensible than it is in peacetime.
+ Verifiable Russian deaths number more than 10,000, but the total number of dead and wounded is surely far greater—maybe 20 times as high, by some Western estimates.
How a tiny NATO nation tackled a big problem: Arming Ukraine: Luxembourg’s challenges in buying arms on the open market underscore the struggle to keep Ukraine supplied until sophisticated Western weapons arrive in the spring. NYT
Macron calls out Russia for work with ‘neo-mafia’ Wagner group: Politico reports the French president says Moscow and Europe must find ‘imperfect balance’ in long run.
In wake of Ukraine war, US and allies are hunting down Russian spies: Officials caution that Russia retains significant capabilities despite exposure of multiple operatives in Europe. WP
+ Russia has sought to compensate for its losses by relying more heavily on cyberespionage, Pelttari and other European officials said. Moscow has also tried to take advantage of border crossings and refugee flows to deploy new spies and replenish its depleted ranks, officials said.
+ But these new arrivals would be without the protection and advantages of working out of Russian embassies, officials said, and may lack the experience, sources and training of those who were declared persona non grata.
+ “February of 2023 is not the same as February of 2021 or 2019,” said a senior Western intelligence official. After’s Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “there just isn’t as much tolerance or as much space” in Europe.
Meet Olaf Scholz’s shadow foreign minister: Wolfgang Schmidt pulls the strings on all big German government decisions, and sidelines the foreign ministry when necessary. Politico
Future of Scottish independence quest in doubt after Sturgeon quits WP
Devolution has stoked brutality and division in our politics: As she resigned, Nicola Sturgeon complained of the toxic atmosphere that she and her party have contributed to in Scotland. Camilla Cavendish
+ Gordon Brown and Tony Blair unleashed Scottish devolution in the hope of stalling the momentum towards independence. Instead, inadvertently, they increased it, which amplified divisions within each nation of the UK.
+ Friends in Scotland complain that politics is so toxic it’s not something you want to discuss around the dinner table.
+ Commentators focus on the fact that around half of Scots want independence. But half don’t: the appalling economic legacy of Brexit is a stark reminder of the risks of going solo.
Larry the Cat celebrates 12 years of dutiful service at No. 10 Downing St. NPR
Marine Le Pen ‘now favorite to be president’ amid pension fury: The Times reports the rightwinger’s journey to the mainstream puts her in pole position to win on her third attempt.
France is a battleground for pro- and anti-Qatar influence operations: Qatar has been at the heart of online clashes in France for years. The latest is a complex manipulation operation that 'Le Monde' has discovered is tied to a secretive Israeli disinformation unit. Le Monde
+ For several years, France and the French-speaking internet have been a prime battleground for pro- or anti-Qatar campaigns.
+ The host country of the 2022 World Cup has invested significant resources to improve its image in France, hiring several online influence agencies, including Avisa Partners, 35ºNord and URéputation.
+ Since 2018 (and for various lengths of time), these different companies have been in charge of defending Qatar's image online and also of attacking its geopolitical opponents, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in particular, with a large number of forums, advertorials, and anonymous social media accounts.
+ One of the main battlefields is Wikipedia.
+ The widely consulted online encyclopedia is a major target for influence campaigns.
In satellite images and video, hidden clues about an Iranian Air Force upgrade: In early February, Iranian state media aired a video about an underground Air Force base. Details in the footage and satellite images point toward the possible arrival of advanced Russian jets. NYT
The Iraq War, 20 years later: It wasn’t the disaster everyone now says it was. Eli Lake
+ Iraq is better off today than it was 20 years ago.
+ In 2003, the World Bank estimated that Iraq’s GDP was a paltry $21.9 billion. In 2021, Iraq’s GDP was nearly $208 billion.
+ To evaluate the war that rid Iraq of a sadistic crime family, one must imagine what Iraq would have resembled had Saddam or his sons remained in power. In that light, the plagues of corruption, ethnic militias, and Iranian influence look like a bargain.
AP: Janet Yellen to visit India for G20 finance meetings
Lael Brainard: a rigorous economist enters Joe Biden’s White House: She will be tasked with delivering the president’s agenda at a pivotal moment for the administration. FT
How democracy can win: The right way to counter autocracy. Samantha Power
US Department of State: Political declaration on responsible military use of artificial intelligence and autonomy: Acces here.
+ "A principled approach to the military use of AI should include careful consideration of risks and benefits, and it should also minimize unintended bias and accidents. States should take appropriate measures to ensure the responsible development, deployment, and use of their military AI capabilities, including those enabling autonomous systems."
Biden’s Trump-focused campaign could be risky if GOP shifts AP
+ Beating Trump is a central argument for Biden’s reelection, though equally important will be his legislative accomplishments, including a sweeping public works package, new gun safety rules and steep federal spending increases on green energy, high-tech manufacturing, and health care
+ Biden’s close aides acknowledge that, in 2020, he was laser-focused on having come out of retirement to deny Trump a second term. If Trump’s not on next year’s presidential general election ballot, they say, the president will broaden the contrasts he presents, seeking to make the race a referendum on broader Trumpism.
+ The Democrats’ midterm performance shows Biden was able to win last year without Trump on the ballot, and could do so again next year, those close to the president argue. Either way, they predict Biden will be buoyed in 2024 by two years of promoting trillions of dollars of reinvestment domestically.
GOP wants candidates to pledge support for nominee — but some resist: WP reports Trump said he won’t commit to supporting the winner if he loses the nomination, and other potential candidates have hedged on the issue.
Scott Walker says Ron DeSantis is in a 'better' spot to take on Trump than he was: NBC News reports some see comparisons between DeSantis and Walker, the then-Wisconsin governor who didn’t last long in the 2016 cycle against Trump, despite significant hype.
"Also, I'd be happy to serve in the Cabinet."
DeSantis 2024 bid takes shape as he enlists aides, woos donors Bloomberg
+ DeSantis is expected to appoint Generra Peck as campaign manager and director.
+ Florida pollster Ryan Tyson, who runs his own agency in Tallahassee, will also play a key role as a campaign strategist as DeSantis seeks to translate his conservative record in the state capital into policy proposals for a national audience.
+ Heather Barker is expected to run the finance operation, with Tucker Obenshain as her deputy.
+ Phil Cox, a longtime GOP operative, is likely to sign on as a consultant.
+ DeSantis, 44, is expected to declare once the Florida legislative session ends. Allies expect that announcement in late May or early June.
+ Next weekend, DeSantis’s team is hosting a three-day retreat for roughly 150 to 200 donors in Palm Beach — the same city where Trump lives half of the year and has based his presidential campaign.
Tim Scott weighs 2024 run, selling unity to a party eager for a fight: Scott, the only Black Republican senator, has many political assets. What he lacks is an obvious ability to win over voters who have embraced a Trumpian brand of us-versus-them divisiveness. NYT
+ “If you want to understand America, you need to start in Charleston; you need to understand and appreciate the devastation brought upon African Americans,” Mr. Scott counseled. “But if you stop at our original sin, you have not started the story of America, because the story of America is not defined by our original sin. The story of America is defined by our redemption.”
+ “I don’t see a path for Tim,” said Chip Felkel, a longtime Republican consultant in South Carolina and a critic of Mr. Trump. He said of the mood in the party, “We don’t have a lot of Republicans ready to sing ‘Kumbaya.’”
+ He has a war chest exceeding $22 million, and will travel on Feb. 22 to Iowa, the first nominating state. Two heavy hitters, former Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado and Rob Collins, a former leader of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, signed on this month to lead a new super PAC backing him.
AP: Romney, outspoken about his own party, weighs reelection run
America’s longing for authenticity: Reflections on Nikki Haley’s announcement, Super Bowl ads, and Will Smith’s humiliation. Peggy Noonan
Peggy is so darn smart. I am jealous.
Never say ‘nice to meet you’ and 27 other rules for surviving in DC: We’re not here to make friends. We’re here to get a job. Politico
DC, home of every high school class president with access to nuclear weapons.
America is sick of Presidents: The real Presidents Day problem. Michael Schaffer
Microsoft, Google, and a new era of antitrust HBR
ChatGPT is a blurry JPEG of the web: OpenAI’s chatbot offers paraphrases, whereas Google offers quotes. Which do we prefer? New Yorker
+ @Carnage4Life: Seeing the ways ChatGPT & generative AI are changing so much about how people create in just a few months, it’s crazy to think tech spent years convinced the future was selling JPEGs stored in a very slow distributed database. Sorry, just the links to the JPEGs, not actual images.
How Google ran out of ideas: The company thinks it’s an innovator. In fact, it’s an imitator—and not the best one, either. Cory Doctorow
+ Microsoft is making a desperate play. Having spent billions on a search engine that no one uses, the company has sunk billions more into equipping it with the chatbot technology ChatGPT, on the theory that answering queries with automatically generated, falsehood-strewn paragraphs rather than links to webpages will be what finally persuades users to switch from Google Search.
+ Microsoft’s move is understandable: It has tried everything to make Bing a thing, and failed. Harder to understand is why Google is copying Microsoft, with a plan to cram chatbots into every corner of the Googleverse.
+ Why is Google so easily spooked into doing stupid things, whether they involve censorship in China or shoehorning awkward social-media features into places they don’t belong? I suspect that the company’s anxiety lies in the gulf between its fantasy of being an idea factory and the reality of its actual business.
+ In its nearly 25-year history, Google has made one and a half successful products: a once-great search engine and a pretty good Hotmail clone. Everything else it built in-house has crashed and burned. That’s true of Google Plus, of course, but it’s also true of a whole “Google graveyard” of failed products.
+ Almost every successful Google product—its mobile stack, its ad stack, its video service, its document-collaboration tools, its cloud service, its server-management tools—was an acquisition.
+ The problem is not that chatbots are irrelevant to search—they’re all too relevant already. Rather, it’s that automated-text generators will produce oceans of spam, and will continue to blithely spew lies with all the brio of a con artist.
+ The buying-things company persists in striving to be an inventing-things company. Rudderless and out of ideas, coasting on a single technical breakthrough codified a quarter century ago, Google will continue chasing its rivals and calling the process “innovation.”
Sam Altman is tech’s next household name — if we survive the killer robots: Sam Altman, the man behind ChatGPT, is a new kind of Silicon Valley power player. NBC News
Why chatbots sometimes act weird and spout nonsense: No, chatbots aren’t sentient. Here’s how their underlying technology works. Cade Metz
+ A neural network is just a mathematical system that learns skills by analyzing vast amounts of digital data. As a neural network examines thousands of cat photos, for instance, it can learn to recognize a cat.
+ Most people use neural networks every day. It’s the technology that identifies people, pets and other objects in images posted to internet services like Google Photos.
+ It allows Siri and Alexa, the talking voice assistants from Apple and Amazon, to recognize the words you speak. And it’s what translates between English and Spanish on services like Google Translate.
+ Why do they get stuff wrong? Because they learn from the internet. Think about how much misinformation and other garbage is on the web.
+ The bottom line: Don’t believe everything a chatbot tells you.
Bloomberg: ASML stolen data came from technical repository for chip machines
+ Information is stolen from a shared storehouse of technical details.
+ US ‘deeply concerned’ about allegations of economic espionage.
Third high-level FTX executive nears plea deal with US prosecutors: FT reports Nishad Singh was a close associate of Sam Bankman-Fried, who founded the now-bankrupt crypto exchange.
From math camp to handcuffs: FTX’s downfall was an arc of brotherhood and betrayal: Gary Wang and Sam Bankman-Fried are offering dueling accounts of the FTX fiasco and of who’s ultimately to blame. Bloomberg
Tesla has been weighing a takeover of battery-metals miner Sigma Lithium amid rampant demand for the metal used in electric vehicle batteries.
Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars: Which could have big political ramifications. Economist
Bloomberg: Airbnb’s record week adds $15 billion in value as travel booms
+ Shares climb 21% on the week to the highest level since May.
+ Bookings show recovery to pre-pandemic levels, CEO Chesky says.
A newspaper taught Hemingway to write: The Kansas City Star’s style guide was his bible. John J. Miller
+ Access the Kansas City Star style guide here.
The strange fate of the business phone call: Workplace phone calls used to have rigid, unforgiving specs. The Internet made them weirder. Clive Thompson
Bloomberg: Vince McMahon is asking $9 billion for his wrestling empire
+ UFC-owner Endeavor is seen as a likely bidder for WWE.
+ The company has already received offers for the business.
Hermès grants 4,000-euro bonus to all employees: Le Monde reports the generosity stems from exceptional profits in 2022 when sales grew by more than 20% in consecutive quarters, including in the last three months of 2022.
What the most productive companies do differently HBR
+ Across sectors and geographies, the most productive companies follow a playbook with these four elements: 1) They capture value from digitization; 2) They invest in intangibles (such as R&D or workforce capabilities); 3) They build a future-ready workforce; and 4) They take a systems approach.
+ Many frontier firms are part of what we call the Titanium Economy — small, often privately held industrial-technology companies that are among the fastest growing and most profitable enterprises in the country. These companies are often based in smaller cities, sometimes even in rural areas, and present across a variety of sectors.
After going gray, a news anchor found herself the focus of the story: Lisa LaFlamme was dismissed after a decades-long TV career, not long after she stopped dyeing her hair, setting off debates across Canada about sexism, ageism, and going gray. NYT
+ A household name in Canada for decades, Ms. LaFlamme was unceremoniously dismissed last summer by CTV, the country’s largest private television network, after what her employer described as a “business decision” to take the program “in a different direction.”
+ Though her national newscast at CTV had been one of the most watched and she had won a national award for best news anchor just months earlier, LaFlamme was left to sign off without a proper farewell.
What should win best film at the BAFTAs? Our critics choose: Will it be Banshees, Tár, Elvis, All Quiet on the Western Front or Everything Everywhere All at Once? The Times
+ The British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs) are tomorrow, February 19, 2023, at 2:00 pm ET.
+ Subscribers to BritBox can watch the BAFTA Awards online through the app.
Gustavo Dudamel offers Lydia Tár the LA Philharmonic: The powerhouse conductor joined the Tár team of Cate Blanchett and Todd Field to go deep on their Oscar-nominated film. Vanity Fair
A requiem for the Spartans: The school I love is forever changed. Tim Alberta
15 iconic hip hop albums that turn 30 in 2023 HHGA
Mikaela Shiffrin wins gold at the world championships: NYT reports Shiffrin’s seventh career gold medal at the Alpine world skiing championships eases the sting of a disappointing Olympics.
Incoming NCAA president Charlie Baker will not relocate to Indianapolis to work at headquarters: USA Today reports with Congress yet to act on NCAA’s pleas for national legislation on many issues, the presumption is that Baker will spend a lot of time in Washington DC.
Son of former Qatari PM bids to buy Manchester United from Glazers: FT reports Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani makes debt-free offer for 100% ownership of Premier League club.
+ Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad Al Thani did not mention what the bid would be, but the price is now estimated to reach as high as $6 billion.
Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.
-Marc
Marc A. Ross | Chief Communications Strategist @ Caracal
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